Angela Rayner clears way for Rebecca Long-Bailey to run for Labour leader.
The shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, has cleared the way for her friend Rebecca Long-Bailey to run as the leftwing successor to Jeremy Corbyn, deciding instead to focus on becoming deputy leader.
Good on Rayner for doing that-although I'd have preferred to have it the other way around-since there was the risk that Rayner and Long-Bailey would keep each other off the leadership ballot if they both stood, by denying each other the number of MP endorsements needed to make the ballot.
Whoever wins the leadership will need to push a democratization agenda at the next party conference, backing Open Selection for all sitting MPs and returning full control of the nomination process to the constituency parties, and restoring full control over policy to the party conference.
At the same time, I'd say that all anti-Corbyn MPs who are still have their seats should do the decent thing and stand down at the next general election, since all they did to the party over the last four years was damage and since their support of Blairism and Blue Labour, concepts which are now politically extinct, makes them hopelessly useless to the party.
At the same time, I'd say that all Corbynite MPs who are still have their seats should do the decent thing and stand down at the next general election, since all they did to the party over the last four years was damage and since their support of Corbynism, a concept which is now politically extinct, makes them hopelessly useless to the party.
the Corbynites are quite hypocritical about “open nominations”. Where they forced confirmation votes against non Corbyn sycophants they almost invariably lost when the local parties stood by their MPs.
The NEC on the other hand imposed a large number of Corbynites into certain seats against the wishes of the local parties and without a vote.
follow the links here and the sorry pattern becomes clear:
https://labourlist.org/2019/12/labour-gained-just-one-seat-but-many-more-fresh-faces/
Please stop calling Corbyn supporters a cult. They aren't. They are simply people who disagree with your idea that Labour has to be as right-wing as possible to win.
And it doesn't make them a cult that they didn't abandon Corbyn when he came under attack. It's not cult behavior simply to refuse to accept the canard that everyone else in the party should always defer to the PLP, that the wishes of the PLP should matter more than those of anyone else. The PLP know no more about what Labour needs than anyone else.
And it's not an injustice for the left to have a chance to get someone they want elected. Most of the people of the party are on the left and know it would be a disaster to go back to Blairism. Are you saying that what most of the party wants and thinks simply shouldn't matter?
2010 and 2015 prove that Labour can never win again with a leader who runs against the base and against the party's core socialist values.
Here's a second candidate not that it matters much
Ken, I have never called Corbynism a cult which implies a spiritual fixation.
The more accurate word is “sect”which implies something narrow, condescending, self- exclusionary, myopic and incapable of introspection.
i am sure you will agree that sect is le mot just
Actually not. The people Corbyn stands with(as Corbyn himself pointed out, there is no such thing as "Corbynism") were simply ordinary people who were and are committed to a socialist transformation by democratic means. There's nothing narrow in that objective and they were never trying to exclude anyone-they probably sounded defensive because the PLP-the last Blairites in the party-refused to accept that Corbyn had any right to have won the leadership or that they had any right to be in the party. What you describe as self-exclusionary was these people fighting to not be excluded.
Can you not see that it was pointlessly damaging for the PLP to refuse to accept that the presence in the party of those people on the right of the party called "Corbynites" was legitimate, and the obsession with not only removing Corbyn as leader but purging those people, may possibly have been a mistake? May possibly have done far more damage than any possible good that might have come of kicking them out?
Would you not agree that, even if the PLP had issues with Corbyn, it should have accepted that his supporters had a legitimate place in the party and to recognize that the massive 2015 Labour defeat on the most right-wing policy offer possible, combined with the unforgiveable betrayal of Harriet Harman's decision to whip the party abstain on-which was the same thing as voting for, in effective terms-Theresa May's benefits cap and the benefits sanctions policy were the cause of the Corbyn victory and that, if they didn't want Corbyn as leader, what they should have done was acknowledged that it was time for the party to redidicate itself to socialism and opposition to austerity?
The PLP never got it, nicky-they never accepted that the rank-and-file rejected their toxic, defeatist idea that the party should just keep moving further and further and further to the right for the rest of eternity, that the party needed to abandon the poor-was what CAUSED Corbyn's victory in the leadership race and that what that victory was about was not some sort of worship of Corbyn himself-btw, you may not have personally used the word "cult", but you have posted any number of links above where the author of the piece used it; no other poster has been so relentlessly vicious towards Corbyn and the people he agreed with than you have been-but was a statement by the party rank and file, by the Labour base and those who used to be part of that base before Kinnock and Blair made it clear they were no longer welcome(and no, virtually none of those people were Trotskyists, nicky), that the party had gone too massively unforgiveably far to the right and something needed to change if the Labour Party were to have any reason to go on existing; that Blarism was a dead end and that there are certain points beyond which Labour must NEVER go in a rightward direction.
Here's a second candidate not that it matters much
Clive wouldn't be bad, and might well make a competitive race.
Poll shows only 2% want Corbynite to succeed Corbyn.
(they must have polled Ken and Josh)
Poll shows only 2% want Corbynite to succeed Corbyn.
(they must have polled Ken and Josh)
Poll shows only 2% want Corbynite to succeed Corbyn.(they must have polled Ken and Josh)
Of course they haven't heard of her. She wasn't a high profile MP before, and up until now, very few of us had heard of her either. With a leadership campaign underway, she has a chance to reach out to people and to change that.
When Bernie Sanders announced that he was running for President for the first time, he had roughly 3% support and a majority of voters would have said they would never vote for a socialist. Now he's the most popular politician in the country. Things can change.
There's also strong support now for Clive Lewis(who wasn't being considered in this poll but has now declared his candidacy), who is close to Corbyn in views, and for Ian Lavery, who essentially shares the positions Corbyn's supporters hold but it a Northerner, clearly working-class, and committed Leave in his views on the EU. Even among Labour supporters, no candidate had more than 16% support,
So no, it's not as simple as assuming the rank and file join you in demanding a sharp swing to the right. Virtually none of the current leadership possibilities, including Keir Starmer, call for that OR for a purge of socialists. Labour wouldn't gain any votes from anyone from going back to saying things like "we're extremely casual about people getting rich-so long as they pay their taxes", and then doing nothing to MAKE the rich pay their taxes, OR from going back to supporting the "market values" that never make life better for anyone but the rich who were allowed, the whole time, not to pay their taxes. And again, the 2010 and 2015 results prove the voters won't elect Labour on a Blairite program any longer.
Furthermore, that poll shows no strong support for any particular leadership candidate. Besides, on the policy changes tht poll supposedly calls for if Labour did ditch Corbyn's tax proposals, it would simply stop being Labour. Nothing different from Toryism can be done on the existing tax rates for the rich. There couldn't be any difference between a Labour government which continued to allow the rich to live their currently tax free lives and just keeping the Tories like that.
There'd be no support for going back to Blair's humanitarian invasion myth or for keeping internal democracy all-but-abolished.
The next leader won't be exactly like Corbyn, nicky. Even a leader sharing Corbyn's policies would learn from Corbyn's mistakes-would not leave personal slanders unchallenged and would not let the PLP get away with the abuse, disrespect, and sabotage they engaged in against Corbyn-btw, given the damage the PLP did to Corbyn and Labour's chances with all of that, don't you think you should finally step up and condemn THEM for it? Don't you think they had some obligation, at some point, to accept that Corbyn wasn't going to be made to stand down without the assurances I've listed above-assurances which would have been a minimal requirement for a party which presented itself as being in any way democratic at all-and to stop the undermining? Isn't that what the parliamentary caucus of a party which wanted to make a respectable electoral showing and have any chance of victory would naturally have done? Imagine how much worse the NDP would have done if Muclair's caucus had publicly treated him the way the PLP treated Corbyn.
Would you at least agree that if, as seems likely, another left-winger wins the leadership, the PLP has an obligation to not, under any circumstances, treat that leader as Corbyn was treated? That that leader would be owed the respect and support Corbyn was denied?
Here are my observations on the election and its aftermath:
It doesn't surprise me that while Corbyn did well against May but he had trouble dealing with Johnson. Corbyn could present logical arguments that defeated May in a debate and helped Labor increase its number of seats. However, Johnson was able to create short slogans like "Get Brexit Done", continually get media attention through twitter and provacative acts, distract from campaign problems with new tweets and acts, and promise new spending for traditonal Labour areas without increasing taxes, which, when combined with the ongoing support of mainstream media, allowed Johnson to dominate the camaign and frame the narrative of the election.
Whoever Labour picks as a new leader, they need someone that cannot only appeal to working class voters and the poor but someone who can make the message simple for the part of the public that pays little attention to politics, counter any attacks immediately whether true or false, such as Corbyn's alleged anti-semitism (and immediately means right away on social media not waiting to give a defence in the newspapers or TV), and make sure you don't framed as the political elite who has no connection to working people.
Labour also needs to start thinking about how to win in an England and Wales only election because Scotland and Northern Ireland may not be part of the election process for long. Most Scottish voters want to remain in the EU, even with its problems, because they see it as helping to offset English domination both historically and currently. Johnson now calls the Conservatives "One Nation Conservatives", which may sound fine in England, but has a different conotation in the other parts of the United Kingdom. The fact that the majority of Conservative voters in a poll said that they didn't mind if Scotland and Nortern Ireland left the UK, could even provide Johnson with a reason to provoke problems that would increase tensions with them and possibly lead to the breakup of the UK. Electorally, I am sure he wouldn't mind losing Scottish National Party voters and MPs, who typically side with Labour in Parliament, as well as Northern Ireland, which has been the biggest roadblock to getting out of the EU for the Conservatives.
With regard to Northern Ireland, for the first time in its history, the Irish nationalist parties won more seats than the Unionists, who typically ally with the Conservatives. This is not an accident. For the first time polls show more Northern Irish would prefer to remain in the EU than with England in the UK because of economic and/or cultural ties to the Republic of Ireland. Furthermore, the demographics of Northern Ireland's future are entirely in favour of the Catholics, who are predominantly nationalist, as the following chart from the 2011 census (and therefore somewhat out-of-date and even more favourable to Catholics) illustrates. The chart shows a dramatic steady percentage of Catholics to Protestants drop with age, meaning that as time passes there is a steadily growing population of Catholics reaching voting age and a drop off in the older Protestant population as it dies off. In 2011 there were 44.3% Catholics to 31.7% Protestants in the 0-4 age group, 41.5% Catholics to 37.8% Protestants in the 35-39 cohort (the oldest cohort that had more Catholics than Protestants), but by the time you reach the greater than 90 cohort, only 25.8% Catholics to 64.0% Protestants, many of whom died during the last decade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Northern_Ireland). The fact that Unionist strength is on the decline could give Johnson even more reason to not worry about whether they support the Conservatives or not, even in the long term, which I actually don't think he worries about at all because he is so impulsive.
Johnson's shrewd calculation that he could win former Labour voters by saying he is abandoning austerity and promising the traditional voters in northern England lots of spending on issues that concern them may end up being his greatest weakness. Because without a great increase in spending and therefore taxes, this is not going to happen, leading to a sense of betrayal with these voters and giving Labour a chance to win them back with the right policies.
The full figures for the poll I posted earlier:
corbynites:
Rayner 3%
Long-Bailey 2%
Burgon 1%
Soft Corbynites:
Lewis 1%
Non -corbynites
Starmer 9%
Phillips. 8%
Cooper 6%
Nandy 4%
Thornberry 3%
Gardiner 3%
Lammy 3%
Ashworth 2%
so the COMBINED Corbynites preference is 6%
The combined non-Corb6nite vote is 37%
The results of the poll are even more encouraging among Labour supporters. Perhaps Labour can save itself from Corbynism after All:
Starmer 16
Phillips. 11
Cooper. 7
Nandy. 5
Lammy 4
Long-Bailey. 2
Starmer is presenting himself, in most respects, as a kind of "continuity Corbynite" candidate. In his initial messages, Starmer is not calling for the party to do what you want and lower itself to Blairism.
BTW, nicky, would you be so good as to define what you see "Corbynism" as meaning? And would you explain specifically how far to the right you want Labour to swing?
I assume that you'll concede the point that no good would come of driving socialists out of the party again.
Again, those polls were taken months ago, before the idea of needing to choose a new leader was something most Labour voters were thinking about. At that time, everyone in the party other than the PLP had accepted that Corbyn wasn't going to stand down before the election and that it was pointless for the PLP to keep attacking and undermining the guy.
The biggest difficulty for Starmer is that the result proved that Labour could never have held its seats in the North or North and Northeast with a hardline Remainer as leader-the collapse there was almost entirely due to voters in those regions being outraged that Corbyn had allowed himself to be forced to pledge a second referendum and thus put the party on record as having no respect for the voters of the North and North East-a group which will always see the EU as at least the partial author of their continuing economic misery. Unless Starmer is willing to commit to an explicitly socialist or at least interventionist program to create economic revival in the North and North East-it's impossible to create an economic comeback in those areas with "market economics"-and unless he's willing to accept that the EU issue is settled and NOT try to fight the next election on a Remain or, if Brexit has happened, a Rejoin platform, he will guarantee that those seats will stay Tory.
I assume that you will finally conceed that there was no way Labour could have won THIS election on an all-out Remain platform, since there simply weren't an enormous number of currently Tory seats that would have easily flipped to Labour if only the party had been allout Remain-if those constituencies had any significant number of Remain voters, they wouldn't have gone Tory last time-and certainly none if the party had been Remain and Blairite-since the wipeout in the North and North East was doomed to happen unless Labour stayed with its "we respect the results of the referendum" position on the EU. To make up for the total wipe out in the Labour heartlands caused by even the acceptance of a second referendum-virtually all Northerners are Leavers-Labour would have had to gain 170 non-Labour seats-at least 150 of which would have been Tory-to make up for the even greater North and North East wipeout an allout Remain position would hsve to cause. In what universe did that many winnable non-Labour seats exist anywhere in the UK?
And for those who would argue that Labout lost ground in Scotland because it wasn't all out Remain-Labour did better in Scotland in 2017, when it was clearly Leave, than it did this year, when it did all it could to appease the Remain wing by pledging to a second referendum.
The only chance Labour has of making any recovery in Scotland involves committing to "devo max" for the Scottish Parliament-including taxation powers.
Signs that Corbyn DID "win the argument" after all:
1) The ultra-Thatcherite Financial Times says he did:
https://www.ft.com/content/e6678366-21a1-11ea-b8a1-584213ee7b2b?fbclid=I...
And there's a poll saying two-thirds of the voters want Boris to ban zero-hour contracts. Labour had only opposed zero-hours contract because Corbyn won the leadership; all Corbyn's opponents would have said it was too radical for Labour to oppose them.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-government-...
The full figures for the poll I posted earlier:corbynites:
Rayner 3%
Long-Bailey 2%
Burgon 1%
Soft Corbynites:
Lewis 1%
Non -corbynites
Starmer 9%
Phillips. 8%
Cooper 6%
Nandy 4%
Thornberry 3%
Gardiner 3%
Lammy 3%
Ashworth 2%
so the COMBINED Corbynites preference is 6%
The combined non-Corb6nite vote is 37%
Because a poll taken of people with little name recognition taken during a time when people are taking a break from politics to focus on the Holidays, before any of the actual campaigns have started and before we've had a chance to see what these people are made of is deterministic?
Of course it is an early poll Aristotle and of course things may change.
Ken mistakenly says it is a dated poll but in fact it was published in The Independent yesterday and was taken AFTER the election.
What is does show, at this early stage at least is that both Labour supporters and the electorate as a whole have little appetite for a Corbynite winning the leadership or for Labour continuing some of the more left wing Corbyn policies.
unfortunately there is much to indicate that the NEC is seeking to influence the race in favour of a Corbynite. They, like Ken, Josh and Aristotle refuse to learn the obvious lessons of the election and this poll.
Please state how far to the right you want Labour to go, nicky. Recognize that even Starmer isn't arguing for as return to Blairism.
If Labour ceases to be radical, it will cease to have any reason to exist. And Labour has a moral obligation never to return to the discredited "humanitarian intervention" myth.
BTW, nicky, nobody here is arguing for no change-we all recognize that a different and better communication strategy is needed, that a real-and real means clearly socialist-economic revitalization policy for the North and Northeast-a strategy which means accepting that Brexit can't be stopped and that it's pointless to still be trying to stop it-and a "ready response" approach to any unfair and unfounded attacks on the leader, and an insistence that the PLP treat the next leader with respect, no matter who that leader is.
Please stop acting as though anybody here is saying that Labour should be run exactly as it was run last time. Nobody here is arguing for that.
It's just that centrism-ie, once again ceasing to be Labour, as the party did under Blair-is not the answer. The miserable failure of the Blairite Change UK party and the overwhelming defeat of every right-wing Labour MP who defected to stand as a Change, LibDem or right wing independent, and the defeat of the LibDem leader in her own constituency-prove that the voters don't want Blairism or Blue Labour.
And there's no reason for any future Labour leader to stand with a powerless, overpaid and irrelevent monarchy and against the rights and dignity of the people by singing "God Save The Queen". Labour should support the creation of a new anthem which centers the people themselves.
George Galloway - The Mother of All Talkshows - Episode 27 (and vid)
https://twitter.com/georgegalloway/status/1209519347053539329
The fate of Corbynism etc.
I thought Thornberry was a Corbynite.
I thought Thornberry was a Corbynite.
She is more left than not...but is dismissive enough of activists and activism and cool enough with nationalism and perpetual war to suit nicky. He'd really prefer to have Jess Phillips come in, expel all the socialists again, and drag the party all the way back to the 1997 policies, even though the miserable showings by Change UK and the LibDems prove the voters don't want Labour to do that.
I stand corrected about the date of the poll...still, it was held before the idea of Ian Lavery standing became a possibility.
nicky still owes it to the rest of us to say how far to the right he wants Labour to go. There's no way for a Labour leader to still do anything for the workers and the poor after declaring war on socialism and sociliasts, and there can never again be a military intervention in another country, especially a non-European country, that could possibly be consistent with any notion of Labour values.
It also can't be Labour to treat British lives as being of a higher value than other peoples' lives, or to assume that "western culture" has any claim to intrinsic superiority over the cultures of the rest of the world-there's no way to hold such assumptions without being a bigot and an imperialist.
Finally, Labour has to have egalitarian values within the UK itself, or it has no claim to be Labour at all.
The biggest change Labour needs to make, in my view, is to make it clear that working-class people in the North and Northeast are treated with value and respect...and the only way to do that is to admit they have valid grievances with the policies of the EU and the effect those policies have had on their lives.
It's not about vilifying the left-the left doesn't deserved vilification and it wasn't wrong on the issues-it's about including areas outside of the cities among the groups the left fights for.
Nobody needs to be expelled or anathemized to make that happen.
In other words, become Tories again, like they did under Blair. Thanks for admitting you never wanted Labour to stay Labour.
In any case, Jarvis is not an MP, so he is ineligible to stand under party rules.
And every voter he'd have spoken to would have been a Leave voter, so with him a "clean break" would not mean going all-out Remain, and by automatic extension anti-worker.
Since Labour can't win if it drives the Corbyn supporters away, and since we both know it would have done nothing to help Labour's chances this election to switch to an antisocialist leader, could you please tell us what this "clean break" you envision would actually mean?
Is there any reason to assume it wouldn't mean embracing Kipling's "white man's burden" role for the UK in the world?
That it wouldn't mean going back to backing austerity again, like the PLP did in abstaining on May's cuts in 2015?
That it wouldn't mean being nothing but a party of bitter old bigots?
That it wouldn't mean going back to being "extremely casual" about extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of the few?
Would Labour still differ from the Tories in any meaningful way under your "clean break"?
Why can't you accept that it's enough that Corbyn is standing down, and that the ideas he supported weren't wrong?
No Ken, Dan Jarvis remains an MP, re-elected on Dec. 12 with a majority of 3571 in Barnsley Central.
You may be forgiven in thinking he was one of the numerousLabour MPs dragged down to defeat by the general revulsion to their party’s so-called leader.
I assumed he was no longer an MP due to his being elected mayor of a municipality in the North.
Look, Corbyn is standing down, so get off of his case already. There is no reason for you to be acting as though he's fighting to hang on to the job and needs to be forced out-there's no difference between Corbyn leaving now and Corbyn leaving when the next leader is chosen, and you yourself said you saw the issue was just him personally, so in saying that you admitted there doesn't need to be a massive swing to the right or the infliction of punishment on those Corbyn allied with.
You have no reason to still be demanding vengeance. You wanted Corbyn gone; he's going to be gone.
And we both know those 51 Labour Leave seats would still have been lost, and more Labour Leave seats lost with them, if the party had been led by a Blairite all-out remainer like Jess Phillips or by Keir Starmer, since no all-out Remainer could have had anything to offer voters in Labour Leave constituencies.
Ken, Labour needs to cleanse itself not just of Corbyn but Corbynism if it is ever to form another government.
There is looming a great factional battle for the soul of the Labour Party. The Corbynites are trying to rig the process in favour of RLB.
As for your nonsense about a Remainer not being able to win, where to start?
Labour gained half a dozen points from the Lib Dems during the election because it was seen as at least ambiguously in favour f Remain.
the various “Reamin” leaning parties secured 53% , almost exactly what recent polling indicates favours Remain.
A more effective leader who actually campaigned on Remain could have consolidated that vote.
if Corbyn ran as a Leaver Labour would have lost votes in droves the Lib Dems and would have done even worse.
A primary objection to corbyn and his faction is that they ensured the election of a hard right Leave givernmen5 against the wishes of the majority of the country. History will view them with disdain and disgust. they should not be let off the hook for enabling an unnecessary decade of Tory misrule.
Happy holidays incidentally.
It's not possible for those aligned with Corbyn to rig the process in favor of anyone.
And it's not as though the only way to prove that is to make it impossible for anyone other than right-wing Labour MPs to be on the leadership ballot, the way you want it.
Corbyn supporters are the people who couldn't even manage to discipline Margaret Hodge for her years of treachery and verbal abusiveness-and look, if anything counts as "bringing the party into disrespute" it's a Labour MP, with no grounds for doing so, screaming obscenities and false accusations of bigotry at the Labour leader in the HoC chamber within earshot of other MPs. Hodge deserved expulsion for that and she got off scot-free.
Corbyn's supporters have never had dictatorial control over the party. If they had had anything close to that, if they'd had ANY control of the party at all, wouldn't at least one of the out-of-control anti-Corbyn MPs, the ones who heckled the man in the Commons, have been deselected?
And you figures on the percentage of voters who voted for "Remain" parties are spurious. A lot of Labour voters are Leave, and those Labour Leave voters are concentrated in the North and North East, as well as Wales and the Midlands. There is no possible Labour Remain leader who could have held those Labour leave voters, because no Labour Remain leader had anything to offer which could have appealed to Labour Leave voters. If Labour took 32%, the Labour Remain vote would come to about 26%. The LibDems only took 11%. The SNP vote was only about 3% of the overall UK total; the Greens and Plaid Cymru were comparable. And there was essentially no such thing as a Tory Remain voter this year. Therefore, the actual combined "Remain" vote can be reckoned at around 45%, not 53%. The Remainers should have accepted that the issue was settled at the referendum and let everyone else move on. It was pointless to insist on the second referendum and equally pointless to insist that it wasn't good enough that Corbyn agreed to it. And it was inexcusably damaging to the only chance there was for beating the Tories-a Labour victory-for the PLP to keep attacking Corbyn and to abet the AS smear even when they knew there was no way Corbyn could resign. At some point, you will have to acknowledge that the PLP bears a significant share of the responsibility for Corbyn's loss of unpopularity and thus for the Labour defeat. Nobody argues that Corbyn is infallible, but c'mon man, you can't put it all on him or the majority of the part who joins him in continuing to support socialism.
There is a growing level of support for Ian Lavery, who supports left-wing socialist policies and is a Northern Labour Leave MP, to enter the race.
Besides which, if the issue was simply Corbyn as a person, it couldn't be legitimate for Labour to blacklist and anathemize everyone who ever had anything to do with the man.
And most of the party rank-and-file support left-wing socialist policies, so Labour can't abandon the vast majority of the policies it fought the last election on and still come anywhere close to the number of voters needed to win.
The fact that the majority of Conservative voters in a poll said that they didn't mind if Scotland and Nortern Ireland left the UK
I think you're referring to the widely reported YouGov poll of Conservative members, not voters. These are of course the people who chose BoJo as party leader and instant PM. It's well known that this group is demographically quite unrepresentative of Conservative voters, let alone the whole population.
Ken, Labour needs to cleanse itself not just of Corbyn but Corbynism if it is ever to form another government.
There is looming a great factional battle for the soul of the Labour Party. The Corbynites are trying to rig the process in favour of RLB.
As for your nonsense about a Remainer not being able to win, where to start?
Labour gained half a dozen points from the Lib Dems during the election because it was seen as at least ambiguously in favour f Remain.
the various “Reamin” leaning parties secured 53% , almost exactly what recent polling indicates favours Remain.
A more effective leader who actually campaigned on Remain could have consolidated that vote.
if Corbyn ran as a Leaver Labour would have lost votes in droves the Lib Dems and would have done even worse.
A primary objection to corbyn and his faction is that they ensured the election of a hard right Leave givernmen5 against the wishes of the majority of the country. History will view them with disdain and disgust. they should not be let off the hook for enabling an unnecessary decade of Tory misrule.
The majority of the country voted to leave. Those who refused to accept that result elected Johnson. The Lib Dems did worse in 2017 when Labour refused to call for another referendum.
nicky, whatever graphic or photo you tried to post there did not go through. You need to use the "image" icon-which is just to the right of the "quote" icon-to post images on these threads.
Corbyn’s tone deaf complacency in his New Years message has not been well received by Labour Supporters:
Understated “quite the year” would work had Labour won the election but it sounds clueless from a leader in denial after a hammer blow fourth defeat. Battered Corbyn should step back completely. Immediately.
Any self respecting “resistance” doesn’t go into a General Election, voluntarily, on Boris Johnson’s terms.
You inept, Tory enabling, trot, idiot
No @jeremycorbyn you are not part of the resistance to Boris Johnson you are one of enablers of Boris Johnson.
After a dismal decade for @UKLabour :- 4 election defeats ending with our lowest no of MPs since 1935, here’s hoping the next decade sees no more wild, multi-billion pound ‘fully costed’ manifestos, an end to antisemitism & a Leader who thinks winning is better than opposition
After a dismal decade for @UKLabour :- 4 election defeats ending with our lowest no of MPs since 1935, here’s hoping the next decade sees no more wild, multi-billion pound ‘fully costed’ manifestos, an end to antisemitism & a Leader who thinks winning is better than opposition
Nice to see that this person apparently doesn't value having a well-thought out platform that people can reference. I wonder what this person wants instead?
If this is what the Labour Party has become, perhaps it's better to just abandon it entirely and start up something from scratch.
There isn't any antisemitism TO end in Labour. And it has never been and never will be antisemitic to oppose what the Israeli government does to Palestinians OR to oppose Zionism if you believe it to be an intrinsically oppressive and reactionary ideology.
There is no way to do a Labour manifesto that does not involve significant spending increases. Low-cost governance can only be reactionary and heartless.
The key proposals, nationalization of rail, electricity, and water, must be kept if Labour is to stay Labour. Privately-run utilities can never have humane, economic democratic values or be run in anything like a compassionate way-there was no such thing as "socially responsible capitalism" under Blairism-there was simply Thatcherism with tiny increases in social spending. There are no votes to gain by lowering Labour to that again.
If there is no anti-Semitism in the Labour Party why did Corbyn apologize for it?
It is astonishing the extent of the refusal of Corbyn and his apologists, here and in the UK, to be objective in the least about the causes of the debacle. They are as incapable of accepting any responsibility as is DONALD Trump.
If there is no anti-Semitism in the Labour Party why did Corbyn apologize for it?
We've been over that, nicky-because he'd been led to believe that if he apologized, his enemies would let it go at that. Also, because he'd been given the incredibly stupid advice to never fight back against any form of attack.
And you know perfectly well it would serve no purpose to ban Labour members from criticizing what the Israeli government does to Palestinians OR to equate non-Zionism with AS-which were the real goals of the reactionaries pushing the AS smear.
It's enough that Corbyn is standing down as leader. It's not as though the system has to be rigged to give Blairites like Jess Phillips a special advantage in the leadership process just to prove that Corbyn's supporters aren't exerting dictatorial control.
And even Starmer isn't pushing for a general swing to the right. The pathetic 10,006 vote total for Change UK, the Blairite Party, proves the electorate doesn't want Blairism back.
It is astonishing the extent of the refusal of Corbyn and his apologists, here and in the UK, to be objective in the least about the causes of the debacle. They are as incapable of accepting any responsibility as is DONALD Trump.
Corbyn won the leadership because the rank-and-file realized that the 2010 and 2015 elections-elections fought on the exact policies Blair would have fought them on-prove that Blairism was extinct politically.
Yes, Labour lost the election with Corbyn as leader. The man has admitted the campaign wasn't run well, as have most of his supporters. But the same policies led Labour to the edge of victory in 2017, and I think you'd have to concede that, if Corbyn hadn't been the subject of what Orwell would call a "four-year-long Ten Minutes Hate" from the Blairite wing of his own party, the outcome would have been much better for Labour this year.
At some point, you have to assign Tom Watson and the PLP at least some responsibility for Corbyn becoming unpopular, and admit that, if he needed to go, they made it harder for him to go by making it clear they would do all they could to block anyone but Blairites from the leadership ballot to replace him.
Why can you not admit that they should have stopped trying to destroy the guy after 2017? That there was no chance that anyone they'd have preferred to Corbyn would have done any better?
The voters were not saying that they'd only vote Labour if it was once again led by somebody who's political master plan was to spend more of his time attacking socialists and socialism than Tories and Thatcherism.
Even if Rebecca Long-Bailey did win the leadership-and the poll you put out appears to indicate she might have difficulties-she wouldn't do things exactly as Corbyn did.
And even you would have to admit that, if Labour ditched the proposals to nationalize water, electricity and the rails, the party would simply be standing on the Tory manifesto and have no reason to exist.
The UK election shows a difference in voting patterns between those aged 18-24 and those over 65 that is staggering. The results have important implications for the choice of leader and the direction of UK politics in general.
If only 18-24 year olds had the vote the Cons would have won only 4 (that's right!) seats while Labour would win 544 out of 650 and the SNP would have won 58 of 59 Scottish seats.
On the other hand if voting was up to only 65+ voters would have given the Cons would have won 562 seats and Labour 51 seats.
Jeremy Corbyn would have been swept into Downing Street as Prime Minister with a 544-seat landslide victory if only under-24s were allowed to vote in this month's general election, it was revealed today.
The 'youthquake' Labour needed, but never materialised, would have won them 341 more seats than the 203 they actually took in December, analysis by Election Maps UK has found.
And Boris Johnson's Tories would only have got just four seats in that 'sea of red' scenario because Mr Corbyn would win almost every seat in England and Wales.
The SNP would have secured 58 of the 59 seats in Scotland, while the Lib Demswould have taken 22 seats - up from 11, handing Labour a majority of 438.
Labour would have won almost every seat in England if under-24s were the only voters in the December general election, Election Maps UK has found.
But the Tories would have taken 562 seats and Labour only 51 if pensioners were the only voters.
In the four key age groups areas, this is how Parliament would have looked:
- If only 18-24 year-olds could vote: LAB: 544 seats (56%) SNP: 58 (5%) LDM: 22 (11%) CON: 4 (21%) GRN: 1 (4%) PLC: 1 (0.5%) IND: 1. Labour Majority of 438.
- if only 25-49 year-olds could vote: LAB: 310 seats (43%) CON: 240 (34%) SNP: 56 (5%) LDM: 21 (13%) PLC: 3 (0.5%) GRN: 1 (3%). Labour 16 short of a Majority
- If only 50-64 year-olds could vote: CON: 421 seats (50%) LAB: 149 (17%) SNP: 47 (4%) LDM: 9 (12%) PLC: 4 (0.5%) GRN: 1 (3%). Conservative Majority of 192.
- If only over 65 year-olds could vote: CON: 562 seats (64%) LAB: 51 (17%) LDM: 10 (11%) SNP: 5 (3%) PLC: 2 (0.5%) GRN: 1 (2%). Conservative Majority of 474.
On December 12 the Tories won 365 seats - 162 more seats than Labour who lost 59 seats and were down to 203 MPs, giving Boris Johnson a majority of 80. ...
This was despite Labour having a manifesto pledge to reduce the minimum voting age from 18 to 16 and urging youngsters to come out and vote in force.
Daily Standard 18-24 year old voting vs 65+ voting
It is astonishing the extent of the refusal of Corbyn and his apologists, here and in the UK, to be objective in the least about the causes of the debacle. They are as incapable of accepting any responsibility as is DONALD Trump.
We get it, you hate Jeremy Corbyn. Even if your diagnosis is correct, constantly continuing on about this isn't going to undo the damage. Are you not capable of putting aside your hatred long enough to have a conversation about what you think the Labour Party needs to do next beyond screaming, "STOP CORBYN!?"
Aristotle, I like to think I don’t hate anyone. You will surely appreciate there is a difference between rational analysis and hate.
It is difficult to dislike Corbyn as an individual. He is too mild and ineffectual. But what he and his followers have done to the Labour Party is deplorable, enabling as they have many unnecessary years of Tory misrule.
In the meantime here is some fresh hope that Labour can shake off its Corbynite nightmare:
31% Starmer
20% Long-Bailey
11% Phillips
7% Cooper
6 Lewis
6% Thornberry
5% Nandy
Assuming it came to just Starmer versus Long-Bailey poll has Starmer on 61% to Long-Bailey’s 39%.
In the last two leadership elections the membership gave Corbyn a clear lead.
