The Labour Party could be tremendous viewing for the next few months.
I'm increasingly convinced they're going to make a woman leader - regardless of suitability. That raises the prospect of either Rebecca Long-Bailey and her wandering eyebrows or horse-faced, foghorn brummie media whore Jess Phillips becoming Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition.
Either would be a total fúcking disaster. Marvellous.
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Originally Posted by Burney
Rebecca Long-Bailey gives me the creeps!
It's 5 years to the next election. Labour might get their act to gether in 4 years time?
How are they going to do that with the membership - whose votes are the only thing that matter in a leadership contest, remember - still controlled by the far left?Quote:
Originally Posted by Alberto Balsam Rodriguez
#allinforabbott. I'm going to enjoy spending this 3 quid.Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
Phillips would hurt Johnson. I wouldn’t dismiss her, c*nt that she is.
And she’d be one of the few to be able to credibly distance herself from Corbynism, having consistently criticised him and his faction over the years.
Lisa Nandy is probably the next strongest contender, but looks distinctly syndromic.
Am I right in saying Corbyn has to do PMQs tomorrow? :clap: :hehe:
Boris is gonna be all magnanimous and go easy on him, isn’t he :-(
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Originally Posted by Burney
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Originally Posted by Burney
Right now, they won't. It will take them years. I'm more hopeful than expectant that it will happen before the next election. I'm saying that as someone that wants to see an opposition actually opposing and offering an alternative.
Phillips is an intellectual and political lightweight who's never had to hold a portfolio and would get torn apart in the rough and tumble of front bench politics. She'd quickly be revealed for the opportunist publicity seeker she is. She's never been exposed to any actual scrutiny and her easy ride in the media would quickly come to an end.Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
I'd actually quite enjoy watching her destroyed by being given the poison chalice of the leadership.
Sadly, it probably won't happen. The membership and the PLP fúcking hate her. She's very popular among left-wing tories, but that's about it.
Abbott is too much to hope for. Comedically-speaking, the best candidate would be Burgon.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir C
I'm more interested in the internal fighting than who leads them. Watching Lavery and McDonnell argue that their platform was popular and that Brexit was the only issue filled me with joy. :hehe:Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
As long as the unions continue their hold over the party there will be a huge fight between the militant left and the left centrists who want to go back to the Blair days. It could get very, very ugly indeed. #rubshands
Know nothing about him but Jorge was on twitter hoping it never happened so I assume he must be really, really bad. :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
So is Corbyn, but it wasn’t those characteristics that kept him from power.
In this age of sound bite politics, I think she could conceivably cultivate a formidable persona that combined a doubling down on gender-based identity politics with a claim to be legitimately speaking for the working class.
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Originally Posted by Burney
:nod: A man apparently untroubled by coherent thought who has the manner and speech of a camp bank teller.Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
Yes. And he has been an unmitigated disaster.Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
Plus gender-based identity politics is not a vote winner and she's not even remotely working class.
EDIT: She is, in fact, a middle-class person's idealised notion of what a working class person is like - largely because she exaggerates her regional accent.
If it wasn’t for Brexit and Corbyn being forced by the membership to move to a 2nd ref position I suspect he’d now be PM.
She looks and sounds working class compared to Johnson. If Johnson doesn’t make good on his pledges to his new base he will be vulnerable against someone who can credibly claim to speak for the people he betrayed and comes without the albatross of Brexit or associations with Corbyn.
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Originally Posted by Burney
I think you're wrong. All the feedback from the provincial doorsteps is that Brexit was almost secondary to a near-visceral dislike of Corbyn.Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
But I suspect much of that dislike took root once he started equivocating on Brexit and, specifically, refusing to take a position on whether he’d support his own deal, which was a masterclass in how to look like a man preparing to f*ck you over.
I reckon had he campaigned on a “new deal but no referendum” manifesto, a lot of labour leavers would have held their noses and voted for him.
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Originally Posted by Burney
Effectively, You’ve just repeated Lavery and McDonnells view of the election result.Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
:rolleyes:
I don’t think it’s the whole story and it’s obviously laughable to say that Corbyn personally would have been a vote winner without Brexit, but I do think it’s conceivable that they could have won the election without the spectre of Brexit.
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Originally Posted by Monty92
No. Corbyn is not not PM because he was unfortunate enough to be around during Brexit. Indeed, Brexit gave him a boost in 2017 because Labour soaked up the anti-brexit protest vote and the traditional heartland pro-leave vote. Over two years of being terrible, he's become toxic as more of his personal and political shortcomings became more and more apparent.Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
Besides which, arguing that Corbyn might have become PM if it weren't for the most vexed political issue of the age is a joke of an argument. It's like saying Theresa May could have been the next Margaret Thatcher if it weren't for Brexit.
The whole point is that you want to elect someone who can deal with such issues.
OK, my view for what it's worth. Labour can only go for a leader who comes from their heartlands , so Midlands or North. Nobody up here feels connected to way the Labour paty have become over the last few years, so they need to go back to basics and reconnect with traditional voters. it will be a long job but the only way they can get back in power eventually.Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
The Tory party cannot ignore the North as they have done for years as they know that if they fail to deliver then these new voters will desert them in droves and will not return.
I do fear that Johnson is in this for himself and that the next 5 yrs will end up a ****fest for the UK.
by the way, i do believe I predicted the result all along :)
But the election only occurred because of Brexit. Without Brexit, Cameron would still be in charge and (presumably) still using the useless old c@nt to mop the floor every PMQTs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
But Corbyn was forced to move away from a leave position by the party rules on how policy is set. As we are so often told, he is very likely pro-Brexit himself.
It’s a bit like blaming Boris for us not leaving on 31 October without acknowledging the role of the Benn Act. :shrug:
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Originally Posted by Burney
That's totally irrelevant. He is the leader of his party and couldn't lead his party in such a way as to arrive at a coherent policy. That is his failure. Besides which, his personal popularity has always been terrible and has only got worse.Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
What 'heartlands' would those be? They don't own them anymore. :hehe:Quote:
Originally Posted by Pokster
Oddly enough, I think he will deliver for these areas. This is a particular obsession of Dominic Cummings and I would expect to see this happen in a big way.
Mind you, I'd guess there's also a calculation that, five years down the road from Brexit, a lot of the remain-voting ex-tory constituencies in the south will come back into the fold, too.
With boundaries being re-drawn to take away their current advantage and them being dead in Scotland, I wouldn't give you tuppence for Labour's future chances of forming a majority government.
I do think the "heartlands" couldn't connect with a millionaire champagne socialist whose based in IslingtonQuote:
Originally Posted by Burney
So what would have been a coherent policy on Brexit, based on the options available to him?
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Originally Posted by Burney
Exactly!!!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by PSRB
Well the clever thing to do when they were still sitting on the fence would have been to allow May's deal to go through by making it a free vote and encouraging abstentions from those in leave-voting constituencies (on the grounds that the people's will had to be respected or some such guff). That would have looked noble and magnanimous and allowed the party free rein to still criticise the outcomes with relatively clean hands.Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
Support Leave on democratic principles but make the argument that while the Tories would sell out to Trump and disregard workers rights blah blah blah, Labour will negotiate a free trade deal that protects blah blah blahQuote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
There was all sorts of ammunition they could have used to argue that they would get a better deal
At the 2018 party conference, BEFORE May had brought her deal back to Parliament, they voted for a second referendum.
Labour members were never, ever going to allow the party to vote through a Tory Brexit :shrug:
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Originally Posted by Burney
The problem there was that he didn't have sufficient control of even his front bench to stop them running around telling anyone who'd listen that in the 2nd referendum that it was mandated by conference that they'd have to have, they'd vote remain - against any deal negotiated by Labour.Quote:
Originally Posted by WES
So again, failure of leadership.
That isn’t how the party sets policy.
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Originally Posted by WES
They couldn't have stopped them from letting it through and a strong party leader would have been able to face down the membership and take the PLP with him. He could then - if need be - have gone on to push for a second referendum on May's deal with a degree of moral authority.Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
Essentially, his priority at all costs should have been to allow the tories to own brexit and then attack them in the aftermath, where he couldn't lose.
But he wasn't a strong leader and bent with the wind.
And just bent.
He’d d have faced shadow cabinet resignations left, right and centre. It would have been suicidal.
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Originally Posted by Burney
Right. Because there’s no way Corbyn could ever survive Shadow Cabinet resignations, is there?Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
Oddly enough, the joy of his ‘project’ would have been that he could have relied upon the hardcore (and entryist members) to stay onside because achieving their socialist nirvana was more important than the short-term distraction of Brexit and this was how it could be achieved.
A clever, agile, charismatic and persuasive political leader could have pulled it off. Happily, Corbyn was none of those things.
You underestimate his underlying vulnerability that endured even after the 2017 election. Maintaining a leave position would likely have forced another leadership challenge, and that would have been decided by the membership, which would have no longer supported him.
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Originally Posted by Burney
His weakness was largely caused by his own failure to persuade people to his position. As I say, he just bent with the wind. Had he ever grabbed the party by the neck and outlined a vision, he could have done pretty much what he wanted post-2017.Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty92
And I think it's a massive assumption that he'd have lost a leadership challenge. Given a choice between losing control of the party and Brexit happening, I think the mass of the membership would have chosen the latter.
Yes, that's right. Monty's argument is that Corbyn could have been elected had he not been Corbyn. :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
I have to agree with you there. But what about thon northern lass with the rather sweet lisp b, Lisa Nandy - isn't she adorable?Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
I fear she's what Jezza's stormtroopers call 'a centrist melt', h.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert Augustus Chapman