Who will be the next Labour leader?

[Louis MacNeice]

I’d be interested to learn more about this ‘Democratic oversight’ of pre-thatcher Institutions.
:

What I was getting at was the increased availability of public institutions to scrutiny compared to their private counterparts. I'm not being nostalgic, looking for the return of some lost social democratic golden age which with just a bit of tweaking can welcome the mad as full members.

However, I am proposing that the social democratic settlement was a genuine improvement on what went before because it opened up to public politics what had previously been held to be private and therefore necessarily apolitical, and in doing so provided some opportunity for the mad to constitute themselves as authoritative, capable political subjects e.g. in organisations such as the Mad Persons Union (MPU).

Of course social democracy didn't have the capacity to seriously engage with self emancipatory organisations such as the MPU (just as it struggled with self aware and assertive rank and file groups of workers), but neither could it completely dismiss them as political actors in their own right, a dismissal which liberalism had previously maintained with great and enduring success.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

p.s. I write this as someone who has been a user of mental health services (inpatient and out, voluntary and compelled), worked as a volunteer for MIND and had a twenty five year long academic engagement with the study of the coming together of mental health and politics first as a student and then as a lecturer and researcher.

 

[Shechemite]

What I was getting at was the increased availability of public institutions to scrutiny compared to their private counterparts. I'm not being nostalgic, looking for the return of some lost social democratic golden age which with just a bit of tweaking can welcome the mad as full members.

However, I am proposing that the social democratic settlement was a genuine improvement on what went before because it opened up to public politics what had previously been held to be private and therefore necessarily apolitical, and in doing so provided some opportunity for the mad to constitute themselves as authoritative, capable political subjects e.g. in organisations such as the Mad Persons Union (MPU).

Of course social democracy didn't have the capacity to seriously engage with self emancipatory organisations such as the MPU (just as it struggled with self aware and assertive rank and file groups of workers), but neither could it completely dismiss them as political actors in their own right, a dismissal which liberalism had previously maintained with great and enduring success.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

p.s. I write this as someone who has been a user of mental health services (inpatient and out, voluntary and compelled), worked as a volunteer for MIND and had a twenty five year long academic engagement with the study of the coming together of mental health and politics first as a student and then as a lecturer and researcher.

Great post. Thanks

 

[Shechemite]

Starmer car crash on Marr. Embarrassing

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Starmer car crash on Marr. Embarrassing

Andrew Neill you mean?

 

[Shechemite]

Andrew Neill you mean?

That Andrew

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Two car crash interviews by Sir Kier Waitrose and Long-Bailey.

Labour are fucked.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Let’s face it, they’d be fucked even if they had flawless candidates.

 

[treelover]

Long Bailey seems to be becoming more confident, more robust, her own person, innovative policies, but still unlikely to vote for her, mightn't vote at all.

 

[treelover]

Two car crash interviews by Sir Kier Waitrose and Long-Bailey.

Labour are fucked.

Why, still Pro FOM?

 

[killer b]

Two car crash interviews by Sir Kier Waitrose and Long-Bailey.

Labour are fucked.

Is anyone paying attention though? I only know about car crash interviews with leadership candidates because I occasionally click on this thread, and I'm actually interested in it (a bit). It's 5 years til the next election - car crash interviews today are pretty meaningless.

 

[treelover]

Forget the ‘red wall’, Labour can win by appealing to a new demographic | Alex Niven

The next leader should focus on building support among young people, families and precarious workers around urban centres, says lecturer Alex Niven

www.theguardian.com

Well others have plans

 

[killer b]

Forget the ‘red wall’, Labour can win by appealing to a new demographic | Alex Niven

The next leader should focus on building support among young people, families and precarious workers around urban centres, says lecturer Alex Niven

www.theguardian.com

Well others have plans

the headline doesn't match the content of the article tbf

 

[Shechemite]

Is anyone paying attention though? I only know about car crash interviews with leadership candidates because I occasionally click on this thread, and I'm actually interested in it (a bit). It's 5 years til the next election - car crash interviews today are pretty meaningless.

The people voting in the labour leadership election might be watching these interviews

 

[Shechemite]

Forget the ‘red wall’, Labour can win by appealing to a new demographic | Alex Niven

The next leader should focus on building support among young people, families and precarious workers around urban centres, says lecturer Alex Niven

www.theguardian.com

Well others have plans

Oxbridge New-Leftist says focus on the youth?

 

[killer b]

The people voting in the labour leadership election might be watching these interviews

I guess they - an electorate strongly in favour of free movement - must have been who Starmer had in mind when he defended free movement to Neil then, rather than the wider electorate who weren't watching and don't care.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Is anyone paying attention though? I only know about car crash interviews with leadership candidates because I occasionally click on this thread, and I'm actually interested in it (a bit). It's 5 years til the next election - car crash interviews today are pretty meaningless.

I think most people won’t notice or care that RLB’s career as a lawyer wasn’t focussed on ‘defending the NHS’ but PFI work. I also think most won’t notice or care that Starmer won’t say who is funding him.

So the reason why Labour is fucked is not about this. It’s about the fact that neither is able to coherently explain that they understand what has happened to Labour or how it avoids reproducing the same experience. It’s visible in the way about the conclusions Starmer has drawn from his time in the red wall - which are entirely the wrong ones. It’s there when RLB talks about the aspirational and non-state networks in WC communities and in doing so reveals she hasn’t got a clue what they are and how they work.

 

[killer b]

They're trying to get elected as leader of the labour party though, not give a detailed and honest analysis of why they lost the election.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

They're trying to get elected as leader of the labour party though, not give a detailed and honest analysis of why they lost the election.

It should be possible to walk and chew gum at the same time

 

[Shechemite]

Starmer was shaking in his interview. There was no confidence, just waffle about ‘modelling unity’.

He won’t get better at this.

 

[Shechemite]

Went full Ben Swain. Painful to watch.

 

[Shechemite]

The interviews themselves are less important (although of course the embarrassing bits will be used at the next GE), it’s that the candidates are demonstrating how inadequate they are for the task of galvanising and rebuilding the Labour Party/vote.

 

[oryx]

Ben Swain.

The bit I saw he didn't look THAT bad but I've just nearly choked reading that

 

[Mr Moose]

Let’s face it, they’d be fucked even if they had flawless candidates.

Probably so. The contradiction between being the efficient custodian of the bourgeois state and recognising the damage that does to people is so huge, the landing strip of electability for Labour so narrow, it’s inevitable every candidate trying to balance it will fall off one way or another.

 

[oryx]

Went full Ben Swain. Painful to watch.

Didn't Ben Swain blink too much or something?

 

[Shechemite]

Shat himself in an interview

 

[fakeplasticgirl]

Were we watching the same thing? Thought starmer did pretty well.

RLB was a total car crash.

 

[Sasaferrato]

I think most people won’t notice or care that RLB’s career as a lawyer wasn’t focussed on ‘defending the NHS’ but PFI work. I also think most won’t notice or care that Starmer won’t say who is funding him.

So the reason why Labour is fucked is not about this. It’s about the fact that neither is able to coherently explain that they understand what has happened to Labour or how it avoids reproducing the same experience. It’s visible in the way about the conclusions Starmer has drawn from his time in the red wall - which are entirely the wrong ones. It’s there when RLB talks about the aspirational and non-state networks in WC communities and in doing so reveals she hasn’t got a clue what they are and how they work.

Was Starmer not 'parachuted' into his constituency?

 

[Shechemite]

Was Starmer not 'parachuted' into his constituency?

Sadly it wasn’t cut

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Were we watching the same thing? Thought starmer did pretty well.

RLB was a total car crash.

What specifically do you think he did pretty well?

 

[Sasaferrato]

Sadly it wasn’t cut

I don't trust him either. His time with the CPS was hardly stellar.