I assume your not posting from a phone!
I’ll try and address best I can, but keep in mind I am making comparisons and hypothetical suggestions based on what I have read (I was only born in 82) so happy to be corrected.
1. I get your point but the large unions could just as easily force Corbyn out as they could disaffiliate, especially if they see no signs of a Labour government. Unite might get the headlines but they are not the only affiliated union, nor are they even the largest. And assuming Brexit does happen as we are not pretty much at the 11th hour, I fail to see the relevance of a Remain supporting TUC as we’ll be out.
2. Agree
3. Yes the new party would have a huge issue to get behind and we have seen how it’s helped UKIP and the SNP recently. But the Lib Dem’s are pretty much a single issue party now when it comes to Remain - but the results so far are modest. And again assuming we do Leave, the election after next (potentially 8 years after Brexit if we leave this March) I don’t think Remain will be the big issue to get behind.
4. Agree with most of that but I think that supports my argument that there is a post Corbyn future for the party because he’s not that good.
5. Not sure what you mean, a new party could be just as equally spread thin. Probably depends on who defects, where they represent and how popular they are.
6. Agree with Labours prospects being poor in Scotland but the SNP is a lot more popular even now then it was in the 80’s. And I suspect Leaving will encourage calls for independence and help the SNP rather then then a pro-EU and I presume pro-union stance of the new pay (which again is just the Lib Dem’s).
Thanks WLR. If you're on your phone that is heroic. If you aren't it's still pretty interesting.
Here's what I think in reply:
1. The unions have no power to change the leadership. Once they were the kingmakers in the Labour Party, but now that power resides in the individual membership. Ed Miliband's disastrous legacy. In the days when the unions controlled the Labour Party they were less likely to desert it. Also, McCluskey may have a big say in forming Labour Party policy, but the General Council no longer does. The party-union bond has loosened considerably and therefore it's less intimidating than it once would have been to set up an alternative social-democratic party to Labour.
3. The Lib Dems are not a bellwether. They carry too much baggage. People, especially young people, remember their perfidy when Clegg joined the Coalition and they haven't forgotten this. But, amongst older people, the Lib Dems are just too....I can think of a million words to describe them, none of them flattering.
4. If Corbyn goes, what's to stop the Tradas of the world electing Richard Burgon instead? This is a new party with a vast new membership (even if if it is losing some of them). Many of them are way, way to the Left and - like Trada - don't have a particular tradition of voting Labour and know anything about the labour movement and what it used to stand for. This membership has immense power when it comes to choosing a leader. It didn't choose Owen Smith. It's now trying to deselect Luciana Berger, Jess Phillips and Stella Creasy plus whatever Jews it can get its hands on. They're mad.
5. I mean that a new party could start with a regional base and a machine. That base could be London, where voters are multi-ethnic, forward looking and pro-European. But the same is true of most of the metropolitan centres and big university towns. New parties need strong regional identities out of which to grow and expand. That's what the Labour Party had in Edwardian Britain, when it began to challenge the Liberals from the West Riding, East Lancashire, East London and the coalfields. The old SDP wasn't attached to anything.
6. The SNP is certainly more popular than it was in the 1980s. But that's my point. The massive Scottish vote for Labour under Thatcherism acted as a deterrent to Labour MPs thinking of jumping ship. No longer.
Another point. The SDP failed to break the mould. But people tend to forget how close they came to doing so. In 1983 they almost surpassed Labour in the popular vote. A few extra points and they'd have done so, taking hundreds of Labour seats with them.