Fun and games with ballot papers

[Padraig]

I wonder how many of the LP's enemies will sign up to vte for whoever they think will make the least effective leader?

...while the friends of the LP will vote for?

[Richard Barrett]

I wonder how many of the LP's enemies will sign up to vte for whoever they think will make the least effective leader?

Not enough to make a significant difference, certainly.

[Serial_Apologist]

Not enough to make a significant difference, certainly.

Indeed - there are far too many conspiracy theorists operating on this forum!

[Bryn]

Not enough to make a significant difference, certainly.

What, not even when added to those already in there?

[ahinton]

Proper tea is theft?

Whoever said that it's often the old ones that are the best would be right on this one!

[ahinton]

Indeed - there are far too many conspiracy theorists operating on this forum!

Well, I'm no conspiracy theorist but I do wonder if, in focusing the amount of attention that it is currently doing on the business of finding and electing a new leader, the Labour Party is offering a distraction both to itself and to others from the question of its very future, which I am far from convinced that it actually has any longer. If its time is indeed over and if, as a consequence, it decides that it has no option but to close its doors once and for all, a very dangerous situation will open up in which a Conservative Party that has pulled the majority that it has done with the help of traditional Labour supporters will find itself without effective - or indeed any - realistic opposition and so will believe itself to have a mandate to flail about and do just what it wishes without fear or favour at least until such time as a real new opposition party can be formed that is capable of gaining at least 250 seats in a future General Election - and that is hardly likely to happen next month.

[Richard Barrett]

What, not even when added to those already in there?

How many do you think there are?

[Serial_Apologist]

How many do you think there are?

Somewhere around half a million is what I heard, last time, which was somewhere around Christmas.

[greenilex]

For Union members (and I have been one of those all my life) the Labour Party has a very real purpose. For co-operators (same applies) the Co-operative Party is the one to join.

Not complicated.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, I'm no conspiracy theorist but I do wonder if, in focusing the amount of attention that it is currently doing on the business of finding and electing a new leader, the Labour Party is offering a distraction both to itself and to others from the question of its very future, which I am far from convinced that it actually has any longer. If its time is indeed over and if, as a consequence, it decides that it has no option but to close its doors once and for all, a very dangerous situation will open up in which a Conservative Party that has pulled the majority that it has done with the help of traditional Labour supporters will find itself without effective - or indeed any - realistic opposition and so will believe itself to have a mandate to flail about and do just what it wishes without fear or favour at least until such time as a real new opposition party can be formed that is capable of gaining at least 250 seats in a future General Election - and that is hardly likely to happen next month.

Any replacement for the Labour Party would have to take in (ie incorporate) its bulwark, the trade union movement; and this I'm not sure the Green Party is either ideologically equipped for, keen to countenance intellectually, or interested in doing. If, in its general sense of means of expenditure, wealth is visualised as incipient potential lying in the natural elements, including the soil from whose fruits the means of production and beasts of burden were once primarily sustained with the help of rain and sunshine, then Green Politics, with its aims to reconfigure wealth creation and production environmentally sustainably, is Labour's "natural" succcessor. But several centuries if not millennia lie in the interim that has changed and re-shaped the meanings people, according to their place in the pecking orders, endow in wealth. This in turn materially drives those in charge at the top of a system intrinsically predicated on competitive survival - not just disproportionately, but in terms of their hold on political and hence legal and military powers. These powers, and those holding them, cannot merely be challenged at the level of counter-arguments or appeals to exemplary moral rectitude, but this would appear to be the way many Greens see it.

Ultimately, the only way those with privilege in charge will be dragged into seeing the sense of change will be when their own life changes are themselves jeopardised by catastrophic outcomes resulting from the very system they have thus far disproportionately benefitted from.

[Serial_Apologist]

For Union members (and I have been one of those all my life) the Labour Party has a very real purpose. For co-operators (same applies) the Co-operative Party is the one to join.

Not complicated.

Absolutely, and one would think that what you have said would amount to common sense. The trouble is that the popular mood has been heavily influenced twofold: by the effects of consumerism since the 1960s - an unsustainable lifestyle philosophy based on obsolescence; and by the bureaucratisation of the trade union movement, caricatured simplistically in the popular right wing press in the catchphrase "superannuated union bosses", and ideologically abused by Thatcher to pin blame for everything wrong in the politics of the time where it didn't really belong. A different perspective is needed - one that takes account of the whole aetiology of the history of trade unionism and its relationship with politics. But with environmentalism now high on the agenda, having been poo-poohed for decades by mainstream media and treated as little more than an add-on by much of a Left that once upon a time spoke in utopian terms of "turning swords into ploughshares", it won't be the BBC offering more fully rounded analysis, diagnosis and prognosis.

[Richard Barrett]

Somewhere around half a million is what I heard, last time, which was somewhere around Christmas.

Yes I know that, I was asking Bryn how many "enemies" he thought had signed up to sabotage the leadership election.

[teamsaint]

Why on earth would the LP just close its doors and give up ?

There is enormous opportunity. The necessary changes to create a green economy, including the inevitable challenge of dealing with zero growth ( at some point) can be a god send to the movement. I am confident that the tories don't really understand the changes and challenges to come. But Labour can, and must.

[ahinton]

Any replacement for the Labour Party would have to take in (ie incorporate) its bulwark, the trade union movement; and this I'm not sure the Green Party is either ideologically equipped for, keen to countenance intellectually, or interested in doing. If, in its general sense of means of expenditure, wealth is visualised as incipient potential lying in the natural elements, including the soil from whose fruits the means of production and beasts of burden were once primarily sustained with the help of rain and sunshine, then Green Politics, with its aims to reconfigure wealth creation and production environmentally sustainably, is Labour's "natural" succcessor. But several centuries if not millennia lie in the interim that has changed and re-shaped the meanings people, according to their place in the pecking orders, endow in wealth. This in turn materially drives those in charge at the top of a system intrinsically predicated on competitive survival - not just disproportionately, but in terms of their hold on political and hence legal and military powers. These powers, and those holding them, cannot merely be challenged at the level of counter-arguments or appeals to exemplary moral rectitude, but this would appear to be the way many Greens see it.

Ultimately, the only way those with privilege in charge will be dragged into seeing the sense of change will be when their own life changes are themselves jeopardised by catastrophic outcomes resulting from the very system they have thus far disproportionately benefitted from.

Whilst what you write here is both true and interesting, I would suspect that, rather than any replacement for the Labour Party havinge to take in its bulwark, the trade union movement, the long-term association between the two is such that the collapse of the former might well risk signalling the same for the latter (at least the latter as we have come to know it); I'm not for one moment suggesting that these things will come to pass - only that they just might, given that the party looks to have gotten itself into a more parlous position than ever and the divergences between the candidates who have so far publicised bids to lead it serve only to illustrate the party's internal strife.

[ahinton]

Why on earth would the LP just close its doors and give up ?

Again, I don't say that it will and, of course, it won't do so willingly but it might just find itself so far out on a political limb that it's hard to see what viable alternative might present itself.

There is enormous opportunity. The necessary changes to create a green economy, including the inevitable challenge of dealing with zero growth ( at some point) can be a god send to the movement. I am confident that the tories don't really understand the changes and challenges to come. But Labour can, and must.

Whatever Labour can or can't or must or mustn't do will count for little unless and until it becomes a more united force, dissolves most of its internal divisions, solves most of its current problems and turns itself into a credible and electable party. That said, I agree that the Tory party as now "constituted" has - or at least shows - little graps of what's in front of it and the rest of us.