Posts by Ben Austin
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It seems to be that within the Labour membership there is a strong difference of opinion about what it takes to win elections. It isn't just about having a new leader who wants to bring Labour back to a more socialist path. It is about how elections are fought on the ground
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Career politician is meant to be disparaging, usually. Although it shouldn't be in all cases.
A common refrain from non Corbyn Labour members to the new Corbyn era members is "how many leaflets did you deliver?" and from what little I've seen in London, there is some truth to that. Whilst noting I've met some hard working Momentum people helping Remain/StrongerIn.
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Well I can confirm this, almost all of my centrist/left NZ friends who've now lived in London for a few years cannot bring themselves to support Labour at present. These are people I know who've voted Labour and Greens in NZ (so far as anyone can know who someone else votes for).
We are pretty niche sure, but similar things are true for my local friendship/work circle.
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Tamsin6,
Agreed, although I'm also equally interested in what to do _next_ as well.
First thing seems easy enough, support the Mayor in his attempts to gain more autonomy for London, both permanently and in short term to be part of negotiations for Brexit.
Second is harder, I'll probably have to hold my nose and join a party.
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Tamsin6,
I have Hoey, although to be fair to her she has been for Brexit for a while, long before I moved to her constituency.
Suffice to say I won't be voting for her. It's going to be a while before I can vote for a Leaver, especially a prominent one.
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The Labour Party issue is one that seems inevitable though, to an outsider at least. He wasn't liked by most of the parliamentary party but the scale of his victory and perhaps the possibility of his popularity delivering results in the recent elections made it about impossible to do anything about. When it became clear he wouldn't save them in the short term the knives were out. Then of course the Referendum came along.
So many of his party activists will have been strongly for Remain, even ones that are on his side (or from Momentum) that he's made his own position untenable. Based on what I heard during the campaign, a lot of them would seriously consider not turning out if there was another election anytime soon under his rule. We had a few Labour (and indeed CP/LDP) activists help us who had in effect stopped turning up to Labour events due to him already.
If they don't try and roll him now, there never will be a right time to try.
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I've heard the figure of 20 full time trade negotiators actually work for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at this point. They're going to be rather busy in the new brave world of amazing trade deals.
I remember noting to some Leave intellectuals (on Twitter of course) that modern trade deals tend to be extremely long (hundreds or thousands of pages) and therefore quite complicated but they were reasonably sure they could do it all pretty fast.
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I think the Conservatives will come in for their share, but this Labour meltdown is just too distracting.
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Russell Brown,
Seems that way. It wasn't necessarily clear at the time though. The activists didn't always feel able to give us full story. They noted various legal issues with full cooperation.
Worth noting that a lot of us in StrongerIN at the volunteer level were new to the game, as it were, so had to take advice on trust from friendly sources. Now of course we know a little better.
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Worth noting that Wandsworth also had a large number of Conservative In people helping (the two local MPs and a few councillors). We couldn't have done it without them. Although also worth noting the Vote Leave organisation locally was made of their local comrades, which made things a bit awkward at the Count.