“I take my responsibilities seriously. I did not lie” - UK politics June 23 on

please let this happen

Hahahaha pic.twitter.com/MvmJfU9xAa

— j (@jrc1921) July 12, 2023

Perfect.

lol, amazing.

I'm guessing they feel they need a "name" candidate because they're being told by people on the ground that Corbyn is likely to win. Which reminds me that I was phoned by a polling company about a year ago and asked, among other things, if I'd vote for Corbyn if he ran as an independent.

heard they are also considering Luciana Berger, which would be the same result but less funny

you need a mission specialist like Paul to take on Corbyn, some low value person who the party doesn't give a fuck about and has previous experience of rejection and failure.

LB is the epitome of a spoiled Habs old girl, let her lose there too.

apparently she was appalling to her staffers and she's a dreadful melt

but I think the party will see her as too high value to waste on a lost cause

Would imagine Berger is being lined up for somewhere she can actually win, probably not Liverpool this time lol. But if they did put her up against Corbyn then there would obviously be a certain discourse we would have to go through again.

also relevant to note

As a student activist and new Labour MP, Berger was romantically linked to Tony Blair's son Euan and with Chuka Umunna

Tonty took her under his wing at an early age and she seems to have stayed there

Are there many Welsh speakers in Islington North?

The whole world is represented in Islington North.

being the anti-Corbyn candidate in Islington N requires either great stupidity or hubris - qualities Mason has plenty of in equal measure!

I think LB wants to stand in Golders Green and Finchley? She ran there last time as a Lib Dem but it’s where she’s actually from or where she has lived as an adult.

She totally dated Chuka but always denies her friendship with Euan Blair was a relationship.

So she moved to 2 different opposition parties, stood for the Lib Dems, and is now fine to stand as a Labour MP again.

When you have it laid out in front of you the hypocrisy is comical.

at least she didn't make a single tweet broadly in support of tactical voting a few years ago eh?

Whenever anyone on the right of Labour is described as ‘talented’ by others in that group, I’m always left wondering what they could possibly mean. Talented at opening and shutting briefcases?

The talent is not being seduced by dumb shit like humanity or wanting to reduce inequality

BBC journalists constantly talking about "junior doctors say they've had below-inflation pay-rises for years" - this isn't a question of opinion, it's on the historical record and you can look it up and report it as a fact. obviously somebody prefers to present it as doubtful claim

Millions of public sector workers, including teachers, police and junior doctors to get pay rises between 5-7%, UK government sayshttps://t.co/3U2SzSrR6A

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) July 13, 2023

The government will help fund public sector pay increases by “significantly” raising fees for migrants’ visa applications and NHS access, Rishi Sunak said.

Setting it up nicely for an incoming Lab govt to continue along the same path

There is no new money there apart from the idea of getting migrants to pay for it, which is so utterly craven - and, I think, delusional - I can absolutely accept that it came from this government.

Hilarious that Rishi kept saying he couldn't agree to the 6% pay recommendations because it would be inflationary, and now he says he can after all - as long as austerity is reimposed. It's not about inflation at all. It's about squeezing the state dry.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/13/strikers-agency-workers-high-court-verdict

those "out-of-touch unelected judges" have made some good rulings recently. lol at Kwarteng's political legacy

Even if it were a good policy, I cannot see how migrants' visa fees can begin to cover public sector pay rises.

it's got to the point where policies don't need to workable or have any practical use at all, as long they sound punitive enough towards anyone who isn't British then it's good to go.

probably a fair amount of immigrants coming here will be people coming to work in the public sector as nurses etc

when i worked in a s/w house, we once got raided by the home office as someone had tipped them off re us having illegals.
meant that the next day we all had to take in our passports to prove we were who we were.
the so called illegals, were developers over from our chicago office who all had valid visas.
however, the process and interviews that the chicago crew had to go through was intense and very intimidating.
and this was over 10 years ago.
i dread to think how things are now.

Teachers Unions leaders are a disgrace for recommending this offer.

I suspect our union will accept it.

A good thing about social media is how it facilitates chat around how shit a lot of union leaders are. Hope teachers reject (and your union Tom) reject this pay cut

would it be so hard for Starmer to say “we’d negotiate to find a fair deal with the great workers of this country”? ffs just last week he accused rishi of having “given up”, the attack line is just sitting there waiting

You can load the bases with no outs and he’ll choose the NOBLETIGER every time

Rachel Reeves was saying last week that a Labour government might also ignore the recommendations of pay review boards - what's she saying now the Tories have accepted then?

god knows i nod off every time she opens her mouth

I can barely hear her over my screaming.

So much for the most popular minister in the cabinet.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/15/ben-wallace-says-he-will-step-down-as-defence-secretary-and-quit-as-mp

Frankly, the left has to start caring a lot more about growth, about creating wealth, attracting inward investment and kickstarting a spirit of enterprise,” he says.

“It is the only show in town for those who dream of a brighter future.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/15/keir-starmer-we-cant-spend-our-way-back-to-power

LOL TIL he entered politics via the scottish parliament

xpost

is the RIP act of 2000 still in force? because that had a prison sentence for failing to disclose passwords and 'I've forgotten it' wasn't a valid response. People were prosecuted under it.

Senior Labour insiders said they agreed that the policy was “horrible” and would not exist “in a perfect world” but said the party was not making any spending commitments it was unable to deliver on. “I can see why colleagues might feel uncomfortable with this but we’ve got to be realistic about the state of the economy,” they said.

One shadow cabinet minister said Starmer had to be able to “slay shibboleths” over public spending but admitted it was a tough position for MPs with constituents in poverty to defend.

“These things are not easy for the MPs because they do genuinely hurt families in their constituencies,” they said. “But we can’t end child poverty unless we have more money to do it – and that’s not going to happen, frankly, in the first term of a Labour government.”

https://i.imgur.com/XjBzkbW.png

this insistence on refusing to commit to actually improving anything in any way reminds me of this joke Jeremy Hardy made in the late 90s about New Labour coming to power and the public feeling like someone who had waited 18 years for an organ transplant only to find out that the donor had the same condition

Can't remember the last time I've had a thought reading this thread that wasn't "these fucking cunts" (nb not the thread contributors).

The funniest thing about lack of commitment is how quickly old that will get when we have droughts/flood/fires and the like.

Sleepwalkers, the lot of them.

enlightening article (for some Americans) about the NHS in the NYT today

A good person.

I’ve decided to resign from @UKLabour and serve as an Independent Mayor.

People are tired of being controlled by Westminster and Party HQs. They want someone to stand up for them. Let the people decide. £25k by end of Aug & I’ll stand as North East Mayor👉https://t.co/WuDEGd3xxJ pic.twitter.com/kscPeMmlX5

— Mayor Jamie Driscoll (@MayorJD) July 17, 2023

All power to Jamie.

Those quotes from the "Senior Labour insiders" (Mandeldroids like Akehurst and McSweeney) won't convince anyone. We've all learnt by now that these people take active pleasure in the suffering of natural Labour voters. It's punishment for the enthusiasm for Corbyn, for wanting fairer policies, for being impudent and not accepting what they're told. The level of hatred these people are going to start to see directed towards them in a Labour gov may well surprise even them.

Jamie has raised 20k in barely 24 hrs.