PR1Berske
Alligator in chains by the park gates.
Not in modern times. The most recent case of a party leader losing their seat was Jo Swinson for the LibDems; prior to that I think we're going back to the pre-45 era.
Keir Starmer's time is up
- Thread starter agricola
- Start date
PTK
Paul Kegan
For a start, OCISA uses the name of Corbyn in its title, when it has nothing to do with him.
It’s very name sounds cranky, if not something invented by right-wingers to discredit the left.
It is registered as a company.
Its whole modus operandi seems to be elitist, and contrary to the traditions of the labour movement.
I don’t like what I have seen of it.
Monkeygrinder's Organ
Dodgy geezer swilling vapid lager
Yeah I'd love to be wrong, but this basically. It's not like there's a shortage of previous independent left candidates is it and the history doesn't really suggest the electorate anywhere is just itching to vote for them.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
"Taken out of context" spooky powers of prediction here
Is it me but isn't the spokesperson talking shit?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
hmm, high point of Left of Labour candidates in H&SP - Candy Udwin's 971 back in 2001 (plus another 359 for the SLP). Low point, 2019's 37 for the Socialist Equality Party. An organisation with a better name than OCwhatever might just get 1000, but more like 500 tops.
MickiQ
In My Defence I was left Unsupervised
Who is Count Binface going to run against? Rishi Sevenbins is the current PM of course but pretty much every political pundit reckons Starmer is a shoe-in.have fun
although i still think there should be a candidate campaigning in an alpaca costume...
Johnny Vodka
The Abominable Scotsman
Looks piss-weak.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Odd that this wasn't corrected earlier. Not like there was a shortage of people calling Starmer out for what he appeared to say.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
It is a real struggle to listen to him talk isn't it? He always sounds like he's about to burst into tears. Not because of the horrors and crimes being discussed, just because someone has asked him in his capacity as a senior politician to explain his position on something. Don't these people know that he should be prime minister? It's obvious, isn't it? Why do they keep asking him questions and shit?
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
He has the most annoying voice of any current politician except for possibly Rees-Mogg; not his accent, his actual voice. Weirdly, Rachel Reeves has the same annoying voice.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
I don’t think Starmer will ever star in a crime comedy caper, unlike Corbyn:
GarveyLives
Well-Known Member
Israel-Palestine war: Keir Starmer supports Israel's 'right' to cut Gaza's water and power
The use of starvation of a civilian population as a method of warfare is apparently prohibited under customary international law.
The Right Honourable Sir Keir Starmer KCB KC MP is - or was - a human rights lawyer.
IMO events in Gaza could derail Starmer's attempts to be a government in waiting.
There are around 15 or so Labour MPs who are Muslims. The article below shows how the current situation could cause internal problems within Labour:
Muslim MP Forced to Flee Labour Conference After Visiting Palestine Stall | Novara Media
Apsana Begum left the party’s Liverpool conference after the Tory chairman demanded she have the whip withdrawn. Rivkah Brown reports.novaramedia.com
And of course it isn't only Muslims who won't be happy with Starmer's support for the horrors in Gaza and its going to make their persecution of Corbyn supporters for supporting Palestine look very bad.
The fact is, 6% of the country is Muslim and they are politically overrepresented within the Labour Party. Support for what could turn out to be a genocide against the Palestinians will almost certainly throw Labour into renewed chaos.
Labour councillors revolt over Starmer's policy on Israel
PTK
Paul Kegan
I think it dodgy indeed to be invoking the name of someone without their permission.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
PTK
Paul Kegan
If you look at the OCISA website it is more like a business plan than a politocal programme.
"The offer we would make to the candidate elected (the mechanics of election are being decided) would have to carry sufficient credibility to allow the candidate to have a fighting chance of unseating Starmer so perhaps a warchest of £50,000, a local constituency office (set up and ready to go), an election agent and the resources to campaign with boots on the ground locally, would attract the right person. That is the plan."
andysays
Love and solidarity
Do you know for a fact that they don't have his permission?
I have no axe to grind for OCISA, and I fully expect their attempt to unseat Starmer to be unsuccessful, but what you're doing here is simply smearing them with anything of substance to back it up.
And TBH that seems to me to be worthy of the description "politically dodgy".
Eric Jarvis
Well-Known Member
1. The candidate will be standing on the basis of accepting the 2019 Labour Manifesto as a policy baseline.
2. Can't argue the first, however it's just not important, it's not as if it's another attempt to create a political party.
3. Nobody involved has a significant amount of money, however a few of the founders own their own home, and given the Labour Party's current propensity for lawfare it makes sense to have some degree of protection from being hammered personally by massive legal bills over a spurious law suit. This is learning from what has been done to Corbyn and Livingstone to name but two. As a limited company the Labour Party can't vindictively go after us to wreck our lives if we embarrass them. OCISA is dissolved completely the moment the general election count is finished in Holborn St Pancras. We all walk away knackered but otherwise unscathed.
4. Really? Elitist in what way? Getting out on the street and surveying the opinions of the electorate in the constituency BEFORE starting the process of selecting the candidate is the very opposite of elitist.
5. That's entirely your call. However, what have you actually seen? Are you in Holborn St Pancras?
Eric Jarvis
Well-Known Member
There has been no formal permission nor attempt to obtain any formal permission. However Jeremy is aware of it has been given every chance to raise objections if he has any. The important thing is to not do anything that gives genuine legal grounds for Labour's refusal to restore the Parliamentary whip to him or reject him as a Labour candidate. So all contact is entirely informal by necessity.
Having spent yesterday on several council estates in the constituency as well as meeting with two of the local Muslim community organisations I think you probably underestimate the level of anger there is amongst his constituents.
Eric Jarvis
Well-Known Member
There is no political programme. There is no attempt to create a political party. Other groups are doing that but we aren't waiting for them to finish doing it. It's just a plan to get one MP elected in one single constituency and then dissolve the organisation that did it. There is no manifesto, a single independent MP doesn't need one and shouldn't really have one. So basically it is just a short term project plan, not any attempt to plan for a government. Why would it be anything else? It is explicitly all about avoiding the mistakes that have been made by multiple left initiatives over the last few decades. If you want it to be exactly like TUSC, Respect, Left Unity etc then you are simply demanding that a failed pattern be repeated just because it is what you are used to. We are looking instead at what happened at the start of the 20th century that led to the formation of the Labour Party, something that may have ended in failure a century later but which at least led to some important and progressive changes. As yet nobody in the OCISA core team has any interest in a political career, and if we do the candidate selection process well enough then it will stay that way and there will be an MP who isn't in Parliament to fill their own pockets and further their personal political ambitions.
I'm a little bit confused, Eric Jarvis, as you say this:
Also I'm sure you've thought of this but why would people vote for someone without knowing what they're standing for or what they believe in? And how will people know they're standing for you if they appear on the ballot paper as an independent (unless of course you are registered as a political party -- haven't checked)?
Then this:
Is the former a basis for candidate selection and the latter what they're telling/not telling the voters or something else?
Also I'm sure you've thought of this but why would people vote for someone without knowing what they're standing for or what they believe in? And how will people know they're standing for you if they appear on the ballot paper as an independent (unless of course you are registered as a political party -- haven't checked)?
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Eric Jarvis
Well-Known Member
Just under 20% of Starmer's electorate are Muslim. That's pushing ten thousand votes right there, and they are well organised in the area, and several Muslim community groups have already sought contact with OCISA. I was expecting it to be hard work to get in contact with them, but they came to us. Next up is organising students and council tenants. Get that done and Starmer's political career is toast even without anyone else voting. The SEP is precisely the sort of left initiative OCISA is trying to be as different from as possible. If you try to organise as an elitist clique bound by a precise ideology you aren't going to get anywhere in a diverse, largely non-conformist, with pockets of serious deprivation by preaching any ideology. This is all based on Lambeth, Liverpool, and Livingstone's GLC in the 80s. Get the various dispossessed communities together and let them lead the fight for what they need. This is not about a bunch of middle class political junkies devising their perfect ideological blueprint for society and then desperately hoping that somebody else agrees with it. This is about helping the people who have been totally screwed over by the establishment do something about it.
Eric Jarvis
Well-Known Member
What will go on the ballot will be decided to at least some extent by the candidate. When the time comes I will mention that suggestion.
Eric Jarvis
Well-Known Member
The thing here is that this is not business as usual in which established political parties do battle amongst each other solely on the basis of their national polling. If you look at it that way then it is almost impossible for any MP with a large majority to lose their seat. That isn't the situation at the moment. The two largest parties are imploding, losing voters and members, and the third and fourth largest parties are utterly ineffectual. So it is wide open to anyone else who can create an on the ground organisation and raise enough funding for a decent street level campaign in any single constituency. It is NOT business as usual. The closest parallel is the late 19th and early 20th century.
Eric Jarvis
Well-Known Member
Offer to stand. Though you will have to provide your own costume.have fun
although i still think there should be a candidate campaigning in an alpaca costume...
zedr
new but not *that* new
£50k could buy quite a nice alpaca costume.
Eric Jarvis
Well-Known Member
It can't all go on the costume. A lot of it will have to go on renting some land to build an appropriate environment for an alpaca somewhere around Primrose Hill. The constituency office isn't going to come cheap.
(Copied this response across the Israel thread to avoid derailing it)
You are wrong, because it isn't just about how it effects people's votes, but it is inherently destabilising to the Labour Party because Corbyn and his supporters were railroaded based on the idea that any criticism of Israel is anti-semitic. Israel conducting ethnic cleansing against Gaza - which they are, it seems almost certain they will annex North Gaza having already violently driven a million people from their homes - will be seem as vindicating Corbyn in speaking up for Palestine, and potentially reignite Labour's civil war. The resignations of councillors is likely only the beginning of it.
Starmer emails all councillors over Israel-Gaza as party tensions grow - LabourList
Horror in Gaza Since our email was sent out this morning, Keir Starmer has written to all Labour…
labourlist.org
I know in my local area, popular North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll was denied standing for re-election due to extremely tenuous accusations of anti-semitism - basically he shared a stage with Ken Loach and talked about movies instead of berating him for "anti-semitism" because he refused to disown all Labour members expelled from the Party based on frequently (but not always) tenuous allegations of anti-semitism. So opponents of Starmer were expelled for anti-semitism on spurious grounds for supporting Palestine. Ken Loach said it was a politically motivated purge so therefore he is anti-semitic and was expelled. Jamie Driscoll talked to Ken Loach about movies instead of berating him for being anti-semitic so therefore he is himself anti-semitic and was denied running for re-election despite local popularity and success.
Driscoll will be standing as an independent and taking most of the local Labour Party campaigners with him. This gives more energy to his campaign. And this is just one local area, I believe there are similar fissures and tensions in local Labour Parties around the country and this moves these tensions significantly closer to boiling point. As discussed on the Keir Starmer thread, there is also an attempt to unseat Starmer with an independent continuity Corbyn candidate in a constituency which is 30% Muslim and also with a high student population. I'm sure there are other manifestations of this tension around the country.
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