Thread by @shaunjlawson

THREAD: What are my politics? How do I see the world? This is likely to prove quite a self-indulgent thread - but given my opposition to Lavery, and lukewarm support for Starmer, I can well imagine how some followers must be thinking "who is this guy? Is he some impostor?"

I'm 41. First got interested in politics aged 8 or 9; the first general election campaign I recall in vivid detail was in 1992. And even before that, I knew enough to dance around the classroom when Thatcher's resignation was announced.

Given when I was born, I spent my entire childhood under a Tory government. And when Labour offered socialism in 1983, or what was still viewed as socialism by very many in 1987 and 1992, it got trounced. Just as it was trounced in 2019.

Those four defeats in a row were exactly what led Labour to shift so far rightwards. It was a response to the electorate; albeit, an electorate under FPTP. Iraq was New Labour's worst blunder by far - but failing to reform the electoral system was its second biggest.

And obviously, growing up during that time quickly led me to conclude: "What the hell is the point of staying left wing when the public keep rejecting us? How can any political party achieve a single damn thing without being in government?"

That whole principle v selling out thing is a central issue across politics everywhere. Barack Obama was probably the most liberal President the US has ever had - so does that mean he's popular on the left? Not in any way. Quite understandably so too given some of his policies.

Then look at Sanders or Clinton. The former had all sorts of brilliant ideas and really enthused amazing numbers. The latter's approach was staid, watered down... but she also knew how difficult it is to win in swing states with left wing economic radicalism. Sad fact of life.

It's just that, in the process, she took so many lifelong Democrat voters for granted - and was oblivious to the reality of their lives under post-industrialisation. A problem shared completely by New Labour and way too many Labour MPs in the last Parliament.

I've mentioned a conversation I had with my best friend circa 2006 or so before. She was very frustrated at Blair. I said: "I hear you. I know. But enjoy this government - because it's probably the best the UK will have in my lifetime".

How depressing is THAT?!

And the reason I thought it'd be the best the UK would have in my lifetime was:

1. FPTP - which drags the entire voting system ever further rightwards

2. The British people just aren't socialist. The tradition of individualism in the UK goes back many many centuries.

Post-2008 crash though, the picture changed. Because the economic system we all live under had failed. And across Europe, social democratic parties who, to borrow the parlance of earlier in this thread, had 'sold out', were caught holding the ball.

In any rational universe, that the system had failed - and has continued to fail ever since - should have led to crony capitalism being blamed. Instead, the centre-left, in government in so many places, was blamed... and it STILL hasn't come up with an answer.

The right has been quite devilishly cynical in how it's exploited that. In how it's pretended to be 'on the side of working people' while doubling down more than ever on incredibly pernicious, disastrous policies which aren't in the interests of working people in any way.

But in Britain, there are two fundamental problems for the left: essentially as difficult to resolve as each other.

1. 'Blairism' was a medium term success and long term disaster. Centrism had some answers 20 years ago; it has none now. And those who claim it does are in denial.

Those who claim it does need to explain what a 'centrist' Labour party could possibly do about climate change, about automation, about a housing crisis which beggars belief, about students saddled in lifelong debt, or a generation of people being poorer than the previous one.

And they also need to explain why centrism has failed ACROSS THE WORLD. Pasokification is a very real thing. And in order to get back into power in Spain, the PSOE - the Socialists, in theory if not in practice - have had to change pretty considerably.

But the second problem, just as serious as the first, is this. As long as we don't come up with a viable alternative to capitalism, the left starts at an automatic disadvantage everywhere: made worse, a lot worse, by corporate media and fake news.

Huge numbers of perfectly reasonable people saw Corbyn's Labour as an attempt to return to the past. Some of that was based on cliches and media smears... but not all of it. Far too often, we seem to picture a world which, for working class people, no longer exists.

Labour is neither organised nor collective. It is atomised. And while the trade unions are weaker in the UK than almost any other developed country, they're not exactly strong in Europe either. Globalisation cannot be reversed; Europe's slow economic decline can only be managed.

All of this creates a quite massive problem.

1. How can socialism work in one country when all the circumstances which enabled it to succeed post-war have gone?

2. How can the left or centre-left win with old answers to new problems?

3. With labour atomised, where is our base?

In 2010, New Labour reached the inevitable end - because the individual who'd persuaded Middle England to vote for it had gone, and Brown was quite absurdly blamed for the 2008 crash.

In 2015, Miliband tried to distance himself from New Labour, failed, and Labour were hammered.

Those people who insist that all the problems have somehow been caused by Corbyn and the left seem to be suffering from a pretty astonishing case of amnesia. People: we had a moderate alternative on offer in 2015. It failed, disastrously.

In 2017, Labour's offer of radical change chimed in with amazing numbers. But here's the thing. Despite the most pathetic campaign in history, the Tory vote STILL went up (by fully 5 points), and Labour STILL didn't win.

The thing about history is it constantly clarifies itself all the time. New perspectives always emerge. We never know the absolute truth of so many things; it can take decades. Centuries, even.

So in 2017, the perspective of so many of us was: the media had been completely wrong. So many Labour MPs had been completely wrong. Corbyn had been completely vindicated... and just one more push would see us over the top. Right?

Sadly, as it turned out, wrong. In 2019, Labour once again became Sisyphus... sliding back down the mountain. And that's not just because of a different policy on Brexit. It's also because of who Corbyn's opponent was.

Boris Johnson is nobody's idea of a political genius. Or any kind of genius, except in his own mind. But thanks greatly to conditioning, to the electorate, he somehow seems prime ministerial in a way Corbyn never did.

My God! There's huge numbers of people who actually trust Johnson more than Corbyn on the NHS. That's insane. It's ridiculous. But Labour's messaging has been weak for a long time now, even if we factor in massive levels of media bias and his own MPs turning on him.

Meanwhile, in 2017, the Tories were led by someone palpably uncomfortable in her own skin, who looked completely out of her depth. The polls started moving dramatically in the Tories' direction when they changed their leader.

Did Labour have to change its Brexit position? Yes. The reason for that is the Lib Dems. Voters were disappearing to them in their droves while Labour was seen as a Brexit party at a time of monumental national and constitutional crisis.

But of course, that only sowed the seeds of Labour's destruction in the north. Which was forewarned in 2015 as so many went UKIP... and even in 2017, we were hanging on by a thread in very many traditional working class seats.

Damned if we did. Damned if we didn't. Damned if we did neither too. But as to where we are now: good luck to any party if its first move is to do the opposite of what most of its members and voters believe. Change only happens when they're taken with us first.

But to return to the beginning of this thread. For much of the last four and a half years, and especially for the last two or so, Labour has been seen as an unmitigated, unruly rabble by far too many of the voters we need if we are ever to win.

A good friend of mine and lifelong Labour voter rejoined the Labour Party the day after the election. Not because he's some centrist sell-out. But he - as shrewd an analyst as I know - felt there was no point doing anything Labour-related as long as it remained such a rabble.

Remember: one shortish period after the war excepted, socialism does not win in Britain. What do we do? Continue to put forward a socialist agenda again and again for the rest of time, keep losing, get dragged into an Orwellian dictatorship because anything else is 'selling out'?

But that doesn't mean we go centrist either. So many of the MPs who lost their seats in the north weren't anyone's idea of Labour. So many of them - Laura Pidcock and Laura Smith excepted - were absolutely awful MPs and relics of New Labour. Relics of a completely different time.

The result is a Parliamentary Party which is both unhappily smaller than it was and considerably more to the left than it previously was too. Which should make the task of any next leader easier with their colleagues, at least.

But reflecting on any defeat doesn't and should never just involve pointing fingers. Frankly, it shouldn't ever involve fitting our political preconceptions around certain rather awkward facts. The facts of our defeat: a dreadful one. And for Britain, a disastrous one.

How many people in life are comfortable with change? Very few. That's a big part of why nativism and nationalism are on the rise across the West... because people see the world changing very fast all around them, and it scares them. A lot.

But it's also true of political parties. I used to know a Welsh woman whose childhood was devastated by what the Tories did to mining communities. She adored Arthur Scargill; she HATED Neil Kinnock like you wouldn't believe.

Sometime in the mid-2000s, over a drink, we discussed all this. Her perspective genuinely was that Labour should've stayed right where it was in 1983, because the Tories would've inevitably collapsed in the end. I couldn't get my head around that.

Not because I couldn't understand what she, her family, her community had been through. But because it was so plain callous. If the electorate rejects us again and again, it's not the electorate who need to or will change. It's us.

To repeat a metaphor from a couple of weeks back: having lost by offering egg and chips in 2015, done rather well by offering double egg and chips in 2017, and been hammered by offering triple egg and chips in 2019, the answer is NOT: quadruple egg and chips.

In fact, purely based on the above, it's probably double egg and chips. 2017 manifesto plus added Green New Deal - but seeded and communicated effectively, under a leader who commands respect across the country.

But if we just choose a left wing candidate because it's what we feel comfortable with, that's no different to when the Tories chose Iain Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke. The electorate expects us to listen, reflect and learn. Not just repeat the same thing all over again.

All the different leadership candidates have their flaws. None of them have proposed, as of yet, the progressive alliance we desperately need: without which, I think we'll lose regardless of who is leader. Such are the iniquities of FPTP.

But I'm sorry. Just as I got right behind Corbyn in 2017 because he was becoming increasingly successful, so I can't now take an approach of "let's just keep doing what Corbyn did" when it failed so completely in 2019.

My politics? They're anti-Tory. Always have been, always will be. And beyond that: I will always back the most left wing option which can also win. Which means I won't be backing either Lavery (if he stands, which I doubt actually) or RLB... because neither can win.

And I sure as heck won't be backing Jess Phillips either. But what I want is grown-up, serious discussion on where we go from here. This is urgent. The country depends on us to get this decision right.

Friends, family and followers alike of mine have had their lives ruined, destroyed, by the Tories. Don't call me a 'sell-out' when my first thought, my first priority, is them. That should be all our priorities: how do we help so many people who need our help, desperately?

But we can't help a single one of them if we don't win first. That's elementary. It shouldn't need spelling out. Nor should the basic reality of the yawning chasm which exists between Corbynism and Blairism: a gulf from within which, the next leader will emerge.