That Starmer fella...

It was better, but wasn't good.

First bit was good TBF but I think that was mainly everyone was off their face.

Chris Grey, whose blog throughout Brexit was essential reading, has a long but interesting take on what Labour need to do to build a new base:

https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2021/05/labour-and-post-brexit-politics.html

Ha!

Almost 5% of ballots cast in this year’s mayor of London election were rejected, mainly because voters had voted for too many candidates.

That's a lot of rejected ballots. Far more than I'd have expected.

This doesn't tell the whole story but this twitter thread should give you the gist of the authoritarianism of the Blair years: https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/1231543272943898626

Yes, it was better than the Tory governments on either side, but people are right to question Blair's political legacy for a whole host of reasons

@Gabriel_Pogrund NEW: Rachel Reeves is new shadow chancellor, party
source confirms.

lolololololol

ffs

Thought it looked an awful reshuffle first of, now not so sure, bit worrying the conclusion of the results is that they need to focus on jobs, when didn't jobs need focussing on?

Does that sound right to any of you?

I think the effect here is amplified by the urban/rural divide. Institutional and systemic racism, for example, are a lot less visible and apparent in the countryside and even in large towns, but those issues are front and centre for London, Manchester etc.

It seems to me the country, or maybe just the red wall, is angrier at Labour than they are at the Conservatives, and for me that has to lie at the feet of media strategy/media - what else could it be when L literally haven't been in power?

They're still the opposition party, up against a massively corrupt and cronyistic government, and however much media bias there is, Labour should have been able to either state what their position is and/or show how abject and corrupt Johnson et al are. Can't lay the failure on the media alone.

It was better, but wasn't good.

Probably this.

But after 18 years of Thatcher and Major, "better" was good enough for a bit.

If you went or have kids who go to school in London their experience will almost certainly have been miles better than it would have been.

Things that we probably take for granted now in terms of democratisation - devolution, more transparent local government - are also a good legacy of Blair's.

Aside from Iraq, I think one of the main criticisms is that they started out with a manifesto that was genuinely radical, but didn't follow through with it after making a good start. Further Lords reform and electoral reform are two examples of unfinished business that could have significantly changed politics for good, if they hadn't taken their eye off the ball.

Boris Johnson looks like he is presiding over the end of the Union, with Scotland pushing for another referendum, and the majority of people in Northern Ireland expecting to unite with the Republic within 25 years.

He's leader of a party with Unionist in their name, and yet this just isn't damaging him at all.

He's found some kind of cheat code, and will outlast us all.

Can't lay the failure on the media alone.

I agree, I think it's down the party's media strategy too.

That there's so much active negative emotion towards Labour at the moment stinks to me. They're not doing anything, but is your man on the street usually angry with them for it? Or are they just ambivalent to politics usually. Maybe it's just symptomatic of being up against fucking boris

Do people just like someone to be angry at in the tabloids?
immigrants->remainers->Labour?

Yes

The Tory cunts have done a reasonable job of fucking things up, defunding everything and blaming it on labour, the places where that actually hits hardest are placed with labour councils because people are less well off and need council services more, so the defunded councils get the blame for central cuts, the people who don't suffer so directly from that have less blame to spread and the ones that do are left with shit services from a local labour council that will struggle to do enough to help but somehow can't convince people it's the dickheads in charge of them causing the problems. They're left patching leaks as the ships going down, drowning the lower decks, rather than pointing out the guys up above are still raiding the buffet and fucking the ice sculptures, or something maritimey.

I mean... pretty much

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And the hardest part of it all is that they have to try to build a winning coalition without once turning to working-class leave voters whose industries are being fucked by a Tory Brexit (hello fishermen!) and saying "we fucking told you so!"

Back to Blairism.

Why is Labour so intent on demonising the only political and electoral success it's had over the last 50 years? Being emotionally anchored to a perceived failure of the last time it was in power, seems to me, to be fundamentally holding Labour back for the future.

If the narrative could be more like, "yeah the Iraq war was a fuck-up but when we were in power we did x, y, z and improved the lives of British people by a, b, c and these are core Labour values, we are the party of the people not the elite". Wouldn't this be a more sensible way to demonstrate our worth?

Labour's internal machinations are so tribal.

Those names alone are fairly uninspiring also. I guess a couple of them could head up a decent opposition, but they would need some solid values/messaging to coalesce around and stick to like glue. Too much reactionary stuff at the moment, trying to say what they think the public want to hear, comes across as inauthentic. Corbyn had some strong underlying principles, even if he was pretty terrible at the day-to-day running of the shop.

It's at least two parties trying desperately not to come to the obvious conclusion.

terrible at the day-to-day running of the shop

not a dig at you and I know your point has coalesced into an accepted truism now but just look at what has gone on with starmer this weekend - the party is a pit of snakes and there are so many who see it as their own personal fiefdom. if JC had wanted to be able to run the shop effectively, he needed to wield an iron fist against these people. enacting the 'stalinist' measures he was so often accused of but never actually carried out. as it was, he was too nice and accommodating of people who would rather see him in the ground - itself a genuine failing/weakness of the previous LOTO.

the person who posted the quote from the terminator about the labour right were on the money:

Listen. Understand. That Terminator is out there. It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with. It doesn't feel pity of remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead.