The State of the Labour Party

LoveUniHateExams

So, we've recently had local elections across the UK on May 6.

Mayoral elections, elections for councillors, and the Hartlepool by-election.

Labour did pretty well in Wales, the SNP did well in Scotland, and the Conservatives killed it in England.

Hartlepool, a city that's been Labour for 50 years, voted in the Tory candidate. Hartlepool voted for Brexit in 2016 (70%) and the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, thought it was wise to offer up a Labour candidate who is a Kent-born Remainer.

Labour has seriously lost touch with its voter base, that base being traditional working class people.

It is now a party for students, social activists and the perpetually-offended, and trendy self-hating middle class people.

Labour will continue to get its ass handed to it in elections until it actually starts listening to ordinary people, the voters.

And ordinary people aren't interested in woke nonsense such as preferred pronouns or taking the knee.

There has been much Labour naval-gazing recently following the elections but I'd be surprised if anything is learned. Self-awareness isn't the dominant trait of either the hard-left Corbynites or the trendy metropolitan supporters of Starmer.

road to nowhere

Sounds somewhat familiar. I am US so there ialmost is s only one party. The Republicans and libertarian split the vite somewhat. The green and socialist have what they want in the dems.

None of them are for ordinary people if ever they were.

Phizzy

What does a hard left Corbynite stand for, and what a trendy metropolitan supporter of Starmer please ?

And is there a group in the middle of these ?

LoveUniHateExams

What does a hard left Corbynite stand for - the erasure of Israel to 'liberate Palestine'; trans-women allowed to use the ladies' toilets and compete in women's sports; £20 minimum wage; reparations to be paid to people alive today who are keen to cash in on the suffering and misery of long-dead people; underage children to be allowed puberty-blockers and hormones; the UK to dismantle its nuclear stockpile; the UK and The West not to kill ISIS/Al-Qaeda terrorists even if possible to safely and clinically do so; systemic racism to be fought and The Patriarchy to be dismantled … I'm sure you get the idea.

what a trendy metropolitan supporter of Starmer please ? - I don't know, because I don't know what Starmer himself stands for.

And is there a group in the middle of these ? - yes, but increasing numbers of this group are switching to voting Tory, lol.

Anony Mous

I'm glad anti-semites and Holocaust deniers don't get elected again in the UK, at least an outbreak of common sense.

punkofnice

Labour no longer represent the working people.

Starmer Piles is the most boring rich turd in the known universe. They say he's forensic. He isn't! He just spews garbage. Totally out of touch with the people.

As the 'opposition' he does no opposing.

I think he's a waste of space.

Politicians have gone to pot. They're all just a bunch of self serving pigs!

Phizzy

Thanks LUHE. I suppose in some aspects I am "hard left" then, but certainly find a good number of the things you list to be risible. A "Soft Left" person, sometimes called a "Centrist", must be therefore be someone who the true Socialists of the Past would call a Tory anyway.

The Labour Party has been taken over by people at the top end of it who are determined that never, ever, will a Democratic Socialist Government be elected to power in the U.K. Which is sad, as the Membership Card says the Party is a .................. Democratic Socialist Party. IMHO it stands for neither anymore.

LoveUniHateExams

@Phizzy - the Labour party was founded to take care of the traditional working class, hence the name 'labour'.

When was Labour's last leader who connected strongly to the traditional working class or was working class himself?

Keir Starmer - Islington lawyer.

Jeremy Corbyn - grew up in a posh house and went to grammar school.

Ed Milliband - son of left-wing intellectual and studied PPE at Oxford.

Gordon Brown - not really working class.

Tony Blair - went to a posh Scottish boarding school (Fettes) and studied jurisprudence at Oxford.

Phizzy

Yes LUHE! "Traditional Labour Values" have been lost for a long time, even if you go back as far as Harold Wilson, he was more about winning elections than about the working man, though he was a bit more connected to the working man, but he was educated etc etc.

I don't think it is necessary ,or even preferential for a Leader of Labour to be a person born to a poor working class family, and never had the chance of a good education, why would that be helpful, apart form having a natural empathy for the same type of people.

A Leader needs to be a REAL Democratic Socialist, and make sure the top end of the Party is peopled with like minded ones. If that does not happen, Labour is finished as to ever getting Elected. A Modern Day Tony Benn would do.

Of course, such a person would have to know how to deal with the inevitable smears and lies from the MSM etc. and be able to communicate and connect with people of ALL backgrounds.

Anony Mous

@Phizzy a real socialist leader they had in Jeremy Corbyn, he ticked all the boxes:

Left-wing, socialist, communist, Jew-hater, rich and self-entitled, anti-west - that is the socialist movement according to Marx.

What you describe being pro-labor, pro-regular people, pro-free speech and pro-business is rather conservative. And not conservative in the sense of religious zealots or neocons (big business conservatives), but traditional values conservative.

The narrative the left media has spun is that everyone on the right is a religious zealot or neocon because there are a few that are (just as there are left-wing zealots) but the breadth of viewpoints on the conservative is a lot larger than any left-wing party, because the conservatives are a lot more accepting in general of different viewpoints (free speech and all), even if that includes viewpoints that aren’t broadly supported.

The State of the Labour Party

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