It isn't at all productive for the Labour defectors though. It discourages other Corbyn-sceptic MP's from jumping over because it transforms the "Red Tory" line from being a fairly juvenile insult to something that's literally cold hard fact. They don't need to accept any Tory MP's if they don't want to, lest one who's got a proper hard-on for austerity. If they want do to that then they're putting down their marker as a right-wing political party. Which isn't exactly going to help them when many of them were moving from a party they said had gone too far left.
The Independent Group for Change | Have decided to disband after ten months
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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.
It isn't at all productive for the Labour defectors though. It discourages other Corbyn-sceptic MP's from jumping over because it transforms the "Red Tory" line from being a fairly juvenile insult to something that's literally cold hard fact. They don't need to accept any Tory MP's if they don't want to, lest one who's got a proper hard-on for austerity. If they want do to that then they're putting down their marker as a right-wing political party. Which isn't exactly going to help them when many of them were moving from a party they said had gone too far left.
Come onnnnn, Ian Austin.
Sky Sources: Tom Watson has been spotted outside Whitehall
He's definitely going
It sounds to me like you're defining the centre ground as some sort of objective thing. In my view, the centre is just whatever set of policies is roughly in the middle of voter sentiment in a specific country at any point in time.
I'm not sure if it would be funnier if they did or didn't let him in.
If you're talking economics, I'd say 'centrism' (if you want to give it a specific label) is when you're roughly in the middle of full-on socialism and full-on free market capitalism with no regulations. So you're not necessarily against capitalistic practices, but at the same time believe in strong social safety nets for citizens etc.
Even if you're going to describe it as simply being in the centre of whatever is the norm though, I'd still say the Lib Dems were right-wing. The leadership was fully behind the Tory austerity agenda with some minor alterations if anything. In that regard Labour occupied the centre-ground by opposing the Tory agenda, but not necessarily opposing austerity on the whole and agreeing with some of its central tenets. The left was occupied by fringe parties like the Greens. Either way, if you're accepting full-on pro-austerity Tories into your party, you're not remotely centrist.
Austin is very brexit, so doubtful he's joining. Ian Murray is quite probable sooner or later.
I fecking love all of this. I've been waiting years for these arsehole to leave the party.
No major party denied the need to bring the public finances under control and reduce the budget deficit over time. The question was basically the balance between spending cuts and tax rises, and how fast the deficit should be reduced.
The coalition elected to go for roughly 80/20 towards spending cuts vs tax rises. I believe Labour was arguing for something more like 50/50. The centre ground was, I guess, something like 60/40 towards spending cuts.
Also, it's worth noting even the Corbyn election manifesto did not promise to reverse the welfare cuts, and actually pledged to continue to implement the welfare cuts previously announced by Osbourne but yet to be implemented. https://www.theguardian.com/politic...anned-tory-benefit-cuts-resolution-foundation
Austerity was and is accepted across the political spectrum, even on the left, if you look at the actual policies rather than the PR statements.
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Alliteration is anderated.
Then they're all advocating right-wing policy.
Even if you believe that then doesn't matter when the likes of Chuka and Soubry team up, it's clearly disastrous politically for any party that wants to look like they aren't basically a Tory-lite group if they're happy to have people who fully cheered on a Tory agenda as figureheads.
Old New Labour (heh) were generally - I'd say - a mix of third way Blair-types who didn't really have any left-wing credentials at all and social democrat types who had some left-leaning beliefs but also felt like more pragmatism and neoliberal economic policy was needed to win votes. I'd say this lot is exclusively made up of the former types, since the latter appear to be largely sticking by Labour now, still feeling like they have some sort of place in the party they don't want to yet relinquish.
Question. In your honest opinion(s) does all this shenanigans make Labour more or less likely to win the next GE? (we all know the new party won’t win any election, any time soon)
I think we're just arguing semantics at this point. I think 'everyone is right-wing' is by definition logically impossible.
It depends what value you place on policies other than pure economics - for me the natural divide in politics now is not traditional left vs right, but rather global vs nationalist.
Personally, I left the Labour Party because of Corbyn's foreign policy views. His response to the Russian chemical weapons attack on UK soil was more or less the final straw for me. I've long thought his views on NATO to be dangerous, and his views on the EU dishonest. I also think Corbyn and his team would prove incompetent if they had to run the country.
Finally, I am friends with Luciana Berger's former Parliamentary Assistant and have heard details of some of the abuse she suffered as an MP. It's some really nasty racist and sexist stuff.
I basically came to the conclusion I could not in good conscience remain in the party while Corbyn's mob are running the show.
Less. Much less. It'll split their vote far more than the tories, who have a solid base of leavers from all social classes.
doomed.
Though if a new brexit party comes into reality then all bets are off....though probably another coalition
I don't think it changes much, as likelier than not it'll sputter out before long.
That would only be if we were still in the EU though. At least a good chance we'll be out before a general election, at which point a brexit party would be pointless.
Unless it's a soft Brexit and they push for a full-on hard Brexit with no freedom of movement etc.
Right now is the best IG are going to look I think. They're new, they have no policies, they've not had a huge scandal yet (racism of Angela Smith's kind is easily forgotten or dismisses by most people in the UK) and they've had good press with soundbites about sensible centrism which probably sound good to people who aren't particularly into politics and don't have the inclination to dig any deeper.
Even so, at their current numbers they are more an interesting curio than anything else. None of the ex-Labour lot would survive an election except for potentially Chuka. Most would lose their seats to Labour as none are big names and people will vote for the rosette. Angela Smith's majority is pretty thin so if she picks up a couple of thousand votes off the Labour candidate it would be enough to swing it for the Tories. Ultimately Labour might lose 2 seats and the Tories might gain one, peanuts in the grand scheme of things.
It has the potential to really hurt Labour though. If bigger names leave Labour for IG they would largely lose their seats at a GE, but most of them would do well enough to hand the seats they're contesting to the Tories. If the original 7 were the focal point of a party running candidates across the board, again I doubt they'd pick up many seats but they'd shaft Labour. But now they're throwing in with the likes of Soubry a lot of current Labour voters who might have been tempted will think twice. Basically all they have in common is they want to stop Brexit and the pretence of finding the middle ground and a new politics is already looking transparent.
I get they'd want to, but once an agreement's signed I think that will be the end of it for a good while. Hard to imagine there'll ever be an end the way it's been going, but it will come.
I'd be intrigued to see to what extent this is the case regarding Labour voters in general. While the party has a ton of voters who were further to the left than what was on offer before, I also often get the feeling that there are a lot of people out there who aren't necessarily all that politically-motivated either way but opt for Labour because of the 'nasty party' taint the Tories retain, and because the Lib Dems are fairly stale at this point and not seen as an at all attractive alternative. In other words, people who are moderate in a fairly neutral sense of the word, in that they don't really want to move toward either extreme, but are generally against policies which they feel will be hurtful to the wider public. Such people might be tempted by a party that looks fairly warm and cosy on the surface even if they're vapid and lacking in substance, and may not worry too much about Tory defectors because they'll view the likes of Soubry as people who ultimately abandoned the Tories. That'd be an optimistic outlook for the IG though - struggle to see them gaining that much traction unless a lot of reasonably sized names defect soon. Time is of the essence and all that.
I would agree with that. Looking back at New Labour the real driving force behind it was the Anglo American relationship and Britian being seen as a world power again. Domestic policy was to basically keep the ship afloat, as Mandelson said he didn't care about how rich people got as long as they paid their taxes. Which is possible something this new group doesnt believe in.
This is a article by Jeremy Gilbert is well worth reading on the recent spilt in labour and about the MP's who have left - https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/je...ion-politics-and-consequences-of-labour-split
As for the social democratics still in Labour they all remind me of a great piece by the Newstatesman I shared on here a while back(Maybe even a couple of years back now)about the history of Ed Balls political career and it's such sad and pathetic read. Ed never really believe in anything other the the common sense at the time, he saw the job as slow steady climb up the ladder, a complete technocratic but he didn't even know it.
The social democratics are like this, they've been in the party for so long, it's how they've pay for their mortgage, put food on the table etc. So faced with a actual crisis they are completely shit scared beacause they know(They must do by now)just have out of depth they are and that they have no vision of the future to offer. Image being someone like Lisa Nandy or Ed Miliband, your a perfectly nice centre left social democratic who just wants a well funded NHS and corprations to pay more in tax. And now your faced with a party always in crisis, your country is leaving a political and economic union that your hold dear to your heart, the leaders office is constantly filled with people who used to be in the communist party and only last year did a MP suggest a general strike to force a election. No wonder they are confused, ideally for them they would do what Balls did and find a comfortable BBC telly gig. But at the moment leaving the party is still risky than staying put.
I should say I just used Ed Miliband as a example of someone on the centre left. There's no way he would leave the Labour Party(Due to his family history).
Could they be any more pathetic?
Yes, they could let the living knock off Madame Tussauds waxwork of Chris Evans, Ian Austin in. Hopefully they do tomorrow.
Actually not so sure... I think almost certainly at the point of the next election we will still be in the process of negotiating a trade agreement with Europe... I think the erg / farrage will be round in one guise or another for a few years pushing for WTO / Canada plus (or a return to the days of the empire)
The way some people use it as a badge of insult suggests otherwise. Harder to insult someone for being a moderate as it makes the accuser look like a zealot. And there are a lot of zealots around.
not sure she will get her way
rule out No deal and the ERG will split off
Dont rule out no deal and loose a lot more than 3 or 4 MP's
Equally I cant imagine momentum not striking and de-selecting a chunk of MP's who will flip over to the independent group
Almost certain to lead to a general election soon and tbh I think its very likley the libs and TIG would have to merge as one would have the (excuse the pun) momentum and one would have the grass roots infrastructure
so probably SNP and the normal parties in Northern Ireland plus some plaid votes taking around 50 seats between them
Id gess the conservatives take something like 300, Labour around 200, libs + TIG around 50 and similar for a ERG/brexit party with a few independent / welsh in the mix
Basically the conservatives either then choose to go soft brexit by joining with the TIG (and blame them for it being a soft brexit) or they choose hard brexit and go with the ERG/Brexit party and blame them for any economic and irish border problems
Of I were may id call the election ASAP
I cant see Conservatives winning 300 seats if the ERG split off
It might look that way to the centre left (although I’m not sure, I can imagine some who’d have been supportive of a milder austerity) but it won’t look that way to the centre right, ie a lot of fairly moderate conservative voters.
More power to them I’d say. Both parties deserve it and that’s more important I reckon.
I don't think it makes much of a difference. Labour and the Tories will select new candidates for the seats that the IG members hold, and they will probably win all of them. Only a couple of the IG members are big name politicians that could potentially win as independent candidates. The rest hold seats because they were Labour/Tory, without being in those parties they're pretty irrelevant and any Labour/Tory candidates would likely beat them
it will be interesting to see the polling with a hypothetical brexit party and TIG in the mix
my gut feel is that brexit party hits labour and conservative votes in some constituencies - particularly ones with large leave numbers,
TIG hits labour votes massivley in remain areas
Gut feel in first part the post the conservatives come our relativley unscathed (assuming they dont have such a disastrous campaign as last time...)
certainly the polls with TIG in there give conservatives a 12 point lead over labour and as brexit party would hit both the big 2 parties as well i just think in first past the post they come out on top (of course it depends exactly who falls where and the timings / external factors - but demographically i think it works in their favour)
The one-issue Brexit folk in Labour-held leave areas went UKIP in 2015 and then most of them went Tory in 2017 because they were more 'Brexit-y' than Labour, which is why the North East saw a swing to the Tories in contrast to the Labour swing everywhere else in that election.
I think that there are more one-issue Brexit voters behind the Tories than Labour across the board and therefore a Brexit party would undoubtedly do more damage to the Tories than it would Labour.
I think it depends on whether the Labour leavers stand in by-elections pre-GE, and a Labour candidate who stands with JC, wins.
I'm a firm believer that had all the Blairite cnuts not been attacking Labour/JC at the last election, the final result could have been better and from that put us in a position to have negated the DUP influence at the least.
That being said, when you have internal beef, and the press against you, it makes it very difficult
Also, re the YouGov polls, a newbie PMd me the below.
Hey Tibs, i don't have enough privileges for the CA forum but i noticed someone quiting the polls from yougov.
You may want to point out the its Conservative MP Matt Hancock's brother has an owning stake in yougov so it isn't accurate.
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...brothers-crowdfunding-firm-matt-chris-hancock
Nobody said winning general elections was easy. Managing "internal beef" and winning the media round to your side is party political leadership 101. If Corbyn had a better grasp of these basics he'd be have a hell of a lot more of a chance of actually ousting the most shambolic Tory party in living memory.