Well, that's depressing
May. 8th, 2015 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe sat up to watch as much as we could of the election results. By three o' clock we'd finished the wine - the bottle of Cal Pla which ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
helenraven gave me for my birthday, and which sustained us admirably through the dark hours, and the television coverage was offering more commentary and fewer actual results than I could stomach. I went to bed. durham_rambler is made of sterner stuff: he stayed on, I don't know how long for, and has gone out to a meeting this morning.
The point at which I decided I could take no more was when one of the talking heads produced the argument that Labour had done badly because Miliband had tried to reverse Blair's modernisation project and return to Labour's traditional policies.atpotch expresses it well here: "Blairite rules still seem to work. Parties not engaging on the centre ground cannot win - and Labour didn't attempt to do that by co-opting Tory-like policies enough, and making a play to other voters. No-one has succeeded without doing this since at least 1974, maybe earlier depending upon how you are arguing."
An alternative reading is that Miliband has not moved far enough to the left. Rejecting the centrist position of New Labour certainly earns you a hard time from the media, but trying to sell a policy on the basis that it isn't very left-wing doesn't get you off the Daily Mail's hook, either: better to say, yes, we are left-wing, and this is why.
After all, if you stood on a platform of an end to austerity, and no to Trident, what's the worst that could happen? Apart from 30+% swings in your favour, and a 20-year old MP, that is?
helenraven gave me for my birthday, and which sustained us admirably through the dark hours, and the television coverage was offering more commentary and fewer actual results than I could stomach. I went to bed. durham_rambler is made of sterner stuff: he stayed on, I don't know how long for, and has gone out to a meeting this morning.The point at which I decided I could take no more was when one of the talking heads produced the argument that Labour had done badly because Miliband had tried to reverse Blair's modernisation project and return to Labour's traditional policies.
atpotch expresses it well here: "Blairite rules still seem to work. Parties not engaging on the centre ground cannot win - and Labour didn't attempt to do that by co-opting Tory-like policies enough, and making a play to other voters. No-one has succeeded without doing this since at least 1974, maybe earlier depending upon how you are arguing." An alternative reading is that Miliband has not moved far enough to the left. Rejecting the centrist position of New Labour certainly earns you a hard time from the media, but trying to sell a policy on the basis that it isn't very left-wing doesn't get you off the Daily Mail's hook, either: better to say, yes, we are left-wing, and this is why.
After all, if you stood on a platform of an end to austerity, and no to Trident, what's the worst that could happen? Apart from 30+% swings in your favour, and a 20-year old MP, that is?
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Date: 2015-05-08 12:15 pm (UTC)Sending tea.
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Date: 2015-05-08 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-08 12:43 pm (UTC)Sigh :o(
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Date: 2015-05-08 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-09 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-09 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-09 04:09 pm (UTC)We still have a Tory council too although our ward has gone all Labour from one Labour and two Lib Dems, so that's a slight consolation at least.
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Date: 2015-05-09 11:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-09 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-08 01:03 pm (UTC)*sigh* five more years of it now ....
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Date: 2015-05-08 04:55 pm (UTC)*trying not to think about it*
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Date: 2015-05-08 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-08 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-08 05:00 pm (UTC)Atpotch has been particularly lucid, I think.
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Date: 2015-05-08 07:41 pm (UTC)I suppose 2015 Labour was ultimately neither fish nor fowl - neither confident in its leftist convictions nor explicitly reaching out to the centre-right. And that leaves you nowhere.
TCH
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Date: 2015-05-09 11:31 am (UTC)And the same goes for Miliband personally: I felt he was constantly having to remember not to act naturally, not to be geeky. There was one particular PMQ, where Cameron was making jokes about - some gaffe of Ed Balls', I think, but I really don't remember - and Miliband was trying to answer back in kind. I was longing for him just to say "Ha, ha! Very funny. Now would the Prime Minister answer the question. please?"
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Date: 2015-05-08 08:51 pm (UTC)Belatedly/
*phew*
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Date: 2015-05-09 11:22 am (UTC)