Rayvin

I think the thing I miss most about Blair and the years associated with him, is that the Labour Party genuinely looked like the adults in the room. They knew what they were doing, where they were going, no soul searching. They had a vision, and ok, it only had a 12 year shelf life, but it was a very stable 12 years. There is no one within the Labour Party now that looks anything like that. We're all kind of hoping that Starmer might be about to pull us around somehow just by virtue of appearing competent, but he's just another opportunistic leadership candidate - he doesn't have a plan. He has no committed and functional team of MPs with a clear vision behind him. He will be taking over a divisive mess caused by a party that no longer believes, deep down, that it should be a united entity. I mean come on, he's not going to win next time out. Labour has no one who could. The only person I genuinely believe could restore some Blairite semblance of order is Cooper, and she isn't running - and even if she was, the paucity of talent within Labour is staggering.

It was politically inept, but I guess they can comfort themselves with the notion that it was true to their principles.

The PLP had to make an inconsequential and doomed rebellion that only ensured that the Corbyn project would last longer as it entrenched attitudes amongst the membership, and which ultimately led to all the name calling now? Please advise what on earth that ridiculously childish display achieved? EDIT - I just checked, and it turns out that Miliband's move was "overwhelmingly backed by a special conference the year before it was implemented". So it's not like one man took us blindly into populism, the whole fucking party signed up to it.

Blame for what?

No no, I'm the Tory because I'm enabling them. I'll vote for Starmer to be the next defeated Labour leader too.

I said earlier it was a needless dig at Blair. Do you want me to say something stronger? It's not as if she's a high profile MP or anything, she's just a fringe left winger. I believe that the moderates within the party will probably win this fight, and get Starmer elected - but all of this rounding on the left wing side is going to set up a siege mentality that is going to create problems. If the moderates win, it has to be with the consent of the left. Let the fringe left wingers make their comments, it's not like there aren't plenty of people in the moderate wing calling Corbyn a Tory enabler so let's not pretend this is one way traffic. In fact, it's been the moderates over the course of the past 4 years who have been the divisive ones. They set the entire PLP against the membership ffs. But now of course it's all about unity because now, the moderates are returning to save the day. Hypocritical bullshit. Have tantrums, get your way, close up shop.

What treatment is that then? You make snarky comments consistently rather than tackling actual arguments and then get dismissive comments thrown at you? ewerk spends more than enough of his time baiting me as he well knows. Bloody hell man.

As an aside, this article by Tim Farron is interesting, concerning what needs to happen for the Tories to be ousted. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/17/progressives-defeat-tories-next-election-2024?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard In a nutshell we abandon the idea of working with the SNP, Labour stands down in about 100 rural seats that they will never win but the LDs could, and the LDs stand down more or less everywhere else. At least I think that's what he's saying. EDIT - would have the benefit of allowing Labour to remain "pure" ideologically while reassuring everyone outside of urban centres that there was a steadying hand on the wheel. Presumably for a single coalition government within which we can achieve electoral reform.

Agree but there have always been movements to improve it. And even in recent times we can see unified visions from western countries. Resisting Nazi Germany, then the Soviets. Before that, for Britain, Empire. Now we have nothing but negative fear driven threats because the political class have run out of ideas. So you get warnings about not leaving the EU, warnings about Scottish independence, warnings about socialism, even climate change can be added to this list. Because as far as the political class was concerned, we'd arrived. End of history. There was no positive vision to sell apart from 'more of the same'.

See, I think the right wing is opportunistically making the best of it rather than causing it. Sometimes I think that the reality simply might be that cultures die - and maybe we're in our death throes. I'd argue the more fundamental problem is that the system just isn't working for most people - and bizarrely that's despite the fact that on many levels, it is working for most people. I come back to vision, which you deplore but I think is vital. Whether it's a centrist vision, or left wing one, or terrifyingly a right wing one, that's what the West is crying out for. Because consumerism, it turns out, wasn't much of a substitute. And I don't think we should have a violent swing to the far left either - but given the choice between that and the far right, you know where I stand. The main point of disagreement we have, I think, is that you believe the centrists could be cleaning up if only they hadn't been denied by Corbynite Labour. I think they've been wiped out harder than even the Labour left have just been.

If only she'd stuck to Change UK's more moderate policies. They really showed me. Along with Swinson in fact.

Yeah so I never said any of them were formed in the 1980s. I just said they had increasing power. So thanks for the dates but sorry, irrelevant. And I don't necessarily object to them. But as I keep trying to say, and which no one seems particularly interested in because apparently this is entirely a domestic problem according to the intellectual titans of this forum, this is an international war between globalism and anti-globalism. Neoliberalism is a globalist ideology that has brought us many positive things (global community, reduced chance of destructive war through interdependency of markets) at the expense of a great number of other factors (domestic political stability, social mobility, the consumerisation of humankind, and climate breakdown). I do not have the specific answer for what we should do about this, but I do know that going back to full on Neoliberalism isn't the answer because the consequences have been dire. You can blame Corbyn, Cameron, Brexit, whatever - but the reality is that they are all symptoms of a wider malaise at the heart of western culture. Too few people have enough stake in the system to vote to maintain it. The chickens have come home to roost.

The IMF, the WTO, the EU, international trade accords, G7, basically any and all of them.

I don't believe they sat down like a pair of evil geniuses, but I do believe that global agreement was reached to all push in similar ways, in part through the increasing power of various international organisations.

I dont know what you're getting at, sorry. I don't even know where she's MP for.

Ok well, she got elected somehow despite that.

I can see her logic tbf. No one is going to recognise the word Neoliberalism as meaning anything, but plenty of people understand broadly what the consequences of Thatcherism were, if not what it actually stood for. The socialists aren't going to go quietly, is what I would take from that. We may yet see the party break up after all depending on the leadership. Either way, potentially (although I hope Starmer is seen as left wing enough to get away with it).

It depends. Thatcher and Reagan sat down and agreed on the doctrine of Neoliberalism and that has prevailed through the past 40 years, even under Blair. Calling it Thatcherism is needless tbh since it really is only being done for the sake of digging into Blair - but Thatcherism was a form of Neoliberalism. I don't think Blair was a bad person or a Thatcherite, and have recently concluded that his drive to get as many people into education as possible is the only thing saving the UK from total oblivion. But he was still Neoliberal. He had to be, sure, but I'm not going to just avoid saying it because it's politically inconvenient.

I actually don't have any strong feelings about this MP, but do note that she's saying that on Twitter, meaning she's engaging with the electorate. So sound bites become necessary again, because that's how the super intelligent process ideas. I've been drawn into an argument I wasn't really making tbh. I was just saying she's kind of right. But I agree that the kowtowing and general taking it up the arse is what the collective has decided is best. She's clearly a stupid person too.

If you want to make an entirely cynical argument as an ultra pragmatic position, which should be popular on here, criticising Blair is exactly what we should be doing to win back these towns. Principally because these towns don't believe anything did improve for them under New Labour. No one in the red belt was calling for a return for Tony Blair. I watched several people interviewed from sedgefield saying such things. "Labour never did anything for us". Secondly, Boris Johnson has just won an election by vilifying the previous Tory party regime and pretending that he is something different. He's retained power almost by acting as if the Tories weren't in power for the past 10 years and attacking their own record. If we want to argue with the electorate about how awesome New Labour was then fine, but i was under the impression we were supposed to be kowtowing and blindly accepting whatever bullshit they come out with in order to "win them back". Or is it just socialism that we aren't allowed to argue with them about? Anyway, don't worry about my opinion on any of this - consensus is that the reason I don't agree with majority opinion on here is that I'm too stupid, so it's not really worth engaging with anything I say

Actually really interesting, nice to see some light shone on it.

I'm not even going to bother.

And? She's in Parliament. It's literally modelled on a fucking common room. She's not there speaking to the electorate, she's speaking on their behalf to people who do understand this shit. Let's not abandon all intellectualism in pursuit of lowest common denominator slogans and soundbites. The slogans and soundbites change nothing, they are meaningless, unless the intellectual understanding and policies that they enable are also present.

Neoliberalism, the ideology of Thatcher, has been the prevailing ideology of western powers for about 40 years. Thatcherism maybe not, but the general ideology has persevered through Blair, even if he only accepted it as a pragmatic compromise.

I'm prepared to surrender on immigration - I've been saying it's a lost battle for years now anyway and that the EU will ultimately have to do the same - but I don't think it'll be enough. Let's hope you're right.