Spadge Vernacular
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You've described traditional Labour and the position Starmer is most likely going to win the next GE by following this.
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You've described traditional Labour and the position Starmer is most likely going to win the next GE by following this.
Yes the debate on the left is now very much between those who want to change the system, and those who want to put the system back together (for fear that any change can only come from the right).
The left are essentially lurching between irrelevency and hegemony. It needs to find a way to be counter hegemonic.
We have needed such an organisation you outline above for decades. A big part of the problem, is that very very few on the left of Labour are willing to countenence a break with Labour of any kind. Thats before you get to the Unions, where the old syndacalism of "we do industrial matters, Labour does political matters" still holds.
Up your way you are fortunate that much of these alliances could be challenged and ultimately broken via the national question. It's not as easy in England and I'm not sure how it looks to begin such a process. In many ways Corbynism reflected an opportunity to do such, but it was squandered.
What always amazes me, when you speak to influential people high up in the left in the LP (and at times some senior figures, before they became famous) is how they refuse to budge on the idea that Labour isn't the sole answer. The right of the party know they have this devotion to and terror of leaving on the left and in a lot of cases are just far more ruthless and smarter at leadership level, so push the left of the party to ever ridiculous situations. I mean they openly campaigned against Labour over the last 4 years, and I'm not aware of a single expulsion.
When we need a serious conversation, we get Owen Jones and Paul Mason telling us "don't give up" "it's still our party" "they're only doing this becuase they are scared" "any talk of something to the left of Labour makes you a Stalinist" "he will start to adopt Corbyns policies soon" etc. The purge of the left will continue, until people stand up and say enough is enough. And it is going to get a lot worse over the coming months and years. They will not let Corbyn be the national treasure Tony Benn was allowed to be.
The issue is though, that Unions and community projects are now very very subordinated to the whims of The Labour Party, who will be subordinated to the needs of the CBI/hedge funds etc. Thats the priority list and pecking order now. They will allow Labour a few crumbs to govern, and Labour will pass on the few crumbs they have left to the unions who will try to sell it as a great victory to a working population who have suffered 40 years of insecurity and reduction in living standards.
When the Tories have sorted themselves out, the same people will boot Labour out and have the Tories back. Yes Labour get to govern, or hold the fort for a while. That may be enough for some. No serious overhaul of society is coming though.
davek
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As far as I;m concerned the flow is with the left. A capitalist economy - even a stunted one as we've lived though - is now a non-starter. The big intervention state is here to stay - just look at the announcement today supporting wages in order to stop mass unemplyment. These polcies dont go back in the box in a hurry. The system was struggling to find the courage to invest pre-covid19. It'll get worse from now on, and government is the one to step in and take up the slack, as they should do.
The LP: it's not looking good for the party if it wants to tack to the centre. The Tories will always be more trusted at that point. And if and when Starmer ditches the hard fought for economic policies over the last 5 years there'll be a stampede for the door of the party. The unions like Unite and the FBU (and others that only recently reaffiliated with the LP under Corbyn) - and also those up for grabs for the left in the next 12 months, like Unison - will know that the time has come to set up a new socialist party.
There's no mileage for Blairism in this age. It's not the 1990s and that choice doesn't exist anymore.
davek
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Nadia Whittome, one of the three Labour MPs who lost her shadow junior frontbench role after defying the party whip at the second reading of the overseas operations bill, has released a statement justifying her actions with an emotive attack on the party’s leadership. She said:
Starmer's Labour Party: soft on torture, soft on the causes of torture.
Shameful 'kin rat. That undrlines that he's bringing his right wing decision making from the DPP office into the heart of Labour.
The party is finished under jim for the left.
New party please.
Labour’s official position was to abstain on the second reading of the bill in the hope it could be amended subsequently, although that was something of a surprise given that John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, had previously called for it to be paused citing human rights concerns.
Starmer's Labour Party: soft on torture, soft on the causes of torture.
Shameful 'kin rat. That undrlines that he's bringing his right wing decision making from the DPP office into the heart of Labour.
The party is finished under jim for the left.
New party please.
Spadge Vernacular
Player Valuation: £70m
The Labour party has had and does have organic links to the working class through unions and community organisations, as Dave puts it.
We might agree that Trade Unions' existence is in itself an affirmation of capitalist class society. Their function in negotiating wages, working conditions, and benefits with employers are built upon long relationships between Unions and capitalists, generally for the economic benefit of their members.
The pecking order has always existed but a successful Labour win at the next GE will give them the opportunity to bring about changes that many wish for. As long as the party remains in opposition, they cannot. Starmer knows this and, for me, is doing the right things to put the party into a position to be taken seriously.
Spadge Vernacular
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Dave, the stampede happened at the last GE under Corbyn. You can try and ignore this fact but it remains.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
The Brexit Election.
Spadge Vernacular
Player Valuation: £70m
Take your pick, mate.
Communist Party of Britain - Website of the Communist Party of Britain
www.communistparty.org.uk
Socialist Party - fighting for the needs of all not the profits of a few
The Socialist Party fights for socialism – a democratic society run for the needs of all and not the profits of a few.
www.socialistparty.org.uk
It would seem that there are plenty that fit your world view.
Spadge Vernacular
Player Valuation: £70m
"That man" was the word on the doorsteps was it not.
This is all true.
However don't rule out the ruling class wanting to make ordinary people pay more for this crisis, with spending cuts as opposed to tax rises. If the Tories can't get that through, they will look for Labour to do it, and you know Starmer would be very keen to go along with aspects of it.
Yes I agree with most of that. I don't see the Unions breaking with Labour any time soon. I'll be frank, I don't think Labour will give the unions much of what they want. They don't have too. They gave no very little for 13 years, and very few of them broke rank. This is the problem for the left in Labour, they hold this odd view, that if you just play nicely, people will recognise it and treat you in kind. They don't.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
The man who won back all the votes lost by Brown and Miliband in 2017?
The serfs were told what to say when asked about Corbyn in 2019 and they complied because they wanted their "Bregsit".
Now they pay for it.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
He knows it too. The Tory Second XI will be summoned, and it'll be a disaster for the labour movement and a kick in the plumbs for everyday people who'll think they're getting something substantially better than the shower of butchers now in power.
This crisis is too big for someone who will no doubt be touting some BS about retooling the economy but in reality still pandering to the interests of the City of London...he's already owned by them with the donations they dangle before him.
D
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Keir Starmer’s rather conservative message to Britain
The Labour leader stresses family, security and love of country in an appeal to former voters
Conservative Party literature makes plentiful reference to Sir Keir Starmer’s knighthood. Tories hope it will signal to voters that the Labour Party’s leader, a former human-rights lawyer who lives in a fashionable part of north London and defended immigrants and suspected extremists, is part of the metropolitan elite.
If Sir Keir, who calls himself a socialist and was named after his party’s first leader, saw his title in the same light, he might be expected to downplay it. But in his first speech to Labour’s annual conference as leader, on September 22nd, he told his party that his investiture at Buckingham Palace was one of the proudest days of his parents’ lives. His title is, he said, a symbol of what he owes Britain’s education system. It was granted in recognition of his term as the head of Britain’s public prosecution service, which he says he spent chasing terrorists and bent politicians. The subtext is that unlike his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, he is proud of the monarchy and the British state, and qualified for the nation’s greatest office.
In vaunting his title, Sir Keir reveals his strategy. Both he and Boris Johnson are pitched at the same group of voters: socially conservative working classes in the so-called “red wall” of small towns in northern England, the Midlands and Wales which flipped dramatically from Labour to the Tories in 2019. While the Conservative Party is consumed by revolutionary fervour, Sir Keir is playing to an older, more deferential strand of conservatism, which defends the nation’s ruling institutions instead of attacking them.
Sir Keir’s address covered the traditional fare of a Labour leader: promises to improve Britain’s schools and hospitals, tackle racial inequality, and improve the lot of workers. Yet it was cast in strikingly conservative terms. Under his watch, Sir Keir said, Britain will be a “country in which we put family first”. Labour will defend Britain’s national security and territorial integrity, and champion decency and neighbourliness. Above all, it will be patriotic. “We love this country as you do.”
One of the speech’s authors was Claire Ainsley, an aide to Sir Keir and author of “The New Working Class: How to Win Hearts, Minds and Votes”, a book which argues that Labour’s policies need to be built on “moral foundations”—ideas such as fairness, hard work and family. Values trump soundbites. Mr Corbyn, who spent a career denouncing British militarism and sympathising with Irish Republicanism, left the party with a reputation for ambivalence or hostility to British interests. Sir Keir’s speech hit the right notes, says Deborah Mattinson, a pollster who advised the party under Tony Blair and author of “Beyond the Red Wall”, a study of the seats Mr Corbyn lost. “I cannot stress it enough: if you don’t love your country, the ‘red wall’ will never love you.” But it must be sincere, she says. “All voters, and ‘red wall’ voters perhaps more than most, can sniff out inauthenticity in a nanosecond.”
The appeal to patriotism is not new. Mr Corbyn and his predecessor, Ed Miliband, both declared their love for Britain in their first big speeches as leader. Yet Sir Keir’s pitch is more credible for two reasons.
One is that he can plausibly position himself as a better steward of Britain’s institutions than Mr Johnson. The government plans to unleash creative destruction on the civil service, curtail the judiciary’s power and break the Brexit withdrawal treaty—a breach of international law which Sir Keir characterises as a tantrum by an unqualified prime minister. “For a party called the Conservative Party, they don’t seem to conserve very much,” he said of the neglect of public services that covid-19 exposed. In his promise to make Britain “once again admired and respected” overseas, some supporters see parallels with Joe Biden’s pitch to restore dignity to the White House. “We don’t have to burn the institutions down to create a great country. We have to improve them,” says an ally. Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, has promised to be more careful with public money than the Tories.
The second is that Sir Keir is a more credible messenger than his predecessors. The Labour Party’s polling has undergone a rapid recovery under his watch. A poll by Ipsos MORI in September found that voters regard Sir Keir as more capable, as a better representative for Britain abroad, and as having better judgment than the prime minister. Voters regard Mr Johnson as more patriotic, and having more of a personality. Mr Johnson’s party is miserable after a string of U-turns and unforced errors. His satisfaction ratings after 14 months in office are similar to those of Theresa May and David Cameron at that point in their premiership: not a disastrous result, but not a good one considering he secured an electoral landslide in December 2019.
Sir Keir’s personality is more conservative too. He contrasts his diligent career at the Bar to Mr Johnson’s as a fabulist newspaper columnist. He is a family man, and neatly attired; the prime minister has a more bohemian lifestyle.
The Conservatives paint Sir Keir’s transformation as opportunistic and the party as unreformed. The Tories will remind voters of Sir Keir’s support for a second referendum on Brexit, and how he loyally served in Mr Corbyn’s team.
They risk fighting the last war. Mr Corbyn is out in the cold. Sir Keir declined to mention him in his address, unlike former winners Tony Blair, Harold Wilson and Clement Attlee, and told the party it must swallow the fact that voters had rejected his project. Brexit has united Mr Johnson’s electoral coalition and split Sir Keir’s. But voters are weary of the question and, like Sir Keir, want a deal struck and the issue put to bed. Sir Keir has elegantly brushed aside arguments which could fuel a culture war, such as whether patriotic songs should be sung at the Proms.
Still, it is four years till the next election, and Sir Keir has a mountain to climb, in the shape of Mr Johnson’s 87-seat majority. Despite his personal lead over Mr Johnson, the Tories are (just) leading in the polls. Some Labour MPs and many of its activists fear Mr Corbyn’s radical economic programme is being abandoned and dislike the leadership’s new turn. “They’re trying to wrap themselves in a bigger flag than the Tories,” says Joe Guinan, a left-wing thinker. When it comes to patriotism, he believes, the Tories will “always outbid us”.
The Labour leader stresses family, security and love of country in an appeal to former voters
Conservative Party literature makes plentiful reference to Sir Keir Starmer’s knighthood. Tories hope it will signal to voters that the Labour Party’s leader, a former human-rights lawyer who lives in a fashionable part of north London and defended immigrants and suspected extremists, is part of the metropolitan elite.
If Sir Keir, who calls himself a socialist and was named after his party’s first leader, saw his title in the same light, he might be expected to downplay it. But in his first speech to Labour’s annual conference as leader, on September 22nd, he told his party that his investiture at Buckingham Palace was one of the proudest days of his parents’ lives. His title is, he said, a symbol of what he owes Britain’s education system. It was granted in recognition of his term as the head of Britain’s public prosecution service, which he says he spent chasing terrorists and bent politicians. The subtext is that unlike his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, he is proud of the monarchy and the British state, and qualified for the nation’s greatest office.
In vaunting his title, Sir Keir reveals his strategy. Both he and Boris Johnson are pitched at the same group of voters: socially conservative working classes in the so-called “red wall” of small towns in northern England, the Midlands and Wales which flipped dramatically from Labour to the Tories in 2019. While the Conservative Party is consumed by revolutionary fervour, Sir Keir is playing to an older, more deferential strand of conservatism, which defends the nation’s ruling institutions instead of attacking them.
Sir Keir’s address covered the traditional fare of a Labour leader: promises to improve Britain’s schools and hospitals, tackle racial inequality, and improve the lot of workers. Yet it was cast in strikingly conservative terms. Under his watch, Sir Keir said, Britain will be a “country in which we put family first”. Labour will defend Britain’s national security and territorial integrity, and champion decency and neighbourliness. Above all, it will be patriotic. “We love this country as you do.”
One of the speech’s authors was Claire Ainsley, an aide to Sir Keir and author of “The New Working Class: How to Win Hearts, Minds and Votes”, a book which argues that Labour’s policies need to be built on “moral foundations”—ideas such as fairness, hard work and family. Values trump soundbites. Mr Corbyn, who spent a career denouncing British militarism and sympathising with Irish Republicanism, left the party with a reputation for ambivalence or hostility to British interests. Sir Keir’s speech hit the right notes, says Deborah Mattinson, a pollster who advised the party under Tony Blair and author of “Beyond the Red Wall”, a study of the seats Mr Corbyn lost. “I cannot stress it enough: if you don’t love your country, the ‘red wall’ will never love you.” But it must be sincere, she says. “All voters, and ‘red wall’ voters perhaps more than most, can sniff out inauthenticity in a nanosecond.”
The appeal to patriotism is not new. Mr Corbyn and his predecessor, Ed Miliband, both declared their love for Britain in their first big speeches as leader. Yet Sir Keir’s pitch is more credible for two reasons.
One is that he can plausibly position himself as a better steward of Britain’s institutions than Mr Johnson. The government plans to unleash creative destruction on the civil service, curtail the judiciary’s power and break the Brexit withdrawal treaty—a breach of international law which Sir Keir characterises as a tantrum by an unqualified prime minister. “For a party called the Conservative Party, they don’t seem to conserve very much,” he said of the neglect of public services that covid-19 exposed. In his promise to make Britain “once again admired and respected” overseas, some supporters see parallels with Joe Biden’s pitch to restore dignity to the White House. “We don’t have to burn the institutions down to create a great country. We have to improve them,” says an ally. Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, has promised to be more careful with public money than the Tories.
The second is that Sir Keir is a more credible messenger than his predecessors. The Labour Party’s polling has undergone a rapid recovery under his watch. A poll by Ipsos MORI in September found that voters regard Sir Keir as more capable, as a better representative for Britain abroad, and as having better judgment than the prime minister. Voters regard Mr Johnson as more patriotic, and having more of a personality. Mr Johnson’s party is miserable after a string of U-turns and unforced errors. His satisfaction ratings after 14 months in office are similar to those of Theresa May and David Cameron at that point in their premiership: not a disastrous result, but not a good one considering he secured an electoral landslide in December 2019.
Sir Keir’s personality is more conservative too. He contrasts his diligent career at the Bar to Mr Johnson’s as a fabulist newspaper columnist. He is a family man, and neatly attired; the prime minister has a more bohemian lifestyle.
The Conservatives paint Sir Keir’s transformation as opportunistic and the party as unreformed. The Tories will remind voters of Sir Keir’s support for a second referendum on Brexit, and how he loyally served in Mr Corbyn’s team.
They risk fighting the last war. Mr Corbyn is out in the cold. Sir Keir declined to mention him in his address, unlike former winners Tony Blair, Harold Wilson and Clement Attlee, and told the party it must swallow the fact that voters had rejected his project. Brexit has united Mr Johnson’s electoral coalition and split Sir Keir’s. But voters are weary of the question and, like Sir Keir, want a deal struck and the issue put to bed. Sir Keir has elegantly brushed aside arguments which could fuel a culture war, such as whether patriotic songs should be sung at the Proms.
Still, it is four years till the next election, and Sir Keir has a mountain to climb, in the shape of Mr Johnson’s 87-seat majority. Despite his personal lead over Mr Johnson, the Tories are (just) leading in the polls. Some Labour MPs and many of its activists fear Mr Corbyn’s radical economic programme is being abandoned and dislike the leadership’s new turn. “They’re trying to wrap themselves in a bigger flag than the Tories,” says Joe Guinan, a left-wing thinker. When it comes to patriotism, he believes, the Tories will “always outbid us”.
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