I do think it’s a shame the well meaning left wingers in this thread are feeling disenfranchised... but with the most right wing government we have had in 30 years, surely there has to be an element of tolerate the change for the good of the country? Get a centre left in at least...
Keir Starmer Labour Leader
- Thread starter Damien
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
That’s a very simplistic analysis not really grounded in reality. Labour’s biggest problem has been bleeding votes in Northern and Midland seats for decades under four different leaders: Blair, Brown, Miliband, Corbyn. Good luck trying to win them back simply by virtue of moving to the centre.
I’ve had the same urge to leave but that’s what they want. They want to demoralise the left to gain more control over the party. We should stay and make sure our side can be represented on councils and the NEC. Let’s also not forget if Starmer does ever win power it will almost certainly be in a precarious position. In the HoC he won’t be able to afford rebellions, and therefore MPs on the left will be able to exert meaningful pressure on him and Labour policies. Plus, Nandy’s call for economic sanctions on Israel is a positive sign that the party may not be so quick to abandon all principles of the past four years.
Agree... just remains to be seen how entrenched and how much of a fight some of the party institutions that momentum gained control of will put up.
Given the rlb example I suspect anybody coming out of the ehrc report in a bad light will be out and that will probably be the spark that ignites the battle and it remains to be seen if it will just be people moaning about blairite scum on twitter or if they will make any credible effort to push back against the direction of travel.
I hope they see its a loosing battle and some accept its the logical way forward and those that don't form some momentum inspired party that appeals to them and allows them to pursue the policies they believe in and perhaps even a union or two will breakaway with it. My worry is instead it will be a two or three year factional battle but even if it is then it will be worth it in the long run to become electable again
Of course, but I do think that if a modern-day SWP or whatever was created it would be much more successful than past versions, not strong enough to gain outright power maybe, but with a good chance of being large enough to take part in a coalition, which might be a more effective way of obtaining some of the policies you want.
Why do they not represent you?
What are they doing that is anathema to you?
What are they not doing that you need them to?
Will another decade of Tory rule bring the country closer to you or see it drift further away?
Indeed.
The guy is only just beginning as the leader. And it is clear that he is aiming at leading a party with strong morales and building trust.
Nobody is going to be perfect all the time.
But as a lifelong Labour supporter of well over 60 years, I am more than happy with what he has done so far.
Labour in opposition is neither use nor orniment.
Becoming the next government is all that counts.
The idea that we can wait for another 15 years and dream there will be enough people to vote for a mythical Labour Manifesto that’s further left than anything currently on offer is INSANE.
Vote them in. Hold them to account. Threaten them with desertion again. Make the left the new centre.
The Tories will lie their way further right every day they are in power. Forever. People need to fcuking wake up and live in the real world.
I bet Keir wishes he was as popular as this thread...
I agree with Nandy, and she said the right thing in the right way. It proves she knows the difference between fair criticism of Israel and anti Semitic singling out. Hopefully Starmer’s clarity on this will force a few others into some necessary reflection on this point, because far too many still don’t get it.
I have to say, I think it is probably necessary to electoral success that some of the more uncompromising / revolutionary elements of the left feel like labour isn’t their home.
Sadly, I think a formal split would almost certainly only benefit the Tories, but I fear it’s becoming inexorable.
And it is absolutely necessary to electoral success that the more uncompromising/extremist centrist elements responsible for deliberately exacerbating a crisis of anti-Semitism within the party and actively rooting against its election in 2017 are made to feel like Labour isn’t their home.
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These are the kind of sentiments I see on Twitter a lot since Starmer got elected. There is a feeling that Starmer has paid no attention to concerns of Labour’s Black voters. Apparent inaction on the leaked report, comments about the Colston statue, lack of representation in his appointments etc
And we really need to drop the idea that just because Tory rule is inarguably worse that means you should get behind Labour no matter what. Labour has to appeal on its own merits, not merely by gesturing at the terrible people that currently run the country.
Which staff do you want sacked, though?
Any chance we can move all Labour Anti-Semitism discussions to its own thread?
I’m sick of this shit being headline news.
Nobody is holding Boris to this standard, so can we all just Fcuk off somewhere else to discuss the complexity of Israel vs Zion vs Jews vs Arabs vs Hezbollah vs everything?
The thread is about the guy that’s trying to drag a party kicking and screaming back to electability.
Criticism of him and his behaviour is valuable. And I appreciate there’s overlap at times. But Letting this thread fully unpack the intricacies of this one issue, every single time is going to inflame passions and lower the tone. It’s going to happen again and again and it’s never a different message.
Just my tuppence worth. Happy to be wrong but also need to float the idea to be shot at.
I’m sick of this shit being headline news.
Nobody is holding Boris to this standard, so can we all just Fcuk off somewhere else to discuss the complexity of Israel vs Zion vs Jews vs Arabs vs Hezbollah vs everything?
The thread is about the guy that’s trying to drag a party kicking and screaming back to electability.
Criticism of him and his behaviour is valuable. And I appreciate there’s overlap at times. But Letting this thread fully unpack the intricacies of this one issue, every single time is going to inflame passions and lower the tone. It’s going to happen again and again and it’s never a different message.
Just my tuppence worth. Happy to be wrong but also need to float the idea to be shot at.
I was sharing someone else’s view. But she quite clearly says those staff who abused Abbott in the internal report.
It's what I've wanted, so we obviously have different views, but I am surprised at how quickly the lefties seem to be caving in. Surely they must regroup and fight back? I've kept reading how much control Momentum has in constituencies, and then there's conference time to come, they could create all sorts of problems there. I'm still not convinced Starmer wants a purge, or that he'll succeed if he does, but I hope so anyway.
Scotland voting for the left leaning SNP as a by product of years of "centrist Labour" has inhibited Labour as much as anything else.
The name of the party in government should not be all that counts. Granted, they are still looking like the lesser of two evils at the moment.
I really don't see Starmers Labour as a party of strong morals. Strong tactics, maybe I could understand that argument.
Which ones still work for the party? I've looked into this before and the ones I could find had all left years ago. So I'd say that it's not a terribly good faith act to suggest Starmer is failing to sack people that don't work for the party, unless you know of any specific examples. That's even aside from all the legal action being taken because of whichever moron leaked it unredacted.
Exactly my point in my previous post. But you made it more clearly.
Exactly my sentiments.
Yet radio silence from Labour (not in that article either) about the racism experienced by black members within the party.
Remind me of the fantastic inroads labour made in Scotland when they moved away from centrist policies under corbyn... unless I'm mistaken its one mp isn't it in the last election?
Ignoring the independence movement when considering the rise of the snp is crazy.
I have not looked into the personnel details myself. The point is there is a feeling that Starmer has not addressed the abuse of Abbott in the report. If those responsible are no longer members of the party as you claim, then a statement confirming that and asserting how seriously they take such abuse would have been helpful. Instead, I recall Starmer’s focus seemed to be on addressing who leaked the report in the first place, which only feeds into sentiments such as the one expressed in the tweet. Whatever the facts are, at best it’s a clear communication failure.
How confident are you that all the people involved in the abuse are no longer affiliated with the party in any capacity though? Even as ordinary members. How would you even know such information?
They had one seat in 2015. They won another six in 2017.
Don’t worry, the facts are clear that Labour lost all but one of its Scotland seats in 2015 but some on here have a loose connection with reality so they’ll find a way to blame Corbyn.
Blair... 56
Blair... 56
Blair... 41
Brown... 41
Red ed is seen as a move away from the centrist policies of brown and blair
Milliband... 1
Corbyn... 6
Corbyn... 1
If anything you would say centrist policues played better but that would still be a false narrative as the big change was the indy ref
It’s remarkable how you can pay attention to wider trends independent of ideology when it comes to exonerating centrist politics, meanwhile everything else is the curse of Jezbollah riding his anti-Semitic Trotskyist unicorn or whatever it is you seem to ramble about an awful lot.
And is that because of ed millions polices being more centrist than Blair as apparently it was the move away from the left that caused it
It indy ref in 2014
The fact that corbyn replicated those results is just further proof of his unelectabilty
I mean if anybody fancies a bet if starmer wont get more than one Scottish mp next time even as he moves to more centrist policies if take that bet... im sure as its apparently nothing to do with the dear (failed) leader and centrist blairite scums fault that labour got 1 mp last time you and Bobby will be pm ing me with your wagers
He's announced an investigation that looks at the content as well as the commissioning and leaking, which is being led by a POC. I'd suggest the comms have been clear on that, because I read it easily enough from all the sites that reported on it. The report will come out in mid-July, so if nothing gets done after that then you'll have a point.
An article was linked on the previous page stating that members mentioned in the report had been suspended. I'd again imagine that more will come out after the report is out and any legal action is done with.
The left to blame for losing Scotland now? 
Does anyone know what the feck the Lib Dems are doing?
They used to help. What happened?
They used to help. What happened?
The comms have been clear that there’s an investigation, not that they are treating the abuse of Abbott seriously. Hence the tweet with almost 4k retweets, and that’s just one I see regularly from Black Labour voters expressing the view that their concerns are not taken seriously under Starmer. You can argue about the merits of that view, but that is how many feel and that is a problem.
No. We don’t.
We can do it all at once.
Conservatives vote for ‘Good enough’. That’s how they get elected.
Play the game properly ffs.
Well, yes. I agree to an extent and politics must, by definition, contain compromise but the last time that happened they introduced all sorts of policies (especially around education but Ed Balls appalling damage to the Social Workers in Britain is never forgotten) that I just couldn't stomach, and I wasn't alone. It is Labour's shift to the right (and it was a much more significant shift to the right than many seem to recall) that is the primary driver of the utter collapse of the party in my country.
Left wingers feeling disenfranchised from the Labour party, a party of the left, isn't a great thing.
Now I'm not being naive. A truly left wing party will not be elected in Britain in my lifetime. Starmer's mission is to achieve power and I think he'll have a good shot at it. Publically taking out RLB will doubtless have helped him in polling and the people who can alternate their votes between Tory and Labour may come back. To appeal to those people though, any hope I and the millions who have (what now appear to considered "hard left" and extreme) left wing views regarding social care, benefits, education and healthcare and also share liberal social opinions (not, contrary to popular belief, something omnipresent in traditional Labour circles) are repelled by the changes that win such floating voters to Labour.
The argument that it's better to have centrist Labour party than these reprehensible feudal Lords in power (and this lot are not more to the right than Thatcher was although they are in some ways worse) is valid...but it is yet another nail in the coffin of the Labour movement and the progressive left of this country. I don't consider myself to be particularly left wing: on this site I clearly am. In this country as a whole I clearly am. I don't think I've drifted left. I am disenfranchised by a desire to appeal to a centre (which many consider an aspirational place to be) which to me is someway to the right. I don't want a replication in Britain of the US scenario where a party as patently right wing as the Democrats are your left option. The centre is achieved through balance between differing opinions not through hitting the median and kowtowing to this country's Tory controlled media and establishment...but the fight was long ago lost.
Absolutely.
Disenfranchised working class people are voting Tory because they hate people with a different skin tone.
But the left can’t stick together because the party isn’t broad enough.
Well done all of you.
Labour will not get elected on a platform of ‘we’re the least-worst option compared to the Tories so get off your arse and vote for us’. They need to offer tangible, positive reasons for doing so. If it’s perceived that Starmer is not doing that, then the correct course of action is to draw attention to it, not ‘get behind Labour no matter what’ and watch the party sleepwalk into another defeat.
You have misread Scotland very badly. I also may have misread your rather chaotic sentences equally badly so I may be misinterpreting you.
The drift to the right of Labour was seen as betrayal in Scotland. We'd backed them for decades and they became something else to win in the UK.
Labour may win more seats in Scotland at the next election. There's not a lot of room to go any other way. Labour's drift to the right killed labour North of the border (although doubtless you'll tel me that you know better). The SNPs rise is due to two primary factors: i)they are, generally and in most matters, left of the rather centrist Scottish Labour party (although not Corbyn's UK Labour) and ii) escaping the right wing voting patterns of England now only seems possible through sundering from the Union. People who are repelled by the word "nationalist" are staunch, dyed in the wool backers of independence. This is a profound change and Starmer isn't mending it easily...and certainly not by hitting the perceived "centre" of politics in England.
Labour’s favourability in Scotland jumped from 1/5 to 3/5 under Smith for a start, not Blair. Smith I assume in your worldview is a Trotskyist so this fact will be most unwelcome to you.
Corbyn improved on Miliband’s performance and won 7 seats in 2017. Drawing the conclusion in 2017 that Labour simply needed to be more left-wing to do better in Scotland is as myopic as the view that it simply needs to be more centrist now. These things are more nuanced and looking at it purely through a left-centre binary is largely unhelpful. But carry on, tell us how the move towards the left under Miliband then Corbyn is to blame for Labour’s death in Scotland; you’re only showing yourself up as woefully ill-informed and deluded as per.
The posts of a person who weighs his contributions against the prospect of making the centre seem appealing to those more to the left than he is. If only people on the left of the party could have displayed the same pragmatic, principled, broad church language of inclusivity as you have here.
What exactly do you want from Labour government that a Tory government won't accomplish?
Oh, it's much more complex than centre to left now. Labour are discredited North of the Border.