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

[chrisp65]

19 minutes ago, blandy said:

Apparently Labour have looked into why they got horsed in the election, and they've found out.... no...wait for it... that having a rubbish leader, a bonkers Brexit non-policy and a non-credible manifesto was a bad idea.

If only someone could have let them know before the election.

The detail they’ve gone in to is absolutely forensic and to be commended.

Apparently, pretending Scotland and Wales didn’t exist might also have been an issue, for voters in Scotland and Wales.

I think they might have really tapped in to some absolute data gold here.

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

Apparently Labour have looked into why they got horsed in the election, and they've found out.... no...wait for it... that having a rubbish leader, a bonkers Brexit non-policy and a non-credible manifesto was a bad idea.

If only someone could have let them know before the election.

What part of 'what you were telling them' about Brexit would have rescued the votes of 1.7m Leave voters?

[bickster]

18 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

What part of 'what you were telling them' about Brexit would have rescued the votes of 1.7m Leave voters?

The part where they should as political animals had the courage of their convictions to actually approach those people and explain why what they thought was a good idea, wasn't. Instead of trying to fudge the whole thing which no-one on ANY side of the debate appreciated. They did the worst thing they could possibly do. The Worst!

[blandy]

57 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

What part of 'what you were telling them' about Brexit would have rescued the votes of 1.7m Leave voters?

I wasn't telling them anything. They lost me when they appointed that numpty as leader and they all started fighting like rats in a a sack. When the Likes of Len McLuskey and co had far too much influence, and further when ....well I think we've done this before.. I wrote down what I thought on VT, (probably far too often  ).

But as Bicks says, they got to where they got to on Brexit because they bottled, over a period of what - a couple of years or more? the notion of standing up for what they believed in, and instead cravenly tried to face both ways at the same time.

They apparently lost leavers and remainers over this duplicitous stance. Perhaps for example, if what I'd said (and I did say it) about bluntly picking a side would have led to them either not losing a million remainers, or not losing 1.7 million leavers? Who knows - it's fruit and nuts, but what we do know is what they did, didn't work and that it was entirely predictable and apparent that it wouldn't work.

[Chindie]

The current leader isn't exactly a paragon of purest shining Brexit virtue either.

[HanoiVillan]

41 minutes ago, Chindie said:

The current leader isn't exactly a paragon of purest shining Brexit virtue either.

No, indeed - the catastrophic policy described above was his above all. 

Fwiw, I agree with the posters above that the policy was a bad compromise, but the only plausible better one really was 'the same as 2017', and it wasn't the corbynites who made it more remain. It's just funny seeing people complain about the brexit policy from the remain direction, when more leave votes were lost, in more geographically important areas. A 'better' policy would have been less popular on this forum, not more. 

[bickster]

21 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

No, indeed - the catastrophic policy described above was his above all. 

No it wasn't, he might well have been the Shadow Brexit Secretary but it's the party conference that decides policy and I also seem to recall reading about a huge stitch up in the composite meeting and Starmer quie clearly unhappy about it, stormed out rather angrily but refused to make comment.

It was quite clear leading up to that conference which way Starmer wanted the party to go (pretty much the same as the majority of the membership)

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

No it wasn't, he might well have been the Shadow Brexit Secretary but it's the party conference that decides policy and I also seem to recall reading about a huge stitch up in the composite meeting and Starmer quie clearly unhappy about it, stormed out rather angrily but refused to make comment.

It was quite clear leading up to that conference which way Starmer wanted the party to go (pretty much the same as the majority of the membership)

I perhaps haven't made the point very clearly. I'm not arguing that the policy that existed was everything Keir Starmer dreamed of, or that he personally designed it. Starmer was, however, the figure in the shadow cabinet who was perhaps most responsible for dragging Labour's Brexit policy in a Remain direction. As you say yourself, if possible he would probably have gone even further. But that was the wrong direction to take, because the first-past-the-post electoral map was what it was, and Labour were more vulnerable in northern Leave-voting seats than they were in southern Remain-voting ones.

There was probably no 'right' Brexit policy; they were probably in an impossible position. The 'no second referendum, and a very soft exit' position at least had the benefit of doing better than expected at holding the coalition together in 2017. But it would have struggled in 2019 because a lot had shifted by then, and the Dunts and O'Briens and Campbells and Femis and all the other stars of the Remain firmament would have ridden them even harder, as would Remainers On Here.

Look, I'm not trying to start a fight. I would have preferred to Remain too. But being seen to undermine a democratic referendum result was not a popular thing Out There, regardless of whether it was On Here.

[bickster]

5 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

a democratic referendum result

Well that phrase in itself is one of the biggest lies they should have been tackling against instead of rubbing it's belly and playing fetch the stick

[blandy]

15 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

It's just funny seeing people complain about the brexit policy from the remain direction, when more leave votes were lost, in more geographically important areas. A 'better' policy would have been less popular on this forum

I don’t know who that’s directed at, but I think it’s incorrect. Firstly the complaint is and was about trying to face in both directions, about not having a clear policy, not that “it wasn’t remain”. 
I was going to type a load more, but it’s done, it’s in the past. Personally I don’t perceive Starmer was responsible for their policy, Corbyn and his aides wanted a damaging Tory Brexit, so he could sweep up in the aftermath, the rest of labour wanted remain and so they fudged it at their conference.

[chrisp65]

48 minutes ago, blandy said:

Corbyn and his aides wanted a damaging Tory Brexit, so he could sweep up in the aftermath, the rest of labour wanted remain and so they fudged it at their conference.

It really is just that. I’d struggle to see how they could have done a worse job. 

For me, I was sort of ambivalent about Brexit at the start, voted remain, but could have been persuaded otherwise, I think. The tory Brexit is clearly going to be really really bad. The Labour policy came over as being a mess, with a vague hope that an economic disaster would then sweep them to power.

Well, strangely they might yet get their long game wish fulfilled.

You should never say never, but right now I would never vote for them again.

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

I don’t know who that’s directed at, but I think it’s incorrect. Firstly the complaint is and was about trying to face in both directions, about not having a clear policy, not that “it wasn’t remain”. 
I was going to type a load more, but it’s done, it’s in the past. Personally I don’t perceive Starmer was responsible for their policy, Corbyn and his aides wanted a damaging Tory Brexit, so he could sweep up in the aftermath, the rest of labour wanted remain and so they fudged it at their conference.

In the simplest analysis, there were only four possible policies: 1] a harder Brexit, 2] a softer Brexit, 3] a second referendum or 4] overruling the referendum. They had policy 2 in 2017, and then moved to policy 3 in 2019. You can criticise that shift (it clearly didn't work), but there is three years of evidence in the Brexit thread that you wanted a more Remain-leaning policy personally, and that that was also the dominant position on the forum. Maybe people can say 'well, it should have been policy 4 then', but that didn't work out for the Lib Dems either did it.

 

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

there is three years of evidence in the Brexit thread that you wanted a more Remain-leaning policy personally

There are 2 things which it is important to separate. There's what I want, as a personal viewpoint - my ideal outcome of the whole national Brexit process, involving all the parties and country. That's one thing. Like @chrisp65I was not personally massively pro EU, like I'm not a sewer enthusiast. But I recognise that we're worse of in many ways without the EU (or sewers). I hated TTIP and that alone was almost enough to make me want to leave - go back to the thread, it'll all be in there.

The second thing is what comment and criticism I made of Labour's Brexit position throughout - where I said they could or should have gone and what they could have done as time moved along. 

And you're quite wrong about this second thing. In observing the stance of Labour, I repeatedly said things like (this isn't word for word, as I can't be arsed searching, unless you really want me to, in which case I will) "there is a perfectly credible argument to be made for a Leave position/policy, but they aren't making it". I also recall saying that another thing they could have done would have been to reach out to the SNP, Plaid, Greens, LDs and collectively work together against  the Tory Brexit position - either putting forward the benefits of remain, or putting forward a coherent kind of one nation critique of the Tory Policy and exactly why it was so wrong, and what the alternative could be - e.g. (say) remain in the Single Market... I also observed that pretty much all their members and voters and MPs were pro remain and there was another argument for coming down clearly on that stance. So my unchanged opinion is that there were at least 3 positions, all of which had credibility and honesty, which they could have adopted that were definitely not worse than the face both ways tactic, and in all likelihood much better than that 2 faced approach.

It's possible to comment on a party's policy or actions, in a way which os more than just "they should do exactly what my personal stance is" - like commenting on someone's car troubles, despite having a different preference for model of car - "drain the fuel tank because you've put diesel in a petrol tank and it'll cause a problem when you try to drive " - isn't that same as "I want to have a Petrol Car".

[blandy]

On 01/11/2018 at 17:29, blandy said:

Secondly, these naughty Leave campaign people in both Leave campaign groups - there's a huge connection with the likes of Johnson, Gove, Mogg etc  - top tory ministers implicated in [consults lawyers] "matters that have been or may be found to be illegal" - that's an absolute gift horse for a Labour leadership.

So for Labour (or anyone else) there's an open goal here.

Foreign interference, Campaign illegality, now investigations by the organised crime investigators into Aaron Banks, there's Cambridge analytica... There's the clusterpork state of the negotiations, the Gov't papers on the impact of Brexit on trade, jobs, prosperity, NHS, medicine, Science etc etc. There's the narrow result of the advisory referendum. There's the parliamentary maths (most MPs against brexit, and massively against hard brexit). There's the lies and dishonesty. and so on and so on.

Leadership would be coming out of your potting shed and actually connecting these things, making a coherent argument for impropriety and illegality having occurred and connecting it to the odious numpties of the Leave campaigns. Pointing out their hypocrisy, too - the Mogg hedge funds moving to Ireland etc.

...Labour's position on Brexit is as messed up as the Tories. And this is not an anti leave argument. They could credibly and coherently make a leave argument, and still point out all of the above, if the argument about upsetting people or whatever is real.

On 14/03/2019 at 18:45, blandy said:

... Corbyn's whole modus operandi has been to pretend to do something, while doing nothing. He'll continue to do nothing that has a hope, because he wants a tory Brexit and to then say "all these consequences - the tories did that, Vote me".

If a deal gets agreed only on the proviso it's put to a referendum, what is Corbyn going to campaign for? - A tory Brexit plan, or Remain - neither of which he wants to be seen to support, so he'll effectively off to his potting shed and hide, again. So that's not going to happen.

With different leaders this would all have been sorted by now. In effect a hung parliament with tight margins, and the same situation of 48-52% in the last ref, the obvious conclusion is that a low scale Brexit is what the natural outcome should be. Take away May and Corbzz and replace them with sane people, and they'd work together to thrash out a soft Brexit. Two leaders, two broken parties.

[HanoiVillan]

25 minutes ago, blandy said:

I also observed that pretty much all their members and voters and MPs were pro remain and there was another argument for coming down clearly on that stance. 

This isn't true, at all. By 2019, their MPs were split into several camps - there were people who wanted to ignore the first referendum (but mostly wouldn't say so), people who wanted a second referendum and planned to campaign to remain, people who wanted a second referendum and would have campaigned to leave, people who didn't want a second referendum but wanted a 'jobs first Brexit' a la 2017, and there were about two dozen of them who voted for Johnson's Brexit bill. So no, 'pretty much all' of their MPs were not 'pro remain'.

 

The claim is also untrue of their members, and more importantly, their voters as well. The whole subject of the discussion is the near-2 million 2016 Leave, 2017 Labour voters who switched to the Conservatives in 2019. That's the whole point of the discussion! Those voters didn't want a second referendum policy with a better explanation; they wanted the result of the referendum they won honoured. The 2019 policy was a disaster not because those voters didn't understand what it meant, but because they did, and they were angry about it.

 

43 minutes ago, blandy said:

It's possible to comment on a party's policy or actions, in a way which os more than just "they should do exactly what my personal stance is" - like commenting on someone's car troubles, despite having a different preference for model of car - "drain the fuel tank because you've put diesel in a petrol tank and it'll cause a problem when you try to drive " - isn't that same as "I want to have a Petrol Car".

I'm fully aware of that. I literally wrote, like 8 posts ago or something:

17 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Look, I'm not trying to start a fight. I would have preferred to Remain too. But being seen to undermine a democratic referendum result was not a popular thing Out There, regardless of whether it was On Here.

I fully understand that the thing I would have preferred turned out to be an electoral disaster. But I'm not seeing other people understanding that. Your claim that 'pretty much all their members and voters and MPs were pro remain' doesn't suggest that you've grasped it, frankly.

[blandy]

4 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Your claim that 'pretty much all their members and voters and MPs were pro remain' doesn't suggest that you've grasped it, frankly.

Labour got 10,269,051 votes. Another million remainers, we're told,  left them because of their stance not being remain and. 1.7 million we're told, left them because it wasn't leave enough for them ( though Corbyn was definitely a factor in that, too). If I'm generous, take away all those 1.7 million out of over 11 million and you have 9.6 million remain, and in the parliamentary votes, there were a handful of leave rebels (10 to be exact). The maths says I'm right, surely.

[blandy]

3 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

I fully understand that the thing I would have preferred turned out to be an electoral disaster. But I'm not seeing other people understanding that. Your claim that 'pretty much all their members and voters and MPs were pro remain' doesn't suggest that you've grasped it, frankly.

There's a high degree of inconsistency and contradiction in what you've written:

You say "I would have preferred to Remain, but that was a disaster of a policy"....except they didn't have that as a policy.

You say you understand that people can comment on policy without it being the same as what they want, but then also said

23 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

It's just funny seeing people complain about the brexit policy from the remain direction

and

4 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

there is three years of evidence in the Brexit thread that you wanted a more Remain-leaning policy personally

which looks a heck of a lot like you're implying it's people complaining about the policy because they were remainers. 

[OutByEaster?]

4 hours ago, blandy said:

I hated TTIP and that alone was almost enough to make me want to leave.

Just on this - there's a fair bit to suggest that Brexit is a reaction to the failure of TTIP to open Europe up to US corporate interests. Once TTIP got blocked in the ridiculous bureaucracy  of the EU, the US needed to find another way to open up some of those markets, including breaking up the EU. It's why Farage was in Trumpland;  their aims and his aims aligned. 

I hated TTIP and it's failure was enough to make me want to remain part of the EU.

[blandy]

20 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

there's a fair bit to suggest that Brexit is a reaction to the failure of TTIP to open Europe up to US corporate interests

Perhaps - . If you're saying that though the desire from various throbbers to leave the EU pre-dated TTIP talks, nevertheless there is a significant part of the tories in particular that are dead keen on lowering standards and democratic oversight, while at the same time more than happy to have secretive, non-sovereign (they're big on claims of sovereignty being a reason to sack-off the EU, though) courts facilitate raw capitalism then yeah, totally. On the other hand, there's evidence, including obviously, timing, that suggests TTIP came along after Brexit was already stirred up. There were Brexit throbbers under Major and Thatcher long before anyone dreamt of TTIP, weren't there?

[OutByEaster?]

56 minutes ago, blandy said:

Perhaps - . If you're saying that though the desire from various throbbers to leave the EU pre-dated TTIP talks, nevertheless there is a significant part of the tories in particular that are dead keen on lowering standards and democratic oversight, while at the same time more than happy to have secretive, non-sovereign (they're big on claims of sovereignty being a reason to sack-off the EU, though) courts facilitate raw capitalism then yeah, totally. On the other hand, there's evidence, including obviously, timing, that suggests TTIP came along after Brexit was already stirred up. There were Brexit throbbers under Major and Thatcher long before anyone dreamt of TTIP, weren't there?

There were, but the whole thing noticeably accelerated after TTiP failed, and at a time where the US was waging an economic campaign across the planet to restrict Chinese growth and Americanise global trade. It could be coincidental, I think there was an (un)happy convergence of a number of interests, none of which feel like they were mine.