Jeremy Corbyn might actually win?

MikeG said:
Yes, but your fertile imagination, and your distrust of anyone to the right of Karl Marx, has led you to think that this involves a great shift in Labour's stance. Of course, it does nothing of the sort. Furthermore, you dress it up as going to the right, whereas I would characterise it as moving further towards the centreground of political opinion. Hell, staying exactly where Miliband left the party would be far better for Labour's chances than following Corbyn's lead.
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You're saying that going as far to the right as necessary to win elections doesn't involve a great shift in Labour's stance. Of course I agree, more's the pity.

Furthermore, the current leadership seem to think it's improper even in principle to oppose the Tory government. In this, it has acquired powerful support. Here's Tony, from today's Guardian, voicing his views.
... it is the oldest politics in the world. It’s the politics of the first caveman council, when the caveman came out from a council where there were difficult decisions and pointed with his club across the forest and said: ‘They’re the problem, over there, that’s the problem.’ It’s blaming someone else.
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Opposing Tory welfare cuts is like club-wielding cavemen blaming somebody else.
 
Giz said:
I think that a center-left 'new' labour is going to be noticeably different to the Tories. Even when not full left. (Unless you characterize Blair and Osborne as indistinguishable ... Which is a stretch).
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I think Tony Blair is even less viable an option than Jeremy Corbyn. He's pretty much reviled these days as an aide to dictators looking for good PR.

Giz said:
Do they want a government that does a bit for union members. Or an opposition that would like to do a lot for them ( but can't).
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I think Mike G has said they should sever ties with the unions which would surely mean a lowering of the party's membership and probably revenue as well. As we saw with the Liberal Democrats trying to make a party with broader appeal which makes too many concessions to the Tory party does not lead to Tory voters being won over but rather the fleeing of the party base and electoral annhilation.
 
Craig B said:
That's not what MikeG is talking about. He's saying, go towards the Right as far as you need to in order to win an election. In fact Mike G can't imagine any reasoning person doing anything else.
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Yes. But i don't think that many reasonable people think that you'd need to become as fully to the right as the Tories to have a chance of winning.

IMO, countries are governed better when the ruling party feels that there is a chance they could get replaced at the next election. Corbyn doesn't seem likely to achieve that.
 
angrysoba said:
I think Tony Blair is even less viable an option than Jeremy Corbyn. He's pretty much reviled these days as an aide to dictators looking for good PR.
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I was trying to reference the position of blairite new labour on the political spectrum. Not suggesting that, in addition to rejecting corbyn, they bring Blair back as leader.
 
Giz said:
I was trying to reference the position of blairite new labour on the political spectrum. Not suggesting that, in addition to rejecting corbyn, they bring Blair back as leader.
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Fair enough. I suppose New Labour could be classified as social democrats, as opposed to Old Labour socialists or Militant Labour communists. Nevertheless, Blairite New Labour itself is probably discredited by association with Blair - the Labour Party raised in a traditional of purging and re-education soon start knifing their own members, if only figuratively. This fractricide sometimes involves actual brothers such as the Milibands, or with one party strategist referring to MPs as "morons", or John Prescott calling out Blair for being abusive, or now, the memo is clearly out that Corbyn must be slimed, by calling him a paedo enabler.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...used-of-inaction-over-paedophile-scandal.html
 
angrysoba said:
... the memo is clearly out that Corbyn must be slimed, by calling him a paedo enabler.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...used-of-inaction-over-paedophile-scandal.html
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Thanks for the link. It's getting very dirty. The LP seems to be destroying itself. It is ironic that this is being achieved not by the feared Militant or other "Trojan horse" Trotskyite entryists, but by the right wing leadership.

Frankly I blame Kinnock for starting this off. In combatting Trotskyite ideology, he abolished all principle in favour of pure opportunism. That opened the door to the first egoist mountebank capable of usurping the party. Blair turned out to be the beneficiary of that development, as Stalin was the beneficiary of Lenin's destruction of democracy within the revolutionary movement in Russia.
 
Giz said:
Ed Miliband took it to the right? Your analysis appears to differ from just about everyone else in the known universe...
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What were the policies that they adopted that took them significantly to the left of where they had been?
 
Is it that political parties are supposed to chase the popular vote by changing their position on the (woefully uniformative and unhelpful) left-right scale and that party members are to join and unjoin parties as they chase up and down the line?

or

Is it that political parties decide what they stand for and stay there, accepting, when appropriate, that their views are nowno longer held by enough people to be elected but at least remain faithful to those who signed up in the first place?
 
Darat said:
What were the policies that they adopted that took them significantly to the left of where they had been?
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I think the biggest single issue was being able to rhyme Ed with Red.

Policies don't really matter when you've got a rhyming soundbite.
 
The Don said:
I think the biggest single issue was being able to rhyme Ed with Red.

Policies don't really matter when you've got a rhyming soundbite.
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I'm genuinely interested - we had this refrain so much during the preamble to the general election and then throughout but no one ever seemed to come out with anything specific.
 
Darat said:
What were the policies that they adopted that took them significantly to the left of where they had been?
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Raising top rate income tax back to 50% on a permanent basis (I think!)--the Brown-Darling rise to that level was touted as temporary (I think!). The mansion tax, electricity tariff intervention (freeze), cap on profit rates for NHS contractors. They would have cut the deficit slower than the Tories said they would but I think that saga has mostly been a case of the Tories moving to Labour.

I wouldn't call it significant.
 
Darat said:
I'm genuinely interested - we had this refrain so much during the preamble to the general election and then throughout but no one ever seemed to come out with anything specific.
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Here's a Guardian article on the subject. You've probably seen it before:

http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...miliband-leftwing-labour-not-paying-attention

The left wing policies were:

  • Limiting some zero hours contracts
  • Repealing the so-called bedroom tax
  • Introducing the mansion tax

Which places "Red Ed" to the left of the conservatives but IMO not to the left of Tony Blair of 1997 .
 
Francesca R said:
Raising top rate income tax back to 50% on a permanent basis (I think!)--the Brown-Darling rise to that level was touted as temporary (I think!). The mansion tax, electricity tariff intervention (freeze), cap on profit rates for NHS contractors. They would have cut the deficit slower than the Tories said they would but I think that saga has mostly been a case of the Tories moving to Labour.

I wouldn't call it significant.
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This is a new take on the issue. Why is Labour not opposing the Tories? Because Tory policies are Labour policies. If I were addressing another contributor I would deploy a devastating reductio ad absurdum argument: why don't you simply suggest that the two parties form a coalition and govern together? lol.

But in fact you do indeed suggest that, so my stinging response would be wasted.
 
The Don said:
Limiting some zero hours contracts
Repealing the so-called bedroom tax
Introducing the mansion tax
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Extra regulation of zero hours isn't necessarily a "move left" so much as a response to a large and recent rise in their use. Similarly the bedroom tax didn't exist until 2012 so opposition to it can't really feature as a move left.
 
Francesca R said:
So I obviously don't regard it as absurd. If it resulted in left and right bits splitting off both parties, that would be cool too. Some of us have long lamented the empty centre ground.
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Is that not supposed to be the lib dems LOL
 
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Francesca R said:
So I obviously don't regard it as absurd. If it resulted in left and right bits splitting off both parties, that would be cool too. Some of us have long lamented the empty centre ground.
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So the "centre ground" is to consist of a coalition of both parties, neither of which occupy it? It will arise because a coalition will automatically tend to the lowest common denominator, or what? A "centre" has to be between things. But there will only be one thing. A LabCon thing. Nothing for it to be between.

It won't be the centre of the political universe - as the LibDems have aspired to be - it will be in effect the entirety of the political universe, in England at least.
 
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