[The Weeping Angel]

I wouldn't say you're using weasel words, but I'd say you're wrong about this.

Then what would you call it?

Ah come on don't have a go at Tubbs.

[Youngian]

... thank God.

Apparently GMB's viewing figures plummeted this week when (a) Campbell turned it into a soapbox and (b) Blair made an appearance.

Your yearning for Blair and Co. is reminiscent of Tories hankering after Thatcher.

Yesterday's men are not the solution to tomorrow's problems and you should know this - after all, someone with a desire to return Labour to the 70s with 1970s policies cost them at least one GE.

You keep saying that with no proof, or apparent understanding of the differences.
I'm not so crushingly negative.

And don't insult or patronise me, please.

I yearn to discuss electoral strategies that beat the Tories which don't involve Blair. Apart Livingstone and Khan in London, that's all there is since Harold Wilson.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

How about the Third Way?

[Youngian]

How about the Third Way?

That's filed under Blair. A fairly meaningless generic phrase appropriated by every political shade from Mussolini to Trotsky.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Third Way, as I understood it, was a market economy where schools had proper roofs.

I quite like that as a vision, but it doesn't really cut the mustard v Johnsonian populism. Even if you improve the original with more housing and better working rights.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The way things look, Labour is going to lose this by-election because the national polls are too bad. Going to be lots of call for Starmer to go.

I wouldn't mind if the party were sensitive enough to do what the Tories in 2003 did, and just stick a senior politician in to steady the ship. They won't they'll have Burgon and got knows who else running, in an election that will take 4 months.

[kettle]

Latest polls have tories on an 18 point lead, which is absolutely embarrassing. who do you think should be labour leader?

[Boiler]

At this point I don't think it'd matter one iota who the Labour leader is or from what faction of the party they came from. Somehow - and Lord knows how - Johnson and his party has struck a chord with the electorate and they love it. Saying "ah, but they won't in (x) years' time" doesn't cut it any more - people seem to have taken short-termism to their hearts, given the turmoil Covid has caused; no point in planning long-term, who knows what's around the corner?

Maybe that deranged ramble I posted from another forum isn't that far off the mark: maybe people have gone past being suspicious of Labour to actively hating them - seeing them as a party of mere protest and supporter of 'woke' that isn't fit to run a parish council, let alone a country. Perhaps the unthinkable has finally happened: Labour is now an irrelevance, outflanked by the Lib Dems and the Greens. Dunno - musing out loud here.

(Random thought: as I typed that, I was reminded of a school friend who back in 1979 said Britain would rue the day they elected Thatcher - and we laughed at him.)

[kettle]

Labour is beset by problems really. Their historical core constituent vote ("red wall", an awful phrase which only apparated in 2019) doesn't want them anymore. The former miners and the deep seated hatred of Thatcher are becoming a memory. Constituencies in desolate former industrial cities are ghost towns, the only people there are overwhelmingly older and more reactionary. The young have all migrated to cities for hopes of some sort of employment. These cities saw desolation under Thatcher, and a significant failure of redevelopment under Blair/Brown (who took the left vote as a given, and chased the centre vote). Now these safe seats are angry, having had poison dripped into their ears by the whole political establishment for decades about how the EU stops us from doing good things. It's no wonder they voted leave, it's the same "just change *something*" energy that created Trump. And they aren't turning out for Labour because, what has Labour done for them? What does Labour promise to do for them?

Labour's hope is with the young (by which I mean under 40 or so). A precariat with no assets, bad jobs and no investment in the status quo. Corbyn, whatever you may think of him, was tapping into this group. Labour will never be able to offer more racism and flag shagging than the Tories, and it's stupid to try. Labour's 2017 manifesto was very popular, and the ideas in it still are. If it can offer an optimistic vision for the future, it will win and survive and thrive. If it continues under Starmer to try to offend nobody and say nothing, it will die.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Latest polls have tories on an 18 point lead, which is absolutely embarrassing. who do you think should be labour leader?

Milliband would be my choice. Think he got a raw deal last time- basically Cameron's referendum promise swung it away from Labour. That one's, well, sailed. Some of the trouble makers from his era have gone.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Labour will never be able to offer more racism and flag shagging than the Tories, and it's stupid to try.

They aren't doing that now, are they? Just trying to look like they like the country they want to lead.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Flags

[Boiler]

Latest polls have tories on an 18 point lead, which is absolutely embarrassing. who do you think should be labour leader?

Milliband would be my choice. Think he got a raw deal last time- basically Cameron's referendum promise swung it away from Labour. That one's, well, sailed. Some of the trouble makers from his era have gone.

And without looking backwards, Tubbs, who? I'm struggling, I have to confess.

[kettle]

Labour will never be able to offer more racism and flag shagging than the Tories, and it's stupid to try.

They aren't doing that now, are they? Just trying to look like they like the country they want to lead.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... hartlepool

This was what I had in mind, really.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Sone of that sounds a bit silly but they vaccine was the problem for them there. Notice utter bollocks from the Tories blaming Paul Williams for the hospital. With no doubt a group of "proper left" joining in.

[Boiler]

Thinking to this by-election: what I do hope is that if it turns into a shit-show for Labour, that we don't descend into the football-like bollocks of "We lost the last three matches! Hang the manager!".

Calm heads need to prevail because right now, a new and terminally-protracted leadership challenge - complete with all the media wank that'll accompany it - will be the final nail in Labour's coffin and someone will be getting the ribbons ready to put through the handles.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Labour are handicapped by the fact it doesn't just have to do well, it has to do well in places the media/ party say it should. The Tories don't get "you lost Oxfordshire, disaster, heartland!"

[The Weeping Angel]

Flags

When it comes to flag shagging it very much depends on the flag.

[The Weeping Angel]

Labour will never be able to offer more racism and flag shagging than the Tories, and it's stupid to try.

They aren't doing that now, are they? Just trying to look like they like the country they want to lead.

I'm reminded of this quote from George Orwell

It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably 
true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of 
standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a 
poor box. All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping 
away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes 
squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always 
anti-British.”

[The Weeping Angel]

Labour's hope is with the young (by which I mean under 40 or so). A precariat with no assets, bad jobs and no investment in the status quo. Corbyn, whatever you may think of him, was tapping into this group. Labour will never be able to offer more racism and flag shagging than the Tories, and it's stupid to try. Labour's 2017 manifesto was very popular, and the ideas in it still are. If it can offer an optimistic vision for the future, it will win and survive and thrive. If it continues under Starmer to try to offend nobody and say nothing, it will die.

Ah 2017 I was wondering when you were going to drag that up.