An amalgamation of several musings with additional thoughts

I keep on seeing comments about sticking to Labour’s values, principles or roots, and I’m really confused, I’m not sure a lot of people realise the roots they are actually talking about, for instance, looking at all previous Labour PM’s before Blair:

  • Ramsey MacDonald, first Labour PM, 1924 & 1929-31, career politician who actively pursued a policy of austerity.
  • Clement Attlee (Earl Attlee), second Labour PM, 1945-51, middle class, Oxford Educated, Keynesian Economist, believed in a strong private sector and minimal government intervention except in times of crisis like recession.
  • Harold Wilson, third Labour PM, 1964-70 & 1974-76, Grammar school and Oxford Educated, believed in private ownership and specifically took nationalisation off the agenda.
  • James Callaghan, fourth Labour PM, 1976-79, Opposed trade unions’ demands during infamous winter of discontent, sent troops into Northern Ireland, exposed monetarist economics the precursor to Thatcherism.

These men were ALL Labour Prime Ministers, they were all Labour, and they are all who are referred to as getting Labour back to its roots, and instilling Labour principles, they all followed Labour principles, those being Freedom, Equality, Community and Democracy.

You mightn’t like the real history of the Labour party and want to believe it is this party that fits just your own view, but the truth is the Labour party is and always has been a very broad church with a very wide range of views.

So yeah, people can show their continued ignorance and say it’s Blairite, Tory-Lite and Red-Tory as much as they like, but that it simply not true. So let’s have a look at just a few of the policy achievements post ’97 and do tell me which ones were Tory ones then;

  • Minimum Wage?
  • Sure Start Centres?
  • Child Tax Credits?
  • Working Tax Credits?
  • Banning Fox Hunting?
  • Building New Hospitals?
  • Building Schools for the Future?
  • Widening Participation in Higher Education?
  • Building Schools for the Future?
  • Devolved parliaments for Wales and Scotland?
  • Cutting waiting lists in the NHS?
  • Employing more Doctors?
  • Employing more Nurses?
  • Employing more Firefighters?
  • Running lower budget deficits than the previous 18 years?

So ask yourself, which of these policies are the Tory ones that the previous Labour government copied without socialist principles exactly?

Keir Hardie was a fairly Liberal socialist and Scottish Independence Campaigner, who believed that the only way to break the Tory hold on power to gain Independence (which he never achieved) was to unite all parties in the centre and left ground of British Politics. He didn’t form it as a solely left-wing party that you seem to believe when you talk about the founding principles of the Labour Party. Indeed if you look at Clement Attlee’s biography, you will see that he was very focused on national duty, personal responsibility, so I’m sorry to break it to you, but the Labour Party was formed as a more moderate liberal party than you seem to mistakenly believe. Corbyn is no Keir Hardie. Incidentally, Keir Hardie had five pledges when he founded the party, they were;

  1. Reforming the House of Lords
  2. Introduction of a National Minimum Wage
  3. Trade Union Representation Rights for all workers
  4. Creation of a Scottish Government
  5. Banning Alcohol

The 1st four were all finally won by a Blair led Government; what a bastard.

You see it is not a binary choice, one can be anti-Corbyn and realise he is unelectable and still not a Red-Tory, like noted left-wing commentators Owen Jones, Alex Anrdeou and Nick Cohen writer of the scathing attack on New Labour ‘What’s Left?’, former Corbyn Economics advisors Thomas Pikkerty & David Blanchflower and many others have all shown.

It is however not my responsibility to pick someone different as being more electable, I am actually not sure there’s anyone in the parliamentary party who could win an election anytime soon, albeit I do think that Smith would probably lose less badly than Corbyn given the chance, but I still don’t particularly support him; see its NON-BINARY my support is to the party.

The reality is that British politics is and always has been about personalities, Clement Attlee was selected as Labour Leader because he was popular, not because he was some raving left-winger, which he wasn’t incidentally. Winston Churchill was selected as Conservative Leader because he was popular and indeed lost the 1945 election to Attlee because he was ill during the campaign and didn’t appear in public much losing his popularity and so moving onwards, Thatcher was popular with the general public, Blair was popular, Brown was not, neither was Hague, IDS or Howard, and so to Corbyn because even less that Michael Foot, he is unpopular, he is ridiculed, he is seen as incapable, incompetent and a laughing stock by the wider electorate. Policy wise there is very little between Corbyn, Smith, Cooper, Burnham and everyone else in the party because believe it or not we are one party with shared ideals, just slightly differing ideas about how to achieve them. The policies we adhere to are mutual ones and agreed upon by the members democratically. Electability is a personal thing, it is about personalities not policies and Corbyn is the most unpopular opposition leader for any political party in the past 40 years and to this end is unelectable with the wider electorate, so if we want a Labour government again he has to be changed, not to say anyone else would do better, we don’t know, but that doesn’t change the fact that with him as leader all we achieve is a Tory government.

From the current independent UK polling report, based on polling averages and current boundaries:

UK General Election Seat Forecast:

  • CON: 420 (+89)
  • LAB:  140 (-92)
  • SNP: 51 (-5)
  • LD: 12 (+4)
  • PC: 6 (+3)
  • UKIP: 3 (+2)
  • GRN: 2 (+1)

Add to that the current acceptance that boundary changes will cost Labour approximately 30 seats, that takes Labour down to an unprecedented low of possibly as few as 110 seats. This we in the Labour Party must all agree is a very worrying and very real possibility.

Now many people say that they can’t trust the polling companies and that they will simply use questions to get the answers that they want or that some organisation is paying them to get. Well it is in the interests of polling organisations to be accurate and get things as correct as possible, even more so now after the blip of the 2015 General Election. So they do not try to get answers that they want, they are trying to get accurate answers, and not even the current Labour leadership doubt the polls, as evidenced by John McDonnell’s recent comment; “It is inarguable that no modern party leader can win an election if behind in the polls.” This continual doubting of the evidence is reminiscent of the Climate Change denier, the continually disagrees with the overwhelming weight of evidence and still clings to their one solitary piece that they are misinterpreting anyway.  There is absolutely no correlation to attendance at rallies and general election success. And blaming all of this on the supposed ‘coup’ is equally disingenuous.

So Corbyn might offer a version of Labour that suits a lot of people on the left and the majority of members, but realise this, the Labour Party’s members are merely 1% of the electorate and the party need another 35% of the electorate to form a majority government. Corbyn doesn’t offer a version of the Labour Party that suits these people and that can’t be anywhere near made up by ‘appealing to non-voters/Green voters/SNP voters’ it needs to be done by appealing to those who’ve recently voted Conservative and UKIP. Most of these people aren’t members of the Tory Party, they wouldn’t call themselves right-wingers like we offensively call them, they are just normal people, very often working class people, very many of them on benefits, but they still don’t think that Labour offers them what they want. You can say this is being Tory-Lite as much as you like, but it’s not, and it is the only way to win power and ONLY in power can we make any difference. This idea of moving the discussion to the left is ridiculous, all it actually means is moving the conversation to a place where the vast majority of the wider electorate have stopped even listening to us.