The hundreds of thousands of Corbyn supporters who carried him though multiple leadership challenges have not vanished from the face of the earth, even though many have vanished from the Labour Party.
If you believe that the Starmer project was a genuine belief that a right wing agenda would get Labour back into power, then the Starmer Project has totally failed on those terms.
If you believe that the Starmer project was a scheme to neutralise any threat from Labour to the vast disparity of wealth in the UK and internationally, then it has spectacularly succeeded.
Firstly, it seems to me that anybody who believes the Starmer project was ever the former is a fool. It was at best an insurance policy, so that in the improbable event of a Labour victory nothing radical would happen to discomfit the rich. The Labour victory was in itself seen by Starmer’s backers as an event to be avoided, and Starmer’s job was to mitigate any Labour victory.
Corbyn never returned any election result remotely as bad as Labour suffered on Thursday. At previous council elections, we were told by Blairite after Blairite that Corbyn would have to resign if he achieved a result even 10% better than Starmer just achieved. Does anybody remember all those Guardian front page articles featuring focus groups led by right wing charlatan Professor Rob Ford of Manchester University, at which small groups of denizens of the M4 corridor or Northern England were led to repeat unbecoming things they had read in the papers about Corbyn, and it was claimed disaster loomed were he and his policies not immediately removed?
It was not becoming of Jess Phillips, Ian Austin and others to display openly their delight at Labour defeat in the last general election. But I cannot understand the passivity of the left now. Get off your backsides, you lazy defeatists, and start to lay into Starmer very heavily indeed. You owe him no loyalty – he lied through his teeth in the leadership campaign about willingness to maintain left wing values, then went straight into ditch and purge the left wing, and supercharge the witch-hunt, once he had won.
Starmer is down now. To quote a left winger who did know how to grasp the moment, I beseech you in the bowels of Christ. It is time now to announce a leadership challenge. It has to come from John McDonnell. Get people back into the Labour Party. Give the people of England some hope and inspiration again, and at least a chance to hear about, and vote for, the possibility of a truly fairer society.
Craig, it was the Corbyn-supporting members who delivered the Labour party straight back to the right at the earliest possible opportunity. They thought Sir Second Referendum was the ideal person to win back all the Labour Brexit seats lost in 2019.
John McDonnell was another who told Labour supporters in the “Red Wall” they must vote again on the EU. That’s when he wasn’t blowing smoke up Alastair Campbell and exonerating Blair of war criminality.
BrianC, that’s not true – what happened was that the Blairites threatened another mass revolt/resignation in the run up to the 2019 GE if Labour failed to adopt Starmer’s Brexit policy of a new (heavily loaded) EU vote. I know this to be true because I know someone who was in the room when the ultimatum was issued. It was that Brexit policy that drove the so-called ‘red wall’ voters to switch their allegiance to the Tories en masse to ‘Get Brexit Done’. Bizarrely Corbyn continues to get the blame, despite having delivered, just two years earlier, Labour’s first net gain of seats (30) and largest vote share since 2001. I noticed Mandelson is still blaming Corbyn for Labour’s abysmal results yesterday…
What’s not true?
Ian J, your account looks accurate to me, but it’s on a different subject, the PLP, compared with Brian c’s point about the Labour membership voting for Starmer.
The Tories performed well in the north of England yesterday not only because of the overall Powellite-Brexit xenophobic flavour in the air but also because Boris Johnson and cabinet ministers have had an awful lot of exposure for the past 14 months saying they’re helping the population – a message that has been drummed away at practically every day – while the “opposition” support them. So for many it was a case of “vote for the government”. Both factors relate to patriotism.
Some may even have changed their minds at the last moment when they read in the far-right media things such as “even the Nazis didn’t go as far as the French are trying to go in attacking the Channel Islands – but the French surrender monkeys soon turned tail and ran away when they saw the monarchist navy, etc.”
I think you may have something. We live in strange times. I am a bit puzzled why Labour didn’t do better. After all, Starmer was trying to do a Blair, and Blair won in his day.
So let’s hope for the next general election, after most people are vaccinated and the “awful lot of exposure” starts to end.
(By ‘you’ I mean N_)
MJ
“I am a bit puzzled why Labour didn’t do better. After all, Starmer was trying to do a Blair, and Blair won in his day.”
A lot of people who liked Corbyn didn’t like Starmer and Blair’s project is seen by many to have failed so its a case of that was then and this is now.
Labour’s constitution is such that it produces an oligarchy of the PLP.
MJ
I’m a bit puzzled as to why you’re a bit puzzled. Why would doing a Blair be popular?
That is not true.
At least none of the Corbyn-supporting Labour members I know ever had any time for Starmer.
That includes me.
Really? Then explain to me how he won by a landslide among Labour members, when the vast majority of them joined to support Corbyn.
I assume it was a publicity coup, and split votes among the other candidates.
Israel !
There was no credible alternative and to be fair Starmer deceptively promised continuation of the socialist policies. Not that I voted for him.
Those who deemed Starmer the only credible candidate were the right and centre who had monstered Corbyn for four years. Guardian columnists, Osborne, Blair et al. The same people who still say he’s the most credible leader.
I was in Labour. I voted for Starmer to be leader as he promised to continue the socialist policies and he promised to win.
Then he started purging the left.
So I resigned and joined the Communist Party which I can honestly tell is you far much more fun! We’re very small but at least we can have honest conversations about what the problem is. *ahem*. Capitalism is the problem. Socialism is the solution. There.
Which Communist Party?
I know of at least six using that name that operate in the UK….
It may be more fun for you to be surrounded by people you agree with and not to have to engage in arguments, but that’s just self-indulgence.
If you actually want to contribute to efforts to make the world better, I urge you to stop messing about in your silly little CP pedalo and come back aboard Battleship Labour.
We need good people like you to help us storm the bridge and steer the ship back on course.
Not true of me, Brian c; I didn’t vote for Starmer. I’m still a member, hoping for another leadership election.
Not true of me either, Clark, but quite obviously true of most of them.
100%
It was the left that stopped me voting Labour last time. 2 young guys knocking on my door telling me I needed a second vote – they didn’t even tell me which party they were from.
There seem to be 2 sides to the Labour party – one which is I’m doing well, and as long as we concentrate on the numbers of lesbian barristers and ignore the real 25% / 75% inequality in Britain I’ll still do well. And the left which I guess is still fighting Maggie Thatcher.
There are millions of Brexit voters out there who should be voting Labour. Lose any more and the nearest thing to a future Labour party will be run by Nigel Farage.
“Starmer is down now”. An opportunity to kick him – out. I agree.
Yes! I am still fighting Maggie Thatcher, and her children and her children’s children. I am a socialist and a believer in equality and a member of the Labour Party; just. And until we sack the full time staff in our London HQ, who sabotaged Jeremy at every turn we will not get a Labour Government. Sorry.
Yes. Similarly until we are rid of the Murrells and their coterie in the SNP there will be no Independence for Scotland.
Hear hear!!!!
Rarely any mention in the MSM of the success of left-wing councils in Preston and Salford, who have taken a very different path from the PFI and outsourcing model to which, according to Blairites, there is no alternative. The SNP could perhaps learn something if they took a look at Preston and Salford, though of course they won’t, any more than Starmer’s Labour party will, though it seems the latter will move house, another pathetic piece of window dressing, now desperate to “prove” they’e not London-centric.
Teesside:
The Labour run council in Stockton-on-Tees is refurbishing the Globe theatre in the town which is owned by the richest family in the area… gifting them nearly £28million in refurbishments to their building… and paying them rent to do it. Middlesbrough Council next door has paid for office blocks for another developer… providing the money to build them, taking on all the risks etc. Both Councils have built hotels for multi-nationals companies using money from the Public Works Loans Board.
The Tory major in Teesside just got re-elected on the basis that he bought back into public ownership the local airport for £40,000,000. That same airport having been previously sold by Labour Councils for just £500,000.
Having had 11 years of Tory government… in Hartlepool they’re calling it change to have a Tory MP. That’s because of local control by ‘Labour’ for years. That included a court fight trying to prevent details about the airport sale for £500,000 contract becoming public.
Why would anyone turn out to vote for Labour when their councils primarily serve the interests of rich developers (and family members when it comes to council jobs).
Thank you for (again) a most important article!
Here are some suggestions for policies a relevant and responsive Labour Party might use:
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2021/05/07/lets-turn-our-work-our-communities-our-finances-our-government-our-taxes-to-common-purpose/
His Youtube channel is good as well and have interesting opinion on Scottish Independence and Currency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMLddlxapwQ
Steve, A responsive Labour Party would do well to ignore the link you give, which is to Tax Research / Richard Murphy – He means well, and knows how the tax and banking system works very well (MMT). He a founder member of the ‘Green New Deal’ group along with with Caroline Lucas MP and the solar panel industrialist Jeremy Leggett, (recently £old out to European dreamers ‘Stakraft’) – The Labour Party must ignore such foolish and loud anti-nuclear power campaigners. [mods can I post more details on why if asked?]
https://greennewdealgroup.org/about-the-group/
Just because you support Nuclear energy solution, other aspects of economy and it’s workings should not be ignored and dismissed.
What I am trying to say is
a) we can create (whatever) 50 billion
b) According to you it should be invested in Nuclear
Most of the people think that we don’t have enough money to invest in either!
PS
You and your posts make me more sceptical about right solution but I still believe that understanding money creation is more important to solve problem.
Hi Pigeon English,
I am simply stressing that building energy plant is always about real word LIMITS such as mineral & land area resources, and the laws of thermodynamics together limiting how many energy generating plants of any particular type and size can and cannot be built.
This does not mean I am ignoring and dismissing other aspects of the “economy and it’s workings”, in spite of the fact that all economic transactions, at root are energy transactions. Nor that I am unaware of how spread sheet space i.e. bank balance sheets i.e. money creation works.
In light of the real world resource limits, anti-nuclear rhetoric is irrational, since a solution to phasing out fossils fuels, without nuclear power is physically impossible to build – unless one is advocating for a massive demand side reduction, i.e. a return to a pre industrial economy.
I “support nuclear energy solution” only because there is no other solution. Period. This is not a matter of opinion. Do the maths without all the hot air.
https://withouthotair.com/
The Party System, with all ‘convention’ subverted and an entirely submissive mainstream media, can now only deliver the Elective Dictatorship that even Hailsham/Hogg warned about (and did FA about it of course). The whole thing needs dismantling and this will not happen without serious trouble.. Indeed with all the opportunistic legislation and ‘bio-security’ measures, things look utterly hopeless.
The fact you are still blogging suggests you have not yet been sent to prison.
I tried typing ‘Craig Murray sentence’ into DDG yesterday and came up with nothing, so am unaware as to your legal position this Saturday morning.
No doubt you will let readers know in due course?
decision delayed till Tuesday next… (I finally found out a minute ago..)
Check the comments under the post about Jersey fishermen.
There’s some court coverage here:
https://twitter.com/jamesdoleman/status/1390623894701281283
Possibly relevant to the court case (as in, this might possibly be useful to the defence): the SNP seem to be committing the election-law crime of revealing information from election counts about how people have voted before the returning officer has announced the results:
from Sky News:
Sky News
12:19
SNP say Salmond will not win a seat in the Scottish parliament
Analysis from Joe Pike, political correspondent in Aberdeen
SNP sources say there is “no chance” Alex Salmond will win a regional list seat. (…)
Mr Salmond’s former Aberdeenshire constituency of Banff and Buchan would have been the best place to pick up votes. But sources told Sky News early sampling suggests he’s not got anywhere near enough support for a seat.“
Rhys, as far as I know, Craig will only find out this coming Tuesday.
I refuse to vote for a Starmer version of Labour. As someone who was ‘over the moon’ in 1997 when the Tories were finally kicked out, only to gradually realise Blair was Tory Plan B, I remain cynical of the chance of any genuine changes.
But it is the same throughout Europe, the social democratic parties have all slithered rightwards and embraced ruinous privatisations and rentier economies, all the while screaming Russia, Russia, Russia and sanctions, sanctions, sanctions, at any voice critical of this status quo.
Not sure what the answer is, in this age of total surveillance and infiltration, any radical movement will get crushed at the embryonic stage.
Never forget: the Blairites openly praised Thatcher before the 1997 election.
As well as the shift in the social-democratic parties that you draw attention to, there are also spooked-up wacko outfits such as the Five Star Movement and Extinction Rebellion, and then there are the Gilets Jaunes who may have some good eggs but who also have other elements fitting into the spooked-up wacko far-right category.
What do you think of Jean-Luc Mélenchon? He’s got a lot about him that’s positive.
The problem with calling for electoral reform of any major kind is that given where we are now the wacko far-right would get well stuck-in to anything such as “citizens’ assemblies”, in a kind of real-world equivalent, far more far-reaching, of 4chan.
Melanchon. To the left of Stalin.
So given the French electoral set up. Macron fails to make round two.
1. Le Pen
2. Melanchon.
The French will first off shore their money. All moved somewhere safe. Then they will vote for Le Pen.
“To the left of Stalin.”
That isn’t hard.
“surveillance and infiltration, any radical movement will get crushed at the embryonic stage.”
Perhaps if our culture was more savvy about those things…
Thankyou Craig; No doubt the most important prayer to date. Take a brief look at ‘dead eye’ robot Sir Starmer’s friends and the organisations he belongs to: https://labourheartlands.com/sir-keir-starmer-the-establishment-candidate-the-labour-leadership-race-and-the-trilateral-commission/
No tin-foil hat here – Time to face reality, recognise and act. I expose the writing on the wall; fair warning: ‘“I pledge allegiance to the Trilateral Commission, and to the domination for which it stands, one planet, indivisible, with tyranny and poverty and top-down order for all…”
Thanks, Mark. That strongly suggests that Keir Starmer unless he goes on to a more powerful position is unlikely to stop being Labour leader any time soon. Then there’s Gove. As for Epstein, he was far more than “just” a sex criminal.
I rather agree Starmer is finished, but I am not much in agreement with ideas of what went wrong, either here or in even the liberal media.
First of the problems is that he is a Londoner through and through, with no experience at all of the north, and how to handle Brexity northerners. You could see it in the way he reacted in a panic to the northern focus groups. He had no idea how to get round the problem, but suggested simplistically rather that they had to be followed. (admission: my family are North Midlands).
Secondly, coming from modest origins, he lacks confidence in himself and his point of view. Quite, quite, the opposite of Johnson’s breezy Etonian self-confidence. So he allowed himself to be taken over by the establishment, who are all ready and waiting to go in for the kill if they perceive an opportunity. The most obvious case is the way he’s been taken over by the Israel lobby, through his wife. I mean, really, taking on a former MOSSAD agent in his office (really former?)! My impression is that Labour party members were left cold by the anti-semitism allegations against Corbyn, and Starmer reviving them doesn’t go well. But it’s not only in that area; he generally gives the impression of wanting not to rock the boat, indeed afraid to rock the boat.
Not sure if Starmer even realises there is a boat, let alone the need to captain it.
No Laquerre he did not allow himself to be taken over by the Establishment, he was the Establishment’s purpose, the Establishment’s volition for the Israelization of British politics, the separation, discrimination, domination to cast out the nihilist, the peacemaker and murder the Dove by deception.
So how did he get like that? You’re essentially saying something downstream of my remark.
No, not downstream of your remark. Actually it is clear Sir Starmers left hemisphere controls the right thus we witness a mind weighted towards the sequential, the detached and repetitional thinking, a robot in fact where the lateralization of his brian function is skewed causing lack of moral sense, empathy, emotion, understanding and an obvious target for control and manipulation by a complex..
“Secondly, coming from modest origins, he lacks confidence in himself and his point of view. Quite, quite, the opposite of Johnson’s breezy Etonian self-confidence. So he allowed himself to be taken over by the establishment, who are all ready and waiting to go in for the kill if they perceive an opportunity.“
Keir Starmer did his postgraduate study at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, which only became a college of Oxford University in the 1950s but which was founded in the 13th century a couple of centuries earlier than Eton, has old buildings, and is hardly Nuffield College. If he had been without self-confidence when there, he may not have climbed so far later. To be fair, given that he was involved in social democratic politics, this confidence may not have been flavoured much by sharing jokes with inherited-wealth inherited-status poshies. He may not have been quite so bad as Gordon Brown.
But the ruling caste would never give the DPP role to anyone they didn’t consider either “sound” or ready and willing to obey orders from his “sound” “betters”.
Exactly N_ on the button
I agree with the sentiment but not the strategy. English Labour is an old machine that has driven itself into the mud. Anyone of Corbyn’s faction who should come forward would be drowned as soon as possible in much the same agonising way (https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/04/that-leaked-labour-party-report/). Much in the same way as with the SNP, as well as with the Bernie faction in the states, readjusting the vision and trajectory of these parties away from neoliberalism has proved unsuccessful time and time again. I wish the English well, but can’t see how Labour can come back. They had an excellent candidate in Corbyn, and the party worked tirelessly to get rid of him. They’d do so again with McDonnell. England needs Momentum to turn into new left wing party.
Alba party may have been too young to win significant votes this time, but it was very very new. I also think the Alba project isn’t ambitious enough. Another problem is that, unfortunately, as extraordinary as Salmond is as a statesman his reputation has been (wrongly!) tarnished and he may not be able to spearhead a new movement because of this.
A republican movement, whose MPs abstain from Westminster and which is divided into two parties that can capitalise on the De Hondt system, with a clear vision of what an Independent Scotland should look like (currency, EU, fishing, oil, border) will crush the SNP by the next election much in the same way that the Irish Parliamentary Party was crushed by Sinn Féin in 1918, after Sinn Féin committed themselves to establishing a Scottish Republic only in 1917. Those who are disillusioned with the SNP today will of course multiply by the next election and that fundamental problem of electability is not going to go away for Sturgeon.
Apologies for repeating myself, I’ve made this argument in the comments before.
…after Sinn Féin committed themselves to establishing an *Irish Republic …
Anndra: your remarks about Sinn Fein are interesting. Other countries seeking independence have also had that experience. It is perfectly normal for those disaffected by lack of progress to drift away and form something with a harder core. I think this is just about to happen in Scotland now, although it might or might not be Alba. As with women and the ‘just be kind’ factor on trans parasitical and colonial take-over, so with independence: a new hardness is about to emerge in both cases; and I think they will run parallel. Scotland is growing up and growing out of its torpor. It has discovered the hard way that being soft is not the answer.
Anndra
“Anyone of Corbyn’s faction who should come forward would be drowned as soon as possible in much the same agonising way”
Such drowning would certainly be attempted but I think he could have won if he’d not tried to appease the press and the PLP. If he’d accepted their threatened resignations over a second Brexit referendum they would have been replaced in due course by candidates who were more sympathetic to him. Its one thing to strive for consensus but it was the Blairites who were making that impossible.
If nobody can win in the teeth of total media hostility then we are in line for continuous rule by the Integrity Initiative and its palls, which seams to be what we’ve arrived at. I do hope Alex Salmond doesn’t waste too much time trying to get fair play out of the nedia but he should have learnt better by now.
‘It has to come from John McDonnell.’
I am very wary of him. I wonder is he all he seems?
The Labour Party has been muted. Chris Williamson and his treatment the template. Even a new workers party will be infiltrated. Despite the criminal inaction over Covid and open corruption, the people still vote for those that despise them. The media combined with traitor Labour MP’s destroyed their own party. Chris Williamson is starting from scratch with little or no help.
“It has to come from John McDonnell.
I am very wary of him. I wonder is he all he seems?”
Me too.
Who is Keir Starmer?
Five questions for new Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer about his UK and US national security establishment links – By Matt Kennard:
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/05/five-questions-for-new-labour-leader-sir-keir-starmer-about-his-uk-and-us-national-security-establishment-links/
Clearly put. There are ex-Corbyn supporters, ex-LP members attacking Starmer daily. Unfortunately there are few within the PLP. The PLP & party machine are more keen on preventing another socialist becoming leader than on ousting a fellow ‘gravy-train politician’. Also if another socialist did become leader, they would be smeared, lied about & attacked daily in the media (& by ‘gravy-train politicians’ on all sides).
Many ex-Corbyn supporters, ex-LP members are understandably advocating a new party. The low turnout & the increased percentage vote to Greens suggest that there is a large constituency wanting something different and transformative. But (as you know Craig) – starting a new party & trying to get some traction in a long established political system isnt easy. Demonstrations, direct action, local groups, strikes and resistence outside of TV politics, might be the best way forward currently. This may coalesce to form a new political party later (& is how the LP came about in the first place).
The origins of the Labour Party are complex, but just as important as the input from various socialist groups affiliating to it (and very deleterious to its politics) were the electoral lash-ups with the Liberal Party and the confinement of its activity to parliamentary politics. The party was, after all, started as a means of representing the interests of the unions (or maybe more appropriately, the union leaders) in parliament.
“The left must take back Labour” is a headline that begs a number of questions, not least whether the British state or Labour hierarchy would ever again allow a situation to arise where a left-winger became leader. All the evidence says this is now not possible: the left needs to learn from experience as the right of the party surely has. The sooner labour party members who really want to fight for socialism – from the small number of MPs so inclined to the hundreds of thousands of vilified and abused people in the ranks – realise this evident truth and act on it by beginning to forge something new, the better.
“All the evidence says this is now not possible: the left needs to learn from experience as the right of the party surely has.”
To learn from the experience of being conspired against you have to be a conspiracy theorist.
The media are, as ever, the problem. I think the statistics show that, in general, a right-wing Labour leader will have better electoral successes than a left-one, because the general tone and direction of the news propaganda will be different. One will be mostly supportive with minor criticisms, and one will be mostly condemnatory.
With that in mind, I am not sure I am willing to commend voters who rejected Starmer at the polls for their good sense and perspicacity. They are still victims of the propaganda system, to the degree that, in the worst instances, it has created the “floating voter” even with Johnson at the helm of an obviously hard-right and openly corrupt Tory party. And in many cases, these are the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” category of the working class, who have been persuaded to electorally shoot themselves in the foot with a blunderbuss.
So the security services and their handlers know that elections can be manipulated, the media are the unwitting conduit through which this anti-democratic manipulation happens, and most of the citizenry don’t see how everything works behind the curtain. They’re too busy with surviving to see how much they are being shafted.
I would love for Starmer to have lost because he was right wing. But if my above thesis is correct, then Starmer did not lose for this reason, because most voters don’t understand that Starmer’s views are in opposition to working-class interests. All they see is (a) he isn’t very engaging, and (b) he doesn’t have much in the way of policies. He lost because, despite the best efforts of the Guardian to prop up their wonky donkey in the race, most people have no idea what he stands for.
NEW: Exclusive polling for @Channel4News by
@JLPartnersPolls shows the top reason given for not voting Labour in elections in England yesterday was Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1390724467383472130
What a depressing clip, even for Channel 4!
* A Blairite like Adonis admits he doesn’t know what Starmer stands for
* The reporter on the scene gets in an opportunity to blame Corbyn, in case it’s still his fault
* A working-class vox-pop man doesn’t care about Tory corruption, and deprived of any political education whatsoever, thinks that voting for the millionaire patrician is worth a go
Christ on a bike…
Further to this, here is an interview from Starmer from yesterday, where he does a few minutes of Ed-Miliband-style waffle-and-bluster: https://twitter.com/alexnunns/status/1390689061883588610. It reinforces the impression of someone who knows bland oratory but isn’t willing to put forward any policy.
May God help you if you truly believe that the working class want more drivel about the multiplicity of genders and white privilege from Labour politicians.
Starmer is offering all the union Jacks and reactionary postures you could ever want. Sadly it seems not too many are interested.
The UK is currently such an embarrassment that I cannot believe that anyone with half a brain would want to be associated with it.
Most British ‘working-class ‘ voters don’t have half a Brain. Complete lack of class consciousness, the majority are now wage and debt slaves to a property and as such think of themselves as ‘middle class’ ish or one up from the old style working class. These people now vote with their ‘aspirations’ rather than with their reality, added to which they are almost all totally de-politicised, either by poor education, disinterest or reading press in a state of establishment capture, usually a mixture. When the world is in chaos poorly informed people go backwards, they want what they once believe they had (even if they never actually had it) Turkeys/Xmas, lambs to the slaughter etc. How to circumvent this I don’t know. Focus on the youth, grass roots, momentum and work your way up, thus avoiding the press. You’ll also need a good selection of REAL green policies, not the smoke and mirrors of Green new deals, resets, carbon offset and associated drivel, this generation of kids are smart, they have access to the science and the data. The future is local and its young, you can avoid infiltration this way (although with todays state sanctioned spying and surveillance they’ll know everything) but thats ok, don’t try to hide anything.
“The Left”……what exactly is the left?
It’s a mishmash of identity politics that is supposed to attract blue collar working class voters to vote Labour. Good look with that one.
It also hamstrung itself by trying to undo the referendum result. So much for the rights of deplorables to vote freely. ( I prefer to be described as “scum of the earth” seeing as nobody has asked)
And your proposed champion of the left is to be John McDonnell!!!
The heart and soul of the Labour Party membership is daydreaming of New Labour Days, that’s why Starmer got elected.
The heart and soul of Labour voters that are staying away from the ballot box is why the election results are as they are. There is scant evidence of an exodus of Labour voters going tory, do the sums.
Instead of a desperate critique of a bad Labour result, how about an attempt to explain why your poster boy Salmonds Albatross brain fart ended as it has…_
The Morning Star, which has been strangely equivocal about Starmer, has come off the fence today.
The front page banner headline reads
“Verdict is in on ‘New Leadership’: NO-HOPE STARMER’S LABOUR ROUT”
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/
Whatever, I’m ready to give up. Every major cause has been lost for decades, capital controls the media and politics. The only chance is if the people rise up, but they won’t – you the reader won’t, because not enough people are short of the necessities of life. Power belongs to profit, and it will run us right over the edge of climate and ecological collapse. The sixth mass extinction is unstoppable.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
I feel similar Clark, when I heard ex Labour members answering as to why they voted for the Conservative party, saying that it was the Tories who done the vaccination, not the furiously overworked skeleton of our NHS, they were voicing their MSM riddled attitudes and lack of will to engage politically to the world.
I left the Labour Party due to Starmers se/election and his history at the DPP/TC, his actions as its head, duly long grassing the affairs undercover policemen had with demonstrators, he never was leadership material but the choice of the Blairite establishment gatekeepers, the fail safe who would take over should Johnson fail.
He has carried on with the infiltration of the Labour party, which should be friends to most countries, by proliferating and supporting dehumanising policies incompatible with UK foreign policy interests, imho. His choice of private secretary makes his split loyalties obvious.
Whilst his personal choice is to leave the EU and strengthen the UK, he is perfectly willing to let a powerful rogue state engage in the UK foreign policy process, as well as allowing the pressurization of UK political parties from outside the electoral representative process to happen. This infiltration going well beyond simple lobbying should be banned, its the electorate that matters, not those trying to incite and split up political parties, ain’t that right Shai Masot?
Rising up is an idea mooted by many now, some very young and still at school, they had enough of our inactivity and lackadaisical approach to what keeps us all alive.
Maybe the necessities of life will sorely be interrupted and the bank of England’s prediction of a regained economic prowess this year, might become far fetched if the powers out of our control interfere with the yearning to care free pollute the skies to go on holiday, by having it instead polluted by Laki. volcanic ash might stop play, limit agriculture, and, depending on the veracity of Earth activities, increase prices for foods and goods, hunger and desperation.
https://www.severe-weather.eu/news/explosive-volcano-eruption-iceland-ash-cloud-2021-fa/
furiously overworked skeleton of our NHS
======
This shows you don’t get it. Let me give you one example. In SE london, a blood test. You now need an appointment. So you ring the number. You are number 272 in the queue, and 4 hours later you might get one. If you haven’t been disconnected first.
The NHS has employed admins on lots of money to manage [ration] blood tests. They didn’t do the simple thing of hiring people to take the blood.
This is repeated across the board. More and more admis, less and less care. Look at spending, it’s rocketed. More and more money is thrown at the NHS and still it fails.
That’s without getting on to the slaughter. 20,000 lethal “mistakes” annually in the NHS.
Not included in those mistakes check out Portsmouth hospital and one doctor. 654 killed in the same way as Shipman.
On your last paragraph. This illustrates why you and Labour are as a dead as a dodo. All you can do is whine.
That’s right, blame the workers of the NHS, when it was overburdened by administrators and an “internal market” by New “Labour”.
Shameless.
You need to understand that your disagreement with a contributor is not evidence of their “not getting it” i.e. understanding the principles involved. It means that you have different views.
Explore those differences if you wish, but don’t label someone as a “whiner” just because you don’t like what they say. Discuss policy ideas, not contributors here.
I’d suggest you don’t get it.
Do a bit of research into what has been happening since the NHS was set up.
On day one the Tories and Doctors opposed it – and, IMO, still do.
The NHS functioned quite well before Thatcher because it was centralised and run by medical staff. After Thatcher it was split up and decentralised and forced to compete with itself and the private sector.
Since Thatcher and Blair, funding, in real terms, has been slashed and yet the population has increased by over 10 million.
Currently, a large proportion of the NHS budget goes towards bureaucracy and contract staff rather than healthcare. Their only concern is feathering their own nests and diverting NHS funds to their own bank accounts.
Most of the senior people in the Government and the NHS are privateers with one agenda to sell off the NHS.
Bozo and the Tories stated in their GE manifesto: 40,000 new nurses and 40 new Hospitals – how’s that going?
Look at India, because that is where we are headed.
In 1951 there were 500,000 beds in the NHS with a population of around 50 million people. Pre covid there were 149,000 beds for a population of 70 million plus. There are too many bean counters, middle management and lawyers soaking up salaries and not enough nurses, specialists and surgeons. The litigious culture the Tories have encouraged costs the NHS 100s of millions every year and leads to lawyers becoming directly involved in setting policy based on how often a hospital gets sued for certain services or activities (“we lost £15 million on neck operations last year, stop it unless it’s life and death and they sign a waiver” etc.) You can’t run a health service for profit, it’s anathema to care.
I confess to a strong feeling of schadenfreude at Labour’s polling misfortunes. It deserves a good kicking as it has lost any claims to be a party with values and integrity. I write this as a long standing Labour Party member who resigned at the disgraceful treatment of Jeremy Corbyn by his own party and the clear intent by the new regime to cleanse it of the democratic underpinning that he had helped to establish and using the trope of anti-semitism as its central justification.
The Labour spokespersons I heard yesterday who kept bleating on with empty rhetoric about “needing to reconnect blah blah blah” just showed that they do not have a clue. It was left to Corbyn himself from outside the party pale to point out in his Channel interview that the exciting radical policies Starmer had signed up to were still extant, though one could hardly believe that from any current presentation of them. He also gently pointed out what Mark Drakeford was achieving in Wales.
The problem I have with the exhortation to get off my backside and challenge Starmer is that he is simply the symptom and not the underlying problem, which lies in that strong, powerful Labour establishment rump that will sabotage any attempt to shift the party to a radical agenda. It clearly does not want a mass membership to promote the idea that it is “for the many and not few”, and if it has an agenda it is to one of identity politics, which will have the same results as with the SNP currently in Scotland.
@Crispa Everything you wrote is true but is only the half of it. Corbyn’s craven poltroonery has to be taken into account. He sold every principle he had to appease the fascist and antisemite factions in his partei. His first apology came in his first week and he never stopped. Damn him.
Go on blame the victim, that is so easy to do. Corbyn’s fault is that he is a decent and honest person and he did not purge the party of the backstabbing blairites it was just against his principles.
A decent, honest man who allowed a black, Jewish woman to be purged by rich, white antisemites? A black man to be purged by rich, white antisemites? Chris Williamson for defending him? The man who defended himself by claiming that he put pressure on the Partei apparat to purge Ken Livingstone faster? The vilest perpetrator against Corbyn was Corbyn, he is the opposite of a victim.
Corbyn was not hands on in these decisions there was a mechanism within the party to do these things. Exactly my point.
So Craig
What are you going to do………dismiss the people (voters) & find a new ones ?
Cultivating the cynical is hard-won ‘djm’; notably when capitulation takes over the mind.
What are you going to do? djm. Are you going to campaign to change the basics, i.e. the electoral system to one that is fair and proportional?
Well, you’ve read the Labour report. You know that the problem posed by Starmer is a structural problem rather than of individuals, one which can’t be resolved anymore than media could be reformed, except by getting rid of most of it. At some point the rot is so deep it’s better to demolish and rebuild.
It won’t work. The reason people have turned off Labour is the left-wing of Labour.
The left-wing has gone around telling voters that they are racists, they are xenophobic, they are stupid, they are ignorant.
The voters have decided to vote against Labour. People don’t vote for people who insult them
Then we have the debts. Not the reported national debt, the true debt. 2 trillion borrowed is reported. 14 trillion of Socialist Pension debts is hidden of the books. That’s increasing at over 10% a year. That’s ONS numbers. So 30% of tax, 220 bn a year goes on the debts. There’s no capital to pay for this. All the money was redistributed. It’s a socialist problem, not a capitalist problem.
So what are the consequences? Wealth inequality is caused by socialism. Pensioner poverty. Lack of investment. Austerity. All caused by those debts. Easy to see why. A 30% tax cut would fix personal austerity. 220 bn a year or less fixes “state austerity”. If the money had been invested and owned by Mr Average at retirement he would have 1.3 million in a fund. It has all gone. The welfare state redistributed/spent it. 1.3 million gives an income of 35K a year. Pensioner poverty gone. There wouldn’t be a social care issue either.
But of course the left is in denial about both the insulting the voters and the big issue, the socialist pension debt.
– “The reason people have turned off Labour is the left-wing of Labour. The left-wing has gone around telling voters that they are racists, they are xenophobic, they are stupid, they are ignorant”
This contradicts the facts and the numbers – depending upon who you mean by “the left-wing of Labour”.
Labour popularity soared with Jeremy Corbyn – check Labour membership, which became the largest in Europe, and the massive swing to Corbyn’s Labour in 2017. Check the huge crowds for Jeremy Corbyn’s appearances.
And it’s the “Centrists” who have “gone around telling voters that they are racists, they are xenophobic, they are stupid, they are ignorant”, not Corbyn and his team.
They aren’t centrists, they are far right.
And what is “socialist” about pension debt? It’s nearly all in the private sector!
Rethink LB about the challenges for modern capitalist societies such as the need to protect the natural environment and enhance the quality of life and to retain the dynamic of innovation and investment while ensuring that the rewards of the global system are not returned to the richer owners of capital.
Every good worker should have a stake in the generation of profit. That stake will vary, nevertheless it will have value as I see it. In our increasing knowledge based economy that value could be the basis for education and skill development or mediate the problem of job displacement and unemployment.
“The left-wing has gone around telling voters that they are racists, they are xenophobic, they are stupid, they are ignorant”…….
…..sounds very similar to our host commenting on the Glorious Victory of the electorate in defying the dictatorship of the unelected European Commission…_
Many of the bloggers on here including Mr Murray behave like that. Mysoginist, Racist, Xenophobic, Islamaphobic, Homophobic, Transphobic, Nazi, Fascist thrown around like confetti. I wish the mods would put a count up at the side of the page.
Phrases / words such as ad hominem, straw man argument, gaslighting and quoting smart stuff from books and philosophers. All very tiresome designed to show how smart they are. They need to connect to the ordinary folk instead of shaming them.
BTW does anyone even read the Guardian or watch the BBC anymore?
Stop the woke and PC BS and start addressing the problems such as Poverty, mental health, food banks, education, unemployment, crime. Never easy to solve, but they could at least try.
The “left” are more interested in changing street names and calling out cultural appropriation than addressing basic problems.
Corbyn was no leader unfortunately and now we have the biggest buffoon in British history unchallenged by Labour Tory Lite.
As for those SNP A-holes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We need new parties that represent the people needs.
Disenfranchised rant over!
“All very tiresome designed to show how smart they are. They need to connect to the ordinary folk instead of shaming them.”
Does this assume that ordinary folk aren’t smart or that smart people aren’t ordinary folk or both.
Nonsense, pay as you go is more than adequate for decent pensions for poor people as well as sinecures for rich bastards.
Add sinecures to the list!
As a vice chair of my local CLP I Couldn’t agree more we really need to fight. Trouble is to get a leadership challenge requires more MPs than belong to the SocCam group and even some of them are flakey.
“It could be that Mr Corbyn manages to run the gantlet and get elected. It’s possible. You should know, we won’t wait for him to do those things to begin to push back. We will do our level best, it’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.”
Former US Sec. of State Mike Pompeo before the GE campaign. The BBC actually broke two election laws; claiming knowledge of postal ballots AND unlawfully influencing the electorate, i.e. “and it doesn’t look good for Labour”.
“The Metropolitan Police have cleared the BBC’s Chief Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg, of committing any electoral crime after she appeared to reveal confidential information about the outcome of postal votes during December’s General Election campaign.”
https://evolvepolitics.com/met-police-clear-laura-kuenssberg-of-electoral-crime-after-she-revealed-postal-vote-information-during-december-election/
Anyone that thinks the 2019 GE was a free and fair election needs their head examining.
People who vote in FPTP “elections” rig their own votes. The Liarbour disaster in Hartlepool wasn’t the “election” of a Tory but mass abstention letting the Tory in with a paltry 15,000 votes on a 42.7% turnout.
Why would you give a toss about what happens in England? Labour is irrelevant in Scotland.
Here’s why:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQbNwvBkfag
I detest the Tories with a passion, but it is very heartening to see Labour under Starmer get a real kicking.
Will this be enough to wake the real socialists up to defeat the Zionist Blairites ? I seriously doubt it. The general electorate’s brains are addled.
Hopes of Democracy died along with the Labour party in 2017. RIP
My bet is that (a) everyone will ignore the fact that Mr Corbyn’s policies were popular, that in 2017 he secured the biggest swing for any Party since 1945 and that he repeatedly saw off attempts to replace him thanks to a membership which reached 600,00 or so, making Labour the biggest political party in Europe; (b) that his defeats were directly due to sabotage by Red Tories, Centrists and certain foreign Governments supposed to be paragons of democracy; and (c) that Starmer will blame Mr Corbyn, dumping any policies from before which he has not yet dumped, and moving Labour even further to the right with much flourishing of flags and patriotic posturing. The commentariat, which demanded Mr Corbyn resign every time he faced a challenge from the right or a fake claim of being anti-Semitic and a cowardly pacifist, will then declare Starmer needs another chance.
Bramble
It worked for the Lib Dems.
A party with no policies. A party that has lost upwards of 100,000 members, including me – my CLP was moribund when I put a clothes peg on my nose and joined about four years ago, it is effectively dead now – not because of me, I hasten to add!. A party still dominated by “New Labour” MPs living alongside Peter Mandelson in the sun-lit uplands of the late 1990s. A party with a leader totally out of touch with voters.
Worse. A party with no-one who could take up the banner for radical social change. After all, who would want the job after the universal hatchet job on Jeremy Corbyn? In the LP you don’t just get stabbed in the back by the Tory media and The Guardian, you get stabbed in the front by your own party.
Craig: trying to turn round a CLP in what was once, long ago, a Labour constituency, but which is now a very safe Tory seat thanks to the growth of suburbia, can be a pretty soul destroying, unrewarding and pointless task.
The Labour Party is dead – time to bury it.
Sadly, we are left with our dreams and our blogs as we continue to cry into our beer:
http://fjp.org.uk/
I honestly think if Corbyn had been elected to the office of PM, there would have been great changes that would’ve benefitted the ordinary folk of the UK. Of course the right wing media owned by billionaires and the Tory party and indeed the British security services did all it could to demean and smear the man, change would’ve worked against them, and the population would’ve been allowed to see that a better society could be created.
The loss of Corbyn, especially to England in my opinion is one of the greatest losses of a socialist reformer since Attlee and Bevan, the really sad fact of it all is that the majority of folk in England and the UK for that matter, don’t even recognise the terrible loss.
The millionaire knight of the realm Sir Keir Starmer, is in my opinion, only in the position of leader to front up the party and not to make a success of it. One could say he could cross the floor and fit in perfectly.
Of course, IMO, the major problem with JC was that he is a decent man who tries to please everyone. As a leader you cannot do that. By appeasing the ‘enemy within’ instead of kicking them out he allowed them to undermine him and sealed his own fate.
During the endless commemorations of the First and Second World Wars which marked the past decade (and which have had a good deal to do with the Tories’ elevation to perpetual power), I noticed that the most significant consequences of that war were almost totally ignored. We heard nothing of the dissolution of the Empire (though of course this was simply a matter of replacement by the US Empire, backed by the UK) and nothing about the triumphant election of Labour in 1945, followed by the creation of the welfare state, social housing, equal access to the law and education and of course the NHS (which everyone claims to love although nobody votes to protect it and its most important resource, its staff). None of these things, apparently, happened. It isn’t only our crimes we sweep under the carpet, it is those achievements which displeased the ruling elites and the now resurgent right wing Establishment in the West. Oswald Mosley’s ghost must feel vindicated.
The Liarbour Partei is the Judas Goat of British fascism. The British working class has woken up and rejected Bliarism Mk II.
What, and voted Tory !!! How does that work ? I hate secret fascists so I voted for an obvious fascist?
In Hartlepool the Tories won by two thousand votes. These figures tell the story.
2010 – 16,267 (Brown)
2015 – 14,076 (Miliband)
2017 – 21,969 (Corbyn)
2019 – 16,257 (Corbyn)
2021 – 8,589 (Starmer)
You can only win a FPTP by accidentally getting half the votes of the electorate plus at least one more. Discussing bent election results as if they mean anything more than the election is a sham is absurd.
You missed the point completely. Even in a bent election, Tory gains are massively overwhelmed by Labour abstentions. The majority are not remotely voting for Tories, but Labour voters are removing their consent.
I think not, read it again.
RE “You can only win a FPTP by accidentally getting half the votes of the electorate plus at least one more”
Not true if there are more than two candidates, in that case you would only need to get more than the runner up. Not true if you mean the electorate is all the people eligible to vote rather than those who actually bothered. Not true if the electoral boundaries favour one party over another, where the total national vote for one party outnumbers the other but the result gives the less than majority party a greater number of parliamentary seats than the other.
FPTP is inherently unfair because it is disproportionate.
Nor do I quite understand how a party could “accidentally” get more that half the votes, unless you think that elections are more of a lottery.
“You can only win a FPTP by accidentally getting half the votes of the electorate plus at least one more.”
No you don’t. The one with the most votes gets the job. You only need more than 50% if there are only two candidates. It is rare for a FPTP winner to have as much as 50% of the votes.
The tory majority could be made up of their core support plus ex-UKIP voters with the help of Labour anti-starmer abstentions.
J (15.08): thanks for these figures. Those former Labour voters who changed over to the Brexit party in 2019 have moved on to the Tories. Labour’s further losses in Hartlepool are due to abstentions. No point in voting for a candidate parachuted in by Starmer.
Look at the abstentions boy.