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

[chrisp65]

But by your own metric, it's something outside this country, so doesn't count in the debate within this country.

Again again, I can see half your point. But then it gets disingenuous to try and 'win'. Which is kinda the same as the other side also tries. The two points are clearly intertwined, whether they should be or not.

[bickster]

@magnkarlHow come you've not made a single post in the Tory Party topic? They just supported a full-on antisemite in the European Parliament, yet you've said nothing?

[peterms]

6 hours ago, magnkarl said:

Again, and I keep getting back to this. British Jews have NOTHING to do with Israel. This is the problem with all of this. People who conflate the issues going on in Israel with what is going on with the likes of Naz Shah, Livingstone, Shawcroft etc still doesn't understand what it is that the British Jewish community is upset about. Labour has a problem dealing with British people being nasty towards British citizens (Jews in this case) and should stop conflating the issue with whatever a state in the middle east is doing.

A section of the British Jewish community is seeking to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism.  They are joined in this by some non-Jews who see political advantage in doing so, as a stick to beat the Labour left with.

Part of the game is for some of the loudest voices in this, notably the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Chronicle, purporting to speak on behalf of "the Jewish community", as though it is of one mind.  I was interested to see that the JC recently claimed a letter by a number of rabbis supporting Corbyn and debunking the line that he is anti-semitic was a fake, and that they quietly dropped this line but didn't issue a correction, and then refused to publish a dissenting view from the person who organised the rabbis' letter on behalf of what appears to be a fairly large section of the Jewish community.  Here.

Quote

Shraga Stern is a prominent Charedi (Orthodox) Jewish activist in London who was one of the organisers of a letter from twenty-nine leading Orthodox rabbis in support of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The letter went viral last week, triggering an immediate attack on its credibility in the pro-Israel media and by the Labour right, with the Jewish Chronicle and other outlets claiming that the letter had been confirmed as a fake. The letter was authentic and some of the media quietly amended their stories, without publishing formal corrections. Some are still propagating the false claim that it is a fake.

Mr Stern has issued a strongly-worded statement, addressed to the Jewish Chronicle, in which he attacks the ‘zionist agenda’ behind the ‘smear and witch-hunt’ against Jeremy Corbyn – an idea outlandish to many secular Britons but put on the official record last week in the US when former Trump campaign head Paul Manafort admitted to the FBI that he had ‘concocted‘ a similar smear with an Israeli official against a Ukrainian politician for political purposes.

Stern’s letter also contests claims by the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) and Board of Deputies (BoD) to represent the mainstream of Jewish opinion in the UK and the claims that antisemitism in the Labour Party is widespread.

The Jewish Chronicle does not appear to have published the letter.

We believe that the anti-Semitism smear and witch hunt against Jeremy Corbyn is a Zionist agenda and has all the footprints leading to that direction. It is being promoted by the Board of Deputies and by the self-made unelected JLC, who are a well-known pro-Israel bodies-  and it’s completely cruel and unjustified.

The Board of Deputies and JLC do not represent Charedi Jews, who do not have voting rights at BoD elections and number today over fifty thousand in the UK, of which 30,000 live in Stamford Hill. According to a 2007 study by Dr Markov Wise at the University of Manchester, almost three out of every four Jewish births in the UK – home to the largest strictly Orthodox community in Europe – are in the Charedi community.

The strange thing here is that they are 263,000 Jews living in UK according to the 2011 census. Half of them do not belong to a synagogue according to BoD population statistics, so this half would not have voting rights in the BoD elections.

Add this up with 50,000 Charedi Jews it equals 181,000 out of 263,000 who will not fall under the BoD and the BoD do not represent them. So how on earth can the BoD have the chutzpah to say they represent the Jews in UK? BoD is a pro-Israel body and only represent a very particular part of Jews who are pro-Israel.

Chareidi Jews and most mainstream Jews in the UK are only interested in Anglo Jewry matters and do not get involved in Israel politics. However saying this we do recognise that real anti-Semitism is an issue all over the country and in all political parties. We are convinced that Jeremy Corbyn is doing his best to tackle real anti-Semitism in his party while still giving his people of his party freedom of speech to criticize Israel.

However, we are nowhere near to fleeing this country because of this. As a Charedi Jew I can say that Charedi Jews are the most vulnerable to anti-Semitic attacks as they dress differently and one can see that they are Jewish, therefore this support letter from leading Charedi rabbis from Stamford Hill including Chief Rabbi Padwa from the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC) says it all.

Jeremy is a long friend and neighbour of the Charedi community here and everyone who knows him personally says that he loves Jews and is against real anti-Semitism, and this is what he has done all his life.

Times have changed and we will not stop here. We will not be hijacked by the BoD and JLC. We will go further then this to make it clear to all the government bodies and to the press, not to fall into the trap of the BoD and JLC who are extremist Zionist bodies and do not represent mainstream Jews.

Discussions are now taking place that I’m personally aware of and talks are in place on considering setting up a new body of Board of Deputies of mainstream British Jews that will focus only on anglo-jewish matters and will represent the entire Jewish population no matter if they are associated to a BoD synagogue or not and act for the many Jews not the few.

A 2015 Guardian article quotes studies for the Institute of Jewish Policy Research showing that a majority of UK Jews will be from the Charedi community by the 2030s.

The Board of Deputies was not reachable for comment. The JLC has been contacted.

 

[magnkarl]

17 hours ago, bickster said:

@magnkarlHow come you've not made a single post in the Tory Party topic? They just supported a full-on antisemite in the European Parliament, yet you've said nothing?

So I should care more about Viktor Orban than I do about the party that I used to vote for for about 40 years?

Viktor Orban is a word removed and the Tory MEP's are words removed for supporting him, though it doesn't quite change Corbyn's silly and quite extraordinary bias and continued stupid behaviour on this issue.

Austria and Hungary have a long history of fascist\populist governments, while the UK is supposed to be a liberal place where you aren't judged on the basis of your race, religion or what have you. 

[StefanAVFC]

6 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

So I while the UK is supposed to be a liberal place where you aren't judged on the basis of your race, religion or what have you. 

haha

[bickster]

1 minute ago, magnkarl said:

So I should care more about Viktor Orban than I do about the party that I used to vote for for about 40 years?

1

Quite frankly, yes. The fact that you don't speaks volumes

There are several degrees of separation between anything going on in the Labour Party and the UK Government supporting a Far Right Anti-Semite, actually in power and in Europe.

To criticise the lesser of these and ignore the major one, devalues any argument you have, massively!

[blandy]

3 hours ago, magnkarl said:

So I should care more about Viktor Orban than I do about the party that I used to vote for for about 40 years?

 

3 hours ago, bickster said:

Quite frankly, yes. The fact that you don't speaks volumes

There are several degrees of separation between anything going on in the Labour Party and the UK Government supporting a Far Right Anti-Semite, actually in power and in Europe.

I'm with magnkarl on this one. Idgaf about Viktor Orban. The bloke's a word removed, in another land. The Labour party however, if it wasn't led and influeneced by such a shower of bells at the moment could (and hopefully would) provide a means to get rid of the most incompetent useless government ever in the place I live and stop Brexit while it is at it . I'd much rather that happened than whatever stupidity Orban is up to.

The UK Gov't supporting a far right Hungary leader on a EU parliament vote was (IMO) tactical regarding Brexit. "I scratch your back, you scratch mine".

[OutByEaster?]

On 19/09/2018 at 09:28, magnkarl said:

Again, and I keep getting back to this. British Jews have NOTHING to do with Israel. This is the problem with all of this. People who conflate the issues going on in Israel with what is going on with the likes of Naz Shah, Livingstone, Shawcroft etc still doesn't understand what it is that the British Jewish community is upset about.

I agree to an extent, there's a huge danger in confusing opposition to the Israeli regime with a dislike of Jewish people, communities, culture and history. It's good to see groups of the Jewish community coming out and condemning Israel as we've seen a bit more of lately, that helps - it helps people understand that there are two very different issues in play. 

For your own part Magnkarl, it's clear that you're personally affected by rising anti-semitic sentiment in all parts of British politics. I support you in that, no party should foster anti-semitic beliefs, just as no party should foster racist beliefs or any kind, whether that be on the basis of colour, religion or culture. I disagree with you on the extent to which that sentiment actually exists within the labour party and the degree to which it's manufactured for political gain, but like you, I believe the ideal extent of it is nothing at all and am supportive of the Labour parties clumsy attempts to tackle it - those still need work, hopefully other parties will follow suit.

What I'm interested in is your opinion on the other part of the issue, the bit that's important to separate from anti-semitic feeling; the current Israeli regime and it's appalling crimes - what are your thoughts on Netanyahu and his government?

 

[PompeyVillan]

8 hours ago, blandy said:

 

I'm with magnkarl on this one. Idgaf about Viktor Orban. The bloke's a word removed, in another land. The Labour party however, if it wasn't led and influeneced by such a shower of bells at the moment could (and hopefully would) provide a means to get rid of the most incompetent useless government ever in the place I live and stop Brexit while it is at it . I'd much rather that happened than whatever stupidity Orban is up to.

The UK Gov't supporting a far right Hungary leader on a EU parliament vote was (IMO) tactical regarding Brexit. "I scratch your back, you scratch mine".

I don't quite understand. Supporting an anti semetic government is meh/tactical, but Corbyn appearing on Iranian state TV is outrageous? 

 

 

[meregreen]

14 hours ago, magnkarl said:

So I should care more about Viktor Orban than I do about the party that I used to vote for for about 40 years?

Viktor Orban is a word removed and the Tory MEP's are words removed for supporting him, though it doesn't quite change Corbyn's silly and quite extraordinary bias and continued stupid behaviour on this issue.

Austria and Hungary have a long history of fascist\populist governments, while the UK is supposed to be a liberal place where you aren't judged on the basis of your race, religion or what have you. 

So why haven’t you commented on it?

[peterms]

2 minutes ago, meregreen said:

So why haven’t you commented on it?

It's almost as though identifying and challenging actual, real antisemitism wasn't the point of the exercise at all.

[snowychap]

8 minutes ago, peterms said:

It's almost as though identifying and challenging actual, real antisemitism wasn't the point of the exercise at all.

A colleague of mine has just fallen off his chair.

[blandy]

12 hours ago, PompeyVillan said:

I don't quite understand. Supporting an anti semetic government is meh/tactical, but Corbyn appearing on Iranian state TV is outrageous? 

No, clearly you don’t. Perhaps my point was unclear. Let me put it differently. The leaders of Iran and Turkey are words removed. Idgaf about either of them, in terms of affecting my life.

Jeremy Corbyn is a hypocrit. He went on Iran TV for money and did not use his appearances on it to condemn anti-Semitic garbage, even when it was voiced to him directly on his programme....etc. They used him, he let himself be used  He’s an idiot.

On 12/09/2018 at 18:35, PompeyVillan said:

Iranian and Russian state stooge. He's been a naughty boy in his time. 

Anyway, now the other lot - The U.K. Tory party and government are also hypocrites and idiots. They voted against some EU parliament motion that would have biffed Hungary for being all nasty like. They did it so they could get something in return as Bicks posted in their (baby eating) thread. 

People I will never support: the tories, Corbyn labour, Orban, Iran’s current leader.

Edited September 21, 2018 by blandy
iPad wouldn'tt cut and paste. Two posts now combined

[peterms]

Interesting and thoughtful piece on Corbyn in the LRB.

Quote

All the commentators seem to agree that something extraordinary happened when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party. There is no agreement, however, on what, exactly, was so extraordinary. For the anti-Corbyn side, what’s extraordinary is that a relic from the ‘hard left’ – a faction thought to have been permanently subdued in the 1980s – managed to win the leadership and alter the party beyond recognition, assisted by social-media-savvy but politically inexperienced young people (plus a smattering of old Trots). Labour’s political identity and its inheritance of practical knowledge, both the product of long, often bitter experience over more than a century, are consequently seen to be under grave threat.

The same facts also feature in the pro-Corbyn version of the story. He almost certainly wouldn’t have become Labour leader without social media (though his opponents tend to mistake a useful tool of contemporary activism for an originating cause). The Labour Party has indeed been transformed, more than doubling its membership to over half a million on the back of an unembarrassed and credible opposition to austerity and neoliberalism. But there’s a difference: in the first version of the story, Corbynism represents a dramatic deviation in the history of the Labour Party; in the second, a dramatic return to, or resurrection of its values.

The disagreement about Labour’s true identity has more to do with clashing ideals in the present than with conflicting analyses of party history – but the history is often bent to fit a particular agenda. It is a distortion to present Corbynism, as its critics sometimes do, as the second wave of an alien invasion: first the Militant Tendency, now Momentum. Corbyn’s politics belong to a tradition that stretches back to Labour’s beginnings (this could never be said of Tony Blair’s). Those who adopt this view would do better just to come out with what they actually mean, which is that it was only in the 1990s, under Blair, that the Labour Party finally found its perfect form. But it would also be a distortion to present Corbyn’s politics as the dominant strain in the pre-Blair Labour Party. The social democratic values he stands for – a strong welfare state, public ownership and provision of services – were most fully realised by the postwar Attlee administration, but this was, for any number of reasons (mainly relating to the Second World War), exceptional rather than representative.

In other words, Corbyn may be atypical, but his views aren’t extraordinary. He is manifestly not a revolutionary – whatever the papers may say – and only in a highly circumscribed sense can he even be called a ‘radical’. While it’s true that his roots are in the Bennite ‘hard left’, this tradition – characterised by a commitment to wealth redistribution and Keynesian economics, as well as by some tentative support for workers’ control of industries and a deep scepticism about the European Union – is not to be confused with the ‘far left’. These terms are often used more or less interchangeably to describe Corbyn and Corbynism, but the ‘far left’ is more properly used of extra-parliamentary groups and movements committed to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Corbyn is not proposing to replace capitalism, by revolutionary or other means. He is not even proposing very significant wealth redistribution. What he has so far felt able to put forward is moderate by the standards of the Bennite left of the 1970s and 1980s: according to the economist James Meadway, the economic proposals in Labour’s 2017 manifesto were more conservative than those put forward in 1983 by the SDP – the breakaway party formed by a faction of Labour’s right wing. Labour under Corbyn is promising, among other things, to abolish tuition fees and expand free childcare, reversing at least some of the cuts imposed by the Conservatives – and by their coalition partners between 2010 and 2016, the Liberal Democrats. It proposes to pay for these measures by raising income tax for the top 5 per cent of earners – though nowhere near pre-Thatcher levels – and by increasing corporation tax from 19 per cent to 26 per cent. The lowest rate under Thatcher was 34 per cent. Corbyn isn’t trying to take us back to the 1970s – at least not yet.

Of course, context and direction of travel matter at least as much as the detail of particular policies – otherwise, it would seem to follow from the facts above that Thatcher was more left-wing than Corbyn. Policies or political positions which, if a continuance of the status quo, would not be a disruptive intervention in a society, can be exactly that if proposed in a different context. In one sense, free university education is not a remotely radical policy: it was, until quite recently, what we had in this country (many other European countries still have it). But to call for its reinstatement in Britain now is to challenge an already deeply entrenched model of education as a private rather than a public good, and of students as individual consumers and entrepreneurs who must borrow to invest in their own ‘human capital’.

The significance of Corbynism has less to do with Corbyn or his politics than with what it discloses about the political system in which we live, widening an already growing gap between the reality of that system and the story it tells about itself. The story we have been told is that we live in a reasonably open and well-functioning democracy, in which political decisions reflect, for better or worse, the will of the people. We are assured that in this system – in clear contrast to totalitarian societies – political dissent and challenge are possible, and that the absence of advocates for positions to the left of the ones currently available to us reflects a lack of real appetite for them: people just won’t vote for the left. One variant of this story says that this is because people have realised that left-wing policies don’t work. Another holds that the problem is that people are too bigoted and irrational to see the merits of a more just and compassionate society. Either way, the message has been, in effect, that this is as good as it gets – even while for many, ‘this’ has been getting more and more difficult. Then came the 2008 financial crisis, demonstrating that things certainly could get worse. And after that, following a wave of anti-austerity movements across Europe and America, something utterly unexpected: a left-wing candidate managed to scrape together the required nominations to stand for the Labour leadership, and won a landslide victory.

The events of that campaign and of Corbyn’s subsequent embattled tenure – the purges, the attempted coup, the smears – demonstrate (or confirm) the degree to which the self-appointed political ‘centre’ has drifted to the right, leading the spectrum of political possibility to contract accordingly. Corbyn’s left reformism is mild by the standards of earlier generations, by the standards of some other European countries, and even in comparison to public opinion in the UK: the polls – though admittedly a fallible guide to people’s convictions and voting behaviour – consistently show majority support for a fully public NHS, for the nationalisation of rail and utility companies and for the scrapping of tuition fees. But this moderate agenda is, clearly, totally unacceptable to the British political establishment. This includes most Labour MPs and those who identify themselves as ‘left-leaning’ or ‘liberal’ journalists, many of whom remain wedded to a market-friendly model shaped by the legacies of Thatcher and Blair.

Corbynism has also called the bluff of those who argue that the recent homogeneity of British politics is simply reflective of a public consensus. It has become apparent that people are not only prepared to vote for a left alternative but they are even prepared to pay to vote for it (by joining the Labour Party), and willing to rally in their thousands in support of the chance to vote for it. Shutting their eyes to all evidence to the contrary, Corbyn’s critics maintained from the first that he was ‘unelectable’; something they continued to insist on right up until the general election of June 2017, which showed the biggest increase in Labour’s share of the vote since 1945, the year of Attlee’s first election victory. While a few still cling to this line – attributing Labour’s performance to the Tories’ poor campaign, or devising creative theories about the motivations of Labour voters (the political theorist Andrew Hindmoor suggests that people only voted Labour because they were sure the party wouldn’t win) – the ‘unelectability’ objection has now largely been dropped. But electability or public opinion were never the real issues at stake for Corbyn’s critics; they, not the electorate, are unwilling to tolerate any serious challenge to a political status quo which is extreme when judged by the same comparisons – to history, to other nations, to public opinion – that show how moderate Corbynism is. The neoliberal character of the status quo doesn’t reflect a public consensus, and it hasn’t for a long time: for example, no opinion poll since the mid-1980s has shown popular support for public sector privatisation.

*

Corbyn now arguably occupies a stronger position than at any other time in his leadership: this summer a Momentum-endorsed slate of candidates was overwhelmingly elected to the party’s National Executive Committee. Yet the assault has been continued, led by some of his own MPs in conjunction and occasionally in co-ordination with a media whose quarrel with Corbyn has been described by a former chair of the BBC Trust, Michael Lyons, as ‘quite extraordinary’. The favourite – and perhaps the most persistent – of the many lines of attack employed so far is the charge of antisemitism.

No one has yet produced any evidence either that antisemitism is more prevalent in the Labour Party than elsewhere in British society (within the Conservative Party, for instance), or that its incidence within Labour has increased since Corbyn became leader. The dispute is really about Corbyn’s positions on Israel and Palestine – positions which, again, have broad public support. Those who make the charge pretend to honour a clear distinction between antisemitism and criticism of the state of Israel, but have in fact consistently sought to undermine the distinction in such a way as to stigmatise and stifle the latter. The recent debacle over the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) guidelines provides one illustration of this.＊ Alongside an uncontroversial definition of antisemitism (long ago adopted by the Labour Party), the IHRA offers a number of ‘examples’ of antisemitism in practice, which include drawing comparisons between Israel’s policies and those of the Nazis, and ‘applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation’. The argument that it is antisemitic to apply ‘double standards’ to Israel is one that is often used to brand criticism of the country as racist, on the grounds that Israel is singled out although many nations commit human rights abuses. There are very good reasons for singling Israel out, such as the deep complicity of Western liberal democracies in its violence. The point is especially pertinent in Britain, which is implicated in everything that is happening in Israel and Palestine today, as in the Middle East more broadly. Britain, after all, occupied Palestine for the thirty years between the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the founding of the state of Israel, overseeing and facilitating the construction of Jewish settlements. Yet Palestine is conspicuously absent from the sporadic conversation about ‘coming to terms’ with our imperial legacy – Rhodes must fall, but what about Balfour?

The prohibition on comparisons with the Nazi regime has also proved a useful weapon for those who wish both to shield Israel and to damage Corbyn. While Israel was completing its transition from de facto to de jure apartheid state by enshrining Jewish-only settlements in law, the attention of the British media was once again focused on Corbyn and the Labour Party. The charge this time was that Corbyn had, in 2010, been present at an event where someone had made the forbidden comparison, and that he was thus antisemitic by association. The fact that this someone, Hajo Meyer, was a Jewish Auschwitz survivor who saw similarities between his treatment at the hands of the Nazis and what was now being inflicted on Palestinians, was no barrier to his deployment as cannon fodder.

Corbyn will not satisfy his opponents by conceding or apologising (though the IHRA examples have now been accepted in full). His accusers – who will be satisfied only with his removal – do not speak for all British Jews, who are increasingly critical of the actions and position of the Israeli state. The ‘Jewish vote’ shouldn’t be simply conflated with a pro-Israel one or treated as fixed. Political ‘common sense’ has tended to assume a tension between principle and pragmatism – and to counsel in favour of the latter. What this misses – and what Corbyn at his better moments exemplifies – is that the two can converge: that adherence to principle can be a source of strength.

If the path Corbyn has started to follow is again closed off, there are two foreseeable consequences. The first is that anger and disaffection will find another outlet. While frequent reference to a racist and right-wing public opinion has been a convenient device for the protection of the status quo, there is no virtue in maintaining an opposite fiction of the British people as saints and socialists. The appetite for Corbyn’s vision of a more compassionate and co-operative society coexists with a counter-tendency that has been well nurtured in recent years: the tendency towards suspicion of strangers and neighbours, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, resentment and a desire to dominate others. This tendency was on full display during the Brexit referendum campaign, and was given a formidable boost by the result. (There is no need to choose between the interpretation of Brexit as a protest against a neoliberal political establishment or as expressive of an ill-informed, racist bigotry: it is both.) Islamophobic sentiment and related attacks are on the increase, legitimised by a media which has for years been normalising far-right rhetoric. British liberals like to believe that Americans are a different species but they didn’t think that even the Americans would elect Trump. Boris Johnson – limbering up with carefully pitched comments about women in burqas and suicide vests – is a threat not to be underestimated. And there are fates worse than Boris.

The other foreseeable consequence of the defeat of Corbynism is that what remains of the achievements of an earlier Labour Party will be undone. The combination of the economic consequences of Brexit and another few years at the mercy of the Tories or Labour ‘moderates’ will spell certain death for the NHS (even without Brexit, the health service would be doomed to an only slightly slower demise). In this context, the attacks on Corbyn’s leadership are attacks on all those whose lives depend quite literally on a break with politics as we currently know it.

What is no longer an option is a return to politics as usual. Those who claim otherwise are incapable either of acknowledging the scale of discontent or of understanding its basis: they would rather blame ‘populists’, or the distorting effects of social media ‘echo chambers’. From this point of view, the sources of Corbyn’s appeal and his success are equally mysterious: it must be a result of infiltrators, nostalgia, a youth fad. ‘Democracy’ must be defended, but the idea that Labour candidates should be made accountable to the members of their constituency parties through a mandatory reselection process, for example, is ‘totalitarian’. The Brexit referendum must be rerun, because democracy malfunctioned in that case, but the decades of neoliberal reforms, carried out against the will of the population, were safely within the bounds of the legitimate and tolerable.

In the event that Corbyn survives to win an election and form a government, what may be hoped from it? It has often been said that we should not expect his troubles to end when he becomes prime minister, and indeed that this may be the moment when his real problems begin. This is probably true, if not very useful. What we may hope for also depends on a more basic and fundamental question. If you think that capitalism can be managed in such a way as to afford a decent life for all, then it is precisely this we should hope for and demand from a Labour victory under Corbyn. If not, the hope must be for something else – whether a step towards a more radical transformation, or just some temporary relief. Perhaps there are little grounds for hope from either perspective. But in immediate practical terms, it doesn’t make much difference. After all – to paraphrase the favourite slogan of the right – what is the alternative to Corbynism now?

 

[StefanAVFC]

Where are the opposition right now after that abomination of a statement by TM?

[peterms]

31 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Where are the opposition right now after that abomination of a statement by TM?

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. 

[NurembergVillan]

14 minutes ago, peterms said:

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. 

Or if you're busy enjoying a tepid brew from your flask at the end of a hard day on the allotment.

[PompeyVillan]

11 hours ago, blandy said:

No, clearly you don’t. Perhaps my point was unclear. Let me put it differently. The leaders of Iran and Turkey are words removed. Idgaf about either of them, in terms of affecting my life.

Jeremy Corbyn is a hypocrit. He went on Iran TV for money and did not use his appearances on it to condemn anti-Semitic garbage, even when it was voiced to him directly on his programme....etc. They used him, he let himself be used  He’s an idiot.

Anyway, now the other lot - The U.K. Tory party and government are also hypocrites and idiots. They voted against some EU parliament motion that would have biffed Hungary for being all nasty like. They did it so they could get something in return as Bicks posted in their (baby eating) thread. 

People I will never support: the tories, Corbyn labour, Orban, Iran’s current leader.

I wasn't having a pop Blandy, I am interested in your reply. I find your views interesting because you strongly oppose both main parties.

[PompeyVillan]

4 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

Or if you're busy enjoying a tepid brew from your flask at the end of a hard day on the allotment.

What is there to say? Official party policy is to support Brexit. 

I'd be more than happy for that policy to dramatically change to oppose Brexit, but I don't see that happening. 

[villakram]

21 minutes ago, peterms said:

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. 

People going mad about Labor are really missing this point.

It's a sinking ship and the Tory crew are doing a fine job at dum-dee-da'n.

Also, it's not as if there is a clear majority in favor of a pro-Brexit position. So, would you ** try** to take over when a change of course is not especially tractable at the current time.

The time is not right, but it is getting closer and closer.