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.

Ed knew how to win an election; he just didn't want to.

bobby wrote:-
As for a new leader, why not just keep Ed Miliband in place, he is a very decent, honest and caring Man. What he lacked was the ability or the want to fight Labours' corner in answer to the falsehoods laid at their door by a despicable Coalition Government, perhaps he was trying to be too statesman like

Ed Miliband resigned, he wasn’t sacked. I agree that he was a good man; none of the candidates to replace him seems any more inspiring.

When Churchill was slaughtered in the 1945 election, he carried on as Tory leader and returned to Downing Street six years later (albeit because of a quirk in our FPTP voting system, which gave the Tories more seats despite fewer votes). When Hugh Gaitskell led Labour to a heavy defeat in 1959 (and when many asked if Labour could ever win again, just as some are doing today), he continued as party leader until his mysterious death in 1963. When Harold Wilson unexpectedly lost the 1970 election, he stayed on as Labour leader and was PM again within four years. Neil Kinnock fought and lost two elections - in 1987 and 1992. Nowadays that doesn’t seem to be the done thing. Clegg resigned last month, Farage resigned (if only until his Messiah-style resurrection from the political dead three days later!), and had Cameron not won a majority, he would have resigned too.

The comments which have been made since the election show that Ed never had the full confidence of the shadow cabinet, many of whom wanted his brother to be Labour leader. Perhaps the Tory way of electing a leader has some merits, where the candidates are whittled down to two by MPs before party members are asked to vote.

Gaitskell was on the right of the party and lost. Miliband was more to the left of the present-day party and lost. The dilemma for Labour (for which I can offer no solution) is that too far to the right means alienating core voters and the ground troops, encouraging the “they’re all the same” mantra, and providing no incentive for supporters of left-wing parties such as the Greens and the TUSC to throw in their lot with Labour. On the other hand, too far to the left means alienating those middle class, home owning (and dare I say ‘aspirational’?) voters on whom Labour depends for a majority since its traditional working class base was decimated by the Tory destruction of our manufacturing sector.

The only suggestion I can make is that Labour – whoever leads the party in future - should offer a PR voting system for Westminster elections. Not a referendum, a cast-iron commitment to change the system in time for the 2025 election. If only that had been introduced during the 13 years of Labour rule, things could have been very different today. For Labour to promise it now could – and should – see other parties, such as the Greens, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and probably the SNP, inviting their supporters to ‘lend’ their votes to Labour in 2020 in order to end once and for all the FPTP voting system, which is no longer fit for purpose.

I have no idea whether he's a 'good' man or not, nor what criteria that is based on. Certainly his policies were pertty feeble. They only seem decent compared to the misery the Tories will inflict. But they follow the same pro privatisation big business bankster corporate nonsense that all the parties are signed up to supporting. There's no way he'd have repealed the WCA, no way he'd have removed benefit sanctions, certainly not have raised benefits to a decent standard of living.

His party are up to their necks in austerity just the same as anyone else. They are all part of the same class of people. Why you people cannot see this is beyond me. A good man doesn't open the door for the Tories because he's scared of the DAily Mail.

Well when you know how to spell his name right as you did not in your THIRD to last post then maybe you would know who you were talking about GW.

Dip you have anything of substance beyond this petty crap?

Show done evidence to back up why anyone would support the red Tories? The guy gave the election to Cameron Ffs!

Who will you be supporting over the next five years and in the next General election, GW?

I feel at present your comments, while maybe accurate in parts, are simply counsels of despair.

It would be interesting to know which current politicians have your respect and your support and what policies you would be happy to see introduced - we all know by now what you don't like - what do you like?

boatlady wrote:Who will you be supporting over the next five years and in the next General election, GW?

Are you seriously asking me who i will vote for in 2020?

Following in Labour and believing that they are going to reconnect to their roots and reject a system that's broken is a counsel of despair.

The only answer right now is mass civil disobedience/unrest and a general strike.

Marching up and down oxford street and inviting the likes of Diane Abbot - who's happy to take BBC coin to share a platform with scum like Portillo - is a counsel of despair.

I firmly believe the days of either right or left wing Governments are or should be over. The working Classes wanting a Government just for them is as foolish as the rich wanting one exclusively for them, neither can work effectively. It has been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt by the total failure for the majority with an extreme right Tory Government in place. The same for a Left wing Government, each group needs the other to make our country work efficiently.
What is the point of having a work force who demand more money, time off if those who employ and pay the wages, likewise what is the point of running business if the majority of the population can not afford your goods. The closest we have ever been to a reasonably fair and workable system was New Labour with its so called third way, they made some mistakes but on the whole the country benefitted.
History has proven that you can not have successful extremes in government.
At the beginning both left and right go off in opposite directions, when they get to their extremes, they turn in and become almost identical, look at Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia one Fascist the other Communist but both eventually becoming the same.
Before we clamber towards a left wing Government, we need to think as to how we create the jobs and pay the wages.

mass civil disobedience/unrest and a general strike. is an unlikely outcome - certainly wouldn't get my vote - we need to look at the available options, and I suspect you would never find a majority in favour of any kind of revolution.

As Bobby says, an acceptable government is one that will take on board the interests and the needs of all parts of society

If his one single vote could ever produce a government, a pocket anarchist would still be protesting the unfairness of it all.

But it's being so cheerful as keeps us going. Meanwhile, back at the topic under discussion, whoever gets elected Leader of the Labour Party will presumably offer Ed Miliband whatever shadow cabinet job he may desire.

Do you think so? Seems they're all taking the opportunity to talk him down at present - it seems to be all 'what Ed got wrong' these days

boatlady wrote:mass civil disobedience/unrest and a general strike. is an unlikely outcome - certainly wouldn't get my vote - we need to look at the available options, and I suspect you would never find a majority in favour of any kind of revolution.

As Bobby says, an acceptable government is one that will take on board the interests and the needs of all parts of society

I have st had my invitation through for the hustings here in Scotland for both the leader & deputy leader of the Labour party, I am going to be busy attending hustings because the Scottish Parliament is looking for a new leader & deputy.

I am sorry to disagree with you boatlady but the only thing that will make this Tory gov't sit up ands take notice of the people that are suffering from HIS & Osbornes cuts, would be CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE or as a last resort general strike. I know plenty of people would not like either but needs must if the Tory gov't will not listen to reason from the working man/women of the UK.

bobby wrote:-
I firmly believe the days of either right or left wing Governments are or should be over…….At the beginning both left and right go off in opposite directions, when they get to their extremes, they turn in and become almost identical, look at Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia one Fascist the other Communist but both eventually becoming the same.

Left and right are still valid terms to distinguish between those who want less inequality and good public services, and those whose priority is low taxes for individuals and who don’t value the concept of society. Apart from left and right, there is also libertarian and authoritarian, and it was the latter trait which Hitler and Stalin had in common.

https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t17-are-you-left-or-right

Our recent general election saw an additional distinction involving nationalism (SNP, UKIP and anti-EU Tories), as opposed to internationalism (pro-EU parties such as Labour and the Lib Dems).

Redflag. The unions tried a general strike in 1926, but they lost their bottle and called it off after nine days. That’s not going to happen again. Unions often can’t persuade a majority of their members to vote in postal ballots; people who can’t even be bothered to do that are not going to take part in a general strike. Besides, there are too many people living on the edge – struggling to feed their kids while paying exorbitant rents or ridiculously high mortgages – who would be too scared to risk losing any income.

No doubt there will continue to be anti-austerity protests and demonstrations, but they won’t involve the vast majority of the population. Sadly, too many of those reared in the 80s and 90s under the ethos of Thatcherism don’t give a toss about those less fortunate than themselves. Then there’s the Tory practice of ‘divide and rule’; let some people buy their housing associations homes and bribe pensioners with savings bonds and bus passes. In last month's election, the Tories had a 24% lead over Labour among pensioners. Conditions would need to get a lot worse for a lot more people before the apathetic majority would sit up and take notice. After five years of a most awful and cruel government, 11.3 million people voted Tory.

The Labour Party calls itself a democratic socialist party. Presumably those of us who have joined it believe in democracy, however warped our current system may be. While protests and demonstrations are legitimate tactics in a democracy, civil disobedience is not, and to support it risks being labelled as anti-democratic. As for a revolution, it wouldn’t achieve anything positive in our globalised world, but that’s for another thread:-

https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t955-you-say-you-want-a-revolution

Owen Smith, the shadow Welsh secretary, explains why he supports Andy Burnham, who wants to restore the “emotional connection” between Labour and the people the party seeks to represent:-

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/labour-faces-fight-its-very-survival-andy-burnham-man-put-party-back-track

"The emotional connection" may not be easy to exploit. The natural constituency of Labour has shifted allegiance, not least because of the success of socialist welfare provision over the years.
There are no longer votes weighed rather than counted to be found from amongst shipbuilders, miners, railwaymen and dockers. Maggie fixed that.

boatlady wrote:mass civil disobedience/unrest and a general strike. is an unlikely outcome - certainly wouldn't get my vote - we need to look at the available options, and I suspect you would never find a majority in favour of any kind of revolution.

As Bobby says, an acceptable government is one that will take on board the interests and the needs of all parts of society

then nothing will change

Ivan wrote:Owen Smith, the shadow Welsh secretary, explains why he supports Andy Burnham, who wants to restore the “emotional connection” between Labour and the people the party seeks to represent:-

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/labour-faces-fight-its-very-survival-andy-burnham-man-put-party-back-track

He will get a better chance after the 8th July when Osborne brings forth his budget, and we all know who will pay the unemployed low paid and those on zero hour contracts and if that does not give the good people an excuse into "CIVIL DISOBIDENCE" or a "GENERAL STRIKE"

Lee Sherriff, the defeated Labour candidate in Carlisle, blames her defeat primarily on Tory scaremongering about the SNP. James Frith, the defeated Labour candidate in Bury North, writes: “At this election, our proposition was all opposition. We spoke of all we’d stop and little of what we’d do. Our offer was a complaint. We spoke to those in need of a Labour government and said little to appeal to those who might be persuaded to want one. We rightly spoke of zero hours and wrongly said nothing to those working long hours. So as we jostle and jockey for a way ahead let’s make sure, well before next time, that we show we have the interests not just of those in need of a payday but those responsible for making payroll.”

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/i-lost-conservatives-just-378-votes-heres-what-ive-learned

So what now for Labour? Liz Kendall has come out with the one-liner: “Labour must offer a chance, not a grievance”. Stephen Bush reckons that may be enough of an offer to the party’s ‘soft left’ for them to look over her policy heresies if they think that she’s the candidate best placed to win in 2020.  

Andy Burnham describes the 2015 manifesto as “the best manifesto that I have stood on in four general elections”. Bush continues: “Burnham seems to have abandoned anything beyond a tonal shift from the Miliband leadership. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, of course, depends on your perspective. One Burnham supporter, approvingly, told me that the shadow health secretary offers ‘the same gameplan, but with a better striker’, while one MP from the Cooper camp refers to him as ‘a Scouse Ed Miliband’. Who’s right? It comes down to the big argument of the leadership election: was it Miliband’s personality, or his programme, that turned off voters? Burnham is now firmly on the side of personality and tone.”

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/were-beginning-see-outlines-labour-leadership-race

Up to a point, Jeremy Corbyn agrees with Andy Burnham: “There was much in the Labour campaign that was very positive, including the emphasis on scrapping the bedroom tax and employment tribunal fees, restoring higher rates of taxation, action on the living wage, repealing the Health and Social Care Act, freezing energy prices, and abolishing non-dom status. However, one of the problems was that for all of the good things in the manifesto, the fundamental economic message was that an incoming Labour government accepted the level of debt that Britain has is a problem, and that the deficit would have to be cleared within one parliament – continuing austerity. Since education and health are ‘protected’, the cuts would therefore fall sharply in other areas of expenditure, particularly in local government, and on welfare.”

Corbyn has latched on to the current buzzword, believing that “we should be more aspirational about closing the huge inequality gap in Britain, ensuring everyone is decently housed, and that the minimum wage rises to become a fair living wage”.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/08/labour-leadership

You pays your money (if you’re a party member) and you takes your choice…..

Thanks for summarising the various positions so clearly Ivan - and thanks for doing all the reading to support your comments.
I feel I could spend every waking hour reading papers and trawling social media to try and get a sense of what would be the best choice for the next Labour leader and what should be the direction for the current Labour opposition.

It does seem the Tories have effectively, for now, occupied all the commanding positions. This may not last, and the next Labour leader, among other attributes must have the nous to take swift advantage of any break in the Tory ranks.

I'm still no wiser about who I will vote for, but will look at the pieces you have referenced to help me make my decision (still having a sneaky fancy for Jeremy Corbin, if only because he isn't one of the usual suspects)

At least part of the Labour 'problem' was Ed Miliband. A good man, but...

 For a start he was a massive target for several reasons to the cruel media ( challenging his brother, his supposed 'geekiness', the odd gaffe, and , latterly, the pledge stone, for example).

I certainly have friends sympathetic to Labour who were saying from way out that he just wasn't the right choice as leader- although they considered most of the policies were logical and supportable.

But I am not so sure that the public saw the policies as resonating with them - too many people are too comfortably off to worry unduly about the poor and otherwise-needy - it needed far more explanation and persuasion as to why it would be right to place a large focus on their plight, and how helping them would also, ultimately, be assisting the country .

We’ve talked a lot about the Labour leadership election, but the deputy leader is being chosen at the same time with the same rule – 35 nominations (15% of the 232 Labour MPs) are required by 15 June to get on the ballot paper.

At the time of writing this, there are seven potential candidates and the nominations for each are as follows:-
Tom Watson 54
Caroline Flint 35
John Healey 21
Angela Eagle 18
Stella Creasy 16
Ben Bradshaw 14
Rushanara Ali 13

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/list-mps-endorsements-labour-deputy-leadership-candidates-0

It's an ill wind that blows no good. The public discussion and party introspection which now follows Labour's defeat in consecutive general elections provides the best possible hope of constructing a positive policy with a more general appeal. The painful learning-curve should be over in time for a revitalised conference in the autumn.

John Prescott makes the case for Stella Creasy to be Labour's deputy leader, on the grounds that she is a good organiser. He also endorses Andy Burnham for the leadership:-



http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/deputy-leader-its-stella-me

Now Liz Kendall agrees with Osborne's ridiculous budget surplus law, making austerity permanent.

How much longer can you defend the red Tories?

Until someone comes up with a better alternative that doesn't involve fighting in the streets?

ghost whistler wrote:....

The only answer right now is mass civil disobedience/unrest and a general strike....

In the middle of the 19th. Century, America was enlarged by Settlers embarking from the East coast in covered wagons to annexe large areas occupied by native Americans (called Indians). When the "Indians" unreasonably objected by attacking the columns of covered wagons, the best defensive measure was to form a circle with all the settlers' fire-power directed outwards.

The stratagem fails when there is a mixture of enemy and friends on the outside of the circle of fire.

e.g. In a Civil War or mass protest disobedience, whereby the assets of both friend and foe suffer equally.

Democracy is the least bad alternative.

Ivan wrote:Lee Sherriff, the defeated Labour candidate in Carlisle, blames her defeat primarily on Tory scaremongering about the SNP. James Frith, the defeated Labour candidate in Bury North, writes: “At this election, our proposition was all opposition. We spoke of all we’d stop and little of what we’d do. Our offer was a complaint. We spoke to those in need of a Labour government and said little to appeal to those who might be persuaded to want one. We rightly spoke of zero hours and wrongly said nothing to those working long hours. So as we jostle and jockey for a way ahead let’s make sure, well before next time, that we show we have the interests not just of those in need of a payday but those responsible for making payroll.”

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/i-lost-conservatives-just-378-votes-heres-what-ive-learned

So what now for Labour? Liz Kendall has come out with the one-liner: “Labour must offer a chance, not a grievance”. Stephen Bush reckons that may be enough of an offer to the party’s ‘soft left’ for them to look over her policy heresies if they think that she’s the candidate best placed to win in 2020.  

Andy Burnham describes the 2015 manifesto as “the best manifesto that I have stood on in four general elections”. Bush continues: “Burnham seems to have abandoned anything beyond a tonal shift from the Miliband leadership. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, of course, depends on your perspective. One Burnham supporter, approvingly, told me that the shadow health secretary offers ‘the same gameplan, but with a better striker’, while one MP from the Cooper camp refers to him as ‘a Scouse Ed Miliband’. Who’s right? It comes down to the big argument of the leadership election: was it Miliband’s personality, or his programme, that turned off voters? Burnham is now firmly on the side of personality and tone.”

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/were-beginning-see-outlines-labour-leadership-race

Up to a point, Jeremy Corbyn agrees with Andy Burnham: “There was much in the Labour campaign that was very positive, including the emphasis on scrapping the bedroom tax and employment tribunal fees, restoring higher rates of taxation, action on the living wage, repealing the Health and Social Care Act, freezing energy prices, and abolishing non-dom status. However, one of the problems was that for all of the good things in the manifesto, the fundamental economic message was that an incoming Labour government accepted the level of debt that Britain has is a problem, and that the deficit would have to be cleared within one parliament – continuing austerity. Since education and health are ‘protected’, the cuts would therefore fall sharply in other areas of expenditure, particularly in local government, and on welfare.”

Corbyn has latched on to the current buzzword, believing that “we should be more aspirational about closing the huge inequality gap in Britain, ensuring everyone is decently housed, and that the minimum wage rises to become a fair living wage”.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/08/labour-leadership

You pays your money (if you’re a party member) and you takes your choice…..

IVAN toa certain degree in your post I would agree with you, but do not agree with all of the post as you know I was in Carlisle with Lee Sherriff helping her campaign for her seat in the HOC and from the work and the honesty she spoke to her future constituents I think the people of Carlisle like others lost there marbles on the way to the polling station.

At the same time I was in Wirral West were every billboard had a picture of Salmond SNP with Ed Miliband in his top pocket or Nicola Sturgeon with Ed Miliband as her puppet, but Margaret Greenwood Labour candidate for WW WON her seat not by much only 400 votes I suppose that this proves the people in WW did not believe the Tory BLATANT LIES.

I will repeat what I have said before lets call it my suspicious theory, there was a deal done between the SNP & Davy boy to get rid for ever the Labour party because beneath the SNP beats the heart of a true blue Tory.

boatlady wrote:Until someone comes up with a better alternative that doesn't involve fighting in the streets?

no one has advocated fighting in the streets. That's a straw man

ghost whistler wrote:no one has advocated fighting in the streets. That's a straw man

But you did endorse "civil disobedience/unrest". If by this you aren't referring to fighting on the streets, could you possibly expand on your original comment? I'm interested.

This suggests to me that Labour didn't lose because Ed Miliband isn't a Blairite; maybe it was more to do with the collapse of the Lib Dem vote helping the Tories, plus the SNP surge in Scotland?


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CG_w9knWcAEIvof.png

"The problem for the Labour party is that there is a body of opinion within the movement that agrees with the Milibelievers. Just look at this barmy post on Labour List, congratulating, yes you read right, congratulating Ed Miliband for his leadership.

They don’t accept that the party was at fault. They promote the same failed policies. They propose the same catastrophic electoral “strategies”. They lionise the same failed leaders. They are uninterested in looking for a future prime minister because they want the next leader to smother them in a comfort blanket and tell them that everything’s okay. Any attempt to move outside our comfort zone is treated with derision and contempt."


http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2015/06/10/the-milibelievers-are-back-and-this-time-they-really-could-destroy-the-labour-party/

This article is nasty. Really nasty and is an attack on those Labour supporters who got behind Ed.

This sort of ongoing post-mortem has got to stop. Yes, we needed to think about the direction of the party but to turn on a young girl in this way is beyond unbecoming. I've met Jon Trickett and he's a good man. He certainly doesn't deserve this attack.

The election is over, it's time to move forward and not rip ourselves to pieces for the entertainment of the right-wing press and more importantly the Tories. David Cameron loves nothing more than trawling through media sites looking for weaknesses and then exploiting them mercilessly. This constant blood-letting by members of our party is meaningless point-scoring and nothing else. Go and join David Miliband if you want to but stop attacking young people like Abbi Tomlinson who was an absolute breath of fresh air during the election.

Redflag wrote:-
IVAN to a certain degree in your post I would agree with you, but do not agree with all of the post

It’s not a question of agreeing or disagreeing with me, there aren’t any of my opinions in that post. I was just reporting what two defeated candidates and three leadership contenders have to say for themselves.

This is where Lee Sherriff blames scaremongering about the SNP for her defeat:-

http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/lee-sherriff-i-would-stand-for-parliament-again-1.1213349

And there is evidence here that it was a problem she was encountering in Carlisle (10 miles from the Scottish border) before the election:-

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/lee-sherriff-the-labour-candidate-trying-to-claw-carlisle-back-from-the-tories-10213012.html

oftenwrong wrote:

Democracy is the least bad alternative.

Britain isn't a democracy

Claudine wrote:But you did endorse "civil disobedience/unrest". If by this you aren't referring to fighting on the streets, could you possibly expand on your original comment? I'm interested.

So you equate civil disobedience with people beating each other up on the streets?

Civil disobedience means stopping work, downing tools and non compliance.

If that's not palatable for people then they'd better get used to the permanent austerity they will be facing otherwise - and that includes under a Labour government.

ghost whistler wrote:Britain isn't a democracy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

A democracy (Greek, demokratia) means rule by the people.[1] The name is used for different forms of government, where the people can take part in the decisions that affect the way their community is run. In modern times, there are different ways this can be done:
1.The people meet to decide about new laws, and changes to existing ones. This is usually called direct democracy.
2.The people elect their leaders. These leaders take this decision about laws. This is commonly called representative democracy. The process of choosing is called election.[2] Elections are either held periodically, or when an officeholder dies.
3.Sometimes people can propose new laws or changes to existing laws. Usually, this is done using a referendum, which needs a certain number of supporters.


Discuss

Discuss what? Britain's electoral system is broken. I'm not sure what else needs to be said; do you disagree with that statement?

I have to agree with ghost whistler on this one. Yes, democracy means rule by the people, but we’ve never elected our head of state. We’ve also never elected our so-called ‘upper house’, which is based on patronage and still contains 91 hereditary peers. Once in every five years we are allowed to put a cross on a piece of paper under an absurd voting system which gave UKIP one MP for 3.88 million votes, while the Tories ended up with 331 MPs for 11.3 million votes. Whatever we all think of UKIP, that isn’t democracy!

What passes for democracy in this country is a sham, with corporations and hedge funds bankrolling the Tories on a massive scale and with 85% of the media supporting them as well. The telling factor is that every government in the UK since 1979 (and most in Canada and Australia in recent times) has had the blessing of Rupert Murdoch. That certainly gives some resonance to the concept of one man, one vote; it’s just a pity that the one man is the Aussie equivalent of Blofeld from the James Bond movies.

Council elections have been reduced to a farce, now that many Tory councils have contracted out services for 10 or even 20 years at a time, tying the hands of anyone who gets elected during that period. Real democracy would also involve all employees electing the boards of companies, and teachers electing their school head.

What now for Labour? Is there a way forward involving the creation of some meaningful democracy in the UK? Ed Miliband did propose an elected Senate to replace the House of Lords, which was a step in the right direction, but I doubt if it fired many people’s imaginations.

ghost whistler wrote:
....So you equate civil disobedience with people beating each other up on the streets?

Civil disobedience means stopping work, downing tools and non compliance.

If that's not palatable for people then they'd better get used to the permanent austerity they will be facing otherwise - and that includes under a Labour government.

Today's media are full of 31-year-old reminders of the Miners' Strike in Yorkshire.

Those who disregard the lessons of history are doomed to forever repeat them.

oftenwrong wrote:Today's media are full of 31-year-old reminders of the Miners' Strike in Yorkshire.

Those who disregard the lessons of history are doomed to forever repeat them.

reminders?

You mean  reporting the ipcc's craven and political decision bit to investigate the behavior of the police at orgrrave?

Which medi, the right wing dominated media we have or some other media?