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The 2024 UK General Election - news, speculation and updates

Sue said:
And you think MPs would vote for their party leader based on the wishes of their constituents..? If so, you have a much more benevolent view of politicians than I do!

And members typically vote for who leads their party.
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You could have open primaries involved the electorate in candidate selection too...
 
kebabking said:
Yeah, but no one else gives a shit who runs the local tennis club, or has a stake in it.

Personally, as an LP member, I do not believe that a) I should have more say over who is PM than my neighbour who isn't, and b) that I'm as qualified as my MP to decide who can both lead, and build a team that will deliver (broadly) a manifesto, given that that they know all the candidates, and I don't.

The job of the PM is to both lead, and serve, Parliament, with MP's as the representatives of their constituencies and electorates - not, and I include myself in this - the 60-odd weirdos out of 80,000 voters who turn up to Friday night constituency meetings.

For me, for Parliamentary democracy to work, MP's should be affiliated to a party - or not - but not owned by them, or controlled by them. They are there to represent all their constituents, not just the ones who voted for them, and certainly not just the miniscule number who happen to be members of the same political party.

By all means look at divorcing the roles of party leader and PM, with the party leader role being very much the one controlled by the membership - but the PM's role is very different, responsible to a far wider electorate, requiring a different skill set and having infinitely more serious responsibilities.
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That BiB is interesting...how would that work in practice?
 
Sue said:
So it's better to have a smaller number of people (MPs) determine who's leader rather than the wider membership who voted for/helped those MPs get elected? I disagree.
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What you don't seem to understand Sue is that this is the Labour Party we are talking about not some bloody mass party of the working class and trade unions. The plebs get their five minutes of democracy ( if they bring their ID ) every five years. That is sufficient.
 
The39thStep said:
What you don't seem to understand Sue is that this is the Labour Party we are talking about not some bloody mass party of the working class and trade unions. The plebs get their five minutes of democracy ( if they bring their ID ) every five years. That is sufficient.
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Tut tut. We also get one opportunity every five years to replace choose our candidate. Well, sometimes we do, or sometimes the centre decides for us. But thats only if we might get it wrong otherwise.
 
The39thStep said:
What you don't seem to understand Sue is that this is the Labour Party we are talking about not some bloody mass party of the working class and trade unions. The plebs get their five minutes of democracy ( if they bring their ID ) every five years. That is sufficient.
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Not off the trade unions? Then why was the manifesto signed off by them? And why do they give millions to the party?🤔
 
belboid said:
Tut tut. We also get one opportunity every five years to replace choose our candidate. Well, sometimes we do, or sometimes the centre decides for us. But thats only if we might get it wrong otherwise.
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A recall mechanism for the local electorate would be a very welcome thing to solve this.
 
Kid_Eternity said:
That BiB is interesting...how would that work in practice?
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Fairly simple - the party would be a membership org with constituency branches, it would decide which potential candidates it wanted to affiliate with, it wouldn't - or wouldn't - do the leg work of getting them elected, and the party (as controlled by the membership) would set the manifesto. The levers would be stuff like party endorsement, funding, legwork by members, and eventually disaffiliation etc... but in the end it would also be about establishing the philosophy that the MP isn't just about 'the winning party, and fuck everyone else', it's about the wider electorate, given that they eventually select, and pay for, MP's.

Effectively making MP's genuinely Wyre Forest, or Central Sheffield's man or woman in parliament, rather that X party's man or woman in Glasgow South or North Herefordshire.
 
Kid_Eternity said:
It was, they're one of the major stakeholders...the idea the unions have little or no influence on the Labour Party really doesn't make sense.
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No, why they keep funding the LP when they dont have much influence over it, is what doesn't make sense. They dont have that much influence. A pretty big vote when it comes to party conference and they can be important in deciding upon local candidates, but they are completely brushed aside when it comes to the manifesto. Thats why this years' was approved 'by acclaim.' They are told 'this is our manifesto, approve it or fuck off' and most did. Not Unite, quite notably.
 
Sue said:
Was it? I genuinely don't know how that works.

That's a good question.
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Traditionally the Trade Union leadership has supported the Labour Party even though Labour has continuously brought abut legislation weakening trade unions especially action from below. However trade union influence with the Labour Party has waned dramatically ( as have Tarde Unions generally) . The most militant trade union the RMT isn't affiliated to Labour. Unite, whose leadership tends to talk critical of Labour still funds it , however, they refused to sign off the Labour manifesto due to their backtracking on trade union rights.

Financially this is the situation:
"Of the £21.5m in cash received by the party in 2023, just £5.9m came from the trade union movement, compared with £14.5m from companies and individuals – a huge increase on the previous year, and indeed more than in the three previous years of Keir Starmer’s leadership combined. As trade union contributions have dipped slightly, from around £6.9m in 2020 and 2021 to £5.3m in 2022, donations from businesses and individuals have soared: they totalled £2.3m in 2020 and rose to £3m in 2021 and £7.6m in 2022 before nearly doubling last year."
 
Oh yeah, was meaning to post this over on the Labour and unions thread, but Unison conference is happening this week, the Gen Sec (who, for those not keeping up with this stuff, is on the right of the union) suggested getting Rayner or another member of the frontbench to address it. From this report of a NEC meeting:
The NEC had a comprehensive and comradely discussion on this proposal. A number of NEC members mentioned that we should only have conference addressed by MPs that voted for a ceasefire in Gaza and supported UNISON policies. This is an important issue, with 76% of the population calling for a ceasefire. The point was made that many good Labour Party activists had been expelled or resigned from the party over the position that the leadership has taken on Gaza. There were also concerns raised about the Labour Party leadership ‘rowing back’ from commitments on the New Deal For Working People. It was felt by many NEC members that we needed an MP that supported the critical SNP motion for a ceasefire. An alternative proposal was put forward, detailing that 56 Labour MPs voted to support the SNP motion on a Gaza ceasefire, and that we should invite one of these MPs. A few names were mentioned including Yasmin Qureshi and Paula Barker, the latter of whom had been a UNISON regional convenor before being elected to Parliament. The particular MP invited should be decided by the Presidential team. The NEC voted on the proposals. The General Secretary’s proposal was defeated: 24 For and 31 Against. The second proposal made by an NEC member was successful: 32 For and 21 Against, with 1 abstention.
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So, of the two largest unions in the country, one of them's openly declared that they can't endorse Labour's manifesto, and the other, a union that's always been dominated by totally middle-of-the-road mainstream Labour politics, has just banned any frontbenchers or MPs who support the leadership line from addressing their conference. The Labour-union relationship is going great, nothing to see here.
 
Silas Loom said:
Hence, choosing the prime minister should be up to the largest group in parliament, not to a bunch of weirdo activists.
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It ultimately is a repudiation of the idea of a political party as representing a mass movement. The Labour Party very much used to be part of a mass movement due its links with the unions.

The Corbyn era happened because New Labour apparatchiks wanted to get rid of the union block vote and replace it with members vote, believing members to be more right wing than unions.

Turns out members were left wing and voted for Corbyn. The Corbyn era amounted to a struggle between the notion of a managerial parliamentary party and the idea of a party which is also a social movement. For various reasons the former were victorious.

So now they are closing ranks to secure a kind of closed cabal who will only ever let the right sort in.

It isn't good for democracy, if you believe that a healthy democracy requires an engaged and informed populace.
 
This is all floating around the idea that people really want Keir Starmer as PM isn't it. I fully expect him to be elected but he's clearly not what most people want as PM is he.

Funnily enough the person who comes to mind most around that stuff is Jacob Rees-Mogg - he absolutely loves banging on about the virtues of democracy that just happens to leave him and his mates in power.
 
meanwhile, our local Labour Party has just sent this around to (some) members
448510827_10159666154151898_6560545815853889668_n.png

There have, of course, been no threats against the useless Furniss. It's just that she is utter shit who can barely complete a sentence without falling over her words.
 
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a flyer (nice blue comforting photo on front with PROTECTING PENSIONERS WITH THE TRIPLE LOCK PLUS, scary red picture on the back highlighting starmer, rayner and reeves with SCAREMONGERS) and a letter both from Conservatives posted through by hand.
 
two sheds said:
a flyer (nice blue comforting photo on front with PROTECTING PENSIONERS WITH THE TRIPLE LOCK PLUS, scary red picture on the back highlighting starmer, rayner and reeves with SCAREMONGERS) and a letter both from Conservatives posted through by hand.
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You need one of those letterboxes with a spring strong enough to sever fingers, I seem to remember encountering them on my paper round.
 
cupid_stunt said:
But sports clubs and unions are only there for their members, MPs represent the wider electorate.
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The electorate gets to decide which of the candidates they think best represents them with this thing called a vote. A group of like minded people in the constituency will do better at picking potential representatives than a mates stitch up agreed at party HQ.
 
Plumdaff said:
The electorate gets to decide which of the candidates they think best represents them with this thing called a vote.
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I know what a vote is, you patronising twat. :rolleyes:

A group of like minded people in the constituency will do better at picking potential representatives than a mates stitch up agreed at party HQ.
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My first or second post on this subject was that the members should chose their local candidate, without interference from any party's HQ.
 
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