Current Affairs The Labour Party

[davek]

But at least Blair had "sommet". You dont win 3 elections being Starmeresq.

He wasn't Major/Hague/Duncan-Smith or Howard. That was his personal strength.

His LP played the game: they were "extremely relaxed about people getting stinking rich" and they continued with deregulation and were as one with the Tories on the EU/NATO etc.

There's been 42 years of unbroken Tory rule since Thatcher got in back in 1979. When either Johnson or Starmer win in 2024 there'll be a Tory government in office until at least 2029

 

[Deleted member 48881]

 

[davek]

I despise that rag.

Maybe if they hadn't attacked Corbyn, stood up to the LP right wing and those peddling the anti-semitism hype and attacked the Tories before the election instead, they wouldn't need to campaign now against their sleaze.

In the same category as the S*n and Torygraph for me.

 

[PaulPowersTash]

If a PM can get away with "I'd prefer to see bodies piled high by the thousands" then I honelstly cant construct a scenario wshere the LP under Starmer makes an impact.

We could well be entering a period where the LP quickly diintegrates. Not before time. The Tories disintegrated under Johnson from a feasible party of law and order and propriety (with the odd exception) looking to Europe, to a party of the extreme right ruled by a populist and without any notions of playing by rules domestically or internationally. They just retained the name 'conservative'...but there's nothing much conservative about them...just as there's very little 'labour' about Labour.

Exactly.
The last time Labour won a GE was under Tony Blair who pretended he was a Conservative.
He then went on to destroy the Labour Party by allowing devolution and the current
situation Labour have in Scotland. The problem with Labour is that they are still very much
a London Centric based party who spend all of their time on the echo chamber that is twitter
convincing themselves that the 4% of the UK population who use twitter is the electorate in general.
It is clear (to most people anyway) that Brexit was the main topic at last election and they effectively
tried to ignore it and hoped it would go away. It didn't. Pictures of the multi millionaire, privately educated,
Knight of The Realm & QC Labour Leader taking the knee and looking at rolls of wallpaper is not exactly
intune with the average person in the street who vote Labour.

 

[davek]

Exactly.
The last time Labour won a GE was under Tony Blair who pretended he was a Conservative.
He then went on to destroy the Labour Party by allowing devolution and the current
situation Labour have in Scotland. The problem with Labour is that they are still very much
a London Centric based party who spend all of their time on the echo chamber that is twitter
convincing themselves that the 4% of the UK population who use twitter is the electorate in general.
It is clear (to most people anyway) that Brexit was the main topic at last election and they effectively
tried to ignore it and hoped it would go away. It didn't. Pictures of the multi millionaire, privately educated,
Knight of The Realm & QC Labour Leader taking the knee and looking at rolls of wallpaper is not exactly
intune with the average person in the street who vote Labour.

Only way the good guys win now is by demolishing Labour and coalescing around an alliance of a new social democratic party and the nationalists in Wales and Scotland. It wont work with Labour. They are wedded to the system. They can barely carry a few trade unions, and their connnection with the working class and their institutions has been hollowed out. Theres's no class base to them anymore - that was severed by the neo-liberals who seized control of the party in the late 1980s and 1990s. They will go the same way as the Liberal Party.

 

[dannyboy]

It's becoming clearer and clearer the cult in the Labour Party was never your average public sector worker, it's the grandees that saw Andy Burnham as too left wing to stomach. There's such a disconnect between these people and reality. Rather than work together they still think if they purge the left the public will adore them.

Starmer was ruined from the moment he let all these has beens back into the tent and stopped trying to plot his own course.

 

[neil999]

It's becoming clearer and clearer the cult in the Labour Party was never your average public sector worker, it's the grandees that saw Andy Burnham as too left wing to stomach. There's such a disconnect between these people and reality. Rather than work together they still think if they purge the left the public will adore them.

Starmer was ruined from the moment he let all these has beens back into the tent and stopped trying to plot his own course.

I don't get this, Burnham was beaten by a further left candidate

 

[dannyboy]

I don't get this, Burnham was beaten by a further left candidate

Just making the point that staffers over at Southside saw Burnham as being too far left. It's now these people who are pulling Starmer's strings and it's been reflected in the way the past year has gone. Better to drive out the socialists than take the fight to the government.

 

[tsubaki]

Just making the point that staffers over at Southside saw Burnham as being too far left. It's now these people who are pulling Starmer's strings and it's been reflected in the way the past year has gone. Better to drive out the socialists than take the fight to the government.

indeed, and of course that lots competence is well evident by Corbs winning, and Starmer’s collapse

 

[DanEFC92]

 

[edge]

Exactly.
The last time Labour won a GE was under Tony Blair who pretended he was a Conservative.
He then went on to destroy the Labour Party by allowing devolution and the current
situation Labour have in Scotland. The problem with Labour is that they are still very much
a London Centric based party who spend all of their time on the echo chamber that is twitter
convincing themselves that the 4% of the UK population who use twitter is the electorate in general.
It is clear (to most people anyway) that Brexit was the main topic at last election and they effectively
tried to ignore it and hoped it would go away. It didn't. Pictures of the multi millionaire, privately educated,
Knight of The Realm & QC Labour Leader taking the knee and looking at rolls of wallpaper is not exactly
intune with the average person in the street who vote Labour.

Good post , since Blair as a high point of winning elections(regardless of your thoughts on the man), we have lost Scotland, most of the rural votes( we had 17 seats under Blair in that category )
Large swaths of the North , and seem only to reflect the views of the london centric and metropolitan people who are in power and in fairness to them are the majority of the active supporters outside of the Unions in the labour party..
If they dont realise soon that most of the country do not live in a facebook, twitter bubble of opinions where if you dont follow the crowd ,every other view is wrong they will struggle .
Unfortunately while in it's current form it seems destined to be a party of the Urban , university city's and be a weak opposition to the Tories.
As it was clearly shown with brexit the online world is not a very good representation of peoples views in this country.
As for going further to the left it has never work in the ballot box in the UK and never will.
The party needs to reconnect with people outside of its current base .
In work most of the people I come into contact with only vote for them if they bother, if they have always voted for them , they are not Tories and have no real conviction towards the party.

 

[LEONARD]

 

[dannyboy]

Lots of Starmer friendly journalists getting out the line that Hartlepool was already lost. Worrying if that genuinely believe that because it begs the question, where do they think they can win?

 

[NilSatisOptimum]

Lots of Starmer friendly journalists getting out the line that Hartlepool was already lost. Worrying if that genuinely believe that because it begs the question, where do they think they can win?

Well probably given the circus round previous MP...
The wider local election vote will be far more telling. If both bad he has to go.

 

[Tubey]

Exactly.
The last time Labour won a GE was under Tony Blair who pretended he was a Conservative.
He then went on to destroy the Labour Party by allowing devolution and the current
situation Labour have in Scotland. The problem with Labour is that they are still very much
a London Centric based party who spend all of their time on the echo chamber that is twitter
convincing themselves that the 4% of the UK population who use twitter is the electorate in general.
It is clear (to most people anyway) that Brexit was the main topic at last election and they effectively
tried to ignore it and hoped it would go away. It didn't. Pictures of the multi millionaire, privately educated,
Knight of The Realm & QC Labour Leader taking the knee and looking at rolls of wallpaper is not exactly
intune with the average person in the street who vote Labour.

Exactly this.

That's where Starmer has so far failed. Things like taking the knee with Rayner for a photo op, or going John Lewis for a wallpaper spot 'for the memes'.

Labour can't win by going hard left, because there's no vote there. They can't win by appealing to the minority. It's why I laughed at the idea that Corbyn represents in any way a working class voter in Merseyside; he didn't. The base Labour electorate now are still obviously the poorer in society, but by and large these people are aspirational and don't want hand outs or the destruction of capitalism. They aren't on Twitter celebrating Karl Marx's birthday. Instead they want a plan to get on the property ladder and so on.

It should have been fairly easy for Starmer - all he had to do was appear competent and gut the party of the weirdos that had infested it. Stand for something, have people believe he could lead. He's failed spectacularly in that goal.