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

Obviously now you have more ammunition and can choose to believe whatever you want

Emily Thornberry MP says she’s “having to take legal action” over former Labour MP Caroline Flint’s claim that she called voters in one leave-voting constituency "stupid"

lol, oh deary me

btw do people itt think Starmer is
1. Bad Not Good - please give reasons/examples of badness - this is an honest request btw, I'm interested to know
2. ok but not as good as the FBPEists talked like he is (but only since he wasn't actually leader, and even if that changes I fully expect the Centrist Chorus wailing of "would love to vote for/work with Labour but not with its current leadership" to continue)
3. ok-to-good but his remainyness and background will play badly in the constituencies Lab need to win back?

Genuinely read the first couple of lines before it went to satireville, shouldn't rush my otms

btw do people itt think Starmer is

4. too hott to be taken seriously as leader

xps to aps - none of the above, there’s an Yvette Cooper thing of people projecting their wants onto him and ignoring his actual views

xp big if true

I'm trying to work and post at once, dangerous game

do what i do and just refuse to work, it's what makes my posts so good not bad

The membership have always been to the left of even the Corbyn leadership. We need someone that can keep channelling it. That's it.

Starmer is not that guy. Good MP and there is definitely room for him in the Shadow Cab but he fails on that criteria.

Trotsky.jpg

echoing aps, I don't know much about Starmer's actual politics. I know he is the fantasy figure who should've led Labour into the election etc etc but how much of a centrist is he, actually? All I know is he is a remainer, I mean so am I and so are a lot of people who don't want a centrist Labour party

part of what made corbyn so appealing to me was a decades-long track record of being on the right side of history, which made him trustworthy in a way that politicians very rarely are (see also sanders, b. (d-vermont)), and even harder to replace

of course that same steadfastness also made him out to be a card-carrying dual member of both the ira and hamas for a lot of voters, so i don't fuckin' know

tbc if I do decide to join the Labour party and vote for the new leader (which I might do after seeing people like Ian Dunt etc urging people to vote for Jess Philips) I would go for Angela Rayner if she's on the ballot

xp to self

This is my favourite idea because the fucking sea is full of unexploded WW2 era bombs! It’s a windy stretch of water!

a fun ol' bundle of unexploded bombs and chemical weapons and nuclear waste all dropped haphazardly in a pretty deep trench iirc, which is part of why (along with "not next to England") all the munitions got dropped down there

deep enough that even apart from UXBs building a bridge would be really expensive even for a country that is v good at major engineering/infrastructure projects, and all evidence points to us not being that country

Like KS was being urged by centrists to stand for leader a mere week after being first elected lol

In that role he was responsible for the response to the Investigatory Powers Bill or "Snoopers' Charter", on which Labour abstained.

He was a human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board

From 2003-2008, Keir Starmer was the human rights advisor to the Policing Board in Northern Ireland. In that capacity he worked with the Policing Board to ensure that the Police Service of Northern Ireland fully complied with its obligations under the Human Rights act 1998.

more xps

there’s an Yvette Cooper thing of people projecting their wants onto him and ignoring his actual views

ah yeah, that's related to what I meant by "not as good as FPBEists say" but the Cooper thing is way beyond that and totally infuriating, and that makes sense. also noted about left leadership, yes

I don't know that much about any of the mooted figures but I like Rayner and am not quite sold on RL-B yet, though I want to be and I haven't seen that much of her, so fingers crossed I just caught her on a couple of not great interviews

Yes, performance on debates will shift things.

deep enough that even apart from UXBs building a bridge would be really expensive even for a country that is v good at major engineering/infrastructure projects, and all evidence points to us not being that country

i'll have you know that the installation of a tram system in edinburgh came in at only twice the original budget and covered just half its originally-envisaged area, a mere three years late

the CCP's no fucking about command capitalism approach to infrastructure would be up to the challenge of building that bridge - but I couldn't even imagine this shower even getting the first post of it in the ground by 2030.

I think this is correct wrt the actual practicalities of drafting and implementing an agreement, but I have questions on whether it is politically possible. https://t.co/jPXRcoWfOu

— Simon (@simonk_133) December 16, 2019

The point on small businesses. A lot of made up cash will need to be thrown around should whatever is being cooked up in terms of Brexit fall through for them...fucking your base.

I wonder sometimes if support for Cooper comes with a bit of "get Ed Balls for free"

(Also I did have a post brewing on yesterday's Jess Phillips discussion, but then Fred agreed with me, so the job's fucked. Time to sit and find lessons to learn)

can i pay extra to get rid of both cooper and balls

should have said that the other way around amirite

vote nullo 2024

Really do not need my eyes to drift onto bg’s dn when people start throwing around references to Balls

Another excellent thread.

I have been thinking about this some more, and it absolutely isn’t going to be easy. There is a serious and visceral antagonism between two groups, neither having any real power, but each viewing the other as having more power than they actually do. https://t.co/jxqT4toHHD

— Sonia (@Sonia_Bologna) December 15, 2019

But we have to breach the divide, if the left wants to build a broad base and a successful future majority. And I think the thing to do is for at last one group to develop extremely thick skin, be prepared to take some abuse and keep showing up for the other group.

— Sonia (@Sonia_Bologna) December 15, 2019

"(Also I did have a post brewing on yesterday's Jess Phillips discussion, but then Fred agreed with me, so the job's fucked. Time to sit and find lessons to learn)"

Or listen to this rather than what Fred thinks about anything.

As BAME Officer for London Young Labour, I utterly condemn Jess Phillips' overt racism. Our movement is broad, but there's no space for transphobia, anti-blackness, or the frankly weird levels of ignorant white feminism and self-obsession she exhibits.

— Faiza (@fzjmmd) December 16, 2019

I am not a labour member, but I have to tell you, one of the conflicts she raises in her previous thread is red passports as something Leavers care about (which is...a lot) vs the GFA. So if this was me being addressed, she’s saying I need to subsume my identity to bring back trust? What does taking “abuse” mean in this context? After four years of anti Irish sentiment?

gyac - don't think it's meant as just that...I saw it as an acknowledgement that this will be painful for both sides. Certainly not an invitation to throw anyone under the bus.

xp

LOL if the Tories end up building a bridge between a unified Ireland and the new Republic of Alba.

Needless to say, this can frack off

This from Natascha Engel, whose Red Wall seat went blue in 2017, really gets to the point about culture. It’s not even that voters there necessarily disagree - it’s that they don’t share the liberal obsessions of the metropolitan bubblehttps://t.co/jV1zbfFgdj pic.twitter.com/gZU7XuUZ3f

— Matt Singh (@MattSingh_) December 16, 2019

it’s the least they could do tbf xp

I'm not saying that we should wait until the bridge is groaning under the traffic from the first applicable Old Firm match before removing the one crucial bolt, but I am also not not saying that.

Like one of the reasons NE lost her seat in 17, against the trend, was because she supports fracking and it was wildly unpopular with her electorate. And she wants to give advice on being in touch with the people who vote for you?!

rest assured, imaginary red wall voters, that net-zero carbon emissions, or lack thereof is going to have an effect on everyone’s lives

(xxp) I'd wait to the marching season otherwise some innocent people could drown.

Every single staffer at Tory HQ is white. In 2019 in the most diverse city in the world, that is quite a remarkable feat. pic.twitter.com/QXuROhdD1l

— Liam O'Hare (@Liam_O_Hare) December 15, 2019

Aww bollix, that’s the Irony-meter fecked again. https://t.co/QiK5wpa6cr

— Duncan Foster (@GoneCaving) December 15, 2019

my jess phillips anecdote is that she used to drink in the pub i worked in in birmingham and one of her mates kicked off at me, a bartender on minimum wage, for the fact the pub had a £5 card minimum, so that’s the company she keeps i guess

— don’t give up (@multiplebears) December 15, 2019

The membership have always been to the left of even the Corbyn leadership. We need someone that can keep channelling it. That's it.

I'd dispute that the membership has always been to the left of Corbyn (in, say, 2005? Really?) But they need to keep channeling it and provide a credible plan for getting it into government, otherwise it's effectively a vote for another five years of far right government.

RLB could be that person - I haven't seen enough of her to judge. She's more approachable, more relatable, a recognisable human being, fresh enough to the electorate that they haven't seen enough to form an opinion. I think McDonnell did her no favours when he put up his hands and took responsibility for last week's disaster and in the same interview went ahead and endorsed her. Heir apparent figures tend not to fare well in these situations.

We'll be able to tell how politically skilled she is by how she navigates the campaign, she'll need to differentiate herself enough from Corbyn to persuade people the outcome will be significantly different. Otherwise she'll be painted as Corbyn and McDonnell's puppet and that's unlikely to end well for anyone.

One thing that can't be emphasised enough is that it isn't domestic policy that lost it for Labour, it was foreign policy. The centre ground isn't where a lot of self-described centrists think it is and there could be a route to a new one - sensible social democracy with a lot of Corbyn's more divisive views around foreign and defence policy removed. The media hammered Corbyn and eventually the mud stuck but he was particularly obliging when it came to giving them ammunition. This is a big challenge for those of us who want to see Britain's place in the world and place in history re-evaluated but that has to be done in ways that are less naive. But it means that a successor to Corbun, even from that wing of the party, won't necessarily have the same problems and drawbacks.

Agreed that Starmer's human rights law background is a goldmine for journalists wanting to confect lines of attack, I hadn't thought about that.

"I'd dispute that the membership has always been to the left of Corbyn (in, say, 2005? Really?)"

I said left to the Corbyn leadership so that's from 2015, and I reckon this has probably hardened since.

"One thing that can't be emphasised enough is that it isn't domestic policy that lost it for Labour, it was foreign policy."

There is some of that in the public's perception of Corbyn but the people who did some numbets tell me BXP ate the difference between Tories and Lab in ~ 40 seats. The Greens did it for Lab in a few more. The Lab vote splintered off in different directions.

I don't know,I wouldn't describe the people I know who joined the Labour Party after Corbyn as especially left wing.

Sorry 'even' isn't clear it Ed was elected over David so its probably longer than 2015.

Also we need to keep the conversation going about imperialism and what we can and can't do. The UK could get a major shocks on deals with India and China.

They are not left wing in the sense of having read Marx blah blah. But they easily backed most of what Corbyn had to say on a range of issues except possibly the EU.

Not Labour Party members, but people I know who became Oh Jeremy Corbyn types weren't particularly political before and I'm not convinced they are now either. Not a lot of deep thinking was going on.

If anyone in the media has a problem with human rights, and we capitulate to that in candidate choice, we are ffffffucked. Keir would argue back. There needs to be passionate arguing back, it gives strength to supporters in a time when the government will almost certainly try to scale down human rights legislation.

love to do trade deals from a vastly weakened position with very large nations that
(a)hold entirely justifiable grudges about mass deaths we caused among their peoples in the 19th and 20th centuries (and then casually forgot about)
(b) when they are in a vastly much stronger position than us (and very much did not forget)
(c) and whose current leaders are not at all evidently bothered abt the downside effects of their decisions on those they consider foreigners and wrong uns