In the week, The Times published polling that suggested large number of Liberal Democrat and Green voters would be prepared to support Labour if they were the party best positioned to block Reform from winning a seat. 57% and 46% respectively, to be precise. Crazily, 39% of Lib Dems, 34% of Labour, and 19% of Greens would even vote Tory to keep Reform out. Something Nigel Farage would be grateful for as a lash up between the two is likely, considering the Tory adoption of outright racism, and Farage's new found love for the Tories' oligarch-friendly economics.
Of interest were comments from The Graun's political editor, Pippa Crerar. Reiterating one of Westminster's worst-kept secrets, she said that this polling backed up Morgan McSweeney's view. I.e. That people will vote Labour come what may to keep Farage out of office. The implication is clear. The political direction of the government doesn't need to change. "Even if they hate us, they hate Farage more," said Sweeney McMorgan, a close ally of the Prime Minister's chief of staff.
As recently noted, politically he's no nore a genius than most Labour MPs. He ran Liz Kendall's ill-fated Labour leadership push on a Blairite ticket that he thought would prove popular. And when the parliamentary party were despairing about whether they would ever get their control back, his clever-clever strategy was to build a leadership campaign based around lies. Not once did he offer a political justification, because like the milieu he sprung from he was incapable of doing so. He knew how to ban people from running as Labour candidates, once he had control of the party apparatus. He knew how to expel people. McSweeney also knows how to gloat publicly about what he's done. But win an argument? Do a politics? Not so much. That's why he bounced Keir Starmer into hiring Peter Mandelson, so he could ring up Washington and pick his brains when lies and and bullshit couldn't cut it.
McSweeney's fondness for it's us or Farage underlines his stupidity. This strategy worked so well for the Democrats in the US, and the SPD in Germany. And with Labour attacking its support base and driving them away to the likes of the Greens, there's no reason to believe the result here would be any different. If, for instance, you're a trans person, why would it matter to you whether the government denying you your rights and your health care are Labour or Reform? Or if your disability support is getting cut? Or if housing is out of your reach? Or if their stoking of racism is a matter of degree and not of kind?
None of this matters to Labour's leadership. Should the party get wiped out, a miserable, penurious fate of multiple directorships and nice executive jobs await. Nick Clegg-style options will be available to some of them. Even better from the standpoint of British capital, Starmer's disastrous leadership is on the verge of liquidating organised labour as a political force. Something worth a shower of damehoods, gongs, and knights garter.
The problem McSweeney has that he is willing to push this, but Labour MPs are less keen. They can see the polls. they can see the disintegration of Labour's base tracked in by-elections. They know from their own dire voter ID data the leadership's hubris has opened the door to their nemesis. And they also know that no party or Prime Minister has ever recovered from the terrible ratings that have been posted this year. They should remove Starmer, McSweeney, and this useless cabinet of the crooked, the criminal, and the crap if they want to stand a chance.
7 comments:
I doubt Labour MPs will 'get rid of' McSweeney, Starmer et al in the kind of wholesale way you suggest. They will probably dislodge Starmer after the May elections, but the soft left are timid, so will dither until it's too late to make the necessary sweeping changes to the party machine that could potentially still make them a significant force at the next election. 2029 is - for better or worse - going to be a disastrous meltdown for the party.
This post is void of politics outside the Westminster bubble! Radical left politics is fermenting all over the disunited UK kingdom! Energy and synergy are with the Nationalist, Greens, Independents and Socialists from Your Party to various Left Wing parties!
As ever, an undeniably insightful post cutting through to the core of the matter. But. Where in the PLP does that alternative come from? Aren’t the right so entrenched that if Starmer and chums get turfed out who the hell is there left to have the mettle to step up to the job of offering hope as a message? Portion of Streeting anyone? No, me neither…
I enjoyed this (sorry to say 😀). Especially "Sweeney McMorgan" and hubris/nemesis.
if they were the party best positioned to block Reform from winning a seat
That conditional seems like it may be important.
If it doesn't look like significant numbers of people around them are going to vote Labour, lib dem and green voters probably won't either, even if Reform are at the gates. Are there enough places left where Labour can possibly generate that critical mass of enthusiasm, along its present trajectory?
McSweeney had to do something to defend his position, and that poll seems like exactly the kind of thing which he'd be pulling in his favours to generate in order to do so.
Closer to D-day, in the horrible event that he is still burrowed into the party like an insatiable tick, he might try to convince doomed (and by that time, deserving of it) Labour backbenchers that a well-funded astroturfing campaign can save their bacon - by convincing voters with nose pegs at the ready that their neighbours are planning to vote Labour.
This belief in tactical voting sounds like Morgan McGenius trying to keep Labour MPs spirits up. Compass has been trying to promote it for 30 years. There seems little evidence of it actually occurring in practice. The Tories won the 'red wall' seats in 2019 because Labour voters didn't vote. Labour won in 2024 because Reform split the Right.
Voters, in the main, don't sit and work out how to vote tactically.
I am going to admit that I don't know what the 'typical' voter will do in 2029. I think part of the problem is that typical voters don't really exist now, if they ever did. We all love to share our wisdom and insight into what other people are thinking but the truth is we struggle to predict what we will be thinking in 4 years. What chance that we have a clue about everyone else?
What I can say is that I am currently of the view that Starmer is the worst PM since the last one, who was the worst since the one before, and so on back to ... probably Gordon Brown. In fairness to Cameron he was probably better than Truss or Johnson, and probably Starmer, although his responsibility for initiating the whole Brexit fiasco does raise (or lower?) the bar.
Starmer is undoubtedly terrible at being a national leader. He has no political instinct, and seemingly no grasp of what is expected of a PM, other than jetting about meeting other leaders, which he clearly relishes. He thinks making a sincere and firm chinned speech expressing his concerns and aspirations about how we should feel and behave is a substitute for doing things that might materially improve people's lives. He is a disaster, and I think that barring some sort of world event (like a war, or a pandemic, or a financial crash - all of which are frighteningly likely) he has already condemned his party to abject defeat.
I don't live in an area that Reform can win, so I don't have to weigh that prospect against the vote I would actively choose. That applies to enough places to threaten any prospect of a Labour win, and even McGuffin should get that. I do think Fuhrage would be terrible for all of us, and yes, worse than Starmer, but I think if that is the extent of your offering to the electorate, "vote for us or you'll let him in" you don't belong in politics. Any party that has that as their main message is making a mockery of Democracy and can only damage what is left of it in this country.
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