have you quit the labour party yet?

voted #1 for them last time but have serious misgivings about how the SD's seem to have sprung up under their noses populated and followed by what wouldve seemed on the face of it to be the next generation of what ought to have been their candidates and people

*blinks*

just cancelled the dd. Didn't bother with the resignation email. They aren't a party of opposition any more and will only get worse once the guileless fuckwit melt of a leader is stabbed in the back.

By the time my trade union processes the necessary paperwork for my subs to be switched to the non-affiliated political fund, the world as we currently understand it won't exist anyway

Did so earlier this week, both dd and through contact form.

does anyone have any hope

I only joined in December.

I'm thinking about it.

I’ve left the party before, when Miliband was tacking to the right, but am not inclined to do it again yet.

I don’t rate Starmer as a leader but I recognise that the shadow cabinet he has put together is an upgrade on the pre-Corbyn one. It’s also the best we are going to get, either within the Labour Party, or electoral politics in general, any time soon. It’s too early to judge how the policy platform will shake out and whether they’ll cross any of my red lines (triangulation on immigration, welfare, military adventurism, etc) - at which point I may give up completely.

The left isn’t going to retake the Labour Party for a while. The right is far more likely to make a concerted attempt to scuttle Starmer first. Unless there is a particularly compelling reason not to, I’d rather stay to oppose that.

I also look at people like Corbyn, McDonnell, the old guard members, etc, who stuck it out through Kinnock and Blair in the belief that there may be something of value to save and were briefly proved right. They’ve put up with worse.

I joined by making a contribution and canvassing at the last electoon. Whether I decide to stay or leave is a decision I will make later in the year and will depend on what contribution I can make with others locally. Difficult to be more specific as I was navigating through the thing and then covid hit.

I don't know if reading lots of stuff since Starmer's victory is good for the soul really (I was going to ask for a few links but thought the better of it). Give yourself a break for a few weeks.

hope these days is getting 4 pints of milk. There isn't an opposition any more. I didn't vote for 20+ years previously and can easily switch back to that mode. I was born poor as fuck and am used to living poor as fuck and with very low expectations of UK governments and the so called opposition. Fuck 'em all! I've got decades of accumulated hatred and class resentments towards wankers like Starmer and would rather die than give him a vote tbh!

I spent most of the 00's working on the poorest social housing of Yorkshire and don't buy any of the crap about the gains of Blairism. I just despise the Labour Party right now.

Hope is not getting 4 pints of milk, we ended up with that this morning. It means we're not getting any on Saturday

Keir Starmer’s reshuffle is impressive - the Marxist nutters are out; moderate left are in. When this crisis is eventually over, and politics is resumed, the Tories are going to find that the 5 years when there was no opposition and no alternative has come to an abrupt end

— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) April 9, 2020

xp
hah!

Good job Osborne, the guy publishing antisemitic cartoons of Starmer’s cabinet yesterday, has no motive for undermining the Labour Party and can be relied on to play with a straight bat or I’d think he’s trolling.

Could look at the way he has treated the even further right Sadiq Khan for evidence of what he thinks of the ‘soft left’.

Re: hope. I think it's pretty much clear that: 1) a lot of stuff is happening and 2) a lot of it is bad (but some is good too)

We should not divorce 1 from 2 (and the item in the bracket) either.

how good that stuff that is happening rn might be depends on how much you believe this will genuinely be a paradigm shift rather than a precursor for more of the same - but worse.

btw if anyone ever falls into food poverty during this lockdown, just remember Mark G doesn't fall into food poverty but he considers that quite a whimsical thing.

wait is this a ukpol thread ffs i wasnt told

Nah, just trying to keep my own spirits up.

soz if I was harsh there Mark!

xp
Get back to your failed melt thread that was like the worst episode of QI ya cunt!

Basically, it was a metaphor for how things seem to get better before they start to get worse.

Nothing to do with the subject in hand, I agree. I'm off to bed anyway, gnight.

goodnight mark, sorry for being a bit shitty. i'm beyond fresh rn!

Jealous of your system where a party is a thing you can “join” in a meaningful sense

Here silby on a semi related note we were discussing you on the main thread and you should post there more in our opinion

I’ll see what I can do. I already disappointed lots of folks by forgetting to become a Crystal Palace supporter, as a bit.

Pretty sure imago would not be disappointed by you forgetting to become a Crystal Palace supporter.

"Jealous of your system where a party is a thing you can “join” in a meaningful sense"

it's no good when most of the members are either voting for an insipid establishment melt or the majority that didn't vote because their own "real opposition" media clown wasn't even close to being up to the job. i really miss Corbyn and McD :(

But at least you can quit it now! What a relief.

when posters badmouth them on here I feel like knifing them for real tbh!

re osborne, this bizarre inversion where opposition means no opposition is totally doing my head in, as is the fact that some non tories seem to genuinely believe this

but i never joined the party anyway so w/e

try telling some of these "non tories" that they aren't tories. You'd need medieval torture tools to make them admit it and they've got a "plurality of voices" on their side !

I wonder if to some extent this idea of 'real opposition' depends on your subconscious conception of what opposition is, whether its something external and existential, a replacement - or whether its more managerial. Almost like the opposition as kind of a wing of the government rather than a replacement for it.

We see this sort of stuff when incoming Labour MPs are asked if they're going to be friendly with Conservatives or not (which is a trick question of course). Was it Pidcock that said she couldn't be? But this then seen as not playing the game, not being respectful to Parliament itself. As somehow ooposed to the concept of parliament and democracy itself

that makes a lot of sense actually

it's supposed to be her majesty's most loyal opposition after all

I think this is part of it but maybe something deeper but its not easy to unpick - and it may be a difficult tightrope for the left in general to walk (oppositional but seen as able to work within whatever power structures are in place). Much of this is presentational rather than substantive, so that path is there.

I even think there's something in this, as I don't really know how much mileage there is in the combative or confrontational approach (QT etc is cringe-worthy with this stuff, and the weird mixture of acquiescence and bluster from the media ineffectual). Or at least it shouldn't be the only or even main instrument. McD maybe the only person that was able to do this. Theoretically it should be easier to play this kind of game of appealing to people who view things through this lens as its really just packaging but its not easy to see who that might be (Ro Khanna in the US seems someone that maybe might have it but don't know in UK)

I think we probably need to distinguish between the people pushing this kind of stuff in a kind of fantasy world of 'opponents shaking hands at the end of the day after a fine battle of wills and wits good show pals" and people subconsciously receiving this narrative as 'now we have someone that takes the job seriously instead of just making cheap points" via the media

Also: how about giving it up for the year and maybe returning to it next year.

Are other people that you know simply quitting and just not engaging in any form of politics? And if they aren't what else are they doing? (I may need some tips lol)

I wonder if to some extent this idea of 'real opposition' depends on your subconscious conception of what opposition is, whether its something external and existential, a replacement - or whether its more managerial. Almost like the opposition as kind of a wing of the government rather than a replacement for it.

We see this sort of stuff when incoming Labour MPs are asked if they're going to be friendly with Conservatives or not (which is a trick question of course). Was it Pidcock that said she couldn't be? But this then seen as not playing the game, not being respectful to Parliament itself. As somehow ooposed to the concept of parliament and democracy itself

I see a lot of ppl fading or quitting who are already busy with jobs and kids. seems like the options are just be casually involved with worthy but isolated small-scale stuff or to attempt to pull everything together yourself. no one ever really worked out what they were doing ofc

my position equates precisely onto SV's; little more to add

the ppl railing against despair, the fragmentation of the movement, or bitterly avoiding electoral politics entirely seem to be doing so out of some sense of moral obligation rather than out of any conviction.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVO9PXiUcAAQHHY?format=jpg&name=large

I've not seen any signs of buyer's remorse from any Kier voters yet. If *this* is what they actually I'm amazed they stuck with Corbyn for so long. But I suppose that is the nature of apolitical happy clappers.

onboard/contained

I think many of them had contaminated 99's from Owen Smith's Mr Melty ice cream van.

Somewhere between wavering and never - I think it's ony prudent to see how things play out but I don't have high hopes.

Even if you had low hopes they pretty much got dashed yesterday! I thought there might be some Kier voters despairing at a shadow cab with Streeting and JP.

messaging w/ ppl and I can tell they're hoping I'm going to offer some rousing morale-boosting sentiments and I'm just holding off on saying "mb see how it's going in 4-10 years??"

I think that timescale might be oppomistic, but these aren't ordinary times.. You never know.

Phone typing whilst walking!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVMUCIMWoAAZrMy?format=jpg&name=large

That one's a doozy! But Sir Kier is offering Jimmy Savile badges to nurses tbf!

Keir's letter was only the start of it....

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Fucking lol

‘The Labour Party’ isn’t a person. It doesn’t care if you break up with it. It isn’t going to change its ways because you sulk and refuse to talk to it for a year.

— Jeremy Gilbert (@jemgilbert) April 13, 2020

By the time my trade union processes the necessary paperwork for my subs to be switched to the non-affiliated political fund, the world as we currently understand it won't exist anyway

― Dadjokke (Sgt. Biscuits), Thursday, 9 April 2020 23:21 (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Turns out Emilie Oldknow is their Assistant General Secretary now, so I guess there's a quicker solution

xp he's right, it's not going to change its ways

what's the new party going to be called* then lads

*at this point the name is probably the most important bit. don't fuck this up whatever you do. examples of fuck-ups: 'momentum'; 'society'; 'people's party'

The Workshy Allstar Teadrinker's Society of North

missy eliot's song 'fremme neppa venette'

The Dangerous Alliance

needs to have a party crest with a guillotine on it.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

melts

I didn't vote (because I don't vote in polls almost never) but this is really good.

When a left-wing friend stood for election in my union, he had massive support. His opponent had none. On the day of the election, the right-wing branch said there’s an allegation of corruption against him. No details were given, but “we must suspend the election for a month”.

— Tony Collins (@_tony_c_) April 14, 2020

can't remember if i voted in this or not but -- im not going anywhere yet, although the sub fees would be handy for a sandwich. But I'll wait til the NEC vote at least, and/or Suck Here goes full mask off.

I suppose Magid Magid could always Green leader

with no conference this year is there anything to even do as members

Forward Momentum Vs Renewal Momentum poll

fwd ftw

yeah it's a weird contest but it's no contest

Our fantastic new Shadow Cabinet are also going to be running a series of online policy discussions

lol I'm still getting emails in my junk folder from Sir K despite cancelling the dd months ago. Maybe you shouldn't have put Reeves in there if "fantastic" was your goal, arsehole! I agree with what reeves said in 2015 now tbf, Labour isn't the party for the likes of me at all anymore... no problemo.. bye !

This person has criticised forward momentum here a bit.

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/05/where-momentum-went-wrong

I really like this piece.

Yeah I saw that. I think it's pretty astute on how momentum fitted into the UK left over the last decade, the changes and continuity, and some of the structural problems given the nature of the org. I think he tends towards a narrow prescriptive - 'rigorous'! - workerism that has no chance of building an effective coalition though.

I am not sure what could build an effective coalition but I liked most of his five points. Good luck to him.

I'm just thinking that the vagueness/openness of Momentum was a big part of what made it unique and large, the narrower it gets, the more it becomes like just another pre-2015 leftist org. the fourth and fifth points seem like vague dreams rather than plans (if there's one thing I've learned about 'the masses' it's that they don't exist), but the third seems clearly right to me. I think there's a balance between decentralization on one hand and having some high profile figure heads to keep some good energy going at a national level, but building better-organised central bodies for educating ppl/dealing with trade unions etc. seems unappealing to me as a main focus, even if it might be necessary. the best momentum things imo were just creating ways for people to network and get involved as they saw fit.

The 4th is a bit of a non-starter. I read the 5th as developing responses to how the right utilise the at times positives that people can throw at things, such as 'flexible working' and the like.

the biggest problem with all of this is still the assumption that working with Labour is still necessary or desirable (or that it ever was tbh)

if the legacy of corbynism becomes people who once knew better banging their heads against the wall of this miserable party for the rest of their lives then what a disaster

why are even the "radical" parts of the UK Left so damn conservative

xxp if that means reworking/redefining flexible working into something un-shit rather than telling ppl they are wrong for wanting it then I am onboard. reading 'mass engagement in community organisation' just makes my eyes glaze over though at this point.

David Evans

fuck this clown car party

At this point I don't give a shit about Labour getting into power any more, fucking Starmer regime is going to be even closer to Blairism than Milliband was. Starmer has made me despise them more than the Tories tbh

some of the worst Tories in this country are basically 80% of this cunt's shadow cabinet

New: David Evans just hosted a Zoom all for staff alongside Starmer and Rayner. He said:

- Labour must get back to winning elections
- wants to professionalise HQ
- accepts there's a diversity issue and wants to make it a key indicator of his performance

there is an incredibly intelligent idea, try and win an election rather than fucking sabotage and undermine an election campaign and the leader at every opportunity ... fucking tool

Don't know who Evans is. Who is he? What does he know? Does he know things? We may never know.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/1A05/production/_112516660_davidevans.jpg

he's got a winning mentality and he evolves ..he doesn't revolve... tbh all I can add is he is a melt and looks like a complete twat!

I'm sure his hair has sealed the deal with Starmer.

"must get back to winning elections" has always meant "...by becoming conservative party lite" and no difference now.

Now is not the time to point fingers about the annexation of Naboo. I propose that we work with our learned friends from the Trade Federation on a comprehensive inquiry into these allegations pic.twitter.com/xWvoAvbobh

— Professor Piss Shitty (@DrFuck_) May 27, 2020

should i see professor piss shitty's other tweets (as found at the @DrFuck account)

he's one of my few non-bot followers on twitter so obv he's a top class poster!

i don't understand Star Wars jokes tbh

I disenfranchised myself last week. Mainly for pecuniary reasons, but I don't think my vote will count for much anymore. They are going to sew this up tight. Besides which, as I replied to the admin bod who emailed me, Starmer seems to have access to the wallets of some very well-off ppl so I think my pitiful pounds are needed by me more than you, currently. Commit to raise the ""living wage"" though and I might be able to afford to come back.

xp how about this

I like to retweet my Ian Nairn joke every now and then for the 7 people who get it. pic.twitter.com/oE1QgoeCOK

— Richard Littler (@richard_littler) May 25, 2020

lol ok i get that one

lol

I don't really get Star Wars jokes with less than obvious geek references but am just an easy mark for any Starmer shop if it makes him look like a twat. And erm some crap jokes have a potency to them yo know ... no not really a hill to die on!

no i know what you mean calz, even without understanding the references to the detailed politics of George Lucas's chef d'oeuvre i do get the general "Starmzy is a pusillanimous melt cunt" bit

the biggest problem with all of this is still the assumption that working with Labour is still necessary or desirable (or that it ever was tbh)

Interested in whether you think parliamentary politics in general are a dead end for the left or whether you think it is the rotteness of the labour party specifically.

As an outsider before moving to the UK I'd only ever voted for minority parties - centre left equivalents of labour in Portugal and Germany always being some shade of neoliberal, getting into a coalition and effecting some change that way seemed the only way for the left to influence things at all from a parliamentary pov. Corbyn was very energizing for people outside the UK as well because of the possibility of a real leftist agenda allied to a party with an actual large, consolidated base.

also somewhat bemused that the main protest I could make now aside from leaving the party - not voting - would only mean one vote less for Diane Abbott, so if it were to count at all (aware it wouldn't) it'd be sending very much the wrong message

yeah but imagine if your abstinence meant one less vote for Barry Sheerman or Streeting and bearing in mind most of the PLP are complete arseholes!

I'm not going to support a diseased party that needs to die and keeping this rotten game going.

my man Pennycook is one of the good seemingly-ok ones, gonna keep the faith for now i think. is one of the momentums wanting to stay in labour and the other wanting to splinter off?

I think the left should put on a unified front saying they will only vote for a labour party committed to bringing in PR so that coherent & representative parties are possible and then you can have a formalised alliance between different elements of the left as opposed to the current factional shitshow, otherwise yes it's pointless

bingo

have been delving into that excellent Pimlett book on Harold ov Hudds recently. Didn't know when he was part of a trade envoy in in postwar Soviet Union that very sneaky snake in the grass Mikoyan tried to get him pissed on vodka and he ended up drinking him under the table, probably absolute bollox like, but it makes a good story.

Entertaining book that - George Brown OMG!

not got to much of him yet, but I recall someone mentioning he can tell a good story or two

the man the phrase "tired and emotional" was invented for

i believe to explain why he was spotted literally face down in the gutter

I've just got where he is a rising star under the tutelage of Cripps who he worships a bit, and who is a very interesting commie from back in the day who much preferred eating raw vegetables much more than getting shitfaced and falling asleep in the gutter!

Two more different characters than George Brown and Stafford Cripps it would be difficult to find.

even as a kid i knew it was silly to accept a peerage then call yrself "lord george-brown"

its grim down south

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZHADphWsAQWBNf?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

lol that's beautiful

this is specifically a london left map

haaaa

Interested in whether you think parliamentary politics in general are a dead end for the left or whether you think it is the rotteness of the labour party specifically.

pretty much yes (former but also the latter). tho I also sort of think "the left" is a dead end in most of its incarnations these days, in this country at least (not that "the right" or "the centre" are remotely preferable ofc)

I was never on the corbyn train but I get the appeal- still he did far too little to challenge the culture of the party (/britain in general- I'm aware this is an impossible demand) & the whole project was doomed from the start by its inability to separate its "social justice" goals from its (accommodation with) nationalism/racism/authoritarianism. I don't know if any social democrats have ever managed to square this circle

well the rioters are clearly the only cool ones here

so are you an-com doomer, leftcom, ???

idk

despite being au fait with jreg i have no idea which one of those i actually am. probably some unholy melange of the central four like the most of the rest of you

And it shows

top row is beautifully cursed. feel like normie momentum dropout-mind samurai-leftcom and everything between is a nice rich zone but irl primmy has its charms too

Missing: 'clueless metic'.

I am def irl primmy now

catch me reading camatte in my yurt

Is that the leader of the opposition sharing articles from the self-confessed antisemite employing Spectator? https://t.co/aPIx4Z5f6n

— Your Mum (@judeinlondon2) May 28, 2020

Starmer, the big fucking heroic-melt who always took such a strident approach to Labour antisemitism, sharing an article by an antisemitic shitrag that runs Wehrmacht apologist pieces by Taki.

Onwards..

while the corbyn project failed to push it through conference Boris Johnson and retirements have effectively instituted a policy of open selection for 40%+ of any future labour government MPs.

— bread and poses (@breadandposes) June 19, 2020

Well put.

Quite often see people on the TL talking about leaving the Labour Party & trying to build something new. A lot of the time they glumly conclude that (under the current electoral system) a splinter party would be doomed to get nowhere. But is that really true? Well, I wonder pic.twitter.com/rOmk9Ic2yj

— Edmund Griffiths (@EdmundGriffiths) June 20, 2020

If he's advocating a UKIP for the left what's the single specific issue it would be based around? There would surely have to be one.

Have been pondering the concept of BLM as an international political party tho

I'd fully support a breakaway party, even if it might attract some cranks and idiots that would need weeding out and might be a shitty experience. The Labour Party is dead & buried, something new is needed and even if it takes decades to even start making a useful impact on two party hegemony, it is better than drinking suicide-lager inside your despair-shed in the garden of absolute hopelessness.

"If he's advocating a UKIP for the left what's the single specific issue it would be based around? There would surely have to be one."

Socialism.

UKIP's never been anything but a joke as a political party, it was a hugely successful pressure group but it will never challenge tory supremacy (nor did it ever want to, really). With its objective acheived it will now gladly fade away.

xpost "socialism" hardly as concrete a demand as "we want Britain to leave the EU".

I was trying to avoid that answer as I don't see it as a single issue!

UKIP approach was 'with this one weird trick (leaving the EU) we can achieve ___'. Everyone (open to it) could understand that as a setting you untick. Socialism is a hundred different settings to recalibrate from tax bands to equal pay to defunding police to enforced quotas...

Workers rights?

Socialism.

Was wondering about that one myself.

Such a confusing word. What kind of socialism?

socialism put through the legitimate concerns mangler, so they are marginally less racist than the Labour Right dominated PLP and have better slogans on their cups: Let's have a membership vote on Controlled Migration, comrade!

if Centre-left Corbynism is getting called hard-left and Marxists by ignorant cunts in the UK then I say go hard-left, because you are going to called every name under the sun anyway.

sorry . shit-typing/shit-posting!

xpost "socialism" hardly as concrete a demand as "we want Britain to leave the EU".

― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, 20 June 2020

The last two lab manifestos were pretty concrete in terms of a set of demands. Obv a UKIP of the left wouldn't be about one issue, as it's about being a pressure group on the Lab party.

Yes but how successful would UKIP have been if it had made its message a set of demands, as opposed to one specific one? Not that I buy the "too many different ideas!" line with regards to the last election, but it's apples and oranges.

I think that if you think a pressure group on Labour could work that means you still think Labour is inherently salvageable. I'm agnostic on this but it doesn't seem to be the consensus here.

I mean, how successful is the UK’s Green Party?

Not very.

UKIP was so "succesful" it didn't know what to do with their potential influence and drowned in their own unexpected sudden found wealth (and dumb assery).

England is still a two-party country. As long as there's no proportional representation electoral system, this will not change. Apart from if Labour is salvageable at all, no third party - like the Greens - will ever have enough leverage to act as a pressure group. Any third party is too insignificant number-wise to make a meaningful dent into anything. Heck, even the rise of a more left, grassrootsy Cromryn pressure group - pressure from within the party - got washed away and Starmerized.

wait, ukip clearly succeeded (or is about to), i mean that's not seriously in question is it?

I think that if you think a pressure group on Labour could work that means you still think Labour is inherently salvageable. I'm agnostic on this but it doesn't seem to be the consensus here.

― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, 20 June 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Just following the logic of that thread. A party running on a left-wing anti racist platform could get 6-8 million votes, not get a seat and depress the Labour vote. Can totally see that scaring the shit out of Labour.

Apart from if Labour is salvageable at all, no third party - like the Greens - will ever have enough leverage to act as a pressure group.

There was a referendum, not that long ago, that could have led to the break up of the United Kingdom, thanks largely to the electoral success of a third political party - a success, which continues to this day.

... in fact, the third party in UK politics.

I’m not sure UKIP is an unqualified success insofar as much if not all of their DNA is already overwhelmingly present within the Tory Party. They just accelerated the inevitable.

Exception to the rule tbf. This is chicken or the egg stuff but UKIP seems more on par w/ how A LOT of Tories think anyway, instead of some third party throwing the wheel into a completely different direction. Tories wanted the referendum, Tories wanted out of the EU, as much as UKIP. UKIP gave Tories an excuse to show their own tough side, you could say.

xp yeah otm, that

The parliamentary Tory Party did not want out of the EU though.

the titular question of thread has been answered quite clearly by Scottish voters in the last decade, yes they have.

Sturgeon was quite openly hostile to Corbyn, any SNP leader has to tread carefully around coalition talk, but she seemed to go a bit further to distance herself from him with personalised comments like " I'm no fan of him but...". I bet she will be a bit more cordial towards Sir Melty-face.

I'm sure she doesn't care much either way, the Labour Party are completely irrelevant in Scotland.

Of course they might not be if there was PR, the saviour of minor parties the world over!

A party running on a left-wing anti racist platform could get 6-8 million votes, not get a seat and depress the Labour vote. Can totally see that scaring the shit out of Labour.

There is absolutely no way that such a party would get anywhere near that. Even UKIP in 2015 didn't break 3m. But they probably wouldn't need to in order to change Labour policy on specific issues. Infiltrating the Green Party is probably a better route.

Green-LibDems/Libdem-Greens, they have both shown in different ridiculous extremes what they are truly about in the last decade, when push comes to shove. it's quite clear neither can stand the idea of even a mildly centre-left party getting anywhere near power (even if they want to wear different shirts now), so they are both pretty much a dead end at the moment for people hankering for a meaningful opposition party imo. The Greens are the worst offenders at positioning themselves to the left of Labour, and then shitting the bed and aligning themselves with the likes of Soubz, and many won't forget this.

I think the pandemic showed there is potentially very bad situation coming for millions of regular voters (+ incoming new voters) whose anger could be harnessed if Labour stays quiet. 6-8 was more late night speculation but perhaps higher than the UKIP number.

This is where UKIP from the left breaks down as this would need to be more like Syriza or what have you where it comes down to a more socialist platform, but it depends on where the next crisis comes from.

I’m not sure anything has held Labour together more than the fact that it’s immensely expensive and difficult to run a major political party - as CHUKTIG found out, even with a sympathetic press and name recognition. Absent of the billionaire backing and free press handed to UKIP, I think the absolute minimum a splinter party would need, for resources and genuine leverage, would be to peel off Labour’s union backing. That strikes me as unlikely.

I don’t think it would be implausible to have a DSA-style organisation independent of Labour coming up with ideas, running organised small-l labour campaigns and providing strategic endorsements to Labour (or Green) candidates.

There are a few non-Labour affiliated unions aren't there? Besides, I think a group that asks questions about the wastage of subscription money to ineffective unions and Labour could be another starting point.

Good point on DSA. Momentum is seen as our version of it but it isn't.

A path, which the Lib Dems have been utilising for years*, is to target seats in local elections and see how you do - people seem more likely to give small parties a whirl there.

Or of course the path the most important party of the last election took was to win 29 MEPs.

*slightly complicated by the fact that the Lib Dems now have the name of being good in local government.

Yeah, think it's time.

Feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

to quote Longshanks : A man does good work when he rids himself of shit

even I have folded

going through my direct debits, aside from pissing £50 a month away on a home insurance policy my ex (who left in 2013) set up for me I discovered to my amusement that I never quit the Greens, they can stay for now lol

Not me.

Angrily composing a resignation email in my head

Angrily composing a resignation email in my head

Felt good to send mine off even tho I'm aware the Hackney North & Stoke Newington branch is unlikely to feel any different about this decision than I do.

Angrily forgetting till now my membership of the Green Party in my head

Right, I can't see any other option but to resign Lab membership. This is heat of the moment stuff but I also feel that it's rationally the right thing to do, coming off the back of lots of other stuff I've thought about in the cold light of day. What's everyone else thinking?

— Alex Niven (@Alex_Niven) June 25, 2020

Stubborn it me

This is v well put.

the good thing about Corbyn wasn't that he might Win And Do Socialism, which was always very unlikely. But he did help folk to imagine some kind of ecosocialist long game, & exposed a new generation to the systematic complicity of British public life in their immiseration

— Rory Scothorne (@shirkerism) June 25, 2020

thank god the kneejerk lefty defence of the BBC is mostly over now

there isn't really any viable electoral platform to move to if you're leaving labour. staying in labour seems like paying some losers to submit you to a series of low-grade indignities to no end. the alternative is no party affiliation or the dreaded Leninist groupuscule route

I'm fortunate in that I don't live In the uk and could, theoretically, disengage from the political culture there. can't seem to manage it completely, but I'm definitely moderating the dosage I ingest. I likely have the right to vote in one more general election and seeing as my constituency is safe SNP with Labour in second-place I likely won't bother my arse voting.

There are alternatives if you don't live in England, to be fair.

The SNP and the mainstream nationalist political culture are also pure shite but

unless you meant voting for the shinners in the 6 counties

a thing I saw on twitter the other day wrt BLM protests in Glasgow - a nationalist saying that people should take their saltires and make it an indy reunion. kind of encapsulates the ideology of the indy movement in 2020

The SNP and the mainstream nationalist political culture are also pure shite but

Oh I know that but it's a moot point because no-one's voting Labour in Scotland anyway.

god the "labour together" report's appendix on Scotland (which appears to be from 2018 for some reason) was some dire reading:

1 in 4 labour voters in Scotland in 2015 voted for the tories in 2017, and 48% of labour voters in Scotland thought Ruth Davidson was doing a good job as party leader

1 in 4 labour voters in Scotland in 2015 voted for the tories in 2017,

They're all over Facebook, my sister seems to know lots of them and I just this minute got into a barney with about five of them on Facebook because my sister posted a story on half a million people being on the beach at Bournemouth which had a headline blaming 'Boris the Buffoon'.

is that just from pure former Labour Yoons/Brexiteers?

they're all No voters but not all of them are Brexiteers

yeah sorry i meant either/or

Unionists. Most of them are probably Brexiteers too, just to annoy everyone else.

You see, the Labour Party's on a hiding to nothing in Scotland, I've got left wing pro-independence friends on FB now talking about Starmer being Blair Mk. 2 and it's all Red Tory this Red Tory that.

The Scottish appendix noted that while voters Labour lost in Scotland to the SNP liked Corbyn and thought he was an improvement it didn't make many of them revert to voting Labour, whereas he turned off the older unionist voters

lads i'm disquieted, indulge me

Labour gained Scottish MPs in 2017.

Yes,with a gain of 9,860 votes from their modern nadir

7 seats out of 59, promptly losing 6 of them in 2019. What's even worse is that the sole remaining Scottish Labour MP, the face and big ba'heid of Labour in Scotland is Ian Fucking Murray.

to be clear about my disquiet, i am disquieted at having quit labour when my red line - RLB being sacked over fuck-all - appears to have been more a case of RLB being sacked for refusing to comply with a silly but simple request to delete a tweet

like, KS is clearly a man with deeply compromised priorities and there have been plenty of potential red lines before this that i've swanned nervously by, but.....idk. have i just tapped out of relevant political membership? ugh

if he is going to run a tight ship with ruthless discipline he might want have a word with that lad in his shadow cabinet with the history of putting out hate pamphlets about travellers, an historical offence but he should be put on notice.. no forget it, Starmer is a tory cop wanker who is all there for landowners and landlord rights

"to be clear about my disquiet"

People are dying Louie, nobody cares.

quite right, let's take ILX offline until the virus goes away

"people are dying" is obvious a semi-decent reason for why KS didn't have to bat an eyelid over this nonsense, but alas, people dying is rarely enough of a cause for focus

Lol.

Anyway thought this was a good quit don't quit reflection.

I've said this before, but maybe worth restating, "Stay & Fight" is a fantasy position that doesn't recognise how badly the left have lost.

— Tom Gann (@Tom_Gann) June 25, 2020

If you see Labour as a "platform" to express yourself it will inevitably disappoint. If you see it as an instrumental "gateway" to inducting yourself into a movement you can work with others to change it and it will also inevitably change you and others too

— Charlie Mansell (@charliemansell) June 26, 2020

This is better than joining the Greens.

I've cancelled my Labour Party membership, and am splitting the money between Community Action on Prison Expansion (@CAPExpansion) and the National Mikey Powell Memorial Family Fund (@fund_memorial) for families affected by custody deaths.https://t.co/vqQdbIxNJT

— Dr Harry Josephine (@HarryJosieGiles) June 29, 2020

Great you posted this. People simply would not believe you today if you said Michael Foot had Labour polling at 56%, had 24-point poll leads & pushed Thatcher down to 28% (then the Labour Right wrecked and more importantly an actual war changed everything)https://t.co/upZMcr3WJ2

— Stephen Smith (@SteveNickSmith) June 29, 2020

lol, an FT journalist speaking truth to power.

On the momentum elections:

1. POH section is a disgrace, should be abolished or democratised
2. Three people who refused to sign the @Labour_Trans pledges is three people too many
3. There needs to be structural work to address problems with representation (and FM could've done better on this) https://t.co/mt8LOOcqvq

— Dan (@d_j_frost) July 1, 2020

Lol @ Tory journo Oborne looking at the Lab report:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/were-labours-antisemitism-failures-really-corbyns-fault/

(Of course it's mainly a question of journalistic integrity for him, but still..)

That the traditional media has failed, almost entirely, to report these suspensions and the ongoing legal proceedings is, to say the least, odd. It has also largely failed to report the contents of the leaked report. Newspapers and broadcasters have no interest in publicising a document that asks serious questions about the narrative they pushed so unquestioningly regarding Corbyn and antisemitism.

This is cowardly and irresponsible. Either they need to show that the Labour report is wrong – or they owe Jeremy Corbyn , Jennie Formby and others an apology. They at least have an obligation to report the other side of the argument.

oh, obornepaws...

It's rarely mentioned that the Tories missed out on a working majority by just 50 votes, or that those specific 2,227 votes would have required a national gain of around 116,000. This is a good @anthonybmasters analysis of the myth of Labour's near miss.https://t.co/17iDcgILd0 https://t.co/dkv5e5iBJJ

— Dorian Lynskey (@Dorianlynskey) August 9, 2020

This could be the thread for arguing over history. We can argue the toss over numbers. I think it's worth saying how many people voted for this very dysfunctional unit and maybe how many more could've done so.

They would not have gotten much through but again. An anti-imperialist in No 10. No arms to Saudi. Abbott as home sec. The emboldening of the left. This argument over numbers and what could or could not be done misses what is basic to me.

how's his Remain podcast with Dunty going? Has it run it's course now Corbyn isn't there to kick anymore. Fucking melt jerkoff!

It’s rarely mentioned that every time I see a Dorian Lynskey tweet, it’s because he’s getting #numbers due to some dogshit Labour opinion rather than whatever it is he actually enjoys.

By the way, Labour’s numbers increased in the weeks after 2017, and were strong and around 40% for much of the following year and a half. The more voters in 2017 thought Labour would win, the more likely they were to vote for them. This is all out there and established by the polls themselves and by the British Election Study.

If he wanted to go back over numbers he might want to consider the national gain required for Remain to win. And how Leave missed out on a working majority by a negative number.

Even in that optimistic scenario it's very difficult to imagine how a Corbyn minority government would have survived for very long - particularly trying to get Brexit legislation through the Commons and with Labour MPs sending blood in the water. Even a confidence and supply agreement with the SNP would have crashed on the Brexit rocks surely?

They might have won in early 2018 when they were polling level with the Tories though.

If he wanted to go back over numbers he might consider how Labour’s numbers tanked the less ambiguous they were about committing to a Remain position.

Lynskey is correct it's important to be realistic about the outcome of General Elections, referendums, that kind of thing

steady on!

just addressing the myth of Remain's near miss

xp I think all the wreckers would have resigned as soon as they could, but then he should have purged them ASAP. No sense in letting people like Ian Austin and John Woodcock call themselves Labour MPs any longer than necessary. But once you get into the messy realpolitik scenario of a coalition like that, it’s difficult to know what would have happened. Certainly if they emerged from the election the largest party we wouldn’t be on course for a no deal exit at the end of the year. What Alphie says above is true, and 2017 was the thing that made people take Corbyn seriously and view him as a real threat. What fools like DL think is neither here nor there tbh.

maybe he could do a thread about how Remainers made the Johnson government

I can't wait to dig into his mate's How To Be a Liberal book, might just cut straight to the "overlook the results of democratic votes/referendums and cry like a fucking baby for 3 years" chapter and see if I can learn something important about how to have the dignified poise of a great classic liberal!

Yes this discussion from people like Owen Jones and Zara Sultana isn't really about what would have happened it's about countering the idea of unelectability. Even if Labour MPs weren't taking the prospect seriously the Tories clearly were. If they weren't genuinely shook they wouldn't have gone for Johnson - although they were also clearly concerned about Brexit slipping through their fingers.

Had the campaign gone on a week longer, Labour may well have wound up at least in government, and possibly won outright. I base this on the phenomenon of people jumping on the ‘winner’ bandwagon when they can see it coming.

Just noting how Bush was quite smart, he would turn up as a reply guy in all sorts of threads with pro-Corbyn people, talk to them, act curious. Most were probably sceptical but because he was courteous it was fine. Something the rest of the media didn't do - and I do wonder if there was better analysis whether they would've seen the threat from Corbyn earlier or not.

Frankly, Stephen Bush is now deliberately being ridiculous.

The claim of deliberate sabotage doesnt need comparison with a different campaign, only that
1. We're they told to distribute more ambitiously
2. Did they

That's it. pic.twitter.com/CiIvHvduRp

— left of Brown (@TKispeter) August 11, 2020

"Corbyn's arrogant tour of Conservative-held seats"

Is he writing from the pov of the Corbyn sceptic or just himself or are they one and the same

I thought Labour were supposed to be speaking to people they disagreed with? Anyway the leaked report alleged a whole shadow campaign in 2017 where resources were diverted so Bush can fuck off.

I immediately bin any commentator who calls Corbyn ‘arrogant’ because it transparently means ‘is not doing the thing I would like him to do, because he ignores melts like me, and I keep trying to speak to a manager’.

it's entirely possible that 2017 was somewhat sabotaged by reluctant corbz-hostile lab operatives and 2019 was badly run by keen lab operatives loyal to corbz

Yup there is a story here to be told of Corbyn loyal ppl who left post-2017 too.

Andrew Fisher comes to mind.

There was a lot of nonsense talk about how strong Labour's ground game before the '19 disaster. In my neck of the woods Tory campaigners were like ants and there were signs on every lamppost even signs half to Leeds outside this constituency - there was definitely some kind of ground game failure that was possibly nothing to do with internal wrecking. My mp, as decent as she was, she was melt adjacent and to the point she deleted a group photo with Corbyn in London that was taken by a local Councillor who told she said something like : oh christ no, I don't want that fucker in my pic! But it was a marginal and one that you might think was the result of gerrymandering - it might have been. I haven't looked into the history of the boundary changes.

Excuse grammar fail, am on my and didn't proof read it cos I wasn't sure if the fucker would even post!

Phone

wb calz, hope you won't mind my new dn.

stabber calz
oh stabber calz
please don't knife my melt
he's got a big tent party
and forensic questioning skills
oh bad man stabber calz

Lol was just thinking about thos repellent imago-eris!

u wot

Just goofing about no one needs to die... Yet!

Careful there.

My constituency encompasses areas like Saviletown where the population is 90%+ South Asian and lots of extreme socially deprived poor areas like Chickenley, Dewsbury Moor, Ravensthorpe etc and then posh af zones like Upper/Lower Hopton etc which belong more to Hudds than here which looks like some gerrymandering went on some point. But anyway, if Labour concentrated their ground game in the Tory zones then they fucked up and effectively did in a good mp who only lost by a couple of thousand there. get brexit done needed challenging and there was fuck all prescence.

Lol BTW I'm still actually barred but can post when I turn off WiFi on my phone. In your face melts!

Moderators HATE him. The one weird trick to post to ILX when you're banned that might surprise you

Lovely to see you back calz, obviously none of us wants to see class traitors die a slow agonising death, that would be bad

xxp You're not according to the admin log?

Disease schadenfreude is ok unless we're talking biological warfare. Them's the rules.

Lol BTW I'm still actually barred but can post when I turn off WiFi on my phone. In your face melts!

The chatter on this thread is reprehensible and reminds me of the good old days of dom, jon and marcello. Good job class warriors

Lads, please. It’s too hot for beef.

The chatter on this thread is reprehensible and reminds me of the good old days of dom, jon and marcello. Good job class warriors

― sound of scampo talk to me (El Tomboto), Tuesday, August 11, 2020 2:32 PM (twenty-three seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

DON'T TRY IT

Lol oh for the good old days

wait why were u banned?

Wait I take that back, I really just meant Marcello I think. Dom and Jon are in a different category

Plax (and calz I guess) -

rolling FP number request thread

xp. yes, Marcello was not really all that different to some "difficult" posters we still have amongst us currently. Dom was carrying on off-board harassment campaigns and such iirc

You recall correctly

Ftr I never threatened to murder anybody, just posted that I'd rather murder him than vote for him and followed this up with I'd vote for Mair's favourite party the Greens these days. But fuck it life is too short can't be arsed going into this, just going to acquaint myself with Killfile instead.

And go masturbate over a military installation Tombot, Marcello is worth a million of you

Seems we have a rogue mod on the loose.

Ffs

LADS

it's all kicking off

UK politics threads are like so many demos I've been to in the past 10 years; there's this ritual.

You've got the various factions of protesters, the nice quaker/Green types with their organised signs saying 'down with this sort of thing', the Sisters Uncut who are really well prepared, and have a loudspeaker and are reading out name of the murdered or a list of the demands, and of course a few tankies in black bandanas and hoodies with anarchy symbols on them, who are milling about menacingly and occasionally shouting "ACAB!" or "Riot!!!" or whatever.

And some copper will come over, and start trying to tell people to take it easy, look, all the coppers are on overtime now and want to go home, could the demo maybe wind it up (and he will 100% say in the inquest afterwards or whatever, that he was genuinely trying to calm things down) - but one of the Sisters will kiss her teeth at him, and the hoodies will make pig noises and start oinking or whatever, and the cop will go beserk and just start telling us we're all scum. So the hoodies start throwing plastic bottles at the cops and taunting them - and BOOM! 500 cops appear out of nowhere, start pushing the crowd back, the tankies smash in the window of Foxton's, there's a million photographers snapping photos of it, and suddenly you're in a kettle and it's got *nasty*.

People will look at descriptions of that situation, and say, "no one wants to go to demos any more, the fucken tankies make it unsafe!!!" When, really, the reason people stop going to demos is because of the *cops*.

Now do the US Pol threads

(xp) And now imagine some American cop who thinks he's some kind of maverick hardass showing up on one of those demos.

This is coming true.

lets set some realistic goals here : jokes banned by 2016. sex banned by 2020. a cop in every household by 2025

— wint (@dril) August 28, 2013

two rights do make a wrong it turns out

Haha I don’t go in US politics threads, they are all ~brrrristling with guns~

Calz at least has to get near me to have a stab at me!

US politics threads are all just cops with the occasional bemused 'tankie' piping up to ask wth is going on in here

Nobody on here is a fucking tankie and someone using the term unironically is the sure sign of a moron.

I'm a Maoist now

If there is any person on this thread using the term “tankie” unironically, it isn’t me, soooo...

Thank you for your critical support gyac but that BBC thing on the economy I posted this morning is just like North Korean TV.

I picture North Korean TV being a bit more respectful of its audience than BBC news tbh

xp all my support for you is critical and I don’t watch things you post

Critical support keeps me honest thanks

north korean tv's audience: chairmans alph, kim jong-un

s/b chairsman

And his (hot) sister xp

And Trump. What a triumvirate, eh?

Very upset by this

Judd Trump that is.

Kim Jong-Un, pintman

I could murder a sandwich rn

Monte Kris-to?

Seems relevant:

if you call people tankies in 2020 I'm gonna assume you're an odious daily beast type and that's a lot worse

— Greg Афиногенов (@athenogenes) August 12, 2020

At this stage I am unconvinced that there are any members of the Labour Party on this thread.

They don't let Maoists in tbf

I’m still a member but that is just cause I am dilatory, I also still have Netflix which is also shite

wins is why TUCA & BERTIE didn't get a second season >:(

Why, I’m still paying for the garbage!

netflix is worse than the labour party but it's close

Labour's been shit since the early 50s tho, Netflix can't compete with that

Reevesy & Starmzy is a massive downgrade on Rick and Morty

that cartoon with repellent imagery versus the party of Nick Thomas-Symonds

Proof again that the only good Labour knight of the realm was Cripps. pic.twitter.com/cWyBvUJQqs

— Mr Demos of Pnyx (@gem_ste) August 12, 2020

You get thrown out of the party for saying stuff like that nowadays

Full Labour email including the bits about the Panorama settlements (from image 2) and how the leadership expects people to fall in line/not talk about that. Not that shocking, but have a read.

Toxic nonsense about behaving respectful and "comradely" after 4y of wrecking Corbyn. pic.twitter.com/qsQEyOrPFz

— i am looking respectfully 👁️ (@miriksmit) August 12, 2020

Cancel culture out of control

Full credit to @ejhchess for spotting this, but there’s a new ‘grass roots’ crowdfunder in town and it’s got some big supporters. pic.twitter.com/iA5Aeq5WKD

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) September 28, 2020

The attempt to start a US-style PAC and Starmer’s recent round of Please Sir May I Have Some More letters to donors makes me wonder what the current state of the membership is. The last update I can find is from April and iirc there’s probably a six month lag between people cancelling their direct debits and officially being taken off the rolls.

NEC elections will be telling I think. Could be the final nail down n the coffin for the left (except it never is, ofc)

This is a positive. I hope the few other left-wing unions stop their contributions too.

if Unite's serious about this, it could be a very good thing. There's no shortage of renters' unions etc that need the money and would no doubt make more effective use of it https://t.co/WL0lcZKdTh

— tom (@malaiseforever) October 7, 2020

some predictably risible responses

centrists: ffs! get behind your club.

Ayesha: it's only because Kieth has stamped out anti-Semitism

Yes lol always another view.

Fuck ‘em. They’re a bloody millstone round Labour’s neck anyway. Less influence they have, the better.
If it weren’t for those puffed up Little-Ponders we’d be in the second term of a David Miliband Labour government right now.

— Mitch Benn🇬🇧🇪🇺 (@MitchBenn) October 6, 2020

i also read a bunch of comments, i'd say it's depressing but idk, let the cunts have their Tories Who Like Nish Kumar Party to themselves

Centrists only respect money even though they all hate the unions, they still want their funding an unconditional support.

it's not like there's a shortage of centrists and assorted Old Lab Trot-haters *in* the unions

Unions fundamentally need influence and know that affiliation to the Labour Party is the primary way to achieve that. They also know that they are better off with Labour - any Labour Party - in power than they are with the Tories, which is why they've backed centrist candidates in the past. If they continued to pay out during the Blair years they're not going to stop now, even Unite's move is predominantly an attempt to gain leverage at a time when the party is hardly flush with money.

There's a double whammy here as well, they know that if they cut off funding then they leave Labour more dependent on wealthy individual donors whose aims may be contradictory to theirs, and ceding the playing field to them in the process.

Well Starmer was already courting wealthy donors and then has gone back to begging members for money/recently departed members to join, so situation might not be as rosy for him as all that.

I suspect the main objection isn't cutting off the money, it's offering a financial lifeline to the kind of grass-roots / youth activism the PLP is absolutely determined to stamp out.

"If they continued to pay out during the Blair years they're not going to stop now"

There is also a before and after Corbyn too and I think it would be good for other left-wing unions that backed RLB to look at reducing or cutting funds to Lab altogether. A lot of the membership that have stopped subs know what that cash is going into now.

Yes, we know

On Unite's decision, Starmer's spokesperson said: "Even before Unite’s decision, we were looking at how we can raise funds to win in 2024 and we’re looking at various different models."

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) October 7, 2020

He'll do a private table dance for £10k, you make it a monthly direct debit you can own the party.

Are trade unions bad

— Keir Starmer googling (@GooglingKeir) October 7, 2020

Bumping this thread purely to avoid posting this nonsense in the middle of the serious discussion about poverty in the main one. Also very relevant to this thread. Posting here in the hope of drawing calz’s attention to this nonsense:

WORLD CUP OF WORST LABOUR MPs - ROUND OF 100 - GROUP 2

TWENTY-FIVE WINNERS AND SEVEN RUNNERS-UP QUALIFY

— World Cup of Stupid Centrist Hacks (@centristhacks) October 26, 2020

Some absolutely brutal ratios in there - Rachel Reeves on 92% of the vote, J*ss Ph*ll*ps on 97%.

Flawless seeding.

Nia Griffith's lucked out in being drawn against Duffield.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle "Landlord"

lol from that Labour MP Rap Sheet: Barry Sheerwaste entry

"Claimed lowering suffrage to 16 would increase the risk of CSA
Called for a catering company to employ ""English workers"", dismissing criticism as ""pernicious political correctness""
Joked that Richard Desmond & Philip Green, two Jews, being on the original list for House of Lords nominations, would lead to ""a run on silver shekels""
Voted against the Hunting Ban (despite his Huddersfield constituency not even being a historical fox hunting area)
Voted to the right of Labour on asylum
Voted to the right of Labour on House of Lords reform"

there is a whole other Rap Sheet category for Barry, like when he puts out his mini Garden Bridge type follies in the Hudds rag as part of doing his bit as a professional lobbyist for his construction industry pals. One of his ideas was to build cable cars going down Leeds Rd (to breath in the lovely traffic fumes and get good view of the waste incineration plant) or converting the square in front of the station into a covered area for no reason other than to piss off the taxi drivers. yet somehow Reeves is even worse than him.

Nia Griffith's lucked out in being drawn against Duffield.

Anyway it’s a disgrace Sheerman is losing by 4% ffs

Liam Byrne has a lot to answer for tbf, his stupid note was a vital propaganda win in favour of austerity.

I like how the rap sheet runs the full gamut from 'supportive of Saudi intervention in Yemen' to 'attended a Shed Seven gig with Therese Coffey and Michael Dugher'.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTVvpfeZ_qq3nCC9VEjsJjs9VjUoXFoX9dC2w&usqp=CAU*

Sheerman would probably have lost his seat in '19 because even dyed in the wool Labour voters have their limits, but the daft fucking Tories ran the *Mekon against him, who is a classic evil Tory baddie who is that reviled in Hudds when kids throw stones at him the parents usually join in rather than scolding them.

my old Labour MP still follows me on twitter. It's amusing sometimes thinking about how she's often RT-ing any positive opinion pieces on Starmer or his own tweets, while I'm clicking like on juvenile photoshops or tweets calling him a "cop wanker" or comparing his complexion to sliced ham!

Liam Byrne has a lot to answer for tbf, his stupid note was a vital propaganda win in favour of austerity.

there was some weird kind of paralysis there, either that or just plain old cowardice and complete lack of conviction. I mean ffs like retorting: we didn't cause the 2007-08 global financial crisis actually. But no they just let the narrative take hold and tamely took their medicine. it was quite pathetic really.

His successor, Lib Dem David Laws, broke with tradition and made the note public, accusing Mr Byrne of flippancy.

Mr Byrne said he had been following a tradition dating back to Churchill.

Not entirely convincing tbh - 'oh well if it's tradition I guess I'll just have to...'

far be it from me to post

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF8c3BjFWsw

well

i refer the thread to my comment of monday evening

I only regret that there is but one labour party for me to have quit.

I have just finally quit the Labour party.

last one out's a meeeelt

xp to Daniel
Same.

Having said that, Jewdas, who are my heroes atm, present a decent, and inspiring case here:

For everyone tearing their hair out or their membership cards up, we want you to look at this image. The old adage that you get conservative with age only applies to babyboomers and their kids. The rest of us are what Israel might call a "demographic timebomb". pic.twitter.com/fkcoMa9Hem

— jewdⒶs // ייִדהודה (@jewdas) October 29, 2020

that's a nice thread

Definitely feel like if a viable alternative to labour doesn't appear now, it never will

lol @ jewdas quoting the ira tho

"viable" is the big issue isn't it? no left-oriented political party starting from scratch is going to be able to get the access to media and etc to mount a meaningful challenge in parliamentary elections any time soon. and i have to say that any left-oriented party has to run the gauntlet of wresting itself from the usual dipshit Stalinists and etc

well, there you go then

i guess the answer is "never"

I wouldn't say never now tho, UK political processes feel exceptionally broken

Jewdas's graph kind of skipping around the conservatism of Gen X, isn't it?

"their kids"

i'm Gen X don't slander me

#notallboomers

I bet it wasn't all boomers and gen X'ers in the membership that melted like butter over that shitty Starmer vid back in January and voted for the twat.

that Kieth vid in full

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTup9yo6T9M

https://vice-images.vice.com/images/content-images-crops/2016/08/08/owen-smith-bbq-in-london-fields-body-image-1470651753-size_1000.jpg?output-quality=75

bloomin' boomers + gen x'ers, what are they good for eh?

God, if I'd remembered to send in my "stop giving any of my union subs to the Labour Party" form three months ago it could have been processed by Christmas

Did send my NEC ballot, like a good boy

The results of @UKLabour NEC elections are being delayed from lunchtime to (approx) teatime as some people who were ineligble to vote appear to have done so and this is being addressed. I have no sense, though, that any faction is about to hire Guiliani

— iain watson (@iainjwatson) November 13, 2020

Update: The chair, co-secretary and a number of other members in Bristol West Labour have been suspended from the party: https://t.co/GTfALr1QHV

— LabourList (@LabourList) November 13, 2020

Local parties were warned by general secretary David Evans not to “have discussions about, or pass motions in relation to any aspect of individual disciplinary cases” in an email to local officers last week.

The guidance stated that the party would “not hesitate to take appropriate action – including against individual members” if it considered that the advice had not been adhered to.

....

But McLaughlin told LabourList: “The anti-democratic suspension of Jeremy Corbyn has, rightly, been a topic of huge debate within the party.

“Because of this it is absolutely right that members should be able to have their say, as Keir Starmer does in every interview he gives.”

I've written off the party and am past the point of caring about right-wing purges and wotnot, thankfully because if I was still a concerned Labour member I might genuinely be getting high blood pressure from ranting about this arsehole. As it is now, I've achieved a reasonable distance and acceptance of events, where I can let thingss pass calmly + coolly observe this dismal jerkoff dying a slow political death, and witness him slowly fading into the obscurity the cunt richly deserves. With still a bit of Grrr! but not enough to give me high blood pressure.

(1)So this is why Labour NEC election results are late: HQ Officials are obsessively combing through the ballot to see if they can cancel votes of members who sent angry "I resign" emails over Corbyn suspension After they were given a vote, but before they actually cast the Vote

— Solomon Hughes (@SolHughesWriter) November 13, 2020

Five for the left. Was always a stitch up.

The following candidates have been elected as CLP representatives to the National Executive Committee:

• Luke Akehurst
• Johanna Baxter
• Ann Black
• Gemma Bolton
• Yasmine Dar
• Nadia Jama
• Gurinder Singh Josan
• Laura Pidcock
• Mish Rahman

— CLP Nominations (@CLPNominations) November 13, 2020

Luke fucking Akehurst back on the NEC!

thousands of souls chanting "stay and fight" in weary unison, shovelling their hopes and dreams into a giant furnace with HER MAJESTY'S LOYAL OPPOSITION in giant letters on the side, slowly filling the room with poisonous smoke

— Rory Scothorne (@shirkerism) November 13, 2020

i am fully sympathetic to both sides of the "stay and fight" vs "fuck this joek party" divide tbh

Momentum text suggested to rank them on the ballot as: Bolton, Rahman, Jama, Henderson, Dar, Pidcock

when i saw Pidcock's name i had a weird flash of "oh yeah you exist"

There’ll be at least one ilx poster who’ll be pleased about Pidcock

don't call it a comeback she's been here for months

iirc Pidcock is good not bad, or did I get that mixed up?

she's decent i think, just joking about how she's dropped off the radar since the beginning of the year

she made some racially clueless comments in the leadership election iirc

She’s also a terf

ah fuck don't remember that, bollocks to her then

The left chose to go along with her rather than ask tough questions. Very grim stuff xp

also she was very Chris Williamson adjacent

wait what i was still under the impression she was a good guy v sad

what was the terfiness?

It was pretty clearly expressed terfy bigotry, not the subtle type.

it's a good reminder really that even if you started a new party, it would attract a massive bunch of unpalatable "committed-socialist" "lifelong anti-racist" "proud trade unionist" wankers with seriously problematic luggage - and just as fucking awful as most of the right-wing of the PLP in their own way!

no shit, but if this isn’t buried I’ll be surprised.

Over half of Muslim members don't trust the leadership on Islamophobia or trust the complaints process.

Respondents also cited Starmer's backtrack on Kashmir, weakening of stance on Palestine & Labour's association with Prevent as key issues https://t.co/Qc3lTYiQ7E

— Ilyas Nagdee (@ilyas_nagdee) November 13, 2020

also even beyond the williamson/galloway types the famous hard left of this party is so appalling on sex work that mentioning names would be redundant / a waste of time

This report by Labour Muslim Network is a considered piece of work that must be treated seriously. @LabourMuslims has worked extremely hard in recruiting and mobilising within the Muslim community for Labour, especially amongst the younger generation. These voices must be heard. https://t.co/2mgrP45CTg

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) November 14, 2020

Lol no one cares

Not caring about Muslims is it

To expand, Islamophobia moves papers and votes in this country, I would expect the party to treat it the way they treated the recent report into anti-black discrimination and the EHRC’s failures there. I cbf linking it rn but there was that thread after the GE about how racism factored heavily into anti-Corbyn messaging that has always struck me as an under-acknowledged truth.

Really important for the leadership to take this seriously. Mosques will not hesitate to coordinate abstentions and with the council elections looming...

My local clp has a big Asian membership and something like 90% of them voted for Starmer in the leadership election. I hope they are now regretting it and planning to suitably punish the party for his bullshit.

I'm assuming it's the old They've Got Nowhere Else To Go tactic that has worked so well for the Labour Party in the past.

I think Starmer choosing 'Three Lions' on DID is the final push I needed.

I thought people were just joking about that. jesus wept.

lmao

Amazing.

This is on rn but I’m disinclined to find my bbc login or listen to his voice so

would rather have boiling tar poured into my ears.

I thought he might have surprised some people with some genuinely nice choices, but it sounds like 90% focus group piffle and 10 % Broon pretending to like the Arctic Monkeys.

Tbftsksqcmp, I doubt he could do a worse one than Theresa May. Just utterly irredeemable, Jesus Christ. Even when the choices aren’t bad, the reasons are horrendous.

I listened to it. Terrible. Some Grenfell charity version of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" with Stormzy (but of course) on it, get tae fuck, Starmer. Kinda hate DID anyway, I hate the fact that you need a reason to choose the music, beyond the fact that it's just stuff you fucking like, I'm pretty sure it was not always like that. I realize that's because most of their guests never listen to music and have no interest in it, instead they prefer listening to their own voices and have a deep abiding interest in themselves.

Starmer has this uncanny ability - that just when you think you've got the measure of what a terrible waste of space he is - he lifts off another layer of this rotten stinking edifice that houses this soulless wisp of a barely sentient lifeform called Keith within it, and reveals himself yet again to be even worse than you previously thought he was.

Lol

Already dreading Keir Starmer’s Desert Island Discs. The theme from the Hovis ad. Elgar’s cello concerto. Something by Stormzy. Dreadlock Holiday by 10cc for some reason. Favourite book: The Complete Dad’s Army Scripts. Luxury: a keg of Adnam’s Ghost Ship.

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) September 22, 2020

^^^ that I don't even know if this is parody or his actual choices sums the man up

note that he didn't suggest something too on the nose like Three Lions, that would be going too far.

He claimed he was in the crowd at the Germany game - ha ha, you fucking lost!

"World in Motion" would have been the hipster choice so i think we can accept Kieth just likes C-tier indie music and pretending to like football, oh noes that's what the crazy guy said about Corbyn the other day, what a dilemma

no true football fan gives a fuck about England anyway

i like the hinted at subtext that Kieth's dad hated him because he knew what a conniving Tory climber he was, don't know if this made the rubbish DID

Well, he supports Arsenal so his credentials as a true football fan are dubious at best.

normally policing the authenticity of what somebody claims to like is bad but i think we can make an exception for this dead-eyed kermit-voiced careerist

at least when Corbyn was pretending to like rock music to an adoring crowd at Prenton Park in '17 it was obv false, but at least it was funny.

Corbyn always had a "i have no idea what you daft kids are doing, but carry on" vibe

until a politician's DID selection is 10 psychic TV live releases or entirely stuff zappa recorded at ircam we shd always accept it is in no way "authentic" but instead entirely spad-driven, plus the spad is low tier and ill paid, hence the effort we put into reading it and clowning it dwarfs the effort put into selecting and explaining it

granted 3 lions is the biggest challenge ever mounted on my commitment to this^^^ line -- but still it fails and still i hold firm

"do you now or have you ever subscribed to the wire" screamed senator mccarthy

senator stereolab as he later became

"The Difference Between Me and You Is That I'm Not on Trial" screamed senator mclusky

I realize that's because most of their guests never listen to music and have no interest in it, instead they prefer listening to their own voices and have a deep abiding interest in themselves.

david suchet choosing the theme from poirot was the ne plus ultra of this.

come on, that's a banger

'True' football fandom reeks of Hoffman Forum snobbery imho (says this Arsenal fan)

unless you've done a tour of duty of all the basement football grounds and witnessed your team getting arseholed by Macclesfield on a pissy rain drenched Tuesday night, then you just aren't a real Psychic TV fan.

fond memories of Wolves getting knocked out of the FA cup first round by Sol Invictus in 1986

Baddiel, Skinner & The Lightning Seeds
Three Lions
Three Lions '98.

not only does he pick this but he picks the worst version of it!

Whenever a politician appears on Desert Island Discs, sceptics wonder whether the chosen tracks have been approved or even curated by special advisers, or run past a focus group. Keir Starmer insists that his eight discs are definitely his own personal selection: “if you run into anyone who has known me for a long time, they will tell you this is the genuine Keir Starmer list.”

he has been into that Grenfell record for a long time has he?

I wonder if there are any more Stormzy songs that might be more relevant to him.

Some say his decision to include a second referendum with Remain on the ballot in the Labour manifesto cost the party the 2019 election. “Of course I acknowledge this came up on the doorstep in different ways across the country,” he says. “In the North West, North East and parts of the Midlands it came up in a negative way, I’ve got to accept that and that’s a fair challenge. Obviously it was differently received in places like Scotland. "

good to hear his disastrously fatal PV 2nd Ref position was so well received in Scotland where they have one s(h)itting Labour MP.

aye but it might have been zero without that principled stance on brexit that we all loved so much on this side of the border

you're never gonna shift Murray without some kind of block and tackle arrangement

One of the weird things you see on twitter is the goings on at YL. Very weird how the leadership are bothering them at all.

Young members put their faith in me as Chair of Young Labour to represent them. As a democratic socialist I stand with young members and their right to engage with the Labour party’s long standing democratic traditions. Now, more than ever, young people's voices need to be heard. pic.twitter.com/LL1aHSHT2g

— Jess Barnard (@JessicaLBarnard) November 23, 2020

Members with household incomes under £20k: 83% agreed with 2019 manifesto, 62% thought it was wrong to not restore whip to Corbyn, 55% think the party is headed in wrong direction.

The factional divide within the Labour Party is also a class divide. https://t.co/MuhQbRtxWZ

— Callum Cant (@CallumCant1) November 26, 2020

It would be, we can't let the idea that the working classes are anything other than knuckle dragging racist morons who are dying to vote Tory gain any leeway.

one person on my twitter was constantly ranting that people's vote was class war and out to destroy corbynism last year, seems sort of prescient now even though I was blithely thinking "chill mate" at the time! Now it's quite clear Starmer is pro-austerity then there is zero harm reduction/self-interest in voting for the cunt, particularly for the sizable section of precariat members (which probably includes lots of middle-class people as well tbf) that joined Labour to support Corbynism, might as well just kill him instead!

Now it's quite clear Starmer is pro-austerity

I'm not clear what he is pro- or anti- on any given day.

He just comes across as pro focus grouped to bend in the wind in such a way that 45% of people who are 60% likely to vote won't find it objectionable or something.

have you not heard his shadow chancellor? who is not one for bold pronouncements - unless it is basically agreeing with the old tory 2010 - attack line that Labour used to spend too much. And do seriously think he's not pro-austerity? I mean you might have to wait for a few weeks before the next election before the cunt actually puts any concrete policy statements, but I'd put my life savings on the cunt being pro-austerity!

From his social media in recent days, I am pretty sure he is resolutely pro pay rises for armed cops!

yeah he didn't think the 2.5% rise the tories gave them last year was enough

all the messaging is basically what you got from Miliband Labour but now with extra armed-cop loving zeal!

I mean it doesn't really how popular anti-austerity policies are, Starmer get's an easier ride from the establishment than Corbz because it's implicit he's not going to support them kind of policies

popular

lol I meant doesn't really matter

he's already denounced/run over with a fucking lawnmower all his ten pledges including the wealth tax one which pretty much says he's quite happy with the status quo.

I mean that he's not genuinely anything. That he's making cut up the credit card noises this week is meaningless.
As soon as there's an analyst telling him there's a percentage point in unshackling the economy with investment in infrastructure growth or whatever he'll be dipping John McDonnell's pockets for policies then abandoning them again ten minutes later.

he is genuinely a tory tbf!

by every metric of measuring "what is a tory" this cunt scores at least 90%

Aye well I think most of the Labour party in recent decades is more Tory than not. Jezza era something of a blip tbh.

yeah sadly I don't think anything like Corbynism will ever happen again in our lifetimes, it was always doomed but I was a believer, now I'm just burnt out!

kieth is socially conservative, fiscally conservative. Even US president elect gropy Joe is outflanking him on trans rights!

Corbynism was a blip in the entire party history tbh, even before new labour the left was generally marginal

Starmer et al seem to think not offending the r/w press is either more important than public approval or that it’s literally the same thing

arguably Atlee was the Starmzy of his era, you're not wrong

you read UKANIA PERPETUA yet Left? That helped me deal with mental baggage I'd accumulated supporting this garbage party!

I haven’t but I’m going to read it now

people my age don’t remember labour before blair but from what we heard growing up you’d think the party was basically communist before he came along and saved/ruined it

it isn't helped by dickheads like Ken Loach putting out stupid hagiographic docs that unquestioningly glorify 1945 Labour without any proper historical context.

i used to make the argument even during the Blair years that Old Labour wasn't exactly the Fourth Internationale

Not remotely surprising - and worth noting that in London, the renters I knew were overwhelmingly pro-Corbyn and the homeowners the most vehemently opposed (although that was never their stated reason) https://t.co/6P1t8uVpjX

— Juliet. (@zinovievletter) November 26, 2020

the most vehemently opposed people to Corbyn seem to be very quiet now there is a Tory leading the Labour Party

Hard to think of a more unprincipled senior figure in British public life right now https://t.co/YkVOUWppPQ

— Stephen Smith (@SteveNickSmith) November 28, 2020

that's one way of putting it

My statement following tonight’s Nottingham East CLP meeting. pic.twitter.com/OzuoKa4XRM

— Nadia Whittome MP (@NadiaWhittomeMP) November 27, 2020

I wasn't expecting this from Nadia, but there you go.

"a motion that was clearly out of order"

Yeah, not sure what she's up to here.

Today's joker:

For the sake of any younger folks on here, I'd just like to assure you Keir Starmer is well to the left of where Tony Blair ever was

— James Harris (@JamesHarrisNow) November 27, 2020

lol most of the New Labour poverty ameliorating policies have already been denounced by his Shadow Chancellor as "spending too much"

I think Nadia has been supportive of Jammy Crumjirn but also keen to maintain party unity, I might disagree on this but she's still sound imo

you have to choose sides in a factional war and there is no such thing as party unity and never has been imo. But I still like her as a person.

more often than not "unity" is just a cudgel used to bludgeon elements of the losing side over the head with!

well yeah, but she's a good'un

I hope so as well. Her instincts have mostly been good so far.

Last year ⁦@Keir_Starmer⁩ was criticising the Tories for removing the whip from senior Tory MPs. Strangely he seems to have forgotten what he said then. #IStandWithJeremyCorbyn pic.twitter.com/rJiqTPvJcu

— Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) November 28, 2020

unprincipled oxygen thief shown up as a shite-talking hypocrite shocker.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/En8K_3VXYAIwxZP?format=jpg&name=large

'I am normal'

say what like about jez, but he sure knew how get the most out of a photo op.

calz have you considered not posting about this guy for a week

have you ever considered not tone-policing other posters like some fucking pub landlady for a day or two? Nobody is perfect and to be quite frank I will post about what the fuck I feel like thank you very much.

Oh yeah of course it was quite remiss of me to post about Stramer on the "have you quit the labour party yet?" thread

sorry about grumpiness, but FFS!

lol @ you using “pub landlady” as a pejorative, do point me to any other examples? Cos I actually like you calz and this guy is all you post about atm.

Haaaaaaa that photo is in front of the pensioner huts around the corner from Leather Lane.

No it isn't. I have also posted about Burnley fc, Ingrid Laubrock and Diego M's corpse today. And that isn't including stuff I've posted about weather and drunken kitchen fires with an old friend on twitter. Maybe just mind own business rather than trying to lecture other people on how they should post, because that is just arrogant behaviour, gyac.

lol, k

calzino, please keep tearing into the cant. Reassures me that my present, perpetual anger at the state of things is warranted

At #JLM2020, Joan Ryan called for "examination" by Starmer & frontbench of roots of antisemitism in Labour. Mike Gapes said Starmer had "been doing a good job so far – much better than I expected" & he "can't back down". Neither confirmed applying to join Labour again.

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) November 29, 2020

critical support for Keith from Gapesy and Joan "look into your hands" Ryan.

Return to the Planet of the Gapes

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EmkcseTXMAE_LlK?format=jpg&name=large

bloody disgrace that he's dressed up for a star wars comic con when visiting a war memorial!

https://www.guardian-series.co.uk/resources/images/6432960.jpg?display=1&htype=0&type=responsive-gallery

this would be a great image to photoshop into a christmas card - the three wise melts.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/En_Z0q_WMAQUc1h?format=jpg&name=small
omg imagine if Corbz was snapped hogging a priority seat on the tube (despite being old enough to need one), but at least this fucker leaving his SUV in the drive at his townhouse will make the roads much safer.

Haha was just about to link this tweet

I’m no Corbyn fan, but afaict:

Corbyn: always stands on public transport, or sits quietly on the floor
Starmer: barges through the doors and heads straight for the priority seat and then watches Avatar on full volume pic.twitter.com/ITOpc7WDTh

— ian ‘eugene cobwebs’ mighty (@iammightor) November 29, 2020

lool

Avatar :D

i'd've gone with Road Trip

When was that taken? No masks. Please tell me he wasn't watching a film at full volume on a tube train.

must have been pre-Rona

xp

it's much worse than that, he was having a very loud facetime chat with Paul Mason apparently!

no signal on northern line

Starmer dropping a heavy hint that Ryan, Gapes, Berger, etc, will be invited back with the ‘five year rule’ waived.

what a triumph for ecumenism, what party wouldn't be improved by having Mike Gapes in it?

fucking disgrace

Imagine if he said at the hustings in feb: listen lads one of my long term strategies will be to bring back Gapesy (LOUD APPLESAUCE!)

lol

Peter Mandelson just told me this at @JewishLabour conference: in short, he said, Labour can't allow the left to legalise party management as it did in the 1980s. So ERHC recommendation of an independent disciplinary process cannot stand.

See @siennamarla for more updates https://t.co/PBpmHlAuAi

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) November 29, 2020

https://sascha313.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/stalin-laughing-02.jpg?w=640

Thanks for doing that 20 minutes of unconscious bias training @Keir_Starmer, but perhaps the measure of your commitment to antiracism might be in opposing the deportation of Windrush descendants and people who have lived in the UK since childhood?

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) December 1, 2020

Unconscious bias training fixes the unconscious, not the bias.

Diane Abbot

Kelvin Hopkins

John McDonnell

Fiona Mactaggart

Dennis Skinner

Jeremy Corbyn

^^^

the six Labour MPs who voted against the 2014 immigration act aka effectively the windrush deportation act.

shit like this is why Crombyn was unelectable. read the room, grandad

The Graun headline at the time: Tory Immigration suffers big blow as 98% of PLP abstain

I quit the Labour Party this morning for the record

It was not in fact difficult enough for me to have postponed it for this long

Well done.

My meltish former Labour local MP has unfollowed me for slagging off Starmer so much, but I've gained the much superior former Colne Valley MP, Thelma Walker as a follower. She's one of them who has quit the party over Corbyn's treatment and can't fucking stand him.

can't stand Kieth I should add!

^ pvmic :)

I fucking love his glistening skin and his cuet hair, he makes want to listen to The Smiths - bless his cotton socks. One of the most inspirational Labour leaders of my lifetime (as a newborn soldier fly that crawled out of the larvae 10 seconds ago).

https://bridgetjonesdiary.fandom.com/wiki/Mark_Darcy?file=Markdarcy.jpg

Likely to be the first of many:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/01/keir-starmer-urged-to-return-donations-from-islamophobic-property-developer

pic.twitter.com/eYnHaSMT97

— Lafargue (@Lafargue) December 1, 2020

pic.twitter.com/3VDSDZpRCU

— Congolesa Rice (@judeinlondon2) December 4, 2020

it seems insane now that approximately 11 months I donated money that I couldn't really afford to the Labour Party and now I'd rather lick shit off the pavement than even vote for them!

Just left the most shambolic Leeds North West CLP meeting where a motion of no confidence in Keir Starmer and Dave Evans could not be tabled essentially due to filibustering as people ran down the clock until the meeting had to end - a ridiculous and undemocratic stitch up.

— George Aylett (@GeorgeAylett) December 4, 2020

from the people who spent five years calling the left a cult, now for only £80 a month you can get keir starmer's autograph and a phone call off eddie izzard or joanne baxter every six months https://t.co/iDUqrXBokw pic.twitter.com/SfUArOx1J9

— Frank Sobotka (@cymrurouge) December 13, 2020

I used to pay a couple of quid a month and one my fave perks was voting to keep Eddie fucking Izzard out of the NEC!

That might be the single most disgusting thing they've done yet, tiered membership to the Labour Party ffs, sink the fucker, it's finished

It's fucking repulsive and also what kind of sick weirdo (and I say this as a weirdo) would want a fucking signed Starmer conference speech?

yeah, of all the many ways this is fucked up the idea that you might want to bask in the 20 watt starpower of Kieth is bitterly comical

A year after a ton of people gave their time to hop on a bus and canvass in other parts of the country for a manifesto they believed in, at their own cost.

a year after tons of members made financial contributions (in some cases no doubt more than they could afford) to the party because they believed the leadership would deliver on the transformative manifesto put before the electorate.

Is this real @StefGotBooted ? pic.twitter.com/opR8WkXkpS

— TheIainDuncanSmiths (@TheIDSmiths) December 13, 2020

if i was intrerested i would probably suggest that its an opportunity for the left to create caucuses and pool resources to literally buy platforms within the party/access to the leadership and then constantly draw attention to how disgusting it is while also platforming key issues. I realise there are huge problems with this but it would be fun to have wealthy donors having to sit at a table with a pissed off nurse or housing campaigner making a huge stink all night about how cronyish this new model is.

or when Starmer presents them with a signed conference speech they can contemptuously drop it on the floor and say lol is this some kind of fucking joke, lol you sad dickhead!

Frequently bought together: The World's Greatest Conference Speeches (all by me) - Kieth Starmer. The Ten Greatest Shits I've Ever Had - Baron Pickles.

That's actually a good suggestion plax.

Under 👏🏼New👏🏼Management 👏🏼 pic.twitter.com/uMayLFERgl

— The Trashies (@TheTrashiesUK) December 14, 2020

just Keir Stürmer chatting with an actual nazi who was pushing white genocide stuff unchallenged. hard centre says nothing to see here

Err, no. We don't need a full investigation everytime Starmer's response doesn't match what activists want. There are bigger problems to worry about. https://t.co/y2qtj6fXaG

— Sunny Hundal (@sunny_hundal) December 14, 2020

surprised

Keir Stürmer

Good work there.

Der Starmer

I've just seen someone suggesting he is the most wooden and lethargic party leader since the Maybot. Quite unfair on the Maybot I say.

Can't stand Keith, but May is still worst human alive imo.

If there was a top trumps set on UK political leaders though, with ratings on all the leadership qualities that so many of these fuckers told us for years that Jermy Crombs lacked. Then I think she would still score higher than Kieth for her ability to converse with radio/tv media without a script or a rehearsed routine and reacting live to situations that require a bit more than the usual constipated profession pol prevaricating ... Alexa, what is the innocuous opinion to harbour on the fascist great replacement conspiracy theory .. tick tock tick tock!

"If you stand for nothing you'll fall for anything"@Keir_Starmer abstaining on white supremacy is quite something.

His apparent indifference to extremist views is very worrying. pic.twitter.com/BRYVH2T5iH

— Tommy Corbyn (@TommyCorbyn) December 14, 2020

his indifference is either actual indifference = worrying

or ignorance = just as worrying, not sure which is worse

Corbyn had his moments as well, clicking like on the anti-Semitic mural was a damning one that still haunts him. I just feel like the reaction to this will be entirely different and have a much shorter life in the news cycle (if it even gets mentioned in it). And rather than a load of crank adjacent twitter lefties defending him, Kieth will have whole sections of the media and just about all of the PLP unconvincingly dismissing this as no biggie.

the fascist stuff is so mainstream now it doesn’t even register as fascist, I’m sure he thinks indulging it will win him back some Real England voters, and he doesn’t want to sound too north london metropolitan elite by challenging it

xp

like all Corbyn cultists i agree, he was hardly perfect

you wouldn't know that to read the Twitter centrists tho would you?

Corbyn specifically commented on the antisemitic mural saying there was nothing wrong with it iirc, probably the most enduring 😬😬😬 of his tenure

oh aye he definitely dropped some serious boners, and also fuck a personality cult, as we have to endlessly repeat

corbyn fucked up a lot but the scandals around him were fundamentally not primarily about the things they were claimed to be about

no one with any power is going to give a fuck about starmer’s racism, which has been the fundamental theme of his leadership

obviously that too, no more than the government seriously gives one fuck about the fishing industry as such

far and away the most distressing thing about Starmer's ascent and the reversion to the mean of the Labour Party is the destruction of the only vague hope that BAME people and other excluded groups for change thru lol parliamentary democracy

of course when corbyn did literally anything, the aggro centrists felt we did need a full investigation every time. and this was all they wanted - creating endless controversy around him to delegitimise him. acting like we didn't have bigger issues to get concerned about.

This is all they want - just creating controversy around him. Not like we have bigger issues to get concerned about.

— Sunny Hundal (@sunny_hundal) December 14, 2020

while it's disconcerting that starmer has clearly thought to himself - I cannot have a "bigoted woman" moment - and that has hamstrung him in his response., it's perhaps even more disconcerting that he likely thought to himself "this is a red wall labour voter type" when hearing this kind of rhetoric when it was an actual fascist, and that this wasn't immediately clear to him because the kind of rhetoric is so widespread in the uk

this party’s takeaway from bigotgate was that racism should never ever be called out, except for factional reasons, and nothing in the last decade has changed their position

also the party is just racist, always has been. it prefers its racism to be expressed through proxies for plausible deniability but it’s more than eager to stoke the flames

none of this is a surprise is it? you just kind of hope that your suspicions aren’t true

when Dawn Butler finished last in the deputy leader election was a big "finished with these fucks" moment for me

Corbyn specifically commented on the antisemitic mural saying there was nothing wrong with it iirc, probably the most enduring 😬😬😬 of his tenure

and no, none of it is a surprise, it's just therapeutic to moan - like you Left dude :D

Here's a chart showing Keir Starmer's satisfaction rating amongst BAME respondents in Ipsos MORI polling. Note that these are subsamples of around 120-130 respondents.

Starmer's net rating amongst BAME respondents has fallen from +53 (June) to +6 (December). pic.twitter.com/BNACT38jnV

— Stats for Lefties (@LeftieStats) December 14, 2020

There's a lot of BAME voters in his constituency.

His constituency office is at the foot of a big block of (mostly) council flats, maybe he should try listening to some of the people who live there.

can't wait to see what's in the daily starmer tomorrow

can't listen to your constituents if they're not bunging you £80 a month

Of course, he knows all those BAME voters in his constituency have got nowhere else to, their votes are in his back pocket, so fuck them.

Yes, and weirdly he appeared to be helpful and normal in his interactions with various groups and individuals from BAME backgrounds (lots of Bangladeshi and Somali people in H&StP) which vexes me! FFS whyyyyy can’t he behave this way on the national stage, how difficult is it to explain why (for example) the Home Office under Patel is bad because they’d love to treat citizens the way they treat asylum seekers, if only they could, and they’re ransacking the entire country with their bullshit?

Those people who might have nowhere else to go could stay home (but they like how he treats them as constituents, so vote for him because he sorts out their issues).

I've lost count of the amount of "fantastic constituency MP's" in the PLP who get praised for not telling their constituents to get fucked (just doing what they are paid to do) apart from from when it comes to abstaining or voting in Parliament in a manner that will make many of them poorer or ruin their lives.

I think we’re in broad agreement, Calz, in that if the right-wing press are gonna call Labour socialist regardless of actual party positions, might as well do some socialism!

https://gal-dem.com/keir-starmer-is-a-wet-wipe-lbc-caller/

"When Starmer first ascended to Labour leader in April, he was somewhat of an enigma"

^^

I agree with all this piece (fantastic title/URL as well!) apart from this nonsense, there was there was enough information on Kier's history to build a very clear picture of a conservative minded reconstructed tory cunt - you didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to see this either, definitely no mystery, no enigma - just an obvious tory cunt.

anyone who didn't see him coming: lol, where the hell have you been for the last 25 years? In a monastery in Wales ?! A cave in the Shetlands ?!

i guess the people who write for gal-dem are all like 25 tho?

oh of course I wouldn't put it so harshly to someone of that age, but there were people old enough to know better posting absolute reeking guff about him back in Feb

not always out of naivety I should add, but I remember him being talked about as if he was a blank slate and don't worry .. he's a human rights lawyer - lol some of the loveliest people in the world as twitter has revealed to us!

lol it seems there was an official rebuttal to this in a labour newsletter?

really? hah hah!

I wonder if calling Sir Kieth a wet wipe is enough to get you thrown out of the party these days!

insulting to wet wipes imo

I love this notion that apparently Kieth is very thin-skinned and trawls social media with a quivering lip while reading people calling him a wet wipe and dismissing his leadership as an abject fail, some of the responses from his office have suggested there could be some truth to this.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EpbZEWeXEAAlAcy?format=jpg&name=large

lol this dismal joke of a man won't be the first rotten pol to try and take credit for Marcus Rashford's good work

the since becoming leader sentence has big marc jacobs by marc jacobs for marc jacobs energy

Nick Ferrari – Police ‘Assessing’ Hate Crime Allegation Against Top LBC Host.

Top LBC regular guest has nothing to say on this matter.

eh surely they have to 'investigate' if there's been a complaint. reporting this is just to enable outrage and then the investigation will be quietly dropped.

unless ferrari has been literally mailing his own feces to people from minority groups. remember, simply using your power to scapegoat and villainise whoever you want to is not against the law.

On December 3, during a live broadcast discussion about 23 people being removed from a deportation plane bound for Jamaica due to legal challenges, Ferrari said: “Fairly soon there will be a Jamaican rapist or paedophile coming to a street near you.”

i dont disagree that these people are the absolute worst and that they should be hounded out of public life forever

is Kieth one of them people that uninvitedly turns up at a party, drinks all the booze and brings an obnoxious noisy racist with him, then blocks the toilet before he leaves.

i dont think keith is that much fun

truedat!

more like the sort who would turn up with a West Wing box set, and occasionally be chiding people for making too much noise during the best bits!

🚨 Labour have voted AGAINST Plaid Cymru's motion to extend the eligibility of #FreeSchoolMeals.

Our motion called for the 70,000 children in families on universal credit or equivalent benefit who aren't currently eligible to get free school meals.

— Plaid Cymru (@Plaid_Cymru) December 16, 2020

Kieth trying to take credit for Rashford's campaigning work and I've not heard him criticising his Welsh Labour colleagues for voting like heartless Tory cunts in the Senedd.

lol i just found out a few members in my ward have started a leftist splinter group on whatsapp.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EqhJ3ABWMAEYw9O?format=jpg&name=large

Today's puzzle has me stumped

genuine question but what is the function of the labour party right now lol

— sandy haws (@jeremywh0rebyn) December 29, 2020

Opened my old campaign account to find a year after losing in elec I'm still getting emails from locals asking me for support. All desperate working class people, one even from the street I grew up on. Tories will keep them struggling. Hard not to think about what could have been

— Faiza Shaheen (@faizashaheen) December 31, 2020

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EqkCcN3XcAEz-LN?format=jpg&name=900x900

there is always what could have been and the grim reality of what we have got, which is two tory parties now.

that he can't even be arsed hiding his indifference to austerity and that he cares so little about victims of Windrush just shows how long a year is in politics

you know who else had a predictable moral framewerk?

it's a lousy metric to use for admiration towards a politician never mind one of the most evil and vindictive in recent UK history, he's such a tool

We don’t even have two Tory parties because the Tories are usually a damn sight better at opposition than this

Really liked it when Theresa called me a “citizen of nowhere”, thanks Keir

A classic May speech from the halcyon days of 2012

https://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2012/10/09/theresa-may-speech-in-full/

I still believe we should scrap the Human Rights Act altogether

love to not believe in human rights, that's my moral framework right there

can't help but have a degree of admiration for you

Interesting fact: the tiles on the floor of the Senate and House of Representatives were made in Stoke-on-Trent.

— Gareth Snell (@gareth_snell) January 6, 2021

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-labour-no-confidence-camberwell-b1784390.html

Keir Starmer: Labour branch passes ‘motion of no confidence’ in leader
South London branch ‘does not believe he can win a general election’, despite rise in polls against PM since Corbyn was party leader

I almost feel like defending him when that horrible piece of shit Rosie Duffield is gunning for him but my main beef with Kieth is that I don't even care if he could win an election with the current bunch of knaves he has in that shadow cabinet and the direction he has taken the party. Lol he's won an extra 4% of Leave voters back to the party - sick numbers!

This looks like great news. Solidarity and well done to @unitetheunion members at Barnoldswick. There is power in a union.https://t.co/pQcWprtpR6

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) January 8, 2021

something has put the fear into him recently

or someone ;)

probably something more like very worrying private polling rather than idiot death-threats from shit-posting muppets!

That all his conservative messaging and not giving a hoot about the biggest teachers' unions advice during what is turning into a national catastrophe, and that this has only gained him a negligible slither of support from knuckle scraping troglodytes in Bishop Auckland should also have him worried. His current electoral math is so bad it is almost guaranteed to keep the tories in power for another decade.

It's the worst time in the last 70 years to be playing a cautious conservative politically narrow-game and hoping not to upset the status quo and also hoping for the best.

calz i think he's more a symptom than a cause but it's beautifully life affirming to watch him fuck himself like ths

who put 50p in kieth

i wdn;t throw a sharpened 50p at that cunt

something has put the fear into him recently

― calzino, Friday, 8 January 2021 22:53 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

or someone ;)

― imago, Friday, 8 January 2021 23:05 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

getting a very "nimoy in the monorail episode" vibe from this

*evaporates*

a couple of wars on different fronts against Kieth now. He's got the FBPE lamers like Duffield who remembered what he did last summer, baying for his blood as well as all the pro-Corbyn branches piling up the votes of no confidence. It won't end well for him, but when it does i'll pull up a deckchair and get some popcorn.

he lacks the savvy of a Blair

whar a terrible indictment

he probably wouldn't survive Chicken Coup 2, because Corbyn for all his faults inspired loyalty amongst a big enough swathe of the membership to withstand such attacks.

Imagine still paying your dues to these muppets...

if you don't pay your dues you can't troll the leadership with no confidence votes

cunt doesn't even have confidence in himself. joined a union just to try and cut him off, the Tory muppet cunt

Wonderful news. https://t.co/n9MYOQdH6a

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) January 9, 2021