[Politics] Next leader of the Labour party

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Len McCluskey’s Unite have chosen RLB and Richard ‘Car Crash’ Burgon as their dream team. No surprise if truth be told.

If you want a strong and very electable Labour duo in 2024, they’re the polar opposite, an awful pairing. Both are hard left leaning, very defensive/blinkered about Corbyn and ‘that manifesto’, charmless, and Burgon’s hopeless when facing straight forward questions in interviews (see a plethora of youtube disaster clips).

Hopefully the membership will be more pragmatic in their final say.

The nut jobs will have to go all-out smear to stop Starmer now. Stand by for blood. Come on, Sir Steer Calmer!!!

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

More than 55% rejected the core Tory offering


So why not vote for policies that will bring about this result?


Lansman isn't a Marxist - nor is he an academic - the best description of Lansman is a 'full-time political spoofer'.


Britain is not a PLC - it is a country - and if you try and run it on a capitalist business model you will end up bankrupting the country (which the Tories/Blairites have done more than once). You cannot divorce the economic from the social and the political - to do so gives control of society to a tiny handful of wealthy propertied men (and they are almost exclusively men) to the detriment of the vast majority of the population.


LP didn't lose millions of voters - but it didn't need to in order for the seats to go Tory.

Not a good argument to get the middle to support the left.

But, as you don't see winning as important, nay bother, then.

 

[Bry Nylon]

Len McCluskey’s Unite have chosen RLB and Richard ‘Car Crash’ Burgon as their dream team. No surprise if truth be told.

If you want a strong and very electable Labour duo in 2024, they’re the polar opposite, an awful pairing. Both are hard left leaning, very defensive/blinkered about Corbyn and ‘that manifesto’, charmless, and Burgon’s hopeless when facing straight forward questions in interviews (see a plethora of youtube disaster clips).

Hopefully the membership will be more pragmatic in their final say.

Agree with all of that. On Newsnight, McCluskey just said one of RLB's strengths was her political analysis.

Is this the same RLB that awarded Jeremy Corbyn "10/10" for Labour's 2019 GE perfomance? And the same RLB, Shadow Business Secretary, who believed that corporations pay tax on turnover rather than profit?

It surely is.

 

[Weststander]

Agree with all of that. On Newsnight, McCluskey just said one of RLB's strengths was her political analysis.

Is this the same RLB that awarded Jeremy Corbyn "10/10" for Labour's 2019 GE perfomance? And the same RLB, Shadow Business Secretary, who believed that corporations pay tax on turnover rather than profit?

It surely is.

I watched that too. When the interviewer gently asked Len(in) as to why Burgon was selected ahead of Angela Rayner, he went for an abrasive, talking over them approach, with “There you go, trying to cause division” on repeat.

He seems far more interested in helping to keep Momentum sympathisers in control of Labour, than aiming high for government. Again.

 

[Nitram]

Len and RLB, the Corbyn makeover with knickers applied, and final nail in the Labour coffin courtesy of Momentum. Might as well just make Boris the PM for the next ten years.

 

[mikeyjh]

More than 2/3 of voters rejected that recent core Labour offering.

In polling most people including myself will always say yes individually to more police, more nurses, higher paid nurses, rebuilt hospitals, etcetera, But we also weighed up whether Corbyn and Momentum, advised by marxist academic Lansman, was good for the UK PLC and whether the total tax and spend mix was credible.

You're massively over estimating the process many people go through when they vote, those very same people who want "more police, more nurses, higher paid nurses, rebuilt hospitals" are very easily convinced by the MSM that a) The tories will deliver that and b) That a vote for the Labour party would result in cost them taxes, raise immigration, pick whatever negative you like really.

 

[Nitram]

Interestingly and similar to the vote prior to Comrade Corbyn winning the leadership election membership has soared by 20% recently. Some activists are saying that the moderates are trying to beat Momentum tactics at their own game. Let’s hope so but I remain cynical. Membership in Brighton has shown one of the biggest increases. BBC source.

 

[Garry Nelson's teacher]

I'm afraid I have to join the 'we're all doomed' club. Burgon has a charisma equivalent to that of a jelly baby and is congenitally incapable of answering a question with anything approaching candour. He is cursed with a mon-tonal drone and will be a turn-off to a rather large proportion of the electorate. McCluskey is just plain sinister and clearly missed a career as an actor specialising in roles as a gangster.
Having lived in Liverpool during the Militant years, I see history being re-created. Derek Hatton for party chair anyone?

 

[Weststander]

I'm afraid I have to join the 'we're all doomed' club. Burgon has a charisma equivalent to that of a jelly baby and is congenitally incapable of answering a question with anything approaching candour. He is cursed with a mon-tonal drone and will be a turn-off to a rather large proportion of the electorate. McCluskey is just plain sinister and clearly missed a career as an actor specialising in roles as a gangster.
Having lived in Liverpool during the Militant years, I see history being re-created. Derek Hatton for party chair anyone?

This.

 

[carlzeiss]

Come on Becky

 

[Baker lite]

I’m hoping Wrong-Daily gets the gig, I do like a laugh...

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I'm afraid I have to join the 'we're all doomed' club. Burgon has a charisma equivalent to that of a jelly baby and is congenitally incapable of answering a question with anything approaching candour. He is cursed with a mon-tonal drone and will be a turn-off to a rather large proportion of the electorate. McCluskey is just plain sinister and clearly missed a career as an actor specialising in roles as a gangster.
Having lived in Liverpool during the Militant years, I see history being re-created. Derek Hatton for party chair anyone?

I saw on the news last night that there has been a 20-35% surge in membership in some constituencies, especially in the south east. Investigations reveal that this appears to be a surge by Sir Steer Calmer supporters. If so, brilliant. If you want to win in the country you first have to work out how to win in your party. If Sir Steer can't work out how to thwart the cybermen, then he won't deserve to win.

Wrong-Bailey will never manage to win over the general public/electorate so I'm hoping that there will be sufficient numbers of labour members to see through militant's dirty tricks. Wrong-Bailey's support for deselection of sitting MPs appears to have gone down like a cup of cold sick outside the word of militant supporters who want to deselect their sitting MP.

My outstanding fear is that the naive idealistic kids who think Wrong-Bailey is a breath of fresh hair and an inspiration to all single mothers, etc, will be unaware of her support for the back door power grabbing that deselection of sitting MPs etc represents. I remember how crestfallen my mate's daugher (age 30) looked six monthas ago when I was forced to inform her that outside her echo chamber, Corbyn wasn't very popular among the electorate at large, and would almost certainly lose a general election battle with Boris the liar. Naive kids, eh?

Nevertheless, I can't see comrade Len McCluskey actually getting much traction with the younger more environmentally engaged labour supporters, and his endorsement of Wrong-Bailey could backfire. Imagine you are vying for the England manager's job and you find yourself in receipt of a ringing endorsement from Ron "Big Ron" do-do-ron-ron Ronnie Ron Atkinson?

"He became a close friend of Tony Mulhearn and Derek Hatton, then deputy leader of Liverpool City Council, and supported the Militant tendency. "I would never, ever deny that", he told the Liverpool Echo in 2009 "but I never became a member". He added: "In the end I decided that Militant was too sectarian from a political standpoint to be effective. But I believe that on the chief issues they were right"

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

Having lived in Liverpool during the Militant years, I see history being re-created. Derek Hatton for party chair anyone?

You mean the Militant years where the socialist council built more homes that the rest of Thatcher's Britain combined - built schools, nurseries and leisure facilities and public parks in working class communities that were being destroyed by Tory policies, that created thousands of jobs, that froze rents for council tenants for five years - those Militant years you are talking about.

 

[WilburySeagull]

Trouble is militant supporters and now momentum claim for democracy but then come up with "democratic ballots" that offer a choice of Long Bailey yes or no with no mention of the other candidates as if in their socialist reality the unapproved ones dont exist. More like Soviet or Iranian "democracy" than the real thing.

 

[Garry Nelson's teacher]

You mean the Militant years where the socialist council built more homes that the rest of Thatcher's Britain combined - built schools, nurseries and leisure facilities and public parks in working class communities that were being destroyed by Tory policies, that created thousands of jobs, that froze rents for council tenants for five years - those Militant years you are talking about.

Thanks for your points. I'm not sure where you get your data from but won't contest it. However, if you could reference it, I'd be obliged. I worked for Liverpool City Council (1978-84) and was a service provider to a great many others who did too. I was also a Labour supporter and still am. My view from the inside track, was that they were deliberately engineering a breakdown in the way the council operated to spark some sort of mass action following intervention by the government. I recall that everything seemed to be a means to an end. This included (and like you I not only remember Kinnock conference speech but was directly involved) the tactic of using the council (and its employees) as some sort of tool. On another level, there was a very scary or at least sinister policy within the council of preferential treatment for those who were 'connected' and the side-lining of those who weren't.
I'm not sure you'll find many LCC staff who would recall this as the council's finest hour. You might also find it quite hard to find huge numbers of Liverpool Labour folk who, living through that, would think of it likewise. As for Hatton, well if you are proud of him in terms of his actions then and his subsequent career, then (as the Scousers say) 'there's nothing down for you'.
This was not democratic socialism in my interpretation of the term, and I would not buy-in to misty eyed memories of it. I think it payed it's part in making us unelectable in the 80s and I'd rather not see it again.
I accept that this is a very specific perspective; but it is authentic.

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

Trouble is militant supporters and now momentum claim for democracy but then come up with "democratic ballots" that offer a choice of Long Bailey yes or no with no mention of the other candidates as if in their socialist reality the unapproved ones dont exist. More like Soviet or Iranian "democracy" than the real thing.

To start with - you will find very few militant supporters in the LP these days - the Militant was expelled from the LP in the late 1980s and early 1990s as part of Kinnock's drive to right the party of all vestiges of socialism.

As for Momentum - well I have made my view of Momentum perfectly clear on this thread on numerous occasions.

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

Thanks for your points. I'm not sure where you get your data from but won't contest it. However, if you could reference it, I'd be obliged. I worked for Liverpool City Council (1978-84) and was a service provider to a great many others who did too. I was also a Labour supporter and still am. My view from the inside track, was that they were deliberately engineering a breakdown in the way the council operated to spark some sort of mass action following intervention by the government. I recall that everything seemed to be a means to an end. This included (and like you I not only remember Kinnock conference speech but was directly involved) the tactic of using the council (and its employees) as some sort of tool. On another level, there was a very scary or at least sinister policy within the council of preferential treatment for those who were 'connected' and the side-lining of those who weren't.
I'm not sure you'll find many LCC staff who would recall this as the council's finest hour. You might also find it quite hard to find huge numbers of Liverpool Labour folk who, living through that, would think of it likewise. As for Hatton, well if you are proud of him in terms of his actions then and his subsequent career, then (as the Scousers say) 'there's nothing down for you'.
This was not democratic socialism in my interpretation of the term, and I would not buy-in to misty eyed memories of it. I think it payed it's part in making us unelectable in the 80s and I'd rather not see it again.
I accept that this is a very specific perspective; but it is authentic.

Between 1979 and 1983 the Tory government stole £217million in grants to Liverpool City Council - it was strangling the city financially. The Socialist council was elected on the basis of creating 1,000 council jobs (in a city ravaged by unemployment) coupled with a reversal of the 1,000 job cuts announced by the Liberals, cutting council rents by £2 per week and introducing a minimum wage and a 35-hour week for the council's workforce. The DLP made these promises in their manifesto on the basis that this was the minimum necessary to lift at least a section of the city's population out of poverty. To implement its programme it was necessary to set a budget of £237million - $25m above the limit set by Tory cuts. The DLP decided to launch a campaign among the council workforce and the working class of Liverpool to force the Tories to hand back £25million of the money it had stolen from the council. The campaign generated unprecedented support for the DLP in the city and the following year the DLP significantly increased its support in the council elections.

You say there was a 'deliberate engineering' a breakdown - when the reality is that the Tories were the people engineering the breakdown. If the DLP had implemented the cuts the Tories demanded in 1984 then 5,000 council workers would have lost their jobs and the council rents would have been increased by 170%. This was unacceptable to the DLP so it fought and continued to fight a very successful campaign to force concessions from the Tory government (and it did so in the teeth of opposition from Kinnock and the right-wing leadership of the LP and from the right-wing trade union leaders - particularly at the time NUPE and the NUT).

Over the period that the socialist council ran Liverpool (and at its high point there were only 9 Militant members who were councillors - the rest were left wing activists who were members of other groups or non-aligned socialists) - this is their record -

6,300 families rehoused from tenements, flats and maisonettes
2, 873 tenement flats demolished
1,315 walk-up flats demolished
2,086 flats/maisonettes demolished
4,800 houses and bungalows built
7,400 houses and flats improved
600 houses/bungalows created by ‘top-downing’ 1,315 walk-up flats
25 new Housing Action Areas being developed
6 new nursery classes built and open
17 Community Comprehensive Schools established following a massive re-organisation
£10million spent on school improvements
Five new sports centres, one with a leisure pool attached, built and opened
Two thousand additional jobs provided for in Liverpool City Council Budget
Ten thousand people per year employed on Council’s Capital Programme
Three new parks built
Rents frozen for five years

This is the legacy of the socialist council in Liverpool - a council that was never defeated at the ballot box but was undemocratically removed from office by the House of Lords. As for Derek Hatton - whatever he ultimately did after being removed from office (and he was vilified and scapegoated, losing his job, losing his home, being blacklisted and an attempt to jail him on trumped up charges) - it does not take away from the role that he, Tony Mulhearn, John Hamilton, Tony Byrne, Pauline Lowes, Peter Owens, Bob Lancaster and the other 40 socialist councillors played in Liverpool in the 1980s. Thousands of people in Liverpool have decent homes thanks to these individuals, the DLP (which was shut down by Kinnock) and the working class people who supported them. There legacy is in bricks and mortar - and to say that folk of Liverpool would not regard it as the 'finest hour' is belied by the fact that the socialist council repeatedly won election after election.

You say Liverpool was the reason why LP under Kinnock became unelectable - yet the LP in Liverpool repeatedly bucked the trend in the 1983 and 1987 general election - with big swings to the LP - swings that if they had been replicated country-wide would have seen LP win a landslide - and swings that were built on the back of the campaigning socialist policies in Liverpool.

 

[Sirnormangall]

I’m hoping Wrong-Daily gets the gig, I do like a laugh...

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Ha ha - party on down Rebecca

 

[drew]

Between 1979 and 1983 the Tory government stole £217million in grants to Liverpool City Council - it was strangling the city financially. The Socialist council was elected on the basis of creating 1,000 council jobs (in a city ravaged by unemployment) coupled with a reversal of the 1,000 job cuts announced by the Liberals, cutting council rents by £2 per week and introducing a minimum wage and a 35-hour week for the council's workforce. The DLP made these promises in their manifesto on the basis that this was the minimum necessary to lift at least a section of the city's population out of poverty. To implement its programme it was necessary to set a budget of £237million - $25m above the limit set by Tory cuts. The DLP decided to launch a campaign among the council workforce and the working class of Liverpool to force the Tories to hand back £25million of the money it had stolen from the council. The campaign generated unprecedented support for the DLP in the city and the following year the DLP significantly increased its support in the council elections.

You say there was a 'deliberate engineering' a breakdown - when the reality is that the Tories were the people engineering the breakdown. If the DLP had implemented the cuts the Tories demanded in 1984 then 5,000 council workers would have lost their jobs and the council rents would have been increased by 170%. This was unacceptable to the DLP so it fought and continued to fight a very successful campaign to force concessions from the Tory government (and it did so in the teeth of opposition from Kinnock and the right-wing leadership of the LP and from the right-wing trade union leaders - particularly at the time NUPE and the NUT).

Over the period that the socialist council ran Liverpool (and at its high point there were only 9 Militant members who were councillors - the rest were left wing activists who were members of other groups or non-aligned socialists) - this is their record -

6,300 families rehoused from tenements, flats and maisonettes
2, 873 tenement flats demolished
1,315 walk-up flats demolished
2,086 flats/maisonettes demolished
4,800 houses and bungalows built
7,400 houses and flats improved
600 houses/bungalows created by ‘top-downing’ 1,315 walk-up flats
25 new Housing Action Areas being developed
6 new nursery classes built and open
17 Community Comprehensive Schools established following a massive re-organisation
£10million spent on school improvements
Five new sports centres, one with a leisure pool attached, built and opened
Two thousand additional jobs provided for in Liverpool City Council Budget
Ten thousand people per year employed on Council’s Capital Programme
Three new parks built
Rents frozen for five years

This is the legacy of the socialist council in Liverpool - a council that was never defeated at the ballot box but was undemocratically removed from office by the House of Lords. As for Derek Hatton - whatever he ultimately did after being removed from office (and he was vilified and scapegoated, losing his job, losing his home, being blacklisted and an attempt to jail him on trumped up charges) - it does not take away from the role that he, Tony Mulhearn, John Hamilton, Tony Byrne, Pauline Lowes, Peter Owens, Bob Lancaster and the other 40 socialist councillors played in Liverpool in the 1980s. Thousands of people in Liverpool have decent homes thanks to these individuals, the DLP (which was shut down by Kinnock) and the working class people who supported them. There legacy is in bricks and mortar - and to say that folk of Liverpool would not regard it as the 'finest hour' is belied by the fact that the socialist council repeatedly won election after election.

You say Liverpool was the reason why LP under Kinnock became unelectable - yet the LP in Liverpool repeatedly bucked the trend in the 1983 and 1987 general election - with big swings to the LP - swings that if they had been replicated country-wide would have seen LP win a landslide - and swings that were built on the back of the campaigning socialist policies in Liverpool.

Wouldn't it have been easier just to post this link?

https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/liverpool/index.html?l7.htm

 

[Beach Hut]

Between 1979 and 1983 the Tory government stole £217million in grants to Liverpool City Council - it was strangling the city financially. The Socialist council was elected on the basis of creating 1,000 council jobs (in a city ravaged by unemployment) coupled with a reversal of the 1,000 job cuts announced by the Liberals, cutting council rents by £2 per week and introducing a minimum wage and a 35-hour week for the council's workforce. The DLP made these promises in their manifesto on the basis that this was the minimum necessary to lift at least a section of the city's population out of poverty. To implement its programme it was necessary to set a budget of £237million - $25m above the limit set by Tory cuts. The DLP decided to launch a campaign among the council workforce and the working class of Liverpool to force the Tories to hand back £25million of the money it had stolen from the council. The campaign generated unprecedented support for the DLP in the city and the following year the DLP significantly increased its support in the council elections.

You say there was a 'deliberate engineering' a breakdown - when the reality is that the Tories were the people engineering the breakdown. If the DLP had implemented the cuts the Tories demanded in 1984 then 5,000 council workers would have lost their jobs and the council rents would have been increased by 170%. This was unacceptable to the DLP so it fought and continued to fight a very successful campaign to force concessions from the Tory government (and it did so in the teeth of opposition from Kinnock and the right-wing leadership of the LP and from the right-wing trade union leaders - particularly at the time NUPE and the NUT).

Over the period that the socialist council ran Liverpool (and at its high point there were only 9 Militant members who were councillors - the rest were left wing activists who were members of other groups or non-aligned socialists) - this is their record -

6,300 families rehoused from tenements, flats and maisonettes
2, 873 tenement flats demolished
1,315 walk-up flats demolished
2,086 flats/maisonettes demolished
4,800 houses and bungalows built
7,400 houses and flats improved
600 houses/bungalows created by ‘top-downing’ 1,315 walk-up flats
25 new Housing Action Areas being developed
6 new nursery classes built and open
17 Community Comprehensive Schools established following a massive re-organisation
£10million spent on school improvements
Five new sports centres, one with a leisure pool attached, built and opened
Two thousand additional jobs provided for in Liverpool City Council Budget
Ten thousand people per year employed on Council’s Capital Programme
Three new parks built
Rents frozen for five years

This is the legacy of the socialist council in Liverpool - a council that was never defeated at the ballot box but was undemocratically removed from office by the House of Lords. As for Derek Hatton - whatever he ultimately did after being removed from office (and he was vilified and scapegoated, losing his job, losing his home, being blacklisted and an attempt to jail him on trumped up charges) - it does not take away from the role that he, Tony Mulhearn, John Hamilton, Tony Byrne, Pauline Lowes, Peter Owens, Bob Lancaster and the other 40 socialist councillors played in Liverpool in the 1980s. Thousands of people in Liverpool have decent homes thanks to these individuals, the DLP (which was shut down by Kinnock) and the working class people who supported them. There legacy is in bricks and mortar - and to say that folk of Liverpool would not regard it as the 'finest hour' is belied by the fact that the socialist council repeatedly won election after election.

You say Liverpool was the reason why LP under Kinnock became unelectable - yet the LP in Liverpool repeatedly bucked the trend in the 1983 and 1987 general election - with big swings to the LP - swings that if they had been replicated country-wide would have seen LP win a landslide - and swings that were built on the back of the campaigning socialist policies in Liverpool.

You forgot to mention sending out redundancy notices via Taxis