What is the point of labour ?

[Detournement]

31 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

Not buying that tbh. The 2nd ref policy of 2019 labour included all that as an option and the red wall voters rejected it, kenning fine what the alternative was.

I'm neutral on what they're doing, I just don't get why they think it will be popular with red wall voters in particular. Who are mainly people motivated by immigration above all other things.

In the long, long run up to the 2019 election there were Labour MPs on the telly* every single day saying they were going to stop Brexit, Starmer announced his own personal support for a 2nd referendum at the conference , David Lammy incredibly said that Brexiteers were worse than Nazis at a huge rally and Andrew Adonis told people who wanted the UK to leave the EU not to vote for Labour. It's not really a surprise that people who wanted the referendum result to be respected felt this outweighed the policy decided at conference.

Red Wall is just the political patter du jour the same as middle England was  or the rust belt. It negates any need to seriously consider the class composition of the electorate.

*I honestly believe that the saturation of BBC coverage on Brexit was designed to help the Tories as it was their biggest asset in any upcoming election. I also think they purposefully broadcast that Stop Brexit shouting roaster's voice for hundreds of hours to radicalise soft gammons. It's the same thing with bizarre non stop Blackford interviews.

[GordonS]

On 26/11/2020 at 19:36, Jedi said:

 

Federalism could work if the second chamber required a 'majority' of two of the four areas for a vote, otherwise, clearly the numerical superiority of English members would always carry.

Any Act of Parliament that provided for federalism and things like voting thresholds in Parliament could be undone or amended by simple majority in Parliament.

That's what happened with the 2019 general election - under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 there shouldn't have been another general election until 2022. To call an early election was supposed to require a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons (as happened for the 2017 election). But instead they passed another Act, the Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019, and that only required a simple majority.

Federalism in the UK would require a written constitution to change some of the fundamental principles of our present constitution, and I don't think anyone realistically expects that to happen. 

[CambieBud]

And the more Starmer appeals to the prejudices of Northern England the more marginal SLab will become.
You hate love to see it

This is spot on. The further to the right Sir man of the people Starmer moved to try to win back Brexiteers in Northern England, the more boxed in they become here. A lost cause

[Granny Danger]

39 minutes ago, CambieBud said:

 

 

This is spot on. The further to the right Sir man of the people Starmer moved to try to win back Brexiteers in Northern England, the more boxed in they become here. A lost cause

 

 

The irony is that with an independent Scotland the ability of the Labour Party to win a majority in rUK will be nigh on impossible in the short-to-medium term.

 

[Gordon EF]

Labour abstaining on the covid tier level vote in England. Who saw that one coming?

[Arch Stanton]

5 minutes ago, Gordon EF said:

Labour abstaining on the covid tier level vote in England. Who saw that one coming?

What is the point of an opposition which doesn't oppose?

[dirty dingus]

[Guest Jedi]

SNP also abstaining on the vote...although in fairness, it does only affect English tier levels.

On the point of Federalism, it would indeed require a written constitution in order to work, otherwise, as suggested, a parliamentary majority could overturn a vote in the second federal chamber, so it would need to be agreed in advance that at least two of (London, Belfast, Edinburgh, Cardiff) representatives would be needed to pass any legislation, not just one.

'If' a second Independence ref results in another No vote though, what happens next? Does that put federalism on the table? No could only win again by a pretty small majority as things stand at present, but would that mean the status quo just continues, or would there be a push for a federal UK model in those circumstances?

Still think that it would be better for Labour to get on board with this, they have to be offering some alternative to the status quo, otherwise they remain irrelevant in Scotland.

[Wee-Bey]

 

[G51]

It's so incredibly hard not to absolutely fucking despise Keir Starmer and what he's done to English Labour.

So I'm not going to try.

[Antlion]

On 01/12/2020 at 09:40, dirty dingus said:

Never noticed before just how much Cherie resembles celebrity fame-seeker Lauren Harries. 

[Detournement]

Naomi Wimborbe-Idrissi suspended now. Wrong type of Jew.

[Arsenal till I die]

So who's this Murray bloke who got passed up? Can't be the same Murray who keeps defending the Tories surely?

[DeeTillEhDeh]

A few years ago there was a documentary about rows of nice old 2 up 2 down brick terraces in Liverpool and the struggle between people wanting to buy them to live in them as homes and developers who wanted to knock them down and build on the land. Joe Anderson came across as a nasty piece of work in it, telling people who were appealing to the council to leave buildings up so they could buy them that nobody wanted to live in them.
Anyway he's just been arrested on suspicion of fraud related to development deals.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/04/mayor-of-liverpool-arrested-as-part-of-investigation

He's not unique in the Labour Party.

[CambieBud]

 

The absolute state of this. There are only two options.

1. Independence or
2. Continued subservience to Boris/ Gove/ Rees Mogg

[mizfit]

What are the chances of Labour holding onto wales at the next Welsh Election?

[RiG]

"What have the Scottish Government spent money trying to prepare for the NHS being overwhelmed in Scotland?"

 

[NotThePars]

Keir apparently abstaining on the Great Replacement

[oneteaminglasgow]

31 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

 

Keir apparently abstaining on the Great Replacement

 

I know that planting himself firmly on the fence seems to be his entire brand, but you’d have thought he could take a side on “white genocide”

[Arsenal till I die]

On 11/12/2020 at 15:44, mizfit said:

What are the chances of Labour holding onto wales at the next Welsh Election?

Good question. As NS regularly points out at FMQ's, they haven't performed as well as the Scottish government, although they've still done better than the UK government (which she has also pointed out at the same time, to be fair). They are also nowhere near as bad as Scottish Labour, and they may even turn in favour of independence. Language is a big issue, a lot of monolingual English speakers there have a kind of language nationalism about them. The English get blamed which flies in the face of the facts - most of the English are in Gwynedd (it's nice) which is solidly pro independence, PC voting and bilingual. I also believe Wales has less powers than Scotland, so less to blame the government for.

In my opinion, the SNP and SF need to team up and demand a referendum for Scotland or NI. If the UK government says no to both, they need to throw their weight behind Welsh independence. It's tough, but if the Welsh voters can be shown a UK that is denying referenda left, right and centre, they might be persuaded to vote for one. Then, if they can be convinced "Vote Yes or you won't get another one", then the break up of the Empire should commence. 

I should add in some personal experience here as well. We had a caravan in Gwynedd and regularly went on holiday there for the 1st 2 decades of my life. I can't be the only English person for this to happen to, but being there, where just about everyone can speak Welsh, must have really affected my politics (that and growing up in multi cultural London). You just really feel, literally standing on the mountain, "this land doesn't belong to England". This is why I feel that the amount of English in Snowdonia and Snowdonia's high support for independence shouldn't be contradictory. We were near Fairborne, which was featured on the BBC site. They done a segment of how it could become the first town in the UK abandoned to rising sea levels. Most of the people in the programme being interviewed have English accents. The nearby Talyllyn (Skarloey) Railway was pretty much revived by Brummies as well.

Another bit of personal experience is I used to help out Welsh Labour round Wrexham way. I never heard one bad word against independence (it would have registered, as I was already in favour of indy), no sure I even heard a bad word about Plaid either.