What I find most amusing, or disturbing, of all the amusing and disturbing things about
Progress is its Third Place First campaign.
As if the way to replace both Coalition parties in the countryside, actually the birthplace of the Labour Movement, is by disagreeing with the Coalition only in the sense that it does not go far enough or have Mandelson, Adonis, Purnell, Milburn and Byers in a Cabinet also attended by The Wrong Miliband as Leader of the "Opposition".
As if the way to replace both Coalition parties in the countryside, actually the birthplace of the Labour Movement, is by disagreeing with the Coalition only in the sense that it does not go far enough or have Mandelson, Adonis, Purnell, Milburn and Byers in a Cabinet also attended by The Wrong Miliband as Leader of the "Opposition".
Yet the fact remains that Labour came third or below in 211 constituencies in 2010 (and the SDLP in a staggering 13 of Northern Ireland's 18), mostly places where it always does, and in most of those always pretty, if pretty, distantly. However, the Coalition has changed the weather.
Imagine a formation which, while welcoming Labour's present return to its historical norm of a many-rooted social democratic patriotism including social and cultural conservatives, was for that very reason fully aware that someone needed to keep Labour on that track or else stand ready to replace it.
Properly organised and sufficiently funded, such a formation could, even in this first instance, expect to win a third of those seats, i.e, around 70. That would be enough to make a very significant difference indeed.
But it could only happen if the unions, most obviously, stumped up the cash. And it could only happen if Labour, with no realistic hope of winning those seats, stood aside in that formation's favour.
Imagine a formation which, while welcoming Labour's present return to its historical norm of a many-rooted social democratic patriotism including social and cultural conservatives, was for that very reason fully aware that someone needed to keep Labour on that track or else stand ready to replace it.
Properly organised and sufficiently funded, such a formation could, even in this first instance, expect to win a third of those seats, i.e, around 70. That would be enough to make a very significant difference indeed.
But it could only happen if the unions, most obviously, stumped up the cash. And it could only happen if Labour, with no realistic hope of winning those seats, stood aside in that formation's favour.
The Trots and the Maoists would be against that. But the only people at least nominally within the Labour Party who could have any idealogical objection to it would be Progress. So much for "no no-go areas".
Obviously kite-flying or something beyond that. Opposition to this would be a very useful way of identifying and eliminating those beyond both the right and the left flanks of acceptable Labour opinion. Progress have also worked out that these seats will be for the taking after five years of the ConDems. They think they can get dozens of their people in under the radar. Not under your radar they can't.
ReplyDeletePresumably this formation would contest these seats even without Labour standing aside if the "Labour" candidates were from Third Place First, ie Progress, not really Labour at all.
ReplyDeleteIts a bit too simplistic.
ReplyDeleteThe sort of seats you mean have very little recent Labour tradition. Where is the evidence that those electors are looking for an economically left, socially right party?
The Labour vote in Norfolk, for example, used to come largely from agricultural workers. There are far fewer of these now and their place has been taken by commuters and people working in the market towns in white collar jobs in the private sector.
People would vote for virtually anything in order to get the Coalition out. Apart, in many of these places, from the Labour Party. It is just foreign to them. That is the way it is.
ReplyDeleteBut if farming areas are not, as you put it, "economically left, socially right", then I don't know where is. That particular interest's alliance with the Conservative Party is now well and truly over. A few protesting local dairy farmers as candidates? That would do nicely.
Likewise fishermen in Cornwall and the North of Scotland. Likewise all sorts of different people in all sorts of different places. If there were the will, then it could certainly be done.
But unlikely, given that Labour really aren't in the picture or serious candidates for winning in any of those type of seats. The Nationalists have the NE Scotland votes sewn up. Cornwall is very socially divided, and interestingly much of the working class vote has gone to the Liberals, but as John Pardoe once said, 19 out of 20 of his constituents deliberately voted anti-socialist. That may have changed, but there's not a great deal of evidence to suggest so.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that there couldn't be an appeal for a populist party on the lines you suggest, but it won't be Labour, which is and will remain a predominantly urban party. UKIP could have been that party, but they appear to have entirely embraced neo-liberal economics
The Coalition has finished off the Lib Dems, and the defeat of independence in the referendum will finish off the SNP. Those seats are there for the taking. It is surprising how many of them have returned Labour MPs in their time. Well, not to me it isn't. But I have been working on this for years. I freely admit that that is not normal.
ReplyDelete