This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[Silent Hunter]

Leadership ratings have often been good indications of election results. Of course, it is still too early for that.

[CumbrianLefty]

Leadership ratings have often been good indications of election results. Of course, it is still too early for that.

And that, strictly speaking, is not quite the same as "best PM".

(not least because around 90% of the time there, the incumbent has a built in advantage)

[cp]

https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1362377275380015108?ref_src=twsrc%5Etf...

And the crowd goes wild ...

What did you make of Corbyn's minus 60 leadership ratings, then?

Alternatively, cherry picking poll stats is an inherently bad faith way of arguing and to be avoided.

Well, since you asked, I'd say they're the sort of straw one grasps at when trying to distract attention away from information one finds difficult to swallow ...

At some point, Labour has to realise that it cannot change society to fit itself. This pandemic has exposed a rotten core in much of Western society and it will need a lot of work to fix.

This really is the crux of the matter. Starmer's team and the Labour right more generally have little to unite them besides a pathological loathing of Corbyn and the politics he represented*. They have no agenda for reform, indeed no intellectual justification for reform at all; they want a restoration, not a change.

Unfortunately for them, the kind of politics they wish to restore has been unviable since the GFC and has a dwindling constituency of support among voters. For those voters, anything's preferable to going back to neoliberal centrism, even the much more radical proposals emanating from the far right, despicable though they may be. The only counterproposal along those lines to show any glimmer of wider popularity recently was Corbyn in 2015-2017. If Starmer and his confederates want to do better, they'd do well to bear that in mind.

*Hence the bewildered hand-wringing over Starmer's anemic poll numbers. I think for a lot of this set, they figured being 'not-Corbyn' would be enough to get them 30 points ahead.

[CumbrianLefty]

Starmer's big speech on the economy today. Some of the uber-online left doing their best to get very upset about it, but arguably the continuities with the previous regime clearly outweigh the departures.

Seems like they had good reason to be derisive. Even the Guardian is struggling to put a happy face on it.

"... he was careful to promise that good government must be the partner of good business, not its enemy."

Could have been written by the Daily Mail.

Strangely enough, I've seen plenty of positive responses to it.

Genuinely, if people like you are now going to behave as the worst of the Labour right did during the previous leadership, then it is (again) going to be a long few years for all of us.

[cp]

Starmer's big speech on the economy today. Some of the uber-online left doing their best to get very upset about it, but arguably the continuities with the previous regime clearly outweigh the departures.

Seems like they had good reason to be derisive. Even the Guardian is struggling to put a happy face on it.

"... he was careful to promise that good government must be the partner of good business, not its enemy."

Could have been written by the Daily Mail.

Strangely enough, I've seen plenty of positive responses to it.

Genuinely, if people like you are now going to behave as the worst of the Labour right did during the previous leadership, then it is (again) going to be a long few years for all of us.

If only my opinions carried that kind of influence!*

I don't know what to tell you: I think Starmer's speech was bad policy and bad politics. The framing of the 'spirit of 1945' or whatever was hamfisted and contrived (also pretty historically ignorant, but that's my historian side talking). The prose was dim - like most political speeches these days - and the argument was halting and equivocal. To that point, notice how many times in the speech Starmer switches from the active to passive voice, and how often he declares how 'bold' his ideas are or how sincerely he holds them. This isn't the language of effective political persuasion.

On the policy side, the only substantive proposal - a British Recovery Bond - is portrayed as a panacea (echoing the pie-in-the-sky policies that apparently Corbyn was guilty of), but, as far as it was possible to discern, would be little more than a new investment vehicle for existing policies. More problematically - and this gets to the worst part of his speech - it's a perpetuation of the same relationship between the central government and the financial/business sector that the Tories and New Labour foisted on us. I'd also note the patronizing lip service paid to racial inequality; afterthought doesn't even do it justice.

All told, this speech indicated to me that Starmer and his team are struggling to articulate an argument for why they ought to be in government beyond "we're not the Tories", and given the content of the speech, that argument seems more like a flattering self-delusion than a genuine difference.

*If they did, the Guardian's opinion section wouldn't be full of transphobes.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Starmer's big speech on the economy today. Some of the uber-online left doing their best to get very upset about it, but arguably the continuities with the previous regime clearly outweigh the departures.

Seems like they had good reason to be derisive. Even the Guardian is struggling to put a happy face on it.

"... he was careful to promise that good government must be the partner of good business, not its enemy."

Could have been written by the Daily Mail.

Reassuring for the BBC to know that there's no such person as Paul Dacre, it's just John McDonnell wearing a wig.

[CumbrianLefty]

Well yes, McDonnell got a few pelters from the left for emphasising "prudence" and "responsibility".

But that doesn't alter the fact that he did it.

[Cassius]

It was just waffle (as nearly all political speeches from both sides of politics are today). Starmer essentially reiterated what has been Labour’s message, in one form or another, since the days of Miliband, with some COVID related garnish because-it’s-2021. I did find it quite amusing how he laid into the Chancellor for pinning his hopes for recovery on short term consumer spending shortly after laying out his own plans for a number of short term measures to juice consumer spending though.

I’m not a Labour man so it’s probably not my place to comment on this, but I don’t really think Labour needs a grand vision in order to get back into office; it just needs to present a reasonably united and competent front, promise some goodies to the electorate and keep on walloping the government for the next three years and cross its fingers that the British public are sick of the Conservatives by 2024 (as they were in 1997 and to a lesser extent in 1964 and 1945). Of course, the party’s torpid state in Scotland is a significant problem that previous Labour leaders who led the party out of opposition and into government didn’t face, but there don’t seem to be any good solutions for that so the party will just have to hope that the Tories really f*** things up for themselves in the next few years (which is always a live possibility). I don’t think the public is particularly interested in ‘transformational’ policies, as opposed to getting back to the way things were before the pandemic, albeit with better public services and more government support thrown into the mix.

[EastAnglianLefty]

"Oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them" is a cliché, but it's a cliché for a reason.

Labour tends to focus too much, knowingly or not, on their plan for re-election, rather than getting elected in the first place.

[cp]

"Oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them" is a cliché, but it's a cliché for a reason.

Labour tends to focus too much, knowingly or not, on their plan for re-election, rather than getting elected in the first place.

I think it's more of a platitude than a cliché. I find people tend to employ it as a rhetorical tool to deflect or muddy the waters of a debate rather than engage with it. As a matter of historical or political analysis, it's sort of like saying 'good things come to those who wait'.

In the case of 2024, and Labour more generally, I don't think presenting themselves as 'blandly inoffensive albeit competent'* will lead to victory. As pointed out above, the deck is stacked so heavily against Labour because of the electoral system and media bias, the only way for them to unilaterally change the terms of debate is with an eye-catching transformative set of proposals. Otherwise, they'll just have to hope the Tories screw up badly enough on the issues Labour is already preferred on - the NHS, education (kinda), economic inequality (undeservedly now) - that those become the terrain on which the election is fought.  


*Title of Starmer's sex tape

[Blair]

Surely we can laugh at the Observer piece about Labour being silent on Brexit- which has Andrew Adonis, Lord Hain and Neil Coyle as the only named sources!

The article is also wrong; Labour have been very critical of the EU arrangements around the creative industries!

[CumbrianLefty]

If the Observer shut down, the quality of UK journalism would - simply by default - improve.

[Zinneke]

If the Observer shut down, the quality of UK journalism would - simply by default - improve.

er, its important that the pretty much only maintream progressive sunday newspaper survives though, no?

[CumbrianLefty]

Replace it with an actual Sunday Guardian.

Most of the Observer "journalists" would genuinely be unemployable anywhere else.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Disagree. When people get fired from the Observer the New Statesman tends to employ them for a year or two until Cowley finds a new fad.

[cp]

Meanwhile, the genuinely intelligent and compelling journalists are relegated to patreon-supported podcasts and video essays.

This really is the worst timeline.

[CumbrianLefty]

Rentaghoul wrote a piece at the weekend that was so bad it *should* have been in the Absurder.

[Blair]

Rentaghoul wrote a piece at the weekend that was so bad it *should* have been in the Absurder.

I came here to post it!

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/keir-starmer-labour-shadow-chancellor-anneliese-dodds-b1805020.html

An article which I kid you not says that Yvette Cooper should be shadow chancellor because 1.) she has a BSC in economics 2.) she posted a funny video with her husband 3.) She ‘holds boris to account’.

The article also makes the rather bold claim that Ed M is too anti business to get the job- which would explain his current position how?

[Silent Hunter]

Rentaghoul wrote a piece at the weekend that was so bad it *should* have been in the Absurder.

I don't get it?

[CumbrianLefty]

Sorry, don't get what exactly?

[cp]

Rentaghoul wrote a piece at the weekend that was so bad it *should* have been in the Absurder.

I don't get it?

Rentaghoul is a pun on John Rentoul's name. Absurder is a pun on the newspaper 'The Observer'

[Blair]

It's really remarkable that he's considered by some as being a leader within British Journalism in regards to covering the Labour Party.

In other news the current Lord Walney is another ex-Labour MP who appears to have gone on a journey which has ended up at a bizarre end...

[CumbrianLefty]

It's really remarkable that he's considered by some as being a leader within British Journalism in regards to covering the Labour Party.

Thing is, he was pretty decent at that once upon a time (and his biography of Blair was quite readable and nowhere near as sycophantic as you might imagine from his more recent output) but as with some other long standing political pundits, his one time skills have atrophied and ossified.

(and, rather like the Observer, his range of Labour contacts is *very* narrow and unrepresentative)

[Blair]

Insert gag about a Labour Mayor, a Labour mayor... this really does show how disorganised the party is (and has been for what 15 odd years)

https://twitter.com/siennamarla/status/1364201262133219329?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogl...

[CumbrianLefty]

And as usual its the lack of transparency that really stands out - *why* is this happening? Search me.