What now for Labour Party ?

Grandad The Labour Party would do well to get its collective head out of being stuck in rules, procedure and ideology, stop contemplating its navel and get out into the real world and work out how it can realistically get half the population onside.

M0nica, the membership of the trade unions has been steadily rising over the last few years especially in the private sector. That has been offset by to some extent by losses in the public sector due to many councils cutting their workforces due to austerity.

However, it is certainly due to the success the unions have had in the courts in regard to Gig Economy working terms etc that has brought about that rise.

Link to the above can be found here:-

www.tuc.org.uk/blogs/trade-union-membership-growing-there%E2%80%99s-still-work-do

Grow stuff, I believe the Liberal Democrat Party who you have stated you support should get its head out the sand and around ton how it can gain more than eleven MPs.

Perhaps having stronger rules and structures would aid that cause?

I did not have much confidence in Corbyn, from the start, he seemed invisible. How come the labour party managed to not see what was happening.

I agree with you about the LibDems Grandad but slinging mud doesn't help anybody.

I am a LibDem member because, broadly speaking, I am in alignment with their social policies. However, I have never said that I am in agreement with everything they do and I voted for Labour in 2015 after the disastrous coalition.

I don't think having stronger policies and structures would help the LibDems at all, especially the kind that Labour has. At local level, the LibDems have very efficient systems in place.

I could easily be persuaded to vote Labour. My vote doesn't actually matter, but there are many other people in the country who feel like me and whose votes do matter. Labour needs us!

I'm sorry you can't see why people won't vote for Labour. They see cliques of people who are more interested in ideology and policies and procedures than serving the needs of real people. From the outside, you really do like a bunch of neo-Stalinists. It's no good complaining about the media because (although you are probably right), you can't change much. You need to be more clever than they are.

You seriously need to change your image - and do it within the next five years because you're letting down the very people you claim to help.

IMO

It may be difficult for those of us, who cannot see the vast majority who work to live and are vulnerable if for some reason they can't work or are forced to work in retrograde circumstances, where their voice is going to come from in the future, but this does not seem to be a problem only in this country.

Trade, and therefore work has changed so much but the institutions that have stood for the well-being of the person I see as the "worker without wealth" have not kept up with the changes. Perhaps this is a seismic shift that has to happen. It has certainly driven many of out of our number, because I count myself among them and certainly want to improve lives, into the arms of the right and far right all over the world.

That is how I see the problem but, even when choosing who to vote for in this recent election and now, after it, I cannot see what needs to be offered to a) to solve the problem or b) to attract those voters.

Thank you all for sharing your knowledge and thoughts though. It is good to feel it is being discussed in such depth and I do learn do much from you all.

Two female labour MP’s are speaking out,

Lisa Nandy and Jess Phillips , a flicker of hope ?

granddad43 - ‘the structure of the Labour Party hasn’t
change in over 100 years ‘.

Explains much.

society has changed , I grew up in a mining village, there were no one parent families apart from widows,
the Chapels and the Workmens Clubs run the village. Same right through South Wales, a labour stronghold.

I am not so sure that your views are not just as entrenched as anyone else's Annie.

The trade union movement in Britain has a membership of approximately six and a half million people, and at this point in time that membership is growing. If the individual unions wish to work together by way of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) there has to be rules and structures in regard to the size of representation within its numerous bodies by those contributing unions.

The same must apply when it comes to the input those unions have into the TUCs political undertakings by of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Rules and a structure must be in place in regard to the political levy each individual trade union member can be requested to contribute and the access those members should have to the structures within the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Yes, it does all sound very complex and, in that, it is. Tony Blair during his era as leader reduced the access and representation that trades unions and their members had in the Labour Party. However, that brought about the compleat disregard of those members political wishes while they were still expected to pay a large percentage of the financial bills of the Labour Party.

The Corbyn era has seen a return of full access of those trade union members to the Parliamentary Party which now having been reestablished will not be changed again at any time in the foreseeable future.

Therefore it is the direct members of the Labour Party and those affiliate members within the trades unions who will be choosing the next leader of the Parliamentary Party and setting its policies into the future. Those members own that party by way of the subscriptions they pay, and it is for them to decide its future.

And in my book, that's the way it should be.

Yvette Cooper would get my vote.

Is it coincidence that the Unions had less influence in the Labour Party in the Blair Government which won three consecutive general elections but more influence in the
Wilson and Callaghan governments when the country suffered
strike after strike after strike and brought in the Thatcher years.

Anniebach, the Blair era did not provide Britain with any form of a socialist government in the view of very many today. He and his cohorts cosied up to the bankers, the very wealthy and even Rubert Murdock which in the end brought forward the British end of the banking crisis, zero-hour contracts, Gig Economy working conditions and the Iraq war.

However, I have one question for those who believe that the trade unions should not be involved in the running of the Parliamentary Labour Party. That question being, who outside of a socialist organisation would fund the huge costs involved in maintaining an effective socialist political party in Britain today?

My answer to the above would be no one, and that would deprive Britain of an important sector of its overall democratic body politic. But of course, that is exactly what the right in British politics desire.

Well, GGMK3, If the dispossessed and vulnerable are being driven into the arms of the far right. It is because they feel they have been failed by the labour movements they originally set up.

There is only one way forward and that is for the labour movements to seismically change themselves to once again being of the people they serve.

So far the British Labour party shows no sign of this. Since last Thursday it has just erected barricades and stood behind them with their hands over their ears shouting 'We were right, the electorate are stupid', which is not helpful.

Hopefully this is just the first reaction to the shock and extent of the defeat and that they will soon become more introspective and think seriously about what they want to be; presumably a party that is of its voters and community, listening to them, acting on what they tell them and reorganising themselves accordingly, or possibly a leftwing socialist metropolitan clique, who place dialectical purity ahead of service to the community.

Corbyn is a good man. Labour needs a leader who will entertain the erstwhile working class as someone like Boris does but without the lies.

Alexa Have you no insight into how devastating arrogant your statement above is. It is because the whole Labour Party thought like you that it lost the election.

The Labour Party lost because it thought itself superior to the ordinary voters it relied on because it still believed they would vote for a donkey if it had a red hat, so they treated them with contempt and ignored everything their natural electorate said about the party its policies and its leadership, That is why it lost and will continue to lose until they change.

The Conservatives, identified themselves with the electorate and reflected back what they were saying. That is why they won.

This realisation may send a shiver down your delicate socialist spine, but it is what parties have to do to get elected.

Well said MOnica

Yes granddad43 the unions put money into the Labour Party
and control it, the same is said of bankers etc putting money into the Tory Party.

It was Thatcher who clipped union wings not Blair. She did so because of the strikes in the 60’s and 70’s ,

M0nica it still believed they would vote for a donkey if it had a red hat, so they treated them with contempt and ignored everything their natural electorate said about the party its policies and its leadership
Would you like to post some evidence for this, because from the meetings I attended and the Labour MPs I heard speak the problems of the working class were being spoken of and addressed. In fact some of the MPs who lost their seats were the ones who most strongly identified with the working class such as Dennis Skinner and Laura Piddock.
The issue of Brexit which has, and still will in my opinion, tear apart communities is another question. It is difficult to see what the LP could have done to solve the issue. Leave or Remain someone would have been upset.
The Labour Party is currently tearing itself to pieces and blaming each other. It isn't a time for gloating or blaming. The people who will suffer from the results of this election are not those posting on here they are the people using food banks and claiming benefits. You have to wonder why those people lost and why a whole swathe of people were prepared to see them continue to suffer in order to achieve a political aim. Personally I put it down to a contest where one leader managed to convince the electorate by not communicating and engaging with them and the other failed to convince them no matter how much he communicated. Anyway it's not an outcome that is going to do anyone any good at all, short term or long term. Except of course for the super rich and those who will be able to continue with their tax avoidance.

Trisher - I agree.
I still can't get to grips with the fact that Blyth Valley, my hometown, has switched to conservative. How could they?
The only reason I can think of is the fact that the longstanding Labour MP, Ronnie Campbell, has stepped down due to poor health, and wasn't all that popular anyway.
Blyth has changed, much unemployment, low level crime etc. .

tricia, many vox pops and press reports before the election and many comments about what they were meeting on the doorstep from both new, re-elected and losing candidates since.

I will not repeat what I wrote in my post, slightly above yours, but I recommend you read it.

I am not a huge Boris Johnson fan, but I am a Conservative.

Obviously I am pleased at the result, but having said that a strong Government needs a credible and united opposition party, sadly that description does not fit the current Labour Party.

The only Labour MP who has caught my attention has been Lisa Nandy, is she experienced enough though?

M0nica I read it, in fact I quoted from it!
I think it's interesting that you choose not to provide proof just hearsay. I know people who voted for Brexit but they were in the most part already Conservtive voters (and some were what could be described as working class). There has always been a small number of those. Quite why people are more concerned to break with the EU than they are with a lack of NHS facilities or the increase in food banks I don't know. I find it a worrying trend. I don't think it is to do with a Labour Party disconnect with the working class, I fear it may be to do with a right wing rise.

trisha
MOnica, would you like to post some evidence of this
I think the result of the election is all the evidence you need.

MerylStreep the LP has been accused of treating people with "contempt". I have seen no evidence of this. Yes they lost the election but not because they ignored ordinary people. They were fighting for the poorest and weakest. They lost for many reasons that isn't one of them.

Arguably they lost because they believed that working class people were more altruistic and would put social concerns above a political issue. They were massively wrong about that,

trisher how on earth can you claim ‘people who voted for brexit were in the most part already conservative voters, this is so not true, voters in strong labour seats for decades were already conservative voters ?