The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[snowychap]

Hmm. Starmer was just absolutely terrible at PMQs.

Johnson was his usual disgrace but Starmer was utterly ineffective.

[ml1dch]

13 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Hmm. Starmer was just absolutely terrible at PMQs.

Johnson was his usual disgrace but Starmer was utterly ineffective.

I only watched the first half, but from what I saw, I agree.

Hopefully it's just a blip.

[blandy]

 

[chrisp65]

...and just to note, they did vote against the bill yesterday, not abstain.

[blandy]

Just now, chrisp65 said:

...and just to note, they did vote against the bill yesterday, not abstain.

The right move, obviously.  Saw on the telly Milliband giving Johnson an absolute working over in Parliament.  Excellent stuff.

[OutByEaster?]

26 minutes ago, blandy said:

 

They're going to need to be really careful with this - they're alienating a lot of Labour voters by distancing themselves from what a lot of Labour supporters believe. Those Corbyn policies were massively popular. 

If they're just relying on picking up 'sensible' Tories, I'm not sure if it'll be enough to win things.

 

[Chindie]

20 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

They're going to need to be really careful with this - they're alienating a lot of Labour voters by distancing themselves from what a lot of Labour supporters believe. Those Corbyn policies were massively popular. 

If they're just relying on picking up 'sensible' Tories, I'm not sure if it'll be enough to win things.

 

[chrisp65]

45 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

They're going to need to be really careful with this - they're alienating a lot of Labour voters by distancing themselves from what a lot of Labour supporters believe. Those Corbyn policies were massively popular. 

If they're just relying on picking up 'sensible' Tories, I'm not sure if it'll be enough to win things.

 

What Corbyn policies did you perceive as massively unpopular?

The man was unpopular, people thought his policies were probably communist craziness. But the reality felt like the actual policies, blinded on a sheet of paper, were ok.

My how we laughed at the idea of abundant WiFi,  nationalised trains, a national care service, more money for the NHS, and a 4 day week.

[darrenm]

9 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

What Corbyn policies did you perceive as massively unpopular?

The man was unpopular, people thought his policies were probably communist craziness. But the reality felt like the actual policies, blinded on a sheet of paper, were ok.

My how we laughed at the idea of abundant WiFi,  nationalised trains, a national care service, more money for the NHS, and a 4 day week.

People liked the policies until they found out who they were coming from. Pure cognitive dissonance.

[OutByEaster?]

16 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

What Corbyn policies did you perceive as massively unpopular?

I didn't. Did my post somehow come out as being ironic?

Quote

Those Corbyn policies were massively popular. 

 

[chrisp65]

43 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

I didn't. Did my post somehow come out as being ironic?

 

DONT YOU **** ARGUE WITH ME!

ha ha, weird projection / mis read on my part there

I’ll sit facing the corner for a while.

[blandy]

2 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

They're going to need to be really careful with this - they're alienating a lot of Labour voters by distancing themselves from what a lot of Labour supporters believe. Those Corbyn policies were massively popular. 

If they're just relying on picking up 'sensible' Tories, I'm not sure if it'll be enough to win things.

I think also the Corbyn people need to be really careful. By that I mean there seems to be insecurity and worry that policies will be abandoned without any evidence they are being abandoned, and that worry is sort of leading to escalation and so on. There was stuff a couple of weeks back calling for Starmer to be sacked for having the temerity to write articles in the Mail and Torygraph. These articles weren't right wing, or anything - just basically (correctly) critical of the Tories competence. These people need to settle down and give their heads a wobble.

[OutByEaster?]

3 minutes ago, blandy said:

I think also the Corbyn people need to be really careful. By that I mean there seems to be insecurity and worry that policies will be abandoned without any evidence they are being abandoned, and that worry is sort of leading to escalation and so on.

I think that's fair, the Corbyn policies were a breath of fresh air - for me they brought a value to the politics of the two main parties that hadn't existed in my lifetime, and I'm an old man - those policies took me from burn-it-all-down to Vote Labour. For me they were a genuine moment of hope for the UK.

I guess there's a sort of feeling that Starmer looks like a duck and quacks like a duck so it's quite likely he'll end up being a duck - but then I think it became clear that what the Labour party really needed in order to progress on the ideas Corbyn brought in was Corbyn's ideology presented by someone who looked like Starmer and didn't bring a history that made him such an easy target. 

There's still a hope that Starmer will keep faith with the policies that brought me and a lot of people like me back to party politics, but given that just about every other party leader I can remember from either side has been the opposite of that, it seems a faint hope. Starmer ousted Corbyn for a reason, and I'm not sure that reason was so that he could follow his principles but add some polish. 

Time will tell I guess.

 

 

[blandy]

1 minute ago, OutByEaster? said:

Starmer ousted Corbyn for a reason,

I agree with your post, but this bit's not true. Corbyn resigned because he got walloped, losing his second general election to (until now) the worst gov't in living memory. Starmer no more "ousted him than did Rebecca Wrong Daily or any of the other people who put themselves forward for the vacancy.

[OutByEaster?]

13 minutes ago, blandy said:

I agree with your post, but this bit's not true. Corbyn resigned because he got walloped, losing his second general election to (until now) the worst gov't in living memory. Starmer no more "ousted him than did Rebecca Wrong Daily or any of the other people who put themselves forward for the vacancy.

I guess that depends on your reasoning for how he got walloped. You're right, Starmer didn't single handedly oust him like some Shakespearean king, I've overegged - I think it's fair to say that a good number of the crew were deliberately not rowing in the direction that the captain wanted though.

All of which is old ground, he's gone, it's an opportunity missed. We now have to see what Starmer will be about.

Likelihood is that he'll get my vote against the current lot anyway - although so would a grapefruit.

[bickster]

1 hour ago, OutByEaster? said:

I guess that depends on your reasoning for how he got walloped. You're right, Starmer didn't single handedly oust him like some Shakespearean king, I've overegged - I think it's fair to say that a good number of the crew were deliberately not rowing in the direction that the captain wanted though.

This doesn't appear to be true either. Corbyn did better in 2017 because there were people with serious knowledge of what was going on in the constituencies that ignored what the Corbyn camp wanted. Come the 2017 election, they were Corbyn's people running the Labour Party. He did much better when the dreaded centrists were running the election funding and targeting constituencies that Corbyn didn't want them to than he did when his own people were doing that. The Corbyn good(ish) result was because the centrists (sorry experienced Party campaign managers) were working against his intructions but to his benefit. The 2019 result was when the party was being completely run by sympathisers to the Corbyn cause (and attempting to defund MPs that weren't seen as allied to the cause)

Now this has been spun in some quarters as "Centrists working against Corbyn", which on the surface is actually true but what they were doing was in the interests of the Party and therefore ultimately Corbyn himself. The results are there for all to see

 

[HanoiVillan]

3 minutes ago, bickster said:

This doesn't appear to be true either. Corbyn did better in 2017 because there were people with serious knowledge of what was going on in the constituencies that ignored what the Corbyn camp wanted. Come the 2017 election, they were Corbyn's people running the Labour Party. He did much better when the dreaded centrists were running the election funding and targeting constituencies that Corbyn didn't want them to than he did when his own people were doing that. The Corbyn good(ish) result was because the centrists (sorry experienced Party campaign managers) were working against his intructions but to his benefit. The 2019 result was when the party was being completely run by sympathisers to the Corbyn cause (and attempting to defund MPs that weren't seen as allied to the cause)

Now this has been spun in some quarters as "Centrists working against Corbyn", which on the surface is actually true but what they were doing was in the interests of the Party and therefore ultimately Corbyn himself. The results are there for all to see

 

Eh? The favoured constituencies of the Ergon House project mostly had large majorities. Chris Bryant in Rhondda was a beneficiary - it is also the constituency in which the Tories received their lowest vote on the British mainland in 2017.

[bickster]

3 hours ago, darrenm said:

People liked the policies until they found out who they were coming from. Pure cognitive dissonance.

I see none of the written on the back of a fag back and tweeted on the fly policies are there. You know the ones that seemed to appear every other day in relation to whatever was in the newscycle that week

 

[darrenm]

23 minutes ago, bickster said:

I see none of the written on the back of a fag back and tweeted on the fly policies are there. You know the ones that seemed to appear every other day in relation to whatever was in the newscycle that week

 

Yeah this was before the 2019 GE manifesto so things like universal free broadband, recompensing WASPI and safe standing at football matches aren't there.

[bickster]

34 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Eh? The favoured constituencies of the Ergon House project mostly had large majorities. Chris Bryant in Rhondda was a beneficiary - it is also the constituency in which the Tories received their lowest vote on the British mainland in 2017.

What happened say in some of those constituencioes two years later? West Bromwich East? Corbyn managed to turn a 5,500 majority into a 1,500 loss

Neither West Brom constituency has ever had a Tory MP since the boundaries were redrawn in 1974. And in the case of WBE, it was pretty much as a result of Labour voters not voting, they didn't switch sides, they just didn't vote.

Normanton, Pontefract and Wherever, Yvette Coopers seat. She just managed to hang on in 2019 from a 14k majority in 2017. Again Labour's vote deserting them and not voting.

In 2015 those dreadful centrists weren't pushing Corbyn in those seats where he was considered a liability, they were pushing Labour and local issues to nullify the Corbyn effect and it almost worked. 2019 Labour pushed Corbyn through every door in the land...

It's not about the size of the majorties they had so they didn't need the extra funding, its about what was being reported back by the local parties, "In trouble here, Corbyn not popular" and they'd target those seats with "non-Corbyn" election material

There really wasn't much to choose between the manifestos on 2017 and 2019. All Corbyn managed to do was turn Labour voters away from Labour, by having a bunch of incompetents and idealogues as election strategists. Well that and the farcical Brexit policy and all those silly made up on the day policies from Narnia. Corbyn didn't lose so badly in 2019 because of the policies agreed at conference, they lost because of him and his team

EDIT: I'll see your Rhondda and raise you a Hayes and Harlington