So… one of the leaders right hand men has just pre-emptively endorsed Tory policy and pointed out that Labour policy is presently wrong and should be changed to be a bit more… well… Tory.

Indeed… and a lot of this centrist/left/right framing is nonsense. Do you want to keep foreigners out? Is that left or right, or just nationalist? Do you want workers on boards? Is that left or right, or just following best practise used in other countries? Do your want to invest in new Hospitals? Is that left or right, or just what needs doing due to the age of many of our hospitals?

all labour need to is change their leader and they’ll automatically win a little naive?

Who said that? Labour needed to change leader… the idea they could then just sit back and wait for a win isn’t the claim. They would have to work as hard as they do now, against the same problems of bias and misrepresentation, but without the albatross of Corbyn making things even harder for them.

What you’re effectively saying is that the primary criteria for the choice of labour leaders should be the whims and preferences of a few billionaire media barons.

Will you lot listen to yourselves FFS?

The point of politics is to get elected into power so you can do stuff. For that to happen, you need a leader that is… erm… what’s the word…. oh yeah… ‘electable’

SO you can endlessly bang on about media barons, the right wing press, Russian bots, Facebook advertising, Cambridge Analytica, the BBC… whatever… but the bottom line is that while all those things go against you, NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE BELIEVE IN JEREMY CORBYN TO ACTUALLY VOTE FOR HIM

There. Its really that simple. And all the complaining, paranoid conspiracy theories and ‘oh its all just, like, soooooooooo not fair‘s in the world aren’t going to change that fact

So you carry on singing his praises all you like, and railing against perceived injustices of it all. At the end of the day the only thing it will achieve is 5 more years of the Tory’s and a pathetic, impotent, totally ineffectual labour party waving its little placards on the sidelines

Corbyn won the leadership not because he was the best single candidate, but because he represented what the vast majority in the labout party want, which is a party that fights for working people.

Which, once again, comes back to the point that you can’t implement any of that if you can’t get into power. It’s a necessary compromise if you don’t already have the majority behind you.

Who are the centrists that some people like to paint as the bogeyman these days? To me they are the ones inline with Tory policies on immigration and Europe. To another they are the ones pushing for higher taxes and more partnership between state and the private sector in public services. Who are your centrists? There are lots of ways for politicians to straddle both left and right ideas and apply them to policies that appeal to people who would call themselves either, or neither.

Yet in the last election 40% of the electorate voted for him

I love this attitude. He came second in a 2 horse race. He lost. Thats it. Full stop. And the other horse was Theresa May, who was actually a three-legged donkey. We have a first past the post electoral system. So it didn’t matter if he go 40% (which he didn’t anyway) or 0.00004%.

The end result is the same. And he’s going to lose again. Everyone knows it, most of all him. You can tell just by looking at him. He’s capitulated already

And that means that when he totters off to the allotment with his huge, gold-plated, taxpayer-funded pension, all he’ll have achieved is saddling the rest of us with 7 years of Tory government

*slow handclap for grandad*

Yep my bad 27.6% of electorate which equals 40% of the vote share.

And it’s not as if they haven’t tried that in the past, and look what happened.

Three consecutive general election wins after a decade and a half in the political wilderness, record spending on the NHS, Surestart, Devolution for Scotland/Wales, the National Minimum Wage, The Freedom of Information Act, The Good Friday Agreement…and as a cherry on top, neither Ian Duncan Smith nor Michael Howard running the country.

The blunders and downright deceits of the Blair era – and yes, they are pretty substantial, should not erase its achievements, and the surefire knowledge that we would have even more willingly followed Bush into Afghanistan and Iraq under a Tory government, and without many of the policies that have made life better for people all across the UK.

Are folk really saying they would choose Boris over Blair?

Were you happy with Ed Binners?

At the time I thought he was hopeless.

Everything’s relative though.

He looks like Barak Obama compared to the ****-wit that followed him

Binners wanted Burnham – a leaver and a racist

I wanted the other Milliband, actually

What you actually need is a front man who is popular above all else. The polices and governance etc,. go on behind the scenes. The front man gets you into power.

Someone like Ed Balls would have been better placed for that front man role. Unfortunately the party democratically elects their leader and the majority of them are not switched on enough to release you need to get a popular leader in place to win before you can do anything else.

Are folk really saying they would choose Boris over Blair?

I reckon there would be a pretty good chance against the Blair of today among the general public.
NHS: money wasted on PFI etc resulting in hospitals carrying massive debts which are hard to fund once the cash was cut back.
FOI: Blair absolutely hated this and considered it a major mistake.
Good Friday Agreement: a lot of the credit here belongs to the tories. I reckon it would have happened anyway.

I would also say many of the problems we face now around people voting for a change, any change, is in part due to him. The relentless triangulation left many feeling unrepresented.

Ed Balls would not have been better. the epitome of a useless machine politician and one who was badly tainted by his previous actions. the tory press attacks on him would have been easy

Given the lack of talent available its really hard to see who

Now I would have Starmer but at the time too inexperienced

I bloody love the self-indulgent, naval-gazing historical revisionism of the Corbynite lefty brigade

You think Blairism was terrible and endlessly slate it, but how the hell do you think the country would have been looking with 13 years of Tory rule instead? Better? Of course it bloody wouldn’t. All the things you rail against (IRAQ!!!!!) would have happened anyway, but absolutely none of the good stuff (listed above) would. If you think otherwise, you’re absolutely delusional. Blairism was absolutely necessary and had to happen

Ironically, for all the bleating they do, year after year of Tory rule is all the left has ever delivered. I genuinely believe they’re happier in opposition. Corbyn and his crew are quite content when they’ve something to virtue-signal about and parade their sanctimonious, pious moral indignation while waving their placards . Anything rather than actually engage with the real world.

Kerley – the problem with Balls would have been that he would have been blamed in the tory press for the economic meltdown. See how well the lie that labour caused it has stuck. Now you have one of the people who was at the helm of labour during that period standing for PM. The attacks would have been relentless and they would have stuck

He is also not likeable or personable at all. A unpleasant man who would have been an easy target for the tory press

Just my view.

I bloody love the self-indulgent, naval-gazing historical revisionism of the Corbynite lefty brigade

Whereas I love your projection of your failings onto others.
Blairism wasnt necessary. The tories were a spent force but for whatever reason Blair decided the best option was to replace them with an identikit. One of the great whatifs would be if John Smith had lived.
There was nothing forcing him to try and out privatise the tories or to out militarise them. Thats a choice he consciously made in order to continue to try and appeal to the hard right.
He decided to take the country rightwards for short term gain which he clearly knew was unsustainable. Hence why he walked away when he did. Something those masturbating furiously over him miss. He knew he had burnt all the capital and the methods he has used were all gone. It was for others to then deal with the mess.

What these elections have proven is that as soon as Corbyn is allowed to be heard and the Tories policies are scrutinised under the broadcasting rules under an election, people swing to Corbyn

FFS no they don’t, they swing to Labour not JC. There’s a lot of people that can’t stand the Tories and will vote Labour regardless of who is leading it. Unfortunately that’s not enough people to get a Labour majority in the next GE (nor was it enough in the last one in case you missed that). That’s why JC is a problem whether he deserves to be or not, too many people in the centre of politics will be persuaded they can’t take a chance on JC so will vote Tory.

This is politics, it does NOT matter if the politician is actually the person the media portray him as and the public therefore assume he is. All that matters is perception in our screwed up world and JC is toxic because of it. No I can’t explain how BoJo is less toxic (to the public majority, not me) but somehow he is and sadly that’s what will matter at the GE

Personally I think Labour screwed up badly going for Ed Milliband rather than David but I guess we’ll never know

So it didn’t matter if he go 40% (which he didn’t anyway) or 0.00004%.

Well it did to an extent, things would have been different if she’d had a big majority. But not much.

SO you can endlessly bang on about media barons, the right wing press, Russian bots, Facebook advertising, Cambridge Analytica, the BBC… whatever… but the bottom line is that while all those things go against you, NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE BELIEVE IN JEREMY CORBYN TO ACTUALLY VOTE FOR HIM

But mate those things are linked. Campaigning has an effect. And social media campaigning is very effective.

Selective quoting…

Here is the full Sturgeon quote: ‘I won't help him in power, to get into power, to stay in power if he doesn't accept the principle that whether there is a referendum in Scotland and what the timescale of that referendum should be should be determined by the people of Scotland.’

— Prof Tanja Bueltmann (@cliodiaspora) November 14, 2019

So you can carry on with your self-indulgent historical revisionism if you like, but its frankly laughable.

I am deeply hurt that such an intellectual force such as yourself feels this way. I note the complete failure to actually engage but just to attempt to sneer and claim superiority.
Sadly you are a good example of why we are in such a shit state.

What if … after decades of education the overwhelming majority don’t want to choose EITHER option?
What if .. They reject the dualistic limitations? What if they want another viable option?

The starter for ten is does the “overwhelming majority” want that or is it a minority who would prefer something else?

I have made it repeatedly clear that, unlike some, I do actually want a decent range of choices in British politics. Not simply a “centrist” Labour party, a right of centre Libdem party and an even more right of centre tory party.
The belief of some that the Labour party needs dragging rightwards aka sticking a “moderate” or “centrist” in charge reduces those options especially when the centre ground shifts as the tories try to distinguish themselves. You end up with hard right policies being portrayed as normal and large numbers of people feeling unrepresented and vulnerable to extremists who, at least, pretend to care.