DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

No, Tom D, I have never met a labour voter in my entire life. I concede that this may cast some doubt on the authority of my pronouncements.

Fucking xpost

That explains: "Doubt this is much of a factor nowadays."

Or maybe you haven't met anyone over 35

"Were you even at the same gig????"

Sure haven't met anyone as tiresome to talk politics with as you. The point, what seems like aeons ago, was that labour would stand to lose much more than it stands to gain from supporting this emergency-cos-we-fucked-up bill. Got a view on that, or you want to carry on with this intersting speculation about who I might or might not have met?

Labour will do a +/- on reaction to any Tory policy and choose between total support and surface opposition with no commitment to reverse. Supporting this law change will not move a single vote from Labour to the coalition so no real damage other than a few Labour voters moaning and voting Labour anyway.

Have you ever met Labour voters?

― Step not on a loose unforgiving stone on a pyramid to paradise (Tom D.), Friday, March 15, 2013 6:00 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

'Cos it sounds like you haven't

― Step not on a loose unforgiving stone on a pyramid to paradise (Tom D.), Friday, March 15, 2013 6:01 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha otm

Before I get drunker and make even less sense, wtf do we even do now? I don't like not voting but there is really nobody to vote for. I suppose my MP is at least on the left of Labour but what is the fucking point. Fuck this country.

Supporting this law change will not move a single vote from Labour to the coalition

True dat. But vice versa is also true.

so no real damage other than a few Labour voters moaning and voting Labour anyway.

Nah, I reckon this could do them small to medium damage at least, just from people staying home when they might have voted labour, or voting for, say greens or yr tusc people when... you get the idea. And just anecdotally, I think that might be a not negligible number of people, although obviously, that's just guesswork atm (and never mind how many fucking labour voters I've ever met lol)

Greens and SNP or Plaid tbf, tusc people not likely to benefit much.

Altho quite interested to hear about this heart of darkness to be found among labour voters that y'all have to share. Your serve, wiseacres.

I live in a Labour heartland and in my experience a vast number of Labour voters are, like their ConDem counterparts, bigoted Sun-reading racist anti-Muslim wankers.

I think there's a segment of labour voters who would on priniple be opposed to dole receivers getting a payout, would maybe even find it cool that it has been suddenly snatched away from them, and would not care about the dodginess of the process.

I live in a Labour heartland and in my experience a vast number of Labour voters are, like their ConDem counterparts, bigoted Sun-reading racist anti-Muslim wankers.

Some people know better than you it seems

tbf several Labour MPs are bigoted Sun-reading racist anti-Muslim wankers

All true but any marginal benefit of doing stuff like this, in terms of votes gained, might still be outweighed by the loss of good will. After the last election Labour's membership, particularly youth membership, rocketed. They've spent the last few years slowly sapping any energy, optimism and trust from people who could have potentially been a useful grass-roots resource when the next election comes.

Long term thinking, you mean? In the UK?

Anyone protesting the bedroom tax today?

Most of my bit of London is on the Save the Whittington hospital march.

The Labour Party has always had a tightrope to walk with regard to a significant section of its core vote that has tended to lean left on economic issues and right on social ones. Benefits, like immigration, are both an economic and a social issue and pretty tricky territory in purely tactical terms (I assume the Labour leadership know where they stand on the moral issue, and then ignore that when making policies).

Part of the problem is that a toxic hatred of people on benefits (particularly unemployment but also housing benefit as well) is becoming entrenched at all areas of British society, *even* among other people on benefits. What's weird in this particular case is that Labour has already drawn a line in the sand on welfare in voting against real-terms benefit cuts. Senior figures in the Labour Party, still think they will win the next election on welfare. I don't really understand this decision even from a tactical point of view, let alone a moral one.

My entirely uninformed guess is that maybe there's some sort of informal Westminster agreement to avoid massive retroactive legal payments wherever possible. See also multiple British Prime Ministers who have never apologised for slavery.

I agree that Labour has a lot to lose among a certain section of voters (in which I include myself) but it's also worth pointing out there aren't many places for those votes to go. The LibDems would have mopped up most of those votes in the past and that's obviously not going to happen now. The Greens aren't organised or big enough. The socialist parties even more so.

The Labour leadership will be more worried about losing support to right-wing parties like the BNP and (especially) UKIP than they will about leaking a bit to any of the above parties. The biggest problem is with core Labour voters just declining to vote at all, but I guess they're banking on enough of those people being so desperate to get rid of the coalition by 2015 that they turn out anyway.

This is not even mentioning the significant proportion of senior Labour MPs who STILL think that any concession to socialism-in-scare-quotes will see the voters rise up and overwhelmingly reject them. And so British politics moves that little bit further to the right...

(All of this is only the case in England admittedly, they could haemorrhage support in Scotland and Wales, but I'm not really sure what the workfare situation is in those places)

Most of my bit of London is on the Save the Whittington hospital march.

Was tempted by this until I saw it was crawling with SWP, not walking alongside those twats

I think a mate of mine's mum is one of the people that got that campaign going (nb not an swp twat)

http://ericjoyce.co.uk/2013/03/a-few-thoughts-re-events/

I have spent the past 12 months making a concerted effort to address the causes of that incident. I do not go into bars, nor drink in my office. Nor do I inject alcohol right into my eyeballs while crying.

http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/16/activist-shocked-conviction-cameron-protest

Just checked this was in England not Bahrain, yes fuck this government.

Carrying on the good work of the last Labour government there I see

Sad but true yes. This lot still make my blood boil on a daily basis all the same.

This is.. beautiful:

http://i.imgur.com/AaLZ7pk.jpg

and the full story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/mar/17/gavin-barwell-date-arab-girls-twitter

The people who hate benefit claimants that much aren't going to vote labour anyway.

You may be interested in this:

Who takes the harshest anti-welfare line? Those on state benefits

whilst i'm inclined to believe it, it'd be more interesting if it wasn't totally anecdotal

Well there's a feelgood story to start monday morning with. No mention of voting intentions there tbf, but who knows, maybe I'm just the king of wishful thinking here, and y'all are right. If that's the case, I don't understand why Labour would have opposed the benefit cap, yet supposedly be supporting this evasive action bill.

My entirely uninformed guess is that maybe there's some sort of informal Westminster agreement to avoid massive retroactive legal payments wherever possible.

Most plausible explanation I've yet seen.

Each placement gains the private company or charity who takes a workfare participant £400-£600. The workfare provider company (eg. A4e) gets a similar slice, too. Why not claw back the placement awards and reimburse the unemployed using this money?

xp

to partly answer your question, you ought to consider the possible disconnects between the Parliamentary Labour Party, the Party at local level, and the diverse constituencies that make up its (potential) electorate. and then consider where the power lies within these disparate groups and how much room there is for democratic direction from the ground up.

or let's say, in simplistic but broadly accurate terms, that the PLP runs the Party now and the aspirations and goals of the PLP are very different from those of the majority of its voter base. and let's ponder whether this is possible because most people don't vote as the result of a long logical enquiry into the policies that best represent their own best interests, and that possibly they are not really conscious of where their own best interests lie.

I dunno, that's all a bit high-concept for me.

the PLP represents a set of middle class technocratic interests that broadly support the economic beliefs of the other large parties, with some nods to "fairness" out of historical nostalgia. the Party isn't particularly democratic - policy doesn't derive from the wishes of all the members.

most people vote on 1 or 2 issues, on sentiment, or out of habit. parliamentary democracy as the best possible means for gauging the will and needs of the majority of the population is a massive lie/joke.

simpler?

hang on, i'm wandering a little.

so to tie it back to why "Labour" wd support or condemn a particular policy - it's based on a cold calculation of the appeal to a tiny sliver of the electorate - a few hundred thousand voters in swing constituencies - plus a reluctance to fully antagonise the broader Labour electorate, but tempered with the knowledge that most of them would elect a chimp if it was wearing a red rosette. and the MPs and their advisors and gurus who run the party are basically in agreement with the consensus across all parties about the economy and how it shd be run. they are all Thatcherites now.

sorry if this seems bleak. i guess on a positive note if people think this is wrong they shd join the party and try and influence it to change direction and let me know how that works out.

lol

Of course I understand all that, you're absolutely right. I just don't quite understand how their cold calculations come up with this answer. But whatever.

most of them would elect a chimp if it was wearing a red rosette.

Hope this isn't a Eric Joyce joke, the guy has a problem.

i think it wd be interesting, if it was possible, to see how often concerns about spending taxpayers money were brought up in public discourse pre-1979. i have an unjustified feeling that people haven't always been encouraged and felt qualified to consider themselves experts on the micromanagement of public spending. nowadays everybody can tell you exactly what the exchequer shd be spent on - it's usually themselves and their families and nobody else.

lol and thinking about it focus groups and market research and radio phone-ins and the internet encourage this idea that opinions are increasingly important and democratically valid whereas the outcome is generally just a championing of ignorant opinion over expertise. which, y'know, fuck expertise in maintaining the machinery of control but good work on this whole new layer of mystification whereby the subjects are encouraged to mystify themselves.

"do you have an opinion on how the day to day management of a medium-sized NHS trust should be carried out? phone up and tell the nation now"

sorry i have to ramble, i'm pretty depressed

you think you're depressed? i'm at the end of the phone most days.

yeah tbf at least i don't have to referee this shit

"Yeah, I'll set up an independant care trust, couldn't do much worse, could I, hurr hurrrup?"