Next Labour leader - Starmer and Rayner win

[Virgil]

Sorry but that’s the sad reality. You simply cannot change the mentality of a lifetime.

Nice to know you understand why your mind is closed.

 

[Ultimate Grib]

Nice to know you understand why your mind is closed.

I'm in my 30s and my opinions are still forming. They will most likely be outdated in another 20-30 years and I won't be able to comprehend some things. It's the way of life.

 

[esmufc07]

British

 

[DOTA]

I reckon our Becky will win it. I think the right of the party are massively overplaying their hand since the election. If they'd allowed the left to quietly lick its wounds they could quite possibly have won out against a deeply deflated opposition but they've been so antagonistic that they're reminding us all how big the distance between the camps is which feels an extremely questionable tactic when they're only a small portion of the party.

 

[DavidDeSchmikes]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

Burgon is the Labour version of Ty

 

[DOTA]

Burgon is the Labour version of Ty

I guess the point he's aiming at is that other than one election, over 22 years ago, centrist parties get very few votes.

 

[DavidDeSchmikes]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

[DOTA]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

Whilst I'm feeling ranty... We shouldn't have a deputy leader. It adds nothing.

Not a criticism of Butler. I personally find her overenthusiastic support of gay giraffes endearing.

 

[EwanI Ted]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

Someone needs to explain population growth to Richard.

 

[Classical Mechanic]

I guess the point he's aiming at is that other than one election, over 22 years ago, centrist parties get very few votes.

If he’s trying to show that then he’s wide of the mark. As @fisky points out, the UK population has grown by 7 million since that last Blair election but also the Lib Dem’s got just under 6 million votes in 2005, down to 3.7 million at this election. Most people would class Cameron’s governments as centre right too. The SNP are also centre left.

 

[Honest John]

I'm in my 30s and my opinions are still forming. They will most likely be outdated in another 20-30 years and I won't be able to comprehend some things. It's the way of life.

You'll be a full-blown Alan B'stard by then

 

[sun_tzu]

[/QUOTE]

If he’s trying to show that then he’s wide of the mark. As @fisky points out, the UK population has grown by 7 million since that last Blair election but also the Lib Dem’s got just under 6 million votes in 2005, down to 3.7 million at this election. Most people would class Cameron’s governments as centre right too. The SNP are also centre left.

3 centre left governments with Blair
A coalition of libs and as you say a centre right Cameron conservative party
Then centre right Cameron conservative party
To be honest the shift to the right with may and Johnson only happened because there wasn't a centre left labour option but instead an agenda more leftwing than ever elected in the UK with the most unpopular opposition leader since those polls began
When hasn't the UK been centre left / centre right when a credible option was put in front of them... And you only have to look at the two worst results in recent history for labour to see a big manifesto from the left with an unpopular leader is a recipe for circa 200 MP's

 

[Classical Mechanic]

3 centre left governments with Blair
A coalition of libs and as you say a centre right Cameron conservative party
Then centre right Cameron conservative party
To be honest the shift to the right with may and Johnson only happened because there wasn't a centre left labour option but instead an agenda more leftwing than ever elected in the UK with the most unpopular opposition leader since those polls began
When hasn't the UK been centre left / centre right when a credible option was put in front of them... And you only have to look at the two worst results in recent history for labour to see a big manifesto from the left with an unpopular leader is a recipe for circa 200 MP's
[/QUOTE]

That‘s the way I see it. A harder left Labour Party allows a hard right Tory party to flourish.

 

[Sweet Square]

Unless their pensions are to be affected .What else do they care about at this stage.

Pretty much

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

[DavidDeSchmikes]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

[Phil]

3 centre left governments with Blair
A coalition of libs and as you say a centre right Cameron conservative party
Then centre right Cameron conservative party
To be honest the shift to the right with may and Johnson only happened because there wasn't a centre left labour option but instead an agenda more leftwing than ever elected in the UK with the most unpopular opposition leader since those polls began
When hasn't the UK been centre left / centre right when a credible option was put in front of them... And you only have to look at the two worst results in recent history for labour to see a big manifesto from the left with an unpopular leader is a recipe for circa 200 MP's

That‘s the way I see it. A harder left Labour Party allows a hard right Tory party to flourish.
[/QUOTE]

And me. My God do I want a centre left option.
Also, you messed up formatting so badly here but I have no idea how to fix it.

 

[DavidDeSchmikes]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

[DavidDeSchmikes]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

That didn't last long

 

[Buster15]

3 centre left governments with Blair
A coalition of libs and as you say a centre right Cameron conservative party
Then centre right Cameron conservative party
To be honest the shift to the right with may and Johnson only happened because there wasn't a centre left labour option but instead an agenda more leftwing than ever elected in the UK with the most unpopular opposition leader since those polls began
When hasn't the UK been centre left / centre right when a credible option was put in front of them... And you only have to look at the two worst results in recent history for labour to see a big manifesto from the left with an unpopular leader is a recipe for circa 200 MP's
[/QUOTE]

Quite right.
Almost by definition, a centred party is going to appeal to the widest selection of voters.
New Labour knew that and to a degree Cameron as well.

Even Boris tries to con people by calling them One Nation Conservatives, which is a contradiction in terms.

The only way back for Labour is for them to decide whether they are a protest party or a party capable of government.
If the latter then now is the time to rid itself of the unenviable image of a party of the past and modernise to appeal to the majority of the voting public.

 

[sun_tzu]

The only way back for Labour is for them to decide whether they are a protest party or a party capable of government.
If the latter then now is the time to rid itself of the unenviable image of a party of the past and modernise to appeal to the majority of the voting public.

If it's the former it time for the party to split (along momentum / new new labour type lines)

 

[P-Ro]

My mate who works for the Labour party told me a couple of days ago that he will resign if Long Bailey gets the leadership.

 

[BennyBlanco]

Doesn't matter who they go with, be it a blairite or the corbyn wing, until they realise their base is completely split between post industrial vs metropolitan constituencies, and work to rectify it they're doomed to spend the next decade in the wilderness. Somehow I think they've still no clue the mistakes they made.

 

[DavidDeSchmikes]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

[711]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

Those who would happily declare themselves to be working class are a minority in today's Britain, and getting fewer as the years go by. His 'we must get back the working class vote' sounds so old-fashioned now, and it's virtually self-declaring Labour as a minority party. The guy's clueless.

 

[esmufc07]

Those who would happily declare themselves to be working class are a minority in today's Britain, and getting fewer as the years go by. His 'we must get back the working class vote' sounds so old-fashioned now, and it's virtually self-declaring Labour as a minority party. The guy's clueless.

A part of me wants to see Burgon as deputy just for the inevitable comedy that would come with it.

 

[Classical Mechanic]

A vote for RLB is a vote for the Tories, so sayeth Jorge

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

[Drifter]

Those who would happily declare themselves to be working class are a minority in today's Britain, and getting fewer as the years go by. His 'we must get back the working class vote' sounds so old-fashioned now, and it's virtually self-declaring Labour as a minority party. The guy's clueless.

It's the so called Middle class that is on the decline.

 

[Brwned]

Those who would happily declare themselves to be working class are a minority in today's Britain, and getting fewer as the years go by. His 'we must get back the working class vote' sounds so old-fashioned now, and it's virtually self-declaring Labour as a minority party. The guy's clueless.

Agree the guy's clueless but I don't think it's true that people no longer self identify as working class. My dad would get offended if you suggested he was middle class - his sense of identity is very different from his current living situation. And the last time I asked that in a survey about 30% of the UK self identified as working class, from what I remember.

 

[711]

Agree the guy's clueless but I don't think it's true that people no longer self identify as working class. My dad would get offended if you suggested he was middle class - his sense of identity is very different from his current living situation. And the last time I asked that in a survey about 30% of the UK self identified as working class, from what I remember.

30% kind of backs up my point that it's a minority doesn't it?

 

[711]

It's the so called Middle class that is on the decline.

If all you read is stories of soup kitchens and zero hours contracts then you might think that, but if you travel around a bit, look at the nature of people's employment, education, their houses, cars, wealth and the possessions people now have then, no it isn't. However whether the percentage is going up or down slightly isn't really the point, it's the sheer old-fashionedness of a party appealing to the working class at a time when others are talking of aspiration and opportunity. It's 'the industrial proletariat must take over the means of production' in a world that's moved on a hundred years.

 

[Vidic_In_Moscow]

A vote for RLB is a vote for the Tories, so sayeth Jorge

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

Same could be said for almost all of the names currently being touted.

 

[Classical Mechanic]

Same could be said for almost all of the names currently being touted.

Apparently they fear Nandy the most because she can appeal to those former red wall constituencies.

 

[Brwned]

30% kind of backs up my point that it's a minority doesn't it?

I suppose so, but I can't imagine the proportion of working class folks was much less 50 years ago, and I can't imagine it'll decline much in the next couple of decades. Maybe it was 40% half a century ago, but that's a pretty slow decline...and 30% of the population are hardly a small segment that don't warrant a party's focus.

A century ago the party of the working class might have represented the majority, but the working class line worked even when the middle class became the largest segment of the population. So it might sound exclusive to you but plenty of people that aren't part of the working class value what that party represents.

 

[711]

I suppose so, but I can't imagine the proportion of working class folks was much less 50 years ago, and I can't imagine it'll decline much in the next couple of decades. Maybe it was 40% half a century ago, but that's a pretty slow decline...and 30% of the population are hardly a small segment that don't warrant a party's focus.

A century ago the party of the working class might have represented the majority, but the working class line worked even when the middle class became the largest segment of the population. So it might sound exclusive to you but plenty of people that aren't part of the working class value what that party represents.

I doubt we differ much in what the ideals of the party should be, I'm talking about presentation. If Labour declares itself to be the 'working class party' today then it will be painting itself into a minority corner. Labour won't see power again in those circumstances, it needs to appeal to the population as a whole.

 

[Virgil]

Apparently they fear Nandy the most because she can appeal to those former red wall constituencies.

I would second this. However the one I think would really make the Tories tremble is Dan Jarvis. Trouble is he is too sensible and not left wing enough for the pillocks who run the party.

 

[Brwned]

I doubt we differ much in what the ideals of the party should be, I'm talking about presentation. If Labour declares itself to be the 'working class party' today then it will be painting itself into a minority corner. Labour won't see power again in those circumstances, it needs to appeal to the population as a whole.

I was talking about the presentation - a significant portion of the middle class value the notion of a party fighting for the working class. Which is why Labour were able to position themselves as a working class party and win power even when the majority of the population were middle class, decdes ago. You'd have to explain why that's changed so dramatically. They cared about aspiration and opportunity back then too.

Whether it's the most successful tactic is a different question but your blanket statement that it can't work isn't self justifying. The reality is that the majority of London are not working class, and yet the majority of London voted for a self-styled working class party. I run into loads of those Labour voting middle class folks every day and what you're saying doesn't add up there. There's clearly a lot more nuance to it than that.

 

[711]

I was talking about the presentation - a significant portion of the middle class value the notion of a party fighting for the working class. Which is why Labour were able to position themselves as a working class party and win power even when the majority of the population were middle class, decades ago. You'd have to explain why that's changed so dramatically. They cared about aspiration and opportunity back then too.

Whether it's the most successful tactic is a different question but your blanket statement that it can't work isn't self justifying. The reality is that the majority of London are not working class, and yet the majority of London voted for a self-styled working class party. I run into loads of those Labour voting middle class folks every day and what you're saying doesn't add up there. There's clearly a lot more nuance to it than that.

I think one cause of our difference is that the 'definition' of middle class has changed over the years. To me decades ago the majority definitely were not middle class, a far lower percentage of the population had 15+ education and had jobs to match, so yes, there has been a dramatic change. Perhaps I'm out of date and what I think of as working class you would tend to think of as 'blue-collar', I don't know. Still, presenting a party as standing for one class, by any definition, seems planning to fail, an obvious mistake. Everything's nuanced? Thanks for that.

 

[sun_tzu]

I would second this. However the one I think would really make the Tories tremble is Dan Jarvis. Trouble is he is too sensible and not left wing enough for the pillocks who run the party.

Im not sure he has the backing in the plp... But I could see him in a prominent role (defence being the obvious one) under starmer or nandy or copper or Phillips ... Well basically anybody but wrong daily

Hes a good outside bet though at 25/1

I still hope Phillips wins but Jarvis would be my second pick if he's on the ballott

 

[Brwned]

I think one cause of our difference is that the 'definition' of middle class has changed over the years. To me decades ago the majority definitely were not middle class, a far lower percentage of the population had 15+ education and had jobs to match, so yes, there has been a dramatic change. Perhaps I'm out of date and what I think of as working class you would tend to think of as 'blue-collar', I don't know. Still, presenting a party as standing for one class, by any definition, seems planning to fail, an obvious mistake. Everything's nuanced? Thanks for that.

My and your definition shouldn't matter, if we follow the original thread. What you were talking about is how people self identify. What you're describing are now markers of being middle class, but there were people who didn't fit that strict criteria that still identified as middle class half a century ago.

Is it your view that majority of the population identified as working class 50 years ago...but they generally voted against the party that identified with their class? People's socioeconomic status can be defined by absolute measures but most people have defined their social class on relative measures.

My point wasn't that's everything is nuanced, but rather the nuances you're skipping over are so significant that they should be considered something beyond that. It's necesarry to ignore some of the nuances in generalised discussions, but that's when they're small and insignificant.

Parties have won power all across the world this century, and in the previous century in this country, while putting themselves forward as a party for a particular class. And people outside of that class voted for them. What you're saying as an absolute statement needs something a bit more substantive to justify it, in that context.

Is it the case that the modern British voter is completely different to those voters? Maybe. But what explains the London Labour vote? They didn't think the Labour Party had specific policies for them, and for the class most of them are a part of. Many considered it an aspirational vote, just of a different kind. They didn't feel the focus was somehow exclusionary towards them.

 

[Sweet Square]

@711

http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2019/12/boris-johnson-and-21st-century-class.html

https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2017/07/jeremy-corbyn-and-working-class.html

https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2017/06/labour-and-21st-century-class-politics.html

The abstraction of labour and the struggles of the 60s and early 70s for Negri revealed another truth about society: that capital had fully subsumed the social. While in Britain we tend to associate this with the penetration of ever greater areas of social life by market relationships, Negri argued that his native Italy and other Western countries were basically 'social factories' in which every facet of life contributed to capital accumulation in some way. There was no "outside" to capitalism: the social was permeated by capital and the logics of capital (hence why Pierre Bourdieu is so useful). Negri argued that under these circumstances, the nature of work shifted away from the production of (material) commodities to the business of reproducing the relationships underpinning the social factory. For instance, consider the millions of jobs in advanced countries tied to the public sector, of educating, surveilling, managing, healing, caring. These provide essential infrastructure that no complex society can manage without. Capital has also made a good fist out of directly profiting from this shift through the selling of professional services. For Negri, this signals the coming of the 'socialised worker' for whom the production of social relations is the object of their labour. In addition, this labour is immaterial; it cannot be appropriated directly as per the preceding generations of workers. The instrument of work here is the brain. Its use can be rented out, but suddenly the relationship between capital and labour shows up what has been the case all along: that the former is utterly dependent on the latter.

There's more bad news for capital, according to Negri. Immaterial, intellectual labour produces social relations and information. It means as a whole, as brains are set to work on particular projects the skills and knowledge acquired doesn't stay under lock and key. It's inseparable from those brains and effectively becomes part of a general intellect. As the collective knowledge of living labour grows, the relation between capital and labour becomes ever more stark. The former appears more parasitic, swooping in, trying to throw up fences around information and generally acting as a fetter on the free development of human culture. In this context, attempts to colonise the minds and imaginations of people through institutions and culture make sense. Ideas have always been a battleground in the class struggle, but in the age of the socialised worker the new front takes in the very components of consciousness. However, Negri is clear (and why his Marxism is so resolutely optimistic): the balance is shifting toward living labour and capitalism is becoming increasingly obviously superfluous. It's only a matter of time before the overwhelming mass of people realise it.

What has this got to do with what has happened to the Labour Party and its fortunes? In my view, the coalescing of the socialised worker is speeding up. It's condensing thanks to the invention of social media. The coming of the internet illustrates perfectly what Negri has written about. Software houses, IT firms, and social media monopolies do not train their key workers - they appropriate knowledges programmers (for instance) have acquired outside the sphere of work, through formal education and their own self-directed adventures in programming languages. Effectively, they're poncing off the general intellect. Social media has elevated this even further by capturing and storing your behaviour, amalgamating them into big data sets, and using your online comings and goings as a force or production, as a means of selling advertising space. Yes, capital and the internet reinforces Negri's observations about its parasitism. However, the internet and social media has another consequence: it's multiplying lines of contact between people, bringing more coherence to the general intellect as information is freely shared back and forth in defiance of propriety rights. It is driving forward the notion that work should be something you enjoy and "find yourself" in. It's effectively secularising the ethos and expectations of the socialised worker and extending it to those in occupations that retain skilled and mass worker characteristics. Employers often complain about not finding young people enough who'll work minimum wage in warehouse jobs or grubbing in fields for strawberries. This cultural shift and transformation of expectations is one reason why.

That is why I talk about the networked worker as opposed to just the socialised worker because everyone, regardless of the character of their work, are wirelessly wiring up and being drawn into the general intellect, of a social life increasingly distant to and alienated from the increasingly petulant demands capital makes. Class still matters, but it is being redefined and conflict is playing out in diffuse and multiple ways across axes of relationships within and extending beyond workplaces and immediate employer/employee relations. Hyper-individuated, the networked worker nevertheless is coming round to the view that they hold interests in common. And this is where the realm of theory touches down in political reality. The austerity and market fundamentalist policies the Tories have overseen, combined with scapegoating scaremongering is build up a head of grievance which, above all, cuts against the emerging consensus of what the good life is: freedom to be your own invention, and freedom from the economics, the housing crisis, the debt, the hate and xenophobia, of all the artificial social ills that threaten this.

The pull of Jeremy Corbyn at the start of his leadership campaign was, put plainly, someone who stood against all that. Largely unknown up until that point, his anti-austerity politics may have been decades old but they were absolutely of the moment. Because they were relevant and attractive, despite being forged in the class struggles of the 1970s the conjuncture - of decomposing Blairism, anaemic social democracy, and a seemingly triumphant neoliberalism - ensured his was the most modern politics. Corbyn was a lightning rod, a strange (and unlikely) attractor around which hitherto unorganised and raw layers of networked workers gathered over the course of his first year as leader and remaking the Labour Party in the process so it better reflected the realities of 21st century class politics. And then when the general election itself was called, the same process repeated itself on a far grander scale. This time it wasn't a couple of hundred thousand drawn to Jeremy Corbyn and Labour, it was millions, aided by the waging of the electoral battle across the peer-to-peer circuits social media enables. Corbyn, despite what the naysayers said, has saved the Labour Party and virtually guaranteed it the next general election because his simple anti-cuts politics, his authenticity and utter absence of cynicism swims with the stream of the general intellect. Rebooted Labourism with its social media savvy sensibility, its inclusivity, its message of hope and optimism bedded around a positive class politics of the overwhelming majority explains how networked workers from the cleaner and shelf stacker to the lifestyle consultant and marketing manager were pulled into its train. And what is more, the overt politicisation of the general intellect means Labour's vote can only but grow. The young are being born into and coming of age within this culture, this new politics of class. And its points of multiplication are reaching out to Tory supporters and bringing them in, corroding and challenging the irrationalisms and unthought assumptions underpinning that politics.

What is happening to Labour is the future. Britain, as the world's first industrial nation showed the rest of the globe its destiny. With the linkage between a transforming Labour Party and the networked worker accomplished, it's quite possible this little island could be about to do the same for politics.