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.

Here's an amusing article on the Labour leadership election by Mark Steel.....  

The last thing Labour needs is a leader like Jeremy Corbyn who people want to vote for

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-last-thing-labour-needs-is-a-leader-like-jeremy-corbyn-who-people-want-to-vote-for-10411466.html

It's compellingly amusing of course, but we shall see if Blair is right in due course.

But then, good old Tone was another chap who couldn't win an election, as I recall.

Politics eh? Who'd bother with it...?

Tony Blair won three successive elections. Therefore we must listen to Tony Blair and adopt his policies if we want to win elections.

That’s a logical fallacy. It takes no account of why Blair won in 1997, 2001 and 2005, or why Labour lost in 2010 in 2015.

The Tories lost the 1997 election on 16 September 1992, ‘Black Wednesday’, two years before Blair became Labour leader. On that day, the British economy resembled a banana republic, with that idiot Lamont raising interest rates by 5%. John Smith or John Prescott would have led Labour to victory in 1997 – and so probably would Arthur Scargill, albeit with a majority somewhat smaller than 179.

The 2001 election result was almost the same as the 1997 one, with the gormless baseball-cap Willie winning just one extra seat for the Tories. In the next four years, the Tories flirted first with Iain Duncan Smith as leader and then ‘something of the night’ Michael Howard. They weren’t in the game.

Labour lost in 2010, not for being too left-wing, but because it had the misfortune to be in office when the worst global financial crisis since 1929 struck, and because its leader wasn’t as ‘attractive’ as the two-faced liar who was leading the Tories and promising the earth to all and sundry. Why Labour lost in 2015 we are still arguing about. I think it was because it fell between three stools – not anti-austerity enough for the left and the Scots, not pro-business enough for the Blairites, and not nationalistic enough for the working class voters tempted by UKIP.

Until the 1980s, even the Tories accepted the state ownership of the utilities and the railways, but for Jeremy Corbyn to advocate such things now is considered ‘extremism’. We have allowed the Tories to shift the so-called centre ground so far to the right, yet still the Blairites expect us to camp on it. Maybe we have to court Tory voters, but why would they want a Tory-lite party when they’ve got the real thing? Perhaps we should be motivating those who didn’t vote, amongst whom (according to one recent poll) Labour would have had a 40% lead if they had bothered to turn out on 7 May. (No names, no pack drill, of course……   )

Well Labour won't win anything if someone like Harriet 'Harperson' just glibly accepts all the stuff that the nasty party dish out and expects the party to follow that edict. Frankly I was disgusted that my parties current leadership should take such a stance with cuts that affect the poorest the most, people who the Labour Party should be standing up for. The opposition should oppose the government, especially one whose only discernable policy is to impose savage cuts in welfare that will affect poorer workers more. If this is what my party is becoming then, they deserve to be in permanent opposition. I really can't see what Labour have to offer, especially if the policies are exactly the same as that of the 'nasty party'. I don't see Jeremy Corbyn as being the answer as he will get crucified by the right wing press and the nasty party.

I was also disgusted that the entire parliamentary party didn’t vote against the welfare bill, and that made me think Jeremy Corbyn deserves to be seriously considered. On balance, I still think Andy Burnham might have the best chance of uniting the party, especially if he offers shadow cabinet jobs to the other three candidates.

Whoever gets chosen will be crucified by the right-wing press, that’s par for the course. Andy would wrongly be attacked over Mid Staffs, Yvette because of her husband, and Jeremy because he is ‘extreme’ enough to want the utilities nationalised. Liz wouldn’t be exempt either – she would be called ‘lightweight’ and have dirt thrown at her because she recently split from her partner. She’s already been criticised for not having children!

I think politicians win when they have a simple message, and as I said previously, Ed Miliband’s campaign didn’t have a clear vision – not anti-austerity, not pro-business, not nationalistic. As the Tories have taught us, it doesn’t matter if 60% of voters hate the message, as long as 40% (or even fewer) are motivated to support it.

LWS wrote:Well Labour won't win anything if someone like Harriet 'Harperson' just glibly accepts all the stuff that the nasty party dish out and expects the party to follow that edict. Frankly I was disgusted that my parties current leadership should take such a stance with cuts that affect the poorest the most, people who the Labour Party should be standing up for. The opposition should oppose the government, especially one whose only discernable policy is to impose savage cuts in welfare that will affect poorer workers more. If this is what my party is becoming then, they deserve to be in permanent opposition. I really can't see what Labour have to offer, especially if the policies are exactly the same as that of the 'nasty party'. I don't see Jeremy Corbyn as being the answer as he will get crucified by the right wing press and the nasty party.

Thank you LWS on this I agree with you they insulted & smeared Ed Miliband RELENTLESSLY during his term of office, what got up my nose was the fact he never retaliated which he should have done but Ed was too much of a gentleman to stoop to there belly low level.   None of the Tories will ever be fit to tie Eds bootlaces not now or EVER, they are a shower of SCUMBAGS lower than the low, you will just have to trust Labour party members to give us the right leader I know who I am voting for do you ?

The one person the Tories are frightened of is Andy Burnham he does not mind calling a spade a spade, whereas Jermy Corbyn looks as though they could walk all over him without getting a reply with a taste of there own medicine (insults & smears)     Please LWS do not give up on the Labour party stand up and fight for OUR LABOUR party.

It is now fashionable to denounce Blair and to some extent I can see why.

My point is that he knew how to win in whatever circumstances confronted him. The old football adage is that a team 'can only beat what is in front of them'. That's what Blair did.

While it is obviously not a case of following all that he says, neither is it necessarily right to ignore the totality of his utterings. He has an election track record which no other Labour leader can even dream of.

And ask yourself : why did all those people who might have voted Labour not do so? But let's see what magic the next Labour leader can produce which will show up Tony as the mere irrelevant flash-in-the-pan that he seems to have been over all those Tory-free years...

Phil Hornby wrote:It is now fashionable to denounce Blair and to some extent I can see why.

My point is that he knew how to win in whatever circumstances confronted him. The old football adage is that a team 'can only beat what is in front of them'. That's what Blair did.

But what was the point of putting this tory in power?    To  please Murdoch, I take it, but why should I want to do that?

My uneducated belief is that the British public do not want the sort of Labour Party which some folk on this board seem to favour. There is no law against wanting something which only a minority of fellow citizens believe in , but the inevitable result is disappointment.

So unattractive is the Labour Party as previously constituted 2010 -2015, that people preferred a Tory Government - to me, that suggests that the alternatives must have been considered pretty dire.

Given that a Conservative administration is as welcome to me as a hedgehog in your underpants, I would really like to see the initial establishment of an anti-Tory alliance led by a party which could develop from a rallying-point into a viable entity worthy of being voted into government in 2020. The Labour Party will not rally anyone unless it has a range of relevant policies to which Joe Voter relates - these will include - like it or not -some which are close to 'Tory-lite' approaches which Tony Blair was bold enough to advocate ( but for which he is now vilified, despite having dislodged the Tories from power for 13 years).

But -as a former poster on these threads used to say - what do I know...?

We are screamed at all day and every day that nobody will vote for - say - the ideas of the best British Government ever, the one elected in 1945. Do we believe these bosses' parrots?

Unless the propaganda war can be won - or at least not lost , there is no hope of a Labour victory. Any agenda which is too left-looking would just make the loss even more likely.

Similarly, at the other end of the spectrum, would anyone seriously anticipate that the likes of the BNP would ever prove a threat to the Tories? It's not rocket science - what is perceived as 'extreme' just won't wash with the British public. The trick is to make what you want to do not appear to be such as to frighten the horses...Tony knew that...

The policies of the Tories have been moving more and more towards the right during the past five years, so it is reasonable to expect that they will have made themselves less attractive to a MOTR electorate by the time of the next general election.

A Labour shadow cabinet needs perhaps only to avoid excess in the opposite direction in order to emulate the happy events of 1997. But for that it will require a public face which has no room for fears that "The Establishment" will never let Labour rule again so long as it clings to socialist principles. Without such principles, and a firm intention to put them into practice, there seems little point in opposing the current administration at all.

Voters will stick with the Devil they know unless there is a credible alternative.

I have read the last few pages here with a mixture of astonishment and amusement. Why? Because professed Labour devotees appear to be willing to compromise ideals simply in order to win an election: and they don't realise that that means nothing if all it means is Tory lite. This is a time to stay true and strong to left wing principles. I couldn't care less if it takes 5, 10, or 20yrs for the right wing neo-liberal agenda to collapse and be proved wrong - stick to your left wing ideals and you will eventually be able to turn around and say'we told you so. Blair is wrong if he thinks, sadly like many that election victory is the main goal - it ought to be staunch principles and views that form the core reason for Labour's existence. When the present right wing policies result in economic and social collapse - and it will happen, people will recognize another way is needed; and that is why Labour need to be patient, but strong in their stance. Flailing around and saying we need to be more like the tories, let's appease the electorates desire for welfare cuts, etc just makes Labour appear weak and desperate.

I am sick and tired of the way people are smearing Tony Blair , alright he did not get everything spot on but please look at the things he did for the UK. But when he came into power in 1997 after 18 years of Tory neglect to all of our public services he got stuck in to more money for OUR NHS & Education the economy grew for all not just the chosen few and he intorduced the minimum wage for all to bring our living standards up.

Just cast your minds back too Thatcher & the Major gov't not as nasty as Davy boys NAZIS regime but it was still against the working people of the UK.

Redflag wrote:I am sick and tired of the way people are smearing Tony Blair , alright he did not get everything spot on but please look at the things he did for the UK.

The only thing to be said for Blair is that he could act sincerity so well he believed whatever happened to be coming out of his mouth.    He is a war criminal awaiting trial, that's all, and getting stinking rich while he does so.

T-O-N-Y! You ain’t got no alibi. YOU TORY!

From a blog by Charlotte Church:-

It seems rather telling that the mainstream establishment is getting all shrill and scurrilous about Jeremy Corbyn. After the poll that said Corbyn would win the Labour leadership, centrists, Blairites and Blairs fell over each other to slander the man himself as unelectable, and then to scoff at his supporters. St Tony of Baghdad, lobbyist to the shadows, left many reeling with indignation when he had the gall to tell others “to get a heart transplant”.

The momentum is with Corbyn. Doesn’t it show a huge arrogance, for the other leading Labour politicians to flagrantly disregard what the most significant faction of Labour supporters are saying? Rather than denigrating the man’s personality and dragging their heels in New Labour mud, shouldn’t they recognise that what many people want is a party of real opposition to sit next to the SNP in the House of Commons?

For the first time in my adult life there is a politician from a mainstream party who shares my views and those of most people I know, and also has a chance of actually doing something to create a shift in the paradigm, from corporate puppetry to conscientious societal representation. The more Jeremy Corbyn is held cheap by the establishment, the more he begins to look like an intriguing outsider, relatable, and unfazed with the squabbling in the political playground.

https://charlottesayshmmm.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/t-o-n-y-you-aint-got-no-alibi-you-tory/

I think I am beginning to 'get it' at last : if anyone fails to find Jeremy Corbyn wholly attractive and a sure-fire winner of the 2020 election they are to be regarded as a Tory.

Second, many Labour supporters actually prefer potential losers ( and actual losers) rather than a winner.

If irrelevance, opposition and martyrdom are the key elements of happiness for the Labour followers who are the rest of us to argue...?      

Sickchip - thanks for the reminder about the difference between might and right

Personally, I feel in politics, as in shoes, there are different fashions - in the '80's everyone was wearing enormous heels and I stuck to my sensible flats - for years I was out of fashion but had comfortable feet. In politics recently, the fashion seems to be for some form of the neo-liberal consensus - I'm going to stick to my socialist principles and have a comfortable conscience.

One day the fashion will change

I think I’m also beginning to ‘get it’ at last. 70 years ago today, Clement Attlee became PM. He created the NHS, built the welfare state, introduced child benefit and free secondary education as a right. He also did some things which the ‘extremist’ Jeremy Corbyn now advocates, such as bringing public services into public ownership and nationalising the railways. Does that also make the man who was arguably Britain’s best ever PM an ‘extremist’, ‘hard left’ and ‘unelectable’?

92-year-old Harry Leslie Smith, who served in the RAF, watched his older sister die from tuberculosis when his father, an unemployed coal miner, couldn’t afford medical treatment for her. He addressed the Labour conference last September, and last week he tweeted this: “I am just thankful New Labour wasn't around in the 1940s, or else we'd never have got the NHS, housing or affordable education”.

As has been noted, Tony Blair introduced some good measures, such as the minimum wage, minimum income guarantees for pensioners and vastly increased spending on health and education, but he then threw away almost ten years of goodwill by getting us involved in a war which was none of our concern. With hindsight, and bearing in mind that Blair had overall majorities of 179, 167 and 66, he did very little that was of lasting value and he did nothing to move the so-called ‘centre ground’ leftwards.

According to Osborne, it’s ‘centre ground’ now to punish those children who happen to have the misfortune of being born into a family where there are more than two of them. So are we supposed to just accept that definition, in the hope that it motivates a few disillusioned Tory voters to switch sides?

When the Tories and their media friends move the so-called ‘centre ground’ further and further to the right, is the Labour Party always supposed to follow, then offer fairly similar policies but delivered by a different set of people? If that’s the case, what’s the point in bothering? Or maybe a left-winger like Jeremy Corbyn could, as Charlotte Church speculated, “galvanise the support of many disparate factions of society who didn’t vote in the general election or who voted UKIP”?

34% of the electorate didn’t feel motivated to vote on 7 May. That’s a far larger constituency to woo than the 24.4% who voted Tory, most of whom will always do so regardless of how heinous their party’s policies might be. Labour managed to lose the last election without Jeremy Corbyn being in charge. Did it lose because it was too left-wing, or because it didn’t challenge the austerity consensus?

I admit that I have reservations about all of the leadership candidates. In the case of Jeremy Corbyn, I’m concerned that he would consider campaigning for an EU exit if Cameron manages to secure an opt out on workers’ rights. Wouldn’t it be better to argue for opting back in? I’m also concerned because Corbyn has rebelled on many occasions against every Labour leader since he first became an MP in 1983. I’m sure he’s found many good reasons to rebel, as he did with the welfare bill last week, but how could he, as party leader, demand loyalty from his MPs when he has rarely shown any himself? I think Andy Burnham still gets my first preference vote, but only just.

Rebellion against something wrong is an act perhaps of courage and high principle.

I suspect the times Ed Miliband achieved a surge in the polls were just those times he rebelled against the general consensus and didn't let himself be managed by 'senior' 'more experienced' politicians.

The more I hear about Corbyn, the more I feel he is ideally suited to lead the Labour party in opposition - he is not signed up as far as I can see to any part of the neo-liberal consensus, so he will oppose clearly and loudly any policies that are derived from this kind of thinking and put forward a properly opposing viewpoint - as a country, we have been indoctrinated into the neo-liberal mindset - we need a strong public voice expressing an opposing view to counteract the brainwashing.

Will he win the next election? I don't know
Will Andy Burnham? I don't know.
I suspect getting a Labour government past the winning post at this point would mean a compromise so extreme that it wouldn't be Labour any more - a bit like the Blair government, which made small adjustments within the neo-liberal framework that, as you point out, did very little that was of lasting value and he did nothing to move the so-called ‘centre ground’ leftwards.

I do wonder what sort of a country we would now have if John Major had won in 1997, followed by Tory victories in the two subsequent elections...

You don’t have to wonder, we’ll be there by 2020. And that’s my point – Blair kept the Tories out for 13 years, but he merely slowed down the neoliberal march back to the 19th century. He didn’t do anything of significance to shift the perceived ‘centre ground’ leftwards.

What is the most important - having a 'pure' and clearly left-wing Labour Party, or getting the Tories out?

If it is the former, then that's fair enough, provided you are content to suffer a Tory government for the foreseeable future while Joe Public beds down some sort of confidence in the emerging Labour alternative.

To some extent the current position reminds me of a Christian Scientist who declines medicine - maybe of slightly unpalatable taste etc., but which could cure them - in pursuit of their wider belief in the power of healing offered by prayer, but which never quite arrives.

One thing seems certain - Labour are in a right mess just now and, even once the leadership election is resolved, there will be some deep divisions to heal and splits to be remedied. The public will regard the whole entity as a ragbag until that is all sorted out and I cannot see any prospect of victory before 2025 at the very earliest.

Hope I'm wrong, however...

Well, if the Labour Party does have the luxury of ten years in which to form a worthwhile socialist government, it has time in which to select the kind of Leadership seen in the aftermath of WW2.

Or do we have to wait for a WW3 before that can happen?

Phil Hornby wrote:I think I am beginning to 'get it' at last : if anyone fails to find Jeremy Corbyn wholly attractive and a sure-fire winner of the 2020 election they are to be regarded as a Tory.

Second, many Labour supporters actually prefer potential losers ( and actual losers) rather than a winner.

If irrelevance, opposition and martyrdom are the key elements of happiness for the Labour followers who are the rest of us to argue...?      

If you fancy beards, send him flowers. Most of us go by policies. The careerists have none except imitating tories, as you know.

WW3

I had felt that such hostilities had already broken out as I follow the day-to-day antics of the leadership contest...

Phil Hornby wrote:-
To some extent the current position reminds me of a Christian Scientist who declines medicine - maybe of slightly unpalatable taste etc., but which could cure them - in pursuit of their wider belief in the power of healing offered by prayer, but which never quite arrives.

I think a better analogy would be of a sick patient going to Dr Blair for treatment and being given a course of painkillers. When their effects have worn off, the patient is just as sick as previously.

Of course Labour is in a mess at the moment. It’s electing both a leader and a deputy leader, and elections are invariably divisive, sometimes over a difference of emphasis and on other occasions over a difference of philosophy. However, as the party has no real prospect of regaining power before at least 2020, it’s better to get things out in the open and sorted now rather than nearer the next election.

Phil Hornby wrote:I do wonder what sort of a country we would now have if John Major had won in 1997, followed by Tory victories in the two subsequent elections...

Good point PH but nobody seems ready to consider your point, if Tony Blair had of told Buch to "GO HANG" over Iraq the fuss over Tony now would not be happening. Before anyone jumps down my throat IRAQ was Tony's biggest mistake but the rest of what he did for the people of the UK I think was good. & beneficail for all of the UK.

They need to cast there minds back to the Thatcher gov't and it was only through Thachers sanction that Major became to be leader of the Tory party, I also think that Davy boy and his scumbags have been going through Thatchers papers from her time in office to get most of there policies they are using today.

I'm far from convinced that - rightly or wrongly - any British government would not have supported the USA in the campaign in Iraq, so Blair just happened to be at the helm at that time.

But he's history now and obviously not regarded by everyone as having been of service to the Labour Party as its leader. The question is: who will be?

Blair and Iraq.......

Can you imagine what would have happened if Bush had been given a free rein in Iraq?......

I do not believe that the war was right but I believe that if Britain had not been involved Bush would have gone harder and faster and may not have stopped at the Iraq/Iran border, It would have given him and his hawks the perfect excuse to take over the Middle East....

It was a war based on duff intelligence and making the 45min from attack was stupid, but then hindsight is the perfect sense

The fact that neither American nor Britain planned for the end of the war was a big mistake.....

As to who should lead the Labour Party (Left or Right)...I don't know but I do want to see an effective opposition who will hold the current government to account for its actions and not just give them a free hand.......

QUOTE: "The fact that neither American nor Britain planned for the end of the war was a big mistake....."

Quite so, astradt, but the beginning of the Iraq War hadn't been planned either. It was a blind and thoughtless knee-jerk reaction against the 9/11 insult to America's military might. There was no evidence whatever that Sadam had been involved, but he had form as a result of George Bush Senior's failure to dot the "i's" and cross the "t's" of the earlier Kuwait adventure.

A cleverer man than me once said, "The Past is another country - they did things differently there." I take this to mean that dwelling on Tory Blair's victory in 1997 has little to tell us about how to re-form an electable Labour Opposition now. But if it's not governed by socialist principles we might as well vote Liberal next time.

(Wash my mouth out with soap and water!!)

From my point of view, I will be voting for a leader for the Labour party, who can lead the party in opposition.
To do that, the new leader needs to have a record of opposing the current government's more vindictive and austerity driven measures.
To be honest, I'm not going to insist on a hard line socialist - but I do think we ought to have someone who publicly espouses policies that are fair and that tend to improve the lot of ordinary people.
If Labour can't do that in the next few years, there's no chance of a Labour victory at the next General election, I don't think

Harold Wilson refused to get the UK involved in Vietnam in 1968, and had the late Robin Cook been PM in 2003 we wouldn’t have joined Bush’s Iraq ‘crusade’. With the possible exception of Ken Clarke, had anyone in the Tory Party been PM at the time, we would certainly have attacked Iraq, but it was a ridiculous decision as Saddam Hussein, vicious tyrant that he was, posed no threat to our security.

I don’t think Bush wanted to take over the Middle East, but I do think the Americans saw Iraq as a possible foothold in the region - and Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to privatise an entire country. In ‘The Shock Doctrine’ (p.348), Naomi Klein wrote that after Iraq had been occupied “there was not a single governmental function that was considered so ‘core’ that it could not be handed to a contractor, preferably one who provided the Republican Party with financial contributions or Christian foot soldiers during election campaigns”.

Getting back on the subject, Labour always had a mountain to climb in 2015. Few parties lose office and are returned to power at the next election (in post-war Britain, only Harold Wilson in 1974 has managed to do so). As this thread has demonstrated, we all have our own theories as to why Labour lost in May, but now there is a comprehensive report which deserves serious consideration (despite a number of ‘typos’):-

https://smithinstitutethinktank.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/red-alert-why-labour-lost-and-what-needs-to-change.pdf

To summarise its contents:-

- It’s been mostly working class voters (not the middle class) who have deserted Labour in the past decade.

- Labour did abysmally among the over 55s, who are the largest voting group. Labour won just one in five of ‘the grey vote’.

- Labour failed in struggling seaside towns, in suburbia, in new towns, in rural areas and in general in ‘small town Britain’.

- Labour won around 450,000 more votes from women than men (mainly among women below retirement age).

- Labour did poorly amongst homeowners, but it had the support of half of those in social housing and made gains with voters in the private rented sector.

- Labour secured the vote of two thirds of non-white voters. However, it gained the vote of just 28% of white voters, 11% behind the Tories.

- Immigration and the economy were the most important first issues to most people, with the NHS in third place.

- According to Ipsos-Mori, 41% thought the Tories were best able to manage the economy versus just 23% for Labour.

- The biggest concern amongst those who considered voting Labour but in the end voted Tory was that Labour would spend too much and could not be trusted with the economy. Over 40% stated this as a reason. Just under a third thought Labour would make it too easy for people to live on benefits and a quarter were worried that Labour would raise taxes. There were also concerns about doing a deal with Nicola Sturgeon (30%), and 32% stated that they preferred Cameron to Miliband.

My thoughts on that document....

So, the biggest lie in modern British politics, that the global credit crunch of 2008 was “all Labour’s fault”, was successful. Many working class voters have deserted Labour, presumably for UKIP, partly because of fears about immigration. Tory scaremongering about the SNP clearly helped, along with a few bribes for pensioners, and Ed Miliband was seen as a less attractive leader than the snake oil salesman Cameron.

In 2005, 9,552,436 people voted for Labour under Tony Blair and the party won a majority of 66. In 2015, 9,347,304 voted Labour (that’s just 205,132 fewer) and the party suffered a catastrophic defeat. Why? Because the turnout was higher in 2015, more people voted Tory and the collapse in the Lib Dem vote gifted the Tories enough seats to give them a small majority.

Why did the Lib Dem vote disintegrate but the Tory share increase slightly? I can’t help thinking that the Lib Dems are now seen as a poor imitation Tory Party, and if that’s the slant of your political views, why vote for the copy when you can have the real thing? Maybe Labour, and especially Liz Kendall and her supporters, should take note of that. In addition, the new Labour leader must do more to nail the myth of Tory economic competence and offer policies which motivate those working class deserters to return to the fold.

There are two ways out of the wilderness for Labour: Jeremy Corbyn or Liz Kendall

Extracts from an article by Michael Chessum:-

“The reason why so much of the party apparatus and its periphery in the press claim to be so concerned about any great shift in Labour is because it is using an old and rather lazy rule of thumb: move too far to the left and you become unelectable; move too far to the right and you may become more palatable to middle England, but you lose your base and threaten party unity. The unelectability of the left has always been based on a dubious conventional wisdom about the 1980s – when the SDP, which was riding high in the polls prior to the Falklands War, split the Labour vote – but it is now utterly useless as a means of understanding how the electorate votes.

Labour lost the 2015 election because it accepted every premise that the Tories and mainstream press laid down, and tried, somehow, to reach a different conclusion. Ed Balls and Ed Miliband went out of their way to accept the need for austerity, cuts and a public sector pay freeze – while at the same time claiming to offer a lukewarm alternative to them. The public were, understandably, unconvinced: why vote for a lukewarm version of conventional wisdom when you have the real thing?

In order to build a convincing narrative, either Labour must reject the (broadly speaking neo-liberal) premises that have constituted the political consensus since the 1990s, or it must embrace them and follow them to their logical right-of-centre conclusions in an attempt to outperform the Tories on their own terrain. At present, there are only two candidates offering to do these things – Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Kendall.”

For the whole article:-
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/there-are-two-ways-out-wilderness-labour-jeremy-corbyn-or-liz-kendall

OK - I'm convinced.

Let's have Corbyn and a huge dose of red-blooded socialism so that the public can once again vote Labour with the confidence of knowing that all our troubles will be over and fairness will once again pervade the land.

Or not, as the case may be...

As you know, we have the little problem of one-party media.   The careerists prefer to please them, and always will, and have been betraying working people at least since Shirley Williams.   Easy to be superior and say we'll have a policy of decency by act of magic, whereas a good steady diet of shit will give the careerists power.   But what's in it for us?   Re-establishing Labour is going to be a long, hard fight.

Here's another theory as to why Labour lost in May - Helen Lewis (deputy editor of 'The New Statesman') thinks it was all the fault of Twitter and Facebook......  

http://www.newstatesman.com/helen-lewis/2015/07/echo-chamber-social-media-luring-left-cosy-delusion-and-dangerous-insularity

The leadership contest looks to be in danger of descending into farce, as news media speculate about Jeremy Corbyn's popularity exceeded only by that of Dan Jarvis - who is not even a candidate.

Phil Hornby wrote:OK - I'm convinced.

Let's have Corbyn and a huge dose of red-blooded socialism so that the public can once again vote Labour with the confidence of knowing that all our troubles will be over and fairness will once again pervade the land.

Or not, as the case may be...  

Yes lets have Jermy Corbnyn and stay out of office for ? Also the Tories will wipe the HOC floor with him the reason he is in the lead is because Tory voters have been paying there £3.00 so they can vote for him and give the Tories a surity of another electoral win in 2020.

Irrespective of the qualities of any Labour leader, the tide will eventually turn against the Tories - not least because they never know when to stop in their quest for absolute power and the sheer greed and spite which always accompanies it.

Like all bullies, they will pick on the wrong 'victim' at some stage and reap what they have sown. What is problematic for so many citizens is just how long that inevitable process will take. There are those who can sit back and wait for the pleasurable sight of yet another Tory fall from grace, but too many people will be consigned to misery alongside their luckier brethren.

It is those unfortunates who I imagine would be glad of whatever sort of Labour Party could rescue them from the jaws of helplessness and hopelessness...