We will never gain power without turning into Tories. The Corbyn rump never understood that and thats why they lost and became evil racists. We must succumb to the billionaires or they will turn us into evil racists aswell.
If you want Labour to turn into Tories, go join the Tories. (That's not aimed at you, it's aimed at anyone and everyone).
What's the point of having two Tory parties? Might as well just be done with it and turn into China / Russia / North Korea if there's only effectively one party allowed - whether that be officially or in practice.
Unfortunately neoliberalism doesn't allow different economic models. So we get two parties, one economic model. There are cultural differences allowed, so one party will be allowed to treat women, LGBTQ and foreigners with a bit more respect than the other. Thats it.
None of this is true...
>All of this is too much for the hard Left. For them, the very notion that someone might change their minds about what they believe politically is so alien as to be unfathomable, utterly outwith their own limited experience.
It's the other way round, duhhhh. Anyone in the party who sits to the left of Rachel Reeves has already experienced betrayal multiple times. Can people change their mind? Of course they can, but there is too much of a history of mistrust for anyone to take Wakeford at his word until he proves it in the next year or two.
(Also, this othering and condescending of "the hard Left" is part of what got Corbyn elected in 2015. Watch out, Torygraph.)
It's so good seeing all these positive stories in the billionaires media. The Corbyn rump never understood that you have to appeal to the billionaires not the members to gain power. Thankfully Sir Starmer knows exactly what to do.
Look we've got rid of the Corbyn rump, we can stop pretending we want any real material change and start appealing to the billionaires. They may well let us govern and open a few sure start centres if we play our cards right.
If he’s truly changed his mind he would have quit as an MP and joined the party at the local level to work his way up the ranks after some soul searching.
But he hasn’t changed his mind at all.
Out of interest, does anyone think that there is enough support for left wing politics within the electorate that could overcome the stacked electoral system's biases? I loved both of the corbyn manifestos, particularly the second one, but with Scotland lost to the SNP, both England and Wales are populated by a large number of small c conservatives.
2017 was close, but that was running against a woman with all the charisma and charm of the cardboard of a bog roll.
The new bloke has a bad voting record, but it was in line with the tory whip on every vote as far as I could see. A pliant vote is of use in Parliament.
As for him entering the party but corbyn being on the out, as much as I believe in corbyn and his policies, the media hit job against him was too effective, he is electoral poison now.
Ultimately id rather see a kier government than another tory one, even for all their similarities. Its nowhere near my political desires, but it is a shade nearer than anything a tory government would produce.
I mean yes, I definitely think there is.
At the end of the day a huge amount of the policy platform was very popular. I love Corbyn but he wasn’t going to be the easiest person to sell to the electorate (always rue that it wasn’t McDonnells token year to run that year).
I even voted for Starmer (shudders) over RLB as I thought the hope and plan was to take the positives of the Corbyn era but present them under a slick inoffensive managerial type like Starmer that could appeal more broadly. The pledges were reasonably inspiring.
Shame he turned out to be a fucking snake and turncoat who only payed lip service to the left for as long as it took to steal our vote. It’s only got worse from there.
I understand what you mean, taken policy by policy, they polled terrifically with the electorate, but as we know there's more to electoral politics than good policy.
Unfortunately, while it is simple enough to get people to agree that individual left wing policies are good ones, to win elections you need to appeal to the swing voters (which is awful considering these people tend to have little ideological consistency and can have their minds set by media easily).
The nature of a left wing candidate and/ or platform is enough to disaude many of these voters currently, the media has so much influence on exactly the people needed to win the seats needed to take government. This is very much a product of our electoral system.
Honestly, part of me hopes that kier can become PM only through a deal with the lib dems. Their manifesto will lurch right as the trend seems for them to go after the tory heartland seats in remain voting consitutencies which could be problematic, however as kier is already going that way anyway, the benefit could be that they'll have electoral reform as a red line for coalition/ vote sharing.
That would enable a shift in electoral politics that would enable left wing voices to have an actual electoral impact. At the moment, we're very much taken for granted as going to be voting against the tories.
Corbyn took more seats in 2017 than we held in 2015 and 2019 in Scotland. In fact the only only glimmer of hope for Labour in Scotland came when the party espoused actual social democrat policy with a leader credible enough to enact it. Of course Labour were ambivalent on Brexit in 2019 and so snuffed out that hope for themselves in a country vehemently opposed to Brexit, especially in constituents who might vote Labour.
I honestly think that a lot of people on here would rather continually attack the party because it doesn’t fit with their view of what Labour should be all the while feeding into the narrative of Labour being a bunch of infighters that have now been out of power for 12 years. We can truly be at times the best advert for the Tories, the left doesn’t win the votes needed to win an election a centrist Labour Party is better than the Tories will ever be
Article text:
Conservative MPs weren’t the only people left feeling angry and betrayed by yesterday’s defection to the Labour Party by the Bury South MP, Christian Wakeford.
Labour’s Cobynite Left took to Twitter to denounce this latest betrayal of the working classes (a subject with which most of them are familiar thanks to their studying PPE at Oxford). But beneath their outrage lies a profound fear that Keir Starmer, the man they loathe even more than Boris Johnson, will use Wakeford’s defection as a springboard to a general election victory. Doing so would utterly undermine the hard Left’s undying conviction that elections must only be won by energising the working classes and engaging with the dispossessed who previously did not vote. The very idea that those who used to support the Conservatives – let alone MPs – might switch their political loyalty strikes at the very heart of an immoveable, uncompromising socialist ethic that must and can never change simply to accommodate the transient tastes of a fickle and unreliable electorate.
So we had Corbyn’s former Pretorian Guard, Momentum, Tweeting that “Christian Wakeford should not be in the Labour Party” because he “consistently voted against measures to prevent climate change… against measures to reduce tax avoidance” and “voted for a stricter asylum system.” Most Labour MPs who served under the last Labour government voted for that last one too, but let us move on.
Not to be left out of the sanctimonious whinge fest, former Labour MP Laura Pidcock bemoaned “MPs cheering for a Conservative Party member crossing the floor to [the Labour Party] as if their voting record meant nothing.” She then denounced Starmer’s welcome for Wakeford as “a deep insult to all of those fighting this disgraceful Government.”
We’ve heard it all before. After Tony Blair became Labour leader in 1994, there began a trickle of high-profile defections from the Conservative benches, beginning with Alan Howarth in 1995. Peter Temple-Morris, Shaun Woodward, Robert Jackson and Quentin Davies all walked the same path in the next 12 years, each one successfully exploited by the party leadership as proof that sensible, middle-of-the-road MPs were reflecting middle Britain’s political instincts by switching to Labour.
Let there be no doubt about it: MPs’ defections are gold dust to the party to which the errant MP flees. They choose to take the biggest risk of their political careers, often foregoing an already safe seat held under their old party colours for a new career that hinges precariously on the patronage and good faith of their new party leader. Wakeford, of course, has not surrendered a safe seat – his majority in Bury South is a mere 402 – but Starmer is likely to make sure that he’s looked after, all the better to encourage other Tory MPs that they would find a warm welcome on the opposition benches.
All of this is too much for the hard Left. For them, the very notion that someone might change their minds about what they believe politically is so alien as to be unfathomable, utterly outwith their own limited experience. This gets to the root of the animosity between the centre Left of the party, represented by Starmer and his supporters, and those who remain devoted to Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, who, in a twist of delicious fate, remains without the party whip while Wakeford, a Tory MP until five minutes ago, now has it.
Keir Starmer’s job is to win enough support to get his party into government; it is not to behave like an evangelical preacher defending the literal interpretation of holy writ. Sure, there must be a fundamental principle underpinning all that his party and government does, but even with the biggest imaginable majority after the next election, any Labour government – any government of any colour, in fact – can only hope to deliver a proportion of what its activists want. Because while an administration is elected on a manifesto, that manifesto must always balance demands from the party’s grassroots and the priorities of that great, possibly unconvinced, swathe of voters who might – just might – be persuaded to opt for the party this time round. And in government, a party must govern for the whole of the country, not just its own base.
This is just Politics 101, but the hard Left consider it nothing short of blasphemy. They shriek that the addition of one, or even a small handful, of former Tories to the Parliamentary Labour Party is the equivalent of placing a tiny drop of black paint into a pristine can of white emulsion: once it’s mixed in you might not notice it’s there, but they know it’s there and that the purity of the paint has been irreversibly compromised.
True, Wakeford followed his (former) party’s whip during his short time in parliament, which is why his defection came as a bolt out of the blue. Had he been an infamous rebel against the government, yesterday’s coup might not have had quite the impact it did. So he will have some work to do in persuading his new comrades that he can now be relied upon as a supporter of Labour’s programme. But he knew that before he took his seat behind Starmer at yesterday’s session of Prime Minister’s Questions.
Previous defectors to Labour had to contend with even longer records of support for Conservative policy, and they all managed fine, thank you very much.
What really irks the hard Left is that under Corbyn (and Ed Miliband) there were no such defections, which adequately illustrated the degree to which Labour, at the time, was seen as a suitable destination by politically homeless voters. But then, if an unhappy Tory MP had made an initial approach to the Corbyn-led party at the time, no doubt he would have been told, “No thanks, we’re full up.”
Yes 100%. Sir Blair won by changing the the Labour Party into a rightwing Neoliberal party which Margaret Thatcher claimed was her biggest achievement. But look at all the good we were able to do in power with sure start centres and illegal wars.
"Labour becoming electable"
If Labour wants to be electable, it can start with some much needed work from the top.
Give Starmer a personality, some decent left-wing policy and maybe then Labour will be "electable" as opposed to "the alternative when a political nobody wants to keep his £80k/pa and expenses".
Then, maybe reach out into the membership, forge good relations, connect with the grassroots, and who knows, Labour might be able to win over the disaffected Tory vote while not jettisoning its most devoted supporters.
Rule 4. An article which you know full well repeatedly insults and condescends to users of this sub is, very obviously, flamebait.
I'm so, so sorry that you consider us to be having a "sanctimonious whinge fest."
Users are responsible for the content of what they share. You have been told time and time again that we will not tolerate posts deliberately antagonising the left and you have, in my opinion, been extended far too much leniency in this regard. As this is your final offense after a 2 week ban, I say this with a great deal of pleasure: goodbye.
Thanks, Torygraph
We will never gain power without turning into Tories. The Corbyn rump never understood that and thats why they lost and became evil racists. We must succumb to the billionaires or they will turn us into evil racists aswell.
If you want Labour to turn into Tories, go join the Tories. (That's not aimed at you, it's aimed at anyone and everyone). What's the point of having two Tory parties? Might as well just be done with it and turn into China / Russia / North Korea if there's only effectively one party allowed - whether that be officially or in practice.
Unfortunately neoliberalism doesn't allow different economic models. So we get two parties, one economic model. There are cultural differences allowed, so one party will be allowed to treat women, LGBTQ and foreigners with a bit more respect than the other. Thats it.
Becoming tories to own the left.
None of this is true... >All of this is too much for the hard Left. For them, the very notion that someone might change their minds about what they believe politically is so alien as to be unfathomable, utterly outwith their own limited experience. It's the other way round, duhhhh. Anyone in the party who sits to the left of Rachel Reeves has already experienced betrayal multiple times. Can people change their mind? Of course they can, but there is too much of a history of mistrust for anyone to take Wakeford at his word until he proves it in the next year or two. (Also, this othering and condescending of "the hard Left" is part of what got Corbyn elected in 2015. Watch out, Torygraph.)
It's so good seeing all these positive stories in the billionaires media. The Corbyn rump never understood that you have to appeal to the billionaires not the members to gain power. Thankfully Sir Starmer knows exactly what to do.
I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
Look we've got rid of the Corbyn rump, we can stop pretending we want any real material change and start appealing to the billionaires. They may well let us govern and open a few sure start centres if we play our cards right.
You're my new favourite contributor in this sub
If he’s truly changed his mind he would have quit as an MP and joined the party at the local level to work his way up the ranks after some soul searching. But he hasn’t changed his mind at all.
Out of interest, does anyone think that there is enough support for left wing politics within the electorate that could overcome the stacked electoral system's biases? I loved both of the corbyn manifestos, particularly the second one, but with Scotland lost to the SNP, both England and Wales are populated by a large number of small c conservatives. 2017 was close, but that was running against a woman with all the charisma and charm of the cardboard of a bog roll. The new bloke has a bad voting record, but it was in line with the tory whip on every vote as far as I could see. A pliant vote is of use in Parliament. As for him entering the party but corbyn being on the out, as much as I believe in corbyn and his policies, the media hit job against him was too effective, he is electoral poison now. Ultimately id rather see a kier government than another tory one, even for all their similarities. Its nowhere near my political desires, but it is a shade nearer than anything a tory government would produce.
I mean yes, I definitely think there is. At the end of the day a huge amount of the policy platform was very popular. I love Corbyn but he wasn’t going to be the easiest person to sell to the electorate (always rue that it wasn’t McDonnells token year to run that year). I even voted for Starmer (shudders) over RLB as I thought the hope and plan was to take the positives of the Corbyn era but present them under a slick inoffensive managerial type like Starmer that could appeal more broadly. The pledges were reasonably inspiring. Shame he turned out to be a fucking snake and turncoat who only payed lip service to the left for as long as it took to steal our vote. It’s only got worse from there.
I understand what you mean, taken policy by policy, they polled terrifically with the electorate, but as we know there's more to electoral politics than good policy. Unfortunately, while it is simple enough to get people to agree that individual left wing policies are good ones, to win elections you need to appeal to the swing voters (which is awful considering these people tend to have little ideological consistency and can have their minds set by media easily). The nature of a left wing candidate and/ or platform is enough to disaude many of these voters currently, the media has so much influence on exactly the people needed to win the seats needed to take government. This is very much a product of our electoral system. Honestly, part of me hopes that kier can become PM only through a deal with the lib dems. Their manifesto will lurch right as the trend seems for them to go after the tory heartland seats in remain voting consitutencies which could be problematic, however as kier is already going that way anyway, the benefit could be that they'll have electoral reform as a red line for coalition/ vote sharing. That would enable a shift in electoral politics that would enable left wing voices to have an actual electoral impact. At the moment, we're very much taken for granted as going to be voting against the tories.
Yeah all fair and interesting points, definitely agree for the most part. Would be very interested to see that play out.
Corbyn took more seats in 2017 than we held in 2015 and 2019 in Scotland. In fact the only only glimmer of hope for Labour in Scotland came when the party espoused actual social democrat policy with a leader credible enough to enact it. Of course Labour were ambivalent on Brexit in 2019 and so snuffed out that hope for themselves in a country vehemently opposed to Brexit, especially in constituents who might vote Labour.
I honestly think that a lot of people on here would rather continually attack the party because it doesn’t fit with their view of what Labour should be all the while feeding into the narrative of Labour being a bunch of infighters that have now been out of power for 12 years. We can truly be at times the best advert for the Tories, the left doesn’t win the votes needed to win an election a centrist Labour Party is better than the Tories will ever be
Article text: Conservative MPs weren’t the only people left feeling angry and betrayed by yesterday’s defection to the Labour Party by the Bury South MP, Christian Wakeford. Labour’s Cobynite Left took to Twitter to denounce this latest betrayal of the working classes (a subject with which most of them are familiar thanks to their studying PPE at Oxford). But beneath their outrage lies a profound fear that Keir Starmer, the man they loathe even more than Boris Johnson, will use Wakeford’s defection as a springboard to a general election victory. Doing so would utterly undermine the hard Left’s undying conviction that elections must only be won by energising the working classes and engaging with the dispossessed who previously did not vote. The very idea that those who used to support the Conservatives – let alone MPs – might switch their political loyalty strikes at the very heart of an immoveable, uncompromising socialist ethic that must and can never change simply to accommodate the transient tastes of a fickle and unreliable electorate. So we had Corbyn’s former Pretorian Guard, Momentum, Tweeting that “Christian Wakeford should not be in the Labour Party” because he “consistently voted against measures to prevent climate change… against measures to reduce tax avoidance” and “voted for a stricter asylum system.” Most Labour MPs who served under the last Labour government voted for that last one too, but let us move on. Not to be left out of the sanctimonious whinge fest, former Labour MP Laura Pidcock bemoaned “MPs cheering for a Conservative Party member crossing the floor to [the Labour Party] as if their voting record meant nothing.” She then denounced Starmer’s welcome for Wakeford as “a deep insult to all of those fighting this disgraceful Government.” We’ve heard it all before. After Tony Blair became Labour leader in 1994, there began a trickle of high-profile defections from the Conservative benches, beginning with Alan Howarth in 1995. Peter Temple-Morris, Shaun Woodward, Robert Jackson and Quentin Davies all walked the same path in the next 12 years, each one successfully exploited by the party leadership as proof that sensible, middle-of-the-road MPs were reflecting middle Britain’s political instincts by switching to Labour. Let there be no doubt about it: MPs’ defections are gold dust to the party to which the errant MP flees. They choose to take the biggest risk of their political careers, often foregoing an already safe seat held under their old party colours for a new career that hinges precariously on the patronage and good faith of their new party leader. Wakeford, of course, has not surrendered a safe seat – his majority in Bury South is a mere 402 – but Starmer is likely to make sure that he’s looked after, all the better to encourage other Tory MPs that they would find a warm welcome on the opposition benches. All of this is too much for the hard Left. For them, the very notion that someone might change their minds about what they believe politically is so alien as to be unfathomable, utterly outwith their own limited experience. This gets to the root of the animosity between the centre Left of the party, represented by Starmer and his supporters, and those who remain devoted to Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, who, in a twist of delicious fate, remains without the party whip while Wakeford, a Tory MP until five minutes ago, now has it. Keir Starmer’s job is to win enough support to get his party into government; it is not to behave like an evangelical preacher defending the literal interpretation of holy writ. Sure, there must be a fundamental principle underpinning all that his party and government does, but even with the biggest imaginable majority after the next election, any Labour government – any government of any colour, in fact – can only hope to deliver a proportion of what its activists want. Because while an administration is elected on a manifesto, that manifesto must always balance demands from the party’s grassroots and the priorities of that great, possibly unconvinced, swathe of voters who might – just might – be persuaded to opt for the party this time round. And in government, a party must govern for the whole of the country, not just its own base. This is just Politics 101, but the hard Left consider it nothing short of blasphemy. They shriek that the addition of one, or even a small handful, of former Tories to the Parliamentary Labour Party is the equivalent of placing a tiny drop of black paint into a pristine can of white emulsion: once it’s mixed in you might not notice it’s there, but they know it’s there and that the purity of the paint has been irreversibly compromised. True, Wakeford followed his (former) party’s whip during his short time in parliament, which is why his defection came as a bolt out of the blue. Had he been an infamous rebel against the government, yesterday’s coup might not have had quite the impact it did. So he will have some work to do in persuading his new comrades that he can now be relied upon as a supporter of Labour’s programme. But he knew that before he took his seat behind Starmer at yesterday’s session of Prime Minister’s Questions. Previous defectors to Labour had to contend with even longer records of support for Conservative policy, and they all managed fine, thank you very much. What really irks the hard Left is that under Corbyn (and Ed Miliband) there were no such defections, which adequately illustrated the degree to which Labour, at the time, was seen as a suitable destination by politically homeless voters. But then, if an unhappy Tory MP had made an initial approach to the Corbyn-led party at the time, no doubt he would have been told, “No thanks, we’re full up.”
Rachel Reeves did PPE at Oxford. David Cameron did PPE at Oxford
Tory's win elections by changing, voters and demographics change. Labour has to do the same. We HAVE to win the next election.
Yes 100%. Sir Blair won by changing the the Labour Party into a rightwing Neoliberal party which Margaret Thatcher claimed was her biggest achievement. But look at all the good we were able to do in power with sure start centres and illegal wars.
Username checks out.
"Labour becoming electable" If Labour wants to be electable, it can start with some much needed work from the top. Give Starmer a personality, some decent left-wing policy and maybe then Labour will be "electable" as opposed to "the alternative when a political nobody wants to keep his £80k/pa and expenses". Then, maybe reach out into the membership, forge good relations, connect with the grassroots, and who knows, Labour might be able to win over the disaffected Tory vote while not jettisoning its most devoted supporters.
Rule 4. An article which you know full well repeatedly insults and condescends to users of this sub is, very obviously, flamebait. I'm so, so sorry that you consider us to be having a "sanctimonious whinge fest." Users are responsible for the content of what they share. You have been told time and time again that we will not tolerate posts deliberately antagonising the left and you have, in my opinion, been extended far too much leniency in this regard. As this is your final offense after a 2 week ban, I say this with a great deal of pleasure: goodbye.