Is this your analysis using Lichtman's 13 keys or did you copy-and-paste someone else's analysis?
Funny Events of the "Woke" world
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
I'm pretty sure he's not much of a hero of the left anymore, except in his own mind.
Back around the Iraq war, a tranche of the British left formed an alliance of convenience with Muslim anti-war groups, sacrificing ideological akwardnesses like women's and gay rights. Galloway, a man whose only real objective is feeding his own ego and vanity, was quite happy to chuck the socialist faff in for the better electoral opportunities that representing Muslims interests afforded. Unfortunately, some socialists don't appear to have caught up with Galloway's political transition. That said, there are a load of socialists who never had any interest in equality (race, gender, sexuality) in the first place. Honestly, Galloway is probably one of them, even if he once said the appropriate boilerplates when required.
Keith losing would be a novel development, whereas Keith winning will set the political clock back to the start of Tony Blair, except most things are yet worse. Enjoy the next twenty five years.
A continuation of the last 14 years of gutted public services and stagnated wages is an interesting application of the term "novel development".
A total collapse of Blairite Labour and any pretense of its 'superior electability' built on the usual surrender of the left would indeed be a novel development. A repeat of the cycle would not.
Blairite Labour was already defeated in 2010, followed by a decade and a half of Tory hard-right rule. How would exactly the same thing happening again be novel or progressive?
The Democrats only need to be slightly less horrifying to vote for than the GOP so long as they can use fear of the GOP to drive votes. So that's all they'll provide, because that's the most beneficial for their big donors, which is who is really represented.
Most of the people 14th Amendment, Section 3 has ever applied to were never convicted of a crime. That said, most of them were public officials of the Confederacy. The few others it's been turned against were convicted of a relevant crime, including one person convicted for Jan 6 related offenses.
Like Silvanus said, states have pretty broad authority over how they run their elections, including ballot access. Which presents a reasonable argument to remove Trump from the general election ballot being a valid thing a state can do (for the same reason they don't have to include every third party candidate). Since primaries are private organizations borrowing state election infrastructure to decide who to back, it's arguable that the state might have less say so about who's on the ballot for those.
You're struggling really hard not to comprehend this.
Blairite Labour was defeated after ruling, and if it comes back after a long period of not ruling, that will be a repeat, more or less, of 1997.
It will rule until the taste inevitably turns sour and the cycle will shift back toward the Conservatives.
If it is defeated even with Tories being as moribund as they are, that will be novel and a more serious indictment of the Blair approach. Much more effort would be needed to convince people that, actually, it's totally necessary to support the Red Tories. Displacing the right from its occupation of the "left" space would be the possible progressive outcome of such a novel development.
I comprehend the argument just fine, I just think it's such an enormous stretch to characterise years more Tory rule as a novel change after 14 years of exactly that.
Eventually-- presuming the Conservative Party doesn't collapse. The Tories are currently undergoing a severe internal schism similar in some ways to what happened to the social democrats back in the day. If it doesn't result in collapse and splintering, it could very feasibly lead to over a decade in the wilderness.
An indictment of the Blair approach, and a ringing endorsement of the Braverman approach. If you reward the furthest right with endless electoral victory, the message that people take away isn't that they should tack to the left-- it's exactly the opposite. Notice how Labour shifted rightwards (both with Blair and Starmer) during its longest periods out of power, as they watched the Tories romp to victory after victory.
What is novel is that it will mean the UK left will have stopped succumbing to extortion and something else can occupy the space currently held by red tories.
So like Blair/Brown. The cycle. You're happy with endless repetition?
Maybe if they are extraordinarily stupid, which... OK, sure, it's the UK. But I believe you can overcome your affliction. There is this thing called turnout that can be measured. Also support for other parties. There is not just one single variable from which all conclusions spring forth. There is, indeed, a conversation-- about what can and cannot work, what will or will not work, and so on. And the Blairites are saying right now that Starmer's election will be a vindication of the superiority of the Blair/Starmer approach. Do you believe that to be so? Corbyn failed twice, but Starmer will pull through; if the Labour Party is half as stupid as you think the entire UK is, then a win for Keith will mean the only reasonable conclusion will be to expel any remaining anti-Zionist Jews, savvily and realistically counter the threat of trans healthcare, and basically agree with the Tories about most things but say you're better at managing the economy.
Labour had 13 years to shift leftward while it was in power. Starmer's shift right is only dramatic because of what Labour looked like under Corbyn, not Brown. And you want to reward the force of reaction that purged the left from Labour with a prime ministership. You want to capitulate.
Oh, like what didn't happen last time, or the time before that.
Absolutely not; hence why I want Labour to shift left, rather than further rightwards as they would after defeat by the right.
So let's have that conversation, rather than the smug condescension. Turnout hovers between ~60 and ~75% for UK general elections. It saw a bit of an uptick in 2017 for Corbyn (~68%), but nothing to write home about, and failing to match Blair or Kinnock.
Then we have the other parties, as you say. Except outside of the main 2, the next biggest voteshares belong to.... the neoliberal Lib-Dems, the SNP, the Greens, and the far-right Brexit Party/Reform. If you took all of the further left-wing parties and combined their voteshares, you'd get.. perhaps 4%. And if anything, consolidation of the vote into the main two parties is increasing. There is no huge untapped constituency hankering for socialism that can be tapped. Sorry.
You're right, there are a lot of factors to consider. Unfortunately none of them point towards this radical restructuring of British politics your surface-level reading is hoping for.
A victory for Starmer would not be a vindication of a Blairite/Starmerite policy direction, because his policies aren't what are garnering support. His overwhelming lead owes itself to the shiteness of the Tories, the flatlining quality of life, and unarguably better political communication skills.
Capitulation would be abandoning all influence. If you sit in opposition and make all the right noises, while influencing nothing, you've capitulated.
I can see the seeds there for improvement-- in the publically-owned energy company, the renationalised railways, and in Angela Rayner generally. Those are things that can shift the British political window back in favour of nationalisation, which is already popular among the voterbase.
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Aside from the Iraq War, honestly, the Blair years seem kind of fantastic in retrospect.
Not to say everything was great and New Labour didn't make mistakes, but I remember that they repaired the NHS, public services generally were doing pretty well, there was affordable housing, the local councils weren't bankrupt and cutting everything, poverty almost halved, the state pension began it's long journey towards adequacy, unemployment was low (and remained so after a minimum wage was introduced), landmark recognition of gay relationships and other progressive social policy, etc.
There are many ways that New Labour really delivered for the British population. What's not to like if Starmer's Labour achieved similar?
Compared to the subsequent decade and a half, the Blair and Brown years were indeed a great deal better for living standards, wages and public services, which tends to be forgotten. And delivered the Good Friday Agreement. That all said, they also abandoned the Labour commitment to nationalisation, and ushered in PFI-- opening the door for a lot of the private sector profiteering and abuse we've seen since.
If Starmer does indeed renationalise the railways and create a public energy company as is pledged, then it won't even be comparable to Blair. That'd be damn huge.
as long as you maintain the correct illusions, sure. and you're helping with that in your own thankfully very small way.
but they will get the credit.
dismal
you will either be disappointed or forget what you were hoping for.
Er...after the US went further right under Trump, the Democrats responded with Genocide Joe, rather than jumping left.
When a country goes right wing, it's "leftist" group tends to abandon the leftwing in a predictably failed attempt to woo centrists.
When a country goes right wing, it's "leftist" group tends to abandon the leftwing in a predictably failed attempt to woo centrists.
The facts of turnout and vote distribution don't magically change if you wish it so. You said we need to take these factors into consideration, and then once you realise how unsupportive they are for your own approach, suddenly they don't matter?
That's simply not how the discourse is going.
It unavoidably requires political communication skills to take a party from a dire situation in the polls (2019) to an enormous lead (2024) in a single electoral cycle.
Corbyn's (domestic) policy platform was more desirable than Starmer's. But unfortunately, even his supporters have come to realise how godawfully deficient his political communication skills were. Plenty of left-wingers haven't forgiven him for his wet vascilation over Europe, only to belatedly declare support for Remain when it was far too late-- opening the door to the bonfire of worker protections. Or how visibly impatient he was when asked simple interview questions he didn't like. Or when he appointed someone he was boning to be his deputy, that was fun.
So to be clear, whenever his stated policies actually are left-wing, we just assume dishonesty? It's fair enough to say Starmer lost a lot of trust when he abandoned most of the 'principles' on which he was elected Labour leader, to be sure. But taking that approach here 1) ignores the rest of the cabinet and party, who also form policy; and 2) leads you into a situation of such automatic dismissal that there's nothing they (or anyone) could do to win your vote. If we took your approach, we wouldn't have the NHS.
Besides, you yourself said the policies in the manifesto would be given credit for Starmer's win. That would include railway nationalisation and a public energy company.
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States can have their own rules for how one gets on a ballot, but they just can't bar candidates from the ballot just because they don't like them, that kinda falls under the constitution...
You're take that it's likely that SCOTUS will allow states to determine for themselves is even more bullshit.
States do have broad authority to set how one gets on the ballot and as long as someone follows those rules, they get on the ballot. States can't deny people to get on the ballot that follow those rules just because.