UK Labour wanted to lose
- Thread starter Trunkage
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Kevin Rudd did a pretty good job during the start of the GFC, and some of this is a template for what countries are doing now during this crisis (as opposed to ScoMo's 'poor people are too stupid to spend money how I want it. Give the money to the rich instead'). But he let that success make him arrogant, leading to his downfall.;
Revisionism, but the man was full of liberation theology too in that QandA on gay marriage.
Of course, the Labour Party have form here.
After the 1979 election when Thatcher won, the left took over the Labour Party and installed Michael Foot. The Labour right thought Foot would be a catastrophe, so what they did was assist a radically left-wing agenda for the party platform (which due to being very long-winded was called "The longest suicide note in history")... and then they quit the party and formed the Social Democratic Party, with the intent that it would supplant Labour as the mainstream left.
The SDP MPs however failed to take into account the passionate belief in the party amongst its voters; the SDP never really progressed and several years later ended up merging into the Liberal Party to form the modern day Liberal Democrats. One might note an element of history repeating itself: a chunk of labour MPs departed the Labour Party this time round ("Change UK"), most of whom also merged into the Liberal Democrats, although much more rapidly than the SDP as Change UK was a total failure where the SDP did actually win some seats.
Incidentally, Labour would have probably won under Michael Foot in 1983, had Thatcher's poll ratings not been comprehensively saved by the tidal wave of patriotism from winning the Falklands War.
How on earth does this follow?
It's not a bloody "purity test" to want party staffers not to be actively working against their own party and happy when it fails. It is, in fact, the very most basic expectation of their job.
A bank employee deactivates the security system and opens the shutters to allow a heist to go ahead. Is it "not really caring about the bank, just caring about the moral high ground" to terminate their employment?
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I wonder if there's any coincidence between that and the fact that Keir Starmer is now making statements about how Labour shouldn't shy away from patriotism in an attempt to win back the trust of brexit voters.
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I was more responding to what chrimson was saying instead of the thread topic since I just got off a thread with them pretty much claiming that everyone was actually right wing. Not the best thing to do but whatever, just gonna leave it.
Rudd was able to kill or hurt a surprising amount of tradesmen with his schemes, the insulation scheme killed people and guys working on the nbn were smashing up asbestos pipes with Spud bars.
You're saying that like it's a bad thing (the hurting tradesmen and asbestos that is, not the murder)
I do believe everything was pushed through too quickly, which lead to teething problems. School halls being another major one (my daughter's school hall is being ripped down right now because it was shoddily built).
You can see many teething problems with Scomo's response Covid 19 too. For exmaple he's basically killed the child care industry because he didn't think about how his policies would effect that industry.
But I personally only partially blame Rudd for the 4 electricians deaths. I know, before entering the ceiling crawlspace, you MUST turn off the power. And I would barely call myself a handyman, let alone an electrician. These trained electricians did not. Some of these deaths were trainees who should have been looked after better
There is a point to be made here though that if the parties were reversed, that if internal Tory staffers sabotaged the Tory party to let Labour win, we probably would not call them left-wing either.
We don't exactly know their leanings, more likely they're some kind of moderate left or centrist, by British standards. That's assuming these people didn't join the party with the express purpose of sabotaging it on behalf of the Tories, but without further evidence this would be fanciful speculation.
So this is some nitpicking over the choice of words, but perhaps sidestepping it, more important than whether they really are "left" is simply the fact that they are traitors to their own party. And that's probably a more productive line of conversation to pursue, in my opinion. Their supposed ideology doesn't really change the situation, since having a party be betrayed by its own people is completely unacceptable, and is an indication that the party needs to heavily renew itself to prevent a re-occurrence. This is important both by the standards of the party, and the democracy as a whole. Obviously if a party does not in fact represent what it purports to represent to its own voters, it is completely unable to represent the honest will of its own voters.
To some extent this is a constant problem in a de facto two-party system, where by necessity the parties will become very broad and each will somehow have to represent circa 50% of the voters. That means that the party requires a great deal of ideological flexibility to even remain functional, as different portions of the party will ebb and surge as the preferences of the voters do. But in many ways this situation is the opposite of that, where the more centered portions of the Labour party are unable to let the fringes take power even temporarily, and would rather tank the whole party.
In other systems, the party could and should simply splinter, as it is obvious that the moderate and radical wings of the Labour party can no longer function in unison. But the Labour "brand" is too powerful for either wing to willingly surrender it to the other, so we're likely doomed to watch them fight each other until one effectively destroys the other. Or more likely we watch this sad spectacle for a few decades more as the infighting makes it easy for the Tories to win repeatedly no matter the fuck-ups they deliver.
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Aren't there quite a few similarities between Trump and Reagan?
Film business/media mogul, intially left wing/Democrat, but go to the right, and once in power, cut taxes for the rich, beef military spending, and whatnot?
That said, Reagan was actually mentally competent as far as I can tell.
Lots of traditional Labour voters are very patriotic or outright nationalist and sometimes xenophobic. There has always been a concern amongst that part of the political spectrum that Labour is weaker here - for instance in defence policy, immigration, etc. More currently, what with Brexit and around, the perception of liberal internationalism ahead of national interest. Whatever else we can say about him, Corbyn was an utter disaster in appearances in this regard, easily caricatured as a typical woolly-headed lefty who won't properly stand up for the country and its interests. With increasing wealth inequality and frustration of feeling abandoned, a lot of voters have increasingly latched onto nationalism.
Attempting to assure them of Labour's commitment to national interest is simply a good idea, so long as it doesn't crudely grope at the grubbier nationalist tropes.
Rudd was stabbed in the back, then Labour came crawling back, put him back in charge, and lost the election.
I know the Liberals have been criticized for turning over prime ministers so fast that "who is the current prime minister?" is no longer asked of concussed victims, but Labour was guilty of this as well.
Is strongly supporting the national healthcare system, re-nationalising the trains and making sure the wealthiest are actually paying their fair share of tax to help bolster safety nets for the most vulnerable in society not caring about one's country enough? Does it have to always be about hate and aggression?
For some people, yes. That's because nationalism is frequently viewed in an exclusionary and competitive frame, where other countries are opponents more than potential friends and allies; a disadvantage to another country is the same as an advantage to one's own. The result of this is to favour other countries doing badly, and a preference to get one over them rather than work to mutual gain.
I also find such nationalists also tend to have painfully obsolete ideas because they've obsessed with past glories insetad of modern-day practicalities. They're the sort of people who (in UK terms) still think Germany's an enemy because we had two big wars with them 3-4 generations years ago, and boasting about winning those wars proves anything in the here and now.
I mean it's good from a pragmatic perspective. I don't think it's good from a principled perspective, since I can't view this as anything but a shallow appeal post-Brexit to win back voters. It's the same electoralist shit as always, that Momentum and the gang were supposed to represent a break from and instead have a combined platform of activism and policy proposals. Though in the same heartbeat we could say it's par the course for labour - local councils, despite giving labour quite a lot of sway, are largely ignored as hubs for engaging with people, and the internal party democracy is toxic. Keir Starmer wanting to appeal to nationalism is par the course for a party uninterested in being anything than a symbol for leftism in the UK, but not going beyond just a symbol.
We only stopped using asbestos commercially in 2003, and before that we'd used it all over the fucking place. Even after the bans there was so much of it around in builder's stocks they used it anyway. And we are fucking paranoid about the stuff: anyone working in building industries has to have at least three or four training courses about asbestos alone. So if those NBN guys were just going at the stuff willy nilly, the chain of negligence doesn't reach the prime minister.
Mentally competent? From the guy who thought MAD was a good idea? And Contra after it was banned? What about South America? Also, Reagan looked people up for striking. Trump hasn't gone that far yet.
Reagan believed in trickle down economics. Trump believe that him and his buddies should have the money (so the result was the same but for different reasons.) Reagan, despite MAD and all those wars, was still a better diplomat. Trump is far more focussed
They both like to bully people. Both brought in gun laws (even if Reagan's assault rifle ban was not continued.)
The Labour Party first and foremost needs to win an election. What you want to do is a mere technicality if you don't take power to achieve it.
If Momentum had a massive fucking problem, it's the weird boner some people on the left seem to have for ideological purity over the practical job of winning an election. That doesn't mean caving in to shit like immigrant-bashing, but if a few Union Jacks and a commitment to 2.5% GDP defence spending and nukes gets another few percent in the polls, it should be considered cheap at the price. Build your alliances with other voter blocs and make some compromise where needed, otherwise it's three decades of Tory rule and we'll be peons tucking our forelocks at our billionaire global investor overlords as we beg them for charity.