Rolling Brexit Links/UK politics in the neo-Weimar era

if he doesn't have enough MPs who will accept places in his shadow cabinet after the election he may resign

Didn't he already double up on some of those jobs?

that NS piece barely contains a sentence that isn't stupid, untrue or meaningless. takes some doing, that.

i think at this stage the greater likelihood is splitting the party than seizing it -- with the election lost and the next one five years off, the rationale for not splitting is certainly less than it was

re ns: stephen bush is still worth reading, nearly no one else

If Corbyn doesn't resign after a massive defeat them fuck him. But he's very likely to be challenged by another left-winger in that scenario.

he will force the challenge i suspect, and force the split

otherwise the momentum wing of the party basically loses all purchase

I also wouldn't bet against the unions abandoning him either. Even the most loyal ones know that their interests are better served by virtually any version of Labour in power than under the Tories. And they're unlikely to accept a situation from which there's no apparent way back.

O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast!

if the election is lost, a momentum party is a plausible consequence, but it emerges at its strongest out of a situation where the PLP is gerrymandering or generally manoeuvring against the membership's (and the jilted would-be membership's) wishes

older labour voters are deserting to the tories -- they'll never come back-- but corbyn is currently winning the election vote with under 40s (this alone won't save him in the election but it makes a new party considerably more doable, especially one formed under the kinds of in-party stupidity and unfairness we've seen corbyn first stood… )

corbyn staying on brings that situation about -- him stepping down much less so

on the other hand, i do keep saying he has little strategic nous

Why are Labour voting pensioners going Tory? TM hasn't committed to the triple lock. Right wing Tory think-tanks have recent history of saying "optimum time to ditch 'em - high numbers will be dead by the next election". The BBC seems have an endless stream of northern WMC pensioners with "not voting for that fooker!" type answers, followed up by "this is the sound of the political landscape changing forever".

Blair promised them (and gave them) nothing but electability. Corbyn doesn't appear to be able to promise them that. 1945 was a very long time ago and at best they were children.

the Atlee government was the anomaly, not the acme, of the Labour party

That explains why they're not voting Labour. It doesn't explain why they're voting Tory.

(Short answer might be 'Brexit')

a lot of (older) people believe in the process of voting (for one of the proper parties) whether they've really got any belief in what any of those parties really stand for, is part of my guess

The BBC lets you say fooker?

xp plus loving the whipcrack of strong government, and we do love our strong governments, coalitions and yearly elections are for effete continentals. plus of course the Brexit demographic skews older.

xp
No only Scottish Rangers fans can smuggle swearing onto the Beeb, was figuratively speaking Tombot.

Yeah the c-word too. Not Celtic either.

I was thinking maybe some pensioners might have muddled hand-me-down or direct memories of Crippsian post-war austerity, and think it is the the right way to do things and associate it with recovery rather than the decay that the current austerity is causing.

I can remember having conversations about Blair and New Labour with my partner's dad (rip) who was born in the late 20's. He used to always say "you've got to give them a chance". I seriously think he was that attached to the "Labour brand" that he would probably vote Corbyn if he was still breathing.

Lib Dems not standing in Brighton Pavilion in order to boost Lucas. Greens not standing in Brighton Kemptown (nor Ealing & Southall) in order to boost Labour.
https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/857348826818064384

oops make that Ealing Central & Acton

If Corbyn doesn't resign after a massive defeat them fuck him. But he's very likely to be challenged by another left-winger in that scenario.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 26 April 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Why should Corbyn resign after a massive defeat? The PLP haven't backed him at all, they should resign from their seats instead.

Why should Corbyn resign after a massive defeat?

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, April 26, 2017 3:46 PM (seventeen seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because he's basically hamstringing the party's chance of competing in an election by being the leader

while having policies not hugely different to ed miliband

while having policies not hugely different to ed miliband

that is total bulshit, jim.

The only residual EdStone type shit is coming from the "credible" wing of the party.

well the manifesto should be interesting (in purely academic terms). being written by Corbyn's main policy bod Andrew Fisher.

I guess it depends to an extends on the composition of the post-election PLP, but if surely Corbyn stands down shortly after the general election then the most likely result is a leadership election where the choice is between several Lab-right candidates without even an Owen Smith style 'soft-left' option? (or even the PLP bypassing a leadership election altogether and electing someone by acclamation?)

to an *extent*

while having policies not hugely different to ed miliband

― -_- (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 26 April 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Making sure every school child is fed without going through the means-testing rigmarole in a push for universal benefits is an example of delicate changes in emphasis from the Milliband years.

Also, not wanting to blow-up the world.

the barracking of corbyn from the press though stems much less from the policies that he floats than from his past associations (as substantial or insubstantial as these are), through decades of being backbench bennite rebel labour mp, with the Provos, SWP, Hamas.

he's painted as loony left on the basis of his past, not his policies.

this might be a shame, it might be a real indictment of our political system, it might show our overton window is located very far to the right, but it's an ingrained and inexorable element of corbyn as politician that will follow him as long as he aspires to lead

Boris just called Corbyn a MUGGLE I demand Trial by Combat.

He WHAT?

Thornberry had Labour's response which was basically 'back in your box, you giant numpty'.

he called him a Mugwump according to the BBC, it would be a compliment in the Algonquian language in which it means "great chief"!

Jim - you said it - "from the press". In the doorstep do people know who the hell the SWP are? Its a non-issue.

Where the kind of left politics has made it onto public conciousness would be his anti-nuclear stance and really mostly his anti-EU stance that came in via the Brexit vote. Now here he could lay out a coherent set of oppositions via a set of speeches while acknowleding that it has bought some good, he could forcefully open up debate. But its not something that he is able to do. There are valid criticisms of the guy.

There are failings but I think people would be more favourable if there was any question that the party genuinely backed him. I haven't seen many reports of this but it wouldn't surprise me on bit if Lab backbench MPs encouraged/lobbied May to hold this election just so they could get rid of him and keep up this charade.

I think a lot of those backbench MPs are worried they'll lose their seats and would quite happily have held on for another leadership challenge next year. Rachel Reeves seems to be the name circulating at the moment, suggesting they haven't learned anything at all.

Press attacks on Corbyn seem much less about past ties - which i think relatively few people care about - and more that he will raise taxes and trash the economy. There is occasionally a grudging respect for the consistency of his principles though a clear message that he is not a serious politician and doesn't understand economics, diplomacy, the threat of terrorism, etc, etc - putting the country at huge risk. The fact that his policies tend to be quite popular in the abstract has to be countered with the consistent line that 'socialism sounds nice in principle but doesn't work'.

I don't think that wound fundamentally change if you replaced Corbyn with anyone else of 'the left'. Miliband was himself repeatedly attacked not just from the right but the centre as being dangerously and irresponsibly left-wing.

Boris seems to be floating the idea that the UK will join in with the next round of Trump's air strikes if they've invited.

I keep thinking about the headline of that NS piece implying that Labour should not be a party that appeals to socialists

Brown was attacked for being dangerously left-wing too. The Blair years really did pave the path for socially liberal types to completely detach themselves from the economics of inequality.

Miliband was also and more effectively attacked for not looking like a leader or potential PM: in fact there's an entirely plausible theory that this factor on its own was enough to cost Labour the election.

I thought Miliband should have stood down in time to give a successor a chance to bed in before an election. The electorate's perception of him wasn't fair, but it was consistent enough over a long period of time to suggest that it wasn't going to change.

Unfortunately Miliband looks like a Hollywood casting director's idea of a successful British politician compared to Corbyn.

looking like a leader 2017:

http://cdn-03.independent.ie/incoming/article35635109.ece/ALTERNATES/h342/DailyMail.PNG

which leads to the question, not how does a left party compete in this environment, but why bother? let's just kill ourselves and get it over with

Several of Corbyn's policies wouldn't be out of place in a Miliband manifesto and some of them could have even been in Blair's without many people batting an eyelid, but there are more than enough points of difference as well. It's a reasonably moderate social democratic policy platform (that's also in and of itself very popular) but he's been painted as a dangerous radical. Being timid while looking radical is probably the wrong way round. Unfortunately he's just not capable of countering this, although he's been doing well enough at campaigning. Opening up debate in and of itself isn't enough, and I wonder whether the "why should he resign?" crew would take Labour never winning an election again in exchange for being sufficiently left-wing.

The PLP haven't backed him at all, they should resign from their seats instead.

Pretty sure most of them won't have any choice.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n08/david-runciman/short-cuts

Runciman in the LRB is interesting on this - Tony Benn's concerns that a left-wing leadership with no authority would be worse than a right-wing leadership that had to be able to work with the left. It's becoming very apparent that you need a coalition of both in order to stand a chance - the right knows how to do the down and dirty things that actually win elections, and knows how to appeal to the wider electorate. But you need the left to keep them accountable and remind the party what it's actually for. That coalition held throughout the early Blair era because for every one thing he was doing they didn't approve of, there were another two or three they were very happy with. But it frayed from 2001 onwards, was on life support throughout the Miliband era and collapsed completely when the right failed to oppose the welfare cap.

Any Labour leader who can't find a way to repair that isn't going to do shit.

I wonder whether the "why should he resign?" crew would take Labour never winning an election again in exchange for being sufficiently left-wing

yeah, basically, for a value of "sufficiently left-wing" equal to or greater than "actively working to promote greater economic equality and a strong, well-funded welfare state"

because without those things the Labour party is functionally useless to me and why would I care whether it could win an election or not?

Do you think that makes it functionally useless to other people?

I mean people who aren't smug media liberals or investment bankers.