Can the leadership debate re-engage Labour supporters?

It is sad to see process overtaking politics in the Labour leadership debate, especially because the campaign had at least contained something about visions and policies and how best to deliver on them.

That is what has engaged the thousands who have turned out to hear Corbyn. Many of them are young and have been enlivened by a political debate on austerity that has been completely missing from the mainstream (except perhaps in Scotland but even there we detect a gradual awakening that SNP rhetoric and policy on that issue are two different things).

Engaging so many people in that debate surely can’t be a bad thing. So has it re-engaged disaffected Labour supporters?

Labour ballot: The curious case of the Tory and the vote

Andy Burnham has expressed concerns that Tories may have been given votes in the Labour leadership election and many in Corbyn’s camp have been quick to dismiss this as scaremongering, or as means to invalidate the election outcome. Parking politics to one side this election has turned into a very curious way to run a ballot.

I work with an former Tory councillor who has received several mail shots from candidates as a ‘registered supporter’. He hasn’t been mischievous about this but his name for one reason or another over the years got onto Labour mailing lists. He jokingly quipped that he could have registered three votes using different email addresses, family names and accounts if he could be bothered – because it really is that easy to register as a supporter.