A reasonably-new Conservative government lurches to the right. The defeated Labour Party elects its most left-wing leader in a generation. There is a new sense of opportunity in the party as the centre-ground seems to be opening up. At conference the leader’s uplifting speech ends “Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government”…
That was David Steel in 1981, when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and Michael Foot the leader of the Labour party. The excitement was real, but it didn’t happen. Our actual breakthrough waited until “New Labour” was electable and people were no longer frightened into voting Tory.
Pragmatism says we should wait to see who Labour elects, and what the actual effects are before getting too excited or worried. But thinking about the prospect of a Jeremy Corbyn victory could help us in our journey. I’ll offer two thoughts as starters:
- We plan for the sort of resurgence that would mean we are seen as the natural alternative to the Tories. That may sound wildly optimistic: but early in a parliament might be a very good time to ask what our route to this place looks like, and it avoids turning a temporary electoral setback in May into something that bounces us out of being a serious party of government.
- We explore being radically centrist — rather than mid way between Labour and Conservative — and push that a lot further. The language of “right” and “left” is rooted in a class struggle formed in another age. I think this language is breaking down, which is one of the reasons for failing to adequately diagnose and therefore tackle growing wealth inequality. It makes sense of Labour voting with the Tories to reduce tax credits, or traditional Labour voters I’ve encountered while canvassing who talk of people on benefits with a prejudice worthy of Victorian ideas of the “undeserving” poor. Yet the preamble to the Liberal Democrat constitution offers something very different: we exist “to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.” Not being enslaved by poverty offers something far removed from class warfare, which feels very contemporary and full of possibility. It is also well outside the familiar Labour/Tory left/right divisions.
I am presenting these as two alternatives. Actually they work together rather well, enabling Labour’s struggles to give us the space to rethink.
Another twist is the way Liberal Democrat peers have been stepping into the breach so strong Liberal Democrat voices in parliament are wider in diversity and number than our present cohort of MPs. This means we have a strong parliamentary voice outside the simple scale from Commons Tory to Commons Labour parties. Although we argue for an elected upper house, the present compromise has the echo of something really important happening just off the Commons stage — a reminder that we are different but not gone.
There are some rich possibilities in thinking this through now, regardless of who Labour elect, as we find our way with a Labour party divided by his campaign and a Tory party divided over Europe.
By accident, Jeremy Corbyn might just help us shift the focus from “fightback” and “recovery from bruising” to “being the Liberal heart of Britain”.
* Mark Argent was the Liberal Democrat candidate for Huntingdon in the 2019 and 2024 General Elections.
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165 Comments
Its all very well speculating about what a Labour party will be like/do after the leadership election, but whatever the result, I think that the Lib Dems should take this opportunity of being in opposition to stand up for what it thinks is right, rather than being motivated by potential political gains from opportunities given by other parties. The disarray that Labour are in at the moment, and the fact that the Tories are in government alone with very divisive issues lining up to be voted on is political opportunity enough.
If Jeremey Corbyn’s success should indicate anything to us as Lib Dems, it is the appetite there is for someone who has principles and stands up for them, even against the workings of the party. This is the Liberal Democrat forte! And now that we are not in government, there is much less chance of the charge of hypocrisy being labelled against us (although memories of the coalition mistakes will fade slowly in many cases). I’m just glad that Tim is the leader because he can get the Liberal Democrat message and values across well, and is not as tainted with the broken promises of the coalition as Norman was: whether that was fair or not fair for Norman is irrelevant on the national scale.
Mark
A historical inaccuracy has crept into your article.
Political terms Left and Right are NOT rooted in class struggle it goes back earlier than that.
The political terms Right and Left were first used during the French Revolution (1789–99), and referred to where politicians sat in the French parliament; those who sat to the right of the chair of the parliamentary president were broadly supportive of the institutions of the monarchist Ancien Régime.
So in those terms Jeremy Corbyn could be easily identified as being on the left along with all Liberal Democrats who are signed up to the beliefs set out in our party constitution.
A logical Liberal Democrat response to Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader of the Labour Party might be to create an entirely new atmosphere in UK politics.
It might herald the beginning of a politics in the UK where parties are accountable to their members rather than slavishly following the fads and whims of the media and the Westminster Bubblers.
Well, here are some suggestions:
– It would probably mean the Tories would get a realistic chance of a second majority term, unless the EU referendum is a blood bath
– It will mean we will have to spend a lot of time trying to contest the argument that Cameron-Osbourneism represents orthodoxy now, and anything contra to that is ‘loony left’
– Any time our MPs vote with Corbyn (whom we have some things accidentally in common with) we will have to put up with slurs and insults
– We will need prominent ex-Coalitionists like Lamb, Carmichael, Clegg to remain within the tent and put over our position to those fearful of Labour in ways that appeal to the centre and centre-right without abandoning our position on the centre / centre-left, otherwise the Tories will turn on us with ‘don’t vote LibDem, they’ll let Corbyn in’.
– Now is the moment to attack the Tories, not Labour – emphasising how far Cameron has moved from the Coalition’s ground, from the legacy of One-Nation Toryism. If we don’t make the message that the Tories are far-right ring now, they will try to eject Farron – vulnerable to the untrue charge of being a leftish oppositionist – from the centre-ground.
– We need to come up with a way to hold the centre-ground that is not Labour’s way of being aggressive and divisive about those on benefits and immigration, or voting for the cruelty of the Tory proposals.
– In a hung parliament situation, the Left could be even more split than in 2015. We will have to plan hard for how to manage that, and how to not fight another election campaign on the basis of ‘we will /won’t do this / that deal with that party’
– We should try to avoid fantasising about another SDP. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t it’s a red herring and a waste of time. But anyway, remember that Roy Jenkins liked the Liberals instinctively from before the split. I cannot see many Blairites who do other than despise us. Kendall and Farron sharing a platform? On what?
– We may also need to prepare for another Scottish referendum as the SNP could become impregnable if there is a split in Labour. All these referenda cost money…
And Rule One: if we spend too much time readying ourselves to fight Corbyn and Cooper or Burnham wins, we look very silly indeed (my money’s on Cooper). Don’t trust the polls too much.
There is a reasonably convincing analysis of why that poll could be badly wrong here: http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2015/07/22/sorry-that-labour-leadership-poll-is-nonsense-jeremy-corbyn-is-going-to-finish-fourth/
However the main conclusion would be that the Labour leadership election is very hard to call by polling and the reasons why £3 supporters are signing up to vote are not clear. Possibly to vote for Corbyn? I think the balance of probability would be Burnham, or possibly Cooper. Those will present different sorts of opportunity.
I think Mark is very keen to be seen as right of labour… Hence “radical centre”. However my view is that we should simply refuse ever to categorise ourselves on the left-right spectrum. Just say “other parties may lurch around in this one-dimensional world but we test policies by our basic principles” Then cite appropriate words from the preamble, as Mark does.
I think what the rise of Corbyn HAS shown is that many people like a politician who sticks to his/her principles. Nicola Sturgeon was seen as the same light, and personally I think that despite her “anti-austerity” programme, if she had been the Labour leader they would not have lost the election (a draw, most probably). In the debates she was widely seen as the most straightforward of all the Leaders, including in England, in contrast to Milibands negative popularity rating that just meant that people did not trust him. Hence the potential LAB-SNP coalition was seen as one that would be led by the SNP, not Labour. If the leaders had been reversed the English would not have been so scared of it.
Burnham and Cooper have shown every sign that they will let the Tories set the agenda for them, and that the slightest tinge of redness in their policies will cause an instant rethink. That is our opportunity. We should not be afraid to adopt a “socialist” policy like collective ownership of a company if it is right, combined with a “Tory” policy of helping small business and entrepreneurship. These things are not incompatible! Both policies empower people, which is OUR philosophy! (ctd)
Part 2:
One of the big problems for us in coalition was that we were seen to have compromised our principles on a number of issues (it does not really matter what we think of it, that was the perception). Of course some of that was necessary in government… But for the time being no-one believes we are a potential party of government. We are currently an insurgent Party and have to build an identifiable and people-focussed philosophy that we stick to. I think Tim is the person to do that!
Meanwhile the good news is that we have moved back into third place in the Ipsos-Mori national poll, and have seen our vote go up in every local by-election where we put up a candidate last night! Green shoots, perhaps?
The counter view is that the Labour Party is not about to disappear, its MPs will still be there; it will automatically be in the media eye. A Corbyn leadership will prolong the depiction of the Liberal Democrats ans treacherous, untrustworthy and Tory appeasers. I think the constant attacks on Lib Dems, with rather less attention on the Conservatives and very little in terms of constructive proposals was actually very harmful for Labour. A more pragmatic leadership would have to put all this behind it.
A perception that feared the prospect of Labour in government, particularly in association with SNP, has often been cited as a reason why further votes turned away from us in the last week. In general we have done better electorally when Labour has been perceived as more electable. In this respect a Corbyn win would not help.
In reality I do think the chances of a Corbyn win are very slim, but if he did win he would not survive to 2020. I do not think he has the ability to lead. The focus on Labour’s travails could have some benefits for us, but also the disadvantage of making it more difficult for us to attract media attention.
Matt Bristol – Although I said that now is the time to focus on what the Lib Dems stand for, and not concentrate on the other parties, I can’t but help agree with what you say. I suppose you’re just confirming Mark’s main argument, that we need to focus on the Tories, as Labour seem to be doing a pretty good job of self-destructing without any help. That may not be the case in a couple of years if they go for Burnham or Cooper, but for now that seems a sensible approach.
On the deja-SDP issue, I would avoid fantasizing at all costs, as the last thing the Lib Dems need is a Blairite strain who see virtue in having no hard-set values.
The lesson from this (and the SNP, and, sadly UKIP and us) is that the public want politicians who believe in something. They say and do things in line with what they believe. Currently the ‘Blairite’ side seem not to believe in anything except power.
Now of course the coalition made us percieved as on the wrong side of that- but I believe as it becomes clearer what the Tories would have got on without us our credibility builds.
Just stand up and be counted when it matters. Pragmatic agreements can occur- but not without values being stated. eg (long ago now- I would support same sex marriage but meanwhile support civil partnership as a step along the way).
Andrew:
I found the poll. It puts us on 9%, so not really a change, but that UKIP had fallen back to 8%, but as you mentioned earlier, we cannot put too much credence on the polls.
In some ways our reduction to 8 MPs has set us free to be more radical & much more flexible just when we will need to be light on our feet. Right now Corbyn seems the most likely winner, by a small margin, he has been in the lead in all 3 polls so far & in the nominations from Local Labour Branches. One quite possible result is a breakaway by Blairite or Blue Labour MPs & Councillors.
A large breakaway might set up a new party, a smaller one might simply seek to join The Libdems. A group of 9 MPs might think they could simply take us over, not understanding how we operate. Any defectors should be welcomed with big hugs, even if we doubt the depth of their conversion. We shoudnt worry about takeover because our values are stronger than theirs.
Incidentally, 2 of the last 3 polls put us ahead of UKIP, a big shift in less than 3 months.
Labour like the Tories are two parties in one. I agree with the second bullet point. ‘Strong Economy and a Fair Society’.
I think Corbyn is good on ‘Fair Society’ but he seems to want the soft option of reducing the deficit purely from Growth, which is irresponsible. The unspoken message is that to have good public services, you have to have higher taxes. A big sell!
Brother Number One (formerly known as Jeremy Corbyn) will astound the nation by handling all major portfolios himself, as well as finding lots of time to tour the nation’s factories and farms to meet the workers and point at things.
Unfortunately being the centre party is not enough. You also need to be considered able to win in a FPTP system and you have to be trusted to do what you say you will. After a five year coalition with several pledges torn up and no electoral reform to show for it, don’t bank on centrists like me voting Lib Dem!
“Not being enslaved by poverty” is a good start, but it does not lead on to full equality because many people are broadly satisfied with what they have, while others are permanently dissatisfied.
Just look at the size of the yachts moored in Moaco for the F1 Grand Prix, while on the racetrack the Chairman of a team with two expert drivers is telling them that whoever comes second is “the first of the losers”.
Unlike First-Past-The-Post Formula 1 does have something for second. There are points all the way down to tenth, with money from sponsors attached to results.
We should forget about Jeremy Corbyn. Let the Labour Party sort out their own problems. None of their candidates is going to withdraw. They intend to wait for the results of the preferential voting.
Peter Kellner, President of YouGov, used his article in the print editions of The Times to attach a huge cautionary flag, for all the usual reasons, it is only one poll, it is only halfway through the race, etcetera. He is right.
What Liberal Democrats should do is to listen to our own leader. Labour is an authoritarian party. The SNP are an authoritarian party. The Tories are authoritarian AND in government.
We need to take the opportunities that arise and win elections.
Most of the early ones will be in local government.
Some momentum would help us for the bigger elections of May 2016 in Scotland, Wales and London with their more proportional electoral systems.
Our friends in Northern Ireland already have STV.
Let’s also wish them well.
http://allianceparty.org/
Whether he wins or loses the Labour Party is going to be in turmoil for some time to come. Let’s not overlook that recently Tim Farron looked good by opposing the Tory cuts to welfare whilst Labour could not make up its mind. So if Labour tag to the right then they are also in trouble.
The prospects of the Blairites splitting from Labour if Jeremy Corbyn wins is not complete fantasy, some are openly talking about it
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/23/jeremy-corbyn-win-could-cause-sdp-style-labour-split-says-donor
Like in ’83 I fear that an unelectable Labour party is liability rather than an asset to us.
You’d think that if both Tories and Labour lurch to the extremes then there is vast ripe centre ground for us, and to a degree there is, but fear still works against us. Few are going to fear both Tories and Labour in equal measure, and the way fear works is that it drives people to embrace what seems the most likely opposition to that fear. We thrive when there is less fear about, more hope and more reason. (And we shouldn’t forget that fear can work more directly against us too – fear that we are soft on crime or soft on defence or soft on immigration. Unfounded fear in my view, but we don’t always do ourselves favours.)
Jeremy Corbyn does appear to be Michael Foot all over again, and he did no good to anyone but the Tories. Blair’s intevention I thought was telling – he didn’t say go for what will win rather than what you believe. He said try to believe in stuff that isn’t quite so mad. Tragically it appears that you do need to believe some bilge to be elected Labour leader. Tony overcame that with an overwhelming messianic sense of hope. No sign of than now.
Martin,
I prefer the turnout-weighted (ie headline) version of the Ipsos-Mori poll, which puts us on 10%! However with UKIP on 9% and the Greens on 8% our 3rd place is far from solid…
Joe,
I really hope that we can enjoy the “liability” of 25.4% of the popular vote in 2020, as we did in 1983!
Andrew is right, polling over 25% is better than 8% – did I really have to write that! If Labour splits again, and it is a big if, we can expect some people to take refuge in our ranks but the circumstances are very different from the mid 80’s. I cannot see a big breakaway and there is no talk of creating a new party that can gain mass public opinion appeal as the SDP did – interestingly up until they published their first policy paper.
My point in commenting is that I do not believe our success is determined by Labour’s popularity rating. Just as we made a big leap forward in 1997 when Labour were at their most popular in recent decades, a couple of per cent more in 1983 and we would have overtaken Labour in the popular vote, a few per cent more and seats would have started falling to us like leaves in Autumn.
Oh, and if we do see defections from Labour should Corbyn win can we draw the line at Polly Toynbee if she suddenly decides her future is with us. Once bitten as they say.
James Sandbach – what I mean about ‘fantasising’ is a split in the Labour Party is not practical politics until well after September, and even if it does happen (which would probably not be until 2016 or 2017, after many twists and urns) it will not be the early 80s all over again where we can re-role-play the Alliance era, it will be a new and risky scenario with new actors on a new basis.
If people in the Labour Party are talking about it now, it is that they are trying to use the threat of it to win the leadership election.
It is not a fact, it has not happened, it is a hypothetical.
We need to spend the next 6 months primarily talking about who we are, and about how the Tories are taking their policies into overdrive and what that will do to practical choice and personal power for those on lower and middle incomes, how that will de-nude and disempower the public services and those who work in them, and how it is a lie that they are continuing the work of the past 5 years..
Joe Otten:
Like Michael Foot! Michael Foot had intellect, was a respected writer and was a child of the thirties. Corbyn meanwhile appeared got caught up in late sixties student politics and been stuck in a time warp. If Labour did present a leader with real intellect, it would be a real problem for us.
There is confusion here between the public and the Labour membership perceptions. I do not think the general public will be moved at all by how Corbyn has stuck with his ‘principles’ (are they really that well defined), most people would be rather mystified at his appearance and if they have long memories, wonder where he has been since the mid eighties. Otherwise I agree, a wholly unelectable Labour Party would cause us at least as much difficulties as opportunities at this stage.
Andrew:
It would be better if you gave links, the 9% was from ipso mori’s trends over several years, let’s hope we can get back in the teens at least.
In actual fact if you plot Liberal/Alliance/Lib Dem vote against Labour vote from 1974 to 2010 (ie. in the years when we exceeded 10%), there is a clear negative correlation. The worse Labour did, the better we did.
If you plot our vote against Tory there is no correlation. Our best % was in 1983, when the Tories got 42.4%, and our worst performance in 1979, when they got 43.9%
Some have suggested our performance may be related to the gap between the other two – that graph shows no correlation either.
So we do better when Labour do worse – until 2015, when on my graph we should have got over 20%… The lessons of coalition….
Martin,
This is always a good link to opinion polls: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/
Within the headline story is a link to the detailed tables if you want. (which are on the Ipsos Mori website and can be found directly)
Political betting often posts them a bit more quickly than Uk polling report – a tweet about this poll was in the lists of tweets on the Lib Dem Voice site last night
Adrian,
I agree entirely about Polly Toynbee! If ever there was a poisoned chalice!
Talking of any Labour split is fantasy. Whilst the Labour Party can still win between 2 and 300 seats its MPs will hold together. You might get one or two defections, but nothing wholesale.
The death of the Labour Party will only come when they reach the FPTP tipping point.
Some of the comments about Jeremy Corbyn in this thread seem to owe little to reality and much more to the Tony Blair Book of Smears.
What is it about a grammar school boy from Chppenham, now in his mid-sixties, that gets people reaching for their smelling salts as they suffer an attack of the vapours?
Anyone who is genuinely interested could do worse than read this wiki biography of him —
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Corbyn
Seems like a reasonable bloke to me. His record on expenses is exemplary. His record within the commons is acknowledged by people of all parties. He is serious minded, polite amd principled.
In many of the causes he has taken up over the years he has shared the views of such dangerous revolutionaries as Ming Campbell, Charles Kennedy, Shirley Williams and Norman Lamb.
In fact compared to Polly Toynbee he is a classical Liberal. 🙂
Matt, I certainly don’t think it’s possible top re-run the narrative of the 80s as circumstances and actors are different. I do however want to see non-conservative Government and greater equality again in my lifetime, with liberals as the driving catalyst and agents for new ideas, campaigns and community politics. Experience suggests that the parliamentary forces of conservatism can only be beaten under FPTP at the ballot box if progressives get together in a broader pluralist movement for change with an attractive, common and credible platform and narrative that all strands of progressive thought and campaigning (from moderates to radicals) can buy into…an reforming alternative to the tories that can offer competence as well as change, justice and sense of national political renewal. A Labour split may be hypothetical at the moment, but part of our Party’s mission historically has been to push for pluralism, realignment and converting others to electoral reform as the basis for a new politics, so we should be alive to strategic opportunities. I agree we should primarily be talking about who we are, and about how awful the Tories (or rather the impact of their policies) are , but we’re such small fry on the political stage at the moment that we also need to open to conversations with others to achieve our goals.
Could I be allowed to add to my previous comment to point out that Jeremy Corbyn is nothing at all like Michael Foot. see —
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Foot
Michael Foot came from a background akin to Liberal Party Royalty. His father was Isaac Foot the Liberal MP and something of a Liberal Party legend.
Descriptions of Michael Foot’s brothers read like a five aside team of the English political establishment.
Michael Foot went to a Quaker non-state school, worked for the Beaverbrook newspaper empire (the 1950s equivalent of working for Murdoch today) havimg entered politics on the far left in the 1930s.
Jeremy Corbyn’s family background is very different and his time doing Voluntary Service Overseas and then working for NUPE in the 1970s cold not have been more different from the Hampstead literary set and glitterati that Foot was at home with.
People who misremember the politics of the early 1980s might like to check out the tabloid coverage of Michael Foot and Peter Tatchell at the time of the Bermondsey by-election and then reconsider.
Al
The link above to Labour Uncut does not prove or disprove very much. Their editor thinks that Corbyn will come fourth, but did not prove it statistically, and, of course, there is a long way to go to Labour’s announcement on 12/9/2015. The comments on their blog disagree strongly,, and there are, of course, regional variations.
We should get on with our own business and leave Labour to do theirs.
James, I agree with all that, but we need to be open to those conversations when and if they happen, and we do not need to be seen to be prematurely speculating about turning a crisis in the Labour Party to our own advantage.
@John Tilley it’s not about Corbyn’s actual resemblance to Foot, but his symbolic resemblance to Foot.
As to 60-something left-wing grammar school boys and their effects on people I couldn’t possible comment!
@ Richard Underhill. The mistake in the Labour List article is that it confuses Labour membership with the Labour electorate. As far as I can find out the electorate also includes about 10,000 £3 voters & around 50,000 Trades Union affiliates, mostly from Unite. These 2 groups seem to be breaking by about 2:1 for Corbyn & their numbers could well increase further. According to Labour Lists own poll, its readers are going for Corbyn by 3:1, with Burnham last.
I dont think its impossible that Corbyn could win in the 1st round.
Don’t underestimate the popular appeal of Jeremy Corbyn – and don’t assume he is some sort of crazed extremist. He gets a response from folk fed up with the small ‘c’ conservatism in the modern Labour Party – and unimpressed with the three flip flopping nonentities he is up against. He is seen to be sincere and a man of principle who means what he says. His anti-austerity message and opposition to neo-con economics ought to have resonance with those in our party who still believe in Keynesian solutions and the role of the state (national and local) to secure social justice.
It’s no surprise every time that pursuer of dollars Tony Blair opens his mouth, Corbyn’s support rises. As someone who had to undergo a transplant …. my view of Blair’s sensitivity is unprintable on a polite board such as this.
North of the border I witnessed the SNP (nationalism and trolls aside) capture a body of radical anti-austerity opinion that ought to have been our traditional ground of radical liberal principle. Charlie Kennedy out-radicalised Labour over ten years ago. I hope Tim can revive things now…..there is a vacuum waiting to be filled.
PS. If anyone is prepared to pop up with $ 55,000 for a half hour spot I’m open to offers. Sic transit gloria !!
On Jeremy Corbyn:
What Jeremy Corbyn is proposing today is not particularly radical or left-wing by historical standards. For instance, he is calling for two industries to be re-nationalised. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Labour Party mainstream was calling for the “commanding heights” of the economy to be nationalised, while the huge bulk of activists and members were in favour of nationalising everything (the implementation of Clause 4).
Where Jeremy Corbyn is a plus for Labour is that he is a forthright man who makes clear statements of policy that attract a wide measure of support on the left, while his opponents lack any clear ideological position and come across as colourless personalities.
Where Jeremy Corbyn is a huge minus for Labour is that in his many years in politics he has said and done a lot of silly things (particularly in connection with Northern Ireland) which the media are bound to throw back at him with compound interest.
Labour probably would be crazy to elect Mr Corbyn. But what a choice for any political party to have to make!
Contrast Farron versus Lamb.
If one looks back to the Alliance policies in 1981-83 and in particular those of the SDP one would find a party that had policies of the 1970’s – Keynesian economic policies with a statutory price and incomes policy and a commitment to full employment, membership of the EEC, NATO and being a nuclear power. I have not spend any time studying Jeremy Corbyn’s policies and discovering if he wishes to nationalise the banks, the largest 200 companies in the UK and having a government that controls the economic output of the country as the Labour Party did in 1983.
If the Labour Party moves to the far left then we should expect our support to increase. If it moves only leftward maybe it could challenge the economic orthodoxy.
David Raw
I agree with you, Corbyn is easily the most convincing of the four candidates, and it is no wonder he is popular with Labour members. Many of his policy positions are also quite sensible (while some are not).
However I don’t think he is as charismatic as Sturgeon (for example) and I think he will be easily demonised (mostly unfairly) by the Tory Press, so I doubt if he would increase the Labour % much above current levels, especially if the right wing of the labour Party continues to fight him.
re. Tony Blair: I agree! If he had any sense he would keep well away! Nick Clegg was sensible enough not to get involved in our Leadership contest
The reason that Labour were never going to win the 2015 General Election was that they didn’t use their period in opposition to work out what the party was for, other than not being the Conservative Party. Burnham and Cooper are still not articulating a reason for the Labour Party to exist, while Kendall seems to think it should be be Conservative Party! Is it any wonder, then, that as Corbyn is presenting a clear vision of what the Labour Party could be that the activists (many of whom, like ours, tend to be left of the party’s centre) are enthused? And even if he makes the Labour Party unelectable, perhaps he could reinvigorate political debate in this country, and stimulate a revival of progressive activism. I would like to see us being part of that sort of movement – and OK, maybe I’m stuck in a sixties timewarp as well!
If Corbyn wins – which I doubt – it could turn out to be good for Labour and bad for everyone else. Within a year or two the party would be in turmoil, with them desperately looking around for someone else. Then it could well be welcome home David Miliband, who is head and shoulders above the current 4 contenders. He’s a very talented guy who could well take votes from both the Tories and LibDems.
@ David Raw,
I agree with you.
The press will try to make mincemeat of Corbyn, but the public seem sick of identikit politicians. Media commenters may find that they run into the same problems that they ran into when they tried to undermine Nigel Farage. Pointing out some of UKIP’s more ‘bonkers’ policies seemed to have done him no harm with the electorate.
Corbyn offers something different, he is a man who clearly lives by his principles. Some of his beliefs, ( I haven’t followed all that he stands for, but he is interesting enough to make me want to know more), don’t seem a million miles from what some Liberal Democrats used to think. No wonder he is attracting the young.
Blairism was successful, but it was of its time, and that time has gone. Politicians seem slow to recognise this.
I am sorry to be really controversial, but as he cycles to his allotment, Jeremy Corbyn even looks like a Liberal circa 1980.
Sic transit gloria mundi. Yes indeed. Never mind underestimating Jeremy Corbyn. Don’t underestimate the public at large (that includes Labour electorate). The public knows that ‘broadly speaking’ the system is not working. The austerity is not working, printin’ money is not working, paying huge amounts in tax cuts to the wealthy is not working … and the ‘common wisdom’ is not working either. “Thus passes the glory of the world” and wisdom of the past is today folly: Tsipras robbed the Greeks of 67 billion Euros – and is immensely popular. Putin has 80% of approval rating despite the fact that he put additional 25% into penury (http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/putin-era-prosperity-fades-as-more-russians-slip-into-poverty/523422.html)- Why? Because in spite of their actual dire performance, they offer hope. Jeremy Corbyn offers hope that something will change.
Joe Otten is bang on about how fear can push people to the extremes. People need to feel “safe” to take a risk for a smaller party, especially if it is offering coalition with both.
I do not feel as strongly as others that the Conservatives are lurching to the right. Osborne and Cameron are too smart to do this. As Simon Jenkins said in the Guardian: Osborne talks a tough game on austerity, but plays a weaker one.
I still think they are on the right, but only right enough to keep their backbenches and activists satisfied.
PS, if the Tories did lurch to the right then people would start to become more afraid of them, but I don’t think they will do so massively. But we will see. I know people directly affected by this next round of cuts quite bad, whereas in the last parliament they didn’t really notice it because of the income tax cut.
I would make a few observations:
1) A number of people seem to think that, ‘principles,’ are all that matter. Sadly, politics is not a therapy session, as much as many on the left seem to want it to be. There really is no huge silent army of people out there just gagging for, ‘authentic Labour,’ (whatever that means). If you don’t believe me I suggest you look at the SWPs vote. My instinct is that Corbyn is a sure route to 20 years of CON government – much though I may wish it were otherwise. For the record, if I had a vote in that contest, I’d have no problem at all going for Andy Burham who I think would be a good leader.
2) Corbyn is probably as close to a Eurosceptic as the LAB membership will go. That could be interesting in the EU referendum, especially if Cameron goes for an IN vote.
3) I am rather suspicious of all the polls and I do think some people are getting rather carried away about Corbyn.
4) A lot of people might like, ‘politicians with principle,’ and people who are, ‘different,’ but liking them is not the same thing as voting for them. A lot of people might not like Cameron, but an awful lot of them voted for him.
5) For all the talk of Corbyn, it strike me that more seats were lost LDP to CON than LDP to LAB. Obviously the latter are important, but if (stress, if) the losses were to CON I don’t really see the Labour Party’s position as important to getting those now CON seats back.
LJP
Our vote correlates negatively with the Labour vote (until the most recent debacle)… Hence the Labour vote is important for our vote %.
If we don’t get our vote % back up to at least 15% we will not be gaining any seats from anyone. The evidence on when we gain seats is harder to read because it is much more about targeting. However, in 1983 when the Tories were on 44% we gained 5 seats from the Tories, including Yeovil. In 1987 when they were on 42% we gained 4 and lost 3 to them. But certainly, when the Tory vote plummeted in 1997 we gained a load of seats from them and made a net gain of 28 while losing 1% of our votes.
Now I may be rather different from most people but I tend to see the measure of our success as votes won rather than seats won (since that seems to be rather stochastic). If we could just get the votes won up to 30% (or if we had a proper electoral system) we would win all sorts of seats. If you offered me 17.8% and 20 seats (as we got in 2001) in 2020 I would take it now without any hesitation!
@ Little Jackie Paper,
There may not be a huge army of people gagging for authentic Labour, but there is, I would argue, a large army of people gagging for authenticity. and Labour under Corbyn might be the party to offer it.
Labour must first and foremost be a movement, one with moral values and principles that can offer a vision of a society that we would all wish to be members of. It is something that many believe the party has lost.
I agree that we vote according to self -interest, but what I don’t agree with, is that when calculating them, we vote in accordance with narrow self -interest rather than enlightened self interest. My family might have to pay higher taxes and lose out in other ways, but if that means that people don’t use food banks, have decent housing and young people have a right to a decent education, so be it. It would be a country that I felt comfortable (and safe), in.
On the EU, Cameron is playing a dangerous game. (On other matters including military interventions, ditto.) The problem with unprincipled people is that one cannot put any trust in them, they blow with the prevailing wind, whatever that is, if it is to their advantage.
When one compares how many voted for Cameron compared to those who did not, he isn’t such a ragingly popular figure. In my opinion, he just seemed the best of a bad bunch because his vision seemed less muddled than that of other parties.
I am not at all surprised that more seats were lost from LDP to Conservative. If one has some Conservative leanings, vote for the real thing, not a party happy to tinker around the edges. When it came to the Health and Social Care Act, those who opposed it, at least accepted that it had a certain (awful) coherence and end aim. The Liberal Democrat interventions just made it more of a mess.
As for the rest of the candidates, on present form, Labour will probably lose in 2015 and probably beyond. What has the party got to lose by taking a different tack?
The Liberal Democrats need to get behind the new leader and formulate some radical policies which they are prepared to fight for, (like some of those championed by Jeremy Corbyn), because a Corbyn win might well do further damage to the Liberal Democrat party. He’s the new 66 year old kid on the block.
John Tilley, Jayne et al
“I am sorry to be really controversial, but as he cycles to his allotment, Jeremy Corbyn even looks like a Liberal circa 1980.” Absolutely: Jeremy Corbyn may be as unelectable as a circa 1980 Liberal, but he has clear principles, many of them close to our party. Whereas the other three Labour leadership candidates’ campaigns look depressingly like our recent general election campaign – “we’re somewhere in the middle so you ought to vote for us”.
My feeling reading the article is that it’s considering the wrong option. It’s if Corbyn loses that there will be a fair number of liberal-minded Labour voters looking for a home with principles. Let’s build them one.
Oh – and on his allegedly terrible mistakes over Northern Ireland, was it not just that he was saying we would eventually need to talk to the IRA long before mainstream politicians admitted this (though they were of course communicating privately with the IRA).
My feeling reading the article was that it’s considering the wrong option.
Apologies for that repeated last line
There’s a huge degree of point missing here – there’s a reason why people like Jeremy Corbyn (admirable though he may be in being a rare principled politician and awkward squad member) are in the Labour Party. It’s because they’re not liberals.
The rose tinted views from some who ought to know better (that means you Tilley 😉 among others) of Corbyn is dangerous. Corbyn holds some deeply unpeasant and illiberal views and although he’s a refreshing change from the three empty vessels in the Labour leadership race a win for him would be bad for politics.
Fundamentally it would let the Tories off the hook. They would know they would win easily in 2020 and couldn’t be called to account by an ineffectual and wrong headed opposition. The Tories were easily able to take out a badly led and ineffetual Lib Dem party in 2015 – they would do the same to Labour if Corbyn wins.
Let’s be clear Michael Foot is a political and inteleectual giant in comparison with Corbyn (and the three other contenders).
Corbyn has the quality of coming across as understanding the concerns and issues faced by ordinary people. Those ordinary people do not have much left at the end of the month after their rent/essentials, are especially vulnerable to economic downturns and reductions in public spending and view any hopes of buying their own home or seeing their quality of life improve as pipedreams.
No other party really has much understanding of those people or has demonstrated much interest in their problems. UKIP arguably are closest out of the other parties, Labour have totally abandoned them, the Tories are seen as too toxic and demonstrate a coldness when faced with the impact of their policies and the Lib Dems have become a middle class pressure group focused on niche areas of little interest to those people.
Corbyn getting elected will make no difference to the Lib Dems. Their support/membership largely live in a different world. That’s why so many struggle to understand him and his appeal.
Looking at the Labour Party, it is very easy to see what happens when a party loses sight of its principles and becomes obsessed with positioning and clichéd messaging. But that is perhaps not a statement and situation to dwell on!
If Labour do split, I very strongly hope they form their own party. With a very small number of exceptions, I’m sure most would agree, those most likely to leave have long opposed democratic and decentralising reforms and are strictly managerial and usually illiberal.
I think it would be most welcome for the Labour Party to re-embrace its socialist roots. But please – no ‘Blairites/Labourites’ joining the Liberal Democrats!
Dan Falchikov – “Corbyn holds some deeply unpeasant and illiberal views ”
I’ve just read the “political views” section of Jeremy Corbyn’s wikipedia entry. There are roughly 15 topics covered, beginning with “He has campaigned strongly against tuition fees in England, the creation of academies and private finance initiative schemes” and including many international issues. I don’t agree with everything, but the general thrust is for the liberal values of freedom, equality and community, with a strong stream of internationalism. Can you give examples of important issues on which his views are “deeply unpleasant and illiberal”?
@ Dan Falchikov,
As an et al, I think that if anyone has missed a point, it is someone who belongs to a party that has lost most of its political representatives.
I find it interesting that he is compared unfavourably to an ‘a political and intellectual giant’. No point in people like me seeking power then, best leave it to the intellectual giants.
I have been reading the posts on Liberal Democrat voice since shortly after the 2010 election. Quite frankly, I don’t know what a ‘liberal’ is or is not any more, so many different views are expressed on here. All I know is that if being a Liberal means standing back whilst the strong wreak damage on the weak and vulnerable, that if it it means taking away the lifeline of people who want to change their lives but don’t know how to do it, then not voting Liberal Democrat at the last election was one on my more sensible decisions.
I lived through the 3 day week and the era of ‘Red Ted Knight and I find the demonisation of ‘Tilley’ et al, as some sort of , illiberal marxists types, laughable. How times change.
@ Sammy O’ Neil,
Stay feisty. If you do decide to leave the party, it will, in my opinion be a great loss. Why don’t you stay and fight within,( even if they don’t deserve you) . There must have been something about the party that attracted you to it rather than to other parties in the first place.
I always regarded socialism (and its extreme for communism) as philosophies that had the right idea but the wrong way of going about it – a way that controlled people and went against the individual desires of people to improve their own family situation (relative to others, because that is how in our hearts we measure ourselves).
I regard the views of socialists (that we should defend the helpless) as far preferable to other extreme (that we should ignore the helpless), exemplified for me by the writings of Ayn Rand. If Liberal philosophy goes too far it can end up there. The extremes of any philosophy tend to be really bad.
So Corbyn: He has socialist views that would have been mainstream in 1975, but are not now… I am not sure that makes them worse than today’s paradigm. History shows that these ideas have ebbed and flowed. He has an extreme “peacemonger” view of world politics. That is better than being a “warmonger”, but I prefer to judge each situation as it comes. He is a big supporter of Amnesty International (how terrible!) and wanted to see Pinochet prosecuted (how terrible!). He does not believe in austerity… I am not sure I believe in austerity either… He was the biggest rebel in the Blairite years and the most frugal MP…
Anyway, I don’t think he has any “unpleasant views” (well, I have not read his views on Israel in detail), but I don’t pretend he is a Liberal either. His instinct is to control rather than enable, but I agree that the other three want to do that more (and Blair was the arch control-freak). I don’t think he would be a very effective leader of the Labour Party, but that applies to the others (I think Cooper would do best, tbh. Despite her vacillating she does have a sense of humour 🙂 And she is a woman, which as many have pointed out is a good thing in politics)
Greek voters didn’t believe in austerity and voted accordingly. An economy that was heading in the right direction in 2014 is now on the brink of crisis as a result.
Unfortunately voters in creditor nations haven’t voted to indulge Greek disbelief in austerity out of their own pockets.
What I don’t understand (or I pretend not to understand) is why when the right indulge in populist and damaging policies, they are rightly condemned for it, but when the left do the same, it is thought to be because their hearts are in the right place and they are just reflecting the righteous anger of the common people.
seems to me the liberals did very well at the start of the Blair years, at a time the conservatives were by definition on the right, and labour was about as far to the right as it has ever been. With that background, the liberals did well with such left wing policies as the state picking up the bill for higher education.
I dont know how much apetite the public really has for left wing policies, but they brought the liberals to their peak of popularity in recent years. And then the liberals threw off their cloak and proudly announced to everyone they were centre right. And the voters left in droves.
Labour destroyed itself at the last election by repudiating its own record in government. It has to reform and unite on a clear message, as Blair managed, whatever that message might be. It isnt terribly helpful in the long run to observe that Thatcher/Major did well with a turn to the right in politics, without noting that Attlee did similarly well with a turn to the left. These things change as the decades roll by. Labour made virtually no attempt to justify any policy even vaguely left of the conservatives, so how can anyone argue what taste the public might have for this, on the basis of current results. Blair’s one definitive vote losing policy was the invasion of Iraq.
One of the Conservatives greatest achievements politically has been to silence those on the left, thereby removing any objection to even the concept of their approach to policy. Thus the debate has become centre right or right right, but did anyone ask the voters?
Notwithstanding what I just posted, Andrew above pointed out that liberal performance is inversely correlated with labour, and not correlated at all with how the conservatives do. In other words, liberal voters traditionally are not coming from conservative supporters, but from labour. That almost certainly means they are left of centre. This analysis would suggest labour under Blair managed to attract centre voters from the conservatives, and the libs managed to attract disenchanted socialists from Labour. Which perfectly explains the consequences of the 2010 coalition.
Liberal party and politicians seem to have become completley detached from their actual voters. Another thread here discussed voting rights at conference, which effectively explained that only an elite of party members ever get to contribute to policy in the way that counts, with a vote. No surprise then that such an arrangement would allow the party to become completely detached from the real views of even its own members.
Danny,
Yes, I agree, that is a valid interpretation of the data I threw into the ring….
Joe
You do seem to have rather caught the populist view (aka lies) on the Greek crisis. The Greek economy actually went into recession in the last 3 months of 2014, before Tsipras was elected, and has improved slightly since. It is unlikely that any of this has much to do with his economic policies however, which have hardly had time to have any effect. Meanwhile even the IMF has said that the deal imposed in such humiliating fashion by the EU is completely unworkable, and that the only solution is to write off Greek debt. There are many well-known economists who believe that ever-increasing austerity will never solve the Greek crisis, but will only push Greek citizens further into misery. Try this one from one of our old acquaintances, for example http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/23/deal-heaps-more-misery-greeks She may not always have shown the best personal judgement but I think she probably knows a good deal more about Greek economics than you or I. Or if you want an American Post-Keynsian view try this: http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/07/9-myths-about-the-greek-crisis-000131
I suspect that that to solve the Greek crisis we need to take a view rather more like the rebuilding of Germany after WW2 than the reparations after WW1. Feel free to compare where those policies led, both economically and then as a consequence politically…
I am afraid that summing up the Greek crisis in 4 lines of Daily Mail soundbite does you no credit Joe. Real people are suffering here in ways that we can scarcely imagine, and punishing them further for their mistakes (and those of the banks who lent them all that money in the first place) is not the solution. And whether they vote for it or not, other people such as European taxpayers are going to have to pay Greece’s bills, because rather like the student fees loans (under present policy…), they are not going to be paid by the debtors…
Turning to austerity at home – well, I am not an economist and if I were I would disagree with many other economists on this issue (whatever view I took). So I will confine my comments to say that if austerity is to be endured with social cohesion, it needs to affect all strata of society. But instead it is heaped mainly on the poor, quite a bit on the middle class with family incomes up to £80k (especially if they work in the public sector), and hardly at all on those richer than that.
Andrew: re:
Our vote correlates negatively with the Labour vote
I will have to look at the significance of that correlation and what figures you are actually using. You admit that you are more interested in votes than seats, but on the members site this table was posted about changes of government, so more related to seats obviously.
1951 – Tories take power – us down
1964/6 – Labour take power – us up
1970 – Tories take power – us down
1974 – Labour take power – us up
1979 – Tories take power – us down
1997 – Labour take power – us up
2010 – Tories/Lib Dems take power – us down
2015 – Tories take power – us down
To me this makes sense in terms of those ex Tory voters shifting to us or Labour in the more marginal seats. On this basis we are more likely to recapture seats if Labour appear more electable.
Clearly there are other elections (1983, 2005 for example) where there has not been a change of government, but we (or the Alliance) have increased votes and seats for reasons that are well known. Labour could implode, giving us, many more votes but a disappointing return in terms of MPs and no change of government.
Sorry to repeat myself but with a Corbyn victory increasingly likely it is possible some Labour MPs may want to defect to us. One obvious question is whether we push them to resign & call a By-election ? Whatever we choose will carry risks & set a precedent so it would be a good idea to think about this now when theres no pressure of time or media scrutiny. I have only just thought of the question, I certainly dont have an answer yet.
“some Labour MPs may want to defect to us”
I should think that disaffected Blairites would head straight for the Tories.
Martin,
I said what data period I was using – the data comes from Wikipedia, and I doubt if it is wrong. Obviously I included all elections in the period stated, not just ones in which power changed. Your analysis excludes 1983, which was our best election in terms of % since the rise of Labour.
If I could find a way of posting a graph into a comment, I would! It only took me 15 minutes to put the data into Excel though…
Denis Mollison: The government was talking (in secret) to the IRA in order to try to move the IRA away from violence. Jeremy Corbyn and his hard-left chums like Ken Livingstone were trying to move a future Labour government towards the Sinn Fein/IRA position on Northern Ireland. Yes, sometimes it’s necessary to talk to terrorists. But Negotiation-101 holds that when doing so, you do not uphold them as heroes, or give the impression of supporting their aims and methods. Yet that is exactly what trendy lefties like Corbyn were doing with respect to Sinn Fein/IRA. There is no evidence that Sinn Fein/IRA wanted peace on anything other than their own terms in the early 1980s, so whatever the value of public talks with them a decade later, they made absolutely no sense then. Indeed the uncritical hospitality given by the trendy left to Sinn Fein leaders may ultimately have been counter-productive, as it gave Sinn Fein/IRA the impression that there was substantial support for its aims and methods among the mainstream left, when such support was always confined to a tiny minority in the far left. This strengthened the negotiating position of Sinn Fein/IRA in the peace process, leading to the settlement we have now that gives more to terrorists than might otherwise have been necessary, and has helped create the status quo where Northern Ireland is governed by a Sinn Fein-DUP sectarian cartel.
Andrew:
Yes, but he has always been silent on left-wing Latin American dictators, most notably Castro. A necessary (but not sufficient) condition of being a liberal is to oppose all tyranny whether it be “left-wing” or “right-wing”. Corbyn gives every impression of being the sort of trendy lefty who loudly condemns right-wing regimes (such as the Pinochet regime and Apartheid South Africa) but noticeable by his absence from the barricades whenever it’s socialist excesses being exposed.
Alex Macfie – Thanks for the response. Did Corbyn really glorify Sinn Fein/IRA as heroes, and give support to their methods? That would be nasty. Whereas supporting the long term aim of a united Ireland is perfectly reasonable: possibly growing slightly more likely now with the discrediting of the Catholic dominance south of the border.
As to Castro, there’s a lot wrong with his regime, but it has to be seen in the context of a USA that has been in a bullying sulk for over 50 years because Castro overthrew the even less pleasant Batista regime.
Alex,
Well, I have not made a detailed comparison but Castro seems to have been much less repressive than Pinochet…
There are left wing dictators like Stalin who were much worse (but did win the War….). I have no idea whether Corbyn has had anything to say about Stalin…
Andrew:
I was not doubting your information. What I wondered is what you did with the information. From the sound of it you used raw data rather than the change in voter support. As I pointed out the table from the members’ site focussed only on elections where there was a change of government.
My interpretation is that Tories have often won when Labour voters have switched to us. At the last election, though; Tories benefited when Liberal Democrat voters shifted to Labour and Green. It seems that UKIP took over as the party that picked up voters without gaining seats, but it is less clear from where they were taking votes.
@ Andrew,
‘Jeremy Corbyn MP: Should the west go to war over Ukraine’.
When Jeremy Corbyn mentions the strained relationship between Russia and the Ukraine, he mentions the death of millions due to Stalin’s collectivisation programme.
I didn’t get the impression that he was a fan of Stalin.
Corbyn has a lot of policies which will be popular. If he wins (an outside chance) he might well manage to pull his party together with some unifying appointments and a fresh approach, catapulting Labour into a lead in the polls and solidifying his leadership. The Tories would probably not be too bothered. Ed Miliband also held an apparently solid mid-term lead. The Tories would just concentrate on painting Corbyn as unfit to rule, and cash in at the next election the way they usually do, by scaring everyone and using Corbyn as their chief bogeyman.
If Corbyn can gain popular approval in this way, the very worst thing the Lib Dems could do would be to sneer at everything Corbyn says and generally appear to be pale blue Tories. A much better approach would be to applaud ideas such as rail renationalisation while expressing caution against unaffordable expenditures. Pitching ourselves as the responsible centre-left could take us a long way.
Jayne, There was more to it than collectivisation, bad as that was, defining almost anyone as a ‘kulak’ and killing them.
To raise hard currency the Soviet Union exported food-grains from the Ukraine. Westerners applying ‘common sense’ deduced that the USSR had had a good harvest and had achieved a food surplus. Soviet rulers described such people as ‘useful idiots’ Bernard Shaw among them. Ukraine, the bread-basket of Russia, starved.
Soviet statistics were unreliable, produced for political purposes. The twenty million people who allegedly died in ‘the great patriotic war’ of 1941 to 1945 was actually the difference between two censuses and included millions killed in the purges.
David Allen is right in a way. I think Corbyn has some decent ideas. He’s anti-suffering. However, he still says some impractical things and if you are anti-suffering then you have to also be practical.
We should also not lose sight of the fact that there is some outright hatred on the far left. It is not just about making the world a “better” place. There is a lot of prejudice and many myths too.
I can’t resist sneering at Corbyn from time to time, but when he’s talking about things like child poverty, homelessness, then how can you sneer at that?
@ Richard Underhill,
Jeremy Corbin is not George Bernard Shaw, Richard.
I am aware of the murder of the Kulaks and if I was shown evidence that Jeremy Corbin was someone who justified or supported the likes of Stalin, I could understand the reaction that his candidature is receiving from some quarters. As Denis Mollison has already asked, what has he said or done that makes him so dangerous? I would be more than ready to revise my estimation of him if something awful came to light.
At the moment, he just seems like someone who is providing a refreshing alternative to current orthodox opinion. His greatest danger to some, seems to be that he is getting a hearing. One cannot help but be amused by the fact that his name was put forward by right wing Labourites, the stated rationale being that it would widen the debate, and now they are scared because we are having one instead of dismissing him and his political views out of hand.
@Paul Barker
“Sorry to repeat myself but with a Corbyn victory increasingly likely it is possible some Labour MPs may want to defect to us.”
No chance. Even if it happened, what an easy press attack on the Lib Dems having them taking in Labour refugees as part of the parties swing to the left under Farron. Then we’ll be the religious nuts AND left wing.
One of the polling companies did an analysis of the people they had surveyed, how they actually voted, their intentions stated, and their previous vote at the last elections. As best I could interpret it, the results said people changed sides all over the place. While parties were losing votes in one direction, they were gaining them in another.
All I can definitively say, is that reading all the comments on here about the strategy the party has had for some time of repositioning itself to the right, was rather a shock for me to discover. Other posters have commented on this who are also supporters of the old style libs. There can be absolutely no surprise that such people as myself have become wholly disenchanted with the libs, because they simply became conservative light. The evidence of the polls is that I am right, many many lib voters thought they were voting for a left wing party, and were dismayed when it turned out to be on the right.
The trend of our times is towards increasing income inequality, after a period where the reverse was true. very approximately, this equates to periods where socialist policies dominated reducing inequality, and those more recently where the right has dominated and pursued policies of increasing inequality. I am on the side of reduced inequality, even at the expense of growth. I dont believe it need sacrifice growth, in fact I believe the school of economists who say the reverse is true. What I do think is that reduced income inequality translates into a more cohesive society, and this is in itself a valuable thing to achieve.
It is a most extraordinary thing to see conservatives attacking Corbyn on the grounds he would harm the labour party if elected its leader. Such sentiment is patently false. I think they fear the left in a way they absolutely do not fear conservative light.
Martin,
Tory seats obviously depend mainly on the gap between them and Labour, so if their % stays the same and the Labour % goes down, they gain seats, as happened from 1979 to 1983. In % terms it was a big swing (10.5%) from Labour to us, but we only gained 12 seats while the Tories gained 65 (despite their vote going down by 1.5%).
As you say, my analysis is only on votes, not seats. But if we had understood targeting as we do now then in 1983 we could probably have won a good deal more Labour seats. Personally, I think that in this parliament we should concentrate on getting our vote up more than trying to gain Westminster seats
the election of corbyn will be a non event—
1
enough lab mps (?47)will trigger another election at their conference & corbyn wont get the quota of MPs to stand again
2
not enough will be willing to serve in his shadow cabinet so he may resign anyway
3
the PLP may even elect its own leader– is that against the rules???
Labour wont commit electoral suicide–once was enough in 1983
BTW ask the islington LDs wot they think of “cuddly” corbyn–when i lived there my feeling was he was a nasty piece of political work & i wasnt impressed how he & for that matter Abbott got their nominations
Personally, I thinks it unlikely Corbyn will win. But more importantly, we’re only a couple of months into this government so we don’t really know how the next few years will pan out. On paper you could draw possible analogies with 1983. However, as they say the past is another country, People do things differently there. It will depend on the economy, the fall out from the EU vote much more than on the labour leadership. Cameron won’t be standing standing, so we can’t even know how the next Tory Leader will perform.
Jayne Mansfield 25th Jul ’15 –
To be fair to Dan Falchicov he did say – “…. The Tories were easily able to take out a badly led and ineffectual Lib Dem party in 2015…”.
He is of course quite right about that and his characterisation of the other three candidates for the Labour Leadership as being “empty vessels” is so true. Does anyone know what those three each stand for other than a slightly less unpleasant form of conservatism that that served up by Cameron?
I agree with Dennis Mollison that the evidence of unpleasant views from Corbyn is a bit thin. Corbyn has been demonised by Blair and the Murdoch machine but is he really that bad? I do not entirely rule out the possibility that he holds some pleasant views. He is after all a Labour MP from North London and I have never heard him condemn the one party, one man fiefdom in Newham where a so-called directly elected Mayor seems to get away with social cleansing of council tenants whilst awarding himself an enormous pension despite the decision of the relevant scrutiny committee. Odd how the corrupt mayor for Tower Hamlets was taken to court and thrown out but the situation in Newham goes without comment.
There are still some dark and nasty corners of the Labour Party just as there are dark and nasty corners of The Conservative Cabinet that some Liberal Democrats are foolish enough to say they are proud to have been a member of.
If today it were a straight choice between Jeremy Corbyn and Danny Alexander it would be interesting to see which one would appeal most to Liberal Democrats. 🙂
I just react against the traditional UK media demonisation of anyone to the left of George W Bush and I am disappointed that some people who comment in LDV seem to have swallowed quantities of Daily Mail and regurgitate it here.
If people cannot draw a distinction between the records of Pinochet and Castro then they need to try reading a book. But then again we have people making comments in LDV who say Israel is a democracy and make no criticism of the women-hating, head-chopping tyrants of Saudi Arabia.
BTW – I should explain that Dan Falchikov lives round the corner from me and we have known each other for around 25 years. Whilst he and I do not always agree about everything he understands the importance of Liberals winning elections and it is quite possible that on Jeremy Corbyn he is right and I am wrong.
@John Tilley who wrote this:
“[They] stated that Labour must “champion the power of human beings to shape their own lives” and oppose “the tyranny of the bureaucratic state and an unrestrained free market”. They called upon Labour to reclaim liberty “as a defining ideal of left of centre politics”. The liberty they championed, through devolving power to the town hall and to the individual … and giving people the power to shape their public services and communities”
A) Burnham
B) Cooper
C) Corbyn
D) Kendall
Just to be clear, I was not trying to paint an equivalence in degree of evil between the Pinochet and Castro regimes. However, I have no truck with people who are happy to turn a blind eye to abuses by left-wing dictatorships such as that of Cuba because of either an overly romanticised ideal of their ideology, or because it feels good to stick two fingers up to the US.
Of course the long-term aim of a united Ireland is a valid one, but there are many people who support this while also unequivocally condemning paramilitary violence. Corbyn shaking hands with Sinn Fein leaders while failing to condemn the IRA’s methods meant he was effectively glorifying IRA violence.
As Tories look to move right and Labour look to move left, LibDems must look to move forward!
It is clear that labour is not going to have the collective conversation on why they got crushed in May before they elect a new leader.
There is one circumstance in which electing Corbyn would be a good thing for the Labour party in Britain….
….If he is serious about and reiterates his offer to host a new leadership election after two years in the job.
This would provide the following benefits:
1. He is a plain-talking traditional socialist more likely to stop the (UKIP) rot in Northern working class communities.
2. He is an uncompromising lefty that will perform as a glorious comfort blanket to what is a fractious party right now.
3. He will provide a two year window for his party to truly grasp what it means to transform the party into an election winning machine once again.
4. Autumn 2017 gives any new leader two years to build a prime-ministerial profile before the 2020 election campiagn kicks of in earnest.
This is what Labour should do. It would have made more sense for Alan Johnson to take this caretaker role, but Corbyn would do in a pinch.
Of course, they may choose to keep him for the general election, in which case I will begin setting my cheshire-cat grin in place now. There would be a real opportunity for the Lib-Dem’s too in this scenario!
Alex,
I think when we talk about dictators of either the right or the left we also have to bear in mind some of the disastrous attempts by the west to propagate democracy around the world. Objectively the reign of Castro in Cuba was far, far better than what is happening in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan today, or indeed in Gaza. Perhaps that is why Corbyn has not chosen to criticise Castro? he would certainly be a very long way down my list of evil dictators…
And it is perfectly legitimate for left wingers or Liberals to question why “the Land of the Free” chose to try repeatedly to assassinate Castro and bring him down, while propping up Pinochet and interfering in the democratic process in Nicaragua. Colourblindness in dictators is not restricted to leftwingers.
Thankfully the current US regime seems to have come to its senses and is currently building bridges with Cuba and Iran, while refusing very sensibly to contribute to the arms race in Ukraine. Darker forces lurk around the corner of US democracy however….
“And it is perfectly legitimate for left wingers or Liberals to question why “the Land of the Free” chose to try repeatedly to assassinate Castro and bring him down, while propping up Pinochet and interfering in the democratic process in Nicaragua.”
Feel free to ask, the answer is right there before your nose: The Cold War struggle for global dominance between two antithetical competing ideologies. Next question…
This is worth a read for the Corbyn-dismissers
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/26/jeremy-corbyn-team-shocked-momentum
Whatever else he has energised an important strand in British Politics that has been dismissed as a joke for too long. I think we forget that Corbyn’s policies are not far from those of Beveridge…
And I also think that the Thatcherite consensus on economic policy that was pursued by Gordon Brown has shown itself to be a busted flush in the crash. I see long years of hardship for most people ahead, to be honest…I am not sure that a return to State Socialism is the answer, but it is a legitimate viewpoint
TCO 26th Jul ’15 – 9:03am
I am prepared to believe that Burnham, Cooper and Kendall have “said” almost anything. What they have said does not necessarily indicate what (if anything) they really believe.
Yvette was on radio 4 this week saying that she believed in a “Stronger Economy amd a Fairer Society”. I thought I had misheard the first time but she repeated it three or four times. Perhaps she has been listening to Nick Clegg and thinks that is the way to charm the voters. If she does think that she obviously has not read through the hundreds of lost deposits of the party using that slogan in May.
Well, I should say that I am pretty sure a return to State Socialism is NOT the answer, but I am also not sure what is!
@jedibeeftrix
Ah, I understand! Sacrificing common sense, democracy and the wellbeing of millions of people for the “Great Game”
makes perfect sense….
Alex Macfie 26th Jul ’15 – 9:17am
Alex, it certaly seemed from your earlier comment that you were drawing a direct comparison between Castro and Pinochet. Otherwise what exactly did you mean by —
“[Corbyn] wanted to see Pinochet prosecuted”
Yes, but he has always been silent on left-wing Latin American dictators, most notably Castro. ”
I am neither a communist nor a socialist but I can recognise that in 50 years the general state of health and education of the average citizen of Cuba has improved very significantly indeed thanks to Castro.
Despite an economic blockade and some pretty daft economic policies when the Soviet Union held too much sway in Havana the average life expectancy of a Cuban is better than many of the major cities of the USA or parts of the UK. The average Cuban can expect to live beyond the age of 80.
The Soviet Union ceased to exist thirty years ago. We are living in 2015. Fidel Castro is an elderly, rather frail man who retired some years ago. Don’t you thnk it is time to drop the anti-Castro propaganda ?
BTW my father was invited to speak at a scientific conference in the USA in the 1950’s and was denied a visa. He told me he thought that it was because he was an officer of a Liberal party branch that had invited a communist as a speaker. So much for free speech…
Pete Seeger, a man I thoroughly admire who died recently, was imprisoned by the McCarthyites for defending his right to decline to say whether or not he was a communist…
I am afraid we are starting to go down the McCarthy route in relation to Islam in this country, and I am very much against it…
Andrew, as someone who live in a neighbouring country to Mozambique during the eighties, I can tell you it was considered anything but a game. 🙂
@Andrew only in the Guardian could this be written without irony:
“She has a grandson at Oxford University who tells her that Corbynism is catching on there, too. “He says they are all wearing Corbyn-for-PM T-shirts. They are struggling to pay for their books and coming out of university with huge debts and here is someone saying he wants a completely different society.””
Jedibeeftrix,
Fair enough, you believe that the West was entitled to subvert democracy in Nicaragua and support right-wing coup and torture in Chile, because the need to win the global struggle with Russia provided an overriding justification. Well, you’re being honest.
The next question is, what overriding justification did the West have for their subsequent adventurist wars of regime change – bringing chaos in place of Gaddafi, and quite probably ISIL in place of Saddam Hussein…? Can all misdeeds be justified on the basis of an overriding need to win the global struggle? Isn’t that what Hitler believed?
There’s an interesting question buried in that, David. If a murderous totalitarian regime wishes to conquer the world, are any misdeeds justified in opposition to it?
I mean, clearly, the neo-cons were not democrats, and were quite comfortable with having their enemies killed rather than engaging in debate. Utterly counterproductive. But there probably are occasions, aren’t there, where the misdeed is justified?
@ John Tilley 26th Jul ’15 – 10:37am
But why would Kendall (for it was she) write this if she didn’t believe in it given how unpopular such views are in labour?
Kendall also gets that you need to have a vibrant economy raising the taxes that the left wingers want to spend.
Certainly Corbyn and Livingstone were early propagandists for the view that Britain should negotiate with Sinn Fein. They were right about that. They weren’t right about their policy prescriptions, and they will of course have infuriated those who were fighting to choke the life out of Sinn Fein. If the worst skeleton in Corbyn’s cupboard was this arguable misjudgment of a twenty-year-old political dilemma, he would surely be an absolute paragon of virtue!
John Tilley rightly mentions “dark and nasty corners of the Labour Party”, such as one-party local fiefdoms where all sorts of shenanigans have been tolerated, which Corbyn has not rushed to condemn. These are not good things, but whether their existence seriously affects Corbyn’s ability to lead is doubtful.
My own observations are, first, that the words “trade union” are repeated far too many times on Corbyn’s website. Nineteenth-century industrial Labourism is not the way forward in the twenty-first century. If Corbyn cannot relearn – and most people his age don’t – he will suffer from the rigidity of outdated attitudes. Second, there is of course the question of financial responsibility. Even if (like me) one believes that the Tory position on austerity and the deficit is a gross, scaremongering misrepresentation to disguise their drive toward social inequality, one has to acknowledge the need to budget responsibly, and to demonstrate that fact. Corbyn may struggle.
All that said – Corbyn does offer hope, and does offer a real opposition to the Tories. Those things will tempt a lot of people to vote for him. Let’s hope that Tim Farron, who offers hope tempered with a bit of responsibility, can do even better!
Jeremy Corbyn MP was interviewed by Andrew Marr on 26/7/2015. He was asked about Karl Marx, on which I am not qualified to comment, preferring to read about Gladstone, Asquith, David Lloyd-George, …
Jeremy Corbyn did refer to the Labour Party having 250,000 members, but was not pressed on how many of them are Tories, whether he agrees with what George Osborne said about him, etc. Tories who write inTHe Times, such as Mathew Parris or Danny Finkelstein want to discourage Tories from joining the Labour Party in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn. Although this kind of tactical voting happens in some US primaries it is essentially undemocratic and carries the risk that voters will get what they voted for.
Alan Johnson is heading the Labour Party campaign on the EU referendum, which may come as early as June 2016. This is of huge importance to jobs. We should not allow complacency to ignore the risks. If the Labour Party is divided on one issue they may also be divided on other issues.
Jedi,
Labour got “crushed” mainly because it lost Scotland. With Scotland it would have about 270 or so seats. Your beloved Conservative’s mainly won because the Lib Dem vote collapsed in Tory facing seats on an over all swing of a little over 1 per cent, about 36 per cent in 2010 to 37 per cent in 2015. Despite losing Scotland Labour share of the vote was up at least on paper. Having said that none of the parties except UKIP, the Greens and the SNP have much to crow about because the turn out was pitiful and skews the level of actual support they have. The conservatives only have teeny tiny 12 seat majority based on a ridiculous 24 per cent of the potential electorate. To me this say the FPTP should be dead because it really does not reflect anything very much and yet again a British Government will gerrymander the boundaries to try to turn 24-30ish per cent of the electorate into a delusional “landslide”.
Has anyone thought that the Corbyn support is coming from members of the Labour party who have witnessed a democratic socialist party be successful in Scotland and would like a bit of that in England and Wales .
I am afraid the Tory lite badge stuck to the Labour party most acutely amongst its own members look at how savage they have been to Liz Kendall.
It doesn’t really matter if Corbyn wins or not the fuse has already been lit and is burning away inside the body politic of the Labour party .Lets be ready to maximise that advantage not with labour party members but their disenfranchised electorate.
@ Glenn – “Labour got “crushed” mainly because it lost Scotland. With Scotland it would have about 270 or so seats. Your beloved Conservative’s mainly won because the Lib Dem vote collapsed in Tory facing seats on an over all swing of a little over 1 per cent………”
No. The collapse of Scottish Labour was but one-third of the total of Labour’s catastrophe:
In the words of Eddie George; the winner of GE2010 was going to have to make such deep cuts to public spending that they would be out of power for a generation.
Getting at least half of their target seats (~60) would have given them a parliamentary majority:
http://labourlist.org/2013/01/labours-106-battleground-target-seats-for-2015/
Result = 232
Hope to Keep from the SNP = 35
Hope to take elsewhere = 70
Total in fantasy land = 337
There was nothing unachievable about in Summer 2010, and it should have been totally within the grasp of any half competent Labour Party with a term out of office to whet their appetite.
If you want the long answer:
https://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/general-election-15-what-have-we-learned/
I have written a few times that I do not think Corbyn will win, however one factor I have not really taken much into account are militant tendency types joining the Labour Party from various neo-Trot groups.
I doubt there will be many rushing to join Labour to support the others. I suppose this makes a Corbyn win less unlikely. If Corbyn did win, I think Cameron would be very tempted to give him a soft ride in the Commons. Of course it would be interesting if it did happen, how would he put together a shadow cabinet? What would be the status of the deputy leader? But I do not think there is much point in speculating now ; we would have ample time to work out our strategy if it happened.
Our main issue with whatever becomes of the Labour Party is that it is a real problem for us if it is widely seen as unelectable.
It will mean a great future for the Liberal Democrats in my mind and a political party alliance that can change the fortunes of the UK for the better in the future. For Colbyn is not Cameron who is a corporate stooge in many ways.
It was great news that Tim Farron was made Lib-Dem leader and with Corbyn at labour, the future would look definitely brighter for the people of Britain.
Therefore if you want a fairer society like Tim Farron wants and someone that the Liberal-Democrats can work with, come out and help the country change for a more caring society and support Jeremy Corbyn as the next Labour leader. You can work with Corbyn but not Cameron as you have found out behind closed doors. In this respect Lib-Dem principles and morals are not conservative ones but more towards a new people orientated politics.
VOTE for JEREMY CORBYN – People Politics are NO More & Wealth and Power Politics of the Few Control the People, Their Families and Their Futures , ‘NOT’ who you Vote For – For a New and Positive ‘CHANGE’, I would Vote for Jeremy Corbyn as the New Labour Leader – http://worldinnovationfoundation.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/vote-for-jeremy-corbyn-people-politics.html
Jedi,
I’m not here to defend the labour Party.
But the fact remains that the Conservatives’s over all vote share was only 1 percent more than it was in 2010 Without the collapse of the lib Dems in Tory facing seats there would have been a hung parliament even if Labour had lost Scotland. I unlike you do not see 24% of the electorate as crushing anything which is why I think FPPT is a joke. In a just world we would have no government under you your favoured adversarial system because nearly twice as many people failed to vote for anyone as elected the government. Pathetic. Also the fact remain without the collapse of Scotland, Labour would have had 270 seats. Your own figures show this. You right wingers fling words like crushed around because you’re trying to distract from the fact that the system is broken. 12 seat majority, Jedi. a weaker position than the coalition. My view is that instead of harping on about Labour and the SNP, we should turn our attention to the mendacious Conservative party and work to remove it from office so that we can have a political system based on votes rather than the Gerrymandering fantasy land of FPTP, a system that should have died years ago when the votes started to collapse.
David Allen:
NO THEY WERE NOT! As I have written before, their motivation was completely different. Rather than trying to move the IRA away from violence, Corbyn and Livingstone were trying to move their party (and thus a future Labour government) towards the Sinn Fein/IRA position on Northern Ireland. They gave uncritical hospitality to Sinn Fein leaders while the IRA was bombing (mainland) Britain. This is completely different from the later critical, distanced engagement by the government.
Public engagement with Sinn Fein was appropriate in the mid 1990s, but it was not appropriate in the 1980s, simply because Sinn Fein/IRA was not interested in a negotiated peace at this earlier time. So it is wrong to say that Corbyn and Livingstone were early advocates of a government policy and were proved right: they did it the wrong way and at the wrong time.
Labour’s first woman leader, Margaret Becket, was temporary. She decided to call a leadership election after John Smith died, which was won by Tony Blair.
Labour’s second woman leader is interim and has just led a divided labour parliamentary party into the division lobbies on the welfare issue.
Two of the four labour leadership candidates are women, but if they miss this opportunity they might find that the deputy leadership has been won by a man, who might even decide to stand for the labour leadership at the next opportunity.
It is said that ‘all publicity is good publicity’. This was true for the tories when mrs thatcher resigned. john major, michael heseltine and douglas hurd stood for the tory leadership, intending to use STV in the third round.
Labour need to sort out their own problems, but the interim leader has exceeded her authority and divided her party. Labour leadership candidates cannot help her much until one of them is elected.
Meanwhile Dr. David Owen has been persuaded to give his advice, although he is not a Labour party member and accepted a peerage from Tory PM John Major. Probably he is trying to be helpful. He cares about the NHS, which is being fragmented.
TCO 26th Jul ’15 – 11:
“But why would Kendall (for it was she) write this if she didn’t believe in it ……?”
Well it is entirely possible that someone wrote it for her. I get the distinct impression that she is performing to a script provided by someone else. In the couple of TV sessions and a couple of interviews I have watched she does not seem very good at thinking on her feet or doing other than repeating slogans like a speak-your-weight machine.
As for Kendall talking about a “vibrant economy” , who is convinced by such meaningless pap ?
When asked repeatedly in one interview how her position on the economy is different from the policies of Cameron and The Conservatives she repeatedly avoided the question.
It is mildly embarrassing that she has a father who was a Liberal Democrat councillor. She seems to be the least Liberal of the four candidates.
If Liz Kendall becomes leader of the Labour Party they could merge with The Conservatives – as they did in Scotland for the Referendum – that turnd out well. 🙂
In an earlier comment I asked what our attitude should be if Labour MPs or Councillors seek to join us, should we push for them to resign & cause a byelection ? It would be good if we decide our attitude before such defections happen, rather than waiting to see if they do. This isnt “counting our chickens” its just admitting that eggs might hatch.
If we force a series of byelections we will lose some of them, that will hurt but I still think we should give voters the last word. Every byelection will raise our profile & build our Party, whether we win or not. We need to set this precedent as soon as possible, both our major rivals are split from top to bottom & we need to be ready to take advantage of that.
@paul: I think you’re not only counting unhatched eggs, you’re counting ones that haven’t even been laid yet.
Historically, the last MP to defect to the Lib Dems was Paul Marsden in 2001. He did not fight a by-election as a Liberal Democrat. Neither did Thurnham in 1996 or Nicholson in 1995.
@ Glenn – “Jedi, I’m not here to defend the labour Party.”
Nor did I suggest you were, quite different to the repeated accusations i have received from you in the last few posts…
“But the fact remains that the Conservatives’s over all vote share was only 1 percent more than it was in 2010”
No. The fact remains that at a time when Labour should have been a odd-on certainty to grow from 258 seats to something north of 330 (for the reasons explained above), they instead manage to lose 26 seats. There is a 100 seat discrepancy between what they should have got and what they did get, and SNP can only be responsible for a maximum of 40 of them.
“You right wingers fling words like crushed around because you’re trying to distract from the fact that the system is broken.”
It is worth pointing out two things here:
1. The British electorate decide whether their voting system is broken, not you.
2. The Labour Party (they’re left-wing I believe), also have a fondness for FPTP.
“My view is that instead of harping on about Labour and the SNP, we should turn our attention to the mendacious Conservative party and work to remove it from office”
My view is that if you wish to achieve this glorious nirvana then you had better join a political party (other than the tories), that has an absolute determination to win elections, rather than the fantasy land of protest politics and the ‘iron’ principles of opposition.
David-1 26th Jul ’15 – 5:30pm
“…the last MP to defect to the Lib Dems was Paul Marsden in 2001. ”
Yes it is one of those inconvenient facts for The Orange Book Tendency that during the last ten years not one single “soft Tory” MP crossed the floor to join the Liberal Democrats. Perhaps this should have been the first signal long before the 2015 general election that people who like conservative economics tend to stay loyal to The Conservative Party.
@John Tilley MPs don’t tend to defect when their party is in the ascendant.
Keep trying 😉
John Tilley 26th Jul ’15 – 6:06pm
A similar record of success with ‘soft Tory’ voters as with ‘Soft Tory’ MP’s before them then!
@TCO. Likewise with voters. It takes great skill to get voters to leave the Conservatives when they are in power. That’s why the Nick Clegg experiment failed. However, somehow he managed to get thousands of Lib Dem voters to leave while he was in power. That’s why the Nick Clegg Experiment was a catastrophe.
paul barker 26th Jul ’15 – 5:03pm
“In an earlier comment I asked what our attitude should be if Labour MPs or Councillors seek to join us”
Paul, they may be yet to be laid eggs but it is something I hope someone is discussing! Just imagine say 10 illiberal centrist Labourites wanting to join the Lib Dem parliamentary team at its present strength. A terrifying prospect.
@Stephen Hesketh how would you feel about 10 leftist Labourites?
Gosh. Messrs Hesketh, Tilley and Evans and just ‘lil ol’ me 🙂
@David Evans yes it’s a shame we hadn’t gone Orange in 1999 when the Tories were down and out.
John Tilley 26th Jul ’15 – 6:06pm: Please also consider MEPs.
The Tories have an overall majority of twelve. If a Labour MP defects to the Liberal Democrats the Tories will have an overall majority of twelve. One MP will have trouble in his/her constituency because of changing parties.
In order to reduce the overasll majority of twelve it is necessary for opposition parties to win seats from the Tories.
Ignore Northern Ireland for this purpose because there are no MPs from Northern Ireland taking the Tory whip, although when David Cameron tried to do a deal with the OUP their MP decided to become an independent.
Ignore the SNP because there is only one Tory MP in Scotland.
After the 1992 general election John Major had an overall majority of twenty one, which fell to zero because of parliamentary by-elections won by opposition parties. At the same time the Tories also lost a lot of other elections at all levels and a constitutional convention was set up which led to devolution, with partial PR.
Jedy
But you are a right wing militarist and a conservative. Where as I’m actually a lib Dem supporter. I’ve read your blog. Why deny it. And how were Labour a stone cold certainty during a mucfh vau8neded economic recovery. The fact is jus over 1% more than 2010 with the lib dem collapse, the press on their side and and labour blamed a world economic cris, the middle east. And by the way dude, I’m giving giving my oppion and I don’t care if the Labour Party support FPTP because along with the Conservatives they been Gerrymandering the bounderis for decades. If either of these bisbegotton excuses apologists for electoral skulldugery genuinely were popular enough to fom a majority that actually was a majority, ie over 50% per cent of the vote on a good turn out, then it really wouldn’t matter what system they were elected under. But they don’t, do they? They like FPTP precisely because they can’t command enough support. 40% of the British electorate didn’t even vote, This is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the current state affairs is it. And before you say anything about the Lib Dem’s lack of support, Democracy is not a way of delivering the results that suites a particular party. It’s about representative government and I say that a 24% vote share represents 24% of the electorate and that’s what parliament should reflect. Proportional representation makes every vote count equally, no matter were it is, no confusion over seats and the popular vote, no need to redraw boundaries, no clams of a landside when more people didn’t vote for you than did or indeed more people didn’t vote at all. So yeah, I think it’s a broken system and needs reform so that it reflects how people vote, not how me and thee vote. If for instance this mean more people vote UKIP then so be it. They deserve representation, not one poxy seat, ditto for the Greens.
As for the rest of your response. I vote Lib Dem, I like, a lot of Lib Dem supporters, believe in electoral reform. Why exactly are you here?
We should not be “pushing” for any potential defectors to do anything. We are not the sort of party that orders MPs to stand down and fight by-elections. That is not the Liberal Democrat way. Leave it up to the individual who defects (if such a thing happens, which I think unlikely). Personally I would not encourage it, since in our system MPs are elected as individuals.
Perhaps “pushing” was the wrong word, persuade vigorously ?
Obviously theres no way to force any MP to resign, we can only try to convince them its the right thing to do. Some MPs are elected as individuals, most are chosen as representing their Party. Polling has consistently shown that most voters dont know their MPs name.
TCO 26th Jul ’15 – 7:20pm
“@Stephen Hesketh how would you feel about 10 leftist Labourites”
I would seek to dissuade anyone from joining our party who isn’t a capital L liberal and fully supporting of the aims and values of our Preamble.
It’s a slightly odd question though bearing in mind we are discussing the impact of a Cornyn win.
“At last sensible Labour politicians are injecting some maturity into the leadership debate. To start with, Tony Blair’s aide John McTernan called anyone who nominated Jeremy Corbyn a “moron”, which is such a refreshing change from the divisive and childish approach of the Left.
His next statement will be that Jeremy Corbyn smells like a poo-poo and anyone who votes for him has a tiny willy, because John McTernan understands the importance of Labour appearing grown up and united.”
These are not my words but form part of an article by Mark Steel in The Belfast Telegraph.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/mark-steel/the-last-thing-labour-needs-is-a-leader-like-jeremy-corbyn-who-people-want-to-vote-for-31402186.html
Well worth reading if you want to brighten up your Monday morning. 🙂
According to electoral law, MPs are elected as individuals. And I’m not convinced standing down and fighting a by-election is the “right thing” for a defector to do. Such a requirement, whether by convention or a formal rule, would give too much power to party whips, who could threaten any rebellious MPs with withdrawal of the whip, which according to this rule would mean fighting a by-election.
Also if we decide that MPs are there as party representatives, then it doesn’t actually make sense to have by-elections: any MP who (for whatever reason) can no longer serve ought to be automatically replaced by someone from their original party, as in a list system. Why, if votes are primarily for parties, should voters get a special opportunity to switch party just because the representative from the originally elected party is no longer available?
Glenn 26th Jul ’15 – 9:11pm said that the Labour Party, along with the Conservatives, have been Gerrymandering the bounderies for decades. Please see Shirley Williams’ comments on the boundary changes at Corby after she won a by-election there.
Please also be aware of the effect of the current government’s proposed boundary changes. Although individual MPs will focus on each of their own constituencies, the effect on a party which holds the adjacent seats need not be so worrying. That applies to the Tories, to Labour and, since May 2015, to the SNP. It is bad news for parties with scattered constituencies, such as the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, the Green and some of the Northern Ireland parties.
UKIP also have one MP, but their future depends firstly on the outcome of the IN? OUT? referendum.
TCO26th Jul ’15 – 7:22pm
“Gosh. Messrs Hesketh, Tilley and Evans and just ‘lil ol’ me”
Three open and honest mainstream preamble-supporting Liberal Democrats and ‘lil ol’ you. Gosh indeed.
I do however observe plenty of other contributors holding similar views/values to those you single out for praise. But thank you anyway.
That is brilliant John Tilley, thanks for sharing it! That is Mark Steel the english comedian?
Stephen: 🙂
Joe (far up the thread): I think the end very very rarely justifies the means, if the means is thoroughly illiberal. Propping up right wing regimes like Pinochet that replaced democratically elected socialist regimes like that of Allende was certainly NOT justifiable. As a Liberal I would like my country to set an example in foreign policy, not employ selective vision. Once you are engaged in an existential war like WW2 it is different though, and both Churchill and Stalin were both utterly pragmatic and utterly ruthless in allying themselves to gain victory… It is why I get angry at the way we tied ourselves in knots over Dresden after the war, to the extent of not honouring the many who sacrificed their lives in Bomber Command..
Of course the big problem with Cuba was that it was near America and it was proposed to site Soviet missiles there… Well of course the same missiles were right next door to Europe all the time and we coped… But a threat to America is of course a totally different matter. Throughout the Cold War the Russians were just as worried about an American first strike on them as we were about Soviet tanks rolling across Europe… Available evidence is that neither side actually ever intended to attack the other. And now we wonder why the Russians get cross about NATO countries right on their border… I tell my Russian colleagues that NATO is a defensive alliance and they say “is that why you invaded Iraq?” Hard to answer really other than by further tit-for-tatism such as South Ossetia. The fact is that in the last 20 years NATO has not acted in a way calculated to reassure Russia, and vice versa, and so we seem to be in a new Cold War that will benefit no-one. And both sides regard “self-determination” as a concept that only applies to supporters of their viewpoint…
And before anyone points out that “NATO” did not invade Iraq, I know that! In Russia NATO = America…
Thanks to John Tilley as well! It did indeed make me smile!
Jamie Stewart
Yes that Mark Steel — although you could also describe him as writer, broadcaster, TV and radio celebrity, Crystal Palace supporter, Keny Country Cricket enthusiast and even former candidate for the London Assembly (sadly not as a Liberal Democrat)..
Mind you, some of the more rabid rightwingers who comment in LDV might point out that he was once a member of the SWP and that he has almost certainly said something nice about Cuba. Although I think he endorsed the Green MP in the last election.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Steel
@Andrew “Once you are engaged in an existential war like WW2 it is different though, and both Churchill and Stalin were both utterly pragmatic and utterly ruthless in allying themselves to gain victory… It is why I get angry at the way we tied ourselves in knots over Dresden after the war, to the extent of not honouring the many who sacrificed their lives in Bomber Command..”
Agreed. I argued on another thread that singling out Dresden when, from a methodological point of view it was no different to many hundreds of other Bomber Command attacks during 1942-45 was absurd. It simply succeeded much better than most (with the exception of Hamburg in July 1943).
Alex Macfie,
“David Allen: Certainly Corbyn and Livingstone were early propagandists for the view that Britain should negotiate with Sinn Fein. They were right about that.
NO THEY WERE NOT! As I have written before, their motivation was completely different. Rather than trying to move the IRA away from violence, Corbyn and Livingstone were trying to move their party (and thus a future Labour government) towards the Sinn Fein/IRA position on Northern Ireland.”
Corbyn, like Harold Wilson before him, thought that the way to achieve a long term peace would have to mean a united Ireland. As I acknowledged in my post, they, like Wilson, turned out to be wrong about that policy prescription.
Wilson, who had to deal with violence from both sides in Northern Ireland, surely acted (as he often did) from pure pragmatism. He clearly didn’t support violence, he simply took a view of the practical possibilities which now turns out to have been wrong. Do you have any evidence that the same should not be said for Corbyn and Livingstone?
@David Allen well for starters Corbyn was coming at this much later than Wilson, so he had more prolonged evidence on which to come to a different and better conclusion, and less post-colonial baggage to deal with.
Andrew 27th Jul ’15 – 10:58am ” we tied ourselves in knots over Dresden after the war” .
Not just over Dresden, which Ian Fleming had delighted in from London looking at aerial photos.
The number of refugees was much higher at that time than now, but the refugee convention was not decided until 1951 and came into force at the beginning of 1953. A lot happened in the meantime of which we should not be proud.
Jeremy Corbun was elected in 1983 as a Labour MP and presumably supported Labour’s 1997 manifesto which proposed to remove all the hereditary peers from the House of Lords.
In a compromise deal with the Tory leader in the upper house 92 remained and their heirs can inherit a place in parliament. The Labour leader in the Lords at the time, Baroness Jay, promised to remove the others, but failed.
David Steel’s bill for Lords reform is now an Act, but lacks the measure to abolish the by-elections for hereditary peers.
As the Lords is again in the news, perhaps all the contenders for the Labour leadership and deputy leadership should state their positions on reform of the Lords. If they voted for the wrecking amendment in the previous parliament, are they in favour of making practical progress now?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11764755/Lord-Sewel-will-not-quit-after-he-is-pictured-in-prostitutes-orange-bra-at-cocaine-sex-party.html
Richard Underhill 27th Jul ’15 – 2:04pm
Richard,
I have had a very sheltered life. Can you tell me – is the orange bra issued along with the ermine robe when people become members of the House of Lords?
The ermine needs to be purchased, borrowed or hired and is only uised for major occasions. The Blair government got rid of a number of hereditary peers, some of whom probably owned their ‘stoats in winter coats’. One such, a Liberal Democrat was elected to the Commons.
Lord Sewell was a Labour peer before he became Deputy Lords Speaker and therefore non-affiliated (not the same as a crossbencher).,The colour of the ref flag or the red rose varies a bit and turned magenta/pink in the 2015 election for Harriet Harman’ s campaign bus.
Orange is therefore not Labour’s colour.
The police have been asked to investigate.
A former Speaker of the House of Commons wass interviewed on BBC Radio 4 World at One.
She said ‘You could not make it up!’
We should try to stick to the presumption of innocence, particularly where the newspapers refer to a “white powder”.
The Times reports on page 5 that Lord Sewell “wrote a blog for the Huffington Post website, in which he spoke of the House of Lords new powers to banish peers who breach its code of conduct.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/
John,
I was really expecting you to relate the orange bra somehow to the Orange Book! (where did the prostitute get it, for example?) 🙂
The Huffington Post is wrong to sday that Lord Sewel is a cross-bencher.
As a Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords he was non-affiliated.
There is a risk of causing the House of Lords a loss of respect, so they may want to take anothet look at their rules.
Andrew 27th Jul ’15 – 7:57pm
I have to admit that the combination of bra and book had crossed my mind. 🙂
The Lord in question as a memher of the Labour Party until a couple of days ago. I wonder which leadership contender he was supporting.
He has now resigned from the Lords, taking advantage of an exit route legislated via David Steel.
Their Lordships could consider, or reconsider, introducing rules similar to those which apply to councillors on non-attendance for six months. They should be reluctant to compromise and make it annual. They should not be guided by what the Commons does, because it has periodic elections. Gradual reform can be useful, although not ideal.
“The two candidates hoping to become the next leader of Scottish Labour have rejected calls for the party to break away from UK Labour. And both Kezia Dugdale and Ken Macintosh insisted in a BBC debate that they would not be told what to do by UK party leaders. The leadership contest was prompted by the resignation of Jim Murphy, with the result expected on 15 August.”
“Glasgow City Council leader Gordon Matheson and MSPs Alex Rowley and Richard Baker are standing for deputy leader.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-33684311
Please will someone currently living in Scotland opine on what the effect of these elections will be on the UK leadership of the Labour Party?
For instance could he/she/they take a different line on Trident? (and other issues which affect us all).
Another thread is about campaigning by Nick Clegg and Joanna Lumley for Ghurkas during a Labour government.
A link of rebel Labour MPs is included.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8025587.stm
https://www.libdemvoice.org/lib-dem-gurkha-motion-won-by-21-votes-14077.html#comment-369244
Nepalese Ghurkas were very helpful in Maidstone and the Weald. Hopefully at least one of them will become a borough councillor soon. They could help themselves if more of them made themselves eligible to vote.
A You Gov poll shows 48% agreement with the view that Lord Sewel
“This indicates a widespread culture of inappropriate and corrupt behaviour in the House of Lords”
What amazes me about this entire thread is how utterly irrelevant it is to our current fight-back. We will get the Labour leader they choose. What seems to me so utterly stupid is the playing up of Corbyn’s likely success. All it does is increase his vote and give him more publicity.
The Tunbridge Wells Courier reported on Friday 24/7/2015 that the Labour Party had refused membership to a Tory and not refunded the £3 fee.
As a member of Scottish Liberal Democrats, it is very worrying to see a lot of sympathy and support for well known Trots and those that have rubbed shoulders with terrorist. As a party, we need to get behind our new leader. We need to advertise our values. Liberal values. The only people interested in labour are, sadly media outlets LBC BBC and a lot of publications, that should know better than to run behind labour, cheering them. Since 1945, we have seen a more authoritarian and socialist daftness, destroy this country. GLC, Foot, Blair Brown and now, Corbyn. If we look towards Scotland, where I live, we now have all that, plus a thick topping of Nationalism. Liberals, have our work cut out for us. We have spineless Tories, that can’t even deal with Calais. They are a contradiction, because they believe telling the Free Market, what wages to pay is a great idea. Labour are total poison, that we need a vaccine for. SNP, would be funny, if they weren’t so dangerous, because they feel insecure. UKIP are Libertarians, all wax jackets and beer. My view is that we should do our very best to destroy labour, replace Nationlism and Socialist nonsense, with Liberalism. Lets have less state. Abolish the Lords. Get rid of around two thirds of MPs. Get back to offending those, that have a desire to takeway our Liberty. Need to get out there, on every issue, via every media outlet. I get tired of seeing SNP, Greens and UKIP, spewing nonsense alongside labour and their, very daft supporters. The party needs to be what it is. It doesn’t need to be friends with other parties, or, share their views. Lets be proud and Liberal.
Simon
I suppose I should have realised there must be a fundamentalist wing of Liberal Democracy out there somewhere… Not my cup of tea however..
Simon Arnold 30th Jul ’15 – 3:18am ” Tories, that can’t even deal with Calais. ”
Calais has been part of France for a long time.
The problem is wider. even before the Dublin Convention and Dublin II were negotiated there was, in practice, free movement between continental member states of the EU and before that in BeNeLux.
There are also major differences between the UK and France in procedures for Administrtive Removal for illegal entrants and the deportation of some criminals. Documentation and cost are also major issues.
Richard Underhill, I believe, we all know Calais, has been part of France for a very long time.
Andrew, ah well, you can’t please everyone. Thats why I am a Liberal.
My point was that Liberals, don’t need to bounce of other parties, we need to stand firm, with what we believe, then run with that. Seems we spend more time discussing other parties, with more seats, but little common sense, or, ideas that will benefit humanity in the United Kingdom.
http://thinkingliberal.co.uk/?p=1897 This is an excellent article.
One small point:
” a BBC interviewer suggested to Ms Kendall that she withdrew to improve the chances of the other anti-Corbyn candidates. And yet this makes no sense for her as fourth-placed candidate. It would make for sense for Ms Cooper (or Mr Burnham come to that) to do so.”
This partly depends on whether second, preferences, are used by her supporters and whether third preferences are used by her supporters.
Commentators are very clear that she has no intention of withdrawing.
Mark Pack is right, but add that Jim Callaghan’s inflation target was too ambitious .
http://www.markpack.org.uk/133777/how-the-tories-really-won-in-1979-and-why-it-isnt-a-role-model-for-a-corbyn-led-labour-party/
Liberal Democrats to not support Labour’s Clause Four, the old one was outdated, the revised edition is part of Tony Blair’s are of the possible.
You Gov President Peter Kellner is well aware of margins of error, sample size, etc, but reduces some of his statements to absolutes, as on 9/8/2015 when reviewing newspapers on BBC TV. He is in favour of pollsters having humility, but even the BBC exit poll on 7/5/2015 suggested “Conservatives as largest party” not an overall majority of twelve.