Labour blocks Corbyn

[Bo_apex]

from standing at next election.

Is this a fair and correct decision ?

[Rufus Stone]

He can stand as an independent candidate if he wishes.

[ZedLeg]

Just more blatant pandering to the centre right folk who may vote for them this time but won't again.

[Dingu]

ZedLeg said:

Just more blatant pandering to the centre right folk who may vote for them this time but won't again.

Appealing to the centre is how you win an election.

[Muzzer79]

They're not blocking him from standing

They're blocking him from standing as a representative of the Labour party.

So, yes it is a fair decision. They've decided that he does not represent the values that they wish run with. Up to the leadership.

[ZedLeg]

Dingu said:

ZedLeg said:

Just more blatant pandering to the centre right folk who may vote for them this time but won't again.

Appealing to the centre is how you win an election.

1 election, the way Kier is disenfranchising the left in his party there won't be anyone to vote for them when the floating voters forget how bad it is now and remember they don't like paying tax.

[Dingu]

ZedLeg said:

Dingu said:

ZedLeg said:

Just more blatant pandering to the centre right folk who may vote for them this time but won't again.

Appealing to the centre is how you win an election.

1 election, the way Kier is disenfranchising the left in his party there won't be anyone to vote for them when the floating voters forget how bad it is now and remember they don't like paying tax.

Depend how long they continue to appeal more broadly. I seem to remember Blair won more than one election. The vote of the left demonstrably isn’t going to win anything close to a majority. A viable Labour Party is good for the country as without it the current incumbents can do literally as they please, which has been going well…

[General Price]

ZedLeg said:

Dingu said:

ZedLeg said:

Just more blatant pandering to the centre right folk who may vote for them this time but won't again.

Appealing to the centre is how you win an election.

1 election, the way Kier is disenfranchising the left in his party there won't be anyone to vote for them when the floating voters forget how bad it is now and remember they don't like paying tax.

It's a bit rich blocking him from standing when the idiot in charge now supported him when he was leader.

[sugerbear]

ZedLeg said:

Dingu said:

ZedLeg said:

Just more blatant pandering to the centre right folk who may vote for them this time but won't again.

Appealing to the centre is how you win an election.

1 election, the way Kier is disenfranchising the left in his party there won't be anyone to vote for them when the floating voters forget how bad it is now and remember they don't like paying tax.

They could always vote for the higher tax tories I suppose.

[Dingu]

General Price said:

It's a bit rich blocking him from standing when the idiot in charge now supported him when he was leader.

If you’ve never changed your opinion on someone based on new information I would be surprised. It’s amusing you see it as a bad thing too.

[bobbo89]

ZedLeg said:

1 election, the way Kier is disenfranchising the left in his party there won't be anyone to vote for them when the floating voters forget how bad it is now and remember they don't like paying tax.

• the far left

It's the far left Corbynite Momentum types he's disenfranchising and for good reason. Getting rid of that lot is the only way Labour will ever be electable.

[ZedLeg]

Dingu said:

ZedLeg said:

Dingu said:

ZedLeg said:

Just more blatant pandering to the centre right folk who may vote for them this time but won't again.

Appealing to the centre is how you win an election.

1 election, the way Kier is disenfranchising the left in his party there won't be anyone to vote for them when the floating voters forget how bad it is now and remember they don't like paying tax.

Depend how long they continue to appeal more broadly. I seem to remember Blair won more than one election. The vote of the left demonstrably isn’t going to win anything close to a majority. A viable Labour Party is good for the country as without it the current incumbents can do literally as they please, which has been going well…

New Labour were a different proposition than Kier's Labour. New Labour had a huge movement behind them in 97(?) and rode off that for a long time. Kier's been handed his advantage and seems to be trying his best to fumble it.

[ZedLeg]

bobbo89 said:

ZedLeg said:

1 election, the way Kier is disenfranchising the left in his party there won't be anyone to vote for them when the floating voters forget how bad it is now and remember they don't like paying tax.

• the far left

It's the far left Corbynite Momentum types he's disenfranchising and for good reason. Getting rid of that lot is the only way Labour will ever be electable.

No one in Labour is "Far Left". Far Left is communists, anarchists etc. They all abandoned Labour in the 90s.

[Gecko1978]

He does not represent current Labour values
He was dismissed for anti semitic failings
He can stand as an independent (likely win too)
The country as a whole is centrist so his policy does not win elections

All seems fair

[Evercross]

ZedLeg said:

No one in Labour is "Far Left". Far Left is communists, anarchists etc. They all abandoned Labour in the 90s.

[ZedLeg]

Evercross said:

ZedLeg said:

No one in Labour is "Far Left". Far Left is communists, anarchists etc. They all abandoned Labour in the 90s.

If you think McDonnell is far left actual leftist discourse would shake you

[2xChevrons]

Dingu said:

ZedLeg said:

Dingu said:

ZedLeg said:

Just more blatant pandering to the centre right folk who may vote for them this time but won't again.

Appealing to the centre is how you win an election.

1 election, the way Kier is disenfranchising the left in his party there won't be anyone to vote for them when the floating voters forget how bad it is now and remember they don't like paying tax.

Depend how long they continue to appeal more broadly. I seem to remember Blair won more than one election. The vote of the left demonstrably isn’t going to win anything close to a majority. A viable Labour Party is good for the country as without it the current incumbents can do literally as they please, which has been going well…

Labour came within 2000 votes of being able to form a government in 2017 under Corbyn; the closest they've been to power since Blair, after the largest swing to Labour since 1945 and gaining more votes in England than Blair ever managed, even in his 1997 landslide. Even in the collapse of 2019 Labour performed better by vote and by share than in 2015 or 2010. A plurality of people in employment in the UK voted Labour in 2019.

Blair did indeed win three elections - the only time Labour has done so and those were the last GEs won by Labour. But New Labour should also be a salutary lesson in how abandoning principles or simply adopting the clothes of your competitors to win power. It's all well and good saying "you can't do anything without being in power" but that's a) not really true and b) pointless if you don't do anything once in power or only get there by promising, and believing, you don't need to really do anything once there. Blair's three GE wins have to be taken in the context of a thoroughly tired, devalues, directionless and widely disliked Conservative Party. Labour shed three million votes between 1997 and 2001 - taking its total votes almost down to the level of 2019 - and would lose another two million by 2010, despite winning another majority along the way. That massive drop between '97 and 2001 was precisely because they lost the "just vote for them to get the Tories out" vote and the "vote for the Labour Party and hope they actually do something meaningfully progressive once they're in power for the first time in a generation" vote.

New Labour's failure to effect meaningful, prolonged, systemic change in the lives of its voters (on par with the 1945 and 1964 governments) and to largely do surface level, managerial improvements that were quickly reversed post-2010 played a huge part in the widespread sense of disenfranchisement, dissatisfaction and legitimate grievance that was, and still is, widely felt in much of Labour's once-heartland is at the root of a lot of our current socio-political problems. New Labour's prioritisation of power over actual progress, its pathetic fear of the tabloids and its belief in triangulation rather than principles, is what added fertiliser and rainfall to the ground in which the seeds of Brexit had already been sown. If New Labour hadn't so thoroughly and comprehensively screwed its standing in Scotland, and had retained even half of its previously unshakeable 40-seat base north of the border (instead of losing all but one) then think how the 2017 election would have panned out.

Is it any better for the country to have two largely interchangeable main parties which wear different colour rosettes but occupy an increasingly narrow spectrum of 'acceptable' beliefs? To the extent that MPs can jump between the two while credibly claiming that their politics haven't changed? Especially when that spectrum is largely dictated by the media and the political establishment itself, rather than being in any way rooted in the political views of the electorate (viz: numerous surveys showing how little overlap there actually is between the positions of the British electorate and the stances of the parliamentary parties)?

Specifically on the blocking of Corbyn as a Labour parliamentary candidate: it utterly smacks of power-plays rather than anything based on reality or principle. It's a totem by Starmer to prove how Labour is now different and to deny any alternative power base remaining within Labour a prominent figurehead to rally around. Corbyn's suspension and delisting as a candidate has no real basis in Labour procedure, beyond the call that he needs to apologise for his statement about the EHRC report, despite that same report specifically allowing for the commentary that Corbyn made, and despite Starmer himself performing the actions that Corbyn was directly criticised for in that report far more than his predecessor ever did. It's ruthless internal political wrangling - frankly of the sort that I wish Corbyn had been more partial to in his time in power.

And yes, it stretches credulity somewhat that SKS is now deciding that the man who he twice enthusiastically endorsed as a would-be Prime Minister at a general election is now so far from the Labour Party's standards that he can't hold the parliamentary whip, can't be a party candidate and can only be a party member after special review.

[ChocolateFrog]

ZedLeg said:

Just more blatant pandering to the centre right folk who may vote for them this time but won't again.

FTFY

[anonymous-user]

Starmer a complete hypocrite he sat on the front bench with Corbyn and cheered him on. Did he raise any objections to Corbyn his policies and his language ? No.

Now he sees a chance of no 10 he decides he doesn’t need Corbyn or I suspect any votes from the left of the party. Will be interesting to see if Corbyn’s mates in the party stand up for him

[ZedLeg]

ChocolateFrog said:

ZedLeg said:

Just more blatant pandering to the centre right folk who may vote for them this time but won't again.

FTFY

No what I said was right, it's the centre right that are getting disillusioned with the tories and are now bumping labour in polls. As soon as the tories change their tack after they lose the election they'll go back.