Stroppyblog
Sounds to me as if they intend to concentrate on "duffing people up in the streets" (
© Billy Bragg) rather than all that getting-people-to-vote-for-you nonsense.
More seriously, how can you have a post title like that without a link to Connie Francis on youtube ?
so it's not just the Labour leadership refusing to face up to the consequences of the votes then...
looks that way
Good post janine.
X
Very good post Janine.
On the brand recognition point this has been weirld out at almost every election now for seven years - as you say if they'd been able to maintain a stable coalition for more than four minutes at a time they might not have that problem but they love to play games with those they are working with.
At the end of the day almost all the political leadership of the SWP has been around since the seventies if workers don't recognise their vanguard by now there really is no hope for them!
Whilst I'd agree with most (but not all) of the points in the article Janine doesn't offer an attempt at explaining why the Left List - which she and I both supported - did so badly.
She didn't offer one and I'm not going to offer one either because I just don't know.
Much of the criticism of the Left List may be valid but would mean nothing to the average voter.
A fictional Jane Public feels left of Labour but doesn't 'know much about politics' as she would tell anyone who asks and there are no trade unions where she works.
She didn't see any of the limited mentions of Lindsey German in the media before the election but, unlike the majority, read the election booklet. She didn't agree completely with anyone but it was clear to her that German was the most left wing candidate.
I reckoned there might have been (tens of thousands?) of people like her, in fact a lot more people like her than have ever read a leftwing blog or been to a trade union meeting.
Despite the weakness of Left List, I thought there is a space left of Labour and there is only person there - a reasonable vote may happen.
Left List didn't just do badly - it did worse than you think.
There are bound to be some people who vote for a candidate by mistake - left my glasses at home, I thought the English Democrats were the Liberal Democrats etc - not many, but a few. 1 in 100, 1 in 200?
The percentage mistake vote would probably spread evenly amongst candidates, let's says it's 1 in 200 = 0.5% So German's first preference vote may be not 0.68% but 0.18% (with a few dozen? LL intended voting Tory etc by mistake). So maybe not 16,000 votes but 6,000 true votes!
I've no explanation but I think the choices are clear.
London has the rich but it also has a higher than average percentage of Lefts, a lot higher.
So I think either a benevolent Southpawpunch socialist dictatorship (no-one may agree with me but people will prefer working 20 hours a week or using free transport, I promise you) or a realisation we were all born 100? 1000? years to early - maybe there is a cryogenic solution?
Actually on thinking about it the percentage mistake vote can't be a s high as 0.5%, the bottom candidate only got 0.2%. But there will be %ge mistake vote, I just don't know how big.
OK, reasons the Left List did so badly.
1. An insipid political programme.
2. Barely using the words 'working class' or 'socialist'.
3. The SWP having pissed off most of the socialists and other labour movement activists it has worked with, ever.
4. Refusing help from people who offer is not a hugely productive strategy either.
5. A brand new, barely-recognised electoral label, the result of consistent inability to work with other socialists and opportunist dashes after the newest show in town.
6. You can not expect the working class to back you when you have spent the last few years appealing to only one section of it.
7. All that romance-then-splitting-up with Galloway, clerics and small business types was just a bit embarrassing, wasn't it?
8. Rats don't usually board a sinking ship.
9. No backing from the unions, due to the factors listed above.
10. Lack of consistent political work in working-class communities.
That's just the top ten - I'm sure there are more.
I don't think 1 and 2 and 9 were factors in their appaling results. You might want them to do that, but in terms of costing votes, I really think that's unlikely.
However 3, 4, 5, 8 and 10 are definate factors. An inability to form stable alliances and refusal to work with others who are not part of the golden circle has been absolutely disasterous for them. They talk about the new electoral label as if that was nothing to do with their behaviour.
Just recieved their election analysis email and all it contains is how badly everyone else did... um... come on.
I've yet to see a convincing list of why Left List (and the British Left generally ) are so absolutely marginal. I don't have one but the above isn't one either.
1. I'm unconvinced (sadly) that a full transitional (or even revolutionary) programme would have much traction above the reformist stuff of LL. But as it probably won't make any difference why not argue what we really want.
2. Probably a plus. Alf Garnett language is prehistoric to most (again, sadly).
3. Hmm. We have been there before, o groups like Militant were ultra sectarian to other Lefts but also were (relatively) successful. But the SWP, ('Isn't that a PC cable or something' might ask my Jane Public) AWL, CPGB etc means nothing to the very vast majority of voters - again sadly.
4. True, but what good would an extra 100 people have made? LL workers did a bit of work, far more than the Christian party, for example - who were a long way ahead in the vote.
5. Yes but also LL is a pretty self descriptive name. The Socialist Party stood under the even better (and self descriptive) label of Socialist Alternative in the most 'Left' seat - Greenwich and Lewisham which got the highest Lab vote in the mayoral election and is somewhere where they have cllrs - and they did as badly as LL.
6. The SWP's orientation to Muslims (although more to mullahs) will be completely unknown to nearly all potential voters. 'What's an SWP?' Galloway's history will be a bit better known.
7. Yes, but only to SWP members = 2000 voters (at most) in London.
8. It wasn't clear LL would sink.
9. Agreed to an extent but that also doesn't stop the BNP.
10. Agreed.
When someone does work out why we do so badly and how to cure that, that person a.k.a. the Red Messiah, will have my application to join his/her party straightaway.
I'm too outside to make any contribution, but I agree with the direction of the post.
Who are you, and what have you done with the real Southpawpunch? What on earth is this about 'socialism' and 'working class' being 'Alf Garnett language'?!
Oh, and on point 6, it doesn't actually matter whether voters know that a party has been paying attention to someone else. It matters that they have never heard of them *because* they have been paying attention to someone else.
And Jim - How can lack of trade union support not be a factor?! Clearly, if a genuine 'left list' had trade union support, the resources, credibility and endorsement that came with that would certainly bring in votes.
2 and 10 is a difficult one, because the IWCA lost two seats in Oxford this council election. (Although I suspect they don't have the resources of the Left List, let alone pre split Respect).
Well, on 6, you say "trade union support, the resources, credibility and endorsement that came with that would certainly bring in votes."
I certainly agree that trade union support is welcome and not a bad thing in any way but there are a number of points about its effect on the vote.
Resources? Well, to be honest, unless we're talknig about huge resources and national backing then it's not significant. A local branch giving over a couple of hundred quid, or even a thousand is a great thing but would have made little difference to the LL's vote itself - in my view.
It's aslo unlike that any other sort of resources would have been forthcoming with the current state of the unions.
And of course it was not going to happen that even one branch gave their support over.
Credibility. It may have raised the morale of some activists but gaining the support of say three branches of different unions in an area is not going to turn out lots of votes.
The only circumstances where TU support would be significant would be if we're talking about whole hearted and formal backing from a significant layer of TUs - this isn't going to happen before a party has proven itself stable, serious and democratic (and maybe not even then) so it was never going to be an option for this election.
Sorry for the length of this btw
In purely electoral terms, I can't help but think that the future of any 'Left of Labour' project is now in the hands of Gordon Brown (and the Liberal Democrats.)
As it currently stands, Brown has a couple of years in office to ensure that the Labour Party at the next General Election doesn't experience an electoral haemorrhaging that would make 1931 look like a tea party by comparison.
I can't see the Labour Party securing a majority for a fourth election in a row, so its best bet is to recover sufficiently electorally to be in a position to enter into coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 2010.
Such a possible scenario would be the best chance the Lib Dems will ever get of securing change in the electoral system in Britain, and would result in some form of proportional representation being introduced for future general elections (arguably, the tide's going that way anyway for a few years now.)
Such a development would offer up the opportunity of the left to do what the SML and others did a few years back in Scotland - and which worked successfully for a couple of years - launch a broad based political party with respect to platforms and differences of opinion under the roof of one political party.
The question of whether or not such a political project would learn from the mistakes of the SSP would be the subject of another future thread.
Never mind Connie Francis, Laban: the classic version was by Billy Banks and His Rhythmakers (1932).
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