tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post3175288395330585428..comments2024-03-27T09:14:27.496+00:00Comments on All That Is Solid ...: What is Happening to the Labour Party?Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-18687179710705042922016-07-18T18:34:30.238+01:002016-07-18T18:34:30.238+01:00I think speedy should be reminded that it was the ...I think speedy should be reminded that it was the Blairites who were most outraged by the Brexit vote, well and me! <br /><br />If we look at the election results in working class areas of the North, those that stupidly voted for Brexit, we can see that Labour has increased its majority under Corbyn. As the Guardian reported Corbyn’s support comes mainly from the working classes and the Blairite counter revolution is thoroughly Middle class, or at best those workers who think they are a cut above the mere plebs. And this is so obvious; Blairism was and is built on attracting the Middle classes who traditionally vote Tory to the labour ranks.<br /><br />This was always going to be a short term project as social liberalism is something any right thinking pro captitalist can easily embrace and actually I think most pro capitalists only embrace social conservatism as a position of convenience. It is no longer convenient to be socially conservative, so the Tories have wisely occupied the same ground and were always going to do this. So this leaves us with 2 almost identical parties who are socially liberal, extremely authoritarian when it comes to civil liberties and hard right when it comes to economic questions. Choice there is not!<br /><br />Corbyn is the only credible chance working class people have of seeing choice and hope, this is why there has been incredible levels of support for Corbyn. I thought even the social democratic left accounted for maybe 10% of the electorate but now we see it is more around 30%, which given the media culture and Britain’s history and position in the world economy is quite something. That 30% can clearly see there is no choice between the main parties and they demand a voice. And 30% is enough to win an election, because sooner or later the sitting government will be kicked out. Whether the powers that be allow you to function standing on the platform Corbyn promotes is doubtful. But whatever the establishment decide they cannot wave a magic wand and dismiss the 30%, which could easily grow as the old forms of mind control break down.<br /><br />I do think you are bending the stick about the levels of change taking place, we still have a Tory government and even if Corbyn was elected we would have to ask how much change he can actually bring about. Though I fully support him because political progress cannot be dismissed. But overall the change is pretty superficial, the fundamentals are still not being challenged.<br /><br />Of course while Britain works out the bourgeois revolution at home it brings chaos and misery to the developed world, this is where real change is taking place, and where Britain has its dirty claws change is for the worse!<br /><br />This why a pro imperialist left is no left at all!<br />BCFGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-86727757497830467892016-07-18T17:29:22.181+01:002016-07-18T17:29:22.181+01:00The claims of the PLP to represent any kind of adv...The claims of the PLP to represent any kind of advance from Blairism are hollow. They remain trapped in a neoliberalist framework of analysis, and have a fundamental antipathy to the idea of accountability to the wider Party membership.<br /><br />The current upsurge of dissent has two directions - one is a purely negative "to hell with you all"; a cynical, misanthropic vision which accounts for UKIP and Brexit. The other is also an expression of disgust, but it is hopeful that something new can be built. These are the new Corbynistas, the Scottish independence campaigners etc. <br /><br />Apart from a radical spasm imposed by the force majeur of WW2, the anti-capitalist tendency in Labour has always been a beleaguered minority, and grassroots community activism viewed with deep suspicion. The PLP simply wants to re-impose the status quo. <br /><br />I doubt the wider Party has the resources to oppose this; but if not now, when?<br /><br />MikeBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-74905532844946351622016-07-18T17:12:22.674+01:002016-07-18T17:12:22.674+01:00@pewartstoat. Yon Hitchens is a smart guy. Always...@pewartstoat. Yon Hitchens is a smart guy. Always interesting even when he's completely wrong. Roberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18097624792336619525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-87836518088231149662016-07-18T12:32:27.914+01:002016-07-18T12:32:27.914+01:00@ Speedy
One thing that is distinctly absent from...@ Speedy<br /><br />One thing that is distinctly absent from your analysis is that the decline in Labour support in non-metropolitan areas dates from a long time before Corbyn came to the leadership and membership numbers took off. Maybe you'd like to comment on the development of the phenomenon before 2015?<br /><br />The problem of getting many working-class and poor people to vote at all, let alone organise to represent their own interests, is one that has taxed the Left for years. You'd have to be very gullible to believe the arguments of the PLP that they know what 'the electorate' or the 'working class' think, given the 2010 and 2015 election results and the fact that they have fewer organic links to ordinary people than Labour Party members do. It is very convenient for professional politicians to have a 'silent majority' which they can claim to represent. However, when you avoid accountability to people for five years at a time and rely on 'lesser-evilism' to win elections, then you can't really claim to be representing the disadvantaged. <br /><br />Igor Belanovnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-29092776550561435442016-07-18T12:24:05.292+01:002016-07-18T12:24:05.292+01:00In response to Peronal note 2:
Yes it has been ex...In response to Peronal note 2:<br /><br />Yes it has been exhausting but don't give up Phil. The coup has been an exercise in the politics of demoralization, hence the unconstitutional vote of confidence, the orchestrated resignations and the relentless smear campaigns. It's hard to stay hopeful in the face of such low and hostile tactics, but it's necessary. The PLP are trying to kill hope, we have to resist.Paul Ewarthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00057355765883155749noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-65816674894281422462016-07-18T10:48:02.740+01:002016-07-18T10:48:02.740+01:00Nothing says more about the bankruptcy of the anti...Nothing says more about the bankruptcy of the anti-Corbyn group than their repeated invocations of 'entryism' and 'the Trots we got rid of in the 80s'. Yes, Militant and Socialist Organiser still exist (in different forms), but even at their height they could never have taken over CLPs <b>by weight of numbers</b>. These days, groups like those are a shadow of their former selves; the combined strength of British Trotskyism (defined generously, including Left Unity and the AGS) probably tops out at 5,000, a.k.a. approximately the number of people who joined the Labour Party every day in the last month. When groups do 'dissolve into' the LP these days, they do it so as to be where the action is (and where the new recruits are). Something big is happening, and Corbyn's opponents are Mr Jones 170 times over.<br /><br />Personal note 1: about the atomisation & recomposition of the Labour movement. Raymond Williams shaped my political views; when I graduated I was entirely certain of two things, that I was a Marxist and that I was a Labour voter. Joining the party briefly looked like a good idea - I had high hopes of the Kinnock/Hattersley leadership - but then Kinnock embarked on his long Mandelsonian march to the Right (remember "Meet the challenge, make the change" - the song, that is?) and the moment passed. So I was in a very uncomfortable position - feeling loyalty to a movement that seemed to be going in the wrong direction - for a very long time. (Needless to say, I was never sold on Blair.) 33 years(!) after I'd first toyed with joining the party, Miliband's 'primary-style' reforms gave Labour sympathisers a voice in the leadership election; I voted for Corbyn and promised myself that I'd sign up properly if we got a good result (I never expected him to actually win). So I've joined, and after a couple of months of lingering on the threshold I've started going to party socials & ward meetings; I've even been out on the knocker.<br /><br />So I was part of the atomisation process & now I'm part of the recomposition; it feels good. I don't know what proportion of the recent membership surge is people like me, but I'm pretty sure it's substantial. At our ward meetings, the membership secretary reads out separate figures for new and returning members. But it takes time - months of getting up the courage to go to meetings, months growing into years of going to meetings, getting to know people, talking in the pub... It takes time for a social subject to constitute itself, and we're nowhere near there yet. Which, presumably, is why the Right has moved now. The single most depressing thing that's happened recently (in a strong field) is the announcement that CLP meetings would be banned during the election. It's as if they just want us to piss off all over again.<br /><br />Personal note 2: I don't know about you, Phil, but I'm <b>knackered</b> - mentally as well as physically. Three weeks of bad news on bad news, three weeks of solid blogging & tweeting, three weeks of strenuous & sometimes bitter argument with people I'd thought of as friends and allies... I feel like I did when I'd just finished marking, and I can barely look at Twitter without starting to panic. If the news isn't going to let up, we're all going to have to give serious thought to self-care.Philhttp://gapingsilence.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-14662590889646048872016-07-18T08:56:22.417+01:002016-07-18T08:56:22.417+01:00An excellent piece. I'd just like add a couple...<br />An excellent piece. I'd just like add a couple of thoughts:<br /><br />No discussion of Tory policy is complete without reference to electoral strategy. By promoting policies such as the Right to Buy and the shareholder society Thatcherism succeeded in transforming the way we talk and think about the world. She created a new capitalist realism in which there really was no alternative (discursively) to actually existing capitalism. It was a form of gerrymandering (literally in some cases - Shirley Porter) that colonized minds:if everyone could become a property owner or a a shareholder, then everyone would see that their best interests were served by the Conservatives. If everyone became a small businessman or woman, then they'd be inveigled into the world of accountants and tax avoidance. This was the assault on collectivism that took place at a subconscious level, a level that was made concrete by the end of actually existing socialism and the associated internalizing of the end of history thesis. <br /><br />But that world is over. Neoliberalism as a form of common sense hit the buffers in 2008. The world changed and we are still working through the consequences as established interests seek to preserve the gains made during the last 40 years by virtue of a scorched earth policy (there will be nothing left to privatize). The new politics, as you allude to, are the politics of the interregnum, during which morbid symptoms appears as the old is yet to die and the new struggles to be born. That is why today's battles are so important, as you rightly note. It has nothing to do with personalities and everything to do with whether we are ready to allow the new to be born, or whether we allow a zombie neoliberalism to close down all alternatives. <br /><br />P.S. Peter Hitchens wrote an visceral piece on his sense of disaffection and betrayal. He claims that the last 30+ years have been a mistake and that he was a dupe. Paul Ewarthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00057355765883155749noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-72899746230099411572016-07-18T07:09:54.654+01:002016-07-18T07:09:54.654+01:00Ah, so you've embraced the "we'll los...Ah, so you've embraced the "we'll lose in 2020 anyway" stance. From what I've read, few of the £3 "cliicktavists" are getting involved at a constituency level - they're much the same people that sign change.org petitions and the like during their lunch breaks. On the contrary, I would suggest falling for the myth of the surge, masks the very phenomenon demonstrated loudly and clearly by Brexit. The thousands supporting Jeremy are not the same people who voted for Brexit, who are the very people you have eloquently explained have become alienated from the PLP. The combined readership of the Guardian and Independent does not win over an electorate 40 million strong, and I'm afraid you are naive (although I do not think you actually are, I think you understand the facts very well) to believe that the JC surge represents any kind of future success: it does not travel outside London or the metropolitan areas, like the referendum vote. It does not swing voters. <br /><br />But this is about the "soul" of Labour, right - by JC's Labour is not a Labour Party, it is a Left party, a party of bourgeois values that is completely out of touch with the values of the class it was created to represent. It is a "do as we say, we know what is good for you" party, not a party that expresses the anxieties and aspirations of the great majority of disempowered people of this country, who want a good job, good pay, a nice TV and a decent holiday, the sort of people that are proud of their national identity, and deep-down the vast majority of the muesli-munching new Labour supporters think of as "chavs". <br /><br />That's why this is wishful thinking, because like it or not, this is a democracy, and it is the chavs - or the proles - who have a vote, and they may lack consciousness, etc, etc (or they may not think they way that you, their "betters" think they should) but they will see right through JC's Labour, and its successors, and will vote for parties of the centre, even if these parties deprive them of their opportunities, because they will understand them better, and better meet their aspirations. And that is the tragedy of Labour - they have just handed that ground to the Tories, and the new Labour supporters, comfortable in their bourgeois bubbles, couldn't give a toss. Speedynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-31353444943801211122016-07-18T06:30:44.150+01:002016-07-18T06:30:44.150+01:00Well, that was worth waiting for. Excellent analys...Well, that was worth waiting for. Excellent analysis.Kenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03493440163559858462noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-20130769682030906002016-07-18T00:52:17.673+01:002016-07-18T00:52:17.673+01:00The SNP have been in Government for 10 years and h...The SNP have been in Government for 10 years and have basically misgoverned as they concentrated on constitutional matters, a Parti Quebecois scenario is in the offing but that is further down the line. <br />Unfortunately Corbyn and his supporters are as far removed from the former Labour Party base support as the PLP is. Both sides offering a top down option only. Labour as we know it will not return, I live in a working class community that was 100% NUM 20 years ago and is now 75% self employed 25% unemployed or inactive in the market for other reasons. I am on state pension. Plus Corbyn is not really rated by a working class that would rather ignore politics. The Unions that support him are mainly reliant on the State or Local Government for employment, and the PCS is really middle class, those of us who have been mangled by the Benefits system see them as the enemy, sanction monkeys. I do not see any form of working class unity soon. The private sector workers have no time for Unions and Politics, rejecting both. Well I think I'll have a nightcap and to bed. One thing, there will be more fighting in the streets, without aim, why shouldn't they grab a little of the action, of course Labour will condemn it and the working class kids aren't too big to prosecute.jim mcleannoreply@blogger.com