Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
He doesn't talk as much as Kinnock.
Sometimes a politician gets an undeserved reputation for some failing or other. The nametag 'Welsh Windbag' was fully merited in Kinnock's case.
Labour Leader: Keir Starmer IV
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He doesn't talk as much as Kinnock.
Sometimes a politician gets an undeserved reputation for some failing or other. The nametag 'Welsh Windbag' was fully merited in Kinnock's case.
ciderglider
pfm Member
Corbyn was unable to expunge those dark forces, but that doesn't mean that a more capable politician couldn't do it.
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
He didn’t say he had someone in mind, or even imply he did. He just said a more capable politician could do it. That’s how ‘discussion’ for you goes, does it not?
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
It isn’t a question of competence though, it’s a question of relative power. The ‘dark forces’ have demonstrated that they have the power to bring down any leader that dares to challenge them. If all it takes to challenge them is a more capable leader, then how is such a leader to gain sufficient traction against the ‘dark forces’ to become leader in the first place? Anyone who does not willingly fit in with the dark forces will be monstered well before they get anywhere near a leadership election. The dark forces will not make the same mistake twice, so the question, rather than who, is how will anyone who wishes to challenge the rotten core become leader of the Labour Party ?
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
^
By those that don’t support the ‘dark forces’ forming a new, cente-left party.
Plenty of people here writing off Labour as ‘unfit for purpose’, ‘no-hopers’, ‘just like the tories’ or plain crap. From what I’ve read here the party has been taken over by right-wingers, so that being the case the solution is not new policies unless this notion those now in charge will crush any challenge is nonsense. If it is true any dissent will be crushed, what is the way forward to challenge the tories?
By those that don’t support the ‘dark forces’ forming a new, cente-left party.
Plenty of people here writing off Labour as ‘unfit for purpose’, ‘no-hopers’, ‘just like the tories’ or plain crap. From what I’ve read here the party has been taken over by right-wingers, so that being the case the solution is not new policies unless this notion those now in charge will crush any challenge is nonsense. If it is true any dissent will be crushed, what is the way forward to challenge the tories?
Tony L
Administrator
Vote against Labour and allow it to die. The more deposits the lost, the more irrelevant they become. They are already gone from Scotland, we just need to allow the far more progressive Greens and Libs to become the natural opposition in England united behind a platform of electoral reform. It may take a few election cycles, but I really do think Labour is over now. It is just a disoriented incoherent deeply-factional vacuum that serves no useful purpose and actually prevents the important issues of the day being scrutinised and discussed. It it nothing more than a media diversion from the Tories, it has no position or answer to anything.
Spraggons Den
pfm Member
Resource Mobilisation theory was used by Sociologists in the past to explain how why some movements such as the anti Vietnam war lobby (college kids and then their parents) succeeded and others like the Black Panthers failed. Given the vast sums of money given by the unions to Labour, RM theory would suggest that the LP will continue to be around providing the TUs don't decide to take their money elsewhere.
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
If Labour is going to challenge the Tories then it is up to Labour, and those who support them, to articulate how they will do it.
Tony L
Administrator
It depends whether one views the Labour Party and trade unions as much of the problem, e.g. for me they are more the Nixon than the protest movement. They are the now blunt tools of the early part of the last century and have nothing much to offer people of today. We need to see a far younger, far less class-driven* and far more democratic entity emerge as this whole issue is systemic and based on a failed system. It is not left/right. It is far more structural than that, it is all about votes not being represented.
*I use the term with an appropriate sneer and snigger given Labour has been led by a wealthy metropolitan elite for as long as I can remember. Even St Jeremy Of The Brexit Fence was from a wealthy public school background and conceptually about as far from the northern working classes as Nigel Farage or Jacob Rees Mogg! Blair and Milliband much the same. Establishment politics tends to be a rich southern kid’s game.
PS I am far from convinced the Black Panthers failed. To my mind their legacy lives through to this day. They helped frame the argument, their work continues through #BLM etc. I view them in a similar way to the Suffragette movement. They instigated change even if that journey remains far from complete.
Minio
Kind of Sort of Not really...
Yes there are quite a lot of them.
The workers tend to be more militant there, from my experience, due to the cost of living being much higher but not so much their wages.
My first job was in Surrey on the GPO.
Think that will take more than a few election cycles. A soft left/centrist Lab/LD/Green Party might be an interesting option but under a new name, and one that is actually interested in power. The disgruntled left can then relaunch their own version of the Labour Party.
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
It’s time to move beyond centre or left politics and class based politics. We need a new narrative for a politics for a changing world.
Bercow said that he has moved from far right politics to a belief in “equality, social justice and internationalism”, three words that could form the basis of new political focus.
If Labour can find some policy ideas to put some substance behind a drive towards equality, social justice and internationalism, they might get a few voters back
Bercow said that he has moved from far right politics to a belief in “equality, social justice and internationalism”, three words that could form the basis of new political focus.
If Labour can find some policy ideas to put some substance behind a drive towards equality, social justice and internationalism, they might get a few voters back
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
No.
You’ve still never explained what you mean by ‘progressive’ in the context of the Labour manifesto in 2017 vs the greens and libdems. Especially the libdems, given the facts of recent history...enabling austerity and setting the groundwork for Brexit among other things. Is that what you mean by "progressive"?
So, I don’t care what a party is called, Labour as we know it can die as you hope, what I want to see is a realistic and constructive suggestion from those people so critical of Labour toward removing the tories. A dream of utopia, or sunlit uplands, doesn’t cut it.
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Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
Unless you think every Labour MP is a tory right winger, the obvious way forward is for the left wing Labour MPs to break away from the "dark forces", as you call them.
It's obvious by now, and not just in this thread, you don't do constructive criticism. As a supposed Labour ITK I'm sure you are very much more familiar with Labour MPs and where they stand than I am. Your reaction to being asked who these left wing Labour MPs are and who could lead a new party formed by such people tells me everything I need to know.
Good luck with your wasted vote on the greens and enabling of the tories.
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
Brexit voters enabled the Tories
Cav
pfm Member
It may take a few election cycles? It will enable a Tory Government for many decades.
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
Unless the Labour Party undergoes some pretty radical changes, they will not challenge the Tories. The votes they’re losing on pfm are as nothing to those they’ve already lost in Hartlepool and do not seem to have any ideas to alter that trajectory.
If Labour cannot articulate what it actually stands for and develop coherent policies to support it’s ideas, then the slide will continue. Labour has conceded ground to the Tories and has come up with nothing to address the slide.
Starmer supporters can bleat about what critics of him on pfm say, but until Labour itself can actually comes out with a clear narrative for a better Britain it will continue on it’s slide of self inflicted self destruction
If Labour cannot articulate what it actually stands for and develop coherent policies to support it’s ideas, then the slide will continue. Labour has conceded ground to the Tories and has come up with nothing to address the slide.
Starmer supporters can bleat about what critics of him on pfm say, but until Labour itself can actually comes out with a clear narrative for a better Britain it will continue on it’s slide of self inflicted self destruction
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