there's an election

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

So when Wales fails to go Blue, when Yorkshire fails to go Blue I'll see a retraction?

Have you actually read any of my posts?

Talking to some Labour buddies tonight we're seriously talking about places like Worcester going red once again. Cornwall, Devon. ( we've been fucked in Cornwall for years) this is not lost.

I think you might be disappointed.

 

[Aber gas]

Have you actually read any of my posts?



I think you might be disappointed.

I always read your posts. Not sure what you mean.

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

You're the only person to have made a definitive prediction in terms of which party will come out on top in Wales and Yorkshire. If results go how you expect (far from certain), what sort of retraction are you expecting?

 

[Aber gas]

You're the only person to have made a definitive prediction in terms of which party will come out on top in Wales and Yorkshire. If results go how you expect (far from certain), what sort of retraction are you expecting?

I'm expecting Matt to apologise for his attempts at promoting false consciousness and counter revolutionary ideas. I expect him and his YouGov cronies to understand their flaws and seek retribution and reeducation doing valuable work of my choosing. Fair enough?

 

[Captain Scumbag]

It does.

A most cogent rejoinder, dear fruit. I stand corrected.

I agree.

Spiffing.

Should it? Would it? It was a hilarious bad attempt at dislodging a leader. Their motives were all too transparent, there was no viable alternative, they moved far too soon and ineffectually and the whole thing was a complete sham.

It failed because it was premised on a very conventional idea, i.e. that it’s impossible to lead a party without significant majority support within its parliamentary caucus. It became a farce because they expected the poor bastard to just buckle and resign – as pretty much any other politician would have if they'd had 30-40 resignation letters on their desk and a sizeable number of parliamentary colleagues engaging in open revolt.

They expected the next leadership election to be sans Jez. They didn’t anticipate Jez being a total mensch, remaining in position and contesting a second leadership election. They completely underestimated him in that respect, and that’s largely because they universalised their own values. They thought he’d resign and skulk off because that what they’d do. Once they realised their error and grudgingly accepted that the second leadership election would involve Jez, all the obvious Blairite candidates wimped out. They knew they’d lose.

So, yes, it was a total fucking omnishambles. But it all stems from them not appreciating the power shift that had occurred in their party. Their basic methodology – a high number of resignations, deliberately phased/staggered to give a sense of escalating crisis – absolutely would have worked against Theresa May, simply because conventional wisdom is still very deeply rooted in her party

Because, if we want to avoid perpetual Tory rule, the Labour Party has to remain a viable entity in British politics.

Well, I wasn’t advocating a course of action. I was just trying to explain why Jez might not do the conventional thing in the event of losing a General Election. His first loyalty is clearly to the party membership. If he thinks, rightly or wrongly, that he still has majority support among that group, he might not go quietly.

Are the majority of party members loyal to Corbyn? This seems a bold claim to me.

Given the astronomical increase in membership since he took over (as an aside, this really doesn’t get the attention it deserves), my guess is that he does. Maybe wishful thinking on my part. We’ll see.

 

[Abertawe]

Should Labour lose (they won't) then we'll see the formation of a new party I think. Corbyn or a Corbyn backed nominee will crush any would be challenger when put before the membership.

Lib Dem/Blairite merge offering a "liberal centre ground" vision would be on the cards I think. Sounds fucking horrendous but there we are. If MP's defected en masse to another party to serve an entire term democracy may as well jump into a tank of starving sharks.

 

[JaseTheVillain]

Decided it'd be fun to do an I side with quiz again since the manifestos have been released...

Comes to something when I only slightly disagree more with the fucking BNP than the Tories and agree more with pissing UKIP. Annoying that I always seem to agree with SNP too. Still, can't say I'm being hypocritical with my constant support of Labour!

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

Are the majority of party members loyal to Corbyn? This seems a bold claim to me. I know long-time Labour members (neither Blairites nor secret Tories, who feel completely disillusioned as a result of his leadership). Besides, an election is a game changer. Those currently loyal may not be (I suspect will not be) come June 9th.

He undoubtedly hasn't had a fair shake of the stick. I would not remotely argue with that. The way that elements within the party have lined up against him and sought to undermine him is appalling. The way the press has vilified him is awful. The set of circumstances he is facing is unique. But, because of a combination of these factors and perhaps his own personal failings, the public has an extremely negative perception of him. This much is inescapable. If he fails to deliver, if the Tories return a large majority, then I very much imagine that a very many people will no longer be prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. The only thing that will save him come June 9th is a dearth of alternative options.

There's definitely a recognition among a chunk of the membership (not just among the people who joined in 2015, but longstanding members too - who've frequently felt overlooked and disrespected by and out-of-touch leadership) - that this is their only chance to gain control of the party and should Corbyn leave, the next leadership election will be a stitch-up.

It may be that enough of them (or Corbyn himself) will give into the war of attrition and decide to take their political energies elsewhere (not saying this is a bad idea) - but if they still believe in the Parliamentary Road To Socialism (TM) they'll know that Corbyn quitting now is a bigger setback to any left project in Labour than losing the election. Particularly if Labour increase their share of the vote.

It would be like handing the keys of your car to someone who has just smashed your windows and slashed your tires and then blamed you for driving slowly.

 

[markwwfc1992]

Anyone see this guy in QT yesterday?

https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/865337811062235136

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

A most cogent rejoinder, dear fruit. I stand corrected.

Spiffing.

It failed because it was premised on a very conventional idea, i.e. that it’s impossible to lead a party without significant majority support within its parliamentary caucus. It became a farce because they expected the poor bastard to just buckle and resign – as pretty much any other politician would have if they'd had 30-40 resignation letters on their desk and a sizeable number of parliamentary colleagues engaging in open revolt.

They expected the next leadership election to be sans Jez. They didn’t anticipate Jez being a total mensch, remaining in position and contesting a second leadership election. They completely underestimated him in that respect, and that’s largely because they universalised their own values. They thought he’d resign and skulk off because that what they’d do. Once they realised their error and grudgingly accepted that the second leadership election would involve Jez, all the obvious Blairite candidates wimped out. They knew they’d lose.

So, yes, it was a total fucking omnishambles. But it all stems from them not appreciating the power shift that had occurred in their party. Their basic methodology – a high number of resignations, deliberately phased/staggered to give a sense of escalating crisis – absolutely would have worked against Theresa May, simply because conventional wisdom is still very deeply rooted in her party

Well, I wasn’t advocating a course of action. I was just trying to explain why Jez might not do the conventional thing in the event of losing a General Election. His first loyalty is clearly to the party membership. If he thinks, rightly or wrongly, that he still has majority support among that group, he might not go quietly.

Given the astronomical increase in membership since he took over (as an aside, this really doesn’t get the attention it deserves), my guess is that he does. Maybe wishful thinking on my part. We’ll see.

Apologies for the rather dismissive "it does"! I think the difficulty here is that the circumstances of the attempted coup were so unusual. Ordinarily that much antipathy within a parliamentary party would be enough to seal a leader's fate, but the idea of a party attempting to oust a leader about nine months into his tenure, when he's barely faced an electoral test (some locals in which they held their own, a London mayoral election which Labour won) is quite remarkable in itself. I would suggest that it would have been rather strange for the membership to have done a complete about-turn in that time period and decided to ditch the guy they'd overwhelmingly backed less than a year earlier!

A general election is very different and if the result is bad then not only will the pressure from within the PLP be intense, but it will also really test member loyalty. I could definitely see him remaining as leader on an interim basis as he justifiably won't want to cede control to the party's right. But if Labour do poorly and he tries to cling on indefinitely then a schism becomes a very real prospect imo. As you say, we shall see!

 

[Aber gas]

Anyone see this guy in QT yesterday?

https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/865337811062235136

Labour should put that weirdo on every election poster and leaflet till June

 

[markwwfc1992]

Labour should put that weirdo on every election poster and leaflet till June

Apparently he is the son of a Tory MP, not sure which one mind...

 

[Aber gas]

3 more signed up today ( all voting Labour) 2 Plaid converted and a couple of Lib Dems wavering ( they might just be humouring me)
For the many.

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

2 + 2 = 3?

Bet the shy c*** all go and vote TORY

 

[Aber gas]

2 + 2 = 3?

Bet the shy c*** all go and vote TORY

Ha, 3 deffo red, 2 more Plaid going red and some Lib Dems ( not so sure, I'll keep an eye on the tricksy fuckers)

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

I agree with an awful lot of what you've written. The trouble is that if this election plays out as we expect it to then I think Corbyn's position is untenable. If the Conservatives return a majority of a hundred or so, despite the Labour vote share holding up, it'll be a impossible to sell such a result as a victory. It can only really be regarded as a failure - those of us with lefty convictions will have to watch on while society becomes more unequal and the most vulnerable suffer five years of unfettered Tory rule. It's a discomfiting prospect and one which will not just bother the Labour right, but also the moderates that the party needs if it is to survive and prosper. They'll rightly be alarmed at Labour's performance (opposition parties should really be making gains, not treading water, certainly not losing seats) and will know that Corbyn's personal ratings are dire. Really not sure how it'll all play out but if I were a figure on the left of the party I'd be looking within Labour ranks for a successor, someone who can do the strategic and presentational stuff rather better than Corbyn.

One of the (myriad) self-owns the PLP have done themselves over the last seven or eight years is to create absurdly low expectations for Corbyn in a general election.

They needed to do that in order to legitimise their own opposition and they assumed their claims would never be tested as they didn't imagine Corbyn would survive for five years. But now there's an election, they've given him a very low hurdle to clear to claim the result as a success.

With the well-received Labour manifesto and a Conservative manifesto that seems to have gone down like a plate of cold sick, a disastrous result for Labour (as opposed to merely losing) is starting to look relatively unlikely. It's clear Corbyn is much better on the electoral trail - meeting people, speaking to large crowds - than he is as a Westminster politician. I say this as a Corbyn/parliamentary socialism sceptic - but he's the only party leader who's having a good campaign. It's very hard to look at what's happening now and think "if only labour had Owen Smith or Yvette Cooper".

 

[Gilly?]

Corbyn is a don, what he did at the Libertines gig is great.

Whether it's had a huge effect remains to be seen but there's someone I know at the show and she said it's got complete strangers (young people to boot) discussing Labour's policies. That can't be a bad thing.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

 

[Abertawe]

Definitely should've gone for Liz Kendall.

 

[Aber gas]

Corbyn is a don, what he did at the Libertines gig is great.

Whether it's had a huge effect remains to be seen but there's someone I know at the show and she said it's got complete strangers (young people to boot) discussing Labour's policies. That can't be a bad thing.

https://twitter.com/joebowly1/status/865989366187012096

 

[Aber gas]

Oh my gosh look at dem polls

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/866031653315129348
( I reserve the right to brand them instruments of the establishment when they are bad, thanks)

 

[Alty]

Oh my gosh look at dem polls

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/866031653315129348
( I reserve the right to brand them instruments of the establishment when they are bad, thanks)

Appreciate that there's been significant improvement for Labour, but when being 9 points down is a cause for celebration you know you're in trouble.

 

[Alty]

As an aside, I'd be interested to hear people's views on these new social care plans. To me they're quite sensible. Strikes me as amazing that older people sitting on a high value asset think everyone else (many of whom like me have no prospect of buying a house) should fund all of their care so they can pass on their 1/2 million quid house to their kids.

Asking them to contribute, while guaranteeing they pay nothing up front and can still leave £100,000 to the children, seems a reasonable reaction to a funding crisis.

Centrism in action, I'd say.

 

[Aber gas]

Appreciate that there's been significant improvement for Labour, but when being 9 points down is a cause for celebration you know you're in trouble.

From being twenty points behind it's a fantastic effort. Still time yet comrade.
Stop pissing on my chips.

 

[Stringy]

As an aside, I'd be interested to hear people's views on these new social care plans. To me they're quite sensible. Strikes me as amazing that older people sitting on a high value asset think everyone else (many of whom like me have no prospect of buying a house) should fund all of their care so they can pass on their 1/2 million quid house to their kids.

Asking them to contribute, while guaranteeing they pay nothing up front and can still leave £100,000 to the children, seems a reasonable reaction to a funding crisis.

Centrism in action, I'd say.

I was holding on to the idea of an inheritance as my only chance of ever securing a decent amount of capital!

 

[Stringy]

I was holding on to the idea of an inheritance as my only chance of ever securing a decent amount of capital!

I suppose if ill health is protected by some kind of insurance then it won't make much of a difference, it will just lead to revenues that otherwise would not have been raised being raised.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

As an aside, I'd be interested to hear people's views on these new social care plans. To me they're quite sensible. Strikes me as amazing that older people sitting on a high value asset think everyone else (many of whom like me have no prospect of buying a house) should fund all of their care so they can pass on their 1/2 million quid house to their kids.

Asking them to contribute, while guaranteeing they pay nothing up front and can still leave £100,000 to the children, seems a reasonable reaction to a funding crisis.

Centrism in action, I'd say.

I think thinking that your home is "a high value asset" rather than a basic human need is part of the reason we're in the state we're in, where many of us have very little prospect of getting long-term housing security (either through ownership or secure tenancy). For many people inheritance is the only way they'll accrue enough capital to own a home (and their only outlet to gain that security). That's deeply unsatisfactory (thanks, 40 years of government assault on housing) but it's where we're at.

Social care should be fully funded by the state as a universal benefit and the only reason that there is a "funding crisis" is because it's been systematically defunded by the government. It's a very definite strategy on the part of the Tories to run down public services to the point of crisis and then present neoliberal reform of those services as the solution to a crisis they have caused (see what's happened to the rest of the health service). To call that process - defund, cause crisis, implement neoliberal reform - as pragmatic centrism, rather than ideologically driven vandalism - is willfully naive.

I don't think it's unreasonable to consider peoples' continuing care requirements as similar to peoples' healthcare requirements. It seems unreasonable and unfair to asset-strip people to meet those requirements. If old peoples' assets are the problem, a wealth tax or inheritance tax hike would be a much fairer way of funding care, rather than pay-by-how-sick-you-are Alzheimer's tax. History has shown that when benefits are deuniversalised, it opens the door to cutting them back or stripping them entirely and should be resisted.

 

[BeesKnees]

Appreciate that there's been significant improvement for Labour, but when being 9 points down is a cause for celebration you know you're in trouble.

It will only get interesting if Tory vote is around 42% . At that point a majority is in doubt. A poll of 42, 37, 10 isn't far away if the trend continues.

 

[BeesKnees]

As an aside, I'd be interested to hear people's views on these new social care plans. To me they're quite sensible. Strikes me as amazing that older people sitting on a high value asset think everyone else (many of whom like me have no prospect of buying a house) should fund all of their care so they can pass on their 1/2 million quid house to their kids.

Asking them to contribute, while guaranteeing they pay nothing up front and can still leave £100,000 to the children, seems a reasonable reaction to a funding crisis.

Centrism in action, I'd say.

I think it's a lottery that plays more towards the financial market than public need.

The issue regarding other residents when a person dies and how they delay the demand for payment is set up for insurance market to offer policies for delaying the payment until the partners death if they then need social care the £100,000 would no longer be protected as the prior policy could claim on it.

Secondly it fails to provide funds now simply because it's not recoverable until later.

Thirdly it fails to acknowledge that those receiving medical care and therefore social care as part of it will not be charged (cancer etc) while those only requiring social care get hit with the full amount (dementia).

I'm far more in favour of restoring the inheritance tax thresholds and introducing a German style social care tax shared between employers and employees. This is something that requires a sharing of the burden in the same way as the NHS, rather than a punishment depending on what kills you.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

Secondly it fails to provide funds now simply because it's not recoverable until later.

Rest of this is spot on, but I thought the proposal was to essentially sell people financial products to allow them to release equity from their house, and use that to fund social care (so funding is provided by banks, who recover their costs when people die).