The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[OutByEaster?]

Just now, Davkaus said:

I'm genuinely baffled by this perspective, I just don't see it, and reading through the replies to that tweet, there are a lot of people also determined to see this, and I don't think it's particularly good company to be in. People calling it  "dripping with contempt", "the mask slipping", and all I'm seeing is a supressed cough. If he were trying to laugh for emphasis, he did a pretty shit job of it, and why does he try to keep talking?

I suspect we may have to agree to disagree here.

I don't see it as particularly contemptuous, I think he's just trying to emphasise that the relationship with the unions is based on more than any single small dispute (which the Coventry one is) and that he thinks it's a bit absurd that people think the Labour Party and the Unions will suffer some calamitous split on the back of it - it's unfortunate that the laugh will sit badly with the people involved in the dispute and those that are already concerned about the direction of the party under Starmer. It's not the crime of the century, but I'm utterly baffled how people would think it's not a laugh or accidental - the laugh has a point, it has context and it's y'know...a laugh.

[Follyfoot]

On 10/02/2022 at 19:04, bickster said:

I see Kier Starmer has been criticising the Stop The War Coalition's stance on the Ukraine

Guardian

Now, of course it all depends on your opinion of the history of the current conflict in Ukraine etc. But regardless of that Ukraine is Internationally recognised as a sovereign nation and that extends to The Crimea which Russia currently illegally occupies, except if you are The Stop The War Coalition...

That's the current graphic on the STWC's website. They really don't do themselves any favours. They wouldn't draw a map of Palestine with the Occupied Territories as Israeli

Why is there Stone Island badge covering most of Europe?

[LondonLax]

Comes off as more a scoff than a cough

[bickster]

I don't wish to quote or link to the Scum newspaper but Angela Rayner has an interview in there today

Thats some pretty dumb shit she's saying about Law and Order

Shoot terrorists first and ask questions later

If people are being terrorised by a local thug, I want a local copper to come and "sort them out"

She wants the police to beat down the doors of criminals at 3am, just to antagonise them

 

She really needs to be nowhere near government

 

[bickster]

Apologies, it's th Scum reporting it but she said it in Matt Forde's Party Political Podcast. Not that it matters too much where she said it (though at least its not the Scum)

[ml1dch]

31 minutes ago, bickster said:

Apologies, it's th Scum reporting it but she said it in Matt Forde's Party Political Podcast. Not that it matters too much where she said it (though at least its not the Scum)

Which is pretty much the best politics podcast that exists. For anyone silly enough not to listen to it already. 

Have to say though, when I heard her say it last week I didn't think it was all that exciting or newsworthy. 

Edited February 17, 2022 by ml1dch

[bickster]

2 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

Which is pretty much the best politics podcast that exists. For anyone silly enough not to listen to it already. 

Never listened to it, I have no opinions on it, just opinions on what Rayner said which quite frankly is right out of the Pritti Patel book of idiocy through strength

[Jareth]

Happened across Question Time last night, usually avoid it, but Andy Burnham was excellent - constantly grilled by Fiona Bruce (as per usual from that massive Tory clearing in the woods) but always retorted with ideas and passionate about the subjects, even had the actual tory on the panel nodding along to what he was saying. 

[sparrow1988]

13 hours ago, bickster said:

Never listened to it, I have no opinions on it, just opinions on what Rayner said which quite frankly is right out of the Pritti Patel book of idiocy through strength

Wasn't the same person sharing posts with Seamus Heaney poems on social media on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday a few weeks back? Now she's advocating a shoot first, ask questions later course of action. Something doesn't quite add up there.

[markavfc40]

1 hour ago, Jareth said:

Happened across Question Time last night, usually avoid it, but Andy Burnham was excellent - constantly grilled by Fiona Bruce (as per usual from that massive Tory clearing in the woods) but always retorted with ideas and passionate about the subjects, even had the actual tory on the panel nodding along to what he was saying. 

He would make an excellent leader of Labour party. Starmer will get one shot at it in a general election within next couple of years and if he can't defeat one of the worst governments of all time he'll be out and I'd love to see Burnham get it. 

Edited February 18, 2022 by markavfc40

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, sparrow1988 said:

Wasn't the same person sharing posts with Seamus Heaney poems on social media on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday a few weeks back? Now she's advocating a shoot first, ask questions later course of action. Something doesn't quite add up there.

Shooting first and asking questions later has a significantly less than brilliant track record when it comes to the ability of the police to distinguish between Muslim men with beards and clean-shaven Brazilian electricians as well.

[Davkaus]

5 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Shooting first and asking questions later has a significantly less than brilliant track record when it comes to the ability of the police to distinguish between Muslim men with beards and clean-shaven Brazilian electricians as well.

Vote winner though, isn't it. Few people want to argue in favour of the terrorist suspects, or being tough on criminals. To a lot of tory England, it's all fun and games until it's you or a loved one being harassed, assaulted or killed by incompetence or a scumbag police officer having a bad day.

Same as the social safety net, the NHS, and basically everything else. A lot of people in this country don't give a **** unless it personally affects them.

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

Vote winner though, isn't it. Few people want to argue in favour of the terrorist suspects, or being tough on criminals. To a lot of tory England, it's all fun and games until it's you or a loved one being harassed, assaulted or killed by incompetence or a scumbag police officer having a bad day.

Same as the social safety net, the NHS, and basically everything else. A lot of people in this country don't give a **** unless it personally affects them.

Whether it's a vote winner or not I don't know; I certainly think you don't want to be seen as 'pro-terrorist' somehow, but whether you specifically benefit from saying these exact words I'm much more doubtful of.

What this is, though, is Blairism. A lot of people - very much including on this forum - seemed to want a return to Blairism in the aftermath of 2019, so if people wanted it, they shouldn't be sad at getting it. It is Blairite in both form and spirit: what I mean by 'form' is that you can imagine every one of New Labour's Home Secretaries saying the same thing, and meaning it. Between 1997 and 2010, Labour Home Secretaries brought in ASBOs, prison sentences of indefinite length, 28 day detention without a charge, and at least one of them authorised the CIA to take British citizens to Egypt in order to torture them. What I mean by 'spirit' is that the logic is the logic of the Labour right, which goes something like this: they believe that the Labour left are 'soft on terror' or 'objectively pro-terrorist' (depending on mood and dispostion), this is bad, being associated with the Labour left is an electoral liability, therefore we must say senselessly belligerent things about terror suspects.

Angela Rayner presumably is neither a psychopath who delights in the prospect of innocent people being killed by mistake, nor a moron who cannot see that is the inevitable consequence of what she is literally proposing. What she is doing is either displaying or performing (delete as you see fit) loyalty to the leadership's new direction.

[blandy]

27 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Whether it's a vote winner or not I don't know; I certainly think you don't want to be seen as 'pro-terrorist' somehow, but whether you specifically benefit from saying these exact words I'm much more doubtful of.

What this is, though, is Blairism. A lot of people - very much including on this forum - seemed to want a return to Blairism in the aftermath of 2019, so if people wanted it, they shouldn't be sad at getting it. It is Blairite in both form and spirit: what I mean by 'form' is that you can imagine every one of New Labour's Home Secretaries saying the same thing, and meaning it. Between 1997 and 2010, Labour Home Secretaries brought in ASBOs, prison sentences of indefinite length, 28 day detention without a charge, and at least one of them authorised the CIA to take British citizens to Egypt in order to torture them. What I mean by 'spirit' is that the logic is the logic of the Labour right, which goes something like this: they believe that the Labour left are 'soft on terror' or 'objectively pro-terrorist' (depending on mood and disposition), this is bad, being associated with the Labour left is an electoral liability, therefore we must say senselessly belligerent things about terror suspects.

Angela Rayner presumably is neither a psychopath who delights in the prospect of innocent people being killed by mistake, nor a moron who cannot see that is the inevitable consequence of what she is literally proposing. What she is doing is either displaying or performing (delete as you see fit) loyalty to the leadership's new direction.

I think this conflates several things in ways which are perhaps not valid.

At the risk of being misconstrued, I'll put it like this: The aspects of Labour (and Tory) Home secretaries where they delve into detention without charge, rendition and all that kind of stuff, as well as outright hostility to asylum seekers and others were very much at odds with not just "centrists" or "Blairites" own values and views, they are at odds with Liberal, small c conservative, Labour generally and British values. Authoritarianism, whether by instinct, or electoral calculation is often /nearly always the wrong move. There has to be higher morality. The majority of leftish, centrist, liberal and further left people are against that kind of thing.

But stuff like ASBOs, wishing to be more pro-active in shutting down anti-social behaviour and petty crime is a different area, for me. I think Rayner, on that specific part is right. it blights the lives of people on an ongoing basis and too often nothing is done.

Being associated with the further left end of Labour is (IMO) mostly an electoral liability, not because of policy, so much, but more because of behaviours exhibited by those particular left politicians. They are often every bit as hypocritical and frankly dodgy as politicians from other parts of the spectrum, but (in the eyes of the electorate) I suspect that the electorate almost factors in (sadly) an understanding that the right might be a bit cronyish, a bit favours for chums, a bit nasty, but at least they'll keep the economy OK and stuff. For the further left, there's (the general electorate see) many claims of purity and morality, (absent from the right), together with the hypocrisy and then also the fear that they'll stuff up the economy and the rest of it. and that rather than be "too hard" on the immigration and rendition stuff  they"ll be too soft. It's more than just an image problem, it's a people problem.

For as long as there are all these factions within the left, or within Labour it's going to struggle to win elections, which ought to be the point of Labour. Many don't see the people on the far left as actually being at all serious about winning the electorate's approval - because "the electorate is wrong and we're right".

I think I'd summarise it as a why question - ask the general public in England why they vote for whichever party in one or two words

Green - environment and animals and stuff

Lib Dems - Socially Liberal

Tories - Economy

Labour - NHS & Look after jobs and fairness

Of course there are plenty of other possible answers, but if Labour focuses on stuff that isn't that core thing (and the far left unfortunately does focus on other stuff) they won't get elected. To me, Blair is a war criminal, but he did focus on that stuff and he won.

*The above deliberately ignores Wars and Brexit and Pandemics and is meant to be over time, not single elections.

 

[HanoiVillan]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

The aspects of Labour (and Tory) Home secretaries where they delve into detention without charge, rendition and all that kind of stuff, as well as outright hostility to asylum seekers and others were very much at odds with not just "centrists" or "Blairites" own values and views, they are at odds with Liberal, small c conservative, Labour generally and British values. Authoritarianism, whether by instinct, or electoral calculation is often /nearly always the wrong move. There has to be higher morality. The majority of leftish, centrist, liberal and further left people are against that kind of thing.

I get the feeling, from our chats about politics over the years, that this paragraph is really describing *your* views, as much as anything, ie that you seem to have a broadly positive view of Labour's years in government, with certain large exceptions, especially the Iraq War, and also these authoritarian measures and stances you mention here. And while I have a broadly negative view of Labour's years in government, I agree with what I think is your position on these issues. But I think we need to be careful that we do not take our opinions and conflate them with wider movements.

The history of the Labour party has not been free of racialised attacks on migrants, or expanding powers of the police or justice system through authoritarian Home Secreataries. In fact, I would argue that since the end of Thatcher's time in power, the Labour party has even been slightly more 'authoritarian' than the Conservative party. I would suggest that there's a number of reasons for this, one being that Labour - especially but not only the Labour right - see issues around crime and policing as being a weak spot and so seek to overcompensate, and another being that Labour governments have given the relevant departments budget increases, not cuts.

I agree that there are *strains* within Labour thought that oppose authoritarianism and curbs to civil liberties, but these are predominantly found on the left of the party. The right has traditionally regarded 'civil liberties' arguments as an annoyance and a barrier associated with their both their left and liberal opponents. That's why we had a run of authoritarian Home Secretaries for 13 years of Labour government; it could not have happened if the policies they supported and implemented were 'at odds with' the 'values and views' of the faction responsible for them.

Moving down from the elite level of government to the public, is it true that 'the majority' of all the political spectrum from left to centre are against authoritarian policies? Well, it probably depends on the issue. But it's always worth remembering the difference between opinion and salience; whatever people tell pollsters, there is not much evidence that a large part of the electorare vote on civil liberties issues.

2 hours ago, blandy said:

For as long as there are all these factions within the left, or within Labour it's going to struggle to win elections, which ought to be the point of Labour. Many don't see the people on the far left as actually being at all serious about winning the electorate's approval - because "the electorate is wrong and we're right".

It's interesting that people see things this way. I mean it's probably worth remembering that we have a large amount of evidence at this point that many (not all, but a very large number) of people on the moderate end of Labour politics spent much of the 2016 to 2019 period deliberately and happily sabotaging their own party. Everybody is different, but I have to say that when I look back at the last few years, for me it's not the *left* of the party that was dedicated to ensuring the party didn't win an election. I don't expect we'll agree about this, of course!

[blandy]

4 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

I get the feeling, from our chats about politics over the years, that this paragraph is really describing *your* views, as much as anything, ie that you seem to have a broadly positive view of Labour's years in government, with certain large exceptions, especially the Iraq War, and also these authoritarian measures and stances you mention here. And while I have a broadly negative view of Labour's years in government, I agree with what I think is your position on these issues. But I think we need to be careful that we do not take our opinions and conflate them with wider movements.

Often people think (in bolitics threads) that when I post kind of analysis posts, that they represent my personal views on a policy or party stance. They don’t. By this I mean, for example, if I say “this policy/course of action will be unpopular” that can be read as “it’s unpopular with Blandy”.  That is not so. I believe when I approve or disapprove of something or someone I say so clearly.

Anyway, that said, I’d take a Blairite policy government over any Tory government. It’s not the ideal, or my preference, which would have been more courageous in addressing some of the stuff they ran away from, like the sticking to and expanding on Tory public private funding for hospitals etc. They were much too timid to start with, but it’s significantly preferable to the Tories shenanigans. I didn’t like Blair’s Iraq stuff, the cash for honours, the cosying up to Murdoch and much else. But third world debt cancellation, massive improvements in education, hospitals, the economy, Kosovo, sierra leone, constructive approach to Europe and many other things that the Tories would never do were in the positive column.

I’m not a royalist at all, but for example focusing on abolishing the monarchy would be a vote loser because the majority of the population (bafflingly) likes them. Even now, even with all the cruft around various nonces or dodgy dealings, they’re still popular. There are loads of this type of niche issues which the far left obsess around, but which will bar them from power. It doesn’t mean necessarily I am against them when I write that.

[Davkaus]

When David Davis looks like the reasonable man in the room, this Labour shadow cabinet might be full of clearings in the woods.

 

[chrisp65]

I really am beginning to dislike the Westminster Labour Party. Nasty.

In a week where they could be pushing the Basic Income changes Labour have introduced in Wales they’ve decided to ignore that and go literally for some shoot first ask questions later headlines.

 

[ml1dch]

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

No international crisis is too important to not be used as a wedge opportunity by Keir Starmer in his own battle with the left.