Bloody hell!! I actually agree with Tony Bleh for once.!

[kenneal - lagger]

This excerpt from this article is something sensible from Bleh that I can agree with.

People do not like their country, their flag or their history being disrespected,' he said. 'The left always gets confused by this sentiment and assume this means people support everything their country has done or think all their history is sacrosanct. They don't. But they query imposing the thinking of today on the practices of yesterday; they're suspicious that behind the agenda of many of the culture warriors on the left lies an ideology they find alien and extreme; and they're instinctively brilliant at distinguishing between the sentiment and the movement. They will support strongly campaigns against racism; but they recoil from some of the language and actions of the fringes of the Black Lives Matter movement. You could go through the entire litany of modern causes and find the same – from Extinction Rebellion to trans rights to Reclaim the Streets – in the same way. People like common sense, proportion and reason. They dislike prejudice; but they dislike extremism in combating prejudice. They support the police and the armed forces. Again, it doesn't mean that they think those institutions are beyond reproach. Not at all. But they're on their guard for those who they think use any wrongdoing to smear the institutions themselves. And they expect their leaders to voice their own opinion, not sub-contract opinion to pressure groups, no matter how worthy.'
Blair concluded: 'The correct course for progressives on culture questions is to make a virtue of reason and moderation. To be intolerant of intolerance – saying you can disagree without denouncing. To seek unity. To eschew gesture politics and slogans. And when they're accused of being insufficiently supportive of the causes – which is inevitable – to stand up for themselves and make it clear they're not going to be bullied or pushed around. "

[UndercoverElephant]

This is almost the same argument as the one I posted in the long-running thread about Labour last week.

Labour is dying because those on the extreme social left who run it, and especially the membership, treat people in the social centre, even some on the social right of their own party, as the enemy. They attack them. This, as Blair knows better than anybody, is not a strategic path to electoral success. And the problem has now become so serious that unless Labour changes direction totally and rapidly, it risks becoming politically irrelevant, permanently.

[kenneal - lagger]

They are also dying because they do not put forward any policies. All they do is criticise so no one knows what they stand for except possibly PCness.

[Mark]

They are also dying because they do not put forward any policies. All they do is criticise so no one knows what they stand for except possibly PCness.

At the last election, Labour developed an extremely detailed and costed manifesto.
By contrast, the Tory manifesto said virtually nothing, apart from 'Get Brexit Done'.
We all know what happened.

Consequently, most people today would struggle to name a distinct Labour OR Tory Policy.....

Starmer's task has been to reposition Labour post-Corbyn during a pandemic...
With voters in Hartlepool wanting something totally different to those in Haringey....
Extremely difficult, but he hasn't got off to a great start....

[kenneal - lagger]

People used to criticize the Tories for being split over Europe. Labour seem to be split over almost everything. The only thing which unites them is hatred of the Tories and the grass roots seem to be losing that.

[UndercoverElephant]

People used to criticize the Tories for being split over Europe. Labour seem to be split over almost everything. The only thing which unites them is hatred of the Tories and the grass roots seem to be losing that.

The tories have a stuctural advantage here. They are conservatives with a small 'C', in the sense that, as a default, want to keep things (especially power and wealth structures) the way they are (and there's only one of those). Labour's supporters are united in disagreeing with that goal, but hopelessly split about what should replace the existing structures. This is exactly why Labour can only win from a non-radical centrist position, but anyone inside the Labour Party who points this out gets denounced as a Blairite. Until such time as Labour re-learns this lesson, it will keep losing.

I do wonder how British political history might have played out differently if Blair had had the guts and intelligence to keep the UK out of the Iraq war, instead of being George Bush's lapdog. It was an unforced error. He didn't need to commit the UK to an illegal war on dodgy pretences.

[kenneal - lagger]

Labour's other problem is that the working classes are, or possibly largely were, conservative with a small "c" and don't agree with many of the middle class's liberal affectations.