Blimey who reads this stuff?

From the Guardian -

The Labour leadership contest has exposed new factions in the party

Until 2015, there were four main factional tendencies in the Labour party: the “old right”, the “hard left”, the “soft left” and the Blairites. The old right – rooted in local government and union bureaucracies – has campaigned against radical socialism since the 1940s. The political crises of the 1980s saw the Labour left divide between the hard left of Tony Benn and the soft left led by Neil Kinnock (and, later, Ed Miliband). The soft left wanted to update socialism for a post-industrial age, to expel Trotskyist factions from the party, and to make whatever accommodations it took to win elections. The hard left remained committed to the radical policy agenda developed in the 1970s, despite waning support for traditional socialism among the electorate. The Blairites, advocating free markets and globalisation, emerged as a distinctive section of the party elite in the 1990s, but never had an enthusiastic base among members; they always relied on support from the old right and the soft left to carry out their agenda.

Strewth - ideology certainly is a rum business. One might suggest that Labour party selection committees could narrow down their list of plausible election candidates using a fairly simple filter such as –

Don’t choose an ideologue – they frame things before understanding them.

Don’t choose a self-absorbed turd.

The two are not unrelated, but it isn't difficult is it? Yet I have an idea that simple little mantras such as these do not drive the Labour party selection process.