I feel that I should acknowledge that the Tories are holding their conference.
I have tried hard to persuade myself that there must be things that they are saying that are relevant.
So, I read the reports and even watched the clips and can't help thinking that such a belief is mistaken.
Kemi Badenoch thinks being defined as the working class is determined by whether you worked in McDonald's for a week or two when you were sixteen.
She also wants to abolish maternity pay and the minimum wage, taking us back to dark days when the state would not intervene on behalf of those needing support against the power of rogue employers.
Robert Jenrick wants UK special forces to set out to kill terrorists. That's going to go down well with the population at large.
Tom Tugenhadt has described the Iraq war as illegal, which definitely won't go down well with his audience, even if it reveals a surprising degree of self-awareness on his part, given he took part in the invasion.
James Cleverly is not, but he might well be the best of this appalling bunch.
And meanwhile, who are they speaking to? Business is not there. A few elderly people are, plus the usual very weird bunch of young Tories who have not yet got the memo that wearing ties is no longer required. But is anyone else listening? Not really.
In the discussion that I took part in last night, one of the audience themes was the disappearance of the left-wing in politics. I suggested that was because we could not agree on a narrative, which I always think a matter of considerable regret. But, what is also apparent is that the Tories have totally run out of stories to tell. What is more, whatever stories those at the Tory conference wanted have, almost certainly, now been stolen by Reform, whilst Labour and the LibDems are claiming the centre right from the Conservatives, and they have no means to reclaim it.
I have, in that case, to ask, yet again, what is the point for the Tories? I think we can be pretty confident none of the leadership candidates now will ever be prime minister, joining so many who served in that role in the decade after 1997 in not achieving that ambition. Indeed, as some wit commented recently, the next Tory prime minister might not only not be an MP as yet, they might still be at school right now, so dire is their situation.
But in that case, what is going to happen to politics, and how are those not on the centre-left going to get a voice? I still can't answer that as yet. And that is very frustrating.
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Good question. In a FPTP system new parties struggle to break through so, it MUST be an existing party.
I suppose it possible that the LibDems try and seize that ground but it seems unlikely.
In practice it has to be the Labour Party. That means a long haul for its members as we try and return the Party to its proper place.
In many CLPs the reclamation of Labour is near impossible. The whole structure from branch to HQ has been inhabited by Blairites, and is geared to quash any possible influence from the centre or left. Decapitation of the current leadership is not going to happen, except from within the ranks of the right wing.
I agree with your argument Clive Parry and the grassroots in my unwinnable CLP have been fighting back. The Left now fill the officer roles in the branch and now form a majority on the GC. I doubt if we are alone and hopefully, the experience in my area is being replicated across the country.
Our focus is on local action. Both because it is a good in its own right but also may eventually allow some left thinking people to make a difference on Town/Parish and District councils.
Good luck
Yes, good luck Sue. My CLP was in that situation two or three years ago, when the right wingers running the party declined to stand for re-election and allowed us to run the party for two years. We got three councillors elected to a Labour free local council, and did a lot of grass roots networking.
When the selection of the parliamentary candidate came up, the powers that be reasserted their control, disallowed anyone left of centre from standing, and engineered the selection of their preferred candidate by use of the e-voting system, hitherto unknown to us, and the other candidates. The CLP is now firmly in control of the right again.
I genuinely wish you luck, but take my tale of woe as a view from the other side.
Please excuse the pseudonym as I wouldn’t wish my location to be obvious.
The theatre goes on.
The harps are being played, lyres plucked in high places.
Where I work in the public sector, nothing has changed, there is no extra money for anything coming through yet and my union is balloting on strike action. We are downgrading the stock condition surveys that tell us our housing is becoming life expired again to kick the can down the road and complaints are going through the roof as people pay their 80% market rents.
Corbyn’s new Independence Alliance will likely form some sort of alliance with Galloway’s Workers GB Party, which covers the authoritarian left, and the Greens are left liberal:
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2024
The Greens will gain support as the extent of ecological destruction becomes ever more obvious.
That will be the end of the independent alliance then.
Any whiff of Galloway is a kiss of death. I am always amazed by fellow lefties who can’t see him and his ilk for what they are, self-aggrandising frauds.
I agree
Whatever the question is, Galloway is not the answer.
Did Galloway’s party get any seats? If not, why would Corbyn’s party bother?
I have not a clue
Why go near him?
@ Mattew T Hoare
Galloway? Seriously?
I didn’t think so.
Actually I still don’t.
Typo in the title. Who is goimng to repreeent the centre-left? — Should be ‘going’ and ‘represent’.
I must be tired this morning
Now corrected
Ricard (sic),
“I must be tired this morning. Now corrected)
You can’t ‘send’ anything these days without checking that the machine has not screwed what you wrote.
You DO know this,……… and tiredness is an acceptable excuse. (In my book)
I hope the answer is the Liberal Democrats. With 57 new MPs it’s an open question, but many of us in the LDs are working for a ‘centre- left’ position, not least because Labour have left such a large gap there.
Also, there are more dimensions to politics than left/right.
The LDs are liberal, where Labour, Conservatives and Reform are all authoritarian.
Unfortunately, what I heard from the LD conference was the need to take the centre right ground
@RichardMurphy – I think the centre-rightists are a minority; their view was not one I found from several conversations with new MPs. If you get the opportunity, do engage and help ensure the `centre-left’ forces win out – Ithink you now have a local LD MP, though not sure where she stands on this.
@HelenHeenan – `to split the vote and enable the Tories’ – This is a common assumption, but first looking at things that way means accepting the unproportional FPTP voting system, and second, it’s not true. Polls in 1983 suggested strongly that Thatcher would have got a bigger majority if the Lib/SDP alliance hadn’t been standing.
8n should make contact….
There’s a big debate amongst LibDem membership who from what Ive seen are deeply hostile to being dragged into being, as the phrase used to have it, just Yellow Tories. There is a bit of a legacy from the coalition period of people who were comfortable in that space but it’s not representative of the wider membership. On issues like climate, decentralising power (public and private), gender, Europe they are way more radical than Labour. Judging by Streeting/Reeves comments, on health and social care too. They could be a positive challenge to Labour in these areas – whilst Tories continue to fight over who can be further to the Right.
Both Labour and LD members are way more radical than their leaders.
That may be true of the Tories too, but then their way.
If the LibDems are the answer, then the question has to be “Given the perverse nature of our first past the post voting system, what have they achieved since the demise of the Liberal Party, since the SDP, since becoming the LibDems, and since being in coalition with the Tories?”
Nothing except to split the vote and enable the Tories.
With PR the LibDems may have a geniune role to play, but I doubt even that.
Except that LibDem seats were overwhelmingly taken from Tories, with local Labour voters voting tactically to make sure. The split the progressive vote argument does not really survive a look at the data. Labour leadership clinging on to FTP despite the views of their membership is a bit of a dent to their democratic credentials. As bad as the Tories in that respect.
And LibDem membership are a lot more radical than their leadership – and today’s Labour party. Unlike both Labour and Tory, there is at least some genuine debate about policy at conferences, rather than just a pre-ordained set of party lines. Though that can get a bit riotous!
@Denis Mollison
If the Lib Dems are prepared to go against their instincts so far into centre left territory you/we may find they become electable as other than a protest vote. (Or a ‘don’t know’)
@Denis Mollison
If the Lib Dems are prepared to go against their instincts so far and enter into centre left territory you/we may find they become electable as other than a protest vote. (Or a ‘don’t know’)
Nick Clegg did a lot of damage to the brand.
Probably what is needed is an energetic voice to start to raise issues of the NHS, care, local authority funding etc. in such a way that the public start to get the message that all is very much not well, but that they could be better.
I hate to mention these names here, but we need a Thatcher or Farage of the Left. Either to generate and then get across clearly and robustly an alternative message or, as per the latter individual, to make people angry about the issues facing us, and thus bring the voters across. Not so very long ago UKIP and a faction of the Tories, were regarded as a bunch of loonies – now their extreme views are near-mainstream.
Where is the figure who can pick up the cudgel and wield it? I think within Labour, only Andy Burnham has the energy and profile to take this on. Whoever it might be, they would face a serious problem of getting any coverage – our media would stifle any emerging force on the Left because it threatens the status quo, as Corbyn found out.
On a scale of 0-10, just how stuffed are we without this?
Burnham might work
But he is comnfrotable in Manchester
Just to indicate the problems the left face, our Lichfield Socialist Dog Walking Group (don’t laugh, we have big dogs) represent all shades of the old Labour Left from Trotsky to Wilson. If asked how to unite the left, there are as many solutions as members (that’s 10 of us). Deeply frustrating at times., but we’re all clear there needs to be a rallying point, and one not exclusively London-centric.
OK, you’ve told us what the socialist dogs think, now what do the walkers think?
But the difference is that dogs, or their ancestor wolves, hunt in packs towards a common goal. Those on the left don’t and constantly bicker over ideological purity and other abstruse matters and are consistently outmanoeuvred by the right.
The Conservatives seem determined to head further over to the populist right where Farage is waiting, even more right wing and more populist.
If so, Labour will be tempted to continue a rightward drift in their wake until any leftward leanings are unrecognisable. That leaves an unmet need further left. There are many people there whose views are not being served well.
So who could serve that unmet need? The Greens, who may continue to do better but start from a low base. Or the Lib Dems – “liberal” is a natural opposite to “conservative”. Or a new party. Good luck with that. Or Labour may repent and trim back toward their historic homeland. But not under the present leader. And probably not until losing a general election. And maybe not even then.
Thatcher used to say that her greatest legacy was Tony Blair and New Labour. She so fundamentally changed the UK’s political landscape that the Labour Party became hardly discernible from some strands of Tory thought. She might well say the same about Keir Starmer. (I suspect Thatcher would have detested Boris Johnson and some of his coterie, their lack of any moral compass, and their poorly thought through policy positions.)
As things stand, my tentative suggestion is that the Lib Dems are most likely to produce leadership on the centre-left.
I am not confident of your conclusion as yet
As long as the LibDems still support electoral reform, they have to be the only choice.
I would hope that any LibDem member who wants a shift to the right would simply recall the coalition years to remind themselves of such folly.
All but the two largest parties support electoral reform.
So where are the agents of change on the left ?
There’s not even a distant ship’s smoke on the horizon..
Lib Dems
Have not moved beyond Orange Book neoliberalism, and are targeting the Tories to displace them, so not centre left.
Labour
The myth that they can only win power as a centrist party holds sway.
Absolutely dominated by technocracy. While Blairite SPADS are their stormtroopers, they will never regain their socialist ethos.
Neoliberal orthodoxy and fear of the City drives their macro-economics, so centre right is the reality, and seems to be accepted as their line of least resistance. They have purged left leaning individuals, as a matter of course.
Greens
Still haven’t quite articulated a meaningful sustainable market based alternative to corporate capitalism, and accompanying macroeconomic strategy, so their ethical foundation is incomplete. They need that coherence to consolidate their gains, and centre left position. Currently the best bet for future credible left of centre credentials, just need to build on their credibility. Would be a major force under a PR system.
The void on the centre left is one thing, but we really have no coherent left at all at parliamentary level, or even extra-parliamentary level, just fragmented culture politics groupings.
Labour party faction fighting and their usual feuding will always hold them back, and I think a more united left alternative is needed, preferably one which appreciates Marxian analysis, but disavows Marxist political prescriptions, as we are well past the age of bureaucratic state socialism.
All noted
The Left needs to learn the lessons of the current paradigm. It wasn’t just a piece of serendipity. It was planned and calculated. Various “think tanks” eg Madsen Pirie and the Adam Smith Institute were key, along with a number of others; the Chicago School, James Buchanan and many more. They were organised and fed off each other.
The left needs to come together and get organised.