[The Slim Reaper]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Within the party (as in the party membership) there is still a massive Corbyn support base... I personally know people who are committed Corbynists and are heavily active within the party (people who were at events rubbing shoulders with Corbyn himself 2 years ago). "The Party" in this sense is not the active career politicians of the party who I agree have been actively purged. But then, again, with that I would say there's a difference between the SMALL proportion of politically engaged people knowing this element has been purged, and the bulk of the general voting public knowing this. I would guess from some pretty anecdotal evidence that the bulk of voters are not aware of how quickly this has happened, and they will associate Labour with Corbynesque policies and actions for a good few years.

Of course there would be support for Corbyn within what should be a left wing party, but a look at the membership numbers shows they are falling through the floor. Labour are putting themselves in a political no mans land by not standing for anything. Starmer has dropped his election pledges, not Corbyn or the left. Again, Corbyn's policies were always more popular than the party when the gbp is polled. It's way too simplistic to even attempt to put this on "well the voters didn't know that Corbyn wasn't there" when we've seen Starmers poll numbers, and the constant freefall. The same voters that had him as popular when he took over, can't now, with a straight face or a modicum of honesty try and say that his popularity has fallen because of Corbyn.

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

I agree to an extent but you could argue that they haven't "waited for him to leave" - the party never did well under Corbyn, and the fact that they're doing even worse now can surely be attributed to them losing many of his supporters whilst failing to gain back many of his skeptics. This is why a flip-flopping party is always going to be in decline... every time they flip they lose some support, and then when they flop, it doesn't all come back.

The party hasn't done well for decades, apart from a brief spell in the 90's - 00's so there has again been a consistent downward trend. Again, it's just not true to put that on Corbyn, especially when he did well in 17, and that's when we saw the media and his own party turn completely crazy with the lies. I've never seen any politician offer hope to young people in the same way Corby did/does, because his message resonates. People are free to like or dislike Corbyn, I think he had faults as a politician, but I'm not really interested in listening to the constant lies about him or his character.

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Absolutely there is a concerning slide to the right and of course Tories are going to be scrabbling to take advantage; sadly, they do it rather well and people are successfully being hoodwinked into believing that the Tories aren't just "unconcerned for the poor" - but that they have concern for anyone other than the actually-wealthy.

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

I think though there's a very real and very problematic shying-away when it comes to examining and acknowledging WHY this surge in sympathies for the right is happening, WHY there's been a foothold for the Tories to exploit in the first place. Why is their tune reaching so many ears? What fears are they exploiting to gain that support (and it is, always, down to fear). Identity politics, "right-think", moral absolutism and tribalism and some of the worst and most aggressive aspects of left-leaning political rhetoric play into this in HUGE ways and it's going to be unstoppable for as long as people dogmatically refuse to acknowledge it. Are there bigots attached to it? Of course, yes, but there are also huge numbers of people who think of themselves more as individualists/libertarians who are prepared to "join the battle against it" and (very very sadly) many who don't fall into that category but are worried enough by the push towards anti-intellectualism to abandon Labour, who have (in the past) been keen to support it, out of ... "wokeness". Disingenuous support for something they mistakenly believe is wildly popular. These people will never vote Tory but they're being siphoned off. To the SNP up here. To the Greens and even it seems back to the Lib Dems down south. Which will always leave the Tories with disproportionate power because of FPTP voting.

Lets cut to the chase. You mentioned this in the other thread about moral absolutes, but until you expand on what areas you think these exist, then I'll never really know the definitions and parameters of the discussion, so would ask that you're specific in what areas these exist.

In my opinion, this lurch to the right isn't complicated. We've seen it in pretty much every place in the world at different times on both the left and right. A government creates a crisis at home that attacks the needs of it's population (austerity), attacking mostly the lives of the working and middle classes, but it has this ready made solution and group to blame (Immigrants, the EU), and they know how to fix it with multiple silver bullets - leave the eu to fund our NHS, end wokeness (whatever that fcuking word is supposed to mean), all the time dividing and conquering as they go along. It's not a new thing.

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Of course it's over-simplified and weaponised but it's not the first term that has been or will be and if that makes terms off-limits we'll just be in a constant battle to find new words to sum up the same things. The problem comes when people want to scoff, be dismissive, say "Pfft u are just a woke!" as a shut-down tactic. I don't think that should stop a term being examined to see if it is in any way "a real thing", or preclude discussion of whther or not it might be a bad thing. To try to ignore that anti-intellectualism, populism, moral absolutism and group-think are huge problems on the left is ultimately not going to help anyone. Are there comparable issues on the right? Yes of course there are ... but that's not really the point. You don't ignore your own house's problems because the neighbours have similar issues.

Again, I need to see your working outs, because although I don't necessarily disagree, at the moment there aren't any specifics.