Big lol at GS thinking even 20% of the voting electorate know who the shadow cabinet are let alone give a fuck.
Big lol at GS thinking even 20% of the voting electorate know who the shadow cabinet are let alone give a fuck.
It would matter as part of an election campaign, as you could demonstrate clearly and unequivocally that he doesn't have his own party behind him. This makes him weak, and therefore an easy target ala Miliband. He was hammered because few people outside core Labour believed he was remotely capable of becoming PM and preferred Wor Dave.
Yeah, everyone on the left thought 'Ed Miliband, good leader but he needs backup'...
It would reinforce the narrative that would already exist - quite powerfully, I suspect.
"Not only is the leader shit, but look at the state of the people who'd be in government."
It creates a clear sense of division and chaos, and therefore not the sort of power you could trust with power.
No-one knows who they are or care. 98% of people couldn't name the actual cabinet let alone the shadow one. You are not the average voter.
Again, I think you're misunderstanding the high level point I'm making.
If someone like Jeremy Corbyn is in charge they won't win ever.Originally Posted by ItalAussie
The opposition needs to look like a government-across-the-water, or else they always lose. Nobody of Jeremy Corbyn's calibre, for example, will ever be elected into government.
What has happened previously is that the opposition has, after a while, begun to resemble a government in waiting. This lot, I'm really not sure they will on that sort of timescale, unless something dramatically changes.
Depends what you mean by "someone like Jeremy Corbyn". A simpering ineffective whiny arrogant career activist? Someone like that doesn't have a chance. But equally the vaguely neo-liberal right wing of the Labour party is done as well - if people want Tories they'll vote for the genuine article. The trouble is that the Labour party only has two types of people in it - career agitators with as much idea about leading and persuasion as I do about astrophysics, and middle class aspirational wankers who think being a slightly nicer Conservatives is the best way to improve things.
Labour needs someone who can lead without being a Tory. Corbyn ain't it, but neither is anyone else they're trying to push.
This comes back to what's the point of Labour any more. Everything it was set up to fight for has been achieved now, and it can't find a place for itself on the political spectrum.
On that logic, elth, the Tories have now been in power for 37 years and counting.
The natural party of government.
Say what you like about Blair, nobody would call him a socialist.
We've covered this ground before, but elections here are won in the centre.
Labour swinging left was a failure last time round, and it's swung further left this time. It's unelectable, and always will be in those circumstances. The plan to have non-voters turn out in droves to vote for Wor Jez is just a comfort blanket for those who think his politics can win. They're probably more likely to believe in deporting non-British people and executing murderers by hanging outside the courthouse than anything Jez might have to say about "a social Europe". But it lets them believe they can win without confronting the reality that they can't.
It means Ital's point, that a party can get in simply by virtue of not being the government here, isn't accurate.
Not until the government has had 15-20 years to really piss everyone off, anyway.
People still aren't going to vote for an opposition who don't look like a competent government in waiting. They certainly wouldn't vote for Corbyn and Socialism. The British electorate have too much sense for that.
Elections aren't 'won in the centre'. They're lost on the left.
You wouldn't win with a strong 'right' agenda either, but you'd lose much less badly than a strong left manifesto.
I'm going on the basis that there have been four genuinely unexpected election results since the war, and they have all been won with solid right-wing manifestos. Winston Churchill getting back in off the back of the electoral system; Ted Heath and 'Selsdon Man' making Harold Wilson seethe; The Sun winning it for John Major; and Sir Lynton Crosby doing likewise for David Cameron. Every other election has basically been a corrupt and failing government out-living its usefulness. 1950/51 and 1970 are particularly relevant since they were in opposition, but they had to make a stand because the Labour Party was in the process of turning us into East Germany.
Unfortunately for the Labour Party, each prolonged period of Conservative rule (31-40, 51-64, 79-97, 2010-50) shifts the centre, to the point where the current centre would have been a right-wing fantasy ten years ago, let alone forty years ago; so how long can they continue to have a purpose as the centre becomes more and more unpalatable for them? Especially if they can only win elections promising to uphold the status quo, preventing them from transforming society and the state to their own liking.
I think the basic problem is that people read too much into Tony Blair. He got in after eighteen years of a Conservative Party that was increasingly seen as totally corrupt and even more incompetent (although John Major still got more votes than Ed Miliband), and then he ran them into the ground with an economic boom and an army of luvvies as they kicked each other in and obsessed over the Euro. There are very few practical lessons to be learned from those circumstances, and yet all current received wisdom stems from 1997-2007, so is it any wonder that pundits and politicians keep fucking everything up? I would argue that history shows that the best option for the Labour Party is to wait it out until the Conservative Party ballses it right up, at which point you can come in with the sort of mainstream left-wing alternative that somebody less useless than Miliband could probably have sold.
There's some excellent polling out tonight. In short, May hammers Corbyn on most things. She's ahead of him on 'principled' by a point, and only 11 behind on 'understands ordinary people'. Of Labour voters at the 2015 election, 40% (versus 36% for Corbyn) think May would make the better PM. For Lib Dems, it's 62% to 16%.
Polling also suggests that Where Eagles Dare and Bespectacled Welsh Lad have more chance of winning the election than Wor Jez, although Labour supporters generally think he's better. BWL seems to be perceived as a stronger threat than "Angela", which is hardly surprising given she can barely get to the end of the sentence without boring people.
Compounding matters, there's an ICM/Sun on Sunday poll which has the Tories ten points ahead of Labour.
I think Owen Smith looks a promising candidate. Whether he's an election winner I'm not sure (I'm only comparing him to Corbyn) but I don't think Labour necessarily need a superstar of a leader to beat May. I reckon she's a Brown of a PM. Like him she'll have an initial burst of popularity but I really find it tough to see her as an electoral asset.
The whole thing comes down to Brexit - whether it's a success, its speed and what other trade deals can be negotiated. Her Premiership hinges entirely on that.
Then again, if Labour run on a platform of a second referendum I imagine they'd get crushed even more than they would now. Smith seems to be big on this idea - he was interviewed on the Daily Politics yesterday and was pushing the 'if you've been missold a proposition, call this number now' line heavily. Brillo took him apart, as you'd expect.
The fucking gap in older generations.
Tbf you do come across as a man born in 950.
Those leader numbers, if they can be replicated over a period of time, are extremely good for May. I didn't think she'd poll that well.
Around 1870, more like.
Agreed. I assume there will be a short honeymoon period, but a competent Labour leader could also narrow some of the direct comparators quite quickly simply by virtue of novelty.
It was piss poor on Andrew Marr earlier. Angela Eagle is basing her campaign on being Northern and working class ('I'm a working class woman, and that's what we need at the moment'), whilst Owen Smith wants to argue that 'austerity is right, but we need a plan for prosperity'. Do you reckon their normal conversations are so dull and cliched?
Eagle wants people to vote for her because she's a woman. That's her pitch. The problem being that she's shit.
What I've seen of Smith is encouraging enough. He speaks better than Corbyn or Miliband did (not a huge achievement) but his message is a bit confused. He'd be a steady enough hand until the next election and would prevent annihilation. They can't shift immediately to the right; they need somebody sensible who can lead for a few years of transition. He could probably manage that.
He also appears to have actual policy ideas rather than just wanting Labour to be against Tory stuff. Wouldn't it be nice to have an opposition that wants to be a government?
Apparently Smith has more support amongst MPs, which would be quite embarrassing for Eagle. I don't see how she would stop the rot in terms of an election, but I do think she would allow some sort of 'realignment' within Labour before stepping down ahead of the election. If this leadership campaign, such as it is, has demonstrated anything, it's that she's just not up to it. As Lewis says, it's just appealing to the idea she's "northern working class". No-one cares, Angela.
Owen Smith doesn't strike me as being anywhere near good enough for the leadership, though. His support for a second referendum might help him win the leadership, but he'd be gutted across the country and his arguments for tax cuts and a fifth of a trillion infrastructure investment would make it easy to paint him as another Labour politician who's here to take your money and ruin the economy. He's also Welsh (so EVEL comes into play), and the public at large barely know who he is.
Just let Corbyn win please for maximum entertainment.
When's the vote?
And he's nailed on, surely.
I missed David Davis on Sky News earlier.
The result is announced towards the end of September, I think. Corbyn winning means a split, surely.
He's great. He has the exact idea that I want to see implemented - some sort of 'Canada Plus' arrangement.I missed David Davis on Sky News earlier.
End of September? What a farce.
David Davis is a complete joke. He talks like Richard Madeley.
Bruiser is a top lad. Dry your eyes.
I both think David Davis is very good and he's a complete arsehole so he's doing something right.
He hasn't half fucking aged though. I rember him on HIGNFY (remember when that was relevant?) looking positively spritely in comparison.
That by-election he forced on an ego trip was crank central, with the smoking ban martyrs and the rape woman, and it forced the old man into voting Liberal Democrat in 2010.
The absolute fucking state of this Trident debate. I read that the SNP stood to applaud Angus Robertson. You have to laugh, really.
On a separate note, let's all congratulate the progressive majority for this:
Conservatives are fucking mint. Love them. Top top lads.
The trident debate was cringe. Trying to listen to Corbyn (who was extremely dull "I went to a conference once and..zzz") being heckled by anyone who could. The house is mental at times.
Edward Stanley was a Whig at the time.
Letting people buying their council houses probably wasn't a good thing.
Those that did felt out of place at work.
This is exactly what I was saying to Igor about.
Could probably counter that list with some shit policies as well, mind.
You have your horizons broadened by Facebook chats with him, and then you come back here... You just can't catch a break.
I didn't bother checking, but it seems to have been something Gideon was throwing about to justify why he's a top lad.
It's passed the house with a margin of 355.
It was almost worth the Scots fighting to the last drunk man. It's a weird one, really, because the SNP lads advocate membership of NATO where you're apparently happy for the Americans to have the capacity to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. Top, top thinking, lads. They haven't a fucking clue, really.
How can a party leader end up voting against what is apparently the official party line?
KUTGW Jez.
And the last one voted in favour.
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