Next Labour Leader

[angrysoba]

PR is a more representative system.

Representative of what? Obviously the SNP would have fewer seats but Scottish Nationalists could, with justification IMHO, claim that the PR system does not represent them well. Anyway, I am no PR advocate in the sense I think it is some panacea as some post-election opinions have suggested it would be. The idea is laughable in fact.

 

[Darat]

FTFY

Disagree with that correction.

 

[Craig B]

Given the result in Scotland it's had to see how any one could argue that being to the left can't result in election victory.

Yes. I don't agree with Francesca's quote that

"It is astonishing, two decades after Mr Blair won the argument against Labour's unelectable left, that it is being re-run". (The Economist)

Blair was not a Labour person at all. The LP made a self-destroying Devil's pact with him to win an election (that Smith would have won anyway, if not so spectacularly.) And where, as in Scotland, the Left is electable, Labour is no longer able to profit from that political climate.

So far from bring electable, the monstrous Blairite charlatan who took over the Scottish Labour organisation after the Referendum presided over an Extinction Event which obliterated his Party, and himself with it.

 

[Francesca R]

Given the result in Scotland it's had to see how any one could argue that being to the left can't result in election victory.

Except that much of the SNP vote was perhaps more "anti-Westminster" nationalism (nationalism not being a left of centre trait in particular). The SNP's record in running Scotland is not as left as Labour's (or its own) 2015 manifesto--for example it has failed to use any of the tax raising freedom it already has. Free university tuition is also not a progressive policy even as many on the left delude themselves that it is.

 

[Rum]

I started a thread on that some years ago but I am all for MPs not representing geographical districts. That allows special interests to be placed above national ones.

Not 'special' interests. Local ones. For example our local authority has just failed its child protection Ofsted. (I used to work in that game so I notice these things) and our MP has waded in. That's just one example, but without a geographically based MP my guess is people would feel as under-represented as they sometimes do under the first past the post system.

 

[Darat]

Except that much of the SNP vote was perhaps more "anti-Westminster" nationalism (nationalism not being a left of centre trait in particular). The SNP's record in running Scotland is not as left as Labour's (or its own) 2015 manifesto--for example it has failed to use any of the tax raising freedom it already has. Free university tuition is also not a progressive policy even as many on the left delude themselves that it is.

You are arguing facts v perceptions, sadly perceptions almost always seem to win out.

 

[Francesca R]

Not 'special' interests. Local ones.

Yes local ones. Which are concentrated interests, and often (not always) contrary to national interests.

Here is the thread on that. Why do elected politicians represent geographical districts?

 

[Craig B]

Except that much of the SNP vote was perhaps more "anti-Westminster" nationalism (nationalism not being a left of centre trait in particular). The SNP's record in running Scotland is not as left as Labour's (or its own) 2015 manifesto--for example it has failed to use any of the tax raising freedom it already has. Free university tuition is also not a progressive policy even as many on the left delude themselves that it is.

Well, your idea of what is "left" is other people's idea of robust Thatcherism, but never mind. The fact is that voters here are not as terrified as voters down south by scary stories like this from Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson quoted in the Daily Record last October.

She (Nicola Sturgeon) will be the most left-wing First Minister Scotland has ever known.

“Forget Donald, and Henry and Jack, and Alex. Nicola will take her party – and the country – leftwards.

“With all those fired-up new members she will be locking horns with Labour, and they’ll be trying to outflank each other to demonstrate a kind of socialist machismo.”

 

[Francesca R]

It doesn't matter what I regard as left or right. I think it is the aggregated UK wide idea of what is left, right and centre that is at issue, insofar as the UK sets its own political centre. And if you regard that centre ground as "right wing" then that would indicate your view is left of the centre.

Statements that Blair-Labour was conservative or right wing, such that the UK has perpetually been electing conservative governments since 1979 . . . merely mark out your own viewpoint as not neutral.

 

[Craig B]

It doesn't matter what I regard as left or right. I think it is the aggregated UK wide idea of what is left, right and centre that is at issue, insofar as the UK sets its own political centre. And if you regard that centre ground as "right wing" then that would indicate your view is left of the centre.

Statements that Blair-Labour was conservative or right wing, such that the UK has perpetually been electing conservative governments since 1979 . . . merely mark out your own viewpoint as not neutral.

I agree. But if the Left is "unelectable" that must mean that being perceived by the generality of voters as Left prevents you from being elected. That is not so much the case in Scotland, where the SNP is perceived as left wing by the population in general, and by the Conservatives and their press too.

For what it's worth, I agree with that assessment, and find your ideas of what is left and right very eccentric.

 

[Francesca R]

I agree. But if the Left is "unelectable" that must mean that being perceived by the generality of voters as Left prevents you from being elected.

No it doesn't, it is an assessment that Miliband-Labour was too far left of the political centre to get elected. Or at least that it was perceived to be.

That is not so much the case in Scotland, where the SNP is perceived as left wing by the population in general, and by the Conservatives and their press too.

The political centre in Scotland may be to the left of the UK as a whole, but nationalism muddies this. However I am not really referring to the political centre in Scotland.

For what it's worth, I agree with that assessment, and find your ideas of what is left and right very eccentric.

I would not take you to be any kind of authority on knowing what my ideas actually are.

 

[Craig B]

I would not take you to be any kind of authority on knowing what my ideas actually are.

I don't claim any such authority. Do you? But I think the policies you consider left wing are rightly identified by others as right wing. Even "scary", as in the case of means tested state pensions.

 

[Francesca R]

Well when you say "your idea of what is "left" is other people's idea of robust Thatcherism", you reveal cluelessness. I would recommend you cease pronouncing on it, such innacurate pronouncements have no merit nor relevance.

Means tested state pension is simply more progressive than universal state pension.

 

[Craig B]

Well when you say "your idea of what is "left" is other people's idea of robust Thatcherism", you reveal cluelessness. I would recommend you cease pronouncing on it, such innacurate pronouncements have no merit nor relevance.

Means tested state pension is simply more progressive than universal state pension.

At the risk of your displeasure I will continue to pronounce on the topics of left and right. I do not pretend to have any clue as to your thought processes, as I have already admitted.

 

[Craig B]

Scotland now needs a new Labour leader too. Just in from BBC

Jim Murphy. Mr Murphy confirmed he was resigning at a media conference in Glasgow
Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy is resign next month, he has announced.
It comes despite Mr Murphy narrowly surviving a vote of no confidence at a meeting of the party's national executive in Glasgow.
Mr Murphy said he would tender his resignation alongside a plan to reform the party.
He said he wanted to have a successor in place by the summer. Mr Murphy lost his seat to the SNP in last week's general election.
He said he had decided to stand down ahead of the national executive voting by 17-14 in favour of him staying in the job.

 

[angrysoba]

You are arguing facts v perceptions, sadly perceptions almost always seem to win out.

I think Labour is not going to win with this attitude. I thought that Suzanne Moore made the point quite well:

The utter lack of comprehension about why people vote Tory, or indeed don’t vote at all, has been galling. Mea culpa – I indulge in my share of Tory-bashing, but I keep it to politicians not civilians. As I grew up in a working-class Tory-voting household, the idea that everyone good just “is” Labour is anathema. I was arguing with my mum about this until the day she died. We always thought each other wrong and moved on to more pressing subjects. Years of screaming at her over the turkey that she herself was a turkey voting for Christmas did not change her voting habits. She just went out for a fag and moaned to the neighbours that I was “still against everything”.

Of course, I had diagnosed her with that everyday ailment “false consiousness”. This is still how most of the left operates. We have the truth, we know what is best and we will enlighten you, awaken you from your slumbers and you will be grateful.

Indeed, most people on the left find it bewildering that people can vote "against their interests" and try to argue that it can only happen because Rupert Murdoch or someone similar has borrowed into the working class psyche. I mean, let's face it, how can the 1% win against the 99%? Obviously the 99% are stupid morons!

Or else Labour themselves are stupid morons and have failed to provide a coherent set of policies that people can trust.

But then again, why should people NOT trust the Labour Party?

If you support the Labour Party and you think that they have done anything that might make people distrust them then I suggest you write down a list of things that have turned voters off them. And then offer some ideas about how the Labour Party can address them. That, surely, would be the rational policy rather than simply bemoaning the idiocy of the electorate.

(And furthermore if you must insist on the idiocy of the electorate then the Labour Party had better think up good ways of tricking them into voting Labour.)

 

[Francesca R]

"99% versus 1%" has always been a very wrong-headed and very distasteful attempt to stratify voters in my view.

Needless to say there is little evidence that it "works"

 

[angrysoba]

"99% versus 1%" has always been a very wrong-headed and very distasteful attempt to stratify voters in my view.

Needless to say there is little evidence that it "works"

Same with "false consciousness" which has various guises which have been prominent on this forum lately.

I prefer the SNP's strategy even if I don't want what they do, which is simply to organize better and have clear goals.

Of course, many leftists (and even soppy wet liberals) still cling to something like an idea of the hard left's "false consciousness".

 

[Rum]

I'm not sure there's much difference between 'false consciousness' and just being fooled.

 

[Francesca R]

Never heard of false consciousness. What is that?