UK General Election, June 8th 2017

[PoliticalShelter]

I think the Blairites would use it as an opportunity to take back control of Labour and most Labour members would probably fall for it to be entirely honest. However, going centrist is just as disastrous.

What is holding back Labour is not their left-wing policies, the polls are very clear that the British people support most of them. The problem is messaging. Corbyn especially and the Labour party as a whole is bad at messaging and Corbyn as an individual is holding Labour quite far back.

What Labour needs is not to become the Red Tory, but to have fresh leadership with better messaging that is straight to the point. They should probably move to the right on issues like immigration to appeal to English voters as well as coming out in favour of English devolved parliament. An important factor that will cost Labour this election is the fact that they have failed to pick up much of the collapsing UKIP vote.

If Blairites get back control of Labour, any chance of a far left split, leading to a small party to the left of Labour? (like say, Linke in Germany). I guess they could get an amount of votes similar to the Greens, and maybe be slightly more competitive than them (I guess they could get 1 or 2 seats with the adecuate candidates and enough effort)

Please can people stop using the term "Blairites". They are a complete non-factor these days, not everyone who isn't a Corbynista is a Blairite.

Yeah the blarites were always more of a "court" faction of the party that have no real support amongst the grassroots and thanks to recent rule changes in the Labour Party means that they are completely powerless.

[PoliticalShelter]

I think the Blairites would use it as an opportunity to take back control of Labour and most Labour members would probably fall for it to be entirely honest. However, going centrist is just as disastrous.

What is holding back Labour is not their left-wing policies, the polls are very clear that the British people support most of them. The problem is messaging. Corbyn especially and the Labour party as a whole is bad at messaging and Corbyn as an individual is holding Labour quite far back.

What Labour needs is not to become the Red Tory, but to have fresh leadership with better messaging that is straight to the point. They should probably move to the right on issues like immigration to appeal to English voters as well as coming out in favour of English devolved parliament. An important factor that will cost Labour this election is the fact that they have failed to pick up much of the collapsing UKIP vote.

If Blairites get back control of Labour, any chance of a far left split, leading to a small party to the left of Labour? (like say, Linke in Germany). I guess they could get an amount of votes similar to the Greens, and maybe be slightly more competitive than them (I guess they could get 1 or 2 seats with the adecuate candidates and enough effort)

Please can people stop using the term "Blairites". They are a complete non-factor these days, not everyone who isn't a Corbynista is a Blairite.

Yeah the blarites were always more of a "court" faction of the party that have no real support amongst the grassroots and thanks to recent rule changes in the Labour Party means that they are completely powerless.

David Miliband won the majority of members votes in 2010... so yes they did have a large amount of grassroots support in the party

The only reason David miliband came close in 2010 was the rules that gave a ridiculous amount of power to the moderate PLP, which has been scraped in favour of one member one vote. So yes the blairties are irrelevant and lack grassroots support. I mean ok he did win Labour Party members but he lost affiliated members which make up a much larger number than Labour Party members and im pretty sure they count as the grassroot.

[PoliticalShelter]

You'll find that the Prodigal Son, David, got the largest number of votes among both MPs and among the party membership. Ed only won through his support among affiliated supporters; something which was used as rather a bludgeon against him later, of course...

Yes i've edited my post upon finding this out.
And of course even if the blairites did have signifcant grassroot support in 2010 you'd have to be delusional to think this is true in 2017.

[PoliticalShelter]

Possibly the weirdest development in British politics over the last few years, and there is a lot of competition, is the recasting of David Miliband as the reincarnation of Jesus, Lincoln and Martin Luther King all rolled up into one, rather than the nice but wet blanket charisma vacumn that he actually was.

FBM, as in Flawless Beautiful Miliband.

I think the basic assumption with David is basically "As the new leader of the blairites he must have all of Tony's political talents and electoral success!" Liz Kendall sought of tried to do a similar thing as well.

[PoliticalShelter]

The only reason David miliband came close in 2010 was the rules that gave a ridiculous amount of power to the moderate PLP, which has been scraped in favour of one member one vote. So yes the blairties are irrelevant and lack grassroots support. I mean ok he did win Labour Party members but he lost affiliated members which make up a much larger number than Labour Party members and im pretty sure they count as the grassroot.

It didn't give a ridiculous amount- it gave it equal weighting, which considering that MPs in both parties have [almost always picked the right leader, (with the exception of Hague in 1997) is actually a rather modest proposal.

The left fixed in the leadership election in 2010 and succeeded, whilst the moderates tried it in 2016 and failed.

As someone who has worked for leadership campaigns I can assure you that affiliated members are absolutely worthless now, but have just been cancelled out by the 'new' members. Of course I'd argue the true grassroots of the party e.g those who actually doorknock, run for councils, etc are actually relatively in the centre of the party (hence why Sadiq and Tom won in 2015)

Having labour MPs vote be worth 600 times more than a party member is not partcularly fair, and if the justification is "labour MPs know best" is not a healthy way to run a political party and really isn't true (unless you believe that David miliband is as wonderful as the press thinks).

Edit: found out about the union envelope thing so ignore that section

[PoliticalShelter]

I think the major difference that David Milliband might have made compared to Ed is that he would have argued against the Tory "Labour spending created the recession" fiction; whereas Ed just kind of rolled over and let the Tories dictate what "competent" economic management was supposed to be.

Not really, if anything David's blairite instinct would of been to try and eliminate it as an contentious issue between the two parties or possibly go further and try to outdo the Tories, to try to impress swing voters.