bojo is king, brexit is on, stuff is fvcked, tomorrow starts here -- new govt new thread new battle

It was kind of my point. JCB (of Johnson's election photo opportunity fame) having been a major local employer that partly filled in the gap after the mines shut. Paternalistic and deeply anti-union, they have had a strong influence on the local culture.

— Susan (@susan1878) December 21, 2019

Luke Pagarani's tweet thread from last week has become a Guardian short read
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/21/labour-older-voters-corbyn-local-socialism

Bowling in the East: I don’t live in Scone anymore but growing up there were two bowling greens in the village, the main one in the park with a very busy social club (think my parents were members briefly at one point but never bowled) and another one tucked away a few streets away.

There’s one in a village down the road from where I live now but can’t vouch for its liveliness.

Theres a bowling club in Shettleston you can go to where four drinks gives you change of £5. My favourite thing about Scotland is when you go to an 18th/21st etc in a bowling club and you can get very drunk very cheaply then watch your granny dance to "Step By Step" and then sit down during "Bits & Pieces" and every single night in one of these is exactly the same

the Puritan revolution virtually ended all sports in England, and lawn bowling did not make much of a comeback even with the Restoration of 1660.The sport flourished in Scotland

Not by me!

https://cdni.rt.com/files/2019.12/article/5dfb2374203027286144de48.png

cursed images

For @tribunemagazine I wrote about what the Labour Party owes to its black and brown voters, and how appeals to a “traditional working class” disguise calls for a cross-class coalition of racism https://t.co/xPfvhGOxUJ

— Jase (@jasebyjason) December 21, 2019

alex salmond looks like the dwarf from twin peaks

...only creepier.

Black Mirror Scene; Year 2022

In the dead of night, a caravan site is torched by an angry mob of locals with the Police unable to intervene due to new laws that permit burning caravans.

TV comedian in studio: "haha remember Corbyn, the silly old bastard?"

*Canned laughter* https://t.co/xW8nuYnYkg

— Dr Robert 'Rob' Zands PhD (@DrRobertZands) December 21, 2019

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/21/bbc-could-restrict-journalists-twitter

Lol

Thank god they're stepping in before anything bad happens

lol remember when laura k committed a crime live on air

haha great days

that charlie brooker video is some instant blackpill shit, just horrible

Look lads not asking much - just keep the institutional bias and lies to the broadcast content and off twitter.

“To defeat disinformation, we must build political structures that connect people to the practical reality around them. We must nurture a verdant democracy that outgrows their cynicism.” https://t.co/F4D5pxCYk4

— Sarah_Woolley (@Sarah_Woolley) December 22, 2019

There are reports that there are divisions within the RLB camp over the direction her campaign takes - essentially between people who want her to be the continuity candidate and those who want a decisive break and the ability to differentiate her own candidacy and vision properly.

The former would be disastrous IMO but the latter might work. She probably needs to present herself as a broad church candidate to stand a chance even if/especially if she wins.

Comrade alphabet, fuck that article is depressing.

I live to serve.

"She probably needs to present herself as a broad church candidate to stand a chance even if/especially if she wins."

We need open selection at PLP level. Can you be broad church and have that too?

Open selection would probably make it more likely rather than less - the idea that open selections automatically benefit the left, or indeed any one group, has always been spurious at best.

Commentariat melts saying candidates who tethered the party to the corpse of 2nd ref are the only way forwards and RLB would be a disaster are being very selective (and dishonest) with their analysis of this election disaster to say the least imo.

Broad church is pretty meaningless a term to me rn. I don't know what RLB will do but it's good to keep quiet for a bit.

XP to Matt - given the way the Lab right fought against it I wouldn't say so. It might mean Rosie Duffield not talking such tripe about the activists (and leadership) who got her elected in Canterbury.

Ed - I only had a skim but the Vox example is interesting. They got a small number in the first round of elections but only increased it when the left parties that did get in fail to find a way. The dissatisfaction is there for all to see.

Similarly we can talk about Bolsanaro but also how Lula was jailed, or that Congress in India are just a terrible opposition.

There has to be continuity in policy, you have to keep offering Green New Deal, for example.

Now is not the time to lose your nerve. There was a tweet by Chakraborthy that said Labour are basically like most soft left in Europe but those parties poll at about 15%. Lab still have 32% of the vote with a big membership and the ideas. It needs to stand with those, none of this clean break with the past.

broad church is fine as long as the church doesn't include legitimate concerners, apologists for tax-dodging big businesses and arseholes who care more about seeing their face on the news than they do about the interests of the 99%

The Labour right don't want a broad church either - they pretend they do but they actually want their own form of factionalism and a much smaller, less participatory party that is easier to control. That might translate into electorally popular messaging but it's more likely to translate into another party that talks to itself, promotes yes men and forms its own disconnects from the electorate. Bizarrely there doesn't appear to be a candidate in the mix from the Blairite wing - Jess Phillips is too much of a loose cannon to count.

At the same time there's no point in just doubling down on the stuff that repelled the electorate last time. That just means you elect your own Iain Duncan-Smith. So they have to find a way of moving beyond pointless infighting - which has been happening for a decade now.

I'm not sure a more Remainy figure like Starmer is the answer either even if these are labels that still mean anything to the electorate in five years' time. A bad Brexit could change everything all over again. And once you've successfully split voters from party loyalties it's best to remember that the voters you've created then have loyalty to no one. Red Wall seats can be won back and no one knows what's going to happen.

Still, it might be smarter for RLB to sit it out for a few years and focus on being a brilliant shadow cabinet member with a broader support base to enable her to run next time.

just got a load of spit in my face reading that R Hattersley piece but am actually much cheered up by how depressed he is at the "infiltrators" hold over the party!

excellent post matt

I was going to say that talk of purges and deselections created an atmosphere that repelled voters but that doesn't seem to have hurt the Tories in the slightest.

It was a unique election in which the two biggest factors won't be an issue next time. That doesn't mean everything will be alright if you just remove Brexit and Corbyn from the equation.

i loved the opendemocracy article as well. worrying yes but if we're forearmed against our oppressor we can counteract

Lol Lab to select its own IDS is terrible talk. My takeaway from the election isn't that the Green New Deal and a lot of policy played terribly with the public.

RLB is by all accounts running and she has the base. I think right now is the time for open selection and it's good of you to pick up on how Johnson purged the Remainers. We have a few years to re-build the party so that it converses, not fights, with the membership.

there's five years to get past the infighting and there are people in the PLP and environs who don't belong in the Labour Party, just get the necessary blood-letting out of the way now.

"At the same time there's no point in just doubling down on the stuff that repelled the electorate last time. "

10 million "repelled" voters is not bad going tbf, considering the opposite successfully turned it into a brexit election. Lets not start re-writing history after a week ffs!

opposition*

Continuity policies doesn't require continuity personnel or continuity framing. Look at what did well (the policies, individually). Keep them. Look at what did badly, don't do that again

OTM.

re the open democracy article, can definitely say people wanted Boris (or possibly anyone) to have a large majority. To have the ability to dispense with meetings and committees altogether. To dispense with democracy. if centrism is a love of meetings, and the centre has collapsed.

I definitely underestimated the "We need to leave because democracy regardless of how I voted in referendum" angle, with "Yes but was only advisory", looking like the worst of rejoinders.

Look at what did well/badly is focus group politics.

I thought he was being sarcastic!

Lol I don't even know anymore.

Learn the lessons from last time but don't do what Labour tried to do in 15 and focus on fighting the last election rather than the next one.

One of the reasons they ended up with Corbyn in the first place is because his rivals read the results of a one page multiple choice survey and based their entire campaigns on it.

The policies are popular and should be kept, though could be more streamlined and just hammer a couple of them the whole time. The wavering, apparent indecision, and lack of clarity are all not good and should be discontinued

It will need someone who thinks 2017 was good not bad.

XP - well that's better. I think even a good policy that played badly like Broadband needs a tweak and re-framing rather than a ditch.

also the coming bumps in the ride will not necessarily come from the direction everyone is expecting

Re-upping, this is the outcome that Boris Johnson should be very scared of. Not that Brexit leads to a recession, but that it doesn't. Interest rates will have to go up one day, and when they do... https://t.co/p1Jq0zRIhE

— Dan Davies (@dsquareddigest) December 21, 2019

The wavering, apparent indecision, and lack of clarity are all not good and should be discontinued

This goes back to my complaint upthread. Saying 'the solution is stop doing these obviously bad things'. None of these things were intentional. The OD article touches on 'lack of clarity' where people are quote saying they don't know what the policies are, or that they just don't know what to believe due to the disinfo in media. These are not problems that can be solved internally within Labour, whoever is leader and whatever can be done to prevent it will take years and years.

I think even a good policy that played badly like Broadband needs a tweak and re-framing rather than a ditch.

I am in agreement. When I am talking about what did badly I am not referring to anything in the manifesto. The manifesto and the policies are not the problem. The problems are elsewhere

If South Korea can manage free broadband, and Kansas City can manage free public transport, that should be reflected in the framing. The framing is key

I think the framing of the policy as South Korea does why not us was an issue. It wasn't framed enough as this is like infrastructure investment needed that we would benefit from, etc.

Re: Dan Davies. Wouldn't a Brexit that leads to a sharp increase in inflation also lead to rate rises to keep it down?

There were some vigilant hacks arguing that S Korean broadband isn't strictly free blah blah like how UK isn't 100% racist just 98.4% racist actually