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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Ex-LAB MP and PB regular, Nick Palmer, on why a party split
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Ex-LAB MP and PB regular, Nick Palmer, on why a party split won’t work
It’s pretty clear that Corbyn has won the re-run, and talk of trying once more next year has faded amid eye-rolling on all sides at the thought of doing it all over again. Instead, the hard-core anti-Corbyn wing has started to talk about a split.
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And first - Unlike Owen Who...
Thanks Dr Nick.
'What did you do during the war, Daddy?'
'I sat on the backbenches sulking'
Hardly inspiring
Cults beget pogroms. Expect a witch hunt at a CLP near you in 2017.
Ho, ho, ho!
who's the reddest of them all ?
We'll never split
because we're frit
Also, Corbyn still does not have a guaranteed NEC majority. That means changes to selection/deselection rules are not guaranteed. But even if they were the one year rule means conference could not vote on them until 2018.
Also worth noting that If it ends up 60/40, that means there are around 150,000-200,000 anti-Corbyn members. As a standalone party that would have second biggest membership in the UK.
To recap, Labour Centrists have 80% of The PLP, perhaps 20% of the membership, 5 of the 23 members of the ruling NEC & The Deputy Leader. The new, Revolutionary Left have the Leader, the NEC majority & most of the members. The only alternative to a Split is endless civil war.
Of course most of The MPs dont want a split, their problem is that the other side do.
Out of interest, Labour are within a good chance of winning big in the 2018 London local elections as it will be eight years into a Tory government, do Labour members think many of the Cllr candidates could come from the momentum wing of the party?
I wouldn't quite put it as anti-austerity politics have won the argument' though. Austerity arguments won, but the will has run dry after six years, among public and politicians. It was still seen as necessary, I would guess, so anti-austerity has not won as that would imply people thought it a mistake, but it is the default position now that it is clear austerity will be dropped.
It would have meant a bigger recesssion but once done you can look forward with no deficit and build for the future.
Instead the coalition chickened out and froze spending rather than cutting it. Hence the massive increase in government debt which one day will have to be re-financed when interest rates are a lot higher than today - and we still have an unsustainable annual deficit adding to the debt each year.
PA - Clinton 52 .. Trump 42
OH - Clinton 49 .. Trump 45
FL - Clinton 46 .. Trump 45
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/2016/081016_SWING_PRES_+_BP.pdf
I admit that's a stretch though.
The scary thing is that the price for this has been minimal. It is inconceivable that politicians will not return to the same well.
They have strenuously tried and failed to get rid of Corbyn and only ended up strengthening him. For these MPs to now just sit quietly and hope that they aren't deselected strikes me as rather optimistic. The new constituency boundaries will give cover to the left to get their own people selected.
The moderate majority of Labour MPs will have to go out with a bang, trying to keep their vision of Labour alive, or a whimper being picked off one by one and letting the Labour party become a creature of the left. Incidentally probably keeping the Tories in power for decades.
Ohio is somewhat in between.
But Trump needs all 3.
There is a Marist poll for NBC/WSJ coming up in 90 minutes for Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
But Marist is on my black list of pollsters (along with Fox, Rasmussen and Reuters) due to methodology problems so I won't be using them, I fully expect them to show Hillary up by 10-20 everywhere.
I have often wondered what people see in Rohit Sharma, particularly when compared to Cheteshwar Pujara (see here for a gloriously sarcastic take on this tendency). Virat Kohli says 'he can change a game in a session.' It doesn't usually take him that long though - fifty balls appears to be about the average before he finds an inventive way to lose his wicket, including on this occasion lunging for a ball so wide it might have been fielded by first slip a la Flintoff and Harmison.
And to think they want to be No. 1 in the world...
Trump has to understand that everyone who confronts him is a Hillary plant designed to bait him into a public spat.
He has to ignore them and not take the bait.
Hillary has a giant campaign, even if she doesn't make mistakes someone on her campaign will, like today with the father of the terrorist in Florida.
Unfortunately he sometimes makes it difficult to carry conviction. It is genuinely stupefying how shockingly poor the standard of this election is. Bush vs. Gore was Lincoln vs. Douglas by comparison.
This isn't true.
Corbyn is an idiot, and he has no project.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-executed-clinton-short-circuited
The only thing is this:
" "If she gets to pick her judges," Trump said, "nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is." "
Were is the suggestion of assassination ?
That is the most generic statement you could possibly make.
Just had a letter from the Gen Sec of the union I joined at Easter.
Due to the Labour Party losing that court case I will likely now get a vote in the leadership election.
The thing is that I can't abide Smith, so it looks like I'm going to have to vote Corbyn.
I'm not sure allowing tory/ukip supporters who, after too much beer veer somewhat to the right of Ghengis Khan, vote for the Labour Leader just because they join a Trade Union (and forgot to opt out of the political fund) is really altogether a very good idea.
@LadPolitics: Some people have been backing @RichardBurgon at 100/1 to be next Labour leader. Now 50/1.
https://t.co/nF1Ld9LOFV https://t.co/yVl7wY5igd
That's something the second amendment people can do.
The comment about Brexit meaning it'll have to be bailed also doesn't mean any argument got won.
He just has to stop taking the bait and stop answering provocateurs.
My guess is college educated women in Philadelphia and african americans in Atlanta.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/watch-as-ed-miliband-backs-owen-smith-in-video-appeal-to-labour-members_uk_57a9e193e4b089961b8599c6
If Corbyn has an original idea I'll eat my hat. If he has an original economic idea then hat factories of the world will need to go to full production for many centuries.
Oh, hang on a minute.
EDIT - in fairness, of course, only one of them was PM and the others had about the same chance of becoming PM as I have of a threesome involving Caroline Wozniacki.
He didn't make it clear whether he wanted liberal high court judges or Clinton shot, I suppose that was his attempt at wriggle room.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-britain-idUSKCN10K285?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Feed:+Reuters/worldNews+(Reuters+World+News)
" "If she gets to pick her judges," Trump said, "nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is." "
Over here Trump would have successfully sued TPM for libel.
And of course, if it had been left to MPs in 1963 it would likely have been one of Butler, Maudling or Macleod, with Powell as a possible fourth candidate and Hailsham maybe in the mix. Home would certainly not have been considered despite being the Foreign Secretary.
In fairness, that is just about the only case I can think of where somebody who demonstrably did not command widespread support in the House of Commons became PM since 1906. Churchill in 1940 would have been the closest thing to another example, but with Chamberlain's backing he was safe enough. Macdonald and Lloyd George led only small groups of MPs, but the support of Bonar Law and Baldwin made that irrelevant.
Luckily for the country he has almost zero chance of becoming PM.
Unluckily for the Labour Party he has no chance of being removed before 2020 at the earliest.
If there is an early election he and the far-left will claim the Kinnock precedent and say that he hasn't had a fair crack of the whip yet so should continue. He will demand to do so and his personality cult of Momentum will ensure it. Even after 2020 that may well happen.
There is a very real possibility of Corbyn destroying the Labour Party entirely. If he remains tin-eared to the concerns of the northern working class (and why shouldn't he as he is to everything else?) then Labour may be destroyed there as it has in Scotland. Wales is up for grabs too based on the Brexit result.
Corbyn represents a very narrow urban middle-class lefty world view that does well in London, Manchester, Brighton and Twitter. Nowhere else.
Considering all of the above, if there was a possibility of joining a centre-left, modern party I would do it in a heart-beat. The LibDems are a poisoned and decimated brand after naively cooperating with the Tories so they won't do, but if there was a genuine moderate left-wing alternative I would resign my membership and join it immediately.
There is no party for my moderate, sensible left-wing politics currently. I believe in a welfare safety-net worth its name, and that it is shameful that we have homelessness in one of the richest countries in the world. I want a cooperative attitude to Europe. I would also like far greater regulation of Corporate pay with a German model of Union representation on company boards. The Conservative Party doesn't care about poverty. It claims to, but actions speak far louder than words.
This country is crying out for an alternative to permanent right-wing politics. I only hope some of the Parliamentary Labour Party have the guts to try for it.
I doubt they will and the UK will suffer over the next 10-30 years because there is now no opposition.
But it's just a generic quote, it works as a Rorschach test.
From an angry clown to a happy clown, as the media would put it.
Or 8 weeks till early voting starts.
"Corbyn represents a very narrow urban middle-class lefty world view that does well in London, Manchester, Brighton and Twitter. Nowhere else."
Unfortunately, too many are lost in the echo chamber of social media where they are just talking to one another, rather than swing voters. Should they encounter a swing voter, who expresses any doubts about Corbyn's suitability as a potential PM, they seem to be telling them to 'vote Tory' as a tactic.
NPXMP would do well to look far more closely at what has happened to Labour here in Scotland. They have no divine right to exist as one of the two main parties, and if voters decide they're out of touch, extinction or irrelevance is a real possibility.