Labour Party leadership election 2015

[politicus]

As for Corbyn, yes, he's a crank.

So? Gladstone was a crank. Didn't stop him from becoming PM.

[politicus]

As for Corbyn, yes, he's a crank.

So? Gladstone was a crank. Didn't stop him from becoming PM.

That was a long time ago. I can't see him becoming PM in this day and age. Mind you, the same could be said for most if not all of the PM's who served during that era.

Sigh.

Didn't think I needed to put a smiley after that one, guess I was wrong.

[politicus]

Is the Torygraph's idea of Conservatives paying 3£ to vote for Corbyn likely to become a real thing or is it just a fantasy?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politics-blog/11680016/Why-Tories-should-join-Labour-and-back-Jeremy-Corbyn.html

[politicus]

What are the main wings/factions in Labour? How relevant is the Old Labour/New Labour distinction now?

[politicus]

https://mobile.twitter.com/corbynjokes

"What goes black, white, black, white, black, white? History repeating itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce?"

Love it!

[politicus]

Yeah, Corbyn seems basically to be in line with the left wing of the Danish SD (which is small, but not considered radical) and to the right of the left wing of Icelandic SDA. I am pretty sure he would fit in nicely on the left flank of Norwegian Labour and Swedish SAP as well.

So it is a bit funny for someone this side of the North Sea that he is considered a "Socialist" (of course you can argue that all forms of Social Democracy are an expression of Democratic Socialism) and a radical.

I suppose his critical view of the UK still trying to play the great power game despite dwindling resources is controversial in a British context, whereas his view of foreign policy would be quite normal for a leftist SD in a small country.

[politicus]

Swedish SDA as well.

What is SDA? The Social Democrats is shortened either simply as S or SAP, SDA sounds like it would be a radical wing of the Sweden Democrats.

Well, I have been writing too much about Iceland. Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Arbetareparti might as well be SDA though (SA I suppose is out of the question for historical reasons ). Shortening the Sweden Democrats to SD is always a bit confusing. SVD would sound more right wing, like the Swiss SVP.

[politicus]

Neil Kinnock has endorsed Burnham.

Logical. How is his status among the members today?

[politicus]

Guardian article on leading figures and candidates in the Greens and far left parties signing up as registered supporters

The thing is that I suspect many of these people regard themselves as Labour supporters in exile, so they don't have a problem with making the statement required about sharing Labour's values and not being a member of an organisation opposed to it.

Does the UK law allows one to be a member of more than one party? In Israel the law forbids it and during party primaries there are usually disqualified voters over such matterss

Strange to have a law about that, parties are private associations, it should be up to them, what they will allow.

[politicus]

Alan Johnson has endorsed Yvette Cooper and some journos have decribed that as a sign she now has he suport of "the Blairite" wing. I thought Johnson was a bit further left than being an actual Blairite?

[politicus]

Let us now discuss something far more important, namely Burnham's hair when he was younger:

Seems fine to me.

[politicus]

Can Corbyn really bring back Scottish votes or is SNP talk of a lack of a "true left wing alternative" just populist nonsense?

It's more of a middle finger to the establishment-I know many scots who saw the referendum as the English conning the scots, claiming that 'operation fear' was used to scare people into voting No. Likewise Scottish Labour has had something like 6 leaders since 2008, and it's been pretty useless.  Combined with the toxic parts of New Labour it's allowed the SNP to surge-they actually won the 2007 elections despite being much more right wing. The SNP used to be known as tartan tories, which is one of the funny aspects of british politics.

It seems lazy to think that labour becoming left wing will win back scotland because there's so many factors. Also the SNP only got 50% of the vote in scotland-FPTP just titled it awfully to give them 58 seats

Corbyn would probably do better in scotland in getting back former labour voters, but even if we got the 58 SNP seats we'd still be 50 off a majority

56.

Nowadays Tartan Tories seems mostly to be used about SNP in the NE. Not in general. 1979 is a long time ago.

[politicus]

Oh dear, Fox News has something to say.

"bearded vegetarian socialist "

The horror.

[politicus]

Some interesting figures; 22% of Britons say they are against the Royals; that must be the highest for some time; higher even than opposition to airstrikes against ISIS. Also, surely tuition fees aren't tuition fees if paid entirely by the government? Also, lol at a large proportion of Kendall supporters who strongly hold positions that would put them in the Socialist Campaign Group if they were MPs.

Obviously this doesn't prove anything either way but you can certainly see the potential for a Corbyn led Labour Party bumping up against the Great British public at the general election in 2020 and coming away with a drubbing.

Only 42% of Corbyn supporters want tuition fees paid 100% by the government? That is quite low.

[politicus]

Labour's policies in the 1960s were actually to the right of Corbyn, certainly in terms of defence. In some areas, Corbyn is actually to the left of the 1983 manifesto, which was still committed to NATO membership.

This may be a daft question, but why is Britain becoming neutral seen as such an extreme position? You are on the edge of Europe and face no serious security threats, so you could "afford" it better than most. Is it clinging on to past glory via the special relationship with the US?

Also, why is there (seemingly) no right wing isolationist opposition to NATO? Are all of UKIP and the Europhobic part of the Tories pro-Atlantic?

[politicus]

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.

[politicus]

Hence when they summon up some faux outrage at how Corbynites are being "too indulgent" and overly-relaxed at the prospect of losing, we know what's really at play.

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.

Honestly, I think Al's far closer to the actual cause - woolly notions of pollution and sentimentality overlooks that prospects for ordinary working-class Brits - particularly the young - things are far from "better off now". Decently paid, long-term secure jobs has made way for 'flexible', low-paid jobs thanks in large part to the shift to service sector economy (zero-hours up by 20% yipee!); union strength barely existent today; inflation in qualifications mean jobs in other sectors require qualifications that now come saddled with debt (up to 30K), pensions are, to put it lightly, not what they were and essentials like affordable housing & regulated rent are no longer a given. Last I seen, Britain's social mobility ranks amongst Eastern European levels - and it's notable, just look at the trend of working-class representation in parliament & other spheres, and I've even seen figures to suggest child poverty has risen since the 1960's.

Obviously ivory tower liberals have no idea, and so are to be found telling us, unconvincingly, we've never had it so good.

While I mentioned sustainability I also included lower unemployment and no outsourcing etc. as factors, so you are making a caricature of my post.

[politicus]

Even if Burnham wasn't having a shocking campaign, he clearly isn't seen as an acceptable compromise for the right of the party.

That seems rather silly of them.

[politicus]

The thing I would point out is that the Tories are also due a leadership election in this parliament. It's unlikely to be a clusterfyck in the way that Labour's has been/is, but it will likely be a clusterfyck all the same.

Theresa May vs. Jeremy Corbyn in 2020 would be fun.

(unless you are British, I guess)

[politicus]

As someone on Twitter pointed out, in the 1950s the media would have merely said "The new leader of the Labour Party is Mr. Corbyn" and then shut up.

Those were the days..

[politicus]

corbyn's best hope is doing a Trump. Break all the established "rules" of politicking and see how things go from there.

Anyway, I don't blame him for not singing the anthem, which is infamously a lousy dirge. There is only one good part of GStQ, and that's the duhduhDUHDUH crescendo before SEND! HER! VIC! TORIOUS!

What about the second half of:

"Lord, grant that Marshal Wade,
May by thy mighty aid,
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
and like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush,
God save the King."

Quite feisty. They could update it with some SNP references.

[politicus]

As the Labour leadership election is now over how about locking this thread off and starting a new one named Corbynwatch?

Whatever you think about Jeremy Corbyn the press are going to absolutely love him and will be ferocious attack dogs at anything he says or does that they don't agree with.

If nothing else it won't be boring
 

Corbynwatch should be on IG. No real reason to lock this (there may still be number crunching/analysis to be done) just open the other one.

[politicus]

Made Corbynwatch on IG. Lets see if people use it.

[politicus]

so it's vital that Labour becomes more attractive to Scotland for its own survival.

Not it's not. All you need to do is prevent Tories from winning an absolute majority and enter a coalition with SNP. There's no question SNP will choose to prop up a Labour government, as their voters would never forgive them for keeping a Torie government afloat.

Focusing on Scotland is the exact opposite of what Labour should do. You need to take seats away from the Tories in England, or they'll have a majority forever.

Reconquer the Midlands, basically.