This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[Silent Hunter]

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

[Blair]

The best line from the Stephen Bush piece was this...

It’s odd,” one shadow cabinet staffer muses, “because I feel like I have a lot of freedom, but of course, when I sit down and think, ‘OK, what’s a Keir Starmer response to this?’ you realise that the general tone has been set sufficiently strongly that it’s just they don’t need to tell us what to do a lot of the time.”

This is the key element of the Labour Party. You even saw it very subtly during the Corbyn era with the fact that even people on the right of the party felt comfortable embracing lines on school spending & the NHS.

It trickles down & down; the junior ministers, the advisors & staff, the local councillors, the PPCs for 2024 & even the new 2019 intake will all slowly. Of course some of this is the grifters willing to allign with anything for a job but equally the reason why you had devoute Blairites running the Labour Party in 2017 was because devout Blairites gave them jobs in '97 & '01.

The Leader sets the tone of the party much more so than the Conservative Party which is already run more akin to a a series of relaxed fiefdoms that co-operate every 5 years; the differences in structure of the two parties alone shows this (the almost obsessive levels of organisational layers in the Labour party compared with the complete lack of anything similar in the Tories)

Although ultimately to be melodramatic we won't know the influence of Starmer on the party until we know who his successor is; the complete lack of an ideological core in 2015 showed how someone like Corbyn won & the incompetence of LOTO by 2019 showed why someone like Starmer one.

There's a chance 2024 could see someone from the SCG win as a reaction to Starmer but equally Jonny Reynolds winning in 2027 could show Starmerism was a success.

[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.

[CumbrianLefty]

The no confidence motion due to be tabled at today's ScotLab meeting against leader Richard Leonard has apparently been withdrawn. Hard to see that as meaning anything other than the plotters falling short of the numbers needed to succeed.

[Blair]

The no confidence motion due to be tabled at today's ScotLab meeting against leader Richard Leonard has apparently been withdrawn. Hard to see that as meaning anything other than the plotters falling short of the numbers needed to succeed.

Funnily enough it actually appears that they might have had the numbers but then the Young Labour rep got disqualified so the unions backed off.

Of course because it's Labour the unions (USDAW & GMB, Leonards own union!) had briefed they were going to vote him down & well are now looking stupid.

[CumbrianLefty]

Actually unclear if they were going to vote against Leonard, or merely abstain.

And the number one rule of plotting, anyway, is surely DON'T CALL A NO-CONFIDENCE VOTE UNLESS YOU ARE ALL BUT CERTAIN THAT YOU WILL WIN IT!

[DaWN]

Amazing incompetence. He's basically untouchable now, and will continue to be a useless walking skeleton right up until he's ground into the dust in May. They had one job and they've managed to make it worse. A nice reminder that the Labour Right don't deserve power any more than the Left do.

[Blair]

Amazing incompetence. He's basically untouchable now, and will continue to be a useless walking skeleton right up until he's ground into the dust in May. They had one job and they've managed to make it worse. A nice reminder that the Labour Right don't deserve power any more than the Left do.

Scottish Labour Right fwiw.

[DaWN]

Amazing incompetence. He's basically untouchable now, and will continue to be a useless walking skeleton right up until he's ground into the dust in May. They had one job and they've managed to make it worse. A nice reminder that the Labour Right don't deserve power any more than the Left do.

Scottish Labour Right fwiw.

Not very much

[CumbrianLefty]

Jenny Marra kicked off this botched coup, that's all you need to know really.

[Blair]

Ed Miliband's performance today showed rightfully why Starmers team tend to lean quite heavily on him- one of the better commons performances I've seen by the end of it (he seemed a bit wobbly at first but I think it was a style thing)

Landed a number of good hits on Johnson & actually reminded me quite a lot of how Hague use to approach opposition where he tended to slaughter Gordon Brown. It's quite liberating to be a former leader.

[Former President tack50]

Ed Miliband's performance today showed rightfully why Starmers team tend to lean quite heavily on him- one of the better commons performances I've seen by the end of it (he seemed a bit wobbly at first but I think it was a style thing)

Landed a number of good hits on Johnson & actually reminded me quite a lot of how Hague use to approach opposition where he tended to slaughter Gordon Brown. It's quite liberating to be a former leader.

Why was Milliband unable to win in 2015 and why was Cameron able to get his reputration quite down at the time, making him appear like a weird person? (see: That infamous sandwich photo for instance)

[Silent Hunter]

Well, the economy was doing pretty well and Labour was only five years away from the recession.

[Alcibiades]

Ed Miliband's performance today showed rightfully why Starmers team tend to lean quite heavily on him- one of the better commons performances I've seen by the end of it (he seemed a bit wobbly at first but I think it was a style thing)

Landed a number of good hits on Johnson & actually reminded me quite a lot of how Hague use to approach opposition where he tended to slaughter Gordon Brown. It's quite liberating to be a former leader.

Why was Milliband unable to win in 2015 and why was Cameron able to get his reputration quite down at the time, making him appear like a weird person? (see: That infamous sandwich photo for instance)

I think that the single biggest reason was that Cameron was able to blame Labour for the recession and claim Tory policies revived the economy without being sufficiently challenged on these points by Miliband.

[Blair]

Ed Miliband's performance today showed rightfully why Starmers team tend to lean quite heavily on him- one of the better commons performances I've seen by the end of it (he seemed a bit wobbly at first but I think it was a style thing)

Landed a number of good hits on Johnson & actually reminded me quite a lot of how Hague use to approach opposition where he tended to slaughter Gordon Brown. It's quite liberating to be a former leader.

Why was Milliband unable to win in 2015 and why was Cameron able to get his reputration quite down at the time, making him appear like a weird person? (see: That infamous sandwich photo for instance)

It's a question in two halfs; Ed spent a lot of his leadership lurching from idea to idea, all while dealing with a Labour Party which he had very little power over (his shadow cabinet for the first 3 years had no-one who supported him holding big jobs other than Sadiq Khan) His leadership on reflection was very rudderless but thanks to the sh**tshow of the coalition it was very good at tactical victories which betrayed the strategic realities of the election (see below)

His biggest problem was that he came across as he was; an ex-political staffer who was playing the role he'd seen Labour Ministers play. After he lost in 2015 he certainly realised he didn't have to follow this role as much; he swore a lot more, embraced his geekyness & like all political figures we love them once they're powerless (Portillo, Balls, Clarke)

When the campaign came he'd been quite damaged by a bad conferece speech (where he forgot the defecit) & a poor scottish referendum campaign which showed he was relatively disliked by Labour voters.

What turned a 35-33% loss into a 37-30 loss was that people didn't see Ed as a suitable candidate for PM & didn't trust Ed Balls to run the economy.

The campaign had nothing to really counter this beyond a small but unambitious retail offer to voters (mocked quite well as vote Labour and win a microwave). The conservatives ran a very good campaign considering what they were actually offering to voters

Corbyn for all his flaws in 2017 was able to counter the low ratings because people thought he A.) Wasn't a normal politician B.) Was offering something different.

[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.

[CumbrianLefty]

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.

Indeed - taking on the energy companies, sticking up for his dad against the Daily Heil smears and (perhaps most of all) torpedoing Cameron's half-baked scheme for intervention in Syria.

After all of these, he saw his personal ratings go up significantly (Labour's weren't harmed either) But still, he appeared in thrall to people who continually urged him to try to be something he was not.

[CumbrianLefty]

Oh and however poor his 2014 conference speech was (and I agree those in the preceding few years were a lot better) it pales compared to the utterly catastrophic offering Balls served up then.

A genuine factor in the following year's defeat, I will always be convinced of that.

[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.

[Blair]

FWIW his team released the speech to the media with the section he didn't include; which was very much the type of row that the media loved back then.

Looking back it does seem that our media consumption, voting patterns & general attitudes really are going to be shifted by Brexit; there were so many events in the 2010-2015 parliament (and campaigns) which were treated as major moments which frankly would struggle to get in the Top 50 for what we've been through.

[CumbrianLefty]

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.

Aided by certain elements within Labour, unfortunately.

[CumbrianLefty]

Starmer's "big speech" this morning.

Totally predictably, online Corbynism having a fit because he mentioned the word "patriotism".

[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."

[CumbrianLefty]

Though they were fine with Jeremy "I love this country" Corbyn.....

(one thing I learned from this discussion that had genuinely passed me by before - JC's first speech at conference as leader name-checked the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony as a reason to be proud of being British; given how it subsequently became a totem of ur-centrism that is pretty amusing)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well the answer to so much of this is that factionalism really is more of a vibe.