The Labour dilemma.
I am and have always been a Labour voter. I know their ideology, philosophy, and where they come from. Their roots are based in fairness, equality and justice – in the labour struggle and trade union movement. I can identify with that.
I want a Labour Government. In my view it is the only way to protect the rights of ordinary people and protect our public services.
I am a great supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. I love his passion and policies – all he stands for. He stands for hope. He has altered the policies of the Labour Party and dragged it back from the watered-down policies of Blairite pseudo-Tories. He has inspired a grassroots movement and attracted tens of thousands in to the Party.
Yet, right now the Labour Party is tearing itself apart and giving the Tories free reign to bring in their despicable policies. They are imposing austerity on the poor and public servants while ensuring the rich are doing very nicely.
While the Tories continue with their ruthless policies Labour are languishing 10 points behind in the polls.
I am disgusted by the Labour MPs who withdrew their services, backstabbed, sniped and undermined.
I am disgusted by the media who have relentlessly undermined, seized every opportunity to ridicule or talk down, and selected their portrayals of Corbyn to create a picture of ineptitude.
Yet I have my doubts.
Can Jeremy be a leader who could unite not just the grassroots but the MPs and electorate at large to make Labour electable?
Why does he go missing when the extremists are intimidating members of his Party?
Why was he so poor during the EU campaign?
How can he be seen as electable when he commands so few of the Labour MPs – not sufficient to form a viable cabinet?
Can Jeremy ever become good at manipulating a hostile media?
Is he seen by the wider electorate as a viable Prime Minister?
How might it have turned out if the whole of the Labour MPs had got behind him and sorted out their differences in private?
Why are those MPS so intent on a coup which allows the Tories to plough along unchallenged?
Right now I cannot see a way forward.
Owen Smith is not a viable leader.
Jeremy Corbyn will be re-elected.
Will that unify the Party or will it pull it apart?
I lived through the seventies with the horrors of Thatcherism and her decimation of production, public services and deregulation. I saw the social fall-out and despair. She was allowed to rule because of the split in the Labour Party. The Gang of Four split away from Labour and set up their silly middle way. In so doing they gave the Tories everything they wanted. They ran amok.
I saw Michael Foot and Tony Benn (both of who talked utter sense and stood for fairness and justice) being demonised and undermined.
I saw Blair take over after the sad death of John Smith and saw the way he moved the party to the centre as a watered down Tory. He was a great disappointment but at least he looked after the public services, inner cities and the poor.
I do not want to see the Labour Party become an idealistic party of opposition. I want to see them elected.
If the party splits we might find ourselves out in the cold for generations and possibly never recover.
I suspect that the left-wing policies, to which I subscribe, are probably not going appeal to a large enough section of the community at large to become electable.
In order for Labour to be elected it has to pull together and be that wide church, to incorporate the left and right wings, and to compromise on policies.
That is the dilemma.
When Jeremy is re-elected can he build those bridges, win those recalcitrant MPs over, bury the hatchet and find the compromises, learn how to handle that right-wing media, create policies with mass appeal, deal with the internal bullying and project the right image of a Prime Minister in waiting, with a unified party and coherent policies?
Or will those MPs continue to take their bats home and oppose him? Or worse – split?
If he can’t unite the MPs and the party splits the Tories will rampage forward without opposition and the working people, public servants and poor will suffer.
I can’t imagine anything worse.
My hope is that Jeremy can do it!
So what are your views?
I’ve always voted Labour too but have never liked the internal politics when I was in the youth part of the party, some years ago… Now I’ve decided to be in The Green Party and it is a lot more ‘harmonious’. If only Caroline Lucas was leader of the Labour Party but she is never given much media time too.
So many machinations. I’d be tempted by the Greens but I’m too angered by what the Tories are doing. The imperative for me is to get them out before they do much more damage. A coalition with the Greens would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it?
A very fair survey of the situation. I find myself veering on the subject. If JC gets another big mandate from the party, his first task should be to unite all parts of it behind a root-and-branch discussion of policy starting from first principles. This should be the job of the next conference to initiate, the first in the new world after Brexit, regardless of short-term electoral pressures. I’m only glad I’m no longer involved in the party and can attend to more personal philosophical matters!
I’m veering too and that causes divisions with friends. I know people (good Labour supporters) who paid their £25 to vote Jeremy out and I know people who paid to vote him in.
The division is making them unelectable. Some of my relatives – a bunch of Tories – were gleefully laughing about it and cheering for Corbyn to be elected. They thought it would remove opposition.
I’m not so sure. I’d love to see him get re-elected, unite the party and get Labour back to its real values. At present, without a viable shadow cabinet, I can’t see how that’s possible. He’d have to lead a hell of a lot better than he did in Brexit.
I keep thinking of WB Yeats …
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Let’s hope it’s a mighty Labour beast who will peacefully defeat all and herald a new age.
Just had a horrible afterthought … you don’t suppose the 2nd Coming could refer to Nigel Farage, do you, only this time he gets elected? Aaaaarrrgghhh … oh, hang on, he’s already had one comeback so this would be the 3rd one … PHEW!
Yeats might have got it wrong! It could be a third coming!!!!