This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[EastAnglianLefty]

The big mystery is whether there was a comprehensive review into the 2017 election; even after Iain McNicol & others left HQ in 2018?

I know it's very internalised but I can't look at the period between 2018-2019 and believe that if the team from 2019 were super-imposed back into 2017 whether we would have seen a better than expected result?

I mean can I just settle at the view that the Labour party hasn't exactly been very well ran since 2005?

Yes, this is exactly it. The reason the distinction between sabotage and unprofessionalism matters is because unprofessionalism isn't something that is solely the preserve of right wing hacks at HQ.

Nonsense. The point is whether you call it unprofessionalism or sabotage, the actions of those on the Labour right in the 2017 campaign were a coordinated attempt to hinder Corbyn's team and hence the wider Labour campaign. It was a betrayal of the party's members, voters, donors, and volunteers writ large and a staggering demonstration of callow cynicism from a wing of the party that had worn its (evidently chimerical) moral superiority and hard nosed pragmatism as badges of honour. The people who did it have no business anywhere near the Labour party, regardless of which wing is ascendant. After all, if they're willing to conspire against their party to throw an election, how can you ever be sure they won't do the same thing again?

And my point is that the evidence that it actually was a co-ordinated attempt to hinder the campaign, rather than an attempt to minimise the expected damage to their particular wing, is weak at best.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The big mystery is whether there was a comprehensive review into the 2017 election; even after Iain McNicol & others left HQ in 2018?

I know it's very internalised but I can't look at the period between 2018-2019 and believe that if the team from 2019 were super-imposed back into 2017 whether we would have seen a better than expected result?

I mean can I just settle at the view that the Labour party hasn't exactly been very well ran since 2005?

Yes, this is exactly it. The reason the distinction between sabotage and unprofessionalism matters is because unprofessionalism isn't something that is solely the preserve of right wing hacks at HQ.

Nonsense. The point is whether you call it unprofessionalism or sabotage, the actions of those on the Labour right in the 2017 campaign were a coordinated attempt to hinder Corbyn's team and hence the wider Labour campaign. It was a betrayal of the party's members, voters, donors, and volunteers writ large and a staggering demonstration of callow cynicism from a wing of the party that had worn its (evidently chimerical) moral superiority and hard nosed pragmatism as badges of honour. The people who did it have no business anywhere near the Labour party, regardless of which wing is ascendant. After all, if they're willing to conspire against their party to throw an election, how can you ever be sure they won't do the same thing again?

And my point is that the evidence that it actually was a co-ordinated attempt to hinder the campaign, rather than an attempt to minimise the expected damage to their particular wing, is weak at best.

I struggle to see how someone could come to that conclusion without relying on motivated reasoning or just being naive. The evidence is quite clear.

I would say exactly the same about you, rendering this whole argument somewhat pointless.

[EastAnglianLefty]

What does that mean?

Nice tweet I saw yesterday - on the lines of "lots of people out there who are totally not racist, but whose least favourite three politicians just happen to be Abbott/Butler/Lammy"

All three also share the distinction of losing internal elections where a good chunk of people who you'd expect to vote for them didn't.

What was Lammy's "internal election"?

The other two maybe need to be unpacked a bit as well - Abbott was never ever going to win in 2010 and her "hard leftness" was beyond much doubt a bigger deterrent then than her race. Butler indeed did poorly in this year's deputy contest, but another non-white hopeful did much better than many had expected; at least something to do with the fact she ran a good campaign, and Butler - FWIW my own 2nd choice behind Rayner - by common consent did not.

Even if there is a bit of reluctance for Labour members to vote for black candidates underneath all that - and tbf there quite possibly is - it maybe shouldn't be conflated with the outright gammony racism I cited above.

Certainly the racial attitudes of Labour members can't reasonably be compared to those of the Twitter trolls going after Butler. Nevertheless, we probably don't talk enough about the fact that BAME candidates only get selected in significant numbers in seats with high BAME populations or seats we don't stand a cat's chance in hell in and I think a higher proportion of BAME Labour MPs will have been selected by an NEC panel (rather than by a CLP) than is the case with white Labour MPs.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I would however suspect that the demographics of Labour members in London will be somewhat different from those as Labour members elsewhere, in broadly the same way as the demographics of London and the rest of the UK differ from one another.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Even within said bubble, the more perceptive contributors to Novara et al. have distinctly more nuanced takes. The broader Corbynosphere isn't large enough to control Labour, but if all you've got in your court is Skwawkbox and Aaron Bastani then you are up the creek without a paddle.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Note that ASLEF will almost certainly keep their seat because the sly buggers switched sides.

Were they not part of the hilarously inept attempt at stoping David Evans from becoming GS? I hadn't noticed that they switched!

I know that TSSA are relatively neutral if not pro-Starmer; although I think that had a lot to do with the GS liking Starmer & the members being ovewhelming anti-Brexit iirc.

This is going to be the case for most unions, though. It's not like bakers as an employment category are particularly left-wing, it's just about the (often very small) cliques of activists who decide union leadership elections.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I strongly suspect that in a less factionalised environment the likes of Coyle would have been much more likely to be deselected. The major thing he had in his favour was that, "He may be a moron, but he's our moron" was a viable rallying cry.

[EastAnglianLefty]

There still hasn't been any attempt to put any policy meat on the bones, but frankly that seems like a smart decision. Conference is effectively cancelled this year - technically it's happening online, but in practice it's unlikely to get anywhere near as much attention as a standard leader's speech. So there's not too much point on set-piece announcements instead, when you can hold them back until the spring for the local elections.

In the meantime, criticising the government and not creating too many opportunities for the government to riposte is the order of the day.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The reaction from Corbynites to that article has often been along the lines of "Blue Labour, ugh". A sentiment I would not actually disagree with, were it true. I think the reality is more hopeful, however.

None of them actually know what Blue Labour is. They just equate it with their 'RED TORY!!!1!!' talk from circa 2015 and think it means any stinking dirty Blairite.

Even amongst those who do this, the reasons for making such claims vary. Some are just acting in bad faith; some know very little about the Labour Party; some are fundamentally from the radical liberal tradition that merged with the trade union left to form the Labour Party.

People often assume the radical liberal tradition was essentially the moderates who went off to the SDP, but this is at best an oversimplification and at worst an active mischaracterisation. Radical liberalism informs just about every variety of crankery on every wing of the Labour party, from Israel/Palestine obsessives; to the people who care a great deal about the non-white working class and have a strange irrational hatred of the people of Ashington; to FBPE types; to Blue Labour itself (because where else do you think the Ruskin adoration comes from?) To oversimplify in the other direction, it's the tradition inherited by people who identify as left-wing but don't actually seem to care very much about class or economics.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The reaction from Corbynites to that article has often been along the lines of "Blue Labour, ugh". A sentiment I would not actually disagree with, were it true. I think the reality is more hopeful, however.

I agree, Blue Labour and Starmer's politics (as described in the article) seem to have very different priorities. To put it crudely, I felt like the former prioritised social conservatism as an end in itself, while the latter seems rooted in more 'traditional' labour movement priorities (as Al describes).

For me, the giveaway with Blue Labour was the "family, faith, flag" slogan - the middle one especially. Even amongst the fabled working class voters of the now almost totally mythologised "red wall" - how many of them do you think go to church regularly, actually?

You can still have faith without attending church regularly; attendance arguably helps, but it's not compulsory.

Yes, but there still isn't any evidence for religion playing an important part in the lives of Labour's "traditional working class vote". Is tradition important and can that involve elements that are basically religious in origin? Sure. But active religious belief is not a particularly significant element of working-class life, and to the extent there are exceptions it isn't really any more notable than middle-class religiosity.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Sir Keir, mind, presided over big cuts to the CPS budget when he was in charge.

Yeah, but that's because it was a public sector organisation. He didn't set the overall budget, so it doesn't really tell you much about his politics. The fact that the more serious problems this caused didn't emerge until after he'd left may tell you something about him as an administrator, but honestly it could just be because it's usually possible to paper over the cracks for a couple of years before the damage really shows.

[EastAnglianLefty]

In 2015, Miliband found himself unpopular with swing voters both for being 'weak' and for 'having stabbed his brother in the back'. These two things are, of course, contradictory, and actually his best moments as leader were all occasions when he showed that he's actually quite a ruthless politician, but they made the strategic error of trying to present him as likeable rather than as effective.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Honestly, Miliband's 2014 conference speech was fine. A bit bland, but not actively bad. It only got panned because the media had decided everything had to be about the deficit, for reasons that had just about nothing to do with the actual state of the economy.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Though I don't think Starmer will mind that, given that the rather unsubtle message of his speech was, "I'm not with those idiots."

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's a situation that nobody comes out of with much credit. On the one hand, abstaining to send a message is as pointless a strategy as it's always been; on the other hand, abstaining on a vote that's going to pass anyway is not a huge ask, and if you can't make that compromise then you're never going to last very long on the frontbenches anyway.

I suspect those three will probably get another opportunity in a year or two, but very few people get a third such opportunity.

[EastAnglianLefty]

What's the worst that can happen to her if she is found guilty?

Considering what her predecessor got away with in pretty much broad daylight, it would indeed be ironic if she fell foul of the law so quickly. And no, i didn't think she was anything like 55.

Sentencing guidelines say that if it's not racially/religiously aggravated then the maximum sentence is 6 months imprisonment. It's triable in a magistrates' court, so ordinarily you might expect it to be dealt with quicker but given the delays in the system at the moment I'd be surprised if there's a verdict before 2022.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Though a recall is only triggered if a custodial sentence is imposed, or a sufficiently long suspension from the House.

Without knowing the details of the offence there's no way to be certain, but I suspect that most convictions for harassment don't lead to actual prison time. So possibly the biggest threat she faces is from the Standards Committee.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I think the very oldest millennials may have just about been able to vote in 2001.

[EastAnglianLefty]

This does pose the interesting question of how many fewer affiliated members UNITE would have to declare before it was actually accurate.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Coronavirus doesn't help, but you aren't going to have a Shadow Chancellor with a huge public profile when a) Treasury questions doesn't get even 1% of the coverage of PMQs and b) Labour hasn't announced any economic policies since the election. Sunak isn't popular because he has a sunny personality.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Wes Streeting replaces Greenwood as Schools minister, which is a net improvement - Greenwood is apparently on the left, but is definitely useless, whereas Streeting is a good media performer. In any case, education policy isn't strongly factionalised in Labour, partly because in all honesty there isn't much detail beyond the slogans.

Streeting and Carden are replaced by James Murray (Ealing North MP, used to be Sadiq Khan's Deputy Mayor for Housing) and Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith & Thamesmead MP) who are both in the centre of the PLP, which would appear to indicate a desire to make sure that the Shadow Treasury Team doesn't become a fiefdom of the right.

If Starmer can come up with something that McFadden resigns over, then it'd be a very strong Shadow Treasury team.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's a shock, but in retrospect it probably shouldn't have been.

I'm reasonably sure Starmer's team will have asked Corbyn what response he was planning to make to the EHRC report and will not have been pleased with a couple of lines in there (and if they didn't ask, Corbyn's team should have assumed it was a case of giving him enough rope anyway.) We know that if Starmer tells you to apologise and you argue, he will take action.

We haven't learned very much new, except that you really shouldn't try to out-bluff Starmer.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Regarding Islamophobia, several sentences in the report are not terrible subtle shots across the bows of CCHQ. The EHRC move slowly, but when they do move you do not want to be in their way.

Regarding Corbyn's personal culpability, I suggest you re-read the report, and specifically the section on who counts as an 'agent' of the party.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's a longstanding issue, but it has got worse in the past 5 years, both in terms of the number of people expressing antisemitic attitudes, and in terms of the number of people who had mildly antisemitic attitudes who radicalised themselves into believing Rothschild memes.

Honestly it's probably the latter group who are the bigger problem right now, and it's those that Corbyn probably bears most responsibility for because the overly defensive tone he took filtered down through the party.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Grade A crank is putting it politely. He is a vociferous anti-semite with a long history of pushing false information and should never be treated as a reliable source.