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Barry Shitpeas posted:I don't believe any of the leadership candidates could win an election now, but they don't have to. What's important is they be an effective leader of the Opposition who will call out the Tories for their failures and lovely policies and show that there is another way for the country, not some centrist weathervane trying to triangulate the polls. For all the mockery of "we won the conversation", Corbyn did succeed in re-energising the left and steering progressive issues back into the mainstream, and the next leader will have a hand in shaping the narrative for the next election as well. Also, Labour as a machine is not exactly optimised for winning elections, and hasn't been for years. A good leader can work on that.
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Feb 12, 2020 16:19
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I suspect the polls of members understate RLB's position - a month is a long time to cut into post-defeat gloom to persuade folks to pull a lever, and Corbyn will surely appeal again for her sometime in March
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Feb 12, 2020 16:31
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Honest opinion: Corbyn's problem was that he was insufficiently genuinely left wing, his successor should try the same platform but dump the stuff that is subsidies for the middle class like rail nationalisation and ending tuition fees.
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Feb 12, 2020 16:42
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Alchenar posted:Honest opinion: Corbyn's problem was that he was insufficiently genuinely left wing, his successor should try the same platform but dump the stuff that is subsidies for the middle class like rail nationalisation and ending tuition fees. Source your quotes
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Feb 12, 2020 16:48
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All fudge orders have now shipped! Which was slightly marred by my seeing my first ever fresh corpse (at age 38) on the way to the post office. No idea what happened- I got there as the cops were doing the blanket draping thing. The poor guy wasn’t wearing any shoes, and now I can’t get the image of a pair of totally still bare soles out of my mind. Not what was expected today to say the least.
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Feb 12, 2020 16:49
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Blue Labour's Paul Embery going Maximum Shithead: https://twitter.com/paulembery/status/1227303622905618432?s=21
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Feb 12, 2020 16:49
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https://twitter.com/RLong_Bailey/status/1227618677358505984?s=20
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Feb 12, 2020 16:52
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https://twitter.com/Nick_elalloy/status/1227500301545918464?s=19
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Feb 12, 2020 16:56
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Stormgale posted:Source your quotes No, genuinely. Look if you dont want to compromise on policy then the takeaway from the election is that voters liked the individual policy pledges but thought that taken together they weren't a credible plan for government. So you dont have to change policy, but you can just cut things until you have something that you think is sellable. Trains and tuition fees are easy because the impact of those pledges was actually pretty regressive.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:01
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Alchenar posted:No, genuinely. Citation needed.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:02
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It's pretty simple, you can get a car for under a grand in the back of the paper, but a train costs over a million, so any relief on trains will mostly benefit the upper middle class with their two train garages.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:05
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Communist Thoughts posted:e: fwiw a lot of reponders are intepreting this as "give up hope, face to despair" but like, no, just talk realistically about our chances. A good question is why is hope defined solely as ‘hoping that RLB will get elected’ rather than ‘hoping that KS will, after being elected, do the right thing?’. KS loyally supported JC all the way to his 2nd election loss. His personal views appear to be more or less that of the 2017 manifesto, perhaps a bit to the left But, you will see people arguing here that it is absolutely worth losing the next election in order to prevent him becoming leader. An excessively soft left government is a risk. If anyone seriously wants to claim it is a worse risk than 10 rather than 5 more years of the Tories drifting ever rightwards, then I question their judgement. Blair and New Labour happened after Thatcher, and because of her. if Blairism is what you hate most in the world, then repeating the process that led to it seems inadvisable. All the above, of course, do not apply to those who think RLB will prove different to, and more successful than JC. I might well end up voting for her myself on those grounds; I haven’t decided yet.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:06
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https://twitter.com/lloyd_rm/status/1227566234415325185
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Feb 12, 2020 17:06
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Question as I've not been following things too closely. Every time I see an article about Starmer recently he seems to be openly committing to Corbyn-inherited left-wing policies, but every time I click on this thread it seems like people are calling him a centrist Blairite. Not being disingenuous with this, is there strong reason to believe he's a lying fucker?
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Feb 12, 2020 17:15
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Rail subsidies are indeed regressive. Much UK inequality is between subregions rather than within subregions, and for rail to make sense, it must interlink areas with large populations, which tend to be the productive cities. It is nonetheless possible to double down on this on the argument that people from those poor regions can move, as people do, to rich areas and thereby benefit from the infrastructure there, but this is not how politics tends to work. All this is noise however - the party of trains-and-tuition-fees socdems who desperately want to believe that their middle-class subsidies are actually the stuff of radically principled ideology (DECOMMODIFICATION!) , and the party of those who think this instinct can be thusly channeled into subsidies for the long-term disabled or unemployed, have been in ascendancy for four years and the structural reasons for this ascent don't seem to have changed. ronya fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Feb 12, 2020 |
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Feb 12, 2020 17:15
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One of the points of re-nationalising the railways was to make it easier to direct investment into rail infrastructure to combat these inequalities rather than it just flowing to where it is most profitable (ie. already rich areas). You're gonna have to show more working on why nationalisation is inherently regressive; currently you're not saying much more than the current state of affairs is inequitable which is hardly a revelation to a Corbynista.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:22
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peanut- posted:Question as I've not been following things too closely. Every time I see an article about Starmer recently he seems to be openly committing to Corbyn-inherited left-wing policies, but every time I click on this thread it seems like people are calling him a centrist Blairite. Not being disingenuous with this, is there strong reason to believe he's a lying fucker? Look at who's supporting him, and who he's got working on his team. He's going big on "party unity" and the "broad church" thing which has always just been an excuse to shift the party rightward whilst forcing the left to "compromise". https://jacobinmag.com/2020/02/keir-starmer-labour-party-uk-leadership quote:The most right-wing rump of the PLP would be encouraged by a Starmer win. It would suspect, fairly or not, that Starmer is less committed to the left-wing policies which some rightist Labour MPs wasted no time in attacking as the election results were pouring in last month. By recruiting former Corbyn advisers including Simon Fletcher and Kat Fletcher, Starmer is doubtless aiming to reassure the Left about his intentions. Less reassuring, however, is the appointment of Matt Pound — former national organizer for the right-wing Labour First — to Starmer’s campaign team, a move hardly likely to dissuade the PLP right that he could be dragged further in its direction once installed as leader. quote:In appointing Pound, a self-proclaimed “full-time” organizer against the “hard left,” Starmer was (presumably deliberately) sending out a message to the Labour right that its concerns would be heeded and its interests tended to if he became party leader.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:24
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the argument seems to be that the people who currently use trains and go to university are predominantly middle-class so making those things cheaper/free would only benefit the middle class the fact there's a hole in this argument big enough to drive an Intercity 125 through doesn't seem to stop people from using it
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Feb 12, 2020 17:25
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Starmer is making a genuine and principled attempt to unify the party by giving both wings what they want - we get left wing policies, and the right get the only thing they actually care about : locking the left out of power forever e: also there will be no left wing policies ronya posted:DECOMMODIFICATION Borrovan fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Feb 12, 2020 |
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Feb 12, 2020 17:29
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Darth Walrus posted:Blue Labour's Paul Embery going Maximum Shithead: OK, difficult question time. One of the things Ashcroft's focus groups got out of former Labour voters who switched for 2019 was this sort of thing: quote:“They’re classing themselves as liberals but won’t let anyone else have a different viewpoint;” There is no route to a majority, or even to a hung parliament, that does not involve winning these constituencies back. Regardless of right or wrong, people who switched away from Labour are saying they're turned off by hearing the Labour Party talking about these things. Is there any possible way of squaring this circle? Are we prepared to accept things like gender self-ID or support for Palestine even being relegated to a page 25-of-the-manifesto thing that the party tries to discuss as little as possible, like (say) the Tories' democracy commission, or local referendums on council tax rises? Or are we stuck with "nope, these are key parts of the offer and if we can't win anything being loud and proud with them, too bad"?
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Feb 12, 2020 17:33
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I need to stop looking at Quora.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:35
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if starmer wins i'll stick around and see what happens. part of what I'm trying to take away from 2019 is to not only try not to let my sympathies towards the candidate i like blind me, but to also try to extend a little more sympathy to the candidates i don't like, at least on a provisional basis, on the idea that they're not actually blood drinking psychopaths (well, only about half of them are). a lot of things people were telling us or warning us under corbyn that i disregarded because they were stupid melt shitheads was actually true. i don't have to accept their conclusions but i'm trying to stop myself just going "oh that blairite said corbyn is unpopular with the electorate? that can't possibly be true thats just media manipulation" i'm not gonna vote for him because personally i don't like him as a leadership candidate but if he wins I'll give him a modicum of benefit of the doubt i dunno i'm just rambling while i wait for an email back
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Feb 12, 2020 17:35
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The nature of the beast is that if Starmer ekes out a contentious victory he will find it practically very difficult to work with the members of RLB's faction, because leading Labour is deliberately structured to be intensely vulnerable to procedural vetoes, petty sabotage, and bad-faith exercise of discretionary powers (measures which, in another light, are called 'democratically decentralizing power away from the leader's office') and vice-versa if RLB wins The UK is simply not large enough to simply find a new pool of untainted personnel from elsewhere, either, so their choice in advisors and ops people will tend to naturally limit itself (and, again, vice-versa). And having people to fill back-end careerist roles - poorly paid, horrible hours, where one's main payoff is being able to shape the unexciting stuff which can't get out the membership vote but do substantially govern most of the party's operational life - are what make the party apparatus tick
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Feb 12, 2020 17:36
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Borrovan posted:I don't understand this acronym
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Feb 12, 2020 17:37
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Guavanaut posted:Declare every Corbynist's opinions mostly monetarist, otherwise distribute information failing to indicate correlation across transport investment as opposed to nationalization. .... 
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Feb 12, 2020 17:38
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Trin Tragula posted:OK, difficult question time. One of the things Ashcroft's focus groups got out of former Labour voters who switched for 2019 was this sort of thing: i think the trans issue you have to come down on the side of the trans community just because its the only right and human thing to do. i do think its probably more unpopular than popular with the electorate though just cause britain is terfy as gently caress. hopefully not enough to actually lose any proper votes though. i would however be perfectly happy with labour shutting the gently caress up about israel and palestine forever, even though its one of my pet issues. its not our country and has gently caress all to do with our party and only hurts us and makes us look insane. should israeli ethno-nationalism be resisted? absolutely. is that the place of the leader of the labour party? lol no
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Feb 12, 2020 17:38
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radmonger posted:A good question is why is hope defined solely as ‘hoping that RLB will get elected’ rather than ‘hoping that KS will, after being elected, do the right thing?’. My hope is that Boris tears off his face mask and it's Lenin.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:42
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Trin Tragula posted:OK, difficult question time. One of the things Ashcroft's focus groups got out of former Labour voters who switched for 2019 was this sort of thing: If they're there at all, they will be key parts of the discussion, regardless of whether they're on page 25 in size 2 font, or page 1 in size 50. The media is what sets the narrative, and if leftist/progressive policy is there to see at all, and it must be to keep the membership engaged, it will be the forefront of the discussion precisely because it annoys these people. There is no route to an electoral victory that doesn't involve some way around that fact. It's also probably worth noting that there are direct, explicit contradictions between people in those select few quotes alone - it's literally impossible to please all of them. Hell, Israel/Palestine will be part of the discussion even if it's NOT in the manifesto, simply because it's been so effective as a stick to beaat Labour with previously. We have to be able to answer it to make progress, because it's never not going to be asked again. What that answer is, I haven't a fuuuuucking clue. But then, I'm still pretty unconvinced that there's a route to long-term improvement in electoralism at all.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:44
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Another point: Corbyn/McDonnell could make significant concessions to anti-immigration sentiment, City fears, private schools, austerity and welfare cuts, Brexit, etc. without supporters revolting. Remember when Corbyn went to the polls with a manifesto which actually kept more of the Welfare Reform and Work cuts than the Lib Dem manifesto? I don't think RLB would be given the same degree of largesse, never mind Starmer...
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Feb 12, 2020 17:46
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Communist Thoughts posted:i would however be perfectly happy with labour shutting the gently caress up about israel and palestine forever, even though its one of my pet issues. its not our country and has gently caress all to do with our party and only hurts us and makes us look insane. should israeli ethno-nationalism be resisted? absolutely. is that the place of the leader of the labour party? lol no Having a press that never challenges you on funneling billions to hardline Islamic autocracies in the Middle East helps too though.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:47
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w0o0o0o posted:URGH don't remind me welcome to team GB now what does URGH stand for
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Feb 12, 2020 17:49
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Trin Tragula posted:OK, difficult question time. One of the things Ashcroft's focus groups got out of former Labour voters who switched for 2019 was this sort of thing: It depends on what you mean by 'are we stuck with them'; if you mean should we pick our battles then yes absolutely. It's not always in our control though. If you mean should we give up and assent to something we know to be morally wrong in order to (maybe) win, then no absolutely loving not. Sooner or later you have to make an unpopular idea popular through political campaigning and communication, you cannot escape this. Change can and will come with sustained effort it just takes time, and it doesn't always correspond with electoral success. So many people seem to be tempted by this idea that you can just say whatever you need to say to take power and then do a double-cross to do Actual Good poo poo (TM) but it's it's cart before horse. The main work of enacting change is the consensus building that culminates in you getting elected, passing the actual law from high office is just the cherry on top.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:57
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Trin Tragula posted:OK, difficult question time. One of the things Ashcroft's focus groups got out of former Labour voters who switched for 2019 was this sort of thing: And this comes back to the "do you work with the electoral ground you have or try and change it?" problem. And of course 'giving the electorate what they want' so often means doing or supporting something that's flat-out wrong. Speaking of flat-out wrong: quote:“They’re classing themselves as liberals but won’t let anyone else have a different viewpoint;” All the bold bits are Just Wrong, and stuff that Labour's platform would directly help with or address. It's just that any pro-Labour viewpoint (or even a viewpoint which tries to accurately and dispassionately lay out what Labour is trying to do) gets drowned out by the majority of the press which just makes stuff up so a lot of what should be Labour's core voter pool think that Jeremy Corbyn Is Going To Give Your House To Trans-gender Syrian Refugees On Benefits. I mean, ffs, "energy providers were nationalised in the past, so renationalising them is a backward step" - who the gently caress do these people think owned the electricity companies, the railways, the water supply etc. before they were nationalised? Going back to the 1970s (or, hurr-hurr, the supposed-golden-age of the 1950s) is too regressive but going back to the 1890s is fine... I know there was talk in the thread about whether a left-leading Labour Party can ever usefully or properly play the patriotism/nationalism card. In theory there should be plenty of scope to say that a 2017/2019-esque Labour platform would make Britain a country with a lot to be genuinely proud of. It was one of the things that made the GE results generate such an emotional kick-in-the-balls for me, as I was (without really realising it) quite looking forward to living in a country which had eliminated homelessness, took national infrastructure into national hands for the greater good, shared medical patents with the world, in some small way faced up to the bad bits of is history, poured effort into sorting out climate change and green technology etc. etc. Those are the sort of things which, since I still class myself as some sort of patriot, would actually get me feeling patriotic. But it seems you can't even try that tack, because the media and, to be frank, wider society, don't want to hear that sort of "New Jerusalem" sort of patriotism. They want to hear that Britain is The Greatest And Lovliest Country Ever Right Now And Nothing Needs To Change Except Expelling The Foreigns. So no left-wing leader will ever satisy someone who wants a would-be-PM to stand up and talk about how great Britain is, because the entire platform rests on the fact that right now it's pretty poo poo in many ways but could be so much better. I dunno. I don't have the answers. And no-one seems to have come up with any that stick in the past 100+ years.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:59
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Can someone try this for me and report back. https://twitter.com/marmite/status/1227191402007793664
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Feb 12, 2020 18:02
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Guavanaut posted:It should probably be done through policy and not public shouting, in the same way that Tories funnel billions to hardline Islamic autocracies in the Middle East but never talk about it. once you start down the merry path of peace thorough policy - quid pro quos and de-escalation and deliberate ambiguities - you inevitably stop confronting regional power brokers so that they can retain the support of their own respective camps whilst coming to your particular favoured table if you care about historic injustice, it's going to be a bitter pill to swallow. Bobby didn't die for power-sharing, as his sister later said
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Feb 12, 2020 18:04
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BalloonFish posted:But it seems you can't even try that tack, because the media and, to be frank, wider society, don't want to hear that sort of "New Jerusalem" sort of patriotism. They want to hear that Britain is The Greatest And Lovliest Country Ever Right Now And Nothing Needs To Change Except Expelling The Foreigns. So no left-wing leader will ever satisy someone who wants a would-be-PM to stand up and talk about how great Britain is, because the entire platform rests on the fact that right now it's pretty poo poo in many ways but could be so much better.
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Feb 12, 2020 18:10
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Jippa posted:Can someone try this for me and report back. I mean, you can get the exact same effect by spreading a layer of peanut butter over a layer of marmite. In that sense I've already tried it. It's good. Peanut butter goes with everything.
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Feb 12, 2020 18:12
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WhatEvil posted:I mean, you can get the exact same effect by spreading a layer of peanut butter over a layer of marmite. In that sense I've already tried it. It's good. Peanut butter goes with everything. That's all the encouragement I need.
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Feb 12, 2020 18:19
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ronya posted:I suspect the polls of members understate RLB's position - a month is a long time to cut into post-defeat gloom to persuade folks to pull a lever This isnt America 
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Feb 12, 2020 18:20
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ronya posted:
Apologies if I have misunderstood, but are you saying people from poor regions can simply move? For me to walk into a flat in my sleepy little town 4 years ago cost £1600 upfront - deposit, month's rent in advance, nearly £200 for referencing fees and as I didn't have an employer, it was only because my dad had recently died and I had a temporarily large bank account balance to shove under the reference agency nose that I was able to pass the 'referencing'. My nephew was looking to move to Bristol a couple of years ago and there you needed £3k upfront. So they've capped or cut referencing fees, but that is small beer compared to the total needed. It's catch 22 - if you can't reach the higher paying jobs in cities by public transport to save deposits and so forth, you can't afford to move to said cities to get the better paid jobs in the better infrastructure. I worked in a local pub for a few months after I moved into this town (mother's in her 80s, I kinda have to be here) and every single person working in that pub had degrees. What none of them had was wealthy parents who could (a) afford to pay for them to have driving lessons (b) afford to buy them a car (c) afford to lend them money to get a deposit to rent - let alone buy - a home in a city.
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