like the queen this thread will never die: in which we ALL resign (ourselves to disgusting miseries to post-boris politics 2022)

Well UKIP was as much a pressure group as a party looking for any kind of electoral victory, I suppose it's *possible* that a single issue left party could bring something like that about under the current system but doesn't seem very likely to me.

Not an electoral party, agree.

State of this.

Starmer is now changing tone. Missions do not achieve themselves, he says. You need to make tough choices.

He says Labour will set up an Office for Value for Money, ensuring money is spent well. And that means that the government will not be able to spend money on things a Labour party would like to do as quickly as they would want.

Snappy sentence.

great way of breaking pledges: honest, was going to nationalise energy, but office for vfm says no.

the quiet man is turning up the volume!

office for value for money??? how are they this bad.

OFFICE4VALUE4MONEY4U

terrible news for the MoD oh wait

That policy gives the lie to all of the other shit they’re peddling - it’s all got a massive asterisk beside it

shocked. shocked, I tells you

UPDATE: Rupa Huq has now had the whip suspended by Keir Starmer for her comments about the Chancellor earlier today. https://t.co/vBkmqlxwcy

— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) September 27, 2022

'superficially black' is very unfortunate phrasing, but it feels like it's not a good thing that about half of the time when a public figure is censured for racism it's a member of an ethnic minority who has said something that upset the tory party

is the full context of what she said available anywhere? the second quote about the 'little brown guy' is barely intelligible on its own

xp she was commenting on his privilege and background which sounds incredibly bad!

Explained better here

if that MP was gunning for Kwarteng's blackness because he's evil, it would be a bit less icky to me, but looking at this full quote, she's actually saying he's 'superficially Black' because he sounds posh and had an elite education...

— natty kasambala (@nattykasambala) September 27, 2022

she could have made some valid points about how meaningless so-called representation is in Kwarteng's case without using that terrible phrase.

Yeah, it’s a deeply weird connection to make at best, there are rich black people same as anyone else and that aspect isn’t really her place to comment on…

predictable response of all the worst racists on twitter calling out her racism.

Just pathetic.

Some new detail on Great British Energy - the publicly owned energy firm announced in Keir Starmer's speech

- It is a generation company, not retail
- Labour is not nationalising any existing company, supplier or retail
- This is effectively a start-up to grow British renewables

— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) September 27, 2022

When you're contorting things this much just to preserve the functions of the economic status quo it's an enormous red flag

Needing to de-carbonise to save the planet (forget that, how about your sorry selves) and this is the response?

Lol.

There's a real chance Labour will face a 1997 situation at the next election: a once-in-a-generation chance to transform the UK. Blair was too cautious. Starmer can't make the same mistakes. Labour must plan for full-spectrum constitutional, political, social and economic reform. https://t.co/z3F90g0dSL

— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) September 27, 2022

Cliffe is demanding more of Lab than Owen Jones who called this speech 'fine'.

Blair wasn't too cautious, those were his politics ffs

willing to grudgingly accept "too cautious" as a widely-understood euphemism for "pissed away a twice-in-a-century chance to change the polical direction of the UK"

anyone believing kier starmer or tony blair has/had any desire to truly transform the country is an idiot or a political commentator "at it". the most they aspire to is making the place ever so slightly better to live in for a slightly widely part of the population than previous.

*slightly wider

the moment starmer gets any push back from the institutions and companies at the top table now he'll cave and apologise for even having had the thought in the first place.

Painfully accurate

If you need to vote for a racist, transphobic, deeply establishment party to assuage some kind of bad childhood feeling about the other team well, good luck with that

Reckon -- as the thread states -- it's councils, DWP, the arts council but if the unemployed increase what then?

Agree with Adam about rising pressure towards austerity, but question for me is where can they actually cut? NHS desperately needs more cash (and they need to build some of those hospitals they promised), she's promised more defence spend. Could further destroy higher education? https://t.co/z5B5SVESAf

— James B (@piercepenniless) September 27, 2022

Fucking hell.

My take on Keir Starmer's #Lab22 speech for @ipaperviews

Briefed as emulating Blair, the speech reflected a clear break from New Labour https://t.co/SbMLzAy8Q3

— Andrew Fisher (@FisherAndrew79) September 27, 2022

xp bit more macro detail/charts from tooze in this newsletter today (doesn't answer the q in that tweet though):

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-155-the-uk-not-keeping

(also some context on kwarteng's academic ideology)

Tooze is a tireless aggregator. Gabor's tweets (which I linked a couple of days ago) are the ones I found most interesting.

Seems naive to think they *need* to build hospitals unless there's a compelling material reason in the bit I didn't read

Who’s going to staff the hospitals?

well quite

Sipping a cuppa and reading abt Lab conf

Newham councillor Terry Paul chaired a fringe event at Labour's conference in favour of the "gig economy" where a Deliveroo senior manager from Scotland was passed off on the panel as one of the firm's riders https://t.co/bpuzdEh6sA

— Kevin Blowe 🏴 (@copwatcher) September 27, 2022

sad. i know terry. i know what he’d say, that if we could make deliveroo a more progressive employer then his constituents would benefit. but it’s just all cut from the same cloth, absurd fantasies about a progressive form of capitalism that have never ever been borne out.

Lol at the two economist types jumping up and down defending the IMF and wanting evidence over this entirely reasonable tweet.

before everyone goes gaga over the IMF statement, remember that killing off the NHS is exactly what the IMF would approve of in these circumstances, and the Tories will draw attention to its support should they decide to do that

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) September 27, 2022

xp: working people can only save themselves. They are on their own.

Bastani's article, of course, doesn't mean he likes or supports KS.

This tweet may be a better example of actual Novara ambivalence.

Labour’s right faction played incredibly dirty, sabotaged any chance of a radical government, and cynically destroyed a lot of good people in the process. But we now have a reasonably social democratic Labour Party on brink of government. Complex emotions!

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) September 27, 2022

Complex emotions?

Also, if an election is 2024, Labour in 2022 is hardly on the brink of government.

Bastani and the Novara lot will support Starmer in the election, and they'll want an invite to the parties in return. They will play down the atrocities committed in return

Genuine Question: Is a points based immigration system necessarily more reactionary than any other form of immigration control? Family reunion and asylum aside, of course. https://t.co/3ZDBFoD3EL

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) September 27, 2022

Even ppl I thought were ok like Fisher are just totally waving the white flag and pretending there is a ghost of Corbyn to some of the policy.

IdontwantalabourgovtIjustwantrevenge.png

A thing about Novara as well is most of its output is so low effort - they have interesting interviews sometimes but most of the time it's basically just leftist talk radio, with the hosts not saying much that you couldn't hear on any amateur UK leftist podcast. Which is fine but they kinda oversell themselves. Seldom see any investigative journalism for instance, which there's a real need for.

they don't remotely have enough funding for that tho -- their model was
(a) enter the mediascape at the pundit-level
(b) build on that
(c, perhaps, one day, when the cash is there) backfill the capacity to make their own news (inc.much-needed investigative deep dives)

(a) has been semi-successful -- ash and james b and the big lad are known names outside the mere twittersphere -- but it comes at a price, which is that clout can only be mantained by having a Provocateur's Take™️ on like 85% of "the day's news" (as determined elsewhere)… and in context the take is going to be being "for" something yr local audience is somewhat against (hence white flaggism etc).

i'm saying it's the structural consequence of a poor strategy (albeit a strategy we all very much enjoyed five years ago when the big lad was saying "it'll go higher" for the exact same reasons = provocateur's clout)

the scientific internet term for (b&c)-fail as the structure of the model is of course "underpants gnomes" (which tbf libcom and others were saying back in 2015)

How is it a poor strategy, when they've grown far beyond what they will have originally expected; bought a studio; are continually hiring new staff; etc?

Even if I didn't like their coverage and opinions (which I often, though not always, do), I wouldn't think they'd shown a poor strategy.

It's gone higher!