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

Cigars are disgusting and this is why Jiminy Concubine is my leader and not the ghost of 'ARROLD! Wilson.

like I often wish I was a less emotional person for myriad reasons, but getting and staying angry about racism isn’t really one of them and I don’t care that that bothers you.

Labour still hasn't really come across a way of presenting its Brexit policy that sticks in the mind of someone who isn't paying full attention - which isn't to do with the policy itself or the nonsensical "but which way will Corbyn vote?" question. I don't know why they aren't just going 'a referendum on the deal' or something similar, which isn't perfect but would do the job better than what we have right now.

DL I also think you put way too much emphasis on a handful of shitposters on your tl being rude about the Lib Dems (who are yellow tories and can eat shit btw 🙂) - ppl from all parts of the political spectrum are talking shit about ppl they disagree with and this is not going to be a significant factor in this election imo

and you're not really proposing solutions or alternatives dl. i know lots of people irl who do the whole "Corbyn is a friend of terrorists and a bolshevik and high here's a racist Diane Abbott meme" and the fact that they are people and have these unexamined opinions doesn't mean they're not being idiots beneath contempt when they do it.

so, who would be a better leader of the Labour party? how much individual power do you think Corbyn has? including considerations of actually likelihood of forming a government which parties' leaders are better?

wow my typo count is thru the roof, performative sincerity folks

because they often come up with reasoning which doesn't seem to relate to any facts that i recognise but rather a set of instincts and instinctive prejudices that would need a psychiatrist to sort out, not an activist.

To wit, the claims that a) Corbyn has deselected MPs over brexit, b) Corbyn has been soft on arguing against cuts to public services. The other stuff dog latin has said is on a scale between between reasonable and arguable, it's the presence of those two arguments that sends my bullshit detector crazy.

xp you’ll never be in my league so don’t even try

i think for most of us on this thread dl some form of socialism, or what this Labour manifesto represents, which is really the most cautious toe-tip into the ocean of socialism, is so transparently good and necessary that we entertain a lot of suspicions of people who don't seem to believe it's good and necessary, or claim to be put off by their offence at the most mild-mannered and honest of party political leaders in 2019.

and some people honestly believe or like to believe that they would like to make the world a better place but something inside, class consciousness, aesthetic distaste, god knows what, makes them incapable of really supporting a change to the status quo when push comes to shove. and personally i think most of those people are unreachable, unpersuadable, and not worth the sheer psychic of engaging with on a good faith level, because they often come up with reasoning which doesn't seem to relate to any facts that i recognise but rather a set of instincts and instinctive prejudices that would need a psychiatrist to sort out, not an activist.

― The Man Who Was Thirsty (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, November 20, 2019 5:11 PM (eighteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

actually I really like this response. I totally get this. Can't really spend too much time ITT now cos it's made me stay late at work but I'd like to respond, other than I totally get what you're saying here. As someone who identifies as leftwing, it pains me to have a bust-up with people who ultimately align with my values.

Are you ever going to address the points made about the negative consequences for other voters of a Tory government, esp one with a large majority, or do they just bother you less because Tory voters are nicer to you when they’re telling you how evil Corbyn is?

― gyac, Wednesday, November 20, 2019 5:12 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I literally no longer have any idea what you're talking about.

If your answer to everything is 'BET YOU'D PREFER THE TORIES', gyac, then you're proving my initial points

this is the only debate clip that banged (1.2m views) on twitter

The Tories want to keep their NHS sell-off plan secret.

We cannot and will not let this happen.#LeadersDebate #ITVdebate pic.twitter.com/grRTP46Jdj

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) November 19, 2019

Yeah that's good stuff.

dog latin - what’s your take on this piece
https://howupsetting.com/2019/11/13/vote-labour-2/

It is ultimately unclear what you want from this thread.

The people on this thread cannot have any effect on the internal management of the Labour party or its policies (beyond those who attended conference and voted for motions) so you cannot want us to "take your views seriously" as an mp might listen to a constituent.

Neither are we canvassing you, it is not our job to "take you seriously" we are here to engage and proffer our own views. In point of fact, the whole thread has completely detailed to "take your views seriously." despite the fairly unclear challenge you have presented every regular poster has tried to engage you nonetheless.

You may mean that we have to take your concerns as themselves "legitimate" (again I'm not sure why, this is not a forum for 'recruitment' of voters) in order not to alienate others. But your view is your view, it seems fairly inflexible when faced with straightforward rebuttals of basic untruths and it is very annoying that you continue to refuse to acknowledge the many times you have asserted straightforwardly incorrect claims that we should supposedly "take seriously."

Saying "oh well everything is fine then" is bizarre. Would us "taking you seriously" in any way alleviate the real and imagined criticisms you have of Corbyn/Labour

If your answer to everything is 'BET YOU'D PREFER THE TORIES', gyac, then you're proving my initial points

covertly and overtly targeting, ffs

can we have a sidebar on this pls

A baseless and unfounded prediction. Loyalists have never attacked anything in GB. https://t.co/8nvr3VYLT9

— Emma Vardy (@EmmaVardyTV) November 19, 2019

BBC ireland correspondent !!!!

I saw and sadly loled, very typical tbh bc as we all know only Irish people and Muslims can be terrorists

please explain how a Conservative government that is covertly and overting minorities for political gain is a situation to be encouraged?

It's not. Who said it was?

Because that’s what you get if you’re suggesting that the Tories’s racism is somehow less notable because everyone knows they’re bad

I didn't say it was less notable. I said that just because the Tories are massive racists doesn't mean that racism on the left shouldn't be ignored or taken as seriously

How do you think Muslims feel with Johnson and Gove in government and a swathe of white nationalists in or adjacent to no 10? Are those concerns less legitimate or real just because they’re already priced in?

No! Honestly, I hate to play the whataboutery card here, but...

xp. must have imagined the bombings of glasgow pubs by loyalists

Point taken, it’s just as I initially thought. Appreciate you’re not a regular itt but this and the other thread do and have discussed antisemitism many times over the past few years. Does that mean we can’t point out that the current gov is incredibly racist and using racism for political gain, or that we can’t call bullshit on Nigel fucking Farage crowing about how he’s barely considered racist anymore?

Dublin-Monaghan? Hardly knew her!

Concerns over racism isn't a pie. Tory racism doesn't somehow eclipse or mitigate other forms of racism just because it's coming from the other side.

gyac, seriously, no-one's defending the Tories or Farage here.

fucking hell, this poor family

Goodness, Raab seeking to recoup the govt's legal costs from Harry Dunn's family is so heartlesshttps://t.co/gatkiXJtLe

— Sonia Sodha (@soniasodha) November 20, 2019

Doglatin it is simply untrue that no one has criticised the AS claims or have handwaved them away - we've talked about them extensively often in a spirits of FFS exasperation with Labour's uselessness at dealing with it. Like, probably dozens of times.

xp
quite a villainous and nasty move to pull is that - especially weeks before an election, probably the price they've paid for saying Raab is a dishonest oily twat.

Doglatin it is simply untrue that no one has criticised the AS claims or have handwaved them away - we've talked about them extensively often in a spirits of FFS exasperation with Labour's uselessness at dealing with it. Like, probably dozens of times.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, November 20, 2019 5:50 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Fair dos. I don't really follow this thread regularly and I'm not just talking about ILX, but lefty online spheres in general where any mention of AS is too often shot down with an 'IT'S ALL A SMEAR!' head-burying. Whether Corbyn's Labour is antisemitic or not, I find that very dismaying. But I see it so often, it makes me really disheartened and leads me to think 'no wonder people are put off'.

There is a world outside ILX, Matt ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

james butler if it hasn't already been posted*: https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/november/arid-exchanges

*i'm not rereading lol

good article

labour has storied history of racism

Sometimes it just strikes me that Britain helped kill hundreds of thousands of brown people in a famously secular Middle East state because of an ultra-niche hyper-extreme religious terrorist group from other countries, and virtually no-one ever seems to recognise this as racism.

— I (@trevorbastard) November 20, 2019

Oh yeah I don't follow those kinds of discussions - I made the mistake of doing that with something about Chris Williamson once and never again. Don't stick your head in the sewer remains a good rule to live by.

Leaving aside the obvious moral reprehensibleness of that decision from Raab it shows a level of complacency within the Tories at the moment because they clearly believe they can create such clearly emotive bad headlines with impunity. That's the sort of story that stops someone switching from Labour (or even the Brexit Party) to the Tories and Labour should be making a massive deal out of it.

They should be making more out of the Arcuri thing as well - it's not bringing someone's personal life into it, it's a matter of public interest that Johnson appears to have abused his position, misappropriated public funds and then lied about it.

i wonder with someone like Johnson whether people who are going to vote him care.

I mean his racism and mendacity are very much features and not bugs for lots of voters. As long as he’s targeting the Muslims and foreigns, he can do what he likes.

boris fucks. proper lad

I'm sure many don't but by no means all.

tbh boris is a craven dweeb who's had his entire life handed to him on a salver but this alchemises in certain quarters of public perception to boris the alpha sexbeast who'll fuck britain to victory, it is all extremely inaccurate and depressing for all that he wishes it were so

FWIW my gut feel is still that the election will deliver much the same result as last time - I don't see where the extra seats are going to come from for Johnson (there are several knife edge Lab-Con marginals but not enough) but I don't see Labour making sufficient ground even to become the largest party.

The DUP may not be as obliging this time round, assuming they have as many MPs this time round.

on corbyn as Labour leader, as the article ||||||| posted says, no one else would have positioned Labour as a progressive left party (even if i think some of the policies are *regressive*, I’m fundamentally sympathetic to the programme). “i’d love to vote for progressive left policies if it weren’t for corbyn” usually feels strongly disingenuous.

anti-semitism in labour exists. as i said upthread, the palestinian vector has some nasty anti-semitic fellow travellers associated with it. corbyn doesn’t seem to be one of those but has perhaps been a bit dull-witted at times. and for those who say that if it is institutional then it existed under Blair and others have a sort of point, but it ignores the space in which Corbyn exists.

but the anti-semitism argument is thrown around in what is clearly bad faith a lot of the time, to attack Corbyn personally, and that

i really don’t get “Corbyn doesn’t believe in the EU” arguments. The policy has been stated. It’s not flash card clear, but reasonably easy to understand and represent with not much effort. What Corbyn feels personally doesn’t have much meaning in that context, and seems an extension of personality politics at the expense of understanding that parties have or should have policy.

It's not sleeveless, mind you, but this is still amusing from a French pov:

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7da7e10054fa41cfedfdd67711799bb8d7ba187e/0_89_5422_3253/master/5422.jpg?width=1920&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=bb4b194c6546b2941bf7c76eb0f30178

xps to Tom D No, definitely not. Yr middle England Tories, like my mother in law, are not really that into the whole package.

tbh boris is a craven dweeb who's had his entire life handed to him on a salver but this alchemises in certain quarters of public perception to boris the alpha sexbeast who'll fuck britain to victory, it is all extremely inaccurate and depressing for all that he wishes it were so

xp to Matt DC

John Curtice said recently that the mathematical probability of Labour getting an outright majority is as close to zero as it can be because of Scotland, which makes sense. A second referendum coalition, which would have to include the SNP I think, is the only option that puts Labour in power, with another general election next year.

Good post Fizzles

(referring to your previous one)

Labour picked up 3.5 million extra votes at the last election and are around 700K short of overtaking both the current Tories (not that this may convert to a FPTP majority but they can win over 60 marginals they created two years ago including the PM's) and '97 Blair's. This is after the antisemitism war and all other criticisms around Corbyn were out there and run into the ground but before the Windrush debacle, Grenfell, the Tories chumming up with Orban in the EU, Johnson's tens of indiscretions and fuck ups since then, women being intimidated out of the Tory party bringing their ratio in it to an appalling 20% and more.

Who voted for Labour in 2017 but now will not be? And who is voting for the first time but not for Labour? These are the only people I wanna argue this much about and even then probably only if they're in a blue-red marginal.

xps to Tom D No, definitely not. Yr middle England Tories, like my mother in law, are not really that into the whole package.

Can we take a moment to wonder if any green party members and supporters are reassessing their party's electoral pact with the lib dems