Current Affairs The Labour Party

[Joey66]

That depends on the Government, they have promised real change in the north to get elected, and that change will take years to complete. Firstly Brexit, then the infrastructure projects. People will notice very quickly if these infrastructure are suddenly taking longer to implement... Johnson turning up in the North for a couple of months will last just a couple of months then action is what people will want!?

The tories are in power because all opposition parties failed to deliver Brexit in fact they frustrated it for 3 years live on TV for it to be seen by the public - yet it was not that alone Corbynism failed miserably as the leader and its policies of spend spend were just unbelievable plus his character his history with anti semitism -an IRA sympathiser etc etc he is like marmite and that means unelectable , and what I am pointing out he has not stood down either as yet - not like Foot , Kinnock who did it in days not weeks - if they appoint another momentum led leader it will again end in the same way maybe clawing a bit of the majority back , but still losing - I have voted Labour all my life , but cannot vote for a party within a party ie momentum ..... = the militant tendency of the early 1980's at least Kinnock tried his best to get rid of them .... and he still got beat......

 

[Methuselah]

What do you think went wrong for them? Their Brexit policy was a disaster imo.

Jo Swansong was their problem.

 

[Disgruntledgoat]

They completely ignored their supposed heartlands, industry was never replaced. No major infrastructure of note to attract was built. Chucking Tax credits at the problem was always short term and costly. It's a legacy of ignoring swathes of the north that has done real damage.

Corbyn delivered a real alternative, the electorate rejected it over get Brexit done. And Corbyn leadership's are taking it on the chin and accepting they should have done better.

However a return to wishy washy Centrism is not what is needed, just ask Swinson Chukka Berger how their dream of a Centrists majority went!?

They didn't ignore their heartlands however. If I look at the 3 places in the UK I lived in under a Labour government I saw 1.5bn a year from central government put into the NDA in Warrington and West Cumbria and the whole Silicon Glen thing on the west coast of Scotland, plus the Commonwealth Games and the investment that attracted.

In infrastructure terms the M6 Toll, I can point to 10 miles of road near Carlisle I used to use all the time (and I bet there are more projects like that around the country), Glasgow was booming with construction when I was there and all of it signed off under Labour. They were by no means a perfect government, but they for sure reinvested the bounty of a thriving global economy in the country (through borrowing, but that;s a different story).

The industrial and manufacturing jobs aren't coming back, I think everybody knows that and, I agree, there isn't an easy answer for that from any government, somebody has to answer the question about those post industrial towns (and probably people with vision who are from there) "What are they for?"

Workington has been a hole as long as I can remember (my parents live up the hill), but the thing that always struck me about the town was that the population were perfectly happy for it to be crap. Indeed, they would sneer at any attempt to improve it. Then break it. The tragedy of those places is that anyone with any ambition is currently forced to leave to get on in life. That;s the answer nobody has come up with yet.

That got a bit ranty, apologies.

 

[Blue 1]

They didn't ignore their heartlands however. If I look at the 3 places in the UK I lived in under a Labour government I saw 1.5bn a year from central government put into the NDA in Warrington and West Cumbria and the whole Silicon Glen thing on the west coast of Scotland, plus the Commonwealth Games and the investment that attracted.

In infrastructure terms the M6 Toll, I can point to 10 miles of road near Carlisle I used to use all the time (and I bet there are more projects like that around the country), Glasgow was booming with construction when I was there and all of it signed off under Labour. They were by no means a perfect government, but they for sure reinvested the bounty of a thriving global economy in the country (through borrowing, but that;s a different story).

The industrial and manufacturing jobs aren't coming back, I think everybody knows that and, I agree, there isn't an easy answer for that from any government, somebody has to answer the question about those post industrial towns (and probably people with vision who are from there) "What are they for?"

Workington has been a hole as long as I can remember (my parents live up the hill), but the thing that always struck me about the town was that the population were perfectly happy for it to be crap. Indeed, they would sneer at any attempt to improve it. Then break it. The tragedy of those places is that anyone with any ambition is currently forced to leave to get on in life. That;s the answer nobody has come up with yet.

That got a bit ranty, apologies.

Same in the North East, my dad lives in Newcastle on Tyne and the transformation of the place between '97 and 2010 was remarkable. To say that Labour ignored their heartlands when in power is, frankly, bollocks.

 

[Disgruntledgoat]

Same in the North East, my dad lives in Newcastle on Tyne and the transformation of the place between '97 and 2010 was remarkable. To say that Labour ignored their heartlands when in power is, frankly, bollocks.

I worked for "Nuclear" Jack Cunningham for 6 months when he was MP for Copeland and I remember the enormous investment in windfarms in the solway firth and on the moors too.

 

[Disgruntledgoat]

Same in the North East, my dad lives in Newcastle on Tyne and the transformation of the place between '97 and 2010 was remarkable. To say that Labour ignored their heartlands when in power is, frankly, bollocks.

Liverpool as well, look at the docks in the 80s compared to now. A trip to the waterfront with my gran was something to be feared when I was a kid.

 

[dannyboy]

This is what you get for taking an interest in politics, kids. A cold, hard lesson that you will never beat the big boys and you will be vilified throughout the land.

The whole weight of the establishment is going to be coming for Momentum over the next few months.

 

[catcherintherye]

Not really, Boris will no doubt push through the Boundary Commissions recommendations and reduce the number of MP‘s to 600, while readjusting the size of each parliamentary seat, which currently favours Labour. This will even the playing field for the Tories. Unless Labour finds a way to wipe out the SNP they will remain the party of opposition....

Ironically the above will very far less favourable to Johnson than it may have been say 10 years ago. Essentially the direction of travel is to cities, which are now overwellmingly Labour. There may be some improvement, but in truth he isn't getting much of a kick back there.

Labour will not wipe out the SNP. That has gone. However the SNP will not vote down a Labour government. That would erode their support base. The day Labour + SNP equals say 318 (when you factor in Plaid and the Greens,and to a degree SDLP) we have a Labour government. In reality that number may well go down to 315 given depending on how many seats Sinn Fein win.

This is well acknowledged by Conservatives. They were very worried that Corbyn could have held his seat numbers (around 265) and still from the government.

Going forward I think we see a lot more of this as well. The tories have won their biggest majority in my lifetime (decades) and they are about where Labour were in 2005, which was viewed as a massive defeat! I think the days of big majorities are gone.

 

[catcherintherye]

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.

Blair and his operation was far tougher than Corbyn's. He booted out lots of people and would not have stood for the messing about we have seen.

As for the right, well sections probably would have kept going, but they were very much a minority. They will now be a majority. They were never going to accept Corbyn, but they would have been adept enough to know there wasn't the room to launch a full scale assault. There is now that room, their voices will be amplified.

The broader point, is that the best way for Corbyn to have shut them up, was not going cap in hand to them for unity but to get on with winning an election.

 

[catcherintherye]

Hitler was quite short too... and napoleon

And Stalin.

 

[catcherintherye]

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.

Yes thats a fair summation of history. However I am always a bit nervous of the presumption history just repeats itself.

Labour are 50 seats away from being in government again. They are in a similar position to the Conservatives in 2005 (they may even be better placed). There are wider trends that are a lot more challenging, but at raw numbers they are ok.

The process of Brexit, and a shift towards a more protectionist economy, with more borrowing and spending from the Conservatives is going to be a very challenging process. It's not impossible for them to navigate, but it's challenging. There are opportunities.

I am always in favour of learning lessons, but it's important the correct lessons are learned. Labour does need to appeal to voters to it's right, but not in the way many people seem to be stating. We need to appeal to voters who are far more socially conservative, but may be fiscally even more to the left of ourselves in terms of what they require. Trying to recreate what Blair (in terms of policy) would be a big mistake. The Liberal Democrats, and CHUK also got routed at this election.

 

[Charlie Sweet]

Corbyn's manifesto was too ambitious and people didn't believe he was capable of delivering it.

it's a shame because some of the policies were great, like building more social housing and freeing millions of young people from the grip of private landlords.

Ultimately, it was Brexit wot won it and Labour's next leader will have to be someone who respected the referendum result.

Disagree on that comment about the policy for restrictions on private renting. Corbyn lost for all manner of reasons - personality, Brexit and Manifesto.

 

[peteblue]

Keir Starmer and Lady Nugee have screwed the Labour Party, which no longer represents the working class, and probably hasn’t for quite a while. Starmer was without doubt the architect of the second referendum nonsense, aided and abetted by the ‘white van man’ hater Thornberry who appears to have done everything she can since to try and make herself appear more human. I particularly liked this little bit on her Wiki page...”When Thornberry was seven, her parents divorced and she had to leave their home with her mother and two brothers. After this, she relied on free school meals and food parcels, and their cats were euthanised to save money.[6]”...you couldn’t make this up...but these are the people, just like Corbyn and all the other privately educated Labour elite who have not a clue about life outside of London....

 

[catcherintherye]

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.

A lot of people might define me as an "extremist" in my views, so I am always a little wary of the label.

Economically people want a more redistribute economic agenda. There is very little support for a continuation of neoliberalism, and even the main architects of the political policy are staunchly against it in rhetoric (albeit in practice what they say is more cautious).

Where we fell down was how packaged the message and who we selected to sell it. As I said before the election, we have won key arguments on domestic policy, but probably need them to be packaged up more cleverly by a leader with less baggage. This election has really shown that. Message discipline is key, we need 2-3 priorities and stick to those.

The big challenge is that on social issues the country has moved to the right. That is the big challenge for Labour currently and something that will take a lot longer to resolve.

 

[Blue 1]

View attachment 73998

This is what you get for taking an interest in politics, kids. A cold, hard lesson that you will never beat the big boys and you will be vilified throughout the land.

The whole weight of the establishment is going to be coming for Momentum over the next few months.

IDS would know. Cancer is less malignant than him. A truly evil man if ever there was one.