Why doesn't Corbyn understand that he lost?

[Sittinonthefloor]

I'm totally bemused! He thinks it's an absolutely 'incredible' result and that May should resign. Has no one told him that more people voted for her and the tories have more MPs? The tories ran an appalling campaign, trying to sell hugely unpopular policies, May comes across dreadfully (all twitchy and brittle) yet still more people voted for her - even with all the bribes he was offering. A decent candidate could have won it for labour, (Yvette cooper?) I know there's been a big swing, but still! Not winning against a poor opponent who's run a dreadful campaign is hardly a cause for celebration.

Day to day, you don't need anything like full attendance at votes. But there are times when every body counts.

Corbyn has won on his terms. He and McDonnell will get on with their business of purging the party of undesirables. They are in clover.

This. Labour voters don't realise the problems coming over the horizon for the Labour movement. Labour's problems are at least as large, probably bigger, than the Tories'.

The vast majority of the PLP will be gutted that Jeremy has increased his number of seats. They are going to have this rubbed in their faces at every opportunity. Some will not serve in a shadow cabinet (even if asked). Many will rebel throughout the next parliament.

I doubt any agreement with the DUP is actually required, because how likely is it Corbyn could whip his entire PLP to oppose any reasonable policy on Brexit?

Corbyn only increased his number of seats because:

a) The Labour manifesto gave 30,000 reasons to young people & their parents to vote Labour (although there was stuff in there I personally liked. Rail nationalisation - yes please!);
b) Theresa May ran the worst Conservative campaign in history, on a Manifesto dreamt up by 3 rank idiots.

Tory voters thought TM had lost her mind during that election. If the Tories get their sh*t together, and pick a single good leadership candidate to replace May, they will start to make amends for this.

I am fed up with the whingeing of Labour Party politicians who do not like Corbyn. It's obvious from this election that we need a more left wing party to represent the views of a proportion of the electorate. If some members of the Labour Party want to jostle with the Lib Dems in the middle ground, they should create a new party to reflect the views which they think are such great vote winners, not continue to whinge about their democratically elected leader, because whingeing and staying makes them look weak and unprincipled. The more they kick and fight to try to "save" the Labour Party they want from the "loony left," the more popular they make Corbyn with those people who are reacting against what they perceive to be an unhealthy stagnation of politics in the middle, where politicians with no real principles or convictions just spend their time looking very similar to each other.

The massive problem with New Labour under Blair and his cronies was that they really were just like the Tories but with less tightly closed purse strings. The two parties had even started just knicking each others' ideas and pretending they were their own. I still remember the tiresome crowing of New Labour that it was now the party of business because it was so deeply relaxed about extreme wealth inequalities and light touch regulation - and look where that got us.

The trouble may be that the more-left-than-usual position has been seen to work well this time (even if it didn't result in a win against a pretty awful Tory campaign) and those happy with the current direction of the party might seek to go more than way and exclude those who are moderates / centrists / Blairites / Red Tories (depending on your point of view).

Yep.

Personally I think a modernist Tory leader such as Ruth Davidson or someone like her, and a different manifesto would be a very different election.

As far as MPs are concerned, I would say the centrists excluded themselves.

I hope that both sides of the Labour Party start to work together now. The PLP need to quit whinging and show willingness to compromise. I think it's worth remembering that the Blairites weren't chucked out of the shadow cabinet, they resigned. Corbyn has shown willingness to compromise and the manifesto wasn't especially extreme or left wing. There wasn't anything in there that can't be found working well in many sensible western and Northern European democracies. Some of the momentum types make me a bit but I think there is a willingness to compromise as long as the centrists accept some of the left-wing aspects of the platform. Nationalising the railways isn't equivalent to Stalinism and the idea that Corbyn is some kind of rabid Marxist-Leninist is just silly.

Part of the issue is also that as leader Corbyn was awful to work for. Yes he is good at campaigning but have his leadership skills done a radical u turn or are those working with him going to find the same issues again

Are they going to have to sit outside his office till get an answer? Agree that policy is one thing and then have him brief something else?

Aw, bollocks. Of course he was awful to work for when it came to party members who aggressively rejected him right from the very start. They tried their utmost to make it impossible to lead anything. There was no period whatsoever of seeing if it would work, or helping the new leader settle in. They wanted him out before he could settle in.

Now is the time genuinely to try and work for the man - or set up a new party. The aggressive reaction to him was unseemly and an embarrassment.

The Labour Party under Blair was utterly toxic, just Tories who were better at hiding it.

I also have concerns about his competence as a leader and I've often said so. I'm still furious with him for the way he disappeared the weekend after the Brexit vote. But I have even more concerns about the attitude of the PLP. Whether they personally wanted him or not, he was elected (twice) by their own democratic processes and I think the way they tried to rip up their own rules is contemptible. Who knows what the result might have been if some have them had stuck around.

I am fed up with the whingeing of Labour Party politicians who do not like Corbyn.

I have a lot of sympathy for this view. The Centrist PLP put the new leadership election rules in place. Within two years, they were wanting those rules to be ignored (no confidence vote).

The only way to fight Corbyn, was under the constitution of the Labour Party. They failed to do this (Iain Nicholl's Gerrymandering, interpreting the rules in a ridiculous way, to get Corbyn off the ballot). They also put an awful candidate up to oppose Corbyn (Owen Smith), because the real candidate(s) were too scared of their CLPs to break cover.

They were hoping for a drop in seats, and a membership becoming more sceptical of Corbyn, and then he:

a) Runs a very good campaign
b) Stays on message
c) benefits from the worst PM in living memory (yes, she beats Gordon Brown)

The Labour party could lose MPs to the Lib Dems and possibly even the Tories (depending on leader) in this parliament. Depends how magnanimous Corbyn is feeling.

The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn has ceased to be the party of the working person now in my eyes.

It is the party of:
the well off, who can pursue their ideologies with a protective cushion of wealth;
and the young, who can pursue their ideologies with the protective cushion of youthful good health & minimal responsibilities.

Agree that a Tory party with a modernist & 'normal person' leader such as Ruth Davidson is the way forward for the Tories.

Whilst I don't think Jeremy Corbyn is 'good' for the Labour Party, I do think that he has had a profound effect for the better on politics as a whole - he is without doubt a natural & effective campaigner & he knows how to engage with & fire up people.
Also, the social media strategy run via the momentum activists was extraordinary - the Tories were really shown up as being the party of the 20th century rather than 2017.

Regarding Ruth Davidson... I am hearing Tory members questioning whether a newly-minted Tory MP could be convinced to resign as MP, in order to get her a Westminster seat + a role both South & North of the border.

Her star really is waxing at the moment. I'm not sure how well she would go down across the rest of the UK, but she has really, really impressed me.

It's far too simplistic to say that it's all the PLPs fault.

Some wouldn't work with JC on principle, some tried but couldn't make it a goer, some were ignored by the leadership who would have tried.

It wasn't helped by the little control JC has over Momentum. Some of them are out and out bully boys.

There are valid concerns about his competence. Nevertheless he was elected twice and that should have been respected.

It is all the PLP's fault - their leader was chosen democratically. There were plenty of sufficiently seasoned politicians in the Labour Party to leave and set up a new party if they did not like him. Instead, they made the Labour Party a joke and themselves look like corrupt, untrustworthy idiots. If more extreme elements are now trying to take over, that is not the fault of Corbyn, it is the consequence of stupid fuckers letting them in by acting in the way that they did to try and get rid of him. It is not only extremists who supported Corbyn for the leadership, or he would not have been elected.

I agree. But the water must flow both ways.

JC as leader should have tried harder to bring his MPs with him and keep Momentum under control.

It's now up to him and his team to form an approach from here.

That was to floisme.

I agree with roundabout re the PLP.

Certain elements tried to get altogether too sneaky & 'clever' in their politicking and have wrecked it.

The ones that were mostly performing like that are the Blair throws backs - each as corrupted & in thrall to power as Blair was & is.

There is plenty of new blood across both Labour & Tory parties - a clean sweep of both parties is reqd.

Of course some of the PLP were less than supportive. That's politics .

The leader of any party is going to have to deal with those sharpening their knives.

But more important is how you bring along those with differing views that are not necessarily organising a coup ( the majority). You can't just ignore/dismiss/bully. You have to find ways and means to build on common ground.

There are valid concerns about his competence

The same could be said of any leader of any political party in history FGS.

Many leaders are very competent and manage to retain a broad consensus amongst their MPs and activists.

There will always be some who refuse to enter the general body of agreement ( Corbyn has consistently refused to accept the will of the party for example) but provided the leadership team can keep a broad brush commonality, that's fine.

It's when a leader cannot do that at all that their competence is called into question.

GetaHaircut - no, not "just politics," but political suicide. The way the PLP handled their leader came across to the general public very much like he was being accused simultaneously of being a bullying, dangerous radical, and a limp wristed, pathetic lentil weaver who could not organise his way out of a paper bag and entirely lacked charisma. So much vitriol was flung in his direction it got boring and unbelievable and many people stopped listening to the words of hatred. The extreme and obviously unreasonable knee jerk reaction to him wasted the hand of those who did not like him, because if there was anything legitimate to complain about after that, it was drowned out by the incredibly strong memories of the utter nastiness, to which Jeremy Corbyn did not bow in public, bcause he is not that bloody stupid.