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

[colhint]

That's OK but how many seats in the North do you think an Arch remainer from London will bring back?

[peterms]

6 hours ago, blandy said:

You're technically right, but I find it hard to look at remain (non-Labour) vote going up by nearly 2 million, Tories up by 300K and Labour down by 2.6 million, with a small drop in overall turnout as well, and not conclude that the drift was substantially from Labour to remain, with a smaller switch Labour-Tory. You are right to look at it as "not proof", but were anyone to deny the direction of travel, given the sheer size of the numbers I'd question their reasons why.

Sure some older voters will have died, some will have changed their minds, some young 'uns will have voted for the first time (and many for Labour), but such a big drop in labour votes and big rise in Remain party votes suggests they lost a lot of remainers - 5 times as many as leavers.  Were the numbers in the thousands or 10s of thousands, nationally, then I'd tend to want to look much deeper, but 2.6 million is a very significant number of people.

So, his conclusion was that Labour lost 2m votes to remain parties and 400,000 to leave parties.  Against that conclusion based simply on netting off numbers, there's a rather more thorough analysis here which assesses the numbers like this:

Quote

As noted above, we estimate that over 200,000 2017 Labour Leave voters switched
to the Liberal Democrats, the Greens or the SNP. They can be added to over 1.1
million 2017 Labour Remain voters who switched to Remain parties (mostly the
Liberal Democrats), according to Datapraxis’s estimates based in the published
YouGov MRP numbers from 11 December 2019.
In total, we therefore estimate that over 1.3 million of Labour’s 2017 voters
switched to other Remain parties, while something like 700,000 to 800,000 of its
Leave voters and 300,000 of its Remain voters switched to the Conservatives (the
latter group most likely because of their views on the leadership).

The balance here is suggested as 1.3m to remain parties, and 1m-1.1m to leave parties.

There is then the question of how these lost votes were distributed, and this table suggests why the impact of losing votes to leave parties was so significant in terms of seats, with the loss in the north being greater as a % of vote share than in London and the south east.

The paper is also interesting in discussing the various voting tribes, and their different concerns and motivations.  Worth a read.

 

 

[sharkyvilla]

26 minutes ago, colhint said:

So you think Labours next leader should be their arch Remainer. A london M.P and a lawyer. 

It's not just the working class that they need to win back but the middle class too if they want to get into power.  You'd think that the Labour leavers would go straight back to voting Labour again now Brexit is happening.  People who in a million years wouldn't have voted Tory because of Thatcher.  The only question is how hard it will be to get the genie back in the bottle now they have taken the plunge and gone against their instinct by voting for Boris.

[TreeVillan]

I literally came here to ask why Labour are dead set on having a female leader without actually having a preferred candidate? Why not the best person for the job, which could very well be a woman anyway? Not just that really as I guess it started with them charging white people more for entering conferences. 

[colhint]

you make a fair point, but who are remainers going to vote for next time.It wont be for a second  referendum, or anything to do with Brexit.  So they  may stick with Labour, but  I feel the north would not be happy with a remainer in charge.

[ml1dch]

31 minutes ago, colhint said:

That's OK but how many seats in the North do you think an Arch remainer from London will bring back?

I guess the obvious answer is "it depends on what the political landscape looks like in five years".

Unless you're expecting a Johnson Government to actually result in a big improvement in peoples' lives in the likes of Wrexham and Bury, Brexit might have lost it's sparkle and shine for those voters in 2024. 

Apart from "fewer foreign people in London" what quantifiable improvements do you expect those seats in the North will be thanking Johnson for in five years?

Edited December 15, 2019 by ml1dch

[colhint]

I suppose that's true also. But wouldn't it be safer to go with not London not Brexit not Lawyer.

[Dr_Pangloss]

33 minutes ago, TreeVillan said:

I literally came here to ask why Labour are dead set on having a female leader without actually having a preferred candidate? Why not the best person for the job, which could very well be a woman anyway? Not just that really as I guess it started with them charging white people more for entering conferences. 

It's because of the warped sense of 'social justice' that has swept over sections of the Labour party. The next leader simply has to be the best candidate for the role, if that person is a women then great, but they should not look to make being a woman a condition for being the next leader. Sadly total idiots like John McDonnell and even the Stephen Kinnock's of the party are peddling such nonsense.

[chrisp65]

Remember that time when Labour felt they ‘had’ to have a left winger on the list to be leader? How did that pan out?

Now it ‘has’ to be a woman. It’ll be like the World Cup, 2024 has to be somebody from an ethnic minority, with 2029 being reserved for disabled candidates and 2034 the big opportunity for the LGBTQ community.

Incidentally, if it is a woman, great. But hopefully, she will also be the best candidate.

 

[chrisp65]

Over half of Labour’s MP’s are female, only a quarter of tory MP’s are female. They have very little to prove on this score.

[TreeVillan]

Exactly, the idea is out now anyway. If they do opt with a female leader, then she'll already be on the back foot as people in their minds will believe she was awarded the role unmerited. 

[ml1dch]

7 minutes ago, colhint said:

I suppose that's true also. But wouldn't it be safer to go with not London not Brexit not Lawyer.

Depends. If the leader is being made in a test tube formed from one part oestrogen, one part anti-immigrant rhetoric and one part Unison membership just to satisfy "the homogenous North" then they probably just end up with similar problem to now. 

[peterms]

23 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Remember that time when Labour felt they ‘had’ to have a left winger on the list to be leader? How did that pan out?

Now it ‘has’ to be a woman. It’ll be like the World Cup, 2024 has to be somebody from an ethnic minority, with 2029 being reserved for disabled candidates and 2034 the big opportunity for the LGBTQ community.

Incidentally, if it is a woman, great. But hopefully, she will also be the best candidate.

 

I'm not party to the internal Labour discussions on who should stand for leader.  I have however observed many discussions in many organisations over too many decades, and it very often happens that people aspire to choose someone from an underrepresented group, as long as they meet the requirements of the role, and this is caricatured by others as a determination to select someone based on race or gender regardless of ability.

It's regrettable that positive action is viewed in this way, and it is in my experience also usually a misrepresentation.

[Dr_Pangloss]

59 minutes ago, peterms said:

I'm not party to the internal Labour discussions on who should stand for leader.  I have however observed many discussions in many organisations over too many decades, and it very often happens that people aspire to choose someone from an underrepresented group, as long as they meet the requirements of the role, and this is caricatured by others as a determination to select someone based on race or gender regardless of ability.

It's regrettable that positive action is viewed in this way, and it is in my experience also usually a misrepresentation.

There's meeting requirements and then there's finding the 'best' person for the role. What you appear to be describing is something akin to tokenism which really just serves to undermine the intended goal.

[chrisp65]

54 minutes ago, peterms said:

I'm not party to the internal Labour discussions on who should stand for leader.  I have however observed many discussions in many organisations over too many decades, and it very often happens that people aspire to choose someone from an underrepresented group, as long as they meet the requirements of the role, and this is caricatured by others as a determination to select someone based on race or gender regardless of ability.

It's regrettable that positive action is viewed in this way, and it is in my experience also usually a misrepresentation.

Agree entirely, and please don’t think I’m anti a female leader in any way, or even anti making sure women are fast tracked in to positions so they can get experience and be role models and prove to be of at least equal merit. I’d encourage women of ability to put themselves forward.

I’d also say, as someone that’s been an equal opportunities union rep and written a couple of ethics and equality policies for a couple businesses, it does nobody any favours to fast track someone beyond their talent that might potentially clearly not be the best candidate.

All for positive action, all for a genuinely equal tilt at the job, all for getting people in to positions to get the experience they need and all that. I’m all for fast tracking. 

The top job ‘has’ to be a woman? That’s language that could work against a female winner that gets there on genuine merit. 

[peterms]

10 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

There's meeting requirements and then there's finding the 'best' person for the role. What you appear to be describing is something akin to tokenism which really just serves to undermine the intended goal.

My point is precisely that it is not tokenism, but is often misrepresented as such.

I'm sure that examples of tokenism can be found if you search for them, but probably far fewer than appointments by groupthink, contacts, similarity to existing postholders or stereotypes of "best" candidates and so on.

[peterms]

10 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

The top job ‘has’ to be a woman? That’s language that could work against a female winner that gets there on genuine merit. 

Yes, if it comes across as "only women may apply" rather than "we should aim to appoint a woman if possible", that wouldn't be helpful to anyone appointed.

I understood the phrase "has to be" as an exhortation, not an attempt to set a rule, which would obviously be far beyond the speaker's power in any event.

[Jon]

King Clive for me.  Ticks the ethnic minority box, top guy, ex army which may appeal to some voters on the right.  On the left, so electable in terms of party membership. 

[hippo]

1 hour ago, Jon said:

King Clive for me.  Ticks the ethnic minority box, top guy, ex army which may appeal to some voters on the right.  On the left, so electable in terms of party membership. 

Problem is - you can join labour for £3 now - and vote for the next leader early next year.

That's open to so much abuse its incredible - that's the reason for the delay - to recruit a load of young angrys - who back Rayner/RBL 

The people who have the final say on the leader - needn't even be labour supporters - and even if they are they are likely to be the enthused militants. (Corbyn didn't just win the labour leadership - he cake walked it )

Unfortunately moderates are less enthused to join a polictal party - so voting members are far removed from the working class people they wish to represent.

I really believe we will see some sort of split and new party formed. How successful who knows ..

[hippo]

Imagine the uproar - if someone senior ranking said " the next leader must be male and he must come from London"

Why has where the next leader lives become a factor .....bonkers...