This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[Silent Hunter]

That one was, basically, a fluke. Labour's electoral performance outside that under Corbyn was dire.

[CumbrianLefty]

Even if true, I would have thought just that merited investigation of why it happened - rather than merely sweeping things under the carpet and pretending it never did.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I think it's clear enough why it happened. The bigger question is whether the various groupings with mutually incompatible desires who ended up plumping for Labour are our ceiling or not.

[Former President tack50]

To be honest, I would rather be British Labour than the Spanish PSOE or even the Portuguese PS in the long term, if only because FPTP means that in order for Labour to be displaced as the main party of the British left needs an electoral revolution of cataclysmic proportions.

Meanwhile under PR it is much easier to be replaced as the main opposition party and the fact that PSOE managed to retain that role in 2016 is almost a miracle.

Of course under PR it is also hypothetically easier to regain that role than under FPTP (which honestly makes the resurrection of the Canadian Liberals in 2015 almost a miracle tbh).

[Umlilo]

Yes, and the fact also remains (though some have tried to write it out of history) that Labour got 41% of the GB vote in 2017 - something that remains woefully under-analysed (by most of Corbyn's backers as well as opponents, it has to be said)

The CW about Labour's chances made it easier for people to vote for them, did it not?

[Pulaski]

I think it's clear enough why it happened. The bigger question is whether the various groupings with mutually incompatible desires who ended up plumping for Labour are our ceiling or not.

That's what coalitions are, though, and virtually every party in every democracy has to assemble them. The conservatives right now have assembled virtually the whole Leave vote with a significant amount of right- and centre-learning Remainers, and Labour didn't even manage to assemble enough of the Remain vote. 2017 proved that it's possible to gather a sizeable coalition around a genuinely left-wing economic platform, even under an (at the time, mildly) unpopular leader. Surely Corbyn's main failure, rather than being "too left-wing" as virtually every analyst opines, was an inability, and even dogged refusal, to to the necessary reach out to assemble a workable coalition. A task made all the more difficult, of course, by the insistence by large swathes of the media that he was a closet Leave voter, communist, and anti-Semite.

[dead0man]

again, I didn't get to see, because the mods deleted everything.  For reasons that have become even more confusing now.  I had assumed the responses were just insults and the mods found the small hijack too distracting, but you're telling me they were just informative...well that's odd.

Simply making a statement that "Labour hates Jews" is trolling, and not the purpose of this thread.

I didn't say that, I asked if they still did.  As they did just a few months ago, I thought it was a reasonable question.  Apparently it's not and magically, Labour totally loves Jews now and there totally isn't still a problem.  Right?


I guess the question now is....where did all the left learning bigots go?

Are Libertarians still happy letting babies starve to death?

what do some other libertarians saying some strange things about their kids have to do with...well, anything?  wait, is that supposed to be a "gotcha"?

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, and the fact also remains (though some have tried to write it out of history) that Labour got 41% of the GB vote in 2017 - something that remains woefully under-analysed (by most of Corbyn's backers as well as opponents, it has to be said)

The CW about Labour's chances made it easier for people to vote for them, did it not?

Polling at the time/just after the election showed this was actually a fairly minor factor.

(after all the polls also suggested a big Tory win last year, but the result was rather different)

[Silent Hunter]

In terms of popular vote, May and Johnson got the highest vote share for the Tories since Thatcher.

[CumbrianLefty]

Indeed, puts that moronic centrist meme of "MAY RAN THE WORST CAMPAIGN EVER!!" in perspective.

[Former President tack50]

Indeed, puts that moronic centrist meme of "MAY RAN THE WORST CAMPAIGN EVER!!" in perspective.

To be fair the huge popular vote results of Labour 2017 and the Tories in both 2017 and 2019 says more about the decline of the Lib Dems first and UKIP later than it says about either of them

Johnson got less seats than Thatcher 1987 despite having a higher percentage of the popular vote
Theresa May got less seats than Major 1992 despite having a higher percentage of the popular vote
And of course Corbyn 2017 got a result comparable to Blair 2001. But while Blair got more than 400 seats in 2001, Corbyn did not even get a Labour minority.

The answer to "Why Labour and the Tories do so great on the PV" is the fact that the Lib Dems used to get 25% of the vote and they now get 10%. This is especially noticeable for the Tories as Labour has lost their Scottish vote while the Tories actually went up there.

IMO a better comparison would be the PV gap between the 2 main parties. You could adjust this to just look at the 2 party vote, but even without adjustments (and rounding) you get since the 1980s:

2019: Tory+12
2017: Tory+2
2015: Tory+7
2010: Tory+7
2005: Labour+3
2001: Labour+9
1997: Labour+12
1992: Tory+8
1987: Tory+11
1983: Tory+15
 
So Boris Johnson got a victory on par with Blair's landslide of 1997. The only reason he does not have 400 seats is because of vote consolidation and the death of the Lib Dems. But this is certainly a testament to how good his campaign was (and conversely how utterly terrible Corbyn's was)

As for May, notice how she had the closest PV result? Given the circumstances of the election, her campaign was absolutely terrible given how she only managed to barely eke out a win

[urutzizu]

Starmer refuses to back Brexit transition extension says he would rather “the negotiations were completed as quickly as possible”

I know that it's a irrelevant political issue right now, but Is this Starmer shifting to a harder Brexit policy now that he has cleared the membership? On the face of it is a dubious Choice of Instance to do it with considering such a large majority of the public support an extension. If so, I wonder if we are to see similar movement on other cultural Issues, Immigration chiefly.

[CumbrianLefty]

Angela Rayner has just urged anybody who isn't a union member, to join one if they can.

But yes, the new leadership is to the right of Blair

[Silent Hunter]

Interesting discussion on the antisemitism report in the latest Private Eye; one lawyer thinks Labour could be facing 40 lawsuits over the leak and £2.5 million payouts even if they were to settle at first opportunity.

[gerritcole]

is The swing needed to win 2024 attainable or is 2029/2034 more realistic for labour

[CumbrianLefty]

Interesting discussion on the antisemitism report in the latest Private Eye; one lawyer thinks Labour could be facing 40 lawsuits over the leak and £2.5 million payouts even if they were to settle at first opportunity.

A piece that was almost certainly written by N*c* C*h*n, and actually cites E*a* P*i*l*p* as a reliable source - two things that seriously compromise its credibility from the off.

[Antonio the Sixth]

is The swing needed to win 2024 attainable or is 2029/2034 more realistic for labour

Swing as a meaningful metric is just a myth at this point, honestly (if it was ever worth anything to begin with). Every election is a blank slate.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Swing as a meaningful metric is just a myth at this point, honestly (if it was ever worth anything to begin with). Every election is a blank slate.

If you have a situation in which a large majority of the electorate has a strong affinity with either of the two major parties, then swing tends to be very useful as a gauge in that sense; after all, when that is the case then there is a hard limit on the extent to which public opinion can actually shift. When that is not the case (i.e. now, but also before the 1950s) then, yes, every election is a blank slate.

[The Mikado]

If you have a situation in which a large majority of the electorate has a strong affinity with either of the two major parties, then swing tends to be very useful as a gauge in that sense; after all, when that is the case then there is a hard limit on the extent to which public opinion can actually shift. When that is not the case (i.e. now, but also before the 1950s) then, yes, every election is a blank slate.

Is there any set of weirder and wilder elections in British history than between the set between the 1922 and 1935 election?

All the best and most insane periods of electoral history tend to have to be brushed over with "And then some stuff happened, and ANYWAY..." and I feel that British elections between 1918 and 1945 fit that pattern hardcore.

[EastAnglianLefty]

is The swing needed to win 2024 attainable or is 2029/2034 more realistic for labour

Swing as a meaningful metric is just a myth at this point, honestly (if it was ever worth anything to begin with). Every election is a blank slate.

The utility of swing is mostly for working out which seats would be expected to flip first. It's never been that useful on a national level.

[CumbrianLefty]

If you have a situation in which a large majority of the electorate has a strong affinity with either of the two major parties, then swing tends to be very useful as a gauge in that sense; after all, when that is the case then there is a hard limit on the extent to which public opinion can actually shift. When that is not the case (i.e. now, but also before the 1950s) then, yes, every election is a blank slate.

Is there any set of weirder and wilder elections in British history than between the set between the 1922 and 1935 election?

I would extend that to 1906-1945 (ie from the last Liberal landslide to the first Labour one) but yes.

[CumbrianLefty]

As widely predicted, David Evans is the party's new General Secretary.

Some on the left are predictably unhappy with this - given the narrow margin of the vote to approve him, this merely confirms that splitting the left vote three ways in the recent NEC "by-elections" for the CLP section was not a terribly inspired idea.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Worth noting that neither of the two other candidates who attracted support (Byron Taylor, former TULO Officer and Karin Christiansen, former Co-Op Party General Secretary) could reasonably be described as Corbynites, so it was largely academic anyway.

[CumbrianLefty]

This thread has fallen into disuse despite important stuff happening in the UK Labour world.

Latest is that some people have been suspended from the party over the leaked report into internal matters that is now the subject of its own inquiry. The anti-Starmer conspiracy theorists immediately presumed it was the leakers, but that does not appear to be the case. In particular if it is true that Patrick Heneghan is one of them, that is maybe significant given his key role in the PV campaign.

[CumbrianLefty]

Turns out that Emilie Oldknow is another suspension.

She was widely tipped as Formby's successor as party GenSec before all this blew up.