General Election December, 2019 (U.K.)

Joe_ Public

I read comments on here saying there's no comparison with trump and the usa, but i disagree. Many of the same principles apply, the main one being the cheapening of political discourse to a level where everybody, no matter how virtuous, gets tarred with the same brush. Like the Wisconsin voter i heard on sky this morning who said the democrats were even worse because trump at least spoke his mind. Or the uk voter who says they're all the same so I'll just vote for the guy who makes me laugh.

ancapailldorcha

Mod: Take the Trump/USA stuff to the relevant thread please.

maynooth_rules

It was only a couple of months ago that Boris was on the ropes. There was talk of a caretaker government, with possibly Ken Clarke leading it. Corbyn dismissed it completely. That caretaker government could have humiliated Johnson and probably ruined his career with no confidence vote, and then the possibility of calling a 2nd referendum.
Corbyn not realising he was toxic, forced Lib dems and SNP into a position of calling a disastrous GE and giving Johnson all that he desired.

Bannasidhe

markodaly wrote: »

Perhaps, but with a group like Momentum at the helm of the party, and the party membership so far removed from their actual base and electorate, its going to be difficult for them to turn it around. Indeed, if the Lib Dems can get their act together they could very well become the party of the opposition.

Corbyn's 'resignation' was atypical of the party and him.
The guy is going to hang around for months, ditherig, blathering and 'reflecting' to ensure the party elect someone in his own image, and will, therefore, remain unelectable.

What exactly do you want the LP to do about Momentum?
Purge 40,000 people from the Labour Party for being a bit too socialist?
Then there would be faux outrage about the LP kicking out anyone who doesn't toe the party line - which, ironically, is exactly what the Tories did. You want the LP to become like the CP?

Would you have them move to the centre to join the Lid-Dems in the middle - where apparently people expect The Tories to move back to now that Johnson has a majority?

Then the UK can have their own version of FF/ FG/Irl Labour- hardly a hap'worth of difference between the parties.
Which means, in real terms, no alternative voices. Just a group of people with the same polices but wearing different coloured rosettes all huddled in the middle.
And ignores the fact that the decline of the LP began when it was a centrist party. Brown and Miliband both shed seats.

Corbyn does not choose his successor. The membership decides - and the candidates are nominated so whoever is on the ballot has to be approved by ten per cent of MPs and MEPs, and candidates must have nominations from either five per cent of constituency Labour parties (CLPs), or "at least three affiliates (at least two of which shall be trade union affiliates) comprising five per cent of affiliated membership". So do stop acting like it's some dictator choosing his successor.
If it was a case of the preferred candidate of the leader 'automatically' becoming their successor then Corbyn would never have been leader in the first place.

And what difference does it make if it takes 10 weeks or 10 months? Unless you are expecting an election soon it makes feck all difference how long the LP takes to choose it's new leader.

May hung on until there was a new leader elected too.

What would be the point in having an interim leader while the 'contest' is going on? Absolutely none.

Letwin_Larry

Lefty Bicek wrote: »

Denmark and Norway, both monarchies. Both score highly in social mobility. Monarchy is no indicator one way or another.

The Honours system, whatever one thinks of it's merits, is extremely class-inclusive, including plenty Irish recipients.

Eton is not a university.

Oxford and Cambridge are not 'nearly impossible for a working class person to attend'.


.

i disagree.
when i worked in London many years ago, we got a visit from our Chairman who was a "member" of the House of Lords. He was in London attending some cermony or other in Westminster and dropped by.

i couldn't believe the deference shown to him by the other staff (all of whom were English). they were literally bowing and curtsying the guy. i shook his hand and slapped him on the back.

i being Irish just saw a fairly affable, overweight, elderly man (who happened to smell of sherry). the others including my manager were almost afraid to talk to the guy for fear of saying something out of place it seemed.
i just chatted and joked with him. he enjoyed fly fishing in Ireland, as i do so that was an obvious choice to talk about i thought. we had a good laugh about things, and he really enjoyed it. i joked about the House of Lords being full of retired old farts. he agreed. i think we even joked about the IRA.

my manager was bricking it, but as it became apparent his Lordship was having a good laugh he relaxed and afterwards thanked me for being so entertaining.

to this day i still dont know what the big deal was. to me he was just a jolly, slightly tipsy old codger, nothing else.

Lefty Bicek

Letwin_Larry wrote: »

i disagree.
when i worked in London many years ago, we got a visit from our Chairman who was a "member" of the House of Lords. He was in London attending some cermony or other in Westminster and dropped by.

i couldn't believe the deference shown to him by the other staff (all of whom were English). they were literally bowing and curtsying the guy. i shook his hand and slapped him on the back.

i being Irish just saw a fairly affable, overweight, elderly man (who happened to smell of sherry). the others including my manager were almost afraid to talk to the guy for fear of saying something out of place it seemed.
i just chatted and joked with him. he enjoyed fly fishing in Ireland, as i do so that was an obvious choice to talk about i thought. we had a good laugh about things, and he really enjoyed it. i joked about the House of Lords being full of retired old farts. he agreed. i think we even joked about the IRA.

my manager was bricking it, but as it became apparent his Lordship was having a good laugh he relaxed and afterwards thanked me for being so entertaining.

to this day i still dont know what the big deal was. to me he was just a jolly, slightly tipsy old codger, nothing else.

You played the rebel, admit it !

It reminds me of a story I was told about Barbara Cartland meeting a young BBC reporter for an interview. The young woman asked BC is she thought Britain had become less of a class-bound society. To which the Dame replied - 'Of course, or I wouldn't be here talking to you.'



Personally - left rural/council-house/unemployment blackspot Ireland with a Leaving Cert that I only passed because it was marked so easily in '86, a twenty pound note, and an address of a sibling to go to.

Two years of hard, hard graft on concrete gangs, said f*** this, put myself through night-school, and from there got to Oxford as a mature student with a full Local Authority grant from the London Borough of Hillingdon. God Bless Them.

Never, ever, ever once had a problem due to class or race. Not once. Quite the opposite.

Everyone has their own story.

Rjd2

https://twitter.com/ayeshahazarika/status/1205946523294584832

Good to see the fanatical and absurd novarra media and to a lesser extent Owen Jones been called out, utterly toxic to say the least.

Strazdas

Strazdas wrote: »

The English class system is much more pronounced than any other country in Europe (the majority of whom are republics).

A high profile monarchy, an aristocracy, an honours system (knighthoods etc), super elite universities like Eton, Cambridge and Oxford which would be nearly impossible for a working class person to attend, and so on

yeah, nearly impossible https://www.bbc.com/news/education-46900154

sid waddell

Rjd2 wrote: »

https://twitter.com/ayeshahazarika/status/1205946523294584832

Good to see the fanatical and absurd novarra media and to a lesser extent Owen Jones been called out, utterly toxic to say the least.

There's only one person there who comes across as a fanatic and it's Ayesha Hazarika.

Just as she did in her appearance on Good Morning Britain on Friday.

prawnsambo

Seems to me that the Labour party will spend the next five years eating itself alive, wake up to another election, lose even more seats and continue with the feeding frenzy.

Letwin_Larry

prawnsambo wrote: »

Seems to me that the Labour party will spend the next five years eating itself alive, wake up to another election, lose even more seats and continue with the feeding frenzy.

not sure about 5 years, but 2 of the women MPs are kicking off. threatening legal action etc.

The Sun described it as better than the carry-on between Coleen Rooney & Rebekah Vardy.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10559712/labour-row-caroline-flint-emily-thornberry-voters-stupid/

ancapailldorcha

prawnsambo wrote: »

Seems to me that the Labour party will spend the next five years eating itself alive, wake up to another election, lose even more seats and continue with the feeding frenzy.

I think it'll be more. Momentum can't just be expelled. It's going to take another shattering defeat at the very least to make them realise that their obsession with ideological purity is harmful.

prawnsambo

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I think it'll be more. Momentum can't just be expelled. It's going to take another shattering defeat at the very least to make them realise that their obsession with ideological purity is harmful.

Yeah. The party has been self-destructing for some time now and it's only going to get worse and more protracted. Something like this requires strong leadership and I've yet to see that manifest itself. So I assume the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Rjd2

sid waddell wrote: »

There's only one person there who comes across as a fanatic and it's Ayesha Hazarika.

Just as she did in her appearance on Good Morning Britain on Friday.

She is pissed of because her party have been hammered and the people who most need a labour government are ****ed.

The cheerleaders of Corbyn have to take some blame for this.

sid waddell

Rjd2 wrote: »

She is pissed of because her party have been hammered and the people who most need a labour government are ****ed.

The cheerleaders of Corbyn have to take some blame for this.

She was an advisor to Labour campaigns which got 29% and 30% on low turnouts, and lost 40 seats in Scotland.

She should have some self-awareness.

prawnsambo

prawnsambo wrote: »

Yeah. The party has been self-destructing for some time now and it's only going to get worse and more protracted. Something like this requires strong leadership and I've yet to see that manifest itself. So I assume the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Given how split the Labour Party is on Brexit and Corbyn, you can only imagine what 5-years of governance would have looked like; it would make the in-fighting from the Tories over the past 3.5 years look tiny - and it would have stretched out the Brexit debate forever.

quokula

sid waddell wrote: »

She was an advisor to Labour campaigns which got 29% and 30% on low turnouts, and lost 40 seats in Scotland.

She should have some self-awareness.

There’s no self awareness among those types.

Corbyn + Referendum in 2019 gets lower vote share than Corbyn + Brexit in 2017

In both cases, the vote share was much higher than the previous two Labour leaders.

Conclusion: should have gone harder on second referendum. And should have been more like those previous leaders.

That would have killed off Labour entirely.

devnull

The bookies now have Rebecca Long Bailey as the clear favourite to succeed Corbyn and therefore another crushing defeat in 2024 is on the cards as she is one of Corbyn's biggest supporters and very senior within Momentum.

Long-Bailey is a huge support of Corbynism and has been parroting the Corbyn line that the 2019 election they were unlucky in and that Corbyn should be judged on 2017, because their election defeat on Thursday had everything to do with Brexit and nothing to do with Corbyn and people are reading too much into it when it is an outlier and the result of one-off events. She's completely tone deaf.

If I was a Tory supporter, I'd be delighted with this.

Professor Moriarty

devnull wrote: »

The bookies now have Rebecca Long Bailey as the clear favourite to succeed Corbyn and therefore another crushing defeat in 2024 is on the cards in 2019 as she is one of Corbyn's biggest supporters and very senior within Momentum.

Long-Bailey is a huge support of Corbynism and has been parroting the Corbyn line that the 2019 election they were unlucky in and that Corbyn should be judged on 2017, because their election defeat on Thursday had everything to do with Brexit and nothing to do with Corbyn and people are reading too much into it when it is an outlier and the result of one-off events. She's completely tone deaf.

If I was a Tory supporter, I'd be delighted with this.

Hard left leader can't win 2017. Hard left leader can't win 2019. Hmmm...what to do?

Simon Jenkins of the Guardian suggesting the Lib Dems should be wound up. I can see his point in a way. If there is no electoral reform in the UK and FPTP remains in place, a vote for them is a wasted vote in England (and a fair bit of Wales). FPTP bolsters a 2 party system. You are voting to elect a party to govern, so whats the point of voting Lib Dem? (That's assuming of course Labour don't end up spectacularly imploding from the fallout of last Thursday).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/16/lib-dems-tories-split-vote-labour

Letwin_Larry

devnull wrote: »

The bookies now have Rebecca Long Bailey as the clear favourite to succeed Corbyn and therefore another crushing defeat in 2024 is on the cards as she is one of Corbyn's biggest supporters and very senior within Momentum.

Long-Bailey is a huge support of Corbynism and has been parroting the Corbyn line that the 2019 election they were unlucky in and that Corbyn should be judged on 2017, because their election defeat on Thursday had everything to do with Brexit and nothing to do with Corbyn and people are reading too much into it when it is an outlier and the result of one-off events. She's completely tone deaf.

If I was a Tory supporter, I'd be delighted with this.

but maybe it wasn't corbyn or Corbynism per se that was rejected?

i asked the question a few hours earlier, as to how could working class Lab voters deliver a Boris majority after Thatcherism and 10 years of austeriry?

after some thought i really think the answer is/was BREXIT.

people have been driven to total distraction by Brexit, and especially the paralysis that it has brought about. Brexit has sucked the oxygen out of everything. quite simply they wanted a strong Govt, of any hue, that as they saw it, would sort the mess out one way or the other.
they opted for a party that they felt could sort the God awful Brexit mess out the most speedily.

so in these circumstances Corbyn committed the worst possible tactical mistake, he dithered, he sat on the fence. and voters said "NO MORE! please, we can't take anymore!"

devnull

Letwin_Larry wrote: »

but maybe it wasn't corbyn or Corbynism per se that was rejected?

I asked the question a few hours earlier, as to how could working class Lab voters deliver a Boris majority after Thatcherism and 10 years of austeriry?

But the thing is that the Tory vote was only up 1% but the Labour vote was down 8%. The Lib Dems vote was up 4%, Brexit up 2% and SNP up 1%. The story is not about the Tories share going up, it barely changed.

But the Labour vote is in freefall and the voters who abandoned Labour spread their votes over several different parties meaning the number of votes required to win working class seats was lower in 2019 vs 2017.

after some thought i really think the answer is/was BREXIT.

That may be what you think, but the simple fact is that there is nothing to back it up. Please see the graph above and all the many Labour MPs who say that Corbyn was number one issue on their doorsteps, far more than Brexit was

Unfortunately the hard left of Labour are too busy trying to deflect this and claim it's all about Brexit because like the Tories with blaming the EU for all the UK domestic problems, it's far easier to blame something else than yourself.

All the hard left of the Labour Party are doing is ensuring another 10 years of Tory rule that will devastate communities. Even today you see the spat between Thornberry and Flint. Both sides want to cop on and settle on something to the right of Corbynism. It doesn't have to be as close to the centre as New Labour, but continuing with a hard left platform is playing into the Tories hands.

The Tories are the enemy and it's about time that Momentum etc started realising that rather than constantly trying to attack people in their own party.

devnull

devnull wrote: »

That may be what you think, but the simple fact is that there is nothing to back it up. Please see the graph above and all the many Labour MPs who say that Corbyn was number one issue on their doorsteps, far more than Brexit was

Aren't those graphs a little misleading?

For example - I, as a Brexiteer, would also claim the problem was Corbyn's "leadership", far and beyond Brexit -- even though I consider it to be a Brexit Election.

In other words, from a political standpoint, it's entirely consistent to poll results that say Corbyn was the primary problem, but that their Brexit policy was insufficient to make up the difference.

Furthermore, even if what you suggest is true, the statistics still show a 31% shift of Labour voters to Conservative on Brexit grounds. Whatever way you cut it, that's a massive hemorrhage.

Letwin_Larry

devnull wrote: »

But the thing is that the Tory vote was only up 1% but the Labour vote was down 8%. The Lib Dems vote was up 4%, Brexit up 2% and SNP up 1%. The story is not about the Tories share going up, it barely changed.

But the Labour vote is in freefall and the voters who abandoned Labour spread their votes over several different parties meaning the number of votes required to win working class seats was lower in 2019 vs 2017.



That may be what you think, but the simple fact is that there is nothing to back it up. Please see the graph above and all the many Labour MPs who say that Corbyn was number one issue on their doorsteps, far more than Brexit was

Unfortunately the hard left of Labour are too busy trying to deflect this and claim it's all about Brexit because like the Tories with blaming the EU for all the UK domestic problems, it's far easier to blame something else than yourself.

All the hard left of the Labour Party are doing is ensuring another 10 years of Tory rule that will devastate communities. Even today you see the spat between Thornberry and Flint. Both sides want to cop on and settle on something to the right of Corbynism. It doesn't have to be as close to the centre as New Labour, but continuing with a hard left platform is playing into the Tories hands.

The Tories are the enemy and it's about time that Momentum etc started realising that rather than constantly trying to attack people in their own party.

i take your point and the graphs are interesting.
but if you look at the Lab defectors to others, the 2 main reasons are Corbyn & Brexit with,

over 1 in 3 deserted them over Corbyn & 1 in 5 deserted them over Brexit.

so while Brexit is not the full picture, it is a substantial part of it.

quokula

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/16/lib-dems-tories-split-vote-labour

A lot of sense there from Simon Jenkins. The Lib Dem’s did everything in their power to hand the election to the conservatives (having already done everything in their power to make the election happen at a time when the opposition had total control of parliament)

They’ve been a spent force for a few elections now and have only gone backwards and served to split the vote on the left, it’s time to do the decent thing and realise when they’ve done fat more harm than good.

Letwin_Larry

Deleted User wrote: »

Aren't those graphs a little misleading?

For example - I, as a Brexiteer, would also claim the problem was Corbyn's "leadership", far and beyond Brexit -- even though I consider it to be a Brexit Election.

In other words, from a political standpoint, it's entirely consistent to poll results that say Corbyn was the primary problem, but that their Brexit policy was insufficient to make up the difference.

Furthermore, even if what you suggest is true, the statistics still show a 31% shift of Labour voters to Conservative on Brexit grounds. Whatever way you cut it, that's a massive hemorrhage.

another observation i would make is, Corbyn's leadership and Lab's Brexit stance go hand in hand. it's extremely difficult to disentangle the 2 imo. such is the nature of these surveys i suppose.

however i think it's fair to conclude, Corbyn's leadership and Lab's Brexit stance between them did the majority of the damage..

devnull

Letwin_Larry wrote: »

i take your point and the graphs are interesting.
but if you look at the Lab defectors to others, the 2 main reasons are Corbyn & Brexit with,

over 1 in 3 deserted them over Corbyn & 1 in 5 deserted them over Brexit.

so while Brexit is not the full picture, it is a substantial part of it.

But in reality it's not far off being twice as many Labour defectors said Corbyn was the main reason for note voting Labour again. But even if all of those still voted Labour, they'd still have lost since in 2017 they didn't get enough votes either so iLabour needed to do far more than just consolidate on 2017.

So you then take a look at the first graph, which pretty much says that over 2.5 times more voters said the main reason for not voting for Labour was Jeremy Corbyn. For Labour to have any chance to win in 2019, they had to convince people who voted Tory, Lib Dem, SNP etc in 2017 to vote for them.

What this shows is not only was Jeremy Corbyn the biggest factor in Labour losing votes they had in 2017, he was an even bigger factor in Labour's failure to win over people who voted for other parties in 2017.

All it paints to is that a Corbyn-less Labour would have had greater success in both those who voted Labour in 2017 as well as attracting people who didn't vote for Labour in that same election.

Nobody says that Brexit wasn't a factor, but it wasn't the main factor, no matter how much Momentum and the hard left and the supports of Corbynism want to push that false narrative.

Rjd2

quokula wrote: »

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/16/lib-dems-tories-split-vote-labour

A lot of sense there from Simon Jenkins. The Lib Dem’s did everything in their power to hand the election to the conservatives (having already done everything in their power to make the election happen at a time when the opposition had total control of parliament)

They’ve been a spent force for a few elections now and have only gone backwards and served to split the vote on the left, it’s time to do the decent thing and realise when they’ve done fat more harm than good.

Lib Dems are not necessarily a left wing party though as they have plenty of soft tories in the party. Why would they want to be ruled by Momentum?

Another centrist party would emerge to replace them anyhow.

rossie1977

More people voted Labour in 17 than they did under Brown in 2010 or Milliband in 2015.

The media and Tories have managed to create a narrative that Corbyn was a racist, anti-semite, Marxist/communist who was second coming of Stalin, millions bought it.

Regardless who the next leader of Labour is smear campaign will begin immediately.

Lets be honest if Michael D Higgins was elected leader of Labour UK he would be called a marxist/communist who was friends with Castro and wants to turn UK into socialist hell-hole.

Eric Cartman

rossie1977 wrote: »

More people voted Labour in 17 than they did under Brown in 2010 or Milliband in 2015.

The media and Tories have managed to create a narrative that Corbyn was a racist, anti-semite, Marxist/communist who was second coming of Stalin, millions bought it.

Regardless who the next leader of Labour is smear campaign will begin immediately.

Lets be honest if Michael D Higgins was elected leader of Labour UK he would be called a marxist/communist who was friends with Castro and wants to turn UK into socialist hell-hole.

Corbyn, his actions, associations and inaction on anti-semitism created this, you can't blame the daily mail and express who would have said it about any labour leader that the sh*t finally had something to stick to.