Jeremy Corbyn vs Angela Eagle

perhaps the tide is turning; bbc news article about recriminations following this tom watson interview refers to "moderate" labour mps :O

Bristol CLP Corbyn 267, Owen Smith 64, Spoilt 1.

‏@CLPNominations 11h11 hours ago
So far, 178 constituencies have made supporting nominations. 25 for Smith and 153 for Corbyn.

Not necessarily indicative but...

Corbyn's preferred candidate, Steve Rotherham, has just wrapped up the Liverpool mayoral nomination.

Don't know what to expect from the NE Fife party - things can be much more middle-class/liberal/right wing that the rest of Scotland. Never returned a labour MP - not as NE Fife, E Fife or Fife (so, ever).

Which *could* mean that they might be even more left-wing than avg: nothing to lose..

It probably depends how many students turn up. But my experience of being a student at St. Andrews was that they're all right-wing assholes, so who knows.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/10/leader-expelled-leftwing-group-militant-peter-taaffe-readmission-labour-corbyn

moderate Labour twitter up in arms about this, though I think they are underestimating the extent to which Taaffe is saying this because he knows it will get Militant/the Socialist Party the most publicity they've had in 20 years rather than because he actually expects it to happen. I can see why the Socialist Party would want to rejoin Labour, it's less clear why Corbyn would want them to rejoin, or what leverage they have to pressure him.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/10/jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-contest-opponents-failures

some very pleasing fightback in the past couple of days against the Moderate Centrists - this piece in particular is like an ethering of what feels like 5000 social media conversations i've had the misfortune to read

bit startled to discover that taaffe is only 74, i somehow imagined him undyingly up there with castro, like some kind of unbending ultraleft númenorean

moderate Labour twitter up in arms

now that I find impossible to believe

few people in the world more pissy and hair-trigger than moderates

These extreme centrists are ruining the middle ground for all of us.

On Today this morning was an academic explaining why Watson has a less than elementary understanding of the true definition of Trotskyite and how the new influx of Labour members are a completely different phenomenon. He concluded with something like:"I'd be very surprised if there are more than 30 Trotskyites left in Hull these days".

we're holding on dammit

That many?

The context of him mentioning Hull was the 30000 crowd that greeted him the other week, as in probably 30 Trotskyites amongst them!

I went to the pub with half of them after the gig

Except you know there are loads of radical socialists who care about the Labour party and don't give a fuck about these pathetic labels. I see nothing unreasonable in having an unlimited horizon for how the world can be transformed - the only debate that should matter is the efficacy and ethics of transformation.

so it's not helpful if i burst in like the marxsplainy kool-aid man to point out that the swp are not trots but neo-leninists? :)

The PLP seem far more sensitive to labels like Blairite or Red Tory, which far more accurately describe their MO than Trotskyite does a lot of people that just want change and are used to being marginalised, or shouted down in reductive terms for decades - and really don't GAF.

XP well that's why I said "care about the Party" to distinguish our malcontents from the cult of SWP

Didn't a lot of SWP leave because some of its leaders were found to be a bit rapey, and other leaders either diminished it through bullshit 'internal discipline' or covered it up?

That is still ongoing as far as I know Suzy, I.e. Denials still in place

Somebody in the Graun used the term "delusional Leninist" the other day, this was actually in a quite pro-Corbyn piece. But it was pretty shit and I stopped reading tbh

NE Fife CLP supports...Smith! 19 votes to 16. Idiots. Plus, I was wearing an old Eraserhead T-shirt, and this old guy pulled it towards him (smoothing it for a better look) and asked 'that's not Trotsky, is it?'.

Lol shd've worn a Goebbels shirt

It was in the wash.

Say what you like but he knew how to communicate with the electorate

There was a bit less obfuscation from Goebbels tbf

also he was on the left of his party from day 1

Putting the socialist back into National Socialist?

So the appeal is going ahead and is actually in court now. BBC News court reporter was reporting from outside the court.

Also just read SWP denying that they are infiltrating Labour or even joining labour. They claim they're offering to work beside Labour in some places

So verdict on the membership thing expected tomorrow around 3pm.

& apparently according to a coup member legal guy who was interviewed on BBC this afternoon you can't tell if a judge is right without an appeal. Which makes the whole legal thing pretty questionable dunnit?

& if you need to legally define the term define in the first day of a court case does it mean that people are being extra thorough or wasting time?

swp is historically (and as far as i know currently) hostile to entryism

(also they're not trotskyists)

umm, since when are the swp not Trotskyist?

Counterfire are the Trotskyists, right?

swp (i'm talking abt the uk one) always used to insist they were neo-leninists not trotskyists -- one i was/am close to once said to me "trotskyists are MONSTERS" (he q

i imagine the reasons for this also apply to counterfire, though the need for the distinction has more or less entirely vanished, and i doubt they get into many fights about it (two of the key figures are neighbours, so i could possibly ask them) (but i probably won't)

oops, posted before completion: the guy who said "trotskyists are MONSTERS" quit abt ten years ago, and refers to the current swp leader as stallinicos

Tony Cliff wrote extensively about Trotsky, including a 4 volume biog, and his theoretical work (lol) was heavily based on Trotsky's ideas. his ideas did depart from mainstream (?) Trotskyism to some extent and thus i guess they maybe aren't "Trotskyists" but are a Marxist-Leninist party that sees itself as being in the same line as Trotsky.

yes to all this! nevertheless…

Going out on a limb here but I suspect Watson is not especially bothered by the nuances of whatever flavour of commie he chooses to label people as.

I keep wanting to make the Crick&Watson Trot DNA joke

also LOL WURZEL

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/11/trotskyists-on-the-march-chaos-ahead

John Harris has impressive Trot-spotting skills for someone who has spent the last couple of years travelling the length and breadth of the country talking to angry white people without ever once discovering a racist.

I'd have to be forced at gunpoint to ever read anything by JH again, I can't do hate-reading any more.

If you ever need a perfect encapsulation of the near-universal mediocrity of everyone in the political and media class who came up during the 90s, just look a John Harris, he's a one-man box-ticking exercise.

"John Harris visits an unemployment blackspot whose football league team failed re-election sometime in the sixties, and finds people don't trust politicians"

Are they showing each of the hustings. Had people on the BBC News morning show today discussing what had happened in the discussion last night. Guess they must have shown bits and I missed it.

Are the meetings very different town to town or are the same things being trotted out.
Surprised to see a Smithite this morning referring to Corbyn as trotting out slogans when Smith comes out with the same soundbites all the time.

Apparently Smith was a very professional seeming performance. & all the booing was by naughty Corbynites.
Does Smith have any charisma, cos it isn't coming through my tv set.

The juxtaposition of sub-header and photo make it look like Harris is claiming to have been involved in the Russian revolution.

His idea of an epoch defining moment was some idiot troglodyte from a shit rock band brown-nosing a PM, and that hackneyed bollocks was probably his finest work!