The Student Room Group

Why Labour should split

Excellent article from Bagehot, with some superb points about how the SDP comparisons are way off base and in fact a "True Labour" offshoot, if it took most of the PLP with it, would very quickly annihilate the Corbyn rump.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2016/08/labour-pains

The Corbynites are always saying, "Why don't you go join another party?". Apparently they think they'd be fine with only 50 MPs left. I really hope we have a chance to see this put into practice.

Labour is more than just its institutional structures. An offshoot really would be "True Labour".
Labour is history anyway unless it modernize, majority of UK not working class anymore.
Original post by ckfeister
Labour is history anyway unless it modernize, majority of UK not working class anymore.


What's really happened is that the working class has changed, so that modern working class people have a different outlook to the way things were in the days when the last wave of Labour leaders were learning their stuff.

Another thing is that Blair and Brown kept down the people who could have been running things now and tended to favour the SPAD types like Miliband and Balls, who proved disastrous at connecting with the new working class.

That said, both main parties are stuffed full of people who don't know a thing about ordinary working lives, but it doesn't seem to stop people voting in the Tories.
Let's say "Blue Labour" (jk) split away and lost MPs - which is not to say they'd be gained by Red Labour - that would leave them too far behind to ever be effective.

The people voting for Red Labour won't just be the hardcore Trots - there would be significant numbers of people just carried along with it who vote Labour just because.

Although, I agree, the only real way ahead for the mainstream MPs is to leave. The Communist coup has been pretty much total. If they do well at GE - they'll be justified - if they do badly at GE, there won't be enough of a party left to take back.
Original post by Trinculo
Let's say "Blue Labour" (jk) split away and lost MPs - which is not to say they'd be gained by Red Labour - that would leave them too far behind to ever be effective.


I disagree. I'd say they'd be likely to have around 150 MPs to the Cult's 80, after byelections. Remember Blue Labour would not be the official opposition, which would cause more defections from the Cult. Eventually the trade unions would step in and force the Cult to give in, because they know they would have zero power under a Blue Labour party. The unions don't want to lose what little legislative influence they have

The people voting for Red Labour won't just be the hardcore Trots - there would be significant numbers of people just carried along with it who vote Labour just because.


Possibly. But eventually one of the factions would win, and the other would shrivel and die. Just like the ILP did in the 1930s. The Labour Party that is the mainstream one has nothing to fear from the extremist one. And the fall of the Liberals in the 1920s shows how quickly the existing dispensation can be overturned

Although, I agree, the only real way ahead for the mainstream MPs is to leave. The Communist coup has been pretty much total. If they do well at GE - they'll be justified - if they do badly at GE, there won't be enough of a party left to take back.


I agree
labour will never be in touch - that's just how they are and always were
This is just another clear example of the inherent stupidity, unfairness and lack of democracy in our political system.

The question as to whether the Labour party should split is fairly obvious, the answer is an emphatic yes. The party is so broad, with a huge amount of differing opinions all in a tetchy alliance with one another as a desperate attempt to get to power at any cost. Realistically we should be living in system where Brownites, Blairites, Corbynites, etc aren't jammed together in a confused mish-mash of policies and priorities that is incapable of convincing anyone to their point(s) of view. The problem; THIS CANNOT HAPPEN.

The political system as is offers so many benefits to established parties that even thinking of forming a new one is a waste of time if you want to do anything other than from a pressure group. If Labour splits then the Tories win every election without contest. That is quite obviously unfavourable and is the only thingy keeping uneasy bedfellows together.

The thing is the Tories have exactly the same problem. They are in power at the moment so many are biting their tongues, but if the divisions are there and they are pretty obvious.


The solution is pretty obvious. Scrap FPTP and reform parliament into an actually representative body. It's obvious that this would be best for everyone and has been for a while, so why has it never happened? To answer that we have to go back to the route of why it the problem exists in the first place, the splitting of the major parties. Whichever one does this first essentially votes themselves out of existence as a major force and as we have all ready established, what parties really want is power at any cost.
At last. I agree. I hope more people come around to this. Then we can have a more interesting electoral spectrum, and finally you can all stop boring us with the infighting.
Original post by Fullofsurprises
What's really happened is that the working class has changed, so that modern working class people have a different outlook to the way things were in the days when the last wave of Labour leaders were learning their stuff.

Another thing is that Blair and Brown kept down the people who could have been running things now and tended to favour the SPAD types like Miliband and Balls, who proved disastrous at connecting with the new working class.

That said, both main parties are stuffed full of people who don't know a thing about ordinary working lives, but it doesn't seem to stop people voting in the Tories.


I'm not really sure the working class has changed that much. Like me, my dad spent a lot of his formative adult years working in a factory, and his impression was that working class people tend to be homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic and instinctively authoritarian - just as they are today. The difference is that the right wing has realised that they can eat away at Labour's support in this voting bloc simply by not being actively hostile towards them.

It didn't help that after the 13 years Labour had to affect the working class we ended up with no apprenticeships and no union representation for pretty much anyone making less than the median income.
Original post by sleepysnooze
labour will never be in touch - that's just how they are and always were


Except when they got elected.

I bet the NHS is one big pain in the arse for you lot.
Reply 10
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Original post by AlexanderHam
Excellent article from Bagehot, with some superb points about how the SDP comparisons are way off base and in fact a "True Labour" offshoot, if it took most of the PLP with it, would very quickly annihilate the Corbyn rump.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2016/08/labour-pains

The Corbynites are always saying, "Why don't you go join another party?". Apparently they think they'd be fine with only 50 MPs left. I really hope we have a chance to see this put into practice.

Labour is more than just its institutional structures. An offshoot really would be "True Labour".


'True Labour' would invite an endless tsunami of understandable satire about it being 'the correct version'

The main reason not to do this is that it would create a public image of total disarray in Labour and that if they can't even govern their party why should they govern the country. At the very least for a split to be successful 'Labour' would have to not be in the name but that would create obvious electoral difficulties
Early reactions to the leadership election seem to dampen the possibility of a large split. Anti-Corbyn MPs sending congratulations to Corbyn and talking about the party's future direction implies they don't have any plans to move any time soon (unless they're hiding them for no obvious reason). Smith seems to be slightly backpedalling on his prior statements that he wouldn't serve in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet.

EDIT: Cancel that last sentence, seems he's sticking with his earlier position after all.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by ChaoticButterfly
Except when they got elected.

I bet the NHS is one big pain in the arse for you lot.


1) how hilariously predictable of you to say.
2) so you're telling me the NHS was the one and only thing labour did that you think was in touch? 70 years ago? :lol:
Original post by sleepysnooze
1) how hilariously predictable of you to say.
2) so you're telling me the NHS was the one and only thing labour did that you think was in touch? 70 years ago? :lol:


Well it should be predictable. They are one of the parties in our two party state. They have been in government or opposition for nearly a century and when they are behind one of the major shifts in our economy since WWII ended. Maybe you should make less stupid statements with predictable come backs?

It's still here 70 years later. If Labour only gets in every so often but does things like that then I don't care. Their achievements stick.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by AlexanderHam
"Why don't you go join another party?".


You know during the New Labour reign of the party Labour people said to left wingers like me that were unhappy with Labour "why don't you join?"

Well now we have joined.
Original post by ChaoticButterfly
Well it should be predictable. They are one of the parties in our two party state. They have been in government or opposition for nearly a century and when they are behind one of the major shifts in our economy since WWII ended. Maybe you should make less stupid statements with predictable come backs?

It's still here 70 years later. If Labour only gets in every so often but does things like that then I don't care. Their achievements stick.


to be honest, it's not "achievements" plural, is it? it's "achievement" singular. and even then, why doesn't the NHS seem to be surviving well? when labour came back in in 1997 with blair they basically privatised it with the PFI deals anyway, and you know what else? never did they ever consider distinctions between self-induced medical problems and non-self-induced medical problems - for instance, there's a huge amount of strain on the NHS today because obesity is funded by the tax payer - same with drug clinics, and other such things. it's such a hollow "achievement" with these funding drains. also, have you ever been to a hospital after getting an injury from another person? the last time it happened to me I waited 6 hours. and my friend actually got his head split open a few nights ago (by another individual, of course) and he waited 4 hours. that's ****ing insane. the NHS is so clogged up and slow. I actually have a toe injury at the moment but I *know* that booking an appointment is going to be appallingly difficult. what an achievement of modern times.

now let's hear you blame the tories for all these issues that have existed since day 1 and were never fixed by labour in all these decades

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