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

[Jareth]

11 minutes ago, blandy said:

Thank you. No worries.

On the older ground of was Rachel Riley (and others) right to call Jeremy Corbyn a racist?  - Me personally, I wouldn't have done so. He has a good record of standing up against many forms of racism, and that's commendable. Bearing in mind my own post just above, that "the idea that it is “required” (not be selective) to comment on every injustice in order not to be accused of having an agenda is utterly ridiculous" I have to say that my perception is that Corbyn has something of a, ahem, "blind spot" when it comes to anti-semitism. He's clearly very supportive of Palestinian rights, and I agree with that stance. The difficulty that brings is that it has led him, in his particular choices, to associate himself with some very anti-semitic people, to rather strikingly fail to call them out on their anti-semitism, even when voiced in his presence, in discussions with him. He has (as @bickster pointed out) had to apologise for "liking" the anti-semitic mural, he himself voiced an anti-semitic phrase at some Jews in a meeting he hosted, he's been a member of a wildly Semitic message-board...and so on and so forth. Now that may all be a case of "I was there but I didn't take part, I didn't see it, I didn't hear it, I didn't realise..." but there's enough there for other people to feel that they might want to wear a T-shirt, or make an accusation of racism. Me I just think the bloke's an idiot, and I think he's so full of his own self-perceived or proclaimed virtue that he by his own definition believes he can't be non-virtuous and therefore can't possibly be a racist.

Can't argue with any of that - blind spot sums it up quite well - I think there was always a not very deeply hidden resentment at any critical voices - but I suppose I was into the whole thing because albeit self-proclaimed - there was a vision for equalling up society. The game was lost because he played it quite badly - inspiring visions aren't enough. I hope Starmer can get there - he probably can as he seems to be playing the Tories quite well at their own game. Disaffected as I am, I would really like to see some sort of policy now, I know it'll come but at the moment Labour aren't putting anything on the table that's terribly detailed. Long time till next election I suppose. 

[Xann]

10 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Can't argue with any of that 

I could, but I can't be arsed doing it all over again.

UK's ****, game over.

[blandy]

24 minutes ago, Xann said:

I could, but I can't be arsed

And good on you for that Dave (in a nice way). Plenty of others have your take, too, but they don't all have your good nature. 

[Xann]

6 minutes ago, blandy said:

... your good nature. 

 

It's a bit like this really.

 

[bickster]

Good old Uncle Len, can't help himself

He really does make my blood boil

[HanoiVillan]

I see that Barry Sheerman has Done An Antisemitism. Really think that he and Rosie Duffield (for different reasons) should just not tweet.

Edited August 2, 2020 by HanoiVillan

[Jareth]

Labour staffers named in a leaked internal party report that claimed to show their private hostility to Jeremy Corbyn have alleged that the document misused private messages to falsely make them seem racist and sexist, an inquiry has been told.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/06/labour-report-misused-private-messages-portray-members-racist

Oh, how awful, they were framed! These guys are 100% Labour values, not at all racist, sexist, or intent on maintaining their position of power. How terrible that they were so misunderstood. I imagine Labour will just pay them off. 

(BTW I promise not to go off on one blaming Rachel Riley for all Labour's ills). 

Edited August 6, 2020 by Jareth

[darrenm]

This probably needs reading if you have any interest in the Labour civil war

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/i-saw-inside-how-labour-staff-worked-prevent-labour-government/

Quote

Another constant battle that took place was over the hiring of staff. Almost every appointment was either delayed, frustrated or blocked by Labour HQ, which had control of the party's finances. “A full year into Jeremy's leadership, we still only had around 16 members of staff which was about half the amount compared to when Ed Miliband was leader”, the former senior Corbyn adviser tells me. James Meadway, a former treasury economist and chief economist at the New Economics Foundation, had to be seconded from one of the trade unions to serve as Economic Advisor in McDonnell’s team after the party repeatedly refused to hire him.

Relationships were so strained that colleagues would regularly turn up to meetings with party staff, get back to their desks, and be left feeling horrified on learning that the contents of the meeting had already been leaked to journalists. This became a major headache as it was almost impossible to plan effectively without the ability to share vital information between the leader’s office and party HQ. Senior aides close to Corbyn were regularly forced to withhold information on policy announcements until the very last minute for fear of leaks.

 

Edited August 7, 2020 by blandy
extract

[darrenm]

12 hours ago, Jareth said:

Rachel Riley

This is why I'm not a fan of her.

It's absolutely fine for anyone to dislike Jeremy Corbyn or anyone else in politics. Everyone has their own views on things and just because I think he's a decent guy doesn't mean I automatically dislike anyone else if they don't. Loads of my friends detest him - that's their view and their right to hold it. So anything I've got against Riley is nothing to do with that.

Firstly, the Count Dankula support. If you remember, that guy trained his pug to do a nazi salute when he said "Seig Heil" and (I don't particularly want to type this) "g*s the j**s" and then put it on YouTube. A really, really offensive, antisemitic thing to do and repeatedly say. Riley thought his sentencing of wearing a GPS tag was "insane". She said she thought the video and the language used was a 'just a joke'. All the time accusing Corbyn of being an antisemite despite years of evidence to the contrary.

Then there's the Stop Funding Fake News vehicle for getting IMPRESS (more tightly regulated than IPSO) regulated left wing news websites and Twitter accounts shut down. She repeatedly over a long period of time targeted companies using her considerable platform and the SFFN (an ironic name being fake itself) account to get them to withdraw advertising from sites such as The Canary and Evolve. Yes, The Canary is full of rubbish sometimes but it's still regulated. I consider it the left wing equivalent of the Daily Mail except the Canary doesn't actually make stuff up but rather slants and distorts to the left.

She goes around calling people antisemitic simply because they're left wing. She called Noam Chomsky an antisemite. She's close with David Collier, a really nasty guy behind the frequently suspended Gnasherjew account, she dogpiles people a lot. Along with Tracy Ann Oberman she doxxed a left wing account and tried to get them sacked. And perhaps the most egregious, bullied a 16 year old girl with mental health problems online.

It's her right to act as she does and it's my right to think she's a thoroughly unpleasant person.

[Seat68]

Back to Rachel Riley yet again?

[tonyh29]

1 hour ago, darrenm said:

This probably needs reading if you have any interest in the Labour civil war

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/i-saw-inside-how-labour-staff-worked-prevent-labour-government/

Not really   but i read it anyway ,  tbh it  just looked like another  Corbyn supporter blaming his defeat on everybody else but Corbyn .

Even the part where he suggests Corbyn was 2227 votes away from being PM , doesn't really hold up to scrutiny  , He  doesn't mention the marginal seats where  labour  won  , i.e Kensington majority of 20  , Dudley 22 , Crewe 48    etc  , by the same logic  May was only 287 votes away from a working majority  .. plus I'm not sure the Libs would have joined his rainbow coalition anyway ( but never say never with the Libs )

 My logic could be flawed but Turnout in seats won by the Conservatives (70.8%) was 4.2 percentage points higher than in seats won by Labour (66.6%) ... I'm assuming this was because Labour had  kinda galvanized the Corbyn/Labour  vote in those  areas , rather than suggesting they hadn't turned up because of Facebook  ? ( though perhaps anti Corbyn voters were also out boosting those numbers ? ) 

 

There is some interesting stuff coming out, but ultimately Corbyn lost twice because people didn't really like the idea of having him as their PM .

 

 

[ml1dch]

1 hour ago, Seat68 said:

Back to Rachel Riley yet again?

The way that some people bang on about her, you'd think she was more politically important than just the co-host of a slightly nerdy daytime quiz show.

It's a bit creepy.

[chrisp65]

2 hours ago, darrenm said:

This probably needs reading if you have any interest in the Labour civil war

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/i-saw-inside-how-labour-staff-worked-prevent-labour-government/

It does slightly read as we’d have won if everyone had given up their factions and pledged allegiance to the leader. Which is a legitimate idea, but not a philosophy that Corbyn ever bought in to, so it would be a bit rich for him to expect it from others.

I don’t doubt there’s a chunk of truth in it though. That thing of needing 2227 more votes per constituency, by chance, they lost here by 2,200 votes and I remember the 2017 campaign because up until that point, it had been Labour’s oddest local campaign. They put up a candidate nobody had heard of, that didn’t do any local campaigning. Didn’t even issue a leaflet, I thought it was odd, to the point I took photos of all the fliers I received through the door. 

They threw that election here.

Then they also threw the next one.

So you would actually have to conclude that if he couldn’t get his own party machine on board, how would he have coped with being PM?

[HanoiVillan]

30 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Not really   but i read it anyway ,  tbh it  just looked like another  Corbyn supporter blaming his defeat on everybody else but Corbyn .

I don't really get how you've read it that way. It is recollections of a toxic culture in the party bureaucracy, not an analysis of factors in the election loss. The writer says 'historians may ponder how different things might have been if these Labour staffers, and numerous Labour MPs, had spent their energies supporting their leader rather than working against him', which strikes me as optimistic - the world and his wife are trying very hard not to notice that any of this stuff happened, and it won't get any fresher - but it's not fundamentally unreasonable to question whether the party would have been more successful if it weren't being sabotaged from the head office.

[HanoiVillan]

5 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

The way that some people bang on about her, you'd think she was more politically important than just the co-host of a slightly nerdy daytime quiz show.

It's a bit creepy.

Well, she is more politically important than *just* being a TV host, obviously. Nobody thinks Alexander Armstrong is 'politically important' because he doesn't talk about politics on social media all the time or sue political activists for libel.

[blandy]

28 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

if he couldn’t get his own party machine on board, how would he have coped with being PM?

This. I started typing something, then gave up. But absolutely that's the main take out of that article/opinion piece, for me too.

[darrenm]

1 hour ago, tonyh29 said:

Not really   but i read it anyway ,  tbh it  just looked like another  Corbyn supporter blaming his defeat on everybody else but Corbyn .

Even the part where he suggests Corbyn was 2227 votes away from being PM , doesn't really hold up to scrutiny  , He  doesn't mention the marginal seats where  labour  won  , i.e Kensington majority of 20  , Dudley 22 , Crewe 48    etc  , by the same logic  May was only 287 votes away from a working majority  .. plus I'm not sure the Libs would have joined his rainbow coalition anyway ( but never say never with the Libs )

 My logic could be flawed but Turnout in seats won by the Conservatives (70.8%) was 4.2 percentage points higher than in seats won by Labour (66.6%) ... I'm assuming this was because Labour had  kinda galvanized the Corbyn/Labour  vote in those  areas , rather than suggesting they hadn't turned up because of Facebook  ? ( though perhaps anti Corbyn voters were also out boosting those numbers ? ) 

 

There is some interesting stuff coming out, but ultimately Corbyn lost twice because people didn't really like the idea of having him as their PM .

 

 

Yeah it's very much some petty battle and this is just one side's reporting. It's a counter to the article in the Guardian posted above so anyone interested can read multiple accounts.

The 2000 votes stuff has always been a bit small time. It may technically be correct but it's never going to happen like that.

[darrenm]

39 minutes ago, blandy said:

This. I started typing something, then gave up. But absolutely that's the main take out of that article/opinion piece, for me too.

I agree he was nowhere near ruthless enough at kicking the other factions out in the same way Starmer and Johnson have been. He kept handing out olive branches only for people to use them against him.

I guess it took even him by surprise just how low some people were willing to go.

[Chindie]

Go on a purge?! Heaven forfend!

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, darrenm said:

I agree he was nowhere near ruthless enough at kicking the other factions out in the same way Starmer and Johnson have been. He kept handing out olive branches only for people to use them against him.

I guess it took even him by surprise just how low some people were willing to go.

I dunno. I think many of them jumped. Further, I think essentially like "his" faction was always a small one and so would have really struggled perhaps to dispose of all opposition. He (as they all do) managed to get the NEC in his image.