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.

more like the Tory Wets Party with an equally shambolic leader imo

The Brexit issue was never a hard line between the parties. It would be unfair to guess what the differences are now because Kieth won't announce any policies until a general election is called, he'll just kvetch lamely in his silly voice

Don't even know why they bother, it's not like Tory voters will ever pivot to Labour. The other way round, yes. All they're doing is alienating their actual voter base.

I'm excited to read the first think piece about how mocking Kieth's voice is middle class privilege or something

It's funny really that just over a year ago Kieth was working an FBPE crowd as a people's vote advocate. Paul Mason was in that crowd chanting Stop The Coup! and looking like a total bellend. Now Kieth has once again shown he is a pure careerist and I think he might he might have pissed off enough ppl now that he will be facing a leadership challenge before the next election.

I mean, I am aware that ending freedom of movement was among the chief motivators of Brexit and immigration in general appears to have become a dodgy issue even for nominally leftier continental parties such as La France insoumise, which is one of the more depressing signs of the times. Nor am I *entirely* averse to compromise if it means ousting the Tories (with the proviso that this kind of strategy is extremely dicey to begin with), but even if we generously allow for that, how far do you take the not-Corbyn line before you suddenly turn into the Lib Dems? Starmer is repeatedly hitting the same ceiling in the polls despite how conspicuously disastrous Johnson's handling of the pandemic has been on pretty much every front save for the vaccination campaign (relative to the rest of the Western world, that is), so at this point, it's like, why don't you take a fucking hint? Sorry for stating the obvious, but every time this guy comes up in my news feed, I just shake my head.

Hopefully the challenge will come from Fozzie Bear

pom before Corbyn there were times when the Lib Dems were to the left of Labour on some positions, and not because the Lib Dems were good

Fair enough. I def wasn't paying attention to British politics during the Blair years, which all boiled down to complicity in the Iraq War when viewed from Canada.

Blair praised Thatcher, failed to address her assaults on the welfare state or trade unions and joined in several foreign adventures with death tolls in the millions which maybe offers some context to our feelings about Corbs

Starmer is auditioning for boris job, just not the way ppl would have imagined perhaps

Its not just that he’s terrible opposition at a time when opposition is easier & more needed than ever - I’m not even convinced he would have handled the pandemic much better in Johnson’s place tbh

The Leader of the Opposition should not be viewed as an audition opportunity, especially when there are elections in 3/4 years time. Why not press the government on what they are getting wrong on their response to the pandemic?

You could argue that national unity and all that rot had to prevail for the first couple months for purely strategic reasons but it's been almost a full year now, ffs. The death toll is staring you in the face.

Exactly, I thought I was going out of my mind when ppl brought up 2024 as a defence for “constructive opposition” bollocks. Kim there’s people that are dying!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErYM-eGXUAAWDdJ?format=jpg&name=large

Kieth you've really changed for the worst I'm afraid... I just don't love you anymore!

The free movement pivot is just milliband racist mugs b/w it was only ever about stopping Corbyn

80k dead is a larger amount than your average parliamentary constituency.

Size of constituencies by electorate

The number of people able to vote (the electorate) differs by constituency. The Office for National Statistics gives the average electorate across constituencies of about:

72,200 in England
67,200 in Scotland
68,300 in Northern Ireland
56,000 in Wales

he's alienating or taking for granted the support of young/BAME/putatively lefty/Remain voters (who make up the greatest number of the membership that elected him leader) to signal he's very conservative to people in so called Red Wall constituencies that mostly will just vote Tory or whatever latest Farage right-wing pressure group is called anyway.

it's outrageous that this week our health service is looking at breaking point in multiple regions and only last weekend Kieth and his melt-idiot shadow education minister were still insisting schools needed to open and Green was even engaging in some good old population blaming/shaming for how bad the rona is. Astonishingly forensic.

As Starmer has abandoned one part of this pledge, be very worth asking him if he still sticks by "Full Voting Rights for EU Nationals" who are in the UK , and the closure of Immigration Detention Centres #AnotherFutureIsPossible https://t.co/RrK81657oc

— Solomon Hughes (@SolHughesWriter) January 10, 2021

lol ofc he doesn’t. he’d take away my voting rights if he thought it would help him win over a racist pensioner in chingford

straight after winning the leadership of the party he said hated selling himself to the membership and was much more comfortable leading rather than campaigning. Another point where one's shady Tory-cunt warning system was ringing loud enough to deafen one!

Ha

1/ Think there are two ways of looking at Starmer saying there's "no argument for opening the [freedom of movement] aspects of the treaty".

— Paul Cotterill (@Bickerrecord) January 10, 2021

The first way is believe he's done a forensic reading of those aspects of the treaty and knows that it was worded in such a way that freedom of movement can return quietly in the next few years, and that it's best to let sleeping racists dogs lie in this respect.

can't tell if he's joking!

Chakrabarti’s Amendment 1 to the covert human intelligence sources bill in the House of Lords: content 153, not content 309. Chooses not to move Amendment 2. Labour told peers to abstain on the changes, which sought to remove the advance immunity proposed for undercover agents.

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) January 11, 2021

Tommy Corbyn Tweeted about "Keith" today and it made him seem like a bit of a knobber, really.

He was Tweeting about Starmer wearing a purple tie, which seemed (to Tommy) to be a terrible thing.

I do think there were better things to slag Starmer off for today.

It’s ‘Kieth’ - surprised Tommy got that bit wrong.

* checks *

He definitely typed "Keith". And his dad was definitely fond of a purple tie.

Tommy Corbyn got jumped on by every aggro centrist out there for tweeting this, I think Starmzy can handle an incredibly mild dig about his tie

Remember when people slated my Dad for leading protests against this fascist instead of attending a state banquet with him? Funny that. https://t.co/mGHFALrOUB

— Tommy Corbyn (@TommyCorbyn) January 6, 2021

I'd be disappointed in Tommy if he didn't either call him "Kieth" or "Keith" or "Sir Haircut" or even just "wanker" will do fine.

he's only a citizen like anyone on here, being Corbyn's kid isn't exactly celeb status and he doesn't owe anything to the Labour Party, he's got just as much right to call him Keith as anybody has!

Maybe? It seemed a waste.

It's only a frivolous post on twitter, and it's not as if a more pointed attack on Kent Starmer from crobywins son is going make a great deal of difference on this current labour shitshow

He’s very sweetly protective of his dad and called Uncle Piers a knobber on social media.

lol poor Uncle Piers

when Corbyn was first elected as LOTO there was a short interview with Piers on Today and he sounded like a perfectly reasonable chap!

I had an Uncle a bit like him as in a total commie in the 60's-70's then a bit of a crackpot in his later years but he definitely wouldn't have been an anti-lockdown loon had he lived into this pandemic era.

3 days of food for 1 family...
Just not good enough. pic.twitter.com/Y7FJEFFAma

— Marcus Rashford MBE (@MarcusRashford) January 11, 2021

Marcus is still doing Kieth's job for him and all the dreadful nutrition experts with union jacks on their profiles in the replies clearly know fuck all about trying to survive on poverty money. It's not the LOTO's job to pander to arseholes like this, if you aren't brave enough to challenge a Tory govt on austerity then you aren't fit for the fucking job.

https://play.acast.com/s/mandatory-redistribution-party/mandatoryredistributionparty.podbean.com%2F25dc012f-600f-527b-8a4f-be12f3cfa264

this podcast is from last year but it came to my attention earlier when people were posting about when Prescott punched the farm worker guy with the mullet who egged him. It's not terrible and makes some very good points.

Piers is will represented in this documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp2utEgZp4

... and also Tony Wakeford from Death in June/Sol Invictus!

Marcus is still doing Kieth's job for him and all the dreadful nutrition experts with union jacks on their profiles in the replies clearly know fuck all about trying to survive on poverty money.

Strikes me that with the current labour leadership we basically need a Rashford for every issue - any footballers wanna tackle not giving the homeless shelter during lockdown?

if only there were more prem footballers with 4m followers on twitter that aren't complete arses who have worked out how to shame and put political pressure on Tories, but Marcus is as rare as principled and decent MP's in the Labour Party.

It turns out Rashford's complaint is not true, because one of the companies involved says so.

There are a lot of people seeking to whip a storm up on Twitter tonight. Too much to hope in age of instant outrage to wait for the facts before jumping in. DfE are likewise investigating. https://t.co/XxExbHgSzx

— Simon Clarke MP (@SimonClarkeMP) January 11, 2021

I can't imagine some shady Tory donor company who are making a killing from poverty, lying out of their arses when they've been accused of immoral and corrupt practise .. no way.

Going out on a limb here but think the current horrible mess we're in is not as a result of two people having a socially distanced walk with a cup of tea or someone stopping to sit on an empty park bench for 5 minutes. https://t.co/R6hbY55eR2

— tom jamieson (@jamiesont) January 11, 2021

Dunno about that pic.twitter.com/S5ct5w7uWM

— Linus (@LinusRII) January 11, 2021

if gotchas on how long Johnson's been on his bike are the standard for UK political debate I think I'll skip the news for a bit

Strong whiff of Labour 96 to it

lol

Some very odd things going on around Starmer's Telegraph column. I happened to be on their website stealing content (disable JavaScript to stop the paywall) and saw his article. Ten minutes later it was gone. So I did some digging so buckle up: THREAD. But first the article. 1/?? pic.twitter.com/eSpmIyYfBy

— It's real 🍊 🍊 🍊 (@StefGotBooted) January 17, 2021