The election is over - so the elections begin
The election's over, and now every MP seems obsessed with elections.
Portcullis House at Westminster seemed alive today with MPs canvassing for at least five different sets of elections. These are:
1. The Labour leadership - both Milibands, Eb Balls, Andy Burnham, Diane Abbott and John McDonnell. Result September.
2. The Liberal Democrat deputy leadership - Simon Hughes v Tim Farron. Result 9 June.
3. The three Commons deputy speakers, where candidates include Dawn Primarolo, George Howarth, Tom Clarke and Lindsay Hoyle for Labour who get two posts, and Nigel Evans, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Roger Gale for the Conservatives, who will get one post. Nominations close Monday.
4. The new select committee chairmen, who are being elected by secret ballot for the first time. Results also Wed 9 June.
5. Labour's Shadow Cabinet, not due to be elected until the autumn, but lobbying is already well underway.
Add to that Labour's London mayoral selection, and various backbench committes, and Parliament is a hive of electioneering at the moment. I love it.
I'm Michael Crick, and I'm Newsnight's political editor. My guiding rule is that in any story there's usually something the politicians would prefer the world not to know. My job is to find that out. Follow me on
Comment number 1.
At 3rd Jun 2010, stevie wrote:why do the Labour party load the voting system to elect a new Labour leader heavily against the candidate from the left? The country voted left, they outvoted the right, i.e. Labour and Lib Dems well outvoted the Tories it's just that the Lib Dems in their quest for power sold their souls to the devil and got in bed with their hated oponents (well, they were three weeks ago)and so we have a country that is of the LEFT and yet Diane Abbott will be lucky to get a nomination...daft I call it..
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Comment number 2.
At 3rd Jun 2010, The Count wrote:How does having a lot of right leaning candidates and a couple of left leaning ones squeeze out the left leaning ones? Labour's problem with regards to fielding a left-leaning candidates with a realistic chance of winning is that no-one at the top of their tree has particularly identifiable as left-leaning for a while.
I'm not convinced that vote libdem = left
I voted libdem as they are the strongest on civil liberties - I think Labour have been the weakest on that for as long as I can remember.
What we've got in govt is what I wanted and it wasn't really being offered and I can't recall it having been so - fiscally tight but socially liberal (I apprepricate that isn't an easy line to tread).
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