Current Affairs The Labour Party

[Moomin]

So how come Blair is the only Labour leader to win a workable majority since 1966?

It may not be comfortable or acceptable to some, but Labour win when they get soft-conservative voters to vote for them. At some point a political party has to decide whether it’s more important to win, or be ideologically pure.

This is the right conclusion.

 

[catcherintherye]

So how come Blair is the only Labour leader to win a workable majority since 1966?

It may not be comfortable or acceptable to some, but Labour win when they get soft-conservative voters to vote for them. At some point a political party has to decide whether it’s more important to win, or be ideologically pure.

Blair won a winnable majority (well he did a damn site better, he won two remarkable victories) because he faced the weakest conservative party in any of our lifetimes. They hovered around the 8-9 million vote mark for 3 elections. He had the chance to crush them, and didn't and by 2005 had very much let them back into the game.

 

[Mrk]

Has he though? His opposition has fundamentally shifted the debate and spectrum far to the left, to the point that (and I quite Peston here) Johnson has gone more Castro than Castro in order to be seen as in touch with the zeitgeist.

He also won millions of votes more than Brown and Miliband and rebuilt the electoral base of Labour. While they didn't fear his ability to win elections, in terms of his shifting of the debate, they were very frustrated.

Another perfect example of a complete lack of understanding of the Tory party.

They do not care about the ‘shifting of debates’ - they care about winning.

 

[catcherintherye]

It's like typing @Tubey and Lukaku into the search icons.

You could at a stretch attach them to racism like he attaches Corbyn to being anti semitism.

I haven't seen that. I am just a bit lost. I'm always happy to here why something may be anti-semitic and it's a good learning opportunity, but tehre eems to be a lot of stuff thrown about without it ever being substantiated. Often by people who aren't even Jewish.

 

[davek]

Sir Haircut handed them a win when abstaining on the Spycops bill and his inability to deal with transphobia from people like Duffield

He continues with own goal after own goal

...BLM criticisms, keeping Kate Green after her 'good covid19' comment...

The feller somehow has a reputation of competence.

He's a sectarian shambles.

 

[Mrk]

Blair won a winnable majority (well he did a damn site better, he won two remarkable victories) because he faced the weakest conservative party in any of our lifetimes. They hovered around the 8-9 million vote mark for 3 elections. He had the chance to crush them, and didn't and by 2005 had very much let them back into the game.

The Tory party was indeed an absolute shambles. But again, he’s the only Labour leader to win a workable majority since 1966. So why in all the other elections since 1966 did people not vote for ‘the alternative’?

 

[ToffeeTim]

So how come Blair is the only Labour leader to win a workable majority since 1966?

It may not be comfortable or acceptable to some, but Labour win when they get soft-conservative voters to vote for them. At some point a political party has to decide whether it’s more important to win, or be ideologically pure.

Pretty much this.

Labour cant win back power without winning back nearly a hundred of those 1997 seats in England, and lots of them lean centre right.

 

[catcherintherye]

Another perfect example of a complete lack of understanding of the Tory party.

They do not care about the ‘shifting of debates’ - they care about winning.

Of course they care about the terrain of the debate. I mean they care about both. Their narrow interest is to win elections, which bothers them. Their wider interest though is to govern for the ruloing class and ultimately allow them to maximise their profits. The political mandarins in the tories are not at all happy Johnson is having to emulate Castro (in their heads) to have to stand still in the debate on economic policy.

They love Thatcher not just for winning elections, but for fundamentally altering the political spectrum.

 

[catcherintherye]

The Tory party was indeed an absolute shambles. But again, he’s the only Labour leader to win a workable majority since 1966. So why in all the other elections since 1966 did people not vote for ‘the alternative’?

I mean Labour won in 74. However in that period Blair faed a uniquely weak Conservative party. No Labour leader has ever had to face a Tory party led by Major, Hague and Duncan Smith with the chaos in the party. He won a huge majority in 2001, with less votes than Corbyn got in 2017.

Kinnock was a horrendous leader, Brown was tarnished by being the chief Blairite, and before Kinnock they have been in and out of office

 

[davek]

They dont even know what they suspended him for. Shambles.

 

[catcherintherye]

Pretty much this.

Labour cant win back power without winning back nearly a hundred of those 1997 seats in England, and lots of them lean centre right.

The problem they have, in truth is that they lean in different directions. How you need to in in Burnley is vastly different to Swindon.

We are in an era now, where only Labour (twice) have won a majority bigger than 50 (in old money, IE 50 seats over 375). Multi party politics has essentially prevented big workable majorities. Had the BXP not stood aside, Johnson would have had a tiny majority too. That's the era we are in now, minority governments, small majorities and the odd coalition.

Labour will govern with the SNP if it is going to govern.

 

[catcherintherye]

They dont even know what they suspended him for. Shambles.

He was suspended for being Jeremy Corbyn and deigning to govern the party in the interests of it's membership.

 

[Mrk]

Of course they care about the terrain of the debate. I mean they care about both. Their narrow interest is to win elections, which bothers them. Their wider interest though is to govern for the ruloing class and ultimately allow them to maximise their profits. The political mandarins in the tories are not at all happy Johnson is having to emulate Castro (in their heads) to have to stand still in the debate on economic policy.

They love Thatcher not just for winning elections, but for fundamentally altering the political spectrum.

Again, I’m sorry but reading even a basic history of the Tory party would help you understand just how much nonsense this is. The Tory party is the most successful western political party in history because it changes constantly (which has always struck me as rather odd for a ‘conservative’ party, but I digress). They started out as a protectionist anti-trade party, morphed into a populist working-class party, then became a jingoistic semi-socialistic party, then muddled around for 25 years being nothing, then became a radical free-trade party, before slowly morphing into the soapy middle-of-the-road born-to-rule center-right party they are now.

The Tories never put ideology over winning - they’ve understood that you win, then change the country to think your way.

 

[davek]

He was suspended for being Jeremy Corbyn and deigning to govern the party in the interests of it's membership.

Pretty much this.

And if it weren't on that pretext today, it'd be on another one some time soon.

 

[Tubey]

Can you explain the anti-semitism? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't see it.

His exact words...

"[Anti-semitism in the Labour party was] dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party."

Anti-semitic trope of conspiracy. He continues to do this despite the EHRC finding:

• Harassment, including the use of anti-Semitic tropes and suggesting that complaints of anti-Semitism were fake or smears.

He's contributing directly to this. He enabled anti-semitism, even if he wasn't anti-semitic directly himself. Although of course there's quite a bit of evidence he is.