Diane Abbott suspended as Labour MP.

[Rob Ray]

In 2002, 12 years after she left Downing Street for the last time, Margaret Thatcher was asked what she thought was her greatest achievement. According to one person at the dinner that night, she replied: “Tony Blair and New Labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds."

(FT)

 

[nino_savatte]

Surely it matters why these MP's are being targeted or your concerns are going to be based on irrational fears and not what is actually happening? I can understand why you might feel that way, but if it isn't true then what?

Come again?

 

[nino_savatte]

Labour has always problematised people of colour, but especially Black people. From the days of Windrush, through to the late 1970s, when it did nothing to challenge the rise of the far-right, to its refusal to allow Black Sections, to the present-day. This David Olusoga documentary is a good place to start.

 

[Pickman's model]

Labour has always problematised people of colour, but especially Black people. From the days of Windrush, through to the late 1970s, when it did nothing to challenge the rise of the far-right, to its refusal to allow Black Sections, to the present-day. This David Olusoga documentary is a good place to start.

not only did they do nothing to challenge the rise of the far-right but both then and under blair and brown they pursued policies which facilitated the rise of the national front and british national party. and of course before founding the new party and the british union of fascists sir oswald mosley was a labour mp

 

[Pickman's model]

Come again?

god no, don't encourage him

 

[DotCommunist]

and now I read that the party is '....is proposing to scrap the duty for Constituency Labour Parties to have equalities officers on their executives, radically scale back the scope of policy debate at its conference, and expel supporters of independent rivals like Jeremy Corbyn'

 

[Pickman's model]

and now I read that the party is '....is proposing to scrap the duty for Constituency Labour Parties to have equalities officers on their executives, radically scale back the scope of policy debate at its conference, and expel supporters of independent rivals like Jeremy Corbyn'

i always thought that the policy debate at conference was a clever way for the leadership to allow passions to be resolved without actually committing themselves to anything, being as the labour party leadership never adopt policies thrust upon them by conference. it's never been a party in which members could really exert an influence (outside the leadership election and they won't let the members do something like corbyn again).

 

[sleaterkinney]

We have Braverman because of 30+ years of politics that have always said it is necessary to flank the Tories to the right, resulting in the Tories tacking right to keep ahead. Corbyn briefly threw this into chaos, but the right wing of the Labour Party — the very people you’re now shilling for — found a way to fuck that

The Labour party are not the reason that Corbyn lost time and time again.

 

[kabbes]

Are you kidding me? Corbyn is the only reason the Labour Party came as close to winning as they did in 2017. And the failure in 2019 is because the party pushed him in a direction he didn’t want to go in

 

[andysays]

The Labour party are not the reason that Corbyn lost time and time again.

I think you've got that the wrong way round, TBH.

 

[Pickman's model]

The Labour party are not the reason that Corbyn lost time and time again.

What are you going to say when shammer snatches defeat from the jaws of victory? A tory win is well on the cards despite the almost unceasing attempts by Johnson, truss and sunak to bolster the Labour party's rating in the polls. Any half-competent politician would have labour ahead by rather more than 20%, anyone who showed empathy for voters, who offered an ounce of hope in the future, who declared for investment in public services and rolling back 14 years of tory cuts, who acknowledged there's a case to have a closer relationship with Europe within the eea and / or customs union if not in the EU would trounce sunak at the next election. And without saying anything about nationalisation, without saying anything about trade union laws, without addressing the virtual police state we live in.

Shammer's the man to let the tories win. He's shown he can't make a promise he'll keep - he's at least as untrustworthy as sunak. And he doesn't have sunak's advantage of not representing a London constituency. Shammer comes across as a smug metropolitan git in the worst senses of all those words. Out on the campaign trail he'll alienate far more voters than he attracts. And remember Labour need a 12 point lead on election night to win, sunak only needs to be ahead by 5

 

[Sue]

What are you going to say when shammer snatches defeat from the jaws of victory?

'See what you've done, Pickman's model, see what you've done???? '

 

[Sasaferrato]

and now I read that the party is '....is proposing to scrap the duty for Constituency Labour Parties to have equalities officers on their executives, radically scale back the scope of policy debate at its conference, and expel supporters of independent rivals like Jeremy Corbyn'

A bit fascist is it not?

 

[sleaterkinney]

Are you kidding me? Corbyn is the only reason the Labour Party came as close to winning as they did in 2017. And the failure in 2019 is because the party pushed him in a direction he didn’t want to go in

They didn’t come close to winning in 17, the tories still had 60 odd seats over them.

 

[teqniq]

The Labour party are not the reason that Corbyn lost time and time again.

Delusional.

 

[gosub]

The tories didn't have spending plans beyond the first year, so we can't know. We can know that he never put up the top rate of income tax. We can also know that he subscribed to the Laffer bullshit that you can't put it up. Because he said so.

I don't remember it that way. Blair was more the sales guy, money side of running things was more Brown. Blair on money didn't stretch much further than what's in it for me?

And by spending plans do you means sticking inside Maastrict borrowing constraints? Coz that was their magic trick -the third way. Massively extending a leasing 'idea' the Tories did indeed come up with.

 

[Sasaferrato]

What are you going to say when shammer snatches defeat from the jaws of victory? A tory win is well on the cards despite the almost unceasing attempts by Johnson, truss and sunak to bolster the Labour party's rating in the polls. Any half-competent politician would have labour ahead by rather more than 20%, anyone who showed empathy for voters, who offered an ounce of hope in the future, who declared for investment in public services and rolling back 14 years of tory cuts, who acknowledged there's a case to have a closer relationship with Europe within the eea and / or customs union if not in the EU would trounce sunak at the next election. And without saying anything about nationalisation, without saying anything about trade union laws, without addressing the virtual police state we live in.

Shammer's the man to let the tories win. He's shown he can't make a promise he'll keep - he's at least as untrustworthy as sunak. And he doesn't have sunak's advantage of not representing a London constituency. Shammer comes across as a smug metropolitan git in the worst senses of all those words. Out on the campaign trail he'll alienate far more voters than he attracts. And remember Labour need a 12 point lead on election night to win, sunak only needs to be ahead by 5

Starmer, I'm told, has basically reneged on all the things he promised when running for the Labour leadership.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I don't remember it that way. Blair was more the sales guy, money side of running things was more Brown. Blair on money didn't stretch much further than what's in it for me?

And by spending plans do you means sticking inside Maastrict borrowing constraints? Coz that was their magic trick -the third way. Massively extending a leasing 'idea' the Tories did indeed come up with.

No. I mean that the Tories published their spending/taxation plans before the 97 election, and Labour pledged to match them.

Blair did bang on about the Laffer curve and was of the opinion that any tax rate higher than 40% would reduce the overall intake and so should never be contemplated. He was a dogmatic right-winger on economics.

 

[Pickman's model]

They didn’t come close to winning in 17, the tories still had 60 odd seats over them.

Yet strangely the tories had to get into bed with the dup to govern

 

[Sasaferrato]

Yet strangely the tories had to get into bed with the dup to govern

 

[two sheds]

2017 votes

 

[sleaterkinney]

Delusional.

Diane Abbot would've made a great Home Secretary!

 

[littlebabyjesus]

They didn’t come close to winning in 17, the tories still had 60 odd seats over them.

They came agonisingly close to winning. Nobody other than the DUP was going to team up with the Tories. A broad coalition with the SNP and various other small parties would have been a very tricky thing to have pulled off, but if the Tories + DUP hadn't given a majority, it would have been a possibility. The Conservatives just scraped in.

 

[phildwyer]

They came agonisingly close to winning. Nobody other than the DUP was going to team up with the Tories. A broad coalition with the SNP and various other small parties would have been a very tricky thing to have pulled off, but if the Tories + DUP hadn't given a majority, it would have been a possibility. The Conservatives just scraped in.

Jeremy Corbyn was 2,227 votes away from becoming Prime Minister

Winning seven Tory knife-edge seats could have put Labour leader in Downing Street

www.independent.co.uk

 

[sleaterkinney]

They came agonisingly close to winning. Nobody other than the DUP was going to team up with the Tories. A broad coalition with the SNP and various other small parties would have been a very tricky thing to have pulled off, but if the Tories + DUP hadn't given a majority, it would have been a possibility. The Conservatives just scraped in.

He was seventy seats short of a majority, that’s not agonisingly close at all.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

He was seventy seats short of a majority, that’s not agonisingly close at all.

Depends what you call winning, I guess. The UK's rotten electoral system encourages the strange idea that anything short of an absolute majority for your party isn't winning. That's not true, though is it, otherwise countries with more sensible systems would never produce winners. But last time I looked most of those countries have governments with leaders. If the end result of the 2017 election had been Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister, that would have been a win, just as it was for David Cameron in 2010.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

I think the 'he nearly won' thing can get a bit overstretched tbf, but it's not like he came along and interrupted an unbroken glory era of centrist success is it. And if there's an inifinite number of universes in which every possibility is played out, none of them would include a remain-centrist victory in 2019.

 

[Wilf]

He was seventy seats short of a majority, that’s not agonisingly close at all.

If we want to be precise with language, I'd probably agree with you. Labour were behind on both the popular vote and number of seats. However, it was still a spectacular result in the circumstances of the time - the persistent attacks on Corbyn and the treachery within Labour's own ranks. Admittedly, an awful campaign by May, but even you have to admit Corbyn/Labour did extremely well.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I think the 'he nearly won' thing can get a bit overstretched tbf, but it's not like he came along and interrupted an unbroken glory era of centrist success is it. And if there's an inifinite number of universes in which every possibility is played out, none of them would include a remain-centrist victory in 2019.

I think it would have been difficult, and any broad alliance would have been very unstable. But if the Tories hadn't got a majority with the DUP, there was no other way into power for them. Corbyn could have had a go, and perhaps failed, to form a coalition. If he'd failed, there would have been another election, and who knows what the result of that would have been? Not necessarily a good one for the Tories, who weren't on the up at the time, quite the reverse.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

If we want to be precise with language, I'd probably agree with you. Labour were behind on both the popular vote and number of seats. However, it was still a spectacular result in the circumstances of the time - the persistent attacks on Corbyn and the treachery within Labour's own ranks. Admittedly, an awful campaign by May, but even you have to admit Corbyn/Labour did extremely well.

In countries with PR, being the biggest party doesn't count for much if no other parties will work with you. Tories were lucky they had the Headbangers to prop them up. Nobody else was going to.

The UK's crazy system more or less ensures a minority government every single time. Last time any single party got even close to 50% of the vote was many decades ago.