Brexit and Labour’s Disaster

Corbyn’s Labour is now the largest political party in Europe. He was soundly re-elected by the 600,000 members and by crushing margins by the new members and old members who left because of Blair alike. An asymmetric void perhaps.

Seconding this. Into the Void was the most illuminating and also depressing book I read last year. Political parties in Europe may have a future of sorts, but the UK Labour party currently doesn’t.

Speaking as a Canadian who is a member of the New Democratic Party I would crawl on glass to get a leader as principled and popular as Corbyn.

Wasn’t the MPs rebellion due mainly (at least in their telling) due to “electability” reasons? I.e., that under Corbyn leadership Labour could not win elections?

The Labour Party is so weak that the Conservatives do not need to worry about Labour defeating them in the next election, or perhaps in the election after that.

I don’t think this is obvious, precisely because of the volatility of the situation. I remember people saying this about the Cameron government in 2015 and I objected at the time that no-one knew how the Brexit referendum will turn out. Now Cameron is gone and just about forgotten. It’s true that the Conservatives are still in, but it’s a very different crew.

More importantly, we haven’t yet seen what Brexit means, in any sense. May has been coasting on the referendum result, and Labour has been wedged, unable to oppose the referendum outcome and also unable to criticise May’s Brexit policy because she either doesn’t have one or isn’t telling. This can’t continue forever (presumably not beyond March), and when the situation changes, anything can happen.

Some scenarios where the Conservatives could come badly unstuck

(a) they put up a “have cake and eat it” proposal that is rejected so humilatingly that they look like fools, then cave in and accept minor concessions on migration in return for a face-saving soft Brexit
(b) hard Brexit becomes inevitable and the financial sector flees en masse
(c) train-crash Brexit with no agreement and a massive depression

The only scenarios I can see that would cement the current position are
(a) a capitulation by the EU on migration etc, with continued single market access
(b) an economically successful hard Brexit/non-fatal train crash

It seems to me that (a) is politically infeasible and (b) is economically unlikely

That’s not to gloss over Labour’s problems or your diagnosis, with which I generally agree.

The essay is excellent as we might expect, Henry. I’m not convinced that Labour had any other choice but to elect Corbyn. Single data points are always suspect, but the decision by the Labor bigwig (have succeeded in forgetting which) to mock ‘white van-man’ clearly suggests she was playing to a constituency within Labour primed to share in a flash-sneer at the prols. I’d have expected as much from any Tory. I have other quibbles, the decision by Labour to take a position on the referendum and on Remain always seemed critical to forcing Labour to adopt anti-immigrant Tory-light postures in order to have it both ways with working-class voters hostile to London and Brussels.

More problematic is this paragraph: “Research by Tim Bale, Monica Poletti, and Paul Webb shows that these new members tend to be well-educated and heavily left-wing. They wanted to join the Labour Party to remake it into an unapologetically left-leaning party. However, the research suggests that they aren’t prepared to put in the hard grind. While most of them have posted about Labour on social media or signed a petition, more than half have never attended a constituency meeting, and only a small minority have gone door to door or delivered leaflets. They are at best a shaky foundation for remaking the Labour Party.” Your questionable decision to deploy ‘they’ and ‘them’ muddies the reality a bit, as does your decision to rely on metrics from the past to predict future behavior.

I take your point that failing to attend a political rally, or go door-to-door, means something in a time when populist parties are in the ‘ascent.’ But as you point out this rise can only occur because the ‘old parties’ have failed so badly to connect activists and members. Again, that said, I’m still not convinced all is doom and gloom. Labour activists opposed to EU membership were effectively gagged/shamed by the elite right up to the present. It is only now this week, that Labour has elected to make English compulsory for new immigrants: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chuka-umunna-immigrants-should-be-made-to-learn-english-on-arrival-in-uk-classes-esol-social-a7509666.html

Labour wasn’t anything but Tory-lite until Jeremy and the new influx of members. I’m not personally in favor of the new policy. It does seem to me more Tory-lite. But the battles are now more out in the open. My guess is that Labour will survive and will rule again, but only if the party can persuade Scotland and Wales to remain part of the UK. Adopting Tory-lite policies is precisely what alienated Scots Labour voters and drove them into the arms of the SNP, so that’s that the PLP gives you.

Britain is entering a period of flux: jobs, housing, respect for all – including all those dead, white people who made such a mess of the world, and respect for all forms of work, and greater social and economic movement within Britain will likely go over quite well with large sections of the electorate. Strong borders and a sensible immigration policy is part of that.

@10 “This sounds exactly like what has happened to the Democratic party in America. Which suggests that there’s something transnational going on, much larger than the specific political situation in any given country”

“This sounds…” Yes, in general terms. Yet, the donor-class candidates could have and should have won in Brexit and in the US.

In the case of the Brexit, I argued before and after that simply allowing Labour candidates and members to express their own views publicly, rather than adhere to a (sufficiently unpopular) particular policy set by Henry’s elite would have negated the need to adopt anti-immigrant Tory lite stances – a straddle that fooled nobody and drove Labour voters to UKIP in not insignificant numbers.

In the case of the US, a Republican donor-class candidate should have been a Democrat donor-class candidate. Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years, effectively run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one. The collapse of the Republican establishment from below still makes my heart sing. Would that the same might occur among Democrats.

Had, however, the Clinton campaign actually placed the candidate in Wisconsin, in Michigan, and in Pennsylvania rather than bank on turning off voters, we’d be looking at a veneer of stability covering up the rot now on display.

The point being: there’s always something transnational going on. I explained Brexit to my own students as a regional rebellion against London, as much as Brussels. Henry’s essay is good on Brexit and UKIP. Both the US and UK outcomes could have been avoided.

@12 Thank you for this, Gareth.

Layman @ 6

“The PLP didn’t opt to get along, they opted to fight, and got mauled.”

They lost the battle but are winning the war.

Corbyn has been keeping a very low profile since his re-election, proposals for reform such as mandatory reselection seem to have been dropped, and the left of the party is squabbling over whether it remains a Corbyn fan club or an active agent for the democratisation of the party. Party policy remains inchoate and receives little media publicity.

Michels hasn’t been disproved just yet, and I suspect the party remains immune to lasting reform, short of a major split.

@Layman @Igor

Yes, after the second election, the PLP have opted for the long game, with the expectation that a disastrous General Election (one of the reasons why the talk up the possibility of an early one at every opportunity) will see a return to “normality”. In the meantime, the strategy is to make Corbyn an irrelevance, hence the lack of coverage in the MSM, except for a drip of mocking articles of which today’s by Gaby Hinsliff in the Graun is typical.

Corbyn and his organisation don’t help themselves but, faced with such irredentism, they have little leverage on the situation.

Research by Tim Bale, Monica Poletti, and Paul Webb shows that these new members tend to be well-educated and heavily left-wing. They wanted to join the Labour Party to remake it into an unapologetically left-leaning party. However, the research suggests that they aren’t prepared to put in the hard grind.

The authors’ own account of research makes for an interesting contrast:

First up, we find that new members are not significantly younger or more working class – but they are more likely to be slightly less well-off and female. The average age of both old and new members is 51 and more than half of them are graduates (56% and 58% respectively). Whereas three quarters of them live in households in which the chief income earner (CIE) has a ‘middle class’ (ABC1) occupation (76% vs. 75%), a third (34%) of old members’ household gross income falls below the national average of around £35,000 –something that’s the case for 41% of new members. Moreover, women make up a greater proportion of the new members than of the older members (52% to 38%). Corbyn, then, does not seem to have attracted a very different type of crowd in many socio-demographic respects, except insofar as it is slightly less well-off and more gender-balanced.

Though it’s undoubtedly real, I’m not convinced the ‘clicktivism’ problem is as important as Henry would have us believe—could be a combination of alienation from the party structure (which could eventually dissipate) and changes in technology and consequently methods of organising (which wouldn’t need to).

In general, the fatalistic tone of this post rather betrays its studied even-handedness in my eyes. But I guess if anyone has a right to feel despondent right now it’s professional political scientists, whose understanding of their object of study is looking about as authoritative as mainstream economists’ did post-2008…

I’d very much agree with John at #10. One of the consequences of the phenomenon you’re discussing is that volatility is incredibly high. I’d never before seen a politically party as totally, irredeemably fecked as Fianna Fail in 2010, but look at them now.

Re MPA Victoria,
Speaking as an expat North American who had Corbyn as constituency MP for eight years, I’d say be careful what you wish for.

Re Kidneystones,
“the Labor bigwig” who mocked ‘white van-man’ was none other than Emily Thornberry, Corbyn’s neighbouring London Labour MP and ally, currently the shadow Foreign Secretary. I’m not sure this identification supports your point.

Chris Bertram @ 22

I really can’t see the obsession with an ‘anti-Tory alliance’. Given that it involves allying with a party who recently were effectively part of a pro-Tory alliance, it only works in any sense if you think that the Tories have morphed into the far-right, or if you have a well-worked out programme of constitutional reform you want to implement.

The bit that concerns involving the SNP particularly baffles me. Given that they have been at daggers drawn with the Labour Party in Scotland, and that they are highly unlikely to step aside from any of their 90-odd % of Scottish seats to give their alliance partner a few more MPs, it seems a non-starter. This impression is magnified when you consider that the spectre of a Labour-SNP minority government was thought to have scared off potential Labour voters at the last election.

JQ@10: for scenarios that would cement the current Tory political position, have you considered
(c) internal problems in the EU (Euro crisis, massive unemployment, immigration problems, very dodgy banks) result in serious electoral upsets for EU project in countries outside the UK, entirely changing the context of Brexit.
I’m not saying that would be a good thing, I can see several resulting problems. But are you sure it isn’t possible?

Oops. Am I in perma-moderation, btw? Irksome if so.

I agree that Labour’s in a terrible state, incidentally, and I don’t think Corbyn’s going to get us out of it singlehanded. I had high hopes of Tom Watson, but that was when I was under the impression he was going to work with Corbyn. What we need most of all is clarity on Brexit – clarity on a position that surrenders as little as possible to the idiocy of Brexit, that is. Again, I don’t know if Corbyn’s the man to lead that particular charge – I’ve got high hopes of Keir Starmer, or I would have if I weren’t feeling a bit once-bitten by now. It’s some consolation to know that the party’s position under Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper would be much, much worse.

engels: “I also wonder what is the explanation for (us) newbies being so lazy and unserious compared to the old guard?”

Heh, engels, I’m sure it’s all that time you’re spending on my lawn.

Corbyn is just awful. A toxic mix of naivity, ego, and blundering stupidity.

His concept of role is almost non-existant. He walks onto a train without having pre-booked, finds it difficult getting two seats together, and decides on the spot that all trains must be nationalised. He spots a man sleeping rough and decides ending rough sleeping is his top priority. He blunders around like he’s just landed from another planet, sees an injustice and thinks he, Jeremy, is the first person ever to see such a terrible thing, and decides on the spot to make it his top priority to eliminate this evil by the simple policy expedient of saying he will eliminate it.

He doesn’t do policy in any recognisable sense. He does positioning statements which he assembles with mates and puts on his personal web site. Take his “Manifesto for Digital Democracy”. It claims to be a policy, but in reality its just a list of Things That Jeremy Thinks Are Good. It doesn’t appear to have gone through a discussion process or approval process. It is not clear if this is a party policy or just a personal document.

His position on Brexit is a disaster. On the issue which is coming to define politics in the UK he is neither clearly for it nor clearly against it. He gives the impression he finds it a dull subject. He is at best second choice for everyone, first choice for no-one; at worst, he is an irrelevance.

Worse, he appears completely oblivious to the power games being played out in his name. Neighbouring constituencies are to be carved up so Jeremy’s seat can be preserved. His son Seb is given a job in John McDonnell’s office. He is effectively held captive by a North London clique who look after him, tell him he’s great, and then use his “policies” as a checklist against which to assess conformance of MPs to The One True Corbyn Way and pursue vendettas.

His personality is completely unsuited to the job of Leader, let alone Prime Minister. Even if you believe in Jeremy’s policies you need to find someone else to implement them because he lacks any of the requisite capabilities.

Nothing is going to magically get better.

No matter how bad things get, under Jeremy they can always get worse.

references:

http://www.jeremyforlabour.com/digital_democracy_manifesto

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/22/shadow-minister-irate-labour-plan-save-jeremy-corbyn-seat-kate-osamor).

kidneystones: “In the case of the US, a Republican donor-class candidate should have been a Democrat donor-class candidate. Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years, effectively run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one.”

For crying out loud, dude…no. Just no.

While most of them have posted about Labour on social media or signed a petition, more than half have never attended a constituency meeting, and only a small minority have gone door to door or delivered leaflets.

There’s a strong feel of “young folks aren’t doing politics the way my generation used to do politics” about this, especially given the activities you’re complaining they’re not doing. Is posting on social media achieving more or less than posting leaflets to fill up people’s recycling bins?

@23
This is possibly correct, but presupposes that the rise of Sinn Feinn, Plaid Cymru and the SNP is because (for some mysterious reason), (parts of) Northern Ireland (parts of) Wales and (most of) Scotland have suddenly turned to the left, in defiance of global socioeconomic/geopolitical trends.

But maybe not. Perhaps these parties are in fact in sync with global political trends because they are all nationalist parties and nationalism is clearly on the rise at the moment. Perhaps the fact that they tend to tack to the left economically (now, certainly not in the past) is a ‘red herring’. Labour refuses to deal with these parties because they note (correctly) that the Labour Party has a vested interest in the UK remaining united, which, obviously, the three parties listed above do not. By empowering them, Labour might risk the split up of the UK, which would probably mean the end of the Labour Party (and, indeed, leftist politics in England as a whole).

Labour might have a point.

(the only exception to this are the British Greens, but they have yet to demonstrate that they can make any sort of major electoral breakthrough).

djr

While most of them have posted about Labour on social media or signed a petition, more than half have never attended a constituency meeting, and only a small minority have gone door to door or delivered leaflets.

There’s a strong feel of “young folks aren’t doing politics the way my generation used to do politics” about this, especially given the activities you’re complaining they’re not doing. Is posting on social media achieving more or less than posting leaflets to fill up people’s recycling bins?

And what about constituency meetings? What’s the point of them? Apart from functioning as part of the social life of the people who attend them, what have they ever achieved — in past generations, never mind this one?

@43 Actually, I make no claim against trans-national developments. Quite the opposite.

Elsewhere, I’ve written that we are dealing with a world-wide tension between advocates of globalization and their opponents. Where you differ is in determinations and outcomes, which I argue are based on the actors, actions and dynamics of each state and which are, as such, unique. There is nothing at all inevitable about any of this and JQ very sensibly reminds us of the volatility of the present moment.

What is clear to me at least is that ideas and actions matter. Labour need not have decided in 2014, or so, to ban members from advocating either a referendum, or leaving the EU. I dug all this up at the time and the timeline is easy enough to recreate.

Austria stepped back from the brink, as did Greece when it repudiated Golden Dawn. The French right and left worked together to keep the presidency out of the hands of the FN, although it’s less clear how that successful these efforts will be in the future.

The next few years will be telling. I see no reliable evidence to indicate good fortune, or end times. The safest bet is more of the same, repackaged, with all the predictable shrieks and yells about ‘never before’ etc. that usually accompanies the screwing of the lower orders. The donor class is utterly dedicated to retaining power. I think JQ is spot on regarding alliances. We didn’t come this far just to have the wheels fall off.

The populism of the right (which I support in large measure) points the way. I’d have preferred to see a populism of the left win, but too many are/were unwilling to burn down establishment with the same willingness and enthusiasm of those on the right. Indeed, this thread has several vocal defenders of an utterly corrupt Democratic party apparatus busted cold for colluding to steal the nomination. There’s a reason donors forked over 1.2 billion to the Clinton crime family and it wasn’t to help Hillary turn over power to the average woman and man in America.

Ya think?

@43, 45

Because the ‘soft’ left, in collaboration with the soft right (and the hard right) have worked assiduously since roughly about 1979 to destroy the ‘hard left’. ‘High points’ in this ‘epic battle’ include Neil Kinnock’s purging of Militant, the failure of the trade union establishment to (in any meaningful sense) support the miners’ strike (1984), the failure of the Democratic party establishment to get behind McGovern (1972), Carter’s rejections of Keynesianism (and de facto espousal of monetarism) in roughly 1977, Blair’s war on ‘Bennism’, the tolerance of/espousal of Reaganite anti-Communism by most sectors of the British left by the late 1980s/early 1990s, and so on.

So what we are left with nowadays is angry working class people who would, in previous generations (i.e. the 1950s, and 1960s) have voted Communist or chosen some other ‘radical’ left wing option (and who did vote in such a way in the 1950s/1960s) no longer have that option.

What the ‘soft left’ hoped is that, with ‘radical’ left wing options off the table, the proles would STFU and stop voting, or at least continue to vote for a ‘nice’ ‘respectable’ soft left party.

What they failed to predict is that (as they were designed to do) neo-liberal policies immiserated the working class, leaving that class angrier than ever before.

And so, the working class wanted to lash out, to register their anger, their fury. But, as noted before, the ‘traditional’ way to do that was off the table. Ergo: Trump, Brexit etc.

If you help crush the communists then don’t be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get the Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever weapons are to hand to do so. If ‘left wing’ options aren’t available, they will choose ‘right wing’ ones.

We have all read this story book before: the ‘social democrats’ connived with the German state to crush the 1918/1919 working class uprising, and then were led, blubbering, to Dachau 20 years later. One wonders how many of them reflected that they themselves might be partially responsible for their fate.

In the same way: the ‘soft left’ connived and collaborated with the Right to crush the ‘radical left’ in the US and the UK (and worldwide) and then were SHOCKED!! and AMAZED!! that the Right don’t really like them very much and were only using them as a tool to defeat the organised forces of the working class, and that with the ‘radicals’ out of the way, the parties of the ‘soft left’ (with no natural allies left) can now be picked off one by one, at the Right’s leisure.

Boo hoo, so sad, oh well, never mind.

@Dipper

Any tirade against Corbyn is entirely pointless, because you’re not addressing the reasons why he was elected, or what he represents. I think most of those that support him have a varying degree of criticism, and many would prefer a more able leader. The problem for Labour is that there is not a more able leader available that understands the need to ditch Third Way nonsense. If any of the PLP “big beasts” had done this in any meaningful way, instead of plotting against him, they would be leader by now.

@28, @41

Yes, and another situation where ‘mostpeople’ have failed to follow the logic of a situation through. Many intellectuals can see that it is not in the EU’s interests for the UK to prosper out of the EU lest it ‘encourager les autres’. Fewer have pointed out that this works the other way, too. It is no longer in the UK’s interests for the EU to prosper (or, indeed, to continue), and a new nationalist orientated Conservative government might make moves in this direction.

As Jeremy Corbyn alone has had the perspicacity to point out, insofar as there is a political movement in the UK that is most closely aligned with Donald Trump’s Republicanism, it is the Conservatives under May (the UK’s latest intervention vis a vis the UN and Israel was a blatant attempt to curry favour with the new American administration).

And Trump, as we all know, is highly suspicious of the EU. Moreover, there is likely to be a battle between the ‘liberal (in the highly specific American sense) leaning’ intelligence services (the CIA etc.) and the Trump administration. Assuming Trump wins (not a certainty) it is possible/likely that Trump will use the newly ‘energised’ intelligence services to pursue a more ‘American nationalism’ orientated policy, and it is likely that this new approach will see the EU being viewed as much more of an economic competitor to the US, rather than a tool for the containment of Russia, as it is primarily seen at the moment.

And, thanks to Obama, the CIA, NSA etc. have far more leeway and freedom to act than they did even 20 years ago. It is also possible/likely that MI5/MI6 might be ‘let off the leash’ by a British (or English) nationalist orientated Conservative Government.

It is not implausible, therefore, that the US and the UK will use what ‘soft’ power they have to weaken the EU and sow division wherever they can. And of course the EU has enough problems of its own, such that these tactics might work. Certainly it is highly possible that the EU will simply not exist by 2050, or at least, not in the form that we have it at present.

@Hidari

“Fewer have pointed out that this works the other way, too. It is no longer in the UK’s interests for the EU to prosper (or, indeed, to continue) …”

Interesting, I’d not seen that elsewhere. I’d be pretty certain that this is the objective of people like Hannan.

“.. and it is likely that this new approach will see the EU being viewed as much more of an economic competitor to the US, rather than a tool for the containment of Russia, as it is primarily seen at the moment.”

Maybe less to do with competition than regulation? The Trump view is presumably that anything that restricts continued plundering of the economy, especially transnational institutions.

@Igor

“I think this is just one of the features of postmodern politics. For potential governmental parties they only have to retain enough support to be a realistic alternative …”

“This explains the hostility of Labour MPs towards Corbyn and the left of the party. They feel that ideological commitments and an orientation towards the poor and disadvantaged will reduce the party’s freedom of manoeuvre, damaging their chances of capitalising electorally on Tory failure.”

Very good.

“Perhaps these parties are in fact in sync with global political trends because they are all nationalist parties and nationalism is clearly on the rise at the moment. ”

Yes, they are clearly part of the nationalist turn. Or at least I assume that is true of Plaid Cymru and the SNP, but it definitely is of Sinn Fein, who are policy wise a leftist party, but ideologically first and foremost a nationalist one. You can see this in polling on their support base, which tends to be more reactionary* and culturally conservative than even the irish centre right parties, yet Sinn Fein as a political party often takes position (such as their strong support for gay marriage) in opposition to the preferences of a large chunk of their base.
This Is particularly the case with immigration, where for going on a decade local politicians have noted that this is one of the concerns they often hear in constituency work that they don’t make a priority in national politics. It’s difficult to (as Sinn Fein does) see yourself (rightly or wrongly) as the nationalism of a historically oppressed minority, and to support the rights of that minority in the north (I’m making no normative claims on the correctness of their interpretation) and then attack other minorities. This is why they’re institutionally , and seemingly ideologically, commited to diversity and multiculturalism in the south of ireland, while also being fundamentally a nationalist party. (Question is (1) does this posture survive the current leadership , and (2) is it enough to stave off explicitly nativist parties**) Afaict this is also true of the snp, I don’t know about PC.
But there’s still a lot of poison in it. “Anti englishness” , which a lot of this, (at least implicitly”) can encourage , might be more acceptable than anti immigrant sentiment, but it’s still qualitatively the same mind set.

*this is ‘re a big chunk if their base, but by no means the full story.

**basically what happens to the independent vote, which is (afaict)possibly the real populist turn in ireland.

In the US, only tiny numbers of voters supported Communist candidates in the 1950s and 1960s.

The effect is not direct. It comes down to the fact that for the average working person, there two main ways they could be significantly better or worse off; wages could be higher, or tax could be lower.

One of those is a thing that is promised by political parties, one isn’t.

The actual rate of tax, or the feasibility or secondary effects of changing, don’t really matter. Leaving the EU, whatever else it means, means not paying tax to it. A belief that the tax paid to the EU ends up as a net benefit to the payee requires a level of trust in the system that is easy to argue against.

The US has lower taxes than any other developed democracy, and so presumably wouldn’t carry on functioning as one if you cut further. Which means to deliver further tax cuts, you need a politician who doesn’t understand, doesn’t care, or just possibly is in hock to those who wish the US harm.

Traditional Communists similarly considered the collapse of the system to be more of a goal than a worry. Without them, arguments against higher wages always prevail.

Not PASOK though.

gastro george @48

Any tirade against Corbyn is entirely pointless

Well I wouldn’t say it was entirely pointless. It is important to establish a baseline, and in this case the baseline is that Corbyn’s leadership is most unlikely to deliver electoral success for Labour.

But your main point is a fair one, so time to try a different tack.

Policy is a misleading guide to whether a party is left or right. The current conservative party is running a significant deficit, is committed to maintaining the NHS free at the point of use, has implemented a living wage, has introduced same-sex marriage, and at the last election touted state spending as the way to improve economic performance. all these policies were traditionally associated with left-wing parties.

Policy is free, and it isn’t particularly sticky. Given those features, policy is not a particularly reliable feature. No private company would make policy its chief USP as it can easily be replicated and customers show little loyalty based on policy. So if policy is not a route to political identity, what is?

What voters want from a political party is that the party holds them and their interests paramount as it goes about its business. When it implements a policy, it makes sure that policy is implemented in a way that benefits them and their group. They want to be sure that in the difficult and complex world of politics, the people they have voted for will look after their interests. The modern Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market – Just managing families – dead centre in her Downing Street speech. And so far she has very high levels of public support.

By contrast, Labour doesn’t seem to know who it represents, who it is batting for, and what it wants for them. It doesn’t give clear signals about where British workers stand in its hierarchies of priorities. Until someone stands up and clearly articulates a vision of ambition for the mass of the people then Labour will get out-fought in all significant political debates.

@52
Yeah maybe I should clarify that. Obviously much of the UK’s trade is done with the EU so in that sense the UK does have an economic interest in the EU prospering, but only in terms of individual states. The UK (arguably) does not have an interest, any more in the EU as a unified political/economic entity and if, as seems plausible, the UK now moves in a more Trumpian direction, this tendency might well continue.

@55 Your evidence argues against your own argument. You have persistently argued, across many CT threads, that the only and sole reason that Labour is doing badly right now is because of Corbyn. And then the evidence you provide is that the left is doing badly in Ireland too. Do you see the problem?

The fact is that if there was any serious alternative to Corbyn, the PLP would have put him or her forward in the recent leadership election, and s/he would probably have won. But there is no such candidate because the problems the Labour party face are much more deeply rooted than the current crisis caused by the Corbyn leadership and these problems are faced by almost every centre-left political party in the West. (The ‘radical’ left, as I pointed out above, having essentially vanished in almost all of the developed world).

Let’s not forget that as recently as the late 1990s, almost every country in Europe was governed by the centre left. Now, almost none* of them are. That’s the scale of the collapse. Indeed the usual phrase for this phenomenon is ‘Pasokification’. Not Corbynification (at least not yet).

Corbyn certainly doesn’t have a solution to this problem but then nobody else does either, so there you go.

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21695887-centre-left-sharp-decline-across-europe-rose-thou-art-sick

*depending, of course, on what you mean by ‘centre left’.

All elections for the last few decades:
Many people in the UK: “Can we have our share of the benefits of globalisation?”
Tacit cartel: “After the City has taken the lion’s share and we’ve had our cut, there might be something left that you can have.”

Referendum:
Tacit cartel: “Vote Remain or everybody will lose the benefits of globalisation!”

Igor Belanov

Of course, they have not provided any reason why anyone of a left-wing persuasion should support such a cynical and opportunistic worldview, apart from the fact that the Tories are evil.

Preventing people from doing evil seems like a powerful motivation to me.

RichardM

Traditional Communists similarly considered the collapse of the system to be more of a goal than a worry. Without them, arguments against higher wages always prevail.

It’s commonplace for minimum wages to be increased without Communists playing any role.

Hidari @62

“You have persistently argued, across many CT threads, that the only and sole reason that Labour is doing badly right now is because of Corbyn.”

That’s not so much a mischaracterisation of my views as it is an out and out falsehood. I agree that there are many causes for Labour’s current difficulty. However, having a leader who consistently polls a distant third behind ‘Don’t Know’ when voters are asked who would make the best PM is not only one of those reasons, it is the primary reason Labour has gone from ‘struggling’ under Miliband to ‘in existential peril” today.

“And then the evidence you provide is that the left is doing badly in Ireland too. Do you see the problem?”

No, because the evidence I provided was that of political groupings pursuing explicitly Corbynite strategies and policies under maximally favourable conditions and still getting utterly clobbered, contra the expectations of many Corbynistas here and elsewhere that absent sabotage by the PLP/the Tory Press/MI5/The Freemasons that Corbyn’s Labour would be readying itself for government.

“The fact is that if there was any serious alternative to Corbyn, the PLP would have put him or her forward in the recent leadership election, and s/he would probably have won.”

There are dozens of serious alternatives to Corbyn. I have no doubt that, say, Keir Starmer, Dan Jarvis, Chuka Umunna, Hillary Benn and Liz Kendall would all be vastly more popular with the electorate than Corbyn is, and would do a far better job opposing May given the massive, continually open goal that is Brexit. (Though, to be fair, Corbyn is so politically incompetent he’s managed to find a political stance on Brexit guaranteed to alienate both Leavers AND Remainers, so even zero opposition would probably be more effective than him. We are, after all, talking about the man who failed to make political hay out of IDS resigning from the cabinet because he found Osborne’s policies too heartlessly right-wing).

The problem is that none of these people are acceptable to the current Labour party selectorate, which is comprised of people whose ideological preferences are hugely at divergent from the electorate as a whole, and who have largely brought into Corbyn’s somewhat creepy and (IMHO) frankly juvenile cult of personality. In other words, if there’s a crisis of the left affecting UK Labour, it is in no small part due to the inability of the party selectorate to accept that the party needs to appeal to voters that do not think exactly as they do.

“Let’s not forget that as recently as the late 1990s, almost every country in Europe was governed by the centre left.”

This is not only a highly, highly contentious statement (Kohl was in power until 1998, Chirac succeeded Mitterand in 1995, Aznar became PM of Spain in 1996 and Fianna Fail came to power with the PDs in 1997, among other, successful centre-right politicians of the late 90s I’m too lazy to google right now) all you’re really saying is ‘centre-right parties came to power after centre-left parties lost elections’, which is about as analytically insightful as the observation that sunsets generally follow sunrises.

“Corbyn certainly doesn’t have a solution to this problem but then nobody else does either, so there you go.”

Except with Corbyn leading Labour there is zero space for other politicians within Labour to develop a political strategy for reconnecting to the political mainstream. He’s not only a big part of the problem, he’s a massive impediment to finding a solution. Which is why I find the willingness of so many on the nominal left to offer him even the mildest of support so utterly, totally baffling. It’s like trying to cure lung cancer by going from one pack a day to two.

Dipper

What voters want from a political party is that the party holds them and their interests paramount as it goes about its business. When it implements a policy, it makes sure that policy is implemented in a way that benefits them and their group. They want to be sure that in the difficult and complex world of politics, the people they have voted for will look after their interests. The modern Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market – Just managing families – dead centre in her Downing Street speech.

Anybody who thinks that the Conservatives are going to hold paramount the interests of ‘just about managing’ families has been played for a sucker.

kidneystones

Corbyn, like Trump, is the consequence – not the cause of the some twenty years of failed policies.

So, what you’re saying is that the present is the consequence and not the cause of the past? is that it?

Shall we ponder for a moment? …

Actions and decisions have consequences …

Thank you, Captain Obvious! Your work here is done.

ZM

It’s not ‘Britain’ that wants the EU to fail; it’s the people who were strong supporters of UK withdrawal from the EU who want that, because to them failure of the EU would provide vindication, or at least a plausible appearance of it.

‘I don’t see why Britain would want the EU to fail — the UK is better off being neighbours with stable prosperous countries in the EU than a lot of failed states pulling out of the EU I would think….??’

Yeah just to be absolutely precise (again) I don’t think the UK would ever want the EU to fail, exactly. But if the perception gains ground that the EU is trying to shaft the UK (and remember it’s in the EU’s interests to do just that) ‘tit for tat’ moves can spiral out of control and might be politically popular.

The joker in the pack is the new Trump Presidency. Almost all American Presidents since the war have been (either de facto or de jure) pro-EU for reasons of realpolitik. Trump might go either way but we know he holds grudges. In recent months Angela Merkel chose to give Trump veiled lessons on human rights, whereas the May administration has done its utmost to ditch all its previous ‘opinions’ and fawn all over him.Who is Trump likely to like most?

If the UK goes to Trump and begs for help in its economic war with the EU, Trump might listen.

More generally (and a propos of nothing, more or less), it might be ‘number magic’ but at least since the late 19th century ‘Western’ history tends to divide into 30 year blocks (more or less). You had the 40 year bloc between the Franco-Prussian war and 1914. Then of course the 30 years of chaos between 1914 and 1945. Then the Trente Glorieuses between 1945 and 1975. Finally we had the era of the ‘two neos’: neoliberalism at home, and neoconservatism abroad (AKA the ‘let them eat war’ period) between 1976 and 2006.

We now seem to be moving into a new era of Neo-Nationalism, with a concommitant suspicion of trans-national entities (e.g. the EU), a rise in interest in economic protectionism, and increasing suspicion of immigration. Needless to say, this is not a Weltanschauung that makes things easy either for the Left or for Liberals. One might expect both the soft and hard right to thrive, on the other hand.

@Dipper

Where to start …

“Policy is a misleading guide to whether a party is left or right.”

You what?

I would have thought that policy, by which I mean actually implemented policies and actions, with real effects, rather than rhetoric, sound-bites or general bullshit, is precisely how we determine if a party is left or right.

As for the remainder of that paragraph:

“The current conservative party is running a significant deficit …”

As any decent economist, and even George Osborne, will tell you, the deficit is an outcome of the economy, not under the direct control of the chancellor so, despite the rhetoric, it’s not really meaningful to use as a policy target. Further, IIRC, in the history of modern advanced economies, I believe they have run deficits in something like 98% of years, so the presence of a deficit is hardly unusual if you’re in government.

“… is committed to maintaining the NHS free at the point of use …”

This is just a bullshit phrase and, in the context of actual policy, entirely meaningless. The Tory party has a long term project to privatise large sections of the NHS, and is currently driving it into the ground as a means to this end. New Labour laid the foundations for this to happen, so is equally to blame. No self-respecting left party would go anywhere near those policies.

“… at the last election touted state spending as the way to improve economic performance.”

More sound-bites. Nothing is delivered. Believe it or not, the state spends money with this aim all of the time. The scope of what new spending is to be delivered is likely to be small.

The other items sound like you think that we are still in the centrist liberal nirvana of Blair/Clegg/Cameron where we were governed by managerialist technocrats, concerned with “what works”, delivering much the same policy no matter who was elected, only competing with each other on the basis of media platitudes. But that has caused massive resentment, failed, and is the reason for Brexit and Corbyn. Precisely because none of those parties were delivering policies that benefited most people.

Indeed, I think that you will find that 600,000 Labour Party members believe that there is, or rather should be, a big dividing line in policy between themselves and the Tory Party.

“The modern Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market – Just managing families – dead centre in her Downing Street speech.”

This reads like it has come directly from Central Office. Do you really believe that the Tories give two hoots about “just managing families”? Did Hammond reduce Osborne’s austerity plan in any way in the last Budget?

Labour, as a whole, certainly doesn’t seem to know who it represents ATM. There are multiple reasons for that: an irredentist PLP, a media sympathetic to the PLP and determined to trivialise or ignore Corbyn, and the disorganisation and incoherence of Corbyn and his organisation amongst them. But deposing Corbyn and returning to neoliberal bullshit won’t solve the reasons why he exists.

novakant

I wasn’t aware that I was supposed to organize the opposition.

You’re not, of course. But when you wrote ‘I have no idea why nobody does it’, it wasn’t immediately clear to me that what you meant was ‘I have no idea why the Labour leadership doesn’t do it’ (where ‘it’ referred back to ‘hit them over the head with this’, and ‘them’ referred back to ‘the vast majority of people’ and ‘this’ referred back to ‘the fact that the Tories have no idea at all what they are doing and their policies are not in the interest of the vast majority of people’).

There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in the interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect?

Seriously, I don’t see that.

Perhaps that’s a result of where you’ve chosen to look. Seriously, where have you looked? have you, for example, looked at the Labour Party’s website?

Sidenote to J-D @ 8 on parties with religious identification

The disappearance of religious affiliation or identity as an organizing principle in Europe is interesting. You might recall that the British Tory Party was an Anglican Party, committed to establishment and the political disability of Catholics and Dissenters, as defining elements of their credo. Despite the extreme decline in religious observance in Britain, I imagine there remain strong traces of religious identity in British party identification patterns.

Elsewhere in Europe, the Greek Orthodox Church plays a political role in Greece and Cyprus, though the current SYRIZA government is somewhat anti-clerical. Anti-clerical doctrines have been revived in France by tensions with Muslims.

There really is a strong element to the Brexiteer mindset that the UK leaving is the first step in the break up of the EU. (Because everyone else also wants to leave, but haven’t been brave enough to do it until they see plucky Britain showing the way.)

“EU carrying on much the same without us” would be a bad outcome in this worldview. Definitely much worse than “all the individual countries doing great, but no EU”, and opinions differ on where “EU breaks up with much economic losses and some fighting” fits on the scale.

ZM: Compared to Australia, I think the difference is the degree of unity between your neighbours. Team Brexit don’t want to be Canada to the EU’s USA. This isn’t new: preventing the continent from being united without us has been one of the main goals of our foreign policy for the best part of a millenium.

84 comments about why labour can’t win, lots of blaming Corbyn but no one has mentioned Scotland. Without forming an alliance with the SNP labour can never again win power, regardless of how popular they are. The alternative – the SNP being somehow destroyed and labour regaining its Scottish stronghold – is likely impossible. So the question becomes who is better able to negotiate a deal with the SNP – Corbyn or a reheated tony Blair? I would suggest it’s Corbyn. Labour will win again once they get the guts to s al that deal, which we know milliband and his mates will refuse to do.

Of course if brexit happens and Scotland leaves then England will be permanently Tory. But once brexit happens no one in the rest of the world is going to care about who rules crumbling, backwards, stagnant Britain (even more so if it’s little England).

Its true you can get just about any outcome at an election with three parties in a first-past-the-post system, so its possible for Labour to win a majority from here with a complete Conservative collapse. But that just says something about the arbitrary nature of FPTP, and anyway it sure aint where I’d put my punting money. And if it does happen it will very clearly be DESPITE Corbyn and his old Trot backers, not because of them – I reckon some of the posters here are living in fairyland.

What I can’t understand from this distance is why the Lib-Dem’s stocks aren’t rising rapidly. Brexit should be energising their base for a start. They oughtta be loudly and very rudely, in the headline-creating style of Trump, crying “we wuz robbed” about that referendum and hence denying the government’s legitimacy. This would have the secondary effect of intensifying divisions in both the Labour and Tory parties on the issue (they need Bill Clinton – not Hillary, she’s a hopeless strategist – to explain triangulation to them).

Electorates have, as dsquared implied, amazingly short memories – surely they’re not still paying the price for the wanton idiocy of that coalition?

Stephen,

“(b) people in the UK who want the EU to fail, in the sense of the grand ever-closer-union EU project, with a ruling supranational state paying no attention to the wishes of its people, being abandoned. There are indeed such people; they would probably argue that it is in fact the grand EU project that has resulted in some EU countries failing economically and becoming impoverished. Are they wrong?”

I would think the last thing the UK wants is a whole lot of failed countries next door in Continental Europe if the EU failed spectacularly like that.

But I think I can see what you mean — some people in favour of Brexit might want to see the EU disband and fail as a transnational political entity so the countries within the EU go back to having more national Sovereignty, but they want the EU to fail in this sense without actually hoping that the EU fails because all the countries in the EU become economically and politically unsalvageable.

Is that about right?

bruce wilder:

It is not inconceivable to me that Scandanavia, Netherlands and Switzerland might be persuaded to form a downsized EU2 sans Euro with Britain and a reluctant Ireland.

Is that spelled EFTA? (Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland are members; Sweden, Denmark, and the UK used to be members; Ireland and the Netherlands never were.)

J-D, when was the last time that labour won enough seats to govern the country without winning any in Scotland? I don’t know how to easily obtain such information but I would suggest to you it is a fairly rare occurrence. Even under Tony Blair a lot of the seats were in Scotland (and Blair benefited from a remarkable LibDem success in Scotland and Wessex which will never be repeated). Now I’ll grant you it’s possible that the Tories will be so unpopular 5 or 10 years from now that Blair’s achievement could happen again (and I think Labour did it in 1945 too) but it’s entirely possible for the Labour Party to get a huge swing and still fail to win without help from the SNP. Realistically, Labour’s chances depend on the SNP, and trying to win without them means hunting down an electoral alchemy like they found in 1997 – which is hard to do and risky to depend upon.

If Corbyn can remake himself as a left wing populist (I think he lacks the fire to do it, but whatevs) and the electorate can be convinced that the negative consequences of Brexit are the Tories’ fault and not Europes (remember the British are always willing to blame foreigners for their problems) then Labour might be able to win without Scotland. But that’s a pretty big ask, in total.

Even now some are promoting a system of ‘two-class’ immigration controls that adversely hit poorer migrants, while others have suggested that Labour is a party for those who work, not the ‘undeserving poor’.

Find you a Blairite careerist who can do both
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rachel-reeves-brexit-immigration-labour-mp-riots-uk-conference-speech-a7334266.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rachel-reeves-says-labour-does-not-want-to-represent-people-out-of-work-10114614.html

@engels

And Reeves, like Umunna, gets funding from PwC.

ZM

Entirely right.A whole lot of failed countries next door in Continental Europe his the last thing anyone in the UK would want.

Seeing the EU disband as a transnational political entity, or at least to reform itself so that the current impoverishment of many EU countries is reversed, would be an entirely different matter, and it is not clear what the rational objections would be.

Mind you, that would probably involve having Jean-Claude Junker being carried out of the EU Commission offices, kicking and screaming. Not obviously an objection.

derrida derider

What I can’t understand from this distance is why the Lib-Dem’s stocks aren’t rising rapidly.

I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that you can’t understand, I think that you don’t want to understand, witness …

… surely they’re not still paying the price for the wanton idiocy of that coalition?

Yes, of course that’s what it is. Obviously. It could hardly have been more predictable.

faustusnotes

J-D, when was the last time that labour won enough seats to govern the country without winning any in Scotland? I don’t know how to easily obtain such information but I would suggest to you it is a fairly rare occurrence.

The information is easily accessible, so my recommendation to you would be a diet of less pontification and more research. The 315 seats Labour won in England and Wales in 2005 (that’s two elections back) would probably have been a high enough total by itself to form government (and indisputably was higher than the number of seats the Tories won in England and Wales); the 357 seats Labour won in England and Wales in 2001 (that’s three elections back) certainly would have been enough.

Now I’ll grant you it’s possible that the Tories will be so unpopular 5 or 10 years from now that Blair’s achievement could happen again

In that case, you’re granting that you were in error in your earlier claim (the one I was questioning):

Without forming an alliance with the SNP labour can never again win power

You also repeat:

Realistically, Labour’s chances depend on the SNP

without answering the obvious question: ‘Why would the SNP be interested in a deal? What’s in it for them?’

The only think workers have is their work, their energy, skills, and abilities.

Aka labour power, it’s also the only thing unemployed workers have—only difference is in their case they’re not able to sell it.

FFS, J-D@104, cut me a little rhetorical slack. My point was indeed that I don’t think past strategic incompetence is likely to be a barrier to future Lib-Dem success. And the current UK political environment makes that especially so. It just depends if the Lib-Dems have the people to recognise and seize their opportunity.

Dsquared succinctly notes @22 that past ineptitude (actually, worse) led directly to really nasty outcomes for Fianna Fail supporters yet that has not prevented Fianna Fail riding high at present. And that is not at all untypical of long-lived political parties’ experience in parliamentary democracies.

novakant

Now there might be a big media conspiracy to drown out these voices, but I think it’s more plausible that the current Labour leadership is just not very good at this game.

I don’t regard failure to achieve something very difficult as evidence of incompetence, and my opinion is that getting your statements regularly reported in the news media is very hard (and I don’t think we have to assume a media conspiracy for this to be true). You haven’t provided any reason to think that getting statements regularly reported in the news media is easy.

Well! Those majority achievements of labour were more recent than I thought but still before the era of UKIP and the collapse of the lib dems. With UKIP spoiling the labour vote and the lib dem collapse not really favouring labour, it’s going to be much harder for them to win government than it has in the past without Scotland.

J-D, I would have thought that the benefit to the SNP of a deal would be keeping the Tories out and forcing the whole country to the left. Isn’t that enough reason?

Bruce Wilder at 81:

“If your opponent is handling dynamite, best not to get too close and certainly a bad idea to try to snatch it from them”.

True to form, Mr Corbyn is trying to get his hands on the red stick just weeks before the first explosion is due to go off: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/09/jeremy-corbyn-uk-is-better-off-out-of-eu-with-managed-migration

“The benefits system discourages this as getting back onto benefits from having worked is a difficult process. Some people prefer not to take jobs because the risk that when the job ends they will not be able to get cash from the benefits system in a timely way.”

Doesn’t this suggest that it isn’t the benefits that are the disincentive, but rather the ‘difficult process’ of returning them after losing work? Should be easy to solve, if someone actually wanted to solve it.

In fact the only elections where Labour won power where they wouldn’t have done without Scotland are 1964 and Feb 1974. Until 1983 the Conservative party held a decent number of Scottish Constituencies. Indeed even winning a majority of the Scottish popular vote in 1956.

@Dipper: “The commonality of interests between workers who want to get out and work and non-working workers who would rather someone else takes the strain exists only in the minds of people who regard both groups with contempt.”

Me: “Did it occur to you that these cohorts aren’t static, but might overlap substantially?”

@Dipper: “Yes. I know.”

Que?

So their commonality “exists only in the minds of people who regard both groups with contempt” but … they are substantially the same people.

JD @ 111

The ‘evil’ in that sentence should have been in inverted commas as I was illustrating a tactic of Labour politicians rather than expressing my own point of view.

derrida derider

My point was indeed that I don’t think past strategic incompetence is likely to be a barrier to future Lib-Dem success.

It won’t affect their chances forever, but it is plainly affecting them now, and your apparent expectations about how quickly the effect will dissipate are unrealistic.

@121 – I spent some time going through the figures after the last election, and it seemed to me that four different things accounted for the UKIP surge, such as it was.

Firstly, they picked up votes from all over; there were seats where all the three main parties lost 2-3% and UKIP put on 6-9%. But UKIP were big news in 2015 (gee, thanks, BBC), in a way that’s just not going to be the case in 2020.

Secondly – and very importantly – UKIP took votes from the Far Right. Over and over again, looking at some Northern seat where the UKIP vote had risen from (say) 5% in 2010 to 20% in 2015, I’d notice that the 2010 results also included 8% for the BNP and 2% for the English Democrats, or something similar. They hoovered up the fash vote, in short, and in some of those places the fash vote was more substantial than we’d like. But they’ve done it now; there’s no additional source of far-right votes that they could tap into to take that 20% up to 30%.

Thirdly, the 2015 election was the year of Lib Dem collapse; in a lot of seats a chunk of the vote seems to have gone straight from the Lib Dems to UKIP, presumably because some people voted on the basis that they wanted to punish the Tories but they certainly weren’t going to vote Labour (or vice versa). That’s not only a one-off resource but one that’s going to turn negative at the next election; the Lib Dems are doing rather nicely at the moment.

Lastly, there were seats where UKIP picked up votes that should have gone to Labour. Typically these were former Labour seats which were expected to swing back to the Labour Party; in the event, instead of Labour putting on 5-6% (and taking the seat) Labour put on 1-2% and UKIP put on 5%+. The perception of a UKIP surge, which was strongly connected with the coverage they were getting in the media (see first point), effectively put the lid on a possible swing to Labour in several places. But this is as close as they got to “spoiling the Labour vote” or taking votes from Labour – and, again, it’s not likely to be the case next time round.

I’m still optimistic, in a very heavily qualified (not to say heavily hearted) sort of way.

Layman @ 118

Simplifying the bureaucracy involved in claiming after a short period of employment is one of the reasons for introducing Universal Credit. UC replaces Jobseeker’s Allowance and a number of other out of work benefits. Unlike JSA a UC claim doesn’t end immediately when you start work so resuming getting benefits is simple.

After Corbyn’s speech, is Labour the new NDP and the LibDems the new Liberals? Are LibDems the only official pro-Remain party at this point? What a mess.

faustusnotes

Well! Those majority achievements of labour were more recent than I thought …

Hence the recommendation that I made to you.

… but still before the era of UKIP and the collapse of the lib dems

It is true that even the most recent occasions when Labour won a majority of seats in England and Wales were before the recent increase in support for UKIP. But there is no particular reason to think that UKIP will achieve the same sort of results at the next election and some reason to doubt it. (This is apart from the detailed analysis already given by Phil, suggesting that the extent to which UKIP is bad for Labour electorally has been overstated.) There is no basis for estimating the electoral performance of UKIP once the UK has withdrawn from the EU. Possibly support for UKIP will be just as high at the next general election, or even higher, but possibly it will collapse. We can only guess. Possibly opinion polling after the withdrawal will give some clue.

It is also true that the most recent occasions on which Labour has won a majority of seats in England and Wales were in a context where the Liberal Democrats were doing much better than they are now. I don’t expect the Liberal Democrats to recover to their former high point by the time of the next election, although recent opinion polls suggest they are recovering a bit. But it’s not clear how important a strong performance by the Liberal Democrats is to Labour’s prospects. Labour was able to win a majority of seats in England and Wales in 1966, back when the Liberals were doing as badly as the Liberal Democrats are now, or possibly even worse.

I would have thought that the benefit to the SNP of a deal would be keeping the Tories out and forcing the whole country to the left. Isn’t that enough reason?

First, it’s not clear how important keeping the Tories out and forcing the whole country to the left are as objectives for the SNP. Second, it’s not clear that if the SNP made a deal with Labour it would increase the chances of keeping the Tories out and forcing the whole country to the left.

Strictly as a matter of historical fact, Rachel Reeves is wrong: the Labour Party was founded as a party for the unemployed (among others), in the sense that it aimed at getting jobs for the unemployed. The first Labour manifesto, for the 1900 general election, called for ‘Useful Work for the Unemployed’ (and also for welfare benefits, in the form of ‘Adequate Maintenance from National Funds for the Aged Poor’ and ‘Adequate Maintenance for Children’).

But even if she were historically accurate, what difference does it make? It is just as bad for a party to decide never to change from the way it used to be as it is for an individual. (That 1900 manifesto also called for ‘No Compulsory Vaccination’.)

JD @ 126

“But I’m still puzzled, because as far as I know Labour politicians don’t accuse the Tories of being evil.”

I’m afraid they generally do, particularly when it comes to elections and getting the core vote out. ‘Lesser-evilism’ is one of the few ‘weapons’ that centrist parties still possess.

Taking pot shots at hereditary wealth is easy. However, the late Duke of Westminster who died last year was well aware of the reasons for his wealth. When asked he if he had tips for entrepreneurs he said “Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror,” (from https://www.ft.com/content/57f2dec2-5e7d-11e6-bb77-a121aa8abd95). In that context the motto ‘The man, not his ancestors’ may well be a cautionary warning to each Duke of Westminster to live up to the challenges and opportunities that hereditary wealth has provided.

It isn’t aristocrats who are holding back the working classes. Labour is committed to not bringing back grammar schools because although some bright pupils do better under grammars schools, the overall results are lower than for similar comprehensives. So it is Labour policy to sacrifice the futures of bright working class children to aid less bright ones. Of course, their own children are exempt from such restrictions, going to a variety of private schools, grammar schools, and highly selective state comprehensives that mysteriously they always seem to get entry to despite living miles away.

Engles @124

That was one of the problems with JSA it was intentionally designed to prevent part time work. If you were on JSA you effectively had a 100% marginal tax rate as all earnings were immediately deducted from benefits. Basically the reasoning was that if you prevent the long term unemployed from taking temporary work employers will have to offer permanent full time positions. What actually happened was that long term unemployed people whose employability skills had deteriorated were unable to ease back into the labour force by taking a part time or weekend job.

UC was deliberately designed to make taking a short term or temporary job actually worthwhile, rather than leave people on benefits for decades.

Dipper

In that context the motto ‘The man, not his ancestors’ may well be a cautionary warning to each Duke of Westminster to live up to the challenges and opportunities that hereditary wealth has provided.

By itself, apart from the gender issue (admittedly an important qualification, but it’s harder to escape in Latin than in English) it’s an excellent motto for anybody; what creates the potential for irony is using it with a hereditary coat of arms.

So it is Labour policy to sacrifice the futures of bright working class children to aid less bright ones.

I don’t think that’s an accurate characterisation of Labour policy, but it would still be better than the Tory policy of sacrificing the futures of the less advantaged to aid those who already have the most advantages. It is not a solution to the problems of the working class to allow a few of its members to escape.

@ J-D 144

“It is not a solution to the problems of the working class to allow a few of its members to escape.”

But some people get to escape. Children whose parents can afford to move to the catchment area of successful state schools get to escape. Diane Abbott’s son got to escape. Steven Kinnock’s child got to escape to Atlantic College. And if no-one is allowed to escape, then what is the point in even trying? No wonder white working class boys do so abysmally at school now.

Oh, and on the Conservatives taking Labour’s policies, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/why-theresa-may-is-the-new-ed-miliband-9gc7v7zpx (£). Just saying …

Dipper — really, there is no evidence at all that grammar schools facilitate or facilitated social mobility. Indeed, they helped create a market for private schools — well-off kids who failed the 11-plus went straight to private schools (one reason why there was such a strong consensus for abolition in most places). Its not that adding a handful of grammar schools will do much harm. Its just that making that her signature issue (as May did) showed that she was clueless about education policy: demonstrating immediately that she hadn’t thought through the first detail of what re-introducing them would involve made her look clueless about policy formation altogether.

Dipper

Oh, and on the Conservatives taking Labour’s policies, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/why-theresa-may-is-the-new-ed-miliband-9gc7v7zpx (£). Just saying …

The Times tells us (should we trust The Times?) that Theresa May is adopting Ed Miliband’s rhetoric, but rhetoric and policies are not the same things. Tories have been using rhetoric about giving ordinary people a better deal for a long time, probably since before the Labour Party existed, so they don’t need to take it from the Labour Party now. Of course, usually they’re lying.

finally, if you have persevered this far then you are probably deeply interested in British politics in which case this is a must-read.

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/dominic-cummings-brexit-referendum-won/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lunchtime_Espresso_10012017

It is a fascinating account by someone at the heart of the referendum about how Remain lost it. It is self-justificatory, indulges in quite a lot of score-settling, in places is rambling, is very long, but is one of the most interesting pieces on politics I’ve ever read.

The commonality of interests between workers who want to get out and work and non-working workers who would rather someone else takes the strain exists only in the minds of people who regard both groups with contempt.

…and in those of economists who have studied the causal connection between punitive unemployment policies and low wage growth

https://www.ft.com/content/7c045a82-d9a9-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e

The resignation of Tristram Hunt points and the combat over the vote will, I think, show how weak support for UKIP actually is today, especially in respect to Labour. Depending, of course, on the quality of candidates my guess is that the Conservatives take the seat from Labour. Both UKIP and the Conservatives need a swing of 8.4 percent and my guess is that the Labour vote is going to: a/stay home; b/choose between Corbyn, the Greens, and UKIP depending on individual priorities. Conservatives who supported UKIP over Brexit are, I think, much more likely to return to the their principal party.

Corbyn needs to stay the course to convince Scottish and Welsh voters that Labour really is different from the conservatives. Support for the Iraq war and labeling Leave supporters as xenophobes and worse comes at a cost. That cost will be electoral defeat until the party has a viable alternative to offer voters. Tory-lite isn’t going to help elect a Labour government anymore than UKIP’s Tory-right is going to provide credibility.

Hunt will probably make a capable administrator at the Victoria and Albert. I wish him every success.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/13/tristram-hunt-quits-labour-mp-triggering-by-election-brexit/

Hunt will probably make a capable administrator at the Victoria and Albert

I think he’d probably make a capable administrator, I’m just not sure about putting him in charge of the whole thing. What on Earth qualifies him for that?

@ engels

“If you don’t think refugees or ethnic minorities are part of the working class you are remarkably stupid or a racist or both.”

Completely missing the point. It is the labour party and fellow travellers that draws these distinctions all the time, dividing and ruling.

“It is the labour party and fellow travellers that draws these distinctions all the time, dividing and ruling.”

Yes, because we know that it’s the Labour Party and the left who are the real racists. Jesus.

He’s also a capable historian.

Indeedy

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-8b5c-Tristram-Hunt-crosses-picket-line-to-lecture-on-Marx/a-8b5c-Tristram-Hunt-crosses-picket-line-to-lecture-on-Marx

@ gastro george, engels

https://diversityuk.org/labour-introduce-race-quotas-ftse-boards/

if you introduce a racial quota and lump all white people in together, then you ignore class distinctions in the white group which will mean under-representation of white working class. The division along racial lines rather than class lines enables Labour and associated state organisations to justify their right to govern on grounds of social justice whilst continuing to give their own families and mates special access.

https://www.faststream.gov.uk/summer-diversity-internship-programme/

A. I’m from one of the following backgrounds:
• Asian/Asian British
• Black/African/Caribbean/Black British
• Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups
• Other ethnic group
B. I’m registered as disabled
C. At age 14, my highest earning parent was:
not self employed
and not in senior management
and employed in one of the following categories:

so a BAME child of a professional is allowed entry to the civil service internship scheme but a white child of a professional isn’t.

Look folks. Labour support is falling off a cliff. there is not a snowball chance in hell of this lot getting anywhere near power. That means a lot of people who deserve some representation in power aren’t going to get it and they will suffer as a consequence. I’m trying to explain why IMHO this is and what Labour should focus on to get back to power. If you’d just rather have another round of that parlour game “You’re a Racist!” then so be it but I don’t see how taking that route is going to improve matters.

@ 165 Good thing Hunt isn’t, then, at least as far as you’re concerned. He’s the director.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/network/dr-tristram-hunt-announced-as-new-director-of-the-va

As for self-respecting historians, ahem, not all PhDs teach, as I’m sure you know. Good museums normally employ a number of area experts and these will include professional historians, especially if the museum is itself an object of study. This is, perhaps, more common in Europe where there are a number of museums of this sort. I would think the VAM qualifies. The curators may study the collection, but also study the artists who produced the work, the architects and builders who worked on the building, and the patrons and their collections in many cases.

Employment competition is often intense, especially at prestige institutions and whilst the curators normally do not have the need, or time, to publish as widely as their peers, they are normally among the most reliable area experts, at least that’s my experience and the opinion of the historians I respect most.

Dipper: “I’m trying to explain why IMHO this is and what Labour should focus on to get back to power.”

Perhaps, but I confess I’ve read your posts, and I’m having a hard time decrypting the prescription. What is it Labour should do, and why would it be a good thing if they did it?

Pavel @ 171

“I’m not sure you’ve seen the number of perfectly capable history PhDs working in completely unrelated fields or not working at all.”

I expect to be in that category myself in a couple of months. But I lack Hunt’s range of options. If he was fed up with politics he could have gone back to being an actual academic and written some more history. But being head of the V&A has more social advantages and a very nice income.

Being a member of the British parliament isn’t really supposed to be a temporary gig that you ditch as soon something more lucrative comes along imo. I’ve always loathed Hunt but I’m surprised how much this annoyed me.

Historically it’s been common for MPs to quit mid-term for a ‘better’ job?

Historically it’s been common for MPs to quit mid-term for a ‘better’ job?
It depends on how far back in history you go, doesn’t it? For the majority of the history of the House of Commons membership was not thought of as a career. (Indeed, for the majority of its history it would not have been considered meaningful to refer to quitting ‘mid-term’.)

engels

For the majority of the history of the House of Commons membership was not thought of as a career.
…which has bugger all to do with my point

On the contrary, it has everything to do with your point. Since it wasn’t a career, giving it up to do something else would have been routine and gone unremarked.

Indeed, for the majority of its history it would not have been considered meaningful to refer to quitting ‘mid-term’.
Umm we’ve had parliamentary terms since the 17th century

So for less than half of the history of the House of Commons.

Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds

Or Steward of the Manor of Northstead, depending on whether his application comes before or after Jamie Reed’s.

Er no
Er yes