Does it ?
ETA : I do apologize for the multiposts - I’m having a bit of a “slam door open door AND ANOTHER THING” moment, I’m afraid. Brought to you by Grimbergen ™(r)(c).
It seems I just am not getting my point across, I do hope that those who are responsible for future Labour strategy are more likely to take on board my view and those like me.
As for nationalisation - I hope you read both articles in their fullest, I now have to accept that you do not have enough handle on these issues to truly understand - that is likely because you didn’t live through those times.
British Rail worked extremely badly prior to privatisation - this was because both Labour and the Tories had badly under-invested for 30 years, and this poor performance of state industries was the reason why privatisation became one of the reasons why it was a very popular policy by the Thatcher administration.
I find that it is very surprising that these organisations whose performance in the private sector has been very mixed did not get more of a shout in the Labour campaign - it was an absolute open door for Labour yet they handled this part of their campaign extremely poorly.
In this aspect the Labour campaign was very incompetent, it never rang the bells that it really should have done and would have been very easy to do. You cannot blame the Tories for not getting involved in debating something that could only lose them points, shame on Labour for not making far more of it.
The Tories were pretty careful in choosing their battleground, Labour was very poor in not not taking it to them in the areas that were likely to highlight Tory policy failings.
You are still not getting it really - its not how you perceive things that matters to the electorate, its how the electorate perceive things - it doesn’t matter how right you believe your arguments are, you have to change your direction completely.
My point is these are not those times. History marches on, popular attitudes along with them. The Founding Fathers of the US are dead old bougie racists and not modern moral authorities in any way, shape or from ; and 1940s Labour isn’t 2019 Labour because the USSR sort of collapsed and Full Communism has lost most of its supporters since I’m not sure if you noticed but I do hope that helps.
I can’t say what Labour’s campaign did or didn’t do, because I’m not in the UK and ain’t give much of a shit ; but the Labour-supporting people I follow on the twitters definitely pointed that particular bit out. Extensively. Which, I mean, at this point does it really need pointing out any more ? Privatized anything is shit and more expensive. Always, ever. It can’t not be. Whether we’re talking healthcare, rail, prisons, education, cable & internet… I mean it’s just fucking capitalism.txt. It’s going to be run with the lowest possible standards and the highest costs for the most possible amount of profit. The only possible remedies against that are competition (which can’t work long term unless it’s government competition, and in any event the competition is only going to be shittier) and regulation or nationalization (which is only ever enabled **after **shit has hit the fan, then typically rolled back when the shit is back on the ground and ready for a new round of hitting the fan).
Again, I really can’t speak towards what Labour officially did or didn’t do. From the outside it does seem like a chaos dunk from the half court. One that barely even needs mentioning, it’s so fucking obvious. So voting bloody Tory when *existing in that reality *beggars belief…
Well, for one thing fuck the electorate because they’re demonstrably blinkered idiots, for another you realize you’re kind of endorsing post-truth politics here ? I mean, if plainly stating facts, and promising factual remedies, and explaining how you’re going to pay for those remedies fails in the face of flagrant, open, almost proud bluster and bullshit… what’s there ? What *do *?
Unfortunately, the Remain side attacked democracy, throwing everything but the kitchen sink in order to stop Brexit, which the UK voted for. Yes, Brexit is a big mistake, but democracy includes the right to screw up.
In essence, a pox on both houses. Furthermore, any analysis needs to take strategic mistakes by the losing side into account. Neither Corbyn nor Johnson were trustworthy. Corbyn says stupid things publicly and Johnson says stupid things privately. Corbyn will promise you the moon and Johnson will promise that he will do nothing but deliver Brexit. The first is unattainable, and the second is just false.
In my opinion, the left should have let the Brexit agreement pass, then fight any further elections on favorable terrain. This would have required them to give up on Remain.
Instead, the biggest left wing leader decided he would create another agreement (after the last one took so long and required so much luck to get through), which would somehow be better (any Brexit deal is a bad deal, so I don’t think Corbyn could come up with a better deal), doing this in a likely minority Parliament, and then holding yet another referendum because his party didn’t like the results of the last referendum. He would, of course, have to take a very long time to do this, while the British public was already frustrated by how long it was taking just to take one more step.
I tried to find that movie clip where a frustrated car purchaser spends extra money to buy useless insurance just to get the negotiations over with… but I don’t know the name of the movie, and every search pointed me to videos about how to avoid being ripped off in real life.
American elections, and now at least a few Canadian elections, have the same problem. The media is weaker, and people rely on social media.
It’s hard to take a media critique of any politician (or topic) seriously when reporters break stories on Twitter and then check their sources. So a reasonably unbiased reporter, without being manipulated at all, can unleash untruth, which can then go viral, because they were in such a hurry to get eyeballs on their Twitter feed that they didn’t take the time to do the basics. Until the media cycle slows down, if that will ever happen, politicians will be able to lie with impunity.
More traditional media are influenced by social media. Twitter drives Google results, so if you’re using Google News and you ignore all the Twitter results, you’re still being indirectly influenced by whatever some popular Twitter page is spouting.
And, of course, the polarization of the media. Probably because I did a lot of searches on Brexit in Google News, I seemed to read only heavily biased articles. There were lots of pro-Remain and pro-Brexit articles, but it would have been easy for me to just pick one side and have no clue what the other half of the UK was thinking.
I think they would have won a fairly honest Brexit election anyway, since Brexit is about emotion, not facts. Any factual criticism of Johnson’s positions would be glossed over by his supporters, who would see this as “gotcha”. This was baked in before the first reporter asked Johnson their first question.
Remain shot themselves in the foot by not realizing they had lost the referendum more than three years ago. The left had a pretty good amount of control over the government, but instead of passing private members’ bills to increase NHS funding and prevent it from being sold in the event of Brexit (or to prevent it from being sold in general), or putting some rational fixes or replacements to Universal Credit in place, they spent all that time fighting against the referendum results. This fueled a lot of resentment as the referendum winners saw months of attempts to overturn their vote.
So the left lost the election, handing Johnson a majority, and they can do nothing to prevent Boris Johnson from (for instance) selling off parts of the NHS or making Universal Credit even harder to qualify for. If Brexit had passed and the government could then focus on other issues, Johnson probably would not have gotten the same amount of votes. Perhaps a more credible Labour leader than Corbyn could have won an election, and Corbyn himself might have been able to hold Johnson to a minority. At the very least Johnson would have to face the electorate on an issue other than Brexit, so he couldn’t just drive tractors through walls labelled “gridlock” to gain votes.
You see this strategic nonsense in politics a lot. Two elections ago in Ontario (2014) the Liberals (a generally centrist party) had a minority government. They were only a few seats short of a majority. This particular Liberal leader was quite left wing. While not part of a formal coalition with the more left wing NDP (the third largest party), they generally supported each others’ policies. In the run-up to the 2014 election, the Conservatives had slight more voter support, and if they won they would devastate the left’s agenda. However the NDP teamed up with the Conservatives to defeat the second left-wing Liberal budget, as they lost support when they supported the first budget, and they had a delusional belief that they could somehow “win” this election. (The NDP will not win an election in Ontario until everyone who remembers the Bob Rae government has passed away. That was in the early 1990s.) If the Conservatives had won a majority, the NDP would have been in a worse place, and since Canada has a first past the post system, they could have split votes with the Liberals and allowed the Conservatives to win.
Fortunately lots of NDP voters were angry at this stupid move, and voted Liberal. Furthermore the Conservatives squandered their lead with poor strategy. The Liberals won a majority and ruled for the next four years. (Are the Conservatives so bad? They won the 2018 election and immediately cut legal aid funding, cut funding for autism services, sent sex education to the 1970s, and so forth. The NDP’s stupid tactics could have imposed this on Ontario four years earlier. Strategy matters.)
In the more recent federal election (2019), the Liberals were reduced from a majority to a minority. There were many reasons the Conservatives did not win this election, and two of those reasons were a socially conservative leader, and an unwillingness to even discuss climate change seriously, neither of which are popular in the two largest provinces of Canada. Naturally some Conservative party members have doubled down, saying they need a louder socially conservative leader, and they need to preach the “truth” about carbon taxes and energy policies. (This preaching will be as accurate as anything coming from the Iraqi Information Minister.) If they continue to follow this poor strategy they could put Justin Trudeau back in office in 2023.
If the topic wasn’t Brexit, I’m sure he would not have gotten away with it. He was able to frame this maneuver as a reaction to attempts to cancel Brexit (which is frequently viewed as anti-democratic even by some people who voted Remain) so voters weren’t as angry about it as you might have expected.
People should, of course, take this into account when they’re making voting decisions, but you can’t literally shackle a candidate to a desk next to a reporter so a candidate can duck and cover. Do you want to vote for someone who won’t tell you their plans? People shouldn’t want to. Alas, if you only care about Brexit you won’t care that your candidate would rather hide in a fridge than talk to a reporter. The left allowed this election to be fought over Brexit, a poor strategy, making Johnson immune to the usual consequences.
Should it be a suicide pact though ?
It’s one thing I will agree on with Labour critics : Jezza should have just gone “fuck it, who’s changed their minds about this by now ? Well there you go, let’s not do the stupid thing at all then, and let’s talk about real shit instead.”.
suicide? You know how rdiculously hyperbolic such things sound don’t you?
OK, you think that a strong “cancel Brexit” position would have got them into power do you? How did it work out for the Lib Dems who did precisely that?
…well for starters you could stop recontextualising complex arguments about the rise of authoritarianism, disinformation campaigns and propaganda into simplistic talking points like “voters are idiots.” Second, stop starting with the assumption that this is “fixable” in the same way that a plumber can fix a blocked pipe by using a drain snake.
I’m not really sure this is a thing that can be “fixed” as much as “survived”. The EU referendums in Norway only in the last 5-10 years stopped being emotional hotspots for people to argue about, and the last of those happened 25 years ago.
Fact is, facts have left the building. It’s done and done and done. Now it’s just to batten down the hatches and ride out the storm for the next decade or so until things start getting calmer. You can fight it all the way, but as this election proves it won’t change anything but the minutiae.
I love, I repeat I love, love the accusation that I’m too emotionally invested in the merits of remaining in the European Union, while implying that Brexiters are not emotionally invested in the (fictional) merits of leaving.
Casdave. I simply don’t get how I’m supposed to indulge voters over whether or not something is fact or fiction. You might as well tell me the electorate voted to declare the Moon to be made of cheese. It’s not. So what should I do? Ship them some crackers?
It’s an expression, my dude.
I think (and I realize this is reckless, dangerous and tantamount to hardline Nazi communism even) politics and campaigns should be about what’s correct, true and/or just ; not saying whatever gets you power.
Fucked up, right ?
If people could be trusted to do the right thing than we wouldn’t need government. Human nature is what it is.
Your choice of words matters I think.
Perfectly reasonable, but that carries with it the responsibility to accept that all sides will smear, distort, lie, exaggerate and misinterpret. All of them, and they always have. Some sides do it more than others and in different areas. I don’t know anyone who think any political party is blameless in this and voters work on the assumption that this is the case.
If you take for granted that politicians will lie to you by the very nature of being in politics, what incentive do they have *not *to ? If you don’t hold politicians accountable who blow toxic smoke up your ass, why shouldn’t they do it ?
I think you’ve hit upon a point that’s been underdiscussed. By going for big and bold on the nationalisations, Labour was unable to make the argument for changes that would have directly addressed voters’ complaints. Overcrowded trains are a big issue for a lot of voters. A policy of escalating penalties for train companies that don’t take steps to relieve overcrowding would have been popular. Hell, just criticising Chris Grayling’s tenure as Transport Secretary would have an easy way of getting a few soundbites. There are lots of issues with the prior UK Government besides their handling of Brexit. Saying that the Tories did a bad job running things, and Labour would be committed to improving those things and running them correctly would have been a decent message. But instead of arguing for mandated improvements and better oversight, Labour wanted to take over. That gave the Tories an easy counterargument, and essentially let them off the hook.
The proposed nationalisations were probably not the biggest reason why Labour lost, but are indicative of why their overall campaign failed. The Labour campaign was campaigning to Corbyn’s base, and not to the country as a whole. They were offering solutions the voters didn’t want, and were therefore rejected.
At some point, even if lying forms the backbone of your campaign, a government will have to govern and they will be judged upon how well they manage to do that.
It may be that some of the things they were vocal about during a campaign don’t come to pass and they can be judged on the failure to deliver, or not.
The accountability happens every time we have an election but there is no perfect solution to this and yes, politicians of all stripes lie to a greater or lesser extent all the time with limited accountability.
“Also, Corbyn had a mustache! You know who else had a mustache? Stalin!” It’s interesting that you accuse others of wanting to Godwinise this thread while you post hyperbolic nonsense like this.
So Labour wants to nationalise the Royal Mail, rail operating companies, energy supply networks and water and sewerage companies. Let’s say they somehow managed to do this. This would put the UK on par with that other well-known Marxist hellhole, Ireland. Oh, the horror.
No, it really didn’t. This was a well-worn Leave canard. Wanting a vote on the actual terms of Brexit isn’t “attacking democracy”. Conversely, the repeated attempts by May and Johnson to do an end run around Parliament (you remember them - our democratically-elected representatives?), to avoid a second referendum vote on the actual terms, and to blatantly misrepresent to the public what was been done with regard to Brexit negotiations - that could be considered “attacking democracy”.
In arguing for Leave to be overturned, you’re arguing for something that was unlikely to happen in the last Parliament, and would only have happened if a skilled opposition had taken a Remain position and brought a majority of Parliament to their side. Labour never took a Remain position. They essentially said put us in charge and we’ll sort it out. Even when Theresa May was losing votes and it was obvious that Parliament was reluctant to pass a Brexit bill, Corbyn still didn’t take a firm position one way or the other. During the election, Corbyn finally offered voters a chance at a second referendum, even if he didn’t take a Leave/Remain position. Voters strongly rejected that offer. Even so, you’re still arguing against Brexit. Sure seems like an emotional investment to me.
Note that it also sounds like you’re arguing that the only form of Brexit will be a catastrophic No-Deal Brexit and it’s been obvious that was never going to happen. Boris’s Brexit will probably be messy and costly and sub-optimal and contain a lot of fudge. Anybody who is informed and realistic probably understands that. However, 1) the majority of those people are rejecting your concept that the only possible Brexit is a catastrophic one, 2) recognise that the EU is no paradise and have been voting for a substandard Brexit over a substandard EU, and 3) believe that in a democracy, the winning vote should be respected. Those are their “facts”. You’re declaring them “fictions” doesn’t change the reality that intelligent informed people hold different opinions than you.
Maybe, for your well-being, you should try to move into the Acceptance phase of grief. Brexit is going to happen.
Don’t forget the indicative votes back in March. Parliament had chances to indicate whether they wanted a second referendum, or revocation of Article 50. Parliament rejected both options.
Labour’s policies on nationalisation were popular.
56% supported rail nationalisation.
50% supported water nationalisation
45% supported gas nationalisation.
In addition:
64% supported a 50% income tax over £123K
60% supported a 45% income tax over £80K
54% supported worker representation on boards
53% supported a wealth tax.
Labour’s problem wasn’t that people didn’t like its policies. Labour’s problem was that they didn’t present those policies as a) part of a coherent vision for Britain that would be enacted by b) a trustworthy and competent leadership. Compare the Tories, who offered plenty of their own spending but wrapped up in “Get Brexit Done”. Johnson didn’t have great leadership ratings, but crucially they were better than Corbyn’s.
The question is, why didn’t Labour succeed in presenting themselves as having a coherent plan and solid leadership? Was it them? Was it the media? There are some aspects where I think the media are at fault* but ultimately the responsibility is Labour’s to find a way to get the word out.
*(E.g. the way the BBC got completely played by the Tories over the Andrew Neil interview. Corbyn steps up and is grilled by Neil - naturally some holes are found in his arguments. Johnson humbugs the BBC with promises that he definitely will turn up for the interview, until his rivals’ appearances are broadcast and he just ducks it. The end result is a glaring partiality in coverage, and it was the BBC’s job to make sure they didn’t get taken for a ride by not broadcasting any leader interviews until they were all in the can. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just a system that’s not fit to deal with the current way politics is done.)
It won them a million extra votes. Their share increased by 4.2% of the vote.
For comparison, the Tory vote share increased by 1.2% and Labour’s fell by 7.9%.