The future of the Labour Party

[The Prof]

Seeing as most BCB predictions for EU referendum were totally wrong, what do we thing will happen to the Labour Party in the next 6 months?

A split? I was reading today about something involving Kinnock Jr and Paddy Ashdown.
Corbny defeated as leader?
Corbyn uniting the party?
Another option?

[yomptepi]

Is there a prize?

It doesn't matter which of the options you go with.

They are done.

[Copehead]

Seeing as most BCB predictions for EU referendum were totally wrong, what do we thing will happen to the Labour Party in the next 6 months?

A split? I was reading today about something involving Kinnock Jr and Paddy Ashdown.
Corbny defeated as leader?
Corbyn uniting the party?
Another option?

Another option: I think they will shed some MPs and limp on with Corbyn as leader, but if they can keep the grass roots membership building they may be able to come out of it as a credible alternative to the neo-liberal hegemony which is being increasingly questioned.

If the grass roots movement dies a death so does the Labour Party as an alternative to neo-liberalism and it would probably be a good time to see if you can move to Scotland or get and Irish passport through a long lost relative. But the Labour Party will become a neo-liberal centrist party trying to sell being a little less horrible than the Tories to its traditional heartlands and getting around 150 seats whilst there will be a new party of the left that will get a handful of seats because people vote for brands and the Labour Party is the brand, most people don't look too closely at what the product is.

[Copehead]

As so often satire gets closer to the truth than political reporting:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/party-founded-by-keir-hardie-being-infiltrated-by-socialists-20150813101079

A BRITISH political party, founded over 100 years ago by socialists has been ‘infiltrated by socialists’, it has been claimed.

The Labour Party, started in 1900 by self-confessed socialist Keir Hardie, has seen a ‘suspiciously large influx’ of people who believe a lot of the same things as he did.

A senior Labour official said: “These people are clearly very interested in politics, but for some reason they haven’t joined the Conservative Party. It would appear they are really into redistribution of wealth, nationalisation and the welfare state. It’s all very sinister.”

[Toby]

There are plenty of people in the centre who don't like the Tories. Appeal to them with credible economic policies and the competence to carry them out and they can win.

Any other way is doomed to failure. People want simplicity in their lives, not confusion and uncertainty. A socialist grass roots movement in this country I think is anathema to how most people perceive politics in the UK outside of metropolitan areas. They just want to get on with life, rather than waving flags and shouting polemic.

[Toby]

Oh and change the name. Labour is out of date and doesn't mean anything anymore.

[Jumper K]

Hmm. What we need seems to be the Liberal Democrats then. That didn't go particularly well did it?

[Deebank]

I think Corbyn will get flattened at the election - whenever it happens - and someone will step forward from the non-Momentum left to take on whoever the anointed Momentum successor is. By which time I reckon many will be thoroughly jaded by the half-arsed cult of personality.

My money is on Andy 'loyal' Burnham.

[Diamond Dog]

Oh and change the name. Labour is out of date and doesn't mean anything anymore.

New Labour.

That should work. Especially if we put a red rose with it.

[Deebank]

Hmm. What we need seems to be the Liberal Democrats then. That didn't go particularly well did it?

It amuses me that Lib Dems are pissing their pants with excitement because they think a couple of Blairites will be defecting to them in the near future.
My dad keeps telling me that 'thousands' have joined the Lib Dems since the refererendum. I said "two thousand?", he checked and it was "nearly four!"

Mind you, they both hate 'Trots' more than tories.

[Toby]

Oh and change the name. Labour is out of date and doesn't mean anything anymore.

New Labour.

That should work. Especially if we put a red rose with it.

You can give it a go. I'm not bothered personally.

[Polishgirl]

There are plenty of people in the centre who don't like the Tories. Appeal to them with credible economic policies and the competence to carry them out and they can win.

Any other way is doomed to failure. People want simplicity in their lives, not confusion and uncertainty. A socialist grass roots movement in this country I think is anathema to how most people perceive politics in the UK outside of metropolitan areas. They just want to get on with life, rather than waving flags and shouting polemic.

I don't want to agree with this, but I do.

[Deebank]

There are plenty of people in the centre who don't like the Tories. Appeal to them with credible economic policies and the competence to carry them out and they can win.

Any other way is doomed to failure. People want simplicity in their lives, not confusion and uncertainty. A socialist grass roots movement in this country I think is anathema to how most people perceive politics in the UK outside of metropolitan areas. They just want to get on with life, rather than waving flags and shouting polemic.

I don't want to agree with this, but I do.

I tend to agree too.

The Corbyn agenda is appealing to people who if they vote at all would probably vote Labour or perhaps Green anyway. You don't win elections preaching to the converted and I don't think the disillusioned socialists bloc is big enough to swing an election. I hope I'm wrong.

Where I part company with my comrades here is that I think any Labour government is better than any tory government.

Even Blair was marginally better than Major/Hague/IBS/Howerd... And I think marginally better is often as much as we can hope for.

Being happy with the leader/policies of a party in perpetual opposition while we suffer a Tory thousand year reich is fucking futile.

[Rayge]

I do think there is a tendency to overrate winning elections and being in 'power'. The only two governments in my lifetime who achieved anything were Atlee's 1945-50, which established the welfare state, and Thatcher's 1979-86 or so, which dismantled it and gave us neoliberal economics. Everyone else has just been tinkering, really, and being moved around by history/ the elite/ civil service / bureaucracy / technological advances '/ foreign wars / global finance and other mass criminalities / treaties / alliances and so on. Sure there were some good things in other governments – Wilson keeping us out of Vietnam, for example – that may not have happened with another party in power, but today actually governing is a bureaucratic exercise in fire-fighting at odds with the fidgety public demand for instant change.

For me, the most important thing in a party is that it cleaves to the main responsibility of democracy (political science 101) which is not, as some here and in real life believe, to impose the dictatorship of the majority, but to ensure the representation of all minorities, to give all points of view a voice. I want a left party that holds the brigands to account, that keeps ideas of social justice, national ownership, and co-operation over competition as an organizing principle, in the forefront of the debate. I want to see the government roasted, not flattered by imitation. Political power is always limited and compromised without a huge groundswell of popular support, and often with it.

[Diamond Dog]

I do think there is a tendency to overrate winning elections and being in 'power'.

See this is laudable but, in reality, utter nonsense really Ray.

Try celebrating losing elections and being 'in power.

In the end, politics is about winning. It's about winning the right to get your agenda through.

No opposition party has ever got one single part of their platform through. It's as simple as that.

[Rayge]

See this is laudable but, in reality, utter nonsense really Ray.

Try celebrating losing elections and being 'in power.

In the end, politics is about winning. It's about winning the right to get your agenda through.

No opposition party has ever got one single part of their platform through. It's as simple as that.

What's nonsense to you, Pete, seems to me to make perfect sense, and is based on my experience and reflection rather than being a consoling fantasy I just plucked out of the air to deal with the current unpleasantness.
Politics, civic life, being part of a society, isn't football. Winning an election isn't what politics is about. It's the grinding between where things – not many, but a few – get done. Being in nominal charge of the machine only gives you a slight advantage in this, as the day-to-day of governance is mostly about reacting to events. Most governments don't come close to implementing their programmes (unless it's for more of the same). Apart from the two I mentioned, all have failed in my lifetime.
Every bore will tell you democratic politics is the art of compromise; it's not about winners crowing and losers weeping. But when it comes to it, I don't want those doing the compromising to be identikit nitwits whose only motivation is to hang on to, or to obtain, 'power' (I am always suspicious of those so convinced of the rectitude of their world view that they seek the opportunity to impose the results of that on complete strangers - sounds like some kind of perversion to me), I want there to be a range of opinions and views for those who are interested (no matter how few they be) and for at least a few people articulating the desire for a kind of society I would prefer to live in (even though, as an autotheist and anarch, I actually do live in that form of society, albeit on a smaller scale than the 'nation' – as if that's a thing...).

[Diamond Dog]

I understand the aims Rayge, I really do - but "Winning an election isn't what politics is about" is nonsense. And, whatsmore, I think you know it. It may not be what you would like politics but to be - but it most assuredly is what 'politics' is about.

Those Govt's may only have got a fraction of their programmes through, I absolutely grant you.

But that's 100% more than the opposition have.

You can't win if you don't buy a ticket. "Buying a ticket" is winning the election - not winning the debate.

A golfing analogy "Drive for show, putt for dough" where driving = debate and putting = votes.

[Rayge]

I understand the aims Rayge, I really do - but "Winning an election isn't what politics is about" is nonsense. And, whatsmore, I think you know it. It may not be what you would like politics but to be - but it most assuredly is what 'politics' is about.

Those Govt's may only have got a fraction of their programmes through, I absolkutely grant you.

But that's 100% more than the opposition have.

You can't win if you don't buy a ticket, my old son. "Buying a ticket" is winning the election - not winning the debate.

A golfing analogy "Drive for show, putt for dough" where driving = debate and putting = votes.

I got to go, so I'll strip out the verbiage and put down some core beliefs of mine to explain why it is sense.

'Winning' isn't what anything is about. There's no such thing as 'winning'. Competition as a life model sucks balls.

I have my political views, and will sometimes be drawn into talking about or explicating them, but I've no desire to impose them on anyone else. They're just the way things work in my world.

As I may have mentioned before in other contexts , it's easier to change your mind than change the world, and as a lazy autarch, that's the path I've chosen.

And not a belief, but I am coming up for 68 years old, and can't get particularly exercised about the long term. In that life I've seen all kinds of amazing changes, such that the world today is utterly unrecognizable from the one that I was born into. And what percentage of that change is due to a particular political party being in power in this country? my guess is less than 0.5%, as I'm feeling generous.

[**NOW PLAYING**]

I agree with Ray. Most governments don't do much except nudge things a little in a particular direction depending on the mood of the electorate or the demands of the financial sector or activities across the pond. Life for the vast majority - for better or worse - continues much as it ever was.

[Diamond Dog]

You think Blair going to war hasn't had an extraordinarily profound effect on every individual in this country?