Current Affairs The General Election

[Eggs]

I’d probably go for Starmer as leader

...not for me, Billy. Somebody new, somebody fresh, somebody with a huge intellect. Rachel Reeves is a highly qualified Economist and centre left politician. Trouble is, the likes of her won’t be elected because the loonies are running the asylum and will continue to support loonies.

See what’s happened with SNP who have well-rounded candidates with high intellect. Labour increasingly push glorified shop-stewards into office. I saw them working for 40 years in the public sector, they all talk the same.

 

[zzr45]

Ahh I see the knives are coming out for Corbyn from those that have defended him for years on here.

I Voted Labour in my constituency. Didn’t matter it seems. Glad Laura Smith across in Crewe has gone as she was a bloody awful politician.

Lessons need to be learned, people seem to think the sneering of Corbyn & McDonnell was going to change minds. Everything was continually torn down by them. There was never a positive element of any of their messages that focused on the present.

Corbyn’s decision to sit out the EU referendum and abstaining from meaningful votes earlier this year set this country on its current course has caused the collapse of the Labour vote. The problem is those that backed him couldn’t see that.

 

[Rudolf Hucker]

What a depressing thing to wake up to.

Unfortunately, I saw this coming & I disagree with some of the reasoning above.

Labour threw this away due to their stance on Brexit.

The tragic irony is that Corbyn, a life long EEC/EU sceptic (as was his mentor Tony Benn) didn’t have the balls to stand up for his beliefs, while Boris Johnson (originally a Remainer, as are the vast majority of tories) spotted an opportunity to grab votes & look where we are now!

Corbyn should have purged the party of the likes of Starmer & position the party behind leave, deal or no deal. We’d be waking up to a very different result now. We’d be getting out of that Neo-Lib nightmare, but wouldn’t be about to bend over to Trump.

I guess we can pray that Trump is impeached or shot soon. We’re F****D!

 

[john jako]

Am still shell shocked at that margin of victory. It’s mind boggling how so parr’s of wales and England voted against labour. I understand the losses to SNP in Scotland which will lead to indyref2. I hope they do it.

 

[Eggs]

Ahh I see the knives are coming out for Corbyn from those that have defended him for years on here.

I Voted Labour in my constituency. Didn’t matter it seems. Glad Laura Smith across in Crewe has gone as she was a bloody awful politician.

Lessons need to be learned, people seem to think the sneering of Corbyn & McDonnell was going to change minds. Everything was continually torn down by them. There was never a positive element of any of their messages that focused on the present.

Corbyn’s decision to sit out the EU referendum and abstaining from meaningful votes earlier this year set this country on its current course has caused the collapse of the Labour vote. The problem is those that backed him couldn’t see that.

....some of us have been going on for years on here about Corbyn being a liability, it can only be good that some of his supporters on here are realising that.

 

[tsubaki]

Corbyn has to go after a defeat of this scale, but this was not just down to him. However him attempting to hang on now, even if it’s just to oversee things, will just do more damage.

Labour have ignored those seats for decades, using them only to get favoured candidates into Parliament then ignoring them and last night there was a reckoning. What we saw last night was basically what happened in Scotland over a number of elections, culminating in 2015 with the wipeout, combined with a leader that people obviously didn’t want to vote for, largely on account of what they’d been repeatedly told about him.

Whoever is leader next has to carry on what Corbyn at least started to do elsewhere and grow the party in those seats, so that they can create candidates who can represent them and influence the party as a whole away from policies which have such an impact on those seats. It will need better councillors and better local government than Labour have provided so far (which was a factor in a lot of those seats too, especially somewhere like Wrexham and Wales generally).

Once that is done, the possibility emerges for a recovery, especially when Johnson’s lies become so obvious and Brexit doesn’t work.

Finally I agree with Lucy Powell when she said there has to be an honest look by the party as to how this happened. At the moment the arguments are not honest, with a lot of the people directly responsible for damaging the party at this election going around telling everyone how sad they are it’s been damaged.

Corbyn is not the future now, but neither is Chris Leslie.

 

[GwladysBlue]

Dennis Skinner

Bowing out to a Tory. Truly heartbreaking.

 

[dannyboy]

Corbyn´s unpopularity on the doorstep, doubtlessly a huge factor but people can´t seriously be pretending there was/is a magic solution to all of this. The idea we hold a second referendum was the position we were dragged to by the likes of Alastair Campbell, it turns out it was a completely disastrous policy and should have been ignored. Poor leadership on Corbyn´s part for succumbing to the pressure.

It will be a painful rebuilding process after being so close in 2017 but the party needs to retain left wing values. If it doesn´t, then what is the point in existing? By all means tone it down if that´s what it takes but the most important thing is the next leader doesn´t have the baggage and isn´t an open goal for the media to score in.

This will not be easy. Scotland is never coming back and trying to build a coalition between people in the cities and those in Brexit towns is a massive ask but it´s one we must embrace. If you think this election was mainly about Corbyn then you are deluding yourself and we will go on losing elections again and again, just like the previous two before he took charge.

 

[Disgruntledgoat]

Corbyn should have purged the party of the likes of Starmer & position the party behind leave, deal or no deal. We’d be waking up to a very different result now. We’d be getting out of that Neo-Lib nightmare, but wouldn’t be about to bend over to Trump.

There is always a constituency within the Labour party that reacts to a defeat to the Tories by deciding they weren't left wing or pure enough. And it always enables godawful Tory governments to stay in office far longer than they should.

 

[Buckers]

I’m not a scouser but all I can say is I salute everyone who loves on Merseyside that stuck by labour. It’s a relief to see that some people still have morals and stand by their principles. The Tories have blood on their hands and the working man has voted for a good old dry bumming just to leave Europe. Liverpool stands like a beacon and hopefully together we will kick the bastards out next time.

 

[Deleted member 28206]

Feels like I’ve woken up after a fist fight.
Awful.

 

[BirkenheadBlue]

Ahh I see the knives are coming out for Corbyn from those that have defended him for years on here.

You’ll have a job finding me defending him.

 

[dannyboy]

A word on Corbyn. The man has been the victim of the most vicious, hysterical attacks imaginable over the last 4 years. I will never say anything other than he was a decent, principled politician who genuinely wanted to help the most vulnerable in our society. I hope for his sake he gets some closure from it all because on a human level it can´t been easy to endure.

Whether you like it or not, he inspired thousands of 20 somethings like me to become active in politics and gave us some hope where there was seemingly none. He dragged the political debate away from austerity when it was the only pitch to be made.

Anyway, get stuck in with the I told you so comments. Every single one of us is hurting badly today but we´ll take our medicine, reflect and carry on the fight.

 

[Brennan]

Corbyn´s unpopularity on the doorstep, doubtlessly a huge factor but people can´t seriously be pretending there was/is a magic solution to all of this. The idea we hold a second referendum was the position we were dragged to by the likes of Alastair Campbell, it turns out it was a completely disastrous policy and should have been ignored. Poor leadership on Corbyn´s part for succumbing to the pressure.

It will be a painful rebuilding process after being so close in 2017 but the party needs to retain left wing values. If it doesn´t, then what is the point in existing? By all means tone it down if that´s what it takes but the most important thing is the next leader doesn´t have the baggage and isn´t an open goal for the media to score in.

This will not be easy. Scotland is never coming back and trying to build a coalition between people in the cities and those in Brexit towns is a massive ask but it´s one we must embrace. If you think this election was mainly about Corbyn then you are deluding yourself and we will go on losing elections again and again, just like the previous two before he took charge.

If you aren’t electable there’s no point in any of it.

This country is not one which attaches itself to left wing politics. Whether that’s right or wrong is frankly irrelevant.

Labour should be a party to the left of the Conservatives which is a real option, they are not and won’t be as long as they lead with socialist policies.

 

[Billy Dean]

The only slight crumb of positivity I can take from all this, and it really is very slight, is that Jo Swinson, Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger are no longer MPs.