Ne'er get thee stitched til Booris be ditched: UK General Election 2019

It's not even extreme left wing; as far as I can see most current Labour policies have been part of the orthodoxy of the UK left for most of my life and would not be out of place in any European social democratic party.

anvil, that's a good post. Can I reply without trying to stir things up too much. I understand it's an emotional issue for most people (including me).

Europe: a) The more Lib Dems that win seats the greater the margin for Boris. b) Given the Lib Dems track record on reneging on signature policies, are you really any happier with their trustworthyness (especially given it was Swinson who was pushing for a referendum 10 years ago), and Corbyns own voting record (check theyworkforyou.com) doesn't really match up with that of a eurosceptic

FWIW I personally think Swinson is awful in pretty much every way. I'm not convinced Corbyn isn't a Leaver at heart. Do you really think he's keen to remain in Europe? As far as I know he's been anti-EU before the EU existed.

antisemitism: whats your preferred course of action here, and how is a Conservative government going to help?

There is racism in every party. The idea that Labour and the left are by-default impervious to prejudice or racism is a fallacy.
AFAICS, Corbyn probably isn't antisemitic but he seems more interested in protecting people in his party who could be than speaking up for Jewish people.
He was slow to act when he was pulled-up on his own history of comments and slow to act on antisemitism in his party until it became a pertinent media issue.
I know many traditionally Labour-voting people (even some ex party members) who see this as a dealbreaker. If Corbyn had been quicker to own the issue and work harder to quash antisemitic views in his party, it might not be the case.

public spending strategies: Pretty core here, if you like these you're probably a natural Labour supporter. You don't have to be! If you prefer the public spending of other parties, its ok!

The idea that free broadband is Communism is super-duper stupid. But some might be sceptical about exactly how Labour might go about renationalising all these different services. It feels like a task as gargantuan and knotty as a clean Brexit. I can see a lot of people loving the idea of it raining free candy under a socialist government, but are these pretty promises that might never get fulfilled? We can only see. Unfortunately for Corbs, these campaign promises feel like sideshow diversions from the main act which is Brexit. The second he tries to change the subject, Boris only needs to shout 'GET BREXIT DONE' and we're back to Corbyn's weak spot in his armour.

Corbyn's overall leadership and media-handling skills: I don't think these are particulary that great either, but Jamie Vardy is unavailable, and
wait till you see the other two, where outright fabrication is de rigeur

Yeah, I don't know what to say. I think Corbyn comes across like a nice dude and his whole 'be nice and make jam' persona is appealing to a lot of people, but not everyone. Amazingly I think he's much better than Swinson, Johnson and May put together. Not everyone agrees, but you can't please everyone. One criticism of Corbyn is that he's a great campaigner and really good at galvansing those who are already on board, but not so good at winning people to his side.

Put these down on a piece of paper, put CON and LAB at the top of each, and put an X against which your prefer.

If you lucky enough to live in a non-marginal, save yourself the hand-wringing and go do something else instead, your vote doesn't matter, its not worth the agro

I'm trying to post from a macro viewpoint rather than my own. I want, more than ever, to get the Tories out and for us to remain in Europe. I consider myself a left-winger, but increasingly I see myself as a Remainer first and foremost. I don't believe that you can end austerity and keep public services running if we leave Europe.

But it's not about how I peronsally vote. I'm interested in Labour winning but they will only do that if they continuously improve and win more people to their side. Simply saying 'you vote Labour or Tory, and that's it'. Labour and their supporters need to own their critics and work towards the future. Consider the viewpoints of others rather than jump on them. I don't give a shit about Corbyn. I think he's actively hurting the Labour party at this stage and the sooner he's replaced, the better. In fact I'd say he's abetted the Tory government in many ways. But that's a story for another time.

[screams] https://t.co/YKt95vX5Pq pic.twitter.com/i5K2MIaPkF

— hern (@alexhern) November 20, 2019

Crying @ this policy

Sending this to the only Lib Dem I know and waiting for a reaction

lol! I keep thinking how can they get any more worse? but they are reading my mind. But yeah obv making landlords richer is powerful food for thought!

FWIW I personally think Swinson is awful in pretty much every way. I'm not convinced Corbyn isn't a Leaver at heart. Do you really think he's keen to remain in Europe? As far as I know he's been anti-EU before the EU existed.

like fuck me you can take absolutely every argument about Labour antisemtism in 100% good faith, and Labour would still not have deported elderly black people to their deaths, or stripped a British citizen of her citizenship (leading to her baby to die) or be planning to say that Bloody Sunday was good actually and all those kids who got shot shouldn’t have been threatening those soldiers with their backs.

― gyac, Wednesday, November 20, 2019 3:32 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I will say it again and again and again: Just because someone has concerns about Corbyn's Labour doesn't make them a Tory who wants to kill people. Everyone knows the Tories are pricks. Saying 'Yeah, Labour might have an antisemitism problem, but the Tories are more racist' kind of skirts around the issue, no? I know plenty of people who feel disgusted by Labour's handling of antisemitism. Are you saying they're wrong to feel that way?

gyac, I'm not on Twitter

I don't really feel like wading into this again, but you and I are on the same wavelength, dl. At the risk of repeating myself, I very much hope Labour wins as many seats as possible because it's this country's best shot at a proper future, just don't expect me to buy into Corbyn wholesale or muster the least bit of enthusiasm for him.

(aside) oh god that 'help to rent' thing, fuck me that's risible

"just don't expect me to buy into Corbyn wholesale or muster the least bit of enthusiasm for him."

This is called 'critical support',,,I believe!

I'm trying to post from a macro viewpoint rather than my own

This is the main problem with what you're saying. You're conflating your view with the view of an imaginary "Mr Wavering Labour, Milltown" and flitting back and forth between the two. Is this about winning over Mr Labour, or yourself? when does it switch from one to the other? This leads to confusion and disarray, topic after topic all rolled in together, racing from one to the next. It has the effect of an unintentional Gish Gallop

Sounds good to me.

xp

_like fuck me you can take absolutely every argument about Labour antisemtism in 100% good faith, and Labour would still not have deported elderly black people to their deaths, or stripped a British citizen of her citizenship (leading to her baby to die) or be planning to say that Bloody Sunday was good actually and all those kids who got shot shouldn’t have been threatening those soldiers with their backs.

― gyac, Wednesday, November 20, 2019 3:32 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink_


I will say it again and again and again: Just because someone has concerns about Corbyn's Labour doesn't make them a Tory who wants to kill people. Everyone knows the Tories are pricks. Saying 'Yeah, Labour might have an antisemitism problem, but the Tories are more racist' kind of skirts around the issue, no? I know plenty of people who feel disgusted by Labour's handling of antisemitism. Are you saying they're wrong to feel that way?

To recap: If someone's issues with Corbyn are enough to make them vote tory, they're a tory. If someone votes lib dem because they don't think Corbyn is sufficiently committed to Remain, they're a mug getting played by Swinson who dgaf.

If you're not that keen on Corbyn but are going to vote labour anyway, then good man yourself for keeping your eye on the fucking ball.

Explain how this is a good outcome, dl?

Nigel Farage just said he doesn’t get called racist anymore because all the attention is on Jeremy Corbyn and he was only called racist when he dared to speak about immigration that everyone agrees with him now.

— Downing Street Source (@judeinlondon2) November 19, 2019

Only saw an edited clip but NF was doing the Trumpy thing with his hands more last night then I remember him doing before.

This is the main problem with what you're saying. You're conflating your view with the view of an imaginary "Mr Wavering Labour, Milltown" and flitting back and forth between the two. Is this about winning over Mr Labour, or yourself? when does it switch from one to the other? This leads to confusion and disarray, topic after topic all rolled in together, racing from one to the next. It has the effect of an unintentional Gish Gallop

― anvil, Wednesday, November 20, 2019 4:07 PM (fifty-five seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

I... don't really know what a Gish Gallop is, nor really what you're saying here.

If you want to know my view, it's that I believe Labour don't currently stand a chance of beating the Tories if their supporters are going to be actively volatile towards anyone who dares to raise questions about them.
Corbyn's cult of personality only stretches so far - spellbinding his admirers while leaving sceptics and floating voters cold. He and his supporters don't seem very interested in reaching those people either.
I feel that if he really were a stronger candidate he would have been able to decimate this shitty Tory government long ago. As such his leadership has been riddled with problems, standing aside again and again as the Tories plough roughshod over public services.
He's been awful at handling his media profile, while his defenders bleat constantly about conspiracies and 'media smears'. Take gyac's 'Stop reading centrist propaganda on Twitter' - no sorry, I'm listening to the very real concerns of good people I know personally and trust. Or maybe they're just Swinson shills? Maybe they secretly hate the poor and the sick. Maybe they want to suck Johnson's cock. Could be. What's real anymore? IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY!

💡 IMPORTANT GENERAL ELECTION EXERCISE💡

Type in your former school name ⌨️ https://t.co/sHZFX2rpOs

Share what you find and #VoteEducation #GeneralElection2019

— Ewa Jasiewicz (@ewa_jay) November 20, 2019

xp great response, civility politics at its best

"spellbinding his admirers while leaving sceptics and floating voters cold."

lool ..you don't half post some utterly hyperbolic garbage

why hyperbolic?

Spellbinding his admirers you say? you obv only haven't read this thread much in the last few years.

I feel that if he really were a stronger candidate he would have been able to decimate this shitty Tory government long ago.

sadly not, I think, our media is so biased against anything vaguely Left that I don't think this is true anymore.

Spellbinding his admirers you say? you obv only haven't read this thread much in the last few years.

― calzino, Wednesday, November 20, 2019 4:33 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Admittedly I browse it only casually. Not sure what ILX's general attitude is towards Corbyn really. I'm not really talking about this thread though??

so are you suggesting he's a dynamic and mesmerising cult of personality type pol? but also quite useless at the same time?

Gish Gallop is when you overwhelm with a lot of arguments in one go many of which are vague and not easy to pin down, so each iteration means more and more to unpack. Its generally when conversation or discussion seems to spiral out of control, heading in multiple directions at once, at the expense of focus or clarity. Then other people get involved and exacerbate it and everyone forgets where they live

Here you go:

what are jeremy corbyn's flaws?

Which MPs did Corbyn deselect? Let alone over Brexit?!

― gyac, Wednesday, 20 November 2019 15:18 (one hour ago) link

I too would like to know the answer to this question

It is very annoying to have to argue with undigested lies.

Also literally the other parties would literally murder all of us in our sleep without a second thought so it sortof is a binary decision? Unless you're just imagining endless possible realities, which is sort of hard to argue with. Who wants the guy from the West wing or w/e to win

There’s that widely-shared stat that Corbyn has defeated the government more times than any opposition leader in history which does undercut his supposed weakness somewhat

the fact we have a 'what are jeremy corbyn's flaws' thread speaks for itself really. calzino - Corbyn is a fantastic campaigner; excellent at addressing his immediate audience and as such has garnered a strong and vocal group of enthusiastic supporters, most of whom were onboard with socialist/left-wing politics in the first place and had been waiting for someone to represent them for a long time. Once you move out of this bubble, it gets trickier. In many ways that's down to a combination of systematically-instilled distrust in socialism and media influence from the rightwing press. But for me I feel it's partly down to a stubbornness or an inability to preach further than the choir. That's why you get people who are confused about him. People who are largely apolitical, like Noodle's colleague who just don't understand Corbyn's politics, and people (like me), who feel like their concerns often get ignored or shot-down rather than accomodated.

As such his leadership has been riddled with problems, standing aside again and again as the Tories plough roughshod over public services.

This is crackers. Who has done more to hammer the govt on public services? Who among either his predecessors in or rivals for the labour leader's job has been anything like as focussed?

Admittedly I browse it only casually. Not sure what ILX's general attitude is towards Corbyn really. I'm not really talking about this thread though??

Aren't you? Who are you talking about and why are you telling us about it?

What are your concerns that are being shot down or not accommodated by the horrendous reds

That thread’s title is a jokey reference to an Obama thread from a decade ago fwiw, I don’t think you can extrapolate too much from it

It is named after the "what are Barack Obama's flaws?" thread. It doesn't "speak for itself." What does that even mean?

Lol

At one point I also was disappointed that Corbyn was not a "stronger candidate", but the thing is, that stronger candidate does not exist. You said yourself you like him more than other party leaders; well, there isn't anyone else in the Labour Party who is that imaginary Strong Candidate either. Corbyn's what we've got, but he was the best candidate in the 1st leadership challenge, and let's not even talk of Owen Smith's embarrassing pronouncements. There is no obvious amazing Labour successor waiting in the wings; the LD and Tory lineups are scraping the barrel too; there's only one Green MP and I like her but she has shown pretty messed up priorities recently.

So given the choice we've actually got I've come round to thinking he's pretty good actually. In fact I am really liking most of the announcements I see coming out this election campaign and in the clips I've seen from debates and rallies he seems pretty on form, pretty strong after all.

And from another angle his strengths or weaknesses don't even matter. We just need to get the lying, country-immiserating, NHS-demolishing Tories out, and Corbyn's the only approximately realistic way to do so. I really hope he can do it, or we are all doomed. (We are probably all doomed, but hey.)

(plus everyone else OTM that the media just isn't giving Labour a chance, and for all people claim it's because Corbyn is a singularly hopeless fencesitter or dangerous extremist, or even both at once somehow, they did the same to Miliband, they did the same to Brown, so a "media-approved Labour leader" is probably also imaginary)

Explain how this is a good outcome, dl?

Downing Street Source
@judeinlondon2
Nigel Farage just said he doesn’t get called racist anymore because all the attention is on Jeremy Corbyn and he was only called racist when he dared to speak about immigration that everyone agrees with him now.

36
11:13 PM - Nov 19, 2019
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Where Nigel Farage can appropriate literal Nazi imagery, hang around with every fascist in Europe and casually drop the number of Jewish people living in America and still have a place in public life?
― gyac, Wednesday, November 20, 2019 4:09 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Who said this was a good outcome? Where did I say it's a good outcome? this is a terrible outcome.

Aren't you? Who are you talking about and why are you telling us about it?

― 'Skills' Wallace (Tom D.), Wednesday, November 20, 2019 4:49 PM (fifty-nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

There is a world outside ILX.

It's fine for people to not vote for Labour for whatever daft reason they like, just as it's fine for people to not vote for the eventual Dem nominee vs Trump. To see the same people holding out the idea that the latter is absolutely unconscionable and the former is a sensible, measured response is eyebrow-raising wrt their priorities.

(xp) Well, I tell you what, go out there and lecture them, not us.

Can I just fill any possible gap here, by calling Farage a big suppurating racist.

You aren't talking about people on ILX. Aye, right.

Please skills Wallace, get outside the Westminster bubble and engage with legitimate concerns

the LD manifesto is called JO SWINSON’s PLAN FOR BRITAIN’S FUTURE

not a cult

It's fine for people to not vote for Labour for whatever daft reason they like, just as it's fine for people to not vote for the eventual Dem nominee vs Trump. To see the same people holding out the idea that the latter is absolutely unconscionable and the former is a sensible, measured response is eyebrow-raising wrt their priorities.

Can't really compare the rhetoric of a primary campaign with that of three weeks before a general election.