They are not going to give up this power easily

[Soph0571]

Listened to JC’s new year’s message and it is very clear that if the inner circle gets their way, they are going to do the exact opposite of what they need to do to be electable in 5 years’ time. How the hell can you do a speech and not even mention the utter failure at the election? This speech was to the membership only. At this point they do not give a flying fart what the rest of us think. The far left was flung out of the Labour party in the 1980’s and it took them over 30 years to get back. They have only been leading the sunny uplands of the Leaders office for 4 years and they are not going to give up this power easily.

For the next five years we know that Boris can do what he wants. We need the Labour party to coalesce behind a competent leader and shadow cabinet that have the skills to hold this far right government to account. This means the party needs to elect a leader that can land blows on Boris across the dispatch box, every single week. And a shadow cabinet that can do the same.

Instead by appealing to the membership with the false narrative that they won the argument, and it is all the medias fault, a continuity candidate of the Corbyn project will undoubtedly get the top job and ergo Labour will either be beyond any hope of resurrection, or at the very least be out of power for a generation.

And this will be the biggest betrayal of all for our most venerable communities.

If you haven't heard it..

[Denzil_DC]

1. It's going to take a lot more than sharp exchanges across the floor of the House

to expose and impede what the Tories are cooking up.

The recent election threw up many embarrassments and scandals for Johnson and his party that would have been severe setbacks, if not curtains, for previous contenders for government. Little of it cut through, none of it was decisive.

Some of that is obviously down to disarray and very poor campaigning among Labour and the Lib Dems, but not all of it.

Some of the media did try to hold the Tories to account (e.g. Channel 4 News, which had a "good election" ), but it's undeniable that there were too many "mistakes" from the BBC that favoured the Tories to attribute it all to overwork and rush and innocent cock-ups, so I don't think it's credible to dismiss that as a factor, and the BBC's headlines do still tend to set the day's media agenda. It's just something we have to live with and try to deal with.

Here in Scotland, for instance, the media are mostly relatively hostile to the SNP in government. In the last but one election, in the UK media the SNP was presented as the scary alien bogeyman that would be pulling Miliband's strings. That prospect wasn't something the media focused much on the most recent election, but there were plenty of other outgroups and distractions up the Tories' sleeves, and too many in the media were happy to parrot and promote them.

Zingers across the dispatch box may excite some of the media and politics geeks for a few hours, but I'm sceptical that they influence the wider public to any meaningful extent. The House of Commons's standing's already been seriously, if not terminally, degraded during the last parliament.

If there were lessons from the recent election campaign, I think one of them is that it's impossible to be too cynical about politics nowadays. If all politicians are seen as full of hot air, why not vote for the ones who offer glib solutions, rather than those who more honestly point out that the way ahead is complicated, and is going to get even more complicated, with uncertainty the only certainty?

I'm more than tired at the prospect of Labour dissolving yet again into infighting while the world burns. That's nothing new. It's a major reason why I abandoned Labour many years ago, having felt that it had abandoned me. The party tried tilting rightwards, but only Blair, for some reason, seems to have been able to make that work electorally, and even he began to struggle towards the end of his time in office. It's arguable that the Blair years sowed the seeds for what we've reaped since and are reaping now.

But the Tories have also been a fractured party over the years, even during Thatcher's reign. They've found what appears to be a temporary solution to that with the great wild goose chase that is Brexit.

How long it will be before the cracks appear again once Brexit starts to become real and needs to be defined and enacted and ways ahead emerge that can't possibly satisfy all the constituencies within the Tory Party, we'll have to wait and see.

[T_i_B]

2. Labour's problems go much deeper than Corbyn

As disastrous as his leadership has been.

And everything I've seen from Labour since the election has seemed to be focused on people from one faction blaming the other factions. (see Caroline Flint for a particularly heinous example of this) Nobody seems to realise how much of a turn off the obsession with internal factional issues really is.

Labour has taken people in a lot of places for granted and failed to connect with voters. That's the first issue that needs addressing. In South Yorkshire / North Derbyshire Labour totally failed to grasp that people have moved on from the coal mining era. An error that Labour would be very likely to double down on if Ian Lavery were to be elected leader.

With Labour in such a weak position now they need to work with other opposition parties, which they moved firmly away from under Corbyn.

One issue that should be a major concern to all progressives is that whilst Britain is still horribly divided, it's no longer on class lines as such. The divide these days is much more generational, and with Britain having an ageing population that puts the Tories at a major advantage.

And yes, Corbyn himself was a major turn off, as was much of Labour's policy platform. The thing I learnt from this election is that in a choice of the worst government of all time and the worst opposition of all time people will always choose the governing party as they at least are a known quantity.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Poll of Labour members suggests Keir Starmer is first choice

Keir Starmer has emerged as an early frontrunner in the Labour leadership race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn after a poll of members suggested he was the first choice in all regions of the UK, age groups and social classes.

The shadow Brexit secretary is yet to formally launch his campaign but is expected to do so in the first few weeks of the new year. The new leader will be elected in March after Corbyn said he would step down following the party’s catastrophic general election defeat.

Polling by YouGov for the Party Members Project put Starmer as winning with a 61% vote share to 39% for the shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long Bailey, in the last round.

Jess Phillips, the chair of the women’s parliamentary Labour party, who has yet to declare if she is running, was the third most popular choice among members, who were surveyed between 20 and 30 December.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/01/poll-of-labour-members-suggests-keir-starmer-is-first-choice

I reckon he's the most electable of those mentioned; I think he comes across well in interviews.

[T_i_B]

4. I wouldn't underestimate Rebecca Long Bailey's chances

She seems to have the backing of a few key people and organisations.

Even if she does not appear to be popular outside of Momentum circles at present.

[Denzil_DC]

5. Electability is obviously a factor.

But, depressing as it is, the major and more pressing challenge for any future Labour leader is precisely that - leadership of a party that shows few signs of being ready to be led at the moment.

[T_i_B]

6. The way I would put it....

Is that Labour need to concentrate on getting the basics right. Put the willy waving rubbish about nationalising broadband to one side and concentrate on engaging properly with voters and being a credible opposition to a dreadful government.