UK Politics - Weeny, Weedy, Weaky

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So. I read a piece recently by David Graeber about the Labour Party and anti-Semitism.

It argues that the basic reason the Parliamentary Labour Party hates Jeremy Corbyn is that Corbyn and his followers have been trying to democratize the Labour Party internally- create something similar to a US primary system so that MPs are actually answerable to their constituencies from time to time. He claims that under Blair the MPs were basically set up as MPs for life, and the underlying reason for their hostility to Corbyn is that the reforms to the Labour Party he is trying to carry out directly threaten their careers.

Does anyone have any comment on this? I am not familiar enough with Labour Party history etc. to judge, obviously, but it seems pretty plausible to me.
a) It's not only Labour who have centralised power thus - remember threats of deselection are not privy to them
b) it's a damagingly outdated system now that there's been fixed terms and other reforms enacted since then 1990s.
 
In the so called good old days; local parties (conservative, labour and liberals) would
select their candidate; typically by long listing and then interviewing short listed prospects.

If the candidate selected was elected and was average or good, they'd keep them until they lost or became
no longer up to. If not up to it, they'd politely arrange for a younger person to stand for the next election.

Now central office might express a view, and if the local party had no strong candidates,
even parachute in their own canddate, but in most constituencies; the local party decided.

Problem was that John Major (Conservative) and Peter Mandelson (Labour) decided to nationalise
their local parties; so that they were no longer independent bodies; but local manifestations of
a national party. I.e. UK politics changed from bottom up to top down.

And I rather think that Jeremy Corbyn thinks that the old way was better.
 
In the so called good old days; local parties (conservative, labour and liberals) would
select their candidate; typically by long listing and then interviewing short listed prospects.

If the candidate selected was elected and was average or good, they'd keep them until they lost or became
no longer up to. If not up to it, they'd politely arrange for a younger person to stand for the next election.

Now central office might express a view, and if the local party had no strong candidates,
even parachute in their own canddate, but in most constituencies; the local party decided.

Problem was that John Major (Conservative) and Peter Mandelson (Labour) decided to nationalise
their local parties; so that they were no longer independent bodies; but local manifestations of
a national party. I.e. UK politics changed from bottom up to top down.

And I rather think that Jeremy Corbyn thinks that the old way was better.

Going by the massive rift between the majority of labour voters (and labour class in general) and the bulk of the Blair-era labour mps, it is hard to claim that Corbyn is wrong to give power back to the regional bodies.
 
Well, given that Blair remains the only the Labour PM in 40 years, it's hard to say that he wasn't doing something right either.
 
You're forgetting the forgettable Gordon Brown…
 
As yet another example of how damaging single-issue voters can be, Boris Johnson is planning to stuff the House of Lords as well as the civil service with ‘Brexit heroes’.

(and let's not forget Treeza May's farewell honours list either)

Not that I support at all this "tradition"...
But taking it as a fact that it is there... perhaps the amount of peers a PM can appoint should be based on the number of years-months of PM-ship.
 
You're forgetting the forgettable Gordon Brown…

Oh, I certainly am, yes, but I don't think that Brown actually fought a successful general election.
 
Already? What if there's a new Queen's speech after a snap election? Couldn't he sneak in some honours then? After all, honours lists are yet another ‘tradition’ in the UK's good-chap-government constitution.
 
Blair didn't have any resignation honours and I'm not sure that Brown did either. Cameron (of course) revived them and May followed suit, despite previously saying that some of Cameron's had made her physically retch.
 
Are the liberals centrist or left wing.
The party "The Liberal Democrats" are to the right of Jeremy Corbyn, but a bit to the left of Tony Blair. I guess this makes them centrist, but I never really know these days what these words really mean.
 
The party "The Liberal Democrats" are to the right of Jeremy Corbyn, but a bit to the left of Tony Blair. I guess this makes them centrist, but I never really know these days what these words really mean.

Ah more likely to support labour over the conservatives though?
 
So, Johnson continues to insist that the five-week proroguement of Parliament was due to needing a new Queen's Speech. Most governments have managed with one or two weeks, so we're expected to believe that his administration is so incompetent that they need five weeks? He also claimed that "we need to get on and do all sorts of things at a national level", apparently oblivious to the notion that other governments haven't needed to shut down Parliament to do so.
 
Ah more likely to support labour over the conservatives though?
Certainly on Europe. On economic matters I am not so sure. There has been a reasonably successful demonization campaign against Jeremy Corbyn, and if it came down to say renationalisation of the railways or something I would not bet on where their votes went. They did join a coalition with the Tories a few years ago, but then to have made it with Labour they would have had to get just about every other minor party in the country to join them to get a majority.
 
Certainly on Europe. On economic matters I am not so sure. There has been a reasonably successful demonization campaign against Jeremy Corbyn, and if it came down to say renationalisation of the railways or something I would not bet on where their votes went. They did join a coalition with the Tories a few years ago, but then to have made it with Labour they would have had to get just about every other minor party in the country to join them to get a majority.

Rgr we have a centrist party here, when they coalitioned with the right it was an all round clust ****.

They coalitioned with the left this time round and under previous labour government
Alot smoother even if it's not exciting for the far left. They got lumped with the choice of support a left of centre government or letva right of centre government form.

The centrist leader was a moderate right winger but left in 93 so a lot of bad blood there.
 
Amber Rudd (not Andrea Leadsom as i posted earlier) has called for a more proportional electoral system to unblock the current logjam.

It could be a good idea for the Tories to rid themselves of the difficult wing of the party and pitch for the centre.

It always struck me as odd that say UKIP gained a similar number of votes nationally as the SNP and lib dems put together but got no seats while the SNP votes being concentrated could win most seats in Scotland.

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...al-representation-voting-system-speech-brexit
 
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