What is the point of Labour ?

[RossBFaeDundee]

England needs a new left-wing party and a youthful and inspiring leader to rekindle any hopes of taking back control in at least a decade or two imo. Hardly profound stuff, but if this doesn't wake Englanders to the fact that Labour is dead and they've been trying to revive a corpse for about a decade, then God knows what will.

[SANTAN]

9 minutes ago, Andre Drazen said:

tl;dr

You cheeky troll.

[vikingTON]

13 minutes ago, RossBFaeDundee said:

England needs a new left-wing party and a youthful and inspiring leader to rekindle any hopes of taking back control in at least a decade or two imo. Hardly profound stuff, but if this doesn't wake Englanders to the fact that Labour is dead and they've been trying to revive a corpse for about a decade, then God knows what will.

It's certainly true that Labour have got far, far too much baggage to represent genuine change. From decades of local economic decline to immigration, the referendum to the Mumbleclown antagonising the poppy fascist type, I fully understand why the monkey-hangers don't want them elected. There's a reason for almost everyone to withhold support. 

FPTP creates a two party dominant system so unless the Greens can emerge as a viable challenger in seats and win union support then a replacement event is not going to happen though. A coalition of the rich and xenophobic culture war gammons is highly likely to win out under that voting system though. 

Edited May 7, 2021 by vikingTON

[NotThePars]

55 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

It would be interesting to see the stats showing categories of response and the volume of people stating as reasons for choosing the Tories over Labour - i.e. whether they are truly representative of the views of the electorate in those regions or whether it's just a couple of voices whose views conveniently back up what the left want them to say.

The broad polling in the aftermath of 2019 put Brexit and then Corbyn as the reasons for the switch IIRC. 

With respect to your last point I have no idea who you are specifically referring to. I immediately think of Andrew Twentyman, the typical working class Red Wall voter who was actually an independent artisanal pizzeria owner from Leigh, who the liberal press were desperate to interview because he positioned himself as someone who spoke for the North. That's a case of the liberal press sending someone on a poverty safari and listening to the first loudmouth they come across though. 

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by NotThePars

[Detournement]

Completely normal guy definitely loving his 2021 life under liberalism logging on. 

[NotThePars]

Me wading into dorlomin's latest tear stained radioactive swamp of a meltdown

 

[speckled tangerine]

Labour are done. They've tried Ed Miliband who was leftish. They've tried Jez, who was obviously left wing. Now Keith who is pretty centrist but, to be honest, i've no real clue as he doesn't appear to stand for anything concrete.

Going back I think the ship sailed for good when the party elected the wrong Miliband. He was the Blairite Tory lite option that maybe would have given the party a chance of winning an election. Not saying it would have been a great reforming government or anything, but in power nonetheless.

But then brexit and that was it. Scotland won't be back and it looks like England wont be either. There's nowhere left to go. England doesn't want them.

 

[GordonS]

47 minutes ago, RossBFaeDundee said:

England needs a new left-wing party and a youthful and inspiring leader to rekindle any hopes of taking back control in at least a decade or two imo. Hardly profound stuff, but if this doesn't wake Englanders to the fact that Labour is dead and they've been trying to revive a corpse for about a decade, then God knows what will.

When Labour picked Corbyn England was absolutely ready for a charismatic, confident, authentic, capable, powerful voice articulating the positions of the left. Unfortunately, they got Corbyn. He's just shit at politics. He's a bad communicator and a lousy leader. His fans don't realise this because he speaks their language, but he couldn't speak to the country beyond London.

 

[Gaz]

8 minutes ago, speckled tangerine said:

Labour are done. They've tried Ed Miliband who was leftish. They've tried Jez, who was obviously left wing. Now Keith who is pretty centrist but, to be honest, i've no real clue as he doesn't appear to stand for anything concrete.

Going back I think the ship sailed for good when the party elected the wrong Miliband. He was the Blairite Tory lite option that maybe would have given the party a chance of winning an election. Not saying it would have been a great reforming government or anything, but in power nonetheless.

But then brexit and that was it. Scotland won't be back and it looks like England wont be either. There's nowhere left to go. England doesn't want them.

Spot on.

[D Angelo Barksdale]

The only thing as inevitable as Keith's crushing defeat last night, was dorlomin's tear stained 'it's all the fault of Jorimy Corbyil and random leftists on the internet'.

You actually love to see it.

[Granny Danger]

1 hour ago, Iain said:

This is literally true. When you poll the issues without reference to parties "lefty" policies are very popular. The same cannot be said of the Labour party.

Conversely I posted something a few weeks back showing people disagreeing with a range of Tory policies then saying they would vote Tory.  People like that are beyond redemption.

[NotThePars]

[WhiteRoseKillie]

3 hours ago, Stormzy said:

Centrists did not lose the last election. Corbyn did 100%. The sabotage existed but he was the main proponent of sabotaging Labour from the inside. 

Delicious irony how the same radical lefties of the party seem to be trying their hardest to bring down Keir whilst also lamenting the sabotage from inside the party during the Corbyn era. 

Simplistic, media-fed pish. I'm ready for the accusations, but if anyone really believes the Labour Party, or Corbyn peraonally, has ever had a problem with anti-semitism, or any other racism which was in the same ball park as what faces them in the HoC, I have a bridge you may be interested in buying. 

As for Starmer - I didn't vote for him, but I feel a year has been more than enough time for him to lay out his vision for the Party's future. I am afraid it is abundantly clear that he doesn't have one. A total waste of a shirt, and has allowed the country's continued slide into a kleptocracy to continue unchallenged. 

[Dawson Park Boy]

34 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

Me wading into dorlomin's latest tear stained radioactive swamp of a meltdown

 

Have you ever actually been to Cuba?

Thought not.

[Joey Jo Jo Junior Shabadoo]

1 minute ago, Dawson Park Boy said:

Have you ever actually been to Cuba?

You’ll love it in Cuba.

There’s shredded pork everywhere.

[NotThePars]

4 minutes ago, Dawson Park Boy said:

Have you ever actually been to Cuba?

Thought not.

It's not Francia's Paraguay, bro, it's actually really easy to visit and I would recommend. A greater and kinder bunch of lads and lassie you couldn't hope to meet. Even a man as viscerally unpleasant and horrid as you would probably get a lovely welcome.

Edited May 7, 2021 by NotThePars

[Florentine_Pogen]

"A Conservative candidate who went viral this week for his bizarre campaign video roaming around a dilapidated Blackburn playground has beaten his Labour rival.

Taxi driver Tiger Patel won the Audley & Queen’s Park Ward by 113 votes.

Please enjoy his campaign video, which sees him silently stalk the play equipment to a Bhangra soundtrack, raising his alarms aloft like Jesus on the cross in front of some obscene graffiti."

[flyingscot]

In the bizarre world of the UK, it seems Labour in Wales are likely to beat former Plaid leader Leanne Wood. 

[WhiteRoseKillie]

3 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

While the rightward shift in British and especially English politics is clearly a thing, I think this blaming of the electorate lets Labour off the hook far too much. This isn't something Labour are powerless to do anything about.

Looking at Hartlepool election figures:

2015 - Labour 14076, UKIP 11052, Tory 8256

2017 - Labour 21969, Tory 14319, UKIP 4801

2019 - Labour 15464, Tory 11869, Brexit 10603

2021 - Tory 15529, Labour 8589

The right wing vote has been there for years, it's not a new development unleashed by the Brexit referendum. While it's the highest vote the Tories have had it's not a wild outlier compared to previous results. The defining factor here is the collapse of the Labour vote with people abandoning them to stay at home, not to move rightwards themselves.

If 15000 people in Hartlepool were still willing to vote Labour in 2019 despite Corbyn and despite their stance on Brexit in a constituency which had voted leave by about 70%, then it's simply not the case that the general rightward trend of English politics makes it impossible for Labour to win in seats like this.

7000 people in this one constituency who had voted Labour in 2019 didn't in 2021. That can only be a huge indictment on Starmer's leadership and the direction of the Labour Party; people see absolutely no reason to vote for them just now. This isn't due to the rightward shift of the English electorate, it's due to Labour being a directionless mess led by a wet wipe.

Your last paragraph hits the nail squarely on the head. 

I fought through the NL project, hoping the Party would rediscover itself. I don't think I have the energy to do the same again. I look at the state of Hartlepool, and the way that the people who live there cast thier vote, and I think, "why fucking bother?" - I'm scunnered with the whole fucking thing. Idiots who believe Johnson gives the slightest shite about anything other than hjimself happy to vote tory in the hope they get bigger scraps from the Establishment table. Yes, idiots. I am done with pretending there is any reason for the bottom 95% of this country to enable these carpetbagging cúnts. Even the over-riding Tory driver of se;lf-interest doesn't cut it when the result of over a decade of these lying scum in charge has meant that our kids will be worse off than us and, in some areas, will die earlier than we do. I repeat - fucking idiots. 

[Gaz]

15 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

It's not Francia's Paraguay, bro, it's actually really easy to visit and I would recommend. A greater and kinder bunch of lads and lassie you couldn't hope to meet. Even a man as viscerally unpleasant and horrid as you would probably get a lovely welcome.

The Cubans - "a great bunch of lads"