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What do Labour need to do to win again?


Park Life
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This is probably the most dangerous time for the party with being shut out from the traditional vote in Scotland, being squeezed by UKIP and fleeing Lib Dems...The task seems daunting...

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Parky, how do you feel about blacking up? It'll be for the good of the country.

My time in the Chipping Sodbury Labour party would come back to haunt me. I'd have to be totally sure those files have been lost. ;) It was carnage mate, banging party workers to the dozen bedecked in my yellow and green bandana. Gosh.

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How do you make that out?

 

What do you think Labour have to do?

After boundary changes adds an extra 20 seats to the conservatives, no Scottish mp's (bar1), UKIP taking more votes from them next time...... I think they'll be on sub 200 seats at the next election.

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After boundary changes adds an extra 20 seats to the conservatives, no Scottish mp's (bar1), UKIP taking more votes from them next time...... I think they'll be on sub 200 seats at the next election.

How does Labour get the taxi driver vote?

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They will never win again. Only coalition will see them elected.

 

bold prediction given the size of the tory majority. i don't think they're going to be the most popular government either in five years time, after the country has felt the affects of the next round of austerity, including the real possibility of a stuttering recovery - even another recession.

 

i personally think labour need to move back to the left on social issues - to win the core vote back - but to do what blair managed and still court business and the aspirational voter. it is possible to set a pro-business agenda without completely shafting the poor int he way the tories are about to.

 

the key, though, in the age of x factor politics is getting the leadership right. it was was clear from the beginning that ed miliband was poor in that department. the big problem for labour is there isn't a queue of charismatic contenders waiting in the wings. chukka umuna is just another london-based intellectual like miliband. he isn't going to win back lost votes.

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How does Labour get the taxi driver vote?

 

Slashing cuts of the Police budget so forces can't prevent whoring and the murders of those poor desperate women by said cabbies?

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They can't

:lol:

 

This is what bothers me, you see supporting Tory in the same way as you see supporting Newcastle.

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They can't

 

What you want is a party that is really committed to the free market to such an extent that they loosen the regulations on taxis to allow the dramatic levels of market penetration shown by Uber in the US, Paris, London etc

 

I see Uber opened in Newcastle recently. Good luck.

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Mark Fishers' latest piece is worth a read:

 

 

 

The truth is what many of us have long suspected: Labour lost this election five years ago, by failing to challenge the Tories’ narrative. Yet this failure wasn’t about the wrong leader, PR strategy or even policies; it is ultimately rooted in Labour’s disconnection from any wider movement, and this is in turn rooted in the wider emergence of capitalist realism. Blairism may have won Labour three elections, but the unfolding of its logic could well lead to the destruction, in the not so far distant future, of the party. As Paul Mason acidly summarises, “Labour no longer knows what it is for, nor how to win power.” With Blairism, Labour knew how to win power, but in acquiring this knowledge, it forgot what it was for.
That existential quandary is bitterly ironic given that there is a large proportion of the population in England – I still believe it is the majority – which feels it has no party which represents it. I maintain that the shift to UKIP is ultimately much more to do with this sense of disenfranchisement and despair than with any intrinsic tendency towards racism or even nationalism in its supporters. Everyone has chauvinistic potentials of one kind or another which can be activated by particular sets of forces. Ultra-nationalism is a symptom of the failure of class politics; or, class politics emerges through the ultra-nationalist lens in a distorted and displaced way.
As Paul Mason also points out, a return to Blairism will certainly not win back those Labour supporters who turned to UKIP. In England, as in Scotland, it was Blairism’s taking for granted and abandonment of its working class base that produced the sense of betrayal which led to so many former Labour supporters losing patience with the party on Thursday. In Scotland, the response to betrayal took a progressive form; in England, it assumed a reactionary mode. Partly, this is because there was no progressive outlet available in England. Working class English voters alienated from Labour’s Oxbridge elite were left a choice between a UKIP that deliberately talked up its appeal to working families, and an array of small left-wing parties to whose message they were not exposed and which had no chance of being elected. UKIP were also practically forced on them to by a political media so decadent, so boring, that it counts Nigel Farage as a charismatic flash of colour. Hence what Tim Burrows calls “the curiously mediated entity of Farage, a man whose direct manner, coloured tweed and pints of ale seem made for meme-politics. UKIP are more popular on Facebook than Labour and the Liberal Democrats put together.”
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What you want is a party that is really committed to the free market to such an extent that they loosen the regulations on taxis to allow the dramatic levels of market penetration shown by Uber in the US, Paris, London etc

 

I see Uber opened in Newcastle recently. Good luck.

:lol:

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Labour's biggest problem was that they never challenged the Tory narrative as the article says. They made some vague "Tories are bad" comments, but positioned themselves on a lot of issues as "we'll do the same as them, just not as bad." and I don't think it pulled anyone in.

 

There's been a bit of debate based on Labour being too right wing for Scotland and too left wing for England, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Labour in it's strategy for 2020 needs to forget about Scotland and concentrate on winning back England (obviously not putting it in an us vs them or making it about flag waving) as I believe it can only win back the confidence of Scotland by putting forward a strategy good enough to win back England.

 

Labour's anti-Tory message in this campaign was terrible. They could have talked about how Ian Duncan Smith's welfare reforms have bordered on the manaical, but instead they have Rachel Reeves saying "we're not the party of people on benefits." It was good to see Labour doing so well they didn't need the votes of the disabled and the out of work. They talked about the Tories with the NHS, but never ever gave figures specific to the problem and somehow every time they talked the NHS, somehow managed to justify in their own minds PFI contracts. They also never talked about repealing the Health and Social Care Act which was the worst piece of NHS legislation of the past 5 years. They talked about how we need the living wage, and then proposed the minimum wage in 2020 would be 15p higher than what the living wage is in 2015.

The truth is they never gave anyone a good enough reason to vote Labour except "we're not the Tories" and never properly undermined the awful coalition government. It was a failure of a campaign both in putting out a concrete message, and inspiring people to know that things can be different. There were too many PR disasters (the pink bus, the Ed stone, the immigration mug) which were all so easy for the press who were all for the Tories to just destroy.

Labour have two choices. They can either take full responsibilities for their own failures, or they can blame the electorate being spooked by the SNP. In our experience up here since they lost Holyrood, Labour never ever learns their lesson and instead ends up slagging off the electorate and not taking responsibility for what they need to do better.

Labour as it's currently constructed will never ever win an election again. They need a full scale overhaul. Whatever direction the take, the message must be clear and the direction must be coherent with what the people want and need. I don't think even the most hardcore Labour voter can say they were clear and concise this time round.

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Labour's biggest problem was that they never challenged the Tory narrative as the article says. They made some vague "Tories are bad" comments, but positioned themselves on a lot of issues as "we'll do the same as them, just not as bad." and I don't think it pulled anyone in.

 

There's been a bit of debate based on Labour being too right wing for Scotland and too left wing for England, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Labour in it's strategy for 2020 needs to forget about Scotland and concentrate on winning back England (obviously not putting it in an us vs them or making it about flag waving) as I believe it can only win back the confidence of Scotland by putting forward a strategy good enough to win back England.

 

Labour's anti-Tory message in this campaign was terrible. They could have talked about how Ian Duncan Smith's welfare reforms have bordered on the manaical, but instead they have Rachel Reeves saying "we're not the party of people on benefits." It was good to see Labour doing so well they didn't need the votes of the disabled and the out of work. They talked about the Tories with the NHS, but never ever gave figures specific to the problem and somehow every time they talked the NHS, somehow managed to justify in their own minds PFI contracts. They also never talked about repealing the Health and Social Care Act which was the worst piece of NHS legislation of the past 5 years. They talked about how we need the living wage, and then proposed the minimum wage in 2020 would be 15p higher than what the living wage is in 2015.

 

The truth is they never gave anyone a good enough reason to vote Labour except "we're not the Tories" and never properly undermined the awful coalition government. It was a failure of a campaign both in putting out a concrete message, and inspiring people to know that things can be different. There were too many PR disasters (the pink bus, the Ed stone, the immigration mug) which were all so easy for the press who were all for the Tories to just destroy.

 

Labour have two choices. They can either take full responsibilities for their own failures, or they can blame the electorate being spooked by the SNP. In our experience up here since they lost Holyrood, Labour never ever learns their lesson and instead ends up slagging off the electorate and not taking responsibility for what they need to do better.

 

Labour as it's currently constructed will never ever win an election again. They need a full scale overhaul. Whatever direction the take, the message must be clear and the direction must be coherent with what the people want and need. I don't think even the most hardcore Labour voter can say they were clear and concise this time round.

Good post.

 

In many ways it seems clear Labour didn't really know what to do with the country if it won. That is the core of it. No vision.

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