[Politics] Next leader of the Labour party

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

Your obsession with "Blairism" conveniently forgets that modernisation of the Labour Party began with Kinnock with the baton being passed to John Smith.

John Smith was a man with intellect, humour and determination, all qualities that Corbyn lacks.

 

[Billy the Fish]

Both catagories are due to get bigger - but I would argue that the opposite will happen -

The British economy (and world economy) is facing a renewed downturn in the next 6-24 months - the Tories will implement attacks on pensioners because they will have no choice from their perspective - and the 18-44 category will face attacks on jobs, wages and working conditions are companies attempt to ride out cuts to profits by dumping the cost onto workers (and this isn't even talking about the fact that all semblance of doing anything for the environment will be chucked in the bin).

The French government is currently under siege with two general strikes last week and more planned - 10million workers on strike and two million on the streets - over attacks on pensions. This is what the Tories are likely facing.

A big majority does not mean political stability - stability is determined by economic circumstances and the political response - both of which are likely to see an upsurge of opposition to the Tories (and the CWU are the first ones to the picket lines on this).

I've been reading this thread and some of the other political ones. This post, like many of your others, is based on what you would like to happen rather than reality.
For you the above scenario represents last night's wet dream - strikes on that scale will never happen in this country and the rest of it is a work of fiction, just like everything else you've posted in the last month!

 

[Chicken Run]

I've been reading this thread and some of the other political ones. This post, like many of your others, is based on what you would like to happen rather than reality.
For you the above scenario represents last night's wet dream - strikes on that scale will never happen in this country and the rest of it is a work of fiction, just like everything else you've posted in the last month!

I totally agree and think he’s a treacherous heinous troll who’d take great delight Ahead of anything else in seeing disorder on the streets.

 

[mothy]

Emily thornberry thinks she could do the job.

Personally I cant stand her smug know it all arrogance.

Angela rayner for me - but apparently she's keen on her hard nosed friend doing the opposition no.1 job - which won't encourage me to vote for them based on what I have seen in the past

 

[Lower West Stander]

Switching is irrelevant - the individuals own or have large shareholdings in the companies - and yes - Ireland is a tax haven and I have been involved in a campaign against the nature of the Irish tax system for over two decades.

The problem is that these companies pay little of no tax anywhere -

Take NMC Healthcare for example - in 2018 it registered over £256million in pre-tax profit - and paid less than £5million in tax. The largest shareholder in NMC is Saeed Bin Butti who owns 17.5% of the company. He is also chairman of Centurion Investments as well as large shareholdings in Travelex and UAE Exchange and has a peresonal wealth of $2.7billion. He is closely aligned with Khalifa Bin Butti Al Muhairi who owns 15% of the shares in NMC, is also KBBO Group, also has large shareholdings in Travelex and UAE Exchange and is a leading stakeholder in Infinite Investment and Centurion Partners. Khalifa Bin Butti Al Muhairi has a personal wealth of $870million. Both of these individuals are associated with B.R. Shetty, an Indian businessman who founded NMC in 1975 - Shetty has a personal wealth of $3.3billion.


The tax system is skewed to facilitate high wealth individuals in avoiding tax - for example - a workers in Britain paid between £12.5K-£50K a year pays 20% in income tax. Wealthy individuals use 'carried interest' instead of a salary as income, resulting in these individuals paying CGT rather than income tax. In 2018 over 9,000 of these high-wealth individuals made almost £34billion in 'capital gains' income (averaging over £3.75million each - with a minimum of £1million in income). Out of this £34billion they paid just over £5billion in CGT. A worker on £12.5K a year had a tax burden of 20% - a wealthy individual earning an average of £3.75m had a tax burden of 14.8%.


I didn't lie - I stated facts - and let's take BP that you tout about having 'massive' and you really mean 'massive losses' - well these massive losses came from the Deepwater Horizon disaster - a disaster that caused massive environmental damage on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico - a disaster that still has not been cleaned up - and at a cost of more than £200billion. Why should any company be allowed to cause a 'massive' environmental disaster because of cutting costs to boost profits - do a ham-fisted job of the clean-up and then be allowed to avoid paying tax because it was obliged to (partially) pay for the clean up?


Two issues here -
1. There are massive tax breaks for private pension pots in the UK - tax breaks that inordinately benefit the wealthy - it is just another one of the tax avoidance schemes that the wealthy use to hive off as much wealth as possible.
2. Isn't it a disgrace that a worker (in an effort to have a decent amount to live on in retirement) is forced to pay into a private pension fund, pay massive fees for being part of the fund, seeing this money gambled on stocks, shares and exotic products invented by vulture funds, and at the end of the day the could well see their pension disappear in a puff of smoke it their fund goes belly up.

Spot the person whose piggy backing off a Muddy Waters short selling report.

Interesting you’re prepared to agree with a hedge fund when it suits your purposes.


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[Lower West Stander]

So losing elections over and over again is fine for you as long as you see it reaching some other purpose? You think Kinnock doing that for 9 years is fine? But the left doesn't even get 4?

What you deride as the Momentun formula gained 3 million votes in 2017, the highest jump in the Labour vote since 1945, raising a vote that has been on the decline since 1997.

Everyone knows Labour were screwed this time not by the policies which all polling shows are popular but by needing both its Remain voters and its Leave voters to combine. What leader and what policy on Brexit could possible have done that? I'm all ears if you have an honest answer

Boris?

Bit of an own goal there.

Keep trying.


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[Brovion]

It would be a mistake to hold on to that statistic. People change their voting as they get older. The current crop of 18-25s will settle down, get a mortgage etc etc. I was once in the Young Socialists ! and am now moderate left (I have no problem with Nationalization although think it should happen very slowly). A lot of people have made similar points to yourself and Grizzling ******. You need to actually face the reasons you lost working class votes and a failure to do so would be unbelievably irresponsible. Stop searching for ideological purity.

Indeed. People getting more right-wing as they get older has always been long-accepted as a fact. (I'm an exception as I'm now a full-on old-school Corbyn/Foot/Benn/Scargill 1970s anti-EU Socialist, whereas when I was young in the 70s I thought of myself as being progressive left). "Middle age is when your broad mind and narrow waist change places" as the saying goes.

There was also a little limerick to sum up up the rightward drift of age:

A graduate of LSE said,
"As a student of course I was Red.
But now I'm with Shell,
Let the proles go to hell,
My pension is safe till I'm dead."

 

[BLOCK F]

Agree.

But...if someone like Starmer actually says it how it is, he'll be accused of bending 'fact' to suit his own ambitions.

If Mr Tony, who has no ambition to become leader again, were to back Starmer, for example, he'd be accused of being the ghost of Christmas Past.

Sadly the momentum folk will manipulate this so that one of their slate wins.

I asked yesterday if someone would post a clear lowdown on Long Bailey given the blandness of her biogs on Wiki and even in the Sun. Is she a woke independent thinker, or just another chippy polytechnic trot?

Edit: just looked her up again - sociology and politics at Manchester Metropolitan (formerly Manchester Poly). It says she has worked for solicitors, but it does not say she is a graduate of laws. I presume not. I know someone else who works for solicitors. He dropped out of sixth form, and has an HND in music technology She is listed in 'find a solicitor' as non practicing. OK, so that one remains a mystery - like Geoffrey Archer's degree from Oxford (polytechnic) perhaps. I am not being snobby here - this is about (mis)representation.

What else? She is a Roman Catholic. Understands the concept of belief, then. Belief in the face of evidence to the contrary? Not good, as far as I am concerned.

On her own site http://www.rebeccalongbailey.com/about/ it says little. She supports Corbyn and Manchester United. And she is a qualified solictor. Absolutely no sign whasoever of any leadership qualities there.....

Edit again: sorry to bang on about 'solicitor'. I always assumed you need to have a law degree (tough) but not the skills to be called to the bar (barrister).

Apparently it is a lot easier than that. From UCAS:


What do I need to do to become a solicitor?

complete a qualifying law degree, followed by the Legal Practice Course (LPC)
or complete a non-law degree then take the Common Professional Examination (CPE) or Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) conversion course, followed by the LPC
or complete the membership or fellowship route of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx) while working in the legal profession – this route can be taken if you do not have a degree

FFS! No wonder some of the solicitors who have acted for me over the years have been so shit.

Back in the day, quite a few youngsters without a degree became 'Articled Clerks' and trained on the job with reputable firms of solicitors. Obviously they had various exams to take on the way, before qualifying. I know a few who did this and became very good solicitors, including an old mate of mine who became managing partner in a very high powered London firm. I believe the same system applied for Accountancy, as well.
As far as the Labour leadership business goes, I saw Lisa Nandy on the Kay Burley prog. this morning; she came over as very level headed, but reading between the lines, I'm not sure she will stand if she feels the whole thing is going to be a charade.
As Mr.Tony said, Labour doesn't just need a new driver, it needs a new fu---ng bus!..........well, I added the naughty word.

 

[wellquickwoody]

Kinnock lost three elections - all of them because he tried to out-tory the Tories

You know how you lot go on about Tory lies...........go take a very long look in the mirror.

Either that or you really are that stupid.

 

[BLOCK F]

Indeed. People getting more right-wing as they get older has always been long-accepted as a fact. (I'm an exception as I'm now a full-on old-school Corbyn/Foot/Benn/Scargill 1970s anti-EU Socialist, whereas when I was young in the 70s I thought of myself as being progressive left). "Middle age is when your broad mind and narrow waist change places" as the saying goes.

There was also a little limerick to sum up up the rightward drift of age:

A graduate of LSE said,
"As a student of course I was Red.
But now I'm with Shell,
Let the proles go to hell,
My pension is safe till I'm dead."

Trouble is Brovion, DB pensions are a bit thin on the ground now and most of us have to rely on the fortunes of the stockmarket to fund our retirement, either through pension funds and /or direct investment. Yes, us nasty selfish shareholders trying to do the right thing and provide for ourselves in our dotage!
I'm afraid your limerick is rather outdated!

 

[wellquickwoody]

He's actually put forward good arguments there. So good you can't even debate them it seems

Which one are you, Morecombe or.........oh, hang on, you must be Wise, as your pal is at least funny!

 

[Guinness Boy]

Boris?

Bit of an own goal there.

Keep trying.


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Indeed. Boris's great trick (or rather Cummings and the Aussie guy who lead their election strategy) was to focus on the one simple message that would have converted working class votes in Leave seats - "get Brexit done". It doesn't matter how trite that is, how many interviews you duck, how many times you lie or hide in a fridge, that was what the people of the north of England wanted to hear. With many in the south east continuing to vote for the metaphorical pig in a blue rosette and Scotland totally lost to the SNP, Labour criticallly ignored its core vote, to its cost.

It could have also said "let's get Brexit done". I assume it didn't because of worries about losing the Remain vote to the Lib Dems but Corbyn crucially misread it. A promise to come out of the EU, perhaps on softer terms, but to definitely come out, would have neutralised the Tory strategy. In fact, having assumed that Brexit was done they could then have sold the ridiculously long list of policies at least as an EU replacement that would have focussed on the working class. But that list was too long, too confused and utterly unobtainable. Cherry picking the most popular polling ones and targetting them at the North and North East would also have nullified Boris.

Unfortunately the unions have made Labour so "democratic" that every leader is likely to be ideologically pure, but useless, and every manifesto drawn up by Clause V is likely to be long, confused and undoable.

 

[blue-shifted]

John Smith was a man with intellect, humour and determination, all qualities that Corbyn lacks.

Corbyn isn't funny, but he clearly does have intellect and determination. What you probably mean is that he has a set of beliefs and a world view which isn't shared by the majority of the country

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[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

Rayner not standing means she will win comfortably

So it's at least 10 more years of the Tories then.

RLB really is useless.

Oh well, Momentum can bang on about it being about the socialist project, we won the argument etc. blah blah.

I heard Starmer on Today this morning - I could vote for him.

It's ironic that the Tories were always the party that was split on Europe, but Brexit has destroyed the broad church that was the labour party too - in the long run a split might be the best way forward.

 

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

It’ll be RLB and AR. I’d be really surprised if anyone else gets a look in. Nandy and Phillips both very unpopular with too many people (as well as many regarding Nandy as incompetent). Some talk about Clive Lewis but he’s a) arch remainer b) male c) has baggage d) flaky

Agree about Clive Lewis, he'd be a terrible choice.

Worse even than RLB who will ensure 10 years of Tory Government.

Starmer for me.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

Indeed. People getting more right-wing as they get older has always been long-accepted as a fact. (I'm an exception as I'm now a full-on old-school Corbyn/Foot/Benn/Scargill 1970s anti-EU Socialist, whereas when I was young in the 70s I thought of myself as being progressive left). "Middle age is when your broad mind and narrow waist change places" as the saying goes.

There was also a little limerick to sum up up the rightward drift of age:

A graduate of LSE said,
"As a student of course I was Red.
But now I'm with Shell,
Let the proles go to hell,
My pension is safe till I'm dead."

I am looking forward to reading the musings of new poster Jolly Blue Giant in about twenty years time.....

 

[Brovion]

Trouble is Brovion, DB pensions are a bit thin on the ground now and most of us have to rely on the fortunes of the stockmarket to fund our retirement, either through pension funds and /or direct investment. Yes, us nasty selfish shareholders trying to do the right thing and provide for ourselves in our dotage!
I'm afraid your limerick is rather outdated!

It was from the 1970s! (Illustrating that rightward drift with age is not a new thing).

 

[Hugo Rune]

Corbyn isn't funny, but he clearly does have intellect and determination. What you probably mean is that he has a set of beliefs and a world view which isn't shared by the majority of the country

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Yes. An odd and ill judged comparison to make by the poster you quote. They clearly dislike Corbyn but why lie about qualities he has when there are so many he hasn’t!

Here are a few:

1. Lack of self awareness.
2. Lack of concern with image.
3. An idealogue.
4. Disabled by principles.
5. Inability to lead a party.
6. Inability to win an election.
7. Inability to install discipline in a party.
8. No new ideas (follows failed socialist dogma of the past rather than embrace new ideas).

 

[Lower West Stander]

Yes. An odd and ill judged comparison to make by the poster you quote. They clearly dislike Corbyn but why lie about qualities he has when there are so many he hasn’t!

Here are a few:

1. Lack of self awareness.
2. Lack of concern with image.
3. An idealogue.
4. Disabled by principles.
5. Inability to lead a party.
6. Inability to win an election.
7. Inability to install discipline in a party.
8. No new ideas (follows failed socialist dogma of the past rather than embrace new ideas).

You forgot IRA collaborator.

Contrary to the views of diehard Corbynistas and those who were too young to have lived through the Troubles, many do still remember that and are sickened by it....

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

Membership is irrelevant. Labour's party membership is probably 3 times that of the tories but it didn't win them the election.

About 5 times - and while it didn't directly impact the election result in 2019 - it did in 2017. It is a reflection of the active, in comparison to passive, support for political ideas - and the membership also elect the party leader.

Totally wrong, I used my brain in my job and was not working class.

If you used your brain and you earned a wage then you are working class - whether you recognise/ackowledge it or not.

I would not be so sure, it would be interesting to know how many Consrvatives rushed to join the Labour Party to elect Corbyn

Seriously - that is clutching at straws territory.

well done, you've qualified just about everyone as working class. even the millionaires

It is well over 90% of the population - society has changed dramatically in the last 100 years - the middle layers have shrunk dramatically, farmers, shopkeepers, independently operating professionals etc. Example - my daughter is a doctor in the NHS - like all doctors in NHS hospitals she is working class, she only works for the public health system - many doctors in Ireland who work in the public health system also have private practice - they are not working class. Social class is not determined by your income but by your relationship to the economy - do you receive an salaried income or do you make profit.

Your obsession with "Blairism" conveniently forgets that modernisation of the Labour Party began with Kinnock with the baton being passed to John Smith.

Blairism is a euphemism for those in the LP that support Tory policies - and you are correct - it started with Kinnock. And Kinnock wasn't trying to 'modernise' the LP - he was trying to shift it to the right, to the territory of Toryism (modeled on the US Democrats) by expelling thousands of left-wing activists, by removing most of the democratic structures of the LP and by dumping the principles the LP was founded on. It took Kinnock, Smith, Blair etc 20 years to do it (Ramsey McDonald tried the same thing in the 1920s and 1930s). The LP may well swing back to Blairism after Corbyn is gone - if it does then the working class will have to rebuild a party for political representation.