Galloway returns to Parliament in sensational win in Bradford West - Labour/Coalition smashed

[butchersapron]

he's right in what he is setting out to achieve, wrong in the way he's trying to achieve it. This is a perfectly consistent position.

He didn't say that he was setting out on the same path as you - he simply said that if labour don't do what they traditionally did (or were popularly seen to do) then they would face further challenges such as his. He didn't offer pie in the sky idiocy about joining labour and reclaiming labour - he made a populist appeal to others to do what he has done. What he has done - you argue - is impossible on a wider scale - but your whole approach is based on arguing that it's possible. The central incoherency, the many faced loon approach always shines though.

 

[butchersapron]

I've never said "vote Labour because we're shit" - that is your stupid caricature. And what specifically is so stupid about believing that the Labour leadership can be pressured into a more traditional social democratic approach, especially in circumstances where it's so dependent on union funds?

Yes you have, repeatedly. You have argued that people should vote labour in order to feel disenfranchised so that they can then get beyond labour - of course the real silliness comes at this point because in your fantasy world the next step is joining and voting labour again to then go beyond labour. You're a clown.

What's so silly about your non-existent army pressurising the labour party leadership into adopting a traditional social democratic approach? Maybe you could petition the queen? That you don't understand how historically daft, how intellectually bereft this mad idea is tells its own story.

 

[articul8]

He didn't say that he was setting out on the same path as you - he simply said that if labour don't do what they traditionally did (or were popularly seen to do) then they would face further challenges such as his. He didn't offer pie in the sky idiocy about joining labour and reclaiming labour - he made a populist appeal to others to do what he has done.

Until what? Until Labour finds itself pressured to move back to what they traditionally were seen as. It's a different route to the same end point.

What he has done - you argue - is impossible on a wider scale - but your whole approach is based on arguing that it's possible..

My approach is based on the fact that only in limited and exceptional cases can Labour be defeated from the left for the forseable future, hence pressure has to be exerted from inside. The idea that "doing a Galloway" is possible on a national scale is the real fantasy[/quote]

 

[butchersapron]

So yes, vote labour we're shit.In fact, you go one better - join labour, we're shit.

Yes, and it hasn't appeared once on this thread apart from your repeated insistence that this is what other posters are saying.

 

[articul8]

Yes you have, repeatedly. You have argued that people should vote labour in order to feel disenfranchised so that they can then get beyond labour - of course the real silliness comes at this point because in your fantasy world the next step is joining and voting labour again to then go beyond labour. You're a clown.

People should - at a General Election - vote Labour and at the same time demand that their interests are properly represented, even though they will do so in the knowledge the Labour is only the least worst option. If they want to make sure Labour offers more of an alternative they should fight inside the party and work with others to build maximum pressure to make this happen.

What's so silly about your non-existent army pressurising the labour party leadership into adopting a traditional social democratic approach? Maybe you could petition the queen? That you don't understand how historically daft, how intellectually bereft this mad idea is tells its own story.

Leaderships find their freedom to act limited by a variety of external factors. But its about time that the unions and broader labour movement made ourselves into more of an active constraint on their ability to keep up the neoliberal drift, and to begin to reverse the tide. This is not impossible.

 

[butchersapron]

Learn the lesson - don't fight labour. You might end up like George Galloway and get elected. That's what you took from thursday - vote and join labour. Because we're shit.

The leadership are not in any way whatsoever blocked in their actions by you and your labour left - they couldn't care less about you. You are an utter irrelevance to them. What's impossible is getting you to recognise this - despite actually knowing it. And it's no good describing an ideal situation and saying that this is what you're on the road to - that's the worst sort of back slapping self-deception possible.

 

[articul8]

Learn the lesson - don't fight labour. You might end up like George Galloway and get elected. That's what you took from thursday - vote and join labour. Because we're shit.

Change Labour by any means necessary - but it comes back to changing Labour and will do the forseable future.

 

[butchersapron]

Change Labour by any means necessary - but it comes back to changing Labour and will do the forseable future.

It does for you, because that's how limited your vision is. Because that's how blind you are - and worse, you insist they everyone else follows you and pokes their eyes out.

 

[articul8]

In classical tragedy the blind are usually the true seers.

 

[JimW]

Change Labour by any means necessary...

Not ruling out the armed option is about as realistic as the rest of your plans.

 

[butchersapron]

In classical tragedy the blind are usually the true seers.

A martyr, a warrior and a seer. Busy days.

And find me one blind seer other than tireseas (which i know i've spelt wrong).

 

[articul8]

Lear (for example) sees the truth of his situation clearer once his eyes have been put out.

 

[butchersapron]

Apart from that not being classical tragedy of course and him not being a seer. But crack on...

(hint: just saying blind people in plays doesn't count)

 

[Belushi]

In classical tragedy the blind are usually the true seers.

Oh fuck off

 

[articul8]

Apart from that not being classical tragedy of course and him not being a seer. But crack on...

You didn't ask for another example from classical tragedy, and there is an argument that Lear is indeed a seer (of sorts).

Were you trying to get me to say Cassandra?

 

[butchersapron]

No, but you did. I wasn't trying to get you to say anything other than stand up your attempted classical allusion.

 

[articul8]

well it's stood up

 

[butchersapron]

By someone not a seer and not from classical tragedy. That's you example of a blind seer from classical tragedy. You can't even get this right.

 

[articul8]

You've got two classical seers already - Tiresias and Cassandra. How many do you need?

 

[butchersapron]

I asked for a blind seer from classical tragedy other than tiresias. How many have you came up with?

 

[ska invita]

David Blunkett?

...I'll leave you to it.

 

[ViolentPanda]

how is it different from Bethnal Green. Galloway can whip up an anti-Labour mood to further his own profile. Where's this going?

Q: Would Galloway have been able to whip anything at all up if an "anti-Labour mood" didn't already exist for him to exploit.

A: No. He may be facile, but he's not able to generate such shifts in political loyalty (because despite what some Labourites are noising about, while it may have been the "Muslim vote" that won for Galloway, they didn't in any way constitute a majority of the electorate in either case) of his own accord.

This isn't the public giving Labour a bloody nose to teach it an isolated lesson, this is generalised discontent with the existing political status quo, and while you hacks are whining about how this doesn't mean that people hate your party, you're missing the point of what such an instance indicates to the electorate.

 

[butchersapron]

Remember VP, no lessons from this for articul8 - well, one lesson - vote and join labour because we're shit.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Christ

Didn't he lead the Labour party from 1994 to 2007?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Lots of people who wanted to inflict a defeat on Labour turned out and voted Galloway (including Tories), a fair % of Labour voters stayed at home, whilst another proportion switched. A bit misleading to talk about "swing" in relation to GE figures.

Nice mantra, but ultimately "it's a one-time bloody nose deal" is just as meaningless as "Om Mani Padme Hum".

 

[Lo Siento.]

Change Labour by any means necessary - but it comes back to changing Labour and will do the forseable future.

change labour according to what precedent? Name a Labour Party world wide that has been "reclaimed" for the left.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

A martyr, a warrior and a seer. Busy days.

.

Only one class per character allowed, Thief is generally the best to start with imo.

 

[ViolentPanda]

what kind of Labour party is on offer though? Or is one Labour politician only the same as another? John McDonnell the same as James Purnell? Jeremy Corbyn the same as Frank Field?

As we both well know, for every McDonnell and Corbyn there are half a dozen Purnell and Field manques. That is the kind of Labour party on offer. A kind of Labour party people by far more neo-liberalists, Fabian top-downists and neo-Victorian moralists than by genuine social democrats.

 

[articul8]

I asked for a blind seer from classical tragedy other than tiresias. How many have you came up with?

one, which was what you asked for (Cassandra)

 

[butchersapron]

Have another go.