Where to now?

Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I suspect Labour is finished as an electoral force until it can get past this Blair vs Corbyn binary.

On one side, I think the liberal/soft-left side of the party should recognise that, for all that Corbyn has a faulty understanding of capitalism and that this causes problems by encouraging a basically conspiratorial view of the world, the policies that have arisen from Corbynism are for the most part both feasible and popular, never mind how personally unpopular the man associated with them might be.

On the other, Corbynites need to stop using "Blairite" as a catch-all insult and to accept that the Labour government of 1997-2010 did a huge amount that was genuinely progressive and good, and that reducing this entire legacy to the single word "Iraq" is massively unhelpful and self-defeating. Further, plenty of good Labour MPs clearly don't fall neatly into either of these two opposed camps, and the fact of not being in Corbyn's inner circle doesn't mean these people are wholly devoted to the cult of Blair either. Or to put it another way, people who don't wake up each morning and think "How can I thwart Zionism today?" don't necessarily think the Iraq invasion and PFI in the NHS were great ideas.

Really, there are good things about "Corbynism" that can and should be separated from Corbyn (irksome as that may be to his supporters, but unfortunately necessary given public perception of him), and there are good things about "Blairism" that can and should be separated from Blair (less of a problem, I'd have thought, since the person who mainly cares about Tony Blair's public perception these days is Tony Blair).

And thirdly, Seumas Milne, Len McLuskey and Ken Livingstone, along with people who say "dOnT tRuSt yOuGoV, iTs ToRy pRoPaGaNdA" and anyone identifying as a fucking luxury space communist, should be put at the bottom of a very deep pit, sealed over and forgotten about.
 
V

version

Well-known member
I really hope this person's wrong.

They have a lot of money on their side, directly and indirectly. New Labour was merely postponing the inevitable. The policies and rhetoric that Labour would have to adopt, now, to be allowed to take power would make what Blair did for Murdoch, the City and George Bush look like Bennism in comparison.

So, thanks to a lot of former Labour MPs choosing defeat over a Corbyn victory for the past four years (including Blair explicitly telling people not to vote Labour and disgraced MPs calling voting Labour unpatriotic), instead it will be the right who deliver ten more years of decline, humiliation and poverty to most working people, until we're about as exploited as Americans currently are.

Then the situation will be much as it is now in the US: the less right-wing of the two parties will be structurally incapable of addressing voters' needs because of patronage and a total reliance on the wealthy for donations (see: Labour's finances during 2014-15). The other will be proto-fascist. Except with a far more technologically advanced arsenal than the current Cambridge Analytica and targeted fake news of the past year.

Labour liberals had one chance to stop this. One chance to rekindle straightforward democratic debate and see where it led. One chance to actually practice what their supposed heros preached. Instead they decided to destroy their party rather than give even one inch to a democratically legitimate voice that wasn't theirs.
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Leo

Leo

Well-known member
Mr. Tea said:
Don't worry, they are.

The idea that Tony Blair, of all people, is responsible for Labour's drubbing is fucking hilarious.
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always easier to point the finger of blame elsewhere.

also, that person's depiction of how the American masses are heinously exploited is, err, a bit OTT.
 
subvert47

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
Labour liberals had one chance to stop this. One chance to rekindle straightforward democratic debate and see where it led. One chance to actually practice what their supposed heros preached. Instead they decided to destroy their party rather than give even one inch to a democratically legitimate voice that wasn't theirs.
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This is basically correct, if a bit of an exaggeration. Very many people, including me, voted for Corbyn and Watson in 2015 to maintain the "broad church". The reason Labour became factionalized is that the right refused to accept they were no longer in charge, tried whatever they could to undermine the leadership and, when that failed, resorted to very loud sulking, and have been doing that ever since. Whoever becomes the next leader, the right will have to come to terms with the resurgent left, either to include it under a "centrist" leader or agree to work with a leader from the left.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Corbyn went into last month's election like a man preparing to jump off a cliff in the expectation of spontaneously developing the ability to fly in mid-air, because he was surrounded by a clique of sycophants and fellow-travellers who'd spent years telling him he could definitely do it. Meanwhile another group of more distant acquaintances were saying "You know, Jeremy, I'm really not sure this is such a great idea", but were shouted down and ignored by the first lot (or told to "fuck off and join the Lib Dems/Tories", of course!).

Now that the inevitable and entirely predictable result has come about, members of that inner group - such as whoever wrote that twaddle quoted by version - are lashing out at the other group for "causing" the defeat by "not believing" that their absolute boy could fly, and therefore undoing the magic that would otherwise have worked.

And for god's sake, isn't time to let go of the hate-puppet of Tony Blair? I'm sure he'd love to think he still has enough influence to affect the outcome of a general election, but that's nothing but a figment of his own egotism. The idea that former Labour voters in the North and Midlands abandoned the party in 2019 on Blair's say-so is utterly risible. These voters may not have warmed to Corbyn but they have no love for Blair either, or for any faction within the Labour party - indeed, for the most part, they've given up on politics altogether. Remember that the Tory vote share rose only by just over 1% compared to May's not at all impressive result in 2017, whereas Labour's fell by nearly 8%. And while Corbyn's unpopularity in the last two years has sent it into overdrive, it's part of a general trend that's been going on for a couple of decades now.
 
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craner

craner

Beast of Burden
subvert47 said:
This is basically correct, if a bit of an exaggeration. Very many people, including me, voted for Corbyn and Watson in 2015 to maintain the "broad church". The reason Labour became factionalized is that the right refused to accept they were no longer in charge, tried whatever they could to undermine the leadership and, when that failed, resorted to very loud sulking, and have been doing that ever since. Whoever becomes the next leader, the right will have to come to terms with the resurgent left, either to include it under a "centrist" leader or agree to work with a leader from the left.
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There is truth to this, in regard to how the Labour right behaved. It is also fair to compare the New Labour stitch-ups in the CLPs in the 1990s to the call for Mandatory Reselection as a tactic to embed the Corbyn Project, which didn't happen to extent necessary, and is therefore still a very active battle. New Labour were more ruthless: the obsessive attempt to control message and image and the effort to prevent far left candidates being nominated to stand for election was very real and ultimately counter-productive. Those tensions were still being played out in 2005.

On the other hand, the first New Labour government was a broad coalition, with the left represented throughout the administration, even the cabinet. The fact that Corbyn and McDonnell weren't part of this was because they were, correctly, considered mediocre cranks rather than a conspiracy to keep them out.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I agree with most of that aside from the 'mediocre cranks' part. The infighting has been insane. Any Labour leader needs to come to terms with reality, and the full spectrum of opinion within the Labour Party - and of course the right's failure to do so was a huge part of the reason for Corbyn's leadership victory - it wasn't to do with him as an individual as such imo. I don't like all of that spectrum of opinion, but it has to be represented if Labour has any chance of winning an election. To my mind, neither the Labour left nor the Labour right came to terms with this at all, and were more interested in tearing strips off each other.

I fucking hate party politics. I went to a post-election Labour meeting in Birmingham and just found it depressing (and not for the obvious post-loss reasons) - most people not very concerned with listening or with a broad vision, tbh. And, sadly, some guy pontificating loudly about the anti-Semitism scandal and how there was 'nothing in it', with me sat there thinking 'can I actually really be bothered with a public argument with an aggressive stranger?'. Turns out I couldn't. It was all kind of like a game of Labour Party Bingo.
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Anyway, to lighten the mood a little, professional comedian Rebecca Long-Bailey has rated Corbyn's leadership "10 out of 10". :crylarf:
 
V

version

Well-known member
Starmer and Nandy are the top two candidates, imo. I don't think any of them have the charisma to beat Boris though.
 
V

version

Well-known member
I'm forever torn between wanting politics to shift away from personalities and 'the game' and being acutely aware that you have to play and personalities are essential.
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
I recommend following Archie Woodrow on Twitter. It's a fascinating thing to do.
 
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D

DannyL

Wild Horses
Burgon is genuinely dumb as well. If he's the best they've got, well.....

I'm wary of criticism of RLB on the grounds of smarts because I think there's often a latent misogyny in this, combined with her having a regional accent. I can't describe her as overflowing with charisma though. I assume the attraction is just continuity Corbynism, the Novara paypacket.
 
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