To ask Labour voters

[SilverySurfer]

Since Corbyn, McDonnell and Momentum appear to be continuing their grip on the Labour Party, whoever the new leader may be, do you see a time when the Party would split into two, leaving the above in one and the second being more centrist?

Initially I guess it would virtually guarantee Labour never winning an election but I wonder if you think it's likely the latter would get far more members, enough to once again become a viable opposition party?

I am a Tory but have always believed that Governments need good opposition parties, which has not been the case since Corbyn became leader.

I appreciate there's a fair number of Corbyn/Momentum fans but I would like to know what you think.

Stephen Kinnock was on Politics Live today. He is a very thoughtful and reasonable Labour MP. There are some around.

Pressed too soon.

I was going to add, that he is staying within the Labour party to try to change it from within. I wish him luck.

SilverySurfer perhaps you would like to explain why you are proud.

or is throwing sarcastic remarks safer?

I'm wondering for every new member Momentum signed up, how many long-term members left the Party in disapproval of Corbyn etal?

Probably a lot :/

I think Labour is pretty fucked right now because as far as I understand it the members, being full of momentum groupies, are much further left than the party officials/MPs/etc so there's a good possibility that theyre just going to choose whoever momentum thinks Corbyn's successor should be, who will probably be about as effective at actually getting anywhere.

I actually liked Corbyn to start off with, but I think it became obvious that compromise was needed as he wasn't going to be a viable option for the wider electorate. I'm hoping now that a lot of the more centrist labour supporters will rejoin the party so they can influence who the next leader will be. I think it's going to have to be someone very charismatic for there to be any hope of uniting eveyone under one banner. There's so much disparity between the different groups of people who would typically vote labour.

Until the Labour party remove the vile left wing factions from their ranks they will remain in the wilderness for many years to come. To use a term that Corybn and Momentum will be familiar with, the party needs a "Great Purge" without the bloodshed.

I'm hoping that a lot of the membership who joined initially excited by Corbyn in 2015 will have seen the reality and now favour a non-Corbynist leader. If you listen to the actual reasons people switched from labour to Tory as I have done, it is clear that Corbynism was a major factor among others. If the members get this and seek to change this then we could move more towards the centre and address this. Ultimately the membership decide, and they are the only ones who could oust Momentum.

I wish people would stop saying that Labour are "very left wing". They are just left wing.

Tony Blair's New Labour were just slightly left of centre, way more moderate than the Labour party had ever been before.

If they were to split into two, one half would be Labour and the other Lib Dem.

All that matters really is it too far left? -and yes Corbyn and Momentum are.

Blair was successful so it’s a good position to take to win.

The saddest thing is our country has swung so far to the right over the last few decades we no longer recognise people for what they are.

Corbyn would have been seen as a moderate in the Labour Party right up until the Blair years and would be seen as a typical left of centre politician in most of Europe. He is very far away from being extreme left wing.

Op, I agree with you, any govt with a large majority needs a proactive and effective opposition to hold them to their statements.

Right now we need an Andy Burnham or similar to restore some faith.

Samcro
SilverySurfer perhaps you would like to explain why you are proud.
or is throwing sarcastic remarks safer?

No.

This thread is about the future of the Labour Party - do you have anything useful to contribute? Have you read any of the responses? Do you agree or disagree? If not maybe this is not the thread for you. However don't let me stop you posting but if it's about anything other than the subject of the thread I shall not respond.

HTH

Basecamp65 It's fascinating because I don't see this Government as being to the far right at all, whereas I view Corbyn as extremely left wing. We are both obviously looking through completely different lenses.

I've read a lot of posts from Labour voters who are insisting the next leader must be female. Do you think this is right or should it be the best person for the job regardless of sex?

its weird to be proud of owning a political opinion.....

I mean mine just turn up in my head...I don't have to produce them through some effort of intellectual constipation relief.

TBH my political opinions have pretty much winnowed down to 'I hope there is still a planet capable of supporting human life by the time my kid is an adult'.

I'm not proud of this thought though...

OP, you (inadvertently) put a poll on the thread. I wasn't sure what question you were intending to poll, my best guess was you wanted opinions on whether the party should split if the next candidate isn't a centrist. I voted YABU on that basis, I expect others have similarly.

I don't think the party should split, there are two many parties to the left (for a FPTP system) as is. More voted to the left than to the right in the election, but with the vote splitting it has given a sizable Tory majority. There seems little sense in exacerbating that.

I'd prefer a more centrist candidate as it feels electorally safer, but (1) I dont think Corbyn was as left wing as portrayed, and (2) it's hard to assess how popular or not Corbyn's policies were given how deeply unpopular he was personally.

If Labour'd run on the same manifesto, but with a more charismatic, polished leader with less baggage for the media to hammer them on, it may well have been a different outcome.

Blair was successful so it’s a good position to take to win.

I know you are just talking about his ability to win an election, but the idea of holding up Blair as a successful leader makes my skin crawl!

OP: I don't think that Labour will split into two parties. I actually like Jeremy Corbyn, but I always had deep misgivings about him being leader. He's the kind of person that I would want close to the leader, along with other, more centrist party members giving a more moderate view. I think they made a mistake by not listening to the wants of a very large portion of their traditional voters, and hopefully this will be rectified in the future. I don't regret what they did though - I think that they tried something radical that failed. But, they did bring a lot more people into the Labour party, and they did offer up a different political agenda. The Conservatives and Boris Johnson won, but with the caveat that they have a very different group of voters to appease, should they wish to keep them. It will be interesting to see how this affects the way that they run things.

Long story short: Labour's radical approach failed pretty dramatically. I can't see how they could argue that it should be continued. I think we will see a very different Labour over the coming year, and hopefully, a more united approach.

Oh and to answer the OP.

I don't think labour should split. FPTP is a shit way to represent the broad spectrum of people's political opinions, so while it is in place your only option for success is to be a massive party riven with internal divisions, that just about holds together most days of the week, and to hope the other massive party riven with internal divisions is having a slightly harder time holding it together than you are.

Areyou yep - In terms of landslide victory, three elections and over a decade, more than him personally. I can’t see Labour getting there right now and wouldn’t say no to someone who could.

I don’t agree the person needs to be female. In fact being female can add extra hill to an up hill battle, so Labour should think carefully about who can actually be a strong candidate.

Corbyn would have been seen as a moderate in the Labour Party right up until the Blair years and would be seen as a typical left of centre politician in most of Europe. He is very far away from being extreme left wing.

I keep seeing people say this, but is it really true? One difference between UK and European politics is that because they have proportional representation, most European countries have more political parties than we do. Typically that includes a hard-left rump-communist/socialist party that picks up 5 percent of the votes at an election and occasionally enters into a bad-tempered coalition with the centre-left parties. Corbyn would fit right in with one of those hard left parties but he's absolutely not typical of the centre-left parties that actually form governments, nor would he ever be a serious candidate for PM in any European country I can think of apart from Greece.

Spamantha ah thanks for explaining about the vote - I hate it on here. Interesting that you think Corbyn Mark II and same policies would have a better outcome. I wonder.

Interesting that you think Corbyn Mark II and same policies would have a better outcome. I wonder.
To be clearer, I think a centre left leader would have been the most successful option.

However, Corbyn was wildly unpopular and it wasn't just to do with the manifesto (terrorist sympathiser, anti-semite, etc). It's hard to really know if the far-left platform failed given (a) Corbyn's personal unpopularity, and (b) the importance of Brexit in this election.

For all his faults, Corbyn still got a higher vote share than Miliband or Brown. I think it's quite possible that a more charismatic leader could win on a Corbyn-esque platform.

In the Simpsons Homer once joined a secret society called the Stonecutters. (Bit like the masons eh?). He was such a pain in the ass that everybody left to form The Ancient Mystic Society of No Homers leaving Homer on his own. That needs to happen to the Labour party. All the Non-Momentum people need to leave en masse to form Non-Momentum Labour.

Because the membership is all extreme left at the moment and they think they "won the argument" nothing will change for the next election at least, meaning a minimum of 10 years Conservative government.

Funny really. Momentum put the Tories in power.

do you see a time when the Party would split into two

Not a regular Labour voter I'm more at the Blair end than the Corbyn one, really, and have been known to vote Conservative in the past as well but I don't think so, to be honest.

The splitting conversation comes up fairly frequently -- in fact it was only a few months ago that people were saying that about the Conservative party. 'Cos really, both parties are broad churches, aren't they; Matt Hancock and Peter Bone probably disagree on more than they agree on, but they're both in the same party and elected as Conversative MPs. I just think there's so much potential for loss of votes that neither one actually does it. Many people still remember the SDP, which didn't end in glittery landslides for anyone.

I think there's a sizeable segment of the Labour party it's always been there that resists any move to the centre because it conflicts too much with their ideological beliefs. Blair, Brown and Mandelson actually managed to circumvent it which was quite remarkable really, although it built on a lot of John Smith's work because they understood a fundamental truth about Britain that got them elected; a sizeable majority of people are reasonably socially liberal and reasonably economically conservative (small l, small c for the avoidance of doubt).

I think the current Labour party still sees cleaving to its ideological tenets as more important than picking a 'vote-winner'. And there's a sense to that, in a way. But my feeling is that 2017 was probably the upper limit of how successful that particular brand of socialism/social democracy (whatever you want to call it) can go in the UK. It's not extreme, per se, but it is limited in appeal. Unless you can find someone who can get people who sit in the centre and usually vote Conservative to give Labour a try as Blair did there's always going to be a ceiling.

Just my view, anyway.

Good thread, I was thinking about this the other day, that momentum should split away and be a stand alone party and then labour can move back to a more centralist position. And the two can act independently.

I doubt it will happen though, because I think the momentum supporters know they would be dead in the water, they need the life blood of the Labour Party to survive.

I honestly think they will fight to keep feedig off the Labour Party as long as they can.

Here's a bit of perspective on how Democrats are reacting on this side of the pond

Democrats worried by Jeremy Corbyn's UK rise amid anti-Semitism

The anti-Semitism has gotten a lot of attention here, but I didn't realize the extent to which anti-Americanism also pervades Corbyn's world view.

The splitting conversation comes up fairly frequently -- in fact it was only a few months ago that people were saying that about the Conservative party.

Jeepers, that's true. Things have moved so fast over the last few months, that I had forgotten that! It's crazy to think that at the beginning of the year, everyone was predicting the Conservative party would tear itself apart from the inside, and suddenly they are in power with a substantial majority. Can't keep up with politics these days.

I've read a lot of posts from Labour voters who are insisting the next leader must be female. Do you think this is right or should it be the best person for the job regardless of sex?

I personally think it shouldn't matter. However it is annoying that the lack of a female leader gets thrown at labour any time they criticise the policy of another party for being sexist so if nothing else it would stop that retort. And it is more than just an annoying retort, it stops the Tories having to properly defend any policies that adversely effect women more because they just say something like "I'm not taking gender equality lessons from a party that have never had a female leader."
I've said upthread my preference is Keir Starmer anyway but there are plenty of good female suggestions being put out, Jess Phillips is probably my preference out of them.