Stop voting for fucking Tories

[JM2K6]

We're reaching a point of asking what the Labour party is for.
- It can't unite the centre/centre left/left
- It isn't the party of the organised working class
- It doesn't represent Scotland and Wales at Westminster
- It isn't seen as a government in waiting or as a viable radical alternative
- It isn't going to win an election any time soon

At some point does it's urban and wealthier vote follow the Germans and head to the Greens?

Indeed. Doesn’t time fly - only one Labour leader has gained a comfortable majority in the last fifty years, even the US has elected four Democrat presidents in that time. I recently read The Strange Death of Liberal England and I wonder whether we’re seeing the death of Labour. The realignment of the Left that’s discussed after a lot of elections seems a long way off.
Another thing - Labour won comfortably in 03 and 07 and one might expect that MPs elected then would be political big/hitters now but of course they’re branded as Blairite.

Aye. Labour is two factions that can't stand each other. Anecdotally it seems to me that the left hates the rest of Labour more than they hate the Tories. As someone who probably agrees with a lot of what the left wants to achieve, it's baffling to me that they spend so much energy on infighting. I mean ffs, (TWITTER KLAXON!!!) Jess Phillips was trending today and it was 99% Labour-left banging on about her laughing at the scale of Corbyn's defeat, a ridiculous story that was spun by the Canary at the time because she let out a disbelieving laugh and it was caught on camera. They still haven't forgiven her for this, and they are willing to believe the worst of everyone who isn't a Corbynite.

And the centre definitely does not like Momentum and the Corbynites, but (IMO) for somewhat saner reasons. Again anecdotally but at least they seem to concern themselves more with the Tories than the left does.

Endlessly frustrating. If we weren't in a FPTP system, Labour would be at least 2 parties and politics would be better for it.

[Ymx]

Labour all went wrong with the wrong Miliband and then never got better.

[GogLais]

Labour all went wrong with the wrong Miliband and then never got better.

Oh God, Ms GL has the political hots for David Milliband. I keep having to pour cold water over her to reminder her that he isn’t riding to the rescue.

[tabascoboy]

Holy shit, Greens beat the Tories in my County Council seat Paying for some unpopular local issues...not sure that it's ever been anything but Tory or NOC before

County will still be blue though

[iarmhí]

Ruth Davidson loses Edinburgh Central seat to SNP.

[Kawazaki]

The Tory mayor of Tees valley has done well.

In 2017 he won by 2000 votes only after 2nd votes were counted.

This time he has secured 73% of the votes cast, and a stonking majority of 45,641 on 1st preference votes!

Is that the Tees Valley oop north full of northerners or a different one?!

[Kawazaki]

We're reaching a point of asking what the Labour party is for.
- It can't unite the centre/centre left/left
- It isn't the party of the organised working class
- It doesn't represent Scotland and Wales at Westminster
- It isn't seen as a government in waiting or as a viable radical alternative
- It isn't going to win an election any time soon

At some point does it's urban and wealthier vote follow the Germans and head to the Greens?

Indeed. Doesn’t time fly - only one Labour leader has gained a comfortable majority in the last fifty years, even the US has elected four Democrat presidents in that time. I recently read The Strange Death of Liberal England and I wonder whether we’re seeing the death of Labour. The realignment of the Left that’s discussed after a lot of elections seems a long way off.
Another thing - Labour won comfortably in 03 and 07 and one might expect that MPs elected then would be political big/hitters now but of course they’re branded as Blairite.

Aye. Labour is two factions that can't stand each other. Anecdotally it seems to me that the left hates the rest of Labour more than they hate the Tories. As someone who probably agrees with a lot of what the left wants to achieve, it's baffling to me that they spend so much energy on infighting. I mean ffs, (TWITTER KLAXON!!!) Jess Phillips was trending today and it was 99% Labour-left banging on about her laughing at the scale of Corbyn's defeat, a ridiculous story that was spun by the Canary at the time because she let out a disbelieving laugh and it was caught on camera. They still haven't forgiven her for this, and they are willing to believe the worst of everyone who isn't a Corbynite.

And the centre definitely does not like Momentum and the Corbynites, but (IMO) for somewhat saner reasons. Again anecdotally but at least they seem to concern themselves more with the Tories than the left does.

Endlessly frustrating. If we weren't in a FPTP system, Labour would be at least 2 parties and politics would be better for it.

I heard a stat recently (on Heart FM of all places ) that there are about 15m Twitter accounts registered to UK inhabitants but only about 15% of those are active. Of that 2.25m just 5% of those are responsible for about 90% of the UK Tweet output.

In short, Twitter (thankfully) doesn't represent the vast majority of the UK.

[Hal Jordan]

The problem with the left is that they have always been far happier stabbing each other in the front, back and sides than fighting the opposition. The right is equally stabby, but manages to keep a lid on it come election time to present a united front to look creditable.

[Lobby]

The Tory mayor of Tees valley has done well.

In 2017 he won by 2000 votes only after 2nd votes were counted.

This time he has secured 73% of the votes cast, and a stonking majority of 45,641 on 1st preference votes!

Is that the Tees Valley oop north full of northerners or a different one?!

It’s the one up north, that includes Hartlepool; indeed, one of the reasons the Tories are thought to have done well there is because Ben Houchen has done so well as Mayor in his first term.

[Biffer]

Bailey doing better than expected just means he’s not losing by 20 points, yeah?

Greens seem to be picking up a lot of seats.

[Dogbert]

Ruth Davidson loses Edinburgh Central seat to SNP.

That Baroness Davidson , you pleb (something in Ermine now )

[Tichtheid]

Plans for 50% funding cut to arts subjects at universities ‘catastrophic’

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... tastrophic

[SaintK]

Patel's immgration plans not going down too well elsewhere

Not a single European country has decided to support the UK government’s controversial asylum plans, with the UN on Saturday night criticising the proposals as so damaging they risked Britain’s “global credibility”.
Six weeks after the home secretary, Priti Patel, unveiled a sweeping immigration overhaul that included deporting migrants who enter the UK illegally to safe countries such as “France and other EU countries”, sources have said the Home Office has been unable to persuade any European state to sign up to the scheme.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/20 ... seekers

[Hal Jordan]

Plays to the narrative, though. "We could have sent those mansion dwelling, benefits scrounging job taking economic asylum seekers back where they came from if the EU had been willing to do a deal!"

[Random1]

Question for anyone who identifies as a lefty; do you think the guardian and canary publications help in labour’s quest for power or hinder it?

[JM2K6]

No lefty is going to conflate the two. The canary and the Guardian are quite some distance apart.

[Random1]

No lefty is going to conflate the two. The canary and the Guardian are quite some distance apart.

Ok, the guardian then.

[Random1]

In fact, Might as well put my mind down first;

I find the guardian very anti Britain and more importantly, anti the man on the Clapham omnibus. Almost all stories are about how shit things are and preachy.

I completely understand that this is slanted by the fact that the left haven’t been in power for ages, so they’re raging against the construct, but I do wonder if a bit of hope might inspire some voters.

And so my thought is; are the guardian making a left government less likely, rather than more likely?

[JM2K6]

[Random1]

?

[dpedin]

Hear we are doing a Republican play now and changing the voting process for Mayors because the Tories are unhappy about losing. Bastards!

[Tichtheid]

In fact, Might as well put my mind down first;

I find the guardian very anti Britain and more importantly, anti the man on the Clapham omnibus. Almost all stories are about how shit things are and preachy.

I completely understand that this is slanted by the fact that the left haven’t been in power for ages, so they’re raging against the construct, but I do wonder if a bit of hope might inspire some voters.

And so my thought is; are the guardian making a left government less likely, rather than more likely?

The Guardian is most certainly not anti-Britain or anti-"The man on the Clapham omnibus", unless that man is exclusively right wing, not just slightly engaged, soft Tory voter, but actively "Devil take the hindmost".

This is just "if you don't like it go and live in Russia", as if being British/English/Welsh/Nrn Irish/Scottish is only for the right of the political spectrum, I reject that notion vehemently.

As for whether or not The Gruaniad makes a difference to elections, I very much doubt it, people who are not likely to vote Leftist won't read it or dismiss it, for those who vote Leftist it's a sounding board (or echo chamber, for those who don't like it).
The physical copies don't sell nearly as much as the right wing press does, and although its online presence is quite successful, I don't think it has influence beyond "speaking to the choir" sort of thing.

[JM2K6]

Leftists largely hate the Guardian. Labour are not in any real sense a leftist party.

[Paddington Bear]

The voting intentions of paper readers are always eye opening. c.20% of Guardian readers vote Tory and a significant chunk of Sun and Mail readers vote Labour. Politics is complicated.

Fwiw my take on the Guardian is it is a serious paper let down by a comic comment section. The Telegraph does the same the other way of course. I'd be much more likely to buy a paper from somewhere that scrapped the opinion section.

[Tichtheid]

Leftists largely hate the Guardian. Labour are not in any real sense a leftist party.

At the risk of being clichéd, it's not what it was, but some of their writers are worth reading, Marina Hyde is usually good for a gallows-humour-style laugh

[JM2K6]

Leftists largely hate the Guardian. Labour are not in any real sense a leftist party.

At the risk of being clichéd, it's not what it was, but some of their writers are worth reading, Marina Hyde is usually good for a gallows-humour-style laugh

Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't hate the Guardian. Christ knows where I'd put myself on the scale from centrist to leftist. I'm just tediously familiar with how many of the Labour supporters who would consider themselves leftists - and how many leftists who hate Labour, particularly post-Corbyn - genuinely loathe the Guardian. Almost as much as they loathe Tony Blair, which is more than they loathe the Tories...

I think they have plenty of good writers, some bad ones, and Comment is Free is where the real madness happens. And La Hyde is a treasure.

[Insane_Homer]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/0 ... rliaments/

Boris Johnson expected to top list of Tory MPs under investigation by parliament's sleaze watchdog

Kathryn Stone will publish the names of those accused of breaking the Code of Conduct, and the nature of the alleged breaches

Boris Johnson is expected to top a list of Tory MPs “named and shamed” for being under investigation by parliament's sleaze watchdog....

[Torquemada 1420]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/0 ... rliaments/

Boris Johnson expected to top list of Tory MPs under investigation by parliament's sleaze watchdog

Kathryn Stone will publish the names of those accused of breaking the Code of Conduct, and the nature of the alleged breaches

Boris Johnson is expected to top a list of Tory MPs “named and shamed” for being under investigation by parliament's sleaze watchdog....

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 44812.html

Boris Johnson being investigated over luxury £15,000 Caribbean holiday

[Insane_Homer]

[Hal Jordan]

People don't care, that's the problem. "Boris" has that Berlusconi magic of concealing his corrupt vileness behind a japey bunga bunga personality that people think is a hilarious prankster.

I see further removal of scrutiny and accountability is laced through the Queen's Speech. Voter suppression (sorry, fraud prevention) and an attack on judicial review.

[Rinkals]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/0 ... rliaments/

Boris Johnson expected to top list of Tory MPs under investigation by parliament's sleaze watchdog

Kathryn Stone will publish the names of those accused of breaking the Code of Conduct, and the nature of the alleged breaches

Boris Johnson is expected to top a list of Tory MPs “named and shamed” for being under investigation by parliament's sleaze watchdog....

I suspect that any list of Tory wrong-doers will be blank.

Not because there are none, but because they won't be held accountable.

[Hal Jordan]

Oh, I see mayoral elections are going to be FPTP as well. I wonder who that will favour?

It's a fucking autocracy, and we are walking into it with nary a whimper.

[fishfoodie]

I think Labour haven't adapted to the changes in the way people are now forced to work. They've been tied to the Unions for too long; but do the Unions now speak for enough people, for position of control they hold ? How many people on zero hour contracts, are members of a Union ?

If Labour wants to resonate with what would have been their traditional supporters; they need to pick a set of policies that can bind together enough of their membership, to cut out a lot of the bickering.

They can start with the usual stuff, that any socialist Party in Europe will use to differentiate themselves from the more Center/Right Parties; Working Conditions, Living Wage; Affordable Childcare; Safe, Affordable Housing, Education, Access to Healthcare.

Unless they want to point out how Brexit is actually making providing these core rights more difficult; they shouldn't even discuss it.

Labour should be hammering away at just how many people are depending on food banks to keep their kids fed; & never mind bullshit policies that are only of interest inside of Westminster. Talk about stuff that hits people every day, every week; & not things that are irrelevant to them.

First & foremost they need to get a room full of smart people to provide canned messages, for MPs to use when reacting to the latest Tory disaster; & they need to up their aggression.

When the Bumblecunt started promising to change laws to stop the, "Super League", he responded within hours to an opportunity to get some soft publicity; the Labour Party should have immediately asked why it took days for this same leadership to get shamed by Marcus Rashford, into responding to extend school meals. Was it just because there were millionares involved that made the Tories respond ?

Within seconds of the Bumblecunt lying; every Labour MP & Councillor should get an SMS message to tell them the truth, & if any of them is up on TV soon after, what to say. In PMQ's all the opposition parties should agree to challenge his lies IMMEDIATELY !!!, if the SNP has the next question, they should drop their last question, & use their first Q to force the cunt to retract & apologise for the Lie.

As the saying goes; "the lie has gone around the world, before the truth has his trouser on".

Unless the opposition can repeated smack HIM down within seconds of the Lie; they aren't laying a glove on him. If they can do it enough, he'll get rattled; & it'll start to resonate with more people.

[Paddington Bear]

I don't think 'Boris is lying' is the vote winner you think it is, given the propensity of all politicians to lie. 'They're all at it' etc.

Labour lack a message that convinces enough people they will have a better life than they do under the Tories, until they sort that out they will keep losing. That Labour can't convince half it's party to even pay lip service to showing it likes the country it wishes to govern doesn't help the mood music of this one bit.

[Slick]

I thought this was quite good.

Conservative victory (in Hartlepool) marked the death of the Labour Party both as an effective conduit of opposition and an institution representing the working class. It’s over. It can no longer be either, for structural and demographic reasons that its members do not seem to understand.

I was in paroxysms of laughter listening to a succession of Labour gobmerchants attempt to explain away this debacle. Mandelson, Abbott, Russell-Moyle — all were wrapped up in their bizarre delusions, sniping at the different wings of the party, spraying the blame around, utterly missing the point. The only one who made much sense was John McDonell, who insisted, rightly, that Jeremy Corbyn’s economic policies in 2019 were popular north of the Severn-Trent divide. Nationalise everything, invest, tax the rich and abolish the grouse moors. Good left-wing populism.

I disagree with little of that. It was the other stuff that put off the voters back then — the culture stuff. The fashionable obsession with race and interminable gender complexities; the hatred of the UK and the contempt for those who love their country and believe in a sense of place and belonging; the secularism; the lack of respect for the traditional family.

The problem is that in attempting to make Labour electable once more, Keir Starmer ditched Corbyn’s economic policies, which did have an attraction up here, and kept the stuff everyone hated. Starmer took the knee, for example: that will have lost him several million votes. For a lot of former Labour voters Starmer and Corbyn are, as an old Blue Labour chum put it to me, two cheeks of the same liberal arse. The working class and lower middle, easily the majority of the country, are not liberal.

One Labour supporter, inadvertently, put it rather well. Upon hearing the result from Hartlepool, Jane Gray, a “Starmer superfan”, tweeted: “Yep as expected the working class love a bit of nationalism and racism. Well done Hartlepool, you turkeys. I’ve never been and I never will.” That’s it, summed up. An absolute loathing of the people the party was set up to support but supports no longer, because it regards them as uneducated, racist morons.

This is the intractable problem for Starmer, who seems a decent man, and the party. Look at the council election results over the weekend. Labour did well-ish in affluent cities, especially university cities. If Starmer were to embrace the mores and aspirations of the people his party once represented, all those gains — the only ones the party has experienced recently — would vanish. So would his party membership, which is no longer made up of horny-handed trade unionists but the well-orf, the comfortable, the impeccably right-on.

In fairness, there is a place for a party that espouses these values: utterly woke but not impinging too much upon the salaries of the middle class. It might pull in 18-25 per cent of the vote, maybe even a little more in alliance with the Greens and Lib Dems. But the Labour Party we knew is gone. Gone for good. Those votes are not coming back. When the north feels dissatisfied with the Tories, it will look to the independents for succour, not Labour

[SaintK]

I thought this was quite good.

Spoiler

Show

Conservative victory (in Hartlepool) marked the death of the Labour Party both as an effective conduit of opposition and an institution representing the working class. It’s over. It can no longer be either, for structural and demographic reasons that its members do not seem to understand.

I was in paroxysms of laughter listening to a succession of Labour gobmerchants attempt to explain away this debacle. Mandelson, Abbott, Russell-Moyle — all were wrapped up in their bizarre delusions, sniping at the different wings of the party, spraying the blame around, utterly missing the point. The only one who made much sense was John McDonell, who insisted, rightly, that Jeremy Corbyn’s economic policies in 2019 were popular north of the Severn-Trent divide. Nationalise everything, invest, tax the rich and abolish the grouse moors. Good left-wing populism.

I disagree with little of that. It was the other stuff that put off the voters back then — the culture stuff. The fashionable obsession with race and interminable gender complexities; the hatred of the UK and the contempt for those who love their country and believe in a sense of place and belonging; the secularism; the lack of respect for the traditional family.

The problem is that in attempting to make Labour electable once more, Keir Starmer ditched Corbyn’s economic policies, which did have an attraction up here, and kept the stuff everyone hated. Starmer took the knee, for example: that will have lost him several million votes. For a lot of former Labour voters Starmer and Corbyn are, as an old Blue Labour chum put it to me, two cheeks of the same liberal arse. The working class and lower middle, easily the majority of the country, are not liberal.

One Labour supporter, inadvertently, put it rather well. Upon hearing the result from Hartlepool, Jane Gray, a “Starmer superfan”, tweeted: “Yep as expected the working class love a bit of nationalism and racism. Well done Hartlepool, you turkeys. I’ve never been and I never will.” That’s it, summed up. An absolute loathing of the people the party was set up to support but supports no longer, because it regards them as uneducated, racist morons.

This is the intractable problem for Starmer, who seems a decent man, and the party. Look at the council election results over the weekend. Labour did well-ish in affluent cities, especially university cities. If Starmer were to embrace the mores and aspirations of the people his party once represented, all those gains — the only ones the party has experienced recently — would vanish. So would his party membership, which is no longer made up of horny-handed trade unionists but the well-orf, the comfortable, the impeccably right-on.

In fairness, there is a place for a party that espouses these values: utterly woke but not impinging too much upon the salaries of the middle class. It might pull in 18-25 per cent of the vote, maybe even a little more in alliance with the Greens and Lib Dems. But the Labour Party we knew is gone. Gone for good. Those votes are not coming back. When the north feels dissatisfied with the Tories, it will look to the independents for succour, not Labour

Very interesting
Who wrote that piece

[Slick]

Very interesting
Who wrote that piece

Rod Liddle

(dives for cover)

[Lobby]

There's an amusing article on Unherd suggesting that, if the Bennites had taken over the leadership of the Labour Party in 1981, the SDP would have become the main centre-left party, leaving the left wing purists to decline into well-deserved obscurity

By provoking a much greater and more enduring split, a Benn victory would have ensured a clear, unarguable divide between utopian socialists and pragmatic social democrats, their unhappy marriage brought to a richly deserved end. The SDP would have been left stronger, more plausible, a Centre-Left party of government. Today Sir Keir Starmer would be safe in the embrace of his fellow pragmatists, untroubled by stubborn working-class women from the north of England. Glancing along the SDP front bench, he might share a friendly nod with his party leader, a chaotic, mop-haired fellow who won the Oxford Union presidency as an SDP supporter, and never dreamed of abandoning his youthful faith. You know the man I mean.

By contrast, the Labour holdouts would have been left to luxuriate in the delights of socialist purity. Since they would never have had a hope of wielding power, there would be no risk of betrayal, no danger of dirtying their hands with the compromises of government. While the SDP went from strength to strength, Benn could have stayed as Labour leader for the next twenty years, preaching to an ever smaller and more exclusive flock. When the time came, he could have yielded the pulpit to his chief disciple, a true believer, a man whose faith burned as brightly as his own. And even now, untroubled by traitors, coups and centrist dads, Jeremy Corbyn might still be leading the Labour Party, with Angela Rayner as his loyal deputy…

https://unherd.com/2021/05/where-it-all ... or-labour/

[I like neeps]

It's an entertaining read but sadly it's not really reflective of the situation.

About half of all people now go to university. They come out with huge debts and most don't find really well paid employment - average grad salaries are getting you a pretty budget houseshare and not the high life. The cost of living in cities is high, most won't own a home until mid to late thirties at best with parental help. This isn't some mass of radical gender flued communists but people who have grown up in two economy crises and locked out of the traditional path society in the UK was built on - work, home ownership by 30 early 30s kids following etc.

Also woke doesn't really mean anything, it's never been defined. It's not Labour party fueling the culture wars either it's mostly the press for sweet sweet ppc clicks. Red wall is a made up term that means traditional labour seat but ignores any cultural distinctions.

And if Rod Liddle took time out his day and did research rather he'd see in the university towns he described pretty large swings from labour to green. There was a move to Labour from Tory in South England though.

[fishfoodie]

I don't think 'Boris is lying' is the vote winner you think it is, given the propensity of all politicians to lie. 'They're all at it' etc.

Labour lack a message that convinces enough people they will have a better life than they do under the Tories, until they sort that out they will keep losing. That Labour can't convince half it's party to even pay lip service to showing it likes the country it wishes to govern doesn't help the mood music of this one bit.

I agree that his lying isn't going to be a vote winner; but what will win votes, is forcing him to tell the truth about what he's lying about !

If he lies about, say, how many Police officers have been hired in the last year; then the opposition should immediately come back with the decline in the number of Officers over the last decade of Tory rule, & ask how they can claim to be the Party of Law & Order; when they are letting police numbers drop so much ?

How can he saddle people living in flats with Grenfell type insulation, with enormous debt; while he gets 200k off Tory chums, to tart up his flat with gold wallpaper ?

His lies are usually about him trying to gain favour on a hot topic; & he lazily lies about the true state of affairs. If he isn't called on it immediately; the voter just gets the lie; they never hear the actual, unflattering truth.