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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Oh those Russians, you may have just ended the Labour party as
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Oh those Russians, you may have just ended the Labour party as we know it
I suspect FPTP will stop this from happening. https://t.co/DYqNOdGvsl pic.twitter.com/34N2QPGk9G
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Labour are polling either great or ok, and since they improved even when the polling was dire, means anyone who didn't split then ain't splitting now.
I know that, the grumbling MPs know that, and Corbyn probably knows that too. Presumably the intention behind these 'we really might leave, for realsies this time' briefings is just a shot across the bow to tell Corbyn to rein it in.
That's a terrible name.
Why not just join the Lib Dems - why have another party competing against Labour, the Greens, SNP, LDs Etc for pro remain voters?
"Start again" would be a terrible name for mockery though. The Progressives is the obvious title for a party believing in reformist, evidence-based social democracy.
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In addition, the deselection agenda is clearly gathering steam. Macron has shown new parties are possible in these times, winning power from nowhere.
I take it they mean pro-EU. If they don't mean that, they need a better descriptor.
AV is the pineapple on the pizza of electoral deliciousness.
Compared to the days of Foot and Kinnock how successfully have the left and momentum tendency consolidated power and control of the party machine? It gives the impression that JC has focused on that having learnt from the past
The SAPs..... lol!
Funny how things work out when we try a slightly different approach than 'you are the enemy we will kill you'... I wonder if it will ever catch on or if everyone will keep up with the traitor rhetoric and force people to act warlike whilst secretly being in talks about peace but worried about the public's reaction to such weak treachery...
The Corbyn fan club, small though it is in Parliament, should be enough to get the boundary reforms though - and the mandatory reselections that come with them.
Ireland had it in the bag...
Or Dave went shopping in Morrisons.
FWIW the party leaders are neck and neck in "doing well" ratings:
https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/975379141930487809?s=19
If anything a new leader could come under more pressure from the left of the party and have to respond to that but then on the other hand the more right wing MPs might feel they can push their weight around, my worry is the new leader could have even more pressure from all sides, at least Corbyn has peace from most of them.
Edit: Many MPs who might have held back also now believe we can win on a left wing platform which is also important and really limits any split potential down to a small number who possibly wouldn't even want to win on such a platform like Tony Blair himself said.
At least the frequency has reduced from one per week to one per month.
Talking to the rest is good as well buts its the nutters you need to bring into the process, besides the British government usually had generated enough support for the other side, in say South Africa or N. Ireland. The other side generally weren't the ones we were inflicting pain on. The advantage to Corbyn is he'll have the courage to meet them to look for peace rather than have secret meetings out of worry that the more warlike populace will accuse him of working with the enemy or some kind of trumped up treachery.
If a new centre party could have enough MPs to become the official opposition it really would be a game changer.
I think that it would also have to be an 'alliance' of groups rather than a completely new party otherwise they would waste too much time deciding the constitution and who should lead and be shadow ministers. No, create a new alliance with Labour MPs, Tory MPs and Lib Dems agreeing a limited set of objectives (including a form of PR, of course).
But, no I don't think it will happen.
For this to happen, a minimum of 132 MPs would have to leave Labour and form a new group or join the Liberal Democrats or Greens, as the only other national parties represented in parliament.
The chances of this happening seem to me to be about the same as the chances of Seumas Milne having a lucid moment over Stalin.
For the avoidance of doubt the chances of that happening are precisely fuck all.
On the 7% lead poll for Labour I would be sceptical, it was commissioned by the GMB and prefaced by questions about 'Tory spending cuts' and the previous Survation poll had a much smaller Labour lead. All polls taken since the Russian poisoning and Corbyn's muted position on it have also had the Tories ahead
https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/975316213898334209
*Looks round expectantly for the apologia to start on the basis that Berry wasn't politically important*
"Since the general election my opinion of [X] has become more..."
Theresa May
Positive: 24%
Negative: 38%
Jeremy Corbyn
Positive: 29%
Negative: 25%
You have to go back to the 1980s when Thatcher led the Tories and Foot and Kinnock led Labour for the last time rightwingers held sway in the leadership of the Tory Party and leftwingers held sway in the leadership of Labour at the same time. At the time it produced the SDP/Liberal Alliance which was formed in 1981 and got 25% at the 1983 general election and 23% at the 1987 general election, the highest share for a third party in a UK general election since 1929 and that is why this thread is pertinent at the present time.
Amongst prominent Remainers who could form such a party, Cable, Adonis and Soubry were all once in the SDP.
Just F***ing Do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXsQAXx_ao0
FPTP is a phenomenal hurdle for a new party to get over as is the essential conservatism of the British people. This applies not only with the electorate but with those that join. In Dundee and Angus we were heavy with disappointed old Labour types who felt that they should still be councillors. It really wasn't a help. It also taught me that being a member of a party involves a lot of compromises and supporting things you don't especially agree with (Europe, even then). In an established party people tend to know and do this but in a new party the tendency to splinter is much greater. Once you have left one party on your principles it is much easier to leave a second. People came and went and money was very tight.
I don't regret being in the SDP but the odds against a grouping like this having any significant impact are huge. They would be better off trying to persuade Labour (or even the Tories) to adopt the policies they want. Otherwise they risk, at best, splitting the vote.
"For the past five years, the rockets have been our only means to resupply the International Space Station. Not bad for a rocket design that was nearly mothballed but has since gone on to make 784 flights, almost all of them successful."
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/29/50_years_soyuz/
Subversives, weaklings and traitors to the Motherland 0.01%
There you go!
Half of them are probably just kneeling at the end of the bed each night, praying that Corbyn simply loses the election, and this madness passes.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-space-programme-collapse-soyuz-2-1b-rocket-cosmodrome-launch-failure-latest-news-a8094856.html
The millionaire communist 15%
Russian Kim Kardashian 12%
Zhirinovsky 8%
Some other joke candidate the Kremlin put up 2%
His Imperial Majesty Vladimir IV 165%
I cannot see a way back for 'Realistic' Labour in the short or medium term. The membership has been skewed by the changes implemented by Miliband and thus control has shifted leftwards. Unless a moderate version of Momentum is established and use those same membership rules to flood the party with new moderate voices, regaining control of the party machine will be very, very difficult. Indeed if such a body were to be established, I can see how the Corbyn inner circle would suddenly demand a purity test for all new members to keep out incoming moderates.
We need a moderate left of centre opposition party. A party that is loyal to the interests of the Nation. A party that deals with those who use violent language as part of political discourse by kicking them out - no matter how senior they are. A party that refuses to give home to those who indulge in anti-semitism. A party that does not cosy up to extremists round the world.
Corbyn has demonstrated that he is not willing to do those things.
They may not succeed but if someone had the gumption to build a new movement on the centre left, then they would earn the respect of those in the political class for doing what is right rather than just sitting muttering in the background.
I really think M Poirot more than anyone else can offer us some guidance. "Means, Motive and Opportunity". The means is essentially understood and not in serious dispute. The opportunity has not been much explored but seems to be based on the happenstance of the daughter visiting her father. An apparent consequence of that is the timing would be dictated by that event rather than co-incident events such as the Russian election.
But, the one that baffles me is "Motive". Why ?
Seriously, to kill the guy a bullet in the back of the head would be much more certain and no less deniable.
"Pour decourager les autres". Well, a bullet would have done that.
To make a stink to make Putin look strong in the run up to the election ? So if the daughter hadn't happened to be visiting at this time then someone else would have been the victim ?
No doubt John le Carre would tell us, as Corbyn almost seemed to suggest, it was our spooks and not theirs. Sorry, I've never been convinced by his plotting, even if his prose style is excellent.
So, why ? To make Theresa look stupid ? that is predictably barmy. The one thing about Theresa is that she is much less unimpressive when it comes to giving a response to events such as this.
To make Corbyn look good ? Whilst his handling of this matter has been much less sure footed than most things it can hardly have been a surprise that an effective response would pose some difficulty for the Cat Herder in Chief.
To provoke a damp squib of a boycott of the World Cup ? That was hardly difficult to dodge, although Tim Farron failed.
To bring the Putin vote out ? Most plausible but the timing is a problem.
To close down the British Council in Russia ? I doubt there will be many tears shed either side of the Iron Curtain for this relic of our Imperialist past.
It leads me to think the cliche of the Spy Novels of the genius spooks juggling their time between chess and the crossword in the Moldovian Times is just so far out. At best they come over as irredeemably stupid, playing their schoolboy pranks.
Should I be found dead in extremely improbably circumstances please draw someone's attention to this contribution.
Survation also was the only pollster to underestimate the Tory lead and overestimate the Labour voteshare
UKIP seems to demonstrate how unstable a new party can be ...
Why was an ice axe chosen as the way of dispatching Trotsky? Again a bullet would have far simpler.
The Soviets and their heirs have always had a penchant for theatrical assassinations. Sometimes they do things quietly, sometimes they do things to really get noticed.
I can't imagine why - I don't think there is a rational basis for their choices other than to send messages to the wider world not just their intended class of victim.
Back from an excellent brunch and a bracing walk which just goes to show you don't need ti live in provincial England to have a pleasant Sunday.
A new party ? Well, yes. Let's not forget the SDP came very close to achieving that breakthrough and I well remember being out canvassing thirty-six years ago in a similarly cold late winter/early spring in a solid Conservative Ward and hearing that solid vote disintegrate in front of me.
One week or so later, Galtieri decided on his insane foreign venture and both the Conservative AND Labour parties were saved. Had the May 1982 local elections happened without the Falklands, I wonder how London would have voted.
As it was, the Conservatives lost 7% and Labour 9% with the Alliance quadrupling the former Liberal share to 24%.
Anyway, that's history which doesn't often repeat itself exactly.
So they stabbed him a few times and then shot him. Then dropped him in a river.
I wonder what we would have thought about an assassination attempt on Kim Philby when he was living in Moscow ?
It's quite difficult, even for those who lived through it, to remember and contextualise public attitudes to Thatcher prior to Galtieri's Falklands escapade. Without the emotional solidarity of the war, the appeal of the SDP to wetter Tories would have been considerably stronger, as there was a significant portion of the party and its supporters which heartily despised her.
The final Survation poll was GB wide not UK wide, it had Labour on 40.4%, and Labour in Great Britain polled 41%.
There's no harm in admitting you were wrong when you said Survation overestimated the Labour vote share which is factually incorrect.
http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Survation-GE2017-Final-Poll-2d7l9l8.pdf
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/voting-intention-1979-1983