The future of the Labour Party: Where does it go from here?

[solidified gruel merchant]

Channel 4 just showed the Simpsons episode where Sideshow Bob runs for Mayor and wins against Mayor Quimbey.
They know.

[DeadJefferson]

No, because the Labour Party leadership is decided by members of the Labour Party, the majority of whom joined the party in response to Jeremy Corbyn; to vote for him and to support a new kind of Labour Party. We are here to stay and we are not going to vote for Jess Phillips.

Idiots like you should look at this chart and reflect, rather than running your mouth off talking absolute deluded crap.

[solidified gruel merchant]

If the Tories had lost this election do you think they should have become a socialist party?

[Dr Rock]

What do you think that chart shows?

[Petey Pate]

Was this even a thing? Everybody knew he was not the ideal charismatic leader you would have ideally hoped for. He was just the placemarker (and a breath of fresh air) for a lot of previously politically disenfranchised people to gather after a long period out in the wilderness and this, I think, will be confirmed by what happens next, now that he has stood down. It's all those people that have transformed the Labour Party.

I recognise that much of it was tongue in cheek, and again it's impact on the election was most likely nil, but things like the 'oh Jeremy Corbyn' chant, memes of Corbyn as Obi-Wan Kenobi, etc, probably gave the impression to outsiders that there was a personalty cult. That said, I don't genuinely think that there was one, for the reasons you gave. Either way, not a huge issue.

Labour North needs complete reform. It is stuffed full of useless job-for-life complacent cunts who have no idea how to do anything except run boards. They are more interested in ensuring their Blairite friends end up in the right council seats. Fucking awful.

Aye, whoever thinks the blame for losing seats in the 'red wall' can be placed squarely on 'Corbynism' clearly has no clue about the long term damage caused by Blairism and their patronising treatment of their constituents who they assumed would always vote for them with little effort. It's similar to the arrogance Hillary Clinton demonstrated over the rust belt, and look how that ended up.

[Dr Rock]

Seems very unlikely the number one reason some Labour voters switched Tory was not because of Brexit.

[solidified gruel merchant]

What do you think that chart shows?

That whichever party wins the election, their politics is the correct and only politics. Dump principles and power up!

[BlodwynPig]

Labour North needs complete reform.

Echoes of "Labour Scotland need complete reform"

Next: "Labour Midlands need complete reform"..."Labour London needs complete reform"..."Labour my house needs complete reform"

[Crisps?]

https://mobile.twitter.com/LukePagarani/status/1205487970897342464

The cenotaph. Gerry Adams. Prosecutions of historic crimes in N.I. Laying wreaths in foreign cemeteries. Poppies. Diane Abbott. Pushing the button. Watching the Queen at Christmas.

These are just tired old words spouted against Labour politicians in the 80s, the time warp the Thatcherite press is still stuck in. Nobody who won't vote Labour because the leader doesn't watch the Queen's Speech was ever going to vote Labour in the first place.

Aside from the usual - having every media outlet bar the Mirror on their side - the Tories won because they had 17.4 million voters all to themselves, and the discipline (and lack of anything else to say) to hammer on one issue, purging the party of anyone who didn't toe the hard line. Labour lost because it didn't.

Things the election suggested to me:

Manifestos don't matter any more, if they ever did. Nobody cares and nobody reads them (except a hostile media looking for ammo).

Po-faced TV interviews and debates don't matter. Nobody cares outside political and media circle-jerks; non-political/swing-voters watch Phillip Schofield not Andrew Neil.

Detailed policies don't matter; single short, chantable slogans that play on existing fears/issues will do, plus unrestrained non-stop lies and character assassination of opponents via every medium possible.

I agree. I think our enemies took advantage of the kinder gentler politics by being utterly ruthless bastards. We won't have those shackles on next time. Kinder, gentler politics can be enacted once we're in power. Until then we're in a war and we're losing.

Yes, what matters is simply getting elected, at all costs. That's what the enemy has understood for years.

[idunnosomename]

They should've let CaB design the mailings. As long as we could use the word cunt we'd have aced it

[imitationleather]

"Save the NHS" must be an early contender for the 2014 campaign slogan.

[BlodwynPig]

"Save the NHS" must be an early contender for the 2014 campaign slogan.

I think Milliband and Cameron are supporters of the NHS?

[buttgammon]

Just looking at the results in places like Wrexham and Clwyd South, it looks more like Labour lost people to abstention than anything else. Turnout was lower than 2017, and get a load of this:



There's a swing against Labour but very little to the Tories, and a lower turnout.

[NoSleep]

"Save the NHS" must be an early contender for the 2014 campaign slogan.

In 2024 it will be "what's an NHS?"

[Funcrusher]

A large amount of any anti-leadership sentiment is a function of constant smearing of Corbyn from the moment he won the leadership, although I seem to remember a brief honeymoon period when at least one right of centre luminary was a fan. But once the establishment picked its jaw up off the floor the level of constant monstering was just unreal. He is the democratically elected leader of one of the two main parties and the leader of the opposition and had every right to expect to be treated as any other politician in that capacity, yet the manner in which he has been treated and spoken of by the entire media class is as an utter pariah, on a par within recent memory only with Nick Griffin. Foot and Kinnock received similar treatment back in the day, although that focussed more on just ridicule rather than them being actively evil. Someone on here observed that during the Phillip Scofield interview at times Scofield acted as if he was talking to a mass murderer. Even though he is the elected Labour leader and leader of the opposition the whole media class has just adopted the idea that he should just be treated as a joke or an anti-semite.

Unfortunately any subsequent Labour leader from left of centre will get the same. Ed Milliband got the Foot mocking treatment. Blair made it into power because he presented in a then novel and very slick manner and he got Murdoch onside.

That said Corbyn is not a very telegenic leader, at least to me. That never bothered me personally because the project is about policies and real change, not presentation. But unfortunately in this reality TV era politics is increasingly being reduced to personality. Corbyn's big asset is that he has genuine values that have been lifelong and he means what he says and that honesty and sincerity always shows. Unfortunately a cunning, play acting liar has won the day, so clearly that wasn't enough.

[pigamus]

Listen to this guy https://mobile.twitter.com/LukePagarani/status/1205487970897342464

"The real charge against Corbyn is that he fundamentally believes that British/white lives are of equal value with the lives of others."

Wow. Pretty much bang on, that, isn't it?

[Zetetic]

Another piece from a door-knocker with some background in qualitative research:

https://medium.com/@DrDanEvans/reflections-from-the-doorstep-e4337513d909

Mostly about media affecting people's attitudes, but also changing nature of labour and implications for social relations.

[Blinder Data]

I think the brutal truth is that we were unusually lucky in 2017. The Tories had lost Cameron and Osborne and gained the most useless Prime Minister in history; Brexit was the dog that didn't really bark, because it was still some way in the future and the Brexiteers were still basking in their sense of victory; and the media was so sure of a Tory victory they didn't even bother going after Corbyn too much. We'll never be that lucky again.

There's some truth to this. 2017 was meant to go like 2019, except it was too early for it to be about Brexit and the Tory's campaign, messaging and leader was crap.

Low turnout seems to be key in some constituencies. Examining the reasons for low turnout rather than blaming it is required. Clearly Corbyn, distrust over respecting/delivering Brexit and a scattershot and incredible (in the proper sense of the word) manifesto left potential voters staying at home.

[Johnny Yesno]

These are both excellent analyses:

Listen to this guy https://mobile.twitter.com/LukePagarani/status/1205487970897342464

Another piece from a door-knocker with some background in qualitative research:

https://medium.com/@DrDanEvans/reflections-from-the-doorstep-e4337513d909

Mostly about media affecting people's attitudes, but also changing nature of labour and implications for social relations.

[Johnny Yesno]

This is also excellent:

this Another Angry Voice blog post makes some good points on how they could have made a much better case for Keynesian investment than they did.

https://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com/2019/12/why-did-we-reject-evil-santas-presents.html

It's a quite astonishing Labour Party failure that the Tories are still widely considered the party of economic credibility after the slowest economic recovery in centuries, the worst period of wage stagnation since records began, the worst productivity crisis the UK has ever suffered, the soaring trade deficit, losing Britain's AAA credit ratings, failing to eliminate the deficit after an entire decade when they said they'd do it in 5 years, and dragging the nation to the brink of a chaotic economy-tanking, job-destroying Brexit meltdown.

I have to admit, the announcement of the broadband fibre roll-out policy caught me on the hop. It was only after watching McDonnell's explanation on TyskySour that I really understood the economic argument, and by that point, it was already too late. Canvassers were having to defend it before they had had time to properly absorb it. These surprise announcements were a terrible idea.

[colacentral]

The way I see it, we're back to 2015 but with less twats in the party to hold us back. No Austin, no Mann. We can't be tricked into electing a rat like Watson to deputy leader again, and I think this time the members will be a bit more canny about that. I think being careful about that deputy position is just as important. I don't want to hear any disingenuous takes about representing the broad church of the party, either.

[Funcrusher]

I would say that most peoples total lack of interest in anything relating to the real state of the economy, and the total lack of any real coverage from the media just boggles my mind. We bailed out the banks to the tune of trillions after the financial crisis and literally no one seems to remember this or care how much of it was ever repaid. There's another financial crisis definitely on the way, no interest. The potential effect of Brexit on the economy is terrifying - just the fact that we will become the only country in the world with no trade agreements with any other country, let alone all the other logistical nightmares, yet millions of voters couldn't give a fig. It'll all be okay as long as you've got posh people in suits running the country as they know how to manage money.

[garbed_attic]

Agreed there are important things to learn from the pieces posted above that I've read!

[Petey Pate]

Idiots like you should look at this chart and reflect, rather than running your mouth off talking absolute deluded crap.

The implication from that chart is that a different Labour leader running with the same economic policies could do much better. There's no good reason not to elect another leader from the left of the party, especially one with less baggage.

Did any canvassers meet anyone who said 'we really want Jess Phillips or Yvette Cooper leading Labour instead'? I doubt it.

[Johnny Yesno]

I think it's true that you don't win elections, you lose them. Only when the country are truly sick of a government will they cut through all the propaganda and boot them out. The media are opportunistic. They get the measure of the dogs in the race, gauge what they can get away with and go from there.
A strong leader not bound by self imposed decency and fairness and an electorate not squeamish about putting the boot in to a government of cunts is all that's required and is precisely the conditions I see playing out next time.

My point is that Cummings took advantage of the fact that people don't have a hope in hell of processing all the information coming at them. His use of targetted political advertising meant that he could push people's individual buttons, even if it led to a conflicting campaign overall.

The 4-D, 5-D, 100-D chess was to simply to saturate further an already saturated digital media with the goal that people would be forced to mentally filter out everything bar issues that appealed to their pre-existing sensibilities, sensibilities that had in large part been shaped by the print and broadcast media.

[Funcrusher]

I think the brutal truth is that we were unusually lucky in 2017. The Tories had lost Cameron and Osborne and gained the most useless Prime Minister in history; Brexit was the dog that didn't really bark, because it was still some way in the future and the Brexiteers were still basking in their sense of victory; and the media was so sure of a Tory victory they didn't even bother going after Corbyn too much. We'll never be that lucky again.

I think this may be true. I was very hopeless about the 2017 election on the day because the Mail and co had done their usual dirty work and no one in the media took Labour at all seriously. The result just seemed like a miracle, and from then on it felt like the power of the old media had really waned in the on-line era and that a new generation of voters that hadn't been poisoned with all the 'loony left' propaganda would change the political map and change would surely come. In hindsight this all looks overoptimistic to say the least. I guess we'll see Brexit 'done' soon enough, but what that means or what happens next is unclear.

[Johnny Yesno]

A large amount of any anti-leadership sentiment is a function of constant smearing of Corbyn from the moment he won the leadership, although I seem to remember a brief honeymoon period when at least one right of centre luminary was a fan. But once the establishment picked its jaw up off the floor the level of constant monstering was just unreal. He is the democratically elected leader of one of the two main parties and the leader of the opposition and had every right to expect to be treated as any other politician in that capacity, yet the manner in which he has been treated and spoken of by the entire media class is as an utter pariah, on a par within recent memory only with Nick Griffin. Foot and Kinnock received similar treatment back in the day, although that focussed more on just ridicule rather than them being actively evil. Someone on here observed that during the Phillip Scofield interview at times Scofield acted as if he was talking to a mass murderer. Even though he is the elected Labour leader and leader of the opposition the whole media class has just adopted the idea that he should just be treated as a joke or an anti-semite.

Unfortunately any subsequent Labour leader from left of centre will get the same. Ed Milliband got the Foot mocking treatment. Blair made it into power because he presented in a then novel and very slick manner and he got Murdoch onside.

That said Corbyn is not a very telegenic leader, at least to me. That never bothered me personally because the project is about policies and real change, not presentation. But unfortunately in this reality TV era politics is increasingly being reduced to personality. Corbyn's big asset is that he has genuine values that have been lifelong and he means what he says and that honesty and sincerity always shows. Unfortunately a cunning, play acting liar has won the day, so clearly that wasn't enough.

I would say that most peoples total lack of interest in anything relating to the real state of the economy, and the total lack of any real coverage from the media just boggles my mind. We bailed out the banks to the tune of trillions after the financial crisis and literally no one seems to remember this or care how much of it was ever repaid. There's another financial crisis definitely on the way, no interest. The potential effect of Brexit on the economy is terrifying - just the fact that we will become the only country in the world with no trade agreements with any other country, let alone all the other logistical nightmares, yet millions of voters couldn't give a fig. It'll all be okay as long as you've got posh people in suits running the country as they know how to manage money.

Both very much on point.

[Johnny Yesno]

I guess we'll see Brexit 'done' soon enough, but what that means or what happens next is unclear.

I wish more people could have seen this before the election:

How to Get Brexit Done ✅: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHH95VvO26k

Predictably, it's Novara again.

[pancreas]

Proper leaflet campaign with very very simple messages, and smear the opponent to fuck. Start in a year's time.

[Johnny Yesno]

Proper leaflet campaign with very very simple messages, and smear the opponent to fuck. Start in a year's time.

I think somehow getting the message across that the tories hate their own voters is important.