Keir Starmer

[subvert47]

Sure, Labour were doing relatively OK in the polls while the Tories were also deeply unpopular, with an incumbent PM who was almost universally hated both by her own party and by most Tory voters. Then Johnson became party leader - OK, that was in the summer of 2019, but it was still well before the election - and given his support among the hardcore Brexit base in the Tory shires, Labour's fate was sealed at that point. Corbyn could have stepped down and let someone else lead the party into the next election, and even if that would still probably have resulted in a defeat, it would almost certainly have been a less crushing one - bear in mind that Corbyn's personal approval at one point reached -60%, the lowest of any UK party leader ever - and would surely have helped some part of the Corbynist project be salvaged.

And come on, Corbyn was useless on both Brexit and anti-Semitism.

Yes, Corbyn stepping down would have been a cunning plan.

On Brexit: The Tory shires were a given anyway. It was the constituencies up here in the Red Wall that Brexit took away. I know Labour supporters who, even if they couldn't bring themselves to vote for Boris,, actually voted for Farage instead because of Brexit.

Corbyn was made useless on Brexit. He was right first time when he supported Article 50. But the bulk of the party got drawn into the People's Vote thing. So we got the neither Brexit nor Remain non-strategy. Which actually made sense, except that no one at all was interested in it.

The anti-semitism thing was 95% bollocks. The trouble was the 5%. But notice that neither the leadership, nor the PLP right, nor the media gives a shit about the 5% when it comes to racism and transphobia in the party. It was always just a stick to beat Corbyn with.

 

[subvert47]

I think the other reasons are the problem - what can be done about them?

Actually they're already sorted, almost by default. Brexit is done. Corbyn has gone. No one really gives a shit about anti-semitism anymore.

Keith can take some credit for the last of those anyway. Unless the media decides to resurrect it again, which they may yet do. They've hardly even touched him so far.

Meanwhile what's he doing? Fuck all.

 

[IdleRich]

I think there is a deeper issue beyond the headlines... something that means that people keep voting for Tories even if they kill people, if they get shown in court to have broken the law, if they spend 200k on doing up their flat and expect other people to pay for it in the middle of a crisis. I don't know what it is but I'd really like to know.

 

[Mr. Tea]

So much infighting... but it looks to me that Left didn't work, Centre ain't working. So what now?

The thing is that most of Corbyn's policies - or at least, the policies Labour adopted while Corbyn was leader - are very popular. What's needed is a party leader who is going to take at least some of those policies forward, but who doesn't have the baggage that comes with a career spent on the political fringes, and who has some of the political ability and media savvy that Blair had.

Whether any such person exists, I don't know.

 

[IdleRich]

Would that dent the Tory deathgrip though? It feels as though rationality has left politics and how people vote has nothing to do with their best interests or what the parties in question actually do. Could be just my depressed take on things sure.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I think there is a deeper issue beyond the headlines... something that means that people keep voting for Tories even if they kill people, if they get shown in court to have broken the law, if they spend 200k on doing up their flat and expect other people to pay for it in the middle of a crisis. I don't know what it is but I'd really like to know.

Sure, some people keep voting Tory - a lot of people, in fact - but even at the last election, which was a huge success, they got under 44% of the popular vote. A big part of the problem is that the remainder of the vote is split between Labour and a whole bunch of other parties. That's an inherent feature of FPTP, of course, and there's no majority political will to change that, since it benefits the party that consistently gets the largest share of the vote, which is the Tories.

 

[subvert47]

That's an inherent feature of FPTP, of course, and there's no majority political will to change that, since it benefits the party that consistently gets the largest share of the vote, which is the Tories.

Actually, there may be. Polling indicates that the majority of the Labour membership now supports some sort of PR. But it would need at least a hung parliament first. And whether, in order to achieve that, Labour would ever be willing to join an anti-Tory electoral pact is debatable.

 

[john eden]

"We need not to listen to people who lost their seats" is the obvious riposte there.

The focus on how shit Starmer is serves to distract from the fact that Pidcok and others saddled Labour with a 80 seat disadvantage. No wonder if it's fucking hard for him. But yeah, more of the same is always the answer. The same preaching sanctimonious shit that is actually a huge turn off to the electorate. There's been absolutely zero sign for any of the Left of their complicity in that terrible result (apart from McDonnell who is the only one who has a brain). There's been no sign that any of them want to show that they're listening. For all Starmer's faults at least that's what he's attempting to do.

I thought Starmer did well on the budget, especially bearing in mind he'll probably be facing Rishi at the next election. 4 years? 3 years now? Is a fucking long time.

There is only so long that people can keep blaming Corbyn for things. We were promised grown up politics by grown up politicans - and that this was the what the country was crying out for.

And the country has come back in the polls and said that Sir Keith is shit... and the centrists who trumpeted that "any other leader would be 20 points ahead now" under Corbyn are very quiet.

It's not really for me to say, but I dunno whether the grown up thing right now is to say that this is all Corbyn's fault? Still?

When Labour tanks at the next election will that also be Corbyn's fault? Blaming the media and factional fighting didn't wash when the Corbynists did it, so you'd hope that the centrists would actually own their shit rather than blaming their failures on external forces...

 

[Mr. Tea]

Actually, there may be. Polling indicates that the majority of the Labour membership now supports some sort of PR. But it would need at least a hung parliament first. And whether, in order to achieve that, Labour would ever be willing to join an anti-Tory electoral pact is debatable.

Ah, well when I said "majority political will", I meant in terms of the current makeup of the HoC.

 

[DannyL]

There is only so long that people can keep blaming Corbyn for things. We were promised grown up politics by grown up politicans - and that this was the what the country was crying out for.

And the country has come back in the polls and said that Sir Keith is shit... and the centrists who trumpeted that "any other leader would be 20 points ahead now" under Corbyn are very quiet.

It's not really for me to say, but I dunno whether the grown up thing right now is to say that this is all Corbyn's fault? Still?

When Labour tanks at the next election will that also be Corbyn's fault? Blaming the media and factional fighting didn't wash when the Corbynists did it, so you'd hope that the centrists would actually own their shit rather than blaming their failures on external forces...

The only reason I mentioned JC was because matey mentioned Laura Pidcock. Like, why would you listen to her? "You had one job" etc.
But the Starmer-hate does fill that a useful gap on the Left in case they accidentally start thinking about why they lost so badly.

Winning an election in this country is fucking hard but at least Starmer looks like he wants to do that. If he polls badly consistently (not that it's that shit atm), he'll change tack and try different things. The attack on Sunak over the budget seems part of that. Have to see what he does and if it works in the long term.

 

[DannyL]

Labour should support PR to be honest, 'cos they're never going to win a majority again with the state of the Scottish Labour vote. The only option is going to be some kind of power sharing with the SNP under the current set up. Idk what that implies for the Union, even if it survives this Parliament.
And Labour always support it when they're doing badly. When they start winning they lose interest.

 

[craner]

Pidcock has an almost supernatural lack of self-awareness.

 

[DannyL]

The quote above is pretty amazing, considering what happened to her.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Labour should support PR to be honest, 'cos they're never going to win a majority again with the state of the Scottish Labour vote. The only option is going to be some kind of power sharing with the SNP under the current set up. Idk what that implies for the Union, even if it survives this Parliament.

A Westminster coalition government including a party whose raison d'etre is the end of the UK would be a somewhat paradoxical arrangement, wouldn't it?

 

[DannyL]

I think there is a deeper issue beyond the headlines... something that means that people keep voting for Tories even if they kill people, if they get shown in court to have broken the law, if they spend 200k on doing up their flat and expect other people to pay for it in the middle of a crisis. I don't know what it is but I'd really like to know.

It is weird isn't it. Idk what it is. 10 years in power has inured us to it's abuses? The cultural war and Brexit shifting attitudes? The death of public shame?

 

[craner]

The quote above is pretty amazing, considering what happened to her.

One of the great post-Corbyn moments was when, fresh from losing her safe seat, she almost immediately accepted the role as Richard Burgon’s deputy leadership campaign manager.

 

[craner]

Because the Labour Party is so self-absorbed and divorced from reality the one thing it probably should reflect on but never will is the fact that it has so little credibility or appeal left that it just takes one thing to go right for the Tories (i.e. the vaccine) and its own polling numbers start tanking again. And, to be fair, this might have less to do with either Corbyn or Starmer than it thinks.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Because the Labour Party is so self-absorbed and divorced from reality the one thing it probably should reflect on but never will is the fact that it has so little credibility or appeal left that it just takes one thing to go right for the Tories (i.e. the vaccine) and its own polling numbers start tanking again. And, to be fair, this might have less to do with either Corbyn or Starmer than it thinks.

You wrote a good post a year or two ago about how Labour has been losing support among working class voters in the North ever since the modest modernisation programme introduced by Kinnock in the early 90s, even before Blair became leader, and that a lot of these voters aren't going to be wooed back to a radical, Corbynite Labour or to a centrist, neo-Blairite Labour, because they no longer have an interest in voting Labour.

 

[craner]

Yeah, exactly. The party is an anachronism and the Corbyn period simply made this extremely visible to the whole country. The thing that New Labour did was the try to strip the party of its myths and legends and illusions and adapt its ideas to the world it was confronted with. The reaction to this failure was a headlong dive backwards into this historical fantasy world with all of its rich and redolent symbols and martyrs.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah, exactly. The party is a historical anachronism and the Corbyn period simply made this extremely visible to the whole country. The thing that New Labour did was the try to strip the party of its myths and legends and illusions and adapt its ideas to the world it was confronted with. The reaction to this failure was a headlong dive backwards into this historical fantasy world with all of its rich and redolent symbols and martyrs.

But in the end, this was a fantasy.

*Burial*