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?

Nice to see that the character assassination of Corbyn is now in full swing

Researcher Greg Dash tweeted this last night:-


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The left hand side of the Labour Party believes that you can take money from business, from companies, from rich people, and simply give it to poorer people, classic redistribution of wealth, good old fashioned Socialism

The other day Jeremy Corbyn announced that if he were Prime Minister ( if pigs could fly ), then every business in the land would have to provide an annual audit including a breakdown of all their employees, their age, gender, pay, whether any of the employees were disabled.

To the builder in Birmingham, the plumber in Peterborough or the small business in Bradford, it looks very much as though Labour is anti business, and that more red tape and form filling is on its way if Corbyn becomes Prime Minister, more inspectors, more people to breathe down your neck.

This of course is on top of previous commitments and pledges made regarding more tax inspectors, more investigators, which is all very well if you are a multi million pound business who uses loopholes to escape tax, but to Joe Bloggs who pays his annual £400 to his accountant, its all very worrying.

The left hand side of the Labour Party have no credible economic plan, except to spend a lot of money using notes of promise, they never understand that wealth must be created, which is then reasonably taxed and the money used to improve peoples lives and public services, the NHS and to support the less well off.

The only game in town is Capitalism, it is the only system around, the only one which is used, and it works.

The difference between between a Labour / Liberal / Progressive thinking person and a Tory, is that we believe that Capitalism should work for everyone, it should benefit all of society, and that Capitalism must have controls and must have social responsibilities.

Those that think there is an alternative to Capitalism, or that supply and demand does not work, or that profit is a dirty word, are not for real, its a kind of fantasy land.

So we have been given what being on the Left of the party wants and means....
Now can we have what the Right of the party will do for the workers?....
So far all we seem to hear is that if the party stays left it will not win the next election....

Only from tories. And we know what the Right will do for us: bugger all

In practical terms, a parliamentary party divided against its elected leader is like Doctor Doolittle's fabled Pushme-pullyu creature.

The smart money seems to be on Jeremy Corbyn emerging from a Leadership Contest confirmed in that post, possibly with an increased majority.

Dissenting Labour MPs will not have changed anything, so their alternatives will be resignation, causing a series of unnecessary by-elections, or make the best of a bad situation (as the despised Tories seem to be doing post-Brexit).  Sitting Labour MPs might well recall the way King Henry VIII's Court operated - Office Holders would bend the knee and pledge allegiance.  Perhaps with fingers crossed, but the alternative was just too terrible to contemplate.

Keir Hardie, George Lansbury, Clement Attlee, Michael Foot - not a charismatic tory liar amongst 'em.   No wonder we got such a superb government in 1945 or that the Social Democrat tories knifed us in the back at the time that suited their own party!

How much of this would have been considered "extreme" before 1979? Policy on Trident perhaps?  


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoZDjHAWgAAeybN.png (Compiled by Dr Éoin Clarke)

Most of you know I'm a Green Party activist, ex Labour CLP Secretary and Councillor and current UNISON steward so I hope it is accepted that I speak with some authority on Labour matters.

I came across a blog from the late Michael Meacher MP recently on Twitter. Written in 2012, it detailed the size and nature of 'Progress' within the Labour Party.

I remember it as a pro-Blairite entryist movement within Labour that used to bombard me with free publications that went straight into my overflowing bin. Michael described the scale of the Progress operation as being better funded than the Green Party, SNP or Plaid Cymru. In my opinion, Blairites set it up to move the centre of gravity of the Party to the right, ensure that Labour policies were Establishment friendly and provide a buttress against 'Old' Labour forces that remained in the Party against all the odds.

We are currently witnessing the struggle of the Progress sect against the soft and hard left in the Labour Party. I will be surprised if Corbyn does not win the new leadership contest by a Country Mile, swept back in with the support of 100's of 000's of recently joined members who are mainly on the progressive left.

I think that feelings are running so high against the #ChickenCoup Labour rebels in the PLP that mandatory deselections will follow by the currently suspended CLP's. The 172+ anti-Corbyn rebels in the PLP will surely jump before they are pushed to set up a new party with an off-the-peg set of wealthy business donors and even one or two large trade unions (fractures are starting) such as the GMB.

There may yet be a legal battle over who 'owns' the Labour Party name. If the rebels fight this and lose, they already have their name courtesy of Blair:

PROGRESS (in this case backwards)

SSERGORP (sorry - couldn't resist)

I'm heartened to read your take on this, Chas - often feel bombarded by the voices telling me Labour will not be electable under Jeremy Corbyn while at the same time the party has fielded a challenger, in the shape of Owen Smith, who seems to be parroting the left-wing policies put forward by Corbyn - but somehow I don't believe any of those policies would survive a successful challenge.

I really hope Corbyn wins the leadership vote - again - and that the other part of your prediction also takes place - the right-wing of the party moving away to establish themselves as a new party - called of course SSERGORP

Tempus rerum imperator ....

Perhaps not "of course" SSERGORP when other possibilities for a new-broom socialist party could be SETIRIALB; SRESOLEROS; RUOBALWENWEN; or for those with a longer memory, the PLDSWEN.

YMEREJTUBENOYNA might be too obvious.

Progress - is a group within Labour which appeals to and represents the centre ground, and can be rightfuly described as been Social Democratic.

Momentum - on the other hand is actually a Jeremy Corbyn fan club, and nothing else.

You will find no articles anywhere on the Progress website which are hostile to Jeremy Corbyn, or are divisive, but instead you will find articles highly critical of Sir Philip Green, articles which are critical of Donald Trump columnists writting about social justice.

There are other groups within Labour ( and always have been ) which represent the more left wing socialist side of Labour, and the OTHER "moderate" group within Labour which DOES attack the policies of Jeremy Corbyn is the "Labour First" group, which defends the record of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

A brief passage from Labour First :

"It’s time to set the record straight on the last Labour government’s proud record. It wasn’t ‘Tory Lite’. Most achievements were opposed by the Tories, who claimed the investment in public services was ‘wasteful’, the Minimum Wage would ‘cost a million jobs’ and improved rights at work was ‘red tape’"

So who could argue with this ?

Chas Peeps wrote:-
I will be surprised if Corbyn does not win the new leadership contest by a Country Mile, swept back in with the support of 100's of 000's of recently joined members who are mainly on the progressive left.

witchfinder wrote:-
The PLP is not in the pockets of the thousands of ex SWP and Green Party members who have recently signed up, they are firstly answerable to the electorate - thats democracy.

What a mess we’re in! How did it happen? Whatever else you might say about Ed Miliband, we can now see that he succeeded in holding the Labour Party together after the 2010 defeat. The party then introduced a wider electorate for choosing its future leaders, which was very laudable, but the unintended consequence was to expose the wide rift between the MPs and the membership. While the MPs can claim to have been endorsed by the electorate, let’s never forget that they only get to stand as Labour candidates by being selected by the local party members who are their foot soldiers during election campaigns.

Over 400,000 people have joined the Labour Party since Jeremy Corbyn first stood as a leadership candidate. If they are reckoned to include “many thousands of Marxists” and “ex-SWP members”, let's see some evidence to support that assertion. I don’t think the SWP has more than about 1,500 members in total, and when other groups such as the TUSC contest elections they only usually get into double figures. To suggest, without some proof, that most or many of the new Labour members and registered supporters are Trotskyite revolutionaries is little more than a smear.

But that seems to be par for the course. Corbyn has been attacked for “not doing enough” during the EU referendum campaign. For the record, he made 123 appearances across the UK on behalf of the Remain camp, 60 of them in June. People queue up to tell us that Corbyn is “unelectable” yet, despite all the predictions, Labour has won every parliamentary by-election (some with an increased percentage of the vote) and all four mayoral elections in the past year. On the other hand, the mediocre candidate put up to oppose Corbyn now, Owen Smith, couldn’t win Blaenau Gwent, once a safe seat for Nye Bevan and Michael Foot, in a by-election in 2006. Smith, once a lobbyist for Pfizer, is so thick that when he was a journalist and his editor asked him to get a quote from a policeman, he is alleged to have dialled 999. Smith claims that he dialled a police hotline. Whatever the truth, he should have done neither, and the incident displays his lack of common sense.

Smith has distorted what Corbyn said about the selection of MPs. After the next election there will only be 600 MPs instead of the present 650, because the Tories have been gerrymandering the constituencies to give themselves an even greater advantage than they have now. The extensive boundary changes required will mean that there will have to be re-selection of MPs. That is not the same as de-selection.

Last year I gave my first preference vote to Jeremy Corbyn, after initially being inclined to vote for Andy Burnham. I don’t care who stands against Corbyn now, he gets my vote as a matter of principle. This election should not be taking place, and the Labour Party needs to change its rules to prevent any challenges to a new leader for at least three years, so that the party can concentrate all its efforts on opposing the Tories. The MPs who refused to serve in Corbyn’s shadow team from day one, and all those who have been plotting against him ever since, have shown their contempt for the party membership and acted as if the 500,000 plus of us don’t exist. And then we had the spectacle of Michael Foster going to court to try to overturn the NEC’s decision to allow Corbyn to be on the ballot paper when he’s being challenged, a move which if successful would have handed the leadership of the party to Smith unopposed. Whatever democracy might be, it isn’t that.

There are what seems to me very reasonable arguments on both sides of this argument, on the one hand it is true that Jeremy Corbyn was elected by a clear majority of Labour Party members, including the many new members.

Is there an acceptable argument that democracy can in actual fact go too far, does pursuing democracy sometimes depart from the realm of common sense. ?

Take for example the membership of the Conservative Party, who do not have the same say or influence as do Labour Party members, most Tory party members would probably bring back public flogging, we would have left the EU long ago, and what most of them would like to do to the welfare state does not bare thinking about.

My point is that the grass roots members of the two big political parties have strong, passionate political beliefs, but in my opinion they are often not in tune with what the wider electorate wants to hear, or what the ordinary man or woman believes in.

The crunch questions are ... would the electorate vote for a Labour Party with a policy of abandoning our independent nuclear deterent ?, would the electorate vote for a party who s leader seems luke warm on NATO membership, and indifferent to EU membership, a leader who is fundamentally opposed to the British head of state, and who s ethics whilstmay be well principled, will simply hand over billions of pounds worth of trade with the likes of Saudi Arabia to our competitors.

The people who support Jeremy Corbyn must accept that his style of Labour Party, and his style of leadership is a departure from what the Labour Party has been all about for the last 25 years.
What if he is an electoral liability ?, what if he is another Michael Foot, with Momentum taking the place of Militant, if he did lead the party into the the next election, then what if it resulted in a mirror image of 1983 - the worst Labour result since the Great War.

You can have a Party that pleases Murdoch and wins elections, or you can have a party that stands for your interests and fight to get power. Those are the choices there are.

But you apparently can't have an electorate with a mind of its own.

witchfinder wrote:-
Is there an acceptable argument that democracy can in actual fact go too far, does pursuing democracy sometimes depart from the realm of common sense?

Yes. Asking people to vote in a referendum on our membership of the EU, when the vast majority of them don’t have a clue as to how the EU operates or what benefits membership brings. For years they’ve been subjected to nothing but negativity and downright lies about the EU from right-wing tabloids peddling the interests of their owners.

Choosing the leader of the party to which you belong is a lot more straightforward, regardless of whether you select on personality or policies. Maybe the system which William Hague devised for the Tories has some merits: MPs whittle the challengers down to just two, after which the members decide. However, they didn’t get to choose in 2003 (when Michael Howard was the only candidate), or this year because Andrea Leadsom withdrew from the last two.

.....will simply hand over billions of pounds worth of trade with the likes of Saudi Arabia to our competitors.

I’d applaud any politician who was principled enough to stop selling armaments to the murderous so-called royal family of Saudi Arabia, who had 47 people beheaded in one day in January. Who knows where those armaments end up in the cauldron of the Middle East. As somebody pertinently posted on Twitter recently, if you export armaments you must expect to import refugees.

...a leader who is fundamentally opposed to the British head of state

Jeremy Corbyn is not “opposed to the British head of state”. I’m sure he bears no personal animosity to Mrs Windsor. Like any real democrat, he’s opposed to the institution of a hereditary monarchy, the medieval idea that accident of birth entitles you to be head of state, no matter how ill-fitted for the role you may be, and to enjoy a lavish lifestyle at the taxpayers’ expense, swanning around in umpteen palaces while many of your ‘subjects’ are relying on food banks and sometimes sleeping in doorways.

what if it resulted in a mirror image of 1983 - the worst Labour result since the Great War.

1983 - Tories 397, Labour 209, Libs/SDP 23
1924 - Tories 412, Labour 151, Liberals 40

oftenwrong wrote:But you apparently can't have an electorate with a mind of its own.

Where would you get that from, when untold billions are spent on brainwashing the mugs? To get people to think is very, very hard work.

Supporters of the Labour Party are entitled to have feelings of despair during the current feverish discord within and without, but for so long as the Right Wing propaganda machine continues to attack Corbyn on every front there must remain the very real possibility of a Socialist government after the next general election.

Otherwise they wouldn't bother, would they?

Nice thought - hope you're right

....there must remain the very real possibility of a Socialist government after the next general election.

If attendances at Corbyn's rallies - such as at this one in Liverpool last night - were more than just anecdotal evidence, you may be right. Sadly, openly divided parties never win elections, and I fear that the next one is already lost.


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oftenwrong wrote:Supporters of the Labour Party are entitled to have feelings of despair during the current feverish discord within and without, but for so long as the Right Wing propaganda machine continues to attack Corbyn on every front there must remain the very real possibility of a Socialist government after the next general election.

Otherwise they wouldn't bother, would they?

Might take a bit longer, with all the careerists sabotaging like mad, but I think things are looking more hopeful than they have for many years.

A Corbyn rally in Brighton tonight. As you can see, only 5 people turned up, all of them Trotskyites.


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In the interests of balance, this was Owen Smith's rally in Liverpool last Saturday:-


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I've heard it said that the mass turnout for Corbyn means nothing - all the real power rests with the PLP who answer to the electorate as a whole, who mostly don't have faith in Corbyn and don't believe he could succeed as Prime Minister.

If that's the case, you have to wonder where all these enthusiasts are going to focus all this energy once Corbyn is defeated.

I believe he is likely to win the vote for Labour leader but if the PLP continue their war of attrition and the media blackout continues there's going to be a lot of disappointed people come 2020

The point is that the PLP represents only the media... It is composed of careerists who care nothing for us. They will leave and form a new gang of Social Democrats, be expelled or do as they are told. They are a great embarrassment, but the sooner we face the problem and clear 'em out the better.

Penderyn's comment is amplified in an article by Jonathan Freedland in Saturday's Guardian.

"....For the Corbynites, strength and competence in parliament would be nice, but not essential. For some, the words "MP" and "Parliament" are suspect: that much was visible from the reaction of the pro-Corbyn section of the audience when Smith mentioned them in Cardiff. They smack of the establishment...."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/05/corbyn-cant-dismiss-mps-brexit-centre-stage

At our local CLP meeting to vote for who we wanted as leader I was gratified to find that the local councillors led the way in voting for Jeremy Corbyn

Reason given - they resent the PLP assumption that the PLP IS the Labour party and the irresponsible mounting of a public attack on the elected leader - which they felt brings the party in to disrepute and will seriously damage their chances of remaining as local councillors. They commented that, although they had been unconvinced of Corbyn's suitability they were pleasantly surprised and gratified to see the influx of enthusiastic new members and felt this was a good thing for the party.

This was surprising because last year they were nearly all wanting to vote for a 'moderate' saying they felt this would make the party more electable.

Seems the PLP may have misjudged the mood somewhat ----

Perhaps the PLP believes that PLP stands for Proper Labour Party and CLP stands for Counterfeit Labour Party?

As this saga develops, it begins to seem more and more as though you may be right about that astradt1

Will the cost of the appeal against the court ruling about letting those who have joined the Party since Jan 2016 be paid for out of the subscriptions of members or from some magic fund?
Has the membership been asked about this?

Explaining the love for Jeremy Corbyn

An article by Helen Lewis.

A political movement of hundreds of thousands of people, which has sprung up within a year, demands proper attention. What's behind the support for the Labour leader? It is too simple to dismiss Corbyn’s supporters as merely idealistic young protest voters, or Trot re-treads. Here are 11 reasons for supporting Jeremy Corbyn which kept cropping up in my discussions on social media:-

1. There’s no point being Tory-lite.
2. Scotland shows that a left-wing party can take power.
3. Jeremy Corbyn has won by-elections and mayoral elections — proving that he can win in the country.
4. The PLP undermined him from the start. He didn’t have a chance.
5. The media undermined him from the start. He didn’t have a chance.
6. Corbyn has achieved victories in Parliament, despite the media and the PLP. For example, he has fought successfully against welfare cuts.
7. Corbyn has pulled the political consensus to the left.
8. This is the first step to remaking politics and forging a progressive alliance.
9. I can’t see Labour winning in 2020 with Owen Smith either.
10. “He has stuck to his principles.”
11. “I feel like I’m being heard for the first time in my life.”

For the details:-
http://www.newstatesman.com/2016/08/explaining-love-jeremy-corbyn

Richard Burgon MP has posted his thoughts on Twitter about the current mess in the Labour Party.......


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As I've frequently said, I am no believer in fuhrers, but the election of Mr Corbyn opened the door to a hope I had almost forgotten. I didn't vote for him, because I don't believe in paying for votes, but I rejoined the Party at once, hoping we'd return to socialism and democracy, and so far all has been well, and I've contributed more than I have to anything since the Miners' Strike, though, as always, the careerists tried to destroy all our Party ever stood for. As to Penderyn's view of Parliament, it is meant to be representative, and if it isn't, it is not doing its job. Its members were elected to represent the views of their parties, but they soon swell up like balloons with the notion that the populace are full of love and admiration for their (generally pretty shoddy) selves, and I say that from knowledge, for I have known a few shockers (no names, no packdrill!). Ivan's quotation is bang on - if they don't stand for us and for socialism, what is the use of them? 'The rumour that ye hear/Is the mingled sound of battle and deliv'rance drawing near/For the hope of every creature is the banner that we bear/And the world is marching on!'

Ivan,

After members, rightly, won their right to vote in the leadership contest it now seems the Labour Party are going to appeal against the decision.....what a disgraceful insult to members. It is really disheartening to see the party big wigs doing their utmost to curtail democratic processes recently; but not surprising that they have behaved so underhand - this is Mandelson's, Campbell's, and Blair's autocratic legacy.

The lies about all the new members being extreme left activists, Trotskyists, Marxists, etc are also a disgrace. Most the folk I know who have joined are people who were inspired by Corbyn and the potential offered to return Labour to it's root values......they joined because they thought they now saw the potential of real choice - instead of Tory or Tory Lite Labour.

Owen Smith, and his backers in the PLP, have a platform to engage people who support them and get them to join the party and vote Owen - so why don't they? Perhaps people simply don't really believe, or feel inspired enough by Smith and co. to join up and vote him in as leader.

The partys slump in the polls is a direct result of the rebel PLP members actions.....that much should be obvious; and for the Smith and his cohorts to point to the polls and say 'look at what Corbyn has done' is just another disgraceful lie. I'm pretty sure if they'd rallied behind Corbyn after the referendum and attacked the Tories they would be doing pretty well now.

All I can say about the latest codswallop about Trotskyite infiltration is than, from my own knowledge of current numbers on the revolutionary left, any body organising infiltration must be importing comrades - from America perhaps?

Penderyn. You’re spot on. Nearly four hundred new members have joined my local branch in little over a year, which is fairly typical of the story elsewhere. With over half a million members, Labour is now Europe’s largest political party. The more people who join, the less chance there is that any Trotskyists will gain any influence.


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Tom Watson appears to be unaware of the thousands who have joined (not “entered”) or re-joined the Labour Party because they want to be part of a movement against austerity and against further privatisation of public services. Maybe Tom Watson should issue some ‘Spot the Trot’ guidance for us innocent folk. We need to know what to look out for.....  

As for my thoughts about today’s court decision, I think the comedian Mark Steel expresses them better than I can:-

“Never before can an organisation have illegally banned its own members from voting in an election it promised them a vote in, then spent the money it took from those members on appealing to the High Court to try and keep the ban. What a boost this approach would be for British business. Comet would never have gone bankrupt if anyone buying a washing machine had handed over their money and then been told they wouldn’t be given a washing machine.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/labour-jeremy-corbyn-ban-members-from-voting-high-court-can-t-be-trusted-economy-a7184971.html

If anything this ruling will simply further anger members towards the NEC and increase support for Corbyn. The NEC and PLP have shown themselves to be anti-democracy at every step in their attempts to oust Corbyn as leader.......their behaviour has been shameful, underhand, conniving, and an embarrassment to the party - they are a cancer in the party that needs to be removed.

The funny thing is the NEC and rebels only appealed this because they know the massive surge in membership are primarily people who support Corbyn. They know nobody is joining to support the born again lefty careerist Owen Smith........why haven't we seen tens of thousands joining to support Smith - according to all those backstabbing Tory lite Labour rebels 'people on the doorstep' don't want Corbyn, so why haven't the traitor rebels persuaded all those people to join Labour and vote Owen. Could it be that they are full of shit and are simply seeking to return power in the party to neo-liberal austerity supporting tory lite bedroom tax supporting welfare cuts supporting Blairists who support no real change, will make no real difference, but get to sit their arses smugly on the opposition benches waving Tory policies through as they pick up their MPs salaries and expenses.

I wouldn't be surprised if they now rig the vote.......I hope it is independently monitored to avoid such a possibility.

Ah! I see....

The literature cited by WikiLeaks confirms that immediately after Labour’s victory in the 1997 general election, Sales was recruited by Tony Blair. Interestingly, it also reveals that Sales used to be a practising barrister at law chambers 11KBW, of which Tony Blair was a founder member. At the time of the appointment, there was uproar over Sales’ appointment and plunged Blair into a cronyism row.

http://evolvepolitics.com/labour-appeal-fury-as-high-court-judge-philip-sales-intimate-links-to-tony-blair-revealed/

Finland has only ever had neighbouring Russia to worry about. We've got a Tory government and a flightless bird Labour Party.

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/economy/jeremy-corbyn-says-uk-should-seek-economic-inspiration-in-finland/ar-BBvAjbQ?li=BBoPMmp&ocid=iehp