Labour Party Desolation v2: a beige loafer stamping on a human face forever

[Buelligan]

Yes, but he lost, so that clearly wasnt enough.

Putting aside the fact that the biggest hurdle will always be the establishment, what things that were within our control, could have been handled differently to produce a better result?

He lost because he and the Party were subjected to years of virtually hourly abuse.  No amount of anything was going to rise above that.

Now, some of the cunts that did that, who worked so hard to destroy us, who babbled on and on about how electable they were are having a little public chat about how to get the messaging right.  Like, their messaging had nothing to do with screwing over Corbyn or Labour.

The things that were within our control that we should have done better were to oust every one of those fucks at the time.  That's were we failed[nb]But we can still fix that, ready for next time.[/nb].  Not language or framing.  Do you not remember?

[thugler]

I wont be voting Labour at the next election because not only is there no point (The tory who won got a massive massive majority that is simply insurmountable in a single election) but also because; comparitively even if I did vote for her I'd just be enabling the type of shite i've lived with for 10 years with her. I held my nose for 2 elections with her because I wanted Corbyn in...If they think im doing it for Beige Keith and the Cunt gang they can get fucked.

This is idiotic I'm afraid. If the tories were able to win the seat it's not insurmountable is it. While it may feel good to be principled and wait for an option you genuinely love, in the meantime the country continues to be fucked over and even the centrist bland fantasy version of Labour some seem to think we have now would be far less shit than more tories and genuinely make a difference to many peoples lives. You should do what little you can to stop it even if it seems a drop in the ocean of shit. There's a million pensioners who will vote for a turd with a blue rosette who you are enabling by not taking part.

[thugler]

Because ordinary people, not even party members, loved him.

Some of them did, some of them couldn't stand him clearly. He was extremely unpopular by the end. You will point out this is due to media poisoning their minds etc. but it's still true unfortunately.

[NoSleep]

They did the same to Ed Miliband with a bacon sandwich; what's your point?

What's "true" is that Boris Johnson got voted in despite all his "public" appearances being stage managed within factories, schools and hospitals (more like official visits), etc and even hiding in a fridge to avoid questions. Media fed political ignorance amongst the population is only ever going to favour tory-style politics, so being in real opposition to that is the only worthwhile direction for the Labour Party from hereon.

[Big Mclargehuge]

This is idiotic I'm afraid. If the tories were able to win the seat it's not insurmountable is it. While it may feel good to be principled and wait for an option you genuinely love, in the meantime the country continues to be fucked over and even the centrist bland fantasy version of Labour some seem to think we have now would be far less shit than more tories and genuinely make a difference to many peoples lives. You should do what little you can to stop it even if it seems a drop in the ocean of shit. There's a million pensioners who will vote for a turd with a blue rosette who you are enabling by not taking part.

I think you may have missed the bit where I said I'd already held my nose and voted for the dick head labour MP for nearly 10 years solid in the hopes of getting the tories out. so saying im putting principles over power seems a bit rich to be honest...my constituency had a +8 point swing to the tories at the last election, and having canvassed for Labour at the last election It's quite easy to see why. my local MP was disliked. Tremendously disliked. she did almost nothing for the community and we were one of the only areas seemingly where we didnt just get "I cant vote for her while Corbyns in charge!" jeering. it was a 60/40 split of them not liking Corbyn and not liking her. she's still our active Labour Candidate and unless she gets hit by a bus will still be running for Labour in our area at the next election.

I cant vote for her again...I did so in 2010 because I wanted to keep the tories out, and I voted for her at every other election because I believed it was the right thing to do and because it gave me the chance of a government I believed in. at this point if the choice is the Tories who are bringing "The Fuckening" or Keith and the gang who'll basically still do "The Fuckening" but at half speed and with a bit more sincerity. I'll pass...because at best, I'll end up with an MP who's just as bad as the tories, but emboldened at the idea that "Centrism works!!1111!" (She's one of those kind of MPs) at the end of the day, while a +9 swing isnt impossible to achieve. it would be positively herculean and bordering on the impossible if my current constituency is still being led by her. So I just dont see the point. I wont not vote. but unless something gives I'll probably spoil my ballot or vote green at the next election, and I'll probably put my weekends back to good use rather than canvassing...

[SpiderChrist]

Where I live (South-East Cambridgeshire) the incumbent MP Lucy Frazer has a majority of 11,490, and 50% of the vote. There is no point voting here under the current FPTP system. None at all. Better uses for my voting card include roaching it for spliffs and, er...

I'm tired of holding my nose and voting for the least worst option. I just have to get used to the fact that the society I would like to see will never happen in my lifetime. While I'm not a "Corbynite" (fucking hate that word) I did see some hope in the policies that he espoused, but it's the hope that kills you innit.

[BlodwynPig]

This is idiotic I'm afraid. If the tories were able to win the seat it's not insurmountable is it. While it may feel good to be principled and wait for an option you genuinely love, in the meantime the country continues to be fucked over and even the centrist bland fantasy version of Labour some seem to think we have now would be far less shit than more tories and genuinely make a difference to many peoples lives. You should do what little you can to stop it even if it seems a drop in the ocean of shit. There's a million pensioners who will vote for a turd with a blue rosette who you are enabling by not taking part.

All you and your ilk's fault.

[Big Mclargehuge]

Where I live (South-East Cambridgeshire) the incumbent MP Lucy Frazer has a majority of 11,490, and 50% of the vote. There is no point voting here under the current FPTP system. None at all. Better uses for my voting card include roaching it for spliffs and, er...

I'm tired of holding my nose and voting for the least worst option. I just have to get used to the fact that the society I would like to see will never happen in my lifetime. While I'm not a "Corbynite" (fucking hate that word) I did see some hope in the policies that he espoused, but it's the hope that kills you innit.

I think there are going to be a lot of voters in that situation come the time of the next election (Our consituency went tory by 21,000 votes and a 52% vote share). it's such a shame we're effectively back to the arguement of "Anything but the tories!" without any kind of reasonable opposition in sight. My attitude to all of this has generally always been "I dont care who you vote for as long as you go out and vote...unless it's the tories in which case stay home." I've voted Labour for as long as I've been allowed to vote, I held my nose for Brown. I was pretty okay with Milliband and I really got on with Corbyn...Keith to me is in between Milliband and Brown and heading more to the right seemingly with every action he makes....I cant support that.

[Kelvin]

He lost because he and the Party were subjected to years of virtually hourly abuse.  No amount of anything was going to rise above that.

Now, some of the cunts that did that, who worked so hard to destroy us, who babbled on and on about how electable they were are having a little public chat about how to get the messaging right.  Like, their messaging had nothing to do with screwing over Corbyn or Labour.

I'm not talking about Starmer. Whatever he arrives at will be focus grouped mush used to sell toothless policies no one cares about, not even him. If the left were still in charge of Labour, i would still want us to use our brains in how we persuaded the public to buy into our policies - just as Corbyn's team did at their best.

In fact, you of all people should understand this, since just in the last few days, youve been arguing that a professor should have been more care careful in how he framed his Mandarin hesitations, which rather illustrates how a tiny bit of care before we speak can make all the difference between a win and a los(t job).

The things that were within our control that we should have done better were to oust every one of those fucks at the time.  That's were we failed[nb]But we can still fix that, ready for next time.[/nb].  Not language or framing.  Do you not remember?

Of course i do, and I have always said that the establishment was the single biggest reason we lost. But I have never stuck my head in the sand and refused to acknowledge our own mistakes, and where we should have done better. Anything ethical that could have won Corbyn and his policies more votes and more seats would have been to our advantage. How their messaging could have been better is up for debate, but for us to be arguing that carefully chosen messaging, language, framing are all fundamentally unethical/unnessesary is both bizarre, and completely at odds with Corbyn's own team. I wonder if we arent just talking at cross purposes, with a very different idea of what we're discussing.

[Buelligan]

I'm in no mood to ponder our past with Corbyn, act like a grown up, scratch my beard and ruefully share that some shit wasn't perfect just to show what a big girl I am.  Because, when it comes to language and framing, that's horse shit.  The framing, as I have already mentioned, that screwed us was put there by the very people who are now running the Labour Party.

We don't need any more Oxbridge fucks sharing their thinks on how to talk to real people.  We did that with Blair, Brown, all of them.  We lost Scotland.  Corbyn was real, that's one of the big reasons we loved and trusted him, if someone doesn't recognise that it says more about them than about him.

And I am not talking about Keith, I'm talking about all those centrist cunts.


_{He was framed}

[Kelvin]

I'm in no mood to ponder our past with Corbyn, act like a grown up, scratch my beard and ruefully share that some shit wasn't perfect just to show what a big girl I am.  Because, when it comes to language and framing, that's horse shit.  The framing, as I have already mentioned, that screwed us was put there by the very people who are now running the Labour Party.

We don't need any more Oxbridge fucks sharing their thinks on how to talk to real people.  We did that with Blair, Brown, all of them.  We lost Scotland.  Corbyn was real, if someone doesn't recognise that, it says more about them than about him.

And I am not talking about Keith, I'm talking about all those centrist cunts.

I dunno. I really feel like we must be talking about different things. You seem to be talking about the misleading narratives created by our enemies, which isn't what im talking about at all, or even equivilant to what im talking about. Im talking about explaing things to the public in a way that makes the ideas seem more appealling or relateable.

[Buelligan]

Well be more specific then.

To be clearer, this is what started this conversation, Cobb's image and my subsequent comment -

Our framing and language of the voters, what?  Does anyone else see that as frighteningly patronising?  Does anyone else see that as an admission that "they" see themselves as a breed apart?  I have some language for them -

Spoiler alert

shit off and take your nasty cupcakes with you

[close]

.  Might even have it framed for them.

Eta (as you've edited) What ideas did Corbyn have that were so far from appealing and relatable?

[BlodwynPig]

I dunno. I really feel like we must be talking about different things. You seem to be talking about the misleading narratives created by our enemies, which isn't what im talking about at all, or even equivilant to what im talking about. Im talking about explaing things to the public in a way that makes the ideas seem more appealling or relateable.

the public are a lost cause, sadly. Don't pander to them.

[Buelligan]

Well it's the quiet ones you got to watch if you're a centrist, isn't it.  Because there's millions of 'em.  Just sitting there, inscrutable, with votes.

And it turns out a lot of them were really quite socialist and pretty fucked off with how Labour have been turned into a fucking cheese and wine.  And when a proper offer came along, all their little lights went on.  So the centrists spent their time pulling down the proper offer and turning off the lights. 

Blink, like that.  Darkness again.

[Buelligan]

Just to continue, Labour lost the 2017 election by 758,766 votes across the UK - as has already been discussed, far fewer than that, in the right constituencies, would have put Labour into government.  So clearly Corbyn's Labour was speaking to the voters.  As has also already been said, that was in the face of an incredible daily, hourly, onslaught from, not just the Tories, media and the Establishment but our own party. 

If our own party - the centrists now saying that giving up on voting Labour is enabling the Tories - had shut their yap, just shut up, enabling us to continue to build support and gain those votes, you'd be in a different and far better country right now.

This had nothing to do with language or framing, except, as I've already said, the framing assiduously applied by the centrist cunts.

[NoSleep]

Well it's the quiet ones you got to watch if you're a centrist, isn't it.  Because there's millions of 'em.  Just sitting there, inscrutable, with votes.

Quick! Say something racist!

[Endicott]

I am in agreement with both Kelvin and Buelligan here. I think it's very fair to say that Labour policy and its expression of that policy in the run-up to GE2017 was clear and appealing to the public, and also that had the party not had a toxic NEC attempting to destroy the Corbyn initiative, that there is a significant possibility that Labour might have won that election.

I also think it is very fair to say that, with hindsight obviously, the decision of conf 2018 to push for a second ref was a mistake[nb]one which I agreed with at the time as a reasonable compromise, but I didn't realise it would be seen by the red wall as a betrayal[/nb] which hampered Labour considerably, and that in the run up to GE2019 Labour's policy and expression of that policy was less focused than in GE2017, and in some case jumbled and a little incoherent. It does not seem unreasonable to me to comment on this and suggest it could have been and should have been done better.

That is not to say that this was the cause of the GE2019 defeat. That has already been analysed to death as down to the 2nd ref policy and the smearing of Corbyn in the whole of the national media and everywhere else.

[Buelligan]

I agree but I'd add that everything outlined in your second paragraph stemmed from somewhere outside the leadership of the Labour Party at that time.  Corbyn's greatest failing, the thing that lost us both elections, IMO, was not framing or language, it was tolerating cunts, within the Party, openly working against the Party and the interests of its members and the wider British electorate.

[Endicott]

I agree with that, yes. I think he more or less admitted in that Oborne interview posted a few months ago that he was too nice, but that's his nature.  He offered the olive branch approach, but it was thrown back in his face by those cunts.

I don't think Kelvin is saying anything to contradict that, but that policy needs to be clearly and simply expressed in future (as it was in GE2017) to get a disinterested an uninterested[nb]I knew I'd got that wrong as soon as I pressed post[/nb] electorate to vote for you. I can't see anything contentious about that.

[BlodwynPig]

As clear as the Government's response to the pandemic? That is the level of clarity we must reach.

[Kelvin]

Eta (as you've edited) What ideas did Corbyn have that were so far from appealing and relatable?

It's not that the ideas were unappealing, but that, as I explained earlier, most people do not engage with the details of political policy or listen beyond the headlines, and we must therefore choose how best to present our ideas to them, so that in the limited time we have their attention, our ideas quickly make sense, resonate, and will be memorable. This does not mean changing our polices in most cases, it just means explaining our policies in a way that cuts through the noise.

And I'm not arguing that this one thing could have tipped the election. I'm saying that this is one of the factors that could have won more votes and more seats, and putting aside the past, is something that the left would benefit from, moving forward. No-one is arguing that the reason we lost the last election is not, first and foremost, down to the lies and behaviour of our enemies, but I will not ignore the mistakes Corbyn and his team made themselves, when the final decisions were theirs to make. No contortions will convince me that the cunts in the party are solely responsible for the final 2019 electoral platform. Not least because a few months ago, one of it's architects was the left wing candidate for leader, and among the left, that was one of her key selling points.   

[Kelvin]

I don't think Kelvin is saying anything to contradict that, but that policy needs to be clearly and simply expressed in future (as it was in GE2017) to get a disinterested an uninterested[nb]I knew I'd got that wrong as soon as I pressed post[/nb] electorate to vote for you. I can't see anything contentious about that.

Precisely. It is only contentious because the initial quote related to Starmer's Labour, not Corbyn's.

[king_tubby]

Kieth's got the 'rona!

https://twitter.com/joepike/status/1305457685672976385

[Blinder Data]

Taking the long view, the decision at the 2018 conference to support a second ref was a step down the wrong path. However, it wasn't just pro-EU pressure groups and centrist MPs calling for this, it was the majority of members. It was coming to a crunch and if Labour didn't make a move towards the Remain side of the argument at that point, its members and voters would've been livid. The Tories benefitted massively from the fact that their electoral coalition and the FPTP system allowed them to back Brexit 100% without the possibility of it hurting them at the ballot box.

[Buelligan]

Precisely. It is only contentious because the initial quote related to Starmer's Labour, not Corbyn's.

Nah, well, the way I read it is it was precisely the contributions from the people now suggesting issues with language and framing are the problem, that were the actual problem - Brexit, for example. 

It was precisely the desire to include and placate everyone that turned the manifesto into a blurb. 

And now these cunts are pointing the finger at language and framing because they don't want anyone to look at that.  Let's not think about Keith's Brexit.  Let's not remember the way Corbyn was harried and undermined to force compromise from him, even when he didn't give it willingly.

And, let's face it, the groundswell of grassroots support that spontaneously erupted in response to Corbyn's leadership has become a rather sad sigh with the arrival of Keith.  But that eruption happened, you can still feel the tremors and it still speaks of something quite different from a man using language and framing not understood by ordinary people.

[Kelvin]

We're going in circles, so I'm going to drop out now. I'll just repeat my point that Corbyn's team did do what I'm saying and saw success with it. It is simply not true to say that Corbyn was above this sort of thing (nor do I think there is anything to be "above", it's not unethical). But just because someone does something well does not mean that at other times it cannot be done badly, or that just because cunts use a technique to sell their horseshit does not mean that the fundamental principles cannot be applied, in less loathsome ways, by us.

Language and framing matters, and makes a world of difference to how people interpret and react to us. Judging by your posts in the Mandarin "Outrage" thread you agree with this in other situations, so why wouldn't it persuade/alienate people in politics, too?

[BlodwynPig]

Kieth's got the 'rona!

https://twitter.com/joepike/status/1305457685672976385

fucking prat.

[Buelligan]

We're going in circles, so I'm going to drop out now. I'll just repeat my point that Corbyn's team did do what I'm saying and saw success with it. It is simply not true to say that Corbyn was above this sort of thing (nor do I think there is anything to be "above", it's not unethical). But just because someone does something well does not mean that at other times it cannot be done badly, or that just because cunts use a technique to sell their horseshit does not mean that the fundamental principles cannot be applied, in less loathsome ways, by us.

Language and framing matters, and makes a world of difference to how people interpret and react to us. Judging by your posts in the Mandarin "Outrage" thread you agree with this in other situations, so why wouldn't it persuade/alienate people in politics, too?

We're going in circles because you keep swerving around the point.  The point is this - Corbyn's language and framing were on the nail, because he was genuine.  The fact that they were is evidenced by the unprecedented support that rallied to him, ordinary people, many not members, that recognised real when they saw and heard it.

Pretending that there was some technical fault with Corbyn's offer, rather than the barefaced sabotage which everyone saw is risible birdy-pointing.  People who present language and framing as a significant reason why Corbyn fell or a criticism of his leadership are engaging in that activity.

Language and framing do matter but in this situation, their value is to communicate a reality.  Corbyn did that in spades.  Centrist Labour can't because it isn't a reality, in the sense that it doesn't genuinely make a left wing offer.  Using adspeak to sell shit to mugs only works for a while[nb]on enough people to make it a worthwhile grift[/nb], that while has already been used up.  This is why we lost Scotland.

[Buelligan]

PS  It was one of the things that was so off-putting about Andy Burnham.  If you listen back through his hustings speeches for the leadership, his conscious repetition of words like Leader was embarrassing and weirdly manipulative.  As if he imagined himself to be some superman mind-training all the untermensch to obey.  Revealing stuff.

[Zetetic]

Kieth's got the 'rona!

https://twitter.com/joepike/status/1305457685672976385

It played well for Boris. Many ex-Labour voters will have respiratory and other chronic conditions. This could make Keith seem more approachable, contagion aside.