Was listening to his 2006 conference speech that @sun_tzu referred to. This bit stood out in particular.
Next Labour leader - Starmer and Rayner win
- Thread starter Kaos
- Start date
Was listening to his 2006 conference speech that @sun_tzu referred to. This bit stood out in particular.
give it to beckett till the summer
A bit over the top but there is a point there. Today's left seem to spend their time scouring twitter for ways of categorising who voted against them, what age, what education, what job do they do, where do they live, any way of pigeonholing people so they can be blamed for not sharing the glorious revolution. All about blame of course, very little questioning why or what might be the way forward to represent them as well. Strange how the party of the many and not the few became the opposite, according to the election result anyway.
I'm not questioning his beliefs as anything but genuine and i do agree with most of what he says but he's a key figure the media will use to damage Labours image.
His interventions always seem to have a negative impact and i don't even believe it'll help get a more centrist candidate elected. It's just preaching to his choir and it'll annoy others.
Knew Corbyn was done when he celebrated that draw against the Lib Dems by sprinting up and down the polling station.
Blair has such a strong political vision, I would love him to come back into front line politics. Would probably have to be as a Lib Dem though!
Have to say that Corbyn's general demeanour since his defeat has been pretty pathetic. He really does act like a surly teenage when he is upset.
Just remember nobody could have done better than Corbyn.
It baffles me that there is a huge list of faux pas that most people would agree should bar someone from public office but apparently leading your country into an illegal war on knowingly false premises is not one of them.
The false premises weren't known, and it wasn't an illegal war. It was one of the worst decisions in the past 50 years, costing a huge number of lives, but I think he did it for what he felt to be the right reasons.
They were known and the UN disagrees on its legality but erm sure?
Yeah the Chilcot Inquiry was scathing of Blair. Think it’s important to remember though Iraq still happens even if the U.K. isn’t involved, and it had Parliamentary support, so it wasn’t just Blair leading troops into Iraq (I seem to remember Blair saying he would resign as PM if he lost the vote, I could be wrong however).
Yep.
I know some are a bit hurt about the apparent gloating from the "I told you so crowd", but he really does make it easy for them
I wouldn't waste your time.
It was all Blair and those pesky "centrists" fault. Nothing to see here, nothing to change.
A discussion of the Iraq war is only going to derail the thread but do you seriously want to argue that it was not an illegal war and that the false premises were not known to be a mix of outright fabricated nonsense and gross exaggerations of the truth? Just to give you a flavour, one of the pillars that buttressed the public justification for the Iraq war was Saddam's supposed links to al Qaeda. Blair admitted in a letter to Bush that the link was 'at best very tenuous' but he still proposed pushing it upon the British public to bring them on side. When Blair says 'at best very tenuous', bearing in mind the parameters of acceptable discourse that governs such official communications, that is essentially a euphemism for 'we know this is blatantly and demonstrably false'. Even the most cursory investigation of the evidence available will expose to you the extent of the knowingly false premises that were used to justify the war.
Now, your latter part has some truth to it. Yes, I do believe Blair had convinced himself that there was a moral justification for the war, even if he knew that the narrative with which it would be sold to the public was not correct. I mean, Saddam Hussein didn't exactly make it hard to reach that view. But the same could be said of Hitler, and thankfully I'm yet to read anyone attempting to exonerate him on the basis that he sincerely believed that what he was doing was right. Moreover, you're deluding yourself if you believe Blair didn't take into account factors other than the moral ones such as the brutality of Saddam's rule when he decided to join the invasion of Iraq e.g. he felt the lives of Iraqi civilians was a price worth paying for an attempt to curry influence with the White House.
Lisa Nandy doing my head in more than a little right now. Someone like Anna Turley was also under pressure in a very brexit area, but was against it because it would've battered the area even harder. All Nandy seems to do is parrot Tory talking points about thinking voters are dumb. Great job on giving Johnson the boost on the withdrawal bill, as well.
I'm all for thinking about how to regenerate towns and devolve power, but less of the "end the culture war" comments whilst saying remainers thought northerners were thick would be nice. And the less said of Stephen Kinnock, the better.
I'm all for thinking about how to regenerate towns and devolve power, but less of the "end the culture war" comments whilst saying remainers thought northerners were thick would be nice. And the less said of Stephen Kinnock, the better.
This thread is a joke. Pages on Blair and Iraq and how dumb corbyn and his supporters are and feck all on the potential next leaders.
Finally!
I can't work her out. I went into this really expecting to like her but totally agree with everything you said
Weird that she was a big Smith supporter too, think she headed his campaign and his main thing was stopping brexit.
Yup looking at it you're right, she was a campaign co-chair! And that was in the immediate aftermath of the referendum, when being for a second one was still relatively niche. Hope she gets asked about this in the campaign...
I'm sure she will and it will probably count against her for enough members to make winning difficult.
As a non-Corbyn supporter what did you think of Smith's campaign? I thought it was terrible.
Yeah proper shite, almost couldn't be bothered voting. There should at least be a reasonable choice this time around and it hopefully won't be so entrenched at either end.
I don't think it would be so entrenched. People latched onto Corbyn for a fairly unique set of circumstances including that he was a unique choice of the type that a large section of people had been wanting for a while, which I reckon won't be the case this time. Probably wishful thinking though.
I've no idea how the nominations will work out with this new system though and how wide a field of candidates it will create.
I suspect we will see 3 or 4 candidates in the end
Long bailey as the momentum mouthpiece
Starmer trying to say he served under Corbyn but isn't that far left
And nandy or Phillips (possibly both) being more centre ground and reform
No I think there’s something to that, not just ‘wishful thinking’ on your part. Corbyn has failed with the electorate but within the Labour party he has succeeded in shifting discourse and policy to a mostly centre-left position. It’s highly likely whoever succeeds him will retain much if the agenda formulated in the past few years. I don’t think the need to push a candidate like Corbyn will be felt as acutely by many on the left as it was post-Miliband. Personally I wouldn’t have voted for Starmer in 2015 but today I might.
The thing is I'm sure what she's saying resonates with her constituents and many other seats of that type. I also imagine she's only running to push a certain debate within the party.
The problem is she's never going to win so all she's doing is saying the people who might win think leavers are stupid.
I worry this whole leadership campaign will be solidifying criticisms in the electorates mind.
She’s a hypocrite. She voted against or abstained on much of the anti-Brexit amendments and indicative votes and is responsible for where we are at the moment together with some of the other midland and north west MPs. They all tried to save their skins with their constituents (most failed!) and fecked the country. Two faced cnuts should be allowed nowhere near leadership of the party.
The Sun running scared of Starmer:
He is kind of bland. I honestly can't think of any other adjective, just bland. All suggestions welcome.
Phillips... At least she isn't bland
He is but maybe the most credible choice right now. I will vote for him, but I'm quite pessimistic about his or any of the contenders's chances. I go along with the view that Labour will need an exceptionally talented leader to turn things around. Maybe one will emerge in the coming years. Let's hope.
Practically all my life I've witnessed crass 'looney Lefty' headlines published about Labour leaders; so I think it would be to the Party's advantage to have a leader the public recognises as a sober and serious politician.
Yeah, I like Phillips. Have to wait and see how many people get enough union/CLP/MP support to stand though. Some of the hopefuls won't make it.
He does but he is yesterday's man and tainted by Iraq.
However, the concept of New Labour was exactly what was needed then and in myopinion now. It resonated with a more modern philosophy.
Compare that with the outdated offering of Corbyn led Labour.
It was completely obvious that it was going to be soundly rejected by the traditional Labour voters.
The answer is very clear.
Modernise or shrivel and die.
Why would I have such a thing for Andy Burnham?? Why would you read my reply and take from it that I have a 'thing' for the person I proposed would be a good candidate for the labour leadership,
Find it intriguing that instead of offering your own opinion on who should replace corbyn, you seem to go down a different path, with unpleasantness, and being dismissive , take into account emotions were still raw when I replied with the tony Benn remark, I was still in pain at the thought of 5 years under these tory bastatds!! And I do take it back making that tony benn remark he was a genius, and a hero to many, sorry for comparing you to him , Bobbymanc who regularly post things on redcafe.
That said , go on WHO ?? Is gonna lead labour back to number 10 ??
Apart from you and a few other centrists in here . Where is the call for this New New Labour coming from?. Traditional Labour supporters were the ones that felt left out under Blair.
And a good chunk of them ditched Corbyn and his manifesto for Johnson... Just as they did foot and his manifesto for Thatcher
And there must have been plenty of people who didn't feel left out under Blair given his three majorities are more than every other labour government majority ever added together (and by quite some way)
One things for certain... Blair achieved far more than foot or Corbyn ever managed (minimum wage, civil partnerships etc) because you have to win enough people in the middle ground to win an election and actually enact policies
What would you qualify as a call exactly?
You’ve just had a worse defeat than the Foot debacle. That was a leadership that ran on a completely mental platform that included Brexit and the nationalisation of banks!
Blair won 418 seat in 97 and 3 terms!
What will it take for you to accept the scale of this rejection?
Last edited: