What now for Labour? (Part 2)

First topic message reminder :

Phil Hornby wrote:I feel that Corbyn is sincere, polite, interesting and likeable - so are my neighbours but, like them, he isn't electable as Prime Minister.

In which case, why should we pay some phoney twicer to be something else?

Ivan wrote:I'd need convincing that withdrawing from NATO is a good idea, and I don't see investing more in the arts as a priority when we now have more than a million visits to foodbanks a year. However, I support all the other policies on that list, and many of them were accepted by the Tories until Thatcher became their leader. It just shows how far the so-called 'centre ground' has shifted to the right in the past forty years, and how a swing back to the left is well overdue.

"Since the 1980s, one has only had to stand still to become a radical.” (Alan Bennett)

How exactly do you see any of us benefiting from NATO?

If you have Fire-insurance on your home, you can probably see a parallel. Once again the "least-worst" option presents itself.

In my experience, insurance only covers you against those things that will not happen - once the insurance company learns that something will happen, it becomes one of those things that you are not covered against

Many people think that our Trident nuclear deterrent is an "insurance" policy. Not all of them understand how to make risk-reward or cost-benefit calculations.

If Trident is such an Insurance policy why not use it on the beggest threat the UK has at the moment DAESH or ISIL however you want to describe these terrorists.

It would also take out Saudi and anybody else who is getting up the nose of those in the west, but we cannot because it will kill too many innocent people which proves we need something else that is safer to use so innocent people are not harmed and in this case Trident is redundant.

That might seem to chime with the thoughts of US President-hopeful Donald Trump. Time will tell, of course.

YouTube

And why not?
I do think we need to choose a side - there are only two - and Jeremy Corbyn is the dominant figure on the side I want to be on

All those people kicking Jeremy Corbyn might consider whether that traditional British public sympathy for the underdog may yet confound their efforts.

IVAN Thank you for putting the video on CE, OW you have a goodpoint there, until people are effected by the Tory some selfish people do not give two hoots for any body else but themselves a true Tory trait in a persons character.

Corbyn is the anti-establishment politician people are crying out for – but that doesn’t mean winning will be easy

Extracts from an article by Maya Goodfellow:-

Welcome to Cameron’s world of empty talk. People living in Calais refugee camps are a “bunch of migrants” one minute; the next, the UK will accept an undisclosed number of unaccompanied child refugees from conflict zones. But the contradictions don’t matter to most when they’re wrapped in a slick package stamped Lynton Crosby. The Tory narrative is frustrating because it’s compelling to so many: we’re fair on those who deserve it, tough on those who don’t. They decide who’s worthy and who’s not, then they make it stick.

But there is good news. Jeremy Corbyn is the anti-establishment politician people in many parts of the world are crying out for. They’re sick of the top-down politics that produces the Camerons of this world. They want real, not superficial change. That doesn’t mean victory will be handed to Labour on a platter: boundary changes, Tory coffers bursting at the seams, Scotland and a small but vocal anti-Corbyn section of the Parliamentary Labour Party are but a few of the challenges facing them.

Labour needs a clear message, and it needs it fast. What’s needed alongside shining a light on the Tory inadequacies is a well-thought-out narrative. Pithy phrases and strong messages – with the policy complexities buried within them – are what Labour needs to develop and then unite around. Messages that can be used on the doorstep and that MPs can repeat every time they’re in front of a TV camera or radio microphone.

For the whole article:-
http://labourlist.org/2016/02/corbyn-is-the-anti-establishment-politician-people-are-crying-out-for-but-that-doesnt-mean-winning-will-be-easy/

boatlady wrote:And why not?
I do think we need to choose a side - there are only two - and Jeremy Corbyn is the dominant figure on the side I want to be on

I will second that boatlady I just wish certain Labour MPs would use there bile for the Tories who in my eyes derserve it not Jermy Corbyn, if they wish to wait and lose another general election they will gain the scorn of millions of peple in the UK.

In Corbyn's own backyard ffs: http://dpac.uk.net/2016/02/how-islingtons-labour-run-council-are-dancing-to-iain-duncan-smiths-tune/

Meanwhile the middle class posh elite who think the sun shines out of his arse will refuse to accept what is happening. As a consequence Labour, whoa re in the process of tearing themselves apart, will be again trounced by the Tories.

Local councillors of whatever political persuasion can be sanctioned if they do not obey the law. That's Democracy.

oftenwrong wrote:Local councillors of whatever political persuasion can be sanctioned if they do not obey the law. That's Democracy.

Tories win because the red capitalists support them.

Probably true, but the real pity is that even "the exploited" voted Tory at the last election, because some newspaper told them to do so.

What's the sensible response to aspirational families who don't quite see the British Labour Party as their path out of poverty?

Maybe the only way to change the media message will be to change the government - so maybe we need to get behind Corbyn and VOTE LABOUR

A very sensible idea boatlady but its not just the voters that need to get behind Jermy Corbyn certain Labour MPs need to join the party too.

All Labour MP's who currently sit in the House of Commons were elected on a ticket which commits the Labour Party to renewing Trident, they were not elected on a 1980s style, old fashioned, traditional Socialist agenda.

The people who are in the wrong here are not the majority of Labour MPs, it is the leadership of the party.

The political stance of Labour MPs has not changed or altered, it is the stance of the leadership which is attempting to shift policy in a completely different direction to which those MPs were elected upon.

The bottom line is that those MPs who do not agree with Mr Corbyn, have no need to, and the new leftwards direction of the party has no moral grounds to expect that they should.

This problem is not going to go away, on the one side is the leadership with the majority of the newly inflated membership, against the majority of Labour MPs.

witchfinder. You are quite correct in saying that the Labour policy at last year’s election was to support the replacement of Trident with a new nuclear weapon system. That’s still the party’s policy at present, mainly I suspect because the affiliated unions – understandably concerned because of the jobs involved – threatened to block any change at the party conference last September.

Speaking personally, I don’t see anything ‘moderate’ about wanting to have weapons which could destroy the planet, or anything ‘extreme’ about wishing to pursue more peaceful means to settle disputes. Nobody has ever explained to me why Britain and France need to have nuclear weapons, when the other 26 member countries of the EU, which both you and I support, seem to be able to manage without them. I also don’t see how nuclear weapons could help to defeat the modern threat which we face, namely from ISIS maniacs who either become suicide bombers or go on murderous rampages until they are taken out. But I am digressing.

When a party wins a general election, it is expected to implement the promises which it made in its manifesto, even though the Tories never seem to realise that. However, when you lose, it means your manifesto has been rejected by the electorate and the implication is that you need to think again.

It wasn’t a “1980s style, old-fashioned, traditional socialist agenda” which caused Labour to lose the elections of 2010 and 2015, and that’s not what will be offered in 2020. Policies such as the nationalisation of the railways – which was accepted by the Tories for nearly fifty years, and which is apparently very popular with the public (check some of those polls which you love to quote) – were accepted as mainstream until the Tories successfully shifted the so-called ‘centre ground’ to the right. Why should Labour tacitly accept that shift?

Since 1945, the Tories have never had fewer than 165 MPs (in 1997) and Labour has never had fewer than 209 MPs (in 1983). That means that even when there are landslide results, 374 of the 650 constituencies, 57.5%, never change hands. As there aren’t landslides most of the time, an even higher number of seats are, to all intents and purposes, ‘safe’. That tells us that whoever is chosen to be the candidate by the members of the dominant party in each of those constituencies will, without a shadow of a doubt, be elected as the MP. So please, don’t try to invoke ‘morality’ – the majority of MPs are in Parliament because they were chosen by local party members and merely rubber-stamped by the voters.

A sizeable number of Labour MPs (Jeremy Corbyn included) stood for election last year on a manifesto which included that commitment to a replacement for Trident. It doesn't mean that they agreed with all of it, such a document has to be a compromise. That’s what happens you join a party which aims to represent up to half the population, you understand that you won’t get everything you want but you accept the general direction in which the party wants to go.

As we all know, and as has now been repeated many times, Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party by a landslide last September. He didn’t win because of “the newly inflated membership”, he still had a large majority if you just count the votes of long-standing members. In political parties, a drastically increased membership is usually considered to be a good thing. It means more people to contribute financially and more foot soldiers to deliver leaflets and to canvass. In fact, exactly what MPs need to help them to get elected.

What you see as “the problem” is certainly not going to go away. Corbyn has been elected and will be Labour leader for the foreseeable future. As much as some of the right-wing MPs might like it, the party members are not going to be told that they’ve made a mistake and must go away and vote for someone whose views are closer to the ‘centre ground’ which the Tories have defined. If there was a successful attempt to unseat Corbyn, he’d either stand again and win again, or John McDonnell would stand and win, or there would be a hemorrhaging of members from the party. And who would then deliver and canvass for candidates?

When Corbyn was elected leader, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall, Chuka Umunna, Caroline Flint, Stella Creasy, Rachel Reeves and Tristram Hunt should have offered to serve in the shadow cabinet. They should have been prepared to stay and fight their corner, because Labour has always been at its best when it’s been a broad church of social democrats and socialists. Instead, they showed contempt for the tens of thousands of party members who had made their choice of leader, threw their toys out of the pram, scurried off to the back benches like bad losers, and in some instances started sniping from the sidelines in a way which will only benefit the Tories. In a political party, you don’t always get what you want, but if you believe in democracy, you live with it. If you really can’t live with it, you get out, as I believe you have done.

ghost whistler wrote:-
In Corbyn's own backyard ffs: http://dpac.uk.net/2016/02/how-islingtons-labour-run-council-are-dancing-to-iain-duncan-smiths-tune/

Local councils were all but emasculated by Thatcher. After she had shut down in 1985 the ones she particularly disliked (such as the GLC and the metropolitan county councils), rate-capping was applied to the others, severely restricting their opportunity to make decisions which were independent of the government of the day. Any councillors who did not adhere to Thatcher’s rules were liable to personally surcharged.

Under Cameron’s regime, local authorities have been forced to make cuts because they haven’t been able to raise the council tax, although Osborne has decreed that it may rise by 2% this year to help with the costs of social care. As to Islington, the council now has just 40% of the cash it had in 2010, so I don’t see how it has much choice other than to be the vehicle (and get the blame) for Osborne’s austerity plan to shrink the state.

http://www.islingtongazette.co.uk/seasonal/election/council_leader_90million_tory_cuts_will_be_catastrophic_1_4072265


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Caj82tMWwAAHrF3.jpg

The general consensus of opinion amongst many grass roots Labour members is that Labour lost in 2010 and again in 2015 because they were not "left enough" or "socialist enough" or words to that effect. Another common yet misguided (in my opinion) view, is that the Labour Party was "too similar to the Tories".

It is history which tells us ( or tells me at least ) that a traditional, socialist agenda is not attractive to the electorate, we saw this with Michael Foot and the disaster that was The 1980s, the same warnings were made then as are been made now, who could forget "The longest suicide note in history", unilateral nuclear disarmament, renationalization of recently privatized industries such as ship building and withdrawal from the EU.

Everyone seems to have an opinion as to what went wrong in the two general elections (2010 - 2015 ), the popular theory amongst many grass root members is that the party needs to reconnect with the working classes, which is where Mr Corbyn comes in.

Looking at what little evidence we have, there is nothing to back these claims, in fact quite the opposite.

Whilst we all accept that most polls got it wrong on the 2015 election, we also accept that the margin of error was not vast, and that there is always "some truth" in what a "series" of polls indicates; So bearing all these facts in mind, and looking at not simply one poll, but a series of polls over several months, most people, myself included, would conclude that Mr Corbyn is never going to be British Prime Minister.

Looking at a series of polls, the Labour vote in Scotland has actually gone even further down, indeed one poll (YouGov) this week has the Tories above Labour in Scotland, this could be an outliner, but if correct, then this would be a watershed moment, but whether it is accurate or not, the SNP are going to "walk away" with an even bigger majority than now in the Scottish election, no sign of any Corbyn effect.

With Scotland lost, and unfavourable boundry changes combined with constant poor poll ratings in England, the future for Labour is bleak, many observors think a swing in excess of the 1997 general election is required just to atain a simple majority, and from where I stand, that is looking like a very remote possibility.

I have no idea how this situation will end, one very dismal outcome could be that Corbyn remains in place, the Tories will then win a much larger majority in 2020, and Labour will simply fade away into irrelevance.

Another possibility is that the Parliamentary Labour Party could act, possibly after the May elections, with current rules Jeremy Corbyn would not get back onto the ballot paper, but of course the rule could be changed before that time; Most of the PLP could resign the party whip, there could be secret talks with the Lib Dems, or the least tipped outcome - a new party.

For me personally I have come a full circle, in the days of Militant and Michael Foot and unions calling the shots, I voted Liberal, and for around 25 years I have voted Labour, so now I return back to the Lib Dems (for now), but I live in hope.

IVAN I agree with your post and with another 4 years to go under this NASTY EVIL Tory gov't it ewill only get worse until the building of WORKHOUSES is the only solution to the problems within the UK.

Which will only leave two choices for the people of the UK either for the people to rise up against the Tories or sit back and take whatever the Tories dish out I know what my option would be.

The general consensus of opinion amongst many grass roots Labour members

In my CLP the general consensus of opinion among the grass roots members was that we supported Corbyn's candidacy for leader - because we felt that it would be important to define the Labour party as clearly different from the Tories - and none of the other candidates were offering a sufficiently different agenda to provide that definition.

It seems many CLP's voted the same way - and then a huge number (an unprecedented number?) of grassroots members voted him in.

We - the majority of Labour members - may be wrong, but in my view any organisation should be defined by its membership - so for the present I suggest that the direction Labour needs to go in is the direction indicated by its elected leadership.

I'm not sure I understand the rationale for joining the Lib Dems, whose main contribution over the past 6 years has been to facilitate the introduction of the first tranche of unacceptable Tory policy and then to disappear into insignificance - but it's not for me to tell anyone else how to live their lives

A very sensible post boatlady I wish certain Labour MPs would come to the same conclusion as you and your CLP, I did not vote for Jermy Corbyn but with 60% of the Labour membership voting for him he has the right to lead the Labour party and the MPs should give him a chance WHICH (certain MPs) have not done.

The Liberal Democrats had three choices in May 2010. To let the Tories rule as a minority government, to work with other parties (there were 307 Tory MPs and 343 non-Tories) in a coalition for a couple of years  while the voting system was changed (an idea which seems to be surfacing again), or to enter a formal coalition with the Tories. As we all know, they chose the latter, after only four days of negotiation (Belgium once took over a year to form a coalition, and the process is still dragging out in Spain at the moment).

The Lib Dems sold out big time. The party which had campaigned on a manifesto to the left of Labour’s dropped its ‘red line’ of PR, reversed its pledge on tuition fees, handed the keys of Downing Street to Cameron, and became enablers for the most right-wing Tory government in modern times. It beggars belief that anyone would want to support them with that track record, and it isn’t surprising that they are languishing at around 7% in the polls. If any party looks as if it is about to “fade away into irrelevance”, it’s that one.

Dozens of Labour MPs are not going to rush to give up the party whip, because they know it will be the end of their careers. And if "history tells us anything", it's that setting up a new party and splitting the vote only helps the Tories, as the loathsome Shirley Williams and her cronies showed us in the 1980s.

The Tories didn’t win a majority for 23 years until May last year, and then it was only 12 seats more than all other parties combined. In three successive elections, they didn’t manage to win 200 of the 650 seats, but they still came back. In 1993, the Canadian Tories were reduced to just 2 MPs, yet from 2006 until November last year, they ran the Canadian government again. The UK Labour Party has been around since 1900 and is not going to disappear. It’s the only alternative party of government to the rancid Tories, and sooner or later the voters will wake up and see what Cameron and his spivs and shysters are doing to them. It might be sooner if they weren't continually distracted by Labour MPs and supporters who are, frankly, just bad losers who won't accept the outcome of a democratic election, one which gave Jeremy Corbyn an overwhelming mandate to lead the party.

Peoiple vote for what they believe

I am very aware that the Lib Dems under Nick Clegg enabled the Tories to enact some pretty nasty and vile legislation, and I accept that by going into coalition with them, they did themselves a great deal of self harm, with about a third of members leaving.

Turning away from the Labour Party is not something I have done readily, or without a great deal of thought, I did actually join the party, but have suibsequently destroyed my card and stopped the direct debit payments.

Political parties do change and evolve with every twist and turn of history, the person who I believe was the greatest Prime Minister in my lifetime is now hated by many within the Labour Party, and he is openly refered to as a "war criminal" - "Traitor" and even worse a "Tory", well that is a clear indication to me that I no longer belong there.

The MP for Westmorland & Lonsdale ( Mr Tim Farron ) holds far more appeal for me than Jeremy Corbyn or John McDonnell, and I should point out that Tim Farron voted against the implimentation of The Bedroom Tax, he also opposed increasing tuition fees, and actually spoke out against Nick Clegg.

I do not agree with everything that the Lib Dems propose, nor do I agree with all that Mr Farron believes, but with the new direction of Labour, I feel most comfortable supporting the Liberal Democrats, a party I have voted for in the past.

I am convinced that the Lib Dems are the party with the best potential and opportunities for growing, the Labour Party is redifining itself with many "lefties" returning back to the party, but that really does leave an awful lot of "centrists" and "moderates", often refered to as "progressives" who are now uncomfortable, and who are increasingly been vilified and attacked, eventualy such people will seek a more appropriate home.

A few weeks ago I was having a drink with some friends of Ukrainian heritage, born in this country but who's grandparents were born in the former Soviet Republic, they asked me how on earth could I possibly support Jeremy Corbyn, they were pleased when I informed them that I no longer supported the Labour Party.

The ethnic Ukrainian-British are not a huge group in this country, but they are well organised, and proud of both cultures, and I find their stories, their culture, their history and opinions very interesting; What I can tell you is that almost all Ukrainian-British people detest Jeremy Corbyn, who they see as been friendly to Russia, and to their number 1 most hated person on the plannet....Vladimir Putin.

Sorry to say that much of Mr Corbyn's foreign and defence policy seems to have been written by either StopTheWAr Coalition or Lewis Caroll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE_jfOj52a4

You can always identify a politician by the easy manner in which they find themselves in agreement with the very person they're speaking to.

The Labour right crows about its “electability”. So why isn’t it interested in how it lost to Corbyn?

From an article by Owen Jones:-

After Jeremy Corbyn scraped on to the Labour leadership ballot with seconds to spare, he joked to an ally: “Now, make sure I don't win”. A seasoned, experienced frontline politician with backing from their parliamentary party would have found the last months beyond gruelling: and Corbyn only stood out of a sense of duty, to prevent the leadership campaign becoming a stampede to the right, rather than out of personal ambition, and without any apparent realistic prospect of victory.

But here's the thing. Many of Corbyn's opponents on the right of the Labour Party pride themselves on their electability, on being good at politics, but show little understanding about why they lost so badly in their own party. Without such a post mortem, involving contrition and political self-awareness, how do they expect to win back the leadership? As Stephen Bush puts it, anti-Corbyn Labourites are “keener on rubbing the lessons from the general election in the faces of the left, rather than subjecting itself to a painful post-mortem following Corbyn's own landslide”.

Corbyn won because of a thirst for a genuine alternative to Osbornomics; a contempt for the established political elite (a phenomenon sweeping the Western world); and a desire for a foreign policy that doesn't produce the calamity of the Iraq war and its ISIS offshoot. Politically savvy Labour opponents of Corbyn would surely ask how they could satisfy these desires and attempt to offer an inspiring vision in response. If they don't, they will certainly provoke much bitterness, but little else.

http://www.newstatesman.com/2016/02/labour-right-crows-about-its-electability-so-why-isn-t-it-interested-how-it-lost-corbyn

And the obsurdity of the above article ?

To suggest that Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper are of the right of the Labour Party, are you kidding. ?

The problem with Mr Corbyn's supporters and allies, is their perception that all who do not follow his rather extreme socialist brand, are "right wing" or "red tories", when the real truth is that people like Andy Burnham are in reality about smack bang in the middle of the Labour Party, they occupy the centre of the Labour Party, what some refer to as Centrists.

The defeat of Labour in 2010 was not exactly devastating, and the Tory Party did not exactly romp to a magnificent victory, and when you consider the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, and a very deep recession, the Tories failed to even win a majority.

Gordon Brown as prime minister was not New Labour, and neither was Ed Miliband, both had strayed away from New Labour and both rejected the stance of Tony Blair in his bid to take and hold the centre ground of British politics.

I am absolutely convinced that if David Miliband had led Labour into the 2015 election, we would today have a Labour government, but as ever in the past ( and in the future ) the left of the party always pull the carpet from beneath the feet of the party, once again they deny victory to Labour and ensure the continued Tory destruction of public services.

The Labour Party has always been able to encompass shades of opinion within its membership, and human memory tends to soften the differences with the passage of time.
Tony Blair was not particularly well-regarded by the PLP by the time he relinquished the Premiership in favour of Gordon Brown, as can be seen from a May 2007 commentary:

https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/11133/Tony+Blair%3A+down+and+out

Ivan wrote:Local councils were all but emasculated by Thatcher. After she had shut down in 1985 the ones she particularly disliked (such as the GLC and the metropolitan county councils), rate-capping was applied to the others, severely restricting their opportunity to make decisions which were independent of the government of the day. Any councillors who did not adhere to Thatcher’s rules were liable to personally surcharged.

Under Cameron’s regime, local authorities have been forced to make cuts because they haven’t been able to raise the council tax, although Osborne has decreed that it may rise by 2% this year to help with the costs of social care. As to Islington, the council now has just 40% of the cash it had in 2010, so I don’t see how it has much choice other than to be the vehicle (and get the blame) for Osborne’s austerity plan to shrink the state.

http://www.islingtongazette.co.uk/seasonal/election/council_leader_90million_tory_cuts_will_be_catastrophic_1_4072265

excuse after excuse.

witchfinder wrote:The general consensus of opinion amongst many grass roots Labour members is that Labour lost in 2010 and again in 2015 because they were not "left enough" or "socialist enough" or words to that effect. Another common yet misguided (in my opinion) view, is that the Labour Party was "too similar to the Tories".

It is history which tells us ( or tells me at least ) that a traditional, socialist agenda is not attractive to the electorate, we saw this with Michael Foot and the disaster that was The 1980s, the same warnings were made then as are been made now, who could forget "The longest suicide note in history", unilateral nuclear disarmament, renationalization of recently privatized industries such as ship building and withdrawal from the EU.

Labour aren't offering anything remotely socialist, nor have they. They are a capitalist party. This is the problem.

Redflag wrote:IVAN I agree with your post and with another 4 years to go under this NASTY EVIL Tory gov't it ewill only get worse until the building of WORKHOUSES is the only solution to the problems within the UK.

Which will only leave two choices for the people of the UK either for the people to rise up against the Tories or sit back and take whatever the Tories dish out I know what my option would be.

if you want rid of the tories, then protest, direct action and revolutoin are the only ways. Labour are not an alternative. They are fighting themselves and intent on emasculating Corbyn who has no influence or power.

ghost whistler wrote:if you want rid of the tories, then protest, direct action and revolutoin are the only ways. Labour are not an alternative. They are fighting themselves and intent on emasculating Corbyn who has no influence or power.

 I don't think it is either/or.   The careerists have been allowed to control the Labour Party for so long we tend to forget history.    In the past, the essential element in the Party was the trades union bureaucracy, but it wasn't the only element, and it could be shifted.    There have been liberals and tories trying to control it from almost the beginning, and always small organised groups to the left, and I reckon we can only succeed at such times as the two, Labour and the Left, are forced to work together.    I've tried both being in and being out, and neither is entirely satisfactory, but in the Party we can at least address hugely more people.

witchfinder. That’s it then, Jeremy Corbyn must resign immediately! The 251,417 of us who elected him leader of the Labour Party are all mistaken, and journalist Owen Jones is “absurd”. A couple of Ukranians in the pub have lied about Corbyn (he said in the FT that he is “no defender whatsoever of Putin or Russian foreign policy”), and from that you think you can extrapolate that “almost all Ukranian-British people” detest him, therefore his leadership must be doomed. Who is being absurd?

It’s also absurd to say that you’re “absolutely convinced” that David Miliband would have won the 2015 election, just as you don’t “know” that Corbyn will never become PM. David would have been subject to the same vilification as his brother (for bacon sandwich read banana) and blamed for being a senior member of the government which, in Tory mythology, caused a global financial meltdown. So Labour members were ‘wrong’ when choosing their leader in 2010 as well as last year, according to you? Don’t you think you’re being just a trifle arrogant?

There are more holes in your posts than in a colander. Nowhere in that article by Owen Jones does he single out either Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper as right-wingers. If you read it, you will see he is talking about Liz Kendall and Chuka Umunna. And Gordon Brown was most certainly part of New Labour. He and Tony Blair were the architects of it, with a little help from Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell.

The polls were very wrong last May, which is why the pollsters held their own post-mortem and decided that they hadn’t given enough weighting to the over-70s, who are the people most likely to vote and most likely to vote Tory. Every poll predicted a hung parliament, none predicted a Tory majority. As the Tories finished 6.5% ahead, and ended up with 99 more seats than Labour, I’d say that the polls were so far out as to be worthless, just like your prediction for the Oldham by-election last December: “It is already widely accepted that the result will not be good in Oldham, indeed some feel the party may even lose the seat.”

You place such importance on opinion polls, but completely ignore real polls, no doubt because they don’t fit your flawed argument. Labour increased its share of the vote in Oldham, an extremely rare event for an incumbent party in a by-election. Labour has gained council seats in by-elections in Kent and Cornwall, and increased its share of the vote by 12.7% in Chorley (Euxton North). No doubt if Labour does badly in the forthcoming Sheffield by-election, it will be all Corbyn’s fault; if Labour does well, the result will be glossed over.

Tim Farron agreed to the coalition with the Tories; the only Lib Dem MP who objected was the late Charles Kennedy. Farron didn’t take a ministerial post in the government, but he can’t now pretend that it was “nowt to do with me, guv”. Farron twice voted in favour of the bedroom tax on 9 March 2011, and he abstained on the issue on four subsequent occasions. His ‘conversion’ has come too late to make any difference, as the Tories now have a majority. Did Farron vote with the Tories (and with Shirley Williams) on the Health and Social Care Act of 2012? Who knows? Who cares? Farron and the remnants of his party are irrelevant. Not only have they lost at least a third of their members, but about two-thirds of those who voted for them in 2010 have deserted them. It took 90 years for them to recover from the previous time that they allowed the Tories to stitch them up, and it will probably do so again. You may well find yourself in the Guinness Book of Records for being the first person to climb aboard a sinking ship.

http://labourlist.org/2014/04/oppose-the-bedroom-tax-the-lib-dems-have-had-at-least-6-chances-to-oppose-it-and-failed/

Labour’s defeat in 2010 was “devastating”, the party lost 108 seats (from 366 to 258) and lost power. It was devastating for the sick and disabled, who were told by Iain Duncan Smith that “work makes you free”, and who have been treated with unbelievable cruelty ever since. But don’t worry about them, keep carping on about Corbyn instead of aiming your fire at the Tories.

The Trussell Trust says that 20% of people in the UK - 13 million – live below the poverty line, and that more than a million people received food supplies from their foodbanks in 2014-15. The Child Poverty Action Group informed us that 28% of children in the UK - 3.7 million - were living in poverty in 2013-14. Two-thirds of teachers have seen pupils coming to school hungry, and some teachers are resorting to taking in their own food to feed children. Oxfam warned us in 2013 that, in the UK, inequality is rapidly returning to levels not seen since the time of Charles Dickens. Instead of joining in with Tory tabloid smears about socialism being “old-fashioned”, it’s a pity you can’t see that the need for it hasn’t been greater for decades. Pussyfooting around a few ‘swing voters’ in Nuneaton won’t solve the nation’s problems, and I doubt if it will make such people take their heads out of the sand and stop voting Tory.

So what is “rather extreme” about Corbyn’s policies? Ending austerity, that Tory con trick to make ordinary folk pay for the excesses of their banking chums, the excuse for shrinking the state? Protecting workers’ rights, one of the reasons the Labour Party was set up in the first place? Scrapping tuition fees, which didn’t exist until Tony Blair introduced them and your Lib Dem friends tore up their pledges to scrap them and acquiesced in trebling them? Having a completely publicly-run NHS? Introducing rent controls in unaffordable areas? Renationalising the heavily subsidised but most expensive railway network in Europe? Anyone who finds those policies “extreme” doesn’t belong in the Labour Party.

As some of us have discussed on another thread, most people aren’t political geeks and don’t concern themselves with matters of left and right. They vote according to how politicians and their parties make them feel, and in the present climate of Tory corruption and ever-increasing inequality, ‘more of the same’ doesn’t cut much ice. It’s not just the case in Britain. A significant number of voters in Greece, Spain, France, and even with support for Bernie Sanders in the USA, are realising that the Thatcher/Reagan neoliberal agenda was a disaster and they’re looking for something different.

https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t1107-have-we-been-barking-up-the-wrong-tree

Corbyn won the Labour leadership by a landslide in each section of the constituency – members, registered supporters and affiliated supporters. So much for all the hype from some right-wingers about “infiltration”. He won because so many people wanted to go in a very different direction from the Blairites, with their support for unnecessary wars, more austerity and more privatisation. Let’s not forget that during Blair’s premiership, Labour support fell by four million between the elections of 1997 and 2005. The Blairite candidate in the latest leadership election, Liz Kendall, received a derisory 4.5% of the votes. That ought to have been the signal that the game is over for the Blairites and their kind of policies. All they are doing now is behaving like bad losers and damaging the party with a public display of disunity.

As always, Ivan, a very detailed and well-argued piece. It would be hard to disagree with it in so many respects.

However, Corbyn himself was by no means above making waves for the Party leadership and so he cannot expect total loyalty now from those within Labour - including many of his own MPs - who are at odds with his direction.

His convincing of the party faithful to vote for him as leader in such relatively large numbers is, of course, no guarantee that such enthusiasm will be replicated by the majority of the British public - a public which is ,unfortunately, notoriously prone to being convinced by the spiteful exhortations of the Daily Mail and The Sun.

Naturally, nobody can predict with any real certainty how any future election will go , but at least some of us who have experienced a few decades of watching the political tides ebb and flow do have this uneasy feeling that the Labour Party is not going to enjoy any meaningful election success - and certainly not nationally - for a good few years yet.

I shall be only too pleased to admit my error if I am proved wrong, but - despite his best intentions - I feel that Corbyn is ultimately a vote-loser amongst the social groups and key constituencies the Labour Party urgently needs to attract .

Penderyn wrote:I don't think it is either/or.   The careerists have been allowed to control the Labour Party for so long we tend to forget history.    In the past, the essential element in the Party was the trades union bureaucracy, but it wasn't the only element, and it could be shifted.    There have been liberals and tories trying to control it from almost the beginning, and always small organised groups to the left, and I reckon we can only succeed at such times as the two, Labour and the Left, are forced to work together.    I've tried both being in and being out, and neither is entirely satisfactory, but in the Party we can at least address hugely more people.

it very much is. voting perpetuates a system that exploits you. the labour party are simply on the left of capital. propagating their politics will achieve nothing.

ghost whistler wrote:In Corbyn's own backyard ffs: http://dpac.uk.net/2016/02/how-islingtons-labour-run-council-are-dancing-to-iain-duncan-smiths-tune/

Meanwhile the middle class posh elite who think the sun shines out of his arse will refuse to accept what is happening. As a consequence Labour, whoa re in the process of tearing themselves apart, will be again trounced by the Tories.

I would not be too quick to crow gw, the EU will do the same thing to the Tory party it has already started with many of his back benchers and his Ministers the next few months should be good fun to watch

The new leader of the Lib-Dems is no change from Clegg OW, he would jump back into bed with the Tories if given the chance