What particular changes in society are you looking for? From the Blair and New Labour experience I thought that there was absolutely no attempt to reverse the Thatcherite policies that you have previously argued forcefully and if I may say so, eloquently, against? I really can't see that a continuation of the 'New Labour' brand will achieve anything. More Foodbanks? Yes, but we will not increase them as fast as the Tories...Cuts to Disability benefits? Harsh, but you see we have to live in the real world (while doing nothing to temper the excesses of the super-rich) - that would seem to me the promise of the New Labourites if they returned. Fly across the world and make promises to Murdoch? (just to achieve power - does Corbyn have to do that?)
Promise the earth to ordinary people like Blair did, and then not deliver.
I am not sure what kind of social change we need - but I will take more Doctors, nurses, teachers, policemen, sure start centres, new deal, more jobs, higher numbers of families and children taken out of poverty etc etc as good starting point!
I am a practical person. We need power to help the people we need to help. Give me a leader who is vaguely electable ( by real people not fellow travelers) and i will support him. To win power we have to win over middle class, middle England voters as our own people wont be enough to secure a majority. Those people decide the results of elections, not momentum students. Can Corbyn win those people to his policy agenda? My experience on the doorsteps suggests he cant.
We also cant rely on our traditional areas of support. Our people are voting UKIP in the north east in high numbers. UKIP, the bonkers wing of the Tory party! Look at the recent Sunderland Council elections. UKIP second in many wards. These our our people and they arent buying our message. Why? Why haven't these people come back to us in droves once Corbyn assumed command?
Therefore:do you want power which we can use to actually help people or do you want constant opposition where we can be ideologically pure, complain about the terrible Tories and ultimately have bot all power to do anything?
I would rather take a practical approach and bend ideology in favour of power than hold a firm line and seek constant opposition.
Some interesting reaction and overreaction here. Labour did OK - not amazing, not badly, OK. Holding ground in the south and winning new seats and taking control off the Tories in places like Worcester is great. Losing a single seat on the Welsh Assembly is OK. And in Scotland the expected hammering was a hammering and would have been regardless of who was leader. But even there we have signs of life in that the SNP lost share and that suggests peak nat has passed.
Arguments about the whys and wherefores of Blair are pointless. Apart from him being in the past which Blair are we talking about? Blair 97 a great socialist reforming PM? Or Blair 05 and his manifesto of ID cards 90 days detention and privatisation? The world has moved on and Labour with it. I hear endless criticism and sniping from continuity New Labour but no policy or directional proposals - if their way is such a hit then we'd have won in 2010 and 2015.
We gained 31% of the vote and lost 23 Councillors. I understand this is the first time an opposition has had a net fall in councillors since 1985.
I am not worried about Scotland. We were always going to lose badly but hoped we might claw back some losses but the SLP is very poorly thought of after the referendum.
We did win the London Mayoral race but with a candidate who doesn't seem to be a Corbynista and talks of building a big tent to hold everyone. He won a bigger personal mandate than either Boris or Ken! That wont go down well.
Labour still have a lot to do. Presentationally it's not been great, not helped by Ken Hitler on one end and the Mann Streetings of the PLP. But it's a step on. We won't regain power by refusing to oppose vindictive welfare cuts as Harman did. We shouldn't regain power if our objective is to continue Osborneomics with a conscience. We need to find Blair 97s radicalism and populism and not Blair 05s cynicism and marketisation. It almost certainly isn't in Corbyn - I voted for him thinking he'd be a caretaker. I still think that to be the case.
I didn't vote for him as I thought he would be a disaster for our party and our chances of election. If he is the caretaker can someone remind Corbyn to hand the broom over sharpish?
It isn't how bad he is, it is how bad he is made out to be. Look at the Evening Standard. First few pages, Joe Murphy writing something bad about him or another Labour 'lefty'. There is always some gossip about him(personality politics at work there) later on in the paper, even today when they were talking about how united we are in voting for a Muslim mayor, they take a few digs at him, and to be honest most of it isn't newspaper story worth material. I bet you that an article about Conservative MP's borrowing less books from the commons library if a new leader came into power wouldn't make the cut.
Corbyn gives the media an open goal. He wont engage with them or challenge their perceptions. Why? How can you to reach people without a political interest if you wont use the media to do so? Osmosis? Mind control?
He is also an oil hungry war criminal that lied to the public about another country having WMD's so that he could convince us to go to war alongside Bush. Something to be proud of my foot.
I guessed you missed the list of domestic achievements above and the 3 election victories then. Which of those should we not be proud of?
Getting rid of members of a party that disagree with what a party stands for (and more or less agree with what another party does stand for) doesn't seem like too bad of an idea to me, especially as they have been the dead weight of elections so far.
:roll: Don't forget to send your tribunal round to my house. Odd that it is the people that are citicised the most who seem to do the most to support the party. I am more than happy to be left wing but I am not keen to have another 18 years in opposition. Many of you seem to prefer that.........
There is a difference between being moderate and being Blairite. Sadiq Khan isn't a hard lefty (to be honest Jeremy Corbyn isn't that far left either) and this is to be expected as Labour are a centre-left party, something that Rupert Murdoch seems to have made everyone forget about. And you can't call Khan Blairite at all, especially as "in 2005, as a new MP, [he] voted against Labour’s proposal to hold terrorism suspects for 90 days without charge" and "made an enemy out of Blair" (source
here). This tells me that a lot of people are supporting a Labour figure who was an opponent of Blair and it also tells me that they support a Labour party that has moved on from him.
You don't think that Sadiq Khan's long standing defense of humans rights through his legal career might and his chairmanship of Liberty might have had something to do with his view on detention without trial? It could have been his underlying leftism of course............