"we'll change the things that need changing and that's all we'll change": the paSUKification of post-brexit politics 2021

like insiderishness is about a certain attachment to existing power and hierarchy

I think Kieth and his ilk do want power, they are just astonishingly shit at getting it, they have learned nothing since 1997 but they still think they are the smart set. Not even electoral disaster can shake their faith in the middle way

Starmer is understood to have been intensely frustrated that the row over the reshuffle meant that he could not visit places where Labour had exceeded expectations after a set of election results that were disappointing overall.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/10/starmer-moves-to-calm-labour-tensions-with-shadow-cabinet-address

Garbage Guardian narration. But a specific problem: KS hasn't made a public speech since Friday, but the paper quotes him verbatim talking internally to Labour staff.

I don't like these conventions - like unnamed sources who make up most of every politics news story now. People should come out and talk on the record or not be quoted at all.

But: there is an increasingly pervasive view on the left that "the Labour Right doesn't care about winning power in the UK, only about crushing the Left and maintaining its own position".

I don't know whether that's true, but supposing it were true, it could make sense that KS cares more about attacking socialists than succeeding as Labour leader.

I have a lot of sympathy with this perspective, I think its true - up to an extent. But it goes beyond that. If this were just the Corbyn years this would be a fuller explanation but this long predates the Corbyn years, it feels more ingrained than a reaction to a real or perceived internal threat

Prioritizing attacking socialists, regardless of whether there are even any socialists to attack. This suggests something much deeper, existential. The desire not to win power almost seems unconscious, internalised. Labour are in their rightful place, this is how it is supposed to be.

too many of the current lot joined the party in the 90's as slimeball career pols and saw New Labour as a project that would endure throughout their rise up the party ranks and into ministerial positions, until this unstoppable career trajectory was rudely interrupted by events in 2007-08. And they've not been right in the fucking head since!

like insiderishness is about a certain attachment to existing power and hierarchy

Exactly this

Fucking hell these sickos

‘Labour needs to be as ruthless as the Tories at listening, responding and changing. It must ditch the rigid dogmas of ideology, but instead reshape its traditional values of fairness, decency, and opportunity for today’s demands and for tomorrow’s world’https://t.co/CtO36yrWTl

— Anna Turley 💙 (@annaturley) May 10, 2021

Now we’re talking. Listening to the electorate and meeting the needs of the country is not unprincipled. “Revisionism” is precisely the way to serve the people. We will know Labour is taking the voters seriously when @annaturley is in the mix. And the voters will know it too. https://t.co/T1mtyppG2g

— David Miliband (@DMiliband) May 10, 2021

David have you cupped your ear and really listened to the electorate lately? If you listen really closely you can hear it... "We........ haaaaate....... yooooou"

Christ. You don't know where to begin with that.

Except to say -- they are commenting on Labour results, not amid the Corbyn era, but *after a year of KS, "under new leadership", and systematically purging socialists*.

Doesn't DM live in the US? Can't he give his sage advice to Bernie Sanders and AOC instead?

it also ignores that aside from some dubious claims about what Labour run councils have the power to do and some bland platitudes, there wasn't anything discernible on offer from Labour. As McD noted - the doorstep campaigners were sent out naked.

I've realised what D Miliband needs: a debate with AOC at a community centre in the Bronx. It must be only a couple of subway rides away for him!

legit lol tracer hand

Good to see Starmer works for some:

"Ryder has admitted to his failures as a father in the past; he was “just a kid having kids” back in the day, more interested in partying than parenthood. But now that he’s clean and settled with Joanne, whom he wed in 2010, he lovesbeing a hands-on dad. Thinking about his daughters’ future has even got him interested in politics for the first time: “This lot in charge are totally out of touch,” he says. “So I’m Labour, although I couldn’t vote for Corbyn – he’d have taken too much money off me!”"

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/may/10/shaun-ryder-i-was-a-heroin-addict-for-20-odd-years-but-theres-been-no-damage-off-that

he'll never vote

it's great when you're melt...yeah

^^^did i do this right

i'm still wondering how the fuck Shaun Ryder's got any money

ahahahaha off he fucks
https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/news/former-cambridgeshire-and-peterborough-mayor-james-palmer-qu-9198631/

I always knew Shaun Ryder was a Gaitskagite

EXC: Angela Rayner was urged to challenge Sir Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership at the height of their row this weekend

Starmer was warned that Rayner had the backing to beat him in a contest, her allies say https://t.co/eaCNjNrZkp

— Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) May 10, 2021

he's not quite as sexy to the wider PLP as he is to Jenny Chapman when he's in bed with her!

his authority in the party has almost completely gone. I can't bear to see him limping on in so much pain ;P Latest Redfield Wilton records the lowest approval rating yet and Labour 11 pts behind. But unfortunately these things can take longer and there isn't anything good to follow his demise.

The new shadow chancellor with her friends at the Spectator garden party pic.twitter.com/06uMBhM8Ap

— Mr Demos of Pnyx (@gem_ste) May 10, 2021

EXC: Angela Rayner was urged to challenge Sir Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership at the height of their row this weekend

In "Batley & Spen", is Spen for the name of the river?

It's an abbreviation of Spenborough

Getting some serious Roy of the Rovers/Michael Hardcastle energy from 'Spenborough'

have wasted many an hour or two cycling around the Spenborough running track on a tandem with the kid. Classic YOLO!

Shippers still MIA and apparently the infamous tweet has caught the attention of those C***o Crap House wankers.

Looking at 2019 election Labour took a 13% drop from 2017, but Tories lost ground too.

The big winner being the Heavy Woollen Independents. Are they NazBols?

just plain and simple str8 up Nazis

their Chairman is ex-UKIP. Probably one of them that jumped ship because Farage was too much of a moderate I think.

the Northern Independence Party would kill for those numbers though!

Those numbers are what made me wonder if they were NazBol rather than straight up Naz

Paul Halloran was going for the inflammatory grooming gangs/terrorism angle, then said in his own defence no I can't be racist because my mam once took in a homeless Jamaican kid!

Yes, I thought it was an abbreviation of Spenborough, and even that the constituency was really called Batley & Spenborough but everyone was just oddly agreeing to abbreviate it. A bit like if everyone was saying 'Notts' or 'Northants' out loud.

But it's then odd that its *official* name is Batley & Spen, with no reference to Spenborough.

Google Maps does feature a SPEN, next to the River Spen.

There was a Spen Valley constituency until 1950.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spen_Valley_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

And a Spenborough local government district till 1974:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spenborough

Spenborough was created as an urban district in 1915 by the merger of Cleckheaton, Gomersal and Liversedge urban districts.[1] The amalgamation was carried out on the instigation of Cleckheaton Urban District Council, in order to resist plans by the County Borough of Bradford to annex the area. The name "Spenborough", after the River Spen, was also suggested by Cleckheaton UDC

That tends to suggest that the name Spenborough was created in c.1915.

Bradford going power mad for more lebensraum, someone need to take a stand against them!

Labour are going to parachute in the Hartlepool guy again, spend the whole campaign talking about grooming gangs to try and 'win back' hardcore racists, then lose their deposit

the Spen isn't much of river really, it's a tributary of the Calder and unless there are flood conditions it's more like a big stream I think.

"Labour are going to parachute in the Hartlepool guy again"

If you can't win seriously at least lose with good humour

I some a couple of Paula Sherriff rumours on twitter, not one of the worst melts but sending a remain ultra to a 60% Leave constituency wouldn't work imo

pic.twitter.com/xPCPsmPrFj

— Andrew R (@ExcelPope) May 11, 2021

lol! from the Kieth really is 6'2 ..honestly... serious of photos with his maverick cop partner.

There have been lots of average quality memes about those photos but that one is genuinely excellent.

It brings so much together -- the odd extensiveness of that photoshoot, their carefully selected outfits (with AR's terrific coat), the weird over-dramatised quality of it, the height deception issue that Calzino has pointed out, the cop partners image, the strange fact that one of these two just tried to fire the other, the names (highlighting the fact that most people not near the area have never thought about Batley or Spen), the ITV factor.

Class has nothing to do with:
-your accent
-where you live
-where you grew up
-what your parents do
-where you went to school

These things remain important in supporting certain individuals to change their class position, but they don’t come into the definition of class.

— Grace Blakeley (@graceblakeley) May 11, 2021

this is a very bad pseud gone on a class trolling mission response to that middle income plus homeowning bigots with regional accents identifying as w/c thing. If you grew up in a poor area in social housing, and went to a sink comprehensive, with parents in low income jobs then your not w/c cos class is thotial constwuct. Yeah just about every formative experience that moulds your perception of yourself from the day you are born, just erase all of that says person who attended a private school and grew up in Hampshire.

EXCL: Carolyn Harris, Keir Starmer's parliamentary private secretary, has resigned amid claims she spread baseless rumours about Angela Rayner's private life

With @patrickkmaguire and @EleniCourea https://t.co/5uww6rzzbz

— Henry Zeffman (@hzeffman) May 11, 2021

I must admit I find Blakeley's position, about 'production' etc, hard to understand. Probably my own intellectual deficiency.

she'd probably need to write a very long Perry Anderson length piece on her class theory to wring out all the nuance. Because in the twitter thread format she just sounds like an infuriatingly wrong posh 'un and she's going to get shellacked for it!