The Boris Bounce

I think Labour could help themselves by listening to their electorate instead of using sound bytes saying they're going to re engage with their electorate. They ignored their constituents in areas that were predominantly leave and classed them as protest voters. They mocked constituents further by putting remainers in as their candidates. Then they have the cheek to wonder what went wrong. You reap what you sew.

 

I don't see how they unite. Uniting has to be around something that allows for other things to be compromised over or not seen as being as relevant or important.

You'd think defeating a common enemy causing such untold damage and harming our establishments may be something to unite around, but it just doesn't seem to be happening.

 

Putting a staunch remainer in shows nothing but contempt for the working class leave voters, these people feel completely abandoned by the Labour Party.
If they’d put a leave candidate in at least this would have shown some respect for the electorate and would have gone someways to clawing back the lost votes

if the Labour Party carry on like this it will be decades before they get elected again

 

I don't get why staunch leftists don't just jump in with the Greens? Too closely associated with ecowarriors? The Greens offer a home to any socialist and at least they still seem honest, unlike Labour. Is it because the leftists know they can't win an election without the centre? I suppose that is the key challenge for the Labour Party.

 

Fully agree and I do wonder how many of that generation who were sold the middle class opportunity for all dream under new labour only for it to turn sour point blank refuse to vote for them now ?

 

It’s been an impossible task during a global pandemic to either offer much opposition or set your own agenda. The country is still split on Brexit lines and the Labour Party is seen as pro Remain. To change things Labour needs it’s own post Brexit vision of the country so that voters don’t fear them trying to rejoin the EU. I’m very much a Remoaner by the way.

 

It will be decades regardless. I'd even go so far as to say Labour will never be in government again in the next 40 years.

I can see what you're saying about respect for an electorate. But surely a party is supposed to have a stance, beliefs, values. And then put that to the electorate and say why they believe that and why people should follow them on that journey.

Labour have ruled out rejoining the EU and even reopening negotiations. Thats pissed off a lot of remain leaning people. Leave voting areas wont suddenly vote for Labour because they put a single leave based candidate there.

Labour have an impossible bind because of Brexit. Lean leave, you risk losing the majority of the voters you have left and struggle to win back any you lost (70% of Labour voters were remain leaning, so a significant majority).

Scotland has gone, Wales is going. North isn't listening. the country rural vote isn't for turning.

I seriously don't know what could be done to turn this around.

 

Theres a big movement of people who want to rejoin the EU who have no political home.

I fear Starmer is taking Labour down the worst of all worlds. Have a pro brexit vision and you lose a lot of voters. Have a pro EU vision, you fail to win back a lot of voters.

The only way I can see things changing is pain. When people start to feel consequence, they then have a chance to judge an alternative, if pride can be put aside.

 

Nowt wrong wi a bit of needlecraft.

 

I think in some ways traditional working -class Labour voters are changing their voting habits because they are crying out for help. I think there's a paradox here. I think the referendum vote was in some ways a cry for help from people who are marginalised and left behind and then again the move to the Brexit party further emphasised that. When the Conservatives say 'Get Brexit Done' it implies that everything is going to be alright. Many people will latch on to that and vote Tory. Similarly with 'Levelling Up'. Easy but it sounds like some kind of cure. The people in red wall areas have been neglected by Labour for a long time. The party when it has had chance has not fundamentally done anything deep or lasting to solve worsening socio-economic problems for these areas so its left to the Tories to suggest they will. The Tories have verbally ridden to the rescue much better than Labour and the Tory message is sticking. There's also the short -term vaccine success which people ascribe to the Tories. But, as I say when your life is not great, your prospects aren't good, you're on a poor wage and use a food bank and have voted Labour before without anything changing why not try the Tories? Not helped by Starmer not having any vision except to say we should see the Union Jack more and wear suits.
Labour should have a socialist vision which they mean to stick to. That's partly why Labour got over 50% of the vote in Hartlepool in 2017. Labour has yet again shied away from that kind of approach though and has bottled it under Starmer. The Tories have said they are the true friends of people lIke those in Hartlepool and ex-Labour voters are thinking 'why not?'.
It's more complicated than this obviously but as I say, its partly a long term lack of interest in these areas by Labour which looks like it is simply reverting to type under current leadership.

 

That's been tried before without success. We're in the middle of a very unusual situation coupled with leaving the European Union. Imo, the worst thing Labour can do is a knee jerk response. Set out how they are going to help young people get housed and in jobs how they are going to prioritise the NHS and look after workers rights. What s going to happen with tuition fees. And hold the government to account for all the massive **** ups .

 

Just thought I’d post you this statement from a ex union colleague, see what you think


Hartlepool
It makes me physically sick to see Tories gloating over their win in Hartlepool BUT Labour is STONE DEEF to its traditional working-class voters of the previous ‘red wall’. What has Labour’s message been for them? Well, its front and centre campaign until recently was to jump in and try and block the new mine in Whitehaven. What was the point of that? Simple, they were trying to garnish up their green credentials for their nice liberal middle-class constituents in the south of England. That’s who they aim to appeal to, the woke, identity politics, middle class liberals. On that line, we have heard no acceptance of the Leave vote and desire of the key working-class voters or that Labour has accepted it. Instead, we get voices calling for rejoining the EU and constantly attacking in quite crude terms the working class people who voted enmass to Leave the EU.
So, they come to job starved post industrial Hartlepool with NO programme for industry, no mention of taking over steel, regenerating steel and ring-fencing British coal to supply that steel requirement. Of course, not they now embrace the anti-industry message and climate hysteria of the middle-class greens, and that is their key target these days. Did that go down well in proletarian Hartlepool? Did they think it would? Even they can now see the answer although they still don’t accept the reason, believe it or not they are still blaming Corbyn under whose leadership it had remained Labour.
So has Starmer and Labour learned any lessons from this? Has it hell, spokespeople are saying the Starmer reforms and war on the left in the party hasn’t gone far enough. Not that ‘the left in the party’ are the answer to the problem, they are in large part THE PROBLEM it was them who joined in a pro EU pincer movement with the right to defeat Corbyn’s leave commitment. They are still at it. There is not a cat in hells chance, that Labour’s left by enlarge has anything in common with the working class outside of London and the South East. On the contrary they regard your average northern working-class person as the enemy, constantly attacked and caricatured and lampooned. Worse this attitude is increasing cross contamination of the young Trade Union activists setting the liberal agenda going wholesale over to Identity politics and Climate Hysteria agendas. One only has to look at the agenda for the Yorkshire and Humberside TUC’s With Banners Held High to see that loud and clear.
How will it change? in the overused phrase ‘I wouldn’t start from here’ Labour in its current form is I fear a dead letter. Genuine working-class representatives particularly of Traditional working class areas, needs to form an alternative nationwide tendency. It needs to be pro industry, steel, clean coal, manufacturing, construction, as well as modern industries in computers and ITEC . It needs to take a sensible review of Green agenda’s abandon the anti-working class programme on domestic gas, foreign holidays, and the plans on banning petrol and diesel engines ( rather than continuing to improve their performance), and of course power generation. They need to be composed of ordinary working class people and conferences need to start to represent us and listen to us. There are genuine and honest Labour MPs a few, their hearts must be in their boots and nothing in this post is aimed at them. The only long term answer for a genuine Labour response is that it goes back to the Labour Platform it was under Keir Hardie rather than ‘a party’ that representatives of working class politics and outlooks in genuine socialist and labour organisations be allowed to share it and that once again it is a voice of working folk not professional politicians and the middle class liberal elite.

 

The problem with the Greens is that, because of our electoral system, it's effectively a wasted vote. I live in Wakefield so last election it was a Labour/Tory swing seat, I can't stand the Tories so it's either vote for Labour or a vote for the greens is effectively a vote for the Tories.

 

Has anyone told him he sounds like he's ideally suited to voting for a far right party?

 

I think the Labour left know they can’t win an election without the centre. It’s the centrists who are deluding themselves into thinking they can win an election without the left.

Whatever people think of Tony Blair these days he was clever enough to realise that he wouldn’t win power without a united Labour Party. The current leadership can’t seem to get anything right

 

There seems to be plenty of opinions why labour has done so badly and fair enough to those that ditched them if they believed that strongly .
But I cannot get my head around them abandoning To vote Tory ,
Brexit and what the fek else . This lying , self centred , grab all you can and fek the rest morbidly greedy obese which is shafting this country for all its worth to so few of them .
There is no excuse , theres plenty of protest votes without voting for a party that has and always will shaft the working class .
For anyone that has had a loved one suffer this appalling disease or suffered at the unjust and uneven furlough scheme and voted Tory. Shame on you.

 

Completely agree - I've always said this. If you don't vote Labour, then fair enough. I get this.

But to vote Tory? I echo exactly what you say.

Shame on you.

 

No they haven’t,

I’m interested in what you deem as far right in his statement ?

Dave Douglas who wrote the statement this morning is about as left wing as you can get

 

Stopped reading at climate hysteria of middle class greens. Cobblers.

 

I see usual suspects are out in force with their pitchforks

 

I've always said far left and far right are two sides of the same coin.