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

He’s not the only out gay Muslim politician at Westminster.

how terminally smug and clueless do have to be to post like you are on the winning side of the argument when Leave has won how national votes in a row now? I'll ask DL because I could do with some of the drugs he's on to help deal with the crushing gut-punch of last week - not that it would do me any fucking good really.

He’s not the only out gay Muslim politician at Westminster.

Waheed Alli in the Lords.

The Lords isn’t canon but point taken.

While I was trying to work out who you meant, I found the Wikipedia page of this legend:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapurji_Saklatvala

I am genuinely interested in how many centrists are going to join the Labour Party in the coming weeks - it's the closest we'll come to a real measure of the Disgusted Silent* Majority.

*not at all silent.

I saw a journalist from the fucking Sun doing it last night, so at least we know we’re set for the next four years of cut up membership cards and “I didn’t leave Labour...the Labour Party left me”

These are the same people who announce shit ‘with a heavy heart’ and explain their insults as ‘light-hearted’ and can’t speak about politics for 30 seconds without resorting to cliché. I never want to hear about the weight of their hearts ever again.

Imagine forming a knitting circle of clueless myopic posho dickheads that spends 3 years slagging off the only party that presented a viable Remain option and then saying the failure of Remain is on that party. Seriously what a fucking prize noggin, good job that cunt doesn't post here any more - he'd be getting more FP's than Fred from me.

I want to turn every office of a former Labour MP into an advice and community action centre funded by members, unions and those who can help run them. We know the Tories won’t even stick a plaster on the problems they have created.

— Alex Sobel MP (@alexsobel) December 16, 2019

how nice is this guy

TBF the Remainiacs people aren’t posh at all, if that’s who you’re alluding to.

you must be joking

on the relative scale of poshness they are about 18 wrungs up the ladder from me. But here I use "poshness" as a pejorative to sum up a general myopia towards the lower classes and a complete lack of understanding of what a set of cunts they sound like to them

I’ll be raging if I’m forced to join Labour to cancel the votes of dingbats like this out

Idly imagining PMQs with @jessphillips up against @BorisJohnson

She’d have him for breakfast. Twice.

— Emma Kennedy (@EmmaKennedy) December 16, 2019

centrist twitter sign up to ao3, its a much more suitable place for your fantasising

This from the last Labourlist members survey is quite instructive: Long-Bailey, Rayner and Thornberry all roughly as popular as each other, but RLB could feel a big benefit from McDonnell endorsement.

I have doubts to the extent Starmer support could hold up, though. pic.twitter.com/9p6zQNQXId

— Ben Gartside (@BenGartside) December 16, 2019

Relax, JP doesn’t have enough media mates to cancel out the votes of a single CLP and I’m sure not many of them will vote for her in the end.

by what metric isn't Dunty posh, Suzy?

I'm not picking an argument but FFS!

I believe he was designated honorary working class as a result of his having did brexit

yeah he consistently has done a cracking job for Leave tbf!

xpost to calz, was gonna say petit bourgeoisie with big ‘escalate with a manager’ vibes but I occasionally interact with them IRL (apart from Dunt) and through work I’ve got tons of mutuals. Have already told them off for blaming/rubbishing younger left commentariat as prime ‘get off my lawn’ bullshit. My own background is a weird combo of free school dinners and genteel grandparents, LOL.

trying to take some time away from engaging w/politics for my own personal and mental health but SLAB are conducting their own post-mortem and anas sarwar just emailed round for input. thought it may be worthwhile sharing here the thoughts I have sent him

While I agree that we need a period of reflection, what is most important is that the future leadership (i) develops a cogent (fact-based) analysis, (ii) supports that with a strategy to achieve power and (iii) then prosecutes it ruthlessly.

Radical Democracy
I have long thought that the constitutional questions are a distraction from our core message as socialists ('the real division in society is 99:1%, not 55:45 nor 52:48'). However, we plainly cannot avoid the fact that the electorate continue to engage with these questions. We need a position and new perspective on each of these. Instead of obstructing on each, we should consider the potential opportunities in both.

Among the most important key components of the Corbyn project were (alongside e.g. greening the economy, anti-Imperialism, human rights-based foreign policy etc) was its commitment to radical democracy. Unfortunately we did not do enough to articulate the opportunities of this idea to voters - nor to link it to the key constitutional questions of the day. As socialists, we need to seek to inject democracy into all of the structures of everyday life (starting by getting our own house in order in the Labour Party). A steadfast commitment to democracy in e.g. the workplace, the boardroom etc is incompatible with an obstructionist stance on the countries' (Scotland, the UK etc) right to self-determination. We should think how we link all of these ideas together into a coherent story, which can give people pride in their countries, a sense they have a stake, and a brighter outlook on the future.

Brexit
I will let the psephologists undertake the requisite analysis of cross-shares etc to help understand why, where and in what direction votes broke against us. I will say, however, that it seems to me a mistake for us to have stood shoulder to shoulder with the Establishment, in a naked disavowal of a democratic direction. We know well enough in Scotland what happens to the Labour party when it stands with the Establishment against the communities in its base.

Wreckers
In my opinion, the next leader needs to have a vindictive streak a mile wide and needs to clear out the wreckers. For four years we have had a succession of apostate MPs in the PLP who were more than happy to go on TV to undermine the party and its leadership. I fully accept that the Labour party is a broad coalition - as is necessary under FPTP - but we cannot (and should not) thole such wrecking, if we want to grasp power again. It may not be a comfortable message for many (particularly in the MSP group) but now is the time for uncomfortable messages.

Community
We need to build solidarity and understanding of Labour values at a community level. Some ideas how this may be done include e.g. engaging with the various community and civic society groups which have sprung up in the gaps created in our social fabric since 2010. We should consider using the storefronts of former Labour MPs and candidates as community hubs, where e.g. advice, resources, political education etc can be dispensed.

Blue Labour
No. Just no. One of the labour movement's core values is that 'you support me, I support you'. Whoever you are. Wherever you come from. Shoulder to shoulder. Hand to hand. We need to build a multi-racial working class movement by saying explicitly that we want to deliver for working class people (regardless of race, gender, ethnicity.) Everyone must be included - including newcomers and people who have been here for generations.

Manifestos
Without wishing to patronise, the vast majority of people do not engage with politics at the same intensity as many politicos on e.g. Twitter. The Tories had one key message backed by four or five secondary pledges. While this gets groans from us politicos (with candidates accused of being robotic etc) this strategy does have some merit. The Tories also seldom put what they are going to do in their manifestos. We should reflect on these points.

Timing
The timing of the election was not great - albeit it was difficult to avoid once the SNP had decided on a GE before the Salmond trial (as the Tories then had the numbers). SNP insight was presumably that (i) a winter election would largely neutralise our strongest asset (i.e. our volunteer army) and (ii) a Brexit election would cause us genuine issues. This will likely be a pyrrhic insight as they are unlikely to get a referendum in this parliament and indeed the Tories may look to unstitch some of the devolution settlement.

Facebook/WhatsApp
We should consider how we engage with the various Facebook Community Pages and WhatsApp CopyPasta Groups, which are many peoples' sole news vectors. For example, do we need an army of oppo bots seeding anti-Tory memes? They are going to do it to us - we need to think how we counter it and/or leverage it for our own gain. 'When they go low, we go high' does not cut it when it comes to the naked pursuit of power.

I was reading this having misread about these being your thoughts and not AS’s (I was going from “wow these are sound” to “TELL THEM ANAS” at the wreckers bit). But I like what you’ve said here!

The Tories also seldom put what they are going to do in their manifestos. We should reflect on these points.

there is definitely a argument that sometimes too much manifesto can be a bad thing, there was such a dizzying array of gold standard policies when maybe just nationalising the trains would have done for now.

Comrade Zebra that was banging and has articulated some of the thoughts I hadn't fully reached yet.

I suppose another argument is that keeping your a lot of your planned policies under wraps would invite even more Marxists wrecking our economy conspiracies from our lovely gutter press than usual, although by the next election the economy might already be wrecked.

I feel like the things you've discussed under radical democracy are elements of the most important path towards long-term change and unfortunately they're also the least sexy or sellable elements of a political platform under the UK's parliamentary and electoral systems

Now I have to work out how to cobble together membership money if only to fight for the direction of the party

NB one of my currently half-formed thoughts is the extent to which we need to question the Labour Party as the preferred site of struggle to achieve socialism (in its broadest sense - another area that needs retheorising imo) in the region currently constituted as the UK

there's been a lot of talk in the 3 years post-referendum of the failure of what we could describe as the UK's 20th century political settlement, and one metric for thinking about the election result is as a consequence or symptom of that failure. i don't think that a tweaked Labour party based on refining some of the elements of presentation or even representation is necessarily gonna be an adequate response to the new realities.

I'm a "reduced circumstances" poor bastard member of Labour for £2 a month, you don't have pay the full fees if you can't afford it.

i'm gonna look into it calz, i'm technically employed at the moment, and i've always been wary of political parties and how they function, i'm only thinking about this now because maintaining the achievements of Momentum seems a fight worth taking on - at least until after the leadership election

tbh I'm about as likely to join the Labour Party as I am that 77 Board thing on ILX.

I want my £23 back now! But having a vote on the leadership of the labour party feels very important rn.

yeah with you on that elitist sub-board, to get away from the hoi polloi!

zebra that is HUEG

Lads!

booming post zebra

^^ nothing to add but wholly agreed.

yeah much better than reading twitter rn

lots of positive talk this evening at a panel event with hilary wainwright, brian eno, zarah sultana mp, dawn foster and others

join the labour party

brian eno is really a thing now isn't he

No Boaby Gillespie no credibility.

there will be plenty of burnt out motorbikes and "cool" dystopias to go around for everyone soon enough!

Dawn Foster is another person who helps me maintain my sanity.

So basically if Alex Salmond had been less of a sex pest we wouldn't be in this situation now?

I think slab might see an upturn if other SNP figures get muddied by revelations of their conduct (surely there was some degree of cover-up?) but cant imagine any election with corbyn second ref vs boris and get brexit done was not going to be disastrous

Is Sturgeon going to get dragged into this scandal - as in if knew he was an offender and did fuck all about it turns out to be true?

*turns out be true* is a bit shit but y'know comes out in the was or whatever is the right phrase to use.