What is the point of labour ?

[Granny Danger]

Anyone opposed to Scottish Independence given the legacy of the last 13 years of Tory misrule is beyond redemption.

Anyone who thinks that things will change under Starmer is deluding themselves.

 

[StellarHibee]

10 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

Anyone opposed to Scottish Independence given the legacy of the last 13 years of Tory misrule is beyond redemption.

Anyone who thinks that things will change under Starmer is deluding themselves.

They know nothing will change under Starmer, but they'll continue to pretend anyway. Even when his gang rolls into government and presses on with the same agenda, these shitheads will be going around telling everybody how great everything suddenly is. 

[Zern]

Hard not to disagree with Femi today:

I agree with Femi on this. The degradation of our human rights has been steadily increasing since our exit from the EU, led by some ultra-right wing tories who sees regulation as red-tape, holding back the industry that could be unleashed.

What is worrying is the Labour party's matching rhetoric that accepts the right-wing premises underlying Tory policy.

Edited August 14, 2023 by Zern
a typo that utterly reversed what i was attempting to say.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Zern said:

Hard not to disagree with Femi today:

 

I'll preface my response here with the following - I like Femi and I voted Remain in 2016 - so my disagreements with his takes are always coming from a good faith position.

Every injustice he describes in that video is valid and credit to him for recognising them all. I'm fully with him on what the problems are. Where I differ, though, is in the solution. The EU is just not what he thinks it is, it is not a guarantor of human rights because while it certainly cares about human rights, that concern is superseded at times by a greater concern. The EU is a bastion of liberalism and I was putting in another thread earlier today, ensuring the right of capitalists to their capital is the primary concern of liberalism.

Every Tory government sin listed in this video by Femi has been carried out by the government of Poland in recent years. The EU hasn't given a toss because Poland is integral to the economic project of the EU. Poland was identified two decades ago as a potential new major European economy so the EU threw money at it to build it up. That bore fruit and Poland is now either soon to overtake Spain or already has depending on which economic metrics you use. Poland has been the largest single nation recipient of EU funding and that funding has actually increased the more authoritarian their government has become. Added to this is that Poland has also long been a favoured child of the US military industrial complex. Poland made up the quartet along with USA, UK and Australia that launched the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example. So Poland enjoys both EU and US favoured status and therefore its government can be as nasty as it wants without punishment. All it has to do is meet its economic obligations to those entities. Hungary is another example of this, terrible and worsening record on human rights but the EU does nothing.

So you can't just have liberalism alone as a solution to the problems Femi lists. You need some socialism too. Well there was Corbyn's Labour advocating that at the end of the 2010s and Femi went against it. Railing against the incoming Starmer government should really be his priority now rather than continuing to lament Brexit, given the former can possibly still be influenced while the latter can't be.

Edited August 13, 2023 by FreedomFarter

[Wee-Bey]

 

[KirkieRR]

Anyone who finds Yvette Cooper in any way exciting (the ghastly Polly Toynbee credits her with something akin to superpowers) badly needs a Saki-style Unrest Cure.

[Granny Danger]

Im sure the morally incorruptible Tony Blair will be a role model for Starmer once he leaves office.

Tony Blair Institute has continued to receive Saudi Arabian money after Khashoggi murder

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tony-blair-saudi-arabia-khashoggi-b2392152.html

[StellarHibee]

9 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

Im sure the morally incorruptible Tony Blair will be a role model for Starmer once he leaves office.

Tony Blair Institute has continued to receive Saudi Arabian money after Khashoggi murder

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tony-blair-saudi-arabia-khashoggi-b2392152.html

Mr Sunak met Prince Mohammed on the margins of the G20 summit in Bali last November, where the leaders discussed social reforms and civil liberties – but not the murder of Khashoggi, No 10 said at the time.

Presumably for the UK rather than Saudi Arabia?

[Billy Jean King]

Car crash press conference with Starmer and Sarwar in Rutherglen.  STV boy put it to Sarwar that he opposed the 2 child benefit cap. He mumbled something about being opposed to it but it's not economically viable. He then was backed into a corner (inc being accused of being in charge of a branch office ) whereby the position was it was something Labour would aspire to policy wise but the finances simply wouldn't permit it. It's akin to saying Labour would abolish poverty, solve climate change and deliver world peace but we just won't have the money. Oh and all the while Starmer squirmed and shuffled in his chair basically saying nothing. 

[Frank Quitely]

14 hours ago, Billy Jean King said:

Car crash press conference with Starmer and Sarwar in Rutherglen.  STV boy put it to Sarwar that he opposed the 2 child benefit cap. He mumbled something about being opposed to it but it's not economically viable. He then was backed into a corner (inc being accused of being in charge of a branch office ) whereby the position was it was something Labour would aspire to policy wise but the finances simply wouldn't permit it. It's akin to saying Labour would abolish poverty, solve climate change and deliver world peace but we just won't have the money. Oh and all the while Starmer squirmed and shuffled in his chair basically saying nothing. 

I think we are all agreed that any upsurge in the Labour vote in Scotland will have very little to do with enthusiasm for their ever-shifting policy programme, and much more to do with disillusionment with the SNP.

[sophia]

58 minutes ago, Frank Quitely said:

I think we are all agreed that any upsurge in the Labour vote in Scotland will have very little to do with enthusiasm for their ever-shifting policy programme, and much more to do with disillusionment with the SNP.

No we certainly are not 

[TheScarf]

1 hour ago, Frank Quitely said:

I think we are all agreed that any upsurge in the Labour vote in Scotland will have very little to do with enthusiasm for their ever-shifting policy programme, and much more to do with disillusionment with the SNP.

Then these people are idiots.  

[oneteaminglasgow]

Starmer not being able to name a single Scottish Labour frontbencher is a phenomenal laugh.

Imagine the anguish that Jackie Baillie must be feeling right now. 

[Suspect Device]

1 hour ago, oneteaminglasgow said:

Starmer not being able to name a single Scottish Labour frontbencher is a phenomenal laugh.

Imagine the anguish that Jackie Baillie must be feeling right now. 

(Pantomime) Dame Jackie Baillie if you don't mind.

[coprolite]

On 13/08/2023 at 16:28, FreedomFarter said:

I'll preface my response here with the following - I like Femi and I voted Remain in 2016 - so my disagreements with his takes are always coming from a good faith position.

Every injustice he describes in that video is valid and credit to him for recognising them all. I'm fully with him on what the problems are. Where I differ, though, is in the solution. The EU is just not what he thinks it is, it is not a guarantor of human rights because while it certainly cares about human rights, that concern is superseded at times by a greater concern. The EU is a bastion of liberalism and I was putting in another thread earlier today, ensuring the right of capitalists to their capital is the primary concern of liberalism.

Every Tory government sin listed in this video by Femi has been carried out by the government of Poland in recent years. The EU hasn't given a toss because Poland is integral to the economic project of the EU. Poland was identified two decades ago as a potential new major European economy so the EU threw money at it to build it up. That bore fruit and Poland is now either soon to overtake Spain or already has depending on which economic metrics you use. Poland has been the largest single nation recipient of EU funding and that funding has actually increased the more authoritarian their government has become. Added to this is that Poland has also long been a favoured child of the US military industrial complex. Poland made up the quartet along with USA, UK and Australia that launched the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example. So Poland enjoys both EU and US favoured status and therefore its government can be as nasty as it wants without punishment. All it has to do is meet its economic obligations to those entities. Hungary is another example of this, terrible and worsening record on human rights but the EU does nothing.

So you can't just have liberalism alone as a solution to the problems Femi lists. You need some socialism too. Well there was Corbyn's Labour advocating that at the end of the 2010s and Femi went against it. Railing against the incoming Starmer government should really be his priority now rather than continuing to lament Brexit, given the former can possibly still be influenced while the latter can't be.

The primary concern of liberalism is freedom. 

Capital appropriates liberalist rhetoric when it suits it to do so and ignores it when it doesn't. 

There's not a lot of emancipation in sweat shops. 

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, coprolite said:

The primary concern of liberalism is freedom. 

Capital appropriates liberalist rhetoric when it suits it to do so and ignores it when it doesn't. 

There's not a lot of emancipation in sweat shops. 

Aye, you're right to correct me on that. It's not the primary concern of liberalism but rather a problem that can arise from a contradiction within liberalism.

The right to private property, a central tenet to liberalism, can clash with the overall goal of personal freedom. 

I know you know this but for the sake of anyone reading who might not; the right to private property allows for the private ownership of wealth generating enterprises (the "means of production"). This is very different to the right to personal property - your personal possessions - which are not enshrined by liberalism. Personal property such as your home can be and often is taken from you under liberalism (due to capitalism).

The right to private property, to own the means of production, can mean the right to subjugate the workers in that production. That's what capitalists can take advantage of and where socialist agitation has always been needed to ameliorate.

[StellarHibee]

7 hours ago, Frank Quitely said:

I think we are all agreed that any upsurge in the Labour vote in Scotland will have very little to do with enthusiasm for their ever-shifting policy programme, and much more to do with disillusionment with the SNP.

Disillusioned as a result of the SNP not moving the independence issue further forward, despite the totalitarian team of Labour and tories at Westminster making it utterly impossible for them to do so. Yep, makes perfect sense to then go and vote for those parties....

[Wee-Bey]

Good stuff lads. More politics in those 2 posts than around 90 % of the banal utterings we get from our elected and unelected representatives.

[BMG Spider]

On 12/08/2023 at 02:25, pawpar said:

Posted this just 5 years ago when I asked the question what is the point of Labour. I now ask the question what is the difference between Labour and Tory. Both support the racist brexit ideal. Keith Starmer has said that he disagrees with tory policies but will not change them if he gets elected. The tories currently support what is happening on the Bibby Stockholm but Labour are quiet yet again hoping they don't rock the boat. Keith would sell his granny's soul to the devil to get elected. So the question is now what would it take for Keith to grow some balls and say enough is enough. Personally it's never going to happen. As I said in my first post much as I hate the tories (and I really bloody do) you have to give them credit for sticking to their racist ideals. while Keith will just not try to upset  anyone and everyone just to get elected.

Pretty clear the difference now is only their names

[oneteaminglasgow]

15 minutes ago, Ziggy Sobotka said:

the banal utterings we get from our elected and unelected representatives.

I think you’ll find that that’s what ‘grown up politics’ is all about.