General British politics discussion thread

BonnieSituation wrote: »

As long as FPTP and the Lib Dems exist in their current form, it just feels like it will be a Tory hegemony forever more.

In an ideal world that insists on FPTP remaining, the LibDems would just split and merge with the other parties as appropriate.

The only good things that a Tory hegemony bring to the party are the run to Scottish independence and a UI. So it's hard not to have a whole "you reap what you sow" feeling for UK and in particular English voters given I'll likely get what I want from them.

Possibly. But there is an alternative - it will be a Tory hegemony until the parties on the left accept that English voters sit further right than they do and that in order to be electable, they need to move to them. Unpalatable for some but it's the uncomfortable reality. A new centre left party won't change the maths.

At the moment the best the Left can do is hope for a rainbow coalition but the price for that would absolutely be a Scottish referendum and likely independence - a one term solution so. Without Scotland, the left, as currently orientated, hasn't a hope in England.

In politics, never assume that the situation that prevails now will endure for ever. Or even for very long.

FPTP has been around forever. The Lib Dems, or their predecessors, have been around for ever. The SNP haven't, but Scotland used to be pretty solidly tory, and this didn't stop the Labour party winning power from time to time, or retaining power that it had won at a previous election.

Various explanations are offered for the Labour party's current woes. Some have more traction than others; many are just rationalisations of the political instincts of the people offering them (which doesn't mean that they are necesarily wrong).

So here's an explanation, or a part of an explanation, that is no doubt a rationalisation of my political instincts. The claim that Labour has lost the support of the "working class" (meaning the class that works but doesn't earn a huge amount of money) is often offered, but needs to be scrutinised.

Labour enjoys majority support of low earners of working age. This is true both of those who work in low paying jobs, and those who don't work, and it's true for every age cohort within that group.

But Labour support falls off a cliff when you look at the over-65s who are, or used to be, low earners. They are solidly Tory. And, the thing is, in an aging society, this group is getting (relatively) larger. They live longer than they used to, plus their sons and daughters are having fewer children than they themselves had. So this is a decisive voting group.

This group is not particularly wealthy but, from their own point of view, they are mostly more financially secure now than they ever were during their working lives. They benefit from the triple lock, they are the only group whose living standards actually rose in the decade after the GFC, and many of them own their own homes (due to Tory sales of public housing stock to them in years gone by).

It seems to me that that's the group that Labour needs to focus on winning back.

Time will help. People who are retiring now are less and less likely to own their own homes (because they were too young to benefit from right-to-buy schemes in the 1980s). Plus, as effective retirement age is pushed up, people's transition in to this group will be delayed and the group itself will be slightly reduced in size. But those are very slow-burning things; Labour needs policies and positions that will work more quickly than that.

Aegir wrote: »

that quote is often incorrectly attributed to Churchill. Swap Labour for Liberal though and you probably sum up a good chunk of Tory voters.

Well the current cabinet aren't exactly the brightest bunch are they?

Aegir wrote: »

I am.

I presume you are aware that the post I was replying to was little more than a petty dig, don't you?

No idea , I was responding to your specific post.

I do believe the current tory cabinet is severely lacking in talent. It could be construed as bargain basement politicians. Why ? Because they only exist in their own sphere they don't seem to have the abilities to 'politik' off of their own island.

Aegir wrote: »

I am.

I presume you are aware that the post I was replying to was little more than a petty dig, don't you?

Do the Tories really need you to run to the rescue all day everyday? You must be exhausted.

Tories are in power 11 years and are in a better position than ever. There is no effective opposition. No good for democracy.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

And they shot themselves in the foot with fees and the alternative vote - because what the UK really needed was yet another type of PR that's different to what was already used in NI, Scotland and the EU elections.

By the time of the AV referendum I don't think they had any feet left. From what I remember the No2AV campaign hired some top dogs from the Taxpayers Alliance who successfully turned the referendum into an anti-LibDem campaign.

gormdubhgorm wrote: »

I was wondering is there any corrollery with the Irish labour party and the British Labour party. The air seemed to go out of the two of them very quickly.

Both now have leaders you have to look up to get their names after you say... what is yer man's name again....
Both the UK Labour and the Irish Labour seemed have zero identity.

I saw a thing where Keir Starmer was basically saying his mission was to rebuild the Labour Party, and rebuild the faith of the working classes in it.

I don't know if is just me, but he does not seem like a Labour guy image wise alone.
A QC by trade, went to an exclusive grammar school etc

I realise the idea was probably to move away from the socialist type Corbyn leadership, beard and a fella who looked like he slept in his clothes.

But this new fella Starmer seems to be the other extreme. Polished. Too polished? Or is it needed these days?

Of the five Labour leaders who have become prime Minister, three of them — Atlee, Wilson, Blair — were public school boys or graduates of the University of Oxford or both. And they were probably the three most successful of the five.
(The others are Callaghan and Brown.) So clearly a socially privileged background isn't a barrier to being leader of the Labour party. Plus, to the extent that working class voters are perceived to have defected to the Tories, they are still clearly not repelled by a party with leaders of privileged background.

Whatever else the problem for Labour is, it's not this.

MrMusician18 wrote: »

It's an interesting proposition but its a shame it wouldn't work. Both Labour and the Tories are parties that are effectively permanent coalitions of the various sub groups within them...... It has to be that way because of the FPTP voting system and you need all voters of your shade to row in behind you.

There is nothing permanent in this world! Yes. The British FPTP system only permits two options at a national level and therefore one option must always be the only realistic alternative to the other. But the alternative option can change. It's difficult, under FPTP, but it does happen.

In the 18th/19th centuries the options were Whig v Tory or Liberal v Conservative. In the 20th Century they were (mostly) Labour v Conservative. It takes a lot for a seismic change like that to occur and many people put it down to the Liberal Party being split because of the "Irish Question". But in reality, there was a growing industrial working class, and an expanding franchise, which brought to the fore a party that more accurately represented its interest, namely the Labour Party.

Is that party still the most appropriate alternative to the Conservatives in this day and age?

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The Blair years were such a success because ... he took the party in a more cosmopolitan centre right economic position. Sadly for the cosmopolitans, a large chunk of voters have moved rightwards socially and flipped to the Tories.

Yes, but what chunk? It would seem that much of the "traditional working class" has made the shift, not the new middle class or "Guardian opinion writers" so derided by some, who still see themselves as more natural Labour voters than Conservatives. There's the rub!

BonnieSituation wrote: »

As long as FPTP and the Lib Dems exist in their current form, it just feels like it will be a Tory hegemony forever more.

suicide_circus wrote: »

Tories are in power 11 years and are in a better position than ever. There is no effective opposition. No good for democracy.

Nature, and politics, abhors a vacuum. There will always be a new coalition, eventually, to emerge as the default opposition. The question is what sort of politics and ideology it will coalesce around.

I think the middle classes should ditch the Labour Party. That doesn't mean they should become conservative; far from it. But they should realise that they now have little in common with the identity group that insists on calling itself Working Class. And they should lose their inhibitions about saying goodbye.

Just have a look at some of the self-appointed spokespeople for the "Working Class" in Britain: Gary Bushell, Rod Liddle, Brendan O'Neill, Julie Burchill all of whom shout from the rooftops that they are "working class", all of whom despise new labour and its "politically correct" or "woke" values, many of whom have previously been in hard left or Trotskyist parties, which makes it all the more ironic that they are in fact "reactionaries", defining themselves in opposition to or reaction against what they see as the prevailing moral order.

"Can't look at tits anymore, can't make Paddy or Paki jokes any more, can't chant humorous racist songs at England matches any more, can't celebrate the achievements of our empire, but have to celebrate Eid and St Paddy's day because THEY in the culturati MAKE us! Our working class culture's being taken away from us We're so oppressed!.....Blah Blah Blah"

Seriously: does anybody here admire the likes of those mentioned above? Is it just me that thinks they are some of the most reprehensible scumbags around? None of them are "working class" in terms of paygrade but are all of the general opinion that "It's not where you end up it's where you start out from" baloney. BTW that very quote was earnestly made by a contributor to Mr O'Neill's Spiked on line vehicle.

I think these people patronise and belittle the true working class. The bulk of middle class labour should move on and cease to pretend that it has anything to do with their twisted vision.

Snickers Man wrote: »

I think the middle classes should ditch the Labour Party. That doesn't mean they should become conservative; far from it. But they should realise that they now have little in common with the identity group that insists on calling itself Working Class. And they should lose their inhibitions about saying goodbye.

Just have a look at some of the self-appointed spokespeople for the "Working Class" in Britain: Gary Bushell, Rod Liddle, Brendan O'Neill, Julie Burchill all of whom shout from the rooftops that they are "working class", all of whom despise new labour and its "politically correct" or "woke" values, many of whom have previously been in hard left or Trotskyist parties, which makes it all the more ironic that they are in fact "reactionaries", defining themselves in opposition to or reaction against what they see as the prevailing moral order.

"Can't look at tits anymore, can't make Paddy or Paki jokes any more, can't chant humorous racist songs at England matches any more, can't celebrate the achievements of our empire, but have to celebrate Eid and St Paddy's day because THEY in the culturati MAKE us! Our working class culture's being taken away from us We're so oppressed!.....Blah Blah Blah"

Seriously: does anybody here admire the likes of those mentioned above? Is it just me that thinks they are some of the most reprehensible scumbags around? None of them are "working class" in terms of paygrade but are all of the general opinion that "It's not where you end up it's where you start out from" baloney. BTW that very quote was earnestly made by a contributor to Mr O'Neill's Spiked on line vehicle.

I think these people patronise and belittle the true working class. The bulk of middle class labour should move on and cease to pretend that it has anything to do with their twisted vision.

So have i got this right, the middle classes, whoever they are, should abandon the labour party and its working class roots (interesting twist on the usual purge stuff, i have to admit, a kind of reverse purge almost) because some right wing reactionary commentators of varying relevance have appointed themselves as the spokespeople for the working classes?

It's been done before anyway. Isn't that why we have the lib dems and, for a wet weekend, change uk? Half the country already thinks labour is poisoned by some vague cosmopolitan elite that is increasingly lost in its own bubble, so i struggle to see how severing the chord completely could ever be any path towards electoral nirvana.

Are Khalid Mahmood and Tony Blair also right wing reactionaries? Because they've both recently alluded to the woke issue in the LP. By all means, continue to allow the David Lammeys, Lisa Nandys and Ash Sarkars to keep controlling the twitter narrative - the Tories are loving it, the electorate however are not.

Dont know enough about twitter to know what "controlling the narrative" means. But i do know that Keir Starmer very pointedly stood against the "woke" crowd during the statue protests in Bristol last year, insulted the black community in the process and Labour ended up losing control of Bristol council last week. We all know this isn't an easy position, but the notion they just need to shift to the right, wave a few union jacks around, talk about locking immigrants up or whatever else it takes to prove they love their country, is problematic to my mind when it seems just as likely to cause them to leak more votes. The tories great advantage is they can promise and lie with abandon, fool poor people into thinking they're on their side, perform u turns to their hearts content and people won't bat an eyelid because that is just the tories torying after all. It is labours curse that they will always be judged by higher standards, sometimes even blamed for tory crimes, whether by association or otherwise, as we saw in several of the vox pop interviews during the recent elections.