[Politics] Next leader of the Labour party

[Chicken Run]

Absolutely - yes - with the hope that he had learned that there is no point in trying to compromise with the Blairites to keep them onside.

Brilliant [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]


If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

Henry Ford

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

Do you have a sense of humour Wolfie? You remind me of Ben's Grandad with your long winded replies. Views such as yours have been put forward all my life, but will never take hold. Selling revolution in Iran, Iraq, Hong Kong etc as the desired outcome to your dreams is precisely why. Apart from red zealots like you, nobody else actually wants your revolution. Even the rest of the North Stand Chat Popular Front has gone underground again.

politics is a serious business

as for revolutions - I do not want a revolution - it would be a f*cking pain in the ass for me at my age. But I have been around the block long enough to know that, whether you like it or not, whether you want it or not, revolutionary upheavals are part and parcel of capitalist society. We do not know if they will be positive or negative, whether they are good or bad, whether they will succeed or not - but it is an absolute guarantee that they will happen. The task of a socialist is to attempt to assist in giving revolutionary upheavals organisation, discipline and direction in the hope that they will develop in a positive and successful fashion (and hopefully at some point in time if socialists have enough influence that they will evolve in a socialist direction).

 

[Bold Seagull]

1. Brexit isn't done. When it is done, why would they go back to Corbyn/momentum labour? They were never with them in the first place. Boris won them their Brexit...Labour (Corbyn labour) are now saying they made a mistake over Brexit. How is that going to recruit brexit supporting, Boris-voting former labour voters?

2. The whole centre ground argument, actually, is that this is the only time labour wins. And Brexit, Corbyn, McDonnell etc is not centre ground.

3. So did Mussolini have some popular policies. I'm certainly in favour of the trains running on time. However....

4. So you think your presumed perception that staying where they are (on the 'far' left - let's not debate that bit) isn't 'playing an assumption'? Your figures are not in context. Next you'll be telling us that labour actually won the last election (like one of their spokesmen said, 'inadvertently' on the radio after the election before).

Here is the mindset:

Our policies are brilliant.
We nearly won.
We must have failed to explain our policies properly.
Let's go again with more of the same - bound to win this time!

Einstein's definition of stupidity: doing the same thing again and expecting a different outcome.....<sigh>

Nope what I’m saying is that it’s not as simple as saying Blair won so Labour will win if the adopt the centre ground. They may need to be less left but doesn’t mean they’re suddenly centre. You would accept that there is a fair amount of political ground between where Corbyn was and say the Lib Dems. My first post to you was to wait and see what the candidates have to say. Not just pigeon hole them as either far left or centre.

What is going to be key over policy in many ways is the leadership material of the candidate. You could argue Blair would have still been elected in 01 and 05 even with a more left policy programme because he was seen as a leader. Corbyn wasn’t and wasn’t trusted either.

I will have a vote in this leadership contest and it’s got a lot to do with who do I see as the public as a whole buying into being led by that person. The candidates could occupy from current manifesto back to ‘97, but it’s going to mean diddly squat if there is no trust, charisma or leadership credentials.

 

[mune ni kamome]

It’s really very simple. The working class people of this country are still far to the right of the current Labour Party. To win power they’ve got to move towards the hated Blairites

 

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

Absolutely - yes - with the hope that he had learned that there is no point in trying to compromise with the Blairites to keep them onside.

Another one who prefers being a protest party to being in power.

 

[Chicken Run]

politics is a serious business

The task of a socialist is to attempt to assist in giving revolutionary upheavals organisation, discipline and direction in the hope that they will develop in a positive and successful fashion (and hopefully at some point in time if socialists have enough influence that they will evolve in a socialist direction).

I think the Church of Scientology and Jehovah’s Witness’s have a similar business plan, most people think they are loons too [emoji23]

Not me though, I think they are a dangerous cults that should be shut down....

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

No expert me, but I seem to detect a degree of socialism in Clive Lewis and RLB.
Maybe it just isn't enough to register on JRG's Richter scale of proper socialism, though!

RLB is the best of a bad lot - a technocrat that is about as left-wing as Michael Foot (and probably less of a political brain). Lewis contributed significantly to LP defeat because of his out-and-out Remain position - if he became leader he would gallop to the right to gain 'the middle ground'.

This is not so much about who will end up as leader - but whether the membership, which was predominantly pro-Corbyn, can keep the momentum (the noun not the organisation) going and maintain the left outlook of the membership. If this happens then the LP will be pulled to the left no matter who the leader is - and there are going to be many battles against Johnson and the Tories to save the NHS (and oppose mandatory health insurance) - to protect workers rights - to fight cuts to public services - and to fight the continued privatisation of education - etc. If this doesn't happen and the Blairites re-consolidate control then the membership of the LP will collapse and working class people will face the task of building a new political party to represent their interests.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Nope what I’m saying is that it’s not as simple as saying Blair won so Labour will win if the adopt the centre ground. They may need to be less left but doesn’t mean they’re suddenly centre. You would accept that there is a fair amount of political ground between where Corbyn was and say the Lib Dems. My first post to you was to wait and see what the candidates have to say. Not just pigeon hole them as either far left or centre.

What is going to be key over policy in many ways is the leadership material of the candidate. You could argue Blair would have still been elected in 01 and 05 even with a more left policy programme because he was seen as a leader. Corbyn wasn’t and wasn’t trusted either.

I will have a vote in this leadership contest and it’s got a lot to do with who do I see as the public as a whole buying into being led by that person. The candidates could occupy from current manifesto back to ‘97, but it’s going to mean diddly squat if there is no trust, charisma or leadership credentials.

As per your paragraphs:

1. To be fair, Labour don't 'need' to be anything, and of course nothing is any guarantee of anything in politics. Except that doing the same thing that failed, again, is not normally the best plan. I don't suggest labour go all liberal democrat. But unlike some on the 'left' I never regarded Blair-labour as all liberal democrat. Apart from anything else, they knew what they were doing. Campbell and Mandleson

2. Interesting point. I was always hoping that labour would move more left in the ensuing years (and parliaments) after Blair's first win. That, to me, was his second biggest failing (the worst failing being capitulating to that soppy old twerp, Gordon Brown and his ambitions). For now, well, if any of the candidates have Blair's chutzpah, charisma, and sound sense of 'what the people want', this may help them. But....my expectation is the swarm of members who joined to back Corbyn and who will vote in the next leader will go for whever sounds like they will best continue with the Corbyn 'vision'. We shall see.

3. Good man. And on that note I salute you and wish you well

 

[Guinness Boy]

'.
If this doesn't happen and the Blairites re-consolidate control then the membership of the LP will collapse and working class people will face the task of building a new political party to represent their interests.

Or just voting Labour in to government like they did from 1997 to 2010


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

The trouble comes when the lunatics take over the asylum and totally unacceptable people like Corbyn and McDonnell are seen to be within touching distance of power.On so many counts, they were unsuited to power, just as many Labour Grandees believed, let alone the electorate. Personally, I was seriously worried about the havoc they may have reaped on the British economy.

Wait until you see the havoc that Johnson and the Tories will reap on the British economy in the next couple of years

 

[jakarta]

Absolutely - yes - with the hope that he had learned that there is no point in trying to compromise with the Voters to keep them onside.

Corrected for You...

 

[pastafarian]

Rebecca has a freakishly small mouth.
Its so weirdly tiny its all i can focus on when she is on the telly.
Just saying.

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

Why was Corbyn a huge problem? You haven't explained that....

Corbyn wasn't the problem - apart from the fact that he cowed down to the Blairites instead of taking them on over the last 4 years.

Could it be.....indecisive except when it came to voting against his own party which he'd done regularly as an eccentric and little-ragarded back bencher,

He consistently voted on the basis of principle instead of political expediency - something that he should be respected for.

slow to deal with accusations of antisemitism,

Anti-semitism in the LP was a manufactured scandal - manufactured primarily by the Blairites and the media - a tiny fraction of the LP membership were accused of anti-semitism (less than 0.1% of the membership) and of that number a tiny fraction were shown to stand up to investigation (about 4% of the accusation). The mistake that Corbyn made was not facing down these accusations as politically motivated and without foundation.

At the same time Boris Johnson - who has a record of being anti-Semitic - was allowed to parade around Plymouth praising an anti-Semitic former Tory MP, with the media barely raising an eyebrow. Three Tory candidates were rightly accused of anti-Semitism - none of them were suspended and two of them now sit in the House of Commons. The Tories have a long and very deep history of anti-Semitism, of racism, of sectarianism, of homophobia, of xenophobia - all of which Boris Johnson has openly expressed - yet the entire focus of the media was on a manufactured, fictitious scandal of anti-Semitism in the LP that involved a tiny number of members and which the Blairites used to ensure that Corbyn wouldn't win the election.

unable to shake off the embarrassment of having show-boaty pointless talks with the IRA after the Brighton bombing (as if he was in any position to end the troubles - no, Blair did that),

I do not agree with Corbyn's position on the North of Ireland - but to suggest he was 'showboating' is nonsense. And Blair did not bring the Troubles to an end - it was primarily political pressure from working class people, Protestant and Catholic, on the republican and loyalist paramilitaries that ended the violence. It is shocking that people think that Tony Blair - a blatant war-monger - had any responsibility for 'peace' in the North. And we do not have 'peace' in the North - we have an absence of violence - none of the problems have been resolved and sectarianism is more deep seated in Northern society now than it was 25 years ago.

Something that people should be conscious of when it talking about the IRA - the IRA's military successes (like the Brighton bomb and the Enniskillen bombing) were their biggest political defeats - and the IRA's military set-backs (like the assassination of 3 IRA members in Gibraltar by the SAS) were their biggest political successes. The political fallout from the Brighton bombing had a major impact on the Republican leadership and was the start of their search for a political solution - I don't know the details of Corbyn's meeting with these minor republican figures and whether it has any impact - but it was the right thing to do. It should also be remembered - that throughout this period the Tory government were in secret talks with the IRA - and that the British state (and the RIC) colluded with Loyalist paramilitaries in the sectarian shooting of Catholics. A friend of mine - and innocent Catholic who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - was murdered by a Loyalist gunman on 16 July 1986 in North Belfast. The loyalist gunman shot him three times in the back of the head. That loyalist gunman was being handled by the British secret service who were providing him with information - they later shopped him to the IRA after he went rogue and the IRA shot him. Nothing in the North of Ireland is black and white.

sharing a platform with Islamist terrorism supporters,

Seriously - Corbyn was on a platform with Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas, in 2012 - Tony Blair met Mashaal in a private meeting and called the the boycott of Hamas after it won the election in 2006 'a mistake'. Corbyn has been accused for calling Hamas 'friends' (he didn't call them that in the context of supporting them) - yet Blairites and Tories alike regularly call the Saudi royal family (the people who have butchered 100,000 people in Yemen) 'friends', 'allies', 'partners' - and never a word about it.

Double standards doesn't even cover it.

approving of an antisemitic mural without actually looking at it simply because of the identity of the painter.....

Corbyn didn't 'approve' of the mural - he stated that that the mural shouldn't be removed on the grounds of free speech. The artist, LA graffiti artist, Mear One, has repeatedly stated that the mural was not anti-semitic, but anti-capitalist. Critics claimed that the six men depicted were Jewish bankers - the artist outline who the six individuals were - 2 of the six were Jewish. Like the rest of the anti-semitic claims - this is another manufactured scandal.

all the hallmarks of a wrong-un, someone who makes bad choices and doesn't anticipate or understand the impact of his words or actions.

Although I could have it all wrong....

You have it all wrong - Corbyn has been the victim of a systematic, calculated and sustained smear campaign - initiated by the Blairites, promoted by the media, assisted by the supporters of Zionism and British imperialism and designed to wreck Corbyn's chances of being elected PM. The campaign was so effective that the same forces at play in the USA are attempting to use the same smear campaign against Bernie Sanders - except they have an extra hurdle to jump - Sanders is Jewish.

 

[blue-shifted]

Wait until you see the havoc that Johnson and the Tories will reap on the British economy in the next couple of years

Well yes, them and the 17.something million people who voted to scythe a huge chunk of income into the exchequer. It won't just be Johnson's fault.

It won't really matter whether Lab, Libs or Tories are in government. There won't be any actual economic choices which can be made.

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

Brilliant [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]


If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

Henry Ford

The great Henry Ford - conscious fascist - ardent supporter of the Nazis - and the man who made a fortune supplying military hardware to both sides during WW2.

Another one who prefers being a protest party to being in power.

You got that one wrong - all in favour of being in power, the question is what policies you implement when in power.

Or just voting Labour in to government like they did from 1997 to 2010

And how did that work out for the hundreds of thousands of people killed in Afghanistan and Iraq (including 625 British servicemen).

Corrected for You...

Don't have a problem with you disagreeing with me - but you really should make a comment rather than editing mine.

Well yes, them and the 17.something million people who voted to scythe a huge chunk of income into the exchequer. It won't just be Johnson's fault.

It won't really matter whether Lab, Libs or Tories are in government. There won't be any actual economic choices which can be made.

There is always a choice about what policies to implement - the Tories and the Blairites will always implement policies in the interests of the super rich.

 

[blue-shifted]

e.

There is always a choice about what policies to implement .

We'll see if you're still saying that in a few years time

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

We'll see if you're still saying that in a few years time

There is always a choice - it comes down to whose interests you serve.

 

[Chicken Run]

There is always a choice - it comes down to whose interests you serve.

Whose interests do you serve?

 

[Chicken Run]

You waiting for the “company response” JRG? When you do get round to answering my question let’s take the short route ok.

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

You waiting for the “company response” JRG? When you do get round to answering my question let’s take the short route ok.

No problem - the working class