As the media speculates on who might challenge Kier Starmer's leadership of the Labour Party, for the rest of us this just looks like more Westminster intrigue.
Out here in the country we've major problems that need dealing with (from economics to social collapse & climate change) but our political class continue to treat the country as a field upon which the game of politics can be won or lost.
Our politics is failing us; and I'm no longer sure even electoral reform would help us!
Labour are increasingly irrelevant, and chasing centrist and Tory votes while ignoring their traditional base has left them floundering in a political no-mans land.
Worse case scenario would be for Labour to elect a leader to appeal to their lost left-wing voters because that would split the progressive vote and pretty much guarantee a RefUK govt.
Best case would see them opting for an odious centrist carpet bagger like Streeting.
@ReggieHere @ChrisMayLA6 The "progressive vote" in already split. The previous coalitions that made up Labour are broken, and only 11% of people support the UK govt.
The Labour coalition broke before 2024. It won in 2024 only because of a quirk of FPTP as the right split.
Labour is now a dangerously wasted vote, a toxic right-zooming minority which splits the anti-Farage vote.
The question now for any progressive in England/Scotland/Wales is how to rapidly kill off #zombieLabour.
Agree totally, but I have no idea how to deal with a zombie Labour Party (great phrase).
Labour is now a liberal franchise of the US Democrats, and the liberals in the UK have been successfully splitting the vote in general elections since the 1940s. It's their entire reason to exist.
@ReggieHere @ChrisMayLA6 The weird American use of the word "liberal" creates a lot of ambiguity when comparing the USA & UK. (In the USA "liberal" means anything that isn’t actively racist and actively persecuting the poor).
#McSweeney's #zombieLabour is #neoliberal economically. But in every other sense, zombie Labour is deeply illiberal.
The remedy is stop voting for zombie Labour, and stop pretending that it is some sort of tactical alternative to the right.
Yes, excepting a brief respite under Corbyn, Labour has been economically liberal (cf. economically left-wing) since Blair adopted Thatcherism in the 1990s, and more recently they've even dropped the social liberalism.
Labour centrists are going to keep on pleading their innocence right up to the point when the party dies.
@ReggieHere @ChrisMayLA6 The question now is largely one of how to define #zombieLabour's point of death.
E.g.
Ethically dead when it expelled Jewish people as antisemites, ignored the Forde report, failed to expel #McSweeney for strategically breaking law on donations to fund his coup.
Politically dead when it failed to censure Starmer for a wholly deceitful party leadership victory.
Socially dead when its approval rating hits 11%.
Electorally dead when it's wiped out in local elections.
Can't happen soon enough.
It's going to be a tedious few years while Labour's centrists keep kicking the corpse.
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
Reg
Claire McNab