butchersapron
Bring back hanging
He could do with a shirt advisor too.
BBC - Owen Jones
- Thread starter Zabo
- Start date
He could do with a shirt advisor too.
To be applauded/cheered for charting that Britain follow the German path of industrial capitalism
to me that was a classic social democratic speech, whats the problem he doesn't share your politics, so what?
its great that loads of young people spent their saturday in this imaginative way....
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
That's the point - he doesn't share my politics, hence the political problems with what he is saying, who he is saying to, who is sponsoring him - you know...politics!
Zabo
Well-Known Member
You mean he's not an Oxbridge careerist? Isn't he a Labour Party member?
I'm still unsure - like many - who he is supposed to be representing other than himself. But...credit due, where credit due the lad can turns his hand and sharp pen to making a comment on absolutely anything except for animal rights in Transnistria. That really did stump him.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
Why are people like him - people with those politics - elevated by the Lebedev Independent?
Balbi
Hey, Dean Yager!
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
pint and paper. That way when he's not using them as props he can drink his pint and read his paper
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
What do people think of the arguments in this article?
Labour, the movement and the radical left
The formal argument is that a united front (a UF is a temporary campaign based on achieving a specific limited aim by class allies - it does not mean all people who agree should stop fighting with each other, it is a term with a meaning) is required to stop the cuts. This is further required in the longer term because there needs to be a social movement in place to fight the post 2015 cuts no matter who wins. (They mean labour). And that a key part of building this UF is labour party activists. So, the questions are 1) Doesn't this UF mean 'vote labour' with some rhetoric of social movement on top? 2) What a UF with that unstated aim can actually do given its hamstrug itself? 3) Who are these labour party activists? How many of them are there? What is their social weight? 4) What is the price of their involvement? 5) Others?
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Our hero is coming under pressure to stand against Clegg.....
"@OwenJones84: Got approached by local Labour activists to stand against Nick Clegg. Tempting and flattering, but will support someone else to oust him
"
No doubt he's also chuffed at the 'approach' but perhaps the seat isn't safe enough in the long term?
"@OwenJones84: Got approached by local Labour activists to stand against Nick Clegg. Tempting and flattering, but will support someone else to oust him
"No doubt he's also chuffed at the 'approach' but perhaps the seat isn't safe enough in the long term?
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
I'm sceptical of it. A UF with Labour is already hamstrung - look at the case of Labour anticuts councillors in opposition 2010-215 now. The Labour Left has zero room for manoeuvre. It's whole strategy is based around a growing economy and British economic power which can be slowly converted to nationalised form - it's game over IMO.
Do you remember similar such efforts around 1987 after the defeat of the miners strike? Apparently there in respects there was a de facto Labour Left-good WRP-SWP-IMG(Tariq)-Workers Power alliance in favour of a Labour Left vote against Kinnock by voting Labour.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
There's always a built in assumption in these arguments that there is a Labour left of consequence in the first place. "Labour activists" in the sense they are used in this kind of discussion are like choirs of angels to a certain kind of religious believer. They are assumed to exist, and no evidence of their existence in any kind of number is required or desired.
If you think that's somewhat peculiar in Britain, it's even more bizarre when people on the left in Ireland start talking about the Labour "rank and file" in strategic arguments. The whole Irish LP has a paper membership claim of circa 6,000. Which doesn't stop various leftists over here from talking about these imaginary armies.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
the labour left mostly left some time ago.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
It exists then? In what sense? Where?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
How do we make w/c politics revolve around the labour party? We pretend that a real substantial labour left exists within in it and has the potential to either win the party as a whole to its positions or is such a poweful force that it can both force a large scale split to the left and attract enough support from outside the party to establish itself as a long-term challenge to labour.
Remind me, who are the fantasists here?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Can you answer the question please?
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
simple; he talks 'left' enough to be sold to their (soft-left-ish) readers as a genuine 'left' voice, without him saying anything too radical and dangerous, as you would expect from a 'lesser evil, vote Labour' default-positioner
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
At a bare minimum there's there 22,000+ who voted Christine Shawcroft onto the NEC. That alone would make the Labour left around 8-10 times as big as even the biggest Trot group around today.
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
If an LP member over the past 20 years was genuinely 'Left' in any real, meaningful sense of the phrase - one that is more than just warm words, and one which unites ideas and action - then either they left Labour years ago, or are careerist ladder-climbers, or are simply wildy, massively delusional, to the point where one fears for their grip on reality. I mean - WHY would anyone want to stay in an organisation so totally devoid of any progressive, let alone (gasp!) socialist principles or values?
There's simply no reason to.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Are you serious with that reply? (Beyond you not knowing who voted for her or why?). How does the act of individuals voting for mean there is a labour left? Ok, that's your bare min answer, let's see what you have beyond that - as you must have something beyond that.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Oh come on - seriously? How does the fact she received the votes of over 20,000 Labour members when standing on a radical left platform show there are people who support these ideas? FFS. It might be inadequately organised, bureaucratically out-manoeuvred, and without real purchase on party policy - but it still exists and has a presence in national internal elections. (and that's before we get to the size and influence of the left in Labour aligned unions - like UNITE).
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yes, that's exactly what i'm asking you to outline - what 'radical left' ideas these are would be helpful too. It would also be interesting to hear why labour
briefing can only get a 100 people to a AGM that would decide if it was to exist as an independent voice of the labout left or not. That sort of thing is rather more important than a few votes isn't it?
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
well maybe it's just my crazy old prejudice that how many votes someone gets bears some sort of relation to the support for the political platform they're standing on?
As for the Briefing AGM - all that proves is that people often prefer to spend their Saturday afternoons in better ways than debating the internal management structures of minor left publications. Mad I know.
As for the Briefing AGM - all that proves is that people often prefer to spend their Saturday afternoons in better ways than debating the internal management structures of minor left publications. Mad I know.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
no, it's because you're stupid. because it's not like there's a level playing field for parties is it?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Are you going to answer the questions or not?
It may also indicate that the broad grouping of which they are supposed to be a leading representative has no actual effective existence that can be talked of. And that this is probably closer to the real picture than a few thousand passive votes that may represent very little beyond habitual passive voting by people who are not active in any sort of ongoing labour-left.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
So the number of votes candidates get bears no correlation to the political support they enjoy? It's just a random number generator?
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
There are two questions here which can't just be conflated
1) How many people in the party hold radical left views and
2) How well are they organised, and to what end?
I'd be the first to accept that the left in the party doesn't punch its weight sufficiently, or sufficiently often. But even so the fact that Shawcroft is on the NEC and Akehurst isn't is a political indicator that there is a left out there which can mobilise to win positions of influence.
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