UK GE17 Open Thread

Think how badly Brexit must be going for Theresa May to sacrifice another soft theee years with Corbyn as leader of the opposition.

Here are two predictions.

1. Labour is going to get smoked.
2. Corbyn will stand for re-election as Labour leader on a platform of he would have won the election but for the media’s bias. The Labour Party membership will re-elect him.

Is there a non-crazy strategy available to anti-Brexit voters of, say, pouring resources into Tory marginals which the Lib Dems could conceivably win?

This is, presumably, the end of Scottish Labour. If not the end of Labour.

I disagree with Tabasco. I don’t see how Corbyn could have a taste for another 5 years of this or how he could survive the loss of 75 seats (which seems entirely possible).

If someone can give me hope I’ll try to recruit some kids to go and work 24/7 for sensible candidates in winnable seats. But as of now I don’t have a party to recruit them for.

As voting for the lesser-evil is now the definitive approach for mainstream liberals at elections in the West, we hold our collective breath now in anticipation of a concerted push outside the right for Labour under Corbyn. Given British conservatism and anti-leftism, it is unlikely that Labour actually wins. Still, Tory under May’s super-vileness will demand the participation of every UK voter in stopping the great calamity that would be a pro-Trump, racist, anti-immigrant, anti-poor party from power. Even barring the remote chance of a Labour victory, denying the Tories an outright majority and therefore carte blanche is an imperative that must persuade all decent people. Right?

Please explain to this confused American why calling for an election is an action of rank partisanship and unfairness. (Serious question, I don’t get it at all but would like to.) Is there really no chance at all that the anti-Brexiteers can combine forces and get themselves a good result?

Thanks!

The problem Theresa May faces was well articulated by John Quiggin and Francis Coppola (https://crookedtimber.org/2017/03/17/deal-or-no-deal/); that the EU would go for a punitive deal and try and force the UK to cave in and accept it. There is a majority in the current parliament terrified of life outside the EU and the responsibilities that come with it, who would vote to accept such a deal. May would find herself being forced to accept a poor deal by parliament, and hence have to call an election to avoid having her premiership end in disaster.

By calling an election now May is gambling that she can get a clear mandate to negotiate for a hard Brexit with the EU. Paradoxically, this gives the UK the best chance of negotiating a good and friendly exit deal with the EU as the possibility that by applying pressure they can get the UK parliament to cave in will have been taken away.

It is refreshing to have as leader a politician who understands how to lead, how to state your case and then push for support, who understands that leadership involves taking calculated risks, and who does the calculation and then goes all in. The FT says the “Vicar’s daughter inherited grit, sense of duty and no-nonsense attitude”. I predict the UK population will agree with the FT, recognise these are exactly the qualities needed right now, and give her a landslide victory.

@ Dipper, I’m really having a hard time parsing what you said @11. I think it’s this: The EU is set to force a bad deal on May. A majority of Parliament are frightened of a bad deal, so when the EU forces that bad deal, that majority will endorse the bad deal, and May will be stuck with that bad deal. By calling an election instead, May will get a mandate for a bad deal, which will cause the EU to offer a not-bad deal. So this is a smart move for May.

It seems to me I’ve gone wrong in there somewhere. Help me out.

@ Harry: ‘Is there a non-crazy strategy available to anti-Brexit voters of, say, pouring resources into Tory marginals which the Lib Dems could conceivably win?’

It would have to be in constituencies that were pro-remain or marginal in the referendum. It would also depend on how strongly the LDs argue that article 50 can be reversed and push for a second referendum.

How many candidates will UKIP put up? Some of their voters will be happy to return to the Tories post Brexit. But a lit who went from Labour will find it harder to vote Conservative. A lot of Corbyn’s policies should be popular with them but he has his difficulties with getting consistent messages from other MPs. He’ll need a clear policy on Brexit and whatever that is a section of the party will be alienated. I don’t know how he’ll do in Scotland and how the possibility of a 2nd independence referendum will play.

John T, I think the rationale is more that major constitutional changes are underway which weren’t debated in the last election and these being implemented by a PM who was not the party leader at the last election. This at least will give the electorate some kind of say on the terms of Brexit. Anyway, it looks like the Conservative will get a mandate for Brexit negotiations and Labour will get a new leader.

It’s grim alright. We now face five years of totally uninhibited Tory rule due to the stubborn refusal of a minority of a minority of a minority to recognise that Corbyn (or any Corbyn-esque, Corbyn-lite, or Corbyn-flavoured replacement) is not only totally unelectable, but would be disastrous if ever actually allowed near power. The only real questions are –

a) Do the Lib Dems recover enough in the SW to keep May’s majority to double digits and provide an intellectually credible anti-Brexit opposition?
b) Are Corbyn and his supporters crushed sufficiently completely, and in a humiliating enough fashion, that they absent the field completely and allow Labour to regain a modicum of electoral credibility under a Macron/Schultz analogue? Or as others have warned here do they cling on in barnacle like fashion in order to finish off the party and complete the UK’s conversion into a one-party state?
c) Does Aaron Banks manage to ooze his way into parliament, or does he get seriously schwacked and go back to offending the people unfortunate enough to be in his immediate proximity rather than the country at large?
d) Once the dust settles and May has her own, almost certainly overwhelming, parliamentary majority does she take the opportunity to get rid of mediocrities like Boris Johnson and Liam Fox that her colleagues inexplicably insist sit in cabinet?
e) Who will John McDonnell, Diane Abbott, Ken Livingstone and Corbyn himself blame for their own hopelessness and general inadequacy as their political careers come to a predictably catastrophic end? (Just kidding – the answer, of course, is Tony Blair).

I found May’s short speech genuinely terrifying as well as infuriating: vote Conservative to make ME stronger, so that I can sweep aside all the inconvenient questioning and opposition in Parliament [what opposition??] to the unassailable Will of The People. This is barely distinguishable from the sort of authoritarianism offered by Trump or Erdogan, but we have a majority of the media all too happy to go along with the claim that Brexit is the Will of The People so anyone questioning it must be crushed forthwith. No, of course the British don’t do fascism so there’s nothing to worry about, but at the very least this is not a good look from the perspective of continental Europe – and as someone remarked on Twitter, it also seems to fall into the Greek fallacy that a vote will strengthen the negotiating hand, ignoring the fact that the EU 27 have voters to worry about too.

What is Labour supposed to do?

If the issue is “credibility” or being “intellectually credible” (god, that is some terrible “manufactured consent” kind of bs) then basically it’s having policies which are acceptable to the bulk of the media and opinion makers. Because Labour are only “not credible” as long as the people who apparently decide what is credible say so. Because the policies aren’t being objected to in any kind of evidence based fashion. It’s all an “everyone knows” kind of thing.

But Labour’s members have rejected those policy positions and why should the party be held hostage by the an undemocratic minority of opinion makers? There is even evidence that many of the policies are popular when not associated with any party or person.

It has been disheartening to watch from here in the US. Corbyn or anyone who might not dismiss the policies and ideas Corbyn was elected to push forward never had a chance. The entire apparatus of British opinion at all levels was committed to doing everything possible to bring down the Corbyn wing of Labour. Even if they had to “burn the village to save it”.

What has been a little bit interesting is the difference the way the media’s treatment of Clinton and Corbyn has been addressed by some people. The focus on their “gaffes” or “issues” was for Clinton a failure of the media and indictment on the whole enterprise. But similar treatment for Corbyn was par for the course and mentioning it has been considered whiny and Corbyn should have been able to completely defeat the media attacks if he was any good. That he couldn’t was further evidence of how bad he was.

“Can anyone explain why on earth Labour is going along with this? I’m not a fan of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act personally, but since it exists not using the veto it gives Labour seems suicidal. What are they thinking?”

Because it appears undemocratic to be obstructing an election, and because they would be (opportunistically) accused of ‘going against the will of the people’, a serious charge in these nationalistic times.

kent @9: it was so unfair and partisan, that this is what the opposition declared http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39630899

Given the political situation and opportunities she faces, it would be have been absolute political malpractice for Theresa May not to go for a quick election this summer. Yes, she has broken her word, but I don’t think any voter cares.

Speaking of political malpractice, of course Corbyn, who could block this election, does not.

@ Tabasco, I expect you are dead on right. Corbyn will not step down. Corbyn and the Labour Left cannot fail, they can only be failed.

@ Dipper. Boy , are you in for disappointment. May is doing this for several reasons, Of course, the primary reason is to win on her own an huge Conservative majority in her own name, putting her up there with the Iron Lady in the Conservative pantheon (and show David Cameron and all those tof boys a thing or two). However, that huge Conservative majority (I expect close to 200 hundred seats), will also make all those hard militant Briexiters on her back bench who currently make her life uncomfortable a mere noisy nuisance. (I expect Boris Johnson and the others to be seen off to political oblivion shortly after the election, or until the deal is cut with the EU that May can blame on them.) The fact is Dipper ol’boy, if the French see Jean Marie off in their upcoming election and join up with the Germans, Spainish, and Benelux on the EU negotiations, the UK is going to get an offer similar to the one Michael Corleone gave to Senator Pat Geary in the Godfather II (we give you nothing, but you pay us for the privilege of giving you nothing.) May will need that huge majority to shove that agreement through Parliament

Of course she will want to rewrite UK law and benefits in the most pro-business, City friendly way, she can, while cutting benefits and starving the NHS, because that is what Tory Governments do.

So despite 7 years of austerity, low growth, destruction of British influence in Europe, reduction of British influence around the world, and the likely departures of Scotland and Northern Ireland from the UK, the Tories are going to be Government for another 5 years and probably long after that as well. It reminds me why I don’t mind the American presidential system when I compare it to the British 1st past the post parliamentary system.

The conservatives are doing what they can and nobody should be even slightly annoyed, or surprised. Labour problems are entirely self-created. They ran as Tory light for years, dismissed much of the working-class base as a loathsome after-thought, and were just about as bellicose and corrupt as the Tories. The PLP is at odds with much of the membership and much of the membership is at odds with much of the public.

Blaming the Labour leader is about as useful as punching a hippie. Jeremy didn’t create Labour’s problems and only a serious debate about issues, not personalities, offers a way forward. Too many of Labour’s ‘sensible’ supporters regard Jeremy as the real enemy, not the Tories – their argument being (we suppose) that Labour’s lamentable record on immigration, concern for the working-class, love of regime change, and utter lack of a coherent vision have less to do with Labour’s unpopularity than the current leader.

They’re going to be crushed, but that just might wake a few people up. Jeremy isn’t the enemy. The Tories are.

“it hardly feels like summer is coming unless there is a massive, polarising electoral campaign in the UK.”

God, what I wouldn’t give for a massive, polarizing, SIX WEEK electoral campaign here in the U.S.

@efcdons21

Yes, it’s the fault of a shadowy cabal of opinion makers that a man who supported the Provos, appeared on PressTV for money, praised the socioeconomic models of Venezuela and East Germany, hired the David Irving of Stalinism as his press bod, runs a legendarily incompetent political operation, and has spent a good deal of his leadership shielding anti-semites in his party is currently running a distant third behind ‘don’t know’ in the PM stakes. That the electorate simply don’t rate such a man and don’t want him leading their country is an hypothesis that is just too ridiculous to even contemplate. There must be a conspiracy.

As to ‘undemocratic minorities’ – that would be the definition of the Labour membership (or rather, the remnants of the Labour membership that haven’t left in disgust and the SWP/Greens/Whatevers who have flooded in on a wave of £3 text memberships). Poll after poll after poll have shown that Corbyn is also hugely unpopular with LABOUR VOTERS who now prefer May as PM by a significant margin.

Accepting that one’s political ideas aren’t terribly popular is a bitter pill to swallow (I should know – I’m a liberal). But the continual search for hobgoblins and grumpkins that are standing in the way of the Inevitable Victory of Socialism is the surest way to ensure that reactionaries rule unimpeded forever.

Dipper: “No deal is better than a bad deal.”

This does seem to be the communication problem. I can’t think of a plausible ‘bad deal’ that is worse than no deal at all. I’m sure I could come up with some implausible ones, but no plausible ones. ‘No deal’ more or less constrains the bounds of the terms to be negotiated, and no terms worse than nothing will be offered, just as no terms much better than nothing will be offered, either. What sort of ‘bad deal’ is May worried about, which would be forced on her by a tricky EU and a frightened Parliament, and which will not be forced on her by a different Parliament, one resulting from this election?

Daragh, JohnT

Thank you. I get the point you make about it being terrible politics for an opposition party to turn down an election, and would consider that to be a complete answer to the question if Labour were down by an ordinary hopeless margin – 10 points, say. The 20 point disaster gap they seem to be facing, on the contrary, seems to me to set up a horrible dilemma. Maybe it makes sense to get massacred quickly rather than die by inches over the next few years.

Efcdons – while I don’t disagree with you, Corbyn has also been a pretty weak and ineffective leader. Compare him to someone like Ken Livingstone in his prime and you’ll see that. Nice guy, not a leader.

The real problem in the UK (much like the US) is that the existing political class are exhausted and bereft of new thinking. Which for whatever reason benefits the right.

Literally every PMQs from here to the next election would end in May telling Corbyn she gave him the chance to put the case for a Labour government to the people and he bottled it.

Not if he had a little more imagination than he patently has. He might have taken the line that May herself has on the prospect of a second indyref:
“Had one not long back, give people a break—next year maybe, if you continue as you are.’

Cian: “…the EU leadership seem to be pushing for the worst possible deal for the UK…”

Can you give some examples? The only things I’ve seen are examples of the EU taking the not-unreasonable positions that you can’t be out of the EU while enjoying all the privileges of being in the EU, and you have to pay your bills on the way out. Those look like bog-standard starting positions given the situation.

JohnT@ 34

I think you’re right there. Then again, May is an historically weak and not terribly competent PM whose paranoid authoritarianism has resulted in a leaky government that has already had to make policy reversals (NIC, the Single Market) that would have been near fatal under normal circumstances. If Jeremy Corbyn was either politically or technically competent as a leader, Labour would have a comfortable poll lead and would be chomping at the bit for an election. Acquiescing to a general election is arguably the least politically tone deaf decision he’s made throughout his leadership, even though that’s a floor-level bar to clear. Same with @41 – If Corbyn was a competent and imaginative political leader, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. That’s the problem.

KingRat @37

Yep. Like I said, I’m not looking forward to the impending triple digit Tory majority and subsequent era of unimpeded rule by incompetent reactionaries. I suppose I’ll have to content myself with that look of spluttering rage, and determination to blame everyone but himself, that Corbyn gets when he knows he’s snookered, after the Tories open up the massive folders on the shelf they’ve got with titles like ‘Provisional IRA – open support for actions by’ and ‘Anti-semitism – coddling and protection within Labour party of.’

That being said, Corbyn is now apparently trying to enforce mandatory trigger ballots across the PLP, so we could end up with the worst of all worlds. A zombie Labour party made up solely of Trotskyist mediocrities devoted solely to agreeing with itself and ritualistic adulation of The Leader and his Awesome Mandate while the Tories get so dizzy with success they start idly wondering if they can get away with literally eating the poor. Which, of course, is exactly what Corbyn’s cabal has wanted from the beginning.

gastro george @42 “I’m frankly surprised, amongst all the Corbyn-hate, that few people here seem to understand why he was elected as leader.”

It’s perfectly understandable. Ed Miliband needed to distract attention away from Unite’s attempts to nobble the Falkirk selection, so he implemented a change to Labour’s electoral rules without giving the proper time and thought to the consequences of his proposed changes. Then, the PLP abandoned its proper role as gatekeeper without considering that this was a deeply dangerous thing to do now that anyone could vote for the leader on the basis of a £3 text message. The parties rolls were subsequently flooded with the kind of brocialists who will never, ever personally face significant ill-effects from Conservative governance and who are therefore free to treat electoral politics as an ideological pissing match rather than an exercise in the art of the possible. And thus – here we are.

And for those talking about Labour ‘betraying the working class’ – since Jeremy Corbyn has become leader there has been a sustained, and massive shift in working class support away from Labour and towards the Tories. It may just be that Tony Blair – Iraq notwithstanding – had a far better idea of what the CDE set wants from its political leaders than trust funders like Corbyn and Milne ever will.

All opinion polls should carry a health warning, but nevertheless reputable one
https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/ac4f13f0-241b-11e7-939c-aada186fb1ac/question/105547e0-241f-11e7-939c-aada186fb1ac/politics
asks people how they voted, and whether they think Theresa May was right or wrong to seek an early general election.

The right/wrong figures, omitting Don’t Knows. are:
Con 62/12
UKIP 61/13
LibDem 50/20
Lab 44/25
SNP 38/31

If these numbers are even approximately right, then Corbyn’s decision not to oppose the early election seems quite correct.

Harry: But as of now I don’t have a party to recruit them for.

Is it totally necessary to have a party before standing? Tiresome. Chained to the master’s tools.

I’m frankly surprised, amongst all the Corbyn-hate, that few people here seem to understand why he was elected as leader. He is, in many ways, an accidental leader, and probably not very good. But he was elected for a reason, which is similar to the reasons for the Brexit vote, but which most people seem inclined to ignore.

It doesn’t matter – what matters is that 48% voted to remain in the EU and now find themselves not being represented politically because Labour couldn’t get it’s bloody act together and was never convincingly for Remain in the first place. I’ll vote LibDem or Green and Labour can go f@ck itself forever, which is the only thing they’re good at anyway.

@ gastro george, Layman, Barry, etc

I’m not going to get into possible outcomes of negotiations because that isn’t the point of the thread. With regard to the election, May has made it clear that parliamentary opposition to Brexit is at the forefront of her mind and she is doing this to get a mandate. It will be interesting how much of her hand she shows during the campaign, whether she advertises a hard brexit explicitly or simply says this is one possible outcome she wishes to negotiate. Also, it will be interesting to see how staunch Remainers like Nicky Morgan and Anna Soubry campaign and what views they will express on May’s stated negotiating ambitions.

Dipper #55

There hasn’t been any real parliamentary opposition to May’s strategy for leaving the EU, so her claim that that is why she is calling a General Election is dubious to say the least. Her claim that there is more opposition in parliament than in the country is upside-down. However perhaps what she fears is that there will be more parliamentary opposition in the future when the dangers of her strategy become clear.

It will be interesting to see how much of her hand May shows in the campaign, and what subsequently she claims to be the mandate that she has received: on current form, it is likely that she will claim a mandate for much more than she openly campaigns for in the next 6 weeks.

May has already said that she wants a Hard Brexit: she said it on her first day as PM. May says that she wants to leave the ECJ and for the UK to opt out of free movement of EU nationals: ie she wants the UK to leave the Single Market. No doubt in the election campaign she will, as usual, use smoke and mirrors to obscure the fact that she has made this choice and make claims about negotiating access to the Single Market; but the choice was made in her first speech as PM.

@John c Halasz 54 – British general elections (like American ones) are usually designated by year (so 2017 in this case).

Dumb question from an American: why is this general election 17 and since when?
Not a dumb question, really, 17=2017. The UK has, in fact, had more than 17 general elections

Daragh, did you vote with a £3 text in the labour leadership election? Because if you didn’t, why do you think other labour outsiders did? It’s always good to heck these kinds of allegations against your own behavior, on the assumption you aren’t special.

A question for people who know more about labour than me: could they actually change leader in the short time before the election? Aren’t their current leadership rules too cumbersome for that?

I’ll never tease my American friends about the fecklessness of their system and their electorate since observing UK politics in the past few years. The political incompetence in each of the major parties has been simply breathtaking, and whatever happens in the next few years all Britons are going to pay a price for it.

Theresa May is the first major party leader since Gordon Brown who looks even vaguely as though she knows what she wants and how to get it. If I was a Brit I would be appalled at the direction she is taking the country – she is a reactionary – but (unless I was a Scot) I would see no alternative to voting for her party. You simply couldn’t vote for the parties of Clegg and Corbyn, and in a first past the post system (thanks to Clegg) voting anywhere else, or not voting at all, is equivalent to voting for May anyway.

I rarely agree with Daragh but his comments in this thread have been spot on.

I have had enough of aging Trots living in some fantasy land where there is a proletarian majority somewhere just aching to cast off the yoke of neoliberal oppression and implement socialism. Their parents gave us Thatcher, and they are giving us May.

Guano@64: an interim agreement of some form … two more years to think what to do next.

I’m not convinced she is thinking that far ahead, or in those terms. She seems to be primarily focused on and good at internal party manipulation. The election will give her enough MPs that she can afford to annoy/dump ones that particularly annoy her, as well as a crop of new and hopefully easy to manipulate MPs that she can bend to her will.

I expect a major panic as it becomes obvious that the EU is willing to close the borders on the night of the 21st or whenever the actual date of exit is. May seems likely to continue to lead with her chin on that one, telling the UK that the hard Brexit will be a glorious victory for the mighty British Empire as her lieutenants bravely force their troops to charge the machine gun posts of EU bureaucracy waving their Union Jacks and wishing they’d been issued ammunition.

Dipper

It is refreshing to have as leader a politician who understands how to lead, how to state your case and then push for support, who understands that leadership involves taking calculated risks, and who does the calculation and then goes all in.

My evaluation of those qualities is not positive but rather neutral. The merit of going all-in depends on what you’re going all-in for; it can be bad as easily as good.

‘I have had enough of aging Trots living in some fantasy land where there is a proletarian majority somewhere just aching to cast off the yoke of neoliberal oppression and implement socialism. Their parents gave us Thatcher, and they are giving us May.’

Ah yes, because the Left is always to blame. The left is to blame for the left, but it’s also to blame for the right. And the centre. If only we lived in a paradise like Poland where there are literally no left wing parties in Parliament, the left has been politically annihilated, and therefore (by this logic) er…the Left should now hold power?

‘If I was a Brit I would be appalled at the direction she is taking the country – she is a reactionary – but (unless I was a Scot) I would see no alternative to voting for her party.’

This is the line pushed by Nick Cohen, Aaronovitch and other presstitutes. It is insane, of course, but very popular amongst Rightists posing as liberals.* They ‘can’t’ back Corbyn etc. as his views are ‘unrealistic’ and so, ‘regretfully’ they ‘must’ vote for May.

It’s very simple. You vote for the party or person whose views are closest to your own. If there is no such person or party, don’t vote. If you are voting Tory, the only possible interpretation of that act is that you are a Tory, or at least more or less in agreement with their policies. Voting Tory and then (incomprehensibly) blaming other actors for ‘forcing’ you to vote thus is logically incomprehensible, and morally vacuous.

Tl; dr:

‘Their parents gave us Thatcher, and they are giving us May.’

No, you are giving us May by your own admission.

It reminds of an what the literary critic Martin Seymour-Smith once said, which is that the major threat to democracy in the West now is not fascists as such but ‘fascists posing as social democrats’.

@Faustusnotes 63 – I don’t know the relevant party rules, but given that the general election is in 6 weeks there is simply no time to physically hold a party election to replace him. He could conceivably resign tomorrow and hand power to an agreed interim leader – probably his deputy, Tom Watson. But he won’t. And in fairness to the man, now that we’re here we might as well see whether any of the skills he showed in campaigning for the leadership twice are transferable to a general election.

Indeed, very simple. If Labour comes out against Brexit tomorrow, I’ll vote for them. Half the country and two thirds of Labour voters are against Brexit, so I don’t see why not. If Labour continues to follow May down the rabbit hole and try to appease the Leave camp, while waffling about ‘soft Brexit’ and ’embracing the opportunities’, I won’t. This is the defining political decision of a generation so show some balls Labour.

(The trouble is of course that the current leadership seems to be quite happy with Brexit, so this is all wishful thinking.)

Here’s Tim Farron, of the ‘Liberal’ ‘Democrats’ refusing to answer the question 3 times, when asked whether gay sex is sinful.

https://twitter.com/AaronBastani/status/827535230391169024

Compare and contrast John F Kennedy’s speech about religion to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, 22 September 1960:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16920600

JohnTH, the Aussie Labour Party would knife him in one morning. They’d have done it months ago and May would not be even considering this election. A large part of this has to be millibands fault for changing the rules to make leadership elections like a primary (that was milliband wasn’t it?) I just hope Corbyn does what novakant says and goes full Leroy Jenkins over brexit, but more than being lukewarm about it I think hisbproblem is simply that he is incompetent. As others have said his policies should be popular but he just isn’t frontbench material.

I like the counterfactual of labour winning in 2010 and then holding a referendum on the eu anyway. I can see some blairist from central casting deciding to use it to wedge the tories, and having it backfire monumentally. But it looks like this time the tories get the infamy of finally sinking the uks moribund economy. Let’s hope labour go down fighting.

‘the current Labour leadership’s ‘centrist’ opponents.’

Yes but it’s the dead eyed extremists of the ‘alt-Centre’ who are the real fanatics in that party. You just need to imagine playing the, so to speak, ‘pass the political parcel’ game to see that most of the current PLP would, ideologically, comfortably fit in gay-hating Tim Farron’s ‘liberal’ ‘democrats’, or, for that matter, David Cameron’s Conservative Party, were they to be ‘teleported’ in.*

Not a few of them would feel comfortably at home in Theresa May’s Conservative party.

*If you don’t believe me, have a read through the LibDem manifesto and just ask yourself, which of these proposals would most members of the PLP have any serious, ideological objections to. Congratulations if you can find one. Two or more gets you a pony.

Daragh @47

Well that’s a pretty impressive rant, though not one I would generally expect from a considered blog like CT. I’m surprised that you didn’t include the Illuminati, or at least Putin, in the conspiracy.

I can’t help but feel sorry for those sturdy Big Beasts in the PLP, who are so effective as politicians that they can’t even mount a coup against the Worst Politician in Westminster (TM).

But when it comes to working-class betrayal, I can’t help feeling that it’s more accurate to gauge their feelings based on their opinions about policies rather than opinions about people. To use the latter is always to infer their opinions about policies. If you hadn’t noticed, Corbyn’s policies are actually quite popular – and would be considered quite banal in almost any other Western European country. It’s only when those policies are mediated through the vitriol directed at Corbyn that they are not.

The question is, what would you prefer? Plausible but dishonest politicians that will promise apple pie but leave you immeasurably worse off, or a rather inadequate politician with the right policies. Both the vote for Corbyn and Brexit were directed against the former, make no mistake. And yet your preference is for them. To what end?

And we are about to see more of the same. May will go to the election with a light manifesto, seek to avoid details or any debate. When she wins, she will then claim a mandate to do what she likes. When the inevitable disappointment over Brexit occurs, where will working-class betrayal be directed? Perfidious foreigners, probably.

Pedantic historian, but I am struggling to detect the faintest resemblance between the current debate and the intellectual climate of the early fifth century.

I’m with novakant – I will vote for the largest pro-European, anti-Brexit party in my constituency. Currently that’s the Lib Dems (who are a not very distant third)

Realistically there was little chance of any of the MPs elected in 2015 being disqualified for breach of spending rules. The standard of proof for prosecuting either the MP or their agent is very high requiring wrongful and dishonest intention rather than an honest mistake about allocating battle bus spending between national and local spending. If there was a fault at national level the party treasurer could face up to one year. However a fine is more likely. Better Together was fined £2,000 for overspending by £57,ooo during the Scottish referendum, the Conservatives are alleged to have overspent by £40,000 so if found guilty a similar size fine is to be expected.

I’m bemused by the fact that some people think Theresa May knows how to get what she wants. I’m not convinced she even knows what she wants. She reminds me of John Major, desperately hanging on buffeted by events outside of her control.

On the Europe exit the EU hold all the cards. The only hope for Britain would be that the EU would take pity on them (always a long shot), but Theresa May and David Davies merry band of Euroskeptics have screwed that up.

Outside the EU it will be years before the UK will have any trade agreements. In fact, it may be years before the UK have a team sufficiently competent at negotiating trade agreements. Britain’s attraction as a manufacturing base for foreign capital is entirely premised upon easy access to the EU. The city (which includes things like accounting and insurance) will survive, but it’s EU related business will probably be lost to Europe. And it’s days as an international center may be ending.

And what is the Tory’s plan? To cut all regulations and gut Human Rights law. Sure, that will fix things. Idiocy.

Here’s a belated response to a previous thread where someone quite reasonably said that pointing out Corbyn is useless is an easy win; what do I propose Labour do about it?

To win, Labour needs to look at the three P’s – personality, positioning, and policy. In that order.

Personality – Labour needs a credible leader. Someone who can deliver when it is needed; can command a majority in the house, can front up to vested interests, and can negotiate effectively with fellow national leaders. Needless to say Corbyn is not that person.

Positioning – who do Labour represent? When stuff happens, who will be uppermost in the mind of a Labour government as they seek to respond? Theresa May put the “just-about-managings” front and central, so people who consider that applies to them know that in principle Theresa May will look after them. Labour talk a lot about people on benefits, people depending on the NHS etc, and whilst these seem to be the same set of people the distinction is important. The Tories represent people who are trying to get themselves and their families a better life, Labour represent people who have given up trying and are looking to the state to provide everything. More people think of themselves in heroic terms – struggling to do the best they can – than in defeatist terms – victims of circumstance that they can do nothing about. So Labour are the party of the defeated, which is not an obvious election winner.

Finally Policy – the least important of the three. There is a whole ecosystem of policy, of pressure groups, think tanks, national and social media, and smart parties pick and choose from whatever is bubbling up as the dominant issues in a way that best furthers the interests of their core group. To illustrate, consider two policies, gay marriage and unilateral nuclear disarmament. To go back thirty years or so, gay rights were still in their infancy and gay marriage was nowhere. This policy has just steamed in from the fringe and been implemented by a conservative government. Now, the conservatives are almost the natural party of gays and lesbians, representing personal freedom and opportunity, and have championed a policy that has benefited hundreds of thousands of people and is now broadly accepted in most of society. Meanwhile Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament has gone nowhere. This is a policy that you can never know is right, you can only know it was wrong, and that you will only know briefly. It is hard to see how this policy can be proven to be a benefit under normal circumstances. The Labour Party should just keep a distance from this until a clear vote winning consensus emerges (ie lots of military people saying we would be better off without trident). Otherwise the Labour Party just gives more people a reason not to vote for them. Needless to say Corbyn makes a big think about his nuclear disarmament pedigree.

Re: 70s Trots. There is some interesting drama capturing the mood of the period. Dusty Hughes play “Commitments” deals with the expectations of revolution under the Heath government of the early 70s, and you can get that in a double-pack with his play “Futurists” about Mayakovsky. See also Trevor Griffiths works such as “The Party” and “Real Dreams”, though those are more part of the 1968 student phase.

A completely different world from the “anti-capitalist” activists today.

@88

“At the moment, quite large sections of the electorate are unaware how disastrous it would be for the UK to rely on WTO rules in two years time”

Indeed, and the trouble is that Labour members are not much better informed. I was at a Momentum event a few weeks ago and the meeting about trade deals was mainly worried about TTIP. The few that had any general views about trade deals seemed to believe the “WTO rules” line that Tories and UKIP have fallen in love with.

soru @84 makes an interesting point. What is Labour’s manifesto going to look like? Presumably, Corbyn will refuse to endorse large sections. The Independent is even speculating that they’ll just list all the (mutually contradictory) resolutions from conference, because that worked so well in 1983.

I don’t know why it gets mentioned so rarely, but EU membership isn’t exactly a fundamentally leftist position by any stretch of the imagination. This is the same EU that is killing Greece, that is an organized lobbyist paradise, etc. How can you get a lot of left leaning people to fight for membership in that without feeling stupid?

Part of the solution seems to be to organize support for EU membership on the basis that doing so is about fighting racism, sexism, classism, transphobia, ableism, and homophobia. Or so. And generally the decent thing to do.

That works better than not, but not well enough. In part, I think, because it is a little of a sham.

@98

You said previously you’d been reading Richard North’s blog. Didn’t you pick up anything he says?

WTO rules alone are not sufficient to maintain existing trade into the EU, we will revert to being a Third Country and get all the pile-ups RN has been warning about. It is not true that the US has “no trade agreements” with the EU. They have plenty of sectoral agreements, that’s what facilitates trade, the lack of a comprehensive FTA is not the issue. A comprehensive FTA with anyone important will take years to negotiate, unless we concede everything to the other side.

Dipper, I read yours @93 and I confess I didn’t find much of a prescription for Labour there. Is that what you were trying to do?

Your first P calls for a different leader, doesn’t really name one, and dismisses Corbyn. Your second P calls for a different position, doesn’t really suggest one, and dismisses Labour’s supporters. Your third P calls for different policies, doesn’t really suggest any, and dismisses Corbyn.

At this point I’m clear on a few things: You don’t like Corbyn, you don’t like Labour, you don’t like Labour voters. But I’m pretty sure I knew that before.

Cian @94

“Their plans are actually way more thought through and coherent than anything from the opposition in the Labour party.”

This.

The only reason that Corbyn is leader is that his internal opponents are people without anything like sellable policies. They stood against the Worst Politician in Westminster (TM) and lost. Twice. They triangulated themselves to death and ended up as what?
Supporters of a little light racism, a little light austerity, representing nothing.

@101
EU membership isn’t exactly a fundamentally leftist position at all. The EU is, at heart, a free trade organisation. Free trade is not, traditionally, an issue close to the Left’s heart.

Now you can make various ‘instrumental’ arguments as to why it would be a good or a bad thing for Britain PLC to remain part of the EU (roughly, based on arguments about the desirability of tariff reductions* and British firms’ access to cheap foreign labour) but it is certainly not an issue that maps easily onto the ‘left-right’ axis.

*arguments which go back to the debate about the repeal of the Corn Laws, another debate in which the Left really played no part.

Gastro George @60

I’ve already explained why ‘but his policies are popular!’ is a rather irrelevant observation @40. I’ll confine myself to adding two more observations. First – voters consider policies hierarchically. They may like Labour policy on, say, school lunches, but they prefer Tory policies on the economy and place the economy higher in their hierarchy of priorities. Currently, the biggest issue for the electorate is Brexit, by an overwhelming margin. On this issue Corbyn has managed to adopt a series of positions so incoherent that he’s managed to alienate both Remainers AND Brexiteers. That’s actually kind of impressive.

Second, as Dipper has put @93 Personality and Positioning are more important than Policy in terms of electoral outcomes. This isn’t that surprising – most people have neither the time nor the inclination to read policy papers. I’ll concede that insofar as Corbyn’s team has bothered to articulate actual policy positions they’ve amounted to little more than reheated Milibandism (which worked so well the first time around). But John McDonnell could come out with a fiscal policy that Friedman would find a bit severe and he’d still be the man who waved Mao’s Little Red Book about during his first budget response. Corbyn could promise to triple MI5’s budget and he’d still be the man who waffled when asked whether police officers should be allowed to shoot terrorists, while they are committing terrorist attacks while being interviewed in the immediate aftermath of terrorist attacks (though again, Corbyn’s ability to find a position that is simultaneously both morally and politically completely indefensible is impressive, in a perverse way).

As to the attempt to remove Corbyn in 2016. You conveniently overlook two facts – first, as leader, Corbyn influences the composition of the selectorate he has to appeal to. Just as the party’s membership shifted to the left under Miliband, it has shifted even further to the left under Corbyn (aided in part by his supporters bullying of members who don’t subscribe to his personality cult, and insistence that his opponents are ‘Red Tories’ etc.). Secondly, the PLP was operating under the – mistaken – assumption that Corbyn was genuinely committed to the Labour party making a serious bid for political power at the next general election. An overwhelming vote of no confidence by one’s parliamentary colleagues is something that most leaders would recognise made successfully contesting a general election impossible, and prompt them to do the decent thing and resign. However, Corbyn is manifestly NOT interested in making a serious bid for political power, as evidenced by his push for mandatory reselections yesterday, even though this would result in Labour basically ceding the field for 3-4 weeks and losing the advantages of incumbency in an election campaign that is already going to be hugely difficult. His goal is to turn the party into an ideological purity cult devoted to agreeing with him and telling each other what wonderful people they all are and how nasty the Tories are, and what a shame it is we can never win because the evil media has brainwashed the electorate so let’s all have a big rally full of other people who agree with us about everything. This is, incidentally, also why Corbyn has remained in post despite the fact that Labour voters now prefer May over him as PM.

Labour has never had a leader as personally selfish and uninterested in implementing policies that might improve the lot of the citizenry as Corbyn, and that has left the PLP with very few options. That there’s already chatter about what is to be done if he clings on after an electoral drubbing, which says it all really.

Elizabeth @92

No-one here is “seeking to discredit any alternatives to the current order of things.” What we’re saying is Corbyn is so deeply politically useless that he presents an insurmountable obstacle to changing the current order of things, and we wish that he would get out of the way. I’ll admit to personally disliking Corbyn for a whole range of reasons, most notably his habit of declaring what a wonderfully personally decent fellow he is while surrounding himself with bullies and encouraging them to torment his opponents. His inability to take any personal responsibility for his failures of leadership while insisting all victories are attributable to him is also pretty unpleasant. This reached a near comical nadir during the Stoke and Copeland by-elections. The victory of Gareth Snell in Stoke (with a substantially reduced majority, after Paul Nutall’s campaign imploded after his lies about Hillsborough became public) was the result of Corbyn’s visionary leadership. The historically unprecedented loss of Copeland, a ruby red Labour seat for generations, was the fault of the perfidy of Mandelson and Blair. I wish that was sarcastic hyperbole on my part, but that was literally their excuse.

Z @102

“Would you really characterize the margin of victory as narrow, especially if you concentrate on England proper (where the presumptive influence of the Labour campaign was presumably greatest; I’m thinking, perhaps wrongly, that Corbyn had little influence on the Scottish vote)?”

No, I wouldn’t characterise the margin of victory in England as narrow. However, the campaign was fought across the UK (which also includes Wales and Northern Ireland BTW) so I don’t see how that’s relevant. Moreover, in a national referendum mobilising every vote counts so unless there were literally no Labour voters left in Scotland (which is far from the case) Corbyn’s failure to influence the Scottish vote would be a massive black mark against him, not an excuse.

“Moreover, opinion polls seem to agree that Labour and Green voters voted Remain in a large majority, so that if you are right that Corbyn and his friends tried to sabotage the Remain campaign, they failed.”

That partisans of political parties whose official positions are enthusiastically pro-European Union would endorse continued membership by a significant margin should be taken as a given. The issue is a) the margin by which they voted for the EU b) the numbers in which they turned out. It can be reasonably assumed that Corbyn’s interventions depressed both.

“In fact, if the YouGov poll I have been reading is to be trusted, Lib-Dem voters did not even vote significantly more for Remain than Labour Voters (68% and 65% respectively).”

I’d like to see that poll. More to the point, I’d like to see several other polls so I can get an average and try to compensate for the inevitable errors that any poll will include. In any case, your argument doesn’t account for the wee matter of the fact that in 2016 the self-identified Labour electorate was significantly larger in size than that of the Liberal Democrats. A greater shift towards remain by LD voters would probably not have been decisive. A greater shift by Labour voters would have (honestly, when it comes to blaming the Lib Dems simple arithmetic seems to go out the window here).

@ Layman 105.

Leader – Rachel Reeves would be my preferred leader
Position – be ambitious for British people. It’s The Labour Party not The Welfare Party. Work to level the playing field and then expect good things from people and allow them to be rewarded.
Policies – Off the top of my head Minimum wage was a good one. More infrastructural investment as the market alone will not deliver. Support small firms through government contracts, and support worker-owned businesses through tax breaks. Suspend Freedom of Movement and provide bursaries for students to study subjects in which we have a shortage (e.g. Doctors and other health-care professionals).

The house of commons is too large. There aren’t enough talented people to fill it — UK electorates are 30% smaller than australian ones, and australian politicians have a significantly simpler job — and it’s of such a size that it’s difficult for individual politicians to get to know more than a fraction of their fellow members or to have any pull based on their own individual voice.

Halve the size of the HoC — this will need english federalism to work, btw — and the quality of your politics will dramatically improve.

Daragh @111

If you could see through your red mist of vitriol, you would see that I’m not arguing about Corbyn’s competence or leadership – I fully accept that they are less than adequate. The point is, because it is how we got here, why was he elected?

Because New Labour was a busted flush, had already lost two elections, had alienated their traditional power base, and the best that they could come up with during the interregnum was to vote in favour of more welfare cuts.

If any of the Big Beasts of Labour had shown the slightest inkling that they understood these failings, they would now be leader.

Daragh 111 – not sure if you see Corbyn as an incompetent or an evil genius able to hold sway over Labour members.
It strikes me that those on the Right of Labour and the right in general like to see themselves as ‘grown up realists’. This always seems to me to be self regarding and has led to an acceptance of growing inequality, break up of working class communities, deregulated markets and wars – all issues debated on this site. There needs to be more self awareness of political motivation rather than seeing what the Daily Mail approves of and calling this good policy formation based on realistic analysis when in fact it is animus against the Left.
It is not clear why ‘realism’ should always be to adopt the position the Tories hold today. This has led to Labour MPs failing to protect their constituents, political crisis and a loss of confidence. Corbyn has had to walk a tightrope to try and hold Labour support. On the Right he has faced constant attacks from MPs seeking to resurrect New Labour – and the frenzied and ill advised tone and substance of these attacks has only made his party support more solid. On the further Right he has to face the new populism, hostile to immigrants and experts, anti Muslim, appealing to the flag and self glorification of the past social arrangements. It could be argued that with any other leader eg Liz Kendal Labour would be in a worse electoral position since it would have become a hollowed out party unable to mobilise its membership, lost its remaining links to its historic base and still be defending things like catastrophic military interventions, bank deregulation and ignoring the result of the referendum.

Dipper: “On the subject of WTO and trade negotiations yes I’ve read all the warning stuff. But am frankly unsure how much to believe these threats.”

Ah, so when you wrote “…why would it be disastrous?…”

what you meant to write is

“…I’ve read why it would be disastrous but choose to disbelieve arguments to that effect.”

You see, what you wrote reads like a request for information, while your response reads like a declaration of your a priori unwillingness to consider the information for which you appeared to be asking. Confusing, right?

The rest of your comment is equivocation. If WTO rules permanently reduce GDP by 2%, would you call that a disaster? How about 9%?

Dipper

Position – be ambitious for British people. It’s The Labour Party not The Welfare Party. Work to level the playing field and then expect good things from people and allow them to be rewarded.

It seems to me that most of the British voters who are looking for a party that stands for a level playing field and reward for achievement probably think they’ve already found one in the Conservative Party and are unlikely to be much interested in the offer of another one. I can’t figure out how your suggested positioning for the Labour Party is supposed to differentiate it from the Conservative Party. What am I missing?

@ Layman – 121

well of course leaving the EU will reduce GDP in the long rung. There will be fewer people here, so we will produce less.

From your post I guess your political opinions on anything are an irrelevance given that as soon as someone threatened you with a significant reduction in GDP you just waved your white flag and handed them the keys to the house.

An estimate of between 2% and 9% is not an estimate, its a confession of having no idea.

#122

Actually there were no issues with Eastern European migrants, you just made that up or you believe the Daily Mail.

Back in the heyday of New Labour 20 years ago, the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator found plenty to hate about the new regime. So, at least from their perspective, there must be *something* differentiating Blair/Cameron from what the Redwood/Cash/Lilley crowd regard as Real Conservatism, with Real Austerity (not the bogus version we got under Osborne).

The trouble with lumping Blair and everyone to the right of him together as a single bloc is you miss that different factions have different ends, and there are consequences about which one wins.

novakant when I say “issues with Eastern European migrants” I don’t mean that there were actually issues with Eastern European migrants, I mean that these are the issues that middle england was consumed with and yes, funnily enough, the Daily Mail was full of stories of Eastern European migrants coming here to take our welfare and our jobs.

Incidentally a few people here, engaging in fervid fantasies that those who pose as being hard-headed like to indulge in, are speculating that after 10/20/30/40 years of splits/infighting a Blairite might end in charge of the ‘Labour’ Party and we can go back to the ‘glory years’ of the ’90s. This is highly unlikely for lots of reasons (the overwhelming probability is that the ‘Labour’ Party is simply finished, along with all the other social democratic parties in Western Europe, an extremely long-term political trend that no one is even alluding to on this thread) but even imagine it’s true, and imagine (even more unlikely) that a Blairite Labour party would get into power.

What would they be able to do? Remember Blair had an astonishing number of things going in his favour: the ‘Great Moderation’, China coming ‘onstream’, relatively quiescence on the foreign policy front (that period of ‘quiet’ between the fall of Stalinism and 9/11), and, last and absolutely not least, the availability of cheap household credit that made up for the stagnation in real wages that began in roughly 1993. Also the small but perceptible ‘burst’ in productivity that occurred with the first ‘dot-com’ boom.

All of these were one-offs, and while 1 or 2 of them could happen again, it’s astonishingly unlikely that they (or similar events) would happen together. So any Blairite administration of 2050 would be like the first Blairite administrations only not as good if you can get your head round that dizzying concept. Not to mention the constant move towards the right wing in American and European politics that has continued, essentially without pause, from roughly about 1975 onward and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. This would be likely to have an effect, and it’s noticeable that of the few ideas the radicals of the ‘alt-centre’ in ‘Labour’ posses, being more racist is the one they return to most frequently.

‘Labour can win this election from a solid left wing position’.

No that’s absolutely NOT possible as the bulk of the PLP are far more hostile to the left than they are to the right. Blair was open that he would rather a ‘left wing’ Labour Party lost this (and all other) elections rather than winning on an ‘old Labour’ platform, but he was just saying what the rest of them think (and before anyone calls me out on this cynicism, remember that these were people who defied a 3 line whip to facilitate the genocide in Yemen: that’s the sort of people they are). The threat was not Corbyn’s possible failure (though many of the endlessly gull-able intelligentsia persuaded themselves to believe that) but his possible success. And this will never change (in the absence of de-selection, which isn’t on the cards).

So Labour will lose the next election (given their poll ratings, success is essentially impossible), Corbyn will resign, and Labour will descend into factional infighting or splitting, and the resulting chaos could continue for decades. A ‘left wing’ Labour party is a contradiction in terms, something which has been true since, roughly, about 1955, but in any case it is highly likely that any Blairite Labour leader would be ‘tarred with the same brush’ as the Western European quasi-Blairite parties, currently facing annihilation in almost all European countries.

So Labour can’t win on a left wing agenda, but they can’t win on a right wing agenda either.

Britain has a number of possible futures. The Tories would prefer the managed democracy of Singapore and are quite open about this, although the open racism of the ethno-state of Israel also appeals, as does, I would imagine, the creeping quasi-fascism of Hungary and Poland. The British delude themselves that 1 party rule under the guise of democracy is impossible but look at Japan.

In any case, these are your options. You might delude yourself that there are others, which is fine, but wish yourself a pony while you’re at it.

@novakant 122 – I think immigration was seen as a major issue overall, and in some constituencies Eastern European migration specifically probably was an issue.
However I think that it is no coincidence that when the Leave folk wanted to hit that sweet immigration button they talked less about Polish plumbers and nurses, and more about decidedly Muslim Syrians seeking asylum and Turks joining the EU (and ‘flooding’ it), even though those matters are either tangentially related to Brexit or implausible. They certainly didn’t seem to think that specifically Eastern European migration was their winning card.

Everyone has their favourite villain in the collapse of the Labour Party, but for me it is Gordon Brown, the Lance Armstrong of British Politics.

The various factions and manoeuvrings of the Labour party, the intrigue and squabbles, did historically produce politicians who knew how to develop and deliver policies and get mandates. Then along comes Gordon Brown, a power-mad ego-maniac. His version of socialism was that he was a genius, and his genius alone could deliver socialist utopia to the masses. He would micromanage everyone’s lives so each got a fair amount.

Workers, by definition, have nothing other than their labour. A constant thread of debate in the Labour Party has been to what extent the Clause IV bit about “To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry” applied to individuals, and to what extent it applied to a class. Gordon Brown was at the class end of this, so he introduced the working tax credit system to redistribute money in a “fair” way away from individual workers and to the class as a whole. This meant that workers could no longer achieve advancement through their own efforts but only as a result of Gordon Brown awarding it to them. He removed all power from individual workers and gave it all to himself, making workers completely dependent on the government for their income.

His manic obsession with hoarding all power for himself meant he systematically destroyed all opposition within the party. The “next generation of leaders” – the Milibands, Cooper, Balls etc all had their individuality crushed and relied for their status only on their ability to please Gordon. This lack of fighting credentials and wider political skills is a major cause of the election of Corbyn.

Gordon Brown crushed all sense of a movement that could generate meaningful policy and replaced it with his own towering intellect. This delivered above-trend growth for many years, but the financial crisis revealed this had been achieved by a government sponsored credit boom. Once that was blown away the Labour Party was left with nothing – no coherent political philosophy, no track record of credibility, and no mechanism or process for producing effective leadership.

Gordon Brown has rapidly slipped out of sight in British politics. In some senses he had some noteable achievements – he kept the UK out of the Euro, and he mobilised other nations to stop the banking crisis in its tracks. But in my view the current state of the Labour Party is largely down to his time in power over the party.

Faustusnotes #122

“The financial crisis and the Iraq war were clearly owned by Labour, but there were also huge issues with Eastern European migration that everyone seemed to think was Labours fault, to the extent that most people seemed to think EU membership was itself Labours fault.”

Indeed, the Conservative Party and the press that supports it has created a connection in people’s minds between Labour and the EU, and also created a belief that there is something treasonous about this. During the referendum campaign, it was Cameron and Osborne who took the lead for Remain while Labour was supposed to deliver its own voters for Remain while having little say over the direction of the campaign. The media focused on the Cameron/Osborne v Gove/Johnson story. Then after the referendum result Cameron and Osborne slunk away, the Remain Tories went silent leaving Labour to try to deal with Theresa May and a rabid Brexit press.

This is highly ironic for those of a certain age, like myself, who remember how keen the Conservative Party was on “Europe” from the 1960s to the 1980s, how keen newspapers like the Daily Mail were on “Europe”; the Labour Party was relentlessly attacked for its doubts about “Europe” until it gave up and embraced “Europe” so as to be electable. I suspect that the Labour Party doesn’t really know why it was in favour of Remain, except that at one time it supposedly made the Party electable, and most of the Party doesn’t have the depth of understanding necessary to fight through the smoke and mirrors surrounding Theresa May’s approach.

DD@ 126

On a hypothetical ROPA 2011 – you’re overlooking the small matter that such an act would require Conservative MPs and lords would have to vote for such a bill. To be blunt, that is about as likely as the long-term survival of a particularly moist and poorly made snowball during an unusually warm summer’s day in hell. Maintaining FPTP is a bedrock Tory principle (for good reason – prior to Corbyn the idea of over 50% of the country voting Tory was laughable). Getting the party to concede a referendum was by all accounts the toughest sell for Cameron and Osborne during the coalition negotiations (there are even rumours that they felt compelled to – ahem – heavily imply that Brown was prepared to legislate for AV+ in order to seal the deal). You’re effectively calling Clegg incompetent because he neither demanded nor received the impossible. That’s more than a little unfair.

And the reasons why overturning legislatively enacted AV would be relatively simple, while overturning legislatively enacted women’s suffrage is virtually impossible are so obvious that there’s really no way to explain them without coming off like a patronising arse.

You’re on firmer ground with the confidence and supply scenario, but I’m still not convinced. After all, what’s to stop Cameron calling a snap election six months later, while Ed Miliband is still finding his political sea legs, the Labour party is dead broke and the Greek crisis is ongoing on a platform of ‘we need a stable majority’? And how could the Lib Dems have credibly made the pitch for coalitional politics having rejected the opportunity to enter a coalition when it presented itself?

At the risk of repeating myself, I find the continued fury with Nick Clegg, for the crime of bowing to the realities of the political environment he found himself in and making the best of it he could, incomprehensible. The coalition gave us five years of Tories with training wheels on – not the ideal form of government by any standard, but infinitely preferable to Tories with training wheels off as the last two years have demonstrated fairly comprehensively, and the best possible outcome given the results of the 2010 general election. Maybe our efforts would be better spent on trying to ensure better electoral outcomes in future, rather than finding whipping boys to expend our disappointment upon.

Faustusnotes @122 – I’ve been living in the UK since roughly 2005. My experiences differ from yours rather significantly. And you might note that in 2010 Gordon Brown was in power, a man who had little to no association with Iraq (even though he should have, but that’s politics) and was losing to the Tories well before the financial crisis due to the clear dysfunctionality of his government. In other words, I think you are projecting your own ideological preferences onto ‘middle England’ without any real evidence to back it up.

“Labour can win this election from a solid left wing position”

There is literally no evidence to support this position, and decades of practical experience arguing the contra.

PS – On the oft mangled Mandelson quote – it was ‘We are intensely relaxed with people getting filthy rich so long as they pay their taxes.‘ As Dipper has pointed out, allowing people to become wealthy and redistributing a reasonable chunk of their income to things like the NHS is a position that remains broadly popular. Mandelson’s phrasing may have been a touch obnoxious, but politically he remains spot-on.