Though Cowards Flinch

Diane Abbott: currently disappointing in 3rd

The week 2 scoresheet for the Labour leadership election race has now been compiled.  Enjoy. 

The race positions currently stand: 

1 Ed Balls (35.3%) 2. Ed Miliband (31.3%) 3. Diane Abbott (28.3%0 4. David Miliband (25.0%) 5. Andy Burnham (18.8%). 

It’s been a quiet week, with most candidates shoring up their existing position.   The main movers have been Ed Balls, up 2.5% on last week, and David Miliband, down 4.3%.  

Ed Balls has benefited from the BSF news to some extent, though he has also risen above on immigration and done ok on capital/labour relations.  David Miliband has lost on capital/labour in particular, after a poor Kier Hardie lecture (blog to come). 

Ed Miliband has nudged up with some interesting stuff on worker rights, without doing anything special, while Diane Abbott has had a very quiet week, with no movement. 

Andy Burnham only entered the scoresheet this week, and is still an unknown factor in many areas.  His aspirational socialism speech did him no favours, however, and he needs to make up ground quickly now. 

Weeks 3 and 4 are likely to be big weeks after this phoney war period.  The TCF interview questions are out with most candidates, and movements in the light of answers are likely to be significant.  Clearly we will try to score candidates even in the absence of returns, or partial returns (for example Diane Abbott has agreed only to answer 8 of the 23 questions),  but equally clearly it will be better for candidates to answer fully if they are to impress the TCF team. 

The outstanding issue to report on is methodological, with some doubts from race observers as to the weighting we accord to ‘track record/credibility’.  Currently it is equally weighted with the two other judgment criteria (understanding and learning potential, commitments made), but there is a view that it should have a greater weighting in the overall mark.  Views are welcome.