have you quit the labour party yet?

voted #1 for them last time but have serious misgivings about how the SD's seem to have sprung up under their noses populated and followed by what wouldve seemed on the face of it to be the next generation of what ought to have been their candidates and people

*blinks*

just cancelled the dd. Didn't bother with the resignation email. They aren't a party of opposition any more and will only get worse once the guileless fuckwit melt of a leader is stabbed in the back.

By the time my trade union processes the necessary paperwork for my subs to be switched to the non-affiliated political fund, the world as we currently understand it won't exist anyway

Did so earlier this week, both dd and through contact form.

does anyone have any hope

I only joined in December.

I'm thinking about it.

I’ve left the party before, when Miliband was tacking to the right, but am not inclined to do it again yet.

I don’t rate Starmer as a leader but I recognise that the shadow cabinet he has put together is an upgrade on the pre-Corbyn one. It’s also the best we are going to get, either within the Labour Party, or electoral politics in general, any time soon. It’s too early to judge how the policy platform will shake out and whether they’ll cross any of my red lines (triangulation on immigration, welfare, military adventurism, etc) - at which point I may give up completely.

The left isn’t going to retake the Labour Party for a while. The right is far more likely to make a concerted attempt to scuttle Starmer first. Unless there is a particularly compelling reason not to, I’d rather stay to oppose that.

I also look at people like Corbyn, McDonnell, the old guard members, etc, who stuck it out through Kinnock and Blair in the belief that there may be something of value to save and were briefly proved right. They’ve put up with worse.

I joined by making a contribution and canvassing at the last electoon. Whether I decide to stay or leave is a decision I will make later in the year and will depend on what contribution I can make with others locally. Difficult to be more specific as I was navigating through the thing and then covid hit.

I don't know if reading lots of stuff since Starmer's victory is good for the soul really (I was going to ask for a few links but thought the better of it). Give yourself a break for a few weeks.

hope these days is getting 4 pints of milk. There isn't an opposition any more. I didn't vote for 20+ years previously and can easily switch back to that mode. I was born poor as fuck and am used to living poor as fuck and with very low expectations of UK governments and the so called opposition. Fuck 'em all! I've got decades of accumulated hatred and class resentments towards wankers like Starmer and would rather die than give him a vote tbh!

I spent most of the 00's working on the poorest social housing of Yorkshire and don't buy any of the crap about the gains of Blairism. I just despise the Labour Party right now.

Hope is not getting 4 pints of milk, we ended up with that this morning. It means we're not getting any on Saturday

Keir Starmer’s reshuffle is impressive - the Marxist nutters are out; moderate left are in. When this crisis is eventually over, and politics is resumed, the Tories are going to find that the 5 years when there was no opposition and no alternative has come to an abrupt end

— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) April 9, 2020

xp
hah!

Good job Osborne, the guy publishing antisemitic cartoons of Starmer’s cabinet yesterday, has no motive for undermining the Labour Party and can be relied on to play with a straight bat or I’d think he’s trolling.

Could look at the way he has treated the even further right Sadiq Khan for evidence of what he thinks of the ‘soft left’.

Re: hope. I think it's pretty much clear that: 1) a lot of stuff is happening and 2) a lot of it is bad (but some is good too)

We should not divorce 1 from 2 (and the item in the bracket) either.

how good that stuff that is happening rn might be depends on how much you believe this will genuinely be a paradigm shift rather than a precursor for more of the same - but worse.

btw if anyone ever falls into food poverty during this lockdown, just remember Mark G doesn't fall into food poverty but he considers that quite a whimsical thing.

wait is this a ukpol thread ffs i wasnt told

Nah, just trying to keep my own spirits up.

soz if I was harsh there Mark!

xp
Get back to your failed melt thread that was like the worst episode of QI ya cunt!

Basically, it was a metaphor for how things seem to get better before they start to get worse.

Nothing to do with the subject in hand, I agree. I'm off to bed anyway, gnight.

goodnight mark, sorry for being a bit shitty. i'm beyond fresh rn!

Jealous of your system where a party is a thing you can “join” in a meaningful sense

Here silby on a semi related note we were discussing you on the main thread and you should post there more in our opinion

I’ll see what I can do. I already disappointed lots of folks by forgetting to become a Crystal Palace supporter, as a bit.

Pretty sure imago would not be disappointed by you forgetting to become a Crystal Palace supporter.

"Jealous of your system where a party is a thing you can “join” in a meaningful sense"

it's no good when most of the members are either voting for an insipid establishment melt or the majority that didn't vote because their own "real opposition" media clown wasn't even close to being up to the job. i really miss Corbyn and McD :(

But at least you can quit it now! What a relief.

when posters badmouth them on here I feel like knifing them for real tbh!

re osborne, this bizarre inversion where opposition means no opposition is totally doing my head in, as is the fact that some non tories seem to genuinely believe this

but i never joined the party anyway so w/e

try telling some of these "non tories" that they aren't tories. You'd need medieval torture tools to make them admit it and they've got a "plurality of voices" on their side !

I wonder if to some extent this idea of 'real opposition' depends on your subconscious conception of what opposition is, whether its something external and existential, a replacement - or whether its more managerial. Almost like the opposition as kind of a wing of the government rather than a replacement for it.

We see this sort of stuff when incoming Labour MPs are asked if they're going to be friendly with Conservatives or not (which is a trick question of course). Was it Pidcock that said she couldn't be? But this then seen as not playing the game, not being respectful to Parliament itself. As somehow ooposed to the concept of parliament and democracy itself

that makes a lot of sense actually

it's supposed to be her majesty's most loyal opposition after all

I think this is part of it but maybe something deeper but its not easy to unpick - and it may be a difficult tightrope for the left in general to walk (oppositional but seen as able to work within whatever power structures are in place). Much of this is presentational rather than substantive, so that path is there.

I even think there's something in this, as I don't really know how much mileage there is in the combative or confrontational approach (QT etc is cringe-worthy with this stuff, and the weird mixture of acquiescence and bluster from the media ineffectual). Or at least it shouldn't be the only or even main instrument. McD maybe the only person that was able to do this. Theoretically it should be easier to play this kind of game of appealing to people who view things through this lens as its really just packaging but its not easy to see who that might be (Ro Khanna in the US seems someone that maybe might have it but don't know in UK)

I think we probably need to distinguish between the people pushing this kind of stuff in a kind of fantasy world of 'opponents shaking hands at the end of the day after a fine battle of wills and wits good show pals" and people subconsciously receiving this narrative as 'now we have someone that takes the job seriously instead of just making cheap points" via the media

Also: how about giving it up for the year and maybe returning to it next year.

Are other people that you know simply quitting and just not engaging in any form of politics? And if they aren't what else are they doing? (I may need some tips lol)

I wonder if to some extent this idea of 'real opposition' depends on your subconscious conception of what opposition is, whether its something external and existential, a replacement - or whether its more managerial. Almost like the opposition as kind of a wing of the government rather than a replacement for it.

We see this sort of stuff when incoming Labour MPs are asked if they're going to be friendly with Conservatives or not (which is a trick question of course). Was it Pidcock that said she couldn't be? But this then seen as not playing the game, not being respectful to Parliament itself. As somehow ooposed to the concept of parliament and democracy itself

I see a lot of ppl fading or quitting who are already busy with jobs and kids. seems like the options are just be casually involved with worthy but isolated small-scale stuff or to attempt to pull everything together yourself. no one ever really worked out what they were doing ofc

my position equates precisely onto SV's; little more to add

the ppl railing against despair, the fragmentation of the movement, or bitterly avoiding electoral politics entirely seem to be doing so out of some sense of moral obligation rather than out of any conviction.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVO9PXiUcAAQHHY?format=jpg&name=large

I've not seen any signs of buyer's remorse from any Kier voters yet. If *this* is what they actually I'm amazed they stuck with Corbyn for so long. But I suppose that is the nature of apolitical happy clappers.

onboard/contained

I think many of them had contaminated 99's from Owen Smith's Mr Melty ice cream van.

Somewhere between wavering and never - I think it's ony prudent to see how things play out but I don't have high hopes.

Even if you had low hopes they pretty much got dashed yesterday! I thought there might be some Kier voters despairing at a shadow cab with Streeting and JP.

messaging w/ ppl and I can tell they're hoping I'm going to offer some rousing morale-boosting sentiments and I'm just holding off on saying "mb see how it's going in 4-10 years??"

I think that timescale might be oppomistic, but these aren't ordinary times.. You never know.

Lads, please. It’s too hot for beef.

The chatter on this thread is reprehensible and reminds me of the good old days of dom, jon and marcello. Good job class warriors

― sound of scampo talk to me (El Tomboto), Tuesday, August 11, 2020 2:32 PM (twenty-three seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

DON'T TRY IT

Lol oh for the good old days

wait why were u banned?

Wait I take that back, I really just meant Marcello I think. Dom and Jon are in a different category

Plax (and calz I guess) -

rolling FP number request thread

xp. yes, Marcello was not really all that different to some "difficult" posters we still have amongst us currently. Dom was carrying on off-board harassment campaigns and such iirc

You recall correctly

Ftr I never threatened to murder anybody, just posted that I'd rather murder him than vote for him and followed this up with I'd vote for Mair's favourite party the Greens these days. But fuck it life is too short can't be arsed going into this, just going to acquaint myself with Killfile instead.

And go masturbate over a military installation Tombot, Marcello is worth a million of you

Seems we have a rogue mod on the loose.

Ffs

LADS

it's all kicking off

UK politics threads are like so many demos I've been to in the past 10 years; there's this ritual.

You've got the various factions of protesters, the nice quaker/Green types with their organised signs saying 'down with this sort of thing', the Sisters Uncut who are really well prepared, and have a loudspeaker and are reading out name of the murdered or a list of the demands, and of course a few tankies in black bandanas and hoodies with anarchy symbols on them, who are milling about menacingly and occasionally shouting "ACAB!" or "Riot!!!" or whatever.

And some copper will come over, and start trying to tell people to take it easy, look, all the coppers are on overtime now and want to go home, could the demo maybe wind it up (and he will 100% say in the inquest afterwards or whatever, that he was genuinely trying to calm things down) - but one of the Sisters will kiss her teeth at him, and the hoodies will make pig noises and start oinking or whatever, and the cop will go beserk and just start telling us we're all scum. So the hoodies start throwing plastic bottles at the cops and taunting them - and BOOM! 500 cops appear out of nowhere, start pushing the crowd back, the tankies smash in the window of Foxton's, there's a million photographers snapping photos of it, and suddenly you're in a kettle and it's got *nasty*.

People will look at descriptions of that situation, and say, "no one wants to go to demos any more, the fucken tankies make it unsafe!!!" When, really, the reason people stop going to demos is because of the *cops*.

Now do the US Pol threads

(xp) And now imagine some American cop who thinks he's some kind of maverick hardass showing up on one of those demos.

This is coming true.

lets set some realistic goals here : jokes banned by 2016. sex banned by 2020. a cop in every household by 2025

— wint (@dril) August 28, 2013

two rights do make a wrong it turns out

Haha I don’t go in US politics threads, they are all ~brrrristling with guns~

Calz at least has to get near me to have a stab at me!

US politics threads are all just cops with the occasional bemused 'tankie' piping up to ask wth is going on in here

Nobody on here is a fucking tankie and someone using the term unironically is the sure sign of a moron.

I'm a Maoist now

If there is any person on this thread using the term “tankie” unironically, it isn’t me, soooo...

Thank you for your critical support gyac but that BBC thing on the economy I posted this morning is just like North Korean TV.

I picture North Korean TV being a bit more respectful of its audience than BBC news tbh

xp all my support for you is critical and I don’t watch things you post

Critical support keeps me honest thanks

north korean tv's audience: chairmans alph, kim jong-un

s/b chairsman

And his (hot) sister xp

And Trump. What a triumvirate, eh?

Very upset by this

Judd Trump that is.

Kim Jong-Un, pintman

I could murder a sandwich rn

Monte Kris-to?

Seems relevant:

if you call people tankies in 2020 I'm gonna assume you're an odious daily beast type and that's a lot worse

— Greg Афиногенов (@athenogenes) August 12, 2020

At this stage I am unconvinced that there are any members of the Labour Party on this thread.

They don't let Maoists in tbf

I’m still a member but that is just cause I am dilatory, I also still have Netflix which is also shite

wins is why TUCA & BERTIE didn't get a second season >:(

Why, I’m still paying for the garbage!

netflix is worse than the labour party but it's close

Labour's been shit since the early 50s tho, Netflix can't compete with that

Reevesy & Starmzy is a massive downgrade on Rick and Morty

that cartoon with repellent imagery versus the party of Nick Thomas-Symonds

Proof again that the only good Labour knight of the realm was Cripps. pic.twitter.com/cWyBvUJQqs

— Mr Demos of Pnyx (@gem_ste) August 12, 2020

You get thrown out of the party for saying stuff like that nowadays

Full Labour email including the bits about the Panorama settlements (from image 2) and how the leadership expects people to fall in line/not talk about that. Not that shocking, but have a read.

Toxic nonsense about behaving respectful and "comradely" after 4y of wrecking Corbyn. pic.twitter.com/qsQEyOrPFz

— i am looking respectfully 👁️ (@miriksmit) August 12, 2020

Cancel culture out of control