The Labour Party

nmc said:
If Long Bailey wins then the Labour Party is finished. I’d expect a regroup on the centre left and a huge number of defections. Corbynism might be a mass movement but it’s unelectable. To be honest the split between trade unionism and politics on the left is long overdue in the UK. The unions have not represented the interests of the poorest in society for many years.
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The perfect fumble said:
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I certainly didn’t have that in mind - that’s a real p9litical wankers paradise. . Was thinking more of a what happened in France when the SFIO disbanded and the Socialst Party replaced it. Britain doesn’t need another SDP or another New Labour but it does need a party that champions Social Justice without Len McClusky sticking his nose in.
 
nmc said:
I certainly didn’t have that in mind - that’s a real p9litical wankers paradise. . Was thinking more of a what happened in France when the SFIO disbanded and the Socialst Party replaced it. Britain doesn’t need another SDP or another New Labour but it does need a party that champions Social Justice without Len McClusky sticking his nose in.
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Labour without Labour ain't going to happen. The Guardian is championing this with renewed vigour, but it's not going anywhere, problem with it, there's no traction. New Labour blew it to such an extent that avenue is now an anathema for much of the membership. Regardless of what some in here might babble on about, and I'm not putting you in that frame, a party has to stand for something.

One of the comments in a Guardian piece peddling soft Toryism as Labour's salvation caught my eye.....


  • There is no such thing as long-term capitalist reform. Roosevelt attempted it and he was barely buried when corporations and billionaires began dismantling the New Deal, finally culminating in the launch of the neoliberal experiment in the late 1970s. Capitalism is unreformable because economy is the lever for everything else in a society and when you give that lever to private interest it closes out the avenue for public interest.


    The question of whether 'the left' wants to subordinate capitalism to the state is another matter. The left is comprised of groups of different viewpoints - the Labour programme aimed to encourage worker co-ops as a way of transforming the economy, while in other states increased government control over private workplaces is seen as optimal.
 
Poll of 1000 members has Starmer winning the leadership contest with 61% to Long Baileys 39%.

Meanwhile they interview one of the remaining MP's who says neither will get his support as they are both a part of the problem.
 
They have their work cut out whoever wins. Amazing stat of the new year

twice as many people have walked on the moon than have been a labour prime minister - 12 v 6.
 
The perfect fumble said:
Labour without Labour ain't going to happen. The Guardian is championing this with renewed vigour, but it's not going anywhere, problem with it, there's no traction. New Labour blew it to such an extent that avenue is now an anathema for much of the membership. Regardless of what some in here might babble on about, and I'm not putting you in that frame, a party has to stand for something.

One of the comments in a Guardian piece peddling soft Toryism as Labour's salvation caught my eye.....


  • There is no such thing as long-term capitalist reform. Roosevelt attempted it and he was barely buried when corporations and billionaires began dismantling the New Deal, finally culminating in the launch of the neoliberal experiment in the late 1970s. Capitalism is unreformable because economy is the lever for everything else in a society and when you give that lever to private interest it closes out the avenue for public interest.


    The question of whether 'the left' wants to subordinate capitalism to the state is another matter. The left is comprised of groups of different viewpoints - the Labour programme aimed to encourage worker co-ops as a way of transforming the economy, while in other states increased government control over private workplaces is seen as optimal.
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I dont agree with this at all - to suggest new labour 'blew it' when they won 3x GEs in a row and Corbyn and the far Left lost the last two is a stretch. Losing elections and being a protest movement for alternative views might have had appeal in the post Blair/Brown years but the pain of election beatings has a significant impact. Labour is at a turning point and I think the majority whant it to be electable and that means a lot of what Corbyn tried has to be ditched and some of what he ditched has to come back.
 
Gaudion M said:
I dont agree with this at all - to suggest new labour 'blew it' when they won 3x GEs in a row and Corbyn and the far Left lost the last two is a stretch. Losing elections and being a protest movement for alternative views might have had appeal in the post Blair/Brown years but the pain of election beatings has a significant impact. Labour is at a turning point and I think the majority whant it to be electable and that means a lot of what Corbyn tried has to be ditched and some of what he ditched has to come back.
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Correct, but they won't change, because they now can't.
 
Ancient Citizen said:
Correct, but they won't change, because they now can't.
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What a stupid statement. They changed a massive amount from Blair to Miliband to Corbyn and with Corbyn gone they will clearly change again. They dont have to write a manifesto for 5 years and we will be in a whole different place then so I expect the change to be pretty massive from now to that point. The rejection of the corbyn continuity candiate will be the first big step and that will be fairly soon.
 
Gaudion M said:
I dont agree with this at all - to suggest new labour 'blew it' when they won 3x GEs in a row and Corbyn and the far Left lost the last two is a stretch. Losing elections and being a protest movement for alternative views might have had appeal in the post Blair/Brown years but the pain of election beatings has a significant impact. Labour is at a turning point and I think the majority whant it to be electable and that means a lot of what Corbyn tried has to be ditched and some of what he ditched has to come back.
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I'd settle for social democracy, I think most members would, but not the third way, that poisoned the party, destroyed it in order to save it, but just ended up destroying it.

You can win elections by not being the government, because eventually all governments piss the electorate off, that's how New Labour won in 97, John Major was fucked and Blair looked fresh, modern and vaguely progressive

in reality John Smith, had he lived, would've won by a landslide in 97, my cat would've done!

New Labour then took that enormous goodwill and a stonking majority and pissed it away until there was nothing left, because, in the end, they stood for nothing but the status quo.
 
Gaudion M said:
What a stupid statement. The changed a massive amount from Blair to Miliband to Corbyn and with Corbyn gone they will clearly change again. They dont have to write a manifesto for 5 years and we will be in a whole different place then so I expect the change to be pretty massive from now to that point. The rejection of the corbyn continuity candiate will be the first big step and that will be fairly soon.
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What would help would be for those who never stop repeating that they are traditional Labour voters but don't like the direction the party has gone, to join the party and vote out Corbyn's cronies and put a centrist leader in place. It worked for Momentum in getting Corbyn in, so why can't it work the other way? (Because half of them are closet Tories and don't like to admit it)
 
Gaudion M said:
What a stupid statement. They changed a massive amount from Blair to Miliband to Corbyn and with Corbyn gone they will clearly change again. They dont have to write a manifesto for 5 years and we will be in a whole different place then so I expect the change to be pretty massive from now to that point. The rejection of the corbyn continuity candiate will be the first big step and that will be fairly soon.
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Will it now, how, exactly, are they going to stop a Long Bailey/Burgon/Lewis candidate from being selected by the membership?
 
The perfect fumble said:
I'd settle for social democracy, I think most members would, but not the third way, that poisoned the party, destroyed it in order to save it, but just ended up destroying it.

You can win elections by not being the government, because eventually all governments piss the electorate off, that's what New Labour did in 97, John Major was fucked and Blair looked fresh, modern and vaguely progressive

in reality John Smith, had he lived, would've won by a landslide in 97, my cat would've done!

New Labour then took that enormous goodwill and a stonking majority and pissed it away until there was nothing left, because, in the end, they stood for nothing but the status quo.
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A warped take, the tories should have been finished when Major called a GE. They were a mess of a party then but the reality was Labour were not much better, hard left factions were casung all sorts of trouble and the wider perception creating a view that they could not be trusted. Blair managed to pull it together by further marginalising the nutters in the same way Kinock had fought them and the moderates in the party, sick of losing, got fully behind him. That battle had been fought for years and Blair got on top of it and got the Militant / Hard Left nutters to pipedown enough. Then once in power many pissed of to the Socialist Workers Party. With Corbyn they all came crawling back and Labour got back in to the swing of losing elections to rank awful tories.

History will repeat itself. The next Labour leader will look to clear out the nutters.
 
west didsblue said:
What would help would be for those who never stop repeating that they are traditional Labour voters but don't like the direction the party has gone, to join the party and vote out Corbyn's cronies and put a centrist leader in place. It worked for Momentum in getting Corbyn in, so why can't it work the other way? (Because half of them are closet Tories and don't like to admit it)
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Agree - I've never been a member but am thinking about joining. My politics are clearly center left and I voted for Labour in every GE bar Corbyns forst where i voted Lib Dem in protest. I might as well have a say in what direction it will take.

Ancient Citizen said:
Will it now, how, exactly, are they going to stop a Long Bailey/Burgon/Lewis candidate from being selected by the membership?
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Have a read of this i posted a few days back:-

Gaudion M said:
Momentum is probably the largest block vote but my understanding is that there are sub 50k paid up momentum members and Corbyn got 313k votes last time to Jones' circa 200k. So that is a big block but no where near enough to suggest they have control. They and the Unions can only endorse a candidate and JC did not have a clean sweep of Unions last time - some biggish unions backed Owen Smith.

What is likely to happen is that Momentum and the bigger unions will back RLB as the continuity Corbyn candidate but we have no idea of the extent to which the 400k+ membership is going to want continuity of a hard left approach. Brexit is a big unknown as the Corbynite narrative is that brexit lost the election and practically nothing else - the idea being that labour should shift to a more pro brexit stance and everything will be rosy. The membership are generally highly educated and anti brexit and that stance will not go down well with a massive chunk of the voters, only a small % genuinely believe that Corbyn and his lack of popularity was not a massive part of the problem. I think its all to play for.
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The recent polling suggests that Starmer will have a strong early lead. Change already on the cards.
 
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