Tony Blair says labour must emphatically reject woke
Grouville St. Mary 26 Nov 21 05:17
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Yes, listen to Jelly. Just ignore it, it’s all made up. Just carry on as before because you’re so decent. The electorate clearly think you’re brilliant.

He’s obviously right. His enemies will try to portray him as a dinosaur, and to claim everything has changed since his day, but in actual fact it hasn’t, not that much. The quantum of change is almost always overw**ked by talking heads who are financially incentivised to postulate great change. His basic message as to how to win elections from the centre left is as correct as it ever was.

also, and this is further bad news for the Tonyh8rs, if he were leading labour at the next GE they’d absolutely smash it

Britain still loves Blair, even if chattering politics tedes on twitter don’t.

Man who’s really good at winning elections explains how to win election.
 

Various Labour tribes explain they’re really gifted at winning elections and the four lost elections in a decade are proof of that because sometimes they lost by less. Call ejection winning man a war criminal because they believe in a kinder, gentler politics. 
 

Labour lose next election after Tozzas bin Boris and put in someone new who definitely is completely different to 3 previous Toz prime ministers.

Electorate blamed for yet again not appreciating how brilliant Labour’s campaign was. RBL installled as new leader. Toz make plans for third decade in power. 

The quantum of change is almost always overw**ked by talking heads who are financially incentivised to postulate great change.

 

this is heh.

 

Also, Laz "his basic message as to how to win elections from the left" is to move it to the right. Just saying.

yes I know. I was meaning move it rightwards to the centre away from the stupidity of Foot/Corbyn. 

 

I often wonder how Smith would have been had he not died and whether he would have carried the party through three elections and that powerful period, and thus how the UK would have fared between the mid 90s and the financial crisis, or whether he would have been sound but lacked leadership impact and thus the reformed labour project would not have had the legs. Alternatively perhaps he would have been better - less presidential and egotistical than Blair - and could have done even more, with less sucking up to the US, no Iraq, no crazy jazz hands.

With hindsight Blair was a fantastic prime minister. Admittedly between the vantage point and the end of the Blair era we have only unmitigated fookerists, but let's allow events to flatter him. 

Love to have a technology revolution that represents a future-oriented policy agenda based on an understanding of how the world is changing. That's definitely a real policy platform that means something. 

Blair and his ilk are never coming back until they can figure out something they actually want to do an express it.

The process of auditioning for the next charismatic centrist cipher has been going on for a decade and a half now and fallen flat on its face every time. 

Pancakes - Surely the flaw there is the staggering lack of charisma on offer? It boggles my mind, as a fully paid up member, that they Labour party cannot find someone with a bit of charisma and electorally acceptable principles, other than maybe Dan Jarvis and he isn’t interested. 
 

Although thinking about it our local CLP meetings probably give a pretty fooking good indication. 

is “wokism” something to do with ewoks? 
 

and double heh at the leftys telling themselves that the “wokeism” problem is all made up by the big nasty tories and just doesn’t exist. 

It mostly is though, you only have to read threads like this to see why. 

People happily admit that they believe the Tories to be corrupt, incompetent, high tax and completely awful in government but that they can't vote for Labour because they are Too Woke. They're desperate to buy newspapers to read about the latest Woke Outrage. It turns people's brains into absolute mush.

When the electorate is happily admitting to you they care about this one thing to the exclusion of literally every other issue that exists, of course its in the interests of your party to amplify it and never, ever shut up about it. 

It's a good peice by Blair 

Blair Institute Link

Labour now has an opportunity to become again the party of government. And its enemy is caution. It can move to a winning position, but it means complete clarity of purpose and direction.

  1. The leadership should continue to push the far left back to the margins. The country must know there is no question of negotiating the terms of power with them.
  2. The party needs a new future-oriented policy agenda based on an understanding of how the world is changing which rejects both the old-fashioned statist view of the left and the status quo politics of the right. I have suggested before that the technology revolution should be at the heart of it.
  3. We should openly embrace liberal, tolerant but common-sense positions on the “culture” issues, and emphatically reject the “wokeism” of a small though vocal minority.
  4. And we should go out and seek the best and brightest from the younger generation to come and stand as Labour candidates. And make a virtue of doing so.

Labour could do it again. Its leadership today is capable of governing and confidence is returning. The corner is turned. But the road ahead is long, and the vehicle requires an engine that can accelerate at speed. We just require the determination to do it.

Just need to workshop that future-oriented policy agenda in case anyone asks any awkward questions like "what the fook does that mean?"

So far it seems to mean Starmer going on TV and claiming he's never actually met Jeremy Croblyn and that Labour would never dream of nationalising anything, while over his shoulder the Tories take half the country's energy and transport infrastructure into public ownership.

At some point there needs to be an answer to what this third way is that goes beyond wishing really, really hard that it could be 1997 again. 

So yes, you agree with me. When you're telling the Tories that your arbitrary "too woke" redline is literally the only determining factor in how you vote and all other considerations of economic competence, corruption and malice are irrelevant they will listen. 

You will be fed endless culture war because that's what you're demanding. 

The starting point for any centrist movement in opposition is always assuring the public that whatever privilege they may enjoy (or perceive they enjoy and however small that might be) will not be eroded by the decisions of the new government. 

Then for those who are dissatisfied with their privilege it's giving them a pathway to a 'better' life. Framing that kind of thing as 'fairness' is politically toxic so it needs to be framed as aspiration or opportunity but ultimately people need to believe that with your government in power and with their hard work their life and the lives of their children will improve.

The party that Blair imagines Labour to be to get to power, is functionally barely any different to the nominally Tory government of Bojo. All they would be arguing about is who is more administratively competent and proper to implemnent their programmes. No real ideological difference to speak of

 

Sticking with "woke" is a key way for Labour to distance itself in the eyes of younger voters from the stagnancy and corruption of the Conservatives. Same now as it was in the 80's & 90's after years of Heil pleasing intolerance (e.g. section 28) came back and bit the tories in the arse when a new generation of voters turned off by years of tory bigotry & intolerance came through. Something the tories only managed to temporarily detoxify themselves of with Cameron. So of course RoFs far right would love for Labour to ditch policies being spun as "woke" because they hightlight how toxic the tory party still is & having spent years trying to shed that image they know the damage it will do if it comes back.

Meanwhile if Labour become the same as the tories on social issues & don't reflect the changing attitudes of the young then what's the point of them? Instead of being pushed to Labour by revulsion at the tories as happended in the past new voters will look elsewhere.  Blair worshippers shouldn't forget that it was Blair's party that lost Scotland for Labour because although New Labour might have played well to their aspirational South Eastern middle class, to Scots his party was indistinguishable from the tories.

Blair and Brown were destroyed by US politics

Blair by Rumsfeld and Cheney's mad dash into Iraq. Blair quite right to support them for the sake of US/ GB relationship, but it destroyed him

Brown by US bankers fraud, taking $15 trillion out of the world economy

I'd have them both back in a heartbeat

Gladstone was 75 when he started his second administration

what occam said pretty much. you’re missing the point pancakes - if labour can’t disown magical thinking then most voters will consider them unfit for government regardless of the soundness or not of their proposed policies. and yes of course the tories make hay with it fgs - when presented with an open goal created by your opponents….!

However, there are some issues which would disqualify a party for me as being worthy of my vote.  Not being prepared to say that only women have a cervix disqualifies Labour now. 

this is highly disingenuous from occam tbf

that is not the issue he is disqualifying labour for

eg what if keir starmer stood up tomorrow and said “i believe only women have a cervix, but our labour government will fight to ensure trans women continue to have the same rights they currently do - including to live publicly as a woman (as required for two years for them to obtain a grc). a labour government will never restrict the rights of trans people to live and access services in this country”

on the culture wars thing - it’s telling that the mail, the times, the telegraph etc. all pulled out the one brief mention of “wokism” in blair’s foreword for the headlines and basically ignored everything else he said about labour

Blair's the only one I voted for who I actually wanted to win.  As opposed to being least worst option.  He and John Major could lead the country now.  Which sounds fcking mad just typing it.

Only time I felt a bit sorry for dreadful Brown was when he went to the US to kiss Obama's bum and gave him a desk tidy made of slave--ship wood or something like that. 

In return Barry gave him a carrier bag of DVDs which didn't even work back in the UK. 

Love how risky has defined this debate around rejection of wokeism which is a bear trap and more likely to engulf any chance of a Labour narrative in controversy. Blair makes other points the main one being clarity about what Labour stands for now. Surely better for Labour to make the case for what it's for rather than being sidetracked by what it's not. 

Keir starmer is for ‘women’ being able to self define, no?

depends what you mean risky

he is in favour of amending the gra so that trans people don’t have to live as a woman for two years and have two separate medical reports before being able to apply for a grc

he supports the provisions in the equality act which allows some exceptions for single sex services to be provided 

he is not in favour of a man deciding he’s a woman on a tuesday that he’s a woman the next day because nobody is

no because sex and gender aren’t the same thing

this is the same argument i’ve had countless times 

do you want to have it again on a friday night?

bit sad risky m8