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

not long voted - imagine it'll be a while before results

did you smuggle any tinnies or a flask of wine in?

two swift pints beforehand took a bit of an edge off

keir starmer and angela rayner

Can you say why it was bad?

a fair few people spoke for RLB but a steady stream of nandys and lots of starmers including one person who explained that he has a knighthood and has written seven books. one person for emily thornberry (and dawn butler). some awful people in the row in front of me guffawing and rolling their eyes at one another and loudly clapping the defences of new labour. overheard one saying they'd been phone banking for keir but they'd seen some videos of lisa nandy and actually she's really good actually. oddly a lot of people for burgon especially as rayner wasn't mentioned much. I know what a lot of these people are like so it shouldn't be a surprise but having to sit through two hours of it only to pointlessly cancel some cunt's votes quite demoralising.

I've not given up hope to save Labour from the right yet, but when I do (thinking about my age and how long these cycles run for) I quite possibly won't vote for them again in my life.

It's early yet, but the best take of this nominations AMM has to be: "He's not just Keir Starmer..... He's *SIR* Keir Starmer."

👢👢👢👢👢

— Greggs Truther (@invisibleste) February 6, 2020

maybe shouldn't get too depressed about these CLP events being rammed with flaky meltist roaders who seemingly must have voted Corbyn as a fashion trend that has now gone out of style. Their lameness hopefully doesn't extrapolate to the full membership and there might still be a glimmer of hope here.

What a bloody country. >> Disabled people 'pulled into poverty' as benefits fall short. Nearly half the 14 million people living in poverty in the UK are disabled or live with someone who is, @jrf_uk finds. https://t.co/WClEcIPzld

— Frances Ryan (@DrFrancesRyan) February 7, 2020

yep, no surprise that half of those 14m living below the poverty line are disabled or living in a household with disabled people.

Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns has provided a character statement for a young Conservative who has pleaded guilty to sending malicious messages threatening to beat up Yvette Cooper MP.

— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) February 7, 2020

sounds perfectly reasonable.

i don't understand why a Tory would turn on one of their own

was gonna say!

that Tribune piece by Laura Pidcock (with transphobic dogwhistle) reveal that Chris Williamson apologists of the crank left are always bad to the core.

You mean this?

The women’s movement needs the space to talk about sex and gender, without fear of being ‘no platformed’. We reserve that measure for fascists.

in this: https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/02/letter-to-the-movement

That seems like a mostly good piece but she's thrown that in without elaborating and then immediately switches to talking about nukes :/

RLB good on shutting that nonsense down in the Novara interview.

xp
yep, it is hard to give someone the benefit of the doubt when them type of views are common amongst that Chris Williamson/Rachael Swindon/crank left mob she has become associated with.

xp it’s a continuation of stuff she’s previously said, it might as well be a foghorn at this stage. Good on RLB for pushing back.

People appeared to overrated Pidcock very quickly on the basis of a couple of good speeches to the Commons, to the extent that she was being talked up as leadership material.

"coilme of good speechless "

did they feature a lot of coil mine references ?

xp indeed, but we have Charlotte and Zarah now

(to be clear, RLB was pushing back against a listener question regarding why we don't have a FrAnK AnD OpEn DiScUsSiOn on it, not Piddock, but same difference innit)

My initial approval of Pidcock was more down to a string of good media appearances and well written pieces back when RLB had a much lower profile imo - what can you do but keep looking to the intake

who genuinely thinks labour fucking councils are 'engines of innovatin'? are people actually believing this bollocks? https://t.co/38Fuf1nGTO

— the deval patrick caucuser (@DAVlDBYNCH) February 7, 2020

lol both Sir Tory Brylcreem and Lisa Nandy-Townsworthy are both beyond the fucking joke on labour councils now.

Those Labour councils, innovating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeARXMHW4Is

Maybe Preston, the Corbynite one, but fuck the rest. I’m still angry about all the sympathetic coverage of the Haringey pricks who were trying to sell off the council housing to developers!

Preston, literally the only example in all of the UK

nandy and starmer are both just fixing for a purge rather than trying the fix the problem with rotten councils that has weakened the party in the north. If Starmer wins Labour is fucked for another decade at least.

obv "north" meant loosely encompassing the midlands or any the shitholes and excluding liverpool!

Aditya C was pretty damning about the new, ostensibly pro-Corbyn mob in charge of Haringey Council now.

Tbh I know this isn't what the people who think that Labour's way back to power is through councils want to hear, but I've never really understood why local government has to have anything to do with the main parties.

Haven't read it yet but the treatment of the Latin Village us an atrocity.

Lab councils being innovative here 👎

Aylesbury estate new library site - approved in 2016, demolition 2017. This is what the site looks like today. https://t.co/pFXS0ovAQ5 pic.twitter.com/qz2fq38fXC

— 35% Campaign (@35percent_EAN) February 7, 2020

xp yep they deserve the criticism.

Local government is where most people have interaction with any elected representatives? Like people care about potholes, refuse collections, schools, libraries - most of these are centrally funded but it’s your councillors who are readily available, have their mobile numbers published etc.

MPs do work on immigration, universal credit, lots of stuff that used to be in the remit of various NGOs, citizens advice etc, and usually they can’t do more in some cases than contacting the minister responsible, but sometimes they’ll have a direct line to the Home Office. That can make a big difference to someone struggling with endless rejections and delays.

Local government is going to be people who live in your area, who you might run into in the supermarket. Besides local government running lots of day to day services, they’re a lot easier to contact. In a lot of constituencies, your MP could be someone who turns up to cut the ribbon at the odd fête, and you might never have contact with them for any reason.

Oh lol sorry I totally misread yr last sentence. Parties use their councils to prove their fitness for office - in theory. Councils are also where most parties select their candidates. I can’t imagine any of them wanting to remove the party political aspect.

The parties won't, but lots of people question the value of councillors being party political. I don't think there's a way to end it, but I'm not much of a fan of parties's contribution to democracy anyway.

i think the party political aspect of it can be harmful, leading to the kind of labour councils we're bemoaning here. every prominent labour council leader seems to be some sort of variation of t. dan smith

thought stephen bush was good on this and metro mayors:

The leadership candidates are little better. Keir Starmer mentions mayors just once in his set of proposals for how local and devolved government will be treated under his leadership, while Lisa Nandy mentions them not at all in her big speech on devolution.

There's a big reason for that: power. While the metro-mayors wield considerable power in the areas they run, they have neither soft nor hard power within the Labour party. Councillors, who tithe their allowances to the Labour party, are a bigger contributor to party funds than any single trades union. Their presence in almost every single constituency party in the country, too, makes them powerful allies - which is why most of the leadership campaigns are making sure to set out their proposals for them. And they have representatives on the ruling national executive committee.

There's no political price to paid within Labour for not taking the metro-mayors seriously. But as far as the struggle for power across the country goes, there's a prize on offer if Labour's next leader treats the metro-mayoralities with a seriousness that their position and powers deserve.

"but I've never really understood why local government has to have anything to do with the main parties"

that's seems like a different answer to a different question. It's local labour councils that are doing things in my area like happily getting on with making up central govt shortfalls in funding by selling disabled respite homes to housing developers etc

i think before thinking about radical local government reform, silly melt cunts talking about devolving more power to them, when it is only to serve their own agenda in re-shaping the Labour party as a centre-right one is some reprehensible bullshit.

There's no political price to paid within Labour for not taking the metro-mayors seriously. But as far as the struggle for power across the country goes, there's a prize on offer if Labour's next leader treats the metro-mayoralities with a seriousness that their position and powers deserve.

yeah but the likes of Khan, Jarvis, Burnham don't deserve any respect and are collectively and personally a fucking waste of space and breath.. I'd literally walk on and whistle to myself if any these pricks were dying on the deck!

I suppose my point is that the requirement for party political membership is both a disincentive and a barrier to entry for local people who actually give a shit and might do some good, but don't identify with whoever they see wearing the appropriately coloured rosette. I know there are some good councils, probably more than we give credit for and chronic underfunding is part of that. They're essential to the life of this country but I get the sense that most people resent them and would prefer to ignore them.

I read Room At The Top a few years ago and the idea that anyone - even a deluded 50s twat of a social climber - might consider small town local government to be aspirational is just this weird time capsule thing now.

Receiving lots of e-mails from Labour and Momentum encouraging me to vote for London Assembly candidates but no actual ballot for me to do so, which was supposed to arrive by e-mail days ago.

Labour have put me in the wrong constituency, understandably as my postcode is divided between two I suppose, still annoying though.

Starmer announced on Twitter that he was cancelling campaign events this weekend "for personal reasons" (presumably around bereavement) and people laid into him. It's all gone a bit cunt-y, hasn't it?

It’s been like that for ages! That’s why Corbyn’s replies had this account.

https://twitter.com/corbynreplyguys

And there were only a couple of replies like that from what I saw - not convinced all the accounts were real either.

I get that. And I get that people should and do care about the future of the Labour Party.

I think what I'm thinking is *direct your anger towards the fucking Tories*.

This isn't solely a Labour member specific problem djh, it's everywhere. But I'm not going to direct my anger at the tories because the labour membership are about to elect a centrist melt leader, and you can act appropriately when someone has suffered a bereavement and still think they are a complete cunt and their politics suck shit you know!

good posts djh. labour currently looks like it has its head up its arse.

I get that. And I get that people should and do care about the future of the Labour Party.

I think what I'm thinking is *direct your anger towards the fucking Tories*.

it's time for the good old Labour Family to coalesce as a whole again, now the right wing have their boy in pole position!

it's been very heartening to see this thread get its plurality of voices back after that awful period of tankie/momentum dominance. some really cracking posts tonight lads.

Scores of Labour MPs are preparing to leave the party if Rebecca Long-Bailey wins the race to become leader, HuffPost UK has been told.

It is claimed as many as 50 will not serve under the shadow business secretary and would instead stage a walkout, according to party insiders.

Kier might have taken a brief timeout, but his campaign office is still pumping bilge like this out to the Huff post.