UK General Discussion:The Rt. Hon Alex Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Populist Hero

[cp]

Actually, whilst poll internals are always *always* somewhat suspect there *is* some evidence that Labour under Starmer have retaken the most ground in the "red wall" seats they famously lost last year. To win an election their vote distribution will have to become better "balanced", so grounds for cautious optimism there.

Well, the question is, why is Starmer appealing to that kind of Labour voter who voted for Boris Johnson in 2019? Why is Starmer succeeding where Corbyn failed?

It's not like Starmer is any closer to that kind of voter than Corbyn?

Well I'd say he's closer to them; there's been a clear effort to appeal to these traditional Labour voters; the piece on D-Day about care homes, the active silence over the Channel crossings, attacking the appointment of Clare Fox over her past IRA support etc etc.

This is on top of the fact that any Labour leader, including RLB & even someone like Lavery) would start at a higher base than Corbyn was at in 2019.

By then he had the fatal combination of being seen as out of touch (on brexit), incompetent (on anti-semitism) & in some cases hated over various issues in his past.

If you want an explanation of the specific issues facing 2019 (which I define as Labour seats held under Thatcher being lost) then this article from Phil Wilson, who lost his seat, sums it up very well.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/labour-leadership-race/2020/03/labours-mess-predictable-result-leader-and-philosophy-hated

Alternatively, if you want an analysis of the 2019 election that's not 5000 words of whiny self-pitying Blairite nonsense, this is an excellent take

Written by someone who no doubt knocked on hundreds of doors during the election!

Deleted half my post because frankly I don't want to argue about the 2019 election. Read both pieces and work out which one is more accurate!

Hint: it's not the one written by the gambling industry lobbyist.

Thing is, there are *so many* rigorous serious analyses of the 2019 Labour campaign that aren't sanctimonious contradictory claptrap, I'm frankly stunned anyone who has an honest interest in discussing the matter would even think to reference Wilson's aimless screed in the first place. Besides the obvious factional bias, it's so internally inconsistent that it barely qualifies as observation. He accuses Corbyn of lacking leadership on Brexit despite running on precisely the platform Wilson advocated himself all through 2018/19. He repeats every falsehood and exaggeration about Corbyn promulgated by the tabloid press, then has the gall to say a hostile media had 'never prevented a Labour win before'. (If that were the case, New Labour would not have had any reason to exist in the first place!)

Graeber's take has its own shortcomings, of course. It's a 10 000-foot view of the election that lacks the ground level information Wilson attempts, and Graeber gives more credit to the media for shaping public opinion than it probably deserves. But at least he offers a systematic rational analysis of the short and long term trends leading up to 2019. Wilson's account is just a litany of personal grievance and wounded ego. Not surprising, considering he's the perfect embodiment of jilted New Labour entitlement.

And for the record, I don't know if Graeber knocked on any doors in 2019. But even if he didn't, he still did more to try to elect a Labour government in the past 10 years than Wilson did (or most of the Labour right, apparently).

[Blair]

I'm very sorry for posting my opinion on the Labour Party on the internet!

[cp]

I'm very sorry for posting my opinion on the Labour Party on the internet!

That's a lie and we both know it!

[Blair]

I would honestly welcome & read a long piece from someone like Laura Pidcock or Dennis Skinner on why they thought they lost their seats in 2019!

I'd of course disagree with large parts of it but I think for these seats if you've not reguarly followled Labour or UK politics you need an on the grounds demonstration of what happened in these seats; I think 2019 was such a flash in the pan election that the much slower trends that have of course dominated these regions can't be seen as the sole reason- especially when these seats were returning relatively stable majorities even during the historic lows of 2010 & 2015.

EDIT: There is one from Pidcock! But she didn't mention the T-Shirts that had been allegedly printed for her deputy leadership campaign!

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/02/letter-to-the-movement

[cp]

I would honestly welcome & read a long piece from someone like Laura Pidcock or Dennis Skinner on why they thought they lost their seats in 2019!

I'd of course disagree with large parts of it but I think for these seats if you've not reguarly followled Labour or UK politics you need an on the grounds demonstration of what happened in these seats; I think 2019 was such a flash in the pan election that the much slower trends that have of course dominated these regions can't be seen as the sole reason- especially when these seats were returning relatively stable majorities even during the historic lows of 2010 & 2015.

EDIT: There is one from Pidcock! But she didn't mention the T-Shirts that had been allegedly printed for her deputy leadership campaign!

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/02/letter-to-the-movement

I must confess I was underwhelmed by that Pidcock piece. Wading through the pleasant sounding fluff and TERFy dogwhistling, the only real, on the ground insight she offered was that the Tories got out their message better, principally about Brexit, while Labour couldn't get shake the perception of fissiparousness long enough to have its ideas cohere. Hardly the stuff of revelations. Still better than Wilson's moralizing New Labour schtick, though.

To return to the originating comment, I don't think Starmer's done anything particularly effective to appeal to erstwhile Labour voters, nor is he preternaturally equipped to do so by his style, biography, or outlook. The improved standing he holds right now is, as has been pointed out, more a matter of him not being the guy on the receiving end of a concerted 4-year campaign of character assassination (yet).

Sadly, I highly doubt this alone will help Labour do much better in the next election. Starmer may be more capable of getting a hearing than a polarizing leader like Corbyn - the chattering classes won't look down their nose at him or his ideas nearly as much - but he's just as much a creature of distant, rarified, metropolitan professionalism as Corbyn is. That's to say, he's no more capable of affecting genuine empathy from Northern working class constituencies than Corbyn did (and Johnson does, preposterously). Unlike Corbyn, however, Starmer can't rely on the enthusiasm of a mass movement or the promise of genuine change to magnify his credibility. Far from it.

[parochial boy]

Speaking of which why is it that transphobia seems to be such an issue specifically on the left in Britain?

Like, in most of the world it tends to fit fairly neatly into the "usual" left-right divide. Yet in the UK, it seems to be the Labour party that is tearing itself apart over trans rights; it is often nominally left-wing or feminist people making a fuss about their opposition to trans rihts; and it was Theresa May of all people's government that tried to bring in the new gender recognition act.

[DaWN]

Meanwhile, our Esteemed Prime Minister had forgotten that Labour changed leaders and accused Starmer of being an IRA supporter. Right in the middle of PMQs. Perhaps a sign that maybe Mr Johnson is not the political genius we all thought him?

[cp]

Speaking of which why is it that transphobia seems to be such an issue specifically on the left in Britain?

Like, in most of the world it tends to fit fairly neatly into the "usual" left-right divide. Yet in the UK, it seems to be the Labour party that is tearing itself apart over trans rights; it is often nominally left-wing or feminist people making a fuss about their opposition to trans rihts; and it was Theresa May of all people's government that tried to bring in the new gender recognition act.

Yeah, it's baffling on the face of it, but fairly easy to explain. Basically, it boils down to class and race (and there isms thereof).

Like many UK political movements, women's liberation has been inordinately influenced by wealthy, well-connected folks whose primary goals were less about dismantling systems of oppression and more about achieving respectability. (This happens elsewhere, of course, but the UK's stuffy class system reinforces it). As a result, its leaders have been more resistant to embracing 'radical' policies (trans rights now; gay and lesbian rights in the 70s/80s; reproductive freedom in the 50s and 60s; women's suffrage before 1900) than their rhetoric of social change, or association with leftwing groups on other issues, might imply. Put more bluntly, a lot of upper middle class middle-aged British women don't want to let trans people into their special women's (liberation) club because ... well, it's just not done!

This same dynamic maps perfectly onto the category of race. Women's groups in the UK, putatively liberal or otherwise, are overwhelmingly white. Consequently, there's been less engagement with the intersectional feminism that's helped propel trans rights into the mainstream over the past 25ish years in the US or other countries where non-white non-elite women challenged feminists on their assumptions about what women's liberation really means.

May and the Tories' relative ease with this issue is more a function of apathy than broadmindedness. They'd never been very concerned about the 'liberation' elements of feminism in the first place, so they never perceived trans rights as a challenge to their hard fought triumphs over patriarchy (as TERFs tend to portray them). Meanwhile, the anti-LGBT hard right in the Tories has been in eclipse since at least 2010, so there's not much agitation to take up the cause.

Also, JK Rowling. Ugh.

[CumbrianLefty]

Sadly, I highly doubt this alone will help Labour do much better in the next election. Starmer may be more capable of getting a hearing than a polarizing leader like Corbyn - the chattering classes won't look down their nose at him or his ideas nearly as much - but he's just as much a creature of distant, rarified, metropolitan professionalism as Corbyn is. That's to say, he's no more capable of affecting genuine empathy from Northern working class constituencies than Corbyn did (and Johnson does, preposterously). Unlike Corbyn, however, Starmer can't rely on the enthusiasm of a mass movement or the promise of genuine change to magnify his credibility. Far from it.

If this was *all* there is to things, Biden wouldn't be well ahead of Trump in the US. But he is.

I think some of the anti-Starmer left genuinely overestimate how much his background puts swing voters - even in the fabled "red wall" - off. And its not just a minor detail that he won't get the full on media assault that Corbyn did (over a period of close to five years, don't forget)

Still, I agree with you about Phil Wilson. Ugh.

(did his lengthy screed even acknowledge that the stance he had taken on Brexit and tried to get the wider party to adopt - for almost wholly factional anti-Corbyn reasons, mind, not because he ever genuinely agreed with it - was utterly and profoundly toxic to so many voters in his own seat?)

[Blair]

The one thing that does not get covered a lot about Keir (and which he reminded everyone at PMQs) is that he is the first Labour leader for a very long time who had a job outside of politics and one which he can actually use to sell himself to voters.

[afleitch]

Speaking of which why is it that transphobia seems to be such an issue specifically on the left in Britain?

Like, in most of the world it tends to fit fairly neatly into the "usual" left-right divide. Yet in the UK, it seems to be the Labour party that is tearing itself apart over trans rights; it is often nominally left-wing or feminist people making a fuss about their opposition to trans rihts; and it was Theresa May of all people's government that tried to bring in the new gender recognition act.

Yeah, it's baffling on the face of it, but fairly easy to explain. Basically, it boils down to class and race (and there isms thereof).

Like many UK political movements, women's liberation has been inordinately influenced by wealthy, well-connected folks whose primary goals were less about dismantling systems of oppression and more about achieving respectability. (This happens elsewhere, of course, but the UK's stuffy class system reinforces it). As a result, its leaders have been more resistant to embracing 'radical' policies (trans rights now; gay and lesbian rights in the 70s/80s; reproductive freedom in the 50s and 60s; women's suffrage before 1900) than their rhetoric of social change, or association with leftwing groups on other issues, might imply. Put more bluntly, a lot of upper middle class middle-aged British women don't want to let trans people into their special women's (liberation) club because ... well, it's just not done!

This same dynamic maps perfectly onto the category of race. Women's groups in the UK, putatively liberal or otherwise, are overwhelmingly white. Consequently, there's been less engagement with the intersectional feminism that's helped propel trans rights into the mainstream over the past 25ish years in the US or other countries where non-white non-elite women challenged feminists on their assumptions about what women's liberation really means.

May and the Tories' relative ease with this issue is more a function of apathy than broadmindedness. They'd never been very concerned about the 'liberation' elements of feminism in the first place, so they never perceived trans rights as a challenge to their hard fought triumphs over patriarchy (as TERFs tend to portray them). Meanwhile, the anti-LGBT hard right in the Tories has been in eclipse since at least 2010, so there's not much agitation to take up the cause.

Also, JK Rowling. Ugh.

Bingo.

Performance feminism in the UK is the purview of Guardian columnists or people who write for the Times magazine section. It's cultivated and curated as a very middle class concern. There is an overlap between that er... 'sort' and those who write about motherhood as if they are the first to discover it. Those actually doing the ground work are removed from that and not nearly as trans exclusionary.

While I don't think there's necessarily a 'crisis' of femininity (?) in the UK, there is certainly both a moral panic and a change in the public/journalism discourse where there is a creeping crass reduction in what makes someone a female/woman to the body; genitalia and capacity to give birth that is both alarming and quite dangerous to feminism going forward.

[cp]

Sadly, I highly doubt this alone will help Labour do much better in the next election. Starmer may be more capable of getting a hearing than a polarizing leader like Corbyn - the chattering classes won't look down their nose at him or his ideas nearly as much - but he's just as much a creature of distant, rarified, metropolitan professionalism as Corbyn is. That's to say, he's no more capable of affecting genuine empathy from Northern working class constituencies than Corbyn did (and Johnson does, preposterously). Unlike Corbyn, however, Starmer can't rely on the enthusiasm of a mass movement or the promise of genuine change to magnify his credibility. Far from it.

If this was *all* there is to things, Biden wouldn't be well ahead of Trump in the US. But he is.

I think some of the anti-Starmer left genuinely overestimate how much his background puts swing voters - even in the fabled "red wall" - off. And its not just a minor detail that he won't get the full on media assault that Corbyn did (over a period of close to five years, don't forget)

Still, I agree with you about Phil Wilson. Ugh.

(did his lengthy screed even acknowledge that the stance he had taken on Brexit and tried to get the wider party to adopt - for almost wholly factional anti-Corbyn reasons, mind, not because he ever genuinely agreed with it - was utterly and profoundly toxic to so many voters in his own seat?)

Of course not. He did manage to find 400 words to expound on the 'chose the wrong brother' axiom. And people say it's Corbyn supporters who are stuck in the past!

For the record, I don't think Starmer, for his background or any other reason, puts off voters in the North. He doesn't put off anyone. How could he? He's a safe, inoffensive, milquetoast cipher; the perfect embodiment of people who think putting in charge 'grown ups' and 'a real leader' will return Labour to Portillo Moment glory. His strategy is to avoid saying, doing, or possibly even thinking anything that could possibly offend the thin skulled man-in-the-street his legal training no doubt conditioned him to fear. That's probably going to help him manage the reactionary press better than Corbyn did, but gods help him if he eats a bacon sandwich.

[afleitch]

SLab are trying to get rid of their leader with some front bench noise. But no one is paying enough attention for it to cascade yet.

Mr charisma himself, James 'fitba' ' Kelly has resigned.

[CumbrianLefty]

Sadly, I highly doubt this alone will help Labour do much better in the next election. Starmer may be more capable of getting a hearing than a polarizing leader like Corbyn - the chattering classes won't look down their nose at him or his ideas nearly as much - but he's just as much a creature of distant, rarified, metropolitan professionalism as Corbyn is. That's to say, he's no more capable of affecting genuine empathy from Northern working class constituencies than Corbyn did (and Johnson does, preposterously). Unlike Corbyn, however, Starmer can't rely on the enthusiasm of a mass movement or the promise of genuine change to magnify his credibility. Far from it.

If this was *all* there is to things, Biden wouldn't be well ahead of Trump in the US. But he is.

I think some of the anti-Starmer left genuinely overestimate how much his background puts swing voters - even in the fabled "red wall" - off. And its not just a minor detail that he won't get the full on media assault that Corbyn did (over a period of close to five years, don't forget)

Still, I agree with you about Phil Wilson. Ugh.

(did his lengthy screed even acknowledge that the stance he had taken on Brexit and tried to get the wider party to adopt - for almost wholly factional anti-Corbyn reasons, mind, not because he ever genuinely agreed with it - was utterly and profoundly toxic to so many voters in his own seat?)

Of course not. He did manage to find 400 words to expound on the 'chose the wrong brother' axiom. And people say it's Corbyn supporters who are stuck in the past!

People who are still David Miliband stans, a full decade after he basically threw away the Labour leadership, really are amongst the weirdest cults out there (no surprise that they have a fair few #FBPEers in their ranks)

[Alcibiades]

Sadly, I highly doubt this alone will help Labour do much better in the next election. Starmer may be more capable of getting a hearing than a polarizing leader like Corbyn - the chattering classes won't look down their nose at him or his ideas nearly as much - but he's just as much a creature of distant, rarified, metropolitan professionalism as Corbyn is. That's to say, he's no more capable of affecting genuine empathy from Northern working class constituencies than Corbyn did (and Johnson does, preposterously). Unlike Corbyn, however, Starmer can't rely on the enthusiasm of a mass movement or the promise of genuine change to magnify his credibility. Far from it.

If this was *all* there is to things, Biden wouldn't be well ahead of Trump in the US. But he is.

I think some of the anti-Starmer left genuinely overestimate how much his background puts swing voters - even in the fabled "red wall" - off. And its not just a minor detail that he won't get the full on media assault that Corbyn did (over a period of close to five years, don't forget)

Still, I agree with you about Phil Wilson. Ugh.

(did his lengthy screed even acknowledge that the stance he had taken on Brexit and tried to get the wider party to adopt - for almost wholly factional anti-Corbyn reasons, mind, not because he ever genuinely agreed with it - was utterly and profoundly toxic to so many voters in his own seat?)

Of course not. He did manage to find 400 words to expound on the 'chose the wrong brother' axiom. And people say it's Corbyn supporters who are stuck in the past!

People who are still David Miliband stans, a full decade after he basically threw away the Labour leadership, really are amongst the weirdest cults out there (no surprise that they have a fair few #FBPEers in their ranks)

While there is not much point obsessing over an internal election from 10 years ago, it is probably safe to say that there would be a Labour government (or at least one from May 2015 to May 2020), and no Brexit had David Milliband become leader.

[CumbrianLefty]

No it isn't "safe" to say that at all, indeed the hard objective evidence that it would have been *likely* (as opposed to possible, as most hypotheticals are) is in fact remarkably scant.

[Alcibiades]

No it isn't "safe" to say that at all, indeed the hard objective evidence that it would have been *likely* (as opposed to possible, as most hypotheticals are) is in fact remarkably scant.

To your first point, that is why I said “likely safe”.

To your second, I think the main reason Ed Milliband lost was that he was the British Dukakis - that is to say he lost an election that was his to lose because was scared to respond to ridiculous accusations from the Tories, chief among them that Labour caused the financial crisis. The Tories, on paper, would have been expected to lose, at the head of a government which had pursued unpopular and unnecessary budget cuts, and indeed polled at an according level throughout their term, but pulled out a victory with the above campaign strategy.

Is it possible that David Milliband would have been hit by the same accusations and failed to respond, but unlikely. Furthermore, he projects a much less weak persona than his Ed; however fair or not such a perception is, this is clearly what many voters saw, which leads me to suspect the Tories may not have tried such brazen attacks on him in the first place.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If you want to play hypotheticals, how about some fantasy version of Alan Johnson with political ambition? Unlike either Miliband, a man who was (is) very well liked with the broad public and a man totally lacking in that stilted wonkish manner of speak common to many of the younger figures from the Blair and Brown governments. Of course there's the rub: he doesn't have any political ambition and never really did - this is also why he lacked much in the way of political energy; not a driven man in that sense, so none of the urgency and electricity that is so absolutely critical to political success.

[CumbrianLefty]

David Miliband is "naturally" well to the right of his brother, so what you say is again far from a given.

Indeed, its not impossible he might have listened instead to those diehard Blairites who chuntered on from 2008 onwards (and certainly 2010) that the party should "apologise" for "spending too much".

(of course, they incessantly briefed against EM as leader for this reason amongst others)

Plus the fact he managed to lose an essentially "unloseable" leadership election has to count against him (yet again, Blairites drone on and on about "the unions" as if they were beasts with two heads - but the fact remains that if DM had made even a perfunctory attempt to woo them, he would have won)

[Alcibiades]

If you want to play hypotheticals, how about some fantasy version of Alan Johnson with political ambition? Unlike either Miliband, a man who was (is) very well liked with the broad public and a man totally lacking in that stilted wonkish manner of speak common to many of the younger figures from the Blair and Brown governments. Of course there's the rub: he doesn't have any political ambition and never really did - this is also why he lacked much in the way of political energy; not a driven man in that sense, so none of the urgency and electricity that is so absolutely critical to political success.

Where would you put Gordon Brown in with all of this - in many ways quite brilliant and incredibly intelligent, but who harboured political ambition without ever really seeming that up for the cut and thrust of campaigning, electioneering and interacting with the public?

[CumbrianLefty]

If you want to play hypotheticals, how about some fantasy version of Alan Johnson with political ambition? Unlike either Miliband, a man who was (is) very well liked with the broad public and a man totally lacking in that stilted wonkish manner of speak common to many of the younger figures from the Blair and Brown governments. Of course there's the rub: he doesn't have any political ambition and never really did - this is also why he lacked much in the way of political energy; not a driven man in that sense, so none of the urgency and electricity that is so absolutely critical to political success.

Used to like AJ, and he was my first choice as deputy in 2007 (though in hindsight, his losing that - to the candidate I ranked bottom - after being the clear front runner was a sizeable red flag) and his mercifully brief flop as shadow Chancellor could be put down to well publicised personal problems.

But his utter lassitude as the official head of Labour's remain campaign in 2016 was inexcusable - and taking the easy way out afterwards and blaming everything on Corbyn (knowing how that would be relayed uncritically by all his pals in the media) was simply cynical and cowardly.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But his utter lassitude as the official head of Labour's remain campaign in 2016 was inexcusable - and taking the easy way out afterwards and blaming everything on Corbyn (knowing how that would be relayed uncritically by all his pals in the media) was simply cynical and cowardly.

That's sort of the issue though: he was terrible in that role because of his lack of personal political ambition and all that that fuels - even more of a problem by then because he winding up his political career by that point. The hypothetical Alan Johnson: Labour Leader is just that - a fictional version of the man, without that feature. The point being, why fantasize about D. Miliband when with a bit of imagination?

[Zinneke]

When talking Blairite fantasies, I tend to drift towards Liz Kendall LOTO. And laugh.

[cp]

... if you want an analysis of the 2019 election ... this is an excellent take

Written by someone who no doubt knocked on hundreds of doors during the election!

Sadly, the author in question, David Graeber, just died

(For the record, not trying to take a shot at you, Blair. It's just kind of nuts how we talked about this two days before Graeber died!)

[parochial boy]

A Prime Minister with absolutely no personal ambition sounds ideal, to be perfectly honest.