Batley & Spen has to be a turning point for Labour: 1/ The party is learning to fight elections, not just count votes; it picked a good candidate and targeted the issues that can reunite Labour's coalition... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
2/ So Labour's GOTV operation today is crucial. But the forces of fragmentation are strong - and Labour is fighting as a divided party, with the left excluded from the Shadow Cabinet and Corbyn from the PLP... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
3/ So today is an uphill battle - with 6,000 pro-Brexit independent votes up for grabs and Galloway's campaigners spreading fear and division... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
4/ After Batley, here's what has to happen: Labour needs a strategy, not just a new strategist, and it needs to execute that strategy with the left as part of the team...newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
5/ We need the left back in the Shadow Cabinet, Corbyn back in the PLP, a swift policy review so that the September conference can ratify a radical economic offer - and CLPs pick candidates who will fight for it newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
6/ The bottom line remains: either we unite the party as a broad coalition representing all the demographics social-democracy needs in order to win, or we go for the Progressive Alliance strategy ... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
7/ Fundamentally, Labour remains trapped in "labourism" - the delusion that voters concern with values, identity and culture will go away if we talk hard enough about economics and inequality ... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
8/ We're in a class struggle and a cultural war. You don't win every battle. The overall conflict is fluid; dramatic breakthroughs are possible. What I want from a leadership is some sign that it is learning and has a strategy to win. newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…

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More from @paulmasonnews

2 Jul
Labour's @kimleadbeater holds #BatleyAndSpen by 300+ votes despite 8000 lost to Galloway. “Our voters turned out in droves” official tells me. This was a triumph for @ShabanaMahmood and @HollyLynch5 . They led a fightback. 1/
2/ In #BatleyAndSpen Labour was winning back working class Tory voters from 2019; with a local agenda, a strong local candidate - but losing socially-conservative Muslim voters over Palestine and homophobia...
3/ Keir Starmer still has huge questions to answer. All the bad decisions that put the seat in jeopardy were taken in his office. He had to keep a low profile to achieve this, which is not ideal...
Read 6 tweets
29 Jun
In the Batley & Spen by-election, Labour is having to do something it's not used to: fight for votes rather than "get them out". It's showing up weaknesses left, right and centre (THREAD) 1/...
2/ Labour is facing the fragmentation of its voter coalition in two directions: to the Tories and to George Galloway - driven by a mixture of justified frustration and social conservatism in both directions...
3/ But win or lose, the fightback on the ground is taking effect. Galloway's strategy of tension has led to intimidation, homophobic abuse and physical attacks by his supporters...
Read 12 tweets
22 Jun
You have to understand the British elite's war on left ideologies as reactions, not action: BLM triggers the "war on woke"; the huge Gaza/Al-Aqsa demos trigger this new attack on the concept of #WhitePrivilege ... soon there'll be a full-blown attempt to ban #CRT ... 1/...
2/ ... but the action/reaction cycle is international, with the Murdoch empire as the vector. If Fox is banging on about #CRT thousands of times a month, but the UK Times and Sky are not, things feel out of joint...
3/ So the whole Anglosphere, from Sydney to Belfast, has to jump to the rhythm of the GOP right, which in turn is the willing host of fascist groups and ideologies...
Read 13 tweets
19 Jun
Please read Tribune's latest attack on the #ProgressiveAlliance - it contains all the vacuous counter-arguments you are ever going to need... let's demolish them one by one... jacobinmag.com/2021/06/uk-pro…
1/ Labour is already too much like a #ProgressiveAlliance because it contains too many Remainers and social liberals... that's really the nub of the Lexiteers arguments but as materialists surely British social-democracy "is what it is"...
2/ ...and the logical concomitant is we should be prepared to face "decades out of power" as the price for expressing working class interests. Yet the majority of working class people *are* socially liberal....
Read 14 tweets
18 Jun
Labour ppl split over Amersham - either it was a harbinger of #ProgressiveAlliance or a disaster caused by Starmer... I can see elements of both... 1/ Tactical voting easier if party loyalty already frayed ...but look at the context...
2/ In SE England there are already numerous local de facto #ProgressiveAlliance s... spreadsheets shared between council candidates deciding where to put the effort etc...
3/ But this was also a stunning mass rejection of the Tory "my mate will get permission to build an extra house in your back garden" culture - which *really matters* in southern England...
Read 4 tweets
17 Jun
Here's how this could work 1/ If party members ask themselves under each heading: what big changes do working class voters around me want under these 6 headings ....
2/ Then choose just 2 policies for each heading: then communicate them - and nothing else - relentlessly, building activist campaigns around them...
3/ Then lose two and put the remaining 10 in order of priority, allocating a fiscal stimulus of £200bn/year to the list ... and commit to nothing else ...
Read 6 tweets

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