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tony blair was personally a very good politician, and found a strategy that worked quite well in a short-to-medium term situation the problem is that, as you position yourself more closely to an established party you'll eventually get ousted because voters recognise and prefer the genuine article. differentiation is a big deal in corporate marketing for a reason - when the danish parties all rushed to recapture the racist vote with increasingly draconian measures adding up to outright robbing refugees that show up, the Danish People's Party's core support didn't appreciably fall as labour moves increasingly to capture a petit-bourgeois vote segment (as they did under New Labour), they are forced to abandon their older, working-class vote segment. the fundamental problem of modern socialist politics is that the working class simply doesn't have the numbers and is too difficult to mobilise to defend their interests, and there are no other large groups of people easily susceptible to a left-wing message. thus, social democrats have been left with two main ways to go to avoid irrelevance: either become the party of the establishment, as they did in scandinavia, or ditch their roots and go petit-bourgeois (in itself a very dangerous choice, as that is a group not courted by almost everyone). it bears mentioning that even in scandinavia, the social democrats are fighting a rearguard action against a clear tendency of long-term decline. in america, the center-left has been revitalised by the application of ruthless identity politics, i.e. appealing to "underprivileged" groups in the form of women, ethnic minorities and young people. miliband tried something like this in britain, but it was terribly half-hearted on a whole. the problem with this kind of politics is that it entirely lacks economic ideology beyond "economic redistribution" and will thus tend towards the path of least resistance in this area, as splendidly exemplified by Bill Clinton
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Jan 2, 2016 03:10
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people who talk about the time when the left dominated the labour party have a bizarre tendency to view Kinnock as a representative of the left of the party. for electoral purposes, Kinnock moved the party quite a ways towards the political 'centre' of his time, but failed to win. in my view, this is mainly because he just wasn't a very good politician
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Jan 2, 2016 03:12
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ronya posted:is the arc described here the late 60s New Left revolution as European socialist parties pretty much everywhere moved to abandon any vanguardist alignment, or the late 80s neoliberal revolution where labour market flexibility and state company privatization was being accepted as a fait accompli i was not really discussing an explicitly revolutionary mandate, simply the erosion of the labour movement (revolutionary or reformist) as a sufficient base for winning elections quote:Kinnock's main arc as Leader of the Labour Party is his dramatic showdown with the hard left, culminating in the expulsion of militant members no i mean kinnock's period. the 1992 manifesto is quite a lot less radical than the 1987 one in important respects, and this was explicitly for electoral reasons, there are post-defeat interviews with left-wingers discussing precisely this phenomenon
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Jan 2, 2016 06:44
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yes, i agree. nevertheless, this is a claim that is made, or at least implicit in the whole "rightward shift is what wins elections" rhetoric
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Jan 2, 2016 07:54
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it seems like a mistake tbh. let's hope Benn not being pushed out already means that he's either staying where he is or switching places with Burnham (which, to be honest, would make sense) it may also be that some of these people are getting sacked for leaking shadow cabinet meeting stuff, which would be a big problem to deal with in any event, or it could just be an attempt at whipping the party into line. i guess we'll see if the leaks stop
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Jan 6, 2016 01:19
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that White Van Man thing was really stupid imo
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Jan 6, 2016 01:19
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Pissflaps posted:It's a good job they didn't take this long to rearrange the deckchairs on the actual Titanic. so one assumes that you would prefer everyone involved to abandon ship and head to lifeboats?
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Jan 6, 2016 01:21
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none of the two sacked were threats. i'm guessing this had to do with the leaks - we'll see if they continue now
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Jan 6, 2016 02:18
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ukip is basically a one-note party on it and they do have a decent chunk of the electorate voting for them
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Jan 6, 2016 16:03
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honestly immigration is one of the biggest policy headaches for the modern left, including the centre-left it's so riddled with ideological contradictions, even before you get into problems of racism &c
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Jan 6, 2016 16:05
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Pork Pie Hat posted:You'll remember that the last time UKMT had cause to think of Noel Edmonds he was claiming some old bollocks about 'electro-smog' being the single greatest threat to humanity. is he blaming immigrants for excessive traffic
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Jan 14, 2016 00:18
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pissflaps the "i don't think jeremy corbyn is likely to win an election" poll is fairly obviously contributed to by every media outlet up to and including the BBC saying "jeremy corbyn is not likely to win an election" since before he was elected it is a pointless metric. various approval ratings are much less pointless, though one might very well discuss whether they should be taken seriously and/or be used as a rationale to oust him - again, there doesn't really seem to be anyone else in the modern labour party who reasonably could win an election
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Jan 20, 2016 02:56
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no matter how one spins it, a party being in apparent total civil war is not an indication of solid leadership. similarly, one may reasonably judge a prime minister by how effective they are at getting their legislation through, as well as how good their proposed legislation is
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Jan 20, 2016 03:03
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honestly i suspect that a lot of corbyn's relatively poor stats are due to a fairly relentless media campaign against him. this doesn't really change the fact that the stats are what they are, and that we should consider them on their own terms, however. i tend to believe that it may well be that corbyn cannot win the 2020 election bar some form of miracle, but neither can anyone else and corbyn is if nothing else a credible opposition figure
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Jan 20, 2016 03:07
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well he did say it in an internal meeting iirc so uh e. that quote was likely one of the main reasons for the shadow cabinet reshuffle, is what i'm saying
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Jan 20, 2016 03:54
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ronya posted:that particular incident struck me as yet another of those it's-not-inconsistent-with-the-80s moments, where Corbyn is only wildly out of step with the wider mood because the terrorists are no longer bombing for a cause that is respectable amongst the British elite oh yeah absolutely i actually think eighties' ideology is 'in' in a lot of ways, though. it certainly has answers to many questions that are difficult for contemporary ideological apparates, and i reckon it's why he became popular to begin with
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Jan 20, 2016 04:55
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i very much doubt that the labour right is going to accept that. it's going to be reported as "labour drubbing in scotland" or what have you
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Jan 20, 2016 05:10
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ronya posted:maybe. I think it runs aground attempting to maintain the leftier achievements of neoliberalism - the individualist civil-rights discourse, diversity and representation and due-process commitments, effectiveness assessments in public policy, etc. These are not intrinsically conflicting goals, but it's matter of what one prioritizes. corbyn's problem is by no means his attitude to women and homosexuals, though i mean, people try to make a fuss about his 'women problems', but their hearts are really not in it
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Jan 20, 2016 05:45
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i don't think that's due to corbyn tbh i also agree that the reports of corbyn's DEATH SENTENCE for labour are somewhat exaggerated, but there's no real reason to attribute every positive poll to him. the remarkable thing in that poll is that UKIP seems to have, uh, exploded
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Jan 22, 2016 00:55
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Oberleutnant posted:Suicide rates are widely reported and are a lens through which to assess the health of a society from local to national and global levels. Suicide statistics - like crime, and health - are inherently political. the DDR realised this, and mercilessly suppressed attempts at tracking suicides i think they used various tricks, at times classing them as "murder of the self" since they compared very favourably to most countries in murder statistics, but it's been maybe ten years since i read much on this so pinch of salt &c
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Jan 22, 2016 18:23
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LemonDrizzle posted:No, and by definition we cannot be for another six months or so. really, corbyn should absolutely use these letters in his PMQs, it would be really difficult for dave to slither away from it
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Jan 22, 2016 18:24
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OvineYeast posted:That is just the traditional German term for 'suicide' (Selbstmord). I think it's considered problematic these days but not so much when the DDR was about. it's the same word in norwegian and, indeed, in english (sui=self cide=kill), but iirc they folded suicide stats into murder stats to make it look better
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Jan 22, 2016 22:59
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serious gaylord posted:Where a man who has been acquitted in a retrial must still notify police anytime he wishes to have sex for the next 4 months or face 5 years in prison. i must say, this seems like it would either put a damper on the mood or be someone's incredibly specific fetish
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Jan 22, 2016 23:19
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imo the biggest argument against MAD is the whole cuban missile crisis at that point, lots of things could've gone wrong and everything would've been screwed. MAD tends to dictate that situations like that don't escalate to that point, because nobody wants to risk a war - but both sides escalated to the point of nearly coming to blows, with powerful individuals involved actively advocating for a nuclear first strike
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Jan 23, 2016 12:43
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blowfish posted:The whole idea is to kill the bastards. If one Russian and two Americans survive, we win. joke's on america, the ussr is comprised of more than just russians finally, moldova's time of hegemony will come
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Jan 23, 2016 12:49
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Pissflaps posted:But it didn't happen, which suggests MAD works? well it "works" in the sense that it didn't escalate to a full nuclear exchange. but that is not the extent of MAD - according to orthodox MAD theorists, the Cuban missile crisis should never have escalated to that level in the first place - it should've been impossible at one point during the crisis, there was a tense enough situation that one relatively minor mistake could have set off a full nuclear exchange, and everybody involved knew it. the parties were, at that point, not operating according to MAD doctrine - because they were outside the bounds of that doctrine MAD does not merely mean "nuclear war won't happen because the cost to all involved is too high", it's one of the most researched game-theory concepts in history, possibly the most researched, and again, the Crisis more-or-less disproved the dominant version of its time
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Jan 23, 2016 13:13
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Guavanaut posted:Orthodox game theorists were generally huge gah
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Jan 23, 2016 13:20
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s who didn't understand human interaction very well or wanted to stick it all into numbered boxes. In real human interaction there's room for a lot more nuance, brinkmanship, disobedience of orders, etc. that still have MAD working.
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gentlemen please
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Jan 25, 2016 01:48
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ronya posted:another prominent referendum where the incumbent government and the main opposition party are campaigning against it does any parliamentary party (bar UKIP i guess lol) want to leave the EU i don't understand why people are worried about this, the amount of resources brought to bear against it is oing to be absolutely staggerin. the big "problem" is that this might legitimise euroskepticism as a political force, like the scottish referendum empowered the SNP let the tories eat themselves. falling into line on this is going to make it "safer", but it will also cause the tories less pain - one hopes for open war on the government front bench as a part of this thing
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Jan 28, 2016 03:42
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Pissflaps posted:These numbers reflect badly on Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. i'm fairly sure that many current tory policies, framed like that, would get similar approval numbers i mean you're not generally wrong in your analysis of corbyn's electability thus far, but this is seriously stretching it
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Jan 28, 2016 15:18
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Cerv posted:Framed like "Westminster voting intention"? that's not what i was referring to
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Jan 28, 2016 15:21
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Pissflaps posted:Supporting Trident renewal is also a Labour policy. i fail to see the pertinence of this remark
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Jan 28, 2016 15:23
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Pissflaps posted:That people are at odds with Corbyn's contrary views on policies that have cross-party agreement does not reflect well on Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. so a leader ought only to have opinions at odds with the two major parties' official policies when that is popular in loaded polls?
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Jan 28, 2016 15:36
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i don't see why you think that being the official policy of a major party is a sign that a policy is more or less electable tbh it seems like, if anything, such a policy would be at its loical flaw of support but i'm sure you have a solid, well-formulated reasoning for this pissflaps
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Jan 28, 2016 15:38
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Pissflaps posted:Though I think you're over-egging the 'loaded' aspect here. The point is to determine public support for unilateral disarmament, rather than as some sort of global removal of nuclear weapons. if a poll contains the word "even" unnecessarily it's typically loaded i tend to agree that unilateralism isn't a popular policy (it obviously isn't), but that poll is necessarily not going to give a very accurate view of the situation
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Jan 28, 2016 15:48
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NO gently caress YOU DAD posted:What happens if your spouse is deaf? Does British Sign Language count as English? Given this government's record with disabilities I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't. i think this is the sort of thing that is safe to assume that people are expecting would be ironed out in the eventuality of a law like this passing
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Jan 28, 2016 15:54
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RobotNinjaHornets posted:On the other hand "healthly"?
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Jan 28, 2016 16:03
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Tesseraction posted:Good to know the EU will bend over for our pissy little country because they're scared we might leave their lovely union. it's an interesting strategy of negotiating, and it would be clever if it weren't so obviously unsustainable: set up the daedalus' sword of the referendum, then try to leverage that to squeeze concessions in the interim i don't think it's going to work, though, merkel and juncker do not normally brook this kind of foolishness, and merkel needs her clout in the EU now more than ever as events in cologne have seen her position somewhat weakened
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Jan 28, 2016 16:37
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trans people represent a massive headache to many gender theory people, both practical and theoretical - on one hand, they manifest a kind of fluidity that essentialists cannot accept, and on another, taking transsexuality seriously means that one has to accept that there is a certain level of essential overlap re: gender and sex. both of these challenges are massively inconvenient on a theoretical level, as you suddenly have to accept that "ok maybe women are inherently like X" based on the behaviour and preferences of trans people, which will necessarily sit poorly with someone who has spent their life working on the assumption (relatively well-supported among cis women) that "inherently" feminine behaviour is a meaningless term in practice then on the practical level you have an element of who one ought to accept as female for female-only spaces (say a rape survivor group) &c - a trans woman who has not undergone transition, for instance, might very well make many of the women in the space uncomfortable, and opens the possibility of some idiot lad going in on a bit of a laugh and just loving the whole thing off it's one of those issues that makes me very happy i'm not seriously invested in theoretical feminism, because it's so complicated, delicate & contradictory
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Jan 29, 2016 16:37
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Zephro posted:It seems to me like half the problem here is a surfeit of "theory" based entirely on handwaving (because we do not understand the biology of gender/sex in any comprehensive way and we know the very next thing to nothing about embryonic brain development). All this armchair theorising gets in the way of the fundamental imperative to not be dicks to other people. theory is very important - de Beauvoir's statement that one is not born, but rather made a woman, for instance, is profoundly theoretical and was a huge rallying cry in the struggle for equal rights and representation for women - and that's just one point of it. if one neglects theory like this in favour of "not being dicks" one might end up with a terribly condescending, paternalistic society where women just aren't clever enough to do serious work, the poor dears
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Jan 29, 2016 16:44
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