Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Except that the result in 2017 wasn't just deflated by party staffers doing what they could to sabotage the election campaign. The PLP and Labour right had been publicly attacking the leadership at every opportunity for two years to try and be "proved right". So the largest popular vote since Blair's 1997 landslide no doubt did come as a shock. And they showed their "palpable excitement" for that by getting a whole lot worse.
Outside of a dictatorship, it's usually considered healthy and normal that people can criticise their own leaders. It's hardly as if Theresa May had the undivided support of her own MPs, was it?

And Blair had plenty of critics on his own benches, not least one Rt Hon Jeremy Corbyn.
 
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subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
Outside of a dictatorship, it's usually considered healthy and normal that people can criticise their own leaders. It's hardly as if Theresa May had the undivided support of her own MPs, was it?

And Blair had plenty of critics in his own benches, not least one Rt Hon Jeremy Corbyn.

Don't be fatuous. They don't all seek out endless mass media opportunities to make that criticism. Nor are they all given unlimited, uncritical access to do so.
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
there is a difference between "I'm not certain my constituents and my own personal beliefs are aligned with the leader on this issue" and "the leadership is useless let me undermine them again and again"
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
And to be honest, Corbynites who obsess over popular vote share and party membership sound a lot like football fans insisting that their team was actually better because they had more possession and more shots on target, except for the minor technical detail that they lost the game.

Popular vote share is basically irrelevant in a FPTP system. As recently as the 1950s, parties have won the popular vote but lost the election. It sucks, but that's the reality.
 

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
And to be honest, Corbynites who obsess over popular vote share and party membership sound a lot like football fans insisting that their team was actually better because they had more possession and more shots on target, except for the minor technical detail that they lost the game.

Popular vote share is basically irrelevant in a FPTP system. As recently as the 1950s, parties have won the popular vote but lost the election. It sucks, but that's the reality.

The popular vote is hardly irrelevant given that it usually does translate into election victory. But the particular relevance here is that the large popular vote for Labour in 2017 contradicts centrist bullshit about left-wing policies being a vote loser, that meaningful change is impossible, and the only viable strategy is the bland status quo.

Regarding which, centrist "honesty" discounts 2017, looks only at 2019, draws its factional conclusions and goes: "See, we told you. Our way is the only way." Fuck that. Fuck them. We did have the chance for meaningful change in this country, but centrists worked their arses off to ensure it didn't happen. Indeed, as Mandelson boasted, they worked every day to do that.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
there is a difference between "I'm not certain my constituents and my own personal beliefs are aligned with the leader on this issue" and "the leadership is useless let me undermine them again and again"
By the same token, maybe someone who is so poorly aligned with the majority of the parliamentary party that they can't even command the confidence of most of their MPs shouldn't have been leader in the first place?

This is not, before you jump in, an appeal to bland-centrism-as-the-only-way-to-get-elected, and I wish you'd stop defaulting to that strawman. Corbyn's policies, or the policies Labour adopted while he was leader, were generally very popular. If someone with more political ability and less baggage had championed exactly those policies, the outcome might have been very different.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
By the same token, maybe someone who is so poorly aligned with the majority of the parliamentary party that they can't even command the confidence of most of their MPs shouldn't have been leader in the first place?
And you can add 70% of Labour voters to virtually all Labour MPs on the single issue that has defined UK politics for, what, six or seven years now, and looks likely to carry on dominating it indefinitely.
 

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
This is not, before you jump in, an appeal to bland-centrism-as-the-only-way-to-get-elected, and I wish you'd stop defaulting to that strawman. Corbyn's policies, or the policies Labour adopted while he was leader, were generally very popular. If someone with more political ability and less baggage had championed exactly those policies, the outcome might have been very different.

No, because those policies came from the left. It needed someone from the left to bring them forward, otherwise they'd never have got a look in. It was just chance that it happened to be Corbyn, because it was "his turn", but it wouldn't have mattered who. Corbyn is about as harmless as they come and he was still turned into the most terrible man in the world ever. All with the complicity and collaboration of the Labour right.

As for Brexit (presuming that's the single issue you meant), I was actually impressed with Starmer as Shadow Brexit secretary. He and Corbyn did excellent parallel negotiation work to render Brexit as soft as possible under a Labour government, while allowing it to go ahead as voted for. That was all scuppered by the People's Vote fiasco, for which Starmer became a cheerleader. And we now have the hardest, most dysfunctional, corrupt Brexit ever.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
the large popular vote for Labour in 2017 contradicts centrist bullshit

One of the most catastrophic general election campaigns ever designed and conducted also played a part in this, before you get too carried away.
 

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
One of the most catastrophic general election campaigns ever designed and conducted also played a part in this, before you get too carried away.

Yes, indeed, a catastrophic campaign for the Tories, whose bullshit was more than usually apparent, whereas Labour got to talk about policies seriously and repeatedly, thanks not least to some centrist would-be saboteur leaking the manifesto.

Johnson hiding in a fridge shouting "Get Brexit Done" was another level entirely (y)
 

version

Well-known member
Pah, that's nothing. On a drum 'n' bass forum I frequent, the Starmer thread is currently up to 535 pages 🤪
giphy.gif
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
No, because those policies came from the left. It needed someone from the left to bring them forward, otherwise they'd never have got a look in. It was just chance that it happened to be Corbyn, because it was "his turn", but it wouldn't have mattered who.
Well if anyone on "the left" is going to lack political ability and have unattractive baggage almost by definition, as you seem to be implying, then the outlook for progressive politics in the UK is pretty bleak, I'd say.
 

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
Well if anyone on "the left" is going to lack political ability and have unattractive baggage almost by definition, as you seem to be implying, then the outlook for progressive politics in the UK is pretty bleak, I'd say.

Draw a silly inference and ignore the argument altogether. Quality trolling (y)
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Draw a silly inference and ignore the argument altogether. Quality trolling (y)
Not at all. Corbyn's policies were popular. Corbyn was not. Seems pretty reasonable to me that someone without whatever qualities it was that turned voters off Corbyn, but with most of the same policies, would probably be a pretty popular politician.
 
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