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Post by cyberhat on Jul 26, 2024 9:18:46 GMT
The one good thing about him crushing the left out of The Labour Party is that it ends up strengthening the left. The more independents the better
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Post by Bernard Marx on Jul 26, 2024 9:31:55 GMT
The one good thing about him crushing the left out of The Labour Party is that it ends up strengthening the left. The more independents the better Agreed- mind you, that depends on how many Labour MPs get the message and actually leave the party. At least Corbyn went his own way in the end! There’s also the issue of Independents not having a unified banner or movement. Some point to the Greens, but I’m unsure how effective they are on their own or whether they’d be able to build any strong support base beyond affluent social liberals. A genuine working-class movement is sorely needed. I initially hoped Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain, for its faults, would catalyse such a movement (their manifesto hinted at such). Galloway at least had the sense to break away years ago. Yet despite almost winning three seats in the election, the WP are now Parliamentarily absent. An event not helped by the media blackout they were given, or by Sunak’s ridiculous dictatorial address outside Parliament after the Rochdale result in February/March. No doubt similar events will occur with authoritarian-in-chief Starmer in charge. At the moment, Reform seem to be the primary beneficiaries of the establishment pushback- probably because they have millionaire funding and media publicity, and because it’s easier to sell right-populism than socialism. The main upside is that over 50 marginal Labour seats- all once safe or substantial- are on the verge of going to the Greens, Independents or Workers Party. But whether this is sustainable will be known over time. |
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Post by cyberhat on Jul 26, 2024 9:58:31 GMT
The big strength of Galloway is he moves the left away from it's wimp image, an often rightly deserved image. Corbyn and the Labour Left seem to pay no heed to their hero Tony Benn's often quoted advice to the left, "toughen up". Making meek compromises when militant belligerence is demanded.
I wouldn't trust the Greens as far as I could throw them. But, I would be happy for them to be part of a left alliance. It would mean them standing down where they could split the vote in Workers Party/strong local independent seats.
Hopefully people will begin to see Reform for what they are, the establishments anti-establishment party. If they weren't they'd never be on the BBC, as opposed to never off it, like now.
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Post by ClockworkOcean on Sept 5, 2024 15:02:19 GMT
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Post by UncleDeadly on Sept 5, 2024 19:51:22 GMT
Hear hear! Always did like Mr. Benn....
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Post by Bernard Marx on Sept 5, 2024 20:59:34 GMT
Hear hear! Always did like Mr. Benn.... Yep, it’s a good clip. Beyond his apposite commentary on Thatcherite policy and the NHS’ formation, his points about innumerable socialist parties blurring together (and/or infighting) and the nominal left often being mired in “professional pessimism” are sensible critiques which echo many of my recent grievances and personal disillusionment. It’s a shame he’s no longer around. Galloway’s said that Tony Benn would be the Workers Party leader instead of him if he were alive, and he’d be a damn fine choice. The UK working class today have precisely nothing worthwhile to turn to- hence Reform’s upswing- and the insurgence of a new politics redolent of what Benn expresses in this clip would be sorely welcome today. |
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Post by UncleDeadly on Sept 6, 2024 14:04:38 GMT
Hear hear! Always did like Mr. Benn.... Yep, it’s a good clip. Beyond his apposite commentary on Thatcherite policy and the NHS’ formation, his points about innumerable socialist parties blurring together (and/or infighting) and the nominal left often being mired in “professional pessimism” are sensible critiques which echo many of my recent grievances and personal disillusionment. It’s a shame he’s no longer around. Galloway’s said that Tony Benn would be the Workers Party leader instead of him if he were alive, and he’d be a damn fine choice. The UK working class today have precisely nothing worthwhile to turn to- hence Reform’s upswing- and the insurgence of a new politics redolent of what Benn expresses in this clip would be sorely welcome today. Indeed. I found myself nodding my head throughout. Ten minutes and 34 seconds of the absolute truth. Hearing Benn expound on Thatcher is like hearing Chomsky on the Vietnam war; he knew exactly what went on and why. I think what resonated with me the most was his straightforward summing up that "If people really knew what was going on they would not accept it". No truer words spoken. Nothing has done more to explicitly enable Thatcher and her successors than this seemingly wilful ignorance; if you refuse to accept that anything is wrong then nothing will ever be right. That is not "negativity", it is direct action towards positivity.... |
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Post by cyberhat on Sept 6, 2024 15:02:04 GMT
Too many people get manipulated by the media into doing the opposite. Seeing what's wrong with the the world, then fighting to make it even worse.
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Post by Ludders II on Sept 6, 2024 15:02:33 GMT
Those of us old enough to remember what society was like before Thatcher can really see the long term damage that was done to Britain.
We now have a generation of politicians that have literally never experienced not living with neoliberal economics. 90% of today's politicians have no real concept of the 'left' as it used to be. Nor even a different model of capitalism such as Keynesianism.
And that's just the economic side, without going into the cultural impact of Thatcherism, where even more damage was done, IMO.
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Post by cyberhat on Sept 6, 2024 16:43:02 GMT
Those of us old enough to remember what society was like before Thatcher can really see the long term damage that was done to Britain. We now have a generation of politicians that have literally never experienced not living with neoliberal economics. 90% of today's politicians have no real concept of the 'left' as it used to be. Nor even a different model of capitalism such as Keynesianism. And that's just the economic side, without going into the cultural impact of Thatcherism, where even more damage was done, IMO. This exactly
They think social liberalism is the left. Follow Carol Vorderman, think gender matters more than class. If it came down to the crunch, they'd pick a fascist over a socialist to stop any threat to their pampered lifestyle. Call anyone calling out their bullshit "class reductionist". Are against every war safely in the past, but support every current war. All while describing people trying to stop these wars as "tankies".
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Post by Bernard Marx on Sept 18, 2024 22:53:35 GMT
Current opinion polling has Labour at 29%: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_electionwww.moreincommon.org.uk/media/w50noqnp/mic-first-vi.xlsxUnder these numbers, they’d lose Bethnal Green, Rochdale, both Birmingham Seats and Ilford North to left candidates (Electoral Calculus). Although I suppose it’s no surprise, given that this appalling new government has voted to keep the Tory two-child benefit cap and scrap the Winter Fuel Allowance under false pretences. How can there be a “£22 billion economic black hole” when the government budget is £1226 billion? It’s bugger all, and one could easily resolve such an issue by scrapping swathes of tax havens and going for ultra-wealthy tax exiles, instead of indiscriminately targeting pensioners (with no clear class line established at all) in a revamp of Cameronite austerity. And in the wake of these incessant Thatcherite invocations, Starmer’s Stalinesque grip on the party means that next to no MPs will dissent on his policy line, only offering tokenistic gestures whilst voting for every Labour policy implementation in the House of Commons. What a depressing shower this is. |
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Post by ClockworkOcean on Sept 19, 2024 7:41:43 GMT
Corbyn should have purged these Tory entryist motherf*ckers while he had the chance. He should have used the release of the Chilcot report to expel Blair, Mandelson, Campbell, et al. and withdraw the whip from all remaining MPs who voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, eliminating most of the Blairites in time for the 2017 General Election. Then he should have cleared out the remaining stragglers by implementing mandatory reselection when the membership demanded it in 2018.
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Post by Bernard Marx on Sept 19, 2024 7:56:08 GMT
Corbyn should have purged these Tory entryist motherf*ckers while he had the chance. He should have used the release of the Chilcot report to expel Blair, Mandelson, Campbell, et al. and withdraw the whip from all remaining MPs who voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, eliminating most of the Blairites in time for the 2017 General Election. Then he should have cleared out the remaining stragglers by implementing mandatory reselection when the membership demanded it in 2018. Damn right. The immediate political lesson of the 2016 Chicken Coup was that changing the Labour Party from within in co-operation with Blairites who loathed Corbyn’s guts was a fundamentally futile task. Had Corbyn not constantly embarrassed himself by watering down his policy platform and shadow cabinet- culminating in his reluctant embrace of Starmer’s fiddled 2018-2019 Brexit policy- he could have not only won power but also fundamentally shifted the country’s wider political ethos. There was a huge anti-austerity mood in the UK during his tenure as leader, one which saw millions of people asking the right questions. Corbyn tapped into a wider stream of political consciousness in 2017 which rejected the callous economic and social order underpinning the UK for decades, thus gaining 12.9 million votes, 3.2 million more than Starmer in 2024. I was in Secondary School that year, and the number of students seeking answers beyond that of the mainstream media and Con/NuLabour orthodoxy was astonishing. Nevertheless, what Corbyn succeeded at intuitively tapping into, he failed to provide a coherent or long-lasting conduit for. In turn, we’ve been plunged into what is ostensibly a one-party state dictated by warmongering, austerity-loving, nuclear-war longing, benefits bashing, genocide-enabling careerists who all think in precisely the same way, whether churned out of the Oxbridge factory or simply trying to emulate its worst excesses. The onslaught on democratic rights seen over the last half a decade by all political parties has been staggering, no doubt motivated in part by the desire to never witness a dissenting party or population come to the fore ever again. |
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Post by ClockworkOcean on Sept 19, 2024 15:02:29 GMT
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Post by Bernard Marx on Sept 19, 2024 15:39:35 GMT
Interesting that Novara ostensibly admit to being duped at the end of this video... Still, I guess this confirms for definite that those most complicit in ousting Corbyn are now sitting right at the top of the Labour Party Apparatus. |
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