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

[Dr_Pangloss]

9 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Christ. It'd be like us drafting in Tactics Tim for some advice.

Or like getting driving lessons from Stevie Wonder.

[peterms]

26 minutes ago, desensitized43 said:

It seems to me completely bizarre that when you're conducting a review into why you keep losing elections, you wouldn't ask the most the successful Labour leader in the parties history. The guy that won 3 elections in a row and managed to deliver majorities that the current crop would only see in their dreams.

Blair and his supporters keep on about three elections in a row as though it was his personal achievement.

In fact, if you look at what was happening at the time, the picture is a little different.

Thatcher had resigned in 1990, and the tories were in turmoil.  They won the 1992 election despite that, and that was the high point of their popularity for many years.  We had all the "sleaze" stuff, Major's pathetic "back to basics" charade, and most importantly Black Wednesday and Lamont's misguided attempt to hold the value of the pound, leading to ERM withdrawal and the loss of the party's always unjustified reputation for economic competence.

Shortly after the election, Labour went ahead in the polls, and remained there.  When John Smith died, Blair inherited this very favourable position.

(Graph from here).

This polling position, fairly consistent from before Blair became leader to the 1997 election, was reflected in the landslide vistory.  Blair didn't build that, he arrived with it in place.

Following that, Labour lost votes and members consistently, not least because of the illegal and shameful Iraq war.

I can see why Blair and his familiars would like to spin the tale of him personally building up this vast majority and holding it until someone else let it all go to pot, but actually it wasn't like that.

I can also see why Labour wouldn't want to consult him on where to go now.  Just about every pronouncement he makes is either trashing the party, or self-justification, or rewriting history.  He has nothing to offer.

[Chindie]

Blair is **** toxic.

[Seat68]

People praising Blair. It's like Klopp taking credit for Rogers hard work. They were on the upwards trajectory when he took over. 

[Brumstopdogs]

 

 

[peterms]

17 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

People praising Blair. It's like Klopp taking credit for Rogers hard work. They were on the upwards trajectory when he took over. 

Did you look at the graph?  The appropriate comparison would be if they were already top of the league, not on a trajectory from somewhere else.

[Seat68]

8 minutes ago, peterms said:

Did you look at the graph?  The appropriate comparison would be if they were already top of the league, not on a trajectory from somewhere else.

I looked at the graph, Blair took over July 94. 

[HanoiVillan]

This Blair discourse - that Labour should either ask him how to win elections, or copy his leadership - is very simplistic and misguided.

• Firstly, there is no evidence that Blair would have handled the politics of 2016-2019 any more successfully than anyone else. He has been able to shift from 'being a prominent supporter of the People's Vote Campaign' to 'complaining post-election about losing northern Labour seats' without skipping a beat only because nobody cares enough about him to interrogate how incompatible those two positions are.
• Secondly, the idea that Blair's legacy is part of Labour's problem is not absurd at all. It's true that Laura Pidcock is using his bad reputation as a shield to ignore the more immediate problem of Corbyn's popularity, but it's weird that people who were and are very able to read Corbyn's personal approval ratings and draw the appropriate conclusion (that he was dragging the party down) seem to be completely ignoring that Blair also 'enjoys' toxic approval ratings in 2019.
• Thirdly, as Peter demonstrates with the polling above, Blair benefitted enormously from the Tories torching their reputation through Black Wednesday before he became leader. It's true that he didn't lose that lead, but then he also had the advantage of being leader for years 15-18 of Conservative rule.
• Fourthly, the specific group of voters that Blair attracted from the Tories - asset-rich boomers in the second half of their careers - have now aged out of the workforce and aren't likely to vote Labour en masse in the future under any type of leader, and there isn't an equivalent mass group in the current electorate who would be impressed by exactly the same policies.
• Fifthly, there is no evidence that Rupert Murdoch, specifically, is going to support a Labour party under any type of leader. He had already stopped endorsing Labour by the 2005 election, and since then has had his media properties vigorously oppose the party, under Labour Right leadership (Brown), soft-left (Miliband) and left (Corbyn). Both he personally, and his media empire more generally, have become much more radically conservative in the intervening two decades.
• Which brings me to the final point, which is that the world has changed in a lot of ways - more than can be listed here - since 1994, which is 30 years before the next election is likely to be held. It's tempting to imagine that if something worked once, it must work again, but that isn't true, and copying is definitely time-limited. Blair didn't take over the party in 1994 promising to copy everything that Harold Wilson had done thirty years earlier, and neither will Labour's next leader.

In general, it's funny coming to this thread after reading On Topic, where I notice there is the standard chorus of siren voices demanding the club re-sign Christian Benteke.

[chrisp65]

At least if Benteke had attacked Iraq he’d have probably missed.

[LondonLax]

3 hours ago, bickster said:

Whoever they pick as leader, they are going to struggle...

I think this in part is due to the Cult of Corbyn sucking up all the headlines, it was always more about Corbyn than anyone else.

Only 25% had heard of Barry the Gardener and he was like super-sub, stick the gardener on he'll stay on message... he must ave been on telly 5 times the amount that McDonnell was and still the electorate don't know who he is. Corbyn, Corbyn, Corbyn, Corbyn. The cult of personality.

I will say the press are as much to blame for that but Labour kept pushing Corbyn above all else

Holding my hand up here, for quite a while I actually thought ‘Barry the Gardener’ was a Villatalk nickname for Corbyn.

[chrisp65]

I think that all that poll shows is that if you survey 1,500 average UK internet users not that many of them absorb much politics beyond Corbyn and Phwoar Bozza!!!

Personally, I wouldn’t expect prospective candidates for the leader of the opposition to be well known. Time would be better spent trawling their social media to see if 10 years ago they kicked a cat, made a comment about Israel or stood next to an Arab.

[peterms]

And the "red wall" thing is seriously overstated, as well as Blair's magic powers...

[bickster]

I think there's a whole heap of misunderstanding here. No one is saying the Labour Party should get a leader who will start an illegal war in Iraq.

What they are saying is that the Labour Party need a Leader that can pull in votes from both sides of the spectrum and make peoples lives better

Did he win 3 elections in a row? yes. DO Labour have anyone else that can say that? no

As much as there are things he did I totally disagree with and he did "Go Bad", he also has some savvy on how to actually get elected and what policies might be required to achieve that, not just political policies but internal policies.

Labour is currently run by idealists, not politicians. Those idealists will never form a government 

All the self analysis that's currently going on in the Labour Party is an absolute waste of time, they are incapable of looking in the mirror and seeing the problem. It's the political equivalent of an eating disorder or a drug addiction

[Brumstopdogs]

[NurembergVillan]

Blair may be looked back upon divisively, but he was a leader - something we've not had since he left office.

[chrisp65]

Any man that can get that sort of London property portfolio has got to be doing something right.

[NurembergVillan]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

Any man that can get that sort of London property portfolio has got to be doing something right.

He's certainly done more to earn his than the royal family have for theirs.

[chrisp65]

6 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

He's certainly done more to earn his than the royal family have for theirs.

Wouldn’t dispute that for a second, and we mustn’t get in the mindset of rejecting the good for the pursuit of the perfect. I just find him difficult to categorise. All that public private finance stuff we’ll be paying for a long time, university fees, all sorts of little things that were picked up and run with by the tories.

I just think, he was ‘labour’, got rich, got a property portfolio, got jobs with Chase Morgan, Yale University etc., waded in to a war we are all still paying for and likely contributed to people’s psyche voting for Brexit so we don’t have to deal with refugees. I dunno, I’m edging towards him being a net negative when I look back.

 

[Graham t]

Blair should be tried for war crimes in my opinion . They don't call him 'teflon Tony' for nothing....

[OutByEaster?]

We've already had a government that reflects Tony Blair's influence on British politics, with an identikit Blair-esque leader in David Cameron.

I didn't like it. I'd prefer someone more Labour.