Ken vs. Boris: It's So On

I'd rather vote Boris

So vote for whoever you like, just put Livingstone second, and we'll be alright.

There is the nightmare scenario that lots of anti-Boris but can't-really-vote-for-Ken-again people go Green or Lib Dem or Left List or whatever and put KL down as their #2 and then Boris nudges over 50%. Game over. Unlikely, I know.

Works both ways

Mike, can one ask for whom you intend to vote? Are you reluctant to vote for Ken Livingstone?

Look I figure the SWP are experts at ineffectually haranguing people in cramped function rooms, which is about 90% of the mayor's job if I understand correctly

And even more practiced at anti-Semitism than Ken

Mike, can one ask for whom you intend to vote? Are you reluctant to vote for Ken Livingstone?

Lab/Green or Green/Lab. Misgivings about Ken, but no great reluctance, especially in the face of the alternative.

Another Green/Lab World.

xpost:
Strange, all these anti-semitic allegations flying around. I don't, god knows, want to get into a barney about this with anyone, anywhere, let alone a Barney Everyone Everywhere. But a) I don't believe that Ken Livingstone is anti-semitic, b) I don't believe that most members of the SWP are. In the latter case, at least, I can only guess that hostility to Israel as a political force is being confused or conflated with anti-semitism -- which is, of course, a different thing. The most vehement critic of Israel I know (including the Dirty Vicar) is Jewish. Probably that goes for a lot of people.

This is a dreadfully volcanic issue so I guess one should try to say no more about it - it is probably pointless to get embroiled in it, one way or another. But it is quite an allegation to make, about anyone. I knew lots of people in the SWP as a student and none of them were racist or anti-semitic in the least. Does any Jewish person actually feel threatened, as a Jew, by British socialists or Ken Livingstone? I doubt it.

Incidentally I don't really think BJ is a racist either.

agreed

BJ racist no; idiot yes

SWP pain in the arse cause hijackers.

I sensed some anti-Semitism when I was on that first anti-Iraq War match, organised by this "Left List" mob - I think it was the Star of David = Swastika banners; the chants about driving Israel into the sea; and the blokes wandering about with fake suicide bomb belts that did it. Maybe I'm being a bit over-sensitive.

swp are more 'lol' than 'omg'.

xpost

blokes wandering about with fake suicide bomb belts

that's 'wtf?!'.

I was on that march, I saw and heard nothing of that sort, but whatever, 2m people, bound to be some crazies.

I wasn't on the 2nd march, needless to say

several xposts

I think BJ is racist in a quaint paternalistic English public school manner.

The rest of your post is spot on, Pinefox.

SWP are more lol than omg, but at least they were always anti-Stalin, unlike all the "serious" people who became Labour ministers and were in CPGP. They're the real tossers.

xpost

wonder what the standard's last-day splash will be. 'ken livingstone ate my hamster', possibly.

SWP are more lol than omg, but at least they were always anti-Stalin

what with them being formed 20 years after stalin died, i remain unmoved here.

SWP are more lol than omg, but at least they were always anti-Stalin, unlike all the "serious" people who became Labour ministers and were in CPGP. They're the real tossers.

Unlike the various SWP members who became Garry Bushell and various Hitchens

CPGB - der.

Yes, but it's just a continuation of whatever Socialist group Tony Cliff started in 1950, and history is important &C.

Whatever.

this stuff on ken's economics guy john ross is lololololol:

http://archive.workersliberty.org/publications/readings/trots/socaction.html

Tom D, every political movement in the history of the world has had prominent members who lurched into reactionary views with age. Your posts on this thread just reek of gratuitous lefty-bashing.

"THEY ALL HATE JEWS OMG!!!"

Gratuitous SWP-bashing, thank you

Get it right

I've heard he gets it from his dad. Wrighty would never have a Jew manage England.

So what are German and her supporters proposing that you object to so strongly? Please answer without reference to hidden anti-semitic agendas or other such blah. What stated policies is she putting forward that you find so objectionable?

Paul Foot. Worracunt he was, eh?

I quite like the SWP because they provide the infrastructure for protest. You know, they print posters, book coaches, that sort of stuff. You don't have to agree with them about anything. I can see how this could be seen as hijacking causes, though.

SWP (and the islamic right) brought a lot of other issues into the STWC and turned a lot of people off, see Tom D above. it stopped it from being an ongoing broad based coalition against an illegal war.

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2006/05/keeping_the_fai.html

"The Iraq War is part of a Zionist plan which targets the establishment of the Greater State of Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates"

I always felt the same way, Jamie, when I was very vaguely involved in such things. But perhaps others who are still practically, politically involved now feel differently.

xpost

Ed is correct (to imply) that it ought to be OK for Tories, liberals, whoever to be part of a stop-the-war movement, without any other agenda being part of the deal. Such a movement, I think, needs to be single-issue in some strong sense.

I admit this is all a big digression.

I agree, and the SWP did their best to drive people away.

I'm renowned on these pages for my "lefty-bashing"

I've seen you at it, behind the pub ;-)

quite hard to hit the back of your own head though.

I'm a Self-Hating Non-Jew

amen

caek, the page you link to contains this sentence:

"Respect 'Coalition', which is the electoral front for the Socialist Workers' Party, and the BNP"

makes me kind of question everything else there

I don't really have an opinion on that page, as I don't know what I'm talking about (heard of the Left List this morning), but I suspect the comma between SWP and BNP is crucial.

The guy is very easy to disagree with and has a particularly objectionable tone (think a Blairite Simon Heffer), but he's often on telly and I'd be staggered if he thought the BNP and SWP were connected in some organizational way.

lol at me saying "he is often on telly" as though that makes him intelligent. Excuse me.

the quotes from the musician guy are legit so far as i can tell (citing wiki lol).

i remember that Harry's Place thing had some beef with that gilad atzmon guy mentioned in the link

Personally, I hate the vulgar multi-cultured metropolis which Ken has helped to create

I think he might be giving Ken a bit too much credit there.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/30/pressandpublishing.london08

^^ interesting, though naturally decca aitkenhead is fathoms out of her depth.

i've come around to the idea of voting to ken, because having ken as mayor under a cameron government will be wtflol to the max.

"A lot of people say you can't support a Tory because you're a progressive," he says. "Well, actually, in some respects the Tories are more progressive than Labour now. It comes down to this idea of what's progressive. Under New Labour, the Labour party has forfeited progressiveness. It's doing things like starting wars and imposing ID cards and locking people up for six weeks without trial."

YEAH BECAUSE THEY HAD NO SUPPORT FROM THE TORIES FOR THOSE THINGS YOU DICKMUNCH

having ken as mayor under a cameron government will be wtflol to the max.

However having Boris as mayor under a Cameron government:

http://www.mimifroufrou.com/scentedsalamander/i/Anschluss_tears.jpg

I've just read Decca A's interview with Gilligan. I don't respect her much, normally, but I don't see much wrong with the job she's done here.

I think that piece is quite shocking. Perhaps one should not be shocked by anything nowadays, or by the conduct of the Standard. But I think it is the brazen openness with which the most prominent and influential (?) journalist in this campaign admits that, in reporting (not merely 'Comment'), he is following a personal agenda of grievance and hatred. If a Guardian journalist (nb I mean someone who seeks out facts, not a columnist / pundit -- some of them do still exist) admitted to that in relation to anyone (BJ, Cameron, Brown, McCain, Clinton, whoever), there would be a furore - this would not be regarded as proper journalism. A newspaper should not be the platform for a reporter to play out his personal grudges and grievances. For this to be so openly admitted really ... well, it really surprises me. Am I going to be alone in this country in feeling this way?

you're certainly quite naive.

when the guardian was pursuing jonathan aitken, how was that not openly partisan?