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The argument that Labour should tack towards rightwards and the argument that Labour fought a shite election campaign need to disentangled, IMO. So, the mottled corpses of various New Labourites have been all over the newspapers (including Blair, Mandelsohn and Alan Johnson just today), using the occasion of Labour's (laughable, if it hadn't returned a Tory government) implosion to argue for the return of Blairism (athough its still not clear if this includes the Islamophobia and war bit, which ended up playing out badly in PR terms). I think this all may be the product of wishful thinking (or their haunted souls) or, if not, then old-timers disease, because the election results don't really carry any evidence of the sort the Blairites claim. Against the grain of the rest of the UK, Labour actually did pretty well in London, even gaining some seats. This despite the fact that the so-called 'mansion tax' and other pledges that had a vaguely leftish tint to them, would have disproportionately affected many Londoners, where the cost of the average property and the average salary have about as much relation to one another as me and Taylor Swift. Moreover, the Tories are obviously not going to fix inequality, they are going to turbo-charge it while drinking babies blood and eating swans and foxes and other stuff Tories do; so purposely codifying the intention to not fight the Tories on that terrain (i.e. social inequality) in the next parliament, and into the 2020 election, seems unutterably stupid (ok, it may be possible to talk aspiration whilst deploring food-banks for another party, but I don't trust Labour to walk and chew gum at the same time - Miliband couldn't even walk off the stage on one of the tv debates without tripping over like a massive tit). I'm not a psephologist, and I can't be arsed to calculate if the aggregate total of Green, SNP and Plaid votes (all to the left of Labour, although I suspect the SNP could prove to be more nominal in that regard over the long term) is greater than the seats they lost in swings to the Tories and UKIP - but if it isn't, and Labour do chase the votes they lost to the right, then fuck knows what sort of lumbering mutated bog monster they will unleash on the public, but its likely to be pretty vile given that the milieu over the next parliament is probably going to be characterised by a clash of nationalisms (Scots vs Westminster; followed by the Welsh and possibly the N. Irish, who are unlikely to accept lesser settlements; then the ongoing UK vs EU - with a referendum seemingly guaranteed, which will just translate into little Englander nationalism vs everybody etc). Anyway, in policy terms, I don't think there's much support for the argument that Labour would have done better if they had positioned themselves more to the right of where they were. This is not the Leninist dogma that everyone's a secret socialist wearing red underpants underneath their blue suit or whatever. I'm unconvinced many people voted differently just because 'food banks', for example. I think the problem, in the main, was that they lost the election *campaign* and the Tories won it, and a great number of new Tory voters probably held their noses whilst doing so. I'd argue that his had less to do with political positioning than Labour ineptitude and the avalanche of hostility they met in the media, who seemed to work for Lynton Crosbie and team on a mass intern basis. On 10 May 2015 at 17:44, Louis Proyect via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > (So according to this, Ed Miliband was a leftie and lost for that reason.) > > NY Times, May 10 2015 > Appeal to Dwindling Core Proves Costly for Labour Party in Britain > By STEVEN ERLANGER and STEPHEN CASTLE > > LONDON — The Labour Party’s defeat in Thursday’s British elections was its > poorest performance in nearly 30 years. > > It was nearly wiped out in Scotland, long one of its strongholds. Some of > its brightest and most experienced members of Parliament lost their seats, > including its shadow chancellor and shadow foreign secretary. > > Most important, it lost the argument about Britain’s best path toward the > future and was left with no clear guiding philosophy. > > Ed Miliband, Labour’s leader for the last five years, took responsibility > and resigned, initiating another round of soul-searching for a party with > trade union and socialist roots in a globalized country where heavy > industry and the traditional working class are fading fast. > > (clip) > > The most obvious symbol of the internal conflict was the post-2010 battle > of the brothers — David Miliband, a Blairite who was foreign secretary, > versus Ed Miliband, a Brownite. The fight was close and Freudian, but while > Labour members of Parliament backed David, the trade unions pushed Ed > narrowly into the leadership. > > The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, reportedly quoting a trade-union > ally, famously said, “We’ve got our party back.” Ed Miliband gave that > traditional socialism a modern gloss, but he sometimes seemed less than > comfortable dealing with issues like nurturing the economic recovery, > shrinking the budget deficit, appealing to business and managing, as > opposed to funding, the national health service. > > In some sense, he was seen as running against Mr. Blair as much as Mr. > Cameron. As Mr. Johnson said, if Labour was “suggesting that we failed in > our 13 years in government it’s not going to do us much good.” > > Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said > that Labour must avoid a simple rerun of the old debate. A core strategy > will no longer work since the electoral system no longer favors Labour, he > said. > > “So will there be another debate about how to win back lost voters?” he > said. “Or about ideas, values and ideologies? After 2010 the argument was > more tactical, but the result was a miserable 30.4 percent of the vote.” > > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/marinercarpentry%40gmail.com _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
