redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
That is exactly my point.
Does it? Where is the evidence of this? What does this "challenging" consist of? A couple of parliamentarians?
Keir Starmer's time is up
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teqniq
DisMembered
No mention of getting the extremely wealthy and multinational corporations to pay their fair share of tax but British recovery bonds and start-up loans for new businesses. Just 
www.independent.co.uk
e2a this would be more like it imo:
Keir Starmer sets out plan for British Recovery Bond to allow people to invest billions in local communities
Labour leader says UK cannot go ‘back to business as usual’ after Covid pandemic
www.independent.co.uk
e2a this would be more like it imo:
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BobDavis
Gimme All Your Lovin’
Tbf Labour won’t get elected again without winning a fair few middle class Tory seats. To me the issue was the person delivering the speech but it is over 3 years until next general election. I think Starmer will still be in charge then so Labour are relying much on the Tories totally failing to deliver.
splonkydoo
Well-Known Member
Well there are about 5 trotskyists in the Dail alone in Ireland (with 3 other quite left Independents) and whether I like them or not i would argue that they do use their platform to good effect and to good publicity. Something which is quite useful is their ability to be able to amplify voices from the outside, and to put questions of direct importance on the agenda, in the media and in parliament. I think they also can play a role in shifting larger groups, such as Sinn Fein, further left - which was in evidence during the water and household charges campaign.
In a situation where our class is getting absolutely battered, I don't think the benefits of it are to be so easily played down right now. It offers a viable (electoral) escape route from the sinking behemoth of the Labour Party, for one. Now, whether you actually want to expend a large effort on a referendum campaign is another issue entirely and brings up its own questions, but I think dismissing the idea of PR out of hand is a bit uneven as it does offer clear advantages for smaller socialist groups and community campaigners to carve out a space.
Spandex
A crazy bulbous punchbag of sound
tbf, Starmer's speech wasn't bad for a LibDem leader. I mean, he's better than Davey or Teather. Maybe not up there with that alcholoic fella or the Bosnian warlord, but if he keeps this up his party will do better than the 5% the LibDems have been stuck on in the polls for the last while.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
Middling Cameron speech I thought.
Raheem
Well-Known Member
Maybe it's a case of one this time, a couple next time and see how far you can get.
Podemos control a quarter of Spain's regional governments, and Melenchon got 20% in the first round of the last French presidential (compared to 24% for Macron). Nothing equivalent can happen under FPTP, because after each election you just go back to zero and start again.
UKIP were able to do it only with a lot of funding and by using the Euro elections (ie PR) as a vehicle.
No mention of getting the extremely wealthy and multinational corporations to pay their fair share of tax but British recovery bonds and start-up loans for new businesses. Just
Keir Starmer sets out plan for British Recovery Bond to allow people to invest billions in local communities
Labour leader says UK cannot go ‘back to business as usual’ after Covid pandemic
e2a this would be more like it imo:
Trickett's going to be the left candidate when Starmer gets couped by the right
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
PR would also, at certain points at least, and depending on just how you do it, have meant that UKIP / BNP / NF would probably have got some MPs based on share of the vote...
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
It would be good, at the point, I think, to hear from some of Sir Kieth’s supporters on U75. What did they think of the speech? Has the relaunch landed do they think? Where might he take the Party next?
Until they reappear here - we miss you, why so quiet these days? - we’ll need to do with his leading ‘public intellectual’s’ analysis. Most interesting bit of this stream of something is Mace the ace’s assertion that anyone who doesn’t like what Kieth had to say or how he said it, is ‘way out of touch with working class people’. Unlike Paul and his friends in London presumably who have their finger on the pulse:
Until they reappear here - we miss you, why so quiet these days? - we’ll need to do with his leading ‘public intellectual’s’ analysis. Most interesting bit of this stream of something is Mace the ace’s assertion that anyone who doesn’t like what Kieth had to say or how he said it, is ‘way out of touch with working class people’. Unlike Paul and his friends in London presumably who have their finger on the pulse:
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Raheem
Well-Known Member
Yes, definitely. Although FPTP has arguably delivered what is effectively a UKIP government anyway.
ska invita
back on the other side
saddening to read that, especially the laugh or cry " All the "Starmer is Tory-lite" trolls will now find themselves way out of touch with working class people... "
the one thing of interest in that is the mention of the massive borrow and spend Joe Biden is planning. Read a thing about this in the FT,
Joe Biden’s huge bet: the economic consequences of ‘acting big’
...suggesting the world will be watching and if it works then it might be green light for a big Keynesian splurge in other countries.
If it fails it might be a nail in the coffin for the concept for a generation.
There should be a clear outcome of Biden's impact by the time of the next election. The economic impact of Covid and the Tory response will be laid out to.
The door would be open for Starmer to follow suit but I don't think he'll dare to borrow and spend big under any circumstances. He hasnt got it in him.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
You can be indignant about lots of things but this will be but the latest in the series of relaunches set to continue into the future unless SKS gets some principles which guide his policies. Indignation doesn't butter many parsnips
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
The "Labour" Party currently atrophying quicker than an over-ripe apricot in the Benghazi sun.
In a couple of weeks only the stone will be left.
An outright laughing-stock and irrelevance. Which, given the desperate need for some-any- alternative to a deeply corrupt and sociopathic ultra-right government, is pretty tragic.
In a couple of weeks only the stone will be left.
An outright laughing-stock and irrelevance. Which, given the desperate need for some-any- alternative to a deeply corrupt and sociopathic ultra-right government, is pretty tragic.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
If you read the thread there is a link to Mason’s latest ejeculation in the New Statesman (free to read). He’s right that whoever is in power state intervention, spending and investment is inevitable in the post covid economy. The question is what type of spending, by who, aimed at who and to promote what. He’s got it wrong about Biden’s stimulus package in the sense that it’s not a warning shot to neo-liberalism about a coming ‘New Deal’ type of approach. Yes, it prioritises aid to those really struggling under the pandemic, but even the GOP have accepted that as an inevitability and a necessity to avoid a full blown crises. But, there is nothing in it to challenge the market orthodoxy, ownership, power or even seek to reduce deep inequality. It’s premised on a consumer boom in return. As such it’s about buying breathing space for neo-liberalism through the transfer of public money into its failing organs.
ETA: here is a slightly more positive take on it than mine:The Left Has Slightly Loosened the Cold Grip of Austerity Under President Biden
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SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
The right aren't happy with him either? Jesus what more could they want from him; he's anti-union, pro-police, pro-war crimes, refuses to criticise a fanatical tory government and has purged everyone vaguely left wing from the top ranls of the party by fair means or foul. Considering he got in on a 'unity' platform it's hard to see what more the labour right could have hoped for. He's even dragged Mandelson out of his crypt for fuck's sake.
planetgeli
There's no future in England's dreaming
Meaningless fucking drivel. Kieth.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
He looks utterly horrified to be so near that tower block. That coat is dry clean only, what if a heroin addict dies on it? What then?
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Well your Irish example is contradictory to the position of other that have proposed PR. Here, PR is not to ensure a "progressive government" or even build a democratic socialist party (neither of which PR has done in Ireland), it is to provide a limited parliamentary representation to socialist MPs. That's a more modest aim, and while I'm not especially concerned about parliamentary politics it might incline me to vote for PR in some future referendum. But it hardly justify the claims made on this thread and elsewhere that PR is going to result in significant political change.
The French presidential election is not a PR system, and while Melenchon made a decent run the representation for groups to the left of the PS in France is minimal. In part because the French system gives minority parties even less representation than FPTP.
But on the substantive points. (1) that PR would allow the growth of social democratic parties, well the graphs and Jacobin piece killer b posted show that to be the opposite of the case. Centre-left parties are dying faster in PR systems than under FPTP. (2) Even when social democratic parties get in power (such as Podemos or the Left Party) they are required to go into coalition with forces to their right. Making the same sort of compromises that the left of the LP does the centre/right of the party.
Fundamentally centre-left support of PR is coming from the same instinct that insisted that this time things with the LP would be different - that the right thinkers are needed to lead the workers.
ska invita
back on the other side
"Our Party and Britain are on the same page. We will work 110% to bring us out of this challenging period.
Labour are the champions of change, a true partnership of social stakeholders. Only we will go the extra mile to deliver best value for tax payers.
Our results driven approach will provide the step change this country so desperately needs."
Of course they're not, nothing will ever be enough for them unless it's Blair reanimated
Issue with that is she's a woman and there's no way Labour are having a woman as leader based on every single other leadership contest ever
ska invita
back on the other side
oh dear
oryx
Sitting on the bok of the day
He doesn't seem to grasp that they're talking about him, not the party.
Raheem
Well-Known Member
I'm against FPTP, but not specifically an advocate of PR. But the point is not the what system the French Presidential election is run under, but the fact that the French system (mostly not PR) does allow space for the development of electoral politics to the left of the PS, which allowed Melenchon the platform to run a vaguely realistic campaign for the presidency. It's a bit daft to suggest it doesn't. LFI have 17 MPs. Not very close to a working majority but, all the same, virtually impossible for an equivalent British party, because they would be structurally excluded from meaningful participation.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
This is like one of those improv games where the audience shouts out things for them to portray: 'What's that, dignified, yes? Do dignified... and what was that? Patriotic? Okay do dignified and patriotic. Sorry, what was that other one, utterly defeated? Okay , kieth, do dignified, patriotic and utterly defeated'.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
My response was in reply to:
I’m less concerned on what it’s called than the conditions that the mass of people lived under. And nationalized industries leading to full employment, building of the NHS, welfare state, free education, council house building and low rents seem fairly socialist results to me. All while paying off the huge debts we’d built up since WWII. And it beats the shit out of what we (and particularly young people) are faced with today.
You may be right – I did see an article with a lot of graphs showing that it all started going to shit worldwide in (I think) 1977, which I now can’t find. However, I’d thought Thatcher and Reagan(omics) initiated neoliberal policies which then spread to the rest of the world.
And I was anyway referring to how it happened within the UK: the media pushing the stories of strikes by greedy unions leading to rubbish piling up in the streets, bodies left unburied and 3 million days lost through strikes. In fact the unions were just trying to catch up with the high inflation of the 70s – which the media then used to set them against the rest of the country who weren’t able to fight for increased wages. Along the lines of: https://www.redpepper.org.uk/the-myth-of-the-1970s/
It was Thatcher that did the major damage in the UK cheered on by the media, with the papers suddenly going quiet on 3*300 odd days lost through 3 million unemployed, with that being used to force down wages while productivity kept rising.
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