Labour Party leadership election 2015

[Dan the Roman]

On wider points it probably makes me a new labour hack to say this but even if people agree with Labour policies on housing, nuclear weapons and rail they will face the problem the tories had 2005-people agreed with the policy but disagree with the party. The tories would play out the 2015 election on max, it would be a complete assault on Labour being weak on defence and about to tax you to the max.

As I said above, Corbyn's problem is being attached to the old left that seemed to attack all western foreign policy as 'evil and imperialist'. We need to be a party of government

His problem is that it will be the only thing an election is about. Labour will be lucky to get a word in about their actual policies in 2020. It will be about how Labour is led by a self-loathing, anti-white, anti-semitic, terrorist-supporting, lunatic, with his lines on migration, colonialism, the monarchy, the IRA, and Israel dug up and presented. And even during this campaign he has embraced some of them - ie. his Balfour declaration comments.

What he is trying to do(stake out ground to the left of the electorate on economics) can only be done by someone solid enough elsewhere that the topic can't be changed. That is not the case with Corbyn.

[Dan the Roman]

Foot had already erased Labour's lead even prior to the Falklands war: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/voting-intention-1979-1983

Nothing at all to do with the Limehouse declaration!

An event which of course happened for no reason and struck a nerve with the voters for no reason.

There were a number of reasons SDP took off - media support, high-profile leaders, claims of being the moderation/centrist force with none of the baggage of the main two. But my original contention remains true: Foot was leading the polls pretty handsomely before the split.

Governments in the UK seem to spend a lot of time behind. Thatcher was behind most of her tenure, as was Wilson, and Cameron for that matter. Blair was sort of the modern exception.

I think Foot was always going to suffer in a campaign because of a squeeze on one of the anti-Labour parties. 1983 very much had an anti-Labour majority, much as 2015 did, and evidence shows that when such exists, boundaries, UNS, pre-election polling, all tend to pale into insignificance.

Foot was DOA because he was not someone people could take seriously as a potential PM. His policies contributed to this impression(ie. things like the EU/Trident made him look unserious) but were not in isolation his problem. The same will be true of Corbyn. The problem with his views on the IRA/Hamas/Banning Private schools is not that they are unpopular but that they make him appear unserious as 95% of the political figures who hold those positions are unserious people( generally either student or post-student activists).

As a consequence the individual appeal of, say his economic message, will not matter all that much, because it will not be viewed in isolation, but as part of a package.

I think going Left, especially on economic issues makes sense for Labour, but Corbyn is the wrong man to take it to Downing Street. He might well pave the way for someone else, but like Moses he can never enter the promised land. And in all honesty I suspect he knows that.

[Dan the Roman]

I was responding to the statement that the 60s was a better decade than the current one (which seems to have now been retracted, in fairness).

That the Wilson government fixed some of those things towards the end of the 60s is irrelevant to that claim.

Anyway, social policy aside, look at any decent metric of welfare and obviously people are better off now. Leftist radical nostalgia for poverty is annoying. I guess if you like poverty supporting Corbyn makes sense though.

There are some long term happiness studies showing that the 60s were the decade when most of Western Europe reached the level where higher material wealth stopped making us happier. Since then material progress has not made the average person feel better.

When you are poor increased material wealth makes you feel a lot better, but this effect decrease when you reach higher levels and at some point more stuff and better living conditions stop adding to most peoples feeling of satisfaction with life.

The nostalgia is also not completely unfounded: Society was a lot more safe and sustainable back then. Local communities functioned better, crime was lower, unemployment lower, outsourcing unheard of etc. Farming was closer to being organic, traffic congestion lower etc. At the same time it was a culturally much more vibrant and exciting era than today.

So as a decade it had an adequate level of material wealth for most people, was culturally interesting and a lot of social and economic changes since then have simply not benefitted ordinary people.

^ This, more or less exactly. Not to mention the fact that the people did actually have some kind of an influence and a choice at the moment, you know, democratically speaking. That's all over now, of course.

There also no immigrants/non-whites. You really can't deal with English 1960s nostalgia without the racial aspect. It is buried beneath every single one of those points. Democracy was real before the foreigners corrupted it, there was less traffic before all the immigrants came, housing was nicer and now look at East London etc

[Dan the Roman]

I was responding to the statement that the 60s was a better decade than the current one (which seems to have now been retracted, in fairness).

That the Wilson government fixed some of those things towards the end of the 60s is irrelevant to that claim.

Anyway, social policy aside, look at any decent metric of welfare and obviously people are better off now. Leftist radical nostalgia for poverty is annoying. I guess if you like poverty supporting Corbyn makes sense though.

There are some long term happiness studies showing that the 60s were the decade when most of Western Europe reached the level where higher material wealth stopped making us happier. Since then material progress has not made the average person feel better.

When you are poor increased material wealth makes you feel a lot better, but this effect decrease when you reach higher levels and at some point more stuff and better living conditions stop adding to most peoples feeling of satisfaction with life.

The nostalgia is also not completely unfounded: Society was a lot more safe and sustainable back then. Local communities functioned better, crime was lower, unemployment lower, outsourcing unheard of etc. Farming was closer to being organic, traffic congestion lower etc. At the same time it was a culturally much more vibrant and exciting era than today.

So as a decade it had an adequate level of material wealth for most people, was culturally interesting and a lot of social and economic changes since then have simply not benefitted ordinary people.

^ This, more or less exactly. Not to mention the fact that the people did actually have some kind of an influence and a choice at the moment, you know, democratically speaking. That's all over now, of course.

There also no immigrants/non-whites. You really can't deal with English 1960s nostalgia without the racial aspect. It is buried beneath every single one of those points. Democracy was real before the foreigners corrupted it, there was less traffic before all the immigrants came, housing was nicer and now look at East London etc

Maybe you can't. A vast majority can. Unless there is something very specific to Britain regarding nostalgia towards that era.

There is. At least among those in Britain who feel that sort of nostalgia I would go as far as to say all but a minuscule minority(sub 10%) either implicitly or explicitly tie that nostalgia to immigration. Try going around and speaking to Labour voters outside university seats. This was evident in 2010, and even more so in 2015 when Labour handed out anti-immigrant mugs.

Those who tend to be pro-immigration tend not to have much if any nostalgia for the Pre-1979 world, not least because it led to 1979, and they tend to be more upscale anyway.

And immigration really is the third rail of British politics to a degree unequaled even anywhere else in Europe. 

[Dan the Roman]

Labour's strongest seats aren't in university areas, they are depressed urban areas, not all of which are full of ethnic minorities (Indeed many are the opposite, see Tyne and Wear).

Britain is not America. Britain's voting patterns are different to America. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I've actually lived in the UK the last three years so am fairly familiar. The depressed urban areas are where you hear complaints about immigration. As you do in the marginals.

The point I was making though was not about immigration per se, but that in my experience almost every time someone in the UK has brought up nostalgia for the 1950s or 60s, it has almost invariably had a racial tinge to it. Maybe there is some genuine Bennite nostalgia, but I would be shocked if most people even remember who he was. The "ideal" of the past has generally been used as a dog whistle.