Why Labour are Scum

[Favelado]

Actually, I might - very marginally - since I happen to live in a marginal. I think Wells might be overplaying his case, but there's a rational kernel there that his critics haven't been able to undermine.

What about the counter-case that validation of Labour's Tory-lite manifestos pushes them ever rightwards? That's what's happened and will continue to happen. In ten years' time you could be making the same case for voting Labour, when they're arguing for the slower introduction of NHS charges than the Conservatives.

 

[Lo Siento.]

Actually, I might - very marginally - since I happen to live in a marginal. I think Wells might be overplaying his case, but there's a rational kernel there that his critics haven't been able to undermine.

That "rational kernel" is what has and will sustain another 100 years of being ruled by the same people.

 

[articul8]

The difficulty facing the left - and I don't pretend to have answered it - is to respond strategically by acknowledging the force of the rational kernel of the argument for the lesser evil, whilst also preventing it from excluding or subordinating any other form of effective political challenge from coming into being. The electoral system remains a key barrier in this.

There is no serious attempt to reclaim the party at present at a national level - McCluskey has chosen, unsurprisingly, to wave a white flag and an open cheque book rather than use what leverage UNITE money should buy at the level of policy. Whether Labour wins or loses the next election there we need to be doing the groundwork of establishing a seriously independent trade union base with roots in the PLP at every level of the party that can demonstrate a clear alternative to the politics of austerity and pull away from the neoliberal leadership, perhaps in terms of a formal break.

 

[butchersapron]

The difficulty facing the left - and I don't pretend to have answered it - is to respond strategically by acknowledging the force of the rational kernel of the argument for the lesser evil, whilst also preventing it from excluding or subordinating any other form of effective political challenge from coming into being. The electoral system remains a key barrier in this.

There is no serious attempt to reclaim the party at present at a national level - McCluskey has chosen, unsurprisingly, to wave a white flag and an open cheque book rather than use what leverage UNITE money should buy at the level of policy. Whether Labour wins or loses the next election there we need to be doing the groundwork of establishing a seriously independent trade union base with roots in the PLP at every level of the party that can demonstrate a clear alternative to the politics of austerity and pull away from the neoliberal leadership, perhaps in terms of a formal break.

What do you mean unsurprisingly? Him/them not doing this, them being prepared to use that potential leverage for good formed the basis for you own claims that party was in the process of moving leftward and for others to join the party - and you argued against people who told you exactly what would happen. Again, you were wrong but manage to be right it seems.

 

[DairyQueen]

Even if this were the case it would by that logic be desirable to have labour in? The stronger claim that electing Labour is a way, or worse still the only way, of stopping or reversing the attacks on workers is clearly untenable. But still, where there's an opportunity to punish the Tories and LDs by voting Labour, then it's worth doing, no?

It won't stop it. Postpone the inevitable, maybe. More than likely, follow Tory policy at a slower pace. Voting against the Tories is not a vote for Labour. Making that statement is what I object to, it pretends our electoral system and politics are much more democratic than they actually are. We are basically two New Labour governments away from hating them as much as the Tories if we are honest.

 

[articul8]

It won't stop it. Postpone the inevitable, maybe. More than likely, follow Tory policy at a slower pace. Voting against the Tories is not a vote for Labour. Making that statement is what I object to, it pretends our electoral system and politics are much more democratic than they actually are. We are basically two New Labour governments away from hating them as much as the Tories if we are honest.

Yes, I don't disagree. Whatever our response is, it can't just to be to say "vote Labour" to kick out the Tories. But though it's insufficient - and obviously so - it is still necessary...

 

[articul8]

What do you mean unsurprisingly? Him/them not doing this, them being prepared to use that potential leverage for good formed the basis for you own claims that party was in the process of moving leftward and for others to join the party - and you argued against people who told you exactly what would happen. Again, you were wrong but manage to be right it seems.

It's unsurprising in the sense that - in the absence of a powerful movement to pressure them to do otherwise - even "left-talking" union leaders are going to take the line of least resistance. I argued that it was necesssary to build such a movement, but clearly we (ie socialists in the Labour party and UNITE) need to reflect on how this has been allowed to happen and learn the lessons.

 

[Pickman's model]

Yes, I don't disagree. Whatever our response is, it can't just to be to say "vote Labour" to kick out the Tories. But though it's insufficient - and obviously so - it is still necessary...

yes vote tweedledum to get rid of tweedledee

 

[Nylock]

The difficulty facing the left - and I don't pretend to have answered it - is that it no longer exists in any meaningful way on a mass consciousness level any more.

FTFY

What passes for a 'labour' party these days has pretty much entirely capitulated to the neoliberals and rightwingers of this country (and beyond) and that any attempts at genuinely setting up a mass left movement inevitably runs into the buffers as the rightwing press/vocal neoliberal academics/rightwing politicians & public figures/the classes ranged against the working class inevitably close ranks and employ the same old techniques to divide and atomise a movement before it begins to gain momentum.

I'm not saying that the electorate are so dumb as to adopt the media narratives uncritically, however the forces ranged against the working class have had decades of practise at keeping them down and divided and amongst their most insidious tactics (and greatest victory) was to drag ever rightwards what has been traditionally defined as 'the workers party' in this country. All the 'big wins' of recent decades have been to the neoliberal right and very little has been won by 'the left' and this has had its own demoralising effect.

Additionally, whilst 'the left' has been continually fracturing and fighting amongst itself only to unite when the inevitable (and increasingly futile) demonstrations happen, the right has been less (publicly) divided and focussed on attaining power and consolidating it, and this can be seen through every stratum of society. This, coupled with almost unprecedented levels of naked greed and corruption in our local (and national) political figures and institutions with seemingly little in the way to check these behaviours all adds up to the general apathy that fuck-all will change and that things will only get increasingly worse as these dead-eyed bastards continue to asset strip the country and tighten the screw ever further.

Eventually the apathy will turn to rage as the people will have been backed into a corner with nowhere to go. When that happens, 'the left' had best be prepared to participate in a meaningful way in the (in all likelihood) violent and chaotic 'reset' of the balance of power and the structural changes that result from it. Otherwise, the far right will.

TL/DR version: the current 'Labour' Party is a busted flush and is a tragic shadow of what it was supposed to be based upon it's founding principles. Go ahead and vote for them if you like the idea of utilising the 'same shit, different arsehole' vote.

 

[Pickman's model]

The difficulty facing the left - and I don't pretend to have answered it - is to respond strategically by acknowledging the force of the rational kernel of the argument for the lesser evil, whilst also preventing it from excluding or subordinating any other form of effective political challenge from coming into being. The electoral system remains a key barrier in this.

There is no serious attempt to reclaim the party at present at a national level - McCluskey has chosen, unsurprisingly, to wave a white flag and an open cheque book rather than use what leverage UNITE money should buy at the level of policy. Whether Labour wins or loses the next election there we need to be doing the groundwork of establishing a seriously independent trade union base with roots in the PLP at every level of the party that can demonstrate a clear alternative to the politics of austerity and pull away from the neoliberal leadership, perhaps in terms of a formal break.

out of curiosity what would you have had mcluskey do at this point - launch a new party less than a year before a general election in which it would be humiliated?

 

[Limerick Red]

In the recent local and euro elections, TUSC candidates were proactively campaigning and leafleting against ukip, which is de-facto campaigning for labour. This, for all the talk of people's assemblies, building a party outside of labour etc. will be repeated by all groups on the left in the run up to the general election, The fear of the Tories and ukip will force the left into a complete capitulation, and will trot out the " labour without illusions" line when they eventually bottle it.
The hard work of the grassroots and party cadre in communities will be pissed up the wall by the bottlers at the top, who will encourage their constituents to "suck it up and vote labour" ...people deserve better, this is not good enough and it's why the left in this country are going nowhere.

 

[articul8]

out of curiosity what would you have had mcluskey do at this point - launch a new party less than a year before a general election in which it would be humiliated?

No actually, I would have been urging him to say to Miliband "we'll support you financially to the extent that we feel your policies would benefit working people" and made a series of demands at the National Policy Forum and Party Conference as a pre-condition for funding Labour candidates in general, otherwise offering to financially support only those candidates who sign up to them.

 

[Pickman's model]

No actually, I would have been urging him to say to Miliband "we'll support you financially to the extent that we feel your policies would benefit working people" and made a series of demands at the National Policy Forum and Party Conference as a pre-condition for funding Labour candidates in general, otherwise offering to financially support only those candidates who sign up to them.

would these demands be in addition to or an alternative to the labour manifesto all labour candidates would have endorsed?

 

[articul8]

would these demands be in addition to or an alternative to the labour manifesto all labour candidates would have endorsed?

Well, obviously if the party accepted the demands in full or for the most party it could be the manifesto itself. If it failed to make significant concessions it would a manifesto of socialists in the Labour party.

 

[Pickman's model]

when will socialists realise they have no place in the labour party?

 

[articul8]

yes vote tweedledum to get rid of tweedledee

that goes back to my orginal question - whether you believed it made no material difference whatsover whether the Tories were kick out or not. Some people may feel this. But I don't think it's what the majority of working class people in Britain think, despite the vanishingly small difference that Miliband seems intent on offering.

 

[articul8]

when will socialists realise they have no place in the labour party?

maybe sooner than you think

 

[Pickman's model]

that goes back to my orginal question - whether you believed it made no material difference whatsover whether the Tories were kick out or not. Some people may feel this. But I don't think it's what the majority of working class people in Britain think, despite the vanishingly small difference that Miliband seems intent on offering.

perhaps you don't remember labour introducing a 10p tax rate for the low paid. and then abolishing it. or introducing tuition fees. or a thousand and one other things. what working class people want is a party which represents them, which the parliamentary labour party has signally failed to do for at least 25 years.

or do you think that brown's dinners in the city in the early 90s, described in the press as to allay any concerns businesses might have about labour, were improving parliamentary representation of working class interests? out of all the labour mps are there more than a score who have any genuine interest in promoting working class interests?

 

[Pickman's model]

maybe sooner than you think

do you mean that the years of arguments here have finally made it through your skull?

 

[articul8]

do you mean that the years of arguments here have finally made it through your skull?

It's a question of how the party stands in relation to the class. Unless there's a fairly substantial change of course, that historic relationship if going to tested as never before....(despite your litany of previous failures)

 

[butchersapron]

Oh god, the same stuff you lot pulled before every election labour looked like it was going to win:

1. Labour in power will act in an anti-working class manner opening up a vacuum for class politics. And they're a little bit better than the tories so join vote and support labour.
2. When labour does indeed act like this in power becomes - the tories are worse, stick with labour. The time is not right to split or even stand candiates against labour. When the election is then lost - as a result of the anti-working class stuff - it becomes
3. We must vote labour because the tories are worse and because Labour in power will act in an anti-working class manner opening up a vacuum for class politics. The time

And we're back at 1. Followed by 2. And then 3. Then all over again. Textbook. Utopian nonsense that history has destroyed.

 

[articul8]

1 does seem like a fair description of where we are now. But 2 won't automatically follow - this is what we have to get right

 

[Pickman's model]

1 does seem like a fair description of where we are now. But 2 won't automatically follow - this is what we have to get right

yes, it takes work to make sure 2 follows. and that's your squalid little job.

 

[butchersapron]

1 does seem like a fair description of where we are now. But 2 won't automatically follow - this is what we have to get right

That's not a description of where we are - it's a description of the circular political behaviour of your tradition and what it does and how it argues over and over over. Before 2010 you were in stage 2 - now you're in stage 3, and a few month after 2015 you'll be back at stage 1. This is the whole political history of your current tradition.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I said the working class should take back labour and that was the most REALISTIC option. I asked posters to name another, nobody can.

Working class people rejoining labour and turning it back to its origins is the only route available.

An inaccessible route.

But hey, if you believe there's a way round all the structural and constitutional obstacles, please feel free to elucidate them to the rest of us!

 

[Pickman's model]

An inaccessible route.

But hey, if you believe there's a way round all the structural and constitutional obstacles, please feel free to elucidate them to the rest of us!

not to mention the historical obstacles, or the political obstacle that it has never been a socialist party

 

[ViolentPanda]

You are slagging of the half a loaf is better then none option, but giving no alternative.

You know why?
Because people who propose what you're proposing are generally of the "vote Labour with no illusions" school, when it comes down to a G.E. In other words you're not prepared to consider any alternative that doesn't fit your (tripartite) schema.
Here's an alternative for you, nonetheless - Mass disengagement from the electoral process: What if they hold an election, and nobody comes?

 

[ViolentPanda]

What about the next 20 years instead of just the next five? Do you want Labour to put the brakes on very, very lightly for a bit? Then let the Tories get in and rip things up again? And then Labour get in....?

Fuck it, lets give the Tories the keys to the JCB now and let them get on with it. It's all taking ages and I'm getting bored. Let's see how much they can piss people off before a proper opposition turns up.

Quite.
That people like "Bo" Wells can't fathom that a vote for any of the mainstream parties is a vote for "More of the same please, sir!" is disturbing.
I'll fall back on my hoary old saw here, and say "a shit sandwich with a Labour garnish is still a shit sandwich".

 

[ViolentPanda]

Firstly, I live in Hackney South & Shoreditch, so not only does it not matter if I vote, I could even go round and somehow persuade 10,000 of my neighbours to vote Tory and I'd still end up with a Labour MP (such is the wonderous democracy we live in).

Yup, and the pathetic attempt to reform the electoral system, which offered us a choice between FPTP and the worst of the other options (proportional representation that wasn't quite proportional representation, and would have mainly acted to embed the current status quo within the "new" system) has made sure that the above situation won't change any time soon, so any of us in constituencies with comfortable majorities effectively have no leverage in the political process.

Secondly, Kalfindin wasn't telling me to vote for Labour because they were the least worst of a bad bunch, he was telling me to "reclaim the Labour Party" for socialism which is considerably more time consuming (and has what I estimate to be zero chance of success).

A proposal for which he's not, AFAIK, furnished anyone with a method or set of methods for achieving (possibly because he didn't realise that Labour changed their internal rules etc to prevent such a thing happening).

Finally, and this is the bit you might want to try grasping once and for all, the politics of the government of the day is not significantly determined by which of the two parties of government (293 years in power and counting) happens to win any given election but by the consensus that is shared between them. Thus Balfour was a free-trader despite being a Tory, MacDonald and Baldwin both believed in the Gold Standard, Attlee and Churchill were both advocates of the welfare state, Callaghan and Thatcher were both monetarists and Thatcher and Blair were both neo-liberals. There is sod all point in changing the government without changing the consensus, and if you want to change that the absolute last bloody thing you would want to do would be to sign a blank cheque to the Labour Party announcing that you'll support them forevermore no matter how noxious their policies, simply because they aren't the Tories.

Power will always seek more power, and seek to perpetuate itself. The name doesn't matter when the end result is the same. The only tool we have against this hegemony is our ability to deny power an electoral mandate - to say "I'm not voting, not for anyone", and to campaign for others to do the same - and make what is party-political, personal. Playing the "blue wing, red wing" game gives us a sop of participation, but it gives us no say. As our governments push the myth that they govern by consent - that they are democratically-elected, and are democratic governments - then why not put that to the test, deny them electoral legitimacy by not voting, and then see what their position is re: "democracy" when they're denied the consent of a majority of the electorate?

 

[ViolentPanda]

If the tories are returned i'll leave the UK by taking a running jump off the cliffs of Dover.

Beachy Head is more effective. Most of the legendary white cliffs are fenced off 20-30m from the cliff edge, because of erosion problems.