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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:
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(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
