More Politics (sorry): NIP

Didn't Corbyn celebrate Labour losing? The smile on his face and trying to high five after the 2017 election that Labour just lost.... That tells me all I needed to know about the party under that leadership.

It wasn't Starmers job to unite the party under Corbyn that was a failure from that leadership was it not?

Time for the party to move on and become electable again some people have left and are stood at the side whining and some have rejoined relieved the party are moving forwards again.

 

latest polls show Labour on 32% 10 points behind a govt that ms been negligent and played a part in thousands of unnecessary deaths. And that’s exactly where they were in 2019.

Now is exactly the time to discuss pre election pacts long term coalition and a change in the electoral system you don’t do that on the back of a *** packet in the run up to an election. Clive Lewis had been very good on this and should be leader.

and yes chasing the red wall gammons is the only group they are interested in and the gammons have no interest in Starmer.

It’s time for Labour to change both direction and leader

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Labour are going to lose Hartlepool and get hammered in the local elections. Hopefully this will lead to change otherwise they are doomed. I’m a floating voter with no real attachment to any party they are offering me zero at the moment.

I suspect this will be reflected in England.

 

What direction? Who would you have as leader? Who can satisfy the likes of Momentum, whilst regaining the red wall seats, which they need to do if they are to have any chance.

 

I left Labour a month ago. Not a huge loss I’m sure. But there you go.

 

And it's only going to get worse.

Selby might sneer at the cheering in 2017, but I know a lot of Labour activists. Granted this was in a big city, but there was a real feeling back then that for the first time in as long as anybody could remember they really felt like they'd managed to get through to a youth vote that up until then had seemed completely uninterested. A hung parliament was a fantastic result given the circumstances (and more than Brown and Milliband managed, let's not forget), and this was despite years of being told that a left-wing manifesto would make Labour completely unelectable and unheard of disobedience within the PLP. If it wasn't for Brexit I honestly believe that the party could have gone on to big things in 2019.

I think that Starmer has thrown away a once-in-a-generation opportunity to cement Labour as the de facto movement for the youth of the country (and by that I mean anybody under about 40), in the same way as the tories have their own demographics tightly sewn up. It remains to see where those votes will go now, or whether they'll disappear into thin air, but the likes of the NIP - good policies, great online presence, serious about democracy - could be an appealing home, and I wouldn't bet against them becoming a real force over the next couple of decades.

 

I don't think I've ever been as disillusioned with the future of the country I live in, how it is represented, it's government of the day and any hope of change.

I don't have enough contempt in my bones for DePfeffel and his cabal. But you look at alternatives and its just an absolute shambles. Scotland is sewn up and Labour get weaker by the year. Wales is on a similar drift and the North of the UK has chosen to ignore what Conservatism has done to it for generations.

The fundamental point of difference between the Tories and Labour (as parties) is that the Tories will unite behind anything that they think is a winner. They covet power and don't care how they get it. Power is their entitlement.

Labour however may seek power, but own the realm of ideology more. Purist ideology trumps power. And this latest "northern" offshoot is just another form if it. I wouldn't even be surprised if it was thought up as a tory strategy to completely break down any realm of Labour stronghold. At the same time as eradicating UKIP and BXP parties, leaving only one right wing group to vote for, the Centre and left world has fractured into pieces. That doesn't win seats and it doesn't win elections.

You can vote Green, LibDem, Plaid, SNP, Labour as it stands in some constituent seats, if more factions are added, it merely dilutes votes.

That being said, I can fully understand left of centre voters being disappointed with Starmer. It's been a drab bland hopeless year. Carped at by those of a more momentum slant from day one, but increasingly as he's shifted to what seems to be an anti EU pro flag waving party, I'm not really sure just who he is aiming at winning round. It feels like he's taken Corbyns disaster and in trying to professionalise the internal mechanisms after years of soviet style decay, he's completely ignored the things that matter. It's a very sad state of affairs when you look at some of Millibands interviews and consider him to have more energy and focus on things that cut through.

They say its always darkest before the dawn. All I can think is that the dawn is far from close and we could be in for 40 years of night.

 

me personally Clive Lewis. Soft centre left. Ex soldier so can play the patriotism card at every opportunity. Recognises the need for working with other parties. Happy to enter into ore election pacts.

Clive was the only candidate who mapped out a pathway for centre left parties to win without Scotland and should be leader now.

I appreciate he may be a little ‘brown’ for some red wall voters but I don’t think Labour should accede to racism to chase some form of electability

 

The idea of Labour winning a U.K. FPTP election in a post SNP world is ridiculous.

I’ve never felt this helpless since 1987, Labour eating itself without even a nod to self awareness.

 

To who?

 

If Corbyn had supported May's deal he'd have got brexit off the decks, remained leader and had May to fight, not Johnson. Too inept though.

 

Clive Lewis as above.

 

the wreckers in his party would not have allowed that.

 

I wrote about this at length some time back, I think. With hindsight I definitely agree (I might have agreed at the time, if pushed), but let's not forget the real depth of feeling on the Labour remain side back then, and the degree to which the Lib Dems were circling around the liberal wing of the party.

Corbyn certainly had more solid leave credentials than even Boris Johnson, if only he'd been able to exercise them, but whichever way he'd gone there would have been uproar. As it turns out losing a few hundred thousand votes to the Lib Dems in the south and big cities would have been a far better outcome, but it was an unenviable position to be in whichever way you slice it. Oddly enough, the whole Brexit fiasco was probably the only matter in which Corbyn didn't follow his instincts, unless like me he was turned off by the nature of what the debate became.

 

He'd have been smarter to try it - he wanted brexit anyway.

 

i don’t t think that’s especially true. I suspect it’s more accurate to say that he didn’t see it as an issue that interested him. He was more interested in pursuing issues such as austerity and took the advice of people such as Starmer that turned out to be strategically wrong. Still he was damned either way.

 

Which is another way of saying that whoever is leader has to be realistically electable in the eyes of the voting public.

 

Corbyn was more electable than say Gordon Brown (less than 30% of vote share). Miliband (35% of vote share) or Starmer 32% in polls currently. Unfortunately he took advice from the Labour Remainers and tanked an election as a result.

 

No sneering just pointing out a fact...

I was an activist in 2017 as well and as in 2019 on the doorstep we were rowing against the tide.

Policy wasn't the whole problem neither was Brexit. The issue was Corbyn and people just not liking or trusting him to run the Country.

2017 is seen as a moment of hope for some in the Labour Party it wasn't and Corbyn should have gone afterwards and allowed someone else to carry on what he started.

May was abysmal in that campaign and our biggest weapon throughout she just wasn't up to it and still beat us leading to Boris then trouncing us in 2019.

All the anti Starmer stuff only serves for another tory majority when the Country can't afford it I'm sorry if some don't like the party moving in a slightly different direction but thats what the membership voted for last April.

We saw 5 years of smears and lies by the right against Corbyn and now it seems a minority of the left want to do the same to Starmer.

 

His problem is that from the beginning he wasn't deemed electable (or suitable, perhaps more accurately) by his own colleagues in Westminster and at the top of the party. They acted disgracefully, and he was always playing with half a deck because of it.