Not inherently. But it’s a more classically ‘harder’ left policy than a New Labour one isn’t it?
‘New Labour’ renationalised Railtrack and the East Coast Main Line, don’t forget.
Yeah that’s kind of what I was hinting at saying it’s not that democratic. While I would have loved for the tories to lose a safe seat as an anti-brexit protest and weaken their majority even more it does seen a bit odd to say vote for this party cos they’re similar to the party you want to vote for. You might as well just have a two party system in that case. On the other hand now ukip seem to be slithering back to the fringes the right have one main party while the left vote is split 3 ways.
Of course.
Yeah, this is why I think if it were to have happened in Witney, the candidate would have had to have been an independent on a remain platform, thus no parties would be seen to be rolling over for others.
Isn’t the Labour position to respect the Brexit vote? I don’t see why they’d stand aside to aid an anti-Brexit position.
Yeah I was more analysing it from the pov of the Greens seemingly getting ‘talked over’ in all this by your Paul Masons etc. The Greens are their own distinct political entity, and from what I’ve read their Members are not really supportive of progressive alliance chat. And nor should they be really.
I can’t emphasis how hard he’d be laughed out of town by the Tories and press if he tried to do this. He’d never recover. I know asita’s a supporter of this idea (we had a conversation about it the other week), but I cannot see a scenario where Corbyn doesn’t lose what little credibility and political capital he has build up for claiming his left of centre positions are the new centre ground.
He could try talking about certain populist policies as being right in the centre of public opinion - nationalisation and the like as mentioned above, but he’ll open himself up to ridicule for claiming he’s in the centre when he holds leftist views on defence, the economy and so on. Cue headlines from the media such as “deluded Corbyn attempts to claim centre ground” and so on.
The only way forward for Labour is to continue to pull the terms of debate to the left but with different language. It’s not fair that May was able to get away with claim she sits in the centre ground the other week with her xenophobic speech, but that’s a privilege she holds by dint of being a Tory and therefore being trusted until she proves otherwise by action rather than a Labour MP who needs to prove they’re deserving of that trust before they get it.
Yep, you’re right, they would try and laugh him out of town. But I feel that unless you challenge the Tories for the centre ground label, they just claim it. And being as a lot of people decide they’re the centre, regardless of whether their views are actually right or left, then trying to be able to claim that is quite important in an election.
So like you suggest, I’d be going in on things like the fact there’s a majority of public support for renationalising railways, and saying that actually labour policies are in line with public opinion, whereas the Tories have had to back down on quite a few of their plans, as it turned out they were massively out of step.
Corbyn’s going to get negative headlines from the press whatever he does, so I’d at least like him to get them because he’s trying to take on the narrative that the Conservatives are the new party of the working people.
It’s really difficult for Corbyn because the core of his appeal (for his supporters) is his distinction from other politicians both on a policy level and a personality level. Although the idea of him suddenly becoming soft on principle and starting to ‘tack to the centre’ or similar is a horrorshow that won’t happen because he’ll refuse to do it.
I think the two things can be reconciled. Such as majoring on an organising concept of ‘fairness’ or similar being a) a common sense principle and b) better delivered by the left. That way you counter May’s rhetoric and can package things like additional government spending/taxation as part of the same project and it doesn’t seem so… radical, I suppose. Problem is you need a pretty skilled operator to do that. And Jeremy Corbyn isn’t that.
All leads me to think he’s best off carrying on as he has been but just getting ‘better’ at it.
Whilst this is correct - if you ask people what they care about policy-wise, renationalising the railways would come quuuuuite far down the list.
Not the the operator, but the team behind him/her as well. And it’s not just plainly evident that there’s few good behind-the-scenes people in politics at the moment, but also they seem to be pulling in about 6 different directions right now, just within the two “big” parties rather than trying to pull together in the same direction.
And immigration was a minor concern with the wider public until the press and UKIP pushed their line repeatedly and vehemently.
Yeah makes sense. I saw that Corbyn’s office have got that Momentum lad working for them now - be interesting to see what happens there. Seems a bright enough chap.
Frank Sinatra needed his lyricist to take another swing etc.
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UKIP and the press tapped into/harnessed something that was already there though - they didn’t create it. The relationship between public opinion and media/political influence is always more complex then you make out.
And in any case the two things are not remotely comparable. Unless you can envisage a future scenario where a seismic referendum result is delivered off the back of people flocking to the ballot box to say something about rail nationalisation.
Also I think saying that immigration having been a “minor” concern is a bit of a stretch. It’s been a mainstay of British politics as an issue since the 50s.
Ten years ago, if you asked people what they cared about policy-wise, immigration would have come quuuuuite far down the list.
True. But in this small bit of theatre I’ve put together, JC adeptly uses this as a pivot to claim more centre ground
JC: The government claims to be in the centre ground of British politics, working for everyone, but that’s not true. It’s the Labour party that has policies that the public support
TM: Hah. You think the public support your hard left policies. You’re even more deluded than I thought. Brexit means Brexit.
JC: Well actually they do. You call renationlising railways hard left, but look at these numbers that proves that most people support it. So maybe thats not the only policy of ours that people support. Made you think.
/exeunt JC to make jam/