What's wrong with Labour

[Puddy_Tat]

and of course this has aged well...

 

[Serge Forward]

I've been watching Steptoe and Son for the first time, just watched an episode from 1965 where Harold is hoping to be selected as a Labour candidate for the local council, and hosts a meeting where at the end the bloke from Labour head office tells them all that the candidate's already been chosen and they're imposing a doctor that none of them have heard of because they can't have a rag and bone man standing as the Labour candidate. Impressively timeless for an almost-60-year-old piece of television.

Classic telly. Of course Harry H. Corbett was in the Labour Party on its more left/socialist wing. Wilfred Brambell was a Tory. They didn't get on off camera either.

 

[hitmouse]

Despite telling people that it's an "anti-racist" party, Labour has consistently shown that it isn't keen on people of colour or GRT. The leadership's refusal to allow black sections, while allowing patently Zionist groupings like Poale Zion (now called the Jewish Labour Movement) to organise, illuminates their hierarchy of racism and racial hierarchy. Fuck the Labour Party.

The numbers of Jewish members who've been expelled or investigated would tend to suggest that Labour isn't that keen on actual flesh-and-blood Jews, as opposed to the abstract concept of them, either.

 

[Dystopiary]

Is it, in what way? It's the same Labour Party that is attacking workers, it's still led by a "duplicitous twat and his cabal", to quote Serge Forward, it is still engaging in racist policies, it has the same nasty authoritarian streak New Labour had, it is still supportive of capital, marketisations and privatisation.

There might be an argument that there was some change in the LP between 2015-2019 (although I think the state of the current LP shows that those changes never went that deep), but the current LP is very similar to the one from 2013.

It's also the same Labour Party of repeated displays of contempt towards people on benefits - the same malevolent Labour Party who implemented changes to the welfare system that caused incalculable harm, and which were a gift to the Tories. Gonna just quote a couple of posts I made last year since I'm banging this drum again.

Anti-worker (and all the rest) and anti-people not in work. They've shown nothing but contempt for people on benefits and out of work, especially disabled people. Actually, no, I'm wrong, as well as contempt they've shown cynical cruelty. It was the Labour Party back in the '00s who started the devastating changes to the disability benefits system that've screwed over so many people.

Honestly Labour could have exactly the same policies as the BNP and people would still be arguing about getting the Tories out. And let's face it, that's exactly the direction the LP have been heading in. And with the encouragement of the people who vote for them they'll continue to shift to the right.

Exactly. In some ways they scare me more than the actual Tories (though Labour are effectively Tories), because they'll really go for this (again) and more people will make excuses for them than they would the Conservatives ("yeah but look at the alternative") but their policies on welfare will be at least as dangerous.

I think a lot of people don't realise how destructive those changes were and how they set in motion a continuous attack on people already struggling. They knew the Tories would be only happy to run with what they'd started, and when they take back the baton, Labour'll gladly continue as Starmer and Reeves have made abundantly clear.

It's a mistake to think of the current state of the Labour Party being down to specifically Starmer and maybe a handful of others at most; he's a symptom of its inevitable trajectory.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

No one has any clue what they are actually doing other than not being the Tories and Starmer is about as inspiring as Boris with his personality removed

I'm not even sure they're doing that, tbh. Starmer's so afraid of alienating any part of the electorate (apart from those who care about the Palestinians in Gaza), that he's a policy vacuum.

Starmer's a former human rights barrister who failed to call for a ceasefire and failed to condemn Israeli human rights abuses, war crimes, in fact.

While calling the government's plans to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda to have their claims processed farcical, he apparently agrees in principle with the idea of sending asylum seekers to a third party country for processing.
(And although it predated Starmer, let's not forget Labour's vile 'Controls on immigration' mug.)

They're trying to compete with the Tories on immigration, not against them.

And Starmer's Labour, like much of the rest of them except Corbyn and the Corbynite faction, pretty much go along with the Conservative's austerity agenda, demonisation of disabled people and 'arbeit macht frei' attitude.

He's an fickle, unprincipled, self-serving, pathetic, policy and charisma vacuum.

 

[hitmouse]

It's also the same Labour Party of repeated displays of contempt towards people on benefits - the same malevolent Labour Party who implemented changes to the welfare system that caused incalculable harm, and which were a gift to the Tories. Gonna just quote a couple of posts I made last year since I'm banging this drum again.





I think a lot of people don't realise how destructive those changes were and how they set in motion a continuous attack on people already struggling. They knew the Tories would be only happy to run with what they'd started, and they'll when they take back the baton, Labour'll gladly continue as Starmer and Reeves have made abundantly clear.

It's a mistake to think of the current state of the Labour Party being down to specifically Starmer and maybe a handful of others at most; he's a symptom of its inevitable trajectory.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but exactly - Reeves being back on the front benches again illustrates exactly how little has changed since a decade or so ago:

Labour will be tougher than Tories on benefits, vows Rachel Reeves

New shadow work and pensions minister says party will cut welfare bill and force long-term unemployed to take up work offers or lose support

www.theguardian.com

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

It’s an intriguing question. But was the historic egalitarianism and commitment to social protection of, say, the Nordic countries rooted in union militancy? I suspect that there was something deeper at work, but I don’t know whether it’s something that can be replicated in Britain.

The original Black sections were more left-wing and explicitly socialist. BAME labour is toothless and subservient to the leadership.

From Wikipedia (my bold).

I didn't know that. But it explains a lot.

When I moved into my flat in Hulme, central Manchester, in 2003, there were more councillors called Murphy than there were Black councillors. For years the council was very white, when you consider the diversity of the city's population.

 

[two sheds]

I've been watching Steptoe and Son for the first time, just watched an episode from 1965 where Harold is hoping to be selected as a Labour candidate for the local council, and hosts a meeting where at the end the bloke from Labour head office tells them all that the candidate's already been chosen and they're imposing a doctor that none of them have heard of because they can't have a rag and bone man standing as the Labour candidate. Impressively timeless for an almost-60-year-old piece of television.

I liked the one when albert was teaching harold ballroom dancing, too.

 

[Cloo]

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but exactly - Reeves being back on the front benches again illustrates exactly how little has changed since a decade or so ago:

Labour will be tougher than Tories on benefits, vows Rachel Reeves

New shadow work and pensions minister says party will cut welfare bill and force long-term unemployed to take up work offers or lose support

www.theguardian.com

I think a huge amount of what's wrong with Labour is their apparent inability to challenge the Tory narrative. They shouldn't be saying 'We'll be tough around benefits', they should be saying 'The Tory narrative the benefits are damaging the economy and that people are on them because they don't want to work is a lie - our bigges bill is the state pension yet no one argues for reducing that, and most people will need benefits at some point in their lives. Benefits are often underclaimed and we will concentrate on making benefits fair so they help everyone who needs them'.

And rather than tying themselves in knots and getting drawn into gotchas about 'DEFINE A WOMAN', they should say 'This is all a distracting sideshow - trans women are a tiny minority in this country and it's disgraceful and dangerous that the Tories are making them into an electoral issue. We will focus on positive policies for all women, which includes X and Y, which is more than the Tories have ever done'

And they generally need to stop getting drawn into culture wars and have the courage to call stuff out as irrelevant bullshit.

 

[hitmouse]

I think a huge amount of what's wrong with Labour is their apparent inability to challenge the Tory narrative. They shouldn't be saying 'We'll be tough around benefits', they should be saying 'The Tory narrative the benefits are damaging the economy and that people are on them because they don't want to work is a lie - our bigges bill is the state pension yet no one argues for reducing that, and most people will need benefits at some point in their lives. Benefits are often underclaimed and we will concentrate on making benefits fair so they help everyone who needs them'.

And rather than tying themselves in knots and getting drawn into gotchas about 'DEFINE A WOMAN', they should say 'This is all a distracting sideshow - trans women are a tiny minority in this country and it's disgraceful and dangerous that the Tories are making them into an electoral issue. We will focus on positive policies for all women, which includes X and Y, which is more than the Tories have ever done'

And they generally need to stop getting drawn into culture wars and have the courage to call stuff out as irrelevant bullshit.

Yep - and to be clear, for anyone who didn't click through, that link is to a story from about 2015, it's not something Reeves has said recently. But I don't think that her basic approach has changed in any important way since then.

 

[newme]

I'm not even sure they're doing that, tbh. Starmer's so afraid of alienating any part of the electorate (apart from those who care about the Palestinians in Gaza), that he's a policy vacuum.

Starmer's a former human rights barrister who failed to call for a ceasefire and failed to condemn Israeli human rights abuses, war crimes, in fact.

While calling the government's plans to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda to have their claims processed farcical, he apparently agrees in principle with the idea of sending asylum seekers to a third party country for processing.
(And although it predated Starmer, let's not forget Labour's vile 'Controls on immigration' mug.)

They're trying to compete with the Tories on immigration, not against them.

And Starmer's Labour, like much of the rest of them except Corbyn and the Corbynite faction, pretty much go along with the Conservative's austerity agenda, demonisation of disabled people and 'arbeit macht frei' attitude.

He's an fickle, unprincipled, self-serving, pathetic, policy and charisma vacuum.

I mean even with theoretically identical policies they appear to be relying mainly on not being the Tories rather than there being some specific difference. Then again we never know what the hell any of them will do in government since they just switch leaders, ignore promises and make good on the most stupid ones quite consistently regardless of what name their party has. Can promise whatever you want and then just not deliver, so they also court potential voters on issues they won't deliver too, both of them. They care far more about being voted in than actually doing right for the country.

 

[Jeremiah18.17]

I think a huge amount of what's wrong with Labour is their apparent inability to challenge the Tory narrative. They shouldn't be saying 'We'll be tough around benefits', they should be saying 'The Tory narrative the benefits are damaging the economy and that people are on them because they don't want to work is a lie - our bigges bill is the state pension yet no one argues for reducing that, and most people will need benefits at some point in their lives. Benefits are often underclaimed and we will concentrate on making benefits fair so they help everyone who needs them'.

And rather than tying themselves in knots and getting drawn into gotchas about 'DEFINE A WOMAN', they should say 'This is all a distracting sideshow - trans women are a tiny minority in this country and it's disgraceful and dangerous that the Tories are making them into an electoral issue. We will focus on positive policies for all women, which includes X and Y, which is more than the Tories have ever done'

And they generally need to stop getting drawn into culture wars and have the courage to call stuff out as irrelevant bullshit.

But that would go against the core, foundational bases of the centrism that now (and for most of its history) has dominated Labour.

Amongst those key beliefs is that the power of the media barons is absolutely unchallengeable - and they will refer to Corbynism as the example of what happens when you oppose the oligarchs.

This grants to a tiny number of right wing oligarchs the power to define the political narrative of the country through their papers and channels, amplified by the state broadcaster, on whose news channels the propagated views of the oligarchs are reviewed and discussed daily by stroking-chin commentators.

And what is the worldview of these oligarchs? It is self-interested and prone to flirt with Bannonite fascism when feeling a threat to their wealth and power. It relentlessly promotes division and mistrust - mistrust that is now amplified by the algorithms of the online world to atomise societies and help make suspicion, bigotry, hatred and conspiracism the animating forces for large enough sections of the population to sustain the negative trajectory. Tribalism and social conformism does the rest.

The last 30-40 years in Britain shows where this leads, a constant moving-right-show, where the post war material (and increasingly now, cultural) gains are relentlessly eroded.

The answer is of course to have the courage to challenge all this on a coordinated national scale (rather than the individualistic opting out of the narrative that the oligarchs are quite happy with), of necessity, outside Labour - knowing that, as with (admittedly severely flawed) Corbynism, the response will be vicious - lying, smearing, infiltrating, sabotaging. Still, the alternative is to enable the rightward march in the hope of some crumbs from the oligarch’s table.

 

[brogdale]

I'd say that addressing all these superstructural issues, at the expense of any challenge to the existing power relations of the base, is the essence of what is wrong with the LP. Any democratic socialist party worthy of such description should at least be addressing things like the legal basis for the exploitation of labour in the rigged jobs 'market', the greed of landlords in the rigged housing 'market', the legalised theft of the asset management corporations that own our natural monopolies, the privatisation of our health-care/schools/social services etc.

But they won't because they're not a democratic socialist party.

 

[nino_savatte]

I'd say that addressing all these superstructural issues, at the expense of any challenge to the existing power relations of the base, is the essence of what is wrong with the LP. Any democratic socialist party worthy of such description should at least be addressing things like the legal basis for the exploitation of labour in the rigged jobs 'market', the greed of landlords in the rigged housing 'market', the legalised theft of the asset management corporations that own our natural monopolies, the privatisation of our health-care/schools/social services etc.

But they won't because they're not a democratic socialist party.

Indeed, and there are quite a few landlords sitting on the Labour benches.

I also hate the way they tell us that it's because they're "a government-in-waiting", they can't offer any serious policies that will make a real difference to people's lives (see also "we're not a party of protest" and "the Tories will attack us").

 

[kropotkin]

I don’t think that trade unions dedicated to aggressively preserving the interests of cosseted public sector professionals, from the BMA to the RMT, are in any way likely to be helpful in achieving that.

The BMA represents groups of doctors that have seen a 25% - 30% drop in wages while their work intensity has gone up. Their resistance to this is the reason you have named them.
There is no world in which that can be called "cosseted". Can you explain how you can cast that fact as such?

 

[brogdale]

The BMA represents groups of doctors that have seen a 25% - 30% drop in wages while their work intensity has gone up. Their resistance to this is the reason you have named them.
There is no world in which that can be called "cosseted". Can you explain how you can cast that fact as such?

Straight out of the Daily Mail, that phrase

 

[Silas Loom]

The BMA also represents consultants, and seems to have done rather better at getting sweet deals for senior doctors than for junior ones. Funny, that.

 

[Silas Loom]

Their resistance to this is the reason you have named them.

That’s an inference, and an incorrect one at that, presented as a statement of fact.

I’d forgotten why I hated all you cunts so much.

 

[kropotkin]

That’s an inference, and an incorrect one at that, presented as a statement of fact.

I’d forgotten why I hated all you cunts so much.

Lovely

You deny you've mentioned the BMA because strikes by doctors have been prominent in the news for the last year?

 

[kropotkin]

The BMA also represents consultants, and seems to have done rather better at getting sweet deals for senior doctors than for junior ones. Funny, that.

I'm a consultant, so I'm fully aware of the differential offers that have been made (rejected by the way).

Out of interest, how much do you think, in percentage terms, a group should lose in wages before they strike? Given that 30% is not enough of a loss to justify this for you


....

Edit: sorry, actually 20-25%. Apologies.

 

[hitmouse]

The BMA represents groups of doctors that have seen a 25% - 30% drop in wages while their work intensity has gone up. Their resistance to this is the reason you have named them.
There is no world in which that can be called "cosseted". Can you explain how you can cast that fact as such?

The mention of the RMT is even more impressively wrong, because the BMA is at least a professional association representing one particular group, whereas the RMT is closer to a genuinely industrial union, and represents/is "dedicated to aggressively preserving the interests of" all grades down to cleaning staff and the like. Although I suppose that cleaners organised through the RMT who've won the real living wage and similar demands could be compared as "cosseted" compared to those in other industries who haven't, because that line of attack can be used to discredit literally any group of workers who try to defend their interests.

 

[redsquirrel]

The BMA represents groups of doctors that have seen a 25% - 30% drop in wages while their work intensity has gone up. Their resistance to this is the reason you have named them.
There is no world in which that can be called "cosseted". Can you explain how you can cast that fact as such?

I would not bother mate. For all his statements about confident unions he's a long time anti-union pro-scab prick.

 

[two sheds]

His equivocatory stance on Brexit was nearly as disgraceful as his foreign policy alignments.

I don’t remember it from at the time because as I recall I decided that it was going to be a tory brexit which was going to be shit so I didn’t really care.

I did check FactCheck: Corbyn’s changing Brexit stance which is from 2019. It accuses Corbyn of “changing his stance many times” but does seem to speculate and make stuff up a lot.

The only things the piece seems to actually confirm were that Corbyn consistently and over many years made a lot of (very reasonable) criticisms of the EU, and after the Referendum said that the Labour party would abide by it. He was always strongly opposed to a no-deal Brexit, and after a 2019 Conference vote passed a resolution for a second Referendum on the final bill he backed that. Was that equivocatory? It sounds fair enough given the Brexit we eventually got but as I say I wasn't paying a huge amount of attention.

That was enough to damn him for me, whatever his positions on UK public services and economics, which ranged from reasonable to impractical,

Which ones were impractical? I'm sure there were some but they were broadly along the lines of the policies that did very well for 30 years after WW2 and also did generally seem to be popular with people.

and in any event would have been put into practice - if he had been elected - by a team of shabby incompetents and thuggish ideologues.

Well yes, they were politicians. Not quite as shabby and thuggish as the tory incompetents and ideologues we ended up with I'd have thought.

 

[Humberto]

Dithered?

 

[two sheds]

I might have done

 

[Humberto]

Cross porpoises again.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

The only things the piece seems to actually confirm were that Corbyn consistently and over many years made a lot of (very reasonable) criticisms of the EU, and after the Referendum said that the Labour party would abide by it. He was always strongly opposed to a no-deal Brexit, and after a 2019 Conference vote passed a resolution for a second Referendum on the final bill he backed that. Was that equivocatory? It sounds fair enough given the Brexit we eventually got but as I say I wasn't paying a huge amount of attention.

i remember that before the referendum, corbyn's position came across as 'the EU isn't perfect, but remain is the less worse option' rather than an enthusiastic pro-EU. no doubt some in the party would have preferred him to share a 'project fear' platform with cameron (look how well that did in scotland with the independence referendum) - the media tended not to take any notice as the 'dave and boris show' was more entertaining.

yes, i think the position at 2017 was that labour would 'respect the result of the referendum'

and at 2019, yes, i think he was following a vote at party conference, as he seems to believe in party democracy. other party leaders tend to regard conference as something they can ignore.

 

[two sheds]

i remember that before the referendum, corbyn's position came across as 'the EU isn't perfect, but remain is the less worse option' rather than an enthusiastic pro-EU.

Yes - that article quotes him as saying he'd prefer to remain rather than no deal or a deal that screwed trade with the EU. Which again doesn't seem too stupid seeing how things have gone.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

i remember that before the referendum, corbyn's position came across as 'the EU isn't perfect, but remain is the less worse option' rather than an enthusiastic pro-EU. no doubt some in the party would have preferred him to share a 'project fear' platform with cameron (look how well that did in scotland with the independence referendum) - the media tended not to take any notice as the 'dave and boris show' was more entertaining.

yes, i think the position at 2017 was that labour would 'respect the result of the referendum'

and at 2019, yes, i think he was following a vote at party conference, as he seems to believe in party democracy. other party leaders tend to regard conference as something they can ignore.

It's ironic the flak he gets now as divisive, etc. given that he was a genuine democrat. There's a lot of stalinist revisionism going on. He didn't make it all about him and what he thought. He wanted to lead by consensus.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I think a huge amount of what's wrong with Labour is their apparent inability to challenge the Tory narrative. They shouldn't be saying 'We'll be tough around benefits', they should be saying 'The Tory narrative the benefits are damaging the economy and that people are on them because they don't want to work is a lie - our bigges bill is the state pension yet no one argues for reducing that, and most people will need benefits at some point in their lives. Benefits are often underclaimed and we will concentrate on making benefits fair so they help everyone who needs them'.

And rather than tying themselves in knots and getting drawn into gotchas about 'DEFINE A WOMAN', they should say 'This is all a distracting sideshow - trans women are a tiny minority in this country and it's disgraceful and dangerous that the Tories are making them into an electoral issue. We will focus on positive policies for all women, which includes X and Y, which is more than the Tories have ever done'

And they generally need to stop getting drawn into culture wars and have the courage to call stuff out as irrelevant bullshit.

They themselves believe the tory narrative on benefits, is the problem.