Didn't see that coming, thought we were stuck with that murderous trout until 2020!
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Didn't see that coming, thought we were stuck with that murderous trout until 2020!
What makes you think you're going to get rid of her, have you seen the state of the so-called opposition? Only Party (apart from the Tories) that I could possibly see gaining from this is the Lib Dems, if enough people have forgiven them for the coalition.
6 more weeks of f**king "Hard/soft Brexit" and "Independence Referendum 2" debates...:hide-1:
What does she have to lose? She's got great approval numbers and there's a decent chance her party picks up some seats. That gives her much needed leverage going into EU negotiations.
You Brits are lucky this smart cookie fell into your lap. Ironic that last year at this time she was stumping for Remain alongside Cameron and Obama.. you remember those guys?
On the one hand yes, the Tories see an opportunity for a major election victory too good to resist. On the other hand the Electoral Commission is now looking into 30 seats that were contested in the 2015 General Election where there are claims the party did not properly account for its election expenses. If found guilty, the election would have to be run again in all 30 seats. In theory calling a new election annuls the value of the investigation, or not, if the Commission decides to continue its work.
On the one hand, Theresa May has the backing of most of her party and the Labour opposition in the matter of the UK's exit from the EU. On the other hand, hard liners in her own party are snooping around her Brexit team to make sure they don't cave in to EU demands and if necessary they welcome the ultimate 'no deal' over Brexit Mrs May does not want.
But with a lack of clarity on negotiations that have not even begun, how can any observer make a statement on the terms of the exit that is anything but speculation? The idea that a new Parliament gives her a stronger hand in the negotiations does not make sense, and does not even make sense if she has a majority in the Commons of 100, she already has the power she needs, Parliament has already made its commitment clear, with the only possible conundrum being a vote against the precise terms of the negotiation, but that is also speculation. But what is more extraordinary, is the possibility that the election may not produce a Commons much different from what it is today.
The assumption is that the Labour vote will melt away, as it did in the Netherlands and as the Socialists in France are expected to get hammered, but in the Netherlands the Greens filled the gap, and in France leftist Melenchon is drawing support from socialists. Labour has solid support in its northern constituencies, and defeated UKIP in the Stoke by-election last month. If the SNP rule in Scotland, Labour might only lose 10-20 seats in England and Wales, and those may be taken by the Tories and the Liberal Democrats so the Tory majority might only be 20-25, and with Scotland in effect voting for independence, the outcome actually either weakens the Prime Minister, or leaves her in the same position as she is in now. As for Northern Ireland, the power sharing administration has all but ceased to function, and while Direct Rule from Westminster appears the only option right now, the likelihood is that the limbo will continue until after the election. In spite of the sectarian nature of Northern Irish elections, one wonders if the indifference London shows to the province will persuade enough Protestants to consider their prospects in a United Ireland to be better than the so-called 'United Kingdom'.
Finally this: with most of the polls getting the last election wrong, May has based this gamble on -the polls, the one's showing Labour in crisis and her party way ahead...is this shrewd political manipulation, or Hubris?
It's possible that the polls show disaffection with how Labour is being run more than how people will vote once they hear an election is called. If I'm unhappy with a party's leadership, I might not indicate support in a poll, but when given the choice in an election would still cast my ballot for the party that most reflects my values.
For those who are left of center politically, would you prefer a politician who is pragmatic or uncompromising? One dilemma is that we distrust the pragmatic politician bc we fear they might sell out our interests. But then there is the concern that the purist does not have broad enough appeal and will not yield to what is expedient, as all leaders must occasionally do.
It is difficult for me to get a grip on why Labour is seen as so weak right now, except to assume that people think Corbyn does not care what Labour voters want, but is wedded to what he wants for them. For instance, although he campaigned for remain his heart was not in it because he sees the EU as a pro-corporate force. But the alternative is isolationism and nationalism. Is the problem with Corbyn's Labour that he is not responsive to his constituents?
One also has to question his judgment somewhat. He is someone who insisted that he spoke with Holocaust deniers and invited both Hamas or Hezbollah to Parliament because he is willing to share a platform with anyone even when they have disagreements on specific issues. When Netanyahu came to Britain he was unwilling to meet with him. Either of these positions is tenable on its own. Don't meet with Netanyahu bc you think his policies are destructive or meet with Hamas bc you think they are necessary for a peace agreement despite their rancid incitement. The two positions put together don't seem consistent to me. I doubt this is the specific reason he has lost support as those on the left seem very defensive (to the point of willful blindness) about this issue. But it might be a symptom of his tone deafness and general inflexibility.
More than 80 per cent of Labour MPs voted against Corbyn last year. Given they're the people who are in a position to know him best that probably tells us something about his leadership. No party leader can succeed in these circumstances.
Corbyn stayed as leader because party members continued to support him, but the problem is that only a tiny minority of the voters join political parties and those that do are not representative of the broader electorate. The fact that he did not recognise his position was untenable is a sign of tone deafness and inflexibility. Even now there are reports that he intends to stay on as leader even if Labour loses badly. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a7691911.html
That seems to suggest that Corbyn and his supporters would rather destroy the party than give up control. This is not just a problem for Labour - good government will not happen unless there is an effective opposition.
Jeremy Corbyn is not hard to understand. He joined the Labour Party in the 1960s at a time when most young people attracted to left-wing politics regarded Labour as a waste of time, preferring the 'revolutionary' and mostly Trotskyist parties that have dominated the left in Britain since the 1940s, to no known effect on the working class or indeed politics in general. The Communist Party of Great Britain was viewed as a Stalinist project, but for Corbyn (at the same time true of Ken Livingstone) Labour had a national party machine and crucially, was funded by the Unions, and this was the vehicle he chose to work in.
The Labour left in the 1960s was in the process of a change shaped by 1960s 'radical chic', as Tom Wolfe put it, where the struggle of justice against injustice, equality against inequality, freedom against oppression found its campaigns in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, opposition to 'American Imperialism' in Vietnam, and an ill-thought through support for 'revolutionary' or 'national liberation' struggles, often armed struggles in Latin America, Africa, and by the end of the decade in Northern Ireland and the Middle East (but few recall the 'revolutionary movement in Oman that was fighting a guerilla war).
The irony here is that a previous generation of Labour left-wingers like Michael Foot (who became leader of the Party and led it to its worst election result in 50 years in 1983), and Ian Mikardo, is that they welcomed the creation of Israel on the same terms, seeing it as a positive climax of the anti-fascist struggle and anti-semitism, and viewing Ben-Gurion's Labour Party as their fraternal comrades in the Socialist International, given that in 1948 Israel was considered to be a Socialist country.
But the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 the War and its aftermath, in particular the occupation of the West Bank and the onset of illegal settlement buildings, changed the perspective of the left for whom justice now lay with the Palestinians. As with Northern Ireland, the hurdle the left had to jump over was 'the armed struggle' where in the case of Northern Ireland it led to savage sectarian violence in the province and bombings and assassinations in the rest of the UK, and in the Middle East a wave of aeroplane hi-jackings organized by Palestinian guerillas, culminating in the Munich Olympic assassinations which for most people robbed the Palestinian cause of any just argument it might have had (and indeed, the armed struggle as a strategy declined from 1972). The problem is that you cannot really support a revolutionary movement and condemn it at the same time because of its violent acts, so the tactic of both Corbyn and at the time, Sinn Fein was to condemn 'all acts of violence'.
An additional problem in the UK at the time was that while, in spite of their denials, Sinn Fein was the political wing of the IRA, it also had support among Catholics, won seats to Parliament (which it never attended) and was in secret negotiations with the British government even as the press and the same government pilloried Corbyn for inviting Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams to talk to MPs in the House of Commons. On a similar level, Hezbollah in Lebanon is represented in the Lebanese Parliament, it is a social movement popular among the Shi'a communities of Souther Beirut and Lebanon, but is regarded a 'terrorist' organization by the USA, mostly due to its connections with Iran, and to support Israel (which according to some rumours is planning another mini-war against Hezbollah on Lebanon this summer).
The Labour left has thus embraced Marxism in a way that the older generation did not, and in Corbyn's case, his involvement with the Labour Party coincided with the emergence of a small group in the London School of Economics in 1968 called the 'Chartist' group. At a time when Marxist and Trotskyists were forming the International Marxist Group or beefing up the Socialist Labour League and the International Socialists (subsequently the Worker's Revolutionary Party, and the Socialist Worker's Party), Chartists identified Labour as the best vehicle for their version of the 'Parliamentary Road to Socialism'. Working from the base, they identified London as the engine room for their long-term aim to capture the Labour Party, and identified Livingstone and Corbyn, both of whom became councillors in London Boroughs, Ken in Camden and Corbyn in Islington, as their champions.
Chartists (most of them teachers but I knew one comrade who was a window cleaner) moved into bed-sits and apartments in Brent, Haringey, Islington, Lewisham, Lambeth and Southwark, joining the local Labour Party, recruiting members, sponsoring radical resolutions, and generally giving local people the idea Labour was 'fighting the cuts' that the (Labour) government introduced to social services after the financial crisis of 1976. They were also active in the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy which aimed to give the memberhsip of the Party the power to select and de-select MPs, and elect the leader of the Party. This became a successful campaign that the left believed placed power in the hands of the rank and file members, and has been the primary objective of the Momentum movement that lay behind Corbyn's successful campaign to become Labour leader.
The election of Mrs Thatcher in 1979 galvanized the left which grew substantially -this is when I joined, for example- and it was clear that getting to the next stage -electing Livingstone and Corbyn to Parliament was a priority, as indeed happened in 1983 for Corbyn, 1987 for Livingstone (his supporters in Brent successfully de-selected sitting MP Reg Freeson [by origin a Jewish orphan from Russia]). In addition, electing radical Labour councils was seen as imperative to raise the tensions with the Thatcher government, which shut down the Greater London Council Livingstone had been leading, and saw the emergence of left-wingers in Brent (the first Black leader of a council in the UK, Merle Amory, then and now a close friend of Livingstone along with her husband Paul Franklyn), Haringey, Lambeth and Southwark. This translated into issue based politics, with a confrontation over council rates and rents the most toxic issue, indeed John McDonnell, the most intellectual of this group (he cites Marx, Lenin and Trotsky as the biggest influences on his life) split -temporarily it seems- with Livingstone over the attempt by the left to force Livingstone in the Greater London Council to defy the government on a matter of law, McDonnell seeing it as part of the long-term strategy known as the 'transitional programme' in which the revolutionary movement attempts the impossible to expose the vicious nature of the state and organize the fight back by the workng class, led of course by people like him.
The left, however, crushed in the 1983 election, limped away to lick its wounds and many left the party (as did I in 1986) disillusioned with the failure to defeat Thatcher. This forced Labour to re-evauate its policy platform and led through Neil Kinnock and the late and much loved John Smith to Tony Blair and the 'New Labour' project. On a key policy issue, Corbyn hated the EU from its inception in 1973 to a few seconds ago, but was persuaded to give lip service to the Social Chapter of the Single Market Act when it was presented to the Labour Conference in 1987 as a guarantee for worker's rights across Europe. Nevertheless Labour has voted with the Conservatives to invoke Article 50 and is committed to the UK being outside of the EU although it claims it will challenge the terms of the Exit when they are brought before Parliament, presumably in 2019.
The summary of this probably over-long story, is that in the aftermath of Blair's New Labour project, the party turned left again, as it did after defeats in the 1930s, 1950s and the 1980s losing election after election, and Corbyn thus represents that secular left which has adopted all the social causes of the day -mostly rights based causes- on the basis that it has wide social and electoral appeal. The older Trotskyists in the Chartist group, new ones and other radicals like Seamus Milne became the foundation of the Momentum movement that sponsored Corbyn's leadership campaign, and a policy portfoliio that could have been written in 1977 -policies to cap wages, policies to regulate prices, the nationalization of the railways, 'defending the NHS', huge tax rises on the super-rich (anyone earning more than £70,000 a year) and so on. It was almost comical to see the old timers energized by the prospect that the 'transitional programme' could be the official policy of Her Majesty's Opposition, even though most of Corbyn's colleagues have deserted him, and this election could be as big a disaster as the 1931 election, although Corbyn claims he will stay on as leader.
The party has lost its way, it has no credibe leadership, no credible policies, no vision of the future, no MPs in Scotland -yet it may hang on in there with 75-100 seats in this election, stranger things have happened. In the end, Corbyn is just a footnote in history, and that is the best one can say for him.
We shall see.
But in the mean time, lets take an empty chair and crush the saboteurs!
Attachment 1005179
If Corbyn as a decent campaign, he could win? The biggest problem is the Establishment, far right media that is the BBC and Murdoch who will ignore Corbyn at every opportunity, as they always do, and keep kissing Mr's Mays bottom, as they always do.
The BBC's "Daily Politics" & their "Newsnight" shows are appallingly bias!
I think the sooner we have an "opt-out" of the license fee the better!
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/334480...is-questioned/
One might argue against the logical conclusion of this article by attacking the source. Afterall I have no idea what the reputation of the sun is but it wouldn't surprise me if it were a tabloid.
But this article paints the picture of a man who is unable to accept criticism of his leadership and takes any critique as evidence of disloyalty. Corbyn supporters might say Coyle represents the establishment or some force sent to undermine dearest Jeremy and his sacred agenda. Could it be the guy just doesn't think Jeremy is as effective a leader as he might be?
Edit: maybe a better article here. Would love to see that email to Corbyn. https://www.theguardian.com/politics...smear-campaign
The Sun is the tabloid that has been the flagship for the Murdoch empire since the Dirty Digger took it over in 1969 and transformed a dull and lifeless broadsheet into a popular daily written in a language the ordinary man and woman could understand but which, unlike the (pro-Labour) Daily Mirror, its most intense competitor, was right-wing, reflecting Rupert Murdoch's view of the world. The Sun became famous for its 'Page 3 girls' flashing their tits, at one time including a 16 year old which in some states in the US would have landed Murdoch in prison. The Sun plied so relentless an anti-Labour campaign between 1980 and 1987 that when Labour lost the General Election it ran a headline 'It woz the Sun wot won it', and Murdoch has been walking in and out of 10 Downing Street ever since, but lost readers over The Sun's disgraceful smears about Liverpool football fans after the Hillsborough tragedy in 1986. The point being that The Sun does not investigate news stories, but makes them up, and if there has been a major event, instead of querying what the Police or the Government says, it just repeats them.
I think an important point is that the 1960s saw the end of a Christian tradition in the Labour Party, and the growth of a secular, often Marxist/Trotskyist trend. Labour's roots are in the non-established Christian communities of Scotland, Wales and rural England, such as the Devon which produced the Tolpuddle Martyrs, workers who organised a union to protect their craft and wages and in 1834 were arrested, and deported to Australia as criminals. The secular left was always in a minority in the party dominated by Keir Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald and Clement Attlee, but by the 1960s the decline of Empire and the challenges to the UK economy that saw the beginning of the end of coal, steel, shipbuilding and textiles also undermined the solidity of Labour's natural working class constituency. This aspect of Labour is not dissimilar to the decline of the industrial working class as the Democrats natural base in the USA, and both parties have relied on the public servant to fill the gap, while policies that used to be focused on the issues most important to to workers: wages, working conditions, education, housing and health, were sidelined as the party recruited supporters based on rights, as in the rights of minorities, women, LGBT and so on. Blair succeeded because he looked reliable, and because voters were fed up with corruption in the Tory Party, and while Blair overhauled the original socialist ideology of Labour to replace it with a modified version of Thatcherism (much as Clinton was a clone of Reagan), he also scored early successes with the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, and a major boost to spending on education. But as Mark Antony put it, 'The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones', thus Blair is now tainted by Iraq and the slavish caving in to the demands of Saudi Arabia. At least Golf can claim to be protecting his brand and financial interests when kow-towing to the unelected dictators of that horrible kingdom.
It is simple really, Labour lost four elections in a row because Labour offered policies the people did not want, and did not trust the leadership. It won elections when the policies were sound and the leadership looked competent. Theresa May exudes confidence even though her actual record in office, as Home Secretary -an almost impossible job in which to be a success anyway- is mixed if not poor. When Tony Benn, a Christian Socialist died, he took that tradition with him into the graveyard of history, though there must be some Labour people with values left in the party. I have rarely known the Labour Party to be led by a group of people so lacking in intellect and culture, so lacking in inspiration, so out of touch with ordinary voters. This is worse than 1983, and it could be even worse on June 9th.
With this viewpoint, one could construct a policy that is coherent. An activist might see the benefit of a boycott tactic to bring pressure to bear on Israel, but a politician is probably in a better position to explain to Netanyahu how he intends to shift Britain's policies and which Israeli policies he sees as unacceptable. The veneration of revolutionary movements regardless of their tactics represents a kind of stunted development. Even the most pro-Israeli person would not think a two state solution could be effectuated without including some Palestinian leadership, whether Fatah or Hamas. How exactly does Corbyn plan to help create a Palestinian state if he is unwilling to talk to any Israeli and even engages in strange efforts to avoid saying the name of the state while talking about it?
Every interview I see with the guy, he seems to look shocked that an interviewer would dare ask him a challenging question. Like the person is breaking some unwritten rule by asking him a tough question. I don't know that it's going to go badly for him, but every time I hear one of his daft supporters complain about traitors within the party, I think it might be for the best. He can take his corduroy jacket and his che guevara hat and complain to his cat about how everyone was out to get him. Yeah, I would prefer him over any Conservative (obviously I don't get a say), and I would not want to go back to the warmongering of Blair but dissent within his party and attention to the priorities of the average person is the only way forward.
I think if you're far of left center politically, you have to accept a pragmatic politician on the national and state level. You also have to pick your battles. Fight the ones you know you can win and compromise on the other ones where there is some wiggle room.
I consider myself a moderate who leans left and libertarian on social issues. But if you give me the choice between voting for a moderate Republican candidate and a purist Left one, I'm going to vote for the former. I just can't get on board with a lot of what the pure Left stands for. Their stance on Israel is actually one of them.
You raise interesting issues, one of which is the support the Labour left has given to national liberation movements without thinking though the potential consequences. Corbyn's second wife was from Chile, his current wife is from Mexico, and you could say they backed the right horse with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, but their support for Hugo Chavez could not reconcile their 'international socialism' with his more nationalist version of it if indeed it was socialism, which is debatable. Venezuela has an abundance of conventional and unconventional oil and gas resources, but is an economic basket case, a testament to failure if ever there was one, yet Chavez remains a 'fallen hero' for reasons not clearly explained.
The problem with Israel is that even with the relatively warm relations between Israel and the UK's Labour Party, most of of whose leaders have been members of Labour Friends of Israel, it was a lukewarm relationship until 1977 when Menachem Begin became Prime Minister, whereupon it deteriorated to the point that Israel gave military support to Argentina during the 1982 Falklands War. It is rooted in the experience of the British Mandate and the 'armed struggle' -to the British, terrorism- that was as violent and destructive as the conflict in Northern Ireland and means there is, particularly with Netanyahu a mild contempt for the British who are simply not important and whose views on the conflict with the Palestinians are mostly ignored. For their part, the left around Corbyn and Livingstone tend to view Israel as an outpost of American Imperialism (and the relationship with the US is now worth a staggering $38 Billion a year), and make a point of forming liaisons with Jews in Israel who not only oppose the occupation of the West Bank, but are also opposed to Zionism, claiming it is possible to be anti-Zionist without being anti-Jewish. The extent to which this means they offer support to Palestinians leaves behind critical thinking in favour of 'situationist' politics, given that while there are acceptable and moderate Palestinians whose voices should be heard, they nevertheless offer support to HAMAS because it is part of the 'resistance struggle' where all good comrades should be, even though in policy terms, the kind of Palestinian state HAMAS wants would be intolerant and undemocratic, and they also never mention the fact that Israel sponsored HAMAS when it was formed because it was opposed to Yasir Arafat and his Fateh movement.
Similarly the Boycott movement is adopted without thinking all of it through, not least whether or not it is effective, the tired argument being that it worked in South Africa, which is debatable. Yes, Israel should not be allowed to market products made on the West Bank and label them 'Made in Israel', but the Boycott is a limp weapon, and in real terms, Israel only does deals in peace when the terms are advantageous to it, and right now the backing Israel's government gives to Settler Fanatics and the repudiation of the Oslo process makes a just peace for both sides difficult if not impossible to produce. The conundrum at the heart of this conflict is that Israel is a democratic state with a vibrant and diverse civil society, but in the West Bank it is little more than a brutal, military dictatorship, which is why those Israelis who recall the original purpose of their state are so appalled at what has happened since 1967, and you don't need to be left, right or centre to agree with that.
Finally, I doubt that if and when the UK leaves the EU it will be able to develop a diplomatic role in the world that leads to it being an honest broker in conflict zones; not only did we lose an Empire, we never did find a role, and I see no demand for the British in the near to medium future least of all in the Middle East where it has a long history of intervention that has created more problems than it solved.
I'm interested to know which Labour MP these Corbyn critics would like to lead the party? All these Corbyn critics seem to want a "Red Tory" Blairite style, pro Establishment character in charge? Then you have nothing different from the far right you have now!
The membership put Corbyn where he is right now, it's pro-Establishment people out there & the media who don't like it!
109.000 people were asked who they would prefer as UK PM yesterday, 63% said Corbyn, sorry I don't know source, it will be on-line somewhere.
Excellent precise view of "The Sun" newspaper Stavros. Always remember as a child my dear old grandma saying; I won't have it in the house!
The two front runners are Yvette Cooper and Keir Starmer, assuming they are re-elected as MPs!
My longer term bet, if he wants the job, would be London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Prepare yourselves for a Muslim Prime Minister, but not in the next 5 years...
Odd are here-(note Tony Blair is 200/1)
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics...-labour-leader
All those 3 are Tories in my book Savros! With undecided voters it would come down to personalities & that's not what Politics is all about!
Some people will laugh but I'd like to see George Galloway(I know he's not even a Labour MP) or Unite Union leader Len McCluskey take the reigns. Jeremy Corbyn struggles to defend himself against his critics & the far right, he's just not aggressive enough.
Realistically though I suppose Corbyns No.2 John McDonald could do a job?
Every time I've seen an interview with Mr. Khan he has come across as intelligent, temperate, and charismatic. I hope those characteristics don't make him suspect, but based on the attacks I've seen him deal with, he seems like someone who is resilient and dignified. There is no doubt that being a Muslim would make him subject to personal attack from every angle by the nationalist right wing, and that his attempts to be diplomatic and promote cohesion might even be challenged.
But just because someone is a lighting rod for the intolerant does not mean he would not make a great candidate. He's described as center left in bios I've read of him; personally center left does not automatically translate to militaristic in my mind. He's probably not as comfortable with Russia's actions in Ukraine as say George Galloway who in 2014 said he believed Russia had a right to act in Ukraine, but some might think there's a moral basis for that.
He is NOT centre left, you have been mis-informed! He is actually centre right, just the kind of candidate Labour doesn't need!
Although I'm sure the media and their friends would disagree!
Even though our views are different, I enjoy your posts. I know that bc I'm not British I don't have my finger on the pulse of these issues like you guys do, and also do not have to live as directly with the consequences of your vote.
I'm just curious what makes Sadiq Khan a Tory? Does he support intervention and active foreign policy? Does he want to cut social programs? I guess I'd also be curious what make George Galloway left wing except him professing that he is.
Peejaye I understand your frustration with the political class that has been in power at least since 2010 and probably before, but I don't think anger and resentment are a sound basis for policy making, and the UK has tended not to vote for candidates who appear to be extreme. George Galloway is a three-legged show pony, completely untrustworthy and too much of a maverick to be a team leader. Len McCluskey reminds me of the trade union barons of the 1970s who were, as the saying goes, all mouth and no trousers, campaigning for worker's rights and socialism but yet when offered a seat in the House of Lords tripped over their left feet in the mad rush to don the ermine and claim their daily allowance. The closest we have come to an extremist was Margaret Thatcher, yet in spite of her flamboyant rhetoric, she was in essence a pragmatist, indeed it was only when she became fixated on a policy nobody else believed in, the Poll Tax, that she was challenged in her own party and forced to resign. The appeal of Theresa May is precisely that sense that she is a safe pair of hands, as was also true of Blair, and is also why Nigel Farage has been on the fringe of British politics where he is destined to remain, having decided after 7 failed attempts he won't be making an 8th attempt to become an MP. As for John McDonnell, the Leninist mind-set he has is not suited to government, he is and would probably prefer to be in perpetual opposition, but if he was Prime Minister, my guess is the UK would be bankrupt in six months.
The truth is the Prime Minister, and the leaders of most parties in the UK are likely to be dull, managerial types. You need only look across the Atlantic to see the pitfalls of electing a matinee idol as Prime Minister, or a loud-mouthed fantasist as President. The policy agenda is where we should focus our energies, but without knowing how Brexit is going to look when the negotiations are done, I am not sure how much forward planning can be done in 2017 if the conditions all change in 2019, but I suppose that is the challenge. I think the voters make relatively simple judgements: Am I better off now than I was ten years ago when I voted for X, will I be better off in the next ten years if I vote for Y? Voters want a risk-free option, but even when voting for change I wonder if they know what it can really mean, like the cleaner working two jobs a day I used to know who voted for Mrs Thatcher in 1979 because he wanted lower taxes. His income tax was reduced, but VAT was doubled in a month, and by December that year he had been made redundant from his main day job because his firm went bust. But if any party, be it the Labour or the Tories, or Le Pen in France claims they will represent the 'forgotten people' they need to deliver for them in terms of jobs and economic growth, and those are the two jewels in the crown that have been missing their sparkle for some time. And Our Noble, and Most Gracious Majesty is 91 years old...
Thanks for your input Stavros, fascinating as always, you are certainly a man of the world.
It certainly should be all about policies, so why were the Tories voted in? I think it came down to personalities last time; Cameron or Milliband and most people didn't like the way Milliband ate is bacon sandwich! Remember the BBC showing all it's viewers half a dozen times a day during the entire election campagne! Most people are now officially worse off than they were 10 years ago, that's there fault if they voted that way! Unfortunately, so am I now after 33 years on the railway, I have been made redundant because of Tory policy on freight on rail and coal fuelled power stations. I did receive a "pay out" thank goodness.
I can only hope and pray for a change of Government but I am not optimistic.
Brancofan; Sadiq Khan isn't a Tory but neither was Tony Blair! They are both what is now called "New Labour". Almost the opposite to traditional Labour. If Corbyn isn't elected he will no doubt be removed as leader and we will have another right wing Labour leader then will have no choice of policies to choose from, depressing isn't it.
I suppose I know he isn't literally a Tory. I guess I just don't really know what policies he advocates that make him seem unacceptably right wing. I have a sense of why Tony Blair is seen that way, but was curious if there are deeper parallels between the two than people placing them in the same category. Anyhow, I'll be watching the election eagerly. Cheers and I hope you get what you're looking for.
Thanks Bronco. No-one could ever be fairly placed in the same category as Tony Blair. He is seen by many as the most hated figure in British Politics but not by everyone I should say.
Blair deserves condemnation for the Iraq war and for not preventing the behaviour in the financial sector that led to the financial crisis. But his government did expand social programs whereas the Conservatives have cut them. Surely that is a significant difference.
The striking fact at present is that conditions in the UK and other advanced countries - stagnant wages, rising inequality, economic insecurity - should have been tailor-made for left-leaning parties, yet it is the right-wing populists who are prospering. Unfortunately it is much easier to target scapegoats (aided by the tabloid press) but the centre-left will have to do a better job of developing solutions and articulating a narrative that addresses the the practical concerns of ordinary people.
On the positive side, the populist right are unlikely to be able to meet their supporters expectations when they do get into power, as we are already seeing with Trump. In particular, a key issue for the future will be the impact of technology - for instance, driverless vehicles are likely to eliminate most driving jobs over the next decade or so. Obviously there are no easy solutions, but the key challenge will be how to ensure that the benefits of technology can be realised without leaving behind large segments of the population. The populist right seems to have nothing to say on this.
She's right to call it, and to be fair she has a good chance of winning.
As for broken promises..haha..what? are people dim, politicians lie. its how it works.
Corbyn can say "oh the polls can be wrong!" until he's blue in the face, but then how many general elections in the last thirty years have made wrong polls? 1992 and 2015? that's out of probably 10 in that period. 2015 was an anomaly really, and the Scottish, Welsh elections have been generally accurate. Plus, I don't want Diane Abbott as Home Secretary or something. If I want to hear a shrill voice, I'd listen to a cat.
Classic example above of someone possibly not voting for a political party because he doesn't like a particular person from that party!
For the record; I am a member of the Labour Party but I am not a fan of Diane Abbott! It wouldn't make me go out & vote for another party!
I'm not having a go at holzz but this is how a lot of voters think! Hundreds of thousands of working class people, some of them poor, would of voted Conservative in 2015, some of them trade unionists! :banghead
I think that one of the trends that helps to explain this was begun in Australia when Bob Hawke transformed the Labour Party into an election winning machine in 1983, following the disarray that crippled the party in the wake of Gough Whitlam's dismissal from power. Blair, Mandelson and Phillip Gould based a lot of their tactics on the Australian experience, in which the key to an election victory was seen as the replacement of the opposition in 'the centre ground' of politics. For New Labour, this meant endorsing most of Thatcher's policies, on housing in particular, but also by not 'threatening' or 'promising' to raise taxes and to maintain a light regulation of the banking and financial sectors in order to persuade the middle class they could trust New Labour not to eat into their prosperity. In previous years it had been claimed the traditional Labour model of 'tax and spend' would damage the City and lead to capital flight, whereas Mandelson made a point of saying he was comfortable with people being filthy rich (which is what he wanted to be himself).
A similar trend enabled Bill Clinton to win the Presidency, the key being to win the support of 'Reagan Democrats' and pursue popular policies like being 'tough on crime'. Blair and Clinton were close at the start of the Blair government, but one wonders if in both cases, the fetish for centre ground policies led to a lapse in their attention to the needs of the poorest members of society. Democrats, today talk about 'the middle class' for obvious reasons, but what about the working class, the poor and the homeless? They used to be on the fringes of society, but in recent years, as the rise in food banks has shown, more and more people are on or just above the poverty line, and many people in work in the UK claim benefits because their wages are not enough to meet the cost of living.
Globalization has been blamed for this alienation between government and the governed, but it is more complex I think. The traditional town centre in France had its baker, butcher and grocery store, along with the cafes and other shops and services. But since the 1970s the growth of out-of-town hypermarkets has shredded town centres and left many looking semi-derelict because it is cheaper to shop in the hypermarket, and town centre businesses find the local council to compensate for falling tax revenues raises them to a level that makes a small business unprofitable. This has happened in the UK. A few years ago I made the mistake of thinking a day out in Nuneaton, birthplace of George Eliot was worth the trip. Within an hour of arriving, I was almost running to the station to leave.
Where globalization has taken effect, the free flow of capital that began in the 1980s, and the transformation of China in particular, has provided people with affordable clothes, affordable cars, affordable long-haul holidays, and affordable computers, smart phones and tablets. In the UK, however, lax rules on home ownership mean that segments of cities like London are stacked with exclusive apartment blocks that nobody appears to live in on a regular basis while local people are bought out and any local character a district has is lost. A major weakness of the New Labour policy was the failure to impose strict limits on borrowing by high street banks, the availability of credit at a time of historic low interest rates meant many people borrowed more than they could repay over time, and it was only a matter of time when the system collapsed. But again, this was not an issue of globalization as much as a domestic political decision not to seek more government control of money and finances, to leave it to the markets, markets which we found out were in any case rigged by the banks. Canada and Australia with stricter rules on borrowing did not suffer as badly as the US and the UK.
In the end, if both the major parties are in effect, offering the same menu of policies or a variation of the same, what is the point of them? The Conservatives have also transformed their party, to some extent at least, with a crop of MPs who are openly gay (two of whom are in the government), Muslim, of African heritage which would have been unthinkable in the 1980s when the only known Conservative MP who was gay was referred to as 'the colourful Norman St John-Stevas' and as recently as 1992 when a black candidate selected by the party to fight Cheltenham Spa -John, later Lord Taylor- was disowned by his local constituency who voted in a Liberal Democrat in the subsequent election for the first time since 1945.
Even now, Labour is trying to offer something different, but not on Brexit, where it has voted with the Conservatives so that anyone opposed to Brexit has limited alternatives, unless you live in Scotland where there is a clear choice. Crucially, I think that while Corbyn is trying to re-position Labour as the party of the 'forgotten people', his lack of credibility and the weakest front bench team in living memory is going to make success very difficult. Dianne Abbott lives in a world of her own, and doesn't even seem to be in touch with the people of Hackney, by contrast Emily Thornberry doesn't appear to be living in this world at all, and is as good a reason for not voting Labour as I can think.
Ok, so FOUR national holidays?
hahaha...nice gimmick Mr. Corbyn.
Offer a gimmick to make Mr. Wenger better at his job, that would be more transparent. ;)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a7697296.html
We're not stupid. We know YOU know you're the underdog, and are doing anything for votes.
So people are happy with a pledge tax rises and 0.7% of GDP still going to Foreign aid to places like India(parts of it full of millionaires)
That's 7 pence for every £10 spent in this country! No wonder this place is fucked. I wouldn't of thought Corbyn would have to do or say anything to get in?
You are stupid, because you will probably still vote these evil c**ts in!
Not necessarily. Already there's an opinion poll (and we all know how reliable those are...:whistle:) showing the Tories lead cut by 11 points in the few days since the election was announced. Can't find the link to it, but basically, who really knows how this election will go?:shrug
Foreign Aid is one of those topics which can never be fully resolved because it generates so much division. Most of the attacks on Foreign Aid come from the Mail, the Murdoch press and an assortment of people who simply don't like the idea of sending a penny to Africa if it can be spent here. But if the Foreign Aid budget was shut down, where would the money go? Not to the projects its critics say it should be spent on in the UK.
The UK's commitment to Foreign Aid comes out of the Overseas Development policy that was created in the 1960s as the Empire was replaced by the Commonwealth. When the UN adopted North-South development issues in the 1970s to get a commitment from governments to spend money to combat poverty and disease, the UK responded by seeking to meet the 0.7% gdp target which in time it did.
Yes, you can find any number of daft-sounding projects in Ethiopia and Pakistan that appear to make a mockery of the concept of foreign aid, and yes you can complain the admin costs alone take too much money and local officials pocket some of it for themselves, but 37% of aid is spent in UN agencies, such as the WHO where money is part of the GAVI alliance that runs vaccination campaigns in rural Africa, for example, and is a crucial part of the fight against diseases such as Meningitis, Polio, Diarrhoeal diseases, pneumonia, TB and malaria.
If you scrap the aid budget because you don't think the UK should be funding the Ethiopian Spice Girls, or running English Language clinics and a physiotherapy unit in North Korea, bear in mind that you will also be scrapping the UK's commitment to the WHO campaign against diseases which make life a misery across the world, and which local government often struggles to deal with. You may also raise questions among the recipients in those countries, such as 'Why did the British leave?', particularly if nothing similar replaces it. Corruption may be a way of life in Nigeria, but does that mean we should not fund campaigns against river blindness? In the end, if nobody does, this disease will just carry on ruining lives. The government of Nigeria has received several trillion dollars in oil revenue since 1979, where did it go? And if Nigeria is that corrupt, ditto Saudi Arabia, why are commercial firms so keen to get their hands on their oil money by doing business with them? Is it not hypocritical to argue we should not send aid to corrupt Nigeria, but yes we can trade with them?
A sensible debate on foreign aid is welcome, but there is more to it than a list of bijoux projects that inflame the retired colonels and their less serviceable friends. Some of it actually works.
Found it, might have known it was from the Daily Mail.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ax-U-turn.html
Thanks Phroaig, first place I looked was the Mails website. Cheered me up a little as that, probably short term though?
I hear what you're saying Stavros, re. Foreign Aid, I was not aware however it was the far right mainly criticising it?
I actually believe taxes should rise for the benefit of all our public services, mostly to fund the NHS but what the Tories will do is raise taxes, not for the most wealthy of course, and still carry on with their austerity cuts on public services! A "spin Doctor" will come up with some excuse when the opposition question their motives or May will just say things were much worse under Labour or her favourite; "We are investing record amounts of £££££" but not explain where it will go!
However; declaring you are going to raise taxes in an election campaign is a very brave and dangerous move. I really hope it comes back to haunt them!
Not always the 'far right' who criticise foreign aid, but plenty of people who should know better do attack it.
On tax, I think general election campaigns produce the least convincing arguments. Before she was elected in 1979 Mrs Thatcher said the Tories had no plan to raise VAT, within a month of the election it had doubled. If anything, the issue of tax became so toxic New Labour maintained the generally low levels of income tax with some fiddling at the margins -raising the threshold for tax payments, and lowering the upper limit from 50+ to 45 then 40% over a set figure. We thus have a bizarre situation where some people are not paying income tax at all because they are on low wages, and they and others receive 'in work benefits' because they can't survive on their basic income, yet everyone who drinks or smokes pays increased duties on their delightful sins, and everyone pays VAT. Every government now makes claims about not raising taxes, says there are too many layers and the tax code should be simplified, but in office reform rarely makes radical change, and the argument that low taxes produces a healthier economy is not borne out by the evidence. At some point, however, I think the government will have to increase income tax, probably when the national income declines as a result of the UK leaving the EU if not before then. Interest rates will also rise. I think governments have no touched these two issues for years because they don't win elections. But if May wins this election, Brexit will take place within the lifetime of the new Parliament and there is no hiding place for hard decisions following a 'hard Brexit'.