[Politics] Next leader of the Labour party

[BensGrandad]

Is it not possible that as Boris says we will leave the EU and prosper rather than all the doom and gloom being spouted on here. The NHS well funded with increased staff. Police and crime figures drastically improved and as per the latest the BBC made to fund themselves rather than have licence money to throw around on rubbish and high fees to presenters.

 

[blue-shifted]

I joined the Militant Tendency (the Irish section of the Committee for a Workers International) in 1982 - I am still a member of the Socialist Party in Ireland (Irish section of the CWI) today.



The LP was founded as a socialist party and has had socialism as its main tenet right up until the Blairites completed the takeover in the 1990s - Corbyn was a minor shift back to the left - yet the constant refrain is that 'Labour' must boot out socialists when the LP membership is predominantly made up of socialists. The people who have taken over an usurped the LP are the Blairites.

Your history is correct. But it is irrelevant. There party needs to somehow come together, and somehow speak with one voice That means no more labelling people, certainly not in pejorative terms. Momentum is no longer needed. There can't be a party within a party. There just needs to be a party. It's important Union leaders shouldn't be directly influencing policy and shouldn't be seen as being anywhere near the decision making process. Certainly no more talk or threats of deselections. Those on the other side of the party, especially the PLP, need to moderate their language and show more respect for the party membership and the traditions of the party.

Both sides will need to forget about past slights and look at the bigger picture

It needs the leader of a lifetime to achieve all this

 

[London Irish]

True, but that last point is crucial. FPTP keeps MPs beholden to voters whereas PR keeps them beholden to the party. The opportunity to vote for and against individuals is important. Would any other Labour Party person apart from Peter Kyle win Hove ? Under PR he probably wouldn’t even be on Corbyn’s party list. Brexit is relevant because it is clearly important to leave voters to be represented by leavers. Mostly that is what happened in those northern seats last week. There are exceptions such as Dennis Skinner.

All surveys show voters vote for the party not for the individual. Virtually any Labour party member could win in Hove because the majority is so large due to demographic changes that have benefited Labour, ie. more of its type of voters moving there. All those Labour defectors like Mike Gapes, Angela Smith, Chris Leslie thought their personal votes were huge, they stood outside Labour's banner and they all lost badly, sorry if you have never heard of any of those MPs but that's the point. The same would happen to Kyle

 

[blue-shifted]

Is it not possible that as Boris says we will leave the EU and prosper rather than all the doom and gloom being spouted on here. The NHS well funded with increased staff. Police and crime figures drastically improved and as per the latest the BBC made to fund themselves rather than have licence money to throw around on rubbish and high fees to presenters.

No

It isn't

Not even the maddest of mad ERG types seriously make a case that this is going to be good economically. It;s a question of how much of the damage can be limited

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

I have always agreed with this point of view - it is good to be represented by an accountable individual, it makes sense that they are chosen by and represent people 'like us', so we have geordie and scouse and brummie and manc MP's as well as southerners, it is good to be able to vote them out if they are a ****. Martin Bell beating Neil Hamilton a case in point. But that doesn't mean we should continue with minority governments claiming huge mandates, with third, fourth and fifth parties never being able to gain traction. The fact that the conservatives have 1 MP for every 30,000 voters, the greens have 1 MP for every 860,000 voters and the Brexit Party have none despite 600,000 voters is just horrendous; or that the SNP have 48 seats for 1.2 million voters whereas the LibDems have 11 seats for 3.7 million voters - with that in mind how can we even claim to be a one-person one-vote democracy?

There are ways round it. Perhaps each MP is allocated a constituency, perhaps by choosing from a list whereby every party has a candidate for every seat. Perhaps half are linked to seats and the other half off a list. Perhaps we elect a lower house by seat and a more empowered upper house by PR. Perhaps we have regional elections with 10 or 20 regions, and choose the list order for each party, rather than having the parties choose it for us. Perhaps we go back to the AV idea, which was actually pretty good. Perhaps we just accept that neither system works perfectly, so lets at least have the version whereby people's votes actually count. That way everybody would be encouraged to vote, and no-one has to think about tactical voting.

I know this has always happened, governments have nearly always been elected on minority votes. Its never felt so stark a difference as it does now, however, perhaps the size of the majority relative to the size of the vote is such a contrast, perhaps because we kind of accept that we split into right and centre-right parties and left- and centre-left parties, and there is obviously a majority of votes for the left and centre-left but the right has the huge majority. It does feel very helpless though that 7 of 10 people you meet didn't vote for this loon and yet he has free rein to do whatever the **** he wants.

I understand the points you make but be careful with your use of figures. 43.6 % of those that voted did so for the Tories. Losing sides often incorporate people in their analysis who did not vote, but that was their choice. They did not express an opinion either way.
You can make a similar point with the actual figure but a bit less exaggerated.

 

[London Irish]

thats a new one, older voters being led by Facebook.

you need to keep up with social media trends, pretty much only grandads use facebook now

 

[Guinness Boy]

All surveys show voters vote for the party not for the individual. Virtually any Labour party member could win in Hove because the majority is so large due to demographic changes that have benefited Labour, ie. more of its type of voters moving there. All those Labour defectors like Mike Gapes, Angela Smith, Chris Leslie thought their personal votes were huge, they stood outside Labour's banner and they all lost badly, sorry if you have never heard of any of those MPs but that's the point. The same would happen to Kyle

Maybe most people do vote for parties but I certainly do not. I voted for Kyle the person and Labour will lose my vote the second they deselect him. Robert Nemeth is actually quite involved in the local community and a second attempt by him against a Momentum installed candidate would go to the wire.

There are not many true union supporting socialists in Hove. Lots of young families and social liberals. It's still more Prosecco than Pints.

 

[Guinness Boy]

you need to keep up with social media trends, pretty much only grandads use facebook now

You need to answer the question of why Momentum are needed at all. You appear to have dodged it whilst answering later posts,. Classic LI MO. I expect you "missed the notification".

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

I understand the points you make but be careful with your use of figures. 43.6 % of those that voted did so for the Tories. Losing sides often incorporate people in their analysis who did not vote, but that was their choice. They did not express an opinion either way.
You can make a similar point with the actual figure but a bit less exaggerated.

It does for the point I'm making because I know many people who didn't vote because 'what was the point'. They want to vote green but know its futile, they have better things to do with their day

 

[blue-shifted]

The swathes of morons who voted cuddly fat lying untrustworthy "Boris" will hopefully realise it is their own fault when their jobs hang by a thread or are reduced to being paid a pittance.

There is absolutely no chance of those who voted Boris in and are going to pay the penalty owning this themselves. Barely a single person will put their hand up and take responsibility for what is coming.

Mostly because their tabloid of their choice (working hand in glove with Tory central office) will be falling over themselves to give them someone to blame. EU not giving us the right deal will be the biggest one, but they'll find ways of blaming the BBC, Scottish Nationalists, immigrants, judges etc

I mean, if they voted a tory in in Redcar, after the steelworks closed under a tory govt and they did f all about it, then we can safely say the link to reality has gone

 

[Two Professors]

you need to keep up with social media trends, pretty much only grandads use facebook now

That's Twitter for grandads and delusionals only.I don't suppose a clown like you is allowed on Facebook groups-plenty of youth on there.

 

[Billy the Fish]

But they're not - not at all. First thing Johnson is doing is removing alignment of workers right between the UK and the EU. Most of those new Tory voters in Blyth and Hartlepool will barely have noticed. They will though, when zero hour contracts at increasingly standard and having no minimum wage are explained away by the moronic Tories running the country as "the UK being competitive". Maybe those people will join the increasing numbers living on the streets and out of soup kitchens? These high numbers are now so visible to all but the most blinkered.

Here is a great rant that explains the difference between the Tories and a progressive centre-left Labour which highlights the difference between the two parties:

https://twitter.com/RussInCheshire/status/1207071942601248772

I'd agree with you if a centre left Labour existed - they would've walked this election. I'm talking about the choice we had between between Boris and Corbyn.

 

[Weststander]

But if he hadn't done it then the centrist votes wouldn't have gone to Labour. We shouldn't forget that 53% of people voted for parties that had a second referendum in their manifesto.

In hindsight, the election was lost as soon as it was called. After six months of fighting against Brexit in parliament, there was no way the opposition would win an election unless Brexit had been resolved one way or another. It turns out that there were a majority of MP's in the old parliament that ran in this election on a second referendum platform. So they could have got it, they didn't have to have the election... they caved. It was all over then. Almost irrelevant how they would have campaigned. And to repeat the point above, 53% of people voted for parties favouring a second referendum. But that means nothing in our FPTP system. Apparently there was a big mandate for Leave.

McDonnell and Burgon, just 2 examples, relished the calling of an early GE and vehemently demanded it for many weeks and months beforehand. “Bring It On”, “Boris running scared” and “Boris is fearful of having the shortest term as PM in history”, were typical boasts. Their theory was the opposite of yours, that 2 years of Brexit chaos and Tories at war with each other, would see Labour take power.

Ill judged.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

It does for the point I'm making because I know many people who didn't vote because 'what was the point'. They want to vote green but know its futile, they have better things to do with their day

The tories did not win because people who wanted to vote green in a safe tory (or labour) seat decided to not bother.

They won because an increased number of voters in marginal seats decided that blue is the colour, brexit is the game, corbyn is a wanker, and winning is our aim.

 

[The Merry Prankster]

You're right, the power in the party isn't the leader it's momentum (& was the Union leaders)

This is simply not true. The Unions - yes, Momentum - no

 

[London Irish]

Maybe most people do vote for parties but I certainly do not. I voted for Kyle the person and Labour will lose my vote the second they deselect him. Robert Nemeth is actually quite involved in the local community and a second attempt by him against a Momentum installed candidate would go to the wire.

There are not many true union supporting socialists in Hove. Lots of young families and social liberals. It's still more Prosecco than Pints.

Anecdotes aren't data

 

[London Irish]

I'd agree with you if a centre left Labour existed - they would've walked this election. I'm talking about the choice we had between between Boris and Corbyn.

Ed Miliband?

 

[London Irish]

You need to answer the question of why Momentum are needed at all. You appear to have dodged it whilst answering later posts,. Classic LI MO. I expect you "missed the notification".

To develop policy, which they have been very successful at. I'm not an NSC nerd checking every post, you need to get over that

 

[The Merry Prankster]

Why is Momentum needed at all? Why not just the Labour Party? Can Labour not devise some positive policy visions and lift people's confidence?

The issue with Momentum is that it is very easy for the right wing press to paint it as a party within a party, just like millitant. The truth might be 100 miles away from that but it is yet another left-wing error that the press has been given that opportunity.

The historical need for Momentum was that Corbyn had no base when he was elected leader and faced active opposition from his own MPs. That faded a bit (but not completely) over time. If it continues, it will probably be as campaigning group. It organised and motivated a lot of young people around the country, sending them to support candidates in marginal constituencies. It might continue to push for democratisation of the party. Something Corbyn failed to do as its opposed by both the PLP and the Unions. Or it might die.

 

[Weststander]

The historical need for Momentum was that Corbyn had no base when he was elected leader and faced active opposition from his own MPs. That faded a bit (but not completely) over time. If it continues, it will probably be as campaigning group. It organised and motivated a lot of young people around the country, sending them to support candidates in marginal constituencies. It might continue to push for democratisation of the party. Something Corbyn failed to do as its opposed by both the PLP and the Unions. Or it might die.

It was the other way round.

Momentum and its wider support effective took control of the party, in terms of the all important member numbers, then they voted Corbyn in as leader.