A victory for Baroness Jowell might give hope to the Anyone But Corbyn movement

Assuming no more problems, sometime on Friday Labour will announce who has won the race to be their candidate for London Mayor. It could be that the result of this race could help be a pointer to the Labour leadership result.

Lady Jowell as a Blairite should theoretically be the least appealing candidate to the returning left that have so dominated the electorate for these elections. A month ago, Ken Livingstone said that the big influx of Corbyn supporters will help Sadiq Khan win the mayoral nomination. He said that there was a 90% crossover in phonebanking.

It may be that Lady Jowell’s name recognition and association with the Olympics might trump that apparent liability. Were Corbyn not to win I think one of the reasons is that some his supporters didn’t turn out to vote like the lazy Labour supporters that some believe explains in part the polling failure at the general election.

The other reason I think that Corbynmania might not live up to the hype is that Corbyn isn’t seen as a winner to the wider public. Labour supporters want to win elections, in the same way Lady Jowell is generally perceived as the one who will beat the likely Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith, Sadiq Khan is seen to do less well against Goldsmith.

Sometimes preconceptions and assumptions in politics can be utterly wrong. Prior to May the 7th it was felt that a strong UKIP showing would hurt the Conservatives, David Cameron had privately said he needed UKIP below 5% to have any chance of him remaining Prime Minister. As well all know, UKIP polled 13% and the Conservatives won a majority. A comfortable victory for Jowell or Khan (or indeed Diane Abbott) might not be the harbinger the  Corbyn and the Anyone But Corbyn camps think it might be I expect a Khan victory will see the odds on a Corbyn victory on Saturday shorten even more.

TSE