Yes or No -AV referendum May 2011

[articul8]

LDs can be useful idiots. At the moment they are just idiots.

 

[butchersapron]

Yes, useful idiots - good phrase. Let's elect them and hope they do nice things for us. Useful idiots indeed.

 

[articul8]

So it's better for all these seats to fall to the Tories, and give Cameron a majority? Getting LDs elected is the least worst option in this scenario - but only providing that voters have the opportunity to demonstrate (in an AV system) that they are not LD supporters primarily.

 

[butchersapron]

That's right, i'm a tory. Only tories hate the lib-dems and think that a plan that involves electing them and putting pressure on them is a bit daft. Useful idiots.

 

[redsquirrel]

So it's better for all these seats to fall to the Tories, and give Cameron a majority? Getting LDs elected is the least worst option in this scenario - but only providing that voters have the opportunity to demonstrate (in an AV system) that they are not LD supporters primarily.

Pinning your hopes on a party which is currently doing everything it can to destroy the welfare state, pathetic

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

So it's better for all these seats to fall to the Tories, and give Cameron a majority? Getting LDs elected is the least worst option in this scenario - but only providing that voters have the opportunity to demonstrate (in an AV system) that they are not LD supporters primarily.

A Tory majority as opposed to one where they have to rely on the votes of the viscious neoliberal Orange Book gang might actually be a bit milder...

 

[articul8]

Pinning your hopes on a party which is currently doing everything it can to destroy the welfare state, pathetic

No hopes beyond divide and rule - replacing a Tory by a LD who has demonstrably been put in there by centre-left tactical votes weakens the right-wing bloc. Of course if Clegg et al go into the next election promising to continue the coalition they will get wiped out totally.

 

[Random]

Of course if Clegg et al go into the next election promising to continue the coalition they will get wiped out totally.

Which will, according to you, be a setback for socialism...

 

[articul8]

Would it necessarily be a victory for the left, if the result is more seats handed directly to the Tories? Surely a better approach is to build such pressure on the coalition that the LD grassroots are forced into conflict with their parliamentary leadership forcing some kind of break with the Clegg/Cameron axis? Which isn't to put undue hopes in LD councillors or activists, just that their vacillating opportunist character makes them susceptible to pressure from without.

 

[Random]

Would it necessarily be a victory for the left, if the result is more seats handed directly to the Tories? Surely a better approach is to build such pressure on the coalition that the LD grassroots are forced into conflict with their parliamentary leadership forcing some kind of break with the Clegg/Cameron axis?

Like, for example, by opposing the AV referendum?

edit: I don't know why I'm surprised by you supporting the Lib Dems seeing as how they pay your wages.

 

[articul8]

Losing the AV vote would bind the otherwise disenchanted MPs (the Simon Hughes tendendency) to Clegg et al out of sheer terror at an early election. Would strip the local opposition of any purchase as far as the leadership goes.

And you know full well I neither support, nor have i ever supported, the Lib Dems. I want to see them smashed out of site when a force to their left can fill the vacuum.

 

[butchersapron]

I like that when, support then up till that date though.

 

[articul8]

Not support, just awareness that tactics in relation to them need to take some consideration of where they are a temporary expedient as a least worst option, and those where they are an outright class enemy.

 

[butchersapron]

Not support, just awareness...

You're shit.

 

[articul8]

You can only draw that conclusion if you are arguing that it would make no odds whether there is a Tory majority or a Labour majority after the next GE. Is that your position? If not, then their ability to take seats from the Tories is of tactical benefit in the short term under a system where their victories would be manifestly down to centre-left tactical votes,

 

[butchersapron]

So, you now get to it, if you want to support labour then vote lib-dem.

Exactly as i said was your real position months ago. (once i found out you were a labour party member who'd posted years of stuff on a lie that is)

 

[articul8]

It is better that people who hate the Tories and their Cleggite allies vote to defeat them where this is a realistic possibility (which most often means voting Labour). Where it isn't, and a LD MP represents the local opposition to the Tories, then and only then might be it be worth considering a tactical vote for the least worst option. I would like to see the next GE elect a Labour government drawn substantially to the left of where it was in 2010 by a mass anti-cuts movement. But I also want to see a realignment of the left and an end to the parliamentarist logic of Labourism as a further consequence.

And on the bullshit about lies, again - what lies?

 

[butchersapron]

We've done this. You lied that you weren't a labour party member when you were. That such burning radicalism now means voting lib-dem. Is this emblazoned on your radical vicars-mags masthead (not they'd need telling)?

 

[articul8]

I support the Labour party in the sense that a rope supports a hanging man. My politics have never been simply Labourist. I don't consider being a highly critical member of the Labour Party to be the most imporant feature of my politics. But I've never denied it.

 

[butchersapron]

I support the Labour party in the sense that a rope supports a hanging man. My politics have never been simply Labourist. I don't consider being a highly critical member of the Labour Party to be the most imporant feature of my politics. But I've never denied it.

Yes, yes you do vlad, By paying subs, voting for it and arguing that everyone else should. Like little Laurie Penny you've spent xmas doing Lenin but getting it wrong. Vince Cable is 'highly critical' but onside. So what?

Never denied it? You hid it so that you didn't have to be put in a situation in which it had to be denied. You're peter and pilate (you also hide your catholicism btw).

 

[articul8]

What is this, a confessional or something?! I'm some sort of secret papist now to boot? You seem to have some weird fantasy going on that the world is run by secret Latimer liberals on the orders of the vatican?

Seriously, are you a well man?

 

[butchersapron]

I know fine well who runs things. I know well who runs your little world as well.

Why did you dump the privately educated obxbridge voice of a generation? Going to get an answer or is the contacts books too important?

 

[articul8]

Where was Christopher Agammenon Pallis educated? Or are we operating double standards?

 

[butchersapron]

Desperate as fuck.

Why did you dump the privately educated obxbridge voice of a generation? Going to get an answer or is the contacts books too important?

 

[articul8]

She has found her metier elsewhere it seems. But I don't see that her education or background automatically disqualifies her views, any more than they did your man.

 

[butchersapron]

You said you sacked her (effectively). Not that she started writing elsewhere. Why did you sack her (effectively)?

 

[articul8]

no defence of Oxbridge man Pallis then? She hasn't been sacked. But she won't be commissioned to write the kind of material that the NS/Guardian are lapping up.

 

[butchersapron]

Why not - you've got other people churning that pap out. Why did you choose to get rid of her? You trumpeted it after all.

Palllis. No. Not needed.

 

[articul8]

It's not about the educational background, is it? It's about privilege being disavowed whilst also being reasserted in ways that are unavailable for others. I try to commission pieces that are rooted in experiences that don't have a ready access in the official liberal media. Recuperation happens though. Is that a surprise?

 

[butchersapron]

Not much of an answer. Odd that the disavowed are still the chosen.