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Labour Party - Just about as bad as you can get

Started by Johnny Yesno, November 30, 2020, 12:30:35 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Shoulders?-Stomach!

In general, with a few specific exceptions, abstaining in commons votes is an act of duplicity, usually through trying to appeal to irreconcilable interests, then achieving appealling to no-one. In short, spinelessness which should be kept to an absolute minimum for practical reasons rather than being a repeating key feature. One could argue that with so significantly fewer seats than the government it should barely ever be used.

Worse in this context, because it signals that the opposition don't know what to do about a vitally important area of national interest and a health emergency. This shouldn't be difficult for anyone to work out, or for sympathizers like thugler, Blinder Data, Trenter Percenter or GOB to figure out. Labour really don't know what to do.

Zetetic

Perhaps spinelessness plays very well with English owner-occupiers. Maybe "Could you imagine bellowing at this man over a pint?" is the test they're trying to meet.

Sin Agog

Quote from: Fambo Number Mive on November 30, 2020, 08:13:18 PM
Abstaining on something like this is weird.

If you support it, vote for it. If you don't, oppose it. Why is Starmer so keen on Labour abstaining?

Doesn't piss off the Remainers in his fanbase so much as actually voting for it.  I can kind of relate to it as a political play, as opposed to everything else he's done as our Eternal & Beloved Opposition Leader Generalissimo.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

We have acts coined after the people who personified them.

In the UK the abstention could credibly be redefined The Starmer.

"Ohhhhh ffs he's Starmered again"

Make this viral, I'll claim no credit.


Sin Agog

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on November 30, 2020, 08:32:29 PM
In general, with a few specific exceptions, abstaining in commons votes is an act of duplicity, usually through trying to appeal to irreconcilable interests, then achieving appealling to no-one. In short, spinelessness which should be kept to an absolute minimum for practical reasons rather than being a repeating key feature. One could argue that with so significantly fewer seats than the government it should barely ever be used.

I know I'm a political trog, but I kind of feel that way about the whole whip system full stop.  If a mofo gets into politics all fired up about a bunch of issues close to their heart, but is then told to vote against them by some big bald bloke called a 'whip' naked at the torso banging a galley drum, well what's the fucking point of your whole career and existence? 

Shoulders?-Stomach!

QuoteIf a mofo gets into politics all fired up about a bunch of issues close to their heart, but is then told to vote against them by some big bald bloke called a 'whip' naked at the torso banging a galley drum, well what's the fucking point of your whole career and existence? 

To be fair there is always as MP a balance between personal interests, party interests and constituent interests. Most of the time the whip won't run counter to those (unless you are a member of the socialist campaign group of a socialist party led by a man who isn't a socialist)

I don't actually enjoy it when MPs use their position to advance crackpot ideas that their constituents couldn't give the faintest shit about, and find it annoying when MPs decide to object on behalf of an entire constituency on a matter of personal conscience (personal conscience, who the fuck do you think you are you trumped up piece of shit? you're a fucking servant so fucking serve).

We have had long enough with MPs making their own interpretations, gatekeeping public opinion, using their pedestal to advance their own personal interests at the expense of others.

thugler


BlodwynPig

Quote from: thugler on November 30, 2020, 08:56:51 PM
Yeah don't agree with this. Should be voting for or against. Pointless.

nice try. just back from the bar with your hands full of lagers for the lads.

"Yeah, don't agree with this" you lazily cast mid-discussion, wanting the lads to coddle you closer, while knowing that Big John is going to get knifed in the alley later.

Zetetic

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on November 30, 2020, 08:54:16 PMI don't actually enjoy it when MPs use their position to advance crackpot ideas that their constituents couldn't give the faintest shit about

Yes, when it's bailing out Crufts or something, no, when it's taking against the death penalty or ending the profitable torture of people with learning disabilities.


Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: Zetetic on November 30, 2020, 09:02:16 PM
Yes, when it's bailing out Crufts or something, no, when it's taking against the death penalty or ending the profitable torture of people with learning disabilities.

That's total expediency though. We had this over Brexit.

'I can't vote for this in the knowledge this will cause my constituents harm' 

In some cases they've overwhelmingly directed you to enact the thing to cause them harm. Once you stop acknowledging the wishes of your constituents it ceases to be democracy, it's just 600 Lords or Counts or something looking after what suits them.

If you want your constituents to think less shitty things then that's what effective leadership is all about, something Labour don't seem keen to do now. Under Corbyn, you can argue whether he was successful or not, but he made clear what Labour under him would be like and the values of the party, expressing why.

Labour's whole problem, the entire thing is traceable to their 'we know best' attitude under Blair, and Starmer is the one seeking to bring that back.

jobotic

Good article by Gary Younge here, including this bit on our media and Corbyn.

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/interview/the-further-you-are-from-power-the-more-you-see/article30925158.ece?fbclid=IwAR2hVjsvM6TWQiCL_2rw2gYK98U4wms07jirZG1DLzfjJ1cZ4tDhyzZxpYI

QuoteIn Britain, the percentage of columnists who went to private schools and Oxford or Cambridge is higher than it is in the House of Lords. Then you have this group of people who know each other, even if they don't personally know each other. Not necessary electorally, but socially they have the same interests. Where did you go skiing? I went skiing there. Where did your son go to school? My son goes to school there. Where did you study, I studied there. Then there is a kind of collusion. It is all informal, none of it is stated, none of it is written down, none of it is probably even recognised. And yet all of this is fully very clear if you're on the outside.

So when there are these ruptures — and this is as true for Trump as it was for Jeremy Corbyn in Britain — then they kind of band together, and the journalists become like political actors and as gatekeepers and they become affronted personally by the presence of these interlopers who have been selected by the great unwashed. And they find it much more cozy, comfortable to be in these much smaller cliques that represent quite a narrow band of political ideology.

In this period of polarisation, you have this kind of clumping at the centre and this disdain for the margins, which is not even political opposition to — it is as well — but it is like, 'where did you people come from; this is our house'. I see that quite a lot.

In Britain with [Jeremy] Corbyn to even claim that this is something that we should try and understand, not support necessarily but understand, and lo and behold, if you said 'actually I think some of this is good, and he has a point', it really casts you out of polite company.

So it was a very peculiar few years, the last few years, where, even though overwhelming numbers of the Labour party supported him, and even though in 2017 Labour did get a higher vote share and gain seats, way better than anybody expected, in 2019 they didn't, it was still considered a kind of a form of idiocy that was career damaging. And who wants to damage their career?

When you have the generation which in its formative years saw the Soviet Union collapse, capitalism is the only thing, the only game in town, [Francis] Fukuyama's End of History — everything else is childish, and romantic and utopian and ridiculous.

Any opposition to the neo-liberal project is folly. Nobody stamps this on your hand, nobody makes you sign a paper but if you want to go on, this is the way to think. Stop talking about socialism, that's what silly people's talk about, it's finished, it's gone. They lost.

This is the world these people grew up in and it has collapsed. It collapsed with the crisis and they have really struggled to get their bearings since then. And that is how they become stenographers [putting out] whatever the last powerful person said to them, so long as their power is in some way connected to the neoliberal project.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Good stuff, and very much how I see it. Of course this is howbthings are in other walks of life, comedy, music, art. Cliques defending themselves from perceived attack, in this case in their own rush to defend the status quo proving the value of solidarity and the collective.

pigamus

Does anyone know what the "Optics Left" is

I saw it on Twitter

Buelligan

I think it's people like maybe Paul Mason or even Owen Jones, who give a good left speech but kind of side with the Establishment a bit too easily.  Might be wrong of course.  I sometimes suspect Michael Walker might be in that category.  Gabriel Pogrund?  But who the fuck cares, let's just kill Keith, then we can talk about it.


pcsjwgm

Quote from: pigamus on November 30, 2020, 11:23:14 PM
Does anyone know what the "Optics Left" is

I saw it on Twitter

"Optics" refers to how a political situation is perceived by the public, which of course is shaped by how the political situation is reported by the media. The "Optics Left" are left-wing people who are so concerned with presenting a respectable image of the left to the media that they expediently compromise their principles, capitulate to Establishment propaganda narratives and political positions, and throw under the bus left-wingers who are being unfairly attacked. Optics Leftists will be seen attacking Corbyn for his factual statements about the scale of anti-semitism in Labour, failing to defend Labour members from the charge of anti-semitism, smearing as "cranks" those who question the prevailing narrative about Labour anti-semitism, uncritically accepting the legitimacy of the EHRC as an anti-racist organisation and lauding the EHRC report, etc.

Owen Jones is definitely one of them. The Novara crowd are too, but to a lesser extent. John McDonnell has also recently revealed his preference for good optics over the truth and justice. Paul Mason might be one of them, but I think where he differs is that, rather than simply being expedient and cowardly, he seems to genuinely believe some Optics Left positions are just elements of a masterful political strategy for how the left can win power.


https://twitter.com/pmpoc/status/1333381742653288450

Famous Mortimer

But he can't be so naive to actually think that would magically solve the problem, right?

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Buelligan on November 30, 2020, 11:39:25 PM
I think it's people like maybe Paul Mason or even Owen Jones, who give a good left speech but kind of side with the Establishment a bit too easily.  Might be wrong of course.  I sometimes suspect Michael Walker might be in that category.  Gabriel Pogrund?  But who the fuck cares, let's just kill Keith, then we can talk about it.

They had a bit on the Crown yesterday. They do love a bit of mainstreaming and narcissism those lot.

Is there a Militant leaning youtube channel?

BlodwynPig

Quote from: pcsjwgm on December 01, 2020, 01:12:25 AM
"Optics" refers to how a political situation is perceived by the public, which of course is shaped by how the political situation is reported by the media. The "Optics Left" are left-wing people who are so concerned with presenting a respectable image of the left to the media that they expediently compromise their principles, capitulate to Establishment propaganda narratives and political positions, and throw under the bus left-wingers who are being unfairly attacked. Optics Leftists will be seen attacking Corbyn for his factual statements about the scale of anti-semitism in Labour, failing to defend Labour members from the charge of anti-semitism, smearing as "cranks" those who question the prevailing narrative about Labour anti-semitism, uncritically accepting the legitimacy of the EHRC as an anti-racist organisation and lauding the EHRC report, etc.

Owen Jones is definitely one of them. The Novara crowd are too, but to a lesser extent. John McDonnell has also recently revealed his preference for good optics over the truth and justice. Paul Mason might be one of them, but I think where he differs is that, rather than simply being expedient and cowardly, he seems to genuinely believe some Optics Left positions are just elements of a masterful political strategy for how the left can win power.


https://twitter.com/pmpoc/status/1333381742653288450


Fucking traitor, Walker. Christ, that is awful. So much right about the man, but this is plain and simple wrong. Corbyn isolated by all but a few. Thugler/Druss/GOB in 3...2...1

If I see Buelligan asking for Corbyn's apology I will ask the cattle to shove me in a tumble dryer.

Zetetic

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on November 30, 2020, 09:09:29 PM
That's total expediency though.
I suppose, in the sense that it's expedient for the people not being murdered by the state/tortured to death because of how they were born/deported back to a country they don't remember ever having lived in.

I don't disagree that a disconnect between MPs and the electorate is a problem, but at the same time I recognise that there are other principles - around the protection of the most vulnerable - that should be upheld regardless of the opinion of owner-occupiers.

pigamus


Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quotethere are other principles - around the protection of the most vulnerable - that should be upheld regardless of the opinion of owner-occupiers.

No. It's the duty of political parties to create that consent through the culture they build. When political parties shut the public out then you create the nasty groundswell of resentment that leads to them beginning to support some even clearly self-defeating ideas.

That said, a similar responsibility is on the media. I wouldn't reform parliament without also reforming the media.

Zetetic

I don't deny that political parties should work to move the electorate, but that doesn't mean that fundamental rights of minority groups should wait on its "consent".

Yes, absurd interpretations of this are available.

Buelligan

Quote from: pcsjwgm on December 01, 2020, 01:12:25 AM
"Optics" refers to how a political situation is perceived by the public, which of course is shaped by how the political situation is reported by the media. The "Optics Left" are left-wing people who are so concerned with presenting a respectable image of the left to the media that they expediently compromise their principles, capitulate to Establishment propaganda narratives and political positions, and throw under the bus left-wingers who are being unfairly attacked. Optics Leftists will be seen attacking Corbyn for his factual statements about the scale of anti-semitism in Labour, failing to defend Labour members from the charge of anti-semitism, smearing as "cranks" those who question the prevailing narrative about Labour anti-semitism, uncritically accepting the legitimacy of the EHRC as an anti-racist organisation and lauding the EHRC report, etc.

Owen Jones is definitely one of them. The Novara crowd are too, but to a lesser extent. John McDonnell has also recently revealed his preference for good optics over the truth and justice. Paul Mason might be one of them, but I think where he differs is that, rather than simply being expedient and cowardly, he seems to genuinely believe some Optics Left positions are just elements of a masterful political strategy for how the left can win power.


https://twitter.com/pmpoc/status/1333381742653288450

I think, maybe, some of this is dependent on your personality and the route you took to your current position.  IMO, people who've got where they're going, at least partly, through a Pavlovian learning system, tend to be more easily compromised when it comes to moral choices.  They listen more to others, especially others in authority, rather than following their own memory of Truth and using their moral compass.  This is how they get lost.  Not their fault. 

At the height of the pogrom, I saw individuals pivoting, people that I personally respect and feel I know.  I think the only way to avoid it is to talk honestly about it.  But most of us are too polite and love our friends too dearly.

People everywhere do it.  And it does take a special kind of courage to stand by ones principles whilst the world cries shame.   It's the base of why I love Corbyn so much.  He mixes with the sea-grass swaying, day in day out but he remains, adamantine.


Buelligan

Just to remind everyone that Corbyn was speaking up, as he always has -

Quote from: Buelligan on November 30, 2020, 06:03:00 PM
And, meanwhile, out in the cold real world, the Jamaica Gleaner appears to be the only paper covering this
QuoteFormer British Labour Party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has written to the United Kingdom's secretary of state, Priti Patel, calling for her to adopt a humane approach over the deportation of several men to Jamaica on Wednesday.

"This planned deportation appears to be a continuation of an unnecessarily harsh approach that ought to have been abandoned on the back of lessons learnt from the Windrush scandal," Corbyn wrote.

"Very few people are currently allowed to fly out of the UK due to the pandemic so it's not clear to me how this character flight can be justified"
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20201130/corbyn-pushes-back-against-wednesdays-deportation-flight-jamaica

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on November 30, 2020, 08:32:29 PM
In general, with a few specific exceptions, abstaining in commons votes is an act of duplicity, usually through trying to appeal to irreconcilable interests, then achieving appealling to no-one. In short, spinelessness which should be kept to an absolute minimum for practical reasons rather than being a repeating key feature. One could argue that with so significantly fewer seats than the government it should barely ever be used.

Worse in this context, because it signals that the opposition don't know what to do about a vitally important area of national interest and a health emergency. This shouldn't be difficult for anyone to work out, or for sympathizers like thugler, Blinder Data, Trenter Percenter or GOB to figure out. Labour really don't know what to do.

Abstaining can just indicate that you would potentially support the bill if it was amended, but not in its current form. And it's not a rare and shocking thing to happen - by May 2019, Corbyn's Labour had abstained on 23 votes relating to Brexit alone. 

Buelligan

When the government has a majority of eighty, what does signaling you'd be up for chatting about amendments achieve?

TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Zetetic on December 01, 2020, 08:33:52 AM
I suppose, in the sense that it's expedient for the people not being murdered by the state/tortured to death because of how they were born/deported back to a country they don't remember ever having lived in.

I don't disagree that a disconnect between MPs and the electorate is a problem, but at the same time I recognise that there are other principles - around the protection of the most vulnerable - that should be upheld regardless of the opinion of owner-occupiers.

Exactly this and it complete nonsense as to how any socialist can skirt over it.