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

[Chindie]

You're all missing the point here.

How much do we hate thee, Jeremy Corbyn? Let us count the ways.

[ml1dch]

5 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. 

I think you are doing "other people" a bit of a disservice. The extension of the above suggests that there was a potential policy that wasn't going to be an electoral disaster. And that potential policy didn't exist. 

Your posts suggest that had they taken a more "leave" position then they keep their leave seats but for some reason don't lose their remain ones, and thus perform better. And there is nothing to suggest that's the case.

As you've rightly said, they were placed in an impossible positon. Which isn't hindsight, I don't believe anyone claimed otherwise last Autumn. They (rightly, in my opinion) decided to go with what a majority of their MPs, members and voters wanted rather than a minority. It wasn't going to win them the election, but going with "we need to win Mansfield, Stoke and Grimsby and the people who vote for us there are racist statue-defenders, so we're just going with whatever they want" was no more viable an election strategy than what they chose.

For all the Miliband reports, the story of the 2019 election is that Labour didn't have a pragmatic faction, willing to prioritize the success of the party over their personal position on Europe. 

So (a larger number of) Labour leavers prioritized Brexit, (a larger number of) Conservative remainers prioritized the Conservative party. 

Edited June 20, 2020 by ml1dch

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

You're all missing the point here.

How much do we hate thee, Jeremy Corbyn? Let us count the ways.

Yes one of the worst labour leaders of all time.

Let us count the ways why he was such a disaster. He couldnt even compete agajnst a oaf like johnson

[HanoiVillan]

5 hours ago, blandy said:

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.

No, it doesn't, because a] *where* the votes were lost matters enormously in a first-past-the-post constituency system (so votes in marginal constituencies simply matter more - in 2019, the constituencies that mattered largely featured high proportion of leave voting LAB-CON switchers), and b] your view of the parliamentary Labour party is simply insufficient - 19 rebels voted for Johnson's Withdrawal Agreement, but that number does not include the very large group of MP's of the likes of Yvette Cooper or Stephen Kinnock who didn't vote for the Withdrawal Agreement but did not want either a second referendum or to remain in the EU. Labour simply was very divided on everything to do with Brexit. You have said yourself that the policy seemed to be confused and 'face both ways' - that didn't happen by accident, or because of idiocy, it was the inevitable result of trying to hold an extremely divided party together.

6 hours ago, blandy said:

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.

Why do you have something in quotation marks that I didn't say? You appear to be correcting something that I haven't said, and I have no idea why.

6 hours ago, blandy said:

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

What I'm saying is people need to decide whether they dislike Labour's Brexit policy because it was insufficiently remain, or because it was ineffective. Because the reason it was ineffective is that it turned off lots of leave voters, not that it was insufficiently remain-leaning. People On Here mostly did not want Labour to have a Brexit policy that appealed to northern Leave voters in 2019, but not having one led to lots of lost seats. 

[HanoiVillan]

4 hours ago, ml1dch said:

I think you are doing "other people" a bit of a disservice. The extension of the above suggests that there was a potential policy that wasn't going to be an electoral disaster. And that potential policy didn't exist. 

Your posts suggest that had they taken a more "leave" position then they keep their leave seats but for some reason don't lose their remain ones, and thus perform better. And there is nothing to suggest that's the case.

As you've rightly said, they were placed in an impossible positon. Which isn't hindsight, I don't believe anyone claimed otherwise last Autumn. They (rightly, in my opinion) decided to go with what a majority of their MPs, members and voters wanted rather than a minority. It wasn't going to win them the election, but going with "we need to win Mansfield, Stoke and Grimsby and the people who vote for us there are racist statue-defenders, so we're just going with whatever they want" was no more viable an election strategy than what they chose.

For all the Miliband reports, the story of the 2019 election is that Labour didn't have a pragmatic faction, willing to prioritize the success of the party over their personal position on Europe. 

So (a larger number of) Labour leavers prioritized Brexit, (a larger number of) Conservative remainers prioritized the Conservative party. 

I think that's a much fairer analysis. And I said something to this effect as well: '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.'

I think all I would say is that Labour majorities in Remain-voting seats were nearly all larger than in Leave-voting seats, so there was potentially more room for losing voters without losing seats. But I think your conclusion that Labour didn't have a pragmatic faction, and that that would have led to trouble no matter what, is fundamentally correct.

[chrisp65]

Lots of activity on that twitter today from Labour politicians celebrating that they’ve won a reprieve for Royal Glamorgan Hospital A&E Department, lots of ‘we’ve done it! We’ve won!’ style tweets.

Westminster Labour MP’s, Cardiff Labour MP’s, local Labour offices, all hailing their victory and the power of community getting together and saving the NHS.

Labour are in charge of the Health Service in Wales and it was their idea to close it in the first place.

 

I’m off to suggest I have salad for tea, then campaign against the idea of salad for tea, then declare my major victory over me when I decide not to have salad for tea.

That’s apparently how it works now.

 

[blandy]

On 20/06/2020 at 23:51, HanoiVillan said:

Why do you have something in quotation marks that I didn't say? You appear to be correcting something that I haven't said, and I have no idea why.

 

You did say it. in this post https://www.villatalk.com/topic/13280-the-chairman-mao-resembling-queen-hating-threat-to-britain-labour-party-thread/?do=findComment&comment=2956538

Quote

 

 I would have preferred to Remain too....

I fully understand that the thing I would have preferred turned out to be an electoral disaster

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

11 minutes ago, blandy said:

 

You did say it. in this post https://www.villatalk.com/topic/13280-the-chairman-mao-resembling-queen-hating-threat-to-britain-labour-party-thread/?do=findComment&comment=2956538

 

What I didn't say was that remaining was Labour's policy, which is what your post seemed to imply.

[blandy]

3 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

What I didn't say was that remaining was Labour's policy, which is what your post seemed to imply.

Why did you even mention it and say it was an electoral disaster, then? Because it wasn't an electoral disaster for anyone who had it as a policy. The SNP did nicely. The lib Dems votes went up by more than 50% from 2.4 to 3.7 million and so on. The only party that had a disaster was Labour, so I thought you must have been implying it was their policy.

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

Why did you even mention it and say it was an electoral disaster, then? Because it wasn't an electoral disaster for anyone who had it as a policy. The SNP did nicely. The lib Dems votes went up by more than 50% from 2.4 to 3.7 million and so on. The only party that had a disaster was Labour, so I thought you must have been implying it was their policy.

'being seen to undermine a democratic referendum result was not a popular thing Out There, regardless of whether it was On Here.'

More than one type of policy was seen as undermining the referendum result. Labour and the Lib Dems had very different policies, but both were seen by Leavers as 'betraying Brexit'.

The idea that the Lib Dems had a good election is laughable. Their leader lost her seat and they lost one seat net. That's an objectively terrible result, which is also the conclusion of their post-election review.

[blandy]

Remain (your preferred policy) was not an "electoral disaster" - All the remain parties gained votes. Overall they gained seats.

Leave worked for the Tories, Remain worked for the remain parties and the fudge was a clusterpork for Labour (to get back on topic). Worst result since 1935, losing what 60 seats and 2.7 million votes. That's a disaster.

When Labour picked up a load of votes between 2105 and 2017 this was seen as a good thing, wasn't it? When the much smaller LDs pick up a load of votes it's "terrible"? Sure they wanted to do much better, and a net change of -1 seat after winning an extra 1.3 million votes must have been gutting for them. But regardless of the one seat loss for the LDs, overall it's (to me) ridiculous to claim remain was a "disaster".

Now Brexit's done (although with negotiations still to happen on what sort we get) I really hope that Labour never again gets itself into a state where it makes itself as unelectable as a government as it had done. Our election system is utterly porked, but until it changes, the only thing to stop the evil tories is Labour, so it needs to be better than the shambles it's been for the past, what 5 years? 

[ml1dch]

25 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

'More than one type of policy was seen as undermining the referendum result. Labour and the Lib Dems had very different policies, but both were seen by Leavers as 'betraying Brexit'.

There comes a point though that you have to stop pandering to morons. 

For some of the knuckdraggers, anything short of bricking up the Channel Tunnel and sending gunboats to Zeebrugge would be "betraying Brexit".

[blandy]

34 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

There comes a point though that you have to stop pandering to morons

Indeed. While all partIes need to be pragmatic, there is a point where standing for what you believe in has to matter, has to be a driving force. I think everyone accepts that parties are not a kind of single minded entity, but a collection of individuals with views and ideals, but they can’t be half pregnant, they can’t be both for and against a fundamental thing and hope to be taken seriously. You have to be credible, to make a case for what you believe and why.  Pandering to morons turns you into Trump’s America, or a version thereof. 

[LondonLax]

Yes, I don’t know what happened to ‘leading on principles’ but it seems to have fallen out of fashion in most places in the west. Now it’s all about who can pander to what parties think their focus groups want to hear. 

[Demitri_C]

2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Lots of activity on that twitter today from Labour politicians celebrating that they’ve won a reprieve for Royal Glamorgan Hospital A&E Department, lots of ‘we’ve done it! We’ve won!’ style tweets.

Westminster Labour MP’s, Cardiff Labour MP’s, local Labour offices, all hailing their victory and the power of community getting together and saving the NHS.

Labour are in charge of the Health Service in Wales and it was their idea to close it in the first place.

 

I’m off to suggest I have salad for tea, then campaign against the idea of salad for tea, then declare my major victory over me when I decide not to have salad for tea.

That’s apparently how it works now.

 

They did the same with a hospital near me years ago so that does not suprise me

[HanoiVillan]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

Remain (your preferred policy) was not an "electoral disaster" - All the remain parties gained votes. Overall they gained seats.

Yes, it was. There is a Conservative government with an 80 seat majority, and we are no longer members of the EU.

[HanoiVillan]

3 hours ago, blandy said:

When Labour picked up a load of votes between 2105 and 2017 this was seen as a good thing, wasn't it? When the much smaller LDs pick up a load of votes it's "terrible"? Sure they wanted to do much better, and a net change of -1 seat after winning an extra 1.3 million votes must have been gutting for them. But regardless of the one seat loss for the LDs, overall it's (to me) ridiculous to claim remain was a "disaster".

The more I think about this argument, the more 'if football matches were 45 minutes long, Villa would be 10th in the table!' energy I get.

[blandy]

11 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Yes, it was. There is a Conservative government with an 80 seat majority, and we are no longer members of the EU.

By taking seats from Labour who didn’t have a coherent policy on Brexit.  The remain SNP took labour seats too.  Labour didn’t get walloped because they had a remain policy. They got walloped because they had a ridiculous policy of negotiate a unicorn different leave deal, then have a referendum on that deal,  but not recommending the deal they themselves (in their imaginations) would have negotiated. They had an absolute clown for a leader and a manifesto that was ludicrous.
Even Labour knows that’s the case.

[blandy]

10 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

The more I think about this argument, the more 'if football matches were 45 minutes long, Villa would be 10th in the table!' energy I get.

Don’t tell that to Catweazle and his furious tramps or they’ll tell you to **** off and join the tories.

[HanoiVillan]

37 minutes ago, blandy said:

By taking seats from Labour who didn’t have a coherent policy on Brexit.  The remain SNP took labour seats too.  Labour didn’t get walloped because they had a remain policy. They got walloped because they had a ridiculous policy of negotiate a unicorn different leave deal, then have a referendum on that deal,  but not recommending the deal they themselves (in their imaginations) would have negotiated. They had an absolute clown for a leader and a manifesto that was ludicrous.
Even Labour knows that’s the case.

Yes, they did blandy. It wasn't the only reason they lost a large number of northern leave-voting seats, but it absolutely was one of them (the report has it as the most important reason). I think we should draw a line under this conversation, because we're not going anywhere.