Clare Short resigns Labour and goes Independent

[articul8]

yes - that people are feeing nostalgic for Kinnock and Hattersly, or looking to people like Short or Kilfoyle as 'rebels' shows what a desperate condition the party is in. And its amazing how quickly (most of) the "Bennites" of yore transformed themselves into the Blairites of today (Milburn, Byers, Beckett, etc.).

I fail to see the great merit some people see in an "electable" imitation of Thatcherism - in many ways, New Labour has been used to push through stuff Thatcher could not have got away with (eg - driving private finance deeper into the heart of the NHS, loading students with vast fees, giving the rich a free reign to run a "city academy" etx.).

 

[Mallard]

That's what Trots and their fellow travellers REALLY hate! They hanker for the glory days of glorious principled opposition.

Perhaps they hanker for the party to actually have principles or perhaps different ones to the privatisation/pfi/war/law and order/immigration obsessed/pro nuclear/big business mantra of New 'Labour'. How far to the right do they have to go before Labour supporters finally realise the futility of trotting out this 'We're better than the tories' nonsense?

 

[Fullyplumped]

Perhaps they hanker for the party to actually have principles or perhaps different ones to the privatisation/pfi/war/law and order/immigration obsessed/pro nuclear/big business mantra of New 'Labour'. How far to the right do they have to go before Labour supporters finally realise the futility of trotting out this 'We're better than the tories' nonsense?

No, they just want to be in opposition. MUCH more satisfying.

 

[Mallard]

No, they just want to be in opposition. MUCH more satisfying.

Nice side step there's an office for you working for 'the project' no doubt. What is the point of supporting your cronies in power when their presence there is either detrimental or at best ineffectual at bringing positive change?
Apart from holding on to power at all costs, what principles do the government (and apologists like yourself) have left?

 

[treelover]

I reckon he is already part of it, wonder what he will do when the good ship: new labour goes down.

Nice side step there's an office for you working for 'the project' no doubt.

 

[Fullyplumped]

I reckon he is already part of it, wonder what he will do when the good ship: new labour goes down.

Ach yer just jealous!

 

[Streathamite]

No, they just want to be in opposition. MUCH more satisfying.

what's the point of being in power if it is only to implement and pursue tory policies?

 

[Haller]

yes - that people are feeing nostalgic for Kinnock and Hattersly, or looking to people like Short or Kilfoyle as 'rebels' shows what a desperate condition the party is in. And its amazing how quickly (most of) the "Bennites" of yore transformed themselves into the Blairites of today (Milburn, Byers, Beckett, etc.).

It's also notable that Hattersley hasn't abandoned his principles in the way that most of those who posed as left-wingers in the 1970s and '80s have. He continues to argue for egalitarian socialism, just as he did when he first entered parliament.

 

[articul8]

Hattersley has never been a principled socialist (or anywhere near it!) - but simply by maintaining a consistent reformist interest in areas like comprehensive education, has ended up to the left of a "labour" governement pursuing Tory policies. (eg. reinventing Kenneth Baker's City Technology Colleges as City Academies)

 

[Kaka Tim]

That's how politics work. Blair had to be elected to do anything, and what he then did was make Labour electable.

This is such a myth - one much promoted by the blairoids - Labour would have been elected in 1997 with John Smith. The torys were so detested even Kinnock may have managed it.

They won in 2001 on a much reduced turnout because the opposition was a shambles - and they had been pretty lucky in government in terms of the economy and an lack of any major crises.

And they 'won' in 2005 (due to the unfarimness of the electrol system and on their lowest vote since 1982) in spite of Blair - who by this time was widely detested.

The myth of 'Blair the saviour' has been biult by his own spin machine, large elements of the media and britains ruling class - who appreciate what blair has done in hijacking the labour party to largely serve their agenda.

I have never ever met anyone who hero worships Blair - compared to the many individuals who idolised Thatcher.

Blair has - in the long term - done immense damage to the labour party and contirbuted muchly the debasement of democracy and politics in this country.

As for Clare Short - well she lost all credibility when she failed to resign over Iraq. As it was described at the time - 'she wrestled long and hard with her conscience - and won'

 

[Lock&Light]

This is such a myth - one much promoted by the blairoids - Labour would have been elected in 1997 with John Smith. The torys were so detested even Kinnock may have managed it.

It was Smith's neanthradal budget proposals that scuppered Kinnock in '92, and might well have done so again in '97.

 

[Streathamite]

ermm...it wasn't just that, and i speak as one who helped do the surveys for the '92 inquest. in many cases it was the tories being given 'one last chance' by their worried supporters. The budget was in there sure, but usually second or third amongst reasons why thegave for voting tory.
strange as it may seem, john major was a big 'plus' for them
but most of all it was that it was simply too big a lag to make up. on average, 50 seats change hands at a GE - 1997 was the big exception. labour came phenomenally close, but not close enough, in so manys eats, which is why '97 had a record number of marginals and 'winnables' in play.

 

[Haller]

Hattersley has never been a principled socialist (or anywhere near it!) - but simply by maintaining a consistent reformist interest in areas like comprehensive education, has ended up to the left of a "labour" governement pursuing Tory policies.

They may not be your principles (they're not particularly mine, either) but they are genuinely held principles. And reformist socialism is a coherent tradition and position. Without agreeing with him very often, I kinda like Hattersley for his consistency - it's a trait that's in damn short supply in left politics.

 

[Kaka Tim]

It was Smith's neanthradal budget proposals that scuppered Kinnock in '92, and might well have done so again in '97.

It was Kinnock running on stage and shouting 'al-right-yy!!!' at the sheffiled pre-election rally - like some welsh gnome version of barrymore.

Millions of TV viewers simaltaneously thought - 'what a fucking nob' and plumped for the grey bloke in the y-fronts instead.

 

[audiotech]

This didn't assist his chances either.

 

[Streathamite]

The voters of Liverpool backed the Labour Party, not Militant. Once they were kicked out of Labour they had virtually no electoral success because nobody in Liverpool voted for them. That's democracy.

sorry, but as an ex-milllie myself i know this is Lp propagandist shite. The people of Liverpool KNEW what they were getting, they knew they were millies, and they still voited 'em back in in-ever increasing numbers. You do realise you've just called the voters of liverpool gullible thickoes, intentionally or no?
OF COURSE a relatively small grouping has stuff all chance against the might of the Labour machine, espesh not with local (tory) and national press queueing up to give a kicking, but - for the record - Labour vote and turnout has been sliding consistently on merseyside ever since the millies expulsions. Militant fought for the workers on merseyside, and peopel there recognised that.
Nulabour barely fights for workers anywhere, and I can't see how anyone can call themselves a socialist and stay in the party. I certainly stayed way too long.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

sorry, but as an ex-milllie myself i know this is Lp propagandist shite. The people of Liverpool KNEW what they were getting, they knew they were millies, and they still voited 'em back in in-ever increasing numbers. You do realise you've just called the voters of liverpool gullible thickoes, intentionally or no?
OF COURSE a relatively small grouping has stuff all chance against the might of the Labour machine, espesh not with local (tory) and national press queueing up to give a kicking, but - for the record - Labour vote and turnout has been sliding consistently on merseyside ever since the millies expulsions. Militant fought for the workers on merseyside, and peopel there recognised that.
Nulabour barely fights for workers anywhere, and I can't see how anyone can call themselves a socialist and stay in the party. I certainly stayed way too long.

There's an element of factual truth in both sides of this debate in relation to Liverpool. But both the protagonists are wrong on the key politics.

Certainly during the 1980s when the broad left was in the leadership of the Party in Liverpool, Labour votes rose significantly across the City.

But it is also true that the Labour vote rose across the country in council elections starting with the capture of the GLC and Met Counties in 1980 and the London Borough victories in 1981. The Bennites captured many council seats and there was talk of a new breed of 'municipal socialism'. However the GLC and most other councils caved in to government pressure in the mid-1980s and only Liverpool and Lambeth stood firm (in the historiography of Militant, the importance of Lambeth Council's battle is often ignored, mainly because it was carried out without any significant role by Militant).

In Liverpool, Labour catastrophically lost the Edge Hill inner city seat in the 1979 by-election to the Liberals; the Tories won a majority of votes in the city in 1979 (European elections) defeating a Militant Labour candidate; in 1981 three of the city's Labour MPs joined the SDP; and Militant at around the same time had (I think) four parliamentary candidates (some of whom deliberately stood down, like Hatton himself, to avoid too much confrontation with the Labour leadership when the boundaries were redistributed and seats reselected for the 1983 general election).

From the ashes of the 1970s Liverpool Labour Party in the 1980s came a strongly left wing party; however it is unfair to ascribe that solely to Militant - reformist fighting figures like Eric Heffer were key leaders, and even 'metropolitan lefties' like Keva Coombes were significant.

This success continued up to the early 1990s, when 25 councillors belonging to the Broad Left were expelled from the local party, and in May 1991, five left wing candidates won seats as 'Ward Labour' standing against candidates supported by the Labour hierarchy (none of them were Militant by the way; Militant deliberately avoided putting their own members in positions where they might 'stand against' the official Labour candidate - this being regarded as a key principle of work inside the Party up to that point).

However once expelled the Militant/Broad Left had little electoral success - Lesley Mahmood won only 6.5% of the vote in the Walton by-election in July 1991; Terry Fields MP for Broadgreen was expelled in December 1991 at the same time as Dave Nellist MP in Coventry, yet Fields only managed 14% in the 1992 general election (Nellist managed double that - 29%). Since then election results for Militant/Socialist Party have been derisory and in single figures. In 1996 for example the 'Militant Labour' ran several candidates, including two former leaders of the Labour group on the Council - Cathy Wilson and Lesley Mahmood; both scored less than 10% of the vote, while two fellow Broad Left candidates successfully defended their seats as 'Ward Labour'; the decline continued as 'Socialist Party' in the 1998 elections to below 5% typically, and by 2000 Cathy Wilson's vote (as 'Socialist Alliance') had declined to just 42. [by comparison Respect managed 281 votes 10.6% in its first outing in the city in 2006, in approximately the same ward].

 

[.r.u.i.n.e.d]

That's how politics work. Blair had to be elected to do anything, and what he then did was make Labour electable.

This word "electable", and its counterpart "unelectable" is one of the classic ways in which a whopping/wapping great lie is smuggled into such a small space, that you don't even notice it, and then that it gets repeated until it's unchallengeable conventional wisdom.

Foot and Kinnock's party are often said to have been "unelectable" by the intelligentsia that write our mainstream media. I doubt they believe it, but it seems to have become received wisdom, despite the fact that it obviously doesn't make sense.

No political party is "unelectable.", unless it doesn't have any candidates standing for seats. The whole point of an election is that any party can win, it just depends who the voters decide to vote for.

The trick that has been played has been to move from the fact that various political groups and leaderships were not elected to saying they were unelectable. Were not elected - were unelected, were unelectable. That seems to be roughly the depth of the argument. But it isn't an argument, - it's never presented as such, by describing some political grouping as "unelectable" the the media frame the whole way in which we see the political landscape and they do it without the need for argument, as a fait accompli

The idea that the voters might have chosen differently with hindsight, or if given another chance never seems to cross these commentators minds.
what is the motivation for this concealed lying?, - Is it to enhance the sense of powerlessness over the outcomes of our "democracy" and the sense that the british voting public is a mass of unchangeable idiocy, thus discouraging people to think that they can do anything about it by voting differently.

 

[Lock&Light]

This word "electable", and its counterpart "unelectable" is one of the classic ways in which a whopping/wapping great lie is smuggled into such a small space, that you don't even notice it, and then that it gets repeated until it's unchallengeable conventional wisdom.................

I know it's only your first posting, but up till now you've spoken 100% bilge.

 

[Streathamite]

so refute it properly....
one thing I'd say on the unelectable shite; despite the awful state Labour were in '83, Thatcher would prolly STILL have been turfed out, were it not for the Falklands. before that, she'd been way behind in the polls for aeons.
Ok - it would have been a hung parliament, and those bastards in the SDP may have been the greater beneficiary, but it would still have averted 13 years of Thatcher and all that entailed

 

[phildwyer]

This word "electable", and its counterpart "unelectable" is one of the classic ways in which a whopping/wapping great lie is smuggled into such a small space, that you don't even notice it, and then that it gets repeated until it's unchallengeable conventional wisdom.

Foot and Kinnock's party are often said to have been "unelectable" by the intelligentsia that write our mainstream media. I doubt they believe it, but it seems to have become received wisdom, despite the fact that it obviously doesn't make sense.

No political party is "unelectable.", unless it doesn't have any candidates standing for seats. The whole point of an election is that any party can win, it just depends who the voters decide to vote for.

The trick that has been played has been to move from the fact that various political groups and leaderships were not elected to saying they were unelectable. Were not elected - were unelected, were unelectable. That seems to be roughly the depth of the argument. But it isn't an argument, - it's never presented as such, by describing some political grouping as "unelectable" the the media frame the whole way in which we see the political landscape and they do it without the need for argument, as a fait accompli

The idea that the voters might have chosen differently with hindsight, or if given another chance never seems to cross these commentators minds.
what is the motivation for this concealed lying?, - Is it to enhance the sense of powerlessness over the outcomes of our "democracy" and the sense that the british voting public is a mass of unchangeable idiocy, thus discouraging people to think that they can do anything about it by voting differently.

Good points. The myth that the 80's LP was "unelectable" was of course the excuse for purging it of any socialist ideas.

 

[TeeJay]

No political party is "unelectable.", unless it doesn't have any candidates standing for seats. The whole point of an election is that any party can win, it just depends who the voters decide to vote for.

Rubbish.

"Unelectable" doesn't mean 'impossible to elect because they aren't standing', it means 'extremely unlikely to be elected' typically because they have alienated too much of the electorate through some extreme or unpopular policy or another.

When a party is deemed 'unelectable' this doesn't mean they won't get any candidates elected anywhere - it means they won't win the election, and not by a small margin either - they will lose big time.

You have a point about the mainstream media labelling people as extremist radicals or as a 'lunatic fringe' rather than taking them seriously or properly discussing their poicies - the Green party for example often simply gets labelled as 'eco-loonies' when it is not being ignored and doesn't often get much air time or column inches, regardless of how reasonable or valid its policy proposals are. Other people here could probably produce their own examples.

However you are way off the mark in trying to unlaterally rewrite the dictionary entry for the word 'unelectable'. Sorry.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

The voters of Liverpool backed the Labour Party, not Militant. Once they were kicked out of Labour they had virtually no electoral success because nobody in Liverpool voted for them. That's democracy. Labour lost to the Liberals & Tories because Liverpool voters were sick of the way Labour had been infiltrated,

Actually, you vile Blairite shit, Liverpool Labour Party, when it was led by Militant supporters, increased its vote at every election. Even when all across the rest of the country the Labour vote was falling. It was only after Kinnock and his witchhunters gutted the local Labour Party and installed their stooges instead that the Labour vote collapsed.

As for Clare Short, the woman has and had no positive qualities to speak of.

 

[Streathamite]

err, i've already kinda covered that ground nigel.....

 

[Fisher_Gate]

Actually, you vile Blairite shit, Liverpool Labour Party, when it was led by Militant supporters, increased its vote at every election. Even when all across the rest of the country the Labour vote was falling. It was only after Kinnock and his witchhunters gutted the local Labour Party and installed their stooges instead that the Labour vote collapsed.

As for Clare Short, the woman has and had no positive qualities to speak of.

In which election between 1980 and 1992 did the Liverpool Labour vote rise while the national Labour vote was falling?

 

[Streathamite]

I'm pretty sure it happened in '83....when labour's vote didn't so much fall as make a tower block suicide plunge

 

[Fullyplumped]

Actually, you vile Blairite shit,

I bet you say that to all the voters! Which is why nobody much ever votes for you.

Liverpool Labour Party, when it was led by Militant supporters, increased its vote at every election. Even when all across the rest of the country the Labour vote was falling. It was only after Kinnock and his witchhunters gutted the local Labour Party and installed their stooges instead that the Labour vote collapsed.

And quickly picked up again with Labour maintaining power until, I think, 1998.

As for Clare Short, the woman has and had no positive qualities to speak of.

Nonsense. Clare Short is an inspiring politician. Not perfect, and she made some misjudgements, and I wish she'd stayed.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I bet you say that to all the voters!

No. Just to Blairite vermin like yourself.

Nonsense. Clare Short is an inspiring politician.

Clare Short is a foul careerist shitbag with not a principle to her name.

 

[Streathamite]

I bet you say that to all the voters! Which is why nobody much ever votes for you.

.

and after nine years in power, and with the limpest opposition you can imagine, we got WHAT percentage of the votes last GE, hmm? and on WHAT turn out?

And quickly picked up again with Labour maintaining power until, I think, 1998.

not that quickly, and not to the same extent, and who are in power now?

Nonsense. Clare Short is an inspiring politician. Not perfect, and she made some misjudgements, and I wish she'd stayed

I know Clare. I like her. but she made the most almighty hash of her quitting, and it is possible that the war could have been stopped (or at least Uk involvement in it) had she gone simultaneously with Cook, and it's a pretty sad testimony to the current PLP that cabinet, govt and CLp all went limply along with this lunatic war. and she - like you - is fatally tarred by your association with the dismal neo-SDP apology for a once-socialist party you have become.
all the people I respect in that party have left years ago, like me, and with the sole exception of corbyn, whose continuing commitment I find mystifying. the fact is, it is impossible to have any socialist principles and remain on board, other than as a hypocrite.
the great Labour sellout has done more to disillusion ppeople than anything else I can think of - hence the devastation caused to party numbers and voter turnout alike.
there's nothing you've done in power that wouldn't have been at least contemplated, seriously, by (say) the macmillan or heath govts in their more progressively paternalistic moments.
other that is, then go to war to defeat a non-existent threat, or introduce ID cards

 

[Fullyplumped]

No. Just to Blairite vermin like yourself.

Ooh I love a man with a silver tongue. You must sell lots of whatever paper it is you sell.

Clare Short is a foul careerist shitbag with not a principle to her name.

No she isn't, but you sound very tough and manly for saying it (feels muscles admiringly).