The Left Party

Momentum was a massive mistake too. I attended several party meetings during the time when he won reelection as leader and the room was always loaded with activists who shouted down anyone who offered any contrary opinions or concerns. It was supposed to be a grassroots movement of fresh young support but turned out to be oppressive and obsessively controlling the narrative. Literally the opposite of everything JC has spent whole career fighting for.

I hope to god those idiots have nothing to do with this party.

 

There are many write ups about his 'campaigning'.

The remain Campaign machine were constantly let down because he refused to participate or intentionally blocked or delayed sign off of speeches, soundbites and campaign literature. Meaning multiple days on the grid were empty so remain had no voice.

He also chose not to share a stage or do dual campaigning with anyone other than in his clique... Again, diluting message or failing to reach left and labour voters in some constituencies. In the end, the Labour side of the campaign had to start parachuting in former leaders to try and fill the voids.

Brexit occurred for numerous reasons. I'm certain if Labour had had a leader willing to campaign properly with some conviction and hadn't been such a baby, given how narrow the margin was, Brexit wouldn't have happened. I'll never forgive him for that.

It's also often forgotten that GE's after the referendum became leave v remain elections. The remain vote stacked on Labour in the hope they'd get a second referendum or some ratification of the sort of exit rather than the extremis clusterf*ck we got. This provided a skew in perception that Corbyn had a wide base of popularity. Very popular, almost a deity in some quarters, just about tolerated in others, loathed by more.

 

This lefty lot and reform are going to take huge chucks of support from Labour / Greens / Lib Dems and Tories.. If things continue in the way they are changing now, Reform and Left could end up being the new two party players.

 

You have to factor in the fact that Corbyn comes from the old Labour left who were very anti the Common Market and it makes sense that his campaigning wasn't much good, at heart he was in favour of Brexit.

 

True, but being in favour of Brexit for economic reasons just shows that, economically speaking at least, he's an idiot.

 

I've no doubt he wanted to leave the EU, he certainly conducted the Labour side of the campaign that way. Very much out of alignment with Labour policy.

 

Sadly it will be those that are back involved. As someone involved with the party back then my opinion is similar to yours it was a horrible place to be if you had other concerns or tried to do anything but follow the narrative that was clearly failing.

We got what we deserved back then and this new party will be just as bad and serves only one real purpose which will most probably leave us wit h a reform majority that doesn't bare thinking about.

 

That feels very much like looking for an easy excuse on this. As with all parties of the left I don't think this one will have any significant impact on polling when it comes to GE time. Most of the likely voters it will attract are already voting Green or some other non-Labour option, so the loss of votes to Labour will be relatively minimal.

However, trying to blame them for the rise of Reform is fundamentally overlooking the failure to date of the incumbent Labour government to retain its core vote from the last general election. Many of the errors are down to failures to control the narrative, rather than policy decisions, such as the mis-handling of the WFA changes, but the recent Welfare Reform Bill has actively driven core supporters across the spectrum within the party away from voting Labour. Fundamentally, they're going down a route of committing electoral suicide which is entirely of their own making, and trying to deflect that onto others is an extremely blinkered way of looking at it.

I know that you are as frustrated with some of the things that the government are doing as I am, and the corrective action needs to come from within the party, rather than trying to deflect blame onto a section of the electorate who, at best, are a diminishing minority within the current party membership. Ultimately, I'd prefer a Labour party without the likes of Burgon, etc trying to undermine it from within so I welcome their impending defection into the WhateverTheNameIsThisWeek Party. I'm more concerned at present about the strategy being driven by those running the operation in No10.

 

Agree with much of the previous post.

If you don’t like Corbyn, Sultana or any of the other independent MPs, their motives and the idea of a new left wing party, don’t vote for them and look elsewhere for your politics.

To try and blame them for the rise of the far right, or exiting the EU is quite frankly ridiculous. And shows an oblivious attitude to how, where and why the current government have got it so wrong, so quickly and so very badly.

 

This new party had nothing to do with the leave/remain campaign and the outcome of it. That would be ridiculous, even if anyone was claiming that, which they aren't.

Jeremy Corbyn however did play a very large part and contributed to the outcome of that campaign. It would be ridiculous to conclude otherwise.