The New Leader of the Labour Party

[moof]

1 minute ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

No he wasn't. And the Sanders stuff doesn't amount to a hill of beans, and trying to draw an equivalence between him and Corbyn is ridiculous.

No, there are some pretty clear parallels. Are you alright? 

[Strontium]

3 minutes ago, Istvan Kuntstain said:

how do you feel about Netanyahus alignment with Otzma Yehudit, I have hinted at this before and got no response of yourself? 

 

Why would you even expect me to know what Otzma Yehudit is or to have an opinion on it?

 

I've looked them up and they're a bunch of racists inspired by that assassinated rabbi. So it should be pretty clear what I would think of them.

[Bjornebye]

12 minutes ago, Nelly-Torres said:

Thornberry and Starmer have pretty much announced that they will be running in any leadership campaign. 

Kenwrights made up 

[Sugar Ape]

3 minutes ago, lifetime fan said:

Thornberry would be an unmitigated fucking disaster. 

The absolute worst. I can’t think of a more condescending, sneering politician in the entire Labour Party. 
 

One thing all sides of the party should be aware of is splitting the vote of their faction. I’d imagine Starmer and Thornberry would attract a lot of the same voters, similarly if someone like Lavery or Lewis got the nominations they would take votes from RLB/Rayner. I think a few of them are going to have to swallow their pride and back a better placed candidate with similar values. 

[Strontium]

3 minutes ago, Istvan Kuntstain said:

Then surely Nethanyahu shouldn't be of elected as PM of Israel, same rules that applied to Corbyn. Yet you have constantly defended Israels action as far as I've seen on these boards. 

 

Yes, people keep telling me who and what I've supported, often inaccurately.

 

The only time I ever "defended" Netanyahu was when I suggested he wasn't a vampire:

 

On ‎13‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 13:22, Strontium Dog™ said:

Netanyahu should be in prison, but I'm quite certain he's not a vampire.

 

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

12 minutes ago, lifetime fan said:

Thornberry would be an unmitigated fucking disaster. 

David Lammy says "hold my beer".

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

1 minute ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

Yes, people keep telling me who and what I've supported, often inaccurately.

 

The only time I ever "defended" Netanyahu was when I suggested he wasn't a vampire:

 

 

You jumped the shark, there, Stronts. He's clearly a daywalker.

[aRdja]

13 minutes ago, Sugar Ape said:

You can’t just focus on the ‘red wall’ mate. It would be ridiculous to do that. If Labour would have backed Brexit and kept the red wall seats they would have lost a lot of other seats in metropolitan and student heavy places. They were in an impossible position on Brexit really. 
 

Their stance on Brexit for leadership candidates shouldn’t be a priority really, only that they accept it’s happening and commit to stopping the worst excesses of it. They’re going to have to simultaneously win back the voters they lost but also keep the ones they’ve already got. It won’t be an easy task. 
 

Also, like it or not, the Labour membership and also Labour voters are still overwhelmingly for remain. 
 

Another point would be that the only poll done on why people went from Labour to the Tories had Corbyn as a much more prominent reason than Brexit, though you may not accept that. It could be you are putting too much weight on Brexit in all this. 

I read somewhere that close to 80% of the seats lost were Leave voting constituents. I accept that Corbyn ultimately wasn’t good enough. His neutral stance on Brexit was a big part of that. I’ve always maintained that he should’ve backed Leave. He also stupidly tied himself down with the idiotic “kinder, gentler politics” nonsense. 

[The Guest]

Why do people try to reason with that pig?  He knows what he’s saying is complete shite but says it anyway to wind you up.  Just don’t respond to the cunt.

[Strontium]

4 minutes ago, The Guest said:

Why do people try to reason with that pig?  He knows what he’s saying is complete shite but says it anyway to wind you up.  Just don’t respond to the cunt.

 

Who the hell is this supposed to be aimed at?

[aRdja]

19 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

No he wasn't. And the Sanders stuff doesn't amount to a hill of beans, and trying to draw an equivalence between him and Corbyn is ridiculous.

Pretty sure he was. I think you actively participated too from memory.

[Sugar Ape]

2 minutes ago, viRdjil said:

I read somewhere that close to 80% of the seats lost were Leave voting constituents. I accept that Corbyn ultimately wasn’t good enough. His neutral stance on Brexit was a big part of that. I’ve always maintained that he should’ve backed Leave. He also stupidly tied himself down with the idiotic “kinder, gentler politics” nonsense. 

Agreed on the gentler politics stuff. You can’t compete with utter cunts like Johnson unless you’re prepared to get dirty yourself. 
 

With the Brexit thing, I strongly disagree. As I’ve said any leader wouldn’t be able to push right wing policies through with the current membership, the same applies to Brexit. The membership are pro remain. Most Labour voters are pro remain. That is just a fact. It would have been unwise to just ignore them and vote for Brexit. 
 

It’s no good keeping those leave seats they lost if they lose a shit load of remain seats in return. They had no good options. Think they need to draw a line under it now, accept it’s happening and make the battle on what kind of Brexit we are going to get.

[Red Phoenix]

2 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

Who the hell is this supposed to be aimed at?

 

The Guardian. It's what other media outlets say to them when they see they've covered another speech by Tony Blair like they've done again today.

[Strontium]

2 minutes ago, viRdjil said:

Pretty sure he was. I think you actively participated too from memory.

 

I said there was an issue with Green being singled out as the sole example of "the few", as I made abundantly clear at the time.

[Strontium]

1 minute ago, Red Phoenix said:

The Guardian. It's what other media outlets say to them when they see they've covered another speech by Tony Blair like they've done again today.

 

No, it was definitely aimed at someone here. It was a shithouse post.

[aRdja]

8 minutes ago, Sugar Ape said:

Agreed on the gentler politics stuff. You can’t compete with utter cunts like Johnson unless you’re prepared to get dirty yourself. 
 

With the Brexit thing, I strongly disagree. As I’ve said any leader wouldn’t be able to push right wing policies through with the current membership, the same applies to Brexit. The membership are pro remain. Most Labour voters are pro remain. That is just a fact. It would have been unwise to just ignore them and vote for Brexit. 
 

It’s no good keeping those leave seats they lost if they lose a shit load of remain seats in return. They had no good options. Think they need to draw a line under it now, accept it’s happening and make the battle on what kind of Brexit we are going to get.

No, I think what Corbyn should’ve done was to try to convince people in the party that the Brexit argument was over in 2016, and focus the conversations more on how to minimise the damage of Brexit, as opposed to continue entertaining the idea of remaining in the EU.

[Red Phoenix]

2 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

No, it was definitely aimed at someone here. It was a shithouse post.

 

Fair enough. I'm still wound up with the Guardian, going to imagine it was at them.

[aRdja]

6 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

I said there was an issue with Green being singled out as the sole example of "the few", as I made abundantly clear at the time.

I’d say if the criticism of Green came from someone not so vocal on supporting Palestinian rights, he wouldn’t have been called an anti-semite for voicing it, like they did with Jeremy.

[Manny]

Thornberry would be a disaster. No way. Anyway - been thinking about this a fair bit recently and I think Labour's fundamental problem is that "class" hasn't died, but it has in the minds of the people who Labour need to vote for them.

 

I recently was on Twitter looking at some of the hellscape timelines of gammon rejoicing in Brexit being unfettered and delighting in the demise of Labour. A lot of it seems to be the tribalisation of politics - treating the election like it's a football match, which the FPTP system is ripe for - but a lot of it is the fact that they just don't see Labour as on their side. Labour was formed as a party to help the disenfranchised, the poor, those with least etc. - but the problem is now that many of the people who still fall into that category don't feel like they are - home ownership, cars, holidays, whatever, they just don't see themselves as helpless. The Tory "aspiration" messaging taps into that.

 

Labour still attracts people who want to champion the underdog - but who's the underdog now if the British white working class don't think of themselves as the underdog? Minorities. And there's the problem - Labour reflects those causes, which further pushes the white working class and their traditional values away from the party, because they view the Labour party as supporting immigrants and LGBT causes they aren't arsed about at best and actively hate at worst. It's part of the reason why the split in this election has moved from left to right and more to big city / small town and high education / low education.

 

One of the gammon timeline I looked at was incensed at Eddie Izzard campaigning in a marginal seat, showing a picture of that next to soot-faced miners of the past and saying the Labour party has changed and I realised - this is the problem for the party. They're viewed as the party of the other; all the Tories have to do is position themselves as a party not for the other and they're instantly more attractive. I read this Twitter summary shortly after the election and it sums it up quite neatly, I think.

 

So I don't have a solution, just a diagnosis. Labour has lost swathes of it's core support, basically, and I've no idea how it can win them back without changing to be more socially right wing whilst still economically left wing (which I'd hate). Maybe Brexit will go so south that voters will have nowhere else to turn in 2024, but I'm skeptical even of that. With the media sewn up and social media a cesspit of disinformation that it just makes people trust their instinct even more than they would have done, I can't see any accountability being held to this government of hypercunts unless it's from the other front bench. They have to get this right I feel.

[Numero Veinticinco]

59 minutes ago, moof said:

Yep. It’s simply not sufficient or even feasible for the only priority being to win. We have to build a public consciousness about the problems we face; local, national and international. Winning elections won’t save us unless there’s a proper framework in place for transitioning beyond the current hegemonic capitalist system. 

I don’t think anybody body is saying winning is all that needs to be accomplished, just that winning must be the first thing accomplished to do anything. Being perfect and losing is beyond folly, it’s Tory paradise. 

[Sugar Ape]

5 minutes ago, viRdjil said:

No, I think what Corbyn should’ve done was to try to convince people in the party that the Brexit argument was over in 2016, and focus the conversations more on how to minimise the damage of Brexit, as opposed to entertaining the of remaining.

There was no way he was convincing the party of that. MPs and members overwhelmingly wanted a remain stance. 
 

With the way the numbers were in the last parliament, in retrospect, he should have let Johnson stew, denied him the election he wanted, and worked with the other parties to find a compromise for what they wanted to happen. Then voted that through.
 

Too late for that now though. It’s happening so we’ll all just have to live with it.

[Anubis]

John Mann laying into Starmer using Sally Gimson's removal as a candidate at the election, only to get slapped down by Gimson herself. If Mann doesn't like Starmer that's another feather in Starmer's cap.

[Sugar Ape]

13 minutes ago, Manny said:

So I don't have a solution, just a diagnosis. Labour has lost swathes of it's core support, basically, and I've no idea how it can win them back without changing to be more socially right wing whilst still economically left wing (which I'd hate). Maybe Brexit will go so south that voters will have nowhere else to turn in 2024, but I'm skeptical even of that. With the media sewn up and social media a cesspit of disinformation that it just makes people trust their instinct even more than they would have done, I can't see any accountability being held to this government of hypercunts unless it's from the other front bench. They have to get this right I feel.

 

I’ve seen a few people saying similar things. 
 

 

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

17 minutes ago, Anubis said:

John Mann laying into Starmer using Sally Gimson's removal as a candidate at the election, only to get slapped down by Gimson herself. If Mann doesn't like Starmer that's another feather in Starmer's cap.

Mann is such a gobshite. Michael Rosen's almost daily pestering of him on Twitter is quite funny. 

[Brownie]

As it stands, Starmer has my support as leader but it’s early days and I need to know his strategy on overcoming the Brexit stuff that would get thrown at him.