How to fix the Labour Party

How to fix the Labour Party

I am considering getting involved in a so-called debate about Lavery, Tricket and Smith’s recent revision of their No Holding Back report, which has been seized with alacrity by the usual suspects, possibly unfairly; it seems more nuanced than its authors and fans suggest but I may not be reading it sufficiently well. I am reminded of the Data Praxis report, Tory Landslide, Progressives Split, which shows how it might have been worse and blames our FPTP electoral system. I precis them by saying,

“Labour lost because, Leavers in Labour seats, switched to the Tories, but more Labour Remainers from 2017 switched; Corbyn (& the manifesto) were now unpopular and thus too many Tory Remainers stayed with the Tories.

Dave Levy

We should also note that Lavery, Tricket and Smith do not mention Scotland; it’s not their expertise but there’s no answer without the Scots.

While looking at what to say, and for help in understanding the problem, I was concerned to be truthful at the state of the red wall parties’ health, but it seems hard to get the local contact rates, which will all be poor nor to get the member/voter ratio. I looked at Labour Together’s report, again to see if they said anything useful about local Party organisation/structure and campaigning. This is difficult to be honest about because of the back office chicanery in Labour HQ on 2017 & 2019 and the myths and maybe truths about how Momentum’s volunteer organisation saved us in 2017 get in the way. They i.e. Labour Together don’t say anything useful or concrete about CLP organisation. We should also note that the Democracy Review did nothing to improve local campaigning effectiveness either. Perhaps we should be listening to Crispin Flintoff on his campaign to fund CLPs properly.

About the Labour Together report, I found this, at Immigration News, which pulls no punches. I say, using their words,

[the] New Labour Together Report investigates Labour’s 2019 Election Defeat with crushing honesty – but glosses over senior saboteurs behind the Labour Leaks dossier. A 150-page report published this week by research group Labour Together serves up some stone-cold truths and analysis in what may have led to Labour’s downfall in the 2019 General Election. “

Olivia Bridge – Immigration news JUne 2020

I have written about “What happened?”, and created a reading list tagged “ge2019” on my diigo feed, and to remind me and others of what wise people said, I also reproduce the Electoral Calculus chart on where votes came and went.

I have made a sankey chart from this, it would seem that this chart is for England & Wales only, but for other source notes, you’ll need to check out the original article.

The Labour Together report is strong on the need to get the strategy right; I think we may need to end the factionalism first and recognise the members must have the first and last word but we also need to resolve the fault lines in our coalition, because much of the pro-Brexit positions came from Labour politicians on the right of the party whose heritage is the “Control Immigration” mug and future road is that of Blue Labour, “work, family, community”. Adopting this sort of rubbish and its racist sub-text will jeopardise Labour’s city heartlands, apart from just being wrong. …

Why Labour lost, again

Why Labour lost, again

On Friday, Ed Miliband released his report into Labours GE 2019, you can find it here, Paul Mason and Phil BC comment on it here (Paul), here (Phil) & here (Phil again)., and the tanks, cranks and so-called Lexiters see this as a reason for attacking Starmer and Labour’s majority Remainers.

This, “The Man or The Manifesto? Labour Together Report Shows Uphill Battle for the Party’s Survival” on immigration news is also worth reading. …

Cash in Hand

Amongst my discoveries while reading Labour’s 2018 Financial Report was the cash in hand figure which led me to post this!


Doesn’t seem to have caught, so I have reposted it here. …

What happened?

What happened?

So what happened? Where does it leave me and my allies? I have been doing a lot of reading much of which I have bookmarked on my diigo feed, tagged GE2019. I wanted to write something deep, insightful and original, but others got there first. The result has two highlights, the loss of seats in the East Midands, North East, East Coast, primarily leave seats, primarily seats that have voted Labour forever but secondly an overall loss of votes to “Remain” parties. Labour’s so-called Lexiters were quick out the gate blaming Labour’s promise for a second referendum as the core cause of the loss of these seats. Reality requires a deeper look; it also requires the recognition that some of those seats will have been lost because remain supporting labour voters chose to vote elsewhere. Would the result have been better or worse if we had not promised the second referendum? How many of these seats did we lose by less than the Green/LibDem vote? How many of the seats in the Leave voting majorities that we held, might we have lost if remain supporters had been less committed to us? It could have been worse! For a more detailed insight I need to wait for the Electoral Commission spreadsheet. I say more below/overleaf …  …

Lies, damn lies and …

This time it’s about voter share but it reminds me of a debate I had about the quote in the title. We felt the and was actually an OR, Another piece of post election analysis that can’t wait. There is a chart being circulated showing Labour’s vote share with the startling result of 2017 as it’s last data point. This makes it pretty useless. They also commit the error of not publishing the complete vertical axis, which has the effect of exaggerating the visual differences and then it seems extend the charts using faces. Anyway, here’s my version …

We should remember that 1992 is 25 years ago, another generation. Without the 1992 data point the argument that 2017 is the anomaly in a declining labour vote is more compelling.

Here’s the meme I am critiquing.

 …

Free and fast broadband; it wasn’t to be.

Free and fast broadband; it wasn’t to be.

It’s time for me to consider the election results; I think in terms of ideas I am set back four years  but in this blog article I want to look at Labour’s manifesto for the Arts, callled a Charter for the Arts. One of the criticisms that being made of the campaign is that unlike 2017, the manifesto was not seen as signpost for better times. It was seen as a classic shopping list to bribe a winning coalition, and constructed without thought or knowledge of how to pay for it. The promises need to be bound into a single promise, and the details need to be the result of debate and consensus in the Party. Much, including the Arts manifesto seemed to be an after thought, an insight underlined by it’s late publication.

Policy for creative industries has not been debated at Conference in my memory, and the NPF reports have been weak although the 2017 manifesto played with ideas around the “value gap“; this document does not repeat this. Corbyn’s introduction is radical, as you would expect, establishing Art as the property of and the right of all.

The manifesto promises to defend and extend free access to museums and art galleries, invest in diversity in the arts, ensure lottery money is fairly distributed, that schools are invested in to support the arts, and possibly most radically, but equally unprepared, promised free broad band for all.

The decades old commitment to free access to museums and libraries, the productive macroeconomic arguments and the failure of the market to deliver nationwide fast broadband are all good reasons to make this promise but we allowed it to hang on the question, “Why free? We don’t do it for water!” and I don’t have an answer to that. (Although we do it for museums, galleries and libraries). …

Tomorrow’s polling day

Vote Labour tomorrow, there are many reasons to do so.

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I have not been well and not got out as much as I’d hoped, can’t really say how I feel and what I know. My part of Deptford seems solidly pro-Labour, if not always enthusiastic; I went to Harrow East, with hundreds of people. It was empty! But if doorstep work makes a difference, the Tories can still lose this.  …

It’s not a double whammy!

And it’s back to tax! WTF.  😵  Labour’s income tax proposals will not affect anyone earning under £80K, contrary to the bollocks on Question Time earlier this week. This increase represents the top 5% income earners in the country. Labour propose to tax those on over £80,000 at 45% rather than 40% and increase the rate for those earning over £150K to 50%. (These are marginal rates i.e. they are only paid on that income earned over the threshold. See http://calculate.forlabour.com.

Currently one pay’s zero on the first ~£12,000, 20% in the next ~£35,000, 40% on £46K to 150K and 45% on whatever’s left if you lucky enough to earn that much.

While issues remain about the zero rate claw back, as it impacts benefits package design i.e. encourages tax avoidance by transferring benefits from money to NPBs and particularly in London, this is not unfair; it might be better if another layer was introduced at £¼ million p.a. so that the newly burdened feel that those better off then them are carrying their share of the burden. (We should also work out how to forgive the student debt, since one of things this tax payment will generate is free (higher) education for tax payers and their children.) …  …