I think the problem is that Corbyn won't bite until it's too late, if at all. I expect he'll want to run for one last term, leaving the ball in Starmer's court to placate him.

The thought of a chunk of Labour '17 voters not bothering in '24 is really disheartening. I understand you'd rather we vote Starmer than Johnson (gun-to-my-head I would), but it's such a lack of vision to not hope to force him into a coalition of leftwing influence. Else we're just looking at Diet Tory until 2029, where at least a Milibanding in '24 gets him replaced.

Labour's manifesto might even be semi-reasonable come the time, but the trust has gone. Starmer's u-turned on too much already. I and hundreds of thousands of others won't be campaigning for him.

I assumed with all the new posts it was about the 11 parties the conservatives have held while we've all been in lockdown/restricted movement, but no... It's about Corbyn. Because of course.

Escape wrote:

By the way, I think...

tedious and counterproductive leftwing gatekeeping

Is almost always a rightwing play.

Except purity gatekeeping is a favoured tactic of the Brexit Ultras as well.

I think he means calling out the gate keeping.

A new left wing party is doomed to failure at national level. A Corbyn led one would return, at best, Corbyn. And he could do that without a party.

The only way one might succeed is to ignore national politics, and operate exclusively at local level building support potentially over decades.

I'm not sure how a left wing PR supporting party bully Labour into adopting PR.

It sounds like what UKIP did to the Cons in threatening their majority and bullying them into the Brexit ref.
Except threatening a majority while demanding something that will end majority rule doesn't really work.

If Labour really are fully committed to FPTP then they are going to risk not getting a majority over agreeing to remove FPTP entirely.

Diluted Dante wrote:

A new left wing party is doomed to failure at national level. A Corbyn led one would return, at best, Corbyn. And he could do that without a party.

The only way one might succeed is to ignore national politics, and operate exclusively at local level building support potentially over decades.

The party name is now critical for branding - you need that name to stand a chance . If that Dominic Grieve became toast because he wasn’t an official conservative anymore the chance that some unknown leftish party will make gains feels like a pipe dream. Even Change UK -every one of them is a famous politician and couldn’t do anything.

Also - there are precedents of left wing parties sweeping in from nowhere but they almost always need the country is literally bankrupt levels of cock up for them to come in.

I think it's a subtler thing that accusing others of gatekeeping or accusing gatekeepers of being rightwing, which is not going to get anyone anywhere fast.

It's more that Yoss and Escape have two different objectives which are very hard to tie together, so that you have at least some overlapping goals and can work together.

Yoss objective: get rid of Tories at any cost, despite acknowledged compromises needed by voting for a centrist (ie: market forces based) party as the only viable opposition in a FPTP system.

Escape objective: bring in FPTP so that coalitions of left wing parties can actually gain some power and influence.

You can see that these things are extremely difficult to tie together - any tactic that Escape can come up with to achieve his goal will almost necessarily undermine Yoss' objective of getting rid of the Tories at any cost.

As for me, if anyones interested: I sympathise with both goals but err towards Escape's, even though it's 100% more fantastical than Yoss'. The reason for this: I think we have enough recent-ish history to show that centrist parties do not really move the dial in any meaningful manner in terms of the, shall we say, "general direction of travel" of the economy, unfairness, public services, inequality, regionalisation, and so on which should be the goals of any left wing voter, which Yoss (I'm sure) is. Sure Blairism packed loads of money into services, but also slammed open the door to privatisation via PPPs and PFIs which we're still paying off as tax payers. All the money was conditionally attached to severe "management-itis" and centralised power. Big ideas about education led to fees for university, which has hugely exacerbated inequality. And so on and so on. 

At worst, these policies despite seeming generous are so market-driven and capitalistic* that they undermine the concepts of fairness and equality fundamentally, and lead to a disenfranchised base who look elsewhere and internally for better solutions, and that's how we end up with Brexit and demagoguery and populism and unchecked executive power and ludicrous culture wars.

Do I place the blame for our current fucking mess at Blair and Brown's feet? and the horrific undermining of Corbyn? Not totally of course, but surely anyone can agree that you can draw some lines, however faint or dark they are.

And that really is the essence of the differences between Yoss and Escape. Yoss sees those lines, but thinks they are faint, and believes the "not great but better" policies of a centrist party is worth the compromise to get the undoubtedly more harmful tories out. Escape believes it's a sticking plaster over a gaping wound - which actually means, you're just saving up trouble. You get 5, maybe even 10 (unlikely!) years of Biden-style triangulating and failure, better than under Tories but you invite them back as soon as enough people have had enough with inequality continuing to grow, market-focussed public service reforms not leading to decidedly better conditions. So long term - Escape believe Starmer cause MORE harm than it's worth voting for them.

I'm not sure you can reconcile this dichotomy, it has certainly caused significant arguments in here

* Don't believe me? check out the recently released memos from Blair's early days. Move past the (frankly understandable, given the contexts and recent history of Tory sleaze being so high on the 1997 electoral agenda and recent ludicrous electoral losses by Labour under Kinnock) paranoia about electability and appearance to the electorate; and focus on Blair's What Is New Labour. Market forces are front and centre. Nothing about regulation. Everything about "opportunity" in the current capitalist paradigm. That's gone well for us hasn't it?

As for Sue Gray, this article is interesting

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33431580

Diluted Dante wrote:

mistercrayon wrote:

The party name is now critical for branding - you need that name to stand a chance . If that Dominic Grieve became toast because he wasn’t an official conservative anymore the chance that some unknown leftish party will make gains feels like a pipe dream. Even Change UK -every one of them is a famous politician and couldn’t do anything. Also - there are precedents of left wing parties sweeping in from nowhere but they almost always need the country is literally bankrupt levels of cock up for them to come in.

Or PR.

Maybe. I remain unconvinced that PR will lead to anything that works well here.. We had a taste of it with the coalition and all it lead to was knifing and broken promises. Essentially manifestos will become at best a vague indications for plans of government as each part is then subject to some dirty horse trade because majorities will be unlikely except in the most ridiculous circumstance.

Do you mean that manifestos are meaningless? I think up until the last one the manifesto was an accurate reflection of a governments plans (and to a large part I think they still are. Maybe in such a context a moderating PR system would be better.

Still I think it’s easy see what the “left wing” parties would have to give up just to get a taste of any ability to do stuff. At which point the worries about purple labour will just become official.

I can’t see how anyone saw the Lib Dems giving up tuition fees promise can see any party properly holding their nerve on stuff that is in any way “extreme” which to me will literally be identical to the policies that are the most attractive and inspire voting from certain people.

Manifestos are pretty much meaningless, I doubt that a single government has ever been elected that has implemented everything promised in a manifesto.

And the horse trading you’ve mentioned still happens, it just happens between different factions in the same party.

More than that, however, I, like millions of others, would have a vote that actually counted for something for the first time in my life. Plus, we would likely never see a Tory party hold a majority again.

I'd not let the capitulation of the Lib Dems guide you on what is likely to happen under a non FPTP system.

If it teaches us anything it's that it almost destroyed them.

mistercrayon wrote:

I fucking hate British politics thread. It’s so easy to get sucked in again and again.

Same here. I'm best staying away to be honest. I got into a Tennis match with Sparky over Corbyn which was a waste of both our time.

I must stop getting angry and calling radio talk showsn