Who will be the next Labour leader?

[fakeplasticgirl]

I heard Starmer’s going to trap the burgonites in a centrist gulag and then jolyon maugham is going to come along and beat them to death like he did that fox.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I wasn’t the one bringing up his voting record.

the son of a toolmaker and a nurse - the first in his family to go to uni - do you not like working class men succeeding?

cant wait until keir wins!

I’ve commented, on this very thread, that I respect his background. But the more important point is this - does he represent, politically, the priorities and immediate needs of the skilled working class that he comes from? I suspect we won’t agree on the answer to that.

 

[Shechemite]

Liberal Remainer Scum vote goes for Starmer
Mockery wanker for Nandy
Red/brown Zionist-traitor-watchers for RLB

 

[belboid]

If you look at what they've actually said, in this campaign... Starmer has explicitly stated his support for renationalisation and his Prevention of Military Intervention Act are very clear signals to the Corbynist left - Nandy has adamantly refused to signal any such support, whilst clearly supporting the liberal friendly policies around free movement and trans rights. The only real difference between them is on brexit, where Nandy is better, but that's not the essential thing going forward.

I think this is an interesting and nuanced piece about Starmer - Keir Starmer’s past is coming under scrutiny. What can we learn from it? | David Renton

 

[Marty1]

Are you reading from an autocue

The chyron off Channel 4 news.

 

[Shechemite]

David Renton

I wondered what happened to the old Etonian more-jumper-than-man fella

 

[MrSki]

The chyron off Channel 4 news.

So boring little cunt how are you voting in the Labour leadership elections?

 

[Marty1]

.

But the more important point is this - does he represent, politically, the priorities and immediate needs of the skilled working class that he comes from?

I’m sure I heard Corbyn mention in PMQS that all working class work was skilled - there is no such thing as unskilled working class work!

Edit: you are correct.

 

[MrSki]

I’m sure I heard Corbyn mention in PMQS that all working class work was skilled - there is no such thing as unskilled working class work!

He forgot to include Amazon drivers that will soon be replaced by robots. Name a job that has no skill attached to it? Boris 'cuntchops' Johnson can't use a fucking mop the unskilled mophead.

 

[Marty1]

He forgot to include Amazon drivers that will soon be replaced by robots. Name a job that has no skill attached to it? Boris 'cuntchops' Johnson can't use a fucking mop the unskilled mophead.

Yeah, I agree.

‘Unskilled work’ is an oxymoron in my books.

 

[Marty1]

So boring little cunt how are you voting in the Labour leadership elections?

Stop acting the hard man on the internet - you’re probably suffering from small man syndrome and in real life a shrinking violet who’s afraid of his own shadow.

 

[redsquirrel]

Nostalgia for that age is peculiar in many respects. There was almost no social mobility and it was repressive and violent, men to other men, groups of men to other groups of men, men to women legal and unpunished, straight to gay, white to black etc. But people remember it as orderly, like Camberwick Green. Jobs and a role for life (with limited choices) and yes a share collectively of economic power.

I think you are thinking about a totally different period to what PT is talking about. Social mobility was at it's height in the mid-70s, and the conventional picture of the 70s is anything but orderly.

If you look at what they've actually said, in this campaign... Starmer has explicitly stated his support for renationalisation

Has he? His 10 pledges talk about 'common ownership' but what is actually meant by that is pretty vaugue and could span a range of positions.

Public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders. Support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water; end outsourcing in our NHS, local government and justice system.

he has been an MP for 5 months at the time and was following Harriet Harman’s whip.

So what, it was an appalling choice, recognised by the vast majority of Labour members, the idea he had to follow it is nonsense. He could have stood up and challenged it - it wasn't just Corbyn that voted against, even Khan voted against (admittedly in his case probably with one eye on the popularity of such a stance with the membership).

 

[Mr Moose]

Nostalgia works on many levels and takes many forms. This sort of offhand dismissal is well wide of the mark

It’s not a dismissal, it’s an observation that there was good and bad. It’s a measure of how alienated people feel that they hark back to a time when the Upper Class had 57 varieties of sayings expressing how to exclude people ‘the old school tie’, ‘U and Non-U’. Nostalgia is always pretty suspect though.

 

[Mr Moose]

I think you are thinking about a totally different period to what PT is talking about. Social mobility was at it's height in the mid-70s, and the conventional picture of the 70s is anything but orderly.

Has he? His 10 pledges talk about 'common ownership' but what is actually meant by that is pretty vaugue and could span a range of positions.


So what, it was an appalling choice, recognised by the vast majority of Labour members, the idea he had to follow it is nonsense. He could have stood up and challenged it - it wasn't just Corbyn that voted against, even Khan voted against (admittedly in his case probably with one eye on the popularity of such a stance with the membership).

I agree that the 70s was highly disordered, from industrial relations to football matches. I‘m talking about a nostalgia for the seeming order that there was, like when small towns all had a bank, a Post Office and two mail deliveries a day. I’m not saying it’s correct.

I don’t know about social mobility in the 50s, 60s and 70s though. Part of the unrest was due to how extreme those class differences were, the lack of entry into management, professions and ownership of all but a white and male middle and upper class. Things were changing, working class voices heard more in culture, but I remember Educating Rita, early 80s, as a fish out of water drama. It was not expected to hear her voice in those surroundings. Social mobility was certainly growing, people knocking on the door, but what indices suggest it was at its highest?

 

[brogdale]

It’s not a dismissal, it’s an observation that there was good and bad. It’s a measure of how alienated people feel that they hark back to a time when the Upper Class had 57 varieties of sayings expressing how to exclude people ‘the old school tie’, ‘U and Non-U’. Nostalgia is always pretty suspect though.

I suspect that most of those voters for whom a 'nostalgia' for the '45-'79 years is a driver towards their populist electoral choices are not dwelling primarily on social trends but, rather, on their family's lived experiences. Harking back to a period of secure employment, career choice, rising living standards, organised labour, affordable housing & transport, accessible welfare, functioning NHS, community cohesion etc. does not seem peculiar to me.

 

[Mr Moose]

I suspect that most of those voters for whom a 'nostalgia' for the '45-'79 years is a driver towards their populist electoral choices are not dwelling primarily on social trends but, rather, on their family's lived experiences. Harking back to a period of secure employment, career choice, rising living standards, organised labour, affordable housing & transport, accessible welfare, functioning NHS, community cohesion etc. does not seem peculiar to me.

It’s a partial view, that’s all, in some ways true, particularly with regard to housing so much better then, but partially false also.

 

[Proper Tidy]

It’s a partial view, that’s all, in some ways true, particularly with regard to housing so much better then, but partially false also.

Its a reaction to the atomisation we have seen and the resulting breakdown of communities. Of course there are things that have changed for the better, but it isn't like this is an explicit and coherent call for a return to post war/pre-80. If it was then they would probably be turning to some sort of left vehicle or labour.

 

[brogdale]

It’s a partial view, that’s all, in some ways true, particularly with regard to housing so much better then, but partially false also.

Maybe, but when it comes to affective political drivers, it matters not one jot to those deciding how/not to vote whether or not they are 'true' or 'false'; they are what they are.

 

[chilango]

I think you are thinking about a totally different period to what PT is talking about. Social mobility was at it's height in the mid-70s, and the conventional picture of the 70s is anything but orderly.

I've got data at home on this. If I remember rightly social mobility peaked during the 50s and 60s, as did "equality", before taking a real hammering in the 1980s which they haven't recovered from.

But...

Social mobility is problematic in some ways. butchersapron posted something on this a while back, but I'd add that it gets used to create narratives of meritocracy and aspiration feeding into the neoliberal idea of individuals making good and bad choices etc. etc.

There's also something about social mobility being primarily a concern of the m/c but off the top of my head I can't recall that argument/research.

 

[chilango]

Also I think there's a lot of nostalgia being promoted for a time that never happened.

Owen Hatherly's book on this is an ok read to get you thinking.

 

[brogdale]

Also I think there's a lot of nostalgia being promoted for a time that never happened.

Also worth remembering that one favoured tory attack line (gleefully promoted by the billionaire press) was that we don't want a return to the 1970's. It's quite a feat of false consciousness creation to simultaneously exploit nostalgia for an era whilst demonising it as a warning against even thinking of voting for change.

 

[chilango]

Also worth remembering that one favoured tory attack line (gleefully promoted by the billionaire press) was that we don't want a return to the 1970's. It's quite a feat of false consciousness creation to simultaneously exploit nostalgia for an era whilst demonising it as a warning against even thinking of voting for change.

My mother can do that in a single sentence

 

[redsquirrel]

I suspect that most of those voters for whom a 'nostalgia' for the '45-'79 years is a driver towards their populist electoral choices are not dwelling primarily on social trends but, rather, on their family's lived experiences. Harking back to a period of secure employment, career choice, rising living standards, organised labour, affordable housing & transport, accessible welfare, functioning NHS, community cohesion etc. does not seem peculiar to me.

That is exactly what is recounted in the book Proper Tidy is talking about.

I've got data at home on this. If I remember rightly social mobility peaked during the 50s and 60s, as did "equality", before taking a real hammering in the 1980s which they haven't recovered from.

Depends on how you measure inequality but the gini coefficient was at its lowest in the mid-70s. I don't disagree with your comments on social mobility being problematic, but it is absolutely clear that social mobility was higher back in the period that the "melancholy" of those PT was talking about was for than now.

I don’t know about social mobility in the 50s, 60s and 70s though. Part of the unrest was due to how extreme those class differences were, the lack of entry into management, professions and ownership of all but a white and male middle and upper class. Things were changing, working class voices heard more in culture, but I remember Educating Rita, early 80s, as a fish out of water drama. It was not expected to hear her voice in those surroundings. Social mobility was certainly growing, people knocking on the door, but what indices suggest it was at its highest?

What do you think social mobility is?
Gini coefficient and % GDP as wages were at their lowest/highest in the mid-70s, social mobility largely follows the inverse trend of the gini-coefficient, increasingly massively during the 50s and 60s, reaching a level in the 70s and then decreasingly massively since, to the point where it is now statistically insignificant.

 

[brogdale]

That is exactly what is recounted in the book Proper Tidy is talking about.
Depends on how you measure inequality but the gini coefficient was at its lowest in the mid-70s. I don't disagree with your comments on social mobility being problematic, but it is absolutely clear that social mobility was higher back in the period that the "melancholy" was much greater than now.
What do you think social mobility is?
Gini coefficient and % GDP as wages were at their lowest/highest in the mid-70s, social mobility largely follows the inverse trend of the gini-coefficient, increasingly massively during the 50s and 60s, reaching a level in the 70s and then decreasingly massively since, to the point where it is now statistically insignificant.

Usual caveats about Gini which 'measures' household income ignoring the accumulating wealth and assets of those who fiscally have little/no income. Also ignores any notion of disposable income inequality, especially given that growing numbers have to shift huge chunks of that 'income' into the the pockets of the rentier class.

 

[redsquirrel]

Usual caveats about Gini which 'measures' household income ignoring the accumulating wealth and assets of those who fiscally have little/no income. Also ignores any notion of disposable income inequality, especially given that growing numbers have to shift huge chunks of that 'income' into the the pockets of the rentier class.

Sure, but most other measure of "equality" show the same picture, eg 1, 2

In this paper we have used a unique data source to examine changes in inequality and mobility in the labour market between 1978/79 and 2005/06. We find significant increases in annual earnings inequality over this period among male and female employees. According to most measures the increase in inequality, particularly in the 1980s, is greater among men. When we consider a wider measure of inequality which includes periods of no earnings from employment we find greater increases in the 1980s for men as unemployment increased and falls for women in the 1990s as employment among women increased.

 

[andysays]

Social mobility and (relative) economic equality are two very different things, and neither really equate directly to feelings of community cohesion.

While there are obviously places where people can still remember a time when community was partially a result of shared experiences from a particular industry, and so feel understandably nostalgic for those times and that feeling, times have changed and that type of community can't really be recreated, not even by the Labour party and its new leader.

 

[redsquirrel]

Social mobility and (relative) economic equality are two very different things, and neither really equate directly to feelings of community cohesion.

They may be different but every single piece of evidence I've seen has shown the two go in hand-in-hand.

 

[Mr Moose]

That is exactly what is recounted in the book Proper Tidy is talking about.
Depends on how you measure inequality but the gini coefficient was at its lowest in the mid-70s. I don't disagree with your comments on social mobility being problematic, but it is absolutely clear that social mobility was higher back in the period that the "melancholy" of those PT was talking about was for than now.
What do you think social mobility is?
Gini coefficient and % GDP as wages were at their lowest/highest in the mid-70s, social mobility largely follows the inverse trend of the gini-coefficient, increasingly massively during the 50s and 60s, reaching a level in the 70s and then decreasingly massively since, to the point where it is now statistically insignificant.

Starting in the fifties for wages is from a really low base. But in any case, that’s not quite the same as social mobility as a broad consideration of life chances and opportunities.

But I fully accept that people lost a lot, housing, economic power, work life balance, job security etc from the 1980s onwards.

 

[redsquirrel]

Starting in the fifties for wages is from a really low base.

So what? That does not invalidate my claim.

But in any case, that’s not quite the same as social mobility as a broad consideration of life chances and opportunities.

Right, so writing class out of the equation to hide the huge decrease in social mobility. You asked for some evidence of my claim - I've posted it (and similar data previously), if you are going to challenge that you need to post some evidence to back it up.

 

[Mr Moose]

So what? That does not invalidate my claim.
Right, so writing class out of the equation to hide the huge decrease in social mobility. You asked for some evidence of my claim - I've posted it (and similar data previously), if you are going to challenge that you need to post some evidence to back it up.

Where have I ‘written class out’? You do get a bit excited sometimes.

Maybe we are talking about different things. Wage mobility is one thing, but it seems odd to claim those decades as virtues of social mobility when so many elevated positions and professions were almost completely denied to working class people and almost all women.