Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/31/how-the-british-left-should-se.html
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If.
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Eventually that WEalth will trickle down. Just ask any TGOP’er.
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I’d be happy to be proved wrong, but I strongly expect a Tory win at the next election because (a) the British public, with its authoritarian-battered-wife mentality, tends to vote Conservative because of the harm they do, and boy howdy have they been doing some harm; and (b) no matter how appealing, reasonable, or human-like Corbyn is, it is very difficult to win a majority when literally all mainstream media are fervently set against it. The Guardian deserves special contempt in that regard.
That being the case, I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea to publicly moot radical agendas for a Labour government or not. Labour has lost elections in the past because the right-wing press painted them as Trotskyites straight out of a Nazi propaganda cartoon; but then, since the right-wing press are already pushing that angle pretty hard, perhaps the way out is through.
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I’m fine with this, as long as the plan of action if Labour gets in doesn’t amount to simply blowing the dust off of Corbyn’s 1972 journal/wishbook. If this is to finally happen, it has to do so with an eye toward the future instead of the past.
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if the coming elections put Labour in power this December,
You’re ‘avin’ a larf, mate!
Seriously, extremely unlikely. Even if they get most seats it will at best be a hung parliament.
Plus, what @Purplecat said and what @bobtato said. Boris is the charmer of the moment and is promising the sort of spending Labour wants to offer, stealing their thunder. Labour’s best bet is that Boris fucks up like Mrs May did. But he has better handlers and better PR. Plus, Corbyn has lost much credibility since 2017.
And Labour will struggle to get their policies headlined when all about them are banging on about Brexit.
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Say whut? Bozo has been fucking up from the first day he became PM, with a nearly 100% failure record to get any of his bills through parliament. When i see polls putting the tories way ahead my stomach drops because we’ve had 10 years of tory austerity killing people and if the polls prove to be correct come december and brexit happens then we’re going to see austerity doubleplus. Or there’s a hung parliament and they form a coalition with farage’s party business and then we’re really in the shit.
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Labour’s popularity plummeted during May’s reign. It took a special kind of party leadership ineptitude to pull that off. Labour’s best bet is to gain some self-awareness, get Corbyn to step down as leader, and go in hoping they can pull together a coalition. (Right now pretty much all the well-known Labour figures have abysmal approval ratings, but someone like Saddiq Khan or Harriet Harmon would at least make a coalition possible.)
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Of course he’s been fucking up - all his life - to any sane person’s view. But I meant I hope he fucks up like May did in having some real jaw-drop moments during an election campaign that exposes his real inadequacy in much the same way May did, in the eyes of the little Englander brain-dead fuckwits who think the sun shines out of his arse.
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Corbyn will not step down during an election and if he did it would guarantee Labour loses. Nobody votes for any party without knowing who the leader will be. Tom Watson may be the stand-in but it would ignite internal civil war in the full glare of the right-wing press. Not good!
And - re May - I meant like she fucked up during the actual election campaign - her performance was woeful and that helped Labour get close. That Labour could land no blows afterwards during her reign does indeed demonstrate ineptitude and incompetence of the highest order. They will continue to think shooting themselves in the foot is appealing to the electorate until Corbyn is gone.
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Of course this would be much more likely to happen if they had someone more competent and charismatic, and actually willing to do the opposing part of being the opposition leader, in charge. With Corbyn, who seems to want Brexit but under the Tories so he can pin all the blame on them, it’s not going to happen.
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If I had to predict at this point (and we’ve seen how well that’s gone for recent votes in the UK), I’d be putting my money on another hung parliament (because if the country can’t agree on brexit, what makes you think they can agree in a general election?), and at least another year of everything getting more shit.
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Sadly, whilst a referendum would have resulted in a clear Brexit outcome, an election likely won’t. I live in a constituency that is as safe a Tory seat as can be and what’s worse he’s a headbanging no-deal/WTO leaver. Every remain vote in this constituency will be wasted/ignored. Even if there is a Tory majority (entirely possible) despite their claims of a mandate for Brexit, millions of voters will effectively have been ignored. Of course, it is also the same the other way, but only up to a point given how many safe Labour seats may be at risk given the ‘working-class’ votes for Brexit and confusion at Corbyn’s shenanigans. Brexit party (or Tories) will make good gains in previously Labour-voting Brexit majority seats.
Personally, I actually want a hung parliament because it is the most likely to lead to a people’s vote on whatever deal is before us, and is more likely than a Labour majority.
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The latest news is that he apparently also won’t step down if he loses the election. However, I was suggesting that he step down before the election. That also won’t happen, but I think it would help Labour’s chances. (OTOH, I was a huge fan of Michael Foot, so what do I know.)
“Before an election” is already in the past. We are now “during an election”. Too late for any new leader to be found - that moment passed a few months ago, given how long Labour’s rules say is needed for a leadership election.
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Corbyn and Watson could step down together, and the PLP and leadership council could agree on a short-term caretaker leadership team. This isn’t going to happen, and Corbyn, who has the lowest poll numbers of any opposition leader since records have been kept (and who is even polling below BoJo among 18-24-year-olds), is going to be out front, leading Labour to the brink of oblivion.
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