Identity Politics, Class Warfare and Labour's future

[Lord Beria3]

Stephen Bush from NS thinks it's now RLB to lose.

The institutional forces of corbynism have mobilised around her. Only Sir Keir could defeat her in the membership but a Corbyn endorsement could be enough to push her over the line.

[UndercoverElephant]

Stephen Bush from NS thinks it's now RLB to lose.

The institutional forces of corbynism have mobilised around her. Only Sir Keir could defeat her in the membership but a Corbyn endorsement could be enough to push her over the line.

I don't think so. I think Starmer will win this, by a clear margin.

[Little John]

Do you still seriously believe it matters?

[fuzzy]

I suppose it matters that if we had another phase of real socialist pressure, the virus might be treated and wilt away to the liberals. I don't think Corbyn did much wrong, he pulled it in the right direction a little.

[UndercoverElephant]

Do you still seriously believe it matters?

Yes. There's three possible winners of this contest. Nandy looks out of contention, but she's a bit of a dark horse. Doesn't have many enemies and people can see she's got quality, so it is still possible she might nick it.

Three possible winners - Long-Bailey, Starmer and Nandy. This is no beauty contest - there are three different ways the Labour Party could go.

Long-Bailey would be a disaster, because she's clearly the wrong candidate. She just hasn't got the experience or the abilities required to take on the job of hauling Labour back towards power. If she wins, the Labour Party will become the Momentum Party. It will not win back any lost support, and will probably lose more. It may be the end of the Labour Party.

Starmer is the establishment candidate, and would take Labour back towards the centre, alienating some of the momemtum types and winning back Blairite voters.

Nandy would concentrate fully on winning back the voters Labour lost. She would try to turn the Labour Party back into what it has historically been.

I honestly believe either of the last two has a chance of depriving Johnson of a majority in 2024, but the momentum true-believers want Long-Bailey, and they may yet win.

[Little John]

So, you are worried, presumably along with the Labour party, about not alienating the momentum types and the Blairites too much. Which is why you think Stamer, the "centrist", will hold that coalition together better than the other candidates.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Labour were slaughtered at the election and why Labour are completely f***ed going forwards. The Blairites and Momentum types are no more than are two cheeks of the same globalist arse merely separated by age, experience and frustration, in the case of many of the momentum types, at not having a place at the table their parents had.

You are completely deluded. But, then, that isn't saying much since you would seem share that delusion along with the rest of the Labour party machinery.

[Lord Beria3]

https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index ... -back-him/

My personal take is that Starmer should win this. Betting markets seem to agree.

[Little John]

This is why it really doesn't matter which of them wins

https://www.thefullbrexit.com/post/why- ... y-crumbled

Why Labour’s “Red Wall� Finally Crumbled

To defend the value of our votes, working-class communities had no choice but to vote Conservative, thanks to their betrayal by the Labour Party, writes Chris McGlade.

The Tories didn’t win this election. Labour lost it. The Labour Party could have won if they’d stuck with their 2017 manifesto commitment to honour the result of the EU referendum. If Labour hadn’t tried to stop Brexit, they would have walked it.

I’m from Redcar, an old industrial town on Teesside. We’ve never had a Tory MP, but even though the Tories decimated our steel industry, closed our coke oven, and shut down the biggest and oldest blast furnace in Europe, Redcar still voted Conservative this week, with a whopping 15.5 percent swing from Labour. I’ve been a member of the Labour Party. I flirted with Militant when I was 18. I was in three trades unions. All my family are working-class, Irish immigrant stock and Labour supporters for decades. We’re not brainwashed, but we all voted Conservative.

Why? Because we expect to be ignored by the Conservatives, but we don’t expect to be ignored by our own party and that’s what has happened. The Labour Party is dominated and controlled by middle-class progressive liberals who don’t think like us, speak like us, act like us, who haven’t suffered like us. They look down their noses at us like they’d stepped in something. They despise us. They care about us as little as the Conservatives do, but we expect that from the Conservatives. We don’t expect it from our party, the party set up to defend us, not sneer at us and think we’re thick and racist because we voted to leave the mega-rich man’s club known as the European Union.

Working-class people aren’t intolerant. I don’t care what race, colour, creed, religion, sex or sexuality you are. But progressive liberals are convinced we’re all knuckle-draggers. Since the election, they’ve come onto Facebook and called working-class people ignorant, stupid and racist, saying we’ve made our own lives worse. One woman blamed me for ruining her daughter’s education. Another said we’d ruined the health service, that we’d made it worse for ourselves. One even said that the working class would be culled first. The protestors on the streets of London and Leeds, screaming about the outcome of a democratic election, are singing “oh, Jeremy Corbyn�. But Jeremy Corbyn hates the EU as much as we do. You might be pro-EU, but he isn’t. He was forced at knifepoint to support Remain.

Working-class people have always had it hard. We don’t have hand-outs from mummy and daddy; we don’t have an allowance to go on a gap year around the world. When the south was prospering, our communities were being decimated. Our mines were closing. Our steel mills were shut. We’ve always had adversity up here and, yes, we’re bracing ourselves now for more adversity. When public education and health services decline, it’s our children that will suffer. But we took all that into consideration and, still, the worth of our vote, democracy in this country, meant more. Because if we lose that, we’ve got nothing.

I spoke with my 72-year-old uncle, a retired plumber. A hard man in his day, a proud man, a man who’s never voted Tory till now, and said his dad would be turning in his grave if he knew he’d now done that. He voted Conservative because, like me, he had no choice. We voted to Leave, and the middle-class progressive liberals that dominate the Labour Party made us a party of Remain. My uncle said, “how can I vote for an MP who’s ignored her own constituents?� And the answer was, we couldn’t. She didn’t deserve to be re-elected just because she wore a red rosette.

The Labour Party no longer represents working-class people in the northeast. It no longer speaks to us. It doesn’t think like us. It’s not us anymore. We have no voice. And, so, we voted for the only party who were offering to respect what we voted for in 2016. Yesterday, we voted in Redcar for democracy and the worth of our vote. If we’d lost that through a pack of middle-class progressive liberals getting elected and holding a second referendum, we’d have lost everything. They’ve taken everything off us up here, even our party. Our vote, our only protection against them, couldn’t be taken away from us as well.

The relationship between northern working-class people and Labour is like being in an abusive relationship, where you’re with a horrible person who treats you badly, they keep going behind your back with other people, they keep lying to you. But because you love them, you keep taking them back time and time again, because it’s all that you know, because you’re frightened to leave them, because you’ve conned yourself into thinking that you can’t live without them and you need them. Then, all of a sudden, one morning you wake up and think: I don’t need to take this anymore. I don’t need someone to look down their nose at me. I’m going to leave you. And suddenly, you end it, and you go and find someone else. They might be better; they might be worse – who knows? When you end an abusive relationship, the person who treated you badly, they come back, trying to cajole you, trying to get back in with you, and when you don’t give them what you want, they get nasty and start hurling abuse. That’s exactly how the relationship has been between northern, working-class people and the Labour Party. They have taken us for granted, they’ve treated us like shit, they look down their noses at us, they go courting the progressive middle-class liberals, and we’ve had enough. We deserve better than being kept down and being expected to be there all the time.

We constantly hear that we mustn’t discriminate on grounds of sexuality, gender, race and religion. But there is constant discrimination against the working class – white, black, Muslim, Christian. Every institution and profession in society is dominated by the liberal middle class, who constantly hurl abuse at us, then come online and wish death on us because we’re sick to death of a Labour Party that no longer represents us and we had no choice but to vote for the only party that would uphold the decision that we made in 2016. The more abuse we receive, the more justified I feel in having voted Conservative.

Chris McGlade is a comedian who came up through the Working Men’s Club circuit, and who performed as George the boxing coach in the West End run of Billy Elliot. His new show, Forgiveness, runs at London's Soho Theatre from 26-29 February 2020.

None of the jokers in this leadership campaign are going to make the slightest bit of difference to Labour's electability.

[UndercoverElephant]

So, you are worried, presumably along with the Labour party, about not alienating the momentum types and the Blairites too much. Which is why you think Stamer, the "centrist", will hold that coalition together better than the other candidates.

I didn't say I was worried about it. It looks to me like the left is shattering. It may not be possible to hold the old coalition together. But regardless of this, the three different leaders would hold together different bits of it, so it does make a difference who wins.

I'm worried about Long-Bailey taking over not so much because I fear the consequences of the policies she'd pursue, but because she's not a credible leader. She's a political baby, and shows no sign of having what it takes to do the top job. She's already been overpromoted, and Labour is currently threatening to overpromote her even further because she happens to belong to the correct tribe instead of because she's talented and experienced enough to do the job.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Labour were slaughtered at the election and why Labour are completely f***ed going forwards. The Blairites and Momentum types are no more than are two cheeks of the same globalist arse merely separated by age, experience and frustration, in the case of many of the momentum types, at not having a place at the table their parents had.

You are completely deluded. But, then, that isn't saying much since you would seem share that delusion along with the rest of the Labour party machinery.

As usual, you've not properly understood my position before declaring I am deluded. Policy isn't everything. Successful political leadership also requires personal attributes. Starmer and Nandy look like leaders. Rebecca Long-Bailey looks like Momentum's Christmas tree fairy with a dash of Dominic Cummings. If she wins, Johnson and Murdoch will slaughter her in about a week.

[Lord Beria3]

Eurointeligence take... agree, starmer on balance the best of a bad bunch but they are all shit as my labour friend said recently.

January 09, 2020

Labour’s energy-sapping leadership election

On some level, this story is really only for those with a very long-term view, say eight to ten years. This is probably the minimum time it will take for the Labour Party to get back into power, and even that timescale is not guaranteed. Like Neil Kinnock in 1983, the new person may just turn out to be a warm-up act. 

Given the current list of leadership candidates, this is not a far-fetched scenario. We don’t think any of the candidates is prime-minister material. This is in our view also true of the front-runner, Sir Keir Starmer, a former human right lawyer, director of public prosecution, and the architect of Labour’s disastrous Brexit strategy. Sir Keir is intelligent but not a great orator or conference speaker. At the last Labour conference, commentators noted that Emily Thornberry, who is also a leadership candidate but with no chances of winning, was a much more effective pro-Remain advocate than Sir Keir.

But he had a good early start and ran a professional campaign, and is now ahead of the pack. The party’s convoluted election rules make it difficult to draw any inferences from that observation, though. He managed to pick up support from some 41 MPs by last night, as the FT reports. This is against 17 for Rebecca Long-Bailey, the Corbyn-continuity candidate, and 16 for Jess Phillips. Another leftist entered the race yesterday, Jeremy Gardiner, the shadow international trade secretary. 

The fundamental problem with the entire group of candidates is that few of them have any sparkle. The one who does, the Birmingham MP Jess Phillips, lacks a well-defined agenda. As we pointed out before, Sir Keir was smart to drop Europe as a campaign issue like a hot potato. There are no votes to be gained for any candidates by taking a particular view on Brexit. Sir Keir is positioning himself to the left of the party, but we have yet to hear his views on income taxes, spending plans, and university fees.

These are still early days in the race. Candidates will need to clear certain thresholds of support by MPs and MEPs, trade unions, and affiliated groups. The final vote is among all party members, affiliated members such as trade unionists, and registered supporters.

[Little John]

It seems quite a lot of those "in the know" in the Labour hierarchy, not to mention a good swathe of the rest of the political class and their lackeys in the MSM, just don't get it yet.

The old, familiar political structures are breaking down rapidly. The liberal democrats are the first to feel it. But, Labour are also on a death spiral now. The Tories have held it at bay for the moment and, who knows, they may yet fully morph into whatever this brave new world demands of their side of the Left/right divide. The Tories have certainly proven to have a more brute and visceral instinct for survival than either Labour or the Liberal Democrats when push came to shove.

Massive political change is coming. The old order is dying. It's anyone's guess as to what the final complexion of that new order may be. But, it's coming and Labour, as currently constructed, are a part of what is dying.

And that's the critical point. The Tories have not, as yet, fundamentally changed in terms of their allegiance to the interests of their own nation-state first as opposed to a stateless capitalist class other than a few of the more old-school, rabidly right-wing nationalists in their ranks. Johnson is simply playing a part because he has the survival instinct to understand that is what is needed in order for him to keep his job. The next couple of years, however, will tell us how much he intends to honor his promises and continue to ride this new political wave - albeit from a right-wing perspective.

Labour, meanwhile, have yet to even acknowledge the existence of that wave, never mind find a way for the Left to ride it.

[Lord Beria3]

Would agree with that analysis LJ. It's the return of the nation state over global class interests.

My bet is the Tories will adapt successfully just as they have numerous times before over the last 200 years.

[kenneal - lagger]

The has been much joviality and pleasure expressed in social media and on the box over the "break up" of the Tory Party over Brexit is the last few years but Johnson with a few bold strokes has divested the party of its troublesome Remainers and quietened those sho are still in the party. Labour, that "core of stability" in the body politic while it had no power and had no need to come together on any issue has been shown, when it needed to come together for an election, to be even more split than the Tories have ever been.

The Tories, I suspect, have long been anti-Europe at the grass roots level with only a few MPs and lobbyists pro-Europe. As the MPs have now been removed and the lobbyists seem to have little hold over the party hierarchy the party has now come together and is showing a united front over Europe. we will have to see how they hold together when it comes to backing promises made to gain the northern Labour vote. As a self employed one nation Tory I just hope that they will be able to get some cash into the hands of those at the bottom so that the whole economy can flourish not just that little bit a the top which has done so well in previous years.

Labour, on the other hand, have been shown to be split three ways with Brehrite Centre Left metropolitan Remainers on one side, Momentum left and ultra left metropolitan Remainers on another and northern small town Brexit voters and party members, conservative with a small "c", stuck in the middle. There is no way that this lot can be united unless Johnson and co get things very wrong indeed and Cummings seems to be too clever to allow them to do that.

I see Labour in opposition and possibly falling apart especially if the Tory government is successful and gets money into the hands of the working class. The rich have done very well for fifty years and especially since 2008 so it is now time for them to recognise that and to allow the balance to be redressed more than a little. If they do Labour are toast.

[Lord Beria3]

Well said!

[vtsnowedin]

I see Labour in opposition and possibly falling apart especially if the Tory government is successful and gets money into the hands of the working class. The rich have done very well for fifty years and especially since 2008 so it is now time for them to recognise that and to allow the balance to be redressed more than a little. If they do Labour are toast.

That has always been the hard part. And of course on both sides of the pond the conservatives have a major faction that think it is not governments job to direct money to one class (unless it is the upper class). Have your conservatives matured enough to see the value in enabling the middle class to advance? We will see.