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

[markavfc40]

11 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

There's no chance that the membership will vote for Jess Phillips. None whatsoever.

I wouldn't know mate but I guess thinking about it her anti Corbyn stance would rule her out. Who do you think the most likely contenders are?

Edited December 7, 2019 by markavfc40

[HanoiVillan]

5 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

I wouldn't know mate but I guess thinking about it her anti Corbyn stance would rule her out. Who do you think the most like contenders are?

I think you said most of them in your first post boss. I would expect Starmer, Rayner, possibly Pidcock and Butler. There may well be others, including Phillips, but I really doubt that the winner will be somebody who has been performatively trashing the party in the media for the past four years, and she has.

[tonyh29]

Don’t see the unions backing any of them , Thornberry is their new leader of choice isn’t she ? 

Edited December 7, 2019 by tonyh29

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, tonyh29 said:

Don’t see the unions backing any of them , Thornberry is their new leader of choice isn’t she ? 

The unions don't pick the leader any more, but Thornberry could well be a candidate.

[Chindie]

Philips is being pushed by the right of the party and interested centrists as a possibility because she's right enough to appease the Blairites but they also perceive her to have a commoners image that will win over the left. Except she's been so outspoken about being opposed to the left of the party that that doesn't really parse. She'll end up in a shadow cabinet role.

[bickster]

8 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

The unions don't pick the leader any more,

hahahahahahahahahahaha. Yeah cos not one member ever votes the way Red Len tells them to. Unite pick the Leader of the Labour Party no matter how they get elected. It'd hard to find a CLP that isn't stuffed to the gills with Unite members.

One Member One Vote doesn't really diminish the power of the unions

I'm not saying this isn't demcratic btw, it is. But lets be honest, the Unions still pick the leader

[bickster]

1 minute ago, Chindie said:

Philips is being pushed by the right of the party and interested centrists as a possibility because she's right enough to appease the Blairites but they also perceive her to have a commoners image that will win over the left. Except she's been so outspoken about being opposed to the left of the party that that doesn't really parse. She'll end up in a shadow cabinet role.

Nah, your average Momentum member hates Phillips and once the die is cast with them, that's it.

Dan Carden for Deputy Leader, not enough experience for leader yet but he's the Unite Stooge in Walton, the safest seat in the country. The Leader won't be Thornberry imo, not sure who it will be though because there are few suitable candidates

It'll take at least another decade before Labour (sorry the Unions) wake up to the fact that Ultra Left isn't electable.

To change the direction of the party, they need to get rid of Red Len et al first and I'm really not sure that is possible

[Chindie]

Portraying the current direction of Labour as ultra left is a departure from reality. If this is ultra left, communism must be hyper mega thunder word removed times a billion to the power of infinity left.

Anywho... Philips will eventually get a shadow cabinet role. Won't necessarily be under the next leader, but she'll get there. The interest in having her more visible will eventually see someone put her in a position. 

[bickster]

7 minutes ago, Chindie said:

If this is ultra left,

This is the most left wing the Labour Party have been in my lifetime. Harold WIlson, James Callaghan et al were never this left wing and they had more reason to be

[Chindie]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

This is the most left wing the Labour Party have been in my lifetime. Harold WIlson, James Callaghan et al were never this left wing and they had more reason to be

But how left is it, really? They're basically looking at putting us somewhere closer to the basis the likes of France and Germany are in many cases. Is that 'ultra left'?

This coming on the back of a (quickly buried) story this week that the UK has become an ultra capitalist society.

The portrayal of this being some pseudo commie reds in sheep's clothing coming to eat your house is ludicrous.

[HanoiVillan]

32 minutes ago, bickster said:

hahahahahahahahahahaha. Yeah cos not one member ever votes the way Red Len tells them to. Unite pick the Leader of the Labour Party no matter how they get elected. It'd hard to find a CLP that isn't stuffed to the gills with Unite members.

One Member One Vote doesn't really diminish the power of the unions

I'm not saying this isn't demcratic btw, it is. But lets be honest, the Unions still pick the leader

I think it may well be a mistake to judge the next leadership election by the outcome of previous ones. There are going to be several differences; not only will the electoral system be different from any election prior to 2015, but there are also likely to be multiple candidates appealing to the left of the party, as opposed to a 'left unity' candidate. If this turns out to be true - and I see no reason why it won't be - then that will be something completely new for Labour leadership contests. I can't think of any previous examples, certainly in my life time. So it may well be possible for a candidate to win through appealing to members, without the explicit backing of unions (though I think it will be a left candidate generally who wins). 

23 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Anywho... Philips will eventually get a shadow cabinet role. Won't necessarily be under the next leader, but she'll get there. The interest in having her more visible will eventually see someone put her in a position. 

Any leader who is daft enough to put her there will get what's coming to them, and what's coming to them is endless briefing against them to her friends in the lobby, and open displays of disloyalty. I can't think of anyone in modern British politics, of any party or ideology, who is less of a team player. You're right, maybe some leader eventually will be daft enough to appoint her to try to get the positive media that would come from doing so, but it would be a terrible decision.

[snowychap]

2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I can't think of anyone in modern British politics, of any party or ideology, who is less of a team player.

[HanoiVillan]

Hah! Fair point. I guess by 'modern' I mean 'post-2015' though.

[sharkyvilla]

I was a bit young really for the Blair years, but apart from the wars what was it that was so unpalatable about New Labour?  I reckon there are millions of votes out there just waiting to be won by a left of centre candidate for PM.  If I had to make a sweeping generalisation about the English public/middle class in particular is that they are socially liberal and financially quite conservative, not particularly interested in mass nationalisation but willing to pay a bit more tax if needs be (strangely I'm not sure taxing the wealthy more is that popular basically because people are deluded that they may be the rich person one day).

[Chindie]

13 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

I was a bit young really for the Blair years, but apart from the wars what was it that was so unpalatable about New Labour?  I reckon there are millions of votes out there just waiting to be won by a left of centre candidate for PM.  If I had to make a sweeping generalisation about the English public/middle class in particular is that they are socially liberal and financially quite conservative, not particularly interested in mass nationalisation but willing to pay a bit more tax if needs be (strangely I'm not sure taxing the wealthy more is that popular basically because people are deluded that they may be the rich person one day).

New Labour basically was the Tory party with better PR and livelier wallets 

They were born of the idea of the Third Way, that is basically melding overtly capitalist ideas to socialist ideals. Except they got it wrong - Third Way was basically an attempt to use those ideals as a guiding principle and to then direct and importantly control capitalist endeavours to the benefit of socialist policies. Instead what New Labour did is continued the methods of the Tories that kept them in power for nearly 2 decades, but invested more, and with slick PR. Then the combination of unpopular wars, the inevitable stories of sleaze, the growth of EU hatred, the handover of power and the final killer blow of a global economic crisis that stabbed directly at the heart of what New Labour basically was founded on killed it. An awful lot of the state of the UK today is because New Labour basically picked up the Tories 80s baton and choose not to institute many policies that would attempt reign in the financial world. Instead they just did half the job, investing more in the country and social endeavours, unaware that the wheels will fall off if they didn't try to reign in the tiger they were riding.

[chrisp65]

3 hours ago, sharkyvilla said:

I was a bit young really for the Blair years, but apart from the wars what was it that was so unpalatable about New Labour? .

I was a bit young for the Jack the Ripper years, apart from disembowling women, was he a decent bloke?

 

[Davkaus]

Look at their record with education and the NHS and tell me that Blairite Labour was the tories with better PR. 

Look at homeless numbers and social care provision and tell me they were tories. Look at how they treated the unemployed and those on disability benefits. 

It's absolute bollocks. 

[chrisp65]

Holy war was probably the deal breaker for me.

[Chindie]

42 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Look at their record with education and the NHS and tell me that Blairite Labour was the tories with better PR. 

Look at homeless numbers and social care provision and tell me they were tories. Look at how they treated the unemployed and those on disability benefits. 

It's absolute bollocks. 

That's why I said they had livelier wallets and invested, which was a good thing. But they had a fundamental basis of not doing too much in respect of regulation for big business and finance, and courting business. The key thing with what they were trying to implement is to place boundaries on that, and by and large they didn't.

It's undoubted that New Labour's social policies were generally good and beneficial (though they still did a bit of Tory baiting), but their economic outlook sat pretty nicely with Tories. And that harmed what came after.

[snowychap]

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

Look at how they treated the unemployed and those on disability benefits.

You mean people like James Purnell who hired Lord Fraud (he of the Fraud Report*) as an advisor at the DWP who then moved pretty seamlessly to being an advisor for the Tories and thereafter a Tory minister?

*Torygraph article from 2014:

Quote

In 2006, Tony Blair, impressed by his role in raising finance for Eurotunnel and EuroDisney, recruited him to carry out a review of the welfare system.

 

Edit: Yes, Tory policies are worse but the genesis of their policies is Labour policy/policy interest from 2006 onwards.

Edited December 7, 2019 by snowychap