Brexit

[Dead Mike]

The problem Labour have is that Corbyn engaged an awful lot of lapsed voters who’d become sick of slick, ‘statesman-like’ politicians who seemed completely detached from their lives. Corbyn changed that as we’ve seen from the groundswell of support he gets when out on the streets & speaking to people when on the campaign trail at the last election. I fear that a change in leadership might make the more ‘centrist’ Labour voters happy but just completely alienate more people who see his replacement as just another Blair/Cameron. Regardless of how far left he’s shifted the party.

If they were to try & change leader it’d have to be done by Corbyn with his replacement hitting the road with him & them essentially being a ‘double act’. Send Corbyn out to the areas where he polls well & his successor to the areas where Corbyn isn’t as well regarded. They’d also have to be locked in a room together for a fortnight ahead of this getting intense media training to ensure they’re not at different ends of the country giving people different answers to the same questions. All seems highly unlikely to me tbh.

I always thought Dan Jarvis would be a good shout. Ex-army, single dad, northern & seems a decent sort. Very hard for the tabloids to attack given his history.

[Carbomb]

50 minutes ago, Dead Mike said:

The problem Labour have is that Corbyn engaged an awful lot of lapsed voters who’d become sick of slick, ‘statesman-like’ politicians who seemed completely detached from their lives. Corbyn changed that as we’ve seen from the groundswell of support he gets when out on the streets & speaking to people when on the campaign trail at the last election. I fear that a change in leadership might make the more ‘centrist’ Labour voters happy but just completely alienate more people who see his replacement as just another Blair/Cameron. Regardless of how far left he’s shifted the party.

If they were to try & change leader it’d have to be done by Corbyn with his replacement hitting the road with him & them essentially being a ‘double act’. Send Corbyn out to the areas where he polls well & his successor to the areas where Corbyn isn’t as well regarded. They’d also have to be locked in a room together for a fortnight ahead of this getting intense media training to ensure they’re not at different ends of the country giving people different answers to the same questions. All seems highly unlikely to me tbh.

I meant to imply that in my original post - it'd have to be someone with Corbyn's backing, hence why I mentioned the new generation of the Labour left, rather than, say, Lib Dems-in-red like Cooper, Flint, et al.

To be perfectly honest, I think Labour should start separating the position of Leader of the Labour Party from Prime Minister/Leader of the Opposition, as it should be much more than a political party - it started off as a movement. A huge part of Labour's potential value is that they have the capacity to not just govern within the superstructure, they can also effect change within the base as well, via unions, community collectives, local party activists, etc.; that's how they got started, after all.

If the Leader of the Labour Party was about co-ordinating the party on both fronts, not just in government, there'd be less chance of them "losing touch" as they did over the years.

50 minutes ago, Dead Mike said:

I always thought Dan Jarvis would be a good shout. Ex-army, single dad, northern & seems a decent sort. Very hard for the tabloids to attack given his history.

It's why I suggested Clive Lewis earlier. Butch mentioned him a while ago - he's basically a more left-wing version of Jarvis. Similar background.

[David]

1 hour ago, Carbomb said:

it looked like nobody would even think of looking in the direction of socialism again in the future, he's done a stellar job of getting people talking about it in enough numbers for socialist politics and ideas to achieve a level of critical mass in the UK mainstream that gets other people discussing them, to the point where it'll be difficult to stuff back into the cupboard again.

I'd be very surprised if we see a government with a solid base of Socialist principles manage to really do much again in the UK. There's a minority who buy into Socialist politics throughout their lives, but many more go through the idea as a youthful phase. I've worked with socialist groups in Scotland in the past, and it's no surprise that the majority of members and campaigners are all university age people. It's been like that for ages now, and we've constantly been waiting on that group to grow up, maintain those beliefs and be followed by the next group and so on.

It doesn't happen. They grow up, graduate, get a job, buy a house, a car, and then aren't quite so keen on maintaining their political beliefs when they're the ones who are likely to be squeezed to make such policies become a reality.

Sure, we all like to think that if a Socialist government came to power they'd grab the rich by the scruff of the neck and penalise them for their success and wealth, but that's not going to happen. Much like we're hearing about with Brexit, they'll just fuck off elsewhere to a place that's far more accommodating, and if Brexit has taught us all anything it's that we can't have the wealthy and the corporations being upset and threatening to take their business elsewhere.

People are fundamentally in it for themselves and their family, and there's nothing wrong with that. 

Go down and stand next to the foodbank bin in Sainsbury's tomorrow and when some middle-class type wanders up with some tins and a packet of pasta ask them if they'd not rather take half of their most likely ridiculous budget for little Poppy or Harry's Christmas and use it to buy toys for little Shantelle or Kyle instead and see what they say.

Proper Socialism died the day that Labour amended Clause IV in 1995, although in truth it had been on its deathbed long before then. 

[Dead Mike]

25 minutes ago, David said:

 

It doesn't happen. They grow up, graduate, get a job, buy a house, a car, and then aren't quite so keen on maintaining their political beliefs when they're the ones who are likely to be squeezed to make such policies become a reality.

 

This certainly used to be the case. Historic voting data shows that the age when people shifted from Lab to Con used to be in their early 30's. At the last election this shifted, the Labour 'youth-quake' that the media thought was coming never materialised & the biggest shift was from 30-49 year olds. The majority of u50's voted Labour! (https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/06/13/how-britain-voted-2017-general-election)

People with families, mortgages etc who can see that they're going to be worse off than their parents were. People who were working full times jobs & still struggling to make ends meet. In short, politics has changed.

[Keith Houchen]

2 minutes ago, Dead Mike said:

People with families, mortgages etc who can see that they're going to be worse off than their parents were. People who were working full times jobs & still struggling to make ends meet. In short, politics has changed.

Indeed it has.  I know he is hated but about 10 years ago, I was in a room with about 30 other people to hear Owen Jones.  He was saying how most peoples first connection to politics used to come with their first job or apprenticeship via joining their trade union.  I think what Corbyn has done is reconnected that first involvement for young people that hasn't been there for decades.  Of course, like many apprentices who back in the day who stopped being interested or weren't interested, the key is to keep them interested.

[PowerButchi]

I'd say that's a fair shout. A lot of the older men I know who are firmly Brexit, and indeed piss and moan about "snowflakes", complain about feminists and the like all day reading the Daily Star would never dream about voting anyone else but Labour, are staunch socialists, and they were all massive union men  which would have been their entry into politics.

Edited December 11, 2018 by PowerButchi

[David]

7 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Indeed it has.  I know he is hated but about 10 years ago, I was in a room with about 30 other people to hear Owen Jones.  He was saying how most peoples first connection to politics used to come with their first job or apprenticeship via joining their trade union.  I think what Corbyn has done is reconnected that first involvement for young people that hasn't been there for decades.  Of course, like many apprentices who back in the day who stopped being interested or weren't interested, the key is to keep them interested.

The problem is that despite Corbyn seemingly refreshing an interest in left-wing politics, we've seen him and his party barely cling on to parity when going up against a Governing party who seem more at war with each other than the opposition. This 'Tory party are the worst we've seen in many a year, and yet the left still can't seem to muster up enough about them to make a serious dent and take advantage.

If, and this is a big fucking if, the 'Tories somehow manage to get their shit together they'll likely piss the next general election I think. Isn't Boris fucking Johnson the most popular politician in the country at the moment or something? It's mental.

 

[Keith Houchen]

Yeah, it says a lot when we have the worst government in recent memory, totally shambolic and inept, yet they are still ahead in the polls.  It's almost as if the media have some sway with public opinion or something.

[Carbomb]

4 hours ago, David said:

The problem is that despite Corbyn seemingly refreshing an interest in left-wing politics, we've seen him and his party barely cling on to parity when going up against a Governing party who seem more at war with each other than the opposition. This 'Tory party are the worst we've seen in many a year, and yet the left still can't seem to muster up enough about them to make a serious dent and take advantage.

If, and this is a big fucking if, the 'Tories somehow manage to get their shit together they'll likely piss the next general election I think. Isn't Boris fucking Johnson the most popular politician in the country at the moment or something? It's mental.

 

When you've got a media that is clearly determined to shit on any leader showing even the slightest inclination towards the left, it's no surprise at all. Ed Milliband is maybe a little bit more left of centre than New Labour, and the campaign the rags waged on him was practically bullying. With Corbyn, it's been virtually non-stop, calling him an anti-Semite, going on about the IRA, etc.

I had hoped initially that this storm would eventually get so excessive as they ramped it up that it might even drive supporters towards him, just out of sheer bloody-mindedness at the idea that they might be being told what to do, but instead we just get the same old shit; sure, Corbyn's Labour haven't been as smart tactically as they could've been, but people blaming Labour for why they're doing so badly against one of the worst governments in history are blaming the wrong people.

Edited December 11, 2018 by Carbomb

[David]

Just now, Carbomb said:

When you've got a media that is clearly determined to shit on any leader showing even the slightest inclination towards the left, it's no surprise at all. Ed Milliband is maybe a little bit more left of centre than New Labour, and the campaign the rags waged on him was practically bullying. With Corbyn, it's been practically non-stop, calling him an anti-Semite, going on about the IRA, etc.

Exactly, which is why i don't see the left making any real headway any time soon, the narrative is too much in the favour of the right. Couple that with the factors I mentioned earlier, plus the pattern that suggests we're seeing a solid swing to the right all over Europe in general and I don't think things look all that great for the left.

5 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

I had hoped initially that this storm would eventually get so excessive as they ramped it up that it might even drive supporters towards him, just out of sheer bloody-mindedness at the idea that they might be being told what to do, but instead we just get the same old shit; sure, Corbyn's Labour haven't been as smart tactically as they could've been, but people blaming Labour for why they're doing so badly against one of the worst governments in history are blaming the wrong people.

I'm not "blaming" Labour, I'm saying that if the left aren't able to make headway now, for whatever reason, when the current lot are in the shitter, then I don't see it happening in the future.

In short, the country, for the most part, simply doesn't want it.

[Factotum]

Quote

In short, the country, for the most part, simply doesn't want it.

Disagree. The last election showed that they do. The Tories won that election by a very small margin and could not get a majority. It was assumed all UKIP voters would go back to the Tories, but they all seemingly went to Labour in those areas.

Labour even won a seat in Kensington and nearly got Amber Rudd out. Nationalisation of railways and other services are very popular amongst even traditional Conservatives. The problem is he needs to strike the right tone. As Carbomb mentioned Corbyn has established that a progressive socialism can appeal, I just feel it needs someone else to get it all the way through. 

[unfitfinlay]

6 minutes ago, David said:

The problem is that despite Corbyn seemingly refreshing an interest in left-wing politics, we've seen him and his party barely cling on to parity when going up against a Governing party who seem more at war with each other than the opposition. This 'Tory party are the worst we've seen in many a year, and yet the left still can't seem to muster up enough about them to make a serious dent and take advantage.

If, and this is a big fucking if, the 'Tories somehow manage to get their shit together they'll likely piss the next general election I think. Isn't Boris fucking Johnson the most popular politician in the country at the moment or something? It's mental.

 

Labour aren't really "The Left" though. They are just as splintered and divided as the Tories. If not more so. A significant amount of Labour politicians were campaigning against Corbyn from the moment he entered the leadership contest. It's not surprising he didn't win considering his own Party have been calling him "unelectable" and trying to get rid of him for years. 

Corbyn has lost me on Brexit though. He seems to have fallen into the exact same trap that his predecessors did. Thinking "Everything will be okay if I can just get into power" and ignoring anything that's inconvenient to that goal. Refusing to even consider a second vote, and doing the "I could get a better deal" thing is just fucking arrogant. We've pissed the EU about for two years, they aren't going to rip everything up and start all over again with only three months to go. Why the fuck would they?

[Carbomb]

1 hour ago, David said:

Exactly, which is why i don't see the left making any real headway any time soon, the narrative is too much in the favour of the right. Couple that with the factors I mentioned earlier, plus the pattern that suggests we're seeing a solid swing to the right all over Europe in general and I don't think things look all that great for the left.

I'm not "blaming" Labour, I'm saying that if the left aren't able to make headway now, for whatever reason, when the current lot are in the shitter, then I don't see it happening in the future.

In short, the country, for the most part, simply doesn't want it.

Yeah, but, assuming that's the case, it's not really something they can do anything about, so they should just get to doing what they can. What I posted above was merely an opinion of what I think could be one of the many things they could do to start winning back the ground lost; not that I think they'll do it, but IMO they need to get back to the grassroots if they really want to do that.

[The King Of Swing]

It would be madness for Corbyn to step aside while the government is making such a mess of everything. Last thing Labour needs right now is a leadership contest imo.

Later next year or 2020 perhaps.

Word going about that the mythical 48 letters have gone in. But I'm not buying that until I see an official announcement.

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

The 48 letters seem to have gone in more times than Jacob Rees-Mogg at a peasant clubbing party. Exactly the same outcome as well, more bumps and bruises than can be counted but nothing ever changes.