bojo is king, brexit is on, stuff is fvcked, tomorrow starts here -- new govt new thread new battle

On this theme of rotten Labour councils etc.. A couple of years ago I went to a meeting at my son's special school about cuts to transport funding and disabled services. The local Labour council guy was sat right in front of me and ended up moving a few seats away cos he knew I was planning to garrote him. There was a woman whose husband had recently died and her autistic grandson would refuse to get on a bus without him and have a meltdown if she tried to bring him on the bus, and she was being told perhaps her transport provision was "non-essential". This cunt from the council didn't once say that their hand is forced by central government spending cuts and I kept pressing this matter with him and all he could say is "this is what we have to work with, deal" basically. Such an arrogant, cold, condescending piece of shit and the lady I was talking about was in tears. I would wager this Labour council fellow hadn't probably voted Labour since at least 2005. His attitude was glaringly Tory to the core. I fucking despise these people.

I got the invite for that too but I won't be joining sorry :(

A lot of representatives at local/national level are not there for honest reasons and doing a job they’re blatantly not suited for. A lot of the MPs parachuted into areas they had no connection with the people who actually lived there were a colossal waste of time and you have to look back at the selection decisions and think, why? So many people in the party where you do see, why are you in Labour?!

John Woodcock in Barrow and Furness is a prime example- straight from university into politics, spent his time in office gladhanding with various dodgy regimes. Spent the last few years lashing out in the press. What did he have to say to a constituency with the 44th most deprived wards in the country? Just treating the electorate with utter contempt.

_I got the invite for that too but I won't be joining sorry :(_


Ah would’ve been nice to see you again 🙂 it livened up once more ppl arrived and I’m feeling a lot more positive, ppl are energetic and focused and have a good sense of what we got wrong nationally. I guess I must have a chip on my shoulder about my hometown cause I always expect a smug complacence to be the baseline. Only potential yikes moment was when I was having a nice chat with a woman and she said “the manifesto fudged certain women’s issues” in such a way as to make me nervous and just go “mmm” and change the subject but again might just be me being a cunt

interesting abt the Labour councils thing

obviously the plight of Oxford is a long way from what we're talking about but I've def had conversations along the lines of "you're telling me a Labour govt will be less moneygrubbing and corrupt than a Tory one, but <long list of things the city council has done which are bad>"

(the bugbears I hear mainly centre around a lot of ill-thought-through transport redesigns or high commercial rents squeezing out anything other than identikit tourist shops, but they did knock down a block of accommodation for the homeless to get cash from developers to build flats instead and haven't got round to building the promised replacement accommodation yet iirc, so that's not a very good advert, esp when the flats haven't been built yet either and there was just a gaping hole and some rubble last time I went past)

Lol: ‘The Liberal Democrat message that “Jo Swinson could be the next prime minister” was one of the worst performing messages we have tested anywhere in Europe.’

— Richard Ensor (@richardjensor) December 14, 2019

This is a good thread, there's also an issue of ppl getting treated really badly by the council, and also councillors & council leaders have a massive reputation for lining their pockets

— ESOLallstars (@ESOLallstars) December 14, 2019

The comments at the bottom of a good-ish thread on councils. I think Lab could make a start on stopping the rot by going after these shitty councillors.

I am feeling more hopeless now than I did on Thursday night, just going to the guardian and seeing all the articles from told-you-so pricks, the ones which are supposed to be hopeful are the worst.

Tony Blair won because he was charismatic and he had murdoch behind him, at least at first. Think that is literally all it takes to win an election.

Those guys have had those takes sitting on ice for two years.

So basically we're going to have a Brit version of ICE

New department for borders and immigration, separate from the Home Office, is mooted in Sunday Times splash, among other machinery of government changes pic.twitter.com/42S2VgE2Q8

— Sunder Katwala (@sundersays) December 14, 2019

The Tory government post-Black Wednesday was quite astonishingly despised as well, headline after headline was disastrous for them.

I'm not sure any of Blair's rivals at the time would have won a landslide but it was unquestionably the most fortunate time to be leading the Labour Party in my lifetime.

John Smith if he’d lived surely?

smh @guardian pic.twitter.com/6xLJLlOx4K

— thom (@thwphipps) December 14, 2019

A few years ago I suggested a CLP exchange programme where leave CLPs visited remain ones & vive versa, each getting to see the other’s communities and daily reality, as a way to create commonality in a moment of division, and do some myth busting to boot. Nobody took it up. Sigh

— No-one (@judeinlondon2) November 16, 2019

How much attention does Momentum give to councillors?

A massive push by momentum to get as many activists as possible standing for council seats would seem like a good thing to me.

How do councillors get selected?

Nm, reading a v long-winded guide

This is classic, good on you @BorisJohnson

All the propaganda created by Momentum and still the public saw through the lies.#leftietossers pic.twitter.com/QPWtCcnrRC

— James Deegan MC (@jamesdeeganMC) December 14, 2019

So basically we're going to have a Brit version of ICE

We already have one - Immigration Enforcement. This just looks like spinning off them, UKVI and Border Force to a new minister and letting the Home Sec focus on crime or whatever.

Got it.

When I was given indefinite leave to remain the department in charge was Immigration and Nationality.

How do councillors get selected?

― plax (ico), Sunday, 15 December 2019 bookmarkflaglink

I think it's open selection

We have politicised a lot of ppl in the last few years. I think some have actually become MPs, but building it from further below. How could versions of Preston (which I know it's different from Grimsby) be applied? Momentum's activist base doesn't reach these places but via councils it could.

I first noticed the overreach as the small events/gatherings about policy & politics started to fall by the wayside. The conversations where ordinary people were making connections with each other and learning together about the basis of our plight dwindled. 3/8

— Metatone (@Metatone2) December 15, 2019

And this is really good, picking on the decline of gatherings.

And this is where merely rewriting the terms of the debate (as Corbyn puts it) doesn't feel like enough and if this is right we double down on migrants and the EU. Always someone to blame...and forget the Green New Deal.

Given that the ruling party is likely gonna have to take responsibility for a big, self-inflicted economic crisis over the next few years, might be worth holding fire on what will be "electable" in 2024...

— Jack Saundrs ❤🖤 (@jack_saundrs) December 14, 2019

this *tweet* is right.

Also of course further demonization of the left.

When I was given indefinite leave to remain the department in charge was Immigration and Nationality.

Immigration and Nationality became the Border and Immigration Agency, which became the U.K. Border Agency, which became U.K. Visas and Immigration which will become something TBC.

They change the name and remit every two to three years to give the Mail the impression they’re doing something.

Idle thought, does the fixed term mean that the next election will also be a December?

No, and they’re meant to scrap FTPA - both main parties had it in the manifesto.

If they scrap FTPA does that leave them open to go as long as they want?
Still trying to work out ways that this is all going to blow up in their faces in the short term like hopefully before the end of next month.
Going to find out the atmosphere over Xmas and I guess things won't have fully changed by then. Possibly my last trip for a long time.

On the immigration stuff, there are some likely positives - Johnson has never shared May’s monomania on the subject, the move to open up the post-study work visa route will have a big impact, the government is going to need to suck up to India, China, and so on, a lot over the next few years and a lot of May’s barriers are not conducive to that, etc. It’ll probably get easier and cheaper for people overseas to get visas for travel as the government shows it is open for business and the route to citizenship, etc, for people already here will likely be streamlined and made more efficient, if not easier, per se.

The gigantic negative is obviously that hundreds of thousands/ millions of EU migrants are going to have to be drawn into that system when they shouldn’t.

I'm not convinced that a left candidate exists who would be able to get the requisite number of Parliamentary nominations, carry enough of the membership and also - and this bit is crucial - want to put themselves through everything that Corbyn has been through over the past few years.

Obviously no one else has the gigantic amount of baggage that Corbyn had - no one is going to be able to get away with calling Rebecca Long-Bailey a friend of Hamas - but the charge of continuity Corbyn could be tough to shift and I wouldn't blame her for deciding not to stand. Everyone else who is likely to stand looks either too factional or too right-wing to carry the membership.

The only likely candidates who look like they could credibly position themselves as unity candidates are Starmer and maybe Angela Rayner. I don't think anyone has the slightest clue what sort of programme Starmer would pursue as leader - he's a political Rorschach rest, a blank canvas for people to project things onto - which might turn out to be a political asset but he's already got the millstone of association with Labour's Brexit policy. Then again, Brexit won't be an issue in 2024 although Europe inevitably will be. Rayner is the more interesting candidate but once again I wouldn't blame her for not wanting the job.

Rebecca Long-Bailey would probably get enough nominations?

But yes, would any of these people want the job?

Keir Starmer surely can't win Burnley back? Though does it really matter? next leader surely interim anyway, having someone thats been opposition leader for 5 years is going to be stale af

Very pleased that this suggests Long-Bailey is standing & that we will definitely have a good left candidate. https://t.co/KUkkIa607F

— Tom Gann (@Tom_Gann) December 15, 2019

I'm not convinced that a left candidate exists who would be able to get the requisite number of Parliamentary nominations, carry enough of the membership and also - and this bit is crucial - want to put themselves through everything that Corbyn has been through over the past few years.

We have politicised a lot of ppl in the last few years. I think some have actually become MPs, but building it from further below. How could versions of Preston (which I know it's different from Grimsby) be applied? Momentum's activist base doesn't reach these places but via councils it could.

Thinking about AOC a bit here, she didn't just magically appear. Justice Democrats were only formed in 2017, but Kyle Kulinski and Cenk Uygur already both had big media platforms which they were able to use to kickstart that

(in terms of getting the right people in at other levels)

I don't know - who knows what will and won't work in Burnley in four or five years? The Tory lead in a lot of these seats is very frothy and could go pretty quickly, especially if Johnson presides over a disaster. The worst outcome would be for Labour to panic about former Red Wall seats and elect some Blue Labour type but I don't think the membership votes exist for that.

But in general Starmer doesn't really project anything beyond 'competent legal type' which has made it easy for him to keep his head down and work his way into this position, whereas other centrists have peacocked or thrown tantrums from the sidelines. But he's also technocratic and very dull.

Ridiculous watching people who thought it was outrageous that Labour plumped for a backbencher with no front bench experience four years ago suddenly going wild for Jess Phillips though.

I have seen talk of encouraging "moderates" to join in order to "take back the party" but don't think that's going to happen.

my mum (a party member) likes jess philips, any advice on how to dissuade her at xmas?

my mum (a party member) likes jess philips, any advice on how to dissuade her at xmas?

Agree with her, but with 'concerns'

"I like her too but it worries me the way she always seemed to be fighting our own side. I'm sure she had good reasons on occasion but I'm not sure she's particularly solid, she just worries me - I worry she'll flip flop when it really matters and I think we need someone who's a little stronger"

I've really found offering nothing myself at all but playing this bullshit "Im not sure I just don't know" game is really quite effective.

People have mostly already decided what you're going to say, and "I don't know" cuts through that. Possession based conversation really doesn't work, counter attack is much more effective.

Let them have the ball, let them do the work, find the weak spot and press whatever it is

Turns out you need the support of 20 or so MPs to stand, plus a couple of affiliated societies like the unions or the Fabians or the Jewish Labour Movement or whoever. RLB will presumably get that unless she isn't the only left candidate in the running (ie if Clive Lewis or someone decides to bundle in there and split the vote).

i seem to recall stephen bush patiently explaining how clive lewis couldn't possibly get there in practical terms and so wouldn't try

(but this was c.150,000 million years = like 18 months ago so maybe the ground is now very different)

I think RLB is more a deputy type.

Jess Phillips does not catch enough shit for lying about black colleagues. She’s the type in your office who’d complain about a black colleague being rude or intimidating or uppity, and then doing white tears when called on it.

Rayner is probably the only one who can get both wings of the party on board, partially because she isn’t particularly trusted by either.

RLB comes across well. Have doubts over everybody else aside from Dawn Butler but sadly she can't stand for leader because racism. A couple of new MPs from the new intake to get shadow cab jobs in a couple of years too.

The key thing is for the membership to hold. As a member now I am hoping I'll do what I can to be quietly ruthless with the Lab right. Stuff that broad church up your arse.

Ridiculous watching people who thought it was outrageous that Labour plumped for a backbencher with no front bench experience four years ago suddenly going wild for Jess Phillips though.

I'm trying to avoid watching or reading too much about politics right now but LOL at this clown's name coming up constantly - despite mfktz's mum, I can't believe me this as anything more than Westminster bubble stuff, she's a public school media intern's idea of a feisty prole.