UK Election June 08

[Jericho]

Didn't see that coming, thought we were stuck with that murderous trout until 2020!

[Laphroaig]

What makes you think you're going to get rid of her, have you seen the state of the so-called opposition? Only Party (apart from the Tories) that I could possibly see gaining from this is the Lib Dems, if enough people have forgiven them for the coalition.

6 more weeks of f**king "Hard/soft Brexit" and "Independence Referendum 2" debates...

[Jericho]

What makes you think you're going to get rid of her

My past election result predictions...I'm fukkin due a win.

[flabbybody]

What does she have to lose? She's got great approval numbers and there's a decent chance her party picks up some seats. That gives her much needed leverage going into EU negotiations.
You Brits are lucky this smart cookie fell into your lap. Ironic that last year at this time she was stumping for Remain alongside Cameron and Obama.. you remember those guys?

[Stavros]

On the one hand yes, the Tories see an opportunity for a major election victory too good to resist. On the other hand the Electoral Commission is now looking into 30 seats that were contested in the 2015 General Election where there are claims the party did not properly account for its election expenses. If found guilty, the election would have to be run again in all 30 seats. In theory calling a new election annuls the value of the investigation, or not, if the Commission decides to continue its work.

On the one hand, Theresa May has the backing of most of her party and the Labour opposition in the matter of the UK's exit from the EU. On the other hand, hard liners in her own party are snooping around her Brexit team to make sure they don't cave in to EU demands and if necessary they welcome the ultimate 'no deal' over Brexit Mrs May does not want.

But with a lack of clarity on negotiations that have not even begun, how can any observer make a statement on the terms of the exit that is anything but speculation? The idea that a new Parliament gives her a stronger hand in the negotiations does not make sense, and does not even make sense if she has a majority in the Commons of 100, she already has the power she needs, Parliament has already made its commitment clear, with the only possible conundrum being a vote against the precise terms of the negotiation, but that is also speculation. But what is more extraordinary, is the possibility that the election may not produce a Commons much different from what it is today.

The assumption is that the Labour vote will melt away, as it did in the Netherlands and as the Socialists in France are expected to get hammered, but in the Netherlands the Greens filled the gap, and in France leftist Melenchon is drawing support from socialists. Labour has solid support in its northern constituencies, and defeated UKIP in the Stoke by-election last month. If the SNP rule in Scotland, Labour might only lose 10-20 seats in England and Wales, and those may be taken by the Tories and the Liberal Democrats so the Tory majority might only be 20-25, and with Scotland in effect voting for independence, the outcome actually either weakens the Prime Minister, or leaves her in the same position as she is in now. As for Northern Ireland, the power sharing administration has all but ceased to function, and while Direct Rule from Westminster appears the only option right now, the likelihood is that the limbo will continue until after the election. In spite of the sectarian nature of Northern Irish elections, one wonders if the indifference London shows to the province will persuade enough Protestants to consider their prospects in a United Ireland to be better than the so-called 'United Kingdom'.

Finally this: with most of the polls getting the last election wrong, May has based this gamble on -the polls, the one's showing Labour in crisis and her party way ahead...is this shrewd political manipulation, or Hubris?

[Jericho]

You Brits are lucky this smart cookie fell into your lap.

Haaaaaaar, you New Yorkers and yer wacky sense of humour...Nearly had me there!

[broncofan]

Finally this: with most of the polls getting the last election wrong, May has based this gamble on -the polls, the one's showing Labour in crisis and her party way ahead...is this shrewd political manipulation, or Hubris?

It's possible that the polls show disaffection with how Labour is being run more than how people will vote once they hear an election is called. If I'm unhappy with a party's leadership, I might not indicate support in a poll, but when given the choice in an election would still cast my ballot for the party that most reflects my values.

[broncofan]

For those who are left of center politically, would you prefer a politician who is pragmatic or uncompromising? One dilemma is that we distrust the pragmatic politician bc we fear they might sell out our interests. But then there is the concern that the purist does not have broad enough appeal and will not yield to what is expedient, as all leaders must occasionally do.

It is difficult for me to get a grip on why Labour is seen as so weak right now, except to assume that people think Corbyn does not care what Labour voters want, but is wedded to what he wants for them. For instance, although he campaigned for remain his heart was not in it because he sees the EU as a pro-corporate force. But the alternative is isolationism and nationalism. Is the problem with Corbyn's Labour that he is not responsive to his constituents?

One also has to question his judgment somewhat. He is someone who insisted that he spoke with Holocaust deniers and invited both Hamas or Hezbollah to Parliament because he is willing to share a platform with anyone even when they have disagreements on specific issues. When Netanyahu came to Britain he was unwilling to meet with him. Either of these positions is tenable on its own. Don't meet with Netanyahu bc you think his policies are destructive or meet with Hamas bc you think they are necessary for a peace agreement despite their rancid incitement. The two positions put together don't seem consistent to me. I doubt this is the specific reason he has lost support as those on the left seem very defensive (to the point of willful blindness) about this issue. But it might be a symptom of his tone deafness and general inflexibility.

[filghy2]

More than 80 per cent of Labour MPs voted against Corbyn last year. Given they're the people who are in a position to know him best that probably tells us something about his leadership. No party leader can succeed in these circumstances.

Corbyn stayed as leader because party members continued to support him, but the problem is that only a tiny minority of the voters join political parties and those that do are not representative of the broader electorate. The fact that he did not recognise his position was untenable is a sign of tone deafness and inflexibility. Even now there are reports that he intends to stay on as leader even if Labour loses badly. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a7691911.html

That seems to suggest that Corbyn and his supporters would rather destroy the party than give up control. This is not just a problem for Labour - good government will not happen unless there is an effective opposition.

[Stavros]

It is difficult for me to get a grip on why Labour is seen as so weak right now, except to assume that people think Corbyn does not care what Labour voters want, but is wedded to what he wants for them. For instance, although he campaigned for remain his heart was not in it because he sees the EU as a pro-corporate force. But the alternative is isolationism and nationalism. Is the problem with Corbyn's Labour that he is not responsive to his constituents?
One also has to question his judgment somewhat. He is someone who insisted that he spoke with Holocaust deniers and invited both Hamas or Hezbollah to Parliament because he is willing to share a platform with anyone even when they have disagreements on specific issues. When Netanyahu came to Britain he was unwilling to meet with him. Either of these positions is tenable on its own. Don't meet with Netanyahu bc you think his policies are destructive or meet with Hamas bc you think they are necessary for a peace agreement despite their rancid incitement. The two positions put together don't seem consistent to me. I doubt this is the specific reason he has lost support as those on the left seem very defensive (to the point of willful blindness) about this issue. But it might be a symptom of his tone deafness and general inflexibility.

Jeremy Corbyn is not hard to understand. He joined the Labour Party in the 1960s at a time when most young people attracted to left-wing politics regarded Labour as a waste of time, preferring the 'revolutionary' and mostly Trotskyist parties that have dominated the left in Britain since the 1940s, to no known effect on the working class or indeed politics in general. The Communist Party of Great Britain was viewed as a Stalinist project, but for Corbyn (at the same time true of Ken Livingstone) Labour had a national party machine and crucially, was funded by the Unions, and this was the vehicle he chose to work in.

The Labour left in the 1960s was in the process of a change shaped by 1960s 'radical chic', as Tom Wolfe put it, where the struggle of justice against injustice, equality against inequality, freedom against oppression found its campaigns in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, opposition to 'American Imperialism' in Vietnam, and an ill-thought through support for 'revolutionary' or 'national liberation' struggles, often armed struggles in Latin America, Africa, and by the end of the decade in Northern Ireland and the Middle East (but few recall the 'revolutionary movement in Oman that was fighting a guerilla war).

The irony here is that a previous generation of Labour left-wingers like Michael Foot (who became leader of the Party and led it to its worst election result in 50 years in 1983), and Ian Mikardo, is that they welcomed the creation of Israel on the same terms, seeing it as a positive climax of the anti-fascist struggle and anti-semitism, and viewing Ben-Gurion's Labour Party as their fraternal comrades in the Socialist International, given that in 1948 Israel was considered to be a Socialist country.
But the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 the War and its aftermath, in particular the occupation of the West Bank and the onset of illegal settlement buildings, changed the perspective of the left for whom justice now lay with the Palestinians. As with Northern Ireland, the hurdle the left had to jump over was 'the armed struggle' where in the case of Northern Ireland it led to savage sectarian violence in the province and bombings and assassinations in the rest of the UK, and in the Middle East a wave of aeroplane hi-jackings organized by Palestinian guerillas, culminating in the Munich Olympic assassinations which for most people robbed the Palestinian cause of any just argument it might have had (and indeed, the armed struggle as a strategy declined from 1972). The problem is that you cannot really support a revolutionary movement and condemn it at the same time because of its violent acts, so the tactic of both Corbyn and at the time, Sinn Fein was to condemn 'all acts of violence'.

An additional problem in the UK at the time was that while, in spite of their denials, Sinn Fein was the political wing of the IRA, it also had support among Catholics, won seats to Parliament (which it never attended) and was in secret negotiations with the British government even as the press and the same government pilloried Corbyn for inviting Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams to talk to MPs in the House of Commons. On a similar level, Hezbollah in Lebanon is represented in the Lebanese Parliament, it is a social movement popular among the Shi'a communities of Souther Beirut and Lebanon, but is regarded a 'terrorist' organization by the USA, mostly due to its connections with Iran, and to support Israel (which according to some rumours is planning another mini-war against Hezbollah on Lebanon this summer).

The Labour left has thus embraced Marxism in a way that the older generation did not, and in Corbyn's case, his involvement with the Labour Party coincided with the emergence of a small group in the London School of Economics in 1968 called the 'Chartist' group. At a time when Marxist and Trotskyists were forming the International Marxist Group or beefing up the Socialist Labour League and the International Socialists (subsequently the Worker's Revolutionary Party, and the Socialist Worker's Party), Chartists identified Labour as the best vehicle for their version of the 'Parliamentary Road to Socialism'. Working from the base, they identified London as the engine room for their long-term aim to capture the Labour Party, and identified Livingstone and Corbyn, both of whom became councillors in London Boroughs, Ken in Camden and Corbyn in Islington, as their champions.

Chartists (most of them teachers but I knew one comrade who was a window cleaner) moved into bed-sits and apartments in Brent, Haringey, Islington, Lewisham, Lambeth and Southwark, joining the local Labour Party, recruiting members, sponsoring radical resolutions, and generally giving local people the idea Labour was 'fighting the cuts' that the (Labour) government introduced to social services after the financial crisis of 1976. They were also active in the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy which aimed to give the memberhsip of the Party the power to select and de-select MPs, and elect the leader of the Party. This became a successful campaign that the left believed placed power in the hands of the rank and file members, and has been the primary objective of the Momentum movement that lay behind Corbyn's successful campaign to become Labour leader.

The election of Mrs Thatcher in 1979 galvanized the left which grew substantially -this is when I joined, for example- and it was clear that getting to the next stage -electing Livingstone and Corbyn to Parliament was a priority, as indeed happened in 1983 for Corbyn, 1987 for Livingstone (his supporters in Brent successfully de-selected sitting MP Reg Freeson [by origin a Jewish orphan from Russia]). In addition, electing radical Labour councils was seen as imperative to raise the tensions with the Thatcher government, which shut down the Greater London Council Livingstone had been leading, and saw the emergence of left-wingers in Brent (the first Black leader of a council in the UK, Merle Amory, then and now a close friend of Livingstone along with her husband Paul Franklyn), Haringey, Lambeth and Southwark. This translated into issue based politics, with a confrontation over council rates and rents the most toxic issue, indeed John McDonnell, the most intellectual of this group (he cites Marx, Lenin and Trotsky as the biggest influences on his life) split -temporarily it seems- with Livingstone over the attempt by the left to force Livingstone in the Greater London Council to defy the government on a matter of law, McDonnell seeing it as part of the long-term strategy known as the 'transitional programme' in which the revolutionary movement attempts the impossible to expose the vicious nature of the state and organize the fight back by the workng class, led of course by people like him.

The left, however, crushed in the 1983 election, limped away to lick its wounds and many left the party (as did I in 1986) disillusioned with the failure to defeat Thatcher. This forced Labour to re-evauate its policy platform and led through Neil Kinnock and the late and much loved John Smith to Tony Blair and the 'New Labour' project. On a key policy issue, Corbyn hated the EU from its inception in 1973 to a few seconds ago, but was persuaded to give lip service to the Social Chapter of the Single Market Act when it was presented to the Labour Conference in 1987 as a guarantee for worker's rights across Europe. Nevertheless Labour has voted with the Conservatives to invoke Article 50 and is committed to the UK being outside of the EU although it claims it will challenge the terms of the Exit when they are brought before Parliament, presumably in 2019.

The summary of this probably over-long story, is that in the aftermath of Blair's New Labour project, the party turned left again, as it did after defeats in the 1930s, 1950s and the 1980s losing election after election, and Corbyn thus represents that secular left which has adopted all the social causes of the day -mostly rights based causes- on the basis that it has wide social and electoral appeal. The older Trotskyists in the Chartist group, new ones and other radicals like Seamus Milne became the foundation of the Momentum movement that sponsored Corbyn's leadership campaign, and a policy portfoliio that could have been written in 1977 -policies to cap wages, policies to regulate prices, the nationalization of the railways, 'defending the NHS', huge tax rises on the super-rich (anyone earning more than £70,000 a year) and so on. It was almost comical to see the old timers energized by the prospect that the 'transitional programme' could be the official policy of Her Majesty's Opposition, even though most of Corbyn's colleagues have deserted him, and this election could be as big a disaster as the 1931 election, although Corbyn claims he will stay on as leader.

The party has lost its way, it has no credibe leadership, no credible policies, no vision of the future, no MPs in Scotland -yet it may hang on in there with 75-100 seats in this election, stranger things have happened. In the end, Corbyn is just a footnote in history, and that is the best one can say for him.