The only party that gets anything more than fuck all is Galloway himself, and the barriers to working with him are not simply his ego
Looming Le Pen - French Election 2022
- Thread starter RileyOBlimey
- Start date
The left has to start somewhere or we surrender to the right forever. In my ward in May the Greens got 150 votes and TUSC 60. The latter would almost wholly have gone to the Greens if they'd agreed to work together. The Green vote would have been 40 percent larger, which is more than the insignificant fractional difference you are trying to pretend it is. And with a united left backing a single candidate everywhere we can increase boots on the ground and become more effective challengers everywhere. You seem to want to throw your hands up in the air and mutter about the uselessness of left wing unity in spite of the French left having just shown us the way.
Your argument is one of perpetual surrender to the right by dismissing the notion of the left working together. It is a mind numbing argument for despair and perpetual right wing government.
Though his ego is a potential problem. It always seems to be about him where he is concerned.
I agree, but that is what we need to start working towards.
wemakeyousoundb
hopefully not gimboid
abstain the biggest party in this election:
only 46.23% of people registered voted in it.
only 46.23% of people registered voted in it.
Colin Hunt
Active Member
If Westminster is the obstacle, why focus on electoral politics at all? Why not build a grassroots movement within communities and trade unions that can make people's lives better outside of the political system?
As it stands, any left-wing alliance has to involve the Labour Party or it will collapse into being a complete irrelevance. For Labour, the electoral gains to be had by allying with the Green party would not be worth the hassle,* and any party that seriously considers allying with Galloway's latest vanity project would be completely mad.
*The 2017 Labour manifesto was backed by the TUSC. An alliance with the Greens would (on the assumption that all Green voters would shift to Labour and not abstain or vote Lib Dem) have won 6 extra seats at that election, with 4 of those being in England. At the 2019 election, a similar pact would've gained 14 extra seats, 12 in England. Since these seats are all marginal seats, from a Labour perspective it could be argued that a better campaigning strategy would be a more effective use of resources than an alliance with the Greens, TUSC, or anyone else.
Labour is a lost cause for the left right now apart from a handful of genuinely left leaning MPs who ought to recognise the writing on the wall and act accordingly.
And yes at the grassroots level we should operate outside parliament to do what we can but we will never get a genuine progressive government that way. We need ultimately to make progress in Westminster which in the long run means recognising Labour as just the other cheek of the Establishment's arse and challenging it at the ballot box. We ultimately need to replace it and for that the left needs to unite. Our best hope for speeding that process is PR, and the best hope for that is denying either a Tory or Labour majority with the Tories doing badly enough to be unable to form any viable coalition, and Labour needing the support of others with PR being the price.
In it's current incarnation Labour is not something that any genuinely progressive left winger can support, and it's internal rule changes guarantee that it will stay that way, whoever ends up being in charge. And have you not noticed the witch hunt going on? Socialists not welcome?
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Have you got any evidence for this? Certainly the Ensemble vote when down but I've not seen any evidence that it was due to former Macron supporters defecting to NUPES/RN rather than the movements. The tweet The39thStep shared tends to suggest relatively little movement from the centre to other groups, which is more what I would suspect.
In many ways the success of NUPES happened precisely because the PS has gone, giving space for a new (centre)-left group. That is not the case in the UK, either you include Labour in the left, in which case it dominates and other groups (outside of Scotland and partially Wales) are irrelevant or if you exclude Labour* you are left with nothing but a bunch of minor parties with very little support. The idea that if only the Socialist Alliance would reform they would get a decent vote is deluded.
*your posts on Starmer and above would indicate this is your preference
Again do you have evidence for this claim?
It depends by what you mean by far right, but during the BNPs rise most of its vote came not from disaffected Tory voters but from non-voters.
That's a non starter since Labour has ceased to be a party of the left so we need to build something new.
And in France the number of centrist seats has fallen whilst those of the left and far right have increased dramatically. This is not evidence of your claim that there has been no shift in votes, lol. However much that was what you expected.
Colin Hunt
Active Member
I agree. But my point was simply that when there was a left-leaning Labour manifesto, allying with the Green Party would have barely gained them anything, and allying with Galloway et al. would've cost them far more than it would have given them. Why would it be any different for the Green Party?
For what it's worth I don't think the Greens are a particularly left-wing party. 'Progressive' maybe, depending on your view.
You won't get a 'genuine progressive government' that way but you'll get visible and clear wins for the people that you want to help. That's a much better way of making gains than creating endless pacts between irrelevant parties.
What kind of PR system would enable Labour to be fully replaced by the left unity party that you've created? It just seems like you haven't thought this through.
He is an egomaniacal narcissist, but nevertheless is a force on the left. Even if we can exclude him personally we need to try and get those who support him onside.
It is you who is not thinking things through.
If you think the only way to make progress is extra-parliamentary then you'll only get small gains against the grain of an entrenched system. We need to take power for fundamental reform.
As for PR, it would allow the left to gain the representation it's cause could gain support for and give it a voice in parliament. Are you familiar with the polling that showed how popular the 2017 manifesto policies were? With such an agenda being vocally advocated in parliament it would inevitably increase support for the left, which would in turn worry others into adopting some of these policies themselves. That is how change would happen. And an establishmentarian faux opposition being supplanted by new forces to the left has happened before even under FPTP. Labour did it to the Liberals and the SNP did it to New Labour. This would be so much easier under PR unless the existing parties responded to head it off by addressing the concerns of the struggling millions themselves.
It seems you are the one with an inability to think things through when considering the possibilities.
One thing is certain. A majority for even Labour or the Tories will never deliver meaningful change. We have to start thinking beyond the same old establishmentarian two party duopoly.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
You don't seem to have much idea what you are talking about.
In an election where over 50% of the electorate did not vote it is entirely possible for the changes in vote share to be brought about by shifts in differential turnout rather than voters transferring their vote from one party to another.
Now some movement from the centre to NUPES probably is happening, but there is plenty of past evidence that the Ensemble, LFI and RN voters are very different and there is not a great deal of movement between them. Like that tweet posted which claimed that 72% of Ensemble voters chose not to vote rather than vote NUPES/RN, which is backed by the much greater fall in the Ensemble share of the vote in the 2nd round than the 1st.
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Colin Hunt
Active Member
You're not responding to my points and I'm getting bored. I'll expand on my point about PR below but before I do that I'll just say that I find it quite funny that I'm being accused of not thinking things through by someone who is proposing an alliance between TUSC, the Green Party, and the Workers Party of Britain. It's absurd fantasy football politics.
My point on PR was that you said it would create the environment for a new united left party to supplant Labour, but you never stated which model of PR would enable this replacement. There are various types of PR and I can't see any of them leading to the type of change that you propose in the UK. In most European countries with PR the left-wing alternative parties that have been created in recent years rely on being in coalition with existing social democratic parties in order to get things done. That obviously dilutes their power to make real change. While I agree that PR makes it easier in theory for new leftist voices to be heard in Parliament, I think you overstate the impact that it would have on the 'establishment'.
Additionally, where establishment parties are worried about the left they usually don't adopt their policies. Not in any meaningful sense anyway. What instances of this phenomena have you seen in countries that have PR systems?
In most countries with PR systems, the 2017 policy agenda is already in place and part of the established consensus. And so what if the left has to work with others to get things done? It is better than being entirely excluded.
And when it comes to PR I favour something similar to the German system. Where our politics would differ under such a system is the establishment's resistance to popular social democratic change of a kind already in place there, which would inevitably increase support for those calling for that change here unless the establishment parties are willing to introduce some of it themselves.
We have the struggling and thoroughly exploited millions here because the establishment duopoly can get away with it in the absence of PR.
People declining to vote for the centrists but still voting for left and right is in effect a serious problem for the centre.
As for votes actually shifting, you have presented no evidence regarding the extent to which that is or is not happening. Your assertion that some votes probably have switched to the left is pure guesswork on your part. Your use of the word "probably" being the big clue to that effect.
The left has managed to unite in France. Yet it is absurd to suggest that they should attempt to do so here?
And all you have to offer us instead is the other cheek of the same establishmentarian arse.
Sorry but that is just more of the same and even the Monster Raving Loony party is better than that.
Who else do you think the Rwanda policy (send them back to Africa) and the culture wars are designed to appeal to if not the former BNP and UKIP voters?
It is blindingly obvious. But politically motivated denial of the obvious is typical of the opponents of meaningful change, one of whose standard tactics is to ridicule the very notion of it even being possible, as you and one or two others are doing.
there's already a united front of no-vote left parties, and no-one's noticed.
The left is not united. It is splintered.
In any case you seem to be championing the notion that the left wing cause is so totally doomed that there is no point trying. Don't you believe in fighting for something you believe in? Making change happen? Or do you want to settle for whatever crumbs from the table you might get offered?
Yours is the politics of hopelessness, the politics of despair, the politics of giving up. You are the type of person the right love. Because that is exactly what they and their media outlets want you to think.
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On the other hand, dismissing the bulk of the working class - who are disproportionately young and located in urban areas - as cosmopolitan elites despite living from paycheque to paycheque for minimum wage in shared rented accommodation - is hardly a path to victory.
The Corbyn vote was along class lines, because relationship to property determines class, not education level. A builder may be superficially working class but is more likely to be self-employed and own several properties than a young heavily indebted university grad working for near minimum wage in an office job while living in cramped shared accommodation and handing most of their wage over to a landlord who is quite likely a boomer, likely to live in a nice rural area (because they can either afford to drive to work or don't need to work), and less likely to have a university education because fewer people did back then. Casting them as the prole and their tenant as the cosmopolitan liberal elite is absurd, but this kind or framing is way too prevalent in our media.
Similarly, the rising cost of property has proletarianised the younger generation to a higher degree than any generation since before WW2. The primary predictor of support for Corbyn was not youth or education level, but whether or not you were in private renting. This correlates to age, as the young are locked out of home ownership; which in turn correlates to education level, because it is only recently that the school leaving age was raised to 18 and around 50% of people started going to university.
I'm not sure if younger people who didn't go to university were any less likely to vote for Corbyn than those that did.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
How often that's been said and rarely it's been done, maybe it's time to try something else
Indeed, and it is a reflection of the fact that for far too long tenants were the forgotten exploited until Labour under Corbyn promised to do something for them.
Colin Hunt
Active Member
So you can't provide any examples of policies being enacted in PR systems because of fear of the Parliamentary left? Instead you're focusing on the 2017 Labour manifesto for some reason. Is that the limit of your political ambition?
My point is that in such systems very little that the left wants will actually happen. Imagine your popular front of Galloway supporters and Green party voters gets into Parliament. How much of Labour's 2017 manifesto do you reckon they'll be able to make into law if they're in coalition with Starmer's Labour? That is, if anyone will form a coalition with them. PR systems place roadblocks in front of reform too.
So where is the progressive German left? The only party in the German system that represents a left-wing alternative was almost wiped out at the last election (losing 30 seats and being only a few thousand votes away from losing 67 seats).
People struggle and are exploited in countries with PR systems. Establishment duopolies exist in countries with PR systems. German workers struggle and are exploited. Germany has 2 dominant establishment parties that have controlled their government just as 2 dominant parties have controlled our government. Your issue should be with the state itself and its relationship with capital, and not with the window-dressing that is the electoral system.
It is absurd to suggest that the Green Party, Workers Party, and TUSC should unite because they have very little in common. In fact, they have so little in common that I'm beginning to think that you might be trolling.
It is also absurd because in general these parties don't have a national reach (apart from the Greens), so rarely end up competing with each other anyway.
there's already a pact between a number of the small left wing parties you've named - the unity you're demanding exists, more or less. Their problem isn't a lack cooperation, it's that no-one wants to vote for them. That problem isn't something that can be solved by more cooperation at election time - taking run up after run up at elections with no public support behind it is pointless. You have things the wrong way round - the energy you'll waste knocking on doors for two months to persuade 43 people to vote for your candidate would be much more fruitfully spent elsewhere. Almost anywhere else.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Rimbaud
A couple of quick points on your response:
1. Nobody (on here, including me) is suggesting ‘dismissing’ young cosmopolitan city dwellers. But, the experience of France shows with absolute clarity where excessive focussing on that group (along with other groups like students) and writing off other sections of the working class leads: to 90 seats for the fascists and a run off between neo-liberals and the far right.
2. The idea that class can be boiled down to an individual’s relationship to property is binary, ahistorical and empties out social, cultural, economic and lived factors. It’s extraordinary unhelpful in making sense of what’s happening, has happened and will happen.
A couple of quick points on your response:
1. Nobody (on here, including me) is suggesting ‘dismissing’ young cosmopolitan city dwellers. But, the experience of France shows with absolute clarity where excessive focussing on that group (along with other groups like students) and writing off other sections of the working class leads: to 90 seats for the fascists and a run off between neo-liberals and the far right.
2. The idea that class can be boiled down to an individual’s relationship to property is binary, ahistorical and empties out social, cultural, economic and lived factors. It’s extraordinary unhelpful in making sense of what’s happening, has happened and will happen.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
I have presented evidence why voters shifting from Ensemble to NUPES/RN is unlikely. The make up to the voting blocks, the way votes have shifted in the past and the way Macron voters (did not) vote in the 2nd round. Is such evidence totally conclusive no, but that is all evidence.
In contrast your contention that Ensemble voters ditch Macron for RN/NUPES is without any evidence at all.
EDIT: It is also worth noting that the NUPES vote in the first round only increased by a little over 1%. The improved performance compared with 2017 was more due to a drop in support for Ensemble, as well as probably a more efficient vote due to the alliance. Again strengthening the case that differential turnouts were the key factor.
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redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Ah could be. Certainly daft enough.
I see this one joined March this year, Wells previous account got booted Nov 21 so?
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