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The Labour Party diagnosis and prognosis thread

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I’ve previously commented that I don’t tend to contribute to political threads, and now here I am starting one of my own. But what the hell, I think this is worth it’s own thread.

Depressingly, lots of papers today have big headline stories about Labour not accepting defeat graciously, blaming everyone else but themselves, etc. I think there’s definitely an element of that going on, but I also think this has been such a seismic shift in the balance of the country that a bit of self reflection is warranted and valuable. So here’s a thread where we can all waffle and reflect a bit – and do it amicably, like we do best.

So the big questions I am interested in are: What went wrong? Was Jeremy Corbyn a mistake? Who should the next leader be? What should the direction of the party be now? Is “Old Labour” now irrelevant, given we are now in a position where only New Labour has been able to win a majority for decades?

Me, I’m still trying to figure it all out. More and more I’m finding the terms “left” and “right” meaningless and subjective, but by any measure I would definitely be filed under pretty hard left. I favour collective responsibility over individualism. I think it’s more important to safeguard a baseline of health and welfare for everyone and I believe the more money you make, the more you should help support this. The old “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need” still seems pretty sound to me. On a stronger, more radical bent, I distrust aspiration (which is too often just a buzzword for “making lots of money”) and generally think there is too much focus these days on monetary success at the expense of sustainability and mental well-being.

So I’m one of those naive people who felt energised by the Corbyn movement. And on a personal level, Corbyn’s avuncular, grumpy, measured approach was a breath of fresh air after politics becoming more and more a game of star power and soundbites.

But I see now that just not enough people are behind this, and I’m now forcing myself to judge my political stance on practicalities instead of utopian hopes. Practically speaking, there’s a huge swathe of people in the country who are hard-working, patriotic types who never trusted Corbyn and felt betrayed by Brexit dithering. There’s absolutely no question that the Conservatives capitalised on this undercurrent so expertly the conspiracy theorist in me is starting to suspect the whole thing has been a long con over the last five/ten years (i.e. use the Brexit vote to foster confusion and unrest, foster that unrest with an incapable person at the helm (May), then a saviour (Johnson) comes swooping in so everyone can unite behind a simple “Get Brexit Done” message which cuts through all the confusion).

The next leader? I’d like Labour to maintain a left wing momentum (no pun intended) and choosing either Jess Phillips or Angela Raynor (both northern, plain-speaking, tough as boots and female) would be a sensible way forward.

What are your thoughts? Get on your soapbox and waffle away. I love reading all your opinions, and on these pages I’m regularly forced to challenge my own views and assumptions in a healthy way.

(PS I’m from Ayrshire and I voted SNP – that’s a whole other kettle of fish so I’m not even going to go there, but opinions welcome on this as well. The SNP has maybe been one factor which has sucked votes away from Labour over the years, so is definitely part of the issue).

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Comments

  1. An interesting – I think crucial – point was made on Victoria Derbyshire’s show this morning by two Labour MPs/ex-MPs: that the old class divide is no longer relevant. It’s now a cultural divide between metropolitan cities and small towns, and their denizens – with a regional aspect to that, given that the post-industrial north of England are emblematic of these small towns.

    The idea of a ‘labour movement’ is now redundant (I never cared for the term). It’s more realistically a ‘student movement’. People who would have qualified as ‘labourers’ (working class, though the class thing is now a minefield of definition) are the likes of those oop nawth who’ve given Jeremy a kicking. The people going bananas and chanting ‘oooh Jeremy Corrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-byn’ are generally well-educated young people in cities. I sense that the Labour Party simply hasn’t got this yet – that its support base has simply changed.

    Another key point, Arthur, is your use of the term ‘the country’. What country would that be? This election has underlined what has been apparent for the past few years – that Brexit has unlocked once and for all the door of ‘English nationalism’, that Scotland is hugely distinct from England culturally, politically, historically and in its future EU-centred aspirations and will eventually secede, and that Northern Ireland is on its way South (literally). And Wales has begun to wake up too.

    I’m sure most English people haven’t cared about NI for years – although the fact that it’s still linked to England is entirely the fault of English imperialism (Henry II et al.), so don’t blame us. But right now, it goes the other way – I suspect a great deal of NI people are wondering why they would wish to be associated with England. (Me, I don’t have any real emotional feeling on which jurisdiction NI should be part of – UK or Ireland – but in pragmatic terms, England is becoming a basket case as far as I can see.)

    • Very good points Colin, thanks for replying.

      I suppose I would qualify as one of these well-educated, urban, student-y types. Although my grandfathers were, respectively, a miner and a car mechanic, I’ve never felt a real affinity for that proud working class thing. If anything, I’ve got an ingrained sense of failure from my inability to live up to my parents’ aspirations (both went to uni when it used to be difficult to get to uni, both became successful teachers – yet despite my uni education I’ve slipped back into what you might call the new working class norm: a low rung job in the financial services industry).

      As for how you define a “country”, I suppose I still unquestioningly think of myself as being part of “Britain” or “The United Kingdom” more than anything else. But I’m certainly not a nationalist and I hate jingoism (and sometimes Scottish nationalism is even worse). You mention pragmatism in your last paragraph, and that certainly sums up how I feel about Scottish independence – it feels like the best chance to build the society I want.

      • Yes, can’t argue with any of that, Arthur. I’ve certainly been conscious at times of being viewed as ‘middle class’ as if that were a crime (usually a vibe from music people being angry young men, or believing that only angry young men from the working class should make music – this whole Clash-worship thing is a long time dying), but I can’t help my perceived background any more than I can help being born in a weird enclave partly populated by a loud minority of socially repressive bigots. But like you, if I understand you correctly, my supposed middle-classness has never resulted in having much money or jobs above the lowest rung. But I’ve still always thought this ‘up the workers’ stuff a load of crap, and my experience of unions is as bitter as my experience of managers. It’s everyone for themselves, in my view, with the caveat of compassion in terms of giving money and time to help other people and charities that touch you when you can.

        • Let me make a shameful admission here. I’ve always been slightly averse to an “up the workers” approach because…. I don’t like work. That’s a simple, but genuine sentiment. It always puzzled me growing up how proud the older generation seemed to be about grafting away in a job that slowly kills you. I’m an idler at heart, and would far rather work less for less money. But this consumerist society has a way of slowly enticing you to work longer hours for more and more superficial rewards, doesn’t it? “Up the idlers”, I say.

          • I agree! Well, at least with the first bit. My problem of the past year or two has been finding enough time to work on a (labour of love) research-heavy non-fiction book while grafting at a screen doing other self-employed stuff to earn money. Still, I’ve subsidised (in either time or money or both) a few other adventures, in music, this year, so I can’t really complain. But, yeah, work – means to an end, nothing more. I always used to find it bizarre that interviews for low-level jobs always expected you to be banging on about continuous professional development and claptrap like that. Sometimes, you just want a job, you’ll do the job well, but you’ve other things going on in your life outside work and don’t care about the next rung up.

              • Continuous Professional Development = continuous servitude to the great mammon of endless meaningless consumption and forelock tugging to those paying me just enough to continue to consume. Yes sir, no sir three bags full sir. Can I have a hoodie with a wolf on the back now please?

              • I was told to do some CPD today… an online module called “Corporate Induction” which, besides sounding like some terrible proctology procedure, is about me being inducted into the organisation that I’ve worked for, er, over thirteen years. Life is sooo long, waste more of it please!

                CPD actually means Corporate Piffle from Dickheads.

    • ‘I’m sure most English people haven’t cared about NI for years’. True. And now it seems the Prime Minster and the Government don’t give a shit either, much less even understand it. I actually think that far from being protector of the Union, Johnson would be highly delighted to ‘give Ireland back to the Irish’ and be rid of the whole damn problem. To that extent i think he and Cummings will be quite happy to see the election results in Northern Ireland.

      • I would deny this, particularly your first point. What never seems to attract much attention is just how far out of touch with the rest of the Union has London become.
        There’s very little animosity here towards the Irish and Scotland is just up the road; they are our fellow sufferers.
        It’s causes me great distress, that they want to float away without taking us with them.

        • I live in Liverpool, the biggest Irish city outside Ireland, etc etc. But even here I don’t see that the Irish border question is at the forefront of the discussion, or is even widely understood. It inst that English people in my experience have any animosity; it’s just that Northern Ireland feels like a foreign country to many on the mainland, and people (understandably) have very little idea about what it means to live in, say, Derry and face the prospect of a hard border, or the slap in the face that many people consider it that Johnson has agreed to a border between one part of the UK (Northern Ireland) and the rest. There was a good piece by Fintan O’Toole in the Guardian on Johnson’s attitude to all of this yesterday:
          https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/15/boris-johnson-lying-ireland-withdrawal-agreement-brexit-belfast-dublin

  2. I recall Arthur Daley saying “what you don’t seem to understand, Terry, is that for most people socialism is something you do in the pub”. To people with proper jobs and responsibilities, an awful lot of politics now looks like live-action role playing, whether JRM’s young fogey schtick, Cambourne’s chumocracy, or the comedic leftist cliches captured by “Citizen Smith”, Rik in “The Young Ones”, and, my favourite, “Alan Parker – Urban Warrior”. if Brahmin Labour double down on socialism and there are more Momentum bigmouths calling people stupid, racist, blinkered, etc. in the next 5 years, just how do you think that will appeal now the shibboleth of not voting Conservative in working class northern England has been breached? As circumstances change, you adapt or die. I am not convinced Labour can integrate Hull and Hampstead any more.

    • “… the shibboleth of not voting Conservative in working class northern England has been breached…” – That’s an excellent way of putting it.

      You seem to be pointing to something perhaps more ingrained and irreversible than I had realised. There has always been an assumption that the working class will vote in huge numbers for “their” Labour party, and that’s something the Conservatives have had to manage and deal with. But, yes, what if that contract has now been broken?

      Has this been on the cards for years and us lefty types have been too blind to see it? Citizen Smith (satirising student right-on politics) was mainstream comedy, what, forty or so years ago? And twenty years before that, films like “I’m All Right, Jack” were lampooning the incompetence of trade unions. The descent of leftist politics and the “labour movement” from dignity to comedy has perhaps been a long time in the making.

      • It HAS been on the cards for decades, and the post ’68 cultural norms of “left=cool, Tory = square” once protected it; half a century on, left now means puritanical and woke. Boris laughs at himself in a way no Labour-left person seems to be able to, and that endears him to those for whom taking the piss gets you through a hard life. The Boss class for these people is left-liberal professionals telling them what to eat, read, and how to vote and raise their children, and to feel bad about being patriotic. It’s a peasant’s revolt. The left thought they owned “the people”, and don’t like the fact that the people will make up their own mind what they want.

    • @Vincent – I don’t find this ‘people with proper jobs and responsibilities’ line very helpful at all. It’s been used as a way of infantilising the opposition, and seems to imply some kind of hierarchy of human worth and values. It’s an essential piece of the populist toolkit. If people with proper jobs and responsibilities voted for a Tory manifesto that struggled to fill the back of a fag packet, then I’m not sure what that says about how proper their jobs are, or how aware they are of their responsibilities.

      Then you write: ‘As circumstances change, you adapt or die.’ Are you implying that it’s all about winning? That truth and reason are no longer relevant? What if the majority don’t want to believe the truth – on climate change for instance – and politicians are happy to exploit that for their own gains. How do you adapt in these circumstances, and would you be happy to tell bigger lies in order to ‘win’?

      • Thumbs up icon.

        Thingis, I’m not sure it’s true that there’s any real, explicable reason for the revolting peasants to identify and object to “left-liberal professionals” as being the ones who are “telling them what to eat, read, and … how to raise their children”.

        Advice on those fronts has come from all quarters – is Greg ‘MasterShout’ Wallace considered a left-liberal? Are all book reviewers – yea unto The Sun (they do have them sometimes, don’t they?) also thus inclined? The tabloids are stuffed with agony aunts and unqualified education gurus who will vacillate between telling you your kids are out of control or that you should molly-coddle them in case they meet the wrong colour, er, I mean sort of person. Are all of these overpaid commentators left-liberal too?

        And taking the piss helps get you through a hard life whatever your political persuasion.

  4. As someone who grew up in one of the safest Labour constituencies in the country (Tory, as of last Friday), I can tell you I know dozens of lifelong Labour voters who simply don’t like Jeremy Corbyn. Here are the main reasons (or perceptions, depending on your point of view):

    He’s another Londoner who hasn’t got a clue about life outside Islington
    He’s never exactly distanced himself from the IRA (the Warrington bombing is still firmly in the minds of the people in north west)
    He’s a 70s throwback/embodiment of student politics
    Anti-Semitism in the party
    Clearly dislikes the monarchy
    Refusal to back Leave when he initially said he’d respect the referendum result
    Old-school Labour types, such as David Blunkett and Alan Johnson, digging him out
    Not denouncing Russia when all the security evidence pointed to them in the Salisbury poisoning

    Now, you may think some of these aren’t true; you may think all of them are true. However, that’s the perception of him, and you only need a few of them to be believed before you’re in trouble. How many of those factors can be blamed solely on the media, as the Labour party claim?

    I’m of the belief that you’ll see many northern voters returning to Labour once, and if, Brexit is completed. I’ve never voted Tory and never will, but Labour needs a big change of direction.

    • Thanks, Hamlet. You know what that list reminds me of? You know when you go for a job interview, and you don’t get it, then you ask for feedback, and you get a list of superficial things that you did wrong in the interview? Like, “Your example for that question could have been stronger” and “You haven’t mentioned your experience of x on your CV”, etc?

      In those circumstances (and it’s happened to me a few times), I always find myself trying to pick the feedback apart and work out why they REALLY didn’t want to hire me, and which of the “reasons” are just superficial reasons to justify their decision. Then again, maybe that’s just denial!

    • Whilst I am sure that Russia almost certainly had their dirty hands on the events in Salisbury, for me it’s just the most likely explanation of events.

      However, I’m intrigued by your assertion that you are privy to “all the security evidence”, even more so than the leader of the opposition who made a measured response to the populist knee-jerk reaction a day or two after the events, asking for more facts to be known before anyone jumped to conclusions.

      He took a measured and reasonable approach in a time of great stress and worry for many people. It remains the case, by the way, that we still have no clear, irrefutable evidence that the Russian state was directly involved – and who would realistically expect us to have that evidence anyway – when it is entirely possible that elements of the security forces within Russia could well have been acting on their own accord and without sanction from the top.

      But I digress.

      Whatever the likelihood is of Putin’s engagement with the action, what really fascinates me is your claim to have access to “all the security evidence”, which is an astonishing claim. I had no idea we had top level spooks postting on here.

      Please spill the beans; exactly how have you managed to attain this trusted position of great privilege?

      • I think most people (me included) felt no amount of evidence was sufficient for Corbyn. Independent international analysis pointed to Russia and JC wanted to send it to Putin for comment. Seriously, what did he expect him to say? “Fair cop guv the Ivans done it”? I think not.

      • What’s that in my mouth, Vulpes? Oh yes, it’s the words you’re putting there. When did I claim that ‘I’ had access to any security information? Can you quote me, please?

        I wasn’t aware there was even a hint of a shred of a hope that anyone other than Russia was responsible. Plus, if you read my post, I was talking about the perceptions of Corbyn amongst many Labour voters. Of course the security services don’t release all their information, but I’m interested: you think there’s a decent chance that Russia wasn’t responsible? Or am I putting words in your mouth?

        • Sure, here’s the quote:

          “Not denouncing Russia when all the security evidence pointed to them in the Salisbury poisoning”.

          As that’s what you wrote, I assumed you were certain of the veracity of the statement, particularly the “all” bit.

          When you say “Russia”, one assumes you mean the large country up there *points roughly north east* which is largely run by criminals and thugs it seems? Thus you attribute the act to the state itself.

          However, “all the security evidence” couldn’t – and still can’t, as far as I can tell (unless you know better) – distinguish between the actions of the state Bear itself and the various privately run cowboy outfits and grudge cabals that prowl within its dominion.

          Someone or some organisation within Russia was responsible, I’m almost certain (you can’t be 100% sure these days can you?), as it seems overwhelmingly likely, but whether it was a state sanctioned action, as suggested by the quote above, I don’t think we are – or ever will be – in a position to pontificate about that.

          Hence the measured, nuanced response at the time from Corbyn. But nuance and measure don’t go down well with that part of the population that’s been bludgeoned by social media drip fed poison and the infantilisation of our social fabric for year after year.

          Seriously, would you have been happier with a Trumpian pout and an ignorant, grandstanding denunciation of the entire Russian nation?

          • I knew you’d bite. Calm down: you’ll drop your Corbyn Action Man.

            You claimed I was implying I had some sort of access to security files; I said no such thing. Do you know, as a fact, of security evidence that was withheld? Care to share it with us? Is it another conspiracy to get at Corbyn? If, by Russia, you need to me to clarify it as ‘Russian state’, then have you not seen the news? The fact that the two chief suspects (the only suspects) were known Russian military, i.e. had worked for the Russian state?

            Your willful misunderstanding of one of eight points I made (again, I was making the wider point of the perception of Corbyn by lots of people) and attempting to turn it on me is a classic deflection technique typical of die-hard Corbyn fans.

            I’ll leave it there and wish you a merry Christmas.

            • You seem to be widening your target area a bit there.

              Are you now calling ME a cunt too, for not voting for Brexit?

              If so, right back atcha, @fishface.
              Seems to me the cunts aren’t all on the one side in this.

            • Somewhere out there, Tahir will be wondering if he’d still have been banned if he’d gone for threats of violence rather than personal abuse.

            • Several comments have been removed from this thread due to their inappropriate nature and being WAY outside our normal happy smiley back and forth.

              Seriously, folks, keep it civil.

              Can we also point out that your friendly helpful Mod team also have lives to live and don’t always see such comments within nanoseconds of them being posted. If you see something you think doesn’t fit then please email it to the Admin address

              • I appreciate how much of a PITA it is when exchanges get too heated to go uncommented, so sorry about that.

                By all means remove my 7th point above, I overstepped the mark.

                I was, as I hope you realise, somewhat peeved to have been called a see you next Tuesday, and I thought I’d better set some boundaries in the event of any future encounter with my accusor in meatspace.

                Won’t happen again on a thread.

                /fuming mode

                • Bravely spoken…
                  Pity the original post in the Vote Tory thread was not called into question…you know the one where VULPES hopes for the early death of the hundreds of thousands of disgruntled Labour voters who switched to Conservative.

                  Quick….before he retracts it

                  Being one of the above, and rightly pissed off at the notion that i should die because my politics do no match his, i realise the double standards of this site i find nauseous.

                  Oh dear Vulpes, I hear you threaten physical, dental harm if we meet.

                  I truly relish the notion.

                  Goodbye

                  • Here is what he ACTUALLY said:

                    “Labour voters switching to Farrago can all fuck off and die…”

                    You were obviously too busy being outraged to learn to read properly.

                    And by the way he is right – Labour voters who switched to voting for the Brexit Party can FOAD…

                    • Are you suggesting that Tories can be less than 100% honest? Being selective in the information they provide in order to create a misleading impression?

                      Gosh. Well I never.

  5. Labour probably should have voted for May’s Brexit deal. Corbyn as leader was a disaster because it was really clear all along that not enough people would accept him as a PM. Rebecca Long-Bailey is one of the leadership’s favourites to take over. More of the same really but perhaps a more electable personality. This seems like denial. It was the fault of the media, Brexit etc. A so-called centrist is not necessarily the answer either if they are considered a continuation of what we’ve had before. I guess they need someone with charisma, dynamic, competent seeming. Someone to inspire. Jess Phillips could be the one. Who else have they got? The manifesto was supposedly popular, we won the argument says Corbyn. Based on what exactly? I believe it was thought by some of those who defected to Tories, to be too good to be true, unaffordable.

    • Nothing wrong with the agenda Labour were proposing, if they had won.
      The governance of this country needs to move to the left, because the current government’s anti-public services agenda and the spread of the gig economy, landlordism and increased corporate greed are just too destructive to be sustained. Civil war will come, followed by either anarchy or totalitarianism.
      Quite correct to say “the workers” are no longer Labour’s fiefdom. A huge swathe of current fields of employment are going be automated out of existence soon and unchecked free-market capitalism will NOT accomodate those whose labour is no longer required. Both educated Metropolitans and Urban manual workers might well find that they’ve been replaced by algorithms and robots. Where will all the smart kids with degrees find work then? Never mind the
      Labour have got to discover how to convince people where their real interests lie without patronising or taking them for granted. Sneering at people and calling them stupid will not get them on your side and whinging on about a biased media will cut no ice with anybody.
      Labour now need to be tough, effective and persuasive.

  6. I have been devouring loads of ‘stuff’ about the election result and it’s origins/causes. Obviously much of the soul searching is on the left – the right, Dominic Cummings apart, probably still can’t believe what they did. I found this – https://www.paulmason.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/After-Corbynism-v1.2.pdf – from Paul Mason, a respected left-leaning commentator, to be an interesting and insightful read. I liked the analysis, but felt he has underplayed the impact of the anti-Semitism thing and am less convinced of his prescription. However, what he has to say chimes with some of what has already been said here.

    • I’ve often found Mason a ‘labour movement’ bore in the past, but he seemed very reasonable and perceptive on TV post-election. More of the British-cultural-climate-change deniers should listen to him. But they won’t.

    • Hi Fifer, just for clarity I want to ask: “the right, Dominic Cummings apart, probably still can’t believe what they did” – “they” meaning who? Do you mean the right can’t believe what the LEFT did to scupper themselves, or what the RIGHT did in winning with such a majority?

      • The latter. My impression is that Cummings (and the Vote Leave crew that come along with him) knew exactly what they were doing, because – unlike Labour – they went out and listened to what was being said all along the Red Wall. Their research informed their strategy which delivered the result. A single minded, highly focused plan fully delivered – and without the benefit of the much vaunted but ultimately ineffective Labour ‘ground game’.

    • Ooh, I’m a couple of pages into that Paul Mason essay and already it’s sounding interesting. The analysis of “where the Labour votes went” on p2 is fascinating and a great riposte to the assumption (which I bought) that disgruntled Labour Brexiteers all turned Tory as a rebellion:

      “Labour, in short, lost nearly twice as many votes to progressive pro-Remain parties as it did to the parties of Brexit and racism.”

      So, not so simple then. A lesson in properly considering the stats before jumping to conclusions.

      • A couple of other observations about that article. Still reading it, and finding it very enlightening.

        – The diagram on p3 – Check out how closely tied the big four (Cons, Lab, LibDems and BxP) all were from around June to July this year! A few months is definitely a very long time in politics. It seems bizarre now that the LibDems thought they were in with a serious chance so recently.

        – One factor in people deserting Labour was “the desire to get Brexit over with” (p7) – That’s an interesting way of putting it, semantically. I have suspected myself that the key attraction in the Conservative message “Get Brexit Done” is that people just wanted the entire thing finished, no matter the result. The desire to reach an end to the bickering was actually more important than whether or not we actually left Europe or not.

    • He’s hardly left leaning, he’s a hard left Corbyn apologist though it’s an interesting paper nonetheless. I find all that stuff about local organisers and education and class struggle etc quite weird, but I’m not a lefty so it maybe seems less strange to those who are. I doubt the average voter would find much to engage with there.

    • I don’t think the non-Metropolitan former Labour supporters were bothered that much about the anti-semitism thing, except as just one more perceived negative on top of all the others. Not supporting their view re: Brexit and the feeling of being taken for granted were the key things. Those two issues made it easy for all the other stuff to work on them.

  7. I’ve voted Labour my whole life, except for one local election about a decade ago where I voted Green instead for local reasons.
    I am still reeling from last week and will have to switch off from it for a while after this I think, before I come back recharged in the the New Year. It’s just too depressing and yes, infuriating. Why? Firstly, although I can completely understand why so many ex mining towns turned away from Labour, it still frustrates th f**k out of me as I suspect it will they themselves by the next election, when the Tories have ignored their real hopes and fears, apart from getting brexit done. They have been taken for granted for much too long and after all, why should a lot of the Labour manifesto be of interest to them? If getting through the day without having to rely on a food bank is your priority then why would stuff like free broadband, nationalised railways etc be of that much interest? OK that’s a bit simplistically put, but I think it rings true.
    Secondly, Labour, and particularly the Momentum section, have become so removed from reality that they forgot what Labour should actually for. If they forgot, why should places like Doncaster and Scunthorpe do the remembering for them? And I use these places as examples because the more prosperous northern metropolitan areas are still tending to sympathise with Labour.
    Labour need, as has been written elsewhere here, a hard, no-nonsense leader, and probably a femaie one. Lisa Nandy might be a good option…someone northern based, untainted by the past, and who has a genuine, not just theoretical, interest in helping out towns who might have felt left behind. Someone who an show real leadership, someone who can categorically say anyone guilty of antisemitism will be immediately out on their ear, and who can say sorry without beiong provoked into it if it helps.
    I do think these new Tory voters might listen to someone like them, who actually lives amongst them, and who adopts a plain speaking approach. This stuff matters, and it works. Look at the simple slogans that win these days…

    • The free broadband thing does seem to have irked a lot of people – from people I’ve spoken to, it keeps getting brought as an example of Labour’s “pie-in-the-sky” policies. Strange, though. I don’t much care either way about it as a policy, but I find it quite inoffensive and I wouldn’t lean on it as a reason to avoid voting for them.

      • It’s only “pie in the sky” for people who haven’t thought it through. But then that’s a much wider problem – thinking things through. Far too few people seem to be capable of doing that these days, or are willing to do it. It takes effort, that’s the problem. You can’t do it while simultaneously updating your FarceBerk page or watching Game Of Thrones, for example. You have to fucking concentrate. It’s just too much trouble to follow up on the detail, get the facts and understand why denouncing something as “pie in the sky” doesn’t really stack up unless you’re a Tory strategist’s puppet.

        • The comments I have heard most frequently are around bafflement – “Why are they putting stuff like free broadband in their manifesto when there are more important things to focus on?” – or “The only people who care about broadband have it already, so why do they need it for free?” etc.

          It was maybe a big ask for people to stop and think about something that seems so trivial and lies so outside the list of common priorities (1. Brexit, 2. The environment, etc).

          In principle, I’m all for it and it seems like a good direction to go. But I think it was a misfire at this time.

  8. SNP? I was sat next to Ian Blackford at a barbers today having our respective hairs cut.

    He wanted to look smart for the SNP team photie to be taken in the afternoon.

    That begins and ends my contribution to the debate.

  9. Anyone who canvassed for Labour (and, I’m guessing here, other parties too) found that Corbyn was the number one issue for Labour. I know I’ve been here before about this, but I am one of those Labour members who has never bought into the whole Corbynista thing – clearly someone who was put up for the job as a bit of a stunt to represent the left, and actually supported in that by some not of the left, the sheer number of other candidates got him in. Since then, he has been controlled by others who are much brighter, and who have now engineered their way to all the positions of power. A big failure was to ostracise talented people within the party in order to promote their own – Diane Abbott is a good example of this; totally out of her depth when you have real ability sat behind her.

    The left blame the media, Blairite conspirators, the BBC in particular and anyone else bar themselves because they know that to admit the Corbyn mistake may bring them all down. The momentum party within the party have to be sorted out as well.

    Jess Phillips would be my choice – not tainted by the Blair years (you know, when we used to win elections) like Yvette Cooper, who I personally admire greatly, but scares the Tories and I think can span the various sections of the party. If she gets allowed to stand, of course – she doesn’t seem popular with the Spartist wing.

    • I’d momentarily forgotten Diane Abbott. Aside from absolutely everything else, the notion of that individual as home secretary was madness. She is simply incapable of holding any kind of office like that. Incapable of simple arithmetic. Probably incapable of organising a garden fete. I’m genuinely amazed that anyone inside Corbynville didn’t see that.

    • Completely agree. Abbott I can only damn with faint praise – “well meaning”.

      Sadly, in action and when thinking on her feet, she’s a disaster area, the very definition of a political liability.

      NEXT!

      • A friend who worked on production team of a news programme said that when he would call in DA for a soundbite or interview, she was so consistently poorly briefed by her team and ‘advisors’, it was sometimes hard to believe that she wasn’t being sabotaged by those around her. Plus, her unfortunate tendency to lecture and waffle.

        I do hope the sons of Spart don’t get their personality-chasm Long-Bailey in – can we please have a Rayner, Phillips or someone of equal oomph now.

        • The thing is that the ‘Sons of Spart’ are (as always) far more concerned with consolidating their hold on the institutions and offices of the Labour Party than they are in actually winning elections – that’s why Corbyn is staying on until at least March, in order to assure that the Momentum-approved candidate wins the leadership.

      • Yes, but the online abuse of Abbott from people who should know better, eg Guido Fawkes, and people who are too stupid to know better and fancy themselves as comedians, has been repulsive and shameful. No. 1 son lives in her constituency and says she’s an absolutely brilliant MP. I buy that – she was one of the few Labour MPs who actaully increased their majority, after all. But it seems entirely possible that she was promoted about her station, for reasons we can only guess at.

  10. My take on the collapse of Labour, as someone who lives in the North, is from a working class, Union supporting background and is a shop floor factory worker, is this.
    Labour have been incredibly naive. They’re still playing the game as if it’s 1997 and haven’t realised what the Conservatives have – that you can tell people anything, just figure out what they want to hear and say it – you don’t have to actually do any of it, unless it suits you, of course.
    They lied to achieve Brexit and they have lied to win this election. Does anybody really believe that the NHS is safe in their hands?
    The Conservative party are now not only appealing to the traditional voters, they now appeal to Labour voters who are worried about the NHS, Policing and ‘Imigrants’. They have simply asked themselves ‘what do the oiks want?’ And promised to deliver it.
    I haven’t heard anyone say to me that they want to leave the EU because it will turn the UK into an economic powerhouse, all they are concerned about is Taking Back Control – control of ‘our’ laws, our borders our money and keeping the ‘Others’ out.

    Labour should have listened to their voters who wanted Brexit and promised to deliver it. It would have taken away power from the Tories by putting them on an equal footing. They failed in the basic task of representing their people and the Conservatives swooped in and hoovered them all up.

    • It’s massively ironic that amid all the ‘take back control’ stuff, Johnson & co haven’t seen that Scotland and doubtless other disenfranchised/cheesed off bits of the UK can now quite reasonably use the same mantra. ‘Yep, we’d like to do that – from YOU’ (meaning England).

  11. I don’t think Labour at any time truly dealt with the first two issues I’d have lead on:
    1. Drugs
    2. Johnson’s contempt of his wife, number of children etc.

    And they certainly should have honed in on a Top 10, rather than try to cover absolutely everything.

  12. I did a lot of canvassing for the Lib Dems and we went from distant 3rd at something like 6k last time to second at 20k and had Labour voters (they took 9k votes) voted tactically we would have removed the Tory. C’est la vie, what’s done is done.

    What I heard on the doorstep – common themes:

    Re Labour:

    – I hardly found a Labour voter who liked Corbyn. I found a lot who weren’t voting Labour because of him – because of antisemitism, terrorist sympathies, anti-West etc etc. This was real.
    – people didn’t believe the Labour manifesto – too much free stuff. Nationalisation and taking rail contracts back were popular, broadband, state drug company etc not so much. Perception it was unaffordable.
    – Labour “faces” unconvincing – Gardener, Burgon, Long Bailey etc. No confidence these people could deliver the manifesto
    – A lot of people are weary of Brexit and “just want it done”. Even when they know “done” is undefined. They voted Tory because they wanted it over.

    Lib Dems:
    – The LD revoke policy was unpopular, not seen as democratic etc. Disaster
    – Jo Swinson was unpopular – little digging revealed this was mostly misogeny and sexism but interestingly it was both men and women
    – Coalition hangover still around and though it’s easy to make the case people won’t listen

    I’m sure if had Labour had had a better Leader and front bench with a slimmed down manifesto, perhaps one which had a 10 year vision encompassing all the stuff but a better targeted set for this election they could have done much better.

    • Burgon was a joyless lump, wasn’t he? I used to think Bazza Gardiner was quietly petulent and patronising in his TV interviews but compared to Jezza and Burger-man I started warming to him – he was like light relief, the jester coming on in ‘Macbeth’, with the rest of stage full of miserable nutcases hell-bent on self-destruction.

    • “too much free stuff” should have been easy to counter – firstly, none of it was free, and secondly the Labour manifesto would have only increased state spending to levels comparable with most other European countries (you know, the ones the Lib Dems are most similar to and most fond of).

      • Wasn’t my job to counter it. That’s what people thought. But I don’t think nationalising the telecoms industry is the best way to get high speed broadband out there either. Boot to executive arse would be where I’d start. To your broader point, I’d agree re European comparison.

      • Vulpes, you’re right. This is another argument I’ve heard many times. In practice it’s actually really difficult to counter-argue though – once someone is in this mindset it’s almost impossible to get them out of it… then when you try, they just bring up the “free broadband – I mean, what’s that all about?” line.

        If I was a Labour campaigner and it was my job to argue and defend these things, I might. But I’m not, and I don’t have the energy.

        • Why would a Labour government want to give free broadband to millions of well off people who already pay for it? It was a daft give away to try to win a few marginal votes. At massive cost. I’d love everything to be free but realism has to dawn at some point.

          • Cos it costs fuck all to supply a basic broadband connectivity so people can have a cheapo computer (£40 plus a cable to the telly?) to keep them in touch with the rest of us (MOTs, Royal Mail deliveries, driving licences, passports, etc. etc. all available online), avoiding the need to make personal vehicle journeys, queue for non-existent buses in wee smelly shelters or sell a kidney to pay for a train ticket.

            Pay oodles extra if you really can convince yourselves you want to stream 4K video of three middle aged twots driving cars, or a lot of sub-Tolkien thrones crap by all means.

            • They promised free full fibre broadband to everyone, not basic DSL. this would not be cheap. But frankly I’m bored by the whole subject TBH. They deserved to lose and I’m glad they did. It remains to be seen whether this shower will be worse. Jury’s out.

              • Yebbut, flippin’ ‘eck, the manifesto aspiration was explicitly “by 2030” FFS.

                Furthermore it specifically said that the upgrade towards 100% coverage would start with those who, to date, have only been blessed with a tin can and some string, thanks to the wonders of the privatised industry we’ve had in place for the last God-Knows-How-Long.

                It’s reasonable to suppose that those last 10% are the no-chance-of-making-a-profit connectivity basket cases, and that they’d probably be delighted to get Government money to get them up to even ADSL levels, never mind anything beyond.

                Can’t argue with your final assertion as regards the deservedness of the defeat though I don’t think the manifesto was to blame (how many do you think were actually arsed to read it?), but can’t share your celebration of the outcome, all the same.

                As for the jury, they might as well stay at home and watch daytime TV, as I can’t see that the coming months and years will bring anything other than pain and suffering and regret for a great many people, many of whom have been bamboozled into signing their own exclusion orders by a shower of really unpleasant pieces of work.

  13. The Labour voter coalition contains a large proportion of people who are essentially small ‘c’ conservatives. They’ll vote Labour because they perceive it is in their interests to do so and despite more liberal policies that they don’t necessarily agree with. However, the painful lesson of the 80s was that they can only be pushed so far. And now that painful lesson has to be learned all over again.

    Corbyn was an unmitigated disaster. A thin-skinned thicko, with a hard-on for violent extremists. And he has attracted people in his own image into the Labour Party. The question now is whether there’s enough of the non-Momentum membership left (or enough of Momentum types waking up and smelling the coffee) to put an electable leadership team in place. If not, Labour is permanently broken.

    My preference is for a Starmer/Phillips dream team. Other options are also good.

    • I’d never actually seen Jon Lansman, the berk who started Momentum, before Election night and then he turned up – not a sinister, snarling evil puppeteer like Cummings but a rather flabby geography teacher in a bad shirt and unmatching brown corduroy jacket who didn’t seem to have anything to say. Fascinating. I watched BBC> I understand he turned up on ITV too, getting a kicking from Alan Johnson.

    • Agree with the point about a lot of Labour voters being small c conservative. Have to acknowledge that xenophobia/anti-immigration sentiment is a significant element of that, which is why they are generally in favour of leaving the EU and have turned on Labour for the whole pro-immigration/EU/multi-culturalism thing. It’s going to take a careful balance act to talk the language that wins them back while hanging onto liberal principles.

  14. When the left wing is strong, Labour does badly at elections. It was the case with Militant in the eighties and now Momentum. It took 14 years for Smith and Kinnock to shift the party towards Social Democracy and electability. Their constitution is constructed in such a way that the left will decide who the next leadership is. Unless hundreds of thousands of moderates join the party to get a vote, that means another far left leader.

    Traditional Labour voters were not impressed with Corbyn as other posters have described. A new younger face with less baggage might stand a chance but any future manifesto will have to appeal to centre to win power.

    The electorate is extremely intelligent. It knew the giveaways promised were never going to happen, the most outlandish being nationalising broadband. All that expenditure could never be paid for by taxing the richest 5% and big corporations.

    They should have had clear, simple messages on the NHS and inequality. The Tories have been in charge since 2008 and the NHS is on its knees. It’s no use promising more GPs and nurses when there are 100,000 vacancies the NHS is currently unable to recruit to. The Tories have changed NHS pensions, introduced a toxic environment for immigrants on which the NHS depends, revalidated older experienced staff into early retirement, stopped bursaries for new nurses and increased demand by slashing social care, yet Labour was unable to get its message across. Poverty and dependency on food banks should be a source of shame for a wealthy nation like ours but, again, no real traction for the Labour solutions.

    Finally, Brexit was a dog’s dinner. The Tories, with the DUP, had a majority. It was their own MPs who ‘blocked Brexit’ and the fact they negotiated two incompetent deals. The anti-Brexit parties actually won more votes than the Leave parties, if you count Labour as anti-Brexit. BoJo neutralised the Brexit Party but Labour and Lib Dems were unable to co-ordinate and were swept away.

    If Labour is ever going to win power it needs to move towards the centre. Its membership and its electoral college won’t allow it to do that. For now.

    • “All that expenditure could never be paid for by taxing the richest 5% and big corporations.”

      I’ve read in several places (Graun, New Statesman etc. – I know) that the level of state spending proposed by the recent Labour manifesto was comparable with that of many other European countries.

      If that’s the case, how do they manage it if your claim is correct? Isn’t it actually that their citizens are already taxed more highly than those of the UK, and that there’s a broad social contract, a consensus that still holds water, which ackowledges the virtue of funding many things in that fashion. Over here, with the interpolation of a profit layer for shareholders, the poison of Thatcherism has gradually eroded that sense, and we are now a nation of selfish, short-sighted little gits?

      • Yes. Other countries tax their population more. However, if you add up all the increased expenditure, renationalisation and other things promised during the campaign, such as WASPI women, the expectation that just taxing the top 5% and large corporations more would cover it was met with widespread disbelief. Especially when you consider the evidence that the actual take in tax does not necessarily rise when rates increase. The public remained unconvinced that Labour’s sums would add up.

  15. It’s early days yet but it doesn’t look as though the Corbynists are ready for a period of quiet reflection. As Momentum has a lock on the membership, the current leadership will probably try to bounce into an early contest to try and make sure the next leader is Continuity Corbyn. That’s been proved twice to be unelectable, so I don’t know what happens in that case. End of the party?

    Corbyn’s vision required people to go to him, while Johnson’s response was to spaff out little pieces of himself as widely as possible. He got away with it because Labour chose principles over power. All Governments end up being unpopular, so the way to keep the crowds singing your name is to not win anything. Corbyn’s a life-long non-winner and therefore still revered by his followers.

    If there’s any consolation it’s that the two things that defeated Labour, the Brexit decision and Corbyn himself, will soon be out of the way. Lisa Nandy, anyone?

    • LN is a good thinker but a bit of a charisma bypass. Jess Phillips would be great and would give Johnson a tough time but I fear the hard left have stitched up the process and it’ll be Rebecca Long Bailey who I think is dreadful. It’ll be interesting to see what the PLP do if it looks like a continuity Corbyn candidate is being slipped in. Nothing, probably.

      • RLB? I fear that the country is not ready for someone with a comedy voice. I keep hoping that an interviewer is going to contrive a situation where she has to say “Shirley Bassey”.

  16. Speaking as an observer now in Australia (but an ex member of the 1980’s militant tendancy) the problem appeared to be Corbyn and his failure as a leader to stomp on accusations of anti-semitism and terrorist sympathy. Too many relatively high-profile, left-leaning celebs of various sorts announced they would not vote Labour for the first time “in support of my jewish friends”. People were genuinely deeply worried. If people who have voted Labour all their lives decided not to this time – how on earth did Labour expect to attract new voters. Corbyn needed to fight a rearguard by announcing at every public appearance that racism and particularly anti-semitism is vile, apologise and assure the jews, denounce terrorism and particularly Hamas, and publicly frog-march anybody with a hint of anti-semitism out of the party.

  18. Ain’t the problem that those who did still vote labour, and now (and before) wring/wrung their hands over Corbyn, still give a shit. Those who didn’t don’t, or have had it kicked too far out of them. Until care is back on anyones agenda we’re fucked.
    No offence to Libs and Greens, but there time has either been or is yet to come, appreciating the care of the former is aspirational and the care of the latter inevitable.
    Clearly I write about England. And probably Wales. Scotland and N.I. are both nearly another country.

  19. Anyone think that maybe this would be a good point to abandon Labour as a lost cause and spend the next five years making the Green Party the main opposition?

    • I’m harnessing my unicorn as I write. I wish it could be so. 67% of all new vehicle sales in the (still, just) United Kingdom are SUVs. Never mind the 3 billion Chinese who all want a Chrysler, change has to start at home, but I can smell the diesel from my office.

    • No. Apart from the intrinsic ludicrousness of the task 1) the Greens want to ban the humane use of animals in medical research ie they want to ban medical research 2) The Greens in Scotland are separatists and want to join the SNP in inflicting decades of austerity on us, of a level that would make a Tory blush.

            • I don’t know… and we may never get a chance to find out.

              (Actually, I don’t even know how it works – do the Scottish Greens just compete for Holyrood seats, and the ones competing for Westminster are actually part of the English Greens? Dunno. And I don’t have a candidate in my area anyway.)

              The Scottish independence question seems to be the main difference between the local Green parties. But another difference is the Scottish Greens want to go full tilt into a Universal Basic Income scheme, and from what I know the English Greens just want to dip their toe in the water by testing it and implementing it gradually.

              (That’s a whole other issue, isn’t it, Universal Basic Income? I’m tentatively all for it… but not to the extent I want to bring it up as a topic on these boards at the moment, because I don’t feel I can back up my argument strongly enough! It feels right to me. And the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that whole Universal Credit thing was called Universal Credit just so people would associate it with Universal Basic Income in their minds, tarring it with the same brush and making it difficult to get any traction for Universal Basic Income as a concept).

              (Mmm. I like parenthesis. As you can probably tell).

        • It’s more mealy-mouthed than that – it aspires to work towards that goal. Which is fine. I didn’t like the sneering tone that document takes towards medical science though. In sharp contrast to climate change science.

    • I voted Green for many reasons including my views on the main 3 contenders. It was never going to count as a vote but I hoped there would be a groundswell of Green votes that would have an impact on the other parties in the way the UKIP vote did in 2015. I do wonder if we’ll be worrying about this Brexit kerfuffle when we in northern Europe are under plastic infested water and southern Europe is on fire….

  20. Still undecided on who is best to take over from Corbyn. I’ve got a lot of time for Keir Starmer but doubt he will be favoured by the left, and he isn’t the most charismatic politician. Also admire Jess Phillips a lot, but she has no significant experience on a front bench team and it’s not clear how she could handle the need to juggle a lot of balls at the same time.

    I’m very sceptical about Rebecca Long-Bailey, largely because she already emerged as the preferred choice of the Momentum crowd, which will immediately taint her with the wider electorate. As long as she is leader the Tories and their press allies will keep repeating that she’s Corbyn MkII. I just hope that a lot of the less ideological Corbyn supporters are ready to choose someone who will have a better chance with the wider electorate.

    • I suspect the Momentumnists will oppose Starmer because he’s too Blair (ie electable) and Philips is very impressive but she’s wound the Corbyn crew up something rotten and they won’t forgive her for that. Either of these two could be the leader after next.

    • Needs to be someone the billionaire newspaper moguls don’t fear, someone who won’t actually change anything at all whatsoever. So Starmer certainly strikes me as a good bet.

      • candidates have to get the support of 10% of MPs and any that do go forward to the wider membership for a vote. The candidate with over 50% of the vote is chosen. If there isn’t one, they drop the last and take the second preferences of anyone who voted for them, and carry on until they have a winner.

        Hard to see Long-Bailey being beaten given the overall makeup of the membership. I think she is much brighter and more credible than Corbyn, and doesn’t have his baggage. But I cannot see her with her politics and personality leading Labour out of the morass it is in. I hope for democracy’s sake I am wrong.

        • It’s more complex that that. They recently changed the rules to give another edge to the machine candidate. Nicked from Stephen Bush’s blog:

           To run for the Labour leadership, would-be candidates need to clear two fields: they need to secure the support of 10 per cent of the parliamentary party – 21 MPs, or, depending on the exact timetable for the contest, 22 MPs or MEPs.  But they also need the support of either five per cent of Constituency Labour Parties – 32 CLPs – OR five per cent of affiliates – including two trade unions – to make the contest proper.

          In practice, the shrunken Parliamentary Labour Party means that every Labour faction is guaranteed to be able to clear the parliamentary threshold – but it is far from certain where their support will come from to reach the contest proper. 

          Read the whole thing here – worth a look.
          https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/12/angela-rayner-free-labour-leadership-election-good-news-her-longshot-rivals

          • ah yes, you’re right – I had forgotten about the CLP/Union thing. Also as far as I know the way is still open for entry-ists of any political persuasion to sign up as supporters for £3 and have a vote. There is a whole discussion to be had about the fact that the main parties now select their leaders almost entirely by vote of their membership. It potentiality condemns them to make major miscalculations electorally because by definition they will select leaders in their own image and based on their own prejudices which may well be unlikely to represent the perspective of the wider voting public. Corbyn is the obvious example; Long-Bailey could become another.

            I am not sure I agree with Stephen Bush that Rayner’s not standing is good for the other candidates. It looks as if Long-Bailey may be the only credible Corbynite candidate and I think a joint ticket with Rayner will be an added positive for her. If others like Nandy, Phillips and Starmer stand they are likely to split the moderate vote between them leaving the way clear for Long-Bailey. Of course their second and third votes may coalesce between just one of them, but I am not sure. And if I am honest, much as I like all three of them, I am not convinced any of them are the obvious person to lead the party. Maybe a Starmer, supported by Phillips as Deputy, ticket might do it, But I think he will be anathema to the Momentum types.

    • John McDonnell: Sorry everybody, it was all my fault Labour lost. I take full responsibility. But you know who would be great as Corbyn’s successor? Rebecca Long-Bailey. We’ve been grooming her for just this moment.
      The nation: …

  22. I’ll just interrupt this thread briefly to thank everyone for their contributions so far (very interesting and thought-provoking) and to proffer a wild theory I just came up with:

    Jeremy Corbyn was popular with Gen X-ers and Millenials because he subconsciously reminds us of Obi Wan Kenobi.

  23. Although I did put my cross against the Labour candidate it was a struggle. Online tests suggested my closest match would have been Green, but they didn’t field a candidate here. Labour were my next closest, but really it was just my antipathy towards Johnson and his Conservatives which stopped me from scrawling a rude drawing over the ballot paper instead.

    I should really have been a very easy win for Labour at this election. I’m in favour of a larger state to cover the failures of the last decades, was frustrated by New Labour when they were in power as I basically saw them as a Conservative Party who wanted to use their powers for good (and went completely off the rails over Iraq, and made themselves vulnerable to the 2008 crash). I wanted to heartily endorse Labour but only just managed to vote for them.

    My principle problem, though far from the only one, was a combination of Corbyn and Europe. I held Corbyn largely to blame for the disastrous referendum result and remain of the view that the outcome could have been different if he has shared platforms with the other major party leaders to present a united case for remain. One of the great ironies of the whole outcome is that we have ended up with a PM who never really wanted to or expected to win the Leave vote, who was pitted in election against an old style Bennite Eurosceptic who had to oppose him though I believe he did want to leave.

    And I couldn’t, and still don’t, trust a word that either man says.

  24. In other news (tangentially related to talking about left wing principles), here is a quote from the new Prime Minister of Finland. Go Sanna!

    “A 4-day work week, a 6-hour workday. Why couldn’t it be the next step? Is 8 hours really the ultimate truth? I believe people deserve to spend more time with loved ones, hobbies and other aspects of life such as culture.”

  26. I served in the armed forces (Royal Navy 71-96), & am members of several ex RN/armed forces forums.

    Rightly or wrongly Labour are perceived to be “anti armed forces/veterans.

    I would like to see former parachute regiment Major Dan Jarvis have a senior role (leader/deputy).

    He would be capable of pulling in a lot of votes.

  27. The self indulgence and dubious antics of the far left and unions left the field open for Thatcher to run riot and that was a tragedy and now it’s happening again. Hence the fixation on the disastrous Corbyn. We take it for granted that the Tories will be the Tories, we don’t need to preach to the (mostly) onverted on that one, but we don’t have to make it so easy for them.

  28. I know it’s democratic and all that ( and, my God, how the leftists in Labour bang on about the democratically elected leader and how we must just support him more….blah blah), but it strikes me that leaders elected by the, almost by definition, more extreme, activist, elements of society (I can’t think of another word – it’s not meant as an insult) who join political parties are generally going to elect an extremist leader, rather than a moderate, middle of the road candidate who appeals to people they don’t like. This is happening in the Tories and well as Labour – Johnson and Corbyn wouldn’t have had a sniff of the leadership if the MPs had had their way.

  32. I am not 100% on the details, but I vaguely remember Emily Thornberry making a derogatory comment about someone putting an England flag outside their house.

    If she thinks that this won’t be brought back time & time again if she were to become Labour leader then that in itself is reason enough for her to not get on the voting slip.

    I remember saying when it happened (IIRC), that I believe that she is a barrister by training & I always believed that that profession was only for the finest brains.

    If tiff raff like me can see that she shat on her own doorstep, why aren’t “her people “ telling her “no chance Emma, you have already blown it”

      • She was on Peston this week – the first 20 mins or so, on iPlayer. It was very interesting, not least the pre-interview Anoushka bit showing markedly in graph form a regression analysis of how the Labour Party’s vote link to ‘working-class’ people has declined to zero gradually and inexorably since 1997.

        Knowing that she’s a barrister makes sense – she can joust formidably, or at least parry blows adequately, on TV and no doubt in debates but I can’t see any of the ‘common touch’ needed to appeal beyond the diehards as a national leader. The overriding impression to a casual viewer is one of smugness with a frisson of intolerance (though not the level of exasperation and petulance seen in Jeremy’s TV interviews). One former MP on the same show told her that not only had Jeremy not communicated with her (or seemingly any other Labour MP who had lost their seat, in contrast to what Gordon Brown did), but he had passed her in a corridor, saw her and blanked her. Emily didn’t know what to say to that. It’s very simple: ‘Sorry Mel, that was just bloody rude’.

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