Michael Foot interview | Labour Party | Party Conference | TV Eye | 1981 | Part 2 

The more I watch news coverage and documentaries about the period, the more struck I am by similarities (certainly in terms of tactics) between Benn and people like David Owen, even though I tend to agree with Benn's politics much more.

​@@insertclevername4123the thing about Tony Benn is that he was pulling a direction totally different to the way the country wanted to go. As Denis Healey said of Benn "If he had been right, Thatcher would never have got elected in the first place". Interestingly, Tony Benn's legacy is perhaps most visible now in the Tory party. His arguments about Brexit were repeated verbatim by the Tory Brexiteers. Benn's changes in "internal party democracy" to make the unrepresentative and non democratically accountable party members decide who the leader is have also been adopted by the Tories - resulting in Truss and Johnson.

@@th8257 [ETA: After hitting post I realized just how long and rambling this is, so if you want to bail now, no-one--myself included--would blame you.] I think I largely agree with you. For me--especially after listening to clips from Benn's diaries on YT and seeing his interviews--it's weird to me that he either didn't recognize or didn't care how much the Overton window had shifted to the right under Thatcher (or Reagan for those of us in the US), or even how much it had started under Callaghan. And even if he did recognize it, he seems to have thought that the solution wasn't to learn the lessons of what had gone wrong and what the people who were winning general elections were doing so as to gradually shift things back in his direction, but rather to replace it all if people would just listen to his speeches (I think it was Kinnock who said that even if he never admitted it to himself, Benn felt like he had a birthright to be a leader). As for internal democracy, I don't think you could put the genie back in the bottle, but maybe there are ways to tweak it so as to avoid the outcomes of people who are or should be unelectable winning the leadership...maybe a modified electoral college--not like Labour had in the 80s, but something simpler, like the parliamentary party and the party membership both being counted, with the parliamentary vote being weighted so heavily that the party membership could only sway a close election rather than handing it to someone who managed to lose by less than all of the other also-rans.

What utter nonsense.

Until 2019

Well Blair caused the biggest homicide note in labours history

He actually changed his mind in later years

@th8257 did he really this is not widely known

It’s his dad .

00:42 you think Corbyn ever had those approval ratings? Bloody SDP split and Falklands war turned things around for thatcher

Callaghan was throughly disgusted with what had gone on at Party conference and wanted out

@@briandelaney9710 I didn't know that. Care to expand?

@@wilsonfisk6626he was not in agreement to the changes in party governance (Electoral college , deselection of MPs ) and disgusted with the infighting in the party especially from the Bennite left and was saddened by the SDP split