Rayvin

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.

And yet Nandy has come out saying we have to make a positive case for immigration. There is a huge value divide between the young and the old - as a result of Blair sending more people to uni, I might add. It's really not going to be easy unless the Tories do so badly that all other considerations go out the window.

Too close to the bone? My bad.

Seems like it I'll stick to forming opinion based on coherent arguments, you stick to name calling.

I don't need to, I know what I meant. You're the one who decided to make a big show of it being about centrism. I don't recall the centrists doing much beyond talking about Corbyn being unelectable while citing what the Tory press thinks of him, incidentally. And I agree with your earlier point anyway - they don't have the power to be an effectual force for now so aren't a concern.

I was primarily thinking of the Tory press, FYI. With the LDs sprinkled in for their consistent hypocrisy on the issue of working with Labour.

Thought so Don't worry about it, I understand

Three years ago I made this post on the guardian after Trump won: Well indeed - but given this billionaire has just managed to persuade large tranches of the lower classes to vote for him, we have to look at why the left's message is not resonating with them. And honestly, I'm struggling to think that the left actually does have a message for these people. It has one for minorities, and for middle class women, but for working class white men and women? Hardly. The left has failed to build a consensus and coalition based on economic stature, instead choosing to do so based on social and political factors. In doing so, it has left a great many people behind. The right has just manipulated the discourse to make it look like economic progress is something they can offer. The fact that they can't and won't is by the by for those who voted, as the left wasn't offering it either. I think they've sent a message more than anything else - and while that message is coloured with racist language quite frequently (and deplorably), I suspect that these people could quite readily live in ethnically diverse communities (as they often do) were their anger being directed at the people ultimately responsible. Failure to harness and direct that anger, is the left's problem. We need to build a coalition with these people again. Or we're fucked. So I agree that we won't govern without them. But those people aren't coming back either way. I don't see how Labour can get them back while holding onto the millions of ideological young people who aren't going to have mortgages and stability which might have otherwise persuaded them to vote pragmatically.

Find me the word 'centre' in my post. Unless, you're saying that everything I've written there is indeed what the centrists do when they fear someone on the left. In which case I applaud you for coming forward with such a bold view, but I don't think it'll be popular on here.

Yes, I got that from what you said. What other ulterior motives could one have? It can't be socialism, since most socialists will make those views visible quite readily. I'm accepting compromise - I'll compromise to the point of Starmer, as long as he's backing socialist policies - on the basis that he fits a number of the irrelevant check boxes that don't matter to me because I'm stupid, but which do matter to the super intelligent. Like being ok with nuking people, loving the queen, and accepting that sometimes, baseless opinions are as valuable as facts.

Can you please explain what the centre, at this point, has to do with Lisa Nandy? I'm stupid and/or a Tory remember, I need things spelled out.

What in that post had anything to do with centrism. There's no popular support for the centre in this country anymore, but plenty of centrist politicians. As you well know?

Ok so, people who voted for Corbyn are stupid or secretly Tories. We've come full circle.

I think she'll be shot with shit from the get go, the LDs will opine that they could work with Labour if not for Nandy, they'll find something in her past that equates her with Stalin ideologically, and will brand her reckless and a danger to the country's finances. And then we'll lose again and rinse and repeat.

I said that if we lose this, we were done for 15 years come what may. I stand by that. We can go over to the centre if you want but we're going to achieve fuck all on that front too. If we're going to lose anyway, I'd prefer to lose without compromise. Die on my feet, as it were. So yes, I am that stupid apparently - although Starmer as spoken positively enough about socialism that I think Corbyn won the battle for the heart and soul of the party anyway, so I'm comfortable voting for him.

Telling about what?

I think they're gone mate. I think that's the problem now actually - those voters aren't coming back. And if they do, we will have had to go so far to the right as to lose the young and idealistic left. Don't really think there's any way forward but to stick to our guns on socialism and wait for them to die/come around off the back of years of the Tories.

This is really not being recognised by people who despise Corbyn. That article I posted, which no one will read, makes the following case (as to why people -specifically some of his MPs- might despise him): Most sitting Labour MPs had begun as Labour youth activists themselves, just as most centrist political journalists had begun their careers as leftists, even revolutionaries, of one sort or another. But they had also risen through the ranks of Blair’s machine at a time when advancement was largely based on willingness to sacrifice one’s youthful ideals. They had become the very people they would have once despised as sell-outs. Insofar as they dreamed of anything, now, it was of finding some British equivalent of Barack Obama, a leader who looked and acted so much like a visionary, who had so perfected the gestures and intonations, that it never occurred to anyone to ask what that vision actually was (since the vision was, precisely, not to have a vision). Suddenly, they found themselves saddled with a scruffy teetotaling vegan who said exactly what he really thought, and inspired a new generation of activists to dream of changing the world. If those activists were not naive, if this man was not unelectable, the centrists’ entire lives had been a lie. They hadn’t really accepted reality at all. They really were just sellouts. One could even go further: the most passionate opposition to Corbynism came from men and women in their forties, fifties, and sixties. They represented the last generation in which any significant number of young radicals even had the option of selling out, in the sense of becoming secure property-owning bastions of the status quo. Not only had that door closed behind them; they were the ones largely responsible for having closed it. They were, for instance, products of what was once the finest free higher education system in the world—having attended schools like Oxford and Cambridge plush with generous state-provided stipends—who had decided their own children and grandchildren would be better off attending university while moonlighting as baristas or sex workers, then starting their professional lives weighted by tens of thousands of pounds in student debt. If the Corbynistas were right, and none of this had really been necessary, were these politicians not guilty of historic crimes? It’s hard to understand the bizarre obsession with the idea that left Labour youth groups like Momentum—about the most mild-mannered batch of revolutionaries one could imagine—would somehow end up marching them all off to the gulag, without the possibility that in the back of their minds, many secretly suspected that show trials might not be entirely inappropriate.