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

[darrenm]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

I can't see the whole post (due to work blocking some of it) but the graph - Labour ends it higher than when it started it.

You really need to see the 2 graphs I think. Otherwise it's difficult to visualise the state he inherited the party against how he left it.

There's an argument that governments always lose support as they go along but that's not happening right now with the Tories. 

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, darrenm said:

You really need to see the 2 graphs I think

It'll have to wait - this is what I get

[HanoiVillan]

4 minutes ago, blandy said:

He damaged it hugely with doing War, for sure -  but beyond that, I don't think you have much cause to make the claim.

I mean I can't see the whole post (due to work blocking some of it) but the graph - Labour ends it higher than when it started it. They also end it above the tories, instead of below them, and don't drop below 42% (main line).

They'd settle for having that "destroyed" popularity now.  

Eh? It ends in 2007, with Labour on about 31%, about 6 points behind the Tories.

(Though I don't think 'Blair destroyed Labour's popularity' is particularly pertinent - he left office 14 years ago - and you wouldn't expect a party to become more popular after a decade in office anyway)

[Chindie]

My partner isn't very politically aware, are knows about as much as the news headlines unless a story particularly catches her interest. New Labour basically covered a big section of her childhood and all of her teenage years.

To this day the one thing she can consistently be relied on to mention is that Blair, and by extension Labour, is a crook who cannot be trusted and took us to a war that was illegal.

Blair is a dirty word and his stench hasn't washed off. He should vanish back to his plush rock to die out of the spotlight and keep his mouth shut.

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Eh? It ends in 2007, with Labour on about 31%, about 6 points behind the Tories.

See my post above yours for what I can see - @darrenm has pointed out the missing stuff (to me) tells a different tale. My bad.

[bickster]

There is no point in the graph after Blair taking over to getting elected that the graph ever goes below where John Smith took the graph to, in fact it looks to be an average of at least ten points above that. And the greatest jump in that graph is after Blair gets elected not before, so the riding on the success of John Smith claim is not showing in the data at all

[icouldtelltheworld]

1 hour ago, darrenm said:

 

 

Fascinating post mate - thanks for sharing. Don't entirely agree with your analysis but plenty of food for thought. 

The key thing I take away from this final graph is the absolutely catastrophic effect that Iraq had on Labour's popularity, which tbh the party hasn't fully recovered from (and may never do so)

Edited May 13, 2021 by icouldtelltheworld

[darrenm]

29 minutes ago, icouldtelltheworld said:

Don't entirely agree with your analysis

Neither do I in all honesty. I know there's much more to the story. I'm just trying to show it's a bit more complicated than 'he won 3 elections'

[darrenm]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

There is no point in the graph after Blair taking over to getting elected that the graph ever goes below where John Smith took the graph to, in fact it looks to be an average of at least ten points above that. And the greatest jump in that graph is after Blair gets elected not before, so the riding on the success of John Smith claim is not showing in the data at all

So you're saying that what the previous leader did has no effect on the success of the current leader?

Not trying to do a gotcha. Just wondering because there seems to be 2 contrasting opinions on this.

[icouldtelltheworld]

24 minutes ago, darrenm said:

I'm just trying to show it's a bit more complicated than 'he won 3 elections'

Absolutely - agree completely with this. Me and my mate were talking yesterday about how incredible it is that Labour used to win sizeable majorities, with the Lib Dems also doing well by generally pitching themselves to the left of Labour (on social issues at least). Demonstrates clearly the rightward shift in English politics over the past decade or so. 

Edited May 13, 2021 by icouldtelltheworld

[bickster]

40 minutes ago, darrenm said:

So you're saying that what the previous leader did has no effect on the success of the current leader?

No, thats not what I'm saying at all, I'm saying he took the batton and ran with it further. John Smith Improved it to X, Blair came along and improved it to X plus Y and that Y was pretty much +10 . Thats just me reading your data. Even when he was elected PM and it dipped slightly, it was still at X but it was higher than X by around ten for the vast majority of the 3 years from 94 to 97. The data disproves what you said

Quote

I'd argue that all Blair knows how to do is win a general election off the back of someone else's work and fortuitous circumstances

Fortuitous circumstances is covering an improvement of 25% in the polls over 3 years. That bit in bold just isn't true, you may well be arguing this was nothing to with Blair, I'd suggest that was not true at all

[OutByEaster?]

He took the baton, beat a child to death with it then took up a lucrative consultancy position in the baton making industry.

 

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

On 10/05/2021 at 23:29, HanoiVillan said:

It's kind of funny that there's actually a by-election this very week, on Thursday, which had completely passed me by . . .

It's for Airdrie & Shotts. The SNP MP resigned to become an MSP. It's an incredible sign of Labour's collapse in Scotland that absolutely no-one is talking about this. Among other things, it used to be John Reid's seat, Labour used to score roughly 60% of the vote until 2010, and Labour lost by less than 200 votes in 2017.

Now, crickets.

The by-election the media didn't bother to cover happened in almost complete silence . . . and the result was actually pretty decent for Labour!

Another own goal, this time by not getting any media coverage at all to an election which actually went pretty well for once (even if, eye-balling the results, it seems mostly like unionists switching to Labour for tactical reasons).

Neither Keir Starmer nor Ian Murray (Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, and Labour's only Scottish MP) have said anything at all in public about this race The BBC barely admitted it was happening either, come to that.

But one person who is in no way beginning to circle like a vulture did manage to make it . . . Can you guess?

Spoiler

 

Edited May 14, 2021 by HanoiVillan

[Demitri_C]

Labours suspended unites deputy general secretary for saying Patel should be the one deported

[darrenm]

1 hour ago, Demitri_C said:

Labours suspended unites deputy general secretary for saying Patel should be the one deported

So, I'm going to go against the grain here and admit I don't really know what's right.

If I was writing that tweet, just before I pressed send, I'd go 'hmm, this really could be misconstrued' and not send it.

It's clear the meaning. He meant the home secretary should be the one deported rather than the immigrants. The 'how would you like it' protest is old and classic and was used against Theresa May.

But it was ill-advised. And if anyone was saying that about Diane Abbott, I'd be all over it.

I've had countless people of Asian descent on Twitter say it's more racist to see something racist in the tweet because the racist 'deport them' tropes don't exist like they used to and when someone says someone should be deported in the context of being the home secretary deporting people, their colour or race shouldn't come into it.

So I guess that apologising and deleting is about right after it's been sent. Of course, it's splitting opinion down the middle as usual. Probably about 52/48..

[bickster]

No idea who this Unite bod is but I did see the tweet last night, retweeted by a Labour Councillor saying it was racist.

I just don't get why people feel the need to retweet something, even though they are disagreeing with it because they feel that it's wrong. You can comment on it without amplifying the very thing you are complaining about. It's idiotic 

[chrisp65]

39 minutes ago, bickster said:

No idea who this Unite bod is but I did see the tweet last night, retweeted by a Labour Councillor saying it was racist.

I just don't get why people feel the need to retweet something, even though they are disagreeing with it because they feel that it's wrong. You can comment on it without amplifying the very thing you are complaining about. It's idiotic 

It’s a weird trait.

Broadcasting to a wider audience the very thing you don’t want or don’t agree with.

I’m fairly confident it actually forms part of the M.O. for trombone strokers like Farage who’ve spotted it’s cheaper to be retweeted by the opposition than buying advertising.

 

 

[darrenm]

47 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

It’s a weird trait.

Broadcasting to a wider audience the very thing you don’t want or don’t agree with.

I’m fairly confident it actually forms part of the M.O. for trombone strokers like Farage who’ve spotted it’s cheaper to be retweeted by the opposition than buying advertising.

 

 

Yeah. Like with the people who pay £80 for Farage to do a video message to 'Hugh Shpeenus'. He knows exactly what he's saying, he's doing it because 

1. He's getting £80

2. It keeps his face doing the rounds

[darrenm]

It just keeps getting worse for Labour. The Greens are doing really well. I wonder where their vote is coming from.

 

 

[bickster]

12 minutes ago, darrenm said:

The Greens are doing really well. I wonder where their vote is coming from.

Well it's not coming from actually doing anything