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I was wrong. But I was not wrong to feel hope. My analysis and predictions turned out to be inaccurate, and I will try to learn from that and do better in future. I thought that the Tory tricks would not be enough this time, and I was wrong about that. I intend to dig into this and try to figure out exactly how it happened, and to take what I learn and use it to defeat this government, both electorally and otherwise. Right now I'm thinking strikes. Lots and lots of strikes. The EU referendum crushed me. Trump's election win crushed me. The surprise upset in the 2017 election was the beginning of me being able to move away from the despair I was feeling. Fast forward to this election, and I feel stronger than I ever have in my life, and I am grateful to have had a chance to share that with you all. This time, I don't feel crushed. Shocked, yes. Saddened, yes. Disappointed, most certainly. But I still feel hope, though I absolutely understand anyone who is having difficulty with that right now. I have been part of a team in this thread who helped to keep hope alive for a great many people, and we sorely needed that. I am still part of that team, and you are all still amazing people. We rest, we cry, we recover. Myself included. Take the time you need, everyone. But when you're ready, please join me once again. We will dust ourselves off, figure out what needs to be done next, and we will renew the fight with both hope and grim determination. The Left is not going back into its box, and we are not out of ideas. We have work to do. I regret nothing. Solidarity to you all.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:08
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yeah i'm gone. not sticking around. this country is a poisonous, spiteful place full of cunts who can't be reasoned with. they're happy to suffer if they think the next person will suffer a little bit more. all for the sake of leaving the EU and turning this into an asset stripped shithole. grenfell went tory for gently caress's sake. best you can do is small scale local activism and trying to blunt the sharper policies thru volunteer work etc. what a loving fallen world.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:09
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I think you need 2 parties: one is silent on racism, xenophobia, trans rights, anything identity focused but makes a ton of noise about making the poor better off, is publicly nationalist and peddles constant conspiracies about the rich. The second publicly accepts the neoliberal consensus on economics but runs hard on identity politics, social justice, trans rights, is international in view and so on. The key thing is they have to be working together which means whilst they can attack each other’s policies as the dumbest poo poo ever, they mustn’t be contemptuous of each other or undermine credibility, or imply that they are the real enemy. There is a real enemy; it just won. Fight them first.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:09
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It's okay to be wrong
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Dec 13, 2019 10:09
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Beefeater1980 posted:I think you need 2 parties: one is silent on racism, xenophobia, trans rights, anything identity focused but makes a ton of noise about making the poor better off, is publicly nationalist and peddles constant conspiracies about the rich. 
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Dec 13, 2019 10:11
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I mean I saw Boris Johnson's majority coming the second the election was announced, but honestly I hoped I would be totally wrong. I wasn't. Ohh well.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:11
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Pablo Bluth posted:How many PLP nominations will leader hopefuls require to get on the ballot? 15%, so 31.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:12
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This toilet country
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Dec 13, 2019 10:13
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orange sky posted:Yeah. The problem with crossing lines and ditching morals is that if something like this happened to Corbyn, he'd be ousted the next day When there’s a very small number of people who decide what is morally outrageous and what isn’t (media owners), how are you ever supposed to win? I don’t see how it’s possible.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:15
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gh0stpinballa posted:yeah i'm gone. not sticking around. this country is a poisonous, spiteful place full of cunts who can't be reasoned with. they're happy to suffer if they think the next person will suffer a little bit more. all for the sake of leaving the EU and turning this into an asset stripped shithole. grenfell went tory for gently caress's sake. best you can do is small scale local activism and trying to blunt the sharper policies thru volunteer work etc. what a loving fallen world. Come to Canada. We currently have a minority government run by a wet paper towel and at the mercy of a bunch of want to be francais. It's great out here right now.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:16
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Honest truth, as an outsider looking in - I always thought you guys accepted the confusing Brexit position of Labour too quickly. It seemed obvious to me that this was a Brexit election, and the average voter is not nuanced or patient enough to understand why Labour's position was actually the superior one. I wonder if Labour would have been better off with a slogan like "Do Brexit Right" and emphasize their opposition to the Tory Brexit, rather than trying to play both sides and make it sound like they were a soft remain party. At least once Boris was chosen as conservative leader and his maximum insta-Brexit became the alternative. Maybe that'd boost the Lib Dems a bit in the south (like other posters noted), but I think it would have gotten closer to a Hung parliament outcome, rather than giving the Tories a clear lane to trounce everyone else with.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:16
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I think it's important for everyone to remember the tory vote share only increased by 1.2%. Yes, only 1.2%! Gaining this many seats on a tiny increase like this is a once in a generation thing and Johnson is a lucky bastard to be on the receiving end. A lot of things came together for this result to happen and I think in the next election things will be looking much better.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:18
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:When there’s a very small number of people who decide what is morally outrageous and what isn’t (media owners), how are you ever supposed to win? I don’t see how it’s possible. It isn't. It's working as intended. Non violent change won't happen, the irreversible path has been confirmed yesterday night. Now things will change when people are starved of food and water, and riot in the streets. Let's hope I'm wrong, but after seeing the manipulation of public opinion (even by what reached Portugal regarding Corbyn) anyone that is opposed to the ownership of the people by big business will be libeled into the ground.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:18
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Labour was hosed in any event. People are genuinely tired of this poo poo and the Tories had a clear cut answer to end it all. That's what won the vote.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:19
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The process of studiously ignoring what actually happened last night is well underway among the melts. Heavy swings to the Brexit Party across all the traditional Labour seats that fell are irrelevant. If only we'd had the centrist Blairite remainer candidate newspaper columnists have been screaming for this disaster could have been avoided.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:20
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Qwertycoatl posted:15%, so 31.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:20
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There is a massive political realignment happening, and socialist ideals and principles do not resonate with a large body of the white working class. There is a massive upswing in nationalist and exclusionary views of the world, where ideas such as cooperation are seen as weakness, and strongmen are revered. I don’t think Labour is necessarily going to be able to reach these people. At least not without becoming something most of us here could never support.
Pesmerga fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Dec 13, 2019 |
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Dec 13, 2019 10:21
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Let's not forget the events of 2017 still happened, and they were still only two years ago.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:22
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I can't get enough of are Dan
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Holy poo poo the vote splitting on the left needs to be sorted out:
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Dec 13, 2019 10:22
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i felt unsettled when the leadership let the remain libs into their headspace and started dithering about brexit. should have stuck with honouring the ref and delivering the softest of lexits. talk of staying neutral during a 2nd referendum just looked poo poo and insincere, like they were trying to smuggle remain in thru the trojan horse of another go around cos the boy didn't trust himself to get a good deal. it was the wrong fight to pick and the results bear that out completely. i think liberals having an outsize voice in media messed up Labour's vibes and got them thinking remain had a bigger constituency than it does. the LD results here show as much.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:22
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Pablo Bluth posted:https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/13/who-will-be-the-next-labour-party-leader I was torn between RLB and Rayner but after these results, definitely Rayner.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:23
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Presented without comment:
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Dec 13, 2019 10:23
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It didn't suprise me. It's a bummer but it is what it is. Might be the push I needed personally - I've gotten a hell of a lot more well in the past few years, I think maybe I'm well enough to move again. I wanted to go back to Canada since legalization and this role is only until March. I moved here to be with family and they've almost all gone back to NA too, just my mum working her last few years before retirement. She never wanted to retire here either. I wonder how much it would cost - I've got a few grand saved up and I don't need to worry about citizenship or what have you.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:24
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By the way words cannot describe how glad I am that not only did the lib dems get decimated, but Jo Swinson lost her seat. gently caress the lib dems in about every way possible.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:24
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The Rabbi T. White posted:Holy poo poo the vote splitting on the left needs to be sorted out: where's the split, libdems aren't on the left.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:25
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:When there’s a very small number of people who decide what is morally outrageous and what isn’t (media owners), how are you ever supposed to win? I don’t see how it’s possible. It has happened before. It will happen again.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:25
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qhat posted:You say this but come on, are we really going to argue that boomers in their 60s had the same viewpoints as their grandparents when they were in their 60s? I don't think so. There's going to come a point within literally ten years where the Tories can no longer ignore massive student loan debt in order to gain votes from the Greys, because the Greys will still have no housing and still debt from when they were 20 years younger. No, but boomers in their 60's are waaaay more conservative than they were in their 20's and 30's. In this election you had a bunch of people who remember their communities being destroyed by Thatcherism voting Tory because something something cosmopolitan elites and multiculturalism. Things might be different in Britain, but I vividly remember the rise of the religious right in Poland in the 90's. It was a small movement largely comprised of old church ladies and everyone was like "oh it's just the war generation reacting to rapidly changing circumstances, it'll be a blip since they're about to die off". Well, the war generation is mostly dead and the religious right now has an iron grip on power, partially because a new and larger cohort, including many people who voted for the nominal left back then, has aged into becoming church ladies. Of course this can't map one to one, since religion and culture war stuff associated with it isn't much of a political issue in the UK, but immigration has worked very similarly for most Western European countries. The received wisdom used to be that xenophobia would to go away as people get used to living in a multicultural society, but what actually happened is that a lot of aging people got more and more anti-immigrant and nostalgic for the past.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:25
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My partner is very settled in her job and I don't know how to say to her that I'm not sure I can bear to stay in this country I am very lucky that I could conceivably leave. I've got a mate who's having to move to Rotterdam for work, his sofa is looking tempting
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Dec 13, 2019 10:25
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gh0stpinballa posted:i felt unsettled when the leadership let the remain libs into their headspace and started dithering about brexit. should have stuck with honouring the ref and delivering the softest of lexits. talk of staying neutral during a 2nd referendum just looked poo poo and insincere, like they were trying to smuggle remain in thru the trojan horse of another go around cos the boy didn't trust himself to get a good deal. it was the wrong fight to pick and the results bear that out completely. i think liberals having an outsize voice in media messed up Labour's vibes and got them thinking remain had a bigger constituency than it does. the LD results here show as much. I don’t think that would have worked either. It would be like Labour’s previous soft-anti-immigrant approach - why vote for the soft version when you can double down on really loving up an immigrant. It could have been spun as ‘look, even labour thinks this is necessary, vote for us for The Best Brexit for Britain’.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:26
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Pesmerga posted:There is a massive political realignment happening, and socialist ideals and principles do not resonate with a large body of the white working class. There is a massive upswing in nationalist and exclusionary views of the world, where ideas such as cooperation are seen as weakness, and strongmen are revered. I don’t think Labour is necessarily going to be able to reach these people. At least not without becoming something most of us here could never support.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:26
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HJB posted:Let's not forget the events of 2017 still happened, and they were still only two years ago. Yeah, I know a lot of people are going into the pit of dispare, but its only one election, there will be another. This one was won on a single issue, and the last few years have shown us that the next election could be next year or in five. Move one, fight the next fight, we lost the battle, but the war still continues - and the Tories burned a lot of their resources in the media on this one. Plus, there is still the chance that Kussenburg gets arrested.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:26
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Also, Jo Swinson lost her seat to a 27 year old SNP female activist standing for the first time. loving glorious.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:27
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Look after each other. I love you goons.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:28
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qhat posted:By the way words cannot describe how glad I am that not only did the lib dems get decimated, but Jo Swinson lost her seat. gently caress the lib dems in about every way possible. Lib Dems increased their vote share the most out of any party (+4.2%) and lost 1 seat. Tories ended up with 35% more votes than Labour and ended on 79% more seats. Voting reform is the first thing the next Labour leadership needs to be pushing, and they need to be (at least temporarily) working with other parties to do it. Otherwise we're never going to fix anything else with this shithole of a country.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:28
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As expected, Lavery on tv banging the labour nationalist drum.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:29
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gh0stpinballa posted:i felt unsettled when the leadership let the remain libs into their headspace and started dithering about brexit. should have stuck with honouring the ref and delivering the softest of lexits. talk of staying neutral during a 2nd referendum just looked poo poo and insincere, like they were trying to smuggle remain in thru the trojan horse of another go around cos the boy didn't trust himself to get a good deal. it was the wrong fight to pick and the results bear that out completely. i think liberals having an outsize voice in media messed up Labour's vibes and got them thinking remain had a bigger constituency than it does. the LD results here show as much. Yep. Absolutely disastrous decision to back a second referendum - the result of Labour caving to pressure from the media and from within the party. One good reason why Starmer should not be the next leader - this policy was his project.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:29
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I thought I'd feel better this morning but I feel worse if anything. It's like that moment in a WW2 film where we realise that actually our heroes are hosed, and despite all the pluck and integrity, they will be executed by the Nazi firing squad without being rescued. (Or, see The Bridge) My family will be worse off under the Tories and I'm worried my mother (precariat in social housing) may end up homeless. I'm worried about my sister who is still in university and looks set to have even less of a hope than I did on graduating. And I'm scared for my partner (not from the EU) who is likely to see even more racism as a result of this election, and even more barriers to ever living in the UK. The only person who might come out of a Tory government okay out of the people I care most about... is me. So I feel responsible for the lives of those three women, to different extents, and I know the government is going to do everything it can to destroy the lives of my loved ones. Purple Prince fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Dec 13, 2019 |
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Dec 13, 2019 10:30
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Grey Hunter posted:the Tories burned a lot of their resources in the media on this one. Did they tho? They burned... maybe a couple of BBC mouthpieces, but who cares, they won. The rest of the media are still firmly on their side and will be forever.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:30
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The risk there was that you’d then lose the city-dwelling labour supporters, with the risk that the ‘heartlands’ would still go full fash. Look at the electoral map and what has happened.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:30
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qhat posted:Labour was hosed in any event. People are genuinely tired of this poo poo and the Tories had a clear cut answer to end it all. That's what won the vote. This is probably the message we should take. It's loving devastating to see this poo poo. The next fight must be to keep Labour to the left and stop the centrists pushing us back to their neoliberal consensus politics. Things are about to get bad for almost all of us as they tear apart the NHS for profit, starve the schools and then physically starve the people. It's easy to be angry at voters for this but it's not helpful, they've been manipulated and most people are largely ignorant to anything the BBC/Sun/Mail etc don't tell them. Hate and anger just reinforce this, don't fall into that trap. They're going to try and make us the enemy like they did Corbyn, we can't let that happen.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:31
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