HanoiVillan Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 4 hours ago, snowychap said: Out of the hundreds of post-election #takes I've read, that is definitely one of the better ones. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted December 18, 2019 Moderator Share Posted December 18, 2019 3 hours ago, HanoiVillan said: Out of the hundreds of post-election #takes I've read, that is definitely one of the better ones. It’s difficult to separate personal opinion from “everyone thinks”, but I’m wary of that diagnosis. The “leadership” yeah, awful. It’s the other part I’m wary of. There’s a significant amount of evidence that people sort of said, yeah, free things are nice, but we don’t actually believe you’ll do it, or even that it is all the right thing to do. Anti austerity, yeah, but the manifesto stance, not so much. But that’s maybe just me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hippo Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 1 hour ago, blandy said: It’s difficult to separate personal opinion from “everyone thinks”, but I’m wary of that diagnosis. The “leadership” yeah, awful. It’s the other part I’m wary of. There’s a significant amount of evidence that people sort of said, yeah, free things are nice, but we don’t actually believe you’ll do it, or even that it is all the right thing to do. Anti austerity, yeah, but the manifesto stance, not so much. But that’s maybe just me. Overall from the leader to the manifesto - it was a question of credibility - they didn't achieve that - so anything they said or offered worked against them. The tragedy is that was Boris was more believed when he said he would fund the NHS. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post bickster Posted December 18, 2019 Moderator Popular Post Share Posted December 18, 2019 6 hours ago, HanoiVillan said: Out of the hundreds of post-election #takes I've read, that is definitely one of the better ones. I preferred this one (thread) 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StefanAVFC Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 6 hours ago, blandy said: It’s difficult to separate personal opinion from “everyone thinks”, but I’m wary of that diagnosis. The “leadership” yeah, awful. It’s the other part I’m wary of. There’s a significant amount of evidence that people sort of said, yeah, free things are nice, but we don’t actually believe you’ll do it, or even that it is all the right thing to do. Anti austerity, yeah, but the manifesto stance, not so much. But that’s maybe just me. Well, they got the percentage of the vote that they got, which was still higher than Brown or Miliband, so any further debits beyond them that you apply to the leadership, you pretty have to give the opposite credit to the manifesto. I don't think we're in complete disagreement about the manifesto. The approach to spending was probably too scattergun; ironically, they adopted the distinctly Blairite 'media grid' system for announcing a new policy every day, to keep them in the news, but that perhaps created an impression of 'every day a new promise'. It also meant that the policies that did cut through didn't get as much time spent on them. I think the WASPI commitment was also a mistake; not the commitment itself, but making it without properly costing it, after releasing the costings document, and without doing any work to make the moral case for why those women deserved compensation. It clearly didn't help, and I bet if we looked in the demographic cross-tabs Labour will have lost that group by a large margin. They just didn't put in the work first. However, again, they got the share of the vote they got, so the more I knock the policies, the less awful the leadership were. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LondonLax Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 16 hours ago, PompeyVillan said: I gather that the far right believe that when their chosen party of preference win an election then the opposition have to concede, and if they dare oppose their demagogue then they are subverting democracy. It could be that but I also think it could be that he took exception to her use of the phrase ‘rightful place’, in a similar way to some fans thinking we and other big clubs had a ‘rightful place’ in the Premier League when we were in the Championship. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 5 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said: I think the WASPI commitment was also a mistake; not the commitment itself, but making it without properly costing it, after releasing the costings document, and without doing any work to make the moral case for why those women deserved compensation. It clearly didn't help, and I bet if we looked in the demographic cross-tabs Labour will have lost that group by a large margin. They just didn't put in the work first. This was the straw that broke the camels back for me. A manifesto of pledges that as you say, generally sounded pretty good. All costed, although there was some criticism of the costings. Then "Oh, and this other thing that's been going on for years, but we've just decided to chuck £58bn at it. Not in our manifesto so we don't need to cost it". It stank of them not getting the poll results they wanted to chucking out an incredible amount of money to buy some more votes, with no clear way to pay for it without compromising on the rest of their manifesto. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 3 hours ago, bickster said: I preferred this one (thread) Well, I read it, but it's just a list of all of the good parts of the Blair government and none of the bad ones. The problem for people whose big idea is 'just do Blair again' is that the fiscal, political, media and social contexts that existed in 1997 - more than a quarter of a century before the next election - do not still exist. Most of the voters who switched from Tory to Labour in 1997 have now retired, and are not going to switch back en masse to a left of centre party. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 18, 2019 Moderator Share Posted December 18, 2019 1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said: government Thats the key word in your post Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 4 minutes ago, bickster said: Thats the key word in your post If your analysis is 'If I were them, I would simply win an election rather than losing it', then I find it hard to believe no leadership candidate has yet travelled to your distant, jungly planet to pleadingly hire you for that expertise. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnkarl Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 (edited) 48 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said: If your analysis is 'If I were them, I would simply win an election rather than losing it', then I find it hard to believe no leadership candidate has yet travelled to your distant, jungly planet to pleadingly hire you for that expertise. I think it's a fair critisism of this set of labour clowns we currently have. None of them have experience from government (there might be someone far down the line?), none of them knows what it takes to formulate good policy because they've never actually done it and none of them seem to understand the ramifications of being in government. You can knock Blair and his ilk for a lot of things, but at least he was electable, quick, witty and introduced a hell of a lot more policies than Corbyn\McDonnel\Abbot and any far left candidates they ever put foward will. I think what labour needs to do is to study social democracy, they seem to have removed the social element by alienating half of their base, pushing MP's out and shooting down anyone who's critical as some sort of murdoch conspiracy theorist. Social democracy works in Scandinavia because broad coalitions come together, politics become multi-faceted and isn't painted red or blue by someone like Corbyn\Johnson. When a party becomes too lop sided to one wing in our system you see what is currently happening to Labour. Edited December 18, 2019 by magnkarl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 6 minutes ago, magnkarl said: I think it's a fair critisism of this set of labour clowns we currently have. None of them have experience from government (there might be someone far down the line?), none of them knows what it takes to formulate good policy because they've never actually done it and none of them seem to understand the ramifications of being in government. You can knock Blair and his ilk for a lot of things, but at least he was electable, quick, witty and introduced a hell of a lot more policies than Corbyn\McDonnel\Abbot and any far left candidates they ever put foward will. I think what labour needs to do is to study social democracy, they seem to have removed the social element by alienating half of their base, pushing MP's out and shooting down anyone who's critical as some sort of murdoch conspiracy theorist. Social democracy works in Scandinavia because broad coalitions come together, politics become multi-faceted and isn't painted red or blue by someone like Corbyn\Johnson. When a party becomes too lop sided to one wing in our system you see what is currently happening to Labour. You're simply repeating bickster's 'if in doubt, win an election' wisdom. Of course most of the party hasn't been in government; it's 9 years since there was a Labour government, and they've suffered three big election defeats since then. How could there be many people with governing experience left? We also don't have a Scandinavian political or media culture, so I don't really see how relevant that is to what the next Labour leader should do. Of course it would be nice if the country could be like Sweden for the next five years, but I'm not holding my breath eh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnkarl Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said: You're simply repeating bickster's 'if in doubt, win an election' wisdom. Of course most of the party hasn't been in government; it's 9 years since there was a Labour government, and they've suffered three big election defeats since then. How could there be many people with governing experience left? We also don't have a Scandinavian political or media culture, so I don't really see how relevant that is to what the next Labour leader should do. Of course it would be nice if the country could be like Sweden for the next five years, but I'm not holding my breath eh. Labour could easily stop shooting itself in the foot by stopping their internal purge. That'd help a lot. There's definitely a big issue with the sycophantic attitudes a lot of the leadership has had towards Corbyn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 37 minutes ago, magnkarl said: Labour could easily stop shooting itself in the foot by stopping their internal purge. That'd help a lot. There's definitely a big issue with the sycophantic attitudes a lot of the leadership has had towards Corbyn. What internal purge is happening at the moment? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 18, 2019 Moderator Share Posted December 18, 2019 39 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said: You're simply repeating bickster's 'if in doubt, win an election' wisdom. I'm not sure where the if in doubt bit came from. The point I'm making is you can't make a difference if you don't win. To make a difference you need policies that will be electable. Labour failed in that respect, they should learn from that but they won't. What I'm reading is that many of them think they had too many good policies, some are even suggesting that the polices were right but it was Corbyn alone that was responsible for the defeat, this isn't the case either. The policies were as bad as Corbyn It's typical of the left wing bunker mentality I've experienced most of my adult life. It's why I left the Labour Party by the age of 22 (having stood in a number of student elections representing them), most of these people are detached from reality and live in their little left wing bubble. They'll also never learn. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 5 minutes ago, bickster said: I'm not sure where the if in doubt bit came from. The point I'm making is you can't make a difference if you don't win. I don't think this is right, to be honest. The Conservatives have performed a huge, near-180 degree turn in their fiscal policies in the last three years, and especially since Johnson took charge, and I don't believe for one moment that is entirely divorced from the opposition to austerity that they have received. Obviously you want to win, but you can still influence the debate by what you choose to oppose and how much traction you get on that. That is all that Labour can achieve for the next five years in any case. 16 minutes ago, bickster said: To make a difference you need policies that will be electable. Labour failed in that respect, they should learn from that but they won't. What I'm reading is that many of them think they had too many good policies, some are even suggesting that the polices were right but it was Corbyn alone that was responsible for the defeat, this isn't the case either. The policies were as bad as Corbyn It would definitely help move the conversation on if we were talking about *which* policies you think were misguided or wrong, and how they could be better. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 18, 2019 Moderator Share Posted December 18, 2019 5 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said: It would definitely help move the conversation on if we were talking about *which* policies you think were misguided or wrong, and how they could be better. I'll tell my MP, trouble is, he's always somewhere else, in other constituencies trying to get Labour to lose better there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 1 minute ago, bickster said: I'll tell my MP, trouble is, he's always somewhere else, in other constituencies trying to get Labour to lose better there I think we want different conversations. I want to talk about the future direction of the Labour party and discuss what people mean when they say they need to change policies, whereas I feel like you want to vent steam and call them all a bunch of **** idiots. That's fair enough, I guess, but I don't suppose either of us is going to get the conversation we want at this point so I suggest we stop replying to each other for the time being. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 18, 2019 Moderator Share Posted December 18, 2019 27 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said: I think we want different conversations. I want to talk about the future direction of the Labour party and discuss what people mean when they say they need to change policies, whereas I feel like you want to vent steam and call them all a bunch of **** idiots. That's fair enough, I guess, but I don't suppose either of us is going to get the conversation we want at this point so I suggest we stop replying to each other for the time being. The point is, it isn't my job to tell anyone what policies they should have, it's up to them to sell it to me Or put it another way, I shop in the shops that sell the stuff I like 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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