UK Politics - Taking the Land Rover to Heaven

[SeanF]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Didn’t even consider voting in the London elections to be honest. I think it’s probably a Khan landslide and it’s very difficult to imagine a worse set of candidates to challenge him this year. Feels like the tories have basically given up on London.

Khan will win by a country mile, about 60/40.  I expect Labour will gain the West of England Mayoralty from the Conservatives.  But, that's probably the extent of good news for Labour.

[Which Tyler]

48 minutes ago, SeanF said:

A hundred years from now, people will mention Boris Johnson in the same breath as Marlborough, Wellington, and Nelson.

"Unlike Marlborough, Wellington, and Nelson; Johnson was a corrupt incompetent who believed that image and belief could make up for lack of will and capacity"

[Derfel Cadarn]

A new political force is rising in Scotland, aimed particularly at a right-wing comedian standing for an MSP position on Glasgow ss part of Reclaim (Lawrence Fox’s party).

I present to you, Jock McEwan of the Nae Bawbags Party! Video is the ‘reply’ tweet.

(for the non-Scottish, bawbag is a Scottish slang term for scrotum, ie ballbag).

 

[mormont]

For a moment I had the Reclaim guy mixed up with the Nazi pug guy, but the latter is standing for the Libertarian Party (having moved on from UKIP).

The sheer number of right wing nutjobs in this election is horrifying.

[kiko]

8 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

"Unlike Marlborough, Wellington, and Nelson; Johnson was a corrupt incompetent who believed that image and belief could make up for lack of will and capacity"

Marlborough is a cigarette, Wellington a rubber Boot. Nelson is a lidl own brand for tea. What is a Johnson then?

[HexMachina]

56 minutes ago, kiko said:

Marlborough is a cigarette, Wellington a rubber Boot. Nelson is a lidl own brand for tea. What is a Johnson then?

If you have to ask....

[DanteGabriel]

1 hour ago, kiko said:

Marlborough is a cigarette, Wellington a rubber Boot. Nelson is a lidl own brand for tea. What is a Johnson then?

https://youtu.be/Dz7uYIIbfmE

[Heartofice]

Looks like Labour have conceded in Hartlepool. Not going well for Starmer is it. 

[BigFatCoward]

Not going well for the country if someone so completely out of touch, incompetent and corrupt is the choice we are making. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

I have to wonder if Starmer is trying Biden’s strategy, deciding that Johnson is the one best qualified to destroy Johnson, and he’s better off leaving him to get on with it

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

Tories didn’t even win by just having the most votes, they got a straight up majority. Bleak.

[Heartofice]

I’m sure the left of the party will now use this as a reason to push back on Starmers ‘strategy’ and revert to more socialist policies. 
 

The issue for Labour really is that it really isn’t seen as being the party it’s name suggests. If the voters you are attracting are the middle class metropolitan city dwellers in London and Bristol then it’s not it time for a name change?

There has already been a push back on the flag waving side of Starmers policies, but actually I think the issue is that everyone saw through all that. Saying you love Britain isn’t quite going to stick overnight. 

[DaveSumm]

The MP they wheeled out to go on the Today programme had a pretty woeful response; basically, the pandemic has prevented them from meeting people face to face and shaking hands and making public speeches, so they don’t know what the public want. They’re looking forward to ‘asking us’ what it is we want from the Labour Party.

So there you have it folks, form an orderly queue to vote for the “once we’ve had a chat we’ll come up with what it is we’ll actually do” party.

[SeanF]

27 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I’m sure the left of the party will now use this as a reason to push back on Starmers ‘strategy’ and revert to more socialist policies. 
 

The issue for Labour really is that it really isn’t seen as being the party it’s name suggests. If the voters you are attracting are the middle class metropolitan city dwellers in London and Bristol then it’s not it time for a name change?

There has already been a push back on the flag waving side of Starmers policies, but actually I think the issue is that everyone saw through all that. Saying you love Britain isn’t quite going to stick overnight. 

The results further South in Remain-voting areas might be better for Labour.  London will be a blowout for them, but the problem is, there's not much left for them to gain in London.  The parts of Greater London that are safe now for the Conservatives are those parts that see themselves as Kent, Essex, Bucks, rather than London.

[Spockydog]

For the first time since 2005, I didn't vote Labour. And I'm glad they got mullered. Fucking delighted. It means our alcy-in-chief needs to take a long, hard look at his pathetic, toothless approach to being Leader of the Opposition.  

Either that, or fuck off back down the pub, and let someone else do it.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I’m sure the left of the party will now use this as a reason to push back on Starmers ‘strategy’ and revert to more socialist policies. 

The issue for Labour really is that it really isn’t seen as being the party it’s name suggests. If the voters you are attracting are the middle class metropolitan city dwellers in London and Bristol then it’s not it time for a name change?

There has already been a push back on the flag waving side of Starmers policies, but actually I think the issue is that everyone saw through all that. Saying you love Britain isn’t quite going to stick overnight. 

The name issue is a good one, actually. Modern Labour seem to have moved into the traditional voting ground of the Liberal Democrats in the 1980s and 1990s, appealing to middle class liberal voters who don't like the Tories but not doing anything to appeal to the working class. You can get votes that way, but you're unlikely to get in a position to challenge the balance of power. Labour's historical support came from the unions via industry, but with industry effectively dead, the unions are a much less important force in UK society. Breaking the unions in the 1980s turns out to have been a huge long-term strategic victory for the Tories. New Labour succeeded off the back of anger at the unions being broken whilst also moving aggressively into areas usually contested by both the Conservatives and Lib Dems (the repeated Tory sleaze scandals didn't help), but the second the shine came off New Labour and the party retreated from the centre, they lost that advantage, not helped by bickering, infighting and self-sabotage ever since. Cummings, for once, made an interesting point this morning by suggesting the centre was dead, at least as we traditionally define it, and Starmer's Labour and the Liberal Democrats have both suffered from trying to increasingly appeal to it.

Of course, you also have social media and the regular media pushing messages that aren't true but seem to have been accepted by osmosis. So we've seen Starmer trying to move more rightwards with his flag-worshipping rhetoric and being careful not to say anything "too SJW" but that's not punched through at the ballot box. Lots of people see Labour as being "all about BLM and trans rights" and not interested in "real working class issues", despite Starmer being noncommittal on those things. Being noncommittal on those things also means you lose votes from people who are concerned about those things (and ditching Corbyn may have lost them as many, if not more, votes than retaining him, though granted they were unlikely to convert many more people whilst retaining Corbyn). You just end up hemorrhaging votes from both ends.

I think one way forward would be a rebuilding of the unions. We've seen some success in that, with gig economy workers (probably the closest thing we have to a new working class, at least in part) unionising, joining forces and getting real concessions improving their pay and rights. There are signs that other industries are going to have to pay more money to British workers to take over jobs which were vacated by EU migrants, and there's scope there to organise people. That would be a ground-up rebuilding of the union system which Labour can then capitalise on (assuming Labour don't rabbit-in-the-headlights swallowed up by irrelevance and someone else steps into their space). That's not something that's going to happen overnight.

[Liffguard]

Two thoughts:

One, Labour's problems appear to be more long-term and intractable than can be attributed to any particular leader. I wonder to what extent the issue is fundamentally demographic. Younger people overwhelmingly vote Labour (which wasn't always the case), and younger people are also disproportionately abandoing small and mid-sized provincial towns to cluster in cities, where the jobs and social scenes are. This leads to Labour's vote becoming more and more concentrated, which isn't helpful for winning seats.

(Although, demographic changes can't account for the result in Hartlepool on their own. From 2017 to yesterday, the Conservative vote went from 14,300, down to 11,800, and back up to 15,500. I.e. overall it didn't change that much. Labour's has gone from 22,000, to 15,500, to 8,500; a dramatic collapse that massively oustrips demographic shift in the same period.

Two, any conversation about whether and how much Labour appeals to the working class needs to define what people mean by working class first. Some people use the term to mean anyone who works for pay and can't survive on assets or passive income. Some people use it to mean non-professionals; people paid hourly, with tenuous employment, who rent or otherwise have very little equity. And some people, frankly, use "working class" as a synonym for "middle-aged or older northern white reactionaries." How you define working class is obviously going to affect how Labour should be appealing to it (or the question of whether or not Labour currently does).

[Heartofice]

All good points, but I think the overall issue for Labour, and for once I’m in agreement with Owen Jones here, is that Labour don’t have a vision or an identity.

The Tories have been able to take over the culture and values vote easily, but also have moved away from the ‘austerity’ Tories image by pushing more spending.  
 

So where does Labour even fit now? It’s main line of attack has been Tory sleaze, but it isn’t cutting through, it’s again one of those things that mainly concerns people who hate the Tories anyway. When it comes to stuff people actually care about Labour don’t seem to have a good answer.

[Liffguard]

6 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

All good points, but I think the overall issue for Labour, and for once I’m in agreement with Owen Jones here, is that Labour don’t have a vision or an identity.

 

Fair point, and one I agree with. I also happen to think that this is one reason why Labour did so much better in 2017 than the elections immediately before or since.

It's partly why I'm resistant to calling the current right-wing of the party "Blairites." Blair was able to present a vision to the public. It ultimately proved to be a hollow vision, but it existed for a time. I don't think any similar vision exists for the current Labour right-wing, other than "not left-wing" and "not Tories." And that's not enough.

[SeanF]

57 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

Two thoughts:

One, Labour's problems appear to be more long-term and intractable than can be attributed to any particular leader. I wonder to what extent the issue is fundamentally demographic. Younger people overwhelmingly vote Labour (which wasn't always the case), and younger people are also disproportionately abandoing small and mid-sized provincial towns to cluster in cities, where the jobs and social scenes are. This leads to Labour's vote becoming more and more concentrated, which isn't helpful for winning seats.

(Although, demographic changes can't account for the result in Hartlepool on their own. From 2017 to yesterday, the Conservative vote went from 14,300, down to 11,800, and back up to 15,500. I.e. overall it didn't change that much. Labour's has gone from 22,000, to 15,500, to 8,500; a dramatic collapse that massively oustrips demographic shift in the same period.

Two, any conversation about whether and how much Labour appeals to the working class needs to define what people mean by working class first. Some people use the term to mean anyone who works for pay and can't survive on assets or passive income. Some people use it to mean non-professionals; people paid hourly, with tenuous employment, who rent or otherwise have very little equity. And some people, frankly, use "working class" as a synonym for "middle-aged or older northern white reactionaries." How you define working class is obviously going to affect how Labour should be appealing to it (or the question of whether or not Labour currently does).

The UKIP vote from 2016/17, Brexit Party vote from 2019 has collapsed to the Conservatives.  Overall, the Leave vote is less heavily concentrated than the Remain vote, making the Conservative vote very efficiently distributed.

Scotland seems like a repeat of 2016, albeit on higher turnout.