Good post. Now do me a favour and try to see what I'm saying, if I can word it right that is
I'm not advocating for a return to new labour and all that, you guys just assume that's the go to because it's all left and right. That's literally all you lot care about right now, and that's not without reason.
However, regardless of brexit, Labour is split and Corbyn has failed to hold them together. Ed failed too. How much longer do you allow these failures before change is needed? You are we shouldn't lost what Corbyn has built, but we kind of have tonight no? This is an absolute humiliation. I said the other day we need a stronger speaker who can convey his core beliefs better, people kept saying we shouldn't have to have that, I said tonight that they should consider looking to move in slightly if only to claw back the floaters, I have been told if the right won't move why should we? (And also that I should vote Tory
). There basically seems no ideas or desire to even contemplating thought on anything, and when suggested we do, you guys instantly go to worst case scenario as if I'm suggesting you give up all you believe just because I'm telling you, and I am telling you, that this will keep happening over and fecking over until Labour get their act together.
What gets me is you keep saying the centre is dead, but what about all those floating voters. Of which I'm one? I'm not a true centrist at all, but I'm also not represented. It's flat out wrong to suggest everyone is now left or right and that's it, it's doing exactly what Labour have clearly done all through this campaign, completely missread the situation.
We need to stop these excuses, pick ourselves up and the Labour party need to find some way to pull itself together behind a real leader. And for god's sake, stop ignoring everyone and everything else and step outside the bubble and realise there's a lot more to this than brexit.
If I'm wrong to think all that, so be it. But at the end of the day, we keep losing and now extremely badly. I can't see how staying exactly as we are is going to change anything. Not in today's climate that's for sure.
Prepare yourself to receive the well thought-out reply I promised to you in the early hours of yesterday morning my friend!
It seems handy to start on the areas we agree on.
- For several reasons, lots of undecided voters who have voted for Labour in the past decided to either stay home, or vote for another party
- Corbyn's unpopularity was clearly a contributing factor for a lot of voters
- For this reason and in the broader sense, Corbyn's leadership has failed
- Due to the above, the party need a new leader and a new approach
Now, what the new approach should be is where I think we will differ.
Bearing in mind that I think we agree that virtually any socialist leader would get the same level of disgusting treatment by the media as Corbyn has endured, there seem to me to be two broad categorisations of plans for electoral success.
1) Britain's Obama
Put a photogenic, confident and slick centre-left leader in charge who is media-friendly and isn't perceived as economically radical enough to spook corporations or receive the non-stop character assassinations that plagued Corbyn. Probably somebody who is centre-right economically but socially progressive. The sort of person the typical middle England Tory could imagine voting for. Accept that you will have no real grassroots ground game as Momentum will be minimised, but try and mitigate that the same way the Tories do - attract weathly donors and spend money on targeted ads, and make use of a non-hostile media to get your message across. Play up your modern, progressive credentials and show that you will curb the worst inequalities of our economic system. Focus group your approach to be as simple, safe and palatable as possible. Appeal to whatever pollsters decide the modern equivalent of the 'Essex Man' or the 'Mondeo Man' are and win over enough voters 'floating voters' like you so that marginal south east seats turn red. Don't concern yourself with trying to reconnect old white working class men from the mining belt with politics, they're too dissilusioned / racist / myopic to make it worth the effort, and your economic policies are going to have friendlier edges but maintain the economic status quo, so won't benefit their communities anyway. Just hope that after Brexit, some of the red wall / 'mining-belt' seats Labour lost last night will return to you, mainly because 'who else are they going to vote for anyway?'.
2) Feel the Bern
Put another democratic socialist leader in charge. Use what you have learned from Corbyn's campaigns to shape your media strategy. Don't waste time complaining to the referee that institutions don't give you a fair shake, be proudly and aggressively anti-establishment in your entire approach. Make it absolutely clear what you are for (workers), and what (or more accurately who) you are against (rentiers). Counteract institutional bias and opposition by operating outside it. Use social media, local reporters and the resurgent socialist publications to get your message out instead of legacy media. Reshape Momentum based on what we learned yesterday, with far more effort going into local grassroots activism and engagement in the red wall / mining belt than in cities. With the Remain/Leave issue put to bed, make a conscious effort to show these communities that you can represent them and that electoral politics can improve their lives and rebuild their communities. Build connections between Labour's new metropolitan heartlands (London, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds etc) and their 'old' mining belt heartlands and represent exploited workers from cities and towns alike. Create networks of local campaigns to show that the Labour party is a constant activist presence in working class communities, not just some volunteers who appear every 5 years and ask for/expect your vote. Expand the solidarity we're seeing develop in inner city working poor with movements like Acorn, Debtor's Unions and J4G, which will become even more prescient after 5 more years of Tory rule. Create a real 'labour' party of workers fighting against rentiers with a new definition of what it means to be working class. Expect to lose a few seats in middle England and wealthy parts of cities to either a nationalist far-right Tory party, or to the centre-right Lib Dems, but trust that the support of workers in a post-capitalist society facing climate crisis, falling living standards, post-Brexit economic slump is enough.
Of course there are many shades of grey in the middle of these two positions, but roughly speaking I think that's what the two poles look like.
It sounds like you would prefer something closer to approach number 1, which I just fundamentally think can't work in 2019. In the era of what Mark Blyth calls 'global Trumpism', a right and left version of populism is the new normal for the foreseeable future in my opinion.
It wouldn't have worked in this election, as evidenced by the type of seats labour lost (mining belt) and gained (cities). I don't think that mining belt communities turned away from Labour because of policy, or because Corbyn wasn't media-savvy or charming enough. They did it because they felt ignored for 40 years, patronised by Labour over Brexit, and sick of globalisation totally changing the demographic makeup of their community with none of the prosperity going to them. Ultimately, I think these places are largely devoid of any hope that electoral politics could restore their communities. 'Vote Leave', 'Take Back Control' and 'Get Brexit Done' has more successfully resonated with them than a progressive message of 'let's all be nicer to each other'.
I think you need a similarly simple and evocative message to win them back. Class war. Your lives are going to get better because the lives of the top 5% are going to get worse.
Finally, you mentioned that due to the scale of yesterday's defeat, we surely have to abandon Corbyn's gains (to some extent). I think that would be suicidal. Think of the few things that Labour has going for it at the moment. Increased support in inner cities, (mostly) popular policy platforms on issues that aren't Brexit, and most significantly, Momentum. The future for the Labour party has to build on these successes, not abandon them. I have seen some pundits (Alan Johnson, David Blunkett etc) blame Momentum for the result, but I have no idea why. Momentum did everything they could and you can see the results in the seats where they were. The idea that we should move forward by having a row with the tens of thousands of people that were prepared to go out campaigning for Labour in the wet and the cold seems fantastical and is a surefire way to destroy any chance of winning an election any time soon, in my opinion.
Lessons need to be learned and our approach needs to change, but let's not hack away at the few good things we have left at the moment.
Anyway, I will be thinking and writing about this election a lot over the coming weeks, but I think that's enough of my screen-vomit for now.
Feel free to let me know your thoughts, as I am keen to hear whether to a floating voter, this sounds vaguely sensible or like mad socialist ramblings.
Can't wait for Burgon to be punted into the history books.
