Well Leader Corbyn has been a prime example of a non committed member of a party who has not got a clue where it is going.
The colour light battleship grey would be a good representation of him.

Perhaps he knows, perhaps he just wants to get re-elected, but indeed, does not know how to go about it.

So that's why he's leading in the polls?

OMG it's a Labour landslide in the making.

7% is a sizeable lead.

Funny, when Labour were behind the anti-Corbyn argument was that they should be leading. Now they're leading, of course it's not by enough.

Can you tell me what size lead would indicate that Corbyn does "have a clue where Labour is going" (Scott's words). Or is this one of those non-falsifiable hypothesis thingies?

Okay.

You asked why is he leading in the polls.

I had no clue, so I thought the polling trend might give us an answer. Are Labour rising while Tories crashing?

Graph says no, graph says Tories are haemorrhaging votes to the new brexit party, Labour staying roughly static in the mid 30s.

So ... why is he leading in the polls? Because the Tories are losing support to Farage.

This is clearly evidence of Corbyn's long term vision and tactical nous.

Well yes. I've said all along, since Corbyn was elected and the whole Brexit thing began to take shape, that the main thing Labour need to do, electorally speaking, is keep out of the way and let the tories get on with destroying themselves. How is that not a valid strategy, given that it's obviously working? Remember that the other choices of leader were all various shades of Blairite/Neoliberal continuity, and as such would have had huge difficulty differentiating themselves and the party from the politics of austerity that are now losing so much credibility.

Obviously I'd like to see Labour's popularity increase, of course I would. I'm at a loss how they might achieve that at the moment though given that they are squeezed by both Leavers who expect them to deliver on Brexit and Remainers who expect them to stop it, and any increase of appeal to one is going to involved a concomitant decrease to the other. But in FPTP politics, the key thing above all else is unity. Contrary to the generally accepted definition of democracy, our governments have always been voted in by minorities. It's the party that can hold together the largest unified (in terms of who they vote for) minority that wins. That's why the Tories have traditionally been so successful, because they've hold together the centre-liberal-right and most of the stupid-racist-right, with those drifting off the right end not being numerous or organised enough to stop them, while Labour lurch from one crisis to another in trying and largely failing to hold together the socialist left and the centre-liberal-left. Right now that pattern is reversing as we can see from the local election results. To be sure, Corbyn's grip on centre-left unity is tenuous, and there's no shortage of attempts like the antisemitism "crisis" to destroy it. But that's nothing compared to the Tories who are in complete meltdown.

Labour's position may not look impressive, but I can think of plenty of ways it could have ended up much worse, including listening to hard Remainers with their naive conviction that simply ignoring a referendum result and telling the winners they were wrong would be so great for their popularity. You and Scott may see Corbyn doing nothing and being ineffectual; what I see is him dodging bullets left right and centre.

First: I suspect Scot and I would take away something completely different no matter what we were witnessing.

Second: I suspect, but have no evidence to support it, that Labour's attempt to play both sides of the brexit game will lead to losing both. Because principle is important.

Maybe, I suppose we'll see.

This is one possible scenario:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... _zS7vHnWRU

Labour backbenchers make striking a deal impossible, without the leadership having to actually say "we're not going to strike a deal because we want to stop Brexit".

Both Tories and Labour are so fragmented now on Brexit, and the negotiations between different factions of both so complex and ever-changing, that I think a lot of the public have gotten used to not thinking of it in simple terms of each party backing one particular line. From comments by canvassers in the local election campaign, a lot of Leave voters particularly just see the whole of Westminster as a fairly corrupt and incompetent shitshow where nobody can quite understand who is backing what, but they know the end result is that they're not giving them the Brexit they voted for.

Obviously that's going to hit both main parties, as your graph and the election results show. If it can lead to some kind of impasse that can only be resolved via a public vote, without that being perceived as coming specifically from the actions of the Labour party, that to me will be a pretty good result.

Beatsong wrote:From comments by canvassers in the local election campaign, a lot of Leave voters particularly just see the whole of Westminster as a fairly corrupt and incompetent shitshow where nobody can quite understand who is backing what, but they know the end result is that they're not giving them the Brexit they voted for.

Well, leavers may well view Westminster as a corrupt and incompetent shitshow, but I suspect that pales in significance to remainers who see at Westminster both major parties determined to eat the Brexit shit sandwich, and arguing over the flavour. Given that the largest party of principled opposition to Brexit (outside Scotland) is the LibDems, I'd suggest that the appropriate remainer's reaction to the entire situation is despair.

So when you say "principled opposition", do you mean acknowledgment that Brexit is absolutely wrong, the resolve to prevent it from happening, and a refusal to be weakened in that resolve by the fact of the referendum result?

Pretty much.

I know all the arguments about how Labour is constrained by aspirations to government the way minor parties aren't, and needing to factor in the prospect of a general election putting them in government, and inheriting the task of implementing Brexit. That doesn't excuse them from criticism for putting forward a unicorn policy of remaining in the single market while ending freedom of movement, though.

Labour's issue, as seen from this admittedly great distance, is one of trust. They campaigned for Remain under a instinctively Leave-supporting leader who looked all the world as if he did so with a gun to his head, who seemed relieved to be able to campaign for Brexit, albeit a different flavour of unicorn shit to the Tories, in 2017. It's not clear to either leavers or remainers what they stand for, other than keeping the voters locked out of any further say on the matter. As someone inclined towards Labour politically, I'd be hard pressed to vote for them were I in the UK.

I don't really have any solutions to offer, either for Labour or the UK; too many eggs have been broken running back to Cameron's decision to promise a referendum in the Tory manifesto to ward off voter leakage to UKIP. The problem for both the Tories and Labour is that FPTP voting makes a Leave/Remain split into two smaller parties electoral suicide. In a preferential or proportional system, such splits would allow the reshaping of the political landscape to be more democratically driven.

OlivierK wrote:

Beatsong wrote:From comments by canvassers in the local election campaign, a lot of Leave voters particularly just see the whole of Westminster as a fairly corrupt and incompetent shitshow where nobody can quite understand who is backing what, but they know the end result is that they're not giving them the Brexit they voted for.

Well, leavers may well view Westminster as a corrupt and incompetent shitshow, but I suspect that pales in significance to remainers who see at Westminster both major parties determined to eat the Brexit shit sandwich, and arguing over the flavour. Given that the largest party of principled opposition to Brexit (outside Scotland) is the LibDems, I'd suggest that the appropriate remainer's reaction to the entire situation is despair.

That was my thought as well.

OlivierK wrote: In a preferential or proportional system, such splits would allow the reshaping of the political landscape to be more democratically driven.

Is the 2011 referendum that rejected alternative vote (68% to 32% another public vote you would see reversed to make the UK "political landscape to be more democratically driven"? Maybe we should scrap votes altogether and let MPs follow their principles.

Obviously democracies sometimes deliver unpalatable outcomes.

That's what a democracy is supposed to do but a two party FPTP system does not. In that referendum the alternatives were very restrictive and never debated fully (very much like every referendum in the UK). Once again it was a binary vote which is all the British system ever allows.

Beatsong wrote:So when you say "principled opposition", do you mean acknowledgment that Brexit is absolutely wrong, the resolve to prevent it from happening, and a refusal to be weakened in that resolve by the fact of the referendum result?

OlivierK wrote:Pretty much.

OK, then if that's the case: Why are ronmcd, Chukka Umunna etc. and my hard-Remainer friends pushing Labour for a second referendum? Why aren't they just insisting that Labour come out with a policy of cancelling Brexit outright, should they get elected?

You either acknowledge the validity of the referendum process, or you don't. If you do, then we've had the referendum and the answer's been given. If you don't, then why pretend that you do by running a second referendum on the pretence that you believe in giving the people a choice - and then presumably a third and a fourth one and so on until you get the answer you're looking for?

Beatsong wrote:

Beatsong wrote:So when you say "principled opposition", do you mean acknowledgment that Brexit is absolutely wrong, the resolve to prevent it from happening, and a refusal to be weakened in that resolve by the fact of the referendum result?

OlivierK wrote:Pretty much.

OK, then if that's the case: Why are ronmcd, Chukka Umunna etc. and my hard-Remainer friends pushing Labour for a second referendum? Why aren't they just insisting that Labour come out with a policy of cancelling Brexit outright, should they get elected?

It's a good point, and that is what the Lib Dems have now done

Vote for the Lib Dems to stop Brexit

If that is such a compelling policy why aren't all those millions of remainers flocking to them for their principled stand?

Beatsong wrote:The longer this drags on before such a referendum happens (if it happens at all), the better. I know people find it painful, but public opinion is very slowly moving towards Remain. A lot of polls now point to an extremely narrow Remain victory. I think that would be a disaster and worse than no referendum at all, for reasons I've described before. But if it can get towards a Remain majority of 55% or 60%, it becomes easier to justify both holding the referendum and observing its result above the last one.

Polls have pointed to a narrow Remain victory for years, including prior to the last referendum.

GrahamH wrote:

OlivierK wrote: In a preferential or proportional system, such splits would allow the reshaping of the political landscape to be more democratically driven.

Is the 2011 referendum that rejected alternative vote (68% to 32% another public vote you would see reversed to make the UK "political landscape to be more democratically driven"? Maybe we should scrap votes altogether and let MPs follow their principles.

Obviously democracies sometimes deliver unpalatable outcomes.

I don't want any democratic decision overturned, even Brexit (unless there's a democratic mandate to do so).

The fact that the UK has to live with its unpalatable outcomes when it voted to reject better voting methods and EU membership is on the UK. No reason not to point out that the UK has fucked up, though, and would be in better shape if it those votes had gone the other way.