This is a problem where the party 'machine' is outsourced to factions. Campaigning on any kind of scale should focused and targeted. Not random get-togethers for a group selfie for Owen Jones' Twitter page. Having the members and the campaigners at your disposal isn't going to do you any good if they're not used in the right way. Self-organisation is great to an extent but when you're fighting an election you need to analysts at HQ to tell you which street to go down and on which doors to knock. Labour's activism just seems like it could be scattergun and ultimately redundant, presumably walking around aimlessly impressed by how many of them there are.
Westminster Politics
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
This is a problem where the party 'machine' is outsourced to factions. Campaigning on any kind of scale should focused and targeted. Not random get-togethers for a group selfie for Owen Jones' Twitter page. Having the members and the campaigners at your disposal isn't going to do you any good if they're not used in the right way. Self-organisation is great to an extent but when you're fighting an election you need to analysts at HQ to tell you which street to go down and on which doors to knock. Labour's activism just seems like it could be scattergun and ultimately redundant, presumably walking around aimlessly impressed by how many of them there are.
The reason Labour sent people to those wards is because last year the campaign spent too much of it's resources in safe seats and narrowly lost seats they could have won.
Which wards are you talking about?
The Tweet didn't mention seats. It just spoke about activists being wasted in areas where there was no need for them to be. You seem to be so desperate to defend Labour/Corbyn that you're not even sure what it is you're defending the from.
Someone within the party identified poor use of activists. Without even knowing beyond that you immediately claim to know the wards he was referring to and know the reason why the activists were sent to those wards, despite the fact the Tweet doesn't mention activists being sent by the party to any wards in particular.
That tweet is clearly in reference to the criticism Owen Jones and Sadiq Khan received over the local election campaign which saw them target places like Westminster.
just saw the edit
it's a reference to this post specifically
you've lost the right to call people stupid
Contesting Westminster was undoubtedly a massive waste of the resources and man power poured into it. It's one of those things that would be an inalienable truth if you could discount the 'because Corbyn/Corbyn supporters did it' factor.
But these days pouring probably thousands of manpower hours into fighting a borough that resulted in a barely slightly reduction in the Tory dominance of the council, is now to be considered a perfectly sound election strategy because 'Corbyn/Corbyn supporters did it'.
Labour won 19 seats on the council (up 3), Tories won 41 (down 3). Are we allowed to even point out that probably wasn't the best use of activists time and resources or is that too much of a smear?
Again it's quite depressing when now even things such as this are subject to debate. A martian from outer space would identify that as a poor use of time and resources that could have been seen a mile off.
The left today: Perfectly reasonable. Stop attacking Corbyn!
But these days pouring probably thousands of manpower hours into fighting a borough that resulted in a barely slightly reduction in the Tory dominance of the council, is now to be considered a perfectly sound election strategy because 'Corbyn/Corbyn supporters did it'.
Labour won 19 seats on the council (up 3), Tories won 41 (down 3). Are we allowed to even point out that probably wasn't the best use of activists time and resources or is that too much of a smear?
Again it's quite depressing when now even things such as this are subject to debate. A martian from outer space would identify that as a poor use of time and resources that could have been seen a mile off.
The left today: Perfectly reasonable. Stop attacking Corbyn!
Labour gained 13% in Westminster North and 11% in Westminster & City of London last year. They had every reason to campaign there. This is a clear example of you chatting shit.
Yeah, Cities of London and Westminster constituency last year had Corbyn making massive gains and getting within 10% of the Tories. Considering general trends in London seemed fair to target that.
It's just that previous things that were just accepted as facts and everyone could move on and concentrate on important things are now contested.
Local elections are a chance to give government a bloody nose
Previous status: A truth
Current status: A MSM smear!
Pouring resources into safe seat/borough in an election where the party has under performed by historic standards
Previous status: A truth
Current status: Blairite conspiracy
An opposition with the luxury of a govt tearing itself apart of an unnecessary referendum, whose been in power for 8 years, should be absolutely destroying them in mid-term opinion polls and make huge inroads in local elections/by-elections, even in 'safe' government seats/councils.
Previous status: A truth
Current status: "Shut you you f$%!@^ Tory"
It's frustrating because the party is never, ever going to learn lessons it needs to in order to stand a chance of winning elections as whenever there's a lesson to be learned there comes a complete denial that there's a lesson to be learned at all.
Local elections are a chance to give government a bloody nose
Previous status: A truth
Current status: A MSM smear!
Pouring resources into safe seat/borough in an election where the party has under performed by historic standards
Previous status: A truth
Current status: Blairite conspiracy
An opposition with the luxury of a govt tearing itself apart of an unnecessary referendum, whose been in power for 8 years, should be absolutely destroying them in mid-term opinion polls and make huge inroads in local elections/by-elections, even in 'safe' government seats/councils.
Previous status: A truth
Current status: "Shut you you f$%!@^ Tory"
It's frustrating because the party is never, ever going to learn lessons it needs to in order to stand a chance of winning elections as whenever there's a lesson to be learned there comes a complete denial that there's a lesson to be learned at all.
Yeah pouring resources into a borough that started the night as a very safe Tory council and finished the night as a very safe Tory council was a tremendously worthwhile thing to do. Especially as other, more marginal councils that were there for the picking, remained in Tory control.
Another one of those 'new facts'.
Before Corbyn people would have maybe come to the conclusion that it would have been smarter strategy to focus those resources on areas where they did stand a chance of overturning Tory majorities on councils in other areas of the country. Or maybe concentrated on Barnet council, which the Tories ended up winning. Now we know that mindset is "chatting shit"
The single biggest barrier to Labour obtaining power is the fact that so many of its supporters seem to be political flat-earthers.
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Labour gained three seats there.
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Non Labour councils in London by Labour percentage of seats:
NOC: Tower Hamlets: 49% (won)
NOC: Barnet: 48% (lost)
Tory: Hillingdon: 38%
Tory: Wandsworth: 32%
Tory: Westminster: 27%
Tory: Kensington: 24%
Tory: Bexley: 22%
Tory: Bromley: 12%
Tory: Kingston: 4%
NOC: Havering: 2%
Tory: Richmond: 0%
Libs: Sutton: 0%
UKIP back to Tories, a bit more(?) leftward drift elsewhere - not much else to report.
The Barnet thing is being over-hyped by MSM although the losing Labour candidates in recently gentrified** West Hendon were clearly very cheesed off.
**that's just to flag up a story if you want to go & look for it
Barnet, which I know quite well, would seem to swing (I looked at 2014 & 2018) on a couple of hundred votes in 5 or 6 wards. But has been basically in Conservative hands since the dawn of time. is quite a diverse area though - I'm surprised it's now as close as it is, however.
The Barnet thing is being over-hyped by MSM although the losing Labour candidates in recently gentrified** West Hendon were clearly very cheesed off.
**that's just to flag up a story if you want to go & look for it
Barnet, which I know quite well, would seem to swing (I looked at 2014 & 2018) on a couple of hundred votes in 5 or 6 wards. But has been basically in Conservative hands since the dawn of time. is quite a diverse area though - I'm surprised it's now as close as it is, however.
Apparently that Tory who shared a racist joke on Facebook was actually trying to delete it. Facebook of course allows you to delete other people's posts.
For what it's worth, it's people like you that make people disengage with politics.
Which is a shame because "feck off and vote Tory" would otherwise engage so many.
A political party/leader who are literally beyond any kind of criticism, is more likely to put people off politics than someone on an internet forum with that opinion. Labour did under perform in the local elections. Diverting resources to fighting safe Tory seats when they failed to win virtually all of their marginal targets, could reasonably argued to be a mistake. But even that point gets a wall of denials. Not ebc
But the cheerleaders see refuse to see anything to criticism and they seem to take criticism personally.
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Plenty of lefties criticise Corbyn and Labour for various reasons, myself included and yet we still support him because he represents our interests in many areas. You’re just not satisfied with the extent or impact of the criticism because it’s not as rabid and extreme as you’d like it to be.
The party has leant back to the left and you feel disenfranchised which is somewhat ironic as it’s by a party who two decades ago disenfranchised many of the left by leaning towards the centre.
I think the Owen Jones/Momentum stuff is probably a bit of a sideshow that doesn't make a great deal of difference one way or the other. If they turned up in Nuneaton I doubt it would stem the losses. Similarly, Labour got swings of 15% in my area that he didn't turn up in (as far as I know).
they were saying that the boost in active numbers is well worth having - active growth & so forth, and particularly if they are young & enthusiastic
Labour don't tend to hide their party strife quite as a well as the Tories do though - with some help from MSM at times, that pendle question was getting asked - ''this is the first they all heard about it'' - but no follow-ups about the extent of racism in the Conservative Party & how keen are they or not, to root
I'm very loathed to accept the 'even the beeb hates us' thing, so maybe I'm just blinding myself but on the Tory racism/Labour antisemitism thing I do see it just as Labour having a noteworthy problem with antisemitism being a new thing whereas the Tories having a problem with racism in any form just isn't new and isn't really a story.
aye, might be, I'd thought of a not dissimilar 'theory' meself actually, about it being a 'non-story' - people seemed to be saying 'so what' about Windrush and attempting to shove the debate in the direction of being about illegal immigration, so as you say, a bit of everyday racism being outed is hardly making for exciting reporting
and back a bit, Labour also need to get some better tellybox performers trained up too - I don't think that's helping them much either, apart from making Corbyn look quite good, in comparison, when he goes on
Perfect.
Melanie Phillips
These moderate Tories, that we should all be friends with, really need to get better transport.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-44054424
Teresa May using the Trump playbook with her outright lies about legacy investigations in Northern Ireland only looking at security forces.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-38844453
Were the Tories who cheered her misled by their leader or did they know she was lying and didn't care?
Will she show any integrity and retract her lies? Will Boris allow her?
Teresa May using the Trump playbook with her outright lies about legacy investigations in Northern Ireland only looking at security forces.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-38844453
Were the Tories who cheered her misled by their leader or did they know she was lying and didn't care?
Will she show any integrity and retract her lies? Will Boris allow her?
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It’s sad that there’s next to no press coverage of this. Miliband was right in the commons - it’s dishonourable for the government to go back on Cameron’s pledge for a part 2.
This government doesn't do honour.
And yet all those on the left got rewarded for being "disenfranchised" by winning power three times in a row, and actually getting to achieve some stuff, even if it wasn't all what they would have wanted in an ideal world.
The main reason to criticise Corbyn is that he's unelectable and won't be able to achieve anything.
"You get scraps or feck all" isn't the greatest of political campaign slogans when repeated over decades - leads to a collapse in enthusiasm.
Empthy rhetoric by the top 1% that sun readers swallow.
At the moment, it's provably the case that he's unable to assemble a coalition capable of beating the conservatives.
Sad news about Tessa Jowell passing away.