Brexit

[Nexus]

I'll vote labour under Corbyn over any of the other shower.

[Zulfy]

Is Corbyn even guaranteed?

[Fenchurch]

And then Labour seemed to want to make sure that keeps happening by picking Corbyn, but never mind all that.

Do you actually think Corbyn is bad, or do you just think he's not populist enough and it's better to give people what they want?

[zoraster]

And then Labour seemed to want to make sure that keeps happening by picking Corbyn, but never mind all that.

Do you actually think Corbyn is bad, or do you just think he's not populist enough and it's better to give people what they want?

I think he's bad, but more to the point, I think he's bad for the party.

[Nexus]

I would be happy for Corbyn and his fellows to break off and form their own, left wing party and let the Blairites get on with it. I'll support the more Left Wing party then.

[Fenchurch]

I think he's bad, but more to the point, I think he's bad for the party.

Well I guess my actual question was, why do you think that?

I'm pro-Corbyn and I know he still has fairly fervent 'grassroots' support. I also think he's a lot more decent and honest than most politicians, and I like his policies.

That's not to say that I don't think it's important to pick someone 'electable', but I'm not sure how that's an easy thing to judge, and so I don't think the pursuit of electable is important at the expense of picking someone actually good.

[Nexus]

Fwiw, I never, ever would've supported Labour before Corbyn - I was very much a Green Party person for the most part until Corbyn was elected.

[zoraster]

I think he's bad, but more to the point, I think he's bad for the party.

Well I guess my actual question was, why do you think that?

I'm pro-Corbyn and I know he still has fairly fervent 'grassroots' support. I also think he's a lot more decent and honest than most politicians, and I like his policies.

That's not to say that I don't think it's important to pick someone 'electable', but I'm not sure how that's an easy thing to judge, and so I don't think the pursuit of electable is important at the expense of picking someone actually good.

He has fervent "grassroots" support (hey, so does Farage! Grassroots isn't particularly a good thing), but that's a far cry from "can win against Conservatives." Even in a fractured Tory party that has shown itself to be irresponsible, dedicated to failed austerity policies, do you really doubt that the Conservative Party will clean up against Corbyn?

If the lesson that was learnt from the UK general election was "Golly. We need to put forward someone to the left of Ed Miliband," I think perhaps something has gone wrong with the analysis.

I don't "get" Corbyn's appeal, honestly. I can understand why policy-wise he can be appealing if you share his outlook, a dated 1970s sort of socialism. He's obviously skeptical of the EU, and he did just about the bare minimum to "support" the Remain vote as possible. Alternatively, he really did want to Remain and he's incapable of making a convincing case, which is basically the job of the PM/Leader of the Opposition. I think he wants to nationalize a great number of industries, which I think is misguided. And I think he's sufficiently dogmatic that he'd carry it out even against the advice of experts.

But mostly I think the Conservatives have been awful for the UK -- even before Brexit. And I think there's no better way to assure you lose the next election than select Corbyn. After Labour losing Scotland, which I don't think is coming back any time soon, it's not exactly like a pretty major leftward shift is the winning formula.

[mykonian]

So you shift towards the policies that form the problem? That's what got them in this mess. You just do that if you want to win for your person rather than what the party stands for. Scotland showed Labours problem, so did this Brexit vote. Labours traditional support (the common worker) has walked away to wards the extremists, or the nationalists. Clear messages at least, and you can say a lot about populists, but they tend to look after the common man.

This is what labour has stopped doing. They are preaching leftist policies to more or less nobody. Liberals don't want to hear it, and the common man doesn't get it and doesn't feel represented. In these years of neoliberalism in Europe, it's enticing to go with the flow even if you are social democrat yourself. It's good for everybody obviously, and it was for a long time. It's hardly just english labour that moved towards the right in that time and mixed in some neoliberal policies.

Now if Labour wants to get voted, they don't have a story to tell to the voters on the right. They already compromised towards there. They'd have to regain their traditional support, because in all honestly nobody is really representing the common labourer at this point, they are escaping to somewhat extreme options.

[Tazaro]

I am pretty apolitical in terms of my current philosophy. I just listened to Alan Greenspan on the subject of Brexit, and I defer to his criticism of Brexit as a monetary expert.

[ChannelDelibird]

Labour have even less hope of getting elected any time soon by being a slightly less mean version of the Tories (a position that will only continue to mean being dragged further and further rightwards), which was demonstrably shown to not be a thing at the last general election, than they do under Corbyn. I'm not sure they have a real hope either way. The party is an utter mess; that's only been brought into greater focus by the release of the Chilcot report and the attempts to rewrite history from the Blairites. (also, fuck Tony Blair.)

Probably the only way that a liberal-minded party could get into No.10 now is with a genuine progressive alliance between the leftist (or nominally leftist) parties, I think. And that seems like a long way from happening when the parliamentary Labour party are relentlessly imploding.

I've been put off Corbyn to some extent by his lukewarm (at best) support for the Remain campaign and the frankly weird spike in antisemitism that's cropped up around Labour since his election, about which I probably don't know enough but it still scares me. Having taken money from Iranian & Russian state TV is not a great look for a man of his stated convictions, either. But he's done better than much of the media would have us believe and I trust him to do actual good in power more than the alternatives.

What I want is to be voting Green in a proportionally represented election. When our next general comes (and bloody hell it had better be soon, except it won't because Darth Theresa is being anointed), I have no idea what I'll feel obliged to do.

[zoraster]

Labour have even less hope of getting elected any time soon by being a slightly less mean version of the Tories (a position that will only continue to mean being dragged further and further rightwards), which was demonstrably shown to not be a thing at the last general election, than they do under Corbyn.

I heartily disagree.

I think it succumbs to the natural inclination that the way to win is to be closer to ones personal values and rationalize around that. But it's fantasy.

It's not like offering some throwback party that was routinely trounced from '79 to '92 is offering this "third way" that suddenly people will come to realize is the way forward.

[ChannelDelibird]

We may disagree on extent but my larger point was that I don't think that Labour are in a position to win a general election under Corbyn much more than you do. But we know that people are violently rejecting so much about politics with which the Blairite wing is too closely wrapped up. There's nothing that the PLP can offer by way of inspiration, just blandness and what's seen as equal complicity in the status quo.

[zoraster]

Maybe, but Labour as a bland party would still be well positioned to win in a general election in the near future, and under Corbyn it's not.

[mykonian]

Labour have even less hope of getting elected any time soon by being a slightly less mean version of the Tories (a position that will only continue to mean being dragged further and further rightwards), which was demonstrably shown to not be a thing at the last general election, than they do under Corbyn.

I heartily disagree.

I think it succumbs to the natural inclination that the way to win is to be closer to ones personal values and rationalize around that. But it's fantasy.

It's not like offering some throwback party that was routinely trounced from '79 to '92 is offering this "third way" that suddenly people will come to realize is the way forward.

I mean, you could take this to a ridiculous point zor, so take this as that. What use is it to become a copy of the conservatives (and have equal chances at winning) if that just means you going to do the same shit? At what point are you selling too much of your soul for that chance of a victory? That point surely is somewhere along that line. I think we are arguing here if labour already passed that point.

And in this case, I don't think soul is as woolly as it sounds. There is a group of voters associated with it, that left labour for this very reason. You seem to think that labour could compete with the conservative voters, while in the last elections they didn't lose their votes to them. They lost them to the scots and ukip. I don't know if agree with your statement that they are lost forever. Ukip for sure is riding a high now, they'll run out of steam. The Scots are going to be interesting for sure, but regardless their message is way different. I think it might be easier for labour to find votes on the left. Not even the progressive left, they don't matter.

[zoraster]

Labour have even less hope of getting elected any time soon by being a slightly less mean version of the Tories (a position that will only continue to mean being dragged further and further rightwards), which was demonstrably shown to not be a thing at the last general election, than they do under Corbyn.

I heartily disagree.

I think it succumbs to the natural inclination that the way to win is to be closer to ones personal values and rationalize around that. But it's fantasy.

It's not like offering some throwback party that was routinely trounced from '79 to '92 is offering this "third way" that suddenly people will come to realize is the way forward.

I mean, you could take this to a ridiculous point zor, so take this as that. What use is it to become a copy of the conservatives (and have equal chances at winning) if that just means you going to do the same shit? At what point are you selling too much of your soul for that chance of a victory? That point surely is somewhere along that line. I think we are arguing here if labour already passed that point.

And in this case, I don't think soul is as woolly as it sounds. There is a group of voters associated with it, that left labour for this very reason. You seem to think that labour could compete with the conservative voters, while in the last elections they didn't lose their votes to them. They lost them to the scots and ukip. I don't know if agree with your statement that they are lost forever. Ukip for sure is riding a high now, they'll run out of steam. The Scots are going to be interesting for sure, but regardless their message is way different. I think it might be easier for labour to find votes on the left. Not even the progressive left, they don't matter.

Well insofar as things can be broken down on a simple left-right continuum (and yes, it's substantially more complicated than that), the idea is to place yourself slightly more center than your primary opponent while trying to capture as much of your policy preferences as possible. In this fantasy simplistic world where both parties are totally rational actors, both will tend toward the middle (whatever the middle happens to be, there's not an objective middle or anything, just the middle voter's preference at the time of the election), but in the real world party, individual leaders, a more complicated field than simply "left or right" on a multitude of issues (see immigration), ability to influence voter preference through campaigning, difference in salience to various voters, an uneven distribution of policy preferences among constituencies, and a lack of perfect information on what that policy position keep it from ever being truly the same.

Regardless, the idea isn't to become a copy of the Conservative Party, it's to place yourself competitively enough to win while capturing the most you can of your own preferences, particularly those that are important to you. Negotiation and compromise is a feature of democracy, not a bug.

---
SNP is a problem, but it's not one that's going to be solved by a leftward shift even as the SNP exists generally to the left of "New" Labour. No one really believes Labour wouldn't form a coalition with the SNP if they needed to, and it's hard to imagine SNP forming a coalition with the Tories unless they believe they can win a Scotland independence referendum and that's obviously a very temporary coalition.

UKIP may capture a certain number of votes from traditional Labour strongholds, but unless Labour wants to go down the road of xenophobic isolationism that's not going to be something they can compete with either. I don't think being to the left is going to convince these voters to turn Labour.

So the question is about the rest of the country that voted mostly for the top three parties, representing 75.2% of the total vote and 87.7% of the MPs. And I don't think you're winning those by going all in on a more extreme version.

[zoraster]

1979 Thatcher won a 43 MP majority. Labour turned leftward for the 1983 election and Thatcher won a 144 MP majority. Part of that was the SDP split, but that didn't exactly come out of nowhere.

[zoraster]

Also, it's worth pointing out that plenty of people have legitimate middle-ground political views. This idea that you're selling you soul or you're a secret Other Party member if you happen to sit between the X-wing of your Party and the closer wing of the Other Party is misguided.

[mykonian]

Well insofar as things can be broken down on a simple left-right continuum (and yes, it's substantially more complicated than that), the idea is to place yourself slightly more center than your primary opponent while trying to capture as much of your policy preferences as possible. In this fantasy simplistic world where both parties are totally rational actors, both will tend toward the middle (whatever the middle happens to be, there's not an objective middle or anything, just the middle voter's preference at the time of the election), but in the real world party, individual leaders, a more complicated field than simply "left or right" on a multitude of issues (see immigration), ability to influence voter preference through campaigning, difference in salience to various voters, an uneven distribution of policy preferences among constituencies, and a lack of perfect information on what that policy position keep it from ever being truly the same.

Regardless, the idea isn't to become a copy of the Conservative Party, it's to place yourself competitively enough to win while capturing the most you can of your own preferences, particularly those that are important to you. Negotiation and compromise is a feature of democracy, not a bug.

I said that was pulling the argument into ridiculousness Just wanted to set the far limit of the scale of how much compromise you can afford.

And I'm not saying you are wrong, but I think the issue here is that the "center" changes over time, and in the last decade or two it has shifted away from labour. And you might know this better than I do, but what is percieved as the center is hardly random, it's something created by politicians, the media, economic fortunes, etc. I wonder if chasing the center that you cannot really cover with your ideals is a workable solution, or if perhaps providing an alternative that way trying to influence the political debate to include your ideals, in a way moving the percieved center closer to you (and hoping for a little bump from the economic situation along the line). Surely, with harsher times to come and the common man voting against the establishment as it was, there's something to say for that argument.

UKIP may capture a certain number of votes from traditional Labour strongholds, but unless Labour wants to go down the road of xenophobic isolationism that's not going to be something they can compete with either. I don't think being to the left is going to convince these voters to turn Labour.

I think that's the wrong way to look at UKIP voters. You aren't going to beat UKIP on racism, that's their thing. But the people voting them aren't racist per sé. Voting UKIP is a protest vote of sorts, for people who don't feel represented by anything else, who feel they are the losers of life atm. Populists like that are a sign that common politics is failing if they get bigger. UKIP has only a marginal voice in terms of economics, basically try to please the common man with very basic solutions. And UKIP didn't get that many votes from the conservative base, so this is essentially the failure of labour. These are votes that can and should be won back when UKIP shows that they don't actually have a plan how to make life better for the common man and when they devolve into petty politics amongst themselves or run out of steam otherwise.

[Fenchurch]

myko you are so good at articulating what I want to say.

So the question is about the rest of the country that voted mostly for the top three parties, representing 75.2% of the total vote and 87.7% of the MPs. And I don't think you're winning those by going all in on a more extreme version.

I'm open to persuasion here, what kind of policies you think Labour needs to adopt to gain more centre-votes?

I've never been able to fully grasp what makes middle voters choose a side. I don't understand what they're looking for, it seems like it might be a nebulous personality thing more than anything else (both of the leader and the party as a whole), and the problem is I think a lot of that comes down to things that can't be predicted, like how they are treated by the media, how they behave in key moments, etc.

[N]

congrats on going-to-have another woman prime minister, I guess

[WeCanSimplyBeOurselves]

Brexit was just a bunch of false promises in replace of an actual plan.

[ChannelDelibird]

congrats on going-to-have another woman prime minister, I guess

And yet we'll still be waiting for a prime minister who is both a) female and b) recognisably human

[ActionDan]

Also, it's worth pointing out that plenty of people have legitimate middle-ground political views. This idea that you're selling you soul or you're a secret Other Party member if you happen to sit between the X-wing of your Party and the closer wing of the Other Party is misguided.

I'm glad someone pointed this out. There have been an uncountable number of times "Hillary is a secret republican" have been uttered it's mind boggling.

Is it also difficult to imagine why moving towards more center/moderate positions might capture more voters? In american elections at least pivoting away from more extreme party positions for general elections is common practice. Specifically because you capture the people represented in the above quote while still retaining your traditional base.

[ActionDan]

Populists like that are a sign that common politics is failing if they get bigger.

Not necessarily!

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles ... or-renewal

Though you'll find no love for UKIP in me.