Right wing Labour MPs should be looking at these polling figures, looking at the leadership election over the summer and concluding that it's time to move on and start a new party. If they aren't already, of course.
But new parties fail under FPTP.
Which ever way they look, or turn, Labour MPs are stymied.
They can either resign themselves to defeat and irrelevance or they can try to change the nation's politics - very firmly against the odds, but try.
As it happens, their message has a very ready audience if it can find the right home. There are two overlapping groups: centrist/centre-left voters who believe in redistribution; and Remain voters, both of whom have no plausible home at present. With Britain's electorate fracturing regionally, it should be more possible for a new party to build regional bases under FPTP than ever before.
So while I see it as an odds-against endeavour, it's not a charge of the light brigade.
But most of these Labour MPs are in Leave voting constituencies. And the Lib Dems are already targeting the centre-soft right Remain voters, as we see in Richmond.
So if this SDP2 morphs into a centrist Remain party they might win a couple of seats off..... the Lib Dems and maybe the Scot Nats. And lose dozens of seats in the north and Wales to the residual Corbynite party, or the Tories, or even UKIP.
A new SDP-Remain party simply fractures the centre-Left and Left even further.
Labour MPs are fucked. Unless and until they can remove Corbyn, & install a sensible leader. It won't happen until the early 2020s; however, by that time Brexit will be done and dusted, so it recedes as an issue entirely (likewise immigration, which the Tories will have sorted).
It is possible, in that case, to see a real Labour revival in 2025 - maybe even preventing an overall Tory majority, and a big Labour win in 2030 (after two decades of Tory power)
The crucial and difficult part will be preventing another idiot lefty leader seizing the Labour reins after Corbyn steps down.
I doubt the immigration issue will disappear completely, free movement restricted by a job offer, which May is heading for, will not be enough for about 20% of the population who will be UKIP targets. Labour's best bet is for Corbyn to be trounced in 2020 and resign and for someone like Chuka Umunna or Keith Starmer or Dan Jarvis to take over. However May looks set to be PM until about 2025 regardless. She could become the UK's Merkel
But but, I totally thought it was just a few bad apples and it was unfair to ban even the few who were
Are they naming names? Was one of the athletes Yelena Isinbayeva?
I bloody hope not! I think she was training in Europe by 2013, after a couple of years off to have a baby.
But was still banned from Rio. So even if the numbers were high, a total ban on anyone born in Russia from competing at the games could still be argued to have been harsh.
The country needed to be punished so they learn not to accept such shadiness. That innocent parties get swept up too is a feature not a bug, otherwise the nation will keep doing it as they'll still be able to send some arhletes, it's worth the risk
But but, I totally thought it was just a few bad apples and it was unfair to ban even the few who were
Are they naming names? Was one of the athletes Yelena Isinbayeva?
I bloody hope not! I think she was training in Europe by 2013, after a couple of years off to have a baby.
But was still banned from Rio. So even if the numbers were high, a total ban on anyone born in Russia from competing at the games could still be argued to have been harsh.
I guess we'll have to wait and see what comes out, but she's done more for her event over the past decade than anyone except Usain Bolt - it would be heartbreaking to discover it wasn't done cleanly.
Mr. Tyndall, if memory serves, Antigonus Monopthalmus was that age, or perhaps older, when he started rising to real prominence.
You do give me hope then. A friend and I were sat in a pub a few weeks ago discussing this. He is in his mid 50s, I in my early 50s, and we were trying to come up with examples of people in arts, music, literature or science who didn't really start to do their best work until they were in their 50s. In modern post war music I am inclined to the belief that all great work is done by the young, usually in their first 2 or 3 albums at most. The same seems generally to apply to literature and the sciences. I would love to hear of examples where people first became successful later in life but - perhaps with the exception of politics - they seem few and far between.
First became successful when already in their fifties, that I am struggling with, though it depends on how you measure success, I suppose. If you ask the question slightly differently, who did their best work when past fifty. The most obvious example being Beethoven.
In the field of the sciences and mathematics, however, with the odd exceptions such as Euler most great ideas come from younger people and, I think, most of the people who produced those ideas are burnt out, or dead, long before they hit 50.
Samuel Richardson wrote his first novel at the age of 51. Juan Manuel Fangio was 40 when he won his first world championship, and 48 when he won his last.
Good result: 8/10 Tories. Derisory turnout and losing plenty of votes prevents a 9 or 10. 7/10 Lib Dems. Gained votes in a difficult area with a poor turnout..
Middling result 5/10 UKIP. No inroads made to the Tories, not that great a result in all honesty.
Poor result 2/10 Labour. Not as bad a vote share as some had forecast.
LibDems only found an extra 106 voters willing to put their heads above the parapet since 2015.... Real winner was the Can't Be Arsed Party. December is a particularly good month for them.
That's a stupid comment. Turnout was half that at the GE. I did predict it would be low. Real achievement to add voters in that situation.
Tories were always going to win. Lib Dems did ok given the scale of the campaign, which was tiny compared to Richmond Park. UKIP went backwards - yes, they were 2nd but soooooo far behind the Tories. As for Labour, oh dear, does not bode well.
All in all, it came out more or less as I anticipated.
So we can assume a much weaker performance for the LDs in a GE where there troops will be much more diluted than in Richmond the other weak. Thanks for clearing that up.
I like the graph - a TERRRRRIBLE night for the Conservatives!
Seriously, if all Labour can say is that we are been squeezed between the party of Leave and the party of Remain, it suggest we have learnt nothing from our Scottish wipe-out. We could get a total hammering in next May's locals. Hopefully by 2020, with Brexit a done deal, voters will refocus on other issues.
If Labour is hamered next May I would expect another challenge to Corbyn. This time the evidence of his electoral toxicity would be much more obvious!
But but, I totally thought it was just a few bad apples and it was unfair to ban even the few who were
Are they naming names? Was one of the athletes Yelena Isinbayeva?
I bloody hope not! I think she was training in Europe by 2013, after a couple of years off to have a baby.
But was still banned from Rio. So even if the numbers were high, a total ban on anyone born in Russia from competing at the games could still be argued to have been harsh.
I guess we'll have to wait and see what comes out, but she's done more for her event over the past decade than anyone except Usain Bolt - it would be heartbreaking to discover it wasn't done cleanly.
Given it's a very technical discipline, I wouldn't worry too much.
Good result: 8/10 Tories. Derisory turnout and losing plenty of votes prevents a 9 or 10. 7/10 Lib Dems. Gained votes in a difficult area with a poor turnout..
Middling result 5/10 UKIP. No inroads made to the Tories, not that great a result in all honesty.
Poor result 2/10 Labour. Not as bad a vote share as some had forecast.
LibDems only found an extra 106 voters willing to put their heads above the parapet since 2015.... Real winner was the Can't Be Arsed Party. December is a particularly good month for them.
That's a stupid comment. Turnout was half that at the GE. I did predict it would be low. Real achievement to add voters in that situation.
Tories were always going to win. Lib Dems did ok given the scale of the campaign, which was tiny compared to Richmond Park. UKIP went backwards - yes, they were 2nd but soooooo far behind the Tories. As for Labour, oh dear, does not bode well.
All in all, it came out more or less as I anticipated.
If we hadn't all been distracted by Richmond Park, I think the Lib Dems would have achieved a comfortable second by hoovering up more of the Remain vote.
Nice to see the party back in double figures with Yougov. I've got a feeling that Labour will continue to shed remainers over the next couple of months & we'll see the LDs nose ahead of UKIP. The UKIP message - vote for us to make sure that Brexit happens - doesn't really work. People expect Theresa May to implement Brexit.
Right wing Labour MPs should be looking at these polling figures, looking at the leadership election over the summer and concluding that it's time to move on and start a new party. If they aren't already, of course.
But new parties fail under FPTP.
Which ever way they look, or turn, Labour MPs are stymied.
They can either resign themselves to defeat and irrelevance or they can try to change the nation's politics - very firmly against the odds, but try.
As it happens, their message has a very ready audience if it can find the right home. There are two overlapping groups: centrist/centre-left voters who believe in redistribution; and Remain voters, both of whom have no plausible home at present. With Britain's electorate fracturing regionally, it should be more possible for a new party to build regional bases under FPTP than ever before.
So while I see it as an odds-against endeavour, it's not a charge of the light brigade.
They need to get on with it now, however. If this realignment happened in the current parliament, it would probably have 150-200 MPs, be the official opposition and have a chance to use that platform to build its constituency base so that it could win FPTP elections in 3 years time. The redrawing of the parliamentary borders would help in this.
The are two chances of Labour coming close to the Tories at the next election:
1. Get rid of Corbyn ASAP - he's completely unelectable.
2. Split off *more than half* the PLP into a single new party, such that they become the official opposition and leave Corbyn sitting next to Farron and Salmond.
They tried 1. this summer and it didn't work, so unless they think it can work again they need to do 2. and do it quickly.
My view. They don't have the cojones to do what's necessary. Maybe a few more polls like today's YouGov might focus their minds a little.
Polls won't shift minds.
a. There's too much scepticism towards the industry for anyone to be too confident about anything.
b. The drift is ever-so-slightly downwards, consistently, so each new low soon becomes normalised (hence today's 17% Con lead not being met with WTFs, and NPalmer commenting that the biggest Tory by-election victory since the early 1970s was a bit of a meh result).
c. Polls don't have results on the ground. No-one has lost a job as a result of a datasheet.
Labour MPs will only really start to panic if they start losing by-elections to either the Tories or UKIP (losses to the Lib Dems or SNP are also to a large extent normalised, though in fact rare with Labour in opposition).
I like the graph - a TERRRRRIBLE night for the Conservatives!
Seriously, if all Labour can say is that we are been squeezed between the party of Leave and the party of Remain, it suggest we have learnt nothing from our Scottish wipe-out. We could get a total hammering in next May's locals. Hopefully by 2020, with Brexit a done deal, voters will refocus on other issues.
If Labour is hamered next May I would expect another challenge to Corbyn. This time the evidence of his electoral toxicity would be much more obvious!
Labour MPs should defect to the Lib Dems then effect a hostile take over and shunt out Tim Farron.
Yes. It would work if they could bring a few tens of thousands of members with them then sign up more from scratch. After the Soft Launch they could drop the ' liberal ' from the day to day title and move to Red and Gold colours.
Mr. Tyndall, if memory serves, Antigonus Monopthalmus was that age, or perhaps older, when he started rising to real prominence.
You do give me hope then. A friend and I were sat in a pub a few weeks ago discussing this. He is in his mid 50s, I in my early 50s, and we were trying to come up with examples of people in arts, music, literature or science who didn't really start to do their best work until they were in their 50s. In modern post war music I am inclined to the belief that all great work is done by the young, usually in their first 2 or 3 albums at most. The same seems generally to apply to literature and the sciences. I would love to hear of examples where people first became successful later in life but - perhaps with the exception of politics - they seem few and far between.
First became successful when already in their fifties, that I am struggling with, though it depends on how you measure success, I suppose. If you ask the question slightly differently, who did their best work when past fifty. The most obvious example being Beethoven.
In the field of the sciences and mathematics, however, with the odd exceptions such as Euler most great ideas come from younger people and, I think, most of the people who produced those ideas are burnt out, or dead, long before they hit 50.
Samuel Richardson wrote his first novel at the age of 51. Juan Manuel Fangio was 40 when he won his first world championship, and 48 when he won his last.
George Martin was a successful novelist from his thirties onwards, but his sales only really took off after 2005, with the publication of A Feast for Crows, when he was 57 (probably, 90% of his sales took place after that date). Tolkien was 65 when the Lord of the Rings was published.
I like the graph - a TERRRRRIBLE night for the Conservatives!
Seriously, if all Labour can say is that we are been squeezed between the party of Leave and the party of Remain, it suggest we have learnt nothing from our Scottish wipe-out. We could get a total hammering in next May's locals. Hopefully by 2020, with Brexit a done deal, voters will refocus on other issues.
If Labour is hamered next May I would expect another challenge to Corbyn. This time the evidence of his electoral toxicity would be much more obvious!
And the Corbyn supporters in the party membership will still say the result was poor because the party didn't unite behind the leader, was too 'Blairite' -SPIT- and not left-wing enough...
Mr. Tyndall, if memory serves, Antigonus Monopthalmus was that age, or perhaps older, when he started rising to real prominence.
You do give me hope then. A friend and I were sat in a pub a few weeks ago discussing this. He is in his mid 50s, I in my early 50s, and we were trying to come up with examples of people in arts, music, literature or science who didn't really start to do their best work until they were in their 50s. In modern post war music I am inclined to the belief that all great work is done by the young, usually in their first 2 or 3 albums at most. The same seems generally to apply to literature and the sciences. I would love to hear of examples where people first became successful later in life but - perhaps with the exception of politics - they seem few and far between.
First became successful when already in their fifties, that I am struggling with, though it depends on how you measure success, I suppose. If you ask the question slightly differently, who did their best work when past fifty. The most obvious example being Beethoven.
In the field of the sciences and mathematics, however, with the odd exceptions such as Euler most great ideas come from younger people and, I think, most of the people who produced those ideas are burnt out, or dead, long before they hit 50.
Samuel Richardson wrote his first novel at the age of 51. Juan Manuel Fangio was 40 when he won his first world championship, and 48 when he won his last.
George Martin was a successful novelist from his thirties onwards, but his sales only really took off after 2005, with the publication of A Feast for Crows, when he was 57 (probably, 90% of his sales took place after that date). Tolkien was 65 when the Lord of the Rings was published.
Mr. Tyndall, if memory serves, Antigonus Monopthalmus was that age, or perhaps older, when he started rising to real prominence.
You do give me hope then. A friend and I were sat in a pub a few weeks ago discussing this. He is in his mid 50s, I in my early 50s, and we were trying to come up with examples of people in arts, music, literature or science who didn't really start to do their best work until they were in their 50s. In modern post war music I am inclined to the belief that all great work is done by the young, usually in their first 2 or 3 albums at most. The same seems generally to apply to literature and the sciences. I would love to hear of examples where people first became successful later in life but - perhaps with the exception of politics - they seem few and far between.
Come to think of it, a lot of military men have been well into middle age, or even old age, when they pulled off their greatest achievements, eg Fabius Maximus, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Marlborough, Blucher, Wellington, Kutusov.
Since the days of Alexander, you needed to be old to have risen far enough to be given credit for the victory. Anyone lower down the pecking order was a 'great hero' rather than 'great commander'.
And yes exceptions exist, but they are exactly that.
Mr. F, Camillus, Antigonus Monopthalmus, Lysimachus, Seleucus, Enrico Dandolo was over 90 when he led the assault on Constantinople.
Mr. Submarine, I don't mean to be a pest, but could you elaborate further on your earlier comment about Kingdom Asunder not being what you expected. Is that good, or bad? [Entirely open to constructive criticism, of course]. If there's a discrepancy between the blurb or suchlike and the contents, then knowing that will be useful for the future.
It won't happen until the early 2020s; however, by that time Brexit will be done and dusted, so it recedes as an issue entirely (likewise immigration, which the Tories will have sorted).
Mr. Anorak, the Black Prince was 16 and 26 when he won his great victories.
In the medieval world, old men were generally not much use, or seen as such. There were exceptions, notably William Marshal, who saved England from French invasion when in his late 60s.
Right wing Labour MPs should be looking at these polling figures, looking at the leadership election over the summer and concluding that it's time to move on and start a new party. If they aren't already, of course.
But new parties fail under FPTP.
Which ever way they look, or turn, Labour MPs are stymied.
They can either resign themselves to defeat and irrelevance or they can try to change the nation's politics - very firmly against the odds, but try.
As it happens, their message has a very ready audience if it can find the right home. There are two overlapping groups: centrist/centre-left voters who believe in redistribution; and Remain voters, both of whom have no plausible home at present. With Britain's electorate fracturing regionally, it should be more possible for a new party to build regional bases under FPTP than ever before.
So while I see it as an odds-against endeavour, it's not a charge of the light brigade.
But most of these Labour MPs are in Leave voting constituencies. And the Lib Dems are already targeting the centre-soft right Remain voters, as we see in Richmond.
snip
I doubt the immigration issue will disappear completely, free movement restricted by a job offer, which May is heading for, will not be enough for about 20% of the population who will be UKIP targets. Labour's best bet is for Corbyn to be trounced in 2020 and resign and for someone like Chuka Umunna or Keith Starmer or Dan Jarvis to take over. However May looks set to be PM until about 2025 regardless. She could become the UK's Merkel
Corbyn needs to not only be trounced but it also needs the membership to wake up and realize that a hard left platform is not going to win in Britain. It is going to be a bloody hard lesson, particularly for the young idealists who have surged to Corbyn, and who have no memory of what utter defeat tastes like.
However, it is possible to see a way out for Labour before 2020. Momentum is busy eating itself. The men in boiler suits from the unions may arrive at Corbyn's door in 2019 and say thanks but the game's up old fellah. The young clickivists may have drifted off to other pastimes.
Labour MPs should defect to the Lib Dems then effect a hostile take over and shunt out Tim Farron.
Yes. It would work if they could bring a few tens of thousands of members with them then sign up more from scratch. After the Soft Launch they could drop the ' liberal ' from the day to day title and move to Red and Gold colours.
But then there's no going back. The alternative is to decant themselves into a "Sane Labour" Opposition (they might want a better name, though I think this gets the message across quite well), with a possible view to reuniting once the Reign of Terror[ist Sympathisers] is over.
Which ever way they look, or turn, Labour MPs are stymied.
They can either resign themselves to defeat and irrelevance or they can try to change the nation's politics - very firmly against the odds, but try.
As it happens, their message has a very ready audience if it can find the right home. There are two overlapping groups: centrist/centre-left voters who believe in redistribution; and Remain voters, both of whom have no plausible home at present. With Britain's electorate fracturing regionally, it should be more possible for a new party to build regional bases under FPTP than ever before.
So while I see it as an odds-against endeavour, it's not a charge of the light brigade.
But most of these Labour MPs are in Leave voting constituencies. And the Lib Dems are already targeting the centre-soft right Remain voters, as we see in Richmond.
So if this SDP2 morphs into a centrist Remain party they might win a couple of seats off..... the Lib Dems and maybe the Scot Nats. And lose dozens of seats in the north and Wales to the residual Corbynite party, or the Tories, or even UKIP.
A new SDP-Remain party simply fractures the centre-Left and Left even further.
Labour MPs are fucked. Unless and until they can remove Corbyn, & install a sensible leader. It won't happen until the early 2020s; however, by that time Brexit will be done and dusted, so it recedes as an issue entirely (likewise immigration, which the Tories will have sorted).
It is possible, in that case, to see a real Labour revival in 2025 - maybe even preventing an overall Tory majority, and a big Labour win in 2030 (after two decades of Tory power)
The crucial and difficult part will be preventing another idiot lefty leader seizing the Labour reins after Corbyn steps down.
I doubt the immigration issue will disappear completely, free movement restricted by a job offer, which May is heading for, will not be enough for about 20% of the population who will be UKIP targets. Labour's best bet is for Corbyn to be trounced in 2020 and resign and for someone like Chuka Umunna or Keith Starmer or Dan Jarvis to take over. However May looks set to be PM until about 2025 regardless. She could become the UK's Merkel
I can't see how either of those can defeat a 'true' lefty (heir of JC) under the current voting system. I also can't see how they can change the current voting system with current NEC, or how you stuff enough moderates into the NEC under their current voting system. Or how you ... [it's getting pretty fractal at this point, so I'll stop]
Mr. Tyndall, if memory serves, Antigonus Monopthalmus was that age, or perhaps older, when he started rising to real prominence.
You do give me hope then. A friend and I were sat in a pub a few weeks ago discussing this. He is in his mid 50s, I in my early 50s, and we were trying to come up with examples of people in arts, music, literature or science who didn't really start to do their best work until they were in their 50s. In modern post war music I am inclined to the belief that all great work is done by the young, usually in their first 2 or 3 albums at most. The same seems generally to apply to literature and the sciences. I would love to hear of examples where people first became successful later in life but - perhaps with the exception of politics - they seem few and far between.
First became successful when already in their fifties, that I am struggling with, though it depends on how you measure success, I suppose. If you ask the question slightly differently, who did their best work when past fifty. The most obvious example being Beethoven.
In the field of the sciences and mathematics, however, with the odd exceptions such as Euler most great ideas come from younger people and, I think, most of the people who produced those ideas are burnt out, or dead, long before they hit 50.
Samuel Richardson wrote his first novel at the age of 51. Juan Manuel Fangio was 40 when he won his first world championship, and 48 when he won his last.
George Martin was a successful novelist from his thirties onwards, but his sales only really took off after 2005, with the publication of A Feast for Crows, when he was 57 (probably, 90% of his sales took place after that date). Tolkien was 65 when the Lord of the Rings was published.
There is a difference, though, between achieving success later in life, and actually starting something new, as Richardson did.
John Wheeler, for example, is a good example of a physicist who remained productive throughout his life, but I'm struggling to think of one who first burst on the world over the age of 50.
Absolute vote share is not the best measure of "worst". Poor vote shares in Winchester and Romsey were not signs that Labour were in any trouble.
Of those 10, it's a toss-up for me which result is worst out of Eastleigh and Sleaford & North Hykeham, though you could make an argument for Henley too. On balance I think I'd choose Eastleigh as the worst result because there was no particular reason why Labour couldn't have done quite well there if they had constructed a message truly capable of appealing to a one nation Britain.
But the Labour vote in Eastleigh did rise marginally compared with the 2010 election!
I think the thread is right in two regards. It would be fatal to faff around with another SDP then Alliance then merger. It doesn't work. #1 Enough MP's have to quit Labour to form the Official Opposition. Or else don't bother. #2 Setting up an entirely new party is a waste. In due course the new Opposition black just takes over the shell of the Lib Dem legal entity, structures and assets. You have to shrink the Gang of Four to Merger process from 7 odd years to 7 months. But you can't do it as a third party. You have to have enough MP's to go straight to second party in the Commons status immediately. That bully pulpit is essential.
Mr. Tyndall, if memory serves, Antigonus Monopthalmus was that age, or perhaps older, when he started rising to real prominence.
You do give me hope then. A friend and I were sat in a pub a few weeks ago discussing this. He is in his mid 50s, I in my early 50s, and we were trying to come up with examples of people in arts, music, literature or science who didn't really start to do their best work until they were in their 50s. In modern post war music I am inclined to the belief that all great work is done by the young, usually in their first 2 or 3 albums at most. The same seems generally to apply to literature and the sciences. I would love to hear of examples where people first became successful later in life but - perhaps with the exception of politics - they seem few and far between.
Come to think of it, a lot of military men have been well into middle age, or even old age, when they pulled off their greatest achievements, eg Fabius Maximus, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Marlborough, Blucher, Wellington, Kutusov.
Wellington was only in his mid 30s at Assaye, and mid 40s when victorious at Waterloo.
I like the graph - a TERRRRRIBLE night for the Conservatives!
Seriously, if all Labour can say is that we are been squeezed between the party of Leave and the party of Remain, it suggest we have learnt nothing from our Scottish wipe-out. We could get a total hammering in next May's locals. Hopefully by 2020, with Brexit a done deal, voters will refocus on other issues.
If Labour is hamered next May I would expect another challenge to Corbyn. This time the evidence of his electoral toxicity would be much more obvious!
And the Corbyn supporters in the party membership will still say the result was poor because the party didn't unite behind the leader, was too 'Blairite' -SPIT- and not left-wing enough...
I would expect the membership to be less receptive to that message than was the case last summer.
Mr. Tyndall, if memory serves, Antigonus Monopthalmus was that age, or perhaps older, when he started rising to real prominence.
You do give me hope then. A friend and I were sat in a pub a few weeks ago discussing this. He is in his mid 50s, I in my early 50s, and we were trying to come up with examples of people in arts, music, literature or science who didn't really start to do their best work until they were in their 50s. In modern post war music I am inclined to the belief that all great work is done by the young, usually in their first 2 or 3 albums at most. The same seems generally to apply to literature and the sciences. I would love to hear of examples where people first became successful later in life but - perhaps with the exception of politics - they seem few and far between.
First became successful when already in their fifties, that I am struggling with, though it depends on how you measure success, I suppose. If you ask the question slightly differently, who did their best work when past fifty. The most obvious example being Beethoven.
In the field of the sciences and mathematics, however, with the odd exceptions such as Euler most great ideas come from younger people and, I think, most of the people who produced those ideas are burnt out, or dead, long before they hit 50.
Samuel Richardson wrote his first novel at the age of 51. Juan Manuel Fangio was 40 when he won his first world championship, and 48 when he won his last.
Fangio's ago record will never be beaten by an F1 driver, they have to be athletes these days rather than the gentlemen drivers of old. Only M Schumacher made it past 40 still racing, in the last decade or two.
Right wing Labour MPs should be looking at these polling figures, looking at the leadership election over the summer and concluding that it's time to move on and start a new party. If they aren't already, of course.
But new parties fail under FPTP.
Which ever way they look, or turn, Labour MPs are stymied.
They can either resign themselves to defeat and irrelevance or they can try to change the nation's politics - very firmly against the odds, but try.
As it happens, their message has a very ready audience if it can find the right home. There are two overlapping groups: centrist/centre-left voters who believe in redistribution; and Remain voters, both of whom have no plausible home at present. With Britain's electorate fracturing regionally, it should be more possible for a new party to build regional bases under FPTP than ever before.
So while I see it as an odds-against endeavour, it's not a charge of the light brigade.
But most of these Labour MPs are in Leave voting constituencies. And the Lib Dems are already targeting the centre-soft right Remain voters, as we see in Richmond.
snip
I doubt the immigration issue will disappear completely, free movement restricted by a job offer, which May is heading for, will not be enough for about 20% of the population who will be UKIP targets. Labour's best bet is for Corbyn to be trounced in 2020 and resign and for someone like Chuka Umunna or Keith Starmer or Dan Jarvis to take over. However May looks set to be PM until about 2025 regardless. She could become the UK's Merkel
Corbyn needs to not only be trounced but it also needs the membership to wake up and realize that a hard left platform is not going to win in Britain. It is going to be a bloody hard lesson, particularly for the young idealists who have surged to Corbyn, and who have no memory of what utter defeat tastes like.
However, it is possible to see a way out for Labour before 2020. Momentum is busy eating itself. The men in boiler suits from the unions may arrive at Corbyn's door in 2019 and say thanks but the game's up old fellah. The young clickivists may have drifted off to other pastimes.
+1
There are quite a few people in my age group, on the left who don't actually rate Corbyn as a leader. But, given that on Twitter (and in real life) you'll be shouted down as a Tory and a Blairite for not agreeing with everything Corbyn says and does, its best to stop debating with these people and leave them to their own devices.
Labour MPs should defect to the Lib Dems then effect a hostile take over and shunt out Tim Farron.
Yes. It would work if they could bring a few tens of thousands of members with them then sign up more from scratch. After the Soft Launch they could drop the ' liberal ' from the day to day title and move to Red and Gold colours.
But then there's no going back. The alternative is to decant themselves into a "Sane Labour" Opposition (they might want a better name, though I think this gets the message across quite well), with a possible view to reuniting once the Reign of Terror[ist Sympathisers] is over.
Yes. You rightly raise another question. Do the Labour rebels *really* want to start a new party or are they looking for asylum until they can go back to Labour ? I'm advocating the Byzantium model but they may want exile then return.
I like the graph - a TERRRRRIBLE night for the Conservatives!
Seriously, if all Labour can say is that we are been squeezed between the party of Leave and the party of Remain, it suggest we have learnt nothing from our Scottish wipe-out. We could get a total hammering in next May's locals. Hopefully by 2020, with Brexit a done deal, voters will refocus on other issues.
If Labour is hamered next May I would expect another challenge to Corbyn. This time the evidence of his electoral toxicity would be much more obvious!
And the Corbyn supporters in the party membership will still say the result was poor because the party didn't unite behind the leader, was too 'Blairite' -SPIT- and not left-wing enough...
I would expect the membership to be less receptive to that message than was the case last summer.
Let's hope so - not only for yourself, @SouthamObserver and others of the 'sensible' left, but also for holding the government to account through what will be a tricky few years with lots of key decisions and votes to take place.
Mr. Anorak, the Black Prince was 16 and 26 when he won his great victories.
In the medieval world, old men were generally not much use, or seen as such. There were exceptions, notably William Marshal, who saved England from French invasion when in his late 60s.
I'd argue that part of that was life expectancy. 40 was considered old, and you were given a sword and expected to fight at 14.
There are quite a few people in my age group, on the left who don't actually rate Corbyn as a leader. But, given that on Twitter (and in real life) you'll be shouted down as a Tory and a Blairite for not agreeing with everything Corbyn says and does, its best to stop debating with these people and leave them to their own devices.
The centre left, hoist by their own petard. After years of them 'othering' Tories, the piquancy of the same happening to them is too delicious to resist.
As a minor anecdote, and old friend, very of the left, dropped by the other day. He has been a massive Corbyn supporter since the initial surge. We tend to avoid too much discussion, as I am clearly 'am not a fan' to say the least, but we usually have a friendly ten minute debate on his merits or otherwise. My friend was uncharacteristically mute on the subject this time and swiftly moved things on.
Are we seeing the first straws in the wind of the inevitable backlash?
Re oldies and achievements, my best man's father retired from regular (undistinguished) corporate life in his late 50s, and started an architecture degree. After two years of that he got bored and started up a business bringing e-commerce to shops. He sold that business to a large US tech company, which in turn sold (18 months later) to Oracle. His career, really, didn't happen until his 60s.
Mr. Tyndall, if memory serves, Antigonus Monopthalmus was that age, or perhaps older, when he started rising to real prominence.
You do give me hope then. A friend and I were sat in a pub a few weeks ago discussing this. He is in his mid 50s, I in my early 50s, and we were trying to come up with examples of people in arts, music, literature or science who didn't really start to do their best work until they were in their 50s. In modern post war music I am inclined to the belief that all great work is done by the young, usually in their first 2 or 3 albums at most. The same seems generally to apply to literature and the sciences. I would love to hear of examples where people first became successful later in life but - perhaps with the exception of politics - they seem few and far between.
Come to think of it, a lot of military men have been well into middle age, or even old age, when they pulled off their greatest achievements, eg Fabius Maximus, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Marlborough, Blucher, Wellington, Kutusov.
Wellington was only in his mid 30s at Assaye, and mid 40s when victorious at Waterloo.
Napoleon lost Waterloo at the same age. He had quite a bit of success in his 30s though. Blucher, critical to the Allied victory, was into his 70s.
I like the graph - a TERRRRRIBLE night for the Conservatives!
Seriously, if all Labour can say is that we are been squeezed between the party of Leave and the party of Remain, it suggest we have learnt nothing from our Scottish wipe-out. We could get a total hammering in next May's locals. Hopefully by 2020, with Brexit a done deal, voters will refocus on other issues.
If Labour is hamered next May I would expect another challenge to Corbyn. This time the evidence of his electoral toxicity would be much more obvious!
And the Corbyn supporters in the party membership will still say the result was poor because the party didn't unite behind the leader, was too 'Blairite' -SPIT- and not left-wing enough...
I would expect the membership to be less receptive to that message than was the case last summer.
Let's hope so - not only for yourself, @SouthamObserver and others of the 'sensible' left, but also for holding the government to account through what will be a tricky few years with lots of key decisions and votes to take place.
The current leader of the Opposition is clearly Kier Starmer. Jezza just does the rallies.
Mr. Tyndall, if memory serves, Antigonus Monopthalmus was that age, or perhaps older, when he started rising to real prominence.
You do give me hope then. A friend and I were sat in a pub a few weeks ago discussing this. He is in his mid 50s, I in my early 50s, and we were trying to come up with examples of people in arts, music, literature or science who didn't really start to do their best work until they were in their 50s. In modern post war music I am inclined to the belief that all great work is done by the young, usually in their first 2 or 3 albums at most. The same seems generally to apply to literature and the sciences. I would love to hear of examples where people first became successful later in life but - perhaps with the exception of politics - they seem few and far between.
First became successful when already in their fifties, that I am struggling with, though it depends on how you measure success, I suppose. If you ask the question slightly differently, who did their best work when past fifty. The most obvious example being Beethoven.
In the field of the sciences and mathematics, however, with the odd exceptions such as Euler most great ideas come from younger people and, I think, most of the people who produced those ideas are burnt out, or dead, long before they hit 50.
Samuel Richardson wrote his first novel at the age of 51. Juan Manuel Fangio was 40 when he won his first world championship, and 48 when he won his last.
Fangio's ago record will never be beaten by an F1 driver, they have to be athletes these days rather than the gentlemen drivers of old. Only M Schumacher made it past 40 still racing, in the last decade or two.
Loosely related to the on topic theme, Corbyn would, if successful, be the oldest person ever first appointed British PM. If he's not, then May becomes the oldest person to win their first election since Macmillan. Over the pond, Trump will, next January, become the oldest US president at first inauguration.
Mr. Anorak, the Black Prince was 16 and 26 when he won his great victories.
In the medieval world, old men were generally not much use, or seen as such. There were exceptions, notably William Marshal, who saved England from French invasion when in his late 60s.
Are there any recorded instances of someone telling Edward I that he wasn't much use?
I like the graph - a TERRRRRIBLE night for the Conservatives!
Seriously, if all Labour can say is that we are been squeezed between the party of Leave and the party of Remain, it suggest we have learnt nothing from our Scottish wipe-out. We could get a total hammering in next May's locals. Hopefully by 2020, with Brexit a done deal, voters will refocus on other issues.
If Labour is hamered next May I would expect another challenge to Corbyn. This time the evidence of his electoral toxicity would be much more obvious!
And the Corbyn supporters in the party membership will still say the result was poor because the party didn't unite behind the leader, was too 'Blairite' -SPIT- and not left-wing enough...
I would expect the membership to be less receptive to that message than was the case last summer.
Let's hope so - not only for yourself, @SouthamObserver and others of the 'sensible' left, but also for holding the government to account through what will be a tricky few years with lots of key decisions and votes to take place.
The current leader of the Opposition is clearly Kier Starmer. Jezza just does the rallies.
Please can they make that official as soon as possible.
*This post has absolutely nothing to do with my £20 at 10/1 on the very capable Mr Starmer becoming the next Labour leader.
Mr. Tyndall, if memory serves, Antigonus Monopthalmus was that age, or perhaps older, when he started rising to real prominence.
You do give me hope then. A friend and I were sat in a pub a few weeks ago discussing this. He is in his mid 50s, I in my early 50s, and we were trying to come up with examples of people in arts, music, literature or science who didn't really start to do their best work until they were in their 50s. In modern post war music I am inclined to the belief that all great work is done by the young, usually in their first 2 or 3 albums at most. The same seems generally to apply to literature and the sciences. I would love to hear of examples where people first became successful later in life but - perhaps with the exception of politics - they seem few and far between.
First became successful when already in their fifties, that I am struggling with, though it depends on how you measure success, I suppose. If you ask the question slightly differently, who did their best work when past fifty. The most obvious example being Beethoven.
In the field of the sciences and mathematics, however, with the odd exceptions such as Euler most great ideas come from younger people and, I think, most of the people who produced those ideas are burnt out, or dead, long before they hit 50.
Samuel Richardson wrote his first novel at the age of 51. Juan Manuel Fangio was 40 when he won his first world championship, and 48 when he won his last.
Fangio's ago record will never be beaten by an F1 driver, they have to be athletes these days rather than the gentlemen drivers of old. Only M Schumacher made it past 40 still racing, in the last decade or two.
Mansell was nearly 40, and absolutely at his peak, when he won his championship. And the cars then were a great deal more physically demanding to drive than is the case today. Fangio would, I think, have been a great in any era.
I think the thread is right in two regards. It would be fatal to faff around with another SDP then Alliance then merger. It doesn't work. #1 Enough MP's have to quit Labour to form the Official Opposition. Or else don't bother. #2 Setting up an entirely new party is a waste. In due course the new Opposition black just takes over the shell of the Lib Dem legal entity, structures and assets. You have to shrink the Gang of Four to Merger process from 7 odd years to 7 months. But you can't do it as a third party. You have to have enough MP's to go straight to second party in the Commons status immediately. That bully pulpit is essential.
Seems a lot of "fighting the last war" in this. History doesn't really repeat itself, although sometimes it rhymes. To be honest if Sir Kier Starmer was leader of the Labour Party, then Labour would be 15 points up. So the doomsters talking about irrevocable, irredeemable decline should remember that things could turn on a dime. However, equally as the hard Brexit chickens come home to roost, the Lib Dems do have the virtue of clarity: just as they had with Iraq. In 2010, the voters showed that they could flirt with Clegg, so Labour could indeed be wiped out by an electorate that does not respect Corbynite waffle.
As a minor anecdote, and old friend, very of the left, dropped by the other day. He has been a massive Corbyn supporter since the initial surge. We tend to avoid too much discussion, as I am clearly 'am not a fan' to say the least, but we usually have a friendly ten minute debate on his merits or otherwise. My friend was uncharacteristically mute on the subject this time and swiftly moved things on.
Are we seeing the first straws in the wind of the inevitable backlash?
I noted those symptoms you describe appeared on Labour List about 6 weeks ago. They are now very noticeable..
But JC had several hundred thousand supporters and I suspect most of them don't really follow politics so JC is still JC to them...
Exactly, and that's Ukip's fox shot for the time being. She may have been a Remainer, but she appears to be sticking to her word.
Meanwhile, Labour's posh/thicko split is gaping wide open. The Northern MPs get it, but the Jezzarites are still in denial. Labour's hokey-cokey attitude to Brexit breeds confusion. The "Of course we accept the decision of the British people BUT ..." isn't winning many converts.
The shop owner from Muswell Hill upset Polly on Daily Politics. She obviously agreed with his posh, white customers who stormed in to accuse him of racism for naming his shop 'Really British'. When she questioned his political affiliations, he admitted he was once asked to be a LD councillor. Oops!
He seemed a cheerful chap. No wonder with all the free publicity the outrage bus passengers have given him.
Loving Labours spin - "some people thought we would end up 5th, but we came 4th"
LOLabour
Just wait til the public gets shown the types of people Jeremy hangs out with in an election campaign.
Labour under Corbyn / hard left = Fecked
This morning before heading out to work they were bragging about not having lost their deposit this time (in a seat where they still managed to hold onto 17% of the vote and finished second only a year-and-a-half ago.) I now return home to discover that Labour is down to 25% with YouGov. This, lest we forget, is meant to be the main Opposition to a Government which is in mid-term and facing very serious issues. It's extraordinary.
In short, things going rather well at the moment, and hard to imagine this changing unless Corbyn falls under a bus.
I think the thread is right in two regards. It would be fatal to faff around with another SDP then Alliance then merger. It doesn't work. #1 Enough MP's have to quit Labour to form the Official Opposition. Or else don't bother. #2 Setting up an entirely new party is a waste. In due course the new Opposition black just takes over the shell of the Lib Dem legal entity, structures and assets. You have to shrink the Gang of Four to Merger process from 7 odd years to 7 months. But you can't do it as a third party. You have to have enough MP's to go straight to second party in the Commons status immediately. That bully pulpit is essential.
Seems a lot of "fighting the last war" in this. History doesn't really repeat itself, although sometimes it rhymes. To be honest if Sir Kier Starmer was leader of the Labour Party, then Labour would be 15 points up. So the doomsters talking about irrevocable, irredeemable decline should remember that things could turn on a dime. However, equally as the hard Brexit chickens come home to roost, the Lib Dems do have the virtue of clarity: just as they had with Iraq. In 2010, the voters showed that they could flirt with Clegg, so Labour could indeed be wiped out by an electorate that does not respect Corbynite waffle.
It does seem to me that in the particularly febrile current environment, political changes are happening within a shorter timescale than precedent would suggest.
Nevertheless Labour's problem is that they can't get to weighing up the options for 2025 until they have, in their own minds, written off 2020. Engaged in active politics, this is very hard for them to do (cf LibDems in 2012). We can all see where the story is going but they have to remain in professional denial, until and unless events force them differently.
But but, I totally thought it was just a few bad apples and it was unfair to ban even the few who were
Are they naming names? Was one of the athletes Yelena Isinbayeva?
I bloody hope not! I think she was training in Europe by 2013, after a couple of years off to have a baby.
But was still banned from Rio. So even if the numbers were high, a total ban on anyone born in Russia from competing at the games could still be argued to have been harsh.
I guess we'll have to wait and see what comes out, but she's done more for her event over the past decade than anyone except Usain Bolt - it would be heartbreaking to discover it wasn't done cleanly.
Given it's a very technical discipline, I wouldn't worry too much.
Mr. Tyndall, if memory serves, Antigonus Monopthalmus was that age, or perhaps older, when he started rising to real prominence.
You do give me hope then. A friend and I were sat in a pub a few weeks ago discussing this. He is in his mid 50s, I in my early 50s, and we were trying to come up with examples of people in arts, music, literature or science who didn't really start to do their best work until they were in their 50s. In modern post war music I am inclined to the belief that all great work is done by the young, usually in their first 2 or 3 albums at most. The same seems generally to apply to literature and the sciences. I would love to hear of examples where people first became successful later in life but - perhaps with the exception of politics - they seem few and far between.
First became successful when already in their fifties, that I am struggling with, though it depends on how you measure success, I suppose. If you ask the question slightly differently, who did their best work when past fifty. The most obvious example being Beethoven.
In the field of the sciences and mathematics, however, with the odd exceptions such as Euler most great ideas come from younger people and, I think, most of the people who produced those ideas are burnt out, or dead, long before they hit 50.
Samuel Richardson wrote his first novel at the age of 51. Juan Manuel Fangio was 40 when he won his first world championship, and 48 when he won his last.
Fangio's ago record will never be beaten by an F1 driver, they have to be athletes these days rather than the gentlemen drivers of old. Only M Schumacher made it past 40 still racing, in the last decade or two.
Mansell was nearly 40, and absolutely at his peak, when he won his championship. And the cars then were a great deal more physically demanding to drive than is the case today. Fangio would, I think, have been a great in any era.
Don't disagree, but the oldies of the past would have found it very difficult to have driven the cars of a decade ago. Next year's cars will thankfully be back to the 6G braking and cornering forces of the early 2000s, along with 1,000bhp all the time - will sort out the men from the boys, and no small part of the reason why Mr Rosberg chose to exit stage left with his head held up high.
The problem Corbyn will have is that he is not even convincing his own base. Regardless of whether you agree with far left politics or not, he is actually just crap. Think about it, what has Corbyn actually said or done that would show actual progress for either the old marxists, the unions, or the millennial corbynista types. He is offering nothing to anyone, and the disillusionment will soon set in. Don't forget that the far left is much more prone to splits and backstabbing than the timid centre left. Corbyn will be undone by his own lot not by Blairites.
There are quite a few people in my age group, on the left who don't actually rate Corbyn as a leader. But, given that on Twitter (and in real life) you'll be shouted down as a Tory and a Blairite for not agreeing with everything Corbyn says and does, its best to stop debating with these people and leave them to their own devices.
The centre left, hoist by their own petard. After years of them 'othering' Tories, the piquancy of the same happening to them is too delicious to resist.
There are lots of working class people who aren't stereotypical lefties, but see the Tories as 'other'. The Tories did it to themselves.
The only positive for Labour in this by election result is the failure of UKIP to gain traction at all. Coming second is meaningless when the party concerned is losing vote share . Far better to have come third with 20% of the vote than second on 13.5%. Other than the Tories UKIP had more invested in this campaign, and the outcome has been a very damp squib for them. That should give Labour some solace re- defending Northern heartlands.
After Richmond the LibDems owe the greens a big favour, and my advice would be to keep an eye on Bristol and Norwich.
Not sure that Bristol LDs and Greens are soul mates at local level.
Yes they seem to hate each other at local level generally. After GE2015 I tweeted something about Greens and LDs needing to work together in future, and got a load of angry tweets back from members of both parties!
As a minor anecdote, and old friend, very of the left, dropped by the other day. He has been a massive Corbyn supporter since the initial surge. We tend to avoid too much discussion, as I am clearly 'am not a fan' to say the least, but we usually have a friendly ten minute debate on his merits or otherwise. My friend was uncharacteristically mute on the subject this time and swiftly moved things on.
Are we seeing the first straws in the wind of the inevitable backlash?
I noted those symptoms you describe appeared on Labour List about 6 weeks ago. They are now very noticeable..
But JC had several hundred thousand supporters and I suspect most of them don't really follow politics so JC is still JC to them...
I don't see any attempt to overthrow JC meeting with success. As you say, he has several hundred thousand supporters and a large number of them will blindly give him their support in any leadership challenge.
On the other hand, if there is some sort of negotiated agreement whereby JC stands down providing he has an assurance that Clive Lewis or someone else he can support, is on the ballot, then there is a way forward. There needs to be a different kind of approach from the PLP. OK, it will probably still result in a lefty being leader, but perhaps a lefty who is less toxic and more acceptable to the GBP
After Richmond the LibDems owe the greens a big favour, and my advice would be to keep an eye on Bristol and Norwich.
Not sure that Bristol LDs and Greens are soul mates at local level.
The Greens are a busted flush in Norwich South with regard to parliamentary elections.
I would've thought that the main role of Green voters in Norwich South is now to defect to Labour and stop Clive Lewis being ejected by the Tories - especially if the next election takes place on schedule and is fought on the revised boundaries.
"The sort of bunker mentality that seems to exist at the moment at the highest levels of the party needs to recognise what is happening in the outside world."
He added that he was concerned Jeremy Corbyn and his team were not in touch with the “real world”.
“There are those who don’t seem to grasp that if you have rallies of the faithful, loyalists, activists and the rest of it, that’s fine, but you can lose touch with the real world.
Right wing Labour MPs should be looking at these polling figures, looking at the leadership election over the summer and concluding that it's time to move on and start a new party. If they aren't already, of course.
But new parties fail under FPTP.
Which ever way they look, or turn, Labour MPs are stymied.
They can either resign themselves to defeat and irrelevance or they can try to change the nation's politics - very firmly against the odds, but try.
As it happens, their message has a very ready audience if it can find the right home. There are two overlapping groups: centrist/centre-left voters who believe in redistribution; and Remain voters, both of whom have no plausible home at present. With Britain's electorate fracturing regionally, it should be more possible for a new party to build regional bases under FPTP than ever before.
So while I see it as an odds-against endeavour, it's not a charge of the light brigade.
But most of these Labour MPs are in Leave voting constituencies. And the Lib Dems are already targeting the centre-soft right Remain voters, as we see in Richmond.
snip
I doubt the immigration issue will disappear completely, free movement restricted by a job offer, which May is heading for, will not be enough for about 20% of the population who will be UKIP targets. Labour's best bet is for Corbyn to be trounced in 2020 and resign and for someone like Chuka Umunna or Keith Starmer or Dan Jarvis to take over. However May looks set to be PM until about 2025 regardless. She could become the UK's Merkel
Corbyn needs to not only be trounced but it also needs the membership to wake up and realize that a hard left platform is not going to win in Britain. It is going to be a bloody hard lesson, particularly for the young idealists who have surged to Corbyn, and who have no memory of what utter defeat tastes like.
However, it is possible to see a way out for Labour before 2020. Momentum is busy eating itself. The men in boiler suits from the unions may arrive at Corbyn's door in 2019 and say thanks but the game's up old fellah. The young clickivists may have drifted off to other pastimes.
The unions would not be enough now, after his renewed membership mandate it needs a general election trouncing for Labour members to realise brand Corbyn is doomed
The unions would not be enough now, after his renewed membership mandate it needs a general election trouncing for Labour members to realise brand Corbyn is doomed
This presupposes that the members who back Corbyn are willing to compromise on their principles for the sake of power, and that they don't actually enjoy being a street protest movement. They're just as likely to blame Blairite treachery for defeat and carry on regardless.
Agree, and despite all the Brexit narrative suggest this is a key extract:
"This is not really about Brexit. The referendum and its aftermath have accelerated changes that were happening anyway: Labour’s long decline since the mid-1990s, the estrangement of its old working-class base, and the fact that it is increasingly a party rooted in big cities."
The unions would not be enough now, after his renewed membership mandate it needs a general election trouncing for Labour members to realise brand Corbyn is doomed
This presupposes that the members who back Corbyn are willing to compromise on their principles for the sake of power, and that they don't actually enjoy being a street protest movement. They're just as likely to blame Blairite treachery for defeat and carry on regardless.
In which case Labour will be dead and the LDs and UKIP will feast on the corpse
"The sort of bunker mentality that seems to exist at the moment at the highest levels of the party needs to recognise what is happening in the outside world."
He added that he was concerned Jeremy Corbyn and his team were not in touch with the “real world”.
“There are those who don’t seem to grasp that if you have rallies of the faithful, loyalists, activists and the rest of it, that’s fine, but you can lose touch with the real world.
Getting in touch with the wider electorate would require those being criticised to be interested in hearing the views of the wider electorate to begin with. One imagines that, on the contrary, they have no interest in leaving the Far Left echo chamber.
After Richmond the LibDems owe the greens a big favour, and my advice would be to keep an eye on Bristol and Norwich.
Not sure that Bristol LDs and Greens are soul mates at local level.
The Greens are a busted flush in Norwich South with regard to parliamentary elections.
I would've thought that the main role of Green voters in Norwich South is now to defect to Labour and stop Clive Lewis being ejected by the Tories - especially if the next election takes place on schedule and is fought on the revised boundaries.
I doubt that. Even on the revised boundaries the Tories would need a 15% lead in 2020 to win the seat. Moreover that fails to take account of a likely first term incumbency bonus for Lewis.
Mr. Tyndall, if memory serves, Antigonus Monopthalmus was that age, or perhaps older, when he started rising to real prominence.
You do give me hope then. A friend and I were sat in a pub a few weeks ago discussing this. He is in his mid 50s, I in my early 50s, and we were trying to come up with examples of people in arts, music, literature or science who didn't really start to do their best work until they were in their 50s. In modern post war music I am inclined to the belief that all great work is done by the young, usually in their first 2 or 3 albums at most. The same seems generally to apply to literature and the sciences. I would love to hear of examples where people first became successful later in life but - perhaps with the exception of politics - they seem few and far between.
First became successful when already in their fifties, that I am struggling with, though it depends on how you measure success, I suppose. If you ask the question slightly differently, who did their best work when past fifty. The most obvious example being Beethoven.
In the field of the sciences and mathematics, however, with the odd exceptions such as Euler most great ideas come from younger people and, I think, most of the people who produced those ideas are burnt out, or dead, long before they hit 50.
Samuel Richardson wrote his first novel at the age of 51. Juan Manuel Fangio was 40 when he won his first world championship, and 48 when he won his last.
George Martin was a successful novelist from his thirties onwards, but his sales only really took off after 2005, with the publication of A Feast for Crows, when he was 57 (probably, 90% of his sales took place after that date). Tolkien was 65 when the Lord of the Rings was published.
There is a difference, though, between achieving success later in life, and actually starting something new, as Richardson did.
John Wheeler, for example, is a good example of a physicist who remained productive throughout his life, but I'm struggling to think of one who first burst on the world over the age of 50.
Right wing Labour MPs should be looking at these polling figures, looking at the leadership election over the summer and concluding that it's time to move on and start a new party. If they aren't already, of course.
But new parties fail under FPTP.
Which ever way they look, or turn, Labour MPs are stymied.
They can either resign themselves to defeat and irrelevance or they can try to change the nation's politics - very firmly against the odds, but try.
As it happens, their message has a very ready audience if it can find the right home. There are two overlapping groups: centrist/centre-left voters who believe in redistribution; and Remain voters, both of whom have no plausible home at present. With Britain's electorate fracturing regionally, it should be more possible for a new party to build regional bases under FPTP than ever before.
So while I see it as an odds-against endeavour, it's not a charge of the light brigade.
But most of these Labour MPs are in Leave voting constituencies. And the Lib Dems are already targeting the centre-soft right Remain voters, as we see in Richmond.
snip
I doubt the immigration issue will disappear completely, free movement restricted by a job offer, which May is heading for, will not be enough for about 20% of the population who will be UKIP targets. Labour's best bet is for Corbyn to be trounced in 2020 and resign and for someone like Chuka Umunna or Keith Starmer or Dan Jarvis to take over. However May looks set to be PM until about 2025 regardless. She could become the UK's Merkel
Corbyn needs to not only be trounced but it also needs the membership to wake up and realize that a hard left platform is not going to win in Britain. It is going to be a bloody hard lesson, particularly for the young idealists who have surged to Corbyn, and who have no memory of what utter defeat tastes like.
However, it is possible to see a way out for Labour before 2020. Momentum is busy eating itself. The men in boiler suits from the unions may arrive at Corbyn's door in 2019 and say thanks but the game's up old fellah. The young clickivists may have drifted off to other pastimes.
The unions would not be enough now, after his renewed membership mandate it needs a general election trouncing for Labour members to realise brand Corbyn is doomed
Len McLuskey and the Brexit campaign show that the unions are as out of touch as Labour.
The only positive for Labour in this by election result is the failure of UKIP to gain traction at all. Coming second is meaningless when the party concerned is losing vote share . Far better to have come third with 20% of the vote than second on 13.5%. Other than the Tories UKIP had more invested in this campaign, and the outcome has been a very damp squib for them. That should give Labour some solace re- defending Northern heartlands.
I share your scepticism about how high Ukip can push its ceiling of support, but we stand to be proven wrong by events. The SNP were a loud yet marginal force for decades, until circumstances changed. Then they weren't marginal anymore.
It should also be added that both Ukip and the Lib Dems only need to erode Labour's vote more than that of the Tories to allow the latter to start winning more Con/Lab marginal seats. Of course, if Nuttall can do better than that, turn his party into a vehicle for English nationalism and knock out a couple of dozen Labour MPs in the North, then Labour is probably finished as a leading party of Government.
There was the Shadow Health Sec on TWAO being asked if Labour was "dans le merde" after coming fourth.. All he could do was go on about the NHS.. Its their only real card and even that doesn't play.
"The sort of bunker mentality that seems to exist at the moment at the highest levels of the party needs to recognise what is happening in the outside world."
He added that he was concerned Jeremy Corbyn and his team were not in touch with the “real world”.
“There are those who don’t seem to grasp that if you have rallies of the faithful, loyalists, activists and the rest of it, that’s fine, but you can lose touch with the real world.
Getting in touch with the wider electorate would require those being criticised to be interested in hearing the views of the wider electorate to begin with. One imagines that, on the contrary, they have no interest in leaving the Far Left echo chamber.
It would also demand they address - Harris's main challenge in the Guardian - which section of the wider electorate they want to get in touch with.
Currently they are naively trying to cling to a majoritarian mindset with their line, paraphrasing, "The Tories/UKIP speak for the leavers, the LibDems for the remainers, we want to speak for everyone". Only a few letters need changing in the last word of that position to get to the truth of the matter.
The only positive for Labour in this by election result is the failure of UKIP to gain traction at all. Coming second is meaningless when the party concerned is losing vote share . Far better to have come third with 20% of the vote than second on 13.5%. Other than the Tories UKIP had more invested in this campaign, and the outcome has been a very damp squib for them. That should give Labour some solace re- defending Northern heartlands.
I share your scepticism about how high Ukip can push its ceiling of support, but we stand to be proven wrong by events. The SNP were a loud yet marginal force for decades, until circumstances changed. Then they weren't marginal anymore.
It should also be added that both Ukip and the Lib Dems only need to erode Labour's vote more than that of the Tories to allow the latter to start winning more Con/Lab marginal seats. Of course, if Nuttall can do better than that, turn his party into a vehicle for English nationalism and knock out a couple of dozen Labour MPs in the North, then Labour is probably finished as a leading party of Government.
I don't believe the omens for Nutall are good if this is the best that UKIP can do under what should be optimum circumstances for them.
There are quite a few people in my age group, on the left who don't actually rate Corbyn as a leader. But, given that on Twitter (and in real life) you'll be shouted down as a Tory and a Blairite for not agreeing with everything Corbyn says and does, its best to stop debating with these people and leave them to their own devices.
The centre left, hoist by their own petard. After years of them 'othering' Tories, the piquancy of the same happening to them is too delicious to resist.
There are lots of working class people who aren't stereotypical lefties, but see the Tories as 'other'. The Tories did it to themselves.
Just so. The idea that sturdy, working folk have been browbeaten and propagandised by lefties into despising the Tories seems somewhat against the current zeitgeist that these folk shouldn't be patronised and underestimated. Of course, this new found consideration for the lower orders will be discarded toot sweet at the drop of a hat by the current crop of carpetbaggers.
There was the Shadow Health Sec on TWAO being asked if Labour was "dans le merde" after coming fourth.. All he could do was go on about the NHS.. Its their only real card and even that doesn't play.
Jon Ashworth. MP for Leicester South,and a useless apparatchik. I therefore tip him for next leader
There are quite a few people in my age group, on the left who don't actually rate Corbyn as a leader. But, given that on Twitter (and in real life) you'll be shouted down as a Tory and a Blairite for not agreeing with everything Corbyn says and does, its best to stop debating with these people and leave them to their own devices.
The centre left, hoist by their own petard. After years of them 'othering' Tories, the piquancy of the same happening to them is too delicious to resist.
There are lots of working class people who aren't stereotypical lefties, but see the Tories as 'other'. The Tories did it to themselves.
Just so. The idea that sturdy, working folk have been browbeaten and propagandised by lefties into despising the Tories seems somewhat against the current zeitgeist that these folk shouldn't be patronised and underestimated. Of course, this new found consideration for the lower orders will be discarded toot sweet at the drop of a hat by the current crop of carpetbaggers.
I don't get the impression they feel they've been browbeaten and propagandised but ignored altogether. Which may be worse. You don't bother browbeating people you don't care about.
What Labour haven't grasped yet is that the next election will be a post Brexit election, post leaving the SM, post the end of FoM. They need to have a position on immigration. Every party will be free to say "we want x number of immigrants". The Tories will, the LibDems will, the SNP will. What is Labour's position going to be? I would suggest Corbyn's preference of a completely open door isn't going to be a vote winner.
Comments
Juan Manuel Fangio was 40 when he won his first world championship, and 48 when he won his last.
Beethoven's Ninth, surely the single finest piece of music ever written, was composed when he was 53, three years before his death.
Nice to see the party back in double figures with Yougov. I've got a feeling that Labour will continue to shed remainers over the next couple of months & we'll see the LDs nose ahead of UKIP. The UKIP message - vote for us to make sure that Brexit happens - doesn't really work. People expect Theresa May to implement Brexit.
a. There's too much scepticism towards the industry for anyone to be too confident about anything.
b. The drift is ever-so-slightly downwards, consistently, so each new low soon becomes normalised (hence today's 17% Con lead not being met with WTFs, and NPalmer commenting that the biggest Tory by-election victory since the early 1970s was a bit of a meh result).
c. Polls don't have results on the ground. No-one has lost a job as a result of a datasheet.
Labour MPs will only really start to panic if they start losing by-elections to either the Tories or UKIP (losses to the Lib Dems or SNP are also to a large extent normalised, though in fact rare with Labour in opposition).
And yes exceptions exist, but they are exactly that.
Mr. Submarine, I don't mean to be a pest, but could you elaborate further on your earlier comment about Kingdom Asunder not being what you expected. Is that good, or bad? [Entirely open to constructive criticism, of course]. If there's a discrepancy between the blurb or suchlike and the contents, then knowing that will be useful for the future.
In the medieval world, old men were generally not much use, or seen as such. There were exceptions, notably William Marshal, who saved England from French invasion when in his late 60s.
However, it is possible to see a way out for Labour before 2020. Momentum is busy eating itself. The men in boiler suits from the unions may arrive at Corbyn's door in 2019 and say thanks but the game's up old fellah. The young clickivists may have drifted off to other pastimes.
Shafted every which way 'til Sunday.
John Wheeler, for example, is a good example of a physicist who remained productive throughout his life, but I'm struggling to think of one who first burst on the world over the age of 50.
The latest round-up of the best doppelgangers in law are here. You never see them in the same room together:
http://www.rollonfriday.com/Blogs/ReadBlog/tabid/144/id/37761/Default.aspx
There are quite a few people in my age group, on the left who don't actually rate Corbyn as a leader. But, given that on Twitter (and in real life) you'll be shouted down as a Tory and a Blairite for not agreeing with everything Corbyn says and does, its best to stop debating with these people and leave them to their own devices.
Are we seeing the first straws in the wind of the inevitable backlash?
*This post has absolutely nothing to do with my £20 at 10/1 on the very capable Mr Starmer becoming the next Labour leader.
LOLabour
Just wait til the public gets shown the types of people Jeremy hangs out with in an election campaign.
Labour under Corbyn / hard left = Fecked
Fangio would, I think, have been a great in any era.
But JC had several hundred thousand supporters and I suspect most of them don't really follow politics so JC is still JC to them...
"People expect Theresa May to implement Brexit."
Exactly, and that's Ukip's fox shot for the time being. She may have been a Remainer, but she appears to be sticking to her word.
Meanwhile, Labour's posh/thicko split is gaping wide open. The Northern MPs get it, but the Jezzarites are still in denial. Labour's hokey-cokey attitude to Brexit breeds confusion. The "Of course we accept the decision of the British people BUT ..." isn't winning many converts.
The shop owner from Muswell Hill upset Polly on Daily Politics. She obviously agreed with his posh, white customers who stormed in to accuse him of racism for naming his shop 'Really British'. When she questioned his political affiliations, he admitted he was once asked to be a LD councillor. Oops!
He seemed a cheerful chap. No wonder with all the free publicity the outrage bus passengers have given him.
In short, things going rather well at the moment, and hard to imagine this changing unless Corbyn falls under a bus.
@HarryHayfield: Bristol West @DavidHerdson #Green 27%, #Lab 27%, #LibDem 26%, #Con 17%, #UKIP 3%, #Ind 0%. #Others 0 (#Green majority of 438, swing: 4.76%)
Nevertheless Labour's problem is that they can't get to weighing up the options for 2025 until they have, in their own minds, written off 2020. Engaged in active politics, this is very hard for them to do (cf LibDems in 2012). We can all see where the story is going but they have to remain in professional denial, until and unless events force them differently.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2016/11/29/jessica-ennis-hill-receive-2011-world-championship-gold-tatyana/
"also an example of people in England being not very nice"
that's the spirit!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/09/sleaford-byelection-labour-52-48-brexit
On the other hand, if there is some sort of negotiated agreement whereby JC stands down providing he has an assurance that Clive Lewis or someone else he can support, is on the ballot, then there is a way forward. There needs to be a different kind of approach from the PLP. OK, it will probably still result in a lefty being leader, but perhaps a lefty who is less toxic and more acceptable to the GBP
"The sort of bunker mentality that seems to exist at the moment at the highest levels of the party needs to recognise what is happening in the outside world."
He added that he was concerned Jeremy Corbyn and his team were not in touch with the “real world”.
“There are those who don’t seem to grasp that if you have rallies of the faithful, loyalists, activists and the rest of it, that’s fine, but you can lose touch with the real world.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/09/conservatives-hold-sleaford-north-hykeham-by-election/
"Clearly for us, this was not the result we might have hoped for”
"This is not really about Brexit. The referendum and its aftermath have accelerated changes that were happening anyway: Labour’s long decline since the mid-1990s, the estrangement of its old working-class base, and the fact that it is increasingly a party rooted in big cities."
It should also be added that both Ukip and the Lib Dems only need to erode Labour's vote more than that of the Tories to allow the latter to start winning more Con/Lab marginal seats. Of course, if Nuttall can do better than that, turn his party into a vehicle for English nationalism and knock out a couple of dozen Labour MPs in the North, then Labour is probably finished as a leading party of Government.
http://order-order.com/2016/12/09/251413/
Currently they are naively trying to cling to a majoritarian mindset with their line, paraphrasing, "The Tories/UKIP speak for the leavers, the LibDems for the remainers, we want to speak for everyone". Only a few letters need changing in the last word of that position to get to the truth of the matter.
The idea that sturdy, working folk have been browbeaten and propagandised by lefties into despising the Tories seems somewhat against the current zeitgeist that these folk shouldn't be patronised and underestimated. Of course, this new found consideration for the lower orders will be discarded toot sweet at the drop of a hat by the current crop of carpetbaggers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/38265635
Anyway, I'm off for a bit.