I think Corbyn's very low approval ratings mostly stemmed from his being seen as being generally incompetent. I don't think centre-left people dismissed him for things such as his ideology or for the false accusation that he was anti-Semitic.
2019 UK election 2
Sun, 2019-12-15 14:36
#352
Sun, 2019-12-15 15:14
#353
I think Corbyn's very low approval ratings mostly stemmed from his being seen as being generally incompetent. I don't think centre-left people dismissed him for things such as his ideology or for the false accusation that he was anti-Semitic.
The main reason that he was seen as "incompetent", if he actually was, was that he was constantly being insulted and disrespected by his own party's MPs. They never let it go that he beat them going away when they tried to replace him with a right-winger in the second leadership race.
The results would have been very, very different if the PLP had invested even half the energy they invested in undermining and sabotaging their leader in doing what they were supposed to do-attacking the Tory government. Funny how they never seemed to spend any time carrying out that task over the last four years, innit?
Sun, 2019-12-15 15:18
#354
The next leader will not be exactly like Corbyn...anyone replacing him will make different choices. But there doesn't need to be an abandonment of the policies he carried out. There's no good reason ever to repeat the Kinnock-to-Blair cycle-Labour would have come to power by 1997 without abandoning socialism, without expelling thousands of innocent socialists, and without abolishing internal party democracy.
It's telling that the last two leaders before Corbyn, both of them Blairites, did worse than Labour did in vote share this year.
The real tasks before the next Labour leader are
1) Winning back the North and Northeast-something Labour can never do with a Remainer as leader;
2) Finding some way to recover in Scotland, something Labour can never do with a Blairite as leader.
Sun, 2019-12-15 15:25
#355
As to Corbyn and his supporters being open to dialog and other voices...I think they'd have been a bit more open had the conversation others in the party were trying to start with them had been a dialog, a willingness to acknowledge the reality that most of the party voted for Corbyn because they wanted a break with Blairism, rather than always just being "When will you bloody well resign so we can kick all of your supporters out of the party!" or "When will you order everyone in the party to give unquestioning support to everything Netanyahu does to Palestinians!"
There was no actual attempt at conversation-there were simply demands for surrender.
Why couldn't the anti-Corbyn forces offer actual compromises? Why couldn't they admit that the party HAD voted to move past the third way? Why could they not treat the pro-Corbyn wing as their equals?
Sun, 2019-12-15 15:26
#356
Corbyn made mistakes, nicky-but his enemies in the party made at least as many in responding to him and those he stands with. Can you not at least acknowledge that the arrogance of the anti-Corbyn people did damage here?
Sun, 2019-12-15 17:40
#357
In 2017, Corbyn took the party to its best share of the vote since 2001 and its best seat total since 2005. The moderate remainers who tied his hands on the Brexit question this time around were in large part responsible for the results.
In 2017 Theresa May also ran one of the worst election campaigns in UK electoral history and Labour was still not able to win even though they were handed every advantage during that election. Corbyn's unpopularity even then prevented Labour from winning. Corbyn has had extremely low approval ratings for a very long time and it was ridiculous that he was able to lead Labour into the election when his approval ratings were so low for such a long time.
I think we should also remember that Remainers make up over half of Labour's voters. I think it makes no sense to blame over half of Labour's voters for Labour's disastrous election results. If Corbyn had agreed to some sort of soft-Brexit deal, Labour's Remainers and Leavers would both mostly have been satisfied. But instead Corbyn always saw Brexit primarily as his opportunity to force an election and win power and that strategy totally backfired on Labour and the left. Corbyn should have dealt with Brexit on its own terms and not tried to use it to win power. Corbyn's short-term greed for power led Labour to the position it now finds itself in.
He didn't force the election. As I posted above it was the Lib Dems and SDP that were gung ho. And already history is being revised. The remainers insisted on another referendum. And refused to go along with a Brexit deal without one. Corbyn didn't, but was forced to agree to one under great pressure. That sealed Labour's fate.
Sun, 2019-12-15 20:49
#358
As much as anything else, it was the refusal of the Remainers to stop pressuring Corbyn to accept a second referendum, followed by their subsuquent refusal to accept Corbyn's concession to the second referendum position as a sufficient enough reason to stop attacking him because he didn't go all the way and commit to pushing for the second referendum prior to the election-when they knew there was no chance it was going to happen-and commit to forcing everyone in the party to campaigning for Remain-an insistence which destroyed Corbyn's credibility as leader because it convinced the electorate that Corbyn's own MPs not only didn't accept him as leader but also didn't even respect him as a human being-that bears as much responsibility for the December 12th results as anything else.
Everyone knew the second referendum pledge would make it impossible for Labour to hold the North and Northeast. Everyone knew that the continued attacks on Corbyn by hardline Remainers for not going all-out Remain would guarantee Labour would make no gains anywhere else.
It all comes down to the stubborn determination by the PLP to never, ever accept that Corbyn had won the leadership, to keep pushing him to resign even when they knew that such a push was sabotaging Labour's electoral fortunes, and to never accept any terms for Corbyn's departure other than the complete erasure of socialism and socialists from the party and the complete restoration of Blairte/Blue Labour dominance whether or not such a restoration does anything to improve Labour's chances of winning any future elections.
They had other options.
They could have treated the majority who backed Corbyn with respect and accepted that that majority had just as much right to have a say in the party as they did.
They could have chosen dialog over endless demands for surrender.
They could have acted like rational, sensible adults, rather than like three year-olds throwing perpetual tantrums.
They simply refused to try any other approach than destruction.
There is no possible case for rewarding those who chose to sabotage Labour with restored iron control of Labour. 2010 and 2015 proves that their policies and their strategies will never lead to victory again.
Sun, 2019-12-15 18:08
#359
Sun, 2019-12-15 18:26
#360
Excellent post there, Ken.
Mon, 2019-12-16 02:41
#361
I'll ask again, to those who spent the whole Corbyn era insisting he should never have been leader and should have stood down as soon as the MPs who never accepted that their party had chosen him for the job:
Who, of any of the people who stood against Corbym for the job, would you have preferred? Liz Kendall? Yvette Cooper?, Andy Burnham? Owen Smith?
And, if your issue with the man was just him, specifically, being in the job, what guarantees would you have been willing to offer his supporters, in exchange for his departure, to assure them that you weren't just going to push to drag the party all the way back to Blairism, that the things they, as the majority of the party supported would not simply be erased?
Lastly, since you knew he couldn't resign once the 2019 campaign started, what did you think you were actually going to achieve by relentlessly attacking him right up 'til polling day? What was the point? Why was it so important to you to sabotage Corbyn that you no longer cared that you were harming innocent people in keeping up the attack?
Mon, 2019-12-16 05:48
#362
Ken, this poll refutes everything you have said about Corbyn and the results of the election:
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.
Mon, 2019-12-16 07:08
#363
It's enough that Corbyn will be gone in eight to ten weeks. The next leader will be someone else. The poll proves Labour doesn't have to move to the right. Corbyn doesn't have to leave this week and you don't need to demand that everyone agree he should never have been leader at all.Ken, this poll refutes everything you have said about Corbyn and the results of the election:
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.
And he'd likely have gone in 2017 if only the PLP had agreed that a strong left candidate would be on the ballot to replace him, that the policies would not have been abandoned, and his supporters not punished. If it was just him, they should have been glad to agree to that.
You've got what you said you wanted. Let it go at that. Labour can't improve things by moving hard to the right and kicking out all the socialists again. The Blairite party, Change UK, took 10,006 votes in the whole UK. That proves Blairism is dead.
Mon, 2019-12-16 09:23
#364
One more time:
Analysis of the 59 seats that Labour lost [as of now]: *Notable Points of Interest* Five were lost to the SNP. Of the 54 seats lost in the rest of the UK, 52 of them voted to LEAVE in 2016: Two voted to REMAIN - Stroud & Kensington
Mon, 2019-12-16 17:03
#365
something for everyone here:
https://leftfootforward.org/2019/12/all-the-what-went-wrong-for-labour-hot-takes-in-one-place/
Mon, 2019-12-16 17:40
#366
Nobody's claiming the campaign didn't end in defeat, nicky. It's just that some of us reject the idea that the only way to move forward is not only for Corbyn to stand down but everything the majority of the party who supports what his campaign fought must be erased.
If you are to be in any way honest, you would have to admit that, once Corbyn was forced to support a second referendu, any possibility of holding those 55 Labour Leave seats vanished.
No one you would have preferred could have held those seats.
Certainly not anyone whose program was to bring back Blairism and fight to the last for Remain.
Hang it up, nicky-what you want-a return to the policies of 1997-isn't going to happen and wouldn't do any good if it did.
And it's enough that Corbyn is leaving-he doesn't need to be anathemized and his supporters don't deserved being driven away.
Without socialism, Labour will simply go back to the slow road to death it was on in 2010, and 2015.
Mon, 2019-12-16 20:18
#367
Surely you can count Ken. Look at the poll posted above in #362.
37% of Labour supporters who abandoned the party did so because they couldn’t stomach Corbyn.
Only 21% did so because they disliked the party’s stand on Brexit. That figure encompasses not just Leavers but also Remainers who disagreed with Corbyn’s avoidance of embracing Remain. And just because 21% gave Brexit as their main reason doesn’t mean they weren’t also part of the 70% or more of the overall electorate who disliked Corbyn.
And of course there was another 6% who abandoned Labour because of its economic policies.
You are delusional in pretending that these numbers do anything but show emphatically thatCorbyn and Corbynism lost the election for Labour.
Mon, 2019-12-16 20:26
#368
One more time:
Analysis of the 59 seats that Labour lost [as of now]: *Notable Points of Interest* Five were lost to the SNP. Of the 54 seats lost in the rest of the UK, 52 of them voted to LEAVE in 2016: Two voted to REMAIN - Stroud & Kensington
Mon, 2019-12-16 20:42
#369
At some point, the PLP needs to take responsibility for the fact that a major reason Corbyn became unpopular was that they spent his entire tenure as leader refusing to accept that he had any right to have won the leadership and withholding any respect or loyalty to him.
He did nothing whatsoever to the PLP to deserve that treatment, and, since they knew that that campaign was never going to result in Corbyn standing down but could only guarantee a bad Labour showing at the polls, they are implicated in the result for refusing to stop their vendetta against the man.
It's as much on them as anything else that Corbyn became unpopular.
And if it was just about him, they could have got him to stand down if only they'd agreed that there would be a strong left candidate on the leadership ballot to replace him and that there'd be no retribution towards his supporters once he'd left.
Why could they not do that?
Why do you keep pretending that it was egotism for him to stand on when, if anything, it was utter selflessness to subject himself to that just to protect those he stood with?
Why can you not admit that the PLP, if their objective was simpy to see Corbyn go, had no obligation to make it possible for him to go? That they were not entitled to have no discourse with Corbyn OTHER than to continually try to make him simply turn tail and run.
Why can you not see that the PLP had some obligation to behave maturely, to show some respect to his supporters and what they supported, that the PLP had SOME obligation, if they wanted him gone, to bend at least slightly? To let it go at getting his departure, rather than insist that he be humiliated into going?
He didn't owe it to the party to just unconditionally surrender and left the left be crushed. He didn't owe it to the party to leave without getting some guarantee that someone who backed at least similar ideas would be allowed on the leadership ballot to replace him. He didn't owe it to the party to vanish and take the entire Labour Left with him, for god's sakes.
And the consensus opinion is that the insistence on the second referendum killed the party in the Labour heartlands-that once the second referendum was pledged, there was nothing either Corbyn or any possible replacement for Corbyn could have offered Labour Leave voters to get them to ignore the fact that the second referendum was a declaration that Labour did not care what the voters in the Labour heartlands wanted, that replacing Corbyn with a hardline Blarite Remainer could only cause even more losses in the North and Northeast, while leading to no gains anywhere else? Why was getting Labour to go all-out Remain more important to you than seeing Labour win the election?
It was not JUST Corbyn, and if it had been, that would not justify a scorched-earth campaign against the majority for the party who are left-wing and the mass abandonment of all left ideas, as you are also pushing for. And Labour can't win if it goes back to Blairism and makes the current majority in the party unwelcome. There are no significant number of people currently to the right of Labour who would embrace the party if it abandoned socialism. The showing of Change UK...10,006 votes in the whole country...proves this.
I've conceded that Corbyn made mistakes, I posted a critique of the man upthread, and he is now going away. Is that not enough for you? You can't just keep banging away at this until everyone agrees that Corbyn should never have been leader and had an obligation to resign immediately after the bogus no-confidence vote, because you are never going to get anybody else her to agree with that.
So please, just give it a rest. You have no reason to keep attacking and nothing to continue to attack. You're just being a troll and a cyber-bully at this stage.
Tue, 2019-12-17 08:28
#370
UK, 2019 national parliament election turnout: Scotland: 68.1% (+1.6) UK-wide: 67.3% (-1.5) Wales: 66.6% (-2.0) Northern Ireland: 62.1% (-3.5)
Tue, 2019-12-17 17:13
#371
The day before the vote, Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC's "political editor"-who had been viciously anti-Corbyn from the start, announced on live tv that she had "seen the postal votes"(the advance ballots) and that they looked bad for Labour's chances. According to British law, no one is supposed to either see postal votes OR to announce what the results from the postal votes are-I'm not sure if they are supposed to even be COUNTING the postal votes before the polls close on polling day-as far as I know, no one is even supposed to claim that they've seen the postal votes or say anything regarding what they might be indicating in terms of a trend-before polling day.
It is entirely possible that what Kuenssberg said on December 11th, whether or not she was even telling the truth about seeing the postal ballots or whether or it was even possible for her to have seen them-may have caused a massive decline in voter turnout on polling day and this had a major effect on the outcome.
Kuenssberg should be either disciplined, and possibly fired, by the BBC for what she said that day, and could legitimately be subject to criminal prosecution for either looking at the results of the postal ballots or simply making a statement regarding what the results of the ballots might be.
She won't be, because the BBC was clearly in collusion with the Murdoch press, the Tories, and the Blairites to sabotage Labour's chances and to destroy Jeremy Corbyn at the ballot box.
What happened in this election-the political establishment of the UK colluding to prevent the election of one political party, must never be allowed to happen again.
Labour needs to support media reform and the breakup of the media corporations of the UK.
Tue, 2019-12-17 18:05
#372
This election has been characterised by the worst delivery of disinformation and deception by political parties and their activists and campaigners in history. The Tory propaganda machine excelled like no other. No other election has had military perfected systems of persuasion combined with new technologies to deliver a single message – that the political mainstream opposition was a danger to society at large. It bordered on evangelical extremism – like Cold War propaganda, it told us to beware ‘reds under beds.’
This sad episode was deceitful, manipulative and very obviously persuasive. But this was not just about billions of highly targeted social ads – the mainstream media were complicit. And they were led like children to the Pied Pipers tune. It was, by any stretch of the imagination, unedifying to witness and alarming to see just how many people were charmed by it all.
Over the next weeks, months and years – we will see an unravelling of the propaganda campaign where Boris Johnson’s Guarantee will simply not materialise. Fifty million more GP appointments year, 50,000 more NHS nurses, 20,000 more police officers and a huge educational boost will all end up falling short of and then excused through yet more disinformation. The mainstream media have a lot to answer for as they aided and abetted the most artful and duplicitous Prime Minister in generations to a position of power that will inflict a form of venomous politics, economic outcomes and power grabs never witnessed in Britain.
The power relations between elites, media and the masses in this election – an election defined by the media’s collective failure to deliver honest output is explained here by Callum Alexander Scott.
Will Davies has recently commented recently on the ‘Berlusconification’ of British politics, where the once separate domains of politics and media have become indistinguishable: Johnson and Michael Gove are both former journalists, George Osborne now heads the Evening Standard, and so on. The failure of journalists to keep these domains separate goes a long way to explaining the current crisis of legitimacy befalling the media, and the result of this election. Journalists and politicians who ignore this are placing us all in deeper jeopardy as the principle of an independent ‘Fourth Estate’ falls further from sight. Given the scarcity of truth during this general election, one thing can be known for certain: the British media is in desperate need of radical democratic reforms.
...Like wise in Canada, as long as we maintain the bs of the CBC there will never be a democratic election...I do my little bit, what with a court case on the 1st of April vs. Elections Canada for failure to guarantee a fair election
Wed, 2019-12-18 04:55
#373
The difference between the right and the left is that the right always want to win the election, whereas the left, who knows. Until the left clues into this little bit of election strategy, they need to stop wasting people's time.
Wed, 2019-12-18 06:19
#374
Ken, do you really ean to suggest that the BBC was more to blame than Corbyn for Labour’s defeat?
Wed, 2019-12-18 09:26
#375
"94% of the seats Labour lost in England in the General Election voted to leave the EU."
https://twitter.com/Freecitizen864/status/1207068900204126208
Wed, 2019-12-18 11:13
#376
"94% of the seats Labour lost in England in the General Election voted to leave the EU."
https://twitter.com/Freecitizen864/status/1207068900204126208
An incovenient truth
Wed, 2019-12-18 14:21
#377
Corbyn, Antisemitism and Brexit: Labour MPs on Why They Lost
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/17/corbyn-antisemitism-and...
"Many former and aspiring MPs who failed to win on Thursday have told the Guardian that Labour's outgoing leader and his views were the biggest single factor that contributed to their downfall..."
Another factor, the smear and disinformation campaign by msm such as The Guardian, goes curiously unmentioned.
"One thing that 'went wrong at the election' for Labour was that its leader was deliberately destroyed by the paper that Thornberrry has just written an article for..."
Wed, 2019-12-18 17:26
#378
On Thursday, the United Kingdom—in its third general election in the past five years—gave a large majority to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party, all but assuring that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union in a matter of months. Johnson, who replaced Theresa May as the leader of the Conservative Party this past summer, was forced to call a vote because his narrow parliamentary majority was not sufficient for him to pass the Brexit deal he negotiated with Europe. The results will likely lead to a renewed independence push by pro-European Scottish nationalists. They have already caused a shakeup in the Labour Party, which has been led for the past four years by the leftist Jeremy Corbyn and had its worst election results in decades. On Friday, Corbyn said that he hoped to lead the Party during a period of “reflection” but would not do so in any future election. Corbyn, who ran on a platform of left-wing economic policies, such as nationalizing utilities and raising taxes on corporations, is distrusted by many voters, in part because of his reluctance to take a clear position on Brexit and recent incidents of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party.To analyze the results, I spoke by phone with David Runciman, a professor of politics at Cambridge University, a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and the host of its “Talking Politics” podcast, and the author of the book “How Democracy Ends.” During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the roots of Boris Johnson’s remarkable political success, the future of Labour, and the election’s lessons for center-left parties around the world.
Read more: Isaac Chotiner, "How Boris Johnson's Brexit won," New Yorker, December 14, 2019
I thought there were some good points here, in particular the following:
Thomas Piketty has made this point repeatedly, which is that the workers aren’t voting for the parties of the center-left—our party is called the Labour Party, but it is no longer the party of labor. It is the party of university graduates, of big cities, and of young people, and the other crucial thing that will emerge when people break down the vote in this election is that there is here, as there was in the Brexit vote and the Trump election, a big, big generational divide. Younger voters will still vote Labour, but we are learning with every one of these elections that younger voters will consistently be outvoted by people over the age of forty-five, and older voters in this election have gone overwhelmingly to the Conservatives, including older working-class voters.
IMO what happened here is that older and less educated voters who are uncomfortable with the way their country is changing (including, but not limited to immigration) generally wanted Brexit and younger and more highly educated voters were, on the whole, more open to "change" and wanted to remain, but there were fewer of them. Corbyn got stuck trying to straddle the two sides of the divide and was not able to do it. I am not sure I agree with the implication anyone else could have done better (i.e., a more pro-Brexit position could have lost the youth to the Liberal Democrats, but a full "Remain" position would have just lost even more seats in the north). In any case, undoubtedly, Corbyn failed.
Wed, 2019-12-18 17:56
#379
Ken, do you really ean to suggest that the BBC was more to blame than Corbyn for Labour’s defeat?
They do bear a significant responsibility. It didn't help that they used the word "antisemitism" every single time they mentioned Corbyn. It didn't help that they covered for Boris at the Cenotaph and Andrew Neil kept demanding that Corbyn apologize for antisemitism when he had nothing to apologize for.
And it didn't help that the PLP never showed him the respect he was due as leader. They knew that, without them guaranteeing that there'd be a strong left candidate and promising no retribution towards his supporters-people who'd done nothing to deserve retribution, btw-that he couldn't be expected to go. Why would they not make that guarantee? Why did they insist on nothing short of total erasure of everything he and his supporters were about? The policies weren't the problem. The opposition to military intervention in the Arab/Muslim world wasn't the problem-most people in the UK are against those wars now and want no more interventions anywhere in that region. The opposition to austerity wasn't the problem-Labour can't be pro-austerity and still be a different party than the Tories.
What I'd like you to do is to think about the event that caused Corbyn's election as leader-a job he had never actually wanted, btw-the decision by the interim Labour leader, Harriet Harman, to whip the PLP into abstaining on Theresa May's brutal and indefensible benefits policy.
Can you not see how catastrophic a betrayal that was? Can you not see how horrifying it was that these MPs were choosing to abandon one of the last meaningful differences there was between Labour and the Tories at that time? Can you not see that there is no way anyone who went along with that abstention-abstention was the same thing as unquestioningly supporting the cuts-could ever have proposed any compassionate, humane policies towards the poor after abstaining on that? Can you not see that that decision horrified most of the Labour base, convincing them that it was intolerable to let the Blairites run the party any longer?
BTW, I haven't said that Corbyn was flawless, I never worshipped the man like a freaking god or anything, or argued that he should stay one. Did you not read the critique of his leadership I posted upthread?
Yes, Labour needs to run itself differently and run the next election differently.
But the answere don't lie in Blairism-they lie in moving the party more towards the libertarian left-towards support of worker cooperatives as the alternative to capitalism-it's not possible to have any Labour values and BE capitalist-and of direct democratic control of the decision-making process in the party.
As Paul Mason-a fairly nasty anti-Corbynite but a person with some insights here-has argued, Labour needs, as many of us have called for, Open Selection for all sitting Labour MPs, as the Scottish National Party has for all of its MPs, MSPs and local councillors. It needs a restoration of control of policy making to the party conference and the removal of not only ineffective Corbyn advisors like Seamus Milne-the one who insisted that Corbyn should never fight back against smears-but all remaining Blairite bureaucrats. It needs to keep Corbyn supporters in the party and help them find a better way to communicate with others. It needs to get the others to accept that leftists are needed in the party and that forcing them out would serve no purpose-it achieved nothing when Kinnock did it, and-digression-if anyone should have stood down after the first election he lost, it should have been Kinnock, since that defeat was his fault and his alone for being unpopular and for never putting up a real fight against Margaret Thatcher in parliamentary debate, and for betraying the miners even though there was never going to be electoral gain in betraying them. Instead, Kinnock blamed the left instead of himself, and punished them for what was exclusively his failure(end of digression).
What needs to happen is to combine at least most of the policies Labour campaigned on this year-and putting them out earlier, since a major reason for the defeat was probably that too many policies were being released too quickly, which gave the voters no chance to digest them-with a more effective campaign organization, with the MPs this time ither being expected to accept and respect the next the leader-who would be a leftist if the process is in any way democratic since most of the party is on the left-in the way they never accepted Corbyn. If Corbyn looked weak, the constant abuse and disrespect he received from most of his MPs has to be blamed for at least part of that. They need to own that and apologize for all the undermining they inflicted on Corbyn and the party.
Wed, 2019-12-18 18:55
#380
Paul Mason Reacts to Labour's Election Defeat (and vid)
https://twitter.com/battleforeurope/status/1206932882779987971
Wed, 2019-12-18 19:21
#381
Tony Blair:
'The takeover of the Labour Party by the far-left turned it into a glorified protest movement, with cult trimmings, utterly incapable of being a credible government'
Wed, 2019-12-18 19:50
#382
Tony Blair:'The takeover of the Labour Party by the far-left turned it into a glorified protest movement, with cult trimmings, utterly incapable of being a credible government'
How many deaths is Corbyn responsible for? How many can be said for Blair?
Wed, 2019-12-18 21:16
#383
And, of course, Labour under Corbyn in 2017 took a higher share of the popular vote than did Labour under Blair in 2001 and 2005.
Wed, 2019-12-18 21:18
#384
And Labour, running on Blairite platforms and with Blairite leaders, took a lower vote share in 2010 and 2015 than Labour under Corbyn took even in 2019.
Wed, 2019-12-18 21:26
#385
And, of course, Labour under Corbyn in 2017 took a higher share of the popular vote than did Labour under Blair in 2001 and 2005.
Actually, Labour got 0.7% higher of the vote in 2001.
Wed, 2019-12-18 22:00
#386
The difference between the right and the left is that the right always want to win the election, whereas the left, who knows. Until the left clues into this little bit of election strategy, they need to stop wasting people's time.
ALL Corbyn supporters wanted to win this election. They nearly won it the election two years ago after all.
It was the right-wing of the party, the PLP, that made it clear that it cared more about forcing Corbyn to resign-even during the general elections in 2017 and 2019 when they knew it would have been impossible for him to resign, since major parties in the UK simply don't have the ability to change leaders during an election campaign-than it did about beating the Tories. If the PLP had put winning the election first, it would have either A)stopped trying to bring Corbyn down as leader after the 2017 election, when he did better than Labour could have that year under any possible alternate leader, especially the pathetically unpopular Owen Smith, the man who had no crowds at his leadership campaign rallies; or B) offered a guarantee to Corbyn and his supporters that a strong left-wing candidate WOULD be allowed on the leadership ballot to replace him, that that leadership candidate would be guaranteed the all-out support the PLP denied Corbyn, and that there would be no purge of left-wingers. The PLP never came close to offering anything like this, and their refusal made it impossible for Corbyn to stand down, since he could not be expected to simply hand the leadership over without getting any guarantees at all that there'd be no retribution against people on the left.
I'd like someone to answer why the PLP was absolutely adamant about refusing to work with Corbyn in this way, why they would settle for nothing short of total erasure of the left.
Wed, 2019-12-18 22:27
#387
I'd like someone to answer why the PLP was absolutely adamant about refusing to work with Corbyn in this way, why they would settle for nothing short of total erasure of the left.
It's the same reason the Democratic Party establishment would rather have another term of Trump than a Sanders administration. Corruption, pure and simple.
Thu, 2019-12-19 10:32
#388
Far-right Britain First is urging its supporters to join the Conservative Party in order to “make Boris Johnson’s leadership more secure”.
The extremist group, whose leaders were jailed last year, sent an email to subscribers claiming “thousands” of its activists were becoming members of the Tories.
It came after Mr Johnson was endorsed by Tommy Robinson and garnered public support from other far-right figures.
“If you haven’t joined the Conservative Party yet, we urge you to do so immediately, to make Boris Johnson’s leadership more secure,” Britain First said in an email sent on Wednesday.
“Senior Britain First officials and rank-and-file members have been receiving their Conservative membership cards in the post....
...
Boris Johnson will let judges scrap EU rulings that protect sick pay and holiday
Boris Johnson plans to hand judges the power to overturn EU rulings on holiday entitlement, sick leave, working hours, VAT and flight compensation.
Theresa May ’s Brexit plan would have allowed only the Supreme Court to rule on judgements handed down by the European Court of Justice - a move which angered many Tory Eurosceptics.
But a new clause in Mr Johnson’s withdrawal agreement would extend that pledge to lower British courts.
Lord Pannick, who led two successful Supreme Court cases against the government over Brexit, warned the move could cause “very considerable legal uncertainty.”
It’s feared the plan could have a major impact on protections for workers and consumers - putting long-held rights in jeopardy.
Thu, 2019-12-19 10:56
#389
Every poll, every objective sounding, puts the blame for the loss squarely on Corbyn and his acolytes. They are desperately propagating a counter narrative that anyone and anything but them is to blame. Unfortunately that myopic delusion has infected some on Babble.
They wish at all costs for their narrow little ideologically pure sect to mainatin control of a once great party and dictate Corbyn's successor.
If they succeed Labour will never achieve power again in our lifetime. Labor has already lost two winnable elections under Corbyn. For country's sake as well as the party the explicit lessons of the election debacle must be understood and their grip on the party eliminated.
Thu, 2019-12-19 11:15
#390
Now that we once again have opinion, let's look again at the facts regarding the seats lost by Labour:
Five were lost to the SNP. Of the 54 seats lost in the rest of the UK, 52 of them voted to LEAVE in 2016:
Thu, 2019-12-19 11:19
#391
Every poll, every objective sounding, puts the blame for the loss squarely on Corbyn and his acolytes. They are desperately propagating a counter narrative that anyone and anything but them is to blame. Unfortunately that myopic delusion has infected some on Babble.
They wish at all costs for their narrow little ideologically pure sect to mainatin control of a once great party and dictate Corbyn's successor.
If they succeed Labour will never achieve power again in our lifetime. Labor has already lost two winnable elections under Corbyn. For country's sake as well as the party the explicit lessons of the election debacle must be understood and their grip on the party eliminated.
Well, yes, the polls do show that people voted against Corbyn. South Africans would have voted against Nelson Mandela if he had received the smearing that Corbyn got. However, the polls also show that the policies which you falsely claim to be limited to a "narrow little ideologically pure sect" are overwhelmingly popular, as in 60% or more approval.
As far as the leadership is concerned, it is your side which is actually a narrow sect, with unpopular policies. Unopular that is amongst the people. Your side's policies are very popular with the capitalist elite, whose boots you continually lick, like the good little doggie you are. You running dogs can only hope to win the leadership if you limit the franchise to your own supporters, and totally suppress democracy within the party.
You won't fool anyone here with your lies, but we can have a good laugh at your ludicrous reverence for the wealthy and powerful.
Thu, 2019-12-19 12:09
#392
Behind The Historic Defeat of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party (and vid)
https://twitter.com/Moderate_Rebels/status/1206749705004310529
"We spoke with Joshua Jackson, who says the failure of the party to get behind Brexit destroyed it,m and the centrists who still dominate Labour sabotaged Corbyn..."
Thu, 2019-12-19 15:38
#393
Every poll, every objective sounding, puts the blame for the loss squarely on Corbyn and his acolytes. They are desperately propagating a counter narrative that anyone and anything but them is to blame. Unfortunately that myopic delusion has infected some on Babble.
They wish at all costs for their narrow little ideologically pure sect to mainatin control of a once great party and dictate Corbyn's successor.
If they succeed Labour will never achieve power again in our lifetime. Labor has already lost two winnable elections under Corbyn. For country's sake as well as the party the explicit lessons of the election debacle must be understood and their grip on the party eliminated.
Well, yes, the polls do show that people voted against Corbyn. South Africans would have voted against Nelson Mandela if he had received the smearing that Corbyn got. However, the polls also show that the policies which you falsely claim to be limited to a "narrow little ideologically pure sect" are overwhelmingly popular, as in 60% or more approval.
As far as the leadership is concerned, it is your side which is actually a narrow sect, with unpopular policies. Unopular that is amongst the people. Your side's policies are very popular with the capitalist elite, whose boots you continually lick, like the good little doggie you are. You running dogs can only hope to win the leadership if you limit the franchise to your own supporters, and totally suppress democracy within the party.
You won't fool anyone here with your lies, but we can have a good laugh at your ludicrous reverence for the wealthy and powerful.
And I'll say this again, with slight adjustments from the version I said before:
There were TWO essentially Blairite parties in this election: Change, The Independent Group, to which several Labour MPs defected at one point-most of whom later defected to the LibDems-which took 10,006 votes in the whole country-and the LibDems, who took 11% of the vote overall-a slight improvement from the last election, but still pathetically low compared to the showings the party made in the Nineties and early Oughts, when it was much further left than it is now-with their own leader losing her seat to the Scottish National Party, a party well to the left of the LibDems on economic, spending, and foreign policy.
Those results prove Labour would have gained no votes anywhere from running on a Blairite program, just as the 2010 and 2015 election results proved the same thing with Labour running on Blairite programs with Blairite leaders.
Yes, this campaign was a disaster. No one claims Corbyn made no mistakes.
But the answer is not to renounce the policies Corbyn ran on, because the policies are popular.
The answer is to simply get a better leader-even Corbyn would say that-one who will fight back against personal attack and one who will make it clear that the MPs are hurting the party when they try to sabotage their leader.
The next leader will not be exactly like Corbyn-even Corbyn supporters
Thu, 2019-12-19 15:43
#394
There is simply no broad public demand for a return to Blairism, nicky. So stop demanding something that would do no good.
Also, Corbyn's supporters are neither a sect nor a cult-their only real crime was staying loyal to a leader who was under attack. What your insistence on calling them a cult or a sect shows is that you simply cannot fathom the idea of people actually feeling enthusiasm about a figure in public life. You are convinced that effective leaders must be bland, dreary, and devoid of all passionate conviction OTHER than a passionate conviction that the Left is the enemy and must be crushed Kinnock-style, even though what Kinnock did in crushing the Left did the party no actual good-remember, in his second campaign, he barely increased Labour's vote share at all, and then personally cost Labour the election by holding his stupid "pre-victory celebration" at Sheffield on the day before people voted.
And there is still the absurdity of the fact that you see Corbyn as a failed leader but think the NDP should have kept Mulcair in the leadership after he cost the party more than half of its seats and dragged it down to third place.
Thu, 2019-12-19 17:32
#395
Mulcair May have had his failings but even in defeat he ran ahead of his party in defeat. He had a roughly 40 to 30 approval rating on election eve. The party got 19%.
corbyn had a roughly 70 to 20 disapproval rating. Despite him his party polled 31%.
Mulcair was a help to his party. Corbyn a hindrance.
Thu, 2019-12-19 17:35
#396
And Michael, you say that I have a “ludicrous reverence for the wealthy and powerful.”
can you refer me to anyplace I said that?
i could suggest you have the same since your preference for Corbyn as leader would ensure the continued dominance of the wealthy and powerful.
Thu, 2019-12-19 17:39
#397
Mulcair was a help to his party.
What a crock of fucking horseshit. Your leftist Tory guy, you know Jean Charest's protege, killed the NDP hopes of being taken seriously by the voters of Canada. Nobody wanted an NDP government led by a tory so they tanked in the only poll that matters.
Thu, 2019-12-19 20:54
#398
And Michael, you say that I have a “ludicrous reverence for the wealthy and powerful.”
can you refer me to anyplace I said that?
i could suggest you have the same since your preference for Corbyn as leader would ensure the continued dominance of the wealthy and powerful.
Well, there's your reverence for Tony Blair, whose whole approach to politics was based on the idea that the Labour Party should effectively stop being the Labour Party, should support capitalism, should bow to the rich and blame the poor for their own condition.
And you really need to stop acting as though Corbyn is refusing to stand down or as though his supporters are fighting to keep him in the leadership. He has said he will stand down when a successor is chosen, and that is more than soon enough. He doesn't deserve to be sent to Devil's Island or drawn and quartered, for God's sakes.
And you need to stop acting as if it's illegitimate for anyone to fight against the idea that Labour has no other choice but to move sharply to the right and choose a vindictive anti-Left bully like Jess Phillips as leader. The voter's rejected Corbyn personally as an alternative-in large measure due to the hate campaign waged against him by the PLP, who spent Corbyn's entire tenure acting as if his victories in the leadership contests didn't count and as if they had no obligation to show him any respect or loyalty at all.
BTW, in that Labour List article, it pointed out that most of the incoming Labour MPs were left-wing, and the article by Starmer on the same site made it clear that he rejects your wish for a mass purge of socialists.
Thu, 2019-12-19 21:11
#399
The NDP disaster in 2015 was Mulcair's fault and Mulcair's fault alone. His pointless fixation with appeasing the ruling class's obsession with balanced budgets was the reason Justin was able to present himself as running to the NDP's left. His insistence on silencing the left-wing MPs elected from Quebec and with refusing to allow NDP MPs to publicly support either the Quebec student protests or Idle No More turned huge numbers of Quebec and other leftists into non-voters. His total refusal to let NDP activists and convention delegates have any say on policy turned the party into a passion-free zone, alienating core supporters without bringing in support from anyone who had ever thought the party was "too left-wing" in the past. In the year he did stay on as leader before being voted out, Mulcair had led the NDP to no gains in the polls at all-which proves he never could have done so. And it goes without saying that no one who loses more than half his party's seats in one general election could ever lead the same party to any significant gains at any future election-the last person who managed that was Lester Pearson, and the fact that no one else has managed it since then proves it is now permanently impossible.Mulcair May have had his failings but even in defeat he ran ahead of his party in defeat. He had a roughly 40 to 30 approval rating on election eve. The party got 19%.
corbyn had a roughly 70 to 20 disapproval rating. Despite him his party polled 31%.
Mulcair was a help to his party. Corbyn a hindrance.
If Corbyn had cost Labour more than half its seats in 2017, as Mulcair did the NDP in 2015, I'd have been one of the first calling on him to immediate stand down, and he no doubt would have stood down in that situation without even having to be asked. Why didn't you do the same with Mulcair in 2015, given that the result proved he and his anti-socialist strategy were absolute failures? What possible case could you make for him staying on then?
Thu, 2019-12-19 21:21
#400
So let me understand your position Kem.
Mulcair was totally to blame for his loss.
Corbyn however is totally blameless for his.
Are you serious?
Thu, 2019-12-19 23:03
#401
So let me understand your position Kem.
Mulcair was totally to blame for his loss.
Corbyn however is totally blameless for his.
Are you serious?
Full disclosure, back in 2012, I supported Mulcair for the leadership, just as you did, nicky. I thought he had the best chance of bringing the NDP to government. When he failed to do that, I decided that his time had passed.
Comparing him with Corbyn, he had the full hearted support of just about all his MPs throughout his leadership. No one was leaking damaging stories about him to the press, or calling votes of non-confidence in the caucus. While the press was not particularly favourable to him, it was nowhere near the frenzied attacks that Corbyn faced for the past 4 years.
In relative terms, Mulcair had it really easy, and still he failed. In that sense, he was to blame for his own loss, while Corbyn's loss had some extenuating circumstances that did not apply to Mulcair.