Interesting Links for 31-08-2016

[andrewducker]

What Killed the Jingle? (tags: advertising music history ) Needy robot babies may make teens more likely to have real babies (tags: children robots ) Why Failure Hits Girls So Hard (tags: failure girls gender psychology ) A fascinating poll of Labour members (tags: labour politics uk ) Gorgeous Photos Of Cats Captured In Black & White (tags:

Comments

[gonzo21]

One rather suspects the panic amongst the PLP has less to do with 'we cannot win an election under Corbyn' and more to do with 'De-selections are coming and under Corbyn we might lose our precious god given seats'.

[danieldwilliam]

I don't.

[thakil]

I mean, 80% of the PLP no confidence voted him! 80%! If one dislikes the current version of the Labour party so much that one thinks 80% of it are useless careerists then why would one join the Labour party? I suppose one answer could be a plan to replace it with a new, completely different party with different representatives. In which case, it's one way to do it, but I'm confident that said party (new new labour, or maybe just old labour I suppose) will be able to maintain a fraction of it's current seats in the next election

[gonzo21]

He's not the leader I would have picked either, but the problem is he's the only game in town. We'll never get another chance to reform the Labour party.

And if this fails, then the north of England will go the same way as Scotland, and the Labour party will be left chasing middle-england seats hoping that Tory-lite will work. And I don't think it will, the Blair victories were an anomaly we'll not likely see again.

I'm unconvinced by the evidence of Corbyn being such a bad leader though. Too much of it originated in the press offices of the New Labour machinery.

[danieldwilliam]

I think the split is more likely to be cities vs towns rather than north vs middle England. I think one has to layer demographics, economics and social attitudes over the geographical concentration required to win large numbers of seats under First Past the Post.

[gonzo21]

The worrying thing is if Labour get this badly wrong, and under Owen SMith and putting two fingers up at We The People I think they are getting it very badly wrong, that UKIP have already made it very clear their main thrust of the future is going to be aggressively going after working class northern voters.

I can see vast swathes of Labour heartland switching to UKIP quite readily, just as SCotland switched to SNP.

[danieldwilliam]

What are these heartlands of which you speak?

[andrewducker]

"I suppose one answer could be a plan to replace it with a new, completely different party with different representatives."
That would be the plan. The idea being that The Labour Party means a particular thing, which was hijacked by central office during 1997-2015, with electability and the middle ground prioiritised over, say, standing up for the poor. And that Labour saying "We are not the party of the unemployed" and failing to resist welfare cuts was the last straw for many people who saw this as the ultimate betrayal.

But the question of "Who is the party?" is not an easy one to answer.

[danieldwilliam]

I'm not sure where the idea that the Labour Party ought to be for the unemployed came from. Or rather that this was the true acid test of proper Labourhood. The Labour Party's roots,  as the name suggests,  are in organised labour.

Concern for the unemployed is a solidarity or a Fabian issue but there's always been a stripe of  winnowing the Deserving and Undeserving Poor in the Labour Party.

[gonzo21]

"I'm not sure where the idea that the Labour Party ought to be for the unemployed came from"

When Thatcher made most of the old organised Labour movement unemployed by destroying their industries and not having any plan for replacing them with anything?

[danieldwilliam]

I agree that the Labour Party have a legitimate interest in those who are unemployed and the process by which those people became unemployed and remain so

[gonzo21]

And I think certainly the Labour party has a problem because since 2008 the mass media has generated a narrative that the people at fault for the financial woes of the world are the shiftless poor and unemployed scum, and not, you know, the banking elite who wrecked the global economy by playing a giant game of taxpayer backed roulette. But its created this scenario where any party I think that seems to stand up for the poor and unemployed too much, instantly becomes unelectable because working people are so against supporting the poor now.

As you say. The way the Tories have become the de facto party of the working, while Labour is perceived as the party of the scroungers.

Though the SNP have made grounds by being the protectors of the underclasses. But Scottish politics are in uncharted waters. And culturally Scotland feels very very different to England now.

Did you see this interesting story today?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37238641

The

[andrewducker]

"any suggestion that the Labour Party ought to be more concerned with people who are actually working than with people who are unemployed"
I haven't seen that.

Although, frankly, the Labour Party ought to be there for the working classes, and their current employment state should be irrelevant.

I feel as disturbed by statements that the Labour Party is not the party of the unemployed as I would of statements that the Labour party is not the party of black people. Or gay people. Either it's a statement of the bleeding obvious (of course it's not _just_ the party of those people) or it's a dog-whistle.

[andrewducker]

As said above, when people started blaming the Conservatives for taking employed working class people and making them unemployed.