Purge the Labour party of the lefties

[Viviennemary]

Just seen on BBC news that Labour wants a purge of the left. Bring it on I say. It was unelectable under Corbyn and that idiotic Momentum lot. Why doesn't Diane Abbott just retire gracefully. But loòks like its all going to cause a big row with the Tories rubbing their hands in glee. Will they ever learn.

Anti-semitism, something about the “Israel Lobby”

She has a great deal of stress in her personal life. This is unfair.

The left are a huge part of the electorate. We mostly have Tory governments and when Labour did get in under Blair they were more interested in appealing to moderate Tories. Same now.

We need PR. Labour should be two separate parties. Labour benefit from the votes of the left but they hate the left more than they hate the Tories.

Well then the Ieft aren't a huge part of the electorate, otherwise they would have won under Corbyn. They are a small part of the electorate, mainly concentrated in small pockets of the country- mainly the wealthier parts of cities frankly. I agree we need PR and we need both Labour and the Tories to split into different parties. At this election, which is not under PR, maybe the Left should go to the Greens. They seem far more in alignment with their views. They are hardly politically homeless.

Well yes the left definitely are a huge part of the electorate. But those who support the left of the LP aren't. Which was demonstrated in 2019.

She was questioned about them on Newsnight last night, and if youbgoogle, they arexeasy to find. I doubt she would have won against IDS in Chingford and Woodford. Someone more centrist probably could. Its hardly a hotbed of radicalism.

We had referendum a few years ago about swapping from FPTP to PR and was massively in favour of staying as we are.

The left drum up support in certain university cities like Liverpool and Sheffield. Not so much in Exeter I suspect. There are still traditional Labour areas but some of the ones we think we know are left, are not. Look where Reform might gain ground. Working class areas but lots living there want to pull up the immigration draw bridge. Labour seem ambivalent about that so the old mill towns (for example) might well go Right. Depends who sings to their tune. They also voted for Brexit.

Seriously? Kier Hardie must be spinning in his grave. The ignorance is staggering.

I have a question.
If the Labour Party makes a purge of people on the Left, does it mean it doesn’t represent the Left anymore?

Who is going to represent people who want to vote on the Left?
And will people voting Labour be scammed into thinking they are voting for a Party on the left that is actually a party centre or right?

And that’s besides the fact a purge is NEVER a good idea. It used to be what political parties in totalitarian countries did.
Just look at where BJ purge in the Conservative Party took them….

And yet… elections are showing quite a different picture aren’t they?

I think some of you forget the far left are never going to be in power. Corbyn was never going to be the PM whatever you think. The press hounded him from day one. I don’t agree with all of his views and think he made mistakes but so has Starmer and, notably, Sunak, our actual PM. Also, one could argue that you need politicians of all stripes in order to strike a balance. I don’t want a Labour Party that has no checks and balances and doesn’t represent all the members. I sincerely believe that Starmer’s policies and arguments need to stand up to scrutiny and if you purge the left, or the right, of the party, who is scrutinising internally? What has happened to the first black female MP in this country is appalling. If you want to alienate a whole group of people Starmer is going about it in the right way in the same way he has upset a large group of Muslim voters. Yes Diane has made mistakes but so have other MPs, who have been allowed to apologise and carry on with their career.

Corbyn still won a third of the vote. That is a big part.

Oh, give over. This country is more left leaning than right wing arseholes would have you believe. Jeremy Corbyn took over 40% of the vote share in the 2017 election. That is categorically NOT A COUNTRY THAT WON'T TOLERATE LEFT WING POLICIES.

We've had right wing bollocks for over 45 year now. Don't you think its time we tried something different. If you want to purge Labour of the left, why don't you just vote Tory?

On one level I'd love to see that happen and the Tories to get rid of the far right too, but if you don't have a few then you will see the Socialist Workers Party grow on the left and Reform on the right, whilst they won't win seats they will stop their more centrist parties winning a few seats and in some elections that will really matter. Under First Past the Post we will always have board parties and the extremes need to be managed. Even better would be if the Lib Dems were an electable centrist party rather than a bunch of idealists focused on whatever makes them popular in that particular area.

45 years of neoliberalism but the left are stilll the problem.

How are they? They are showing exactly that. Especially over the last election and probably this one. The Greens are the party most aligned with the Left now, especially when it comes to trans rights and Palestine. People didn't vote Labour in 2019 becsuse they were Left. They in all likelihood will vote for them now because they are centrist. Most people don't care about Diane Abbott. I agree she has been treated badly, although I'm wondering who stirred the shit by telling her she was going to be deselected when it wasn't true and by all accounts she was negotiating a dignified retirement.

Tbf, the turnout was pitiful. Iirc.

This x 1000. I want a Labour Govt. not a left wing talking-shop stuck in permanent opposition.

That has nothing to do with it. The majority said "No". They were stupid to do so but there you go.

Corbyn used to remind me of people standing outside our student union at lunchtime in the late 60s, trying to flog copies of Socialist Worker and dishing out Marxist Society leaflets.

I unthinkingly took one of those once, stuffed it in my coat pocket and forgot about it (I wasn’t remotely politically-minded) until I was home for the holidays, when my DM borrowed my coat to nip to the shops - and found that Marxist Soc. leaflet.

All hell broke loose. My true-blue folks refused to believe that I hadn’t ’turned communist’ - they simply couldn’t believe that I hadn’t been ‘got at’. 😩

It wasn't PR. It was badly organised.

You still need a wide spectrum within a government.

If only the left were listened to over Iraq for example. Even Blair allowed back bench left wing mps, powerless as they were.

And it resulted in the lowest number of Labour MPs since 1935! Increasing majorities in safe seats is pointless.

Face facts, all the left of the Labour Party can do is give election victory to the Tories.

There's a lot of truth in the old gag that at Tony Benn's funeral the largest wreath was from the Tory Party.

Labour will never support PR. In this they are as one with the Tories. FPTP suits them down to the ground. If PR was introduced, the Labour vote would fragment to the point of distruction.