Foot was consistently ahead of the Tories from the start of his leadership in 1980 to the start of the Falklands in '83, bar the odd poll here and there.

A pile of self delusory nonsense.

It's only 11 years since Labour was in power with a commanding majority.

Nothing to do with "elites" - you can't get more elite than Cameron, and he won the last election. It is everything to do with leadership and policies, and Labour have unelectable versions of both.

Decent, articulate, moderate leader and policies to match, and they'd be back in contention. So long as the Left have the party's balls in their grasp they are destined for electoral disaster.

Labour are not left wing, they are liberal.

And liberal is poison to the majority.

Of course they're leftwing. Unilateral disarmament, colossal borrow and spend, redistribution, increased union powers, increased taxation.

The one thing they're not is very liberal.

1. No, just looking a bit deeper than the superficial glance you've given it

2. Since then there's been a worldwide financial crash, and Labour (unfairly) blamed for the recession by a slick Tory PR machine which wasn't countered by a Labour party in shock.

3. I'm not talking about elites, but elitist attitudes in the Labour Party establishment such as the PLP, not just the rebels. I wasn't contrasting with Cameron, but concentrating on what was happening in Labour. Again, you are stating what the symptoms are, not the reasons why they have a poor leader and policies which are not popular when associated with labour. However, when the policies are put to people without being associated with labour they are popular (a survey I saw ages ago, but can't remember where).

4. Labour had a decent articulate leader in Miliband, but he was slaughtered by the right wing press for doing things like eating a bacon sandwich. Corbyn is who the party membership want. Corbyn has won both elections very clearly. No-one has stood for election against him who is acceptable to the membership, and the questions are a) why not, and b) who is there? Policies aren't a problem, but the way they are portrayed by a leader who is out of touch with the majority of the country. However, until the underlying reasons are sorted out, labour is destined to continue making the same mistakes.

Look to Scottish Labour and you'll see it isn't Corbyn, but the whole Labour Party establishment. The elections next year are likely to see the further demise of Labour in Scotland. Hopefully this will not happen in England, but they aren't helping themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lo...ote_in_history

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3059773.stm

Labour can be very illiberal and authoritarian when it suits them by wanting to restrict choice, personal freedoms and competition.

Why do you think being liberal is a "poison" these day? I don't see what's wrong with giving people the freedom to live their lives how they choose without unnecessary involvement from the state.

Is labour finished?, no far from it. I believe they have just lost their way for a while. Sort the in fighting between "New" labour and The labour party out and reflect the views of their voters and they'll be back..... The Lib Dumbs on the other hand are a bunch of chancers old money thick and aren't worth wasting a breath on.

But we have seen this happen enough times to know that it is one thing for Labour to have a big polling lead mid-term and then convert that into actual votes in a GE. As Neil Kinnock and Ed Miliband could tell you.

But that excludes the decline in his poll figures which basically started from the start of 1981 when polling around 50% to 1983 by which time it was half that. Much of that is because of the rise of Lib/SDP which included those breaking from Labour. Conservative polls did not start improving until start of 1982

People were drifting from Labour to the SDP Liberals through much of Foot's time in power.

I'm a fit 67 year old Labour voter.
I would be gobsmacked if Labour were even in power again during my lifetime.

OK, fair do's.

That is undoubtedly why they lost in 2010, and with good reason. Brown's lassez faire attitude to The City certainly helped - he didn't see it coming, whilst others did (Vince Cable for one) but were drowned out. Of course the Tories would have done the same, but you can't expect an electorate who have just voted Brexit to have the sophistication to appreciate that. Whoever was in at that time were destined for the chopper. And no matter how much we deplore the media driven politics we have, we are where we are, and Brown just was not likeable. His colossal faux pas in the campaign was also massively damaging.

People have short memories. That attitude of blame is diminishing, just as the "betrayal" accusation of the LibDems is.


There is nothing stopping them having popular policies. They feel the need to be equivocal about Brexit, but the distinct majority of their voters were remainers. The Tories were predominantly remain, but it hasn't harmed them. People are obsessed with the "elite" badge but Labour has always been run by elites. Roy Jenkins, anyone? All parties are full of elites, even the SNP. Mhairi Black is one of a tiny minority (and she's a hoot. Met her in a HoC bar last week, fag in one hand (outside, natch), pint in the other! Sharp as a pin).

Miliband is a very nice guy (I know for sure) but never looked like a PM. Too awkward, to eager to please. Farron is the same. A leader has to look and sound the part in modern politics - it's just a fact of life. As usual, it was the Left unions who engineered his victory over bro, as they thought he was more friendly to them and what a disaster that was. Corbyn is a very unhappy accident. Had his proposers not unwittingly nominated him, he would have had no platform and the Momentum mob would not have been spurred to action. They saw their chance, and they went for it bigtime. In a way it showed how out of touch with the party those who gave him the opportunity were. The others in the line-up were utterly mediocre, but Labour would be doing less worse had any of them won. There's always been sufficient passionate lefties to take over the party if given the chance. Nowhere near enough in the country to elect a Corbyn style party though. There is a chronic paucity of talent on the Labour benches for sure. That has to change before they stand a chance again.

You don't have to tell me about how Labour has taken its heartlands for granted for many, many years. This doesn't mean they have to cowtow to every prejudice in the provinces. A proper political party takes a stance, puts its argument convincingly, and persuades people.

Leicester City would have more chance of winning the Premier League again than there ever being another majority Labour government.

I think that there should be a rule that any candidate must have a local connection of some kind.

I live in a rock solid Labour seat, our MP is one of the "Blair Babes", chosen from an all woman Shortlist, barrister who lived in London and was member of the London Assembly.

No connection with the constituency whatsoever - other than it gives her a free meal ticket.

She is about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

I recall a quote from Screaming Lord Sutch about the Bermondsey By-election in 1983 Peter Tatchell for Labour v Simon Hughes of the Liberals.
Sutch said that Tatchell "seemed to think all he needed to do to become the MP was turn up at the count."

I wouldn't say Labour are finished, but the way they're going, they are not helping themselves. I still remember when I heard a few people saying the Tories were finished after the 1997 Election, but they came back.

Thanks, much better explanation of your position.
The problem I have is where will the people come from who will be able to do that?

Just look at the talent Tony Blair had to choose from after 16 years of Tory rule:

Its just reverted to the problems of the 80's. The only difference is that UKIP are dividing the vote, and in a lot of places the Lib Dems are no challenge at all to the Tories or the kippers.

It will take an extremely discredited Tory government and a determined and charismatic Labour leader able to drag the Labour party to the right of centre to bring about a Labour government again. The last time we elected a left wing government with a decent majority was 1966.

There was a phrase, from David Horoniwitz I believe, over the last couple of days about the hard, hard left "feeding on the corpse of Labour".

There are organisations behind Momentum who see the state of the Labour party as their big chance to change the face of British politics. These people are making their moves now and will hammer more nails into the Labour coffin as they gain more positions of power.

I can only see Labour surviving by splitting. The PLP know this and are either hoping that the Tories will mess up big time such that they can (somehow) re-establish themselves after 2020, or that Labour does so incredibly badly in the next GE and they can steam back in with "I told you so" as their message.

The second option is likely to be the result which means that Labour is out of power for at least another 8 years, possibly much longer.

I'm 48 - and in mine!

(But I'm not a Labour voter )

The trouble I think for the Labour Party is that it still thinks that the answers of the post war years will solve problems today. Not only did those solutions not work, the world is different now.

The ironic thing is that we still have the poor, the disenfranchised and those for whom the changes are leaving behind and these are the people who Labour needs to attract, but it needs to do it in a different way.

There is the other point that in this new world the old ideas of left and right do not seem to work anymore and most people are a mixture of both, but generally have to vote for the party that mostly agrees with them.

Well, the talent of some of that lot is debatable. I'm reading "Tragedy of Power" by Tom Bower. He is too relenting with his complete destruction of Blair - not a positive word in 600 pages, at least, not yet - but it is a devastating chronicle of the inadequacies of his administration. Many of those on your list are revealed as hopelessly out of their depth - not least Dobson, who was a clueless dinosaur at health.

It is always a problem for parties who have been out of power for sometime. The experienced members become too old, and the newbies are just too naïve. This was very evident with the LibDems at the start of the coalition - none had any experience whatsoever, and it is bound to show.

Labour need to lose Corbyn as soon as possible - the longer he is leader, the more inconsequential they will become.

Precisely.

And those poor are no more likely to be unilateral disarmers than anyone else. Nor are they necessarily enamoured with sticking another £500B on top on of our eye watering debt. Or glowing eulogies to Castro. They are concerned about cost of living, wage levels and of course in some cases, immigration.

Not yet, but they could soon be...

And all of it can be traced back to one Mr. E. Miliband, whose incredibly ill-advised change of the party leadership election rules put the decision in the hands of party members, a self-selecting group who are far more likely to be at the political extremes than the general public.

Nobody pays money to join a political party just to be a moderate.

So, naturally, they will elect a leader in their own image who will, in turn, position the party even further away from the voters whose support they need to win elections.

Problem is: how do you get out of this downward spiral?

And that's the question that's difficult. For Corbyn is not going to change an electoral system that installed him as leader, and I don't see who in Labour has the power to over-ride that.

They need to figure it out soon, else it's game over. We'll already starting to see how other parties are hoovering up their support base.

Regards,

Cypher