This Once Great Movement Of Ours

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As far as I can tell, Diane Abbott has been suspended for being Diane Abbott. Or for being a bit more Diane Abbott than usual. Keir Starmer is a white man who loves playing divide and rule, as she may say.

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You keep saying this, but she really is not (and God knows, I am no big fan)

Ever heard of Philip Snowden?

Indeed. More recently, the only Labour MP who could reasonably be described as such is perhaps Gisela Stuart. Even Frank Field can't be described as such IMO. I'm talking of course about whilst they were Labour MPs rather than what they did subsequently.

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Yes it’s a bit like people claiming Tories like John Major, Ken Clarke or David Gauke aren’t Toris; they are, they’re just from a very distinct tradition!

Worth noting ofc reeves had a change to defect in 2019 and didn’t!

Clarke and Major were both economic Thatcherites for the most part. Steve Richards says in The Prime Ministers We Never Had that Clarke could (and probably would) have won the Tory leadership if he had played up that aspect more and kept the European stances at bay.

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John McDonnell believes in the Labour Party as an institution in a way that Corbyn never did.

McDonnell is the Michael Gove of the Labour Party. Very intelligent, very ideological, sharp media performer and ultimately very unlikeable and lacking in charm, hence why neither of them have ever become leader. I'm not sure either of them would appreciate the comparison, but I think it's apt.

Corbyn, meanwhile, is the Bill Cash of the Labour Party. Again, not a comparison that either would probably enjoy.

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In the case of Abbott, it's less of an 'age' thing and more of a 'Diane Abbott' thing.

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I take it this is the “forget higher spending, let’s cut taxes and plug everyone into the Hypercube” comment?

Given the sheer persistence of his ID card evangelism (which, I’ll admit, I’m coming around on), I guess we should have expected him to lean even further into the ‘tech is a panacea’ stuff as he gets older.

When he came to Singapore he still mentioned ID cards in his speech and praised singapores digital ID cards

A country to aspire to, particularly from a left-wing perspective.

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A trio of Corbynistas - Anas Sarwar, Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan - have called for a ceasefire.

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Starmer's speech today, decent enough. But will it repair the damage already done?

The question might inherently provide the answer.

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I note that Hussain's tweet on the matter has received a complimentary reply from someone by the name of George Galloway. Many will be aware that Hussain suffered an exceptionally bad defeat to Galloway in a certain by-election just over a decade ago.

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That no good, troublemaking Corbynista.

https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1724808399299457408?s=20

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This isn't going to go down well in certain quarters. He also praises Attlee, but only the headlines tend to be read these days.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67604830

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As is typical of Starmer, it was carefully worded anyway.

He says that Thatcher "aimed" to do worthy things, not that she actually did them.

What she aimed to do was (or would have been) arguably worse than what she actually did do. She didn't turn out to be quite Roger Douglas.

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Glenys Kinnock (Baroness Kinnock) has died at seventy nine. Best known as Neil Kinnock's wife, but a notable THIGMOO figure in her own right. She had been very ill - Alzheimer's - for a long time.

The second THIGMOO heavyweight gone within a few days, in fact.

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the very worst aspects of The Thick Of It and The West Wing.

On the latter, putting aside the negative aspects, I will say that the second season finale (specifically, the final few minutes, whenever the great Dire Straits song starts) is one of the greatest television series moments ever IMO.

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Speaking of George Lansbury, someone apparently claimed recently that Labour was only ever a socialist party for four years of its existence (2015-2019). Corbyn wasn't even the most 'socialist' or 'left-wing' leader the party has ever had. Taking Hardie, early MacDonald, Lansbury and Foot into account, it wouldn't be entirely absurd to leave him out of the top three on that particular score.

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Basically many of the FBPErs and the Corbynistas have more in common with each other than they would like to admit, just as the Bennites and the Woystas of 40+ years ago did.

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I’m probably being too cynical here, but Reeves feels worryingly like Roger Douglas.

I was more thinking that the 2020-2023 NZ Labour experience is about to repeat itself, but I guess we don't know that she isn't because Douglas didn't broadcast his agenda before taking power.

The (likely) incoming minister, at least of any particular prominence, with the most Douglas potential would be Streeting. Reeves certainly preaches 'fiscal restraint', but so did McDonnell.

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I’m probably being too cynical here, but Reeves feels worryingly like Roger Douglas.

Btw, it looked for a while in 2021 that Starmer would go down as the British Labour version of H. V. Evatt.

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Who is likeliest to succeed Starmer if by some black swan event he steps down

I really don't think there is a stand out favourite just now, is my honest answer. Streeting is the one who is relentlessly hyped by much of the media, but there is a lot of internal resistance to him.

Streeting does give off 2015 Liz Kendall vibes, but presumably would do better owing to a higher profile, the marginalisation of the left, and a greater desire to compromise to win. Still, if he fought a full leadership election based on attacking the soft left to attract praise from the right wing press, he would still probably lose…

There are also some Pete Buttigieg parallels of course. Although I can (to some extent) get the hype about Streeting.

Kendall's campaign hilariously never grasped that you need to appeal to the Centre Ground (TM) of the Labour Party to win a leadership election, or even just to get a non-embarrassing result.

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Jones suffers from looking about twenty years younger than he is. He's in his late 30s.

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I do however think that the continued infantilisation of him; how he looks, how young he looks is incredibly crass and characteristic of broader issues with anyone under the age of 40 (just...in his case) holding any position in the public arena. Particularly when it comes from the same politicians and media that regularly fête a rotation of young, suited adenoidal Tories.

Well, is this going to cease to be the case in August (when he turns 40)? I think not.

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One (among many) issues for the whips these days is that many of the old school (and effective) methods of whipping would now be classed as workplace misconduct.

The implementation of legislation on matters regarding workplace misconduct was no doubt assisted by such methods.

Some of the Tory choices for the position of Chief Whip have been quite ridiculous in recent times. Can anyone imagine Chris Heaton-Harris and Wendy Morton being able to herd actual sheep? Labour has tended to stick with nasty pieces of work from the North East, which is less ridiculous.

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A large proportion of the people complaining in the comments of that tweet have the Palestinian, EU and/or trans flags in their name/bio. Nationalism and pride is completely normal until it’s a political party using the flag of its own country.

I think I once changed my Facebook profile picture so that it was covered in rainbow colours. Must have been one June. Other than that I have never engaged in any kind of flag nonsense. The problem is that a lot of people categorise you if you have any kind of flag or symbol in your profile. It's better to be assessed on the basis of whatever bile you actually spout, IMO.

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What would 'Left' even mean in that sort of context? I mention this not to be a prick for the sake of it, but historically there would have been only one possible meaning for a party of the radical Left in Britain - advocacy of the nationalization of, at least, the Commanding Heights of the economy and a transition to a planned economy* - and that is not exactly what is being talked of here. Of course for such a party there is, of course, no longer even a small electoral market (that world is gone), but that's not the point.

_{*No, no, loosely worded resolutions about the public ownership of certain utilities and forms of public transport categorically do not count, especially not from people who otherwise show a strong attachment to the notion of private property rights.}

I defined it as the 'Old New urban left' as you once described Corbyn! So people without the traditional links to trade unionism

My interest was spiked by the fact that chunks of this movement seem to be going to the greens; at risk of sounding crude it's largely the same sort of voters who went Liberal Democrat in 2005/2010 & then flirted with Labour in 2015, signed up to Corbynism and then well went various ways in the years since then!

It's weird how little coverage there has been of the greens; whether its their growth in local government, their surge in Conservative areas as the anti-Conservative alternative and the expected strength they'll get as being the urban progressive alternative to Labour.

The peak of Green Party coverage seems to have been in the run-up to the 2015 election, other than their 1989 Euros purple patch perhaps. Of course they were led by Natalie Bennett (not to be confused with the Israeli Prime Minister with a very similar name), possibly the least charismatic leader of any vaguely notable party the modern media age. I wonder how much better they would have done if Lucas had been leader at that point.

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This seems like as good a thread as any to post this. At 5:18, Peter Mandelson tells the story of how he was once bouncing up and down on Elton John's bed with Thomas the Tank Engine videos (with the Ringo Starr narration) on the television. Just what everyone wants in their head at teatime no doubt.