UK govt. - effective opposition?

Or link to the thread and tell us what time she posted it.

As I have said many times, too many times for some, labour has no chance with Corbyn as leader .

I'd still like to know what Jalima said

Sorry Jalima - it was Daphnedill at 11.14 on page 8 of the Trump Rally thread. She answers something J. wrote.
I agree with her entirely, just wonders where it leaves us?

on a hiding to nothing?

OK - here's the post from Daphnedill:

Jalima The problem with the more left-wing parties in Western Europe isn't so much that they've lost touch with core voters, but the core voters have disappeared. In the interwar years, when the Labour Party really grew, there was a distinct difference between 'workers' and the upper and middle classes. The working class and women had only recently won the vote after all, so it was natural they would flock to the political party which represented the formerly unrepresented.

The world has moved on. Apparently only 7-8% of the UK population is involved in manufacturing or mining. The workers have gone! People have mortgages and savings, some manual workers can send their children to private schools, it's possible to be aspirational. This has affected the whole of the Western world.

Left-wing movements all seem to be having an identity crisis. I don't think it's simply a case of left vs right any more. It's certainly not a case that there are poor people on one hand and rich people on the other. Most people are somewhere in the middle.

If people only ever voted in their best interests, nobody would ever vote for the Labour Party, because most people aren't poor, disabled, unemployed, etc. In the Labour Party, there seem to be so many different factions. There are those who remember the old days, when there were traditional working class communities, those who care about the poor, who think a social democratic model would be best, those who would favour a more communist approach, those who haven't a clue what they're going on about, but just hate conservatism and the 'establishment'...

The question really is not how to get in touch with core voters, but deciding who the core voters actually are.'
That's the post I was referring to, and I'm wondering if there's any answer to.
Someone has to stand up and oppose what's happening, the opposition being denied any say.

I think we need to wait until after the Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent by-elections. Labour could surprise us and hold both with good majorities, but I think it unlikely, in which case, it might lead to a re-assessment of the parties direction and leadership.

But currently the Parliamentary party is so divided and demoralised that I suspect they would have great difficult finding anyone prepared to stand for the job who would be capable of doing it because they know whoever succeeds Corbyn will have to work tirelessly to make the party potentially electable in 2025 and by then they would have been leader of the opposition for 9 years, an improbably long time in the job and would be doing all the work for their successor to get the success and all the praise. In other words they would be a second Neil Kinnock.

Posted the above and then saw the quote from Daphnedill.

The answer is, and don't all jump on me, New Labour. Blair and Brown did understand this problem and tried to address it. Unfortunately the two people who saw the problem were the last people who should have had any say in its implementation, as so often is the case, and having won the elections the deep flaws in both their personalities blew it. Unfortunately New Labour is now a busted flush.

Factionalism is a problem in both main parties, the Conservatives just hide it better. Look at the falling out over the EU and vicious infighting in the party during the referendum. There is a deep divide in the Tories over health, defence and tertiary education.

I read an article sometime ago that suggested that what is needed in this country is more parties, so that the checks and balances of coalitions keep us on a wobbly, but fairly central track with none of the extremes of either main party.

The Liberal Democrats do represent centre and centre left politics. The party has always been disadvantaged by the media bias towards confrontational two party politics and the first past the post electoral system which is loaded against a party whose support is not concentrated in certain areas of the country. Even with 25% of the vote, the party can end up with only 2.5% of the seats in the House of Commons.

In 2010 the party was faced with a difficult decision. Although most members would have preferred to go into coalition with Labour, the numbers did not add up and so the LibDems entered a coalition with the Conservatives, putting the best interests of the country before the interests of the party.

There is no doubt that mistakes were made -acquiescence in the raising of tuition fees is the obvious one but I think the worse mistake was not insisting on a referendum on PR. The AV referendum was a farce. Nobody wanted it and Cameron, having promised Nick Clegg he would remain neutral, campaigned against it.

However several good policies were enacted by the coalition government. Low earners were taken out of paying income tax. The pupil premium has been a very successful policy helping schools with a large number of disadvantaged pupils. Most importantly a lot of vicious right wing policies were stopped. Only since 2015 have we seen what an unfettered Tory government can do.

The Liberal Democrats were punished by the electorate in 2015 but since then, membership has grown, many elections have been won and a lot of voters have begun to realise how much better the country fared when the party was part of that coalition government. It was only when David Cameron had free reign to put what he saw as the interests of his party before the interests of the country that he called the ill-conceived EU referendum.

The Liberal Democrats are the most effective opposition to this extreme right wing government.

But Tim Farron has ruled out any sort of coalition with Labour, so it's a bit of a long shot.

I do not think Tim Farron has ruled out any future coalition, but he has ruled out an electoral pact, which is a different thing.

The thing that is annoying me most about Tim Farron and the Lib Dems at present, and I write as longstanding Lib Dem party member, and that is their constant harping on about remaining in the EU and doing all they can to stop our exit.

There was a referendum with a clear result. The majority of the electorate voted to get out of Europe, so out we must go. Democracy isn't something that governments and parties can decide whether they like the result of or not and ignore it if they don't. Democracy reaches its finest hour when parties and governments get an answer they do not like, accept it and work with it.

In this case the Lib Dems, while acknowledging their continual support for the European ideal should be working in a constructive manner to ensure our exit is as open as possible, not just moaning and trying to find ways to thwart the referendum result.

If i had to vote tomorrow i would find myself at a loss. I have always used my vote as i find it one of the most valuable things i have but at the moment i would struggle

The referendum result was very close and the marginal majority for leaving did not give TM a mandate for the type of destructive hard brexit she is now persuing. The 48% who voted to remain are being ignored, as are those who voted for a soft brexit.

The Liberal Democrats are asking for the final deal (at this point unknown) to be put to the people with a proper explanation of the advantages (if any), disadvantages and costs. If TM manages to negotiate a great deal for the UK, no doubt it would be ratified but we should not accept brexit at any price.

Most LibDem members are fully supportive of Tim Farron's policy.

We have had the referendum, the electorate has made its views clear,

I see no reason why a further referendum is necessary. Just as the Electoral College in the USA decides who will be President, not the sum of the popular vote so in Britain we elect a government to govern on our behalf. We are not Swiss we are not governed by referendum. We only had a referendum to get the Conservatives out of a whole and look where that got us.

I didn't realise there'd been an option of voting for a 'soft Brexit' varian - must have missed that.

I agree with what M9nica has said.

M0nica, sorry.

Granny I would feel the same if I had a vote in the uk. Here in Germany I vote for Angela Merkel and locally usually the green party candidate.

I grew up in a house with strong political opinions and we all voted Labour and had some exiting election night parties. It was all more personal, without TV coverage and now the internet and 'Fake News'
There seems to have been a backlash after the referendum mostly because a referendum should be decided on a 70% majority not a 50% one. That was a failure on Cameron's part.

There has to be an Opposition party of some kind so I assume that the Labour party will be that party at least until the next election. That gives the Conservatives a free hand to do what they want. Not an ideal situation at all.

I was beginning to think I had amnesia!
I will read this another time (too tired to concentrate now).

Most of my reply to dd on the Trump thread at the time was

^A lot of the middle class has effectively become the working class.
And in theory the Labour Party should be winning hands down.

But they have not realised that this new group do have aspirations.
And also, that they themselves have become the new elite.
[and as for celebrities who espouse their working class roots!^

No idea where Labour can go. Because what and who is Labour now?

Even if they joined with liberal democrats, I think a lot of voters need to know who and what labour now is and stands for and believes in.

I have said for ages labour has to move to the centre .

On Kinnock, he worked his socks off to get the party free from the far left and win back the voters after the 1983 collapse of the party. He did win back voters, just check where he had to start from and he had the militants to contend with. Corbyn wants a rerun of that 1983 election. He has said if labour loses the next two bi elections he is staying as leader, nothing can be done to get rid of him, momentum need him to carry their ambitions on .

We have had the referendum, the electorate has made its views clear

No it hasn't. There are almost as many views about what 'leave' means as there are people who voted to leave.

I cannot accept that the country can potentially be plunged into economic suicide on the basis of that appallingly badly thought out referendum. We need to see what the actual deal is (not Theresa May's wishlist) and decide whether it is a price worth paying for for whatever we thought we voted for.

There has been a huge mistake made. I don't mean the Leave vote, I mean that the whole process has been botched so badly that we need to do it properly. If, with the whole deal and its implications out in the open, in a properly run referendum, 'the people' still vote to Leave then so be it. I'll be much happier about accepting the result.

As to 'effective opposition' I don't think we've had one for the last 6 years. We certainly don't have one now.

AB it's all very well saying that Labour has to move to the centre but they have the dilemma that dd outlined in her original post. How do you reconcile the 'traditional', conservative (in its non political meaning) Labour voter with middleclass Labour voters who are seen as part of the 'elite' and who have ideas/ideals completely at odds with the the 'traditional' section?

I think that Labour is dead and we need a new Centrist party, or, to make a lot more of the Lib-Dems

And also, that they themselves have become the new elite.

I think I also added later that I meant the labour party have become the new elite