LabourList’s top posts of 2015

2015 was the best ever year of traffic for LabourList. Here’s what you were reading most:

10. Ed Miliband opposes airstrikes in Syria

A late entry onto the list, and the most read article in December. Mid-way through the Commons debate over whether to extend airstrikes into Syria, which we covered with an extensive liveblog (see below), LabourList broke the news that former leader Ed Miliband would be opposing the plans. It was quickly picked up across the media

9. Scottish Labour is going down in flames – and taking Miliband’s chance of a majority with them

“The opportunity to turn this around may already have passed. The mood in the party is low this morning. It will take something almighty to shift the gloom now.”

Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Former editor Mark Ferguson wrote this back in February, months before Scottish Labour’s wipeout became a reality – showing that LabourList will tell you exactly what’s going on for the Labour Party, and won’t sugar coat it.

8. Labour MPs release statement calling for change in party policy direction

In hindsight, it’s interesting to see the popularity of this news story from January, of 15 Labour MPs calling for the party to take a stronger anti-austerity position, support rail renationalisation and give trade unions bigger roles in the workplace. Signed by Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott, it was clear then that there was a grassroots appetite for the policies that later gave Corbyn victory in the leadership contest.

7. Car crash Osborne interview leaves him unable to answer NHS funding questions 18 times

Just weeks before the election, George Osborne made a disastrous appearance on the Andrew Marr Show, as he failed to properly answer how he planned to fund the National Health Service… 18 times.

We got a video of the interview up later that day, for everyone to enjoy – and for people to see just how little the Tories care about the NHS.

6. Jeremy Corbyn’s policies

The summer saw a sustained and unexpected spike in traffic for the site – largely down to the incredible Jeremy Corbyn Story. People would readily read anything with his name in the headline, and his policy announcements were particularly popular.

At his first meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Corbyn said that housing was to be one of his priorities as leader, and back in June it was his plan to extend Right To Buy to private tenants that proved to be his most widely shared proposal. It’s just a short post, but it caught the imagination.

5. Labour lost because voters believed it was anti-austerity

“The first hard truth is that the Tories didn’t win despite austerity, they won because of it.”

Jon Cruddas’ first article on the back of his independent review into Labour’s defeat proved controversial. The research from the Dagenham and Rainham MP suggested that cutting the deficit was a priority for voters – even working class and poor voters – and that concerns about a coalition with the SNP were widespread.

At a time when the first poll was released indicating Corbyn could win on first preferences, the Cruddas findings electrified debate among the grassroots.

4. I’m ready to serve in Labour’s renewal, but not as leader

“I’m ready to serve in that rebuilding process as part of the Labour team. But I can’t do that as Leader at this moment and I won’t be putting my name forward in the coming leadership contest.”

Just days after the election, Dan Jarvis ruled himself out of the race to succeed Ed Miliband with this article on LabourList. Published just after 10 o’clock on a Sunday night, it was already one of the year’s most read pieces by midnight. A lot has changed since then, but it seems there was enough interest around Jarvis to mount a serious bid had he not written this.

3. LabourList Liveblogs

As always, our liveblogs proved exceptionally popular, with September’s frontbench reshuffle gaining the most attention over a period of five days, as we kept you up-to-date with all the latest moves in Corbyn’s new top team.

In the opening stages of the summer’s leadership contest, we also kept a running list of which MPs had nominated which candidate, and showing who they had supported in 2010.

Our liveblog tracking the Syria debate in the Commons proved popular for people who couldn’t follow all ten hours of debate live, while our commitment to election night coverage mean we were the place to be when votes were counted in the Tower Hamlets and Oldham West by-elections.

2. About that Question Time audience

The leaders’ Question Time attracted some of the big moments of the close campaign, as Ed Miliband refused to say that Labour had overspent before the financial crash.

However, the programme came under fire after it emerged that some of the supposedly undecided voters who had given Miliband a hard time were in fact signed up Tory supporters. Unsurprisingly, our round-up gained plenty of attention in the final days before the election.

1. 48 MPs break the whip to vote against the Welfare Bill

The handling of the Labour’s response to the summer’s Welfare Bill vote saw one of the most defining moments of the year for the party, and Jeremy Corbyn’s staunch insistence that he would break the whip and vote against the measures, rather than abstain, proved popular with activists.

LabourList was first to publish the list of Corbyn and the 47 other Labour MPs who voted with him, and it shot up to become the most read article in the website’s history. If there was a single moment that Corbyn caught the imagination and won the leadership contest, this was it.