[Yossarian]

What about all the, "You picked the wrong brother then picked Corbyn. When you show you've changed I'll vote for you again" types? I think there are a lot more of those than you realise....

And re "people see straight through this kind of politician", again, I think your (laudable btw) conviction in the mass population's seemingly incisive / forensic political judgement is extremely optimistic. At the last election vast swaths of people voted for an administration who basically hold them in complete contempt. If you read Twitter or the Guardian you have massive failings and epic corruption laid bare every day, but to all these genius political observers it's all "Well, Boris deserves some fancy wallpaper after all he's done for us". Johnson may as well be wrapped in political teflon.

[Oldmanmatt]

Even if you think Blair did not represent Labour, don't you think that was part of his success?
I don't think it's contraversial to say that Boris Johnson doesn't represent the traditional Conservative party. Theresa May, on the other hand is very much a traditional Conservative and nearly lost them the government. The party realised that and ruthlessly went about picking a winner.

Blair and his team successfully got into bed with Murdoch and big business, he was ruthless and won the backing of the power brokers.  The whole 'there's no point in voting their all the bloody same' resulted from this.  Keir and his team have tried to do the same but the power brokers aren't interested..  Financially speaking, with a greatly reduced membership and the failure to attract big business money Labour is struggling.  I think people see straight through this kind of politician and the electoral success of Blair and co. can't be repeated... the damage has been done.

On the other hand, Labour hasn’t won an election since (general), so, there’s that.

Getting “more” votes, doesn’t necessarily correspond to “getting enough votes” and the latter is what is required to achieve power. If the party is not winning, they are not offering what the people want. That’s the end of it. All that this last episode has proved, is that their current offering is possibly even less appealing than the previous.

All you have said is “what we had under Corbyn was more popular than what we have under Starmer, but still not popular enough to win an election”.

Which is a good time to trot out that axiom that goes along the lines of “doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results, is the definition of insanity”.

I would love the country to move back to the left. The Blair era, for all it’s faults, was a better time for the underdog and the lower income community than the current administration.

Edit:
The “there’s not point voting, they’re all the same” argument predates Blair by some margin.
I’m not sure how much margin, but I wouldn’t be surprised if wasn’t carved into an Athenian wall somewhere beside a rude (and more recent) cartoon of Pericles.

[BrutusTheBear]

It's not much of a democracy is it when we essentially all have to capitulate with the powers that be in order to be thrown a few scraps?
I have DanM's post on the climbing in caves thread in mind... Whilst we're all squabbling but essentially after the same things we are heading at pace for global catastrophe.  The need for radical political and societal change is beyond urgent.  There is a need to remove financial interests and influence from the political sphere, a need to focus all political decision making on ecological and environmental protection on a global sale. The world is changing and our so called democracy seems unfit to address it seriously.

[Oldmanmatt]

It's not much of a democracy is it when we essentially all have to capitulate with the powers that be in order to be thrown a few scraps?
I have DanM's post on the climbing in caves thread in mind... Whilst we're all squabbling but essentially after the same things we are heading at pace for global catastrophe.  The need for radical political and societal change is beyond urgent.  There is a need to remove financial interests and influence from the political sphere, a need to focus all political decision making on ecological and environmental protection on a global sale. The world is changing and our so called democracy seems unfit to address it seriously.

So, bearing in mind Bojo and the Con’s success in selling gilded shit to the masses, whilst blatantly dipping their sticky paws into the public purse; from which position is it easier (or even possible) to sell some major changes and uncomfortable truths from? Power or opposition?
Your faith in humanity is misplaced.
To achieve your goal (ours, if I’m honest), you must begin with baby steps and proceed with incremental, almost invisible, shuffling.
It’s a binary choice. Ease humanity into change or fail to implement change completely.

Unfortunately, if it’s already too late for the gentle response, then it is simply too late. Any other approach simply creates a back pressure that arrests flow. Equally unfortunate is our collective inability to understand that the term and concept “conservative” applies to both left and right equally.

[Yossarian]

I don't disagree with your sentiment. The unfortunate problem is that there are loads of people like going on holiday / like buying mountains of disposable fashion, new cars, etc. And how do you communicate a progressive green agenda to them and make it sound appealing? There are loads of these people living in the same street as me, in a town that has been described as a run-down seaside ghetto, which was held by Labour under Blair, but which has been Tory since 2010 with a current MP who in the run-up to the last election said that people with learning difficulties shouldn't be paid as much because they don't understand money. They're not gin and jag old school Tories - they're the people who would've voted for Thatcher. Plumbers and demolition guys who won't pay someone to trim the brambles growing out of their hedge across the pavement, but who'll spunk their covid business loan on an Audi R8.

I think Labour need to concentrate on what they're going to give people (Corbyn's broadband idea would be a start), rather than taking stuff away. And with any luck, Sunak might start doing the latter and then things will rebalance.

[Wellsy]

The Tories at the moment sell something aspirational and dynamic, for you, your community, and your country. "Let's move forward so we can be global competitors like we once were." You can see that in, for example, the new(ish) teeside mayor, who is a young Tory, from the area, believes in making local businesses successful, believes in interventionist government in the local economy, and has the full support of the PM and the Chancellor in that. Wants to spent money, wants to get local people employed etc. Specifically is promoting green policies. All that stuff.

Meanwhile Labour is caught between the somewhat socially conservative and basically patriotic remnants of the unions and young, progressive types who hold patriotism to be disturbing and even vaguely offensive. They seem to have very little local impact outside of young, diverse urban areas in Manchester, London and so on, outside those areas they're seen as not really present, not engaged, and definitely not dynamic. They're not selling anything nationally either; where's the sense of ambition and dynamism? But of course it is tricky; Labour appeals to making the country an ambitious international market dealer sound specifically negative to young anti-capitalists, who have no interest in the UK being a global economic power. They want Labour to be challenging ingrained and long-running views on Empire, race etc which yeah I agree with but that is driving a wedge between them and Labour's other supporters and indeed from everyone else.

So basically Labour needs to sell something to people outside it's usual remit which appeals to people within it's usual remit. The Tories have ditched Thatcherism and have gone all in on populist interventionalist government spending policies and are unified behind aggressively sacking off the last remnants of EUism and going with full force international pacific involvement capitalism and Labour are strugging to get the party to agree what form of democratic socialism they will present to get rejected next, riven by factionalism and culture war struggles, and facing off against the electoral disadvantage of the Lib Dems, Greens and in Scotland SNP dragging votes largely from them.

I feel like it's not that Keir Starmer is a bad leader (he's alright, and also probably the best on offer); but how can you be a good, dynamic, confident leader when your party is obsessed with having shouting matches with itself in the public eye? How can you sell something dynamic and ambitious when your party can't even agree on whether thinking that the UK is a good country that deserves to do well or not? It also doesn't help that Labour seemingly cannot have realistic estimates of their own performance. They massively overstated how they did in 2017, were blindsided by 2019, in the local elections it was obvious that without UKIP splitting the Tory vote then they'd win as between them they had more votes than Labour, they did manage to make inroads in a number of places and they did really well in Wales, but they come out sounding like a bunch of morose, angry losers who will promptly start arguing with each other again.

[chris j]

Yes, I'd agree with this. The Tories are selling something positive, whether it's snake oil or real will be seen down the line. Labour under Brown offered benefits, tax credits and the chance to be part of a client state beholden to Labour, but then he let the mask slip with his 'bigoted woman' incident. Since then under Miliband and Corbyn and through Brexit many Labour members have't held back on the contempt and lack of empathy they obviously have for the aspirational working class electorate. Starmer (nice but ineffectual) now has the Corbynite rump as his version of John Major's Eurosceptic 'bastards' group. I suspect Labour are only now entering their IDS/Howard/Hague phase after the damage Corbyn has wrought and there may have to be a  more or less a generational change in the Labour PLP before they are electable again.

[TobyD]

Intriguing scenario here in West Yorkshire as Tracy Brabin (the one surviving Labour MP round here after the last GE bloodbath) is running for West Yorkshire mayor.

I assume if she wins, this will trigger a by-election, which at the moment The Tories would likely win.

If she loses the mayoral vote, I'm guessing she "just" goes back to being our MP still?

So, errrr, go Tracy? Or not?

The conservatives will obviously win this seat. When it happens,  it will be pointless, and wrong trying to frame it as a failure of Starmer.  As others have said and many commentators observe,  all of these seats have been going this way since before Corbyn.  He certainly repelled a lot of people but isn't solely responsible for the socio-cultural shifts which made all of this inevitable. 

[andy popp]

I feel very disconnected from British politics, though certainly not disinterested or uninterested - just remote. And increasingly  I realize I have little idea of what it feels like to live there, what daily life is like (I was last in the country, very briefly, in Jan 2020, when poor old Widnes looked even more down on its luck than normal and I was horrified by the number of rough sleepers in Liverpool). So I appreciate this thread, which has had some thoughful posts and good debate over the last couple of days.

Rather than being a matter of this leader or that, it seems clear that Labour's issues are structural, but I would push back on the idea that you can't build a social democratic movement (which is really what we're talking about, not socialism) in the absence of a traditional mass industrial working class. Labour's immediate roots lay in trade unionism but beyond that there was a rich environment of local associational activity: coops, friendly societies, burial clubs, etc. etc. Maybe those precise forms don't need to replicated but local grassroots associational activity might be the source of a viable future (though slow and difficult to build). I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, but the always interesting John Harris makes precisely this point in this piece: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/09/labour-crisis-politics-people-work-left

[Oldmanmatt]

I feel very disconnected from British politics, though certainly not disinterested or uninterested - just remote. And increasingly  I realize I have little idea of what it feels like to live there, what daily life is like (I was last in the country, very briefly, in Jan 2020, when poor old Widnes looked even more down on its luck than normal and I was horrified by the number of rough sleepers in Liverpool). So I appreciate this thread, which has had some thoughful posts and good debate over the last couple of days.

Rather than being a matter of this leader or that, it seems clear that Labour's issues are structural, but I would push back on the idea that you can't build a social democratic movement (which is really what we're talking about, not socialism) in the absence of a traditional mass industrial working class. Labour's immediate roots lay in trade unionism but beyond that there was a rich environment of local associational activity: coops, friendly societies, burial clubs, etc. etc. Maybe those precise forms don't need to replicated but local grassroots associational activity might be the source of a viable future (though slow and difficult to build). I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, but the always interesting John Harris makes precisely this point in this piece: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/09/labour-crisis-politics-people-work-left

Labour grew out of offering and delivering real, tangible, improvements to ordinary peoples everyday lives.
Maggie promised and (to some extent) delivered, the same; when Labour lost it’s way in the 70s.
(Actually, they “ran out” of major reforms to deliver and started to disappear up their own ideological arses).
I know many of my parents generation, who paid a few fuckalls for their council house and immediately became die hard Tory, lower middle class, simply by shifting to a very low mortgage payment, new credit standing and a new sense of self.
I think the “Labour left” in all it’s generational guises, has alway deluded itself into a belief in some common bond, fraternity and shared sympathy across the downtrodden masses, blah, blah, blah.

All that most people want is “a better life” and they want it with as little personal effort as possible. Our current society would not exist, if any other truth prevailed.

The Tories simply allow people to be selfish, tout it as virtue and their biggest internal rifts grow out of minor arguments about how much selfishness is acceptable. The winning formula “we will pay you to support us and we won’t force you to carry that loser down the road”.

[TobyD]

...
Rather than being a matter of this leader or that, it seems clear that Labour's issues are structural, but I would push back on the idea that you can't build a social democratic movement (which is really what we're talking about, not socialism) in the absence of a traditional mass industrial working class. Labour's immediate roots lay in trade unionism but beyond that there was a rich environment of local associational activity: coops, friendly societies, burial clubs, etc. etc. Maybe those precise forms don't need to replicated but local grassroots associational activity might be the source of a viable future ...

I was thinking, looking at the results from last week, that although it's been overshadowed by the reshuffle and Johnson's problems with the union, that the Labour results in all the mayoralties were actually really good. The Conservative party only hold two of them. Perhaps the way to stay relevant is not to push for national government at all, and push for increased devolution to the regions and greater powers for the mayors and regional government. The Conservative party talks the talk on this, but is pathologically predisposed to centralise and desperate to control everything. It sounds negative, but I wonder if this is what Andy Burnham decided some time ago.

OMM, I agree with basically all of what you've said.

[Johnny Brown]

Whilst we're all squabbling but essentially after the same things we are heading at pace for global catastrophe.  The need for radical political and societal change is beyond urgent.  There is a need to remove financial interests and influence from the political sphere, a need to focus all political decision making on ecological and environmental protection on a global sale. The world is changing and our so called democracy seems unfit to address it seriously.

Sounds a lot like you should be voting Green then. Labour simply isn't single-minded enough on these big issues, and a vote for them in many northern cities is just a vote for the status quo.  While there might be some truth in the turkeys/ xmas angle on Hartlepool, too long in unchallenged power is often a recipe for poor governance and particularly the arrogance that you can afford to ignore dissent. This is certainly why they've just lost control of Sheffield, where their reaction to the Green councillor's protest at their street tree fiasco was to try to imprison her.

[tommytwotone]

Intriguing scenario here in West Yorkshire as Tracy Brabin (the one surviving Labour MP round here after the last GE bloodbath) is running for West Yorkshire mayor.

I assume if she wins, this will trigger a by-election, which at the moment The Tories would likely win.

If she loses the mayoral vote, I'm guessing she "just" goes back to being our MP still?

So, errrr, go Tracy? Or not?

The conservatives will obviously win this seat. When it happens,  it will be pointless, and wrong trying to frame it as a failure of Starmer.  As others have said and many commentators observe,  all of these seats have been going this way since before Corbyn.  He certainly repelled a lot of people but isn't solely responsible for the socio-cultural shifts which made all of this inevitable. 

Sadly I think you're right - Tracy's 3.5k majority won't hold up I assume.

The only viable option open here would be to persuade Jo Cox's sister to run, but I think even that may come across as cynical, and people have short memories as it is.

[TobyD]

Intriguing scenario here in West Yorkshire as Tracy Brabin (the one surviving Labour MP round here after the last GE bloodbath) is running for West Yorkshire mayor.

I assume if she wins, this will trigger a by-election, which at the moment The Tories would likely win.

If she loses the mayoral vote, I'm guessing she "just" goes back to being our MP still?

So, errrr, go Tracy? Or not?

The conservatives will obviously win this seat. When it happens,  it will be pointless, and wrong trying to frame it as a failure of Starmer.  As others have said and many commentators observe,  all of these seats have been going this way since before Corbyn.  He certainly repelled a lot of people but isn't solely responsible for the socio-cultural shifts which made all of this inevitable. 

Sadly I think you're right - Tracy's 3.5k majority won't hold up I assume.

The only viable option open here would be to persuade Jo Cox's sister to run, but I think even that may come across as cynical, and people have short memories as it is.

Indeed. The Conservative party will clearly pour everything into winning here while the narrative is going their way.

This is interesting, however from Katy Balls in the Guardian:
But for all the heady forecasts of Tory wins for years to come, not everyone is on the same page. As more results have come in over the weekend, the picture has become more complicated. The Tories aren’t the only incumbents enjoying success. Welsh Labour held firm despite Tory efforts, Labour metro mayors such as Andy Burnham boosted their vote share, and the SNP enjoyed electoral success in Scotland.

The question some Tories are beginning to ask: is this down to a political realignment or part of a wider political trend in which incumbents across the UK are benefiting from a vaccine bounce and a loosening of restrictions? If it’s the latter, it’s harder to say how long it will last. “My colleagues have very short memories,” says one sceptical MP. “Just six months ago they were all talking about how long [Johnson] would last. Things can change fast.”

About 2 years ago, everyone was forecasting the breakup of the conservative party and the death of the two party system. At the moment, I could easily see Labour dying entirely, but things can, indeed change fast.

[BrutusTheBear]

Missed quite a bit since yesterday morning
AP - The grass roots activism you described as a Labour strength is in full flow in Preston and the very strong election performance there reflects this 'Community Wealth Building' approach. https://www.preston.gov.uk/article/1339/What-is-Preston-Model-, Much to be celebrated and built upon here.  Social democracy is written on the LP membership card!
JB - I voted Green this election. I am a former LP member and activist (my membership subs now go to the local food bank) , hence my interest.  (This statement maybe grounds for purging me should I ever join again! )
Labour are in with a shout in the upcoming by election, they should win but mustn't attempt to parachute in an out of towner... Those days are over.

So we discover the Dark Lord Mandleson is pulling Keir's strings and he is calling for a further shift right. The newly shuffled Shadow Chancellor appears to sit to the right of Sunak!

More embarrassing nonsense and back peddling on the sacking of AR yesterday. It's not a sacking, it's a promotion apparently.  A broad coalition of mostly northern MPs seems to be exerting force upon the leadership. 

[spidermonkey09]

The newly shuffled Shadow Chancellor appears to sit to the right of Sunak!

I think Reeves is quite unfairly maligned by the left, of which I would consider myself part. I think people's views develop over time and I found this interview quite persuasive. I don't think the anti-welfare, IDS-esque caricature of her that is common on the Labour left is fair.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2021/02/comeback-rachel-reeves

[TobyD]

The newly shuffled Shadow Chancellor appears to sit to the right of Sunak!

I think Reeves is quite unfairly maligned by the left, of which I would consider myself part. I think people's views develop over time and I found this interview quite persuasive. I don't think the anti-welfare, IDS-esque caricature of her that is common on the Labour left is fair.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2021/02/comeback-rachel-reeves

I agree, I like Rachel Reeves, she is well qualified as a chancellor (as was Dodds incidentally); but Rachel Reeves is a good media performer. To my mind she had been better than Starmer in this respect by some margin. She is able to be very strongly critical of government policy without sounding hectoring. Starmer is bloody good at PMQs but has a habit of sounding irritated by interviewers. I lived in her constituency about ten years ago, and she may actually be the only Labour MP I've actually voted for, and I would do again.

Labour are in with a shout in the upcoming by election, they should win but mustn't attempt to parachute in an out of towner... Those days are over.

So we discover the Dark Lord Mandleson is pulling Keir's strings and he is calling for a further shift right.

They really aren't. Pretending as much will only lead to more problems. All available evidence suggests that the conservatives will get a large majority.

It really isn't helpful describing people as a 'dark lord'. I have any number of deeply unpleasant things I could write about the views and disposition of some politicians, but I don't think this is really fair. They are all human beings with strengths and weaknesses. I'm really sorry if that sounds all bloody worthy but they are just people after all, not a different species.

[Johnny Brown]

Sheffield council referendum result just out: 65% for change to committee model, 35% for current 'strong leader' model. Incumbent Labour council getting bashed from both directions.

[BrutusTheBear]

My bad..  I meant to say the deeply cynical and unpleasant Lord Mandleson.

[Nails]

What I found most notable about the local elections was the absence of campaigning. There was barely anything through the door yet alone anyone at the door. I would struggle to state what Labour stand for at present (some vague guff about addressing inequalities and injustices). I don’t feel that Labour’s poor showing is either a surprise or of particular significance. The Tories had a massive GE victory on the back of Brexit and nothing’s happened since then except Covid. Why would voters have changed their minds in the interim? The negative effects of Brexit are masked by all the massive negatives of Covid. The Tories inevitably get some credit for the vaccine success though to my mind they deserve very little, the success being largely due to very effective and well established interconnections between UK academia and UK pharmaceutical industries. That combined with an NHS capable of delivering a rollout programme. Kate Bingham was definitely a very capable organiser and deserves credit, though the main point I’d make there is that even a Chumocracy can sometimes select somebody who is not shit.

I’m continually astonished by the vitriol that spews forth from the Labour left to anyone on the Labour right. They hate Starmer et al with a vengeance that should probably be reserved for Nazi war criminals, and present 2017 as hard evidence of the solidity and viability of the whole Corbyn project, simply because the result wasn’t as shit as everybody thought it would be. They need reminding that Dunkirk wasn’t actually a victory. I can’t see anyone waiting in the wings who looks like a better leader than Starmer at present. We just have to hope he can stop the infighting and pull things together sufficiently to present a credible vision to offer people at the next GE. I live in hope but I won’t be betting my house on it.

[Will Hunt]

n=1

My area of West Yorkshire/Bradford almost never votes Labour, in either general or local elections. The Bingley ward has (spoiler: had) three Conservative councillors elected. The Labour candidate has chipped away at his rivals over the last couple of local elections and this time won. I've no idea why this might be.

[BrutusTheBear]

The vitriol that the Labour left feels towards the right of the party is everything to do with the active briefing, undermining and counter campaigning that took place esp. during general election campaigns.
Assume you know about this Nails?

[andy popp]

I've no idea why this might be.

Good local candidate who has worked hard over the long run?

[Will Hunt]

I've no idea why this might be.

Good local candidate who has worked hard over the long run?

That's certainly one of the reasons (and probably very significant). I'm not sure it completely explains the overturning of what is normally a fairly comfortable Conservative majority though - there are still lots of people locally who I can't imagine would ever vote Labour regardless of the candidate.
Changing demographics maybe? The census data will be an interesting read.

[Nails]

The vitriol that the Labour left feels towards the right of the party is everything to do with the active briefing, undermining and counter campaigning that took place esp. during general election campaigns.
Assume you know about this Nails?

And so it continues? Political infighting that keeps the Tories in power indefinitely.