Labour Party/government Watch

[PS_RalphW]

I think JohnH's comment is supremely hubristic given his own party's showing in May on a centre right ticket. (not that it would have been seen as centre right in any previous decade).

I don't know if Corbyn can succeed in rolling back the corporatists in his own party, let alone win in 2020 and then win against the establishment but he is what this country needs, so long as it is done with an understanding of the limits to growth.

It is going to take massive reform of media laws to constrain the corporatist message.

[UndercoverElephant]

I think JohnH's comment is supremely hubristic given his own party's showing in May on a centre right ticket.

Yes.

I don't know if Corbyn can succeed in rolling back the corporatists in his own party

I'm not sure there are many of those. The three other leadership candidates, for example, aren't "corporatists". They are careerists who, I suspect, will quite happily change their spots if they think it is in the interests of their careers to do so. They won't back Corbyn if they think he's going to lose, but if they think the wind has started to blow in the other direction - specifically if a Corbyn victory in the leadership results in a sustained improvement in the polls and, say, a couple of convincing wins in by-elections in significant constituencies? They don't believe in anything. If they think Corbyn can win, they'll go along with it.

let alone win in 2020 and then win against the establishment

The power of "the establishment" is fading. So much of that power has been wielded via the right-wing press, but that is a dying industry (my local convenience store has been giving away free copies of The Sun for the last three weeks - looks desperate to me). There's no doubt that the establishment, via the right-wing press and Sky, will do everything in its power to present him as the "loony left" leader who would destroy Britain if elected PM. The question is whether potential voters for Corbyn are likely to any notice of them. We've just had an election where those same forces did everything possible to present Ed Miliband as ludicrously left wing. Maybe there's a limit to how productive that strategy can be.

What the BBC does is a bit more important. I don't know what to expect from that organisation any more, but I'm guessing that being overtly anti-Corbyn would be a bit beyond the pale even for them, and that they'll try to take something resembling an objective position. This will be considered outrageous by those on the right, who will accuse the BBC of being a mouthpiece of the radical left. But what are they going to do about it? Attacking or trying to dismember the BBC would just drive even more people towards Corbyn.

It will be nasty, but the establishment faces a point of diminishing returns. The more they attack somebody like Corbyn, the more it will look like they fear him because he's representing ordinary people, risking the strategy backfiring. We've already seen this process in action when Blair's anti-Corbyn intervention had the exact opposite effect to what he intended.

It is going to take massive reform of media laws to constrain the corporatist message.

There won't be any such reforms under a tory government.

[UndercoverElephant]

Reposted in correct thread...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... aster.html

It would therefore be a disaster for Britain were Jeremy Corbyn to become leader of the Labour Party. He is an unreconstructed socialist and an early 1980s-style Labour Party would have a disastrous effect on opinion, even if Mr Corbyn himself never even got close to winning an election.

This is superb stuff. A "disastrous effect on opinion"? That can only mean one thing if you are on the left, and it is the exact opposite.

The centre-ground would move inexorably towards a more statist position.

Yep.

How would the Tories react if Mr Corbyn were to call for a minimum wage of £10 or £12 by 2020, against their £9? Or if he called for the nationalisation of electricity or rail companies?

Errr...they'd have to make a case for their own policies?

The implied meaning could not be clearer: the tories are very worried about the consequences of the left actually having a voice. They are worried that if the debates that they think were closed forever after the Thatcher era are re-opened, they might lose them.

A Corbyn-led Labour Party would be a disaster for the pro-capitalist cause.

Music to my ears.

[3rdRock]

All good stuff UE.

The only problem being, that by 2020, Murdoch and the rest of his corporate chums in the MSM will have done such a hatchet job on poor old Corbyn, that, on paper at least, he'll make Mao Zedong look like a staunch capitalist.

[UndercoverElephant]

All good stuff UE.

The only problem being, that by 2020, Murdoch and the rest of his corporate chums in the MSM will have done such a hatchet job on poor old Corbyn, that, on paper at least, he'll make Mao Zedong look like a staunch capitalist.

They'll certainly try. But I am not sure they will succeed, and their efforts might even backfire.

[UndercoverElephant]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... l-out.html

Too late, the damage had been done. Labour supporters had been given a glimpse into the future: a future in which unity will be Labour’s watchword, and anyone who disagrees will have to face the consequences.

And according to several MPs I spoke to, they didn’t like it.

“There’s no great love for the Blairites,” one backbencher told me. “But the virus comment was over the top. For the first time it has made people stop and think.”

It should make everyone stop and think. Not least Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall – the only three people in their party who can now prevent Jeremy Corbyn from successfully seizing the reins of power.

But they’re not thinking. They’re flailing around, trying desperately to find a way to stay clear of the Corbyn juggernaut, while simultaneously nudging their rivals towards its wheels.

On one level, it’s unfair to criticise any of them. They are simply trying to win a leadership contest – one foisted upon them and an ill-prepared party – the best way they know how. Each sincerely believes they are the best placed to defeat Jeremy Corbyn.

But they cannot each be right. And this is no longer simply just another leadership contest. Those of us who had naively hoped that a Corbyn victory could prove the catalyst for a pragmatic grassroots backlash have been rudely abused of that notion.

Liz Kendall represents the dwindling rump of Blairites; Yvette Cooper the fractured Brownite army; Andy Burnham is reaching out to what can loosely be termed the old Prescott agnostics. Alone, none of them is a match for the Corbynite insurgents. But collectively they would at least stand a fighting chance.

Fight being the operative word.

The time for coded attacks on Corbyn and his followers has passed.

Smell the fear.

[johnhemming2]

It is going to take massive reform of media laws to constrain the corporatist message.

Why is it that legislation to restrict freedom of speech is needed in respect of a debate about the future of society etc?

[Little John]

It is going to take massive reform of media laws to constrain the corporatist message.

Why is it that legislation to restrict freedom of speech is needed in respect of a debate about the future of society etc?

What utter tripe. there is no freedom of speech when the mass media is largely owned by a tiny number of pro-corporatr capitalists. Even the BBC has been more or less co-opted in the neo-liberal agenda. You need to face up to the fact that history did not end with Regan and Thatcher no matter how much you wish it. There are plenty of us in the world, and always have been, who detest the world people like you hold so dear and our voices will not be silenced any longer

[johnhemming2]

Freedom of speech is a question as to when the state prevents someone saying something. I accept that it is not absolute. However. the fact that views that you disagree with are ones which are supported by the majority is not a good argument for aiming to use collective state power to silence those people.

To be fair, however, your views do hold political power in North Korea where there are laws that prevent the western mainstream media from being read/viewed by citizens.

[Little John]

Freedom of speech is a question as to when the state prevents someone saying something. I accept that it is not absolute. However. the fact that views that you disagree with are ones which are supported by the majority is not a good argument for aiming to use collective state power to silence those people.

To be fair, however, your views do hold political power in North Korea where there are laws that prevent the western mainstream media from being read/viewed by citizens.

F--k me

[johnhemming2]

Thank you for your kind offer, but I would rather not if you don't mind.

[UndercoverElephant]

http://www.leftfutures.org/2015/05/aban ... our-fears/

The aftermath of election defeat for Labour has been marked by the familiar combination of soul-searching and mutual recrimination. The remnants of New Labour bemoan the supposed failure to address the concerns of middle-of-the-road voters, and point to the lessons they believe should be drawn from Tony Blair’s three successive election victories.

Those who would prefer to disown the Blair legacy counter with the argument that Eds Miliband and Balls conceded too much to the Tories and did too little to establish their credentials with traditional Labour voters who accordingly failed to turn out in sufficient numbers.

It is certainly true that a number of familiar factors contributed to the Labour defeat – among them, the huge disparity in financial resources and media support enjoyed by the Tories, and the perennially lower turnout by disadvantaged voters. We can add by way of explanation some issues that were peculiar to this election, among them the collapse of the Liberals, the SNP’s exploitation of the discredited and moribund state of the Scottish Labour Party and the successful gerrymandering of the electoral roll and consequent disenfranchisement of mainly non-Tory voters as a result of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act of 2013.

But none of these factors – familiar or otherwise – helps very much in deciding where Labour should go from here. As those behind cry “Forward!”, and those before cry “Back!”, the dilemma for Labour is that one thing is clear – there is little future in simply waiting for the voters to tire of the Tories. History tells us that that can take a long time.

The options that are regularly recommended – returning to Labour’s core support (declining as it is) on the one hand or posing as Tory-lite in the contest for the centrist vote on the other have little to commend them, either in principle or practice. There is no point in fighting the next and future electoral battles from either of these stances (or more typically from a confusing attempted combination of the two) when there is no reason to expect that they will produce any better result than they have done in the past.

What is surely needed, rather than simply repeat failed strategies, is a game-breaker, not in the sense of some hitherto undiscovered silver bullet, but in the form of some genuine new thinking that breaks free from the neo-liberal consensus that has in effect imprisoned the left in an intellectual straitjacket for three decades or more.

Both those who would go forward and those who would go back reflect thinking that is the product of a debilitating lack of intellectual self-confidence. Those who would take refuge in the past are happy to bemoan the consequences of Tory policies but have no convincing alternative analysis or prescription to offer. They dare not admit it, but they are terrified that if they are seen to depart too far from neo-liberal orthodoxy they will be exposed as having no clothes.

Those who argue for a move towards the centre are more likely to admit that – at heart – they see no option but to accept the Tory programme. Their hope is that they can persuade the voters that they are nicer people and will deliver that programme more compassionately. The voters prefer those whose hearts are in it.

Both of these apparently polar opposite positions, in other words, implicitly acknowledge the immoveable centrality of the Tory approach. Sometimes, that concession is explicit, as in the commitment to giving priority to reducing the government deficit. In any event, the defeatism at its heart communicates itself with deadly effect to an electorate that does not need much persuading that Labour does not deserve their confidence.

The paradox is that the Labour leadership (not just in Britain but elsewhere in the English speaking democracies as well) are so paralysed by fear and lack of confidence that they have failed to notice that the world has moved on. All the major central banks have abandoned the cautious conservatism of conventional monetary policy. The IMF has turned its back on austerity as a proper response to recession. The OECD says that inequality is not the price that has to be paid for economic efficiency but is a major obstacle to that efficiency.

Other countries have shown how living standards higher than our own can be raised still further through an appropriate policy mix. The way is open to learn from them and to offer the British people a new approach to running the economy – one that does not require us to choose between social justice and economic efficiency (or, for that matter, between Labour’s core values and Tory “aspiration”) but that recognises that we will all be better off if we give proper value to all our citizens and to the contribution they can all make to the general welfare. There is no mystery as to how this can be done if we only open our eyes; the necessary policy levers are just waiting to be pulled.

Working people – and that means most of us – have nothing to lose but our fears, and principally a fear of abandoning an orthodoxy that is no longer fit for purpose in a modern democracy. As to precisely what alternatives should be adopted, why not at least begin to think about them? They are not in short supply.

[3rdRock]

Polly Toynbee writing in the Guardian this morning:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... est-chance

Free to dream, I’d be left of Jeremy Corbyn. But we can’t gamble the future on him

Many of us share the Labour leadership frontrunner’s core beliefs, but tactically the best chance lies with Yvette Cooper.

Polly may well be right.

Over the next five years, the MSM will have successfully vilified JC and he'll be lucky if he isn't crucified at the next general election.

[Little John]

Polly Toynbee writing in the Guardian this morning:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... est-chance

Free to dream, I’d be left of Jeremy Corbyn. But we can’t gamble the future on him

Many of us share the Labour leadership frontrunner’s core beliefs, but tactically the best chance lies with Yvette Cooper.

Polly may well be right.

Over the next five years, the MSM will have successfully vilified JC and he'll be lucky if he isn't crucified at the next general election.

Bollocks.

First we are encouraged to ridicule
Then we are encouraged to despise
Now we are being encouraged to "see sense"

But, mostly, we are being encouraged to fear.

As the article by UE states, we have nothing left to lose but fear itself.

One thing is becoming increasingly clear; the fuckers in charge FEAR a Corbyn victory because they know only too well that if his arguments are given a voice on the public stage, they will win the day.

By chasing only tactical votes, a party ends up being voted for by no-one. Or, to paraphrase Bevan; we know what happens to people who stand in the middle of the road. They get run over.

[3rdRock]

Polly Toynbee writing in the Guardian this morning:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... est-chance

Free to dream, I’d be left of Jeremy Corbyn. But we can’t gamble the future on him

Many of us share the Labour leadership frontrunner’s core beliefs, but tactically the best chance lies with Yvette Cooper.

Polly may well be right.

Over the next five years, the MSM will have successfully vilified JC and he'll be lucky if he isn't crucified at the next general election.

Bollocks.

First we are encouraged to ridicule
Then we are encouraged to despise
Now we are being encouraged to "see sense"

But, mostly we are being encouraged to fear.

As the article by UE states, we have nothing left to lose but fear itself.

One thing becoming increasing clear, the fuckers in charge FEAR a Corbyn victory because they know only too well that if his arguments are given a voice on the public stage, they will win the day.

By chasing only tactical votes, a party ends up being voted for by no-one. Or, to quote Bevan "those who will only stand in the middle of the road get run over".

I don't fear JC, on the contrary, I admire him for his forthright beliefs and welcome his rise in popularity.

However, I do fear the power of the MSM who, with the blessing of their corporate masters, will vilify Jeremy at every available opportunity.

Goebbels proved convincingly that if TPTB continue to repeat the same message, eventually the 'sheeple' will fall into line.

I do hope I'm wrong but the drip feed effect of the MSM combined with our famous British taste for apathy, may well see Jeremy defeated.

As for Yvette Cooper et al, don't get me started!