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

[HanoiVillan]

The consensus opinion about the Labour party's disciplinary processes, both On Here and in the wider media, between 2016 and 2019, was *absolutely not* 'it's inside baseball, nobody cares'. If you're advancing that opinion now, and you didn't before, then you are making very clear that you don't care about anti-semitism. Let me be quite clear - if you thought it was morally shameful when you thought Jeremy Corbyn and Jennie Formby were sitting on anti-semitism complaints, then you cannot, under any logic, now think it's 'no biggie' if Ian McNicol and Sam Matthews did it. Either resolving anti-semitism complaints is important or it isn't.

On the factional politics, I find it ridiculous to see people saying things like 'This stuff doesn't win or lose elections, the in-fighting does though', not because it isn't true, but because it's like the joke about the guy giving directions saying 'I wouldn't start from 'ere mate'. The party simply *is* divided, very deeply, and Starmer will not unite it by asking nicely or by crossing his fingers and toes and really hoping for it. He's going to actually have to do things to unite the party, which means that this report obviously cannot simply be ignored or brushed under the rug.

Edited April 19, 2020 by HanoiVillan

[HanoiVillan]

Actually want to add, on the idea that 'now is not the time':

1 - Keir Starmer does not have any role in the government, he's not handling coronavirus, he has plenty of time;

2 - The crisis is here *now*, not later, and crises don't patiently line up one after the other;

3 - If people are concerned that the public won't like Labour if they seem to be having an internecine fight, then right now, during the global pandemic that is occupying everybody's attention, is absolutely the ideal time to deal with it;

4 - If he wants to make the argument (which he should) that Johnson was 'asleep at the wheel' in February, per the Sunday Times this morning, then he should probably not argue that he can't do more than one simple task at a time.

Edited April 19, 2020 by HanoiVillan

[Sam-AVFC]

23 hours ago, bickster said:

UK voters don't quite have that level of american stupid

Unfortunately I don't buy that at all.

23 hours ago, bickster said:

You'll be beating yourselves up for something the general voting public gives not two shits about

You're right, they don't. I bet a lot of the voters on the Labour left do care though. I just wonder what the point is of trying to unify the party and bring back the centre if you alienate another part of it. 

[blandy]

On 19/04/2020 at 18:27, HanoiVillan said:

The consensus opinion about the Labour party's disciplinary processes, both On Here and in the wider media, between 2016 and 2019, was *absolutely not* 'it's inside baseball, nobody cares'. If you're advancing that opinion now, and you didn't before, then you are making very clear that you don't care about anti-semitism. Let me be quite clear - if you thought it was morally shameful when you thought Jeremy Corbyn and Jennie Formby were sitting on anti-semitism complaints, then you cannot, under any logic, now think it's 'no biggie' if Ian McNicol and Sam Matthews did it. Either resolving anti-semitism complaints is important or it isn't.

On the factional politics, I find it ridiculous to see people saying things like 'This stuff doesn't win or lose elections, the in-fighting does though', not because it isn't true, but because it's like the joke about the guy giving directions saying 'I wouldn't start from 'ere mate'. The party simply *is* divided, very deeply, and Starmer will not unite it by asking nicely or by crossing his fingers and toes and really hoping for it. He's going to actually have to do things to unite the party, which means that this report obviously cannot simply be ignored or brushed under the rug.

Agree with some of that. But I guess it's the angle, or aspect we're looking from. For Labour members and supporters, I can't argue with your take. Particularly if you/they are Corbyn enthusiasts. Though I'd add that (most charitable interpretation) when "people" were saying "it's mostly not Labour members, the problem (AS) is tiny and it's largely fabricated, now this report shows it is both larger than announced" (and here's the charitable bit - because Corbz was prevented by nasty manipulators like McNicholl, allegedly, from seeing the true picture) and that it was far more actual Labour members than was stated, there needs also to be an acceptance (and action) that there really is a genuine problem that was of the scale complained about. And it needs rooting out - the complaints are there, they are allegedly sat there, largely undealt with, because allegedly they were held back by anti-Corbyn numpties.

The second para - I have a provision on the last few words - this report obviously cannot simply be ignored. There's a problem with it. It is in essence a report written to demonstrate that Corbyn was hard done to. It contains many accusations, much private data and contains absolutely no responses or right of reply or anything other than the "prosecution" angle. It breaches, potentially (I'm not a lawyer) data protection law and various other individual legal rights. So when it is "dealt with" it needs to be treated legally correctly and the process should start with allowing the individuals accused or "incriminated" whatever the phrase is to have a rebuttal (is that the word?) and then the report needs to be written as a balanced document, and then deal with it. Trial by leaks is no way to proceed. And the leaker - well they weren't an opponent of Corbyn, were they? - They've potentially caused massive damage to Labour by their action. Labour could get the arse sued of it. Lucky Starmer's a lawyer, then.

Edited April 22, 2020 by blandy
typos

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

Agree with some of that. But I guess it's the angle, or aspect we're looking from. For Labour members and supporters, I can't argue with your take. Particularly if you/they are Corbyn enthusiasts. Though I'd add that (most charitable interpretation) when "people" were saying "it's mostly not Labour members, the problem (AS) is tiny and it's largely fabricated, now this report shows it is both larger than announced (and here's the charitable bit - because Corbz was prevented by nasty manipulators like McNicholl, allegedly, from seeing the true picture) and that it was far more actual Labour members than was stated, there needs also to be an acceptance (and action) that there really is a genuine problem that was of the scale complained about. And it needs rooting out - the complaints are there, they are allegedly sat there, largely undealt with, because allegedly they were held back by anti-Corbyn numpties.

Sure, I can't and don't disagree with that. The report made clear in its opening paragraphs that there were indeed lots and lots of valid and justified complaints about anti-semitism. The problem is significantly worse than I had assumed, clearly naively, from the volume of disciplinary *actions* that were taken. That certainly does suggest that whoever ends up in charge of the relevant unit is going to be very busy.

I would still like a better idea of the *proportional* prevalence of anti-semitism, rather than dealing in absolute numbers. Since we're debating 'per capita' in the covid thread, it's important to note that it's inevitable there will be a lot more complaints about anything in absolute numbers in a party of 550,000 than there is in a party of 70,000 (for instance). However, that simply means the party's capacity to deal with disciplinary matters needs to be expanded to match the volume.

6 minutes ago, blandy said:

The second para - I have a provision on the last few words - this report obviously cannot simply be ignored. There's a problem with it. It is in essence a report written to demonstrate that Corbyn was hard done to. It contains many accusations, much private data and contains absolutely no responses or right of reply or anything other than the "prosecution" angle. It breaches, potentially (I'm not a lawyer) data protection law and various other individual legal rights. So when it is "dealt with" it needs to be treated legally correctly and the process should start with allowing the individuals accused or "incriminated" whatever the phrase is to have a rebuttal (is that the word?) and then the report needs to be written as a balanced document, and then deal with it. Trail by leaks is no way to proceed. And the leaker - well they weren't an opponent of Corbyn, were they? - They've potentially caused massive damage to Labour by their action. Labour could get the arse sued of it. Lucky Starmer's a lawyer, then.

Nobody is going to pretend that they don't know about the report, just because it was leaked. There is clearly going to be a follow-up investigation (already announced by Starmer) which will give accused parties a right of reply, but it can't be avoided that the report contains lengthy excerpts from the conversations of the people involved, so there is strong prima facie evidence of wrongdoing here. It's not just a 'he said, she said'.

[chrisp65]

I’d put my hand up and say I had convinced myself it couldn’t be anywhere near as big a deal as was being made. I was basing that on my own personal experience from the distant past when I was a union rep and mixed in some very left wing labour circles for a couple of years. I have absolutely no recollection of any anti semitism even around the whole boycott Israel and Israeli products campaign.

So there are, I guess, three possible reasons. I was oblivious to it, it’s a fairly new phenomenonenonenon, it’s a regional thing?

 

[blandy]

9 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Sure, I can't and don't disagree with that. The report made clear in its opening paragraphs that there were indeed lots and lots of valid and justified complaints about anti-semitism. The problem is significantly worse than I had assumed, ...

I would still like a better idea of the *proportional* prevalence of anti-semitism, rather than dealing in absolute numbers. Since we're debating 'per capita' in the covid thread, it's important to note that it's inevitable there will be a lot more complaints about anything in absolute numbers in a party of 550,000 than there is in a party of 70,000 (for instance). However, that simply means the party's capacity to deal with disciplinary matters needs to be expanded to match the volume.

Nobody is going to pretend that they don't know about the report, just because it was leaked. ... there is strong prima facie evidence of wrongdoing here. It's not just a 'he said, she said'.

I agree with all you wrote, but clipped the quote. On the "proportional", or "per capita" thing, I understand your perspective - is that a "so we can compare Us with the tories (70,000 members) and look less bad" sort of angle ? (forgive me if not, but if not why mention another party membership number?) or is  there's another reason - maybe just an understanding of the percentage, for er, it's own sake? Whatever, I don't think any road that goes down a "they're worse than us" line is at all the right take.

Last Para - yeah, it does very strongly look like there's clear wrongdoing. The point though is for example that these "lengthy excerpts from the conversations" could have been edited or included in ways which give a different picture to the reality. Omissions also matter. I hope this doesn't open a closed wound - but a week or so ago for example, you (understandably) took offence at my mention of "apart from the angry tramps, no one believed Corbyn had a chance of becoming PM" feeling I was including you as an angry tramp. You quoted me saying it. Bang to rights, right? I was calling you an angry tramp so lock me up! In a subsequent post I said (hopefully) stuff that demonstrated that I absolutely don't hold you as an angry tramp, I apologised regardless and explained the tramps are X, Y and Z (and I'd named them previously)  - Ah, so he's not such a monster after all - release him! - stupid example perhaps, but hopefully you see the clumsy point. "Don't pass that on to Jeremy"  - bang to rights, withholding info. But hold on, there's this other e mail not included, originally that shows Jeremy asking not to be contacted about this subject - like when the Sun and Rebecca thingy all got found not guilty (because they were all not guilty, obviously snoopy libel lawyers) and some ahem, information, might have you' know been unfortunately somehow unavailable to the courts, having been, er, "lost" accidentally in a, er, perfectly, um, legitimate and very coincidentally but unrelated, recent computer archive upgrade or something.

 

[blandy]

20 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

it’s a fairly new phenomenonenonenon,

This would be my take. Sort of since about 2015.

[Sam-AVFC]

Any issue of discrimination in a group is clearly a problem but can the group be blamed when it has open memberships and incidents are less than the national averages?*

 

*I have no ideas what the numbers are on the Labour thing, more of a general musing

[Sam-AVFC]

33 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

So there are, I guess, three possible reasons. I was oblivious to it, it’s a fairly new phenomenonenonenon, it’s a regional thing?

I don't think I knew any Jewish people growing up and never heard a single antisemitic comment that I remember. I did see plenty of outrageous examples of racism against black/Indian/Chinese/Polish/Romanian people.

Weirdly I've noticed that now when I go home to the South West the Tommy Robinson types have two new links to antisemitism. One is shouting how antisemitic Labour are and the other is constantly complaining about George Soros.

It all comes back to social media, which I think plays into all 3 reasons. Regionality is a bit moot as everyone is online all day, we're now lucky enough to read every Tom, Dick and Harry's opinion on Twitter and lastly this all adds to people feeling more brave about saying things so I think it would have increased massively over recent years.

I do think the US has probably influenced us a lot as the two talking points I mentioned earlier are quite standard for the American right (replacing Labour with 'the generic left'). You only have to look how many British people on Twitter have something along the lines of "pro Trump, pro Boris, never Labour, Zionist, anti fake  news..."

Edited April 20, 2020 by Sam-AVFC

[HanoiVillan]

10 minutes ago, blandy said:

I agree with all you wrote, but clipped the quote. On the "proportional", or "per capita" thing, I understand your perspective - is that a "so we can compare Us with the tories (70,000 members) and look less bad" sort of angle ? (forgive me if not, but if not why mention another party membership number?) or is  there's another reason - maybe just an understanding of the percentage, for er, it's own sake? Whatever, I don't think any road that goes down a "they're worse than us" line is at all the right take

I think it is useful to know this information, because it matters to me. I am not a Labour member, but I have been a Labour voter over the last four years. Evidence I have seen looking at the prevalence of anti-semitic attitudes across Labour and Conservative voters suggests that anti-semitism is actually, despite the press, less frequent in the former. If it turns out that this is wrong, and not just marginally so but actually that Labour are a fundamentally racist party, and that a hugely disproportionate percentage of Labour members are anti-semites (which I still don't expect to be the case, though it's clearly a larger percentage than I thought) then I would have to evaluate whether I could, in good conscience, continue voting for the party.

15 minutes ago, blandy said:

Last Para - yeah, it does very strongly look like there's clear wrongdoing. The point though is for example that these "lengthy excerpts from the conversations" could have been edited or included in ways which give a different picture to the reality. Omissions also matter. I hope this doesn't open a closed wound - but a week or so ago for example, you (understandably) took offence at my mention of "apart from the angry tramps, no one believed Corbyn had a chance of becoming PM" feeling I was including you as an angry tramp. You quoted me saying it. Bang to rights, right? I was calling you an angry tramp so lock me up! In a subsequent post I said (hopefully) stuff that demonstrated that I absolutely don't hold you as an angry tramp, I apologised regardless and explained the tramps are X, Y and Z (and I'd named them previously)  - Ah, so he's not such a monster after all - release him! - stupid example perhaps, but hopefully you see the clumsy point. "Don't pass that on to Jeremy"  - bang to rights, withholding info. But hold on, there's this other e mail not included, originally that shows Jeremy asking not to be contacted about this subject - like when the Sun and Rebecca thingy all got found not guilty (because they were all not guilty, obviously snoopy libel lawyers) and some ahem, information, might have you' know been unfortunately somehow unavailable to the courts, having been, er, "lost" accidentally in a, er, perfectly, um, legitimate and very coincidentally but unrelated, recent computer archive upgrade or something.

Don't worry, no offence taken, but I think that was a rather different situation. There probably is quite a lot of room for interpretation on the question of whether and to what extent anti-semitism complaints were being held back to embarrass Corbyn, but I don't think there's any nuance that could possibly explain someone reacting to the surprisingly positive exit poll with 'everything I've been working against for two years', for instance, or calling a colleague 'pube head' or commenting about how a woman allegedly wasn't wearing a bra. The disciplinary questions around anti-semitism are extremely important, but there are lots of disciplinary issues raised by the report that aren't around anti-semitism as well. On the anti-semitism, as I said before, the investigation from Starmer's team will be important, as long as it is conducted transparently.

20 minutes ago, blandy said:

This would be my take. Sort of since about 2015.

See, this is also why 'per capita' numbers are important (along with lots of other context, like with procedures and their implementation changed post-2015). Because the other thing that happened in 2015 was that the party expanded massively. So to what extent are we dealing with a roughly random distribution of anti-semitism (and indeed, other forms of racism, of which there were several examples in the report, ad which must not be forgotten or minimised), or a problem specifically for the left? And if it is a 'left problem', has it been learned in the party (ie, with a wide distribution amongst the pre-2015 left as well) or is it that Britain in general is becoming more anti-semitic or racist, and therefore it was learned outside the party?

[blandy]

2 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

... I don't think there's any nuance that could possibly explain someone reacting to the surprisingly positive exit poll with 'everything I've been working against for two years', for instance, or calling a colleague 'pube head' or commenting about how a woman allegedly wasn't wearing a bra. .....On the anti-semitism, as I said before, the investigation from Starmer's team will be important, as long as it is conducted transparently.

See, this is also why 'per capita' numbers are important (along with lots of other context, like with procedures and their implementation changed post-2015). Because the other thing that happened in 2015 was that the party expanded massively. So to what extent are we dealing with a roughly random distribution of anti-semitism (and indeed, other forms of racism, of which there were several examples in the report, ad which must not be forgotten or minimised), or a problem specifically for the left? And if it is a 'left problem', has it been learned in the party (ie, with a wide distribution amongst the pre-2015 left as well) or is it that Britain in general is becoming more anti-semitic or racist, and therefore it was learned outside the party?

Thanks.

First para - (and this might dig me a hole) I'm not sure any of those comments are necessarily a big deal. The first - the exit poll one just makes the bod look like a plonker. If there's actual evidence of him working to sabotage things - on this occasion he did this thing, witnessed by this person - then that's "hang him". If it's someone sounding off in frustration because they had been (for example) working to set up a group or informal message group of people who hoped Corbyn would get beaten more heavily,  so they could get a new leader, it's a bad look, but no different to a left winger railing against Blair during his time - it's not ideal and I'm not excusing or praising it, but I don't know where the line is drawn.

The next one  - rudeness. A single event of being a bit rude about someone (behind their back) is nothing at all, in my world. The last one, again not great, but where on the serious offence scale does that comment sit? Somewhere next to the "Give him a reminder about inappropriate comments, respect and diversity and expect no repeats, or stronger action will be taken" - essentially these are (apart from the first one) low level examples of anger or ignorance or insensitivity - not worthy of a formal investigation from the leader of the party. I know there's loads more, and the first one is worth looking for evidence of actual wrongdoing as opposed to possible manufactured bragging to make him look whatever to whoever - idiots do that - lie to curry favour.

On the last para, I wonder if it's because the sudden influx of energised, enthusiastic good people who liked what they felt Corbyn, or Corbyn's values to be didn't also unfortunately include quite a number of long term and /or previously banned folk from the disrespectable fringes of hard left politics, with completely anti-semitic views, emboldened by the new leadership. I recall STW had a bit of an issue with some of their leadership and AS. Caroline Lucas left immediately. Corbyn didn't. Corbyn mixed and met with many blatant anti-semites, went on Iranian state TV, didn't confront anti-semitic stuff on his TV programme. That sort of thing could rather embolden others to think their own views on Jews would also go unchallenged and so into Labour these wretched people crawled. Corbyn may or may not* have simply been being polite to his Iran TV hosts, who were paying him 50 grand, he may have been genuinely seeking to bring the two sides in Palestine together when he met the Hamas and Hezbollah anti-semites... "you've got to talk to these people".

Regardless, it does all seem to have kicked off since Corbyn became leader, even if nothing to do with him, and he I believe wouldn't have wanted it.

*Delete as appropriate

[snowychap]

Pretty decent start from Starmer at PMQs (v Raab and not Johnson, obviously).

[wazzap24]

10 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Pretty decent start from Starmer at PMQs (v Raab and not Johnson, obviously).

Very decent indeed. 
 

The “I didn’t need to be corrected” bit on testing was particularly delicious. 
 

Early days and Raab has the brain power of an amoeba, but promising none the less. 
 

Johnson won’t fair well with forensic, fact-based questioning - he needs to stick with this. 

[markavfc40]

I don't know I thought he could have been harder on the government. I know he is walking a tight rope of not wanting to go in too hard and be accused of politicising for the sake of it but there are so many failings which in fairness is perhaps one of the problems as he tried to cover 3 issues and couldn't follow up as he probably would have liked.

I thought Raab was talking about another country the way he was bigging up how well they are doing.

 

Edited April 22, 2020 by markavfc40

[snowychap]

13 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

I don't know I thought he could have been harder on the government. I know he is walking a tight rope of not wanting to go in too hard and be accused of politicising for the sake of it but there are so many failings which in fairness is perhaps one of the problems as he tried to cover 3 issues and couldn't follow up as he probably would have liked.

As it was his first PMQs as leader, I think he probably went as hard as he could for the first go.

Perhaps next week, when he asks the question about the number of social care workers dead, if it isn't answered properly at all, he may be a little more forceful in his criticism.

The point about the difference between testing capacity and tests carried out is the kind of thing that I would be expecting him to come up with more frequently - it may be an answer largely prepared in advance but it specifically responds to a point made by the other person (something which Corbyn often failed to da).

[ml1dch]

41 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Pretty decent start from Starmer at PMQs (v Raab and not Johnson, obviously).

 

 

[blandy]

17 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

I don't know I thought he could have been harder on the government. I know he is walking a tight rope of not wanting to go in too hard and be accused of politicising for the sake of it but there are so many failings which in fairness is perhaps one of the problems as he tried to cover 3 issues and couldn't follow up as he probably would have liked.

I thought Raab was talking about another country the way he was bigging up how well they are doing.

I thought there was a kind of lightness of touch to Starmers questions and follow ups. He made 3 good points with his questions, supplemented what he was saying with responses and I perhaps agree on the last question, the PPE one, he did a media slogan, rather than be a bit more "lethal' - he went too easy on the condemnation.

[chrisp65]

 

 

[ml1dch]

One for Bicks...