The Labour Files

[BillyStubbsTears]

Branton.

You could at least do me the courtesy of explaining which parts of my posts were "just plain wrong".

As it is, what you're effectively saying is "I've read what you wrote and I'm still right."

What you are continuing to do is to ignore the massive hole that Corbyn had taken Labour into BEFORE Ref2 was the party policy.

How many seats do you think Labour would have won in the 2019 election had their support stayed at 22-25% which is where it flatined from Jun-Sept 2019 (while official policy was to embrace Brexit).

And why do you think that support for Labour immediately began to rise (and support for the LDs fall commensurately) when Labour did adopt a Ref2 policy?

If you don't address those points, you can't claim to have a serious critique.

[Branton Red]

Billy

Well firstly (point 5) you can be in a CU with the EU and not have freedom of movement - ask the good people of Turkey.

1) You assume Labour's collapse in support in 2019 was wholly down to Remain voters. This is provably wrong.

Official policy may have embraced Brexit but Leave voters hardly viewed Labour as pro-Leave by this point.

What's pro-leave about their referendum on the deal policy launched in Feb 2019; blocking Brexit in Parliament (as reported in the RWP); or senior backbenchers/big beasts coming out continually for Remain??

Labour's huge loss of support in 2019 came from losing both Remain and Leave voters.

Proof? You've provided it already. After Sep-19 the increase in Labour's polling exactly matched that of the LD's fall. Where is the fall in support from Labour Leavers at this point?

Follow the logic. The loss of Red Wall votes (and seats) must have occurred pre-Sep and already be baked in to the 22-25% polling you mention.

2) The Maths. I've already proved the 22-25% excludes LD Remainers and Red Wall Leave voters.

So either regain Red Wall voters and 61 seats. Bringing Labour 122 seats closer to the Tories.

Or (as happened) gain 7.5% in vote share from the LDs. The LDs actually got 11.5% and 10 seats. But this 7.5% is concentrated in Remain areas. 61 seats is pushing it; 122 seats no chance.

But I provide this Maths to humour you. In reality things are not as simplistic as your analysis is suggesting.

3) You appear to believe Labour were faced with a binary choice Leave or Remain/Red Wall or LD Remainers. Untrue.

Labour can never win an election or maximise support by pandering to one part of it's electors whilst thumbing it's nose at the other. Whether in general terms or on one important yet divisive issue.

Labour wins by building coalition. Through compromise.

In this case. Yes leave the EU and SM in order to end freedom of movement so alleviating the main concern of many Red Wall voters. Stay in a CU with the EU and remain strongly aligned to the SM (again you're wrong - the EU would embrace such an idea remember the Backstop and Verhofstadt celebrating with his chums declaring "we've made them a colony"?) to alleviate the Remain side.

i.e. maximise overall votes by targeting both Red Wallers and LD Remainers to vote Labour.

4) You're correct Labour neutralised Brexit in 2017. Also that a more detailed Brexit policy was required in 2019.

However campaigning on a "soft" Brexit would have neutralised some of the vitriol on the subject (no not as effectively as in 2017) thus allowing Labour's popular other policies more room to breath whilst exposing the Tories lack of policies.

Again as you show Labour's gains post Sep-19 were almost wholly due to Remainers switching from the LDs. No switching due to non-Brexit policies - which was seen on a massive scale in the 2017 campaign.

5) You appear to believe that Ref2 was the correct policy as it minimised Labour's defeat. The aim of the Labour Party is to be in Government not to be a protest party or chase lost causes (regardless of how important).

I explained in my previous post why stopping Brexit was doomed once a GE was called (2/3rds seats voted Leave) and therefore why embracing Remain killed any chance of Labour winning. Killed it. Dead.

Yes the chance of victory was slim otherwise - but that's what was said 3 months ahead of the 2017 vote.

6) That's the theory. If only there was some overarching piece of evidence to prove my point.

Oh yes! The result of the election itself. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election. Just look at it!

Labour's worst result in nearly 100 years. And you're claiming it's the best they could have hoped for! And that their Brexit policy was correct even in hindsight?! When: -

- The election was held because of Brexit to sort the Parliamentary impasse
- Labour's opponents had by all accounts made a pig's ear out of negotiating Brexit
- Labour's Brexit policy was easily the most talked about and reported on in it's entire manifesto
- Labour came within a gnat's whisker of being the biggest party just 2.5 years earlier
- And that with the same leadership and broadly similar policies - except of cause your cause celebre.

I hope you don't find this discourteous but I'm giving your "homework" a D-.

[BillyStubbsTears]

That's a lot to respond to Branton. I'll eat the elephant 1 slice at a time.

1) You're absolutely right that we could be in the CU without FoM. That's a mistake by me but it doesn't fundamentally change my point. What we couldn't do is what the Lab 2017 manifesto claimed: End FoM & retain all the benefits of the CU AND SM. Not "close alignment". All the benefits.

2) You're saying the Red Wall Labour voters must have left Labour before Sept 2019. I disagree with your logic on that (see 3 below) although I think your conclusion is right. But hang on a minute. The reason this discussion started was you claiming that Starmer was the architect of Labour's 2019 defeat. And you say that it wasn't the move to a formal Ref2 policy that lost Labour those votes, it was the mood music before that.

And presumably you blame Starmer for that. Otherwise, what are we arguing about?

Only...it wasn't just Starmer. It was anyone and everyone outside Corbyn's bunker, who saw the catastrophe he was leading Labour into (point 4 below).

Have a guess what backstabbing Blairite, EU-loving Centrist Quisling came out unequivocally for REF2 in May 2019. Go on...have a guess.

3) You agree with me that the rise in Labour's vote after they a cepted the Ref2 policy went in lockstep with the fall in LD support. But look at the FALL in Lab support earlier in 2019. It went in lockstep with a rise in the LD support. There's no evidence that Labour supporters were running off to the Tories or to Farage. The churn in Lab support in 2019 was to and from the LDs. My take? Labour had lost the Red Wall support before REF2 was mentioned. And the primary reason was how Corbyn came across to them. I had literally hundreds of Red Wall voters close the door in my face when canvassing in 2019, saying "never while he is in charge".

4) Your analysis of what would have happened had Labour miraculously won back all the Red Wall voters misses a massive point. What good would that have done to their electoral chances had they done that and not regained the supporters they'd lost to the LDs? Go do the maths.

And you are committing the category error that so many Brexit supporters have made on this subject. You assume that all the Lab voters in Red Wall seats were Brexit supporters. In fact, even in the most strongly Brexit supporting Red Wall seats, there were very large minorities of Labour supporters who were anti Brexit. Lose them and you've likely lost the seat anyway. Labour wasn't in a place to win many seats by appealing ONLY to Lab Brexit supporters. Because they comprised at most 25% of Labour support nationally.

5) if you REALLY think that "we made them a colony" clip was serious, I'm wasting my time.

Tell me you DO realise it was black comedy.

You DO don't you?

[Ldr]

So the real enablers for the current shit show are Labour members who elected Corbyn as party leader, thereby giving the tories easy election wins!

[albie]

Ldr,

Both the Labour Leaks report, and the Forde Report to investigate it, make it very clear that the Labour right were active in undermining the leadership of Corbyn.

The intention in doing so was to damage the electoral position of Labour to the advantage of the Tories.
Some in Labour head office preferred a Labour defeat, if it increased their chance of promoting neo liberal alternatives to socialism.

The real enablers of the Johnson pantomime are those who worked against the alternative, and indulged in the media feeding frenzy about anti-semitism to discredit Labour.
We now know that this was largely fictional distraction, but the damage was done.

[Ldr]

Albie, apologies my sarcasm didn’t translate well in text

[albie]

Sorry Ldr, I thought you had misunderstood the Forde findings.

Meanwhile, the purges continue....Leicester now:
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/red-mist-leicester-19-sitting-8270715

A wee bit Stalinist, is owd Keith!

[Branton Red]

Billy

a) This debate started because, against all evidence, you insisted I was wrong in blaming Labour's Brexit policy on their 2019 GE catastrophe. I've not mentioned Starmer.

b) "There's no evidence that Labour supporters were running off to the Tories/Farage." Provably wrong.

Dec-18 to Sep-19 Labour polling fell 16 points from 39% to 23%. LD support rose 9 points 9% to 18%. No other players in town so c. 7% of Labour support went to the Tories (or Brexit party).

Don Valley (my) constituency 2017 to 2019 Labour lost 17.8% vote share. Tories/Brexit Party gained 15.2%. Same analysis can be given in the other 61 Red Wall seats lost.

Evidence clearly shows 2017 Labour Leave voters switched to Tories/Brexit Party. Fact.

c) "The primary reason [Red Wall voters abandoned Labour] was how Corbyn came across to them." Logically implausible.

The national Labour vote held firm at c 40% till Dec-18. Why would Red Wall voters suddenly in 2019 abandon Labour because of Corbyn having supported Labour under to him up to then?? Why would Left wing voters suddenly switch to the Right (point b above) just because of the party leader? Why did this just happen in Red Wall seats where Corbyn, as you say, held the same view as the majority on the major topic of the day??

d) No miracle needed to persuade Labour Red Wall Leavers who'd supported Labour all their lives to switch back to Labour. Just a promise to implement Brexit - the one key reason they otherwise switched to Tories/Farage.

e) I did the Maths in point 2 of my previous post. 7.5% of LD vote highly unlikely to be 61, let alone 122 seats. You're still stuck on this binary either/or argument (see point 3 on my prior post).

f) I clearly stated "Red Wall Labour Leavers" in my prior post. I certainly did not assume all Labour voters in these areas were Leave voters.

g) "Lose [Labour Remainers] and you've likely lost the seat anyway." Almost certainly wrong. 2 reasons: -

1) Mathematical. Remainers were a minority in these seats. Their votes in summation mattered less. But also disproportionally so. Lose 1 of their votes the Labour majority falls by 1. Lose a Leaver to the Tories, the majority falls by 2.

2) FPTP system. LDs have no presence in the Red Wall. They can't win the seat. Labour Remainers likely therefore to stick with Labour to stop the Tories getting in. Esp if (point 3 prior post) Labour are campaigning on a much "softer" Brexit than the Tories - which would certainly been the case if Labour had followed Leave.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Branton

As it happens, we don't need to go on your or my arguments about which 2017 Labour voters went to support other parties and when.

You Gov systematically record that information in their polls. All the data can be found in the links in the table in in National Polling Results here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election

Taking four polls at random.

On 7 Jan 2018, of those people who voted Lab in 2017:

88% still supported Lab
3% had switched to Con
6% to LD
1% to Green
1% to UKIP


By 16 Dec 2018, just before Corbyn very firmly committed Lab to seeing through Brexit, of those people who voted Lab in 2017:

83% still supported Lab
4% had switched to Con
5% to LD
4% to Green
3% to UKIP
2% to SNP

Just hold there for a moment. Across 2018, Labour's 2017 support had held firm. 4-5% had switched to avowedly Hard Brexit parties. 7-11% had switched to soft Brexit/Remain parties.

Look what happened next.
 
By 10 Apr 2019, of those people who voted Lab in 2017:

69% still supported Lab
4% had switched to Con
9% to LD
6% to Green
3% to Change UK
3% to Brexit Party
3% to UKIP
2% to SNP

So 10% had switched to Hard Brexit parties. 20% to soft/No Brexit.

And still it went on.


By 18 Sept 2019, just before the conference that committed Labour to Ref 2, of those people who voted Lab in 2017:

50% still supported Lab
4% had switched to Con
26% to LD
6% to Green
9% to Brexit Party
2% to SNP
2% to Plaid Cwmry


That's 13% lost to Hard Brexit parties. 36% to No/Soft Brexit.

This is the point I've been making for 3 years. Brexit supporters of right and Left want to blame Labour's disaster in 2019 on having a Ref2 policy. But they never look at the counterfactual. YES Labour lost Red Wall Brexit supporters. But by September 2019, they had lost THREE TIMES as many anti-Brexit supporters to other parties. If Labour had attempted to woo back the Red Wall voters, they MAY have limited that damage. But across the rest of the country, they would have been decimated. It's not beyond possibility that they would have been reduced to around 100 seats. And that's the sort of massacre that finishes off political parties. Like happened to the Liberals 100 years before.

Labour cannot EVER win power now without the support of young, internationalist, city dwelling, educated, progressive people. They were on the verge of losing a whole generation of those voters to the LDs, Greens and SNP/PC in late 2019. They were never, ever going to win the 2019 election, but they needed to stop it becoming an existential loss.

The policy, bluntly, was to keep the majority of their support, let the Red Wall go temporarily, then win it back when Red Wall voters realise what a shower they had elected.

It worked as well as it could.



By 2 Dec 2019, just before the election, of those people who voted Lab in 2017:

71% still supported Lab
7% had switched to Con
11% to LD
3% to Green
3% to Brexit Party
2% to SNP

Labour had pulled back more than half the losses to the progressive parties. And lost no more than they had already lost to the Hard Brexit parties in the fervour of early 2019.

[Branton Red]

Billy

You started this debate by (falsely) accusing me of lazily interpreting facts to draw a conclusion I want to be true but you are continually doing the same. You narrowly analyse the data at a superficial, simplistic level until it matches your narrative. And then you stop.

If we had PR your analysis would have merit. But we don't. We have a deeply unfair and undemocratic FPTP system which propagates a 2 party system.

Labour are judged by how they perform, not in total % votes, but seats won relative to the Tories. So for impact you need to double your Sep-19 13% vote switch to the Tories against the 36%. But there's more.....

FPTP is skewed against smaller parties (i.e. LDs) and against Remain. I've already explained why the Ref2 policy guaranteed Labour's defeat and annihilation (given 2/3rds of constituencies voted Leave).

But also each Labour vote lost to the Tories in the Red Wall was massively more damaging than any vote lost to the LDs in Remain areas.

So Labour lost c 13% of it's vote to Tories - this cost them 61 seats (or 122 seats relative to the Tories).

Per the Dec-19 poll you quote they therefore lost c. 16% of their votes to LDs et al. How many seats did this cost them in comparison? (It's a round number which often follows the words 'Doncaster Rovers' in the Sunday papers).

Here's why en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_target_seats_in_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election

There were dozens of Lab held Lab/Con marginals in Leave areas which only needed a small swing away from Labour for them to lose the seat. Labour duly obliged many such swings with their Ref2 policy.

Meanwhile many seats in Remain areas are held by Labour but with huge majorities. Note only 2 target LD seats held by Labour requiring a swing under 5%.

A policy which panders to voters in ultra-safe seats but ticks off those in marginals is not good politics.

Yes Labour would have been wiped out if they had supported a form of the Tories policy on Brexit. But that was never, ever going to happen. And it's not what I'm advocating Labour should have done (note how I have the intelligence and wherewithal to be able to separate what I think was best for Labour vs what I wanted).

I'm advocating Labour should have followed a compromise "soft" Brexit. Leave the EU and end FoM but otherwise stay closely tied to the EU. In the CU and tied to the SM. This would have maximised Labour's seats and even given them some small hope of victory (rather than guaranteed defeat).

There was a mood for compromise in the country - you've provided the evidence re high support for the EEA option

Labour can't win without the support of young, internationalist, city dwelling, educated, progressive people and also the support of traditional Labour voters in it's heartlands. That should be the main lesson Labour draws from their 2019 debacle (not just on Brexit but all matters)

[Branton Red]

Billy

"Branton. If you really want to talk about this, I'll talk all day. But you're going to need to have done your homework."

Funny how you've gone quiet then when confronted with evidence and fact-based logic, which contradicts your concocted theory, from someone who really has done their homework.

Still you wouldn't want to allow inconvenient facts to get in the way of your contrived polemic, eh Billy?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Branton.

Apologies for my late response. As you may well have noticed, I wasn't on here much last week. The final week of the FY is hellish, and with some family issues thrown on top, answering your post wasn't at the top of my priority list. Still, your post got a like from Hound, who does love to see his conviction that I'm a fraud and a hypocrite buttressed. So that's nice.

As for your 27 March post, I truly do not know where to start. You claim to have done your home work, but central to the entire argument you make are a fundamental error of analysis, and a re-writing of history. I'll explain them really carefully. Please consider this before you respond.

1) Analysis error.
You say that Lab lost 61 seats to the Tories with a national 13% loss of votes to the Tories (wrong number, but we all make mistakes, so no problem), while losing 16% to the LDs et al cost them no seats at all. And you conclude from that, that Labour wasn't existentially threatened by loss of support to the LDs. I don't think you quite understand that you are actually making my point for me, by pointing out that Labour's position by Dec 2019 WASN'T one of existential loss. But you're ignoring the counterfactual. Which is: what would have happened if Labour had gone into the Dec 2019 election with the losses to the LDs et al that they were suffering in September BEFORE they adopted REF2 as their policy.

The problem then wouldn't have been a loss of seats to the LDs. That's a fundamental error that you make. The problem really would have been how many seats would they have lost to the Tories, because of the anti-Tory vote being split between Lab and the other anti-Hard Brexit parties?

We cannot know this latter number for certain, but we can make a decent estimate of it. That can be done by using the 18Sept percentages above, and applying them  to the votes of each seat in the 2017 Election.

I've run those numbers. They say that, of the 262 seats Labour had before the 2019 Election,  if Labour had lost 26% of its 2017 support to the LDs, 4% to the Tories, 6% to the Greens, 9% to BP, 2% to the SNP and 2% to PC (and, to be as fair and accurate as possible, added what that poll also says about Lab gaining 1% of 2017 Tory voters and 3% of 2017 LDs) these would have been the results in 2017 Labour seats.

Lab 96
Con 155
LD 5
SNP 5

That is based on the assumption of a uniform national swing in every constituency, which of course wouldn't have happened. But its the reasonable best we can do.

And THAT is what you appear not to have understood at all. Where Labour was in Sept 2019, was on the wrong side of a cliff edge, at which, under FPTP, a national party that drops below about 25% of national vote sees its number of seats collapse. If you don't get that, you're going to continue to fail to understand why the existential crisis for Lab in late Summer 2019 was the hemorrhaging of support to the strongly anti-Brexit parties.

2) Re-writing of history.

You say "I'm advocating Labour should have followed a compromise "soft" Brexit. Leave the EU and end FoM but otherwise stay closely tied to the EU. In the CU and tied to the SM. This would have maximised Labour's seats and even given them some small hope of victory (rather than guaranteed defeat)."

Err...what do you think Labour's policy was in early 2019? It was PRECISELY what you describe there. In the 27th March 2019 indicative votes, Labour's leadership policy stance was to support the following proposals:

1) Firm commitment to CU membership
2) 1 above, plus "close alignment with the single market and dynamic alignment on rights, standards and protections."
3) Membership of EFTA and EEA

The leadership DID also support a confirmatory referendum on a final Brexit deal, but Corbyn made it crystal clear that this wasn't what the Ref2 supporters wanted (a vote with the options being Brexit As Finally Agreed & Remain). Corbyn said on the day of the first round of indicative votes that Labour was supporting a Confirmatory Referendum purely "to keep the option of a public vote on the table in order to stop a disastrous no deal or May’s unacceptable deal”.

Labour WAS doing exactly what you say they should have done.

The result? Well you've seen it in my previous posts. A historically unprecedented loss of support, the vast majority to more stridently Ref2 parties.

You say "There was a mood for compromise in the country - you've provided the evidence re high support for the EEA option."

That was 15 months earlier than the 2019 GE. By March 2019, opinions had polarised. May had been dragged by the Far Right into stridently postulating a No Deal Brexit. The ERG, Johnson, Farage, Baker et al were actively pushing No Deal as a positive outcome by Spring 2019. Since literally no-one had advocated that in 2016, that move had destroyed the mood of compromise. The other side equally hardened. If the Right was going to give the finger to comproimise, why shouldn't the centre-left? Why should Remain supporters grit their teeth and accept a soft-Brexit? Why not ask the people in a second vote if, given how things had evolved since 2016, they still wanted Brexit at all?

You don't believe me that the moment for compromise had passed? Then explain why Labour lost 5 million supporters to the LDs et al in the first half of 2019, when their official policy was precisely for a compromise soft Brexit?  And explain how a soft compromise could have helped Labour regain the 3-9% of their previous supporters who had embraced Farage by Spring/Summer 2019. You REALLY want to claim that they were coming back to a Labour party that promised them a soft Brexit?


Here's it in a nutshell.

Johnson did a consummate job of exposing Labour to attack from both sides. He offered the Red Wall the red meat of being able to vent their hatred of Brussels and internationalism. And any attempt (ANY attempt) to try to win them back was inevitably going to lose far more support from the other wing of the Labour party. And, although I suspect you still won't accept it, the numbers are unarguable - by Summer 2019, the latter of those two threats was the existential one - the one that could have killed Labour as a national force.

Labour was never going to be in a position to win in Dec 2019, precisely because there was no policy that wouldn't lose one group or another. Labour, eventually, and correctly despite Corbyn's protestations, judged that the least damaging path was to let the Red Wallers have their emotional spasm, and to work on  winning them back when they saw for themselves what a shower of shite they had voted for. History appears to be vindicating that approach. To idly say that Ref2 lost Labour the 2019 election is a facile error born of a lack of understanding of the vote numbers and the political context at the time.

By the way. Are you still sticking to the line that the EU officials who said "We did it! We made them a colony!" we being serious?

[albie]

The moment Labour lost the 2019 election is captured here, when Keith went rogue at Labour Conference;
https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1642486320604872705

Dennis Skinner could see Keith was throwing the red wall leave votes to the sea.
The loss of Labour red wall seats maps closely to leave voting constituencies;
https://twitter.com/TweetForTheMany/status/1643340637457068032/photo/1

Corbyn should have sacked Starmer, and he should have been expelled from Labour at the time.
The cost of not doing so is now clear;
https://youtu.be/mDaY6K5A2qI

[BillyStubbsTears]

So you just ignore the argument I put up there Albie. Have a go at making a case for how Labour was supposed to win in Dec 2019, given that it was at 23% in the polls before Starmer made that speech. And that the overwhelming majority of the support it had lost had gone to pro-Remain parties.

Go on. Have a go.

But you won't of course, because it is impossible. What you'll do is cling to what the Left does. Every time it fails, it scrats about for The Great Betrayal Myth to console itself that it was everybody else to blame.

You raise Skinner.

I assume you know Skinner voted for accepting a No Deal Brexit in the Indicative Votes? It was that sort of attitude from a hardcore of Bennite EU-phobes, including Corbyn if he could have been honest, that lost Labour 5 million supporters between Spring and Autumn 2019.

But you will, of course, blame Starmer.

[BillyStubbsTears]

By the way Albie. While you're at it defending the Great Betrayal Myth, you might want to take this into account in your argument.

https://twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1132925015316488193?s=20

[ncRover]

Ridiculous Ablie. 99% of the electorate (your everyday man / woman) in 2019 will have known nothing about Starmer’s speech there.

[drfchound]

And conversely nc, a big percentage of the electorate now know little of what Starmer actually stands for, except that he is anti government.

[Bentley Bullet]

And conversely nc, a big percentage of the electorate now know little of what Starmer actually stands for, except that he is anti government.

Starmer is a prosecutor, posing as a politician. He stands for nothing other than opposing the government. When he actually becomes the leader of the government God help us all.

[BillyStubbsTears]

And conversely nc, a big percentage of the electorate now know little of what Starmer actually stands for, except that he is anti government.

Starmer is a prosecutor, posing as a politician. He stands for nothing other than opposing the government. When he actually becomes the leader of the government God help us all.

Let me get this right.

When politicians have done nothing but be in politics all their lives, they know nothing of the world outside.

When a working class lad works his way up to the very top of his profession, THEN enters politics, he's useless because he isn't a real politician.

[Bentley Bullet]

Just because a working-class lad works his way to the top of his profession doesn't make him a good Prime minister. Otherwise, people like Gary Lineker, for instance, would be putting themselves up.

[albie]

BST,

I was not replying to your argument, as I think it is contrived.
You seem to think your views are what matters....they are not!

I was returning to the topic.

Your argument that Labour were unlikely to win is correct, given the media storm around the false anti semitism narrative, but that is not a valid reason to lobby for ref2 which could only deter support amongst leave voters. Consolidation of the voter base needed to avoid the division that ref2 entailed.

The position of the party should not be improvised on the hoof, which is what Starmer did as a clear undermining of the leadership.

Much of the rest of your long post is not relevant to the evolution of the political context.
As Branton points out, there is a considerable re-writing of history going on.

Mcdonnell was incorrect in the tweet you mention, as he was when he tried to bring the deplorable Alastair Campbell back into Labour. Do not take the opinion of one individual as a guide to the overall position of the party, as with the Starmer speech.

Nothing Starmer has done suggests he is on the side of socialists, or in support of trade unions, or in any way working class interests.

ncRover,

The Labour Conference speech was widely covered in the media at the time, and anyone watching the evening news would have been aware of this speech. The idea that 99% of people were not aware is simply unreasonable, and even if people were not fully connected with the issue, it is still part of the mood music.

Many take their cue from the way an issue is framed by the media, the so called "overton window". This is central to the way all political discussion is focussed on what counts, and what is disregarded.

[BillyStubbsTears]

BST,

I was not replying to your argument, as I think it is contrived.
You seem to think your views are what matters....they are not!

I was returning to the topic.

Your argument that Labour were unlikely to win is correct, given the media storm around the false anti semitism narrative, but that is not a valid reason to lobby for ref2 which could only deter support amongst leave voters. Consolidation of the voter base needed to avoid the division that ref2 entailed.

The position of the party should not be improvised on the hoof, which is what Starmer did as a clear undermining of the leadership.

Much of the rest of your long post is not relevant to the evolution of the political context.
As Branton points out, there is a considerable re-writing of history going on.

Mcdonnell was incorrect in the tweet you mention, as he was when he tried to bring the deplorable Alastair Campbell back into Labour. Do not take the opinion of one individual as a guide to the overall position of the party, as with the Starmer speech.

Nothing Starmer has done suggests he is on the side of socialists, or in support of trade unions, or in any way working class interests.

ncRover,

The Labour Conference speech was widely covered in the media at the time, and anyone watching the evening news would have been aware of this speech. The idea that 99% of people were not aware is simply unreasonable, and even if people were not fully connected with the issue, it is still part of the mood music.

Many take their cue from the way an issue is framed by the media, the so called "overton window". This is central to the way all political discussion is focussed on what counts, and what is disregarded.

Which part is contrived?

The fact that Labour were down to the low 20s in the polls before they adopted Ref2?

The fact that the vast majority of those who had deserted the party had gone to Remain-supporting parties?

The fact that more than half of those returned to support Labour in the weeks after they adopted the Ref2 policy?

See, I reckon you're not engaging with any of those demonstrable facts because you know that they contradict the bullshit that the Left want to be true.

And yes, I've heard this McDonnell criticism from others on the Left. He was a solid member of the Corbynite faction for years. He and Corbyn were inseparable for decades. But God forbid that he should ever criticise "The Leadership" (which was what exactly? The incontestable word of the Blessed Jeremy? Wasn't McDonnell his No2 and right hand man? Wasn't he an integral part of "The Leadership"?)

[tyke1962]

This from DDN pretty much sums up what we are looking at under a Starmer Labour government .

No doubt many will hide behind " better than the Tories " , " we've got to get rid of the Tories " blah blah blah .

Fair enough but be in no doubt what it is you are actually replacing the Tories with .

The Establishment have chosen Keith for you , let that one sink in .

https://youtu.be/mDaY6K5A2qI

[drfchound]

This from DDN pretty much sums up what we are looking at under a Starmer Labour government .

No doubt many will hide behind " better than the Tories " , " we've got to get rid of the Tories " blah blah blah .

Fair enough but be in no doubt what it is you are actually replacing the Tories with .

The Establishment have chosen Keith for you , let that one sink in .

https://youtu.be/mDaY6K5A2qI

Just reading some of the early comments on that link tyke and one says that anyone who supported Corbyn would never vote for someone like Starmer.

Clearly that is untrue because there are plenty on this site who backed Corbyn and who have now binned him off and support the idea of Starmer as PM.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

This from DDN pretty much sums up what we are looking at under a Starmer Labour government .

No doubt many will hide behind " better than the Tories " , " we've got to get rid of the Tories " blah blah blah .

Fair enough but be in no doubt what it is you are actually replacing the Tories with .

The Establishment have chosen Keith for you , let that one sink in .

https://youtu.be/mDaY6K5A2qI

Just reading some of the early comments on that link tyke and one says that anyone who supported Corbyn would never vote for someone like Starmer.

Clearly that is untrue because there are plenty on this site who backed Corbyn and who have now binned him off and support the idea of Starmer as PM.

Absolutely and I'd say some of us who seriously consider labour under Starmer wouldn't have gone anywhere near labour under Corbyn. Guess there's 2 sides to that.

[albie]

Tyke,

Billy knows full well the background and intentions of Keith, it's been posted for him on here many times.
As a extreme centrist member, his goal is to spread misinformation in support of his tribe.

I posted the Double Down video above, but he ignores it because it doesn't suit.

The post about the red wall is a classic example.
"The fact that the vast majority of those who had deserted the party had gone to Remain-supporting parties?
The fact that more than half of those returned to support Labour in the weeks after they adopted the Ref2 policy?"

First up, fail to recognise that red wall Labour votes had been falling under New Labour.
Then do not acknowledge the rise in Labour votes under Corbyn, pulling back the Labour vote by 4 million from the dog days of Prudence Broon to 2017.
https://twitter.com/Desuetudine/status/1643566533686226947/photo/1

After that, don't consider how those votes might lie in terms of constituencies.
As shown the loss of Labour red wall seats maps closely to leave voting constituencies;
https://twitter.com/TweetForTheMany/status/1643340637457068032/photo/1

Then make the big leap to argue against the data, that provoking annoyed leave voters by supporting ref2, and pretend it was good politics.
Obscure the fact that it was suicidal in the red wall by saying it was supported by many remainiacs, so it was OK.

This is the nature of doublethink and distraction, tools of the obfuscation trade.
I speak as a remain voter, by the way!

[BillyStubbsTears]

Albie

We've been through this SO many times. I say "we". I mean you've repeated that old canard about Corbyn being such a winner for losing an election with a high vote. And I've pointed out the bleeding obvious context that you insist on ignoring.

I'll point it out again. I don't doubt you'll ignore it again.

The 2010 election was a genuinely three-day election. The LDs, who had spent a generation positioning themselves as a repository for people pissed off with normal politics, took advantage of the Global (clue in the name) Financial Crash to get their largest number of votes ever. 7 million.

Even 2015, by which time the LDs had self-immolated, saw UKIP win 4 million votes.

The 2017 election, the one you laud Corbyn over, was the first one in 50 years that was a genuine 2 party election. Yes Corbyn built up the Labour vote. But it would have taken some effort not to do, given the loss of a third option.

And here the bit that the adherents of the Church of the Blessed Jeremy never engage on.

It's widely accepted that Theresa May's performance in 2017 was the worst in history by a sitting PM. She could barely get her mouth to function when asked a question. But even SHE presided over a result that saw the Tories win 3 million more votes than in 2010?

Why?

Because it was only a two party election, duh!

Corbyn's performance by 2019 by the way, was a political miracle. He presided over the resurrection of the battered corpse of the LDs. His policies saw something like 3.5million of the people who voted Labour in 2017 desert to the LDs by Sept 2019, together with another 1.5 million to the Greens, PC and SNP.

But of course, it was Starmer that lost Labour the 2019 election...

[BillyStubbsTears]

And once again, I'll ask you. What would have been the result in Dec 2019 had Labour not clawed back half those 5million votes that Corbyn lost in the first half of 2019?

I KNOW you won't answer because there is no answer other than the one your blind faith refuses to accept.

[ncRover]

Ok then Albie, let’s say 80% weren’t aware of it. And I highly doubt it changed the mind of many of that remaining 20%. The majority of people are not heavily invested in politics on Twitter and even more are not in a left wing echo chamber. The main issue for many middle of the road voters were the hard left policies of Corbyn.

If you are on the side of Skinner over Starmer here I’m going to assume you voted Leave in 2016?

[ncRover]

Dread to think how Corbyn would be handling Ukraine right now.

We’d have no nuclear deterrent and he’d be trying to engage in “dialogue” with Putin.