This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[CumbrianLefty]

Honestly at a certain point I wonder if Corbyn has anything to gain from having the whip returned to him. This Labour party have clearly decided to revert back to the old attitude of "no room in the inn" for any genuine socialist, much less anyone even moderately critical of Israel. If I were him I'd think long and hard about apologising for the mildest of comments to get back into a party that would never dare to suggest suspending the likes of Tony Blair for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Doesn't seem to be a whole lot inside Labour worth fighting for anyway.

I mean, this just isn't true on either point.

There *are* people who would like to purge the left in its entirety, granted.

Just not that many of them in the current leadership.

[CumbrianLefty]

Things have gone fairly quiet on this already - maybe a good sign?

[CumbrianLefty]

This thread has gone rather quiet too......

Latest on the Corbyn business is Jon Lansman making clear he wasn't happy with the former leader's response to the report (though he also disagrees with the suspension, unsurprisingly)

[CumbrianLefty]

Turnout not much lower than previous standalone NEC elections recently. Its not impossible that this one being an entirely online affair (previously, literature was sent to members) had an impact too.

[CumbrianLefty]

Though the figures released do suggest party membership has dipped back below 500k.

[CumbrianLefty]

Of course some are hypocritical in castigating the likes of Abbott whilst giving Blair a free pass, but the fact remains that DA happily appeared on a platform with people who are basically genocide deniers. Apologising was the least she could do.

And this sort of thing keeps happening because of the extremely reductive and simplistic "anti-imperialism" that so many on the Labour left subscribe to. At its crudest this seems to boil down to a genuine belief that the US, UK and (of course) Israel are literally the only bad countries in the world.

[CumbrianLefty]

Corbyn made some "clarifying" comments this morning, probably as near an apology for his remarks on the morning of the EHRC's report release as we are going to get.

Ball now in the NEC's court, rumours his case could be considered as early as today.

[CumbrianLefty]

As widely expected, Starmer says Corbyn won't get the parliamentary whip back just yet.

[CumbrianLefty]

Most people in the party just want all this s*** to be over.

A shame the fanatics on both sides of the "forever war" aren't going to let that happen.

[CumbrianLefty]

Of course it is possible, whether he would be up for it in his mid-70s (assuming a 2024 GE) is another matter. Especially if he wasn't automatically guaranteed a win - and his seat could be significantly altered in the coming boundary review, which might be a factor there.

Meanwhile, it has been announced Corbyn will be going without the Labour whip for three months. Whilst this has been widely criticised as a fudge which will annoy both camps, kicking this into the long grass until things are possibly less heated may turn out to be not such a bad option.

[CumbrianLefty]

This is all a minefield - and yes, some on the left don't negotiate it very well - but Sarkar was fairly obviously talking about the situation *now*. The idea, implied by at least some, that she was trying to minimise the historic suffering of Jewish people is not correct.

[CumbrianLefty]

Weekend polls show Labour's/Starmer's ratings to have taken a turn for the worse - kicking Corbyn's future into the long grass for a few months may yet prove to have been the wisest option.

[CumbrianLefty]

Weekend polls show Labour's/Starmer's ratings to have taken a turn for the worse - kicking Corbyn's future into the long grass for a few months may yet prove to have been the wisest option.

Only one poll, and from a particularly unimpressive pollster at that. Might be indicative, but not anything worth fretting about just yet.

Though they got the last GE almost spot on (yes I was surprised too)

And there is also the latest YouGov poll showing Labour down by 3%.

[CumbrianLefty]

Of course, there is an argument they should actually be writing to Starmer about Evans.

[CumbrianLefty]

each time it becomes more ineffective & more self-destructing until you end up trying to do a leadership contest because there's nothing else left to do!

Except that, in this case, they literally do not have the numbers to get to that point! So there isn't even a station at the end of the line marked 'sweet release of death'.

Ian Lavery is going to challenge Starmer for the leadership AND WIN - haven't you heard?

[CumbrianLefty]

The Observer (which this is despite the misleading web address) is well known as a holdout of many of the most unreconstructed Blairite dinosaurs, some of whom haven't stopped moaning since 2007.

[CumbrianLefty]

Or more accurately, the Phillips diehards who found both Keir and Lisa too "unreliable".

[CumbrianLefty]

Its happened before.

[CumbrianLefty]

The media obsessing over how Labour would vote on any deal, before the government has actually produced anything that can be offered to parliament, sums up how they have got their priorities wrong in recent years.

[CumbrianLefty]

Only since about Friday evening, before then it was all "but what will Labour do??"

As if that was *the* most important thing.

[CumbrianLefty]

Only since about Friday evening, before then it was all "but what will Labour do??"

As if that was *the* most important thing.

Moaning about media coverage is useless without trying to change it

Actually concur with that to an extent.

Corbyn of course thought an overwhelmingly hostile media could just be ignored and his grass roots "movement" would carry all before them. This actually wasn't far off working in 2017, but the media (once they had got over the initial shock) simply redoubled their hostility to ever more vicious and unscrupulous levels. Meanwhile the "movement" became increasingly inward looking and preoccupied with internal politicking. With the result we all know about.

Starmer is in contrast supposed to think the media matters and we need some proper support there, so yes we could do with a somewhat sharper strategy to go along with that I agree.

[CumbrianLefty]

Corbyn's leadership not only ignored the media, it was handing them ammunition with unforced errors and gaffes.

Well yeah, though that was partly a consequence of not being bothered by them.

[CumbrianLefty]

Whilst Labour-media relations did indeed take a turn for the worse after 2007, the real turning point was undoubtedly the 2010 leadership elections. Most of the media fully expected the "other" Miliband to win, had built up contacts with him and his team in preparation for that event, and went into what can only be described as a terrific strop when he did not.

[CumbrianLefty]

I "feel seen" by a couple of those tbh

[CumbrianLefty]

Well if it was done by FPTP, yeah