Good point re: Purnell. I hate the slimey so and so and I think he personifies why people are fed up with the present Labour cabinet. He’s gone and screwed things up even more now. Cheers, Jimmy.

I can’t see Brown revitalising the party without bringing back some big guns – the cabinet just seems too lightweight. There’s no one like Cable in it. There is, however, an abundance of people like David Miliband and Ed Balls who have not done anything in their lives other than policy wonkery before being parachuted into safe seats. Labour needs to get some proper MPs into cabinet, people prepared to disagree and with proper roots in their constituency.

Blunkett was born and raised in Sheffield. He worked on the council for umpteen years and then went on to become an MP. He’s not going to lose his seat. Someone like Miliband, who I doubt had been to Newcastle more than twice before being elected, does not have that advantage. Bring back proper MPs and Labour will solve many of its problems.

Andrew Rawnsley’s piece in the Observer yesterday gave a pretty much definitive account of why Brown is still PM despite last week’s antics.

I agree.

As I say here: Gordon Brown is safe now.

Self-interested Labour MP’s know that if Gordon stops – for any reason – being Prime Minister, then an election will be called shortly thereafter. An election where Labour will be wiped out.

Every self-centered Labour MP will be thinking the same this morning. Why rebel, why resign dramatically, why go on TV to condemn Brown when all that’ll do is hasten my own personal trip to the wilderness?

Gordon Brown will be PM for as long as he wants to be.

2- With the focus on the coup, you are right that the expenses thread to the reshuffle was largely missed. not entirely. The Telegraph did mention it briefly; Michael White reports that Peter Oborne focused on this in The Week at Westminster (though I haven’t heard that mysefl)
http://www.nextleft.org/2009/06/was-it-telegraph-wot-shuffled-it.html

3 may be right, or premature. That was true by midnight Thursday, and clear to everyone by Sunday morning. But the results do put us back in uncertain territory. The truth is nobody knows. I expect the media to talk up the PLP meeting as the biggest test, and for that to bolster Brown’s position today and tonight.

The problem for the plotters is
(i) lack of leadership and organisation: a “virtual” coup isn’t going to cut it.
(ii) those who could lead/organise it would probably narrow its support (Clarke, Byers, Blears) while others would not go public until they think it has succeeded.
(iii) Fundamentally, that the point of backbench pressure was always to get the Cabinet to act, which Friday has made considerably less likely.

Finally, the idea of not acting because they could choose to act later is always tempting. The moment is then never right. As Dave Cole suggests, this may be the worst of all worlds – Purnell’s resignation has created a put up or shut up moment. The Cabinet have now backed Brown. If backbench rebels will not go public or gain enough support this week, it would be better to accept the issue as closed.

4 – Related, the ambiguity of “simply” in Cruddas’ statement is deliberate, I think. His view seems to be that Brown will stay, and he isn’t acting against him.

Let’s step outside the bubble for a moment. As I write , the Euro results are as follows:

Conservatives 24
UKIP 13
Labour 11
Liberal Democrats 10
Greens 2
BNP 2
Plaid Cymru 1

That is to say, the right has demonstrated that its strength is fully two-thirds of the electorate.

I’ve allocated half the Lib Dem vote to the right – in those areas where there were locals which UKIP did not contest last Thursday, between a third and a half of the LD vote siphoned off to UKIP – and presumably there are also Europhile free-marketeers cum libertarians in their ranks who did not do so. Can we please have no more of counting the Lib Dems in with the “left”? They are a centre party which has left-of-centre people in it.

Next, these results show that race is now more important than class as a source of political cleavage in England. Over a fifth of the vote went to the two racist parties, UKIP and the BNP. And before any UKIPper clobbers me over the head with an ANL badge or whatever, let’s be quite clear that whatever its activists’ individual views, its support came from people who interpret “quit the EU” as “throw all the foreigners out, not just the black ones”. Let’s not kid ourselves otherwise.

Is it possible to win these voters back for “the left”? I doubt it. I know of no historical example of widespread (and therefore culturally acceptable) xenophobia being evaporated by political education. People have been deploring communalism (not strictly xenophobia but psychologically equivalent) in India, for example, for as long as India has been independent. But it hasn’t gone away and no one thinks it will. These election results suggest that among large swathes of the white working class race identity has replaced class consciousness – hardly surprising, since there hasn’t been a major party promoting working-class interests for the last 15 years.

My prediction is that most of us will give up political activism, other than specific community camapigns and blogging, within the next five years. Come to think of it, I gave up party politics twenty years ago, if the parties can’t persuade someone like me to join them, who the hell can they persuade?

“And before any UKIPper clobbers me over the head with an ANL badge or whatever, let’s be quite clear that whatever its activists’ individual views, its support came from people who interpret “quit the EU” as “throw all the foreigners out, not just the black ones”.”

Do you have any evidence for this? Why didn’t such people simply vote for the BNP if they felt so strongly about immigration?

[6] It’s not rocket science. There’s a lot of jumping up and down by politicians and others saying “oh dear oh dear the BNP might get in” so surely a significant wodge of voters will think, “no I don’t want to be associated with fascists, dear old Dad’s D-day medal and all that” whilst still hankering after the days of their childhood when (as they remember it) everyone had English as a mother tongue and a foreigner was someone from 20 miles away. So guess how they vote…

That is to say, the right has demonstrated that its strength is fully two-thirds of the electorate.

Sure, but the electorate is still left wing on economic and social issues. It’s just a left-wing party articulating those concerns doesn’t exist.

Sunny, these arguments are awfully reminiscent of the Tory true believers after 1997.

‘Britain is still a conservative country – we just need to encourage our base’
‘What’s important is the number of our supporters who have stopped voting altogether’
‘The old-fashioned Tory messages are right – we just need to be more confident in getting them across’

I certainly don’t claim to be an expert in the internal workings of the Labour Party, but if the message that they draw from a thumping in local, European and probably next year’s General Election is that they were too centrist, then the parallel will be complete and you can all look forward to a very long time in the wilderness.

Argh Purnell you BASTARD – I was thinking this over the weekend, that really all the Blairites achieved was to allow Gordo to stuff the Cabinet full of cowards or loyalists.

I still think people are giving too much credance that a vote for the BNP was based on a consideration of the issues rather than a knee-jerk rejection of the main parties.

@5 Mike Killingworth: “let’s be quite clear that whatever its activists’ individual views, its support came from people who interpret “quit the EU” as “throw all the foreigners out, not just the black ones”. Let’s not kid ourselves otherwise.”

Tripe. There’s an awful lot of people for whom the loss of sovereignty – perceived or real – that comes with EU or euro membership is a key issue. Reactionary insularity maybe but it’s not just simple racism. It’s not my stance or belief, but I really think it is mistaken to characterise UKIP as a purely racist vote.

Ukip is not a racist party, and Farage has also made it a somewhat less eccentric and nutty one than 4 years ago. (But only somewhat: it very much lacks strength in depth). It does campaign on immigration, but its central ‘get Britain out’ proposition is a legitimate argument, as is less or no immigration. Farage is traditional eurosceptic right, and he is not an extremist. It is silly to say he and his party are. There are often interchanges of voters between ukip and bnp, but that is a different, and quite complex issue. It doesn’t justify slandering ukip as racist.

The LibDem vote might split right/left in various proportions if the LibDems did not exist, but it is clearly a centre to centre-left party, as are the greens, PC and SNP.

Sure, but the electorate is still left wing on economic and social issues

On social issues now yes; economically, well it depends what you mean by “left-wing”

Wanting a bit more regulation, maybe.
Wanting the return of Clause 4, obviously not.

And how is the left doing across Europe?

ooops

The government’s central talking point since the re-shuffle has been that voters expect them to deal with the MPs expenses crisis.

Which is odd, given that the voters seem to expect them to leave office, not keep working.

In the light of the recent election results the arguments about the Labour party leadership look like the squabbling of dinosaurs, while a big blue asteroid heads straight towards them. Brown or no Brown, Labour is clearly going to lose the general election.

On the other hand, the Tories were at least as much into the finance and private debt based economic model that blew up last year as Labour were, and AFAIK have come with no alternative. No wonder the electorate is sceptical of them (cf. comment 8), and there is no reason to suppose that a Tory victory at the next general election will *necessarily* lead to another 18 year Tory marathon.

Despite their current woes, Labour still outpolled the LibDems, and so it seems to me Labour is central to any non-Tory potential government. That government may or may not include someone else, but Labour will be in there. So the key question for anyone who opposes the Tories is how will Labour get it together again after an election defeat?

“Despite their current woes, Labour still outpolled the LibDems”

Lib Dems are always under represented in Europe compared to nationally, keep an eye on the polls to see which is most likely.

I certainly don’t claim to be an expert in the internal workings of the Labour Party, but if the message that they draw from a thumping in local, European and probably next year’s General Election is that they were too centrist, then the parallel will be complete and you can all look forward to a very long time in the wilderness.

I know it sounds like that Tim J – but all the polls show that Labour ideology is closer to voter concerns than Tory. It’s just that this govt is absolutely shit at strategy and narratives.

It’s just that this govt is absolutely shit at strategy and narratives.

Really? I’d say that political strategy and the creation of media narratives is a positive strength of Labour, especially under Brown.

To my mind, Labour’s problems arise from a general weariness with what some call strategy and narratives, and others call spin. As people learn how it works, they learn how to see through it at what lies within, what is actually happening in the country. They don’t seem to like what they see, or the murky prism through which it is broadcast.

[8][12][13] I only regret that I wrote in haste earlier, and so pulled my punches.

First, I am not talking about UKIP’s leadership or even its activists, but its voters last Thursday. The distinction between a product and its consumers shouldn’t be too hard to grasp.

Second, poll after poll has shown that the proportion of people who think that quitting the EU, sovereignty, interference from Brussels etc is the single most important issue facing the country is… 3% or so. Therefore, there has to be some other factor which explains why the political party which is (allegedly) only interested in that issue polls not 3% but 17% or so and drives Labour into third place.

The only explanation is that their voters heard the “dog whistle” and voted accordingly. (Anti-sleaze voting – no, that would have been split around all the fringe parties and other independents. Most Labour activists who wanted to cast an anti-sleaze vote voted Green, so why didn’t “ordinary working people and their families”?)

We can be fairly sure, then, that 80%+ of the UKIP vote was a racist vote, pure and simple. And quite why any Conspirator would want to deny Cameron’s characterisation of UKIP as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” I’ve no idea. Why did the Party’s founder, Dr Alan Sked, leave it, Sunder? (Answer on Wikipedia, which I think can be trusted on this one.) Why do so many of their MEPs look like Arthur Daley with a booze problem?

And if we add that 80%+ to the BNP’s vote, and do a little, a very little demographical extrapolation – i.e. we make the assumption that only a negligible number of non-white voters are included in this group, and that not many graduates are either (although of course there are in the 3% obsessed with sovereignty) – a little subtraction will tell us that between 30% and 35% of the white non-graduate vote is now prepared to vote on the basis of race rather than class.

Here’s the news boys and girls. They ain’t coming back. Once people start voting on the basis of a racial identifier that’s where they stay. Attempts to build a party that will appeal both to them and to non-white voters will fail, just as attempts to build non-sectarian parties in the Six Counties of Northern Ireland have dismally failed. Race and religion are far more powerful than class as sources of solidarity.

And anyway, working class voters have been treated, for the first time ever, to twelve successive years of Labour government. And they have got – relatively speaking – poorer, and are now facing 3-5 million unemployed (with a tattered and torn welfare safety net), a society that gets more and more yobbish each year and the distinct impression that, if all Labour MPs aren’t crooks, enough of them are to make it hardly worth the effort sorting the saints from the sinners. They’ve seen the so-called left in action and they don’t like what they’ve seen. From now on populism and racism will command their hearts.

The only saving grace is that UKIP and the BNP are too stupid to merge. If they did, they’d come second in the General Election without any difficulty.

The political ideas on which Sunny set up this site, and to which we are all, in our own ways, more or less signed up to, belong in the 20th century. Last Thursday was the first 21st century election. From here on, politics are about anger, fear and greed. The politics of hope are dead.

Mike, your summary of the net effect of 12 years of Labour rule is horribly accurate. So, if Labour and the left are the politics of hope, it sounds as if its death is long overdue.

I’d rather wish that “the politics of hope” be defined differently, in terms of personal opportunity, personal responsibility, personal freedom, and collective tolerance.

The Sheerman front is collapsing live on C4.

“There is no question that the overwhelming majority in that meeting seemed to be behind the Prime Minister.”

Argh, Labour are losing because of Brown so they have no choice but to keep Brown?

God those lot are so incompetent, they can’t even carry out a coup properly without fucking it up!

Argh, Labour are losing because of Brown so they have no choice but to keep Brown?

But they aren’t losing because of Brown. He is only part of the reason they are losing, and none of the standing alternatives could improve things. That the clownish coup was carried out by Blairites only served to remind everybody that it could be even worse.

Last Thursday was the first 21st century election. From here on, politics are about anger, fear and greed. The politics of hope are dead.

Calm down Mike, this is not the end of the world – heh. I don’t think its exactly true that once people vote BNP they don’t come back. The voters remain fluid.

Furthermore, there’s a big section of the electorate that didn’t vote – which you’re discounting, and assumign the ones who voted are representative of the population. The election of the BNP may even galvanise more people during the GE to come out and vote against them.

The politics of hope isn’t dead – we just don’t have anyone to offer them that hope. The left will only resurge now once Labour is out of power and the Tories start doing their damage (which won’t be in the first few years).

After that, it’s down to its party members and activists to ensure that they don’t get Blair MK2, but a progression in a way that Obama was progression from Clinton.

The BNP might have got two seats this time but even that pitiful number was won in areas where they received fewer votes than last time round. Stop building them up into some all powerful force: they’re loving it.

Are the right-wing shitting themselves over the Greens?

[25][26] If this was just about the BNP, I’d be inclined to agree with you. But it isn’t, so I don’t. Apart from the fact that 80% of UKIP’s voters just aren’t that interested in the EU, so we have to account for their votes in some other way – and I notice neither of you dispute my analysis – we also have the phenomenon of the election of populist “independent” Mayors in places like Middlesbrough and Doncaster – former Labour heartlands.

“I’d say that political strategy and the creation of media narratives is a positive strength of Labour, especially under Brown. ”

LOL mate wtf are you smoking?? Can I have some??

That was @19

I’m slightly confused by Mike’s comments.

Here’s the news boys and girls. They ain’t coming back.

Didn’t UKIP achieve more or less the same %age in the last EU elections, but only 2% was it (?) in the last GE.
The same thing will happen this time too, or is the reason UKIP did well this time supposedly different from last time?

The relative importance of the sovereignty issue precisely explains this difference.
A large number of people – possibly the majority – would like to leave the EU.
However in a GE, where the EU is of low importance versus the economy, crime, health etc., UKIP will languish in proportion to the number who put the EU top of their concerns.

When there is a “European” election – perceived as having no impact on the “more important” issues – UKIP logically does much better.

So, they – the supposedly racist UKIP voters – will come back.
As indeed will the BNP voters.
What proportion of the vote at the next GE would you expect UKIP and the BNP to win?
It will be low.

[30] Well obviously I think that UKIP attracted a substantial racist vote in 2004, too. I doubt even “cjcjc” regard Kilroy-Silk as an ambassador for multi-culturalism…

As to the GE, obviously a lot – I would guess half – of the UKIP/BNP vote will go back to the Tories (just as much of the Green vote will go to Labour or the LibDems, depending on the seat) in order to get Labour out. However I think the Tories themselves would be the first to say that it is a very instrumental vote upon which they can’t rely thenceforward. Cameron isn’t Thatcher, won his inner-party election because he wasn’t Thatcher, and I very much doubt he even wants to be Thatcher, either. He’s more interested in the votes of IT workers than call centre workers.

If I can come all by my little self to the same conclusions as Eric Hobsbawm I think you’re going to have to do better than the offerings so far to shift me…

Eh? Hobsbawm says that the far right are comparatively unimportant, but that the left need a new direction. That would seem to be some distance from your take on things…

[32] John, where does EH say that? He argues (as I do, and even Alistair Darling does in his own sweet way) that the space has been created for the far right by the collapse of what he calls “social democracy” and I call “democratic socialism” (but we must allow an old ex-communist his little lapses…). He focuses on the collapse of the left deliberately, he refuses to talk about the far right on political grounds, the same grounds which lead him to say

The European left relied on a working class that no longer exists in its old form, and in order to recover it will need to find a new constituency. That may be hard.

‘Hard’ in this context is Redspeak for ‘impossible’.

It is also significant that he argues that parties of the centre-right will indulge the far right. Of course they will, they want a polity in which they take 40% of the vote, the centre and left another 40% and the far right 20%. This guarantees them perpetual power, because they are the single biggest ideology and their opponents are too split to cohere into an alternative.

Sunny’s American analogy doesn’t work, either – not only because US parties are such different beasts to ours that calling them by the same name really occludes more than it reveals – but also because the Republicans, for reasons best known to themselves, are under the delusion that they can occupy the “hard right” – itself a series of contradictions in US politics, since Fundamentalist Christians, Imperialists and Objectivists have very little common ground – and enough of the centre ground to be electable at the same time.

Well if all you’re saying is

(1) things are very fluid
(2) the left is struggling almost everywhere (assuming you don’t count Obama as “left”?)

then it’s difficult to disagree with that!

I’m sure you’re right about UKIP/Tory and Green/Labour (or Green/LibDem) at the GE.
It’s not quite so clear about BNP/Tory in my view.

But then why did you say these people were all lost??
Now only half are lost?

I thought Hobsbawm was dead.
He supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary, didn’t he?
What a charmer.

[34] By “they ain’t coming back” I mean that the votes the left has lost to UKIP/BNP are irrecoverable. Where they go amongst the three right-wing parties I am sure will depend upon the particular election and the behaviour of the Tories in government.

And yes, Hobsbawm (still very much with us at the age of 92) was a tankie. So what?

So I wouldn’t cite agreement with him or his agreement with you as a mark of distinction!

I love that word “tankie”.
I know it’s the conventional description, but would we so lightly describe someone who supported say the events of Tienanmen Square?!

@Rayyan, #28/29

I don’t smoke….never have.

The current appalling headlines for New Labour are despite their presentational and media skills, not due to any lack of them. If it were not for those skills, if it were not for that ability to present a favourable narrative, Gordon would be long gone. Put it this way; we came perilously close to losing our banking system, and the Government responsible is still in power! That is nothing short of a stunning endorsement of their media skills.

The problem is that presentation is not enough; you need to have substantive results as well. Chickens have been coming home to roost for a few years now, just as the public have begun to wise up to those previously so effective skills.