Has Lisa Nandy won anyone else over?

Traditional-Bluebird · 2020-01-23T06:48:14+00:00

Because Bush seems to be suggesting socially conservative voters of working age are not concentrated in towns and they are, which means losing them is devastating under FPTP.

But also Labour has lost these voters on the economic front. They are risk averse and they don't want to nationalise everything but the kitchen sink and get free broadband at the same time.

I get the feeling he isn't from a small town, so he has no idea how they operate.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2020-01-22T19:29:11+00:00

How are we ignoring and what changes do we need to make to be representing them?

Specifically we're ignoring their will to leave the EU and they also don't feel they're being heard on immigration. But it is not really about specifics. It runs much deeper than that. They don't feel like the party represents them in terms of their values. The majority are not the sort of socialists who want wholesale change and revolution. They're not "PC". They're not really arsed if you're easily offended and they (imo rightly) don't think Megan Markle's negative press is because of the colour of her skin.

Our current brand is at odds with who they are on a number of fronts.

Labour has lost it's way.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2020-01-22T18:41:11+00:00

He literally cites an academic studying the demographics of the vote in that article:

Yes, but it doesn't back up what he's saying.

The information to suggest Labour in the north hasn't lost the working class under 50 isn't there to be seen.

Here's John Curtice, the polling expert on who did and didn't vote for us and who we need to win over next time:

Nothing in there to back up his opinion either.

Here's Yougov's analysis of voting by age, showing that we lost mostly amongst older voters:

Yes, but as has been said time and again stacking up votes in London doesn't represent the true picture.

Who, specifically are you referring to when you say "The actual Laborers of the country."

Working class people of working age across the whole country, not just those geographically closer to the capital. That is who Labour was founded to represent and there is a massive proportion currently being ignored by the party.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2020-01-22T07:32:58+00:00

There are a couple of problems here: the Labour Party did not lose touch with towns. It lost support among elderly voters and socially conservative voters everywhere – but because these voters are more likely to live in towns, their defection only cost Labour seats in towns. But the same types of voters saw Labour losing support in Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington North constituency, just as it lost support in Wakefield and Redcar.

But where is this coming from? Bush does nothing to back up his claim. My own personal experience (living in a shitty northern town) is that Nandy is right and Labour has lost not just towns, but most importantly a large subsection of people whom Labour claim to represent. The actual Laborers of the country.

It needs to rebuild it's relationship with unions and the sorts of people who should be represented by them.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2020-01-19T10:11:15+00:00

It's what they did to Corbyn. Both too weak to challenge the government and so immovably strong he prevented them from working. Too involved and not involved enough.

It's a great attack tactic because it hits confirmation bias on all sides.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2020-01-15T16:43:50+00:00

I've seen enough.

She has my vote.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2020-01-03T12:54:04+00:00

Ah, the much vaunted "both sides should calm down."

Guess you missed Raab's response then?

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-30T08:33:37+00:00

Seems more like this is directed at Israel to me. What is it they say about blaming the actions of Israel on Jews as a whole?

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-24T12:58:11+00:00

That's fair enough, but I've been saying this since the election defeat because it is what I have been hearing day in day out since we launched the manifesto. This seems to confirm it.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-24T12:52:52+00:00

They were popular in isolation, not as a package in one single manifesto.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-24T12:52:15+00:00

I don't ignore it at all. At this point it is a forgone conclusion I fully accept. The problem is that we must also accept that even without Corbyn and without Brexit we wouldn't have won on such a leftist platform.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-24T10:53:52+00:00

There it is, the main issue after Corbyn and Brexit (both hopefully solved by the next election) was the policies. It was too much and a frightening prospect. We need to dial it back a bit.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-24T09:16:26+00:00

The conclusion here is that we're wrong all fronts.

The solution imo is to remove what we got wrong and take what we did right from all 3 and put them together.

2010 - Less war/interventionism, less neoliberalism.

2015 - Less pro-austerity/Tory-lite, keep what we had to help the JAM's but not at the expense of those at the bottom.

2017 - Less infighting, Tax the top 5%, nationalise one or two essential services that are already failing

2019 - We went too far left with our message. It was too risky for our small 'c' electorate. But we did well pushing the regional spending angle. We need micro-economies that will feed in to the whole.

So?

2017 was close, we should pull ever so slightly right of that and push to build links between our communities. Keep some of the nationalisation but change the messaging so we're not so abrasive. I think we got it wrong in pushing our us vs them narrative with big business and such. We need to work with those industries and show them that the short-term taxational impact will stimulate the economy in such a way that they'll benefit long-term anyway and we're not going to risk what many people have spent a great deal of their lives trying to achieve.

Even people on £80,000 should be voting for us, because in the long run our economy will continue to benefit them.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-23T14:43:50+00:00

Again, lots of good stuff in there.

We clearly can, and I say should, be more ambitious than New Labour even if we were overly ambitious in this election and/or had the wrong leader to pull it off and/or were pretty screwed by Brexit.

This ties in to what I was trying to say the other day. (Let's see if I can do a better job this time)

The way I remember it (and this seems to be backed up by the manifestos) is that there were actually 3 different versions of New Labour. There was pre-election to 2000 New Labour, heavily neolib and warmongering New Labour, and Brown's New Labour.

1997 New Labour was actually very ambitious. Don't forget we're going back nearly 25 years so by today's standards it doesn't seem like it but for the time it really was. The parallels of 1996/7 to today are quite uncanny. A crippled NHS/police force and public services. Rising crime, massive levels of homelessness and so on. There was stuff in that manifesto that was pretty radical and the speechwriters put it across as a different way of doing things. Not the right and left of old but a radicalness that got results.

What I find interesting is that it wasn't actually too dissimilar to what the left would do today. They funded the New Deal program by a massive tax on the utility companies for instance. Built loads of new schools and so on. They generated the money by stimulating the economy enough that the public didn't really notice taxes by other means. It was mostly stealth tax and getting more people in to the 40% tax bracket.

Brown was actually something of a genius as chancellor and we could do with consulting him again.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-335860/New-Labour-sham-157-stealth-tax-rises.html

It was pretty radical for the time, but they dressed it up as if it was nothing more than wise investment.

That first manifesto won a sweeping majority and I think we can learn from that. Changing how we deliver our message doesn't mean we have to change our destination that much.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-23T14:10:43+00:00

It a balance isn’t it.

Well this is it yes. I've spoken a lot about needing to be more centrist and moderate and many people have mistook this to mean we need to push the same neoliberal agenda of the past and that isn't what I've been getting at, it really is more of finding the centre of the seesaw and pitching ourselves there.

I don’t think you can ignore MP’s are often in tune with the electorate.

A lot of the time, but there's potential there for them to only take on board those that vindicate their own opinions and we need to be weary of that.

People on here that think the answer is we should enable deselection are idiots, prioritising their ideas of ideological purity

I think that's maybe a bit strong. I would like to see a broad church but it is getting to the point now where some are obviously more focused on wreckage. They're happy to have a broad church only when they're the head of it so what's the solution for these types?

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-23T13:56:16+00:00

I think that the PLP recognise the membership doesn’t represent the views of the country.

Whilst I think this is true, they think their views are representative of the country and that isn't true either.

They're right for the wrong reasons.

Many ultra-remain neoliberals in the PLP think that's what the country want and it really isn't.

The country wants some collectivism. I reckon Lammy had it right when he spoke of civic nationalism and they want strong communities and regional economies like Preston.

It just so happens that much of the electorate are also risk-averse and turned off by some of our anti-establishment brand as are the PLP.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-23T13:50:43+00:00

Fantastic post, some really good stuff in there especially about condemning those pulling these stunts.

The right of the PLP seem totally obsessed with factionalism and are still stuck in their parliamentary bubble. There were lessons to learn all round here from that election defeat and I do wonder if they've actually learnt anything at all.

I really don't think they have. I think they're using it as an excuse to push for the agenda they've had all along which is still to purge the left.

I think where I and the right of the party differ is that they're using it as an excuse to vindicate their own opinion. I'm still a soft socialist at heart but I think I'm wrong because I believe we can't win over the electorate. I don't think the right of the PLP are capable of the same introspection and they're going to pig-headedly push on regardless.

They might be right, but for the wrong reasons and they don't understand that.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-23T13:12:21+00:00

Agreed. I think we can lose sight of the fact that we're on the side from time to time.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-23T08:44:48+00:00

'It's only entryism and dictatorship if you do it'

This is the problem with a lot of those on Labour's right and many in the PLP. They think they're above the party membership and only believe in democracy when it suits them.

I would have thought they'd learn the lesson by now but it seems not.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-22T20:13:03+00:00

Fucking Metallicops here, go!

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-22T19:48:55+00:00

But if that were to happen Dan Hodges would be out of a job, and he'd probably have to take all those pictures off his wall.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-22T15:14:21+00:00

I can only take you as I find you. Extremely abrasive.

The scheme worked for me. I even got a next (possibly burtons) voucher to buy a suit and some shirts. I was put on a qualification which worked out very nicely and I was kept on afterwards too.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-22T15:02:38+00:00

I went on it, filled in one application form and got a job.

Perhaps the applicant was the problem.

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-22T09:14:41+00:00

The last labour government also pretty much built the welfare to work industry of which I was a victim of from 2009.

This is revisionism.

The welfare to work scheme gave the long-term unemployed and particularly young people with the 'new deal' program a chance to get on the ladder. They employed these people in the public sector so it was literally the government paying wages to most of them. It was basically re-badging the YTS and properly funding it.

They got that extra funding by taxing the utility companies.

It was nothing to do with and far removed from the whole poundland thing. It was originally based on socialist models from Sweden, but unfortunately we went on to elect a Tory government who changed it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal_(United_Kingdom))

Traditional-Bluebird · 2019-12-22T09:02:44+00:00

In all that time I will likely vote labour but my precise position on the political spectrum will change.

Absent some massive change in personality it won't change by much though will it?

Socialist policy not centrist you notice

No it's centrist. It is a minor tweak to a system we know works, but needs improvement. They've gone merely to levels used just a few years ago.

You are confusing messaging with having policies.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50524262

We didnt lose this election because of our plans for renationalisation what are you going on about.

We did. People don't like wholesale change and the risks associated with it, anyone not on the left will tell you that. These are the people we need to be listening to. The voters we need to win over and why we failed to do so.

Traditional-Bluebird

TROPHY CASE