2019 UK election 2

408 posts / 0 new

Fri, 2019-12-13 02:10

Ken Burch

The worst thing about this result was that the most compassionate, human, honest, open and positive figure in UK politics, the first party leader in that country in decades who wasn't a cynical, conniving bastard, was crushed by a conspiracy of bastards, a cabal of sneering bullies.

How can anyone see any good in THAT?

If this leads to the Blairite PLP confining the next leadership ballot to "moderates", Labour will forever forfeit the votes if everyone under 40. No "moderate" can ever possibly appeal to such voters. And since Labour wouldn't gain votes from people in any other demographic in doing so, Labour will probably sign its death warrant if it does that, as the party cannot survive on nothing but the votes of the middle-aged and dismissive, and will never again win the support of the prosperous.

The PLP must pledge itself never to treat another leader as it treated Corbyn throughout his tenure as leader. In a fair leadership election process, a leftist will likely win. That leader must be given the chance Corbyn was never given, and the respect he was always denied, if Labour is to have any chance at all of returning to power.

The abs0lute failure of the LibDems to make any gains in seats or even to re-elect any of the former Labour MP's who defected to them, and the failure of the Independent Group For Change to even come close to winning a seat is proof that Labour would not have benefited from a return to Blairism OR an unambiguous Remain position, as is the fact that almost all of Labour's losses tonight were from Leave-voting areas.

Fri, 2019-12-13 04:36

#253

josh

Leave-supporting Labour chairman Ian Lavery, who held his seat with a reduced majority, said he was "desperately disappointed", adding that voters in Labour's "heartlands" were "aggrieved" at the party's Brexit stance.

The stance of holding another referendum.

Fri, 2019-12-13 04:46

#254

josh

Labour ended up doing about a dozen seats better than the exit poll projected. Crossing the 200 threshold. Not that that's any consolation. The vote was 44-32. Most of the polls were pretty much spot on.

Fri, 2019-12-13 05:38

#255

nicky

In his graceless declaration speech last night Jeremy Corbyn, like his myopic Babble apologists, avoided taking any personal responsibility for the debacle.

Anyone or anything else is to blame. Just not Corbyn or his dogma or his anti-Semitic acolytes.

Brexit, Blairites, Zionists, the press, Starmer, and, according to Ken, even me, bear responsibility but not Corbyn.

How pathetic.

Let’s hope that Labour can be saved from Corbynistas.

Two points about the results which contradict some of the nonsense posted above:

The parties supporting Remain ( including Labour) received 53% of the vote.

The LibDems, although once again hammered by FPTP, increased its vote more than any other party.

Labour now faces a choice between those who learn the lessons of this disaster and those who do not. Josh, Ken, Michael and Aristotle are among the latter.

Fri, 2019-12-13 06:45

#256

nicky

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/jeremy-corbyn-labour-manifesto-antisemitism-brexit

Labour was disastrously, catastrophically bad, an agony to behold. A coterie of Corbynites cared more about gripping power within the party than saving the country by winning the election. The national executive committee, a slate of nodding Corbynite place-persons, disgraced the party with its sectarian decisions. Once it was plain in every poll and focus group that Corbynism was electoral arsenic, they should have propelled him out, but electoral victory was secondary.

Should we laugh or cry at Corbyn’s announcement that he wouldn’t stand for another election? He should have gone before dawn. Any possible or impossible successor will clear out that Len McCluskey clique – Karie Murphy, Seumas Milne, Andrew Murray and others who propped up the old fellow to secure their own power base – with results worse than Michael Foot. Watch them try to divert blame onto “Corbyn-disloyalists”, remainers and ”Blairites”.

Corbyn is not an amoral man. He can never tell a lie: pretending to watch the Queen’s Christmas message in the morning showed he’s not used to fibbing. He is a man without any qualities required of a leader, mental agility, articulacy, strategy, good humour or charisma.

Yet his legacy is of historic importance: he did this country profound, nation-splitting, irreparable harm. Had he led his party and the unions full tilt against Brexit, the narrowly lost referendum could have been won. But he and his cabal refused outright: when beseeched, they said they were too busy with May’s local elections. He wouldn’t share any remain platform. Festering Bennite 1970s ideologies blinded his sect from seeing Brexit was the far right’s weapon of buccaneering destruction. He could have saved us – but he obfuscated.

Fri, 2019-12-13 06:56

#257

Aristotleded24

Does it really even matter who the Labour Party chooses as its leader at this point? One of the reasons people trusted Corbyn to the extent that they did is because he had been around long enough to have shown that he didn't crack under Blairite pressure. Even if a new leader comes around who takes identical positions to Corbyn on the issues, how can it be assured that this new person won't crack and eventually become a Blairite? Look to the US, where Sanders was the lone voice of progressivism in the US in 2016. Now that progressive ideas have come into fashion, every other candidate on the Democratic side (with the exception of Gabbard) are pretending to be more progressive than they actually are in the hopes of fooling everyone into voting for them.

Fri, 2019-12-13 07:16

(Reply to #257) #258

Aristotleded24

nicky wrote:
Yet his legacy is of historic importance: he did this country profound, nation-splitting, irreparable harm. Had he led his party and the unions full tilt against Brexit, the narrowly lost referendum could have been won. But he and his cabal refused outright: when beseeched, they said they were too busy with May’s local elections. He wouldn’t share any remain platform. Festering Bennite 1970s ideologies blinded his sect from seeing Brexit was the far right’s weapon of buccaneering destruction. He could have saved us – but he obfuscated.

Ignoring the fact that the Labour losses were heaviest among those Labour constituencies that voted to Leave in 2016, and the fact that the Liberal Democrats, who took the identical position on Brexit that nicky wanted Labour to take was thumped in the election as well. Remain people such as the Guardian have ignored the fact that when given a choice to Remain in the EU or Leave, people voted to Leave. That's the only thing that Johnson had going for him was that he was going to do what the people voted to do on that file.

To see just how silly this call for a second referendum was, let's imagine that it had happened and that people voted in the second one to Remain. Why should that result have been accepted over the first one? What if the Brexit people refused to accept the result of that one, and pushed for another referendum after that? At what point do you accept the results? Or would it be like a hockey playoff format? Let's have a best-of-seven series of referendums! Whichever side wins 4 referendums their position prevails! See how silly that is?

So ironic for the Guardian to accuse Labour of not seeing what's obviously in front of it when the Guardian refuses to acknolwedge that its own side lost the 2016 referendum.

Fri, 2019-12-13 07:24

#259

josh

The Guardian should look in the mirror. Smeared Corbyn. Bad enough Labour has to deal with the incrediblly biased Tory press. Pressured Labour to say they would hold another referendum, which killed them in the north and the midlands. Shows the paper has no political judgment.

Fri, 2019-12-13 07:32

#260

josh

Two points about the results which contradict some of the nonsense posted above:

The parties supporting Remain ( including Labour) received 53% of the vote.

Hate to break it to you, but Labour is not a remain party. The last time, Corbyn promised to implement the Brexit vote without another referendum. This time, the pressure from the remainers in the party caused him to promise another vote. With FPTP, that killed any chance of stopping a Tory majority. The remainers cut their noses off to spite their face.

And had the referendum losers simply accepted the result of the 2016 vote, we could be looking at a Labour government. They chose not to as the hill to die on, thereby handing the Tories a majority. I suppose there's some poetic justice in that.

Fri, 2019-12-13 08:06

#261

NDPP

"Lab treated its Leavers (and our democracy) with contempt and it appears this has had severe consequences. It is not rocket science that calling your own voters fascist scum and trying to erase their democratic vote would not end well...

https://twitter.com/labourleave/status/1205264647504486401

Leave Fight Transform

https://twitter.com/LeFTCampaign/status/1205295842309087232

"The REAL LEFT now needs to learn the plain truth. As Tony Benn said in 1975: 'When the British people speak everyone, including their members of Parliament, should tremble before their decision, and that's certainly the spirit with which I accept the result of the referendum."

Prediction Time

https://twitter.com/thephillipics/status/1205461218623991809

"Two things you can guarantee: 1) The Tories will sell Brexit short. It was a demand for renewal and enfranchisement, and they don't have the will or the capacity for the kind of investment and constitutional transformation that Brexit demands. 2) The left will not be able to take advantage of this failure because it clung so doggedly to the status quo of EU membership."

"Instead of fighting for the democratic possibilities that lay in the Brexit earthquake, Corbyn preferred to 'maintain party unity' - by prioritising the perspectives and interests of middle class left-liberals over those of the working class.*"

'Why Labour Lost' (upthread)

* This myopia is precisely the same problem with the NDP. (And babble for that matter).

Fri, 2019-12-13 08:09

#262

josh

Corbyn was in an impossible position on the question. I think he was wrong in promising another referendum, but I take into account the enormous pressure he was under in the hopelessly divided party.

Fri, 2019-12-13 08:16

#263

pookie

I am wondering why Corbyn would think it helpful to remain as leader until a new one is selected (if reports I am hearing are true). Normally one would expect someone facing this result to resign immediately.

Fri, 2019-12-13 08:20

#264

josh

I think he should and let John McConnell be interim leader.

Fri, 2019-12-13 10:45

#265

robbie_dee

For what it's worth yesterday will probably prove to be the high point of Boris Johnson's career.

Fri, 2019-12-13 11:07

#266

nicky

I've no idea who John McConnell is, Josh, but he would be bound to be a better interim leader than any of the Corbynistas like John McDonnell

Fri, 2019-12-13 11:10

#267

nicky

This survey, from the pollsters Opinium, undermines the claim that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was not the main problem facing Labour at the election.

Opinium@OpiniumResearch

We asked voters why they had not voted for particular parties in our on the day poll (12th December). For Labour the key issue was the leadership.

77

10:32 AM - Dec 13, 2019

Fri, 2019-12-13 12:13

#268

JKR

Of all the parties, the LibDems actually increased their vote totals the most of all the parties. They increased their vote total by almost 60%, but they lost a seat! FPTP strikes again! Under a proportional system the LibDems should have 75 seats instead of the 11 they received. All those extra seats seem to have been given to the Conservatives! So much for democracy under FPTP. :(

Fri, 2019-12-13 13:23

#269

epaulo13

..not to worry now that there will be a brexit. with the bad old eu off our backs.

quote:

GEORGE MONBIOT: Well, it is a very dark day for everyone who believes in justice, for everyone here who wants a kinder, fairer, greener nation, arguably the darkest day that we’ve had since the end of the Second World War in this country. And we’ve now stepped into the same political arena as the U.S. has with Trump, India has with Modi, as the Philippines have with Duterte, and Brazil with Bolsonaro. These are very dangerous times. Just when we need to confront the greatest predicament humankind has ever faced, which is the collapse of our life support systems, our governments are in the hands of giant toddlers who just want to smash up all our public protections, our public services, any means by which the power of capital and those who accumulate it can be restrained.

Fri, 2019-12-13 13:40

#270

josh

I don't think Johnson's Tories are as bad as that crowd.

Fri, 2019-12-13 13:48

#271

epaulo13

Link

PRIYA GOPAL: India, where we’ve just had the Citizenship Amendment Bill, where ethnonationalist, authoritarian forces have won an election for a second time earlier this year. I think that I simply see Britain as the latest footnote, if you like, in what George just referred to as the global perilous state that democracy is in. What we’re seeing is the authoritarian right rampaging across the globe. And in a way, Britain has simply joined Brazil, India and Hungary, Poland and, of course, the U.S.A. So, we do need to see what is happening in Britain in a global context, and that should worry us very greatly.

quote:

GEORGE MONBIOT: Well, it’s a long time since we’ve had an overtly racist prime minister in this country. There’s been dog whistle racism, but in this case he just comes out and says it, similar to the way that Trump does. And this is a very frightening time indeed — the stuff he said about Muslims, the stuff he said about people of color, and then in the manifesto an actual stated commitment effectively to wipe out another threatened group, which are the Romani Gypsies and Travelers in this country, who are protected ethnic group. They were also subject to the Holocaust: About 500,000 Romanis and Sinti were killed by the Nazis. And yet, here they are actually in the Conservative manifesto, which basically says we’re going to drive them out; we’re going to engage in a cultural cleansing, effectively, of these people from our country, and either they’re going to go and just live in houses and not pursue their culture anymore, or they’re going to be in prison; we’re going to jail them for pursuing their culture. It couldn’t be more blatant. It couldn’t be more terrifying. But it’s there, right in black and white, in their platform. So, you know, this is really, really frightening.

And we know that whenever he runs into trouble, Johnson is going to use xenophobia and racism and scapegoating of immigrants, of Muslims, of the poor and the weak in general, of Romani and Travelers in particular. He’s going to use all that to deflect attention from the many problems that he’s going to run into, particularly as he tries to implement Brexit, particularly as some of his lies and cheating are exposed. He’s going to turn it towards the classic scapegoating of minority peoples, with potentially very frightening implications for those peoples. And it’s up to all of us who believe in social justice to stand in solidarity with those peoples and defend them from the inevitable attacks.

Fri, 2019-12-13 15:47

#272

Ken Burch

nicky, Corybn has announced he's standing down. is that not enough for you?

Why are you STILL attacking him?

What do you want him to do? Apologize for ever running for the leadership? Apologize for being born?

Have all Corbynites lined up and shot, then shoot himself?

Corbyn is not going to fight another election. His policies weren't unpopular, so they don't need to go. And there's nothing to gain from expelling his supporters. In any case, there are no policies to the right of Corbyn's that would even be recognizably Labour at all-my god, do you want the party to go back to the nothing platforms it fought on in 2010 and 2015? The ones which got Labour a lower vote share than it took last night?

The plain fact is, it would not have elected Labour to have ditched Corbyn and gone all-out Remain. The categoric failure of the LibDem campaign-whose leader ran on exactly the policies you'd probably have Labour stand on and ended up losing her own seat and that of every former Labour MP who defected to her party-proves that.

It was the insistence on the second referendum-an insistence Corbyn bowed to-that killed the party in the Labour heartlands, and it was those losses that are why the result was a rout in the seat count. The seats were lost there because the voters felt betrayed by the fact that Corbyn was taking the side of the economic forces which had left their regions to rot, in trying to keep the possibility of staying in the EU alive. It's on the Remain wing that those seats were lost, due to your insistence on endlessly pushing Corbyn to disregard the results of the referendum, and even more would have been lost if Labour had gone all-out Remain, with no possible gains for Labour in any other areas to make up for those losses. You were repeatedly told that the Labour Leave vote was heavily concentrated in the Labour heartlands, that letting those voters think Labour would take the side of the wealthy in London on the EU would infuriate them and help Johnson and Farage, yet you treated that observation as if it didn't matter.

BTW, I did point out several mistakes Corbyn made. He was wrong to not fight back strongly against the AS slur-a slur you just perpetuated by implying that he has AS "acolytes". He was wrong not to push harder for the full re-establishment of internal part democracy or to bring in Open Selection for sitting MPs. At one point or another, there was probably grounds to suspend or expel half the PLP for the outright contempt they treated Corbyn with, and for the fact that they devoted almost all their energy to fighting to oust him when they were supposed to be focusing on trying to oust the Tories. He fought for the many, but he never fought for himself.

The plain fact is that Owen Smith the Pfizer lobbyist, the man who had to ask to speak at Corbyn rallies during the second leadership vote because no one ever went to HIS rallies, would not have done any better than Corbyn as leader. If you can't get crowds when you are seeking the leadership, there is no possible way you can ever be a popular or credible opposition leader.

And if the PLP does what I think you want it to do and simply imposes a Blairite like Yvette Cooper, it will make Labour a party that never gets the votes of anyone under fifty again. The young will never turn out for a bland passionless centrist, and there are no votes Labour can gain from any other age group by telling the young to go to hell.

There are also some genuinely suspicious things about last night's vote-such as how huge numbers of young people, those young people shown in the long lines at polling stations, were simply not allowed to vote. This will need to be investigated and is legitimate grounds for mass public protest.

If there's any gracelessness in any response to the election, it's in your response-you've been on a verbal rampage ever since the results were in, taunting everyone who wouldn't defer to what you believed was your intrinsically superior wisdom. None of us deserve this from you.

Fri, 2019-12-13 17:40

#273

nicky

Have to run out the door Ken but this article will answe most of your questions.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/corbynism-labour-left-party

This problem did not wait until the election to reveal itself. The polling data was clear and voluminous on this point long before the election. Corbyn is the most unpopular opposition leader since records began. And though we may not like it, we know that voters’ assessment of the party leaders plays a huge part in their decision.

Labour knew it and Corbyn knew it. Those appalling numbers were not state secrets. His admirers always describe him as a selfless, almost saintly man, devoid of ego. So why didn’t he take one look at his own ratings and say, “I am clearly a drag on this party’s prospects. Those who need a Labour government have a better chance of getting one if I step aside.” Not a chance.

Corbyn’s own vanity was too great for him even to consider such an act of self-sacrifice. Instead he was encouraged by his own devoted legions of supporters, for whom the idea of a change of leader was heresy. In their mind, it was better to lose under Corbyn than to have a shot at winning with someone – anyone – else.

Perhaps it was too much to ask that he make way for a candidate less sure to repel the electorate. But he made this a presidential campaign, his face everywhere, other Labour heavyweights banished from the airwaves. In their place were factionally approved nodding dogs such as Richard Burgon. Never mind that they were bound to be useless, what mattered was that they were loyal to the ruling clique.

Fri, 2019-12-13 18:46

#274

Ken Burch

Why can't you admit that there's no good reason to keep attacking Corbyn? He's said he's standing down. What more do you want?

And why would you not stop the attacks even during the election?

Fri, 2019-12-13 18:51

#275

Ken Burch

There's no good reason every to go back to Blair's policies. Labour would gain no votes from that. Nobody wants Labour to go back to being the second party of the right again, which is what Blairism meant.

And there was no excuse for the complete lack of respect the PLP treated Corbyn with throughout his leadership. He did nothing to them to justify such conduct.

Fri, 2019-12-13 19:29

#276

josh

Well said.

https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1205600286842085376?s=20

The same person led the party in 2017 and it won an 8 point higher vote share and some 60 more seats. What changed? Not the leader. Not the manifesto. The change was Labour's pledge to hold another referendum.

Fri, 2019-12-13 19:38

(Reply to #276) #277

Ken Burch

josh wrote:

Well said.

https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1205600286842085376?s=20

The same person led the party in 2017 and it won an 8 point higher vote share and some 60 more seats. What changed? Not the leader. Not the manifesto. The change was Labour's pledge to hold another referendum.

That's why the anti-Corbynite MPs wouldn't let up on having the second referendum. That's why Starmer insisted on having that pointless demo for Remain at the party conference. They did it because they knew it would destroy Corbyn's chances. Most actual Remain supporters weren't actually that obsessed with getting the second ref-it was just the obsessives, the ones who wouldn't accept that the issue was settled and that Labour needed to move on if it was to win.

Fri, 2019-12-13 20:11

(Reply to #277) #278

NDPP

[quote=epaulo13]

..not to worry now that there will be a brexit. with the bad old eu off our backs.

[quote=NDPP]

Nope. You'll be happy to know both black cats and white cats agree Mouseland must never break free of their supranational, neoliberal EU prison. The only thing really being contested in that regard was how and who would broker the sellout. 'All over the world cats make friends with cats and nowhere in the world do cats make friends with mice.' - Mao -

BOJO's BRINO NOT BREXIT

https://rabble.ca/comment/5653826#comment-5653826

This is an important point to understand.

Fri, 2019-12-13 20:26

(Reply to #278) #279

JKR

josh wrote:

Well said.

https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1205600286842085376?s=20

The same person led the party in 2017 and it won an 8 point higher vote share and some 60 more seats. What changed? Not the leader. Not the manifesto. The change was Labour's pledge to hold another referendum.

Who's to say that if Labour had not pledged to hold a referendum the Liberal Democrats would have come in second place and pushed Labour into 3rd party status that could have turned Labour into the UK's version of our NDP? Driving away the many Labour Remainers would also have led to electoral disaster especially since there are more Labour Remainers than Labour Leavers.

Fri, 2019-12-13 20:42

(Reply to #279) #280

Ken Burch

JKR wrote:

josh wrote:

Well said.

https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1205600286842085376?s=20

The same person led the party in 2017 and it won an 8 point higher vote share and some 60 more seats. What changed? Not the leader. Not the manifesto. The change was Labour's pledge to hold another referendum.

Who's to say that if Labour had not pledged to hold a referendum the Liberal Democrats would have come in second place and pushed Labour into 3rd party status that could have turned Labour into the UK's version of our NDP? Driving away the many Labour Remainers would also have led to electoral disaster especially since there are more Labour Remainers than Labour Leavers.

It would not have been asking too much for the Labour Remainers to let the EU issue go in the name of the greater good.

And in case you didn't notice, LibDem support plummeted during the campaign, even with its status as the only Remain-obsessive party.

There was no good reason for the Remainers to both force Corbyn to agree to a second referendum and then still insist that his agreement to that wasn't enough.

Fri, 2019-12-13 20:54

#281

NDPP

Scuffles With Police in Central London as Outraged Anti-Brexit Protesters March on 10 Downing Street (and vid)

https://on.rt.com/a76d

"An angry crowd of anti-Brexit protesters have taken to London streets, chanting 'Boris Johnson - not our Prime Minister!'

Why not concoct a conspiracy with Putin to explain Labour's loss and impeach BoJo? Worked out well for Dems, no? Oh yeah, forgot. According to the evil Guardian, Vlad supported Corbyn...

https://twitter.com/thephilippics/status/1203456128195149824

"Putin supports Corbyn and Remain and Reform. Is this getting confusing? Doesn't matter. We have always been at war with Eurasia..."

Fri, 2019-12-13 21:12

#282

iyraste1313

Journalistic accountability advocates such as Media Lens and Jonathan Cook have been working for years to compile evidence of the mass media’s attempts to paint Corbyn as everything from a terrorist sympathizer to a Communist to a Russian asset to an IRA supporter to a closet anti-Semite. Just the other day The Grayzone documented how establishment narrative manager Ben Nimmo was enlisted to unilaterally target Corbyn with a fact-free Russiagate-style conspiracy theory in the lead-up to the election, a psyop that was uncritically circulated by both right-wing outlets such as The Telegraph as well as the ostensibly “left”-wing Guardian.

...from Caitlin Johnstone

while I do not profess to suggest that Labour lost primarily to such media manipulations, no doubt it was a crucial factor which must be investigated by responsible authorities.

Likewise I suspect the Liberals in Canada had a healthy push from such public space as the CBC, no doubt threatened by Conservative suggestions of investigations of their propaganda........

Fri, 2019-12-13 21:33

#283

NDPP

More...

Democrats Worried by Jeremy Corbyn's UK Rise Amid Anti-Semitism

http://hill.cm/Fnc6XDb

"...I think criticisms of Corbyn are certainly legitimate,' said Ben Cardin (D-Md). He needs to be condemned by the members of the Labour Party as well as all individuals who understand that there can be no room for that type of language and that type of action anywhere'...Sen Tim Kaine (D-Va) said Labour's leaders should do more to combat anti-Semitism in its ranks. 'The recent statement by the leading rabbi in England about how Corbyn's statements have caused so many Jews in England to be concerned about Labour, people who are members of that party, leaders of that party, should take that very seriously..."

Fri, 2019-12-13 21:48

#284

NDPP

The Lobby from Canada on Labour's Defeat

https://twitter.com/CIJAinfo/status/1205337143851278336

"History has repeatedly taught us antisemitism predicts rot, and once the rot sets in collapse is inevitable. A cautionary tale told again and again and again."

Serves equally well as a cautionary tale against the Lobby itself. Time to get serious about eliminating it from our politics.

Fri, 2019-12-13 21:56

(Reply to #284) #285

JKR

Ken Burch wrote:

It would not have been asking too much for the Labour Remainers to let the EU issue go in the name of the greater good.

Labour could have compromised and voted for something close to Theresa May's version of Brexit a long time ago and avoided this catastrophe. What was Corbyn's plan during the last 3 years? As leader of a major national party he has to bear the most responsibility for what happens under his watch. It seems his political and negotiating skills are very poor and the electorate punished him and his party for it.

Fri, 2019-12-13 22:23

(Reply to #285) #286

Michael Moriarity

JKR wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

It would not have been asking too much for the Labour Remainers to let the EU issue go in the name of the greater good.

Labour could have compromised and voted for something close to Theresa May's version of Brexit a long time ago and avoided this catastrophe. What was Corbyn's plan during the last 3 years? As leader of a major national party he has to bear the most responsibility for what happens under his watch. It seems his political and negotiating skills are very poor and the electorate punished him and his party for it.

In hindsight, I agree that it would have been better for Corbyn to accept the best deal he could negotiate with May, and get Brexit off the table back in 2018. Then the election could have been about the other issues, and as a bonus, Boris would never have become Conservative leader. Not doing this turned out to be a mortal error.

Fri, 2019-12-13 22:40

(Reply to #286) #287

Ken Burch

Michael Moriarity wrote:

JKR wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

It would not have been asking too much for the Labour Remainers to let the EU issue go in the name of the greater good.

Labour could have compromised and voted for something close to Theresa May's version of Brexit a long time ago and avoided this catastrophe. What was Corbyn's plan during the last 3 years? As leader of a major national party he has to bear the most responsibility for what happens under his watch. It seems his political and negotiating skills are very poor and the electorate punished him and his party for it.

In hindsight, I agree that it would have been better for Corbyn to accept the best deal he could negotiate with May, and get Brexit off the table back in 2018. Then the election could have been about the other issues, and as a bonus, Boris would never have become Conservative leader. Not doing this turned out to be a mortal error.

Fair point, actually. But that would also have required the Labour Remain obsessives to back off, to not go off as a bloc and form a new SDP-Europe was actually one of the major reasons the original SDP was formed-in response to Corbyn doing that. Can we assume they could have been trusted not to do that?

Fri, 2019-12-13 22:43

#288

Ken Burch

Jonathan Cook on the results and what comes next:

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2019-12-13/corbyns-defeat-slayed-the-...

Fri, 2019-12-13 23:31

#289

Ken Burch

Gary Younge on the results and what he saw in the campaign:

"Corbyn’s departure creates a problem for centrists. They have been predicting this moment since before he was elected leader. When events failed to comply – when the party reelected him with a greater majority or the country gave him more seats and votes – they waited for the next event. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. The trouble is, with him leaving they will now have to produce an agenda and a candidate of their own, and then offer those up to a party that has grown in size, even if it is momentarily diminished in confidence."

"I did not hear a single voter ask about Owen Smith or pine for Yvette Cooper. Whatever comes next, it won’t be a return to abstaining on the welfare bill or backing the hostile environment policy. They will want Labour to be more effective in opposition, but they will WANT it to mount an opposition."

"The centrists will have to face the fact that the thousands of people who travelled the country during these past few weeks to canvass in the cold and rain are not about to abandon their ideals or the party. And those who invested so heavily in this particular iteration of Labour will have to face the fact that their conviction alone was not enough to convince others of their ideals."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/labour-why-lost-je...

Sat, 2019-12-14 00:14

(Reply to #289) #290

bekayne

josh wrote:

Well said.

https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1205600286842085376?s=20

The same person led the party in 2017 and it won an 8 point higher vote share and some 60 more seats. What changed? Not the leader. Not the manifesto. The change was Labour's pledge to hold another referendum.

So the 6% gain by the Lib Dems, Greens and SNP came from the Tories, who replaced it with votes they took from Labour?

Sat, 2019-12-14 00:37

#291

Ken Burch

The SNP took Con, Labour AND LibDem seats-they defeated the LibDem leader, Jo Swinson, in her riding. And what matters more than anything was that the Brexit Party vote was concentrated heavily in Labour areas, whereas the LibDem and Green vote increases weren't concentrated in areas dominated by any one party. The results prove it was a disaster for Labour to promise a second referendum and that Labour would have done even worse had it gone all-out Remain.

There were no significant number of ridings where an all-out Remain stance would have resulted in Labour gains.

And it was impossible to commit to the second referendum without sounding to Labour Leave voters as if the party was ignoring and abandoning them. There was nothing Labour could have offered to voters in the North and Northeast of England that would ever have countered the sense of collective betrayal they felt becauses Labour did as much as it could do to appease the wealthy, privileged Remainers.

There was no way to campaign for Remain and against austerity at the same time.

Sat, 2019-12-14 02:35

#292

Ken Burch

https://tonygreenstein.com/2019/12/labours-electoral-disaster-is-the-pri...

Sat, 2019-12-14 05:53

(Reply to #292) #293

josh

JKR wrote:

josh wrote:

Well said.

https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1205600286842085376?s=20

The same person led the party in 2017 and it won an 8 point higher vote share and some 60 more seats. What changed? Not the leader. Not the manifesto. The change was Labour's pledge to hold another referendum.

Who's to say that if Labour had not pledged to hold a referendum the Liberal Democrats would have come in second place and pushed Labour into 3rd party status that could have turned Labour into the UK's version of our NDP? Driving away the many Labour Remainers would also have led to electoral disaster especially since there are more Labour Remainers than Labour Leavers.

They didn't promise to hold another referendum last time. And the Lib Dems did worse.

Sat, 2019-12-14 05:55

(Reply to #293) #294

josh

NDPP wrote:

Scuffles With Police in Central London as Outraged Anti-Brexit Protesters March on 10 Downing Street (and vid)

https://on.rt.com/a76d

"An angry crowd of anti-Brexit protesters have taken to London streets, chanting 'Boris Johnson - not our Prime Minister!'

Why not concoct a conspiracy with Putin to explain Labour's loss and impeach BoJo? Worked out well for Dems, no? Oh yeah, forgot. According to the evil Guardian, Vlad supported Corbyn...

https://twitter.com/thephilippics/status/1203456128195149824

"Putin supports Corbyn and Remain and Reform. Is this getting confusing? Doesn't matter. We have always been at war with Eurasia..."

Democrats? You mean the party that won back the house last year?

But I guess it is possible to grinde your axe on a strawman.

Sat, 2019-12-14 05:59

(Reply to #294) #295

josh

JKR wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

It would not have been asking too much for the Labour Remainers to let the EU issue go in the name of the greater good.

Labour could have compromised and voted for something close to Theresa May's version of Brexit a long time ago and avoided this catastrophe. What was Corbyn's plan during the last 3 years? As leader of a major national party he has to bear the most responsibility for what happens under his watch. It seems his political and negotiating skills are very poor and the electorate punished him and his party for it.

They probably should have supported it. But Corbyn was leading a party that was more divided on the remain or leave question than the Tories, whose division focused more on how to leave. It handcuffed him.

Sat, 2019-12-14 06:03

(Reply to #295) #296

josh

Ken Burch wrote:

Michael Moriarity wrote:

JKR wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

It would not have been asking too much for the Labour Remainers to let the EU issue go in the name of the greater good.

Labour could have compromised and voted for something close to Theresa May's version of Brexit a long time ago and avoided this catastrophe. What was Corbyn's plan during the last 3 years? As leader of a major national party he has to bear the most responsibility for what happens under his watch. It seems his political and negotiating skills are very poor and the electorate punished him and his party for it.

In hindsight, I agree that it would have been better for Corbyn to accept the best deal he could negotiate with May, and get Brexit off the table back in 2018. Then the election could have been about the other issues, and as a bonus, Boris would never have become Conservative leader. Not doing this turned out to be a mortal error.

Fair point, actually. But that would also have required the Labour Remain obsessives to back off, to not go off as a bloc and form a new SDP-Europe was actually one of the major reasons the original SDP was formed-in response to Corbyn doing that. Can we assume they could have been trusted not to do that?

They might have. But as we saw with the others who left to form another party, they would have vanished by Election Day. Had the remainers simply accepted the result of the referendum, we would have been looking at an entirely different electoral landscape.

Sat, 2019-12-14 06:15

(Reply to #296) #297

josh

bekayne wrote:

josh wrote:

Well said.

https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1205600286842085376?s=20

The same person led the party in 2017 and it won an 8 point higher vote share and some 60 more seats. What changed? Not the leader. Not the manifesto. The change was Labour's pledge to hold another referendum.

So the 6% gain by the Lib Dems, Greens and SNP came from the Tories, who replaced it with votes they took from Labour?

The Tories barely budged, going up 1%. That probably came from Labour, but Labour also lost crucial votes in the north and the Midlands to the Brexit party. And the Tories also lost votes in Scotland and southern England to the Lib Dems.

Sat, 2019-12-14 07:43

#298

NDPP

'This New House of Commons Has The Highest Number of Non-White MPs Ever

https://twitter.com/labourleave/status/1205441742033559552

"So Britain's parliament includes 10% ethnic minorities. The EU parliament has just 3%..."

Sat, 2019-12-14 08:40

#299

NDPP

For Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

https://twitter.com/battleforeurope/status/1205547271779233793

"As if sidestepping (or worse, trying to overturn) Brexit wasn't bad enough, Labour also paid the price of embracing a neoliberal framing about 'fiscal responsibility'. In this article we explained how Labour was setting itself up for failure by doing so.

'Tribune recently published an article unequivocally titled 'Against MMT', written by James Meadway, former advisor to the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. He joins a coterie of economists and policymakers - Kenneth Rogoff, Larry Summers [The man who broke Glass-Steagal, Chrystia Freeland's 'guru', Epstein circle, etc], Paul Krugman and others - who have attacked modern monetary theory (MMT).

This campaign reached its apex when Republican senators proposed a resolution in Congress denouncing it - one of the first times an economic theory has been condemned in this way. More surprising is the fact that MMT has also been the subject of fierce criticism by [pseudo] left-wing economists and commentators, such as Doug Henwood and Paul Mason. In the last year or so, the critiques of MMT have accelerated as its public profile has risen, partly due to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's promotion of the theory in relation to her endorsement of a 'Green New Deal' (GND).

This was to be expected. MMT threatens powerful vested interests in our societies. MMT allows us to break out of the illusory financial constraints that for too long have hindered our ability to imagine radical alternatives and to envision truly transformational policies, such as the Green New Deal, in the knowledge the issue is not whether we can 'afford' a certain policy in financial terms but only whether we have enough available resources - and political will to implement it. This is a massive paradigm shift.

Citizens are constantly told that the government cannot afford to invest more in education, healthcare, infrastructure, welfare and other public services. Yes, there is never a lack of money when it comes to tax-cuts for the rich, bank bailouts, military activities and other programmes that benefit our political and economic elites. Unfortunately, the mainstream macroeconomic narrative continues to plague large swathes of the left, particularly in [EU] Europe..."

Sat, 2019-12-14 10:15

#300

epaulo13

..again it's the remain (not talking about those that manipulated this) that takes the hit. as if they were the unreasonable one. as if because there was a vote back when they should have accepted this.

..imo remain had every right to express there desire as much as leave..in spite of the vote way back when. they were right to fear a brexit brought on and manipulated by the right. it was no secret that neoliberalism and austerity had run havoc for years. yet leave blew up the labour manifesto for a mythical brexit.

..this is the story. how manipulation and division works. how we either overcome this or we perish.

Sat, 2019-12-14 10:45

#301

NDPP

Jacobin: Why The Left Should Embrace Brexit

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/brexit-labour-party-socialist-left-co...

"The Left's anti-Brexit hysteria is based on a mixture of bad economics, flawed understanding of the European Union and lack of political imagination..."

2019 UK election 2

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