The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[ml1dch]

 

Throw some more coal in the auto-exclusion machine boys, we're pulling an all-nighter.

 

[Seat68]

The Labour Party are that mate from school who you shared a mix bottle of spirits made up of bits from your parents drinks cabinet, you shared tales, you shared laughs, you danced to Ollie and Jerry at the school disco, you both had your first fag at the same time. You lose touch but **** those memories were good. 

Then they get back in touch and friend you up on Facebook and you think what a **** bellend. 

Yeah that's the Labour Party. **** bellends.

Edited May 30, 2019 by Seat68

[Demitri_C]

The party that let's very one down. If we had a half decent labour party they would have wiped the floor with the conservatives 

[bickster]

[blandy]

16 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Hang on, it's Corbyn's fault that Campbell chose to reveal who he had voted for?

I've got no idea how you got that from what I wrote.

I'll have another go. Corbyn's "policy" decision on Brexit has directly led to a collapse in Labour's vote in recent elections - the Council ones and the EU one. It has led to large numbers of former Labour voters voting for Green and Lib Dem candidates. Corbyn's  "policy" decision on Brexit runs counter to the wishes and views of the vast majority of Labour members, voters and MPs. It's therefore entirely unsurprising that they're being deserted by their natural base, or a large part of it.

So Campell saying after the election "yeah, I voted for the Lib Dems, and not Labour, for the very first time in my life" is a consequence of Corbyn's mishandling of Brexit.

An almost identical set of desertions from the tories reflect May's equally inept, or perhaps even more inept handling of Brexit. Both of them are "handling" Brexit through narrow perceived party interest and against national interest, and they're paying for it. And because they're so useless, they're losing voters, support, donors, members, trust and so on.

 

[bickster]

... and long may it continue (for both parties of clusterpork)

[bickster]

I see Red Len and Ian Lavery have been yanking at Comrade Corbyn's chain again, insulting the wishes of the party faithful in their wake.

[peterms]

22 hours ago, blandy said:

This take on it is rot, IMO. It's the wrong way round.

The damage is/was inflicted by Corbyn, not Campbell. Campbell's actions (and those of the many many other Labour members who did exactly the same, only with less media attention) are a symptom, not the cause.

Exactly the same has happened, in terms of voting,  with the  tories - Heseltime doing the same thing, saying the same thing, having the whip withdrawn (though not expelled) - it's again a symptom of the mess the tories are in, not Heseltine wanting to damage the tories, or providing ammunition.

Campbell, Hezza, whoever may or may not be [insert crime here] , but they've done what they've done as a consequence of both Party's incompetence. 

You are reading Campbell's actions simply as a response to Labour's position on Brexit, and as a result you draw a false equivalence with Heseltine.

Campbell has long been part of an organised grouping within Labour that sought to exercise control (and managed to, for years) by means that went beyond what the usual interest groups and factions in parties do.  His conduct, and that of his mates, willingly embraces inflicting deliberate and planned damage in order to undermine the party when it doesn't follow the set of policies he approves of.  See for example public interventions by Blair and others whenever there's an election coming up or when Labour are doing better in the polls.  It's a mission with them, a way of life, an extension of the "project" they have been carrying out for decades.  This is not the case with Heseltine, who will take a public and oppositional stance on select key issues (Westland and Brexit being the two standout examples), but who isn't engaged in long-running attritional warfare against pther parts of his own party; he simply has policy disagreements with some of them, as is normal.

19 hours ago, bickster said:

Campbell set the trap, the Labour Party fell for it

Yes he did.  Although since the choice was between responding to the provocation or allowing him to carry on unchallenged, it's not clear what not falling for it would have involved.

[bickster]

5 minutes ago, peterms said:

 

 

 

3 minutes ago, peterms said:

Yes he did.  Although since the choice was between responding to the provocation or allowing him to carry on unchallenged, it's not clear what not falling for it would have involved.

Ignoring it, like they've done so many other times in the past (See Tony Benn, 2009 EU Elections for one example of EXACTLY the same thing)

EDIT, plus they still haven't Auto(lol) expelled any of the others who admitted the same in AC's wake, They managed to convene on a Bank Holiday for AC but 4 days after others admitted the same... nothing... nad... zilch...

[peterms]

7 minutes ago, bickster said:

Ignoring it, like they've done so many other times in the past (See Tony Benn, 2009 EU Elections for one example of EXACTLY the same thing)

EDIT, plus they still haven't Auto(lol) expelled any of the others who admitted the same in AC's wake, They managed to convene on a Bank Holiday for AC but 4 days after others admitted the same... nothing... nad... zilch...

So you're Spartacus, are you?

Quote

"Solidarity" for the expelled Alistair Campbell, gushes journalist Robert Peston -- from Charles Clarke, the safety elephant. It's a "Spartacus moment" for Labour members, says Fiona McTaggart, Blair's former party knuckle-cruncher. Bob Ainsworth, former minister for the bombing of countries of which he knows little, claims to have voted Green. Labour members are "queueing up to be expelled by the leader", according to the Guardian's letters page.

So. Let us unpack this "Spartacus moment". At a guess, I would deem it unlikely that a significant share of Labour members voted for any other party in the European elections. Yet Alistair Campbell, boasted of doing so. He was subsequently joined in this by several other senior apparatchiks of the Labour Right. They voted Liberal, they say, with the express objective of changing party policy. That electoral sabotage depended, of course, on it being publicly disclosed. 

These people are all experienced Labour Party managers. They know, even if the editor of the Guardian letters page doesn't, that "the leader" doesn't expel you in such circumstances. The rules do. The National Executive Committee, the elected governing body, is there to interpret the rules. The rule in question says if you support a candidate who stands against a Labour candidate you are "automatically" ineligible to remain a party member. Now I admit that all rules require interpretation given the complexity of circumstances. And I would generally incline to the most relaxed interpretation of such rules. However, this expulsion doesn't seem that tenuous. It isn't really a "spiteful" overinterpretation, as Tom Watson claims, to suggest that voting for a candidate and declaring that one has done so on television, constitutes "support" for that candidate. It's far less tenuous than the large-scale expulsions of people for supporting other parties before they had even joined Labour. Not to mention, the expulsions that Watson himself sought when he forwarded his little 'list' of militants and wreckers to the leadership.

Campbell is not an idiot. A seasoned operator at the heights of Labour organisation, he knew that he was courting his automatic expulsion. And if he wasn't expelled, it would prove the timidity and thus declining authority of the party's governing bodies. At worst, it would make the party a club for grandees who can do whatever the hell they like, while grassroots members can be summarily purged on the basis of rumour and paranoid bollocks. After close to four years of right-wing sabotage, that would not only be grossly undemocratic, but also self-destructively idiotic to capitulate to that, just because Campbell has an amen chorus. The wail of Blairite moirologists will pass.

Campbell is not a martyr for the membership, as he would like to claim. Despite the efforts of New Labour at the peak of their arrogant power, Labour does have some democratic structures. It is possible, as the Left has discovered over the last few years, to change policy. The whole spirit of the Corbyn project is to enable the membership to do that, albeit the party reforms have been too slow and limited. I would be surprised if, in the September conference, there wasn't a clear push by the membership to prioritise a second referendum. Campbell could have pursued his preferred policy within the party's structures. He chose something else. It was not brave defiance of authority. He was not standing up to 'the bastards' in the name of something idealistic. He was using his last remaining source of clout, which is his standing with a credulous media, to attack and undermine the party. This is part of a longer-term strategy of demoralisation, to render the party susceptible to right-wing recapture. As I have warned, they haven't gone away, you know. I strongly suspect that the majority of Labour members will not thank him for that, whatever they think of his views on Europe.

A queue of journalists has lined up to compare this situation to Stalinism, or some other equally implausible historical reference. Some, taking Campbell's own cue, have contrasted the haste of his expulsion with the ponderously bureaucratic handling of antisemitism allegations. Because, as we all know, taking longer to prosecute a murder than a traffic violation is certain evidence that the courts care not a jot about murder. This service to an out-of-power clique is extraordinary. All the more so when they publish outright falsehoods, such as the claim that a Twitter poll run by Tom Watson is a scientific poll of Labour members. 

This illustrates a point that has been documented, now, to exhaustion: our national media are incapable of reporting objectively and seriously on today's Labour Party. They don't know how it works, and are utterly incurious about it. As a matter of political economy, they have no capacity for such serious reflection. As a matter of political ideology, they deem it superfluous. That's why they keep getting it wrong. Yet they could at least make an effort not to look like they were born yesterday. 

Just look at them. A line up of veteran New Labour pugilists, control freaks, operators, closets groaning with skeletons. People who, in living memory, conducted a ruthless party takeover that cut absolutely zero quarter to their opponents. People whose autocratic and imperious treatment of the membership resulted in Labour reaching its lowest membership since 1918. People who were destroyed in the Labour leadership election, and have since meditated on little else but the overthrow of the members's choice.  Now they tell you that they're on the side of the oppressed and excluded members. That they're the victims of an overweening authority. They say, "I'm Spartacus!" Are they? Are they really?

 

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, peterms said:

At a guess, I would deem it unlikely that a significant share of Labour members voted for any other party in the European elections.

That's a bit of a fail, see poll further up the thread, only 45% of Labour members, voted Labour

 

5 minutes ago, peterms said:

They know, even if the editor of the Guardian letters page doesn't, that "the leader" doesn't expel you in such circumstances. The rules do.

Clearly not, the evidence is most definitely that "rules" are applied subjectively and inconsistently, the leader is also known to intervene.

 

7 minutes ago, peterms said:

he knew that he was courting his automatic expulsion.

Adding the word automatic doesn't make it so (as shown above)

That article is not exactly what you'd call objective.

 

[chrisp65]

Well, that's a fine and well crafted piece of niche essay writing by a Corbyn fanboy, I'm just not sure it explains why only one was auto expelled on a bank holiday and the others still aren't. It's a strange super smart sort of trap they set that Labour absolutely could not wriggle out of, well, could only wriggle out of 75% of the time.

Can you not see how utterly stupid this looks? Just more self inflicted contradictory bollocks. If they couldn't think themselves out of this 'trap' then they need to pack up and go home, they're inept.

It's a heady mix of paranoia and student politics and that ain't going to run the country any time soon, which is fine, because they don't really want to, do they. 

[blandy]

40 minutes ago, peterms said:

You are reading Campbell's actions simply as a response to Labour's position on Brexit, and as a result you draw a false equivalence with Heseltine.

I'm reading his voting for the Lib Dems in a Euro election as a response to Corbyn's position on Brexit, yes. And not just him, but huge swathes of previous Labour voters, and of members and so on, too.

As to your wider perspective on Campbell's behaviour and outlook etc. (leaving aside the partisan blog quoted, with all its errors, for a moment) - I'm not some kind of fan of him - what he did with Blair on Iraq was a disgrace. Like I said previously, he wanted to be kicked out, the Angry Tramps wanted to kick him out and he was kicked out. The thing I took issue with was the implication that Corbyn's Brexit policy was nothing to do with voters (including Campbell) deserting Labour. It most blatantly is the key factor, though there are others. People are seeing him and his abilities and flaws for what he is and what they are, to a large extent.

I think the same is true of May - She was apparently popular with tory types when she was made Leader, now, it's, er, not going so well for her. Divided party, Leader out of step with members and MPs, unpopular stance on the Brexit, unable to demonstrate pro-active leadership, unnecessary lines in the sand, tribal and narrow minded approach, stuck in the past.... Both of them are dreadful leaders. The tories have next to no one any better. Labour does have a number of clearly more capable potential leaders. But, whatever... while they continue to be run by a sect, egged on by a cult, they're screwed. Which is a shame.

[peterms]

5 minutes ago, blandy said:

The thing I took issue with was the implication that Corbyn's Brexit policy was nothing to do with voters (including Campbell) deserting Labour.

For most usual Labour supporters who voted for another party last week, I agree the stance on Brexit is the issue.  For Campbell, it's just another opportunity in a decades-long history of seeking to exercise control by undermining and harassing anyone who disagrees with him and looks like being able to exert influence within the party.  He was waging this internal war when he was running things, and he's still doing it.  I don't know if the LP are going to make an overt distinction between Campbell and others, but they should.

[peterms]

37 minutes ago, bickster said:

That article is not exactly what you'd call objective.

He's expressing a view.  Like you, like me.

[bickster]

11 minutes ago, peterms said:

He's expressing a view.  Like you, like me.

Actually, as already demonstrated, he's talking shit

[blandy]

4 hours ago, bickster said:

Actually, as already demonstrated, he's talking shit

Yeah, aside from an opinion, as Peter says, he’s talking a fair amount of crap

Quote

unlikely that a significant share of Labour members voted for any other party in the European elections....a martyr for the membership, as he would like to claim...

That type of stuff is just imagined nonsense.

[PompeyVillan]

I've left the Labour party.

I agree with so much of Labour policy, but the leadership, stance on Brexit and the utterly toxic infighting between members and supporters is something I don't want to be part of. I also didn't want to vote for them in the EU elections and wanted to be honest about it.

I'm not abandoning Labour, I just don't want to be a part of it again. Or any political organisation, it creates a rigid mindset that is unhealthy. The only other party I would consider voting for would be the Greens at the moment. I love the freedom to be able to express that view without feeling disloyal. 

 

 

[El Zen]

1 hour ago, PompeyVillan said:

I've left the Labour party.

I agree with so much of Labour policy, but the leadership, stance on Brexit and the utterly toxic infighting between members and supporters is something I don't want to be part of. I also didn't want to vote for them in the EU elections and wanted to be honest about it.

I'm not abandoning Labour, I just don't want to be a part of it again. Or any political organisation, it creates a rigid mindset that is unhealthy. The only other party I would consider voting for would be the Greens at the moment. I love the freedom to be able to express that view without feeling disloyal. 

 

 

I totally get this. 

I actually do happen to be a member of a political party, but only as a token gesture and show of support to the party I agree with the most and that I feel is doing the most to oppose our current right wing gov’t. I’ve switched parties before, and will do again if I feel like it. I don’t even feel particularly obligated to vote for «my» party. Being actively involved in party politics doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest. Speaking from experience (albeit a very brief one), it’s an unpleasant business. 

[blandy]

2 hours ago, PompeyVillan said:

I agree with so much of Labour policy, but the leadership, stance on Brexit and the utterly toxic infighting between members and supporters is something I don't want to be part of. I also didn't want to vote for them in the EU elections and wanted to be honest about it.

I'm not abandoning Labour,

This.

I'm not and never have been a member of any party, kind of for the reasons you imply. I mean with a football team "support" for the team is kind of unconditional, but you can criticise selections or tactics, or managerial choices or whatever and still be a supporter. With a party, you can't, really. They are tribal to the extent that people will support them (members I mean) even if they start "throwing games" and playing in other teams colours, etc. Probably a crap analogy. Sorry.

But anyway, Labour's toxic infighting, the cultist nature of it, the anti-semitism, the "holier than thou" attitude, the notion that all criticism of the leader is part of a right wing plot, or Zionists, or whoever trying to overthrow a brilliant man - it's just mental. It's so bad that I gave up on them a while ago. I don't want to, but they're utterly, just kind of lost to me. How on earth, well I know how, but with the tories in such a humungous mess, can the opposition not be prospering? How can they not see that they're so far down the wrong road in their approach? Dreadful.