love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

That has never worked in the history of politics. xp, responding to LJ

mass non-voting in a party puts pressure on that party to move towards the direction the non-voters are in

Particularly if you're in a non-marginal.

Nobody is going to be voting for another 4 years, now is not the time to be saying "my vote is guaranteed", now is the time to be saying "my vote is not guaranteed"

Yes but you can learn a lot more from people taking their votes in a specific direction than you can from people just not voting.

"A lot of left Twitter in particular appears to repeating that mistake, I'm seeing lots of prebuilt narratives cobbled together from bits of the Blair and Miliband eras but we still don't know what this Labour frontbench are going to propose"

Starmer is doing a racist weekly phone-in show, this has been announced at a week of anti-racist protests. While I don't know where they will go there is enough evidence that thid is not looking good and to equate left and centrist twitter like this isn't right at all.

If anything this is the time -- no elections of any sort for at least s year -- to show you aren't happy with the leadership.

can't believe that for the hundredth time i'm having to protest (too much, he doth!) that my strategic goals are essentially identical to alphie's

that said how do you lead a populace away from authoritarian neoliberalism let alone make it drink the sweet nectars of neosocialism

i even agree that this is a good time to show Labour that disenfranchising the most vulnerable half of their base is evil let alone tactically inept - but how do you even go about showing that? when are the next council elections and what is the protest vote?

Can we really not bring the “complaining about the party you nominally support” argument is voter suppression here, it’s bad enough in the US thread.

By the way, Starmer still hasn’t said a fucking word about schools reopening.

mass non-voting in a party puts pressure on that party to move towards the direction the non-voters are in

It's nice out here in the lukewarm sun.

Has Starmzy said anything about democratising the party since he became leader? Has he said anything about bringing the PLP closer to the wishes of the membership? Cos I don't think he has and I think that tells us a lot.

"can't believe that for the hundredth time i'm having to protest (too much, he doth!) that my strategic goals are essentially identical to alphie's"

I have never supported Change UK, the Greens or concern trolled anti-racist protests.

Labour is hardly reacting to the last loss of voters by heading further left though, so even if this were true the party answer apparently always is "the direction the non-voters went is towards the right, let's be more racist"

This seems disingenious to me - it obviously wasn't leftist voters who stayed home in protest last time. Basically you're saying the strategy worked for the centrists - all the more reason to adopt it.

Starmer is doing a racist weekly phone-in show, this has been announced at a week of anti-racist protests.

ftr I have zero faith in Starmer but this is the wrong thing to attack him on. Bernie goes on Fox News and that is good.

tbh, i'd rather he went on Ferrari's show than O'Brien's.

Bernie did a one-off Fox news town hall, and he did not soften what he had to say to them.

This is not what Starmer is doing xp

This seems disingenious to me - it obviously wasn't leftist voters who stayed home in protest last time. Basically you're saying the strategy worked for the centrists - all the more reason to adopt it.

concern trolled anti-racist protests.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, 5 June 2020 10:40 (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

fuck you, dipshit - we are in a deadly pandemic

lots of melts in the so-called red wall, lots of authoritarians, lots of property owners, v few ppl on the liberal left or even who will change their vote based on benefits

TBH I don't understand the Nick Ferrari thing at all - I get that if you're looking to split voters off from the right you need to be heard in the space where they're going to be listening, and talk radio is basically the cesspool of Britain, but London-based reactionaries are right at the bottom of the priority list given the party's electoral performance there.

Then again I hear talk radio most often in cars driven by immigrant cab drivers who sit and listen to endless frothing racists telling them there's too many of them in the country, punctuated with these genteel 75-year old lefties calling in. I have to admit the psychology of listening to talk radio is something I don't really understand.

Maybe it's a bid for a sweet slice of electoral Essex gammon IDK.

it's obv true that while a collapse in vote will normally lead to change, it doesn't necessarily lead to right kind of change

He's been on Ferrari's show before and did ok iirc.

imago you have the same strategic goals as a dipshit? Please re-think your life man.

what is wrong with checking whether mass non-distancing at a time like this is a good idea for any reason? and i even said, in response to what others then posted, that protest probably comes first. 'concern trolling' - go fuck yourself

Then again if I'm in a cab and LBC is on it's usually just like please turn on Kisstory or Magic like the good lord intended.

This is what I mean – the red wall wasn't made of melts.

It was made of people who're into brexit, as far as I can tell, and so "let's be more racist" would actually be valid from a realpolitik pov (goes withoit saying I'm not advocating it). It certainly wasn't a protest motion against meltism by the left.

Oh great it's another xyzz/LJ face-off, gonna be a fun day on the UK pols thread. -_-

Yeah LBC is the only ever thing I’ve ever heard in a cab, but the drivers themselves vary when I talk to them. Regardless, Starmer going on Ferrari is a joke. The comments about this on twitter were all conspiracy theory shit about grooming gangs, if you want an idea of the audience.

it's been a few months tbf

also it symbolises the absolutist vs inclusivist dialectic Labour must struggle with

but even as an inclusivist I am not sure hanging out with Nick Ferrari is a good look either

xps to ogmor

but supporting a rotten party that will just naturally follow the course of least resistance to the bottom is almost guaranteed to maintain the rotten status quo, you could say it's a binary choice! but I don't think anyone believes it would guarantee a Labour pivot back to the centre-left.

And I have to say I agree with alphie, was there so much reaction to VE Day parties, or beaches, or people queuing for takeaway beers? Because that’s where the rise in cases now is from, and protesting for your civil rights is a far better thing that any of the above.

So if you are on the left and want to say “don’t vote Labour” it is hard to see anything other than you’re saying “I’m OK with the hardest right option possible keeping control”

this difference in attitude to electoralism does get at a fundamental dividing line between left and centre-left, but its striking that voter turnout is generally lower among ppl most likely to get fucked by hard right govts

this is taken directly from Claire Ainsley's book (Ainsley being Starmer's head of policy). Labour spent five years under Miliband banging on about the 'contributory principle' and if anything compounded the 'strivers vs skivers' framing https://t.co/Cir5fkJE65 pic.twitter.com/OBS17v13NC

— tom (@malaiseforever) June 5, 2020

It was made of people who're into brexit, as far as I can tell, and so "let's be more racist" would actually be valid from a realpolitik pov (goes withoit saying I'm not advocating it). It certainly wasn't a protest motion against meltism by the left.

Most former Red Wall seats are how held on thin majorities so as Ogmor says the picture is a lot more nuanced than that.

was there so much reaction to VE Day parties, or beaches, or people queuing for takeaway beers?

obviously i am MUCH more against all of these. at some point you have to be better than the idiots idk. protest is one of the few areas where i'd say there IS a debate!

Lol @ protest 'probably' comes first. You just can't help yourself.

Imago you've got chill. If you are angry whenever I throw your own words at you maybe you should think before you type your garbage on here every fucking day.

He's been on Ferrari's show before and did ok iirc.

― ShariVari, Friday, 5 June 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Lab people go on Sky or highly unbalanced QT panels, but this really feels different.

Being better and more dignified than the flag-wavers isn’t dealing with the structural inequalities that people are protesting. I’ve seen lots of them wearing masks and I think it’s fairly obvious the racialised quality of the protests will be the government’s excuse if there’s a spike in a month - that doesn’t make the protestors wrong, it makes the government racist.

I've seen a few ppl make the case that, globally, turnout is the big problem for the left rather than swing/floating voters, and intuitively it makes sense to me

completely aside from this discussion: I totally missed that the SNP had re-admitted Neale Hanvey this week?

There was lots of reaction to VE Day parties and people going to beaches. It's been widely decried as stupid, irresponsible and dangerous.

Not quite to the same extent.

There is a certain demographic that didn't complain about that and is complaining now.

"Racists", I think we call 'em.

It's very easy to over-rely on non-voters though and as a grouping they're incredibly varied. They aren't necessarily a particularly substantial pool of Labour voters and there's no guarantee they're going to turn out regardless of policy platform. The wider mood music makes a difference as well.

I've had a look at the target seats and it would have taken around 87,000 votes in the right areas to deprive Johnson of his majority. That's a pretty tiny amount all things considered.

It’s interesting to compare the Tory route. The current admin is far more right-wing radical than Corbyn was left-wing. But they got control of the country by first taking power, then taking the party.

This is completely arse over tit btw. The Tory radical right took the party first, literally throwing out of the party those who didn't agree with them, and then won an election.

I think he's talking about Cameron?

There is a certain demographic that didn't complain about that and is complaining now.

"Racists", I think we call 'em.

I think he's talking about Cameron?

I think he's talking bollocks in that case.

it's the most politically fractured time in british politics certainly in living memory and mb ever. behaviour has been v irrational from an electoral pov for a long time, anger and apathy have been building on the left at least since thatcher and you can't wish or indeed really argue that away. what issues you can use to unite enough different groups to beat the tories is a big q, but you can't appeal to everyone left of ken clark and as many have said, it's not necessarily true that there always is a possible platform you could run on that would find enough support. different groups are constantly being taken for granted, and it's p tough work persuading those left outside of a given coalition to vote for you, and lesser evil logic simply doesn't hold for most ppl.

matt idk what you mean by over-relying on non-voters!

This is completely arse over tit btw. The Tory radical right took the party first, literally throwing out of the party those who didn't agree with them, and then won an election.

Ogmor - I mean you don't want to actively depress turnout among your core voters (assuming there can be an agreement on what the core vote actually is) - that probably did for May in 2017. But equally you don't want to assume that there's a pool of latent voters who are just waiting to be attracted by whatever policy platform you're advocating. Voter and non-voter groups in general are much more complex and contradictory (and sometimes irrational) than these kinds of broad brush arguments allow for.

This is too narrow a view. The radical right already had the country – Brexit began under Cameron, driven by UKIP. Because they had the country they were strong enough to take the party and kick out everyone who disagreed. Then they proved they were right by getting a whapping majority.

The other way around wouldn't have worked. If they'd first moulded the party into the no-deal-ahoy! swivel-eyed loons they are now would they have won a majority in 2015? Fuck it, probably the answer is yes with this country, but I still doubt it.

Sorry but that still makes no sense to me, Brexit happened because of a catastrophic miscalculation by Cameron and the parliamentary Tory Party, the majority of whom were opposed to it. The Tory radical right were never in control of the country at any point because they were never in control of the party until the disintegration of May's government.