What now for Labour? (Part 1)

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A post mortem

We lost. I feared the worst a few days ago when walking my dog. I met a left-wing man I’ve known for years who said that he was voting for the Peace Party. Someone of his persuasion was going to throw his vote down the drain instead of opting for the only party which could replace the Tories. That made me apprehensive about whether millions of anti-Tory voters would use their votes effectively. (The Peace Party came seventh in my constituency.) Worse was to follow when I logged in here. To read that a serious Tory hater couldn’t “become enthused by any party on offer” and chose not to vote for the only viable alternative to Cameron’s evil regime, was further evidence, albeit anecdotal, that the Labour campaign, despite having so many troops on the ground, was failing to motivate enough people to secure a victory.

About eleven million people in the UK (about 37% of those who voted) chose the Tories, and it resulted in them winning 331 of the 650 seats in Parliament, 12 more than all the other parties combined. In our so-called democracy, we have to respect their choice, even if it’s difficult to understand it. I’ve never come to terms with how anyone of modest means, or anyone with a social conscience, could ever vote Tory. I have a brief encounter with OCD whenever I go into a polling booth, checking what I’ve done on the ballot paper several times before I put it in the box.

What makes it even more difficult to understand now is that many people believed Cameron in 2010, he lied to them and has since broken a string of promises (which have been recorded elsewhere on this forum any number of times). He’s presided over the cruellest government in living memory, and yet so many people don’t seem to care. He’s stuffed the House of Lords with cronies, often after the Tories have received generous donations from them, and he's sold off state assets at knockdown prices, in the case of the Royal Mail enabling Osborne’s best man to make a fortune. He and his government have even been reprimanded several times for falsifying statistics.

The Tories often complain that the BBC is ‘left-wing’, which it isn’t, as a thread on this forum fully demonstrates; if anything it leans to the right these days, and it has always fawned over so-called ‘royalty’. But the Tories never complain about the rabid right-wing nature of most of the press, with even ‘The Independent’ giving them a tepid endorsement this week. That press, and programmes such as ‘HIGN4Y’ and ‘News Quiz’, have participated in the character assassination of Ed Miliband over a long period of time, gradually corroding his credibility, and dismissing him as “not being prime ministerial”. Whether he is we will never find out now, but does Cameron fit the bill? So often he’s shown himself to be an arrogant, bad-tempered, out-of-touch bully with a sense of entitlement. His behaviour on the day after the Scottish independence referendum incited the Scots and drove many of them from Labour into the arms of the SNP. In this campaign, he created fear of the SNP to scare many English voters towards the Tories. Had he been alive today, Machiavelli could have learned lessons from Cameron.

Ed Miliband sometimes looks awkward on television and isn’t very good at eating a bacon sandwich (who is?). But what does it say when the issue of choosing a potential prime minister is reduced to the level of a vote for ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ or ‘The X Factor’? Would Clement Attlee - in my opinion the greatest PM we’ve ever had - have won many votes for his celebrity status? Shouldn’t it be more important to choose between the bedroom tax and a mansion tax, and between democratically managed public services or private ones controlled by unaccountable corporations? Did those who voted Tory really want the ultimate destruction of the welfare state? Are they really so blasé about the possibility of becoming sick, unemployed or disabled one day? Instead of thinking about such issues, so many were distracted by the Tory charge that Miliband was ‘weak’, even though Cameron was too scared to debate head-to-head with him.

So it was rather like 1992 after all. No triumphalist Sheffield rally this time, just a silly stone monument, but the polls telling us that it was neck-and-neck and then the Tories winning easily. Three party leaders have resigned, but so should the pollsters. Electoral Calculus was claiming only yesterday that the chance of a Tory majority was just 4%. I don’t think I’ll ever bother to look at an opinion poll again; studying tea leaves is probably a more reliable guide to election outcomes.

Maybe the similarities with 1992 (which turned out to be a good election to lose) won’t end there. Five months after John Major lied his way back into office with scaremongering and promises of “tax cuts year on year”, Tory economic incompetence was there for all to see on ‘Black Wednesday’. His hapless government, riddled with sleaze and tearing itself apart over Europe, limped through five unhappy years, and we all know what happened next. So maybe 2020 will be like 1997, but five years is a long while to wait to find out, and sadly a lot of vulnerable people are going to suffer in the meantime.

My opinion has always been to get Andy Burnham in the Labour hot seat and not to sway away from being traditionally LW as some say...

Maybe Labour do need to see things more from a business point of view though, but moving too far from the keft will create a division..and not a joyful one like me!

Na, but Labour remain the second largest party in the UK, a party who do not label folk who have hit a sricky wicket as ' benefit scroungers ' and the like as the Conservatives do...

They have created a stream of people who just blurt things out without thinking and this culture of benefot haters makes us look like a nasty little island...we really need that image out to bed ..the Tories created it and we must do our bit to stamp out this hateful nonsense ...

The Labour Party have and always will be best at representing the lower paid workers and who care about our elderly , sick and diabled...another group the Tories have helped to stigmatise.

Despite their election win, there are areas where a majority of the public must be uneasy about some Tory policies. It seems to me that it is these which need identifying so that they can be targeted for highlighting at every opportunity - no good harping on about issues where Cameron has Joe Public on his side.

For example, I can't believe that many of the more extreme outcomes of Duncan Smith's cruel and heartless policies sit comfortably with many - this may be an area ripe for targeting ( and IDS personally , given his despicable demeanour and close resemblance to a Nazi Camp Commander).

So, find the softer under-belly of Tory policy content ( and the least palatable individuals - Pickles, Gove  and Fallon  might be worthy recipients of a 'campaign' ) and hammer away relentlessly at it, and them, and leave the battles that cannot readily be won.

The Tories have benefited from a constant barrage on key themes and , while Labour etc. will not have the benefit of as wide a media coverage and emphasis, nevertheless they will have opportunities for making their case heard...

There clearly isn’t any room for complacency. Labour was seen as too right-wing in Scotland and all but wiped out by left-wing nationalists. In England its working class vote was squeezed by the right-wing nationalists of UKIP, who played on the fear of immigrants and the EU taking their jobs.

But there also isn’t any need for despondency. It’s only a few weeks ago that people were saying that the Tories hadn’t won a general election outright for 23 years and never looked like winning one again. There is a thread on this forum where Douglas Carswell (when he was still a member) thought the Tory Party was going the same way as HMV. In three successive general elections from 1997 to 2005, the Tories failed to win 200 seats, but five years later they were dominating a coalition government.

Before the Canadian federal elections in 1993, their Progressive Conservatives (an oxymoron if ever there was) had 156 seats. After it had they had 2. Ten years later they regrouped and emerged as the Conservative Party of Canada, which has been in power since 2006.

In the UK in 1992, during a recession, Labour suffered its fourth successive defeat at the hands of the Tories. Five years later Labour won with an overall majority of 179 seats. Even though the Tories are planning to rig the constituency boundaries even more in their favour than they proved to be in this election, they only need to lose a handful of seats to lose their majority next time.

One real achievement of Ed Miliband was to keep the Labour Party united in opposition, and it must remain so when it gets its new leader. In the meantime, Harriet Harman, as caretaker leader, needs to ensure that the Tories don’t write the narrative again as they did in 2010 when Labour was busy navel-gazing.

An awful lot can and will happen in the next five years. We need a leader with fire in his or her belly, and in my opinion, of the candidates on offer, there is only one who fits the bill. This is what Dan Jarvis has to say:-

“Labour was routed in Scotland, went backwards in Wales and rejected in England. We were swept away by the Tories in the south, while UKIP eroded our support in our traditional heartlands. We need a unifying leader with the broad appeal to win those people back. That’s why I am supporting Andy Burnham and will be doing everything I can to ensure he is elected as leader of the Labour Party.”

http://labourlist.org/2015/05/dan-jarvis-backs-andy-burnham-for-leader/

To get on the ballot paper, a candidate needs to receive at least 35 nominations from Labour MPs. I understand that Andy Burnham has received so many nominations that some of the other hopefuls are struggling to get their 35. A lot can change in the next few months, but at the moment the election appears to be in the bag for Andy.

Cannot stand Andy Burnham, he will lose us the next election too, so why elect him as leader folks I just hope the voters of the labour party see sense.

A well-known aphorism is "Marry in haste and repent at leisure."

It may apply equally to appointing a Party Leader in the immediate turmoil caused by an electoral setback.

A period of earnest committee debate could profitably come first.

stuart torr wrote:Cannot stand Andy Burnham, he will lose us the next election too, so why elect him as leader folks I just hope the voters of the labour party see sense.

I also think Labour can do themselves a favour if Yvette Cooper was leader, again some will say part of Brown's old school cabinet but do we really want to move so far away from the left?

JD I understand where you are coming from but does Yvette have it in her to handle the crap that will come out of Davy boys GOB regarding her husband and the kind od smear he threw at Ed Miliband because just because she is a woman that will not stop Davy boy.

Yvette Cooper is coming out with the stuff that pleases the Murdochs. Another broken reed!

Redflag wrote:JD I understand where you are coming from but does Yvette have it in her to handle the crap that will come out of Davy boys GOB regarding her husband and the kind od smear he threw at Ed Miliband because just because she is a woman that will not stop Davy boy.

Becuase she is a woman and a fairly respected one at that ..I do Red!, of course there will always be some stick received , more so as you say being the missus of Edd Balls, but I think Cooper has it in her to put Cameron to shame in the commons!!

i think anyone at the helm of Labour will get stick but I just can't see anyone getting it as bad as Mili...he wasn't leader material really and was even mocked over his appearance and speeches ...

I still wonder if there was skullduggery when he beat ad David for the leadership!..

Amd how the Tories rubbed their hands with a sinsister glee when he won the leadership!

Diane Abbot would have been another to get it bad imo Red, but I think Cooper has what it takes!

And I think she would be good at shooting Cameron down in the commons!

That's just my opinion of course!

Cameron has only felt the wrath of Harman , bring on Cooper!

Penderyn wrote:Yvette Cooper is coming out with the stuff that pleases the Murdochs.   Another broken reed!  

..maybe you'd rather go with ladies man Chukka then Penderyn?


He's clearly stated he is more for business and moving away a bit more from the left.

JD I just hope you are right because we both know that Yvette will be in for it from the Tories as long as she has a sharp tongue in her mouth to double what ever Davy boy fires at her and then be able to pick it up double it and hit Davy boy with it below the belt that was something that Miliband lacked.

But where I can I will attend the hustings and listen to what they have to say before I make my decision on who to vote for ias the leader of the Labour party.

Joy Division wrote:..maybe you'd rather go with ladies man Chukka then Penderyn?


He's clearly stated he is more for business and moving away a bit more from the left.

I can't pretend I find any of the would-be fuhrers attractive in any way.   Why not go back to having a democratic party with a chairperson instead?

Am I not wrong Penderyn,but I thought that Chukka had pulled out of the leadership contest anyway?

I don’t buy into this nonsense that Labour leaders have to be right-wing to win elections. They have to be able to motivate their foot soldiers (which Ed Miliband clearly did), offer something different to the electorate (which Ed Miliband did) and be able to communicate it well (where Ed Miliband failed). It also helps if you are charismatic (which Ed Miliband isn’t).

Tony Blair won three elections, not because he was right-wing, but because he was – and still is (however much you may dislike him) – charismatic. What exactly does that mean? I’d say that a charismatic person has an extraordinary ability to attract, that you ignore their faults and forgive their transgressions. People were still attracted to Bill Clinton after all the shenanigans over Monica Lewinsky. Many will still fall for the charms of Tony Blair, despite the Iraq debacle. Nigel Farage has obviously got something of a magnetic personality, enough to build up a party from nothing (albeit with the help of the BBC). Boris Johnson has too many character flaws to list here, but he seems to walk on water. And nobody cares that his politics are on the extreme right of the Tory Party.

Very few other current British politicians are charismatic – maybe Alex Salmond (though I can’t see that myself) or Nicola Sturgeon? However, there are some with fire in the belly, able to rouse the core voters and inspire the troops to take a distinct and inspiring message out into the constituencies to garner more support. From what’s on offer from Labour at this point in time that must, in my opinion, be the scouser Andy Burnham. We don’t need those who suck up to Murdoch and the corporations; those who want the Tories can and will vote for the real thing, not pale imitations.

Ivan wrote:I don’t buy into this nonsense that Labour leaders have to be right-wing to win elections. They have to be able to motivate their foot soldiers .... offer something different to the electorate .... and be able to communicate it well .... It also helps if you are charismatic.  

Anyone know what Keir Hardie is doing these days?

Anyone know what Keir Hardie is doing these days?

Still trying to work out how to get a majority I'd guess.

stuart torr wrote:Am I not wrong Penderyn,but I thought that Chukka had pulled out of the leadership contest anyway?

Best plan. It strikes me, incidentally, that these football-manager-type resignations of defeated fuhrers are a perfect way to let the tories get away with vast lies while we talk to ourselves. Why not insist on any elected 'Leader''s staying on for at least a year after a defeat?

Ivan wrote:I don’t buy into this nonsense that Labour leaders have to be right-wing to win elections. They have to be able to motivate their foot soldiers (which Ed Miliband clearly did), offer something different to the electorate (which Ed Miliband did) and be able to communicate it well (where Ed Miliband failed). It also helps if you are charismatic (which Ed Miliband isn’t).

From what’s on offer from Labour at this point in time that must, in my opinion, be the scouser Andy Burnham. We don’t need those who suck up to Murdoch and the corporations; those who want the Tories can and will vote for the real thing, not pale imitations.

Is rule by a Murdoch-puppet fuhrer such a good thing?   Why?

Why not insist on any elected 'Leader''s staying on for at least a year after a defeat?

Seems a good plan to me. Football managers don't have to resign every time their team loses

Since March 2015 I talked to loads of people on the doorstep in Sheffield Carlisle & Wirral West nobody said anything to me except they want rid of the Tories.    You must be right LWS because all I got on the doorstep was "WE NEED TO GET RID OF THE TORIES" then they go & vote them back into power, IDIOTS but they will soon find out exactly what they voted back into power and when they start moaning I will be telling them "HELL SLAP IT INTO YOU" its not as if they where not told the truth about  the Tories after the last 5 years they should have known themselves.

As for the SNP they are playing a sneaky game of we will do and say anything to get another Referendum to part Scotland from the rest of the UK, what they do not realise is the number of business that will leave Scotland because parting from the UK also means no access to the EU market, the SNP are no better than the Tories for IDEOLOGY stakes seperation is what they want and are too hell what the people of Scotland want.

Tristram Hunt, who said that Ed Miliband “lacked political courage” and accused Labour of “throwing money at the poor” has, thankfully, failed to gain the necessary 35 nominations and withdrawn from the leadership race. He will now support the most right-wing of the remaining candidates, Liz Kendall. One wag on Twitter has posted: “If I had £1 every time someone on the Labour doorstep campaign wanted Tristram Hunt to be party leader, I'd be penniless”.  

Rumour has it that Mary Creagh is also struggling to get 35 nominations.

The Murdoch Press and similar peddlers of poison will be sharpening their knives to plunge afresh into the backs of Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. There can't be much in either's closet which has not already been inspected by the Tory-adoring media, but I feel sure they are still looking.

And what they don't find, they will invent. It's a long and rocky road for whoever the Labour Party chooses for the poison chalice...and Labour needs to think how they will seek to minimise the damage which such continual propaganda can bring.

No doubt Andy Burnham will be repeatedly castigated, as the health secretary at the time, for the somewhat exaggerated Mid Staffs Hospital scandal. And if the trash tabloids can attack Ed Miliband’s late father, then they will certainly use the apparent unpopularity of Yvette Cooper’s husband to get at her.

As we know, in 2010 the Tory-dominated government took the opportunity created by the vacuum of a Labour leadership contest to embed in the nation’s psyche the myth of Labour’s economic incompetence. That worm Vince Cable is now claiming that he has “always acknowledged that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling made a good fist of managing the financial crisis and that the Blair-Brown years produced good, progressive change, especially at the beginning”. I cannot recall him saying any such thing when David Laws first waved the Liam Byrne note around in Parliament, or in fact at any time in his subsequent five years of sleeping with the Tory devil.

I suspect that the desperate Cable is only saying such things now because he's angling for the rump of the Lib Dems to have some sort of arrangement or understanding with Labour. He writes:-

“It is just possible that disillusionment with the Tories and with the nationalists in England and Scotland will set in so fast and go so deep that, as in the mid-1990s, there could be a pincer movement from the centre and centre left under plausible new leaders. Merely to state the hypothesis suggests, however, how far away it is. But to make it even possible, a lot has to happen, including our two parties deciding whether they are for ever locked in mortal tribal combat or, more sensibly, whether they are potential allies in a wider, progressive purpose of constitutional reform; a liberal approach to civil liberties; anti-nationalist and internationalist; and with a modern fusion of social democracy and market economics.”

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/05/vince-cable-lib-dems-were-victims-tory-fear

How Sun Journalism Works...

( telegraph)

" C'mon David, think - you'll have to come up with something better than : ' that Andy Burnham was horrible to me once..'  "

PH Davy boy always has Lyton Crosby who is great at thinking up new LIES for the Tory party to tell because this time they cannot blame "The Labour Party Mess".

It looks like it will be either Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper that will win the leadership, if what your picture is right it should be Andy Davy boy needs a taste of his own medicine, after what he and his cohorts did to Ed Miliband the viler Andy can be to Davy boy the better I willl like it.

I thought we could have a female leader for once Redflag,make her the exact opposite of Maggie T, and hope she can be the labour version of that conservative witch.

Good idea stuart I see where your coming from, as long as she has a veli nasty tongue in her head to hit the Tories with to see how they like it but we all know they will scream like PIGS when they get a taste of there own medicine.

Redflag. Yvette Cooper thinks that Labour should “consult more closely with business leaders” and drop its opposition to the Tory cut in corporation tax to 20%. Now that might be music to the ears of Rupert Murdoch, but would it make you travel the length and breadth of England to help get her elected?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32784980

We can all be wise after the event, but I think Ed Miliband lost because he fell between several stools. His platform wasn’t right-wing enough to attract wavering Tory voters, not left-wing enough to capture the votes of Green Party and SNP supporters, and not perceived as caring about working class concerns as much as UKIP, especially over immigration. Add to that the prolonged and corrosive character assassination of a thoroughly decent man, and we had the recipe for a Tory majority which the pollsters failed to predict.

I cannot comprehend how from as far out as 2013 it wasn't obvious that a Miliband-led Labour Party was never going to win the election.

Cameron walked all over him at PMQs and he seemed to ask 'questions' which gave the Tory Champion every opportunity to wipe the floor with him. It was like watching a flyweight boxer ( albeit a charmingly pleasant one ) trying to fight with his guard down against Joe Frazier.

Like Stuart - on another thread -I can visualise the Tories winning again in 2020 , unless Labour picks a leader who develops a better strategy for attacking Cameron in The Commons on issues where his greatest vulnerabilities lie, and constructs policies which resonate with key parts of the electorate. Like it or not Blair won three elections by boxing clever and appealing to voters who may have been normally more tempted to take the Blue Route. Hard though it may be to swallow, many left-wing 'principles' don't play well with Joe Public - paradoxically, even those who subsequently suffer personally through putting their cross in the blue box...

'I told you so' is never a good look, Phil - maybe if you feel the Labour party is so useless you could join, stand as an elected representative and finally have a platform from which you can make a difference.

They say the observer sees most of the game - but if you want to change the game you have to be on the pitch

" 'I told you so' is never a good look, Phil "


Neither, incidentally, is 'I didn't like what you had said so I am going to have a hissy fit'.


I am sorry if my comment is taken in that way - it was simply intended to convey that I had expressed reservations about Labour's chances, but if we are also denied predictions on here the conversations are indeed going to be limited.

Still, that's opinions for you - and the inability to see the all-too-obvious probably explains why the Labour Party more widely is unable to attract waverers...

Phil Hornby wrote:I cannot comprehend how from as far out as 2013 it wasn't obvious that a Miliband-led Labour Party was never going to win the election.

Cameron walked all over him at PMQs and he seemed to ask 'questions' which gave the Tory Champion every opportunity to wipe the floor with him. It was like watching a flyweight boxer ( albeit a charmingly pleasant one ) trying to fight with his guard down against Joe Frazier.

Like Stuart - on another thread -I can visualise the Tories winning again in 2020 , unless Labour picks a leader who develops a better strategy for attacking Cameron in The Commons on issues where his greatest vulnerabilities lie, and constructs policies which resonate with key parts of the electorate. Like it or not Blair won three elections by boxing clever and appealing to voters who may have been normally more tempted to take the Blue Route. Hard though it may be to swallow, many left-wing 'principles' don't play well with Joe Public - paradoxically, even those who subsequently suffer personally through putting their cross in the blue box...

Up to a certain point PH I agree with you, I agree with you that Ed Miliband allowed Davy boy to deride him and smear with no retort coming from him, but you seem to forget there was another 257 Labour MPs in the chamber that allowed it to go on too. In all those PMQs & I watched most of them Davy boy never once answered any of Eds questions because he could not as he knew what Ed was saying was the truth something else the Tories hates TRUTH

Yes Tony Blair won 3 Elections but not everyone including Labour members did not like Tony's Tory lite, before the G.E of May 7th 2015 people where calling for re-nationalisation of gas electic & railways Ed did not bring that policy forward & maybe that is part of the reason Ed lost the election. On whether it is possible for the Tories to win the election in 2020 that may be stopped by the cuts that will be brought in by Gidiot the Idiot on the 8th July, from what I have heard they will be deeper than the cuts of the last 5 years, to be honest I cannot see people just taking it like they have for the last 5 years more so the people that voted Tory on May 7th 2015.

There are now even those in the Labour Party who express emerging doubts about the whole effort 2010 -2015, including Miliband's effectiveness.

I feel that too many elements of what was done let down the sort of efforts that you made, Redflag.

You are starting to creep now PH, cos you did not vote and because posters are still having a go at you for deriding Ed.

I'm rather unwilling to just write-off entire five-year chunks of my life. Although in truth the times ever since 2008 have not been particularly good for the common man, there was always the hope that "Gordon Brown's Party" would regroup and return to the fray.
It didn't, and perhaps never could have expected to bounce back at the first opportunity, no matter who was in charge.

It would be nice to think that "lessons have been learned" in the politician's default response, but if the rump of the Labour Party is now going to engage in mutual back-stabbing then we may as well get used to the unpleasant way that Tories do things, but identify a more likely Challenger.

Aspiration will usually beat hibernation, so faites vos jeux, mes amis.

Who would you place your bet on OW?

Stuart - anyone who seriously believes I would decide to 'creep' around anyone to curry favour or popularity, obviously has no knowledge of me and precious little perception.

I have wished Redflag well in several posts in the past, so my admiration for her efforts is nothing new.

But I recognise that, for some, the pain of unexpected defeat has bitter effects upon the mood - does it not...?

An Opposition Coalition thinks the unthinkable, Stu.

Apologies.