David Miliband, the Great White Hope of the Blairites, showing he's still got his finger on the pulse by backing Liz Kendall.
It's just so beautiful.
http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-liz-kendall-labour-leadership-david-miliband
I found myself agreeing a lot with what David Miliband said in this article..
That's a stupid thing to use as evidence. It doesn't say "Would this person make *you* more or less likely to vote Labour?" (which itself has problems), but instead effectively "Do you think this person will make *other people* more or less likely to vote Labour?". In cases where the media is severely out of touch with the public, there's actually likely to be a pretty big gap between those two, as the majority of people might really like a candidate that the mainstream media pillories and therefore they assume that nobody else likes.
In other words, all that picture tells us is that the media like David Miliband, not actually that *people* like David Miliband.
Sure, and in that sense it's like that NATO poll thing a while back which was actually about whether you think the US would come riding in on a white horse, not whether you want them to. But - aside from the other poll questions which are more useful - there's also some utility to it because I don't think the question of "do you think we're like to actually win?" is an irrelevant one from a party mangement POV. A general concensus that the boss isn't up to the job is pretty damning.
I mean, sure, but it feels like you're shifting the goalposts now. You were responding to someone mocking David Miliband for being out of touch by proposing Liz Kendall, the implication being that Liz Kendall won't do anything for Labour electorally, and your response was to say "well, Corbyn's not electable either" - only your data wasn't actually sufficient to prove that. It's probably true that it indicates he will have a hard time managing the party - but that's more or less obvious to anyone with common sense, and it's also fairly ludicrous, in the context of David Miliband's "in-touch-ness", to argue that Kendall could manage the party either given she's apparently on about 7-8% first preferences to Corbyn's 57-58%.
Corbyn is the only one of the bunch to agree with most prominent economists that austerity was harmful, counterproductive. His economic policies aren't being dismissed by economists either.
You wonder what the hysterics are really informed by.
Bookies paying out on Corbyn victory. Sources close to Burnham and Cooper say they're both resigned to defeat.
He'll move the debate left in the sense that the political axis is actually a sphere, yes. He'll basically be terrible for the party and for the country and as a (quite sexy) young man for whom the Tories are a natural home but with whom I disagree on some things, the idea of an opposition that's not going to be able to actually tie it's own shoe laces is less appealing (to me) than you might think it is.
The way I see there might actually be an opposition, not just a typical Jack Johnson and John Jackson scenario.
The real reason that you don't want a left-wing opposition is that it makes shifting everything to the right easier in the future as long as the left stays 'centrist' (read: right-wing). Let's be real.
No, I don't think Corbyn will have much of a chance. It's already difficult for the opposition to shift things and the Tories will make short work of making sure he has no media control. But at the moment the centre isn't centrist, it's hugely right-wing (e.g. believing that the deficit is economically important rather than merely epiphenomal). The longer the Labour Party fight over the centre the easier it is for the Tories to push that steadily further right.Are you kidding? You think Corbyn's either a) atrocious leadership followed by either fraticide or suicide or b) atrocious leadership followed by electoral barracking will somehow shift the center to the left?! Yeah, just like Michael Foot did.
You'll forgive us for not taking our political advice from a member who repeatedly told everyone about how he was wanking as the election results came in.
No, I don't think Corbyn will have much of a chance. It's already difficult for the opposition to shift things and the Tories will make short work of making sure he has no media control. But at the moment the centre isn't centrist, it's hugely right-wing (e.g. believing that the deficit is economically important rather than merely epiphenomal). The longer the Labour Party fight over the centre the easier it is for the Tories to push that steadily further right.
Are you kidding? You think Corbyn's either a) atrocious leadership followed by either fraticide or suicide or b) atrocious leadership followed by electoral barracking will somehow shift the center to the left?! Yeah, just like Michael Foot did.
You'll forgive us for not taking our political advice from a member who repeatedly told everyone about how he was wanking as the election results came in.
He'll move the debate left in the sense that the political axis is actually a sphere, yes. He'll basically be terrible for the party and for the country and as a (quite sexy) young man for whom the Tories are a natural home but with whom I disagree on some things, the idea of an opposition that's not going to be able to actually tie it's own shoe laces is less appealing (to me) than you might think it is.
godelsmetric (and actually anyone in this thread), you should trying reading Owen Jones' The Establishment. I know he's a bit of a wonk, but this reads more like a piece of long-form journalism than an argument, and it's a really interesting history of why the political centre has moved in the way it has over the past thirty years. I think particularly the parts on outriders and the media are something that the left could learn from.
I'm not at all convinced it'll be a less effective opposition than the Labour party has been for the last five years, in truth.
I'm also not at all sure the Tories care about being consolatory with Labour, even with a fairly small majority, except on issues like their attacks on civil liberties, which the non-Corbyn candidates would vote with the Tories on, making them no opposition whatsoever.
I don't really understand how you're defining "the centre" though? There's no universal centre, even within a single country. What's centrist in Norway isn't centrist in the US, and what's centrist in 2015 isn't the same as what was centrist in 1984, 1973 or 1948. Neither politicians nor poli-sci philosophers decide where the centre is, the electorate does. When they voted in Blair, that's basically where the centre was, so overwhelming was his victory. In closer elections, the centre can be said to be somewhere more equally distant between the two major parties between which the election was fought. You can just point to somewhere and declare that the centre.
I'm defining it exactly the same way that you are. My point is just that our 'relative centre' in the UK is, by an reasonable standards, very right-wing.
Not entirely. The people gets what the people thinks they want. The only reason the British public thinks that deficit reduction is an important economic consideration is because they're told it by politicians. If the standard of political discourse in this country were any higher, the people would know that it's a side concern at best, and in general is just a way for the Tories to subject the country to a bunch of welfare cuts that people probably wouldn't want if they knew they were totally unnecessary.
Well maybe but the people have just been living it for 5 years and the boys in blue got re-elected with a higher vote share. It might have something to do with our growth in both GDP and jobs which is markedly higher than most of our European neighbours and the fact that despite the cuts, things aren't all falling down, headway on a lot of areas of public sector reform and a general display of competancy (the cabinet, for example, was remarkably stable for the duration of the last parliament). If the only reason the right constantly wins is because of a massive media conspiracy, it must help that people seem to like what they're seeing.
The recovery was in spite of cuts, not because of them. You know that.
Haven't received ballot papers yet. I wonder if I have been banned.
Yet more shenanigans going on with life long Labour supporters not being allowed membership to vote for the leader:
https://twitter.com/marcuschown/status/634259439625859072
This is... Disturbing
Yet more shenanigans going on with life long Labour supporters not being allowed membership to vote for the leader:
https://twitter.com/marcuschown/status/634259439625859072
This is... Disturbing
Anyone's got to be better than the three folk who would struggle between them to win the monthly 2nd best teller in a regional bank competition.
I don't know why it seems nuts? A party that has over 20-25 years drifted far from its social democratic foundation is struggling to reconcile between a faction that likes how it is and a faction that prefers how it was (in very basic terms). It seems healthy and natural that a party does soul searching when it loses.
I don't see how Corbyn meaningfully helps to overhaul the party or regain the trust of the party. Enthuse *potential* voters, I give you... but your implication is that after Corbyn is done and has lost his election, we can move to some new, presumably somewhat less leftwing figures - and I don't see much of the Corbyn support being retauned when that happens.