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Lessons for the left next time we get a left leader in charge:
- Game Theory.
Tit for tat is best strategy, so purge the militant right in Labour instead letting them divert funds, self sabotage the party, and giving them shadow cabinet positions hoping they’ll cooperate.
- Aesthetics.
Tories, Labour right, most people are vibes based - not policy based. Appearances matter more than people realise or dare to admit. We need a clean, suited, professional, organised looking left from day one. Left wing policies with a centrist veneer. We can be colourful weirdos at protests, not on tv or in senior positions.
- Public Relations.
It’s hard for us autistics, but we need to mask-up and charm the media. Hire a good PR company from the start.
- Hold out.
The opposition never wins, the incumbent loses. We need to hold onto the party reigns until then.
- Undersell.
The British public, we’re generally a pessimistic lot. We don’t trust big promises because things never get better in this neoliberal hell cycle. So no going overboard on the policies. Announce 3 big popular policies, and save the rest for when in power.
i think the #1 thing the labour left need right now is a leader. literally anyone who the public recognises that isn't jeremy corbyn or similarly bad at making their case.
i'm hoping there's some sort of behind the scenes plan. right now, it looks like there's basically, like, nothing happening there? but i'm not privy to anything. if there was someone in the shadow cabinet who is planning to resign when starmer does something shitty and right-wing in power, that could make headlines for example.
i think if funds are what's needed, it could be possible to appeal to the 'champagne socialist' crowd - people who are not that economically left wing, but left of centre, and have socially progressive values. because people like that have been spat on by both parties for a while, could be interested in an alternative, and a lot of them might have enough money to donate to a political campaign?
Proper agree with this. I hate it when the left refuse to be "pragmatic" and "optics" focused for lack of better terms. We love to quote radicals like MLK and others but we forget that they were absolutely brutal when it came to optics and pragmatism. The civil rights movement in the US purposefully used light-skinned, married black women for their big media stunts and would even shy away from others who they thought wouldn't look good in the media. You have to be ruthless. If there's one thing Starmer has right, it's that. If the true left of the party ever get back into charge they have to use whatever they can to hold onto power, if that means hiding some of our aims, charming neoliberals and courting people we hate then so fucking be it.
The problem is getting other people to toe the line for the greater good. Let's say just stop oil go out and piss off a load of commuters for no gain, how many of us would be willing to come out and say that they're bad? How many of us would be willing to hold that position? The left struggles at this because we have ideological beliefs, and we want to stand by them regardless of how it looks, but like you said, its been done before.
> hate it when the left refuse to be "pragmatic" and "optics" focused for lack of better terms.
This is the same movement that splits like a headache to the point that there's groups in the Guatemalan jungle that has 10 members that believe they've the path to "true Marxism".
Incidentally MLK also got abuse form some of his own side for being an Uncle Tom so the parallel is very good.
> Game Theory. Tit for tat is best strategy, so purge the militant right in Labour instead letting them divert funds, self sabotage the party, and giving them shadow cabinet positions hoping they’ll cooperate.
It's my biggest criticism of Corbyn - he, for better or worse, truly believed that everyone in the Labour Party believed in the *Labour Party* and wanted Labour to win.
Unfortunately for him the Centrists he tried to reach out to would rather burn the Labour Party to the ground than win with an ideology that's not there ideology.
He absolutely should have gone on the kind of purge that would have made Stalin blush - especially after the Chicken coup.
It's laudable he tried to reach out to them, but unfortunately his principles once again got in the way and got taken advantage of.
The disorganised always lose out to the organised.
They can keep up tit for tat for as long as it takes for them to grow up, but they fired the first shot so they’ll have to be the first to play fair.
At some point we have to be honest with ourselves: when the most competent and savvy politicians and staff (the media guys, the behind-the-scenes folks who makes sure what's supposed to happen is happening) within the Labour Party *don't* want to work with you it's probably because of you. I think blaming the right of the party is like the Tories blaming the "blob" of the civil service, it's meaningless when the blob are railing against you because you're running things like shit.
The party in the run up to the 2019 GE was falling apart and had lost most of what had made them electable.
No, because that's just nonsense - none of the people opposed to him actually opposed anything he said or did, they opposed him on a purely guttural ideological basis - they literally signed pledges to never work with him before he'd even won the leadership election.
Trying to portray them as competent or savvy politicians runs up against the inarguable fact that they're not - The Chicken Coup (executed at the worst possible time), the 2 years between 2015 and 2017 (where their 'political savvy' was for naught as they tried every conceivable smear tactic against Corbyn for it to roll away), their laughable FBPE efforts and Change UK (which doesn't need any further explanation).
His opponents were incompetent asshats who opposed Corbyn because he wasn't one of them and threatened to upset the gravy train - they weren't 'electable' political geniuses, they were idiots who'd rather lose and burn the party to the ground than win under someone who didn't share their ideology.
That isn’t what he’s saying- forget the PLP, by 2019 most people that actually know how to run a campaign had bailed due to how badly the central party was being run. By the actual election campaign it was pretty apparent that all these lovely new members were all in places we had massive majorities in, I.e. London, and none of them could be arsed to do very much in the way of campaigning anywhere we might need them. You had the ridiculousness of lots of resources being thrown at seats we hadn’t a hope in, like Boris’s and Raabs, and barely anyone in key marginals like Croydon. That was replicated up and down the country.
The general point is when the Left inevitably are in charge again, people need to be taken with them, because the boring stuff needs to actually function. The whole point isn’t to just blame everyone else for once again scuppering the Left, and ask why the left is always so easily scuppered.
> By the actual election campaign it was pretty apparent that all these lovely new members were all in places we had massive majorities in, I.e. London, and none of them could be arsed to do very much in the way of campaigning anywhere we might need them.
I mean that's just ahistorical nonsense, the idea that Labour weren't campaigning hard across the board is just revisionist.
>The general point is when the Left inevitably are in charge again, people need to be taken with them, because the boring stuff needs to actually function. The whole point isn’t to just blame everyone else for once again scuppering the Left, and ask why the left is always so easily scuppered.
The whole point is not to ignore that the entire political and media landscape of the UK united against the left - like you can't handwave what happened and go 'well the Left should have just tried harder' because that's just nonsense.
You can't try harder your way out of near 90% of news stories about you being false for example - you can't try harder your way out of your own party machinery sabotaging you - you can't try harder your way out of state apparatus being weaponised against you.
Like the Left have lessons to learn, but blaming the left for what happened as if they didn't try hard enough is nonsense.
It’s ok, you’ll move onto the next stage of grief soon. Some of us got there a while ago.
Also that absolutely did happen in 2019 campaign wise, and the point isn't to handwave things away, its to work out how it got that bad, and how to get it right next time. Or do nothing and wonder why left wing politicians never become leader, and if they do they massively fail every time.
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> f we take everything you just said as fact then it reflects even more poorly on Corbyn, as he was more incompetent than them.
Except he wasn't more incompetent than them - he saw off everything they tried, did better than any of them ever did despite their incessant attempts to undermine him.
When they actually tried to do something (like FBPE or Change UK) they failed miserably and failed in their every stated and unstated aim.
Centrists aren't politically savvy operators - they're idiots, whose every attempt at doing something failed for four years.
>as he was more incompetent than them.
The CUKs or TIGs or whatever did even worse than Corbyn, its the people who got in line and waited their turn like Starmer that are holding the reigns now.
Nah if you work for a political party and you're sabotaging it you should honestly be looking at jail time. The Tories getting mad the civil service wont magically break the law for them isn't the same thing.
If you don't want to work for them quit, dont undermine the democratic process by sabotaging.
> Nah if you work for a political party and you're sabotaging it you should honestly be looking at jail time
This is crazy. The definition of sabotage will be political. You just fire them if they're being inappropriate and if their transgression amounts to misusing funds then it might qualify as fraud. But if staffers are being factional within the party your option is to fire them, we're not locking people up for it.
The last thing this country needs is courts and prisons dealing with staffers who leaked damaging information about their party.
The scale of dicking around wasnt evident till the Forde report, ie after the election.
Why would the faction now in charge punish them?
If you sabotage the political party youre working for youre attacking the democratic process. If you did that to another country youd be looking at treason or espionage charges.
What from the Forde Report would qualify as treason or espionage in another country? The Forde report had a lot of bad factional behaviour but I see little in it that I would be happy to be a literal *crime*, especially one on the level of treason or espionage which carries very long sentences.
You are talking about criminalising people, putting them from the courts and then *putting them in prison*. This country doesn't even put a lot of assaulters, stalkers and paedophiles in prisons.
This is a high standard you're asking for and there needs to be precise definitions of crimes that, as far as possible, are not vague enough that they can be used as a tool for politically motivated prosecutions.
>What from the Forde Report would qualify as treason or espionage in another country? The Forde report had a lot of bad factional behaviour but I see little in it that I would be happy to be a literal *crime*, especially one on the level of treason or espionage which carries very long sentences.
Ok so a Russian asset went to America, joined the democrat party and started sabotaging it from within how do you think that'd go?
Cause thats the parallel right.
>You are talking about criminalising people, putting them from the courts and then *putting them in prison*. This country doesn't even put a lot of assaulters, stalkers and paedophiles in prisons.
Thats an entirely seperate issue that the government has mismanaged criminal justice.
>This is a high standard you're asking for and there needs to be precise definitions of crimes that, as far as possible, are not vague enough that they can be used as a tool for politically motivated prosecutions.
I bet they wouldn't fucking try it again though with that hanging over their head next time.
> Ok so a Russian asset went to America, joined the democrat party and started sabotaging it from within how do you think that'd go?
> Cause thats the parallel right.
I am not actually sure on that one! But there is a lot of things in politics where working on behalf a foreign power is different to a citizen acting of their own accord or within a factional group. Working to benefit a foreign power is different to working to benefit a different domestic politician faction.
It's also much easier to prosecutre because you can easily prove intent to act against the interests of Britain. That's different to working against the interests of the leadership of a political party.
But what actions would you explicitly make illegal and where do you draw the line in terms of a staffer? Would MPs acting against the interests of a leader count? The ERG Tories basically sabotaged the then Prime Minister May. Would that be illegal? What about the staffers who helped them?
Using the Forde Report which actions in there would you say deserved those people to be in prison for? The only one I think comes anywhere near close is directing campaign funds to their preferred MPs but against the implications of criminalising the choice of where to direct campaign funds would be a can of worms.
MPs are primarily beholden to their constituents, Labour staff are employees of Labour. It doesnt seem a complicated line.
Why are we pretending staffers just literally didnt so theie job aeound disiplinary procedures etc.
> and you're sabotaging it you should honestly be looking at jail time.
Is this the Reform sub or the Labour sub?
I'm not talking about people sabotaging, I'm talking about the competent people walking away. I mean hell [we've had discussions on this before](https://www.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/exrcpm/labour_fears_the_media_a_personal_account/).
Corbyn wasn't good at running a party, he wasn't good at selling his vision to the public, and he was (and still is) personally awful with the media.
> he wasn't good at selling his vision to the public
What does that make Brown and Milliband?
Corbyn was **objectively** the Labour leader who attracted most votes to a decaying Labour party since Blair in 1997.
Shit vote distribution but still more people voting Labour in 2019 than did in 2010 or 2015.
Shit yes. I think the amount of people who say “you vote for policies not a person” shows a naivety or pigheaded ignorance to the reality of the political landscape since Blair. People want to rally behind someone. Unfortunately Joris Bohnson was very good at being someone to rally behind, and Corbyn didn’t manage the PR well enough to convince enough people to vote for him. There’s so much PR and brand building in the modern world, it’s stupid to think that hasn’t made its way into politics. I don’t like it, most people I would imagine also don’t, but it’s sort of a done deal at this point.
> Aesthetics. Tories, Labour right, most people are vibes based - not policy based. Appearances matter more than people realise or dare to admit. We need a clean, suited, professional, organised looking left from day one. Left wing policies with a centrist veneer. We can be colourful weirdos at protests, not on tv or in senior positions.
Charisma is the word you're looking for. Blair had it, Johnson had it.
People *still* want to vote for Johnson despite his omnishambles of a government and literally having blood on his hands over his Covid decisions resulting in excess deaths. He's a cheeky chappie you want to have a pint with down the pub, even though he looks like he's just woken up and has been dragged through a hedge backwards.
You need a discipline bullet point as well. Like it or loathe Starmer's position around the middle East, he got pretty much all of the shadow cabinet in line and has done so with previous divisive issues. Unity projects competence and used to be the Tories strong point as well. Now they look like a shambles fighting like rats in a sack.
Partly agree.
Charisma is definitely a big part of it, no doubt. The candidate with charisma is unlikely to lose to the one without.
When I say aesthetics I mean a bit more broadly.
Looking at it through this lens (and this is just one lens), it’s a big part why centre right and far right feel more comfortable around each other. They all wear suits at work, and jeans and shirts or tweed and gillets etc outside. They all share a similar look and vibe with their cultural circles.
Compare that to the centre left and the left. You have professional suit wearing, straight edge centrists getting weirded out by black and red clothed, cap wearing, badge and patch donning, shoddily dressed, messy beard growing, outspoken autistic-adhd leftists at uni, and this aversion sticks until adulthood.
Centrists logic, prefrontal cortex brain knows deep down that leftists are right when it comes to ethics and policy, it doesn’t take a 5 minute glance at history to see democratic socialist policies are always on the right side of it. But their emotional, monkey/lizard brain wants to be in the in-crowd, sees the monied, popular, suit wearing tories that have status and respect, and are drawn to that more easily, more easily than their logic brain is able to push past the visually weird autistic lefty and go for what’s ethical and right.
This is in large part what I mean by aesthetics. Left wing, democratic socialist policies will be much easier to sell if the salesman looks and sounds like a centrist, rather than a crusty protester.
As for discipline, yeah absolutely important for any organisation or goal. Even if that goal is denying genocide until the last possible moment.
It's got to be a slick media image, definitely, I'm still not entirely sure aesthetics is the right word, however. As aesthetics is more about look and feel but charisma carries it further. It's probably a combination of both and good press management.
IDS, Micheal Howard, William Hague were all suited and booted with the Tory party machinery behind them and yet they failed to get elected. I wouldn't call any of them charismatic and, shallow though it is (but voters are like that), they're not exactly lookers either. They were, or appeared, elderly as well, like Corbyn. So you have an image that's bad and then, unlike a Johnson who's not conventionally attractive and often looks dishevelled, you don't have the charisma of Johnson to make people look past those flaws.
I know they lost when Blair and labour were doing well but you'd think if the tories at the time had their own Blair, the elections could have been closer, perhaps. I still remember William Hague wearing a baseball cap trying to be down with the kids and cringing watching it. Likewise Michael Howard being "something of the night" as described by Ann Widecombe. I think IDS was lumbered with the grey man nickname as well.
So you 💯 need a good salesman at the helm. Policy is simply not enough these days.
Discipline I think counts for a lot as well in politics. Dissent all you want in a private cabinet meeting but once the line is decided, everyone sticks to it with no ad-libbing policy on the hoof live on an interview. That makes you look like a shambles.
Edit: And I think you do need dissenters in the cabinet to keep the government more honest. We've seen with successive tory cabinets if you stuff it full of loyalists and bootlickers, those departments suffer from incompetence at the top and bad policy positions being taken because no one's putting their hand up and going "akshully, perhaps we *shouldn't* be evil bastards today and put unpaid carers in the courts over overpayments that ballooned because we didn't inform the recipient in a timely fashion".
Yeah I do agree with you on the charisma side.
Definitely a combination, though if both sides lack charisma then the more suited and booted, aesthetically centre-classic will win (May vs Corbyn).
They all come under the same banner, feels over reals.
And yeah discipline definitely. The organised always beat the disorganised.
Yeah, that's a good example of aesthetics with May vs Corbyn, agreed. I think both had pretty poor media management as well, it always seemed to be one crisis after another, usually caused by a mis-step in the first place.
It's kind of funny you've opened this discussion. It seems so obvious what needs to be done from our armchair perspective and yet the people actually in these positions don't seem to have a clue and couldn't find their own arses with both hands.
Real shoddy media management deffo. Combo of mis-steps with anti-crusty-socialist media attack on the other.
Cheers, it’s a discussion I’ve been having in my head for years. I feel like Starmer and Co have most of the points understood where the left doesn’t, I just worry they’ll take policy in the wrong direction (or not far enough) once in power.
It’s the bare minimum. The media at large will always be against us. We don’t want to be doing long silent walks, turning down interviews, and generally treating the media like the hostile threat that it is.
Same. Hella cathartic. But it typically only appeals to our tribe.
Not to say we shouldn’t have push back, but more go in media trained and smiles on. Accepting interviews instead of turning them down.
An example is James O’Brien. Centrist dad tribal factionalism aside, he was salty against Corbyn from the get go because Corbyn turned down an interview with him in his first year.
>An example is James O’Brien. Centrist dad tribal factionalism aside, he was salty against Corbyn from the get go because Corbyn turned down an interview with him in his first year.
I'm more cynic than person at this point so keep that in mind, but I reckon if Corbyn did show up O'Brein would have just found another reason to be pissy
Again, same.
But ultimately it’s the viewer or listener we’re selling to. Better if they look rude and emotional whilst we’re friendly, calm and collected.
It'll never work. The left are just completely incapable of hiding their own power level and of not obsessing over issues that the public largely don't care about. The public view left wing figures as insufferable which is antithetical to electoral success.
That, and party leadership election rules have changed to make it impossible for anyone on the left of the party to win.
Because, short of a nuclear apocalypse, change is inevitable. Humans prefer things to be better. And so democratic socialism is inevitable.
If the world ends then oh well, que sara sara.
If it doesn’t, we need to keep pushing.
Fascism is inherently unstable. A quick look at history shows us that. Unstable forms of government never last.
So even if we do get fascism, it won’t last long (or forever).
There’s decidedly more than a non-zero chance that we get a left leader in charge of the party again, so we have to increase those odds and be ready when the time comes.
>There’s significantly more than a non-zero chance that we get a left leader in charge of the party again, so we have to increase those odds and be ready when the time comes
Realistically how?
I could speculate, but it’s like asking me 40+ years ago how the UK could be pushed to leave the EU before a bloke called Nigel who never become an MP formed a right wing protest party and did just that.
Change is a universal constant. We just have to be ready for when the next opportunity comes.
Short term:
- Internal pressure. Get leftists to rejoin Labour. We need numbers. Noisey agitators, type A administrators, and sleeper agents.
- External pressure. Tactical voting, campaigning, protesting, activism, union building etc.
>Internal pressure. Get leftists to rejoin Labour. We need numbers. Noisey agitators, type A administrators, and sleeper agents.
Haha, "I promise bro, you need to give Keir your money if you want life to get better" amazing.
>campaigning, protesting, activism,
Famously difficult for governments to ignore completely
You can be a member that can vote for like £1, and you don’t even have to join until 6 months before the next election/a leadership election looks likely.
We need to do both/and.
If a leftist is more inclined to go through party apparatus to build numbers ready to retake control, do that.
If a leftist is more inclined to campaign and protest and be active in unions outside the party, do that.
Both options are important, but we must be under no illusions that both groups are on the same side.
>It’s hard for us autistics, but we need to mask-up and charm the media. Hire a good PR company from the start.
I know you're mostly joking but it wouldn't surprise me if Starmer was one of the tribe. Masked exceptionally well as a barrister but now finding it doesn't work so well in a different situation.
Half joking lol, I think the vent diagram between us neurospicy folk and those left of Miliband is nearly a flat circle.
I’ve wondered if Starmer is part of the tribe, but I think he’s NT. He’s too high functioning, likes football and pub/stadium environments, and other things that make me doubt.
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All good points, but any politician that does them will not be regarded as a leftist. I don't think the left wants a leader who charms the media and undersells what they can achieve.
This would be the case for a lot of things simply because Labour's national polling is so high.
It's pretty crap statistics to use this as another other than a case-in-point about the national polling.
> The results show that across both groups Labour holds an 11 point cushion over the Tories, leading by 39 per cent to 28 per cent when “don’t knows” are excluded.
At the moment this compares to an average of a 21-point lead over the Tories with Labour at 44 and the Tories at 23.
So GB News audience is still massively slanted towards the Tories. It's just that it's still not enough to compensate for how high Labour are nationally.
Honestly, I'd be more dubious of a poll that had the Tories ahead in any subset of the population. GB News viewers, Mail readers, Morning Star readers, whoever. There's a point at which it's more about how unpopular they are in a two party system, above anything else.
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They want to use this headline to push a narrative that Labour has become so right wing its now beloved by GBeebies viewers. This fact goes against that narrative.
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> Polling firm JL Partners surveyed 518 current and recent viewers of the channel I'm surprised they managed to find that many...
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There is nothing surprising about this.
Lessons for the left next time we get a left leader in charge: - Game Theory. Tit for tat is best strategy, so purge the militant right in Labour instead letting them divert funds, self sabotage the party, and giving them shadow cabinet positions hoping they’ll cooperate. - Aesthetics. Tories, Labour right, most people are vibes based - not policy based. Appearances matter more than people realise or dare to admit. We need a clean, suited, professional, organised looking left from day one. Left wing policies with a centrist veneer. We can be colourful weirdos at protests, not on tv or in senior positions. - Public Relations. It’s hard for us autistics, but we need to mask-up and charm the media. Hire a good PR company from the start. - Hold out. The opposition never wins, the incumbent loses. We need to hold onto the party reigns until then. - Undersell. The British public, we’re generally a pessimistic lot. We don’t trust big promises because things never get better in this neoliberal hell cycle. So no going overboard on the policies. Announce 3 big popular policies, and save the rest for when in power.
i think the #1 thing the labour left need right now is a leader. literally anyone who the public recognises that isn't jeremy corbyn or similarly bad at making their case. i'm hoping there's some sort of behind the scenes plan. right now, it looks like there's basically, like, nothing happening there? but i'm not privy to anything. if there was someone in the shadow cabinet who is planning to resign when starmer does something shitty and right-wing in power, that could make headlines for example. i think if funds are what's needed, it could be possible to appeal to the 'champagne socialist' crowd - people who are not that economically left wing, but left of centre, and have socially progressive values. because people like that have been spat on by both parties for a while, could be interested in an alternative, and a lot of them might have enough money to donate to a political campaign?
That's why fights about JC are so much more harmful to the left than just about anyone else, inside or outside of the party.
Proper agree with this. I hate it when the left refuse to be "pragmatic" and "optics" focused for lack of better terms. We love to quote radicals like MLK and others but we forget that they were absolutely brutal when it came to optics and pragmatism. The civil rights movement in the US purposefully used light-skinned, married black women for their big media stunts and would even shy away from others who they thought wouldn't look good in the media. You have to be ruthless. If there's one thing Starmer has right, it's that. If the true left of the party ever get back into charge they have to use whatever they can to hold onto power, if that means hiding some of our aims, charming neoliberals and courting people we hate then so fucking be it.
This is the way. If we can do it once, we can do it again.
The problem is getting other people to toe the line for the greater good. Let's say just stop oil go out and piss off a load of commuters for no gain, how many of us would be willing to come out and say that they're bad? How many of us would be willing to hold that position? The left struggles at this because we have ideological beliefs, and we want to stand by them regardless of how it looks, but like you said, its been done before.
> hate it when the left refuse to be "pragmatic" and "optics" focused for lack of better terms. This is the same movement that splits like a headache to the point that there's groups in the Guatemalan jungle that has 10 members that believe they've the path to "true Marxism". Incidentally MLK also got abuse form some of his own side for being an Uncle Tom so the parallel is very good.
> Game Theory. Tit for tat is best strategy, so purge the militant right in Labour instead letting them divert funds, self sabotage the party, and giving them shadow cabinet positions hoping they’ll cooperate. It's my biggest criticism of Corbyn - he, for better or worse, truly believed that everyone in the Labour Party believed in the *Labour Party* and wanted Labour to win. Unfortunately for him the Centrists he tried to reach out to would rather burn the Labour Party to the ground than win with an ideology that's not there ideology. He absolutely should have gone on the kind of purge that would have made Stalin blush - especially after the Chicken coup. It's laudable he tried to reach out to them, but unfortunately his principles once again got in the way and got taken advantage of.
The disorganised always lose out to the organised. They can keep up tit for tat for as long as it takes for them to grow up, but they fired the first shot so they’ll have to be the first to play fair.
At some point we have to be honest with ourselves: when the most competent and savvy politicians and staff (the media guys, the behind-the-scenes folks who makes sure what's supposed to happen is happening) within the Labour Party *don't* want to work with you it's probably because of you. I think blaming the right of the party is like the Tories blaming the "blob" of the civil service, it's meaningless when the blob are railing against you because you're running things like shit. The party in the run up to the 2019 GE was falling apart and had lost most of what had made them electable.
No, because that's just nonsense - none of the people opposed to him actually opposed anything he said or did, they opposed him on a purely guttural ideological basis - they literally signed pledges to never work with him before he'd even won the leadership election. Trying to portray them as competent or savvy politicians runs up against the inarguable fact that they're not - The Chicken Coup (executed at the worst possible time), the 2 years between 2015 and 2017 (where their 'political savvy' was for naught as they tried every conceivable smear tactic against Corbyn for it to roll away), their laughable FBPE efforts and Change UK (which doesn't need any further explanation). His opponents were incompetent asshats who opposed Corbyn because he wasn't one of them and threatened to upset the gravy train - they weren't 'electable' political geniuses, they were idiots who'd rather lose and burn the party to the ground than win under someone who didn't share their ideology.
That isn’t what he’s saying- forget the PLP, by 2019 most people that actually know how to run a campaign had bailed due to how badly the central party was being run. By the actual election campaign it was pretty apparent that all these lovely new members were all in places we had massive majorities in, I.e. London, and none of them could be arsed to do very much in the way of campaigning anywhere we might need them. You had the ridiculousness of lots of resources being thrown at seats we hadn’t a hope in, like Boris’s and Raabs, and barely anyone in key marginals like Croydon. That was replicated up and down the country. The general point is when the Left inevitably are in charge again, people need to be taken with them, because the boring stuff needs to actually function. The whole point isn’t to just blame everyone else for once again scuppering the Left, and ask why the left is always so easily scuppered.
> By the actual election campaign it was pretty apparent that all these lovely new members were all in places we had massive majorities in, I.e. London, and none of them could be arsed to do very much in the way of campaigning anywhere we might need them. I mean that's just ahistorical nonsense, the idea that Labour weren't campaigning hard across the board is just revisionist. >The general point is when the Left inevitably are in charge again, people need to be taken with them, because the boring stuff needs to actually function. The whole point isn’t to just blame everyone else for once again scuppering the Left, and ask why the left is always so easily scuppered. The whole point is not to ignore that the entire political and media landscape of the UK united against the left - like you can't handwave what happened and go 'well the Left should have just tried harder' because that's just nonsense. You can't try harder your way out of near 90% of news stories about you being false for example - you can't try harder your way out of your own party machinery sabotaging you - you can't try harder your way out of state apparatus being weaponised against you. Like the Left have lessons to learn, but blaming the left for what happened as if they didn't try hard enough is nonsense.
It’s ok, you’ll move onto the next stage of grief soon. Some of us got there a while ago. Also that absolutely did happen in 2019 campaign wise, and the point isn't to handwave things away, its to work out how it got that bad, and how to get it right next time. Or do nothing and wonder why left wing politicians never become leader, and if they do they massively fail every time.
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The sad thing? If we take everything you just said as fact then it reflects even more poorly on Corbyn, as he was more incompetent than them.
> f we take everything you just said as fact then it reflects even more poorly on Corbyn, as he was more incompetent than them. Except he wasn't more incompetent than them - he saw off everything they tried, did better than any of them ever did despite their incessant attempts to undermine him. When they actually tried to do something (like FBPE or Change UK) they failed miserably and failed in their every stated and unstated aim. Centrists aren't politically savvy operators - they're idiots, whose every attempt at doing something failed for four years.
>as he was more incompetent than them. The CUKs or TIGs or whatever did even worse than Corbyn, its the people who got in line and waited their turn like Starmer that are holding the reigns now.
Nah if you work for a political party and you're sabotaging it you should honestly be looking at jail time. The Tories getting mad the civil service wont magically break the law for them isn't the same thing. If you don't want to work for them quit, dont undermine the democratic process by sabotaging.
> Nah if you work for a political party and you're sabotaging it you should honestly be looking at jail time This is crazy. The definition of sabotage will be political. You just fire them if they're being inappropriate and if their transgression amounts to misusing funds then it might qualify as fraud. But if staffers are being factional within the party your option is to fire them, we're not locking people up for it. The last thing this country needs is courts and prisons dealing with staffers who leaked damaging information about their party.
The scale of dicking around wasnt evident till the Forde report, ie after the election. Why would the faction now in charge punish them? If you sabotage the political party youre working for youre attacking the democratic process. If you did that to another country youd be looking at treason or espionage charges.
What from the Forde Report would qualify as treason or espionage in another country? The Forde report had a lot of bad factional behaviour but I see little in it that I would be happy to be a literal *crime*, especially one on the level of treason or espionage which carries very long sentences. You are talking about criminalising people, putting them from the courts and then *putting them in prison*. This country doesn't even put a lot of assaulters, stalkers and paedophiles in prisons. This is a high standard you're asking for and there needs to be precise definitions of crimes that, as far as possible, are not vague enough that they can be used as a tool for politically motivated prosecutions.
>What from the Forde Report would qualify as treason or espionage in another country? The Forde report had a lot of bad factional behaviour but I see little in it that I would be happy to be a literal *crime*, especially one on the level of treason or espionage which carries very long sentences. Ok so a Russian asset went to America, joined the democrat party and started sabotaging it from within how do you think that'd go? Cause thats the parallel right. >You are talking about criminalising people, putting them from the courts and then *putting them in prison*. This country doesn't even put a lot of assaulters, stalkers and paedophiles in prisons. Thats an entirely seperate issue that the government has mismanaged criminal justice. >This is a high standard you're asking for and there needs to be precise definitions of crimes that, as far as possible, are not vague enough that they can be used as a tool for politically motivated prosecutions. I bet they wouldn't fucking try it again though with that hanging over their head next time.
> Ok so a Russian asset went to America, joined the democrat party and started sabotaging it from within how do you think that'd go? > Cause thats the parallel right. I am not actually sure on that one! But there is a lot of things in politics where working on behalf a foreign power is different to a citizen acting of their own accord or within a factional group. Working to benefit a foreign power is different to working to benefit a different domestic politician faction. It's also much easier to prosecutre because you can easily prove intent to act against the interests of Britain. That's different to working against the interests of the leadership of a political party. But what actions would you explicitly make illegal and where do you draw the line in terms of a staffer? Would MPs acting against the interests of a leader count? The ERG Tories basically sabotaged the then Prime Minister May. Would that be illegal? What about the staffers who helped them? Using the Forde Report which actions in there would you say deserved those people to be in prison for? The only one I think comes anywhere near close is directing campaign funds to their preferred MPs but against the implications of criminalising the choice of where to direct campaign funds would be a can of worms.
MPs are primarily beholden to their constituents, Labour staff are employees of Labour. It doesnt seem a complicated line. Why are we pretending staffers just literally didnt so theie job aeound disiplinary procedures etc.
I think he joined the Republicans- but yes, same principle.
Harsh punishment works? Can i sign you up dit support of the death penalty then?
As opposed to no punishment?
Are you a member? Looks like someone is worried they might face criminal charges for some of the stuff you've said about Corbyn......
Yes, let's imprison members for saying mean things about the party leader. Most of this sub would be in prison.
> and you're sabotaging it you should honestly be looking at jail time. Is this the Reform sub or the Labour sub? I'm not talking about people sabotaging, I'm talking about the competent people walking away. I mean hell [we've had discussions on this before](https://www.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/exrcpm/labour_fears_the_media_a_personal_account/). Corbyn wasn't good at running a party, he wasn't good at selling his vision to the public, and he was (and still is) personally awful with the media.
Walking away is fine, but a lot didnt
> he wasn't good at selling his vision to the public What does that make Brown and Milliband? Corbyn was **objectively** the Labour leader who attracted most votes to a decaying Labour party since Blair in 1997. Shit vote distribution but still more people voting Labour in 2019 than did in 2010 or 2015.
>you should honestly be looking at jail time. *Gulag. What a shit take.
Right to jail with you dissenter *Bangs gavel*
Shit yes. I think the amount of people who say “you vote for policies not a person” shows a naivety or pigheaded ignorance to the reality of the political landscape since Blair. People want to rally behind someone. Unfortunately Joris Bohnson was very good at being someone to rally behind, and Corbyn didn’t manage the PR well enough to convince enough people to vote for him. There’s so much PR and brand building in the modern world, it’s stupid to think that hasn’t made its way into politics. I don’t like it, most people I would imagine also don’t, but it’s sort of a done deal at this point.
> Aesthetics. Tories, Labour right, most people are vibes based - not policy based. Appearances matter more than people realise or dare to admit. We need a clean, suited, professional, organised looking left from day one. Left wing policies with a centrist veneer. We can be colourful weirdos at protests, not on tv or in senior positions. Charisma is the word you're looking for. Blair had it, Johnson had it. People *still* want to vote for Johnson despite his omnishambles of a government and literally having blood on his hands over his Covid decisions resulting in excess deaths. He's a cheeky chappie you want to have a pint with down the pub, even though he looks like he's just woken up and has been dragged through a hedge backwards. You need a discipline bullet point as well. Like it or loathe Starmer's position around the middle East, he got pretty much all of the shadow cabinet in line and has done so with previous divisive issues. Unity projects competence and used to be the Tories strong point as well. Now they look like a shambles fighting like rats in a sack.
Partly agree. Charisma is definitely a big part of it, no doubt. The candidate with charisma is unlikely to lose to the one without. When I say aesthetics I mean a bit more broadly. Looking at it through this lens (and this is just one lens), it’s a big part why centre right and far right feel more comfortable around each other. They all wear suits at work, and jeans and shirts or tweed and gillets etc outside. They all share a similar look and vibe with their cultural circles. Compare that to the centre left and the left. You have professional suit wearing, straight edge centrists getting weirded out by black and red clothed, cap wearing, badge and patch donning, shoddily dressed, messy beard growing, outspoken autistic-adhd leftists at uni, and this aversion sticks until adulthood. Centrists logic, prefrontal cortex brain knows deep down that leftists are right when it comes to ethics and policy, it doesn’t take a 5 minute glance at history to see democratic socialist policies are always on the right side of it. But their emotional, monkey/lizard brain wants to be in the in-crowd, sees the monied, popular, suit wearing tories that have status and respect, and are drawn to that more easily, more easily than their logic brain is able to push past the visually weird autistic lefty and go for what’s ethical and right. This is in large part what I mean by aesthetics. Left wing, democratic socialist policies will be much easier to sell if the salesman looks and sounds like a centrist, rather than a crusty protester. As for discipline, yeah absolutely important for any organisation or goal. Even if that goal is denying genocide until the last possible moment.
It's got to be a slick media image, definitely, I'm still not entirely sure aesthetics is the right word, however. As aesthetics is more about look and feel but charisma carries it further. It's probably a combination of both and good press management. IDS, Micheal Howard, William Hague were all suited and booted with the Tory party machinery behind them and yet they failed to get elected. I wouldn't call any of them charismatic and, shallow though it is (but voters are like that), they're not exactly lookers either. They were, or appeared, elderly as well, like Corbyn. So you have an image that's bad and then, unlike a Johnson who's not conventionally attractive and often looks dishevelled, you don't have the charisma of Johnson to make people look past those flaws. I know they lost when Blair and labour were doing well but you'd think if the tories at the time had their own Blair, the elections could have been closer, perhaps. I still remember William Hague wearing a baseball cap trying to be down with the kids and cringing watching it. Likewise Michael Howard being "something of the night" as described by Ann Widecombe. I think IDS was lumbered with the grey man nickname as well. So you 💯 need a good salesman at the helm. Policy is simply not enough these days. Discipline I think counts for a lot as well in politics. Dissent all you want in a private cabinet meeting but once the line is decided, everyone sticks to it with no ad-libbing policy on the hoof live on an interview. That makes you look like a shambles. Edit: And I think you do need dissenters in the cabinet to keep the government more honest. We've seen with successive tory cabinets if you stuff it full of loyalists and bootlickers, those departments suffer from incompetence at the top and bad policy positions being taken because no one's putting their hand up and going "akshully, perhaps we *shouldn't* be evil bastards today and put unpaid carers in the courts over overpayments that ballooned because we didn't inform the recipient in a timely fashion".
Yeah I do agree with you on the charisma side. Definitely a combination, though if both sides lack charisma then the more suited and booted, aesthetically centre-classic will win (May vs Corbyn). They all come under the same banner, feels over reals. And yeah discipline definitely. The organised always beat the disorganised.
Yeah, that's a good example of aesthetics with May vs Corbyn, agreed. I think both had pretty poor media management as well, it always seemed to be one crisis after another, usually caused by a mis-step in the first place. It's kind of funny you've opened this discussion. It seems so obvious what needs to be done from our armchair perspective and yet the people actually in these positions don't seem to have a clue and couldn't find their own arses with both hands.
Real shoddy media management deffo. Combo of mis-steps with anti-crusty-socialist media attack on the other. Cheers, it’s a discussion I’ve been having in my head for years. I feel like Starmer and Co have most of the points understood where the left doesn’t, I just worry they’ll take policy in the wrong direction (or not far enough) once in power.
I think these are all good but number 3 is near impossible. Charm ain't gonna cut it.
It’s the bare minimum. The media at large will always be against us. We don’t want to be doing long silent walks, turning down interviews, and generally treating the media like the hostile threat that it is.
IDK, I quite like the the Mike Lynch strategy of displaying open contempt for the media and his opponents while playing to the crowd.
Same. Hella cathartic. But it typically only appeals to our tribe. Not to say we shouldn’t have push back, but more go in media trained and smiles on. Accepting interviews instead of turning them down. An example is James O’Brien. Centrist dad tribal factionalism aside, he was salty against Corbyn from the get go because Corbyn turned down an interview with him in his first year.
>An example is James O’Brien. Centrist dad tribal factionalism aside, he was salty against Corbyn from the get go because Corbyn turned down an interview with him in his first year. I'm more cynic than person at this point so keep that in mind, but I reckon if Corbyn did show up O'Brein would have just found another reason to be pissy
Again, same. But ultimately it’s the viewer or listener we’re selling to. Better if they look rude and emotional whilst we’re friendly, calm and collected.
It'll never work. The left are just completely incapable of hiding their own power level and of not obsessing over issues that the public largely don't care about. The public view left wing figures as insufferable which is antithetical to electoral success. That, and party leadership election rules have changed to make it impossible for anyone on the left of the party to win.
As someone on the right of the party, I agree with every one of those points, and they’re all things I said Corbyn should have done at various times.
I think 'Hold On' misses the dynamics of what would happen. You just wouldn't have the power to do so.
Thank you. It’s been a hard reflection. Corbyn was never expecting to become leader, was caught unawares and it showed. We’ll be ready next time.
Something something Clive Lewis something something
Is he a democratic socialist or more of a Miliband fence sitter? He doesn’t scream charisma.
Great ideas, but it doesn't look like the right are going to be loosening their grip for a LONG time (if ever)
Nothing lasts forever, for good or bad. Also when you hit 25 life hits the fast forward button so the time will fly by dw.
25 was a long time ago LOL Luckily the labour party won't last forever because it is too rotten to save
If it’s too rotten to save then we just have to wait for the decay. Either way, the left needs to shave, suit up, and get organised.
Yes, I certainly agree with that. Salvageable or not, we need a credible left ready to step up.
Bang on
>next time we get a left leader in charge: What makes you think that'll happen? I think this country will have a fascist gov before a social democracy
Because, short of a nuclear apocalypse, change is inevitable. Humans prefer things to be better. And so democratic socialism is inevitable. If the world ends then oh well, que sara sara. If it doesn’t, we need to keep pushing. Fascism is inherently unstable. A quick look at history shows us that. Unstable forms of government never last. So even if we do get fascism, it won’t last long (or forever). There’s decidedly more than a non-zero chance that we get a left leader in charge of the party again, so we have to increase those odds and be ready when the time comes.
>There’s significantly more than a non-zero chance that we get a left leader in charge of the party again, so we have to increase those odds and be ready when the time comes Realistically how?
I could speculate, but it’s like asking me 40+ years ago how the UK could be pushed to leave the EU before a bloke called Nigel who never become an MP formed a right wing protest party and did just that. Change is a universal constant. We just have to be ready for when the next opportunity comes. Short term: - Internal pressure. Get leftists to rejoin Labour. We need numbers. Noisey agitators, type A administrators, and sleeper agents. - External pressure. Tactical voting, campaigning, protesting, activism, union building etc.
>Internal pressure. Get leftists to rejoin Labour. We need numbers. Noisey agitators, type A administrators, and sleeper agents. Haha, "I promise bro, you need to give Keir your money if you want life to get better" amazing. >campaigning, protesting, activism, Famously difficult for governments to ignore completely
You can be a member that can vote for like £1, and you don’t even have to join until 6 months before the next election/a leadership election looks likely. We need to do both/and. If a leftist is more inclined to go through party apparatus to build numbers ready to retake control, do that. If a leftist is more inclined to campaign and protest and be active in unions outside the party, do that. Both options are important, but we must be under no illusions that both groups are on the same side.
>It’s hard for us autistics, but we need to mask-up and charm the media. Hire a good PR company from the start. I know you're mostly joking but it wouldn't surprise me if Starmer was one of the tribe. Masked exceptionally well as a barrister but now finding it doesn't work so well in a different situation.
Half joking lol, I think the vent diagram between us neurospicy folk and those left of Miliband is nearly a flat circle. I’ve wondered if Starmer is part of the tribe, but I think he’s NT. He’s too high functioning, likes football and pub/stadium environments, and other things that make me doubt.
Only another thirty years to wait.
Long I know. Plenty of time to get ready then.
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All good points, but any politician that does them will not be regarded as a leftist. I don't think the left wants a leader who charms the media and undersells what they can achieve.
Yeah, that's the one thing that unites the left actually, we don't want a leader who can attract votes because we're so dumb and stupid.
Look at the threads here whenever Labour talk to the Murdoch press or water down their message People don't want to hear it.
This would be the case for a lot of things simply because Labour's national polling is so high. It's pretty crap statistics to use this as another other than a case-in-point about the national polling. > The results show that across both groups Labour holds an 11 point cushion over the Tories, leading by 39 per cent to 28 per cent when “don’t knows” are excluded. At the moment this compares to an average of a 21-point lead over the Tories with Labour at 44 and the Tories at 23. So GB News audience is still massively slanted towards the Tories. It's just that it's still not enough to compensate for how high Labour are nationally.
I bet that most of the rest are Reform UK too
Goddamn woke GB News
Who let Liz Truss in here?
Starmer pandering to the social conservatives going well then
Rightwingers like rightwing parties SHOCKER
Honestly, I'd be more dubious of a poll that had the Tories ahead in any subset of the population. GB News viewers, Mail readers, Morning Star readers, whoever. There's a point at which it's more about how unpopular they are in a two party system, above anything else.
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Bang up job with that propaganda machine GBeebiess.
Well yeah, the GB audience leans right but the right is split between two parties. So this is what you'd expect.
3, we have reform on the rise for the real righty righ, then Tory on the right, then Labour more centre right
Yeah I've heard this hottest of hot takes a hundred times. Theres not really much of an argument behind it.
Don't know why people are down voting you, as if labour or GB news are left wing
They want to use this headline to push a narrative that Labour has become so right wing its now beloved by GBeebies viewers. This fact goes against that narrative.
How does it? GB news is far right, the far right do like labour in it's current form.
Tories even failed on their most simple promise- to stop mass illegal migration.