#44

So who’s going to lead the new centre left party that’s about to emerge?

#45

This is a great time for the Real IRA

#46

This year has shown that batshit outsider propositions can gain traction

Well I think you’ve proved your own point there.

2 Likes
#47

when they say keeping a consistent position that may be ‘outsider’ now but with the right moves won’t be in a few year

I feel like your first comment contradicts your second. You describe how to change consensus and move the centre ground. At no point do you manage that by accepting the outsider label, running under the outsider flag, or electing a die hard outsider leader. The message strategy required to make someone like Corbyn seem like the voice of common sense and the centre ground would have to be miraculous. His basic policy position is the right one and it has current events on its side to balance out the usual implicit establishment bias, is now but this is not the way to serve the agenda. This is the way to be labelled an outsider, stay an outsider, and blow a massive political opportunity.

#48

With respect I think you’re missing our point and the lesson of the last 40 or so years of policy. His/her statements don’t contradict each other at all, neither of us are proposing accepting the outsider label per se. We’re simply saying while Corbyn’s policies are seen as outsider now by the media and electorate (which is a measure of how far to the right the discourse has swung considering many of his policies are nowhere near as leftwing as the post-WW2 socialist consensus embraced by all sides), Labour have four years to:

  1. find sympathetic allies in the press, think tanks etc who can help affect this change in discussion.

  2. Use the ongoing damage of austerity and the imminent disasters of Brexit to his advantage.

  3. Shred the Tories whenever he smells blood. This is where Corbyn has been staggeringly awful for me. I don’t know if he’s generally a peaceful guy or if he’s been distracted by the rebellion, but he needs to toughen the fuck up. Whatever his faults, Blair was a true politician; he would have seized each and every one of the Tories’ numerous fuck ups and failings over the last six years and destroyed Cameron every week. Corbyn needs to stop bringing piss to a shit fight.

  4. Again, refuse to discuss the economy, immigration, etc on the Tories’ and media’s terms.

I’m not sure I fully understood your last point (my fault) but if I read it right then again I’d repeat what brainfeeder and I mentioned about the outsider philosophy of free market capital coming to dominate and limit public life. If those bloodless lizards managed to pull off a paradigm shift then it’s proof anyone can do it with the right PR, marketing, message and policies.

WRT the PLP rebels, their main problem is they have no credibility with any side, especially now; to me they occupy the same space the Lib Dems do. Right wing capitalists with a desire to push a weakly racist agenda to appeal to little England, their policy diluted by tokenistic gestures towards social justice and workers activism, etc. Even if they won this leadership challenge they would definitely lose the 2020 election because the public already get what they want in terms of hate, greed, spite and xenophobia from the Tories and UKIP (say what you want about the Tories but they are tremendous, inspired haters and liars). Why on earth would the electorate put a pale imitation on the throne when they have the real Coke already?

2 Likes
#49

Saw something about an exit poll suggesting that Smith won in the 18-24 category - found that the most surprising thing as I thought that was the most Corbyny demographic. Any ideas why? Maybe the perception (whether right or wrong) that he didn’t fight hard enough for the EU?

#50

another example of how the press use one rule for corbyn, and another for the critics:

when corbyn’s rallies (regularly) spill over it’s reported as ‘preaching to the choir’ and irrelevant; this on the other hand, is positioned as showing just how much appetite there is for the progress/labour first message. none of this is the slightest bit surprising, but colour me IRKED.

Prescott on Kinnock: ‘there’s no doubt he’s got great experience of [losing]’ LOL

and mcdonnell should probably just apologise over the mcvey comments, simply not worth getting in a ruck over them.

#51

I think part of the point is play the long game. I really don’t see any enormous opportunity about. The political landscape needs to change and it is changing rather quickly. I don’t see a ‘centralist’ position as effective it’s not the 90s there is no broad political consensus in the UK to the extent that there was in the past.

Labour if they have any hope of being successful need to identify themselves as something different. Not just another part of the same views but just a little slower. Labours worst mistake was not challenging autestry.

Because it is now seen as in much of the debates on TV as the same as a healthy economy and it’s anything but. These flippant positions that are followed to seem more sensible and central have only served to strengthen the Conservative party by allowing them to dictate the debate.

If people believe that autestry is a good thing why would they vote for a party that does it slower? You need to fight the battle on different ideas. Not slightly more humane versions of the same idea.

2 Likes
#52

:expressionless:

#55

Ah ok, thanks for digging! That makes a lot more sense.

#57

Margin of error is roughly 13% - so Corbyn could be anywhere between 31 points behind and 16 points ahead based on that sample (assuming not an outlier). Also worth remembering that this was only a poll of members; without knowing the demographics, it’s entirely possible that Corbyn’s youngest supporters are mainly registered supporters rather than actual members.

#58

So lots more bedshitting ahead then…

#60

So bizarre - “a load of centre-right Labour SpAds and councillors attend Labour Conference, go to event designed to show that centre-right Labour people exist”.

Go to Stoke or wherever it is Jeremy’s been the past couple of months and see how many people turn up to a Labour First rally there - i.e. people not literally being paid to attend the Labour Conference. I suspect they know all this but yeah, I saw Kuenssberg’s tweet and it reinforced that amazement I feel when some people insist there’s no sort of media bias against our Jezza, or that it’s all down to incompetent media handling by the leaders’ office.

#61

Watching marr now. Corbz sounds knackered.

#62

Hear, hear!

#63

You say all that. Yet most this recent polls suggest most voters identify as centrist:

There’s a central problem with ‘Corbynism’ in that making concessions to the electorate has always been the route to electoral victory (and how could it not?) but Corbyn’s support is all tied up in him being the antidote to a generation of Labour party concession with the electorate so… hmm. All comes back to the issue as I see it which is I simply can’t see where Corbyn’s votes will ever come from to ensure a Labour majority. Apart from if The Tories do something remarkable and become astonishingly unpopular. In which case it’s open season.

1 Like
#64

Chuka and other Progress types hammering the end to Freedom Of Movement line this morning.

From claiming the internationalist moral high ground to appeasing racists in a couple of months is fine work. This would accelerate the drifting of any support to the LibDems and is a bold pitch at staking out the ‘moderate centre’ as being to the right of David Cameron.

It’ll be interesting to see columnists in so-called ‘liberal’ papers trying to support this without tying themselves in knots.

Any decent political journalist would now be asking Tony Blair what he thought of sacrificing Freedom of Movement.

#65

I find it quite odd that figures like Umunna and Reeves are ignoring the ‘Blairite’ way on immigration. Blair won 3 elections at a time of high anti-immigration sentiment without (explicitly at least) pandering to it.

#66

I don’t think anyone apart from Chuka thinks Chuka is the answer. He looks like it - handsome, mixed race, lawyer who wears a suit - but he’s not done anything to suggest he’s a leader. Are the others anyone of note or is it Wes Streeting?

I was intrigued to see Eagle come out in favour of a 2nd referendum, which if you’re responsible for the exit deal is still the only way to deny leave voters cover when it all goes tits up. I’m not sure it helps Labour at this point though.

I worry that individual MPs are going to keep getting good coverage of their individual responses until some kind of firm position is adopted and repeated by the leadership. McDonnell used some good language in his Today interview, characterising the idea of staying in the single market as the way to build a reformed Europe. We have clearly given up our seat at the table in terms of negotiating EU policy but at least this interpretation is pro-europe and defines out hasty exit as something other than a mistake.

#67

There was a whole raft of essays that came out from Progress last week arguing for the end of FoM. None of them are high up in the PLP, but they’re the kind of figures the PLP has been demanding that the membership listen to over the summer - including Ed Miliband.