UK Labour Party splits

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UK Labour Party splits

Postby gisambards » Mon Feb 18, 2019 1:31 pm

Seven Labour MPs have defected from the Labour Party in protest at Corbyn's leadership, primarily his total unwillingness to properly handle anti-Semitism in the party and mercurial to the point of non-existence stance on Brexit.

It's highly likely that this will turn out to be a futile gesture that will just cause them to vanish into obscurity amid a cloud of death/rape threats, but I am still glad that someone has finally taken a stand, and in a fairly major way, and there is the possibility it will lead to something - as some commentators have pointed out, the far-left might respond to this by going overboard in trying to purge other nonbelievers from the party, which might just make more of them quit.

Personally, I hope it's the latter because Corbyn has gone well beyond a joke at this point. For three years now, our only credible opposition has been the personal cult of an incompetent anti-Semitic bully whose greatest heroes are guys like Castro and Chavez, and that really does have to stop. As much as I'm opposed to Brexit, I would favour literally any Brexit outcome over him coming into power.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby cmsellers » Mon Feb 18, 2019 5:02 pm

One of the problems with politics is that partisans on both sides always tend to be more energized than everyone else. When you have politicians who support most of what you want, that's helpful. And when the other side is full off evil people out to destroy everything you hold dear, it becomes a matter of life-and-death to prevent them getting into power.

Has there ever a time in recent history when a new centrist party has been successful for more than a couple of election cycles? I can only think of two cases where a centrist party enjoyed initial electoral success. One was Ariel Sharon's Kadima, one is Macron's En Marche. They both required a convincing leader, and both suffered blowback when they tried to implement solutions the left and right hated. Sure, Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke, but his plan to dismantle the smaller settlements in the West Bank was already on the ropes when he did, and it's not clear he'd have had the capital to pull it through.

Also, MPs in parliamentary systems who defect to third parties usually tend to lose from what I've seen, so I think you're right about most most of them signing their political death warrants.

I'm a little worried, because a smaller, purer, party can still win elections in a FPTP system when the voters are more fed up enough with the other candidate or party, justifiably or not.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby Marcuse » Mon Feb 18, 2019 7:07 pm

The new Independent Group walking out of Labour is a hugely complicated act. I'm struggling to keep in my head all the different things this will affect, and how others react to this will also confirm its importance or otherwise.

It's strange that the focus on them walking out is on the anti-Semitism complaint, because really they don't seem to be unified on that front at all. Luciana Berger has been a notably affect person, and she clearly was going to leave come what may. The other members seem to be concerned about the response to anti-Semitism (and there are perfectly legitimate reasons to be disappointed in the leadership on that account) and how the party is seen more than being directly affected by it.

The issue they really all concur on is that they all support a second referendum on leaving the EU. Several of them named the position on Brexit as the reason they chose to leave, and given this I'm unsure as to why this complaint about Corbyn's leadership is being portrayed in the media with an emphasis on racism when Berger aside it seems more apt to draw a parallel between them on this issue where they all do agree.

Of course the comparison to the SPD and the gang of four is going to come, and to head this off they're specifically not merging with the Lib Dems, even though they do agree policy-wise with them on a lot of things, especially the Brexit issue with unites them. The Lib Dems only have 11 MPs (apparently one left and sits as an independent because he didn't agree with them on Brexit) so the addition of seven more would be huge for them. Also worth noting that Labour had previously had five other members leave the party, and one got kicked out for being jailed for lying to a court that her brother was driving a car she was driving when it was speeding.

Of course the left has brought out the knives, and trade union leaders and activists referring to the group as traitors and the usual "red Tory scum" shit as usual. Tom Watson (the deputy leader) made online posts explaining why he thought this was unproductive but I doubt they'll fall on listening ears. The Lib Dems have extended the olive branch promising to work with them, and the Conservatives are laughing. For all the shit the ERG pulls, at least they don't walk out of the party.

But seven MPs isn't a small amount. It sounds small in a group of 650 but when the last election majority came from an alliance with a group that has only 10 MPs it can be decisive. For Labour to lose these MPs makes it even harder for them to win a general election. In effect it puts paid to Corbyn's goal of forcing a new GE because he can't really guarantee that he'll win with thorns in his side like this. I would be surprised if any of the group lost their seats if a new GE was called, and if a new party does come about then it's probably going to split the left even more.

If more people choose to resign though, this might cause serious problems. Corbyn isn't known for his inspiring vision and drive, and even his reputation as a conviction politician (which was, remember, one of his selling points) is being tarnished by his steadfast refusal to speak clearly on Brexit. This is noticable to the point where the Tories are mocking him for it now. If more members leave Labour to join this Independent Group then it's possible we might see Labour as a political force collapse, at least in the sense of it being a natural party of government. My overriding concern there is that Labour will collapse before Corbyn accepts to step down, and the Conservatives will have nearly unbridled power because nobody will be keeping them honest.

I don't really know what would be better, because harming Corbyn's electoral chances is something I'm all for, but I don't necessarily think that harming Labour is a good thing. At the very least every government needs a strong opposition to hold them to account and if Labour can't even keep its members inside the fold how can it tell the Conservatives with any force or focus about the failures (and there are manifold of those) in government. Longer term, it might mean effective one-party rule by the Conservatives by default for a while. I'd expect that a coalition of other parties might be able to overtake them in pure numbers and form an overall majority, but I'd be surprised if that worked out for long.

I hope I'm wrong and this does fade into obscurity, but the politics I'm seeing right now is either dynamic and polarised (and exactly the kind of attitude that might result in this situation) or the same old staid boring stability that produces no solutions to today's problems and contributes to them continually. I'm worried where we go from here.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby Pedgerow » Tue Feb 19, 2019 2:43 am

I've always been vaguely in favour of Jeremy Corbyn (although I didn't vote for him, because we need to support our smaller parties), but I have also criticised him for being so devoted to his principles, and so unwaveringly resistant to any form of compromise, that he cannot win enough popular support from his enemies to be elected. And when it comes to politics, being elected is actually pretty important, surprisingly. So even though I like the idea of parties splintering into smaller factions, because it harms the two-party system that I hate so much*, I can't really support today's decision. All these people that I agree with (including Chuka Umunna! The next Prime Minister if he hadn't been put off by the media attention and let Jeremy Corbyn lead Labour instead!) have taken their excellent, admirable opinions, and run off into the wilderness with them. They're never going to win, or gain any power at all where they are now. They might as well have all gone and joined the Green Party. I love the Green Party, and I voted for them last election, and I remember lots of my Facebook friends taking those quizzes where it lists the policies and you pick your favourites and then get told which party you really support, and they all got the Green Party too. And did the Green Party win? You tell me. In my constituency, they lost their deposit, getting fewer than 500 votes, even though preventing that was the entire reason I voted for them. And now Chuka Umunna, the British Obama, the saviour of British politics, has as much chance of political relevance as they do.

As a negotiating tactic, I guess it could make a point. Maybe Conservatives will desert their party and join too. And in any parliamentary vote, our new Independents will still vote against the government just as they did under Labour, so things aren't going to change that much. And, as Robert Peston explained on Facebook, shared by some guy I vaguely knew eleven years ago, there might actually be more debate within the Labour Party now, because seven MPs have voluntarily declared themselves The Evil Traitorous Enemy of the People™ and so the MPs still in the Labour Party can now speak out about Jezza's fence-sitting and diplomatic shrugging without drawing the full ire of Twitter's perpetually furious community.

Nevertheless, I'm not optimistic. When Jeremy Corbyn first became Leader of the Opposition, utterly decimating a tragically Umunna-less field of competitors, many people decried that this was the wrong decision, that taking the party further left wouldn't win a general election, and that the same tactic had been tried in the 1980s and had failed miserably. Now, Labour seems to be going the exact same way that it went in the early 1980s. The SDP was formed in 1981 according to Wikipedia; if these trends of cyclical history continue, we're in for another 16 years of right-wing governments. I don't want that. I voted Green. That's terrible news. This is not the way to get these demonstrably incompetent smirking hoorays out of power. So I have to tell these laudably-principled heroes and heroines the same thing I think when I see a social media post from any of my rabid Corbynite friends: fuck your principles; actually win something and then we'll talk.

*The only fact I know about politics that is a fact and not just an opinion: the way the first-past-the-post electoral system inevitably creates a two-party system is called Duverger's Law.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby gisambards » Wed Feb 20, 2019 2:54 pm

Another Labour MP has joined the group, as well as three Conservative MPs. My only concern about this at the moment is that I think the group looks too much in danger of just wanting to stop Brexit, and I think their focus really should be much more on the limitations of the two-party situation. The current situation, where there isn't really a notable third party at all, is actually quite rare for modern Britain - Scotland still have the SNP, and it's actually only fairly recently that the Lib Dems have stopped being notable presence in politics - and while two-party systems always leave a lot of people stuck in the political wilderness or voting for minor parties, the situation here now is that the two major parties raise far deeper than normal questions about their competence. And I think that should really be the focus, and I worry they're just going to alienate people by putting too much emphasis on their being anti-Brexit.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby Marcuse » Wed Feb 20, 2019 10:53 pm

The problem with the Independent Group is that they are anti-Brexit. That's what unites them, way more than complaints about anti-Semitism or the state of Labour. The Conservatives who have joined them have given the same reason for leaving their party. This isn't really about the stranglehold of a two party system, which is what all of them were more than happy to prop up when it suited them, it's about the fact the Conservative leadership chose to pander to the ERG and push a harder Brexit, gambling it was easier to appease the ERG and DUP than Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, the Greens and also some independents. This is, and I say this as analytically as I can manage, disgruntled remainers leaving their parties because they no longer agree with their leadership on Brexit and want to vote against it without consequences.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby gisambards » Wed Feb 20, 2019 11:56 pm

To be fair, I think they should feel, as any MP should on any issue, able to vote against it without facing consequences, so long as voting against it aligns with their specific constituents' views as well (although I'm aware there are MPs on both sides of the Brexit debate - and given the geography of the thing this is probably particularly an issue with pro-Remain Labour MPs - whose personal views don't actually align with their constituency's). If both parties really have tried to quash rebellion to the extent that this is necessary, then I don't think there's anything really wrong with it. Further, if this really is just down to disgruntled Remainers who want to vote against Brexit, then I don't think that's such a bad thing as there are also quite a sizeable number of disgruntled Remainers in the general public who don't feel represented by either party's leadership. I do think that that's hampering the longevity of this movement in the long term, but at the same time Remainers do still need to be adequately represented.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby Marcuse » Sat Feb 23, 2019 1:29 am

BBC wrote:Ian Austin's decision not to join his former colleagues in the new Independent Group is telling.

It shows that he felt strongly enough about the problem of anti-Semitism within Labour to quit the party he has been a member of for 45 years on that basis alone.

But it also suggests that Parliament's newest group may be seen above all for what, in the absence of any policies, unites them.

That is support for a further referendum on leaving the EU, something Ian Austin would not sign up to.


A ninth Labour MP has quit, citing the anti-Semitism in the party. Notably he has refused to join the Independent Group because he doesn't believe in a second referendum on Brexit.

To be fair, I think they should feel, as any MP should on any issue, able to vote against it without facing consequences, so long as voting against it aligns with their specific constituents' views as well


This isn't really how politics works though. Voting against three line whips isn't something people with career ambitions can do with regularity and it's pretty clear that the parties aren't going to offer free votes on an issue as contentious and heated as Brexit. There would be consequences if the former Labour MPs didn't vote the way their party told them to.

Further, if this really is just down to disgruntled Remainers who want to vote against Brexit, then I don't think that's such a bad thing as there are also quite a sizeable number of disgruntled Remainers in the general public who don't feel represented by either party's leadership. I do think that that's hampering the longevity of this movement in the long term, but at the same time Remainers do still need to be adequately represented.


With respect, about 80%+ of the House of Commons are remainers already. I don't feel like the voices for a second referendum, a deal, a customs union and single market access, or no Brexit are underrepresented at all, being the policy of all the minor parties barring the DUP and the sentiment of most of the PLP and probably two thirds of the Conservative party. The entire reason this has run aground to the degree it has is because there's no consensus at all for any kind of Brexit whatsoever, which is why we're still looking down the barrel of no deal at the end of March.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby gisambards » Sat Feb 23, 2019 2:24 am

Marcuse wrote:
To be fair, I think they should feel, as any MP should on any issue, able to vote against it without facing consequences, so long as voting against it aligns with their specific constituents' views as well


This isn't really how politics works though. Voting against three line whips isn't something people with career ambitions can do with regularity and it's pretty clear that the parties aren't going to offer free votes on an issue as contentious and heated as Brexit. There would be consequences if the former Labour MPs didn't vote the way their party told them to.


This is exactly my point. This is why it makes sense for them to leave their party.

Marcuse wrote:With respect, about 80%+ of the House of Commons are remainers already. I don't feel like the voices for a second referendum, a deal, a customs union and single market access, or no Brexit are underrepresented at all, being the policy of all the minor parties barring the DUP and the sentiment of most of the PLP and probably two thirds of the Conservative party. The entire reason this has run aground to the degree it has is because there's no consensus at all for any kind of Brexit whatsoever, which is why we're still looking down the barrel of no deal at the end of March.

And yet the majority of those Remainers are forced to follow the party line of the two major parties, both of which insist on pursuing Brexit. If you tally up the number of Remainers in parliament who aren't in a position where they might be pressured to vote for Brexit instead, it's a much smaller number.

It's also simply inaccurate to suggest that the failure of Brexit to go well can really be attributed to there being too many Remainers in Parliament. We could have had a deal, but it was the pro-Brexit MPs that ultimately rejected it.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby cmsellers » Sat Feb 23, 2019 2:29 am

Look, Marc, I've become a lot more sympathetic to Euroscepticism in the wake of Brexit, but that said, the "Leave" side made a lot of promises that they couldn't keep. I don't think it's unfair to suggest that putting the best deal Theresa May was able to get to the voters is the right thing to do. And because Theresa May is committed to leaving without a second referendum, another election (smartly after the first one backfired on her), or an extension, while Corbyn is pretty clearly in favor of leaving himself, I'd say the ability of Remain voices to express themselves in the two major parties actually is underrepresented.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby Absentia » Sat Feb 23, 2019 2:38 am

I would argue that if it's true that 80% of MPs are Remain and they're going ahead with Brexit anyway, then Remain voices are very underrepresented indeed.

Fundamentally speaking, if an 80% consensus isn't enough to force a course change then something is wrong with the current power structure and I can't blame these MPs for trying to buck it.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby Crimson847 » Sat Feb 23, 2019 3:19 am

What's keeping those 80% in line is that, at least according to the results of the referendum, >50% of the British public disagrees with them. If 80% of Parliament holds one view and the majority of the public holds another, it's not clear to me from a democratic perspective that Parliament's view should prevail over the people's.

Beyond that, my thinking is that having an overwhelmingly pro-Remain Parliament decide what a departure deal will look like (if there's one to be had) is rather like giving Ford the power to set the price of GM's cars. Pro-Remain politicians have relatively little incentive to work hard to deliver a good deal in order to smooth a path they don't want people to take in the first place.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby cmsellers » Sat Feb 23, 2019 3:50 am

53% of the British public voted for the "not the status quo" option. It's sort of like how most Americans love the idea of a "better healthcare law," but don't like the Republicans' actual proposal. I think it's perfectly fair to offer a vote on the deal May actually got, since there was already a vote on the deal the UK already had, and since neither May nor Corbyn is interested in representing the views of remainers.

I don't know if British referendums allow for ranked-choice voting, which would be the optimal solution. If not, a two-part referendum would make sense. First part would ask if you still want to leave. The second asks: if part one passes, do you take May's deal or do a hard Brexit? Asking these questions in this order gives the advantage to the "leave" side, since you eliminate "remain" before "hard brexit" even though the latter is likely smaller. This, admittedly, isn't optimal, but if you can't do RCV, giving the advantage to the side that won last time seems fairest.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby Absentia » Sat Feb 23, 2019 4:02 am

I've already stated my opinion on how much stock ought to be put into the results of a referendum, particularly a vague one with no concrete proposal on the table. There's a good reason why we elect people to hash these things out for us.
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Re: UK Labour Party splits

Postby Crimson847 » Sat Feb 23, 2019 4:36 am

cmsellers wrote:53% of the British public voted for the "not the status quo option."


If the referendum question was something like "are you satisfied with the current system?" that would be a natural assessment. Disliking the status quo doesn't entail support for any particular alternative, as Republicans did indeed find out about Obamacare to their cost.

However, that wasn't the question on the referendum as far as I'm aware. The question was "leave the EU or stay in it?", and people chose the former. That doesn't mean they favor any particular version of Brexit, so a vote on May's deal makes perfect sense, but it does mean they voted for some form of Brexit. If they didn't actually support Brexit but voted for it as a form of extremely unspecific protest at the "status quo", then they should feel proud to have joined the long, storied tradition of voters in democracies casting votes for stupid reasons, but unfortunately the government can't really tell the difference between a serious Brexit vote and a "lol j/k" Brexit vote.


@Absentia: Personally, I like referenda at the state level here because it seems to result in ballsier proposals getting passed, which is important for the use of states as laboratories for democracy. Medical marijuana and legalization were spearheaded by state referenda, for instance, politicians being notorious cowards on drug policy issues.
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