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What Will Labour Do Now?


scepticus

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HOLA441

I think that Labour are finished.

Scotland has two left wing parties.

The National Socialists of SNP and the Union Socialists of Labour.

Problem is that half of the Scottish electorate want independence, so they will always vote SNP. Labour is finished in Scotland.

As for England and Wales, Millibands utter refusal to even consider an EU referendum put paid to their chances.

UKIP took 15% of the votes, Labour could have hovered these up if they had promised an immediate referendum, no strings unlike the Tories offered.

But Labour were caught with their pants down They are an authoritarian party not willing to listen to the electorate, and it showed, the public looked and didn't like what they saw.

The best thing that Labour can do now is start paying for a funeral plan.

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HOLA442

As for England and Wales, Millibands utter refusal to even consider an EU referendum put paid to their chances.

UKIP took 15% of the votes, Labour could have hovered these up if they had promised an immediate referendum, no strings unlike the Tories offered.

Offering a referendum would have helped avoid making themselves look anti-democratic but in itself it wouldn't have stopped people voting UKIP. UKIP voters (particularly ex-Labour voters) are not on the whole interested in technocratic issues and many of them are not all that bothered about the EU. UKIP is now a combination of a protest party and a populist movement which poses a serious threat to Labour in their heartlands.

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HOLA443

Labour could have hovered these up if they had promised an immediate referendum, no strings unlike the Tories offered.

I heard that Owen Jones (lefty journo) saying something similar on dateline london. Not what I expected to hear frm him

Also amazingly, all the lefty commentators now seem to be saying that they knew it was a mistake all along, and labour should go back to contesting the political middle ground. Probably would have been helpful to mention it before the election debacle.

(Why have you forsaken us Tony, in this hour of our need?)

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HOLA444

Public beheading of Gordon Brown and Ed Balls. They could do Ed M as well, just for good measure.

Move to a contribution based benefit system. There's no vote in supporting a doley client state - people who work esp. their working class neighbours, hate it. And the lazy dossers cannot be arsed to vote to keep the money coming.

Work out whether they are a party of the working person, or the public sector unions.

The latter will only give you ~30% of the vote and piss off the other 70%

The former will lose you the easy money but then you will have to deliver real public sector services reforms.

And our public services are very expensive and poor compared to most Western European countries.

Fact is, there's no point banging on about 'the NHS being the best in world' when its not, by a long shot. And most of the electorate have tales of constant messed up appointments, major medical fckups etc etc.

Edited by spyguy
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HOLA445

What should Labour do? Depends if they want a chance of power or not.

I suspect much of the UK population is small c conservative. They like safety and security economy wise, with small amounts of social progression providing they have time to get used to the idea. They like a government to tell them what to do and think. They are mildly xenophobic, but will tolerate small amounts of the exotic.

Labour need to recognise this. It isn't about providing a radical alternative. Only a few want that - and they vote Green.

They can't out Tory the Tories or UKIP - but they can get closer (as they've previously done). They can make the case for them being better caretakers of the NHS (even it not actually true).

Edited by StainlessSteelCat
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HOLA446

Labour did well in London, so it's not all Downfall stuff.

However they seem to have lost their market town support (and worryingly for them their northern support).

They could get a lot back by tempting people into the "housing miracle". State that x thousand of new social homes would be built. Give locally based workers the chance to rent a property (they would have to pay say a 20k entry fee) with the option to buy at a reduced amount say 80k after 8 years renting.

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HOLA447

They are all busy at the moment saying how wrong and misguided Ed was - how come they weren't saying this before he lost them the election?

Even Polly Toynbee is saying he should have stood down a year before the election. One of the front runners for the leadership is now saying Labour sounded like the moaning man in the pub.

I know there was dissatisfaction with Ed among some backbenchers, but I don't recall much vocal protest from the higher echelons.

Ed wasn't to blame. He's just the sucker caught in the headlights as chickens came home to roost. Blair's chickens when he buggered up our constitution, brought home to roost by the SNP. And longer-standing chickens concerning immigration, brought home to roost by UKIP.

Get rid of income tax.

Have a land value tax.

Just outright print next years budget deficit.

Remove fractional reserve banking.

Free health care.

Free tuition at all levels.

Have a points based system for our borders.

and

Keep left.

YA ΣΥΡΙΖΑ AICMFP.

Couldn't they just disband and do us all a favour. Seriously all this reinvention shows they are without any credibility whatsoever. Labour just f%@#!*g die already.

Fair suggestion as far as it goes, but it just means we have to re-formulate the original question to ask where a new opposition will come from.

Labour are now irrelevant, the new main opposition is the SNP. We have moved on, the new normal is that the UK is going to split up, whether the EZ project falters before this happens is hard to predict, but we have shifted big time IMO.

SNP is interesting, but I expect Cameron will be more worried about opposition from within his own party. That's what happened to Thatcher and Major, when Labour was moribund (though full of sound and fury).

Offering a referendum would have helped avoid making themselves look anti-democratic but in itself it wouldn't have stopped people voting UKIP. UKIP voters (particularly ex-Labour voters) are not on the whole interested in technocratic issues and many of them are not all that bothered about the EU. UKIP is now a combination of a protest party and a populist movement which poses a serious threat to Labour in their heartlands.

UKIP inherited the libdem "mild protest" vote. But split with the Greens.

UKIP also inherited the BNP too-many-immigrants vote, plus a lot of people who were put off the BNP by the stigma of their ostracism, and by their barmy hard-left policies. That smells of chickens coming home to roost for Labour: the "bigoted woman" chickens that have for a long time dismissed any debate about immigration.

Here's a suggestion for Labour to become a meaningful opposition. Take up cudgels on the EU. Address the main problems head-on: for example, by moving to a contributory benefits system (with deemed credits based on residence) to kill off the spectre of "benefits tourism". Discuss reform constructively, and engage with other countries' proposals for reform where we have common interests. The UK press take anti-EU propaganda - much of it spin and even outright lies - so much for granted that tackling it head on could bring some chickens home to roost for them!

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HOLA448

Labour did well in London, so it's not all Downfall stuff.

However they seem to have lost their market town support (and worryingly for them their northern support).

I suspect that loss of Northern support may be a one-off. Some of those voters may be shocked by the Tory victory into returning to the Labour fold next time.

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HOLA449
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HOLA4410

R4 was interviewing people in Nuneaton this morning - it was IIRC one of the first results to show Labour which way the wind was blowing - one of their top targets.

The first was an extremely articulate young voter who said she felt Labour didn't care about people like her, who were working and trying to save a deposit. They only cared about people who weren't working and were living in a nicer home than she could afford to rent privately.

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HOLA4411

Labour may be authoritarian but rumours are already circulating about the snoopers charter being reintroduced and the human rights act being repealed. I wouldn't be surprised if I got a knock on the door from Gove's Special Squad for making the treasonous and communist suggestion that house prices should be lower (I'm only half joking).

As for what Labour should do -go for the generation rent vote, if the Tories do prop-up house prices for the next five years there should be enough tenants out there to sweep labour into power.

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HOLA4412

Result was marginal. Labour increased their vote but not enough & obviously lost a ton of seats to the SNP.

Judging by all the Blairites who crawled out of the woodwork last few days there will be some sort of Blairite putch.

In fact the vision and policies dont need to change substantially. That would be an error imo.

MY take is they lost because marginally enough people believed a very big lie about being "bankrupt like Greece" and being "saved" by prudect Tory "cuts" and Labour failed to counter it with avoiding a great depression. Whereas of course this was complete nonsense. But you only have to see from the many posts on here how many peope believe that narrative when in fact Tories are the party of financial mismanagement and busts.

In a nutshell then Labour need to do very little except work much much harder on selling a positive message. Their response to the above was frankly pathetic. Electorate have ditched Balls and Miliband so thats part of the job done for them. They need to elect a leader who looks/talks like a one nation Tory and who cannot be linked to Brown or Blair and people like Diane Abbott, Umunna, Cooper et al need to stop trying to be leader. Somone like Dan Jarvis looks likely.

Then they need to simply sit back and wait for the Tories to 1. Implode again 2. F*ck each other (literally/metaphorically) 3. Embezzle 4. Trash the economy again. All of that will happen in either 5 or 10 years and even England will be fed up with them by then

Oh, and forget Scotland completely. They aint coming back.

Also, they could do with buying the Telegraph, The Sun, The Times and probably now the Independent who all pumped out lie after lie.

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HOLA4413
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HOLA4414
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HOLA4415
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HOLA4416
Guest Jemmy Button

What Labour needs to do right now is to join the dots up between Mass immigration, and the populaces dissatisfaction with it. It will never happen though. It is the reason the Labour Party are irrelevant to me.

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HOLA4417

Labour was the party of the working man, now gone.

They need to restart as the party of the buy to letter, the party of the parasite, they'd need a new name of course, my suggestion, the tory party.

Edited by TheCountOfNowhere
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HOLA4418
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HOLA4419

(1) Say sorry for overspending in 2000-2007, when they should have ran budget surpluses.

(2) Go for a young centrist leader. Andy Burnham would be like a Kinnoch/ Foot swap.

(3) Stop being tribal and appealing to those in the pay of Government...welfare lifers and public sector...offer a crumb at least to hard working white van man.

(4) Start actually listening to floating voters and stop being indulgent to the faithful with strange looking leaders and the inability to see things differently.

Edited by crashmonitor
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HOLA4420

Result was marginal.

...

Then they need to simply sit back and wait for the Tories to 1. Implode again 2. F*ck each other (literally/metaphorically) 3. Embezzle 4. Trash the economy again. All of that will happen in either 5 or 10 years and even England will be fed up with them by then

Well, it was 37% to 30%. A "normal" victory, which could easily have gone the other way. But what about some changes to actually make them the natural choice, rather than just buggin's turn.

Edited by Steppenpig
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HOLA4421

Labour was the party of the working man, now gone.

UKIP inherited the libdem "mild protest" vote. But split with the Greens.

Funny thing is, Ukip and Lib Dems (and possibly even the Greens) are probably more representative of the population of UK than the Tories or Labour, who should be the fringe parties.

Edited by Steppenpig
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HOLA4422

Here's a suggestion for Labour to become a meaningful opposition. Take up cudgels on the EU. Address the main problems head-on: for example, by moving to a contributory benefits system (with deemed credits based on residence) to kill off the spectre of "benefits tourism". Discuss reform constructively, and engage with other countries' proposals for reform where we have common interests. The UK press take anti-EU propaganda - much of it spin and even outright lies - so much for granted that tackling it head on could bring some chickens home to roost for them!

I've been unusually sociable for the last few days. Endlessly discussing the UK election with hosts and guests. But if I try and bring up the EU, they don't know anything about it. They just assume "it's obviously all being run in our interests". Why would anyone think that, when it is obvious (once you start thinking about it) that they are just politicians like those in Westminster? In my view, if what was going on in the EU parlament was discussed in the media the way we discuss Westminster, we would be out tomorrow. If our Euro-masters let us.

Edited by Steppenpig
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HOLA4423

Funny thing is, Ukip and Lib Dems (and possibly even the Greens) are probably more representative of the population of UK than the Tories or Labour, who should be the fringe parties.

Except the Lib Dems and Ukip wanted to balance the budgets and Tories and Labour promised the moon.

And the electorate are greedy self serving bast......ds, who want jam today and dispossess their own grandkids. eg. I am worried that my pension triple lock just isn't enough and by the way I am worried for the future of my grandkids. Like bloody hell you are.

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HOLA4424

I suspect that loss of Northern support may be a one-off. Some of those voters may be shocked by the Tory victory into returning to the Labour fold next time.

My view is that they won`t in Scotland, voters are telling both parties to F*uck off. The absolute best outcome for the SNP is what we have, a large body of SNP MP`s going down to do battle with the bad Torrries, this is Braveheart stuff and Sturgeon and co. are loving it.

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HOLA4425

What Labour needs to do right now is to join the dots up between Mass immigration, and the populaces dissatisfaction with it. It will never happen though. It is the reason the Labour Party are irrelevant to me.

Alternatively, they could push the Tories really hard and ask them to demonstrate how they are sorting out the problem. Unlike unemployment stats it is hard to fudge the net immigration figure.

Edited by StainlessSteelCat
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