Johnson is quite short though. And some of the best leaders of our time, Atlee and Thatcher were also short. I don't remember Churchill being particularly tall either. Eden was though....
Current Affairs The Labour Party
- Thread starter Number_25
- Start date
- Status
Johnson is quite short though. And some of the best leaders of our time, Atlee and Thatcher were also short. I don't remember Churchill being particularly tall either. Eden was though....
There are exceptions to the rule, but statistically it does hold, and you have to remember that Corbyn is even less like the stereotype society has for a leader, so that plays a part.
There's a lot of truth in that mate. For the most part, the people I've met in Momentum (even some in mid level positions) have little understanding of socialism or the history of it. If there was an inspiring centrist they'd probably quite quickly fall in behind them. The ground is being laid for that by the likes of Paul Mason now.
As for a bloodbath, I think the right of the party want a massacre. While the left of the party just want people to play nicely. It's very easy to see how that ends unless the left of the party actually begin to put some level of defence of their position up.
However make no bones about it, there are layers at the top of party who absolute hate the fact that people like me are allowed to be members, and are allowed to right criticisms or have an opinion. They don't think I have any place in the organisation (and tens of thousands like me). I have to say I do think this is a big part of the problem as to why we cannot connect to ordinary people, but again thats rather by the by.
I think you are in a broad sense right. I do think you need a big, confident figure. I think this about Klopp and to a degree Ferguson too. Being a big, bold character will clearly help people.
Again I'm beyond being politically correct about things (maybe when I'm a bit less tired!) but I do think women in the party (and indeed most parties) are better than men, because of structural obstacles that get in their way, it's logical they would be. I do think women tend to be more empathic. They can also connect to layers of people that are probably put off by a particular type of masculinity (albeit I don't believe this was Corbyn's style).
If you put a gun to my head, I would say the likes of Raynor, RLB are impressive but probably need a bit more exposure and the confidence that comes with that.Both would be good leaders in 3-4 years with their profile being built. I'd like to see both on the front benches in prominent positions, but at this stage I'd opt for Starmer as leader.
As a rule, if we have a largely female front bench, I do think it will go a long way to de-toxify the party as being seen the party of strong arming men from the 70's, which while I don't think Corbyn was, the people behind him were.
It's perhaps the one saving grace I have from this election, that actually junior members, and junior women MP's actually performed pretty well, and you feel with more exposure could really grow. This is something Tony Blair was very good at too, successional planning.
dannyboy
Player Valuation: £70m
Really, if Corbyn and the left were the ruthless, Stalinist dictators the media paint them as then the party would be theirs forever. The fact is, they aren't and in many ways they were actually too nice and too weak. The right won't be as forgiving. As you say, they want blood so this will never happen again.
I still wouldn't rule out the Momentum backed candidate winning but this will be a close run thing. I'd love to have a unifying candidate who brings the party together but I just can't see it happening. This is going to get messy
Yes thats true. Look lets be real about it, Blair was a ruthless, hard, brutal operator. Corbyn was a weak, kind, nice, thoughtful man. Blair was right. That is exactly how a leader should be. I think thats about as objective as we can be on the issue. I have no idea why political journalists or Labour MP's cannot be as honest as that really.
The issue with unity, what leads to unity is winning and success. I saw Freddie Flintoff say the best dressing rooms are ones that win. Team spirit is never good in losing dressing rooms. We need a candidate who can move us forward and inspire confidence.
If Corbyn would have looked like winning, the right of the party would have shut up. What gave their criticisms credence was that it never really did look like winning. Thats a fair criticism of Corbyn.
JelavicBrate2
Player Valuation: £15m
The problem is that the divisions in Britain are far more complex than a lot of people in politics and the media think they are. Outdated labels such as "left wing" "right wing" "liberal" "conservative" don't really explain peoples beliefs, the same applies to America. Mexican American Democrat voters in California share almost identical views to Scotch Irish Republicans in the South on most issues except immigration. The divide between Labour and the Conservatives was largely about class, now you have privately educated Oxford graduates claiming to represent the working class on both the left and the right. Also ethnic minorities are even more socially conservative to the White working class in Britain, which makes the situation even stranger.
2 party politics causes this irrational us vs them attitude the problem is who is us and who is them? As Janice Turner wrote in The Times after the EU referendum that people can't even agree on what they disagree on, which perfectly sums up modern politics. There's no real similarity between lets say a brick layer from Bradford and a university lecturer from Brighton. Peter Hitchens perfectly summed up all this issues in his book the broken compass, where he right points us that the 2 political parties don't really represent anybody anymore the Conservative party aren't socially conservative, the Labour party are dominated by middle class university graduates. My view is that we should have smaller political parties who actually understand the people they're representing, not this nonsense of sending somebody from Brighton to a Liverpool constituency. Another issue is people have started to bring morality into politics, which is problematic because political and religious beliefs are entirely morally subjective. A socially conservative Christian or Muslim is going to have a different view on homosexuality to a socially liberal homosexual. There wasn't a drastic change in voting patterns in the 2016 US election, yet people were trying to place a huge amount of significance on peoples support for Trump or Clinton. With the exception of a small minority on morons, nobody thought either of them were especially good candidates. Politics has to change or there is a very real chance of civil unrest, because people are so fed up with politicians.
2 party politics causes this irrational us vs them attitude the problem is who is us and who is them? As Janice Turner wrote in The Times after the EU referendum that people can't even agree on what they disagree on, which perfectly sums up modern politics. There's no real similarity between lets say a brick layer from Bradford and a university lecturer from Brighton. Peter Hitchens perfectly summed up all this issues in his book the broken compass, where he right points us that the 2 political parties don't really represent anybody anymore the Conservative party aren't socially conservative, the Labour party are dominated by middle class university graduates. My view is that we should have smaller political parties who actually understand the people they're representing, not this nonsense of sending somebody from Brighton to a Liverpool constituency. Another issue is people have started to bring morality into politics, which is problematic because political and religious beliefs are entirely morally subjective. A socially conservative Christian or Muslim is going to have a different view on homosexuality to a socially liberal homosexual. There wasn't a drastic change in voting patterns in the 2016 US election, yet people were trying to place a huge amount of significance on peoples support for Trump or Clinton. With the exception of a small minority on morons, nobody thought either of them were especially good candidates. Politics has to change or there is a very real chance of civil unrest, because people are so fed up with politicians.
evilwebby
Player Valuation: £50m
It's probably true that when you actually speak to extremists from either the Left or the Right they can come across as perfectly "normal" members. The violent protestors against the election result in London on Friday night.. will probably go back to being good law abiding BSc-chasing students come Monday morning.
Labour need to be very careful.
If they fail to heed to lessons from this result and stay with the Socialist project then they could be finished as an electoral force, replaced by the rise of another party in the coming decade. this is how the Labour party itself was created and formed, by the working classes to effectively render the old Liberal party obsolete in the early 20th century.
Very true - as we can see, this has already happened in Scotland. The Labour Party has been replaced by the moderate left of centre SNP.
evilwebby
Player Valuation: £50m
Also, by the time Blair was leader the Labour party had been so battered by 4 consecutive losses they they were finally willing and ready to accept that they had to change and move more towards a centrist policy, a process that had started a decade earlier by Kinnock but accelerated strongly under Blair. That's the other thing that the process of change requires - the lessons of defeat, and pain of time spent out of power. Labour has been out of power for nearly a decade now. My guess is that they are probably ready to begin learning the lessons of why they haven't had power in that time, and begin the process of making themselves electable again, but that process too will take a couple of terms.
NilSatisOptimum
Player Valuation: £70m
If you ignore the N in SNP, your entirely correct.
As it stands with Brexit, Scotland is leaving the UK, same goes for Northern Ireland...
You may well be completely right. I can't say what A. N. Other leader might or might not have done in 2017 or last week. The two reasons I heard from former Labour supporters for deserting the sinking ship were Corbyn and Brexit. When directed toward the manifesto, guffaws of forced laughter rang through the air, quickly followed by, "Yeah right. And we'll end up paying for it."
None of the fallout from the result will affect me. I do , however, feel tremendous pity for those far more vulnerable who - for whatever reason - have yet again been let down by inadequate strategy and tactics from leading Labour politicians.
OnlyBlueWillDo
Player Valuation: £35m
Watch John McDonnell on Andrew Marr today, it's on iplayer 30mins in, very good honest interview, I like the fella, he's cock on about the media.
Labour leaders always get attacked because they challenge the establishment.
Labour leaders always get attacked because they challenge the establishment.
twoblue
Player Valuation: £35m
Hitler was quite short too... and napoleon
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
I disagree with quite a lot of this - for a start, Blair wasn't really a ruthless, hard, brutal operator. He liked to portray himself as such, but even at the height of his power between 1997 and 2001 there were things like Livingstone beating him easily over the London Mayor nomination, and the frankly absurd attempts to stop Rhodri Morgan from leading Labour in Wales (which if you believe the story was mostly down to Blair having stayed at Morgan's house once and being appalled to see Morgan's dog licking a plate clean).
I'd also take issue with this idea that the right would have ever shut up if they thought Corbyn (or a turn to the left) was going to win. To do that would have required them to admit that everything they'd done, said or believed was wrong, and that they were completely superfluous - if anything, Corbyn looking like he was breaking through would result in them kicking off (which is of course what they did) not shutting up.
- Status