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Labour is rather fortunate. Rather than looking on at a mere disaster, its members and supporters could have been witness to the electorate having smote the ruin of a once-great party unto the dust.
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http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/boris-johnson-brexit.html
Second is that any plausible replacement would have done better. Who? For the most part, those touted as new leaders lack at least one of achievement or charisma, and often both.
We know Jeremy Corbyn will soon stand down and be replaced. It is not clear that this will solve any of Labour's problems, any more than did replacing Brown with Miliband then Corbyn, or the Conservatives replacing Major with Hague, IDS and Howard, or the LibDems replacing Clegg with Farron and Cable and Swinson.
Problem is Corbyn in charge for the interim . Not sure he can be trusted nor to try to fix the rules or candidates.
Focus on tory seats is misses the point that Labour are the party they need to beat. That is where the left leaning seats are held. The few gains from tories are swing seats from the right, the ones you win as a bonus.
Tactical voting and all that baggage is the preserve of permanently small and weak parties and political geeks. It is weak in the polling booth.
Stop the tories is a negative message. It is applicable in the real world in the same way as tactical voting.
Question is will Libdems get a third chance?
I don’t think we’re close to a new, settled status quo in UK politics. The fight between English and Scottish nationalism is going to intensify, the Unionist grip on Northern Ireland is loosening and the Tories now have to work out how to deliver social democracy for their new heartlands while satisfying the bone dry economics of their right-wing membership and Parliamentary party. And then there’s coming to grips with the realities of Brexit!
This all adds up to a lot of turbulence and a hell of a lot of othering coming down the line.
interesting article, however I don't think the current battle line is Brexit. Its towns v cities, global v local. This is about those areas of the country who feel they have taken the hit on globalism trying to get back on their feet.
If the Tories can consolidate their gains we'll be looking at a new landscape.
If he and his team maintain discipline, they’ve got a chance to really shape the country in the way they want. The trouble is I’m not sure any of us know for sure yet what that’s going to look like.
Totally agree - I read from UK Labour that the party overwhelmingly led the way with respect to social media posts and views. Similarly we all on here remember the excitement generated by the 'child on the floor' [Jennifer's ear? form the 90's] and Andrew Neil non-interview. Result: 80 seat majority. People enjoy social media like they used to love reading the papers. Entertainment is one thing - but when it comes to politics none of it means very much outside the bubble. I love politics - everyone I know really couldn't give a f***.
https://twitter.com/nearlylegal/status/1205639362924482562
Laroop, of 'I went into a kettle and now they won't let me out' fame.
By fighting on the genius and simple slogan “Get Brexit Done,” he exposed the deep divides on the left, unified the right, and knocked his opponents for six (if you will forgive a cricket metaphor). But just as important, he moved the party sharply left on austerity, spending on public services, tax cuts for the working poor, and a higher minimum wage. He outflanked the far right on Brexit and shamelessly echoed the left on economic policy.
This is Trumpism without Trump. A conservative future without an ineffective and polarizing nutjob at the heart of it. Johnson now has a mandate to enact this new Tory alignment, and he will be far more competent than Trump at it. Unlike Trump, he will stop E.U. mass migration, and pass a new immigration system, based on the Australian model. Unlike Trump, he will focus tax cuts on the working poor, not the decadent rich.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/andrew-sullivan-boris-johnsons-winning-formula.html
- put our own voters first - homes, infrastructure, health
- more spending but sensibly funded
- big corporations must be good citizens and pay their taxes
- the environment gets more attemtion
The debates will be on the details and where this is spent.
But that does not really answer the question. Put another way, what does the new leader need to be better at than Corbyn? If the answer is everything, or they could hardly be worse, then it does not matter who is the new leader.
On the other hand, maybe Labour supporters are like football fans calling for a new manager after a string of defeats but finding it makes no difference (cf LibDems, or Conservatives for 15 or so years).
Ireland to go to the polls following UK election
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/varadkar-rallies-the-troops-as-fine-gael-get-ready-for-snap-poll-in-wake-of-uk-election-38784368.html
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/racism-claims-and-forced-labour-camps-the-most-controversial-new-tory-mps-who-won-seats-in-general-election/ar-AAK6x2G?ocid=spartandhp
I consider my children English though they all have dual citizenship.
that would be Lee Anderson who used to be the head of the Ashfield Labour party and Gloria de Piero's election agent.
Why wasn't he expelled from Labour then ?
BTW my stepson says the story of the child on the floor in A and E was true... was it? I thought it had been found to be fake???
https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1205751680119083008
We'll lick our wounds until the leadership contest. There's not really much else to say until then.
And then couldn't understand or accept they had lost.
Go back to traditional Liberal heartlands in South West and/or Scotland?
Build on the shifts of the last decade and become the main rival in the nicest cities in the country to live?
You need a different leader depending on which you choose. Doing both at the same time is over ambitious. You should be aware of what Labour is doing and not compete for the same seats.
the truth is more nuanced, in reality remain should have won but they threw it away by treating the electorate like idiots
I do remember in 2007 people were discussing the extinction of the Conservatives. Brown had a 10 point lead. Parties are quite resilient in this country.
Then they made a comeback
Fake news 1: pictures of an ill boy on the floor had themselves been faked
Fake news 2: an aide to Health Secretary Matt Hancock was punched by a Labour mob
https://firstdraftnews.org/latest/how-two-disinformation-campaigns-swung-into-action-days-before-the-uk-goes-to-the-polls/
Say what you like about Farage - I always do - but he would throw them out and claim the high ground over it.
not a shit leader, or mad policies or disenchanted core voters
what next the protocols of the elders of Zion ?
For if you had asked at any earlier stage in its history, the Liberals were clearly “towns” and “local”, appealing to areas of the country with individualistic histories and character, Devon & Cornwall, mid Wales, Scottish Highlands and Borders. Stretch the point and seats like the fens (isle of Ely) and Isle of Wight fit into a pattern, you could even add Bermondsey with its deck access blocks of council tenants in the shadow of the skyscrapers of London. Almost all you could describe as “left behind” areas, in both good and bad ways.
There’s a little of that left in the handful of seats that the LibDems have managed to retain. But in many more former Liberal strongholds, there is no sign of any residual appeal among the poorer residents of these rural areas. Its policies nowadays put more emphasis on issues of internationalism and identity, rather than community and devolution as used to be the focus.
In the LibDem era the party is trying to become the principal champion of “global” and “cities” (including their commuters). As is much of Labour, with the Tories giving up their hold on the educated middle aged in order to appeal to a broader range of pensioners.
In the LibDems’ case, there is no doubt that the merger with the SDP changed the character of the party, yet in the early years at least they did manage to hold on to most of the former Liberal base. Since the coalition that all seems to have gone.
Both main parties ran literally thousands of different micro-targeted adverts on Facebook. Not the same advert to thousands of people, but thousands of different adverts (often using different combinations of the same core components, of course).
Helping the North doesn't mean continuing the high tax policies that have failed it.
The next election in Britain is likely to be fought at a time of continuing chronic economic underperformance, given the handicap Brexit will continue to place on Britain, Britain’s influence will have continued to vaporise, it having withdrawn from the first division of nations, and the country is likely to be still more divided, inward-looking and surly. The successful party is probably going to need to craft a positive message for people who have been let down yet again and who have lost all belief in promises. Getting that message is going to need careful thought.
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1205384023834386433?s=19
Sutton now has two Tory MPs where in 2015 it had two LD MPs . That's two heads off the hydra gone..now for the council.
But it probably doesn’t help that the Tories have become the ‘local’ party outside the big metropolitan areas, which fits with their increasing focus on English (in particular) matters rather than the multilateral structures that appeal to Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
All the rest was irrelevant. BoJo needn't have bothered putting out a manifesto. I spoke to one of the WASPI woman on Thursday night, and although she had gone to the trouble of calculating how much she'd get, she still voted Tory. "I'd never have been given it, would I?"
Edit: As Kinnock Jr said last night "We tried to triangulate a binary issue."
- sovereignty lies with the Scottish people
- stopping Scottish independence is like “trying to stop a tsunami with a sieve”
- SLab are open to discussing the merits of independence
- and the real show-stopper: Richard Leonard is going to continue as leader until the May 2021 GE!!!!
Have they lost the plot? Richard Leonard?? As candidate to be FM??? Puhrleeeeze.
(BBC Good Morning Scotland, 10 minutes ago.)
I think very little affects how people vote. The 2017 GE was different in that it came out of the blue and people hadn't really thought much about Theresa May, and probably hadn't thought much about Corbyn.
This time, people had had two and half years of Brexit battles and Labour AS. People had made up their minds long before Thursday. You cannot fatten a pig on market day.
I am in the North end of Ashfield, and in most of my local seats the story is that the Labour vote fell by 15-25% and went elsewhere, rather than mainly upward growth in the Tories. In terms of totals, in Ashfield it went to Zadrozny mainly - Tory vote down 2.4%. In Bolsover it went to BXP and Tory. In Mansfield where the MP is a community focused Tory, who I think has done a Davey Kingston 1992-1997, it went to him (+17%).
The drivers were Brexit and especially revulsion for Corbyn, which I saw everywhere just by asking for opinions. He was specifically disowned by Lab canvassers even. Suspect here it was his useful-idiot-for-terrorists record, and incredulity at his fantasy economics, rather than antisemitism. It is a military area, and many have family or friends or schoolfriends who have been IRA targets or victims; the history of Jezza supping with the IRA in Parliament does not encourage.
I think Swinson's inexperience was a problem. Being polite, a key traditional Lib Dem skill was to be able to say entirely different things to different people, by change of emphasis. If the fundamentalist remainer position adopted by Farron was partly tactical, Swinson baked that into a dogma and went out of her way to pour scorn and abuse on those who took a different view.
How on earth was she allowed to do a Chris Patten 1992 (tbf she had a bigger majority before but you know the SNP)?
Go back and read her leadership acceptance and conference speeches. The hapless misunderstanding of the other is visible there under the honeyed inclusive claims.
In my view the effect of that is that you have ploughed salt into your future target fields for growing new voters across half the country; not clever and you are going to have to think carefully where you sew.
The only Lib Dem Councillors left standing within 10 miles and more of my desk are those that rebranded themselves Ashfield Independents. The rest have gone; all of them. I think the nearest (look at a map) are Beeston, Newark, Tupton, and I think Clowne.
My current resolution, having been a LD voter occasionally, is not to touch you with a barge pole due to the monomaniacal Remaniac stance. It may change, but not any time soon.
Suspect that I may for the first time ever join a PP, which may be the Tories to argue for attention for this area. But I would far prefer Zadrozny as our local MP, for whom I voted.
I am commenting because I really do want a non-socialist centre-left party in our politics, and hope that socialism gets buried for good.
Betfred 4/11 no indyref2 before end 2020. That's a winner to me after Boris's phone call with Nicola last night.
If you want insurance, Paddys are 10/1 indyref2 does take place in 2020. That's a more realistic price imo but DYOR.
A liberal party needs to be, and always has been, at the leading edge of social change - which in the 21st Century clearly isn't going to be the rural South West. Clegg had it right in putting forward and agenda for younger people in a globalised age, and you could argue that Cleggmania was the first stirrings of what morphed into Corbymania. If Clegg had understood the new base he was building, he would have realised what a catastrophic mistake tuition fees would prove to be. Nevertheless the influx of young people into the party during the Brexit fiasco indicates that the potential is still there.
So long as social and economic progress is driven along by the educated and technologically adept young, that's where a liberal party needs to be. They should be (and should have been) leading the push back against generational inequality and harnessing the youthquake that Corbyn has been reaching for.
That isn't a constituency that any socialist party can harness to the working class and ethnic minorities. Labour needs to work out what sort of party it wants to be in the modern age.
if you won't read the newspapers from the centre of the world.... ;-)