Labour Party Thread II: I'm Shagging Thatcher Instead

Lots of interesting stuff to discuss. I think the presentation of the current leadership as completely united when there is documented discord between the Leader and Deputy is an interesting decision. One specific I had an immediate question about was this:

Labour’s membership remains larger than it was before the initial Corbyn surge in 2015, though it is much more right-wing than it was.

Is the current membership more right wing than the membership under Miliband?

Does it really matter one way or the other? Similar to an article in yesterday’s Observer. Seems a fairly reasonable take, that piece, basically variants on “how do people on the left of politics in the UK exert any noticeable influence on our society”, to which I’m not sure there’s an answer and certainly doesn’t really seem to be one in there.

Certainly a very reasonable piece and there certainly isn’t a specific answer to be found. I was really just curious about the two points I mentioned, especially the suggestion about the membership as I couldn’t see even vague justification. I don’t think it’s a loaded point, just an interesting puzzle.

I have no idea. I’m not sure that this is what that statement was saying though (or rather, I don’t think it meant to say that, and the wording isn’t clear)

Rayner’s effectively been sidelined on all policy areas and is just wheeled out as a spokesperson/tweeter these days - there’s minimal discord between them now as she’s been so marginalised.

I was trying to imagine the scenario where Starmer actually becomes PM and projecting it forward to what would finally finish him off. And however I thought about it the most likely option always seems to be: defeated by the tories at a GE. I mean a big unpopular war wouldn’t do it, he’s too boring to get caught doing something massively illegal, and there’s nobody coming up on the rails smart enough to “do a Brown” on him is there.

What is ‘doing a Brown’?

Taking over from a deeply unpopular prime minister who stands down in line with a verbal agreement made over a decade earlier?

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He’ll just stand down at some point and it won’t be very interesting.

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Constantly undermining and forming a government in waiting.

Why would he bother?

[I mean keeping things as they are is pretty much his entire essence.]

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The last two Labour prime ministers to win general elections have stood down, so he’ll probably want to do that.

Incidentally, Wilson stood down in 1976 claiming that he’d always planned to retire when he was 60. Starmer has just turned 60.

I don’t really think he did this, certainly not prior to 2005 anyway.

The briefings against Brown after he took over were much worse.

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I’m not even saying it as a criticism. I was always a Brownite and couldn’t wait for Blair to go. You’d have to squint pretty hard not to see Brown’s desire to be the leading figure in domestic policy even during Blair’s time as PM and he was clearly itching to get into the big chair.

Yeah maybe. I didn’t ask the question in any sense other than just musing about what would happen. If I had a point if anything it would be that at the moment it looks as though if he were to get into power then he would have so completely purged the parliamentary party into his won image that it’s hard to see any factions gaining any influence to change his direction/undermine him/replace him. And additionally it’s hard to see him making such a major misstep that he would become undermined. It just seems the most likely thing would be the tories would elect someone vaguely human and house-trained as leader, then all it would take would be a couple of years of negative economic weather and hey presto here’s Cameron V2 again.

I hate to hand it to him, I really do. But he looks a good 10 years younger at least.

Prick.

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Not to someone who’s 52 he doesn’t.

Yeah, which is why I think he’ll end up leaving in a manner of his own choosing.

They’re not going to do that any time soon, unless they change the way they choose their leader.

Well it wouldn’t be soon would it? It’d be in about five years at the earliest, and possibly also after a hollowing out of their parliamentary party.

As for him leaving in a manner of his own choosing, if he gets into power, gets to do whatever he wants and then nothing goes wrong then why would he decide to jack it in? To spend more time with his stamp collection or something? If the time came when he thought his days were numbered it’d be too late to just gracefully step down; surely far more likely he’d just narrowly lose to a party offering fairly similar bland promises, but with a shinier new face.

Yeah I’m shocked by this!

It’s already happening - what do you think the purpose of all the glowing articles about Streeting was? Locking the left out of power and running down the membership will be the point at which he is most vulnerable.

If the press hadn’t tanked the government so comprehensively over the past 10 months, he’d have been out already.

So what do you think Streeting views as his point of difference then?