"oh you don't get me I'm the end of the union": lol brexit is how we're all gonna die

the thing with corbyn is that he and the portion of labour that is behind him is pretty much, as someone said on twitter, the only person proposing redistribution of wealth and avoiding endless war.

this means 1) that some on the left can too much reify him as a personality 2) people who don’t like him tend to go in ad hominem. it really fritzes their understanding about what is and isn’t relevant.

but as calz says, who gives a fuck about corbyn qua corbyn if there’s a labour party who will be doing something to redress the last ten years of austerity, correct the ideology or lack of it that encouraged and abetted the iraq war, and refeamecthe role of private money in the public realm.

*reframe the role

one important narrative point in this is that the 2007/8 crash exists outside what public policy could reasonably have managed (other than in the way Gordon Brown did in terms of response) and that the “response” to the crash by the Tories was to see it as an opportunity to pursue their radical ideology of shrinking the state and carrying out their own transferral of wealth to the already wealthy.

liam byrne’s letter deserves to be a museum artefact in this respect - i still no plenty of people who think labour crashed the economy in 2007 thru overspending. austerity-as-household budget is the natural and equally incorrect corollary of that.

this all matters because if you see ideology in the last ten years, you can see corbyn in a meaningful context. if you don’t then you are v ripe for STOP THIS DANGEROUS CHAVISTA.

For the life of me I don’t know why Labour didn’t push back at all on the Byrne letter (it’s a dumb handover tradition going back decades, which I believe was started by Tories) and while I’m sure David Cameron would still have brandished it in 2015, he would have looked more of a dick for doing so.

I've still heard a few fools quoting that letter on Any Questions, even just 18 months back. I think they've realised it's tapped out now, but yeah it is such patent bollox, but there seemed to be some kind of cowardly paralysis preventing Labour '15 from challenging it and subsequently it probably did damage.

The cunts still go on about the Winter of Discontent FORTY YEARS later. So I expect some little Tory squirt will be bringing up Liam Byrne on 2030 or whenever.

Cal & Fizzles otm re: Corbyn. There are so many things that bother me about him, but I vote for policies and he was the only person offering something that wasn’t more of the same shit shovelled up. I think a lot of his most vociferous defenders on twitter and the like are people who themselves are desperate for change in a very literal sense, and that’s why they have the bunker mentality. If you’re going on about his dodgy foreign policy positions or whatever, that must seem a luxury to someone who’s felt the sharp end of eight years of Tory policies.

Also a problem: he gets attacked by liberals many of us assumed were more left than is now obvious, and those same liberals very much take a ‘look what you made me do, it’s your fault I’m now POLITICALLY HOMELESS’ approach when dealing with the provincial/non-bourgeois left Labour voter.

xxp not to mention re the 70s it seems like a lot of people conflate the early 70s blackouts and strikes with the Winter of Discontent and think it was all under Labour

this will only be resolved when a young and charismatic leader with corbyn's policies emerges

More untutored thoughts here as well!

Dunno, I’m all for a more mature leader who doesn’t have or want a post-Government opportunity to coin it with directorships and consultancy work.

am not an SNP supporter

― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Friday, 25 January 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i voted labour in the last GE

― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Friday, 25 January 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So you keep telling us!

that's also fair xp

Young and charismatic, like Macron, Sebastian Kurz, David Cameron...

gr8 b8 m8

those people weren't charismatic, they were presentable and polished

gonna have to give xyzzzz a bingo here and invoke AOC. hey, it's the zeitgeist

Which current politicians are charismatic?

Oh, Age Of Chance, forgot her.

What all this shows is the tendency of a lot of people within Westminster - on the benches, in think tanks, in the media - to over-rely on small number of rehearsed positions and pre-built narratives that echo around Westminster to such an extent that they're accepted as gospel and blind politicians and policy-makers to what's actually happening out there.

Our esteemed PM took that approach to an almost Neu!-like level of refined minimalist perfection at the last election and look what happened. Cameron had his own version pre-2016 and look what happened. I think we all have a duty not to give all that froth and noise any more attention than it deserves, and that probably includes not bothering with dozens of indignant posts every time some no-mark says something beastly about Jeremy Corbyn.

This stuff is dangerous for Labour as well because I think the 2017 election has allowed it to build its own seductive narrative and, probably, overestimate its own chances of winning the next election. It certainly doesn't look like building enough of a majority to lead us out of this clusterfuck and may need the clusterfuck to get significantly worse to stand a chance of doing so. (Caveat, that will probably happen).

At the end of the day, anger at austerity and structural inequality is so strong by this point that's probably in and of itself enough to guarantee Labour c. 40% of the vote whatever happens. But that anger also means things are volatile and there could be a further upset if Labour are blamed for making the clusterfuck worse.

This all pales in comparison next to Tory Brexiters who are being *extremely* complacent about potentially saddling their own party with its own Winter of Discontent moment. Lorries backed up at Dover, empty supermarket shelves, people going without basic medicine, flights grounded, sleeping bags on airport floors and holidays cancelled. If this happens its going to hold a lot more strongly in the national consciousness than something that no one under 40 witnessed in the first place.

I think we all have a duty not to give all that froth and noise any more attention than it deserves, and that probably includes not bothering with dozens of indignant posts every time some no-mark says something beastly about Jeremy Corbyn.

while this is most definitely right (and grown up and sensible) - it can be hard to resist the base urge to dunk

If this happens its going to hold a lot more strongly in the national consciousness than something that no one under 40 witnessed in the first place.

If the media drone on and on about and present received wisdom as fact, as they have with the Winter of Discontent.

One of the things is that a lot of that stuff will be inconvenient-to-life-threatening regardless of where you are on the political spectrum.

an almost Neu!-like level of refined minimalist perfection

*charges into thread, wheezing angrily* sir, i take excep —

while this is most definitely right (and grown up and sensible) - it can be hard to resist the base urge to dunk

― ||||||||, Saturday, 26 January 2019 12:05 (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

come come now i hope we are not americans

Just to go back up.

I'm not trying to say Corbyn is above criticism, but I don't care about his opinions on Chavism - just as much as I couldn't give a fuck about May on Trump or the fucking LibDems/Labour Melts on macron.

― calzino, Friday, 25 January 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Mostly agree, to many of us its his domestic more socialist positions that matter, but its his practiced anti-imperialism (something that no young charismatic piece of thrash, as well as older lefties like Bernie Sanders, quite have) is what leads to his attacks on Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen - were he to become PM there would be a confrontation there. He would 'disrupt' things and that is significant and goes both ways when it comes to the public. The speech on terrorism at the GE played well whereas Skripal was quite damaging to Labour last year - although you do wonder if the effects of those things would last or not into a new one. Probably not, just like when people who tell you again and again they voted Labour to add some fake nuance to their take on Corbyn may not in fact vote the same way again in the next one.

Tory Brexiters who are being *extremely* complacent about potentially saddling their own party with its own Winter of Discontent moment.

Isn't the plan to blame Europe and/or immigrants for that?

The Conservatives are the natural party of government; it's not possible for bad things to be the result of their mismanagement.

i’m still confused about the skripal thing. clearly, because everyone keeps saying it, it’s damaged labour, but is it because people think that russia is still a communist leaning state in some way? reds in the bed stuff? i mean the newsnight graphic with the was it wasn’t it photoshopped corbyn hat suggests that. but everyone knows that russia has been a rampantly capitalist oligarchy which has inherited and maintained the structures of state control from its communist heritage, but nothing else, right*? i mean abramovich at the v least as an avatar of that provides the evidence? or is it not that.

*nervous glance to shari vari here

putin’s a mad imperialist cunt and britishes love to hardman

I mean there seems to be a bit of that going on too, but in the main it’s that Russian actors came here and were able to do so. If you contrast towards Corbyn’s GE about staying out of other countries/UK actions create terrorism back home, that was popular because a lot of people do agree with isolationist views - but it’s very different when it’s happening here.

yeah corbyn has done well w isolationist foreign policy when it’s been about escalations abroad. his dovishness didn’t play as well when it was in response to an ~incursion~ on great british soil.

wasn't it was Corbyn saying that the government was too quick to blame the Putin regime, which I thought was reasonable at the time. Williamson offering Putin out in comedy hardman style was apparently the right way to do it.

, that was popular because a lot of people do agree with isolationist views

I was sorta surprised by this and still not quite sure how it plays out, there doesn't seem the same isolationist anti-war streak in UK as in US - still feels an underlying belief in our brave boy should be out there killing and showing the world whos boss

our brave boy

bloody hell, cutbacks have even reached the armed forces now this is rough

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/26/john-humphrys-suggests-ireland-could-quit-eu-and-join-uk

Questioned about the possibility by the BBC Today presenter John Humphrys, Ireland’s Europe minister, Helen McEntee, said it was not contemplating quitting the EU, that polls showed 92% of the population wanted to remain in the bloc, and “Irexit” was not plausible.

Humphrys said: “There has to be an argument, doesn’t there, that says instead of Dublin telling this country that we have to stay in the single market etc within the customs union, why doesn’t Dublin, why doesn’t the Republic of Ireland, leave the EU and throw in their lot with this country?”

fwiw I've never heard anyone having a go at Corbyn over the Skripals, I'm not convinced it's that big a deal.

that’s some real galaxy brain shit right there xp

what is with this entire generation of so-called bbc institutions turning into gibbering euthanasia cases

[/calzino]

http://www.gstatic.com/tv/thumb/tvbanners/262620/p262620_b_v8_ab.jpg

How much do the BBC pay that senile moron a year?

my fave senior moment from Humphrys last year was when he introduced Patten as the "former governor of China". Just a misspeak maybe you say, but coming from this arrogant dense twat...

bbc is straight up becoming the political equivalent of dads4justice

I'm really looking forward to the segment on @BBCr4today on Monday morning when John Humphrys interviews a French government minister and demands to know why France won't rejoin the Angevin Empire, so it can carry on trading with Britain after Brexit pic.twitter.com/09njPWwrRB

— Dr Francis Young (@DrFrancisYoung) January 26, 2019

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dx5zGcFXgAI3qR4.jpg

and ppl say it is Corbz who is going turn this country into Venezuela 2.0.

well that’s one way to take back control i guess

One in 20 British adults do not believe the Holocaust happened, and 8% say that the scale of the genocide has been exaggerated, according to a poll marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

Almost half of those questioned said they did not know how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and one in five grossly underestimated the number, saying that fewer than two million were killed.

embarrassing, sickmaking .... seriously, fuck this country.

first world problems: the spread of fake, pro-ignorant historical narratives that suit neo-fascism.