Who will be the next Labour leader?

[Streathamite]

I'd go for Starmer.
For a start he'd take Labour back to the centre ground which is where they need to be to win elections.

It is an irrelevant and obsolete myth that Labour can only win elections as a liberal centrist party. It's at least 7 years past its sell-by date, i.e. when the electorate started emphatically rejecting everything centrist

 

[kabbes]

It wasn’t even true back in 1997. I remember that election so well. Everybody really fucking hated the Tory party. They were the “nasty party”. Labour could have been anything at all and still won that election, and at least the next. Cameron’s success was to realise he needed to embrace social liberalism to free them of the taint of Lilley and Howard and Tebbitt and Portillo etc

 

[Supine]

It is an irrelevant and obsolete myth that Labour can only win elections as a liberal centrist party. It's at least 7 years past its sell-by date, i.e. when the electorate started emphatically rejecting everything centrist

Simply not true. There have been no labour governments for 45 years apart from blair.

 

[Lefty1992]

Nandys’ ‘ f*ck the Scots, they’re as bad as the Catalonians, the Nat. bstards’ intervention this week was good vfm, must say

Bit of an own goal that was and not a way to win over the Scottish voters who Labour desperately need to get back into government.

 

[Lefty1992]

It is an irrelevant and obsolete myth that Labour can only win elections as a liberal centrist party. It's at least 7 years past its sell-by date, i.e. when the electorate started emphatically rejecting everything centrist

Sorry but Blair won three elections, two by landslides on exactly that platform. He's the only Labour prime minister to have tasted success in 40 years. What does that tell you?

 

[Lefty1992]

And you know what I want to see again? One of the best nights in the Labour party's history in the 97 election.

 

[kabbes]

Sorry but Blair won three elections, two by landslides on exactly that platform. He's the only Labour prime minister to have tasted success in 40 years. What does that tell you?

That people desperately, viscerally hated the Tory party at the time.

How old were you in 1997, Lefty1992?

 

[Lefty1992]

That people desperately, viscerally hated the Tory party at the time.

How old were you in 1997, Lefty1992?

Five.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

1997 was the first election I was old enough to vote in. I duly went out and voted Labour, stayed up late and celebrated and everything. It did feel like a new era, to me anyway.

After that I didn't vote Labour again until 2017. I've no interest in going back there.

 

[Lefty1992]

That people desperately, viscerally hated the Tory party at the time.

How old were you in 1997, Lefty1992?

Agreed there was a hatred towards the Tories and that they were on their way out but Blair modernised Labour and gave them a vision which made them electable again. If they'd been a hard left party held to ransom by the unions like they were during the Thatcher years, they would have lost. Kinnock started the modernisation by taking on the unions and came close in 1992 and Blair finished the job off.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Five.

You’ll be a big hit here Lefty...

 

[killer b]

why are you calling yourself 'lefty' this time round? you don't seem to have any recognisably left politics.

 

[killer b]

'held to ransom by the unions'

 

[Smokeandsteam]

but Blair modernised Labour and gave them a vision which made them electable again. If they'd been a hard left party held to ransom by the unions

Can you give an example of this process? How did the ransoming of Labour by unions work in practise?

 

[Lefty1992]

why are you calling yourself 'lefty' this time round? you don't seem to have any recognisably left politics.

So anyone who doesn't fit the hard left type isn't really left wing? Great logic.

 

[kabbes]

Five.

Then you have literally no idea what you’re talking about. Even people in very right-wing areas — and I was living in one of them — were desperate to get rid of the Major government. His party were massively socially conservative — anti-gay, anti-women, anti-minority, anti-everything and everyone except white heterosexual men. It went heavily against the social liberalisation of the nineties and people literally hated the Tory MPs, even if they agreed with right wing economics. Anybody would have beaten them.

 

[Lefty1992]

Then you have literally no idea what you’re talking about. Even people in very right-wing areas — and I was living in one of them — were desperate to get rid of the Major government. His party were massively socially conservative — anti-gay, anti-women, anti-minority, anti-everything and everyone except white heterosexual men. It went heavily against the social liberalisation of the nineties and people literally hated the Tory MPs, even if they agreed with right wing economics. Anybody would have beaten them.

Rather like anyone would beat Labour right now. They're just as wrapped up in their own views and completely out of touch as the Tories were until Cameron arrived. The last election showed this. Labour need to go through the same process as the Tories by accepting some hard truths, facing up to why they went wrong and their failures, and finding someone with the vision to make the party electable again. Or you can retreat to the comfort of a few hundred thousand members agreeing with you?

 

[killer b]

So anyone who doesn't fit the hard left type isn't really left wing? Great logic.

anyone who repeats tory talking points like 'held to ransom by the unions' isn't left wing, yeah.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

anyone who repeats tory talking points like 'held to ransom by the unions' isn't left wing, yeah.

I’ve asked Lefty1992 to demonstrate how this worked. A concrete example from any point in the history of the Labour Party will do.

 

[Lefty1992]

anyone who repeats tory talking points like 'held to ransom by the unions' isn't left wing, yeah.

Well yeah with the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79, strikes galore and blackouts.
And my point is that the hard left type seem totally unaccepting of other view points. They don't seem to acknowledge that Labour is supposed to be a broad church and the main opposition party with a goal of trying to get into government, not some protest movement. I'm centre left and want to see a Labour party that can make a difference get back in government, hence why I call myself Lefty.

 

[Proper Tidy]

I hate it when people discuss 1997 as it just brings back to me how shite the mid to late 90s were, I mean in every way not just politically, it was embarrassing. Oasis and lager and men behaving badly, loaded and massive jeans, reebok classics, union jack cushions, awful time.

 

[Proper Tidy]

Overwhelmed by dreary indie and will self

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I hate it when people discuss 1997 as it just brings back to me how shite the mid to late 90s were, I mean in every way not just politically, it was embarrassing. Oasis and lager and men behaving badly, loaded and massive jeans, reebok classics, union jack cushions, awful time.

Oasis v Blur.... the new class signifiers

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Well yeah with the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79, strikes galore and blackouts.

Is this your example?

Is this where you want the debate over trade union ransoms? Over the social contract?

 

[The39thStep]

Well yeah with the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79, strikes galore and blackouts.
And my point is that the hard left type seem totally unaccepting of other view points. They don't seem to acknowledge that Labour is supposed to be a broad church and the main opposition party with a goal of trying to get into government, not some protest movement. I'm centre left and want to see a Labour party that can make a difference get back in government, hence why I call myself Lefty.

There werent any blackouts in 1978/9 son. Blackouts were imposed by the Tories during the miners industrial action in 1974 . The Tories called an election camapigning on the slogan 'Who Governs Britain' and Labour won the election and settled the dispute giving the miners a 35% pay rise., a year later the NUM won a further rise.

 

[brogdale]

Well yeah with the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79, strikes galore and blackouts.

Conflating the events of early 1974 and late 1978/early 1979 does not indicate that you've got a good grasp of who the 'goodies' & 'baddies' were during these periods.

 

[Proper Tidy]

Bodies piled up on the streets, rabid dogs eating babies, everybody had a beige vauxhall viva

 

[Idris2002]

Bodies piled up on the streets, rabid dogs eating babies, everybody had a beige vauxhall viva

And it was still better than life under Boris Johnson.

 

[Proper Tidy]

My favourite bit of labour liberal centrist revisionism is the the recasting of Kinnock as somebody who enjoyed some sort of success instead of being a terrible failure of a human being who fell in the sea

 

[killer b]

And enjoyable rinse of Jess Philips right here: Lynsey Hanley | Performing an Idea of Ordinariness · LRB 22 January 2020

"Everywoman: One Woman’s Truth about Speaking the Truth, which came out in 2017, is an everyday tale of one middle-class city-dweller’s struggle to reach Westminster from a professional public-sector background, having gone to a highly selective grammar school and two Russell Group universities."