Political Compass 2015

[cesare]

Socialist Appeal?

Socialist Campaign ?

Possibly

the button will know if he's around

 

[butchersapron]

electoral success is one metric, but also building a platform likely to attract significant new layers of support, building credibility in local communities, building support for direct action, etc.

I thought you just said it was all about 10 left-wing labour MPs finding themselves in a very powerful position due to the electoral balance and being able to impose some left-wing bollcoks on the labour leadership

some (a minority of course but still) of the new candidates are less likely to be lobby fodder, and a minority government could see a group of 20-30 left MPs have some influence...

...and we're back in the room.

 

[butchersapron]

Actually, why am i doing this waste of time again?

 

[articul8]

Socialist Campaign Group in just a Parliamentary thing now - they don't have members [that's all in the LRC].

Socialist Appeal is the section of the Militant that stayed in the Labour Party - but have taken a very weird sectarian path of cheerleading for Chavez and are mainly now just running Marxist Student Societies.

 

[cesare]

Must've been Socialist Appeal.

 

[Sprocket.]

Appealing for Socialists?

 

[DotCommunist]

my kingdom for a socialist!

 

[articul8]

...and we're back in the room.

They are answering two different questions:
a) what ought the left try to achieve, and
b) what prospect exists of the Labour left having any influence in the short term

a) is by far the most important since the likelihood of b) depends not only on parliamentary arithmetic but on the social forces in the country

 

[weepiper]

in their manifesto, yes. But in their role in Holyrood much less so - cutting corporation tax, putting public services out to tender, implementing cuts...

removing prescription charges, introducing free personal care for the elderly, scrapping tuition fees, revoking Right To Buy...

 

[articul8]

removing prescription charges, introducing free personal care for the elderly, scrapping tuition fees, revoking Right To Buy...

err wasn't it the Lab/Lib coalition that avoided introducing student fees in Scotland?

 

[weepiper]

err wasn't it the Lab/Lib coalition that avoided introducing student fees in Scotland?

Dewar scrapped tuition fees but replaced them with a Graduate Endowment Tax which is just a delayed tuition fee, SNP got rid of that returning properly free university education.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

not that I think it matters but the Campaign Group of MPs disbanded not long after Diane Abbott challenged John McDonell for the right to be the left challenger in the last leadership ballot.

 

[chilango]

Ha.

articul8 has been so busy waiting for his 20 - 30 Labour Left MPs to emerge from the 100 or so Labour Left party members that he hasn't noticed that the fucking Nationalists and the Green Party of all people have snuck round and have dragged things to the left (in terms of public discourse during the election campaign at least for all that's worth) and might yet wield the sort of influence over the Labour leadership that he's been fantasising that himself and his imaginary comrades will one day have if they can just hang on and be subservient for a generation or two longer.

Poor articul8.

Oh well. Something about layers will console him.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

I'm not convinced anyone has dragged things "to the left" outside of Scotland... And even then it seems (to this outsider) that the business oriented SNP have been dragged left by the electorate - something that will not happen in England where it is UKIP who are the high profile insurgents...

 

[Sprocket.]

Indeed this shower in England at the moment have thatcher to the left of all of them. Even she didn't try privatising the NHS piece by piece.

 

[elbows]

I'm not convinced anyone has dragged things "to the left" outside of Scotland... And even then it seems (to this outsider) that the business oriented SNP have been dragged left by the electorate - something that will not happen in England where it is UKIP who are the high profile insurgents...

I'd put it this way. One of the features of modern 'democracy' and influencing of people, especially in a TV age, has been the deliberate and persistent narrowing of the spectrum of what is considered 'legitimate debate' on a particular subject. Fucking suffocating. Well, watching the debates, the sense of suffocation was not the same for me and that made me temporarily happy.

I would not make the mistake of confusing parties rhetoric with what they actually do with power. But I still appreciated hearing anti-austerity, explicit anti-'there is no alternative' rhetoric.

 

[danny la rouge]

I would not make the mistake of confusing parties rhetoric with what they actually do with power. But I still appreciated hearing anti-austerity, explicit anti-'there is no alternative' rhetoric.

These are both important points.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I think Miliband genuinely wants to protect what's left of the social democratic legacy, but believes it's impossible to do anything that fundamentally challenges the financial markets, so ends up making adaptations. Someone like Milburn actively wants to break up the welfare state/public services etc to run them along market lines.

So Miliband has these beliefs, but isn't willing to risk his political arse to uphold those beliefs.
And you still think people should "vote Labour with no illusions"?

 

[ViolentPanda]

you don't think they see themselves as a master race, with all that implies for non-aryan populations?

I think that you're confusing the British National Party (hard-right/New Right/neo-fascist) with the NSDAP. Best not to make the juvenile HnH/UAF error of conflating a minority of twats with a regime of murderous zealots.

 

[ViolentPanda]

yes, although they spent a while trying to persuade people otherwise

They're Nazis because...?
I mean, they don't even have anything akin to the 25 points, just a mish-mash of quasi-fascist racial supremacism glued together with myth.

 

[ViolentPanda]

What feasible scenario do you see at the moment, that's keeping you there?

Himself as a senior mover and shaker?

 

[articul8]

I think that you're confusing the British National Party (hard-right/New Right/neo-fascist) with the NSDAP. Best not to make the juvenile HnH/UAF error of conflating a minority of twats with a regime of murderous zealots.

I wasn't comparing their capacity, but the source of many of their ideological influences

 

[articul8]

Himself as a senior mover and shaker?

the way to get on in that sense is hardly associated with supporting the hard left!

 

[Pickman's model]

I wasn't comparing their capacity, but the source of many of their ideological influences

oh do give over, you were talking shit and you got pulled on it.

 

[articul8]

So Miliband has these beliefs, but isn't willing to risk his political arse to uphold those beliefs.
And you still think people should "vote Labour with no illusions"?

He (and his ilk) genuinely think that challenging neoliberalism would mean total economic and social apocalypse - a market meltdown and society grinding to a halt.

 

[articul8]

oh do give over, you were talking shit and you got pulled on it.

we were talking about their ideas on economics not their capacity to implement them

 

[Pickman's model]

articul8 perhaps you could point to a bnp publication of the last 15 years which refers to aryans.

 

[Pickman's model]

we were talking about their ideas on economics not their capacity to implement them

for the hard of thinking YOU WERE TALKING SHIT AND GOT PULLED ON IT

 

[Pickman's model]

So Miliband has these beliefs, but isn't willing to risk his political arse to uphold those beliefs.
And you still think people should "vote Labour with no illusions"?

he doesn't care about the illusions as long as they vote labour

 

[Pickman's model]

Must've been Socialist Appeal.

like a blue peter appeal but without the appeal