What is the point of Labour ?

[NotThePars]

Trickle down economics don’t work btw. That’s how the neoliberal consensus between the two parties has presided over rapidly increasing inequality, the destruction of the welfare state and the longest sustained period of wage stagnation in two centuries.

[dorlomin]

1 minute ago, NotThePars said:

Trickle down economics don’t work btw. That’s how the neoliberal consensus between the two parties has presided over rapidly increasing inequality, the destruction of the welfare state and the longest sustained period of wage stagnation in two centuries.

Slogans for a night on the piss in the NUS bar, not really a plan for governing. How is that going to convince votes in Nuneaton or Stevenage constituencies to vote Labour. Shouting your personal beliefs at them is going to get them to change?

These are two of the midlands seats that Labour held in government but now have about a 10% deficit in votes. They are the kind of people Corbyns supporters hate with a passion. Almost affluent, looking to get on in the world but have some desire to see a fairer society. But when they walk into a polling booth are they really going to put an x next to someone who arse licks the provos, lays wreaths for Black September, whos economic program seems nothing but slogans from 1983?

 

Again the people screaming at people to leave Labou are rarely those in Labour. The only policies they have is to cherry pick a couple of things they want to claim this should be the manifesto with the dripping contempt for the votes as if they cannot think for themselves beyond manifestos. 

[Granny Danger]

All the folk claiming that the ‘ordinary people’ don’t want Labour seem to have ignored what happened at the last GE.

And let’s not forget that result was despite a vicious and sustained attack that the majority of the PLP were making on Corbyn right up to the vote.

 

 

 

[dorlomin]

29 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

All the folk claiming that the ‘ordinary people’ don’t want Labour seem to have ignored what happened at the last GE.

You do not support Labour.

And they lost. 

Marginal constituencies are not voting Labour anywhere near enough for them to form a government. 
 

Quote

 

And let’s not forget that result was despite a vicious and sustained attack that the majority of the PLP were making on Corbyn right up to the vote.

 

I have never known the hard left to not have excuses why it was someone else's fault.  The usual remedy is "need to be even further to the left on every issue especially the ones I am obsessed with". 

[Granny Danger]

Just now, dorlomin said:

You do not support Labour.

And they lost. 

Marginal constituencies are not voting Labour anywhere near enough for them to form a government. 
 

I have never known the hard left to not have excuses why it was someone else's fault.  The usual remedy is "need to be even further to the left on every issue especially the ones I am obsessed with". 

You sound like a Trump support with that level of denial.

 

[dorlomin]

1 minute ago, Granny Danger said:

You sound like a Trump support with that level of denial.

 

That makes zero sense. 

[Granny Danger]

Just now, dorlomin said:

That makes zero sense. 

That’s down to your inability to understand.  

[BerwickMad]

Yvette Cooper.
Voted for the Iraq War. Voted against inquiries into the Iraq War. Voted for war in Libya. Voted for war in Syria.
Vote for Foundation Hospitals and Trusts. Abstained on the Welfare Bill.
Good choice.

Voting for or against a war 15 years ago doesn’t really place you on the political spectrum, nor is voting for it the difference between being a social democrat and a conservative. Neither does the odd individual vote, and certainly not an abstention.

You look at her voting record on TheyWorkForYou which shows she voted against the bedroom tax, 47 times against reductions in welfare benefits, for raising income tax on the rich, for a bankers bonus tax, against reducing corporation tax etc etc. She’s progressive on social issues and pro-European integration.

I would never argue she was as left wing as Corbyn but her overall voting record and the campaigns she fights are generally progressive and left of centre. She certainly doesn’t have the overall voting record of a conservative. She also does a better job of holding the Tories to account than most of the front bench.

[NotThePars]

1 hour ago, dorlomin said:

Slogans for a night on the piss in the NUS bar, not really a plan for governing. How is that going to convince votes in Nuneaton or Stevenage constituencies to vote Labour. Shouting your personal beliefs at them is going to get them to change?

 

Not sure I'm taking lessons in etiquette and campaigning from the guy who does little except leave snide comments about people's education or unsubtly compare people to his left to the people way to his right.

 

[BawWatchin]

48 minutes ago, BerwickMad said:

Voting for or against a war 15 years ago doesn’t really place you on the political spectrum, nor is voting for it the difference between being a social democrat and a conservative. Neither does the odd individual vote, and certainly not an abstention.

You look at her voting record on TheyWorkForYou which shows she voted against the bedroom tax, 47 times against reductions in welfare benefits, for raising income tax on the rich, for a bankers bonus tax, against reducing corporation tax etc etc. She’s progressive on social issues and pro-European integration.

I would never argue she was as left wing as Corbyn but her overall voting record and the campaigns she fights are generally progressive and left of centre. She certainly doesn’t have the overall voting record of a conservative. She also does a better job of holding the Tories to account than most of the front bench.

Has it ever occured to you that some politicians vote a certain way, knowing that there's no chance of their vote making a difference, but they do it anyway to make themselves look good?

[Detournement]

16 hours ago, dorlomin said:

Slogans for a night on the piss in the NUS bar, not really a plan for governing. How is that going to convince votes in Nuneaton or Stevenage constituencies to vote Labour. Shouting your personal beliefs at them is going to get them to change?

These are two of the midlands seats that Labour held in government but now have about a 10% deficit in votes.

They aren't slogans. The share of GDP taken by workers has decreased significantly since Thatcher came to power (despite the expansion of the labour force). Government spending as a percentage of GDP has dropped to 7% behind France which is killing growth and productivity. These are the primary economic problems facing the UK.

Also Nuneaton is Labour's 81st target requiring a 5% swing and Stevenage is 63rd requiring 3%. However it's not 1997 any more and these places are full of people who voted Labour in 1997 and now vote Tory due to decent pensions and housing equity. It's the under 50s who are voting Labour strongly and there is no indication that the Tories are capable of applying any policies which will bring them into the Tory fold as they move beyond 50.

 

 

[Detournement]

15 hours ago, BerwickMad said:

Voting for or against a war 15 years ago doesn’t really place you on the political spectrum, nor is voting for it the difference between being a social democrat and a conservative. Neither does the odd individual vote, and certainly not an abstention.

You look at her voting record on TheyWorkForYou which shows she voted against the bedroom tax, 47 times against reductions in welfare benefits, for raising income tax on the rich, for a bankers bonus tax, against reducing corporation tax etc etc. She’s progressive on social issues and pro-European integration.

I would never argue she was as left wing as Corbyn but her overall voting record and the campaigns she fights are generally progressive and left of centre. She certainly doesn’t have the overall voting record of a conservative. She also does a better job of holding the Tories to account than most of the front bench.

If you voted to needlessly unleash huge levels of violence on Iraqis then you are not on the left. If you were duped then you are not fit to govern.

I actually don't mind Cooper and I think she would back any genuinely progressive policies but her time in Parliament leaves me in no doubt that given any power she would be beholden to the same interests and lobbying as Blair and his ministers.

[dorlomin]

9 hours ago, Detournement said:

They aren't slogans.

They are slogans, not policies or ideas. 

Quote

Also Nuneaton is Labour's 81st target requiring a 5% swing and Stevenage is 63rd requiring 3%. However it's not 1997 any more and these places are full of people who voted Labour in 1997 and now vote Tory due to decent pensions and housing equity. It's the under 50s who are voting Labour strongly and there is no indication that the Tories are capable of applying any policies which will bring them into the Tory fold as they move beyond 50.

The tories target the over 50s because the over 50s turn up and vote. A strategy of waiting till enough people die then hoping the rest stick with you is imbecilic.  Your political enemies will always be dynamic and changing, as people age their concerns change. Labour not being in power has lead to the odious fuckwits in the tory party going full on on the low income and those with little wage bargaining power. Now Landsman\McDonnell are more concerned with unleashing the freaks of Arkham Asylum onto the "moderate" MPs than lifting their lazy arses to oppose Brexit. True to form the hard left are obsessed with internal party discipline and have little interest in the wider world. The same self indulgent, self obsessed petty politics of every hard left splinter group. 

There is also another point, the drooling far left clowns whine about "first past the post" being some kind of barrier. Their sole interest is in trying to grab government, they are never effective at  the local level. They have zero interest in the "dull" politics of towns and county councils. The SNP, LDs and others have long known you build the spine of your party at the local level, that is where your activist base learns its trade and you find the best candidates. By establishing your credibility in local government you can build to national relevance. However the fruitcakes and freaks of the hard left have never been willing to put in the hard yards building credibility at that level. this is why they wail about "fptp". Their endless array of microparties lost deposits at general elections and never put any effort into the locals. This is all way past your limited capacity to grasp. The reason nothing "left of Labour" emerged other than the Greens was because only the Greens, SNP, LDs were willing to spend time trying to get the bin collections working. 

Edited September 8, 2018 by dorlomin

[Detournement]

13 minutes ago, dorlomin said:

They are slogans, not policies or ideas. 

The tories target the over 50s because the over 50s turn up and vote. A strategy of waiting till enough people die then hoping the rest stick with you is imbecilic.  Your political enemies will always be dynamic and changing, as people age their concerns change. Labour not being in power has lead to the odious fuckwits in the tory party going full on on the low income and those with little wage bargaining power. Now Landsman\McDonnell are more concerned with unleashing the freaks of Arkham Asylum onto the "moderate" MPs than lifting their lazy arses to oppose Brexit. True to form the hard left are obsessed with internal party discipline and have little interest in the wider world. The same self indulgent, self obsessed petty politics of every hard left splinter group. 

There is also another point, the drooling far left clowns whine about "first past the post" being some kind of barrier. Their sole interest is in trying to grab government, they are never effective at  the local level. They have zero interest in the "dull" politics of towns and county councils. The SNP, LDs and others have long known you build the spine of your party at the local level, that is where your activist base learns its trade and you find the best candidates. By establishing your credibility in local government you can build to national relevance. However the fruitcakes and freaks of the hard left have never been willing to put in the hard yards building credibility at that level. this is why they wail about "fptp". Their endless array of microparties lost deposits at general elections and never put any effort into the locals. This is all way past your limited capacity to grasp. The reason nothing "left of Labour" emerged other than the Greens was because only the Greens, SNP, LDs were willing to spend time trying to get the bin collections working. 

They are descriptions of the macro economic trends that affecting working class people across the UK which steer politics much more than personalities and media storms.

Working class socialists don't need to start a new party. The labour movement created one for us over a century ago and it has been reclaimed for it's original purpose of improving the lives of working people.

"This is all way past your limited capacity to grasp"

Brilliant coming from a dullard who's posts comes across as random sentences from the Times comment section pasted together.

 

[welshbairn]

9 hours ago, Detournement said:

I actually don't mind Cooper and I think she would back any genuinely progressive policies

^^^Reported to Momentum HQ.

[Cerberus]

Socialism has never and will never work and voters know that.

Only the jakes, anti-establishment nutters and those who have nothing to lose want it.
Anyone with even a semi-decent job won't vote for them.

 

[Jambo99]

1 hour ago, Cerberus said:

Socialism has never and will never work and voters know that.

Only the jakes, anti-establishment nutters and those who have nothing to lose want it.
Anyone with even a semi-decent job won't vote for them.

 

are you not a Scottish Nationalist nutter?

[Arsenal till I die]

12 hours ago, dorlomin said:

They are slogans, not policies or ideas. 

The tories target the over 50s because the over 50s turn up and vote. A strategy of waiting till enough people die then hoping the rest stick with you is imbecilic.  Your political enemies will always be dynamic and changing, as people age their concerns change. Labour not being in power has lead to the odious fuckwits in the tory party going full on on the low income and those with little wage bargaining power. Now Landsman\McDonnell are more concerned with unleashing the freaks of Arkham Asylum onto the "moderate" MPs than lifting their lazy arses to oppose Brexit. True to form the hard left are obsessed with internal party discipline and have little interest in the wider world. The same self indulgent, self obsessed petty politics of every hard left splinter group. 

There is also another point, the drooling far left clowns whine about "first past the post" being some kind of barrier. Their sole interest is in trying to grab government, they are never effective at  the local level. They have zero interest in the "dull" politics of towns and county councils. The SNP, LDs and others have long known you build the spine of your party at the local level, that is where your activist base learns its trade and you find the best candidates. By establishing your credibility in local government you can build to national relevance. However the fruitcakes and freaks of the hard left have never been willing to put in the hard yards building credibility at that level. this is why they wail about "fptp". Their endless array of microparties lost deposits at general elections and never put any effort into the locals. This is all way past your limited capacity to grasp. The reason nothing "left of Labour" emerged other than the Greens was because only the Greens, SNP, LDs were willing to spend time trying to get the bin collections working. 

I lived in Nuneaton for 2 years, and in New Arley (in the North Warwickshire borough and the Nuneaton constituency for a further 8). The Tories offer absolutely nothing to the under 50s in Nuneaton or North Warwickshire. Nuneaton is an absolute dump. The town centre has a worse congestion problem than most cities including on a sunday, and in the middle of the day on a week day. Just about all the roads going onto the ring road (which runs right through the town centre) have been blocked off leading to this mess. The buses all go via the town centre, leading to commuters sitting in congestion on a bus in a town centre they don't even need to be in. Away from the town centre, there is nothing but houses and flats, no jobs and barely any amenities. Strangely, out in the villages all the buses go to Nuneaton even in places half way between Nuneaton and Coventry, which is far better for jobs and services. Add to all that, the fact that 13 years of New Labour made Labour a toxic brand and created voter apathy. Labour lost Nuneaton council in 2008, under Brown who is basically a Blairite just after he scrapped the 10p tax band. The under 50s will not end up voting Tory in Nuneaton and North Warwickshire, or nationally. Unlike the oldies, we face a rising pension age which the dementia age is not keeping up with, and social media for all its ills, has exposed the establishment but many over 50s don't use it. However, the under 50s aren't going to suddenly stop using it when they pass a certain age. Even before social media, from 1983 onwards the age brackets have voted how they have pretty much every election since, all the evidence debunks the myth that a) Tory voters didn't use to vote Tory and that b) people who don't vote Tory will end up voting Tory. How many people in what age group vote may vary, but the passage of time will trump that. And to suggest that Labour hasn't been targeting voters of all age brackets and all kinds of areas of the country is laughable. In Corbyn and Thornberry's borough, last time I checked the only seat that wasn't Labour was green but I guess Labour are dog shit at the local level eh? In fact the worst Labour councils are the most Bitterite - Coventry tried to take Corbyn to court to stop him being on the ballot paper as sitting leader, after doing all they could to screw over a) Coventry City and b) Wasps fans by letting their team do an M.K dons.

 

I must say, your post is full of insults and you won't win the argument with such immature behaviour. I can't even be arsed to red your post as I'm sure you will mine, but my life time ambition isn't to have a popular score on an internet message board.

[tirso]

On 9/7/2018 at 17:01, BerwickMad said:

I only know of Margaret Hodge off the top of my head who has accused him directly of being an anti-Semite. She’s clearly motivated in that she wants rid of him, but that doesn’t mean concerns should be dismissed. He’s had questions to answer over various things he’s said or done. He also appeases anti-semites which is why many of them support him. Don’t tell me that little ‘leaked’ part of a pulled statement wasn’t aimed to appeal to the vile scumbags from groups like JVL outside the NEC meeting earlier in the week.

It’s not just about Corbyn though. There’s clear anti-semitism in the Labour Party and I see it at local level and all over social media. If people talked about any other minority group the way they do about Jews, they’d be protesting against it themselves.

You’ll probably argue that some of the shite these scumbags come out with isn’t anti-semitism, but whatever the definition, it’s still pretty repulsive. As is the constant abusive attacks at anyone not following the leader.

Anyway, my point is that politics isn’t as black and white as Corbynista or Tory. There’s a pretty obvious centre-left that isn’t ‘Red-Tory’.

Cheers for the reply but I'm still not convinced he has said or done anything anti-semitic.  And you haven't pointed anything specific out.

"There's clear anti semitism".  Can somebody show me quotes or actions?   I'm not saying there is or isn't.  

Even if it's not your main point; it's a big card to play calling anybody anti-Semitic without any actual proof.

I don't really have a game in this fight.  I'm just not convinced this isn't a smear.  Calling someone an anti Semite is a disgrace unless she has proof to back herself up.    

[Detournement]

This is why we need a radical Labour government.