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Next UK Labour Leader - post Brexit

FlyerTon

By FlyerTon
in The Politics Forum

Next UK Labour Leader - post Brexit  

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jmothecat

jmothecat

Posted
Posted
Yup. Values aren't as important as you like to say they are. Winning is. The old football tribal mentality not even slightly hidden.



Values are very important. Otherwise there's no point. I'm not arguing for one or the other, I'm arguing for both. Like we managed with New Labour.
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WaffenThinMint

WaffenThinMint

Posted
Posted
33 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

 


Were you as concerned with the left wing of the party when the so-called moderates took the party to the right in the 90s? Hundreds of thousands of members and voters just drifted away as Blair et al focused on keeping the wealthy onside.

There was a genuine sense that the leadership at that time didn't seem to want socialists in the party anymore. The word was tainted and genuine left wingers were left completely alienated at carefully stage managed conference year in year out.
 

Labour membership when Blair became PM was 405 000 - the highest since 1979 when Labour lost to Thatcher. Members did not leave due to Blair keeping the wealthy onside - they now accepted the old SDP view that sucking up to the rich was the price to pay for getting at least some social justice measures through - but primarily due to discontent over Iraq and distress over the fascistic tendencies of Mandelson, Straw, etc to squash any grassroots dissent to the extent party conferences more resembled the sort beloved of Oswald Mosley than any Labour leader before or since.

It is important to remember however why left wingers and left wing policies were tainted within Labour whilst being welcome in the Greens, the SNP, Plaid Cymru. Hell, even the Lib Dems and the far right cherry picked the bits that suited them. Why could they do so and reap electoral rewards?

The difference is that they learned to maintain discipline to a level where dissent was possible without tolerating those wanting whose "political engagement" amounted to little more than physical intimidation of fellow party members, let alone opponents. The SNP beat the SnG pit bull mercilessly until it finally learned to behave & the Greens bust their "Dark Green/Red-Green" lunatic wing before it bust the. Both acknowledged certain types were more trouble than they were worth long before the damage was done in public.

By contrast, there has long been a tendency within Labour to treat as "deniable assets" so-called Trotskyites and other pseudo-left wing thugs more interested in being part of a gang bullying and intimidating for the joy of it than having any real interest in the common people they purport to care about. Members of the Socialist Workers Party in particular (via the auspices of the so-called "Labour movement" & its umpteen flags of convenience) have long been co-opted at election times to do all manner of "necessary evil" to "political opponents".

Thanks to Searchlight and the various anti-fascist gossip groups, there's not a single member of the far-right able to slip into UKIP or the Tories without being exposed before two months have passed (in the case of the Tories, they also have their own internal background checking department, but that's another story). Labour doesn't enjoy that luxury. Branches have been less choosy about the sort of characters they've allowed in - and to be fair, it's often next to impossible for some Labour branch in some leafy suburb to know that the guy kindly helping out with leafletting and postering is the same one living a double life as a notorious SWSS thug in some campus town 50 miles or more away. As those willing to act as footsoldiers at election times have ebbed thanks in part to the allowance of such types, the reliance grows - making for a vicious circle.

The price is the alienation of large parts of the country as every extended family has someone (whether directly, an aunt or uncle, etc) in college/uni or workplace that's witnessed or experienced Trot intimidation or outright violence first hand at some point over the decades: and it is still very much ingrained into the British psyche that this is the sort of behaviour - and the sort of brutish machismo fixated world view it represented - they'd fought a ruinous war to prevent coming to these shores.

Enter Tommy Sheridan - the Thinking Man's Ned, and the best thing the left had since the glory days of Benn had they realised it. All the brashness of the Trots and infantile taste for the easy glories that gesture politics can "win" but with a polish and pragmatism to his approach that had eluded the left, someone that made left-wing ideals sound like a good idea to the extent he p***ked more than a few Scottish Tory consciences on the quiet as to what they'd done to their own land, remember that the Christianity so many of them held dear had more than a large dollop of socialism involved in the practical side.

The trouble was the lessons he taught about reengaging those feeling increasingly alienated from politics - and giving them something positive to believe in - were learned by just about every other party in the country except for Labour and their fair-weather friend thugs.

It isn't that left wing ideas are tainted. Not even far-left ones. But until the Labour left rejects once and for all the cult of machismo which has been the bane of the British left for half a century - and led inevitably to the culture of misogeny where young girls were raped within the ranks of both the Workers Revolutionary Party and Socialist Workers Party whereupon the "comrades" did their best to cover it up - then socialism and its adherents are always going to have a bad name, and everyone will continue to suffer the dearth from mainstream contemporary political thought of ideals which any nation ought to regard as central tenets of being civilised.

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jmothecat

jmothecat

Posted
Posted



Round and round we go. I don't think the Blair government did anywhere near enough to justify the betrayal of labour principles.


They didn't 'betray' Labour principles, they updated them and made them relevant to modern society.
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BerwickMad

BerwickMad

Posted
Posted
Absolutely atrocious email sent from the Corbyn campaign to members this morning. He's outwardly calling the NEC 'disrespectful' and 'undemocratic'.

That's the new politics folks.


Think Team Corbyn finally backed down to John McDonnells trolling demands.
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BerwickMad

BerwickMad

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How can anyone claim they're not undemocratic when they are denying members the chance to vote?

Desperate nonsense from the resident Thatchblairite JMO, as per.


The 6 month rule is entirely sensible. The problem was it was being made up as they went along.
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jmothecat

jmothecat

Posted
Posted
How can anyone claim they're not undemocratic when they are denying members the chance to vote?

Desperate nonsense from the resident Thatchblairite JMO, as per.



We have someone who only joined the party in June, who in that time has taken the party to court, and then harshly criticised that very same party, trying to tell life-long members how they should vote.
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Granny Danger

Granny Danger

Posted
Posted
21 minutes ago, jmothecat said:

 


We have someone who only joined the party in June, who in that time has taken the party to court, and then harshly criticised that very same party, trying to tell life-long members how they should vote.

 

Surely they were wanting to exercise their right to vote rather than tell anyone else.  And if any Labour Party member offers an opinion on how others - including 'life-long members' - should vote what is the cut-off point before they can offer that opinion?

6 months?  2 years?  5 years?  It's all very arbitrary isn't it?

 

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jmothecat

jmothecat

Posted
Posted
Surely they were wanting to exercise their right to vote rather than tell anyone else.  And if any Labour Party member offers an opinion on how others - including 'life-long members' - should vote what is the cut-off point before they can offer that opinion?

6 months?  2 years?  5 years?  It's all very arbitrary isn't it?

 



Did you even read the email?
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