2010 Labour Party Leadership Elections (Napoleon's World)

The 2010 Labour Party Leadership election was held on November 4th, 2010 to decide the party leader in the May 2011 English general election. Hard-left candidate Nick McDonald, Labour's leader since 2007, lost the election to the center-left candidate, Jack Davenport. Fellow hard-left candidate Julia Stabler placed third in the voting.

Background
The Labour Party under John Lennon lost the 2005 General Election to Jeremy Irons and the conservative Whig Party. In the wake of the electoral defeat, center-left Lennon announced he would step down from party leadership and the Labour Leadership election was scheduled for October of 2005.

Center-left candidate Roman Dansley was the victor over hard-left candidates Nick McDonald and Ed Miliband by considerable margins, and assumed command of the party leadership immediately. However, after barely a year in power, the hard-left party element won a resounding victory in local elections, particularly in the Manchester-Liverpool area, due to continuing unpopularity of the Irons government.

Dansley, feeling pressure within his own party, stepped down in favor of McDonald, who ran unopposed in the March of 2007 leadership election in order to prepare for the general election against Jeremy Irons and the Whigs.

When Irons announced he would resign as Prime Minister after the 2008 elections, and instead cede power to new Whig leadership, the Labour Party ratcheted up their efforts. The young, likable David Cameron emerged from the February 2008 Whig leadership conference as the new party leader and won a surprise victory over McDonald and Labour.

Following the May 2008 defeat, McDonald's experience and the strength of the hard-left element of Labour promised to bode well going into 2011 - however, a resounding Whig victory in the 2009 and 2010 local elections suggested that the improving English economy wanted different leadership. A leadership election was announced for late October or early November by McDonald himself.

Candidates

 * Incumbent Labour Party leader Nick McDonald, representing the far-left liberals in the Labour Party, enjoyed the powers of incumbency and popularity amongst powerful unions.


 * Julia Stabler led an insurgency amongst liberals in Labour, favoring more ambitious social welfare programs. Her candidacy was expected to hurt McDonald, especially in poor urban London and Birmingham suburbs.


 * Jack Davenport emerged as the Lennonite center-left candidate, favoring a more compromising tone with the majority party Whigs than McDonald had offered in the previous years in power, running on a platform of "Let's get things done in Parliament."

Results
Jack Davenport carried the election with 53% of the vote. McDonald received 38%, and Stabler received 9%. Political analysts believe that Stabler severeley hurt McDonald's chances of maintaining party leadership and the victory by Davenport reverts Labour to the centrist party it was in the late 1990's and early 2000's, just prior to and during the Premiership of John Lennon.

Impact on 2011 General Election
The popular Whig party is expected to win its third consecutive general election, the third time in history it has achieved this (1978 and 1996 being the previous instances of this). David Cameron is a well-liked Prime Minister and holds a favorable margin in Parliament.

However, with Davenport's youth and upside, Labour party leaders, especially Davenport, have eyed the 2011 general election as a "building election" - a chance to win seats, cut down on Cameron's majority and spend the next three years building a center-left platform that will encourage moderates in England to support Labour in 2014. The Whigs have lost in landslides after three terms in power in the past - 1981 was one of the most lopsided electoral victories in English history, and 1999 brought Lennon to power despite his inexperience.