Nylock
I hate 'these days'...
Good spot, but in my defence I mangled capitalisation and proper use of ellipsis not the English language in general
Now that the Labour party has finally died, we should have a funeral.
- Thread starter Hocus Eye.
- Start date
There is no point having a commitment to things that have been rejected by the electorate and make the party unelectable.
Only one Labour Party leader has won a General Election for 40 years. That's because under his leadership they sought to engage ordinary people, welcome that ordinary people are aspirational, and listened to ordinary people rather than preaching to them.
As others have said better than me and hence I plagiarise - sometimes one has to compromise for the common good. Tony Blair, who, according to Neil Kinnock, was always impressed by wealth, aided by Peter Mandelson, the man who famously said that he was intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, ensured that in the right-of-centre conservative United Kingdom, Labour gained power through finding a middle way between two extremes. He then allowed his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, to redistribute income from the rich to the poor, haul 700,000 children out of poverty and provide some of the best public services this country has ever enjoyed. Working conditions for teachers, for instance, were improved immeasurably between 1997 and 2003. Who knows what kind of country we might be living in now if the Iraq war hadn’t got in the way?
Subject: the bleedin’ obvious. It is very difficult for political parties to help the disadvantaged in society if they are not in government.
Hopefully the Labour Party can return to becoming a party that can actually help the disadvantaged, rather than bask in rhetoric..
JHE
.
True, but I believe that inequality actually grew during the Blair/Brown years. This is not to say that there were no redistributive measures. Tax credits and the Nat Min Wage are important, but those measures were not even strong enough to offset the tendency towards greater inequality, let alone create a less unequal society in 2010 than there had been in 1997.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
What does this statement mean? Strikes me there's a lot in there that needs unpacking.
MochaSoul
It's being enslaved of your own free will
Whole societies have succumbed to this notion of letting the market decide it all without asking if it were wise and without looking at the long-term effects of such a decision.
Labour compromised nothing that hadn't already been compromised by society itself. When it talks of "aspiration" it's in the same terms as the conservatives talk of it and it means "getting richer". It's nothing to do with the common good but it disguises itself in the same cloth. Labour simply followed an unthinking society and in so doing it compromised its own self.
But I also think that it were only a matter of time because of the neoliberal push to have the markets decide not just what is value but also what is of value as well as to quantify it with a price tag.
Hence, yes, I think the Labour party is defunct. I also think that answers to why or how it lost its will to live are not just confined to within the Labour Party.
Labour compromised nothing that hadn't already been compromised by society itself. When it talks of "aspiration" it's in the same terms as the conservatives talk of it and it means "getting richer". It's nothing to do with the common good but it disguises itself in the same cloth. Labour simply followed an unthinking society and in so doing it compromised its own self.
But I also think that it were only a matter of time because of the neoliberal push to have the markets decide not just what is value but also what is of value as well as to quantify it with a price tag.
Hence, yes, I think the Labour party is defunct. I also think that answers to why or how it lost its will to live are not just confined to within the Labour Party.
MochaSoul
It's being enslaved of your own free will
Thanks, Treelover. You guys are a tough crowd and I feel quite inadequate voicing my ideas so I read more than I contribute. Yes, perhaps I should overcome those feelings but... ah well.
I just thought the subject deserved a little "opening up". I think it's unfair to chastise a political party for not aiming to power (when their raison d'être is to steer communities toward their "ideal") but it's equally fair to criticise it when that quest becomes all about the power and nothing about the ideals. That's probably my main criticism of the Labour Party. It gave economics (and economists) the final word in deciding what is good for society and how to achieve it, and, in so doing, forgot its own ambition for a "good society" and replaced it with simple greed.
All that said, I also think the Labour Party is far from alone in all of that.
Perhaps that funeral should indeed happen. Were I to organise it I'd invite people to think hard about these things.
I just thought the subject deserved a little "opening up". I think it's unfair to chastise a political party for not aiming to power (when their raison d'être is to steer communities toward their "ideal") but it's equally fair to criticise it when that quest becomes all about the power and nothing about the ideals. That's probably my main criticism of the Labour Party. It gave economics (and economists) the final word in deciding what is good for society and how to achieve it, and, in so doing, forgot its own ambition for a "good society" and replaced it with simple greed.
All that said, I also think the Labour Party is far from alone in all of that.
Perhaps that funeral should indeed happen. Were I to organise it I'd invite people to think hard about these things.
gimesumtruf
pedant fodder
At the election Labour said (I paraphrase) We have a fully costed manifesto, some other bits and bats and a lump of stone and we have O, O Ed, poison Balls and dickhead Byrne (WHAT A TEAM).
In the last week of the election Tories said, (I paraphrase again) We stand on our record plus no one will pay any extra taxes.
Since Blair aka Mrs Thatcher Blair left, Labour are now lightly/heavily blue rinsed, middle ground, union apologist, headline following, we won't listen, debaters.
Have'nt you got to be a politician to run a government?
Small rant:- The Tory scum had a bedroom tax, ATOS employment and were privatising stuff, hang on did'nt labour go along or even author some of this stuff, doh.
Labour now say, we will go away, beat ourselves up and learn (again) . As Mr Royal would say "my arse"
If they aint dead there aint no justice
edit While Blair ruled, my wages hardly moved.
Labour have been destroying my voting pref for years.
In the last week of the election Tories said, (I paraphrase again) We stand on our record plus no one will pay any extra taxes.
Since Blair aka Mrs Thatcher Blair left, Labour are now lightly/heavily blue rinsed, middle ground, union apologist, headline following, we won't listen, debaters.
Have'nt you got to be a politician to run a government?
Small rant:- The Tory scum had a bedroom tax, ATOS employment and were privatising stuff, hang on did'nt labour go along or even author some of this stuff, doh.
Labour now say, we will go away, beat ourselves up and learn (again) . As Mr Royal would say "my arse"
If they aint dead there aint no justice
edit While Blair ruled, my wages hardly moved.
Labour have been destroying my voting pref for years.
What do mean by "union apologist"? The Labour Party has no reason to apologise for its founders the Union movement. Its whole purpose was to be the voice of the unions and working class.
billy_bob
Air of bewilderment model's own
Much of this assessment presupposes that what went wrong for Labour this time was what the overwhelmingly right-wing media and their political opponents have claimed went wrong. Labour themselves have passively accepted this fundamentally anti-Labour narrative partly because they've become so dominated by Blairite and post-Blairite automatons who have no idea what normal people might want of the main (centre-)left party in the country, and instead only think about 'what will get us elected?'
And as Louis Macneice has said, what is the point of them if that's their only 'value'? We endlessly got from Milliband's party a 'we're slightly less nasty' narrative, which satisfies no one, regardless of their political persuasion. And yet it was this Tory-in-pastel-shades Labour party that the (again) overwhelmingly right wing media and Labour's political opponents used their dominant (and far less confused) voices to tell everyone was some kind of creeping socialism.
I don't believe Labour lost because it was lurching to the left, or even because people were fooled into thinking that it was. Nor am I naive enough to think that it would have sailed to victory easily if only it had put forward a truly socialist manifesto. I even concede that some considerable social good sneaked in in the Blairite trojan horse (along with an avalanche of shit though).
But I dont think the context and climate is the same as it was in 97, for many reasons, and I think if they'd come out with something that was coherently and purposefully principled about social justice, equality etc, even if it hadn't won it for them, it might have offered some hope for the party's future in terms of rebuilding a cohesive support base. As it is, all you've got is a disparate, disillusioned rump of people who increasingly put their tick next to the rosette only through gritted teeth.
MochaSoul
It's being enslaved of your own free will
While I agree with this, I also think it's important not to forget that it's all too easy to shout "We believe in equality" while delegating to markets decisions that will severely impact on that same equality.
I mean, the markets put a price on everything. They would have the obese poor being paid to lose weight. That may work (at least temporararilly) but it's a soul degrading strategy and one that cheapens the value of human dignity. How could that ever be acceptable to anyone proclaiming their belief and support for... anything worthy of the term "value"
gimesumtruf
pedant fodder
The Labour party has'nt kept to that purpose of being a voice to the unions, it distances itself like tories have done with ukip when bascically they are the same party.
In the election they did'nt even stand up for the good things they themselves did, never mind the unions. They have no fight, they are indeed dying if not dead, because despite all the warnings coming from the party over the years they refuse to listen.
MochaSoul
It's being enslaved of your own free will
The relationship between the unions and the labour party has been, to me, in the last two to three decades, comparable to that of a higher earning battered wife and a violent husband. (I should know but I only speak like this having, at some point, realised I was never going to be able to affect change in him. The unions have still to come to such a realisation.)
billy_bob
Air of bewilderment model's own
Absolutely, that's consistent with my point - they say a few mealy-mouthed things about equality - not enough to fool the people like myself and many others here who care passionately about equality, but enough to put off the properly laissez-faire capitalists they're pathetically trying to court, so they end up losing on both fronts.
I've yet to meet anyone who isn't rabidly, unchangeably right wing who doesn't get whole-heartedly behind the Spirit Level authors' conclusions once they've got their heads round them - I really think there's an appetite out there for a politics that engages properly with that. A half-hearted attempt which, as you say, doesn't put it's money where it's mouth is, only lets everyone down. And because it's not coherent and principled, it's also easy for the likes of the DM to turn people against it on Us and Them grounds - "equality's only there to help That Lot, at Your Expense" etc - like has been done with the human rights agenda too.
The tories have got the 'we're a bunch of rapacious bastards and we're not fooling anyone' vote covered - if Labour can't find a different demographic they're doomed to always coming a poor second with the same one.
Time for a meander. Society has changed so much since the post war settlement.
In the late 1960s i worked in a hospital as a driver/porter. my best mate there was (believe it or not) an ex professional footballer. He had absorbed progressive political ideas from his home area of Scotland's Clyde Valley, and was an ardent Labour Party supporter - not sure if he was a member, but he always argued that working class people had an immediate duty to join the appropriate trade union, and to then vote Labour at elections, because Labour had a mission to improve conditions for ordinary people by using nationalisation to tame the obsession of the wealthy with private ownership and individual profit. His main supporting evidence for this political stance was that working conditions and wages and long term job security were always better for people who were employed by the state. i more or less accepted this view, not only because a charismatic Scot had made it, but also because there were many other people around at the time whose belief system was quite similar. Labour back then had a clear and intelligible identity based in a long term strategy of 'securing for working people the full fruits of their labour'.
We know the history of Labour subsequent to the 1960s, its attempts to diminish the trade unions through 'in place of strife', it's total capitulation to the free marketism, and its middle class embrace. We also know the damage done to workers' communities by the combination of Tory and Labour politics through the same period.
my mate the footballer became embittered when Thatcher came to office, and used to say that he would not live to see another Labour government. He was right, he died in 1996. But he had seen what was to come, the betrayals of noble and honest social democratic ideas which at least had a human character (if nothing else), and then the final cut, the extravagant dumping of clause four by an incubus cabal who were desperate to save the market system and ingratiate with the decadent.
Today it is hard to even imagine a time when ex pro' footballers could be found doing proper jobs once their sporting careers had ended - so complete is the cult of celebrity, and the never ending elevation of individual 'solutions' to the enormous collective problems wrought by inequality.
Labour has definitely gone as a reforming organisation, and just like my mate Willie, we'll not see the like again. i reckon that starting from scratch is the only viable way forward - sticking to Labour politics guarantees a future for capitalism.
In the late 1960s i worked in a hospital as a driver/porter. my best mate there was (believe it or not) an ex professional footballer. He had absorbed progressive political ideas from his home area of Scotland's Clyde Valley, and was an ardent Labour Party supporter - not sure if he was a member, but he always argued that working class people had an immediate duty to join the appropriate trade union, and to then vote Labour at elections, because Labour had a mission to improve conditions for ordinary people by using nationalisation to tame the obsession of the wealthy with private ownership and individual profit. His main supporting evidence for this political stance was that working conditions and wages and long term job security were always better for people who were employed by the state. i more or less accepted this view, not only because a charismatic Scot had made it, but also because there were many other people around at the time whose belief system was quite similar. Labour back then had a clear and intelligible identity based in a long term strategy of 'securing for working people the full fruits of their labour'.
We know the history of Labour subsequent to the 1960s, its attempts to diminish the trade unions through 'in place of strife', it's total capitulation to the free marketism, and its middle class embrace. We also know the damage done to workers' communities by the combination of Tory and Labour politics through the same period.
my mate the footballer became embittered when Thatcher came to office, and used to say that he would not live to see another Labour government. He was right, he died in 1996. But he had seen what was to come, the betrayals of noble and honest social democratic ideas which at least had a human character (if nothing else), and then the final cut, the extravagant dumping of clause four by an incubus cabal who were desperate to save the market system and ingratiate with the decadent.
Today it is hard to even imagine a time when ex pro' footballers could be found doing proper jobs once their sporting careers had ended - so complete is the cult of celebrity, and the never ending elevation of individual 'solutions' to the enormous collective problems wrought by inequality.
Labour has definitely gone as a reforming organisation, and just like my mate Willie, we'll not see the like again. i reckon that starting from scratch is the only viable way forward - sticking to Labour politics guarantees a future for capitalism.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
You still haven't explained this phrase: "ordinary people are aspirational"
Are you just mouthing some slogan you read somewhere or does it mean something to you? If so, what?
billy_bob
Air of bewilderment model's own
And he/she isn't going to. Any 'ordinary people' who have started saying it, as if it's actually something that has mattered to them all along rather than the political waffle de jour, are being taken for mugs.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
labour politicks predicated on a future for capitalism
to a ppoint , they were also drowning in paper work, targets, bureaucracy, etc as were most public servants, a faustian bargain.
Sea Star
have you ever explored your dark side?
And yet clearly can't as evidenced by recent elections.
Sea Star
have you ever explored your dark side?
profile says female, so 'she' I'm guessing.
Yes, while the party concentrated on trying to become "electable" (a weasel word) it managed to lose its support base. It seems to have "triangulated" itself out of existence.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Are you fucking bonkers? As a Civil Servant, it was the last Labour government that raped my pension and froze my pay. Working conditions improved? No! Worsened by the job losses in the department.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
The Labour party is not dead, sorely wounded, but not dead.
Labour can stage a comeback, and it can do so by all the people here who are whinging about it, joining it, and effecting change from within.
Labour can stage a comeback, and it can do so by all the people here who are whinging about it, joining it, and effecting change from within.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
their are socialists within the labour party. It isn't, and never was a socialist party. You'll be old enough to recall something I have only read of in retrospect, the expulsion of the Militant faction, who while trots and with all that entails, were doing just what you suggest. It got murdered and kicked out of the machine. Its a dead vehicle. When they line up with the tories to shrilly demand we stay in the EU they are going to face a similar loss of support as that seen when Slab lined up with the tories over indyreff.
(I hope anyway)
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
I do remember Hatton et al.
I'm not big on labels. Were I to try an label myself (which I have), I don't fit into any of the boxes. I'm a mixture of capitalist and socialist. Capitalist in the recognition that to pay taxes, businesses must make a profit, and that those who can work, should work. Socialist in that I want to see houses built for fair rent, an increase in benefits payments for those who need them and state control of the rail and gas/electricity sectors. I want a properly funded NHS, which is run by doctors, not accountants.
Labour may have never been 'socialist' in the narrow sense, but they were markedly left of centre.
The reinvigoration of the Labour Party is in everyone's interest, and by that I mean 'Old Labour'. If it fails to get up after this setback, God help us, we will have the BV for ever.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
In the recent General Election, "aspirational" was mostly used by the political class as a shorthand for "wants to get on the property ladder", hence the focus on fantasy house-building by every party.
As far as I'm concerned, ordinary people are aspirational. many of us, however, either self-limit our aspirations to such things as surviving day-to-day, or have our aspirations limited by external factors - most of which are the result of neoliberal economic policies and their poisonous effect on the social.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
To do that one would first have to change the membership articles and internal rules to reinstate a sensible degree of party democracy. This will not happen while the children of Mandelson and Blair are still around, as they're all shit-scared of internal democracy.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Indeed. People aspire, whether it be to make ends meet until the next benefits payment, or pass the right A levels to go to medical school.
I had aspiration, which was to get a job that I could do well, didn't quite bore me to death, and paid enough to support the standard of living I wanted. I succeeded. Fulfilling what I could have done, er... no. I suffer from that debilitating condition known as terminal idleness.
I have had a few jobs in my time that I really enjoyed, and consider that a real bonus. Although we are house owners, that was circumstance rather than aspiration. I'm glad though, it is something to pass on to my daughter.Similar threads
