The Labour leadership race

Tanmann wrote:However she seems the only candidate in the race apart from Jess Philips willing to acknowledge that Corbyn had been a disaster and that there'd been a serious antisemitism problem.

Which meant she might've been the only one in the race who openly sent any signal of genuinely acknowledging the party needed to be seriously reformed before it could be electable again.

There's a reason for that. It's called sucking up to Murdochs fictitious narrative. Whenever I ask people to give me cold, hard evidence of this supposedly widespread anti-semitism they can NEVER supply concrete instances, whereas the racism the Tories espouse is quite blatant and openly in your face. 

Even in the crushing seat-defeat Labour experienced last General Election, Corbyn still garnered more of the popular vote than either Miliband or Brown. In fact Corbyn has been the only Labour leader to have reversed (albeit temporarily) the parties decline which has been eating away their support base since Blair's first landslide victory in 1997.

Tanmann wrote:Which meant she might've been the only one in the race who openly sent any signal of genuinely acknowledging the party needed to be seriously reformed before it could be electable again.

Consistently repeating the mantra of "OMG! We're so shit! All our policies are shit! Our membership are shit and our leadership is shit!" is neither aspiring towards reforming the party nor a constructive strategy towards selling the party to electoral power again. All it's doing is subserviently kowtowing to the media oligarchs who completely fucked up Labours principles and unity during the Blair/Brown period to the devastating effect that neither Scotland nor great swathes of the North feel that they can trust the party in power ever again.

Nandy is a piece of shit, she conspired in the chicken coup and Owen Smiths (another complete thicko) leadership campaign which completely fucked up Labours chances of power in 2017 and she talks utter disingenuous and obfuscated bullshit about anti-semitism too, the only thing she's right upon is Labour should never have sought a 2nd Referendum.

Rob Filth wrote:Whenever I ask people to give me cold, hard evidence of this supposedly widespread anti-semitism they can NEVER supply concrete instances

Stop it Rob. Think of the hurt you're causing.

I don't believe that Anti-Semetism is widerife in the Labour party.
I never believed that Jeremy Corbyn hates Jewish people.

I didn't vote Labour at the last election because Corbyn is a cunt.
And I didn't want a cunt as prime minister.

Boris is a wanker, but he isn't a cunt.

Lord Pertwee's Knob wrote:I didn't vote Labour at the last election because Corbyn is a cunt.
And I didn't want a cunt as prime minister.

Boris is a wanker, but he isn't a cunt.

You're right, what a frightful bounder that Corbyn is trying to give Millennials all the things Boomers enjoyed such as free education, cheap social housing, more secure working conditions, a functioning Welfare State and funding it through nationalised Public Services and Industries instead of flogging everything off cut-price to foreign investors and shareholders.

Bastard doesn't want to bomb Iran either, what the fuck is the matter with the guy?  

Now why can't Labour choose someone like that nice Tony Blair as Leader who doesn't flinch from murdering half a million brown people and turning a blind eye to the routine scapegoating and racism spewed out daily from Murdochs outlets or charging into illegal wars when prompted like a good boy?

He won three elections, don't you know.

J.K. Rowling wrote:

Rob Filth wrote:Whenever I ask people to give me cold, hard evidence of this supposedly widespread anti-semitism they can NEVER supply concrete instances

Stop it Rob. Think of the hurt you're causing.

You shouldn't have been writing Harry Potter whilst claiming benefits, you should've been frogmarched to the workfare centre and let off a few hours to visit the foodbank if you were well behaved instead.

Rob Filth wrote:

Lord Pertwee's Knob wrote:I didn't vote Labour at the last election because Corbyn is a cunt.
And I didn't want a cunt as prime minister.

Boris is a wanker, but he isn't a cunt.

You're right, what a frightful bounder that Corbyn is trying to give Millennials all the things Boomers enjoyed such as free education, cheap social housing, more secure working conditions, a functioning Welfare State and funding it through nationalised Public Services and Industries instead of flogging everything off cut-price to foreign investors and shareholders.

Bastard doesn't want to bomb Iran either, what the fuck is the matter with the guy?  

Now why can't Labour choose someone like that nice Tony Blair as Leader who doesn't flinch from murdering half a million brown people and turning a blind eye to the routine scapegoating and racism spewed out daily from Murdochs outlets or charging into illegal wars when prompted like a good boy?

He won three elections, don't you know.

You want more money for the NHS, Schools, Housing?

Simple.
You cut Immigration down so only the 1% The cream of the crop can get in.

You tax people who have more than one child, and increase that tax with every subsequent child.
One standard Family allowance benefit that doesn't increase per child.
Dole money to be stopped after 6 months if the person seeking work refuses to take on menial physical labour or take a job in the NHS.

The population in this country needs to be drastically reduced if our benefit system is to survive. People have to be forced to have smaller families or pay for them.

Actually there's a book I recently read by Paul Collier and Alexander Betts called Refuge: Transforming A Broken Refugee System that details a lot of ways that today's out-dated, bulging at the seams immigration system could be reformed in a way that would provide a win-win solution for all sides of the immigration debate.

As for the 'Corbyn isn't a warmonger' line.... it seems strange then that he's happy to pally around with the likes of Hamas who definitely are.

Tanmann wrote:As for the 'Corbyn isn't a warmonger' line.... it seems strange then that he's happy to pally around with the likes of Hamas who definitely are.

Commie Corbyn never met a terrorist he didn't like.

Lord Pertwee's Knob wrote:Commie Corbyn never met a terrorist he didn't like.

Indeed not.

And that's why I ultimately realized any fairer deal for the working class and unemployed he might've offered than they'd gotten under the Tories, would probably be cancelled out by them being rendered terrorist cannon fodder under his compromised national security anyway.

That's why I voted Green in the end. Simply because they were the only other anti-austerity option.

So Keir Starmer got it comfortably, as predicted. What will his tactics be, particularly in the circumstances? No wonder he still looks haunted!

Mott1 wrote:So Keir Starmer got it comfortably, as predicted. What will his tactics be, particularly in the circumstances? No wonder he still looks haunted!

It makes me laugh that people are going on about how Corbyn ruined the Labour Party and not Tony Blair?

It was definitely Corbyn that launched an illegal war on Iraq, sold off the NHS, and appointed the most incompetent buffoon as Chancellor.

If only Corbyn hadn't gone in for the SJW crap he'd be Prime Minister.

burrunjor wrote:

Mott1 wrote:So Keir Starmer got it comfortably, as predicted. What will his tactics be, particularly in the circumstances? No wonder he still looks haunted!

It makes me laugh that people are going on about how Corbyn ruined the Labour Party and not Tony Blair?

It was definitely Corbyn that launched an illegal war on Iraq, sold off the NHS, and appointed the most incompetent buffoon as Chancellor.

If only Corbyn hadn't gone in for the SJW crap he'd be Prime Minister.

Blair would have alienated a large number of his party if he had just dismissed Brown, and I don't think he could have predicted everything Brown would do ahead of time. But yeah, the Iraq war thing is unforgivable.

As for Corbyn, he would still have been fucked on his indecisive Brexit stance, which admittedly a lot of the party agreed with.

None of this has anything to do with Keir Starmer. Starmer has to unite a divided party which is no easy task to begin with. He has to reinvigorate the manifesto without completely ditching it while facing some people who will claim he is centrist till the day they die.

The Labour party is in a right state. Many also feel that without courting Murdoch like Blair did, he won't get anywhere, what do you reckon?

If he does he will lose support, but I think the importance of having the media onside is overblown anyway. But something needs to be done about Murdoch and his ilk.

I will at least give Starmer the benefit of the doubt, it seems preferable to shooting yourself in the foot by rallying against your new and fairly elected leader. Do you think he will have a positive effect?

Facebook political groups are as pathetic as ever. All the Blairites are calling him a Corbynite, and all the Corbynites are calling him a Blairite.
He is neither.
So much for Labour unity against the Tories. All I see are two sets of morons who are too political ignorant to see beyond this simplistic reductionism.
Pack of fools. They almost *deserve* a Tory government.

Rawkuss wrote:

burrunjor wrote:

Mott1 wrote:So Keir Starmer got it comfortably, as predicted. What will his tactics be, particularly in the circumstances? No wonder he still looks haunted!

It makes me laugh that people are going on about how Corbyn ruined the Labour Party and not Tony Blair?

It was definitely Corbyn that launched an illegal war on Iraq, sold off the NHS, and appointed the most incompetent buffoon as Chancellor.

If only Corbyn hadn't gone in for the SJW crap he'd be Prime Minister.

Blair would have alienated a large number of his party if he had just dismissed Brown, and I don't think he could have predicted everything Brown would do ahead of time. But yeah, the Iraq war thing is unforgivable.

As for Corbyn, he would still have been fucked on his indecisive Brexit stance, which admittedly a lot of the party agreed with.

None of this has anything to do with Keir Starmer. Starmer has to unite a divided party which is no easy task to begin with. He has to reinvigorate the manifesto without completely ditching it while facing some people who will claim he is centrist till the day they die.

The Labour party is in a right state. Many also feel that without courting Murdoch like Blair did, he won't get anywhere, what do you reckon?

If he does he will lose support, but I think the importance of having the media onside is overblown anyway. But something needs to be done about Murdoch and his ilk.

I will at least give Starmer the benefit of the doubt, it seems preferable to shooting yourself in the foot by rallying against your new and fairly elected leader. Do you think he will have a positive effect?

I am not qute sure about Starmer yet. I was more talking about those who try and pin all of the parties problems on Corbyn which is just laughable.

I have a feeling that after the Corbyn backlash we are going to get as far away from a proper Labour Party, but we'll see.

As for Blair IMO he is actually the worst Prime Minister we've had since the Second World War. It was a toss up between him and Thatcher, but I think he might take the lead.

burrunjor wrote:As for Blair IMO he is actually the worst Prime Minister we've had since the Second World War. It was a toss up between him and Thatcher, but I think he might take the lead.

It has to be Thatcher.
In spite of all the things there are to dislike about Blair, he at least managed to do some good things before 2004.
The same cannot be said of Thatcher.

Ludders wrote:

burrunjor wrote:As for Blair IMO he is actually the worst Prime Minister we've had since the Second World War. It was a toss up between him and Thatcher, but I think he might take the lead.

It has to be Thatcher.
In spite of all the things there are to dislike about Blair, he at least managed to do some good things before 2004.
The same cannot be said of Thatcher.

The war in Iraq was the biggest blunder of the 21st century. It not only led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq, but helped to further set a precedent of a larger country, mugging a smaller one. We saw the same thing happen in Libya less than 10 years later.

Furthermore, Blair also appointed Gordon Brown who helped to privatise the NHS.

Finally I'd argue that Blair is responsible to some extent for identity politics. He was the arsehole who used identity politics to cover his own tracks, with his Blair Babes nonsense (John Pilger did an excellent video on Tony Blair and identity politics I'll try and find it.)

On top of all of that Blair corrupted the Labour party to the point where it was basically the Tory part 2.0 and helped to undermine genuine left wing politics.

Point being, that despite all these things, (and more!) at least there are some good things to list about Blair, albeit almost all from his first term.
The Tories opposed all the things that he put in place to help the less fortunate. The obvious ones being the Minimum Wage, Tax Credits, and free bus fares for pensioners. Thatcher did none of these things, she opposed them.
There were other things in the LGBT area like the repeal of Section 28, the equalisation of the age of consent, and introducing civil partnerships.
Introducing greater transparency with the Freedom of Information Act, the creation of the Sure Start, taking half a million children out of poverty.
Oh, and the Northern Ireland peace process. (Credit to some groundwork done by John Major's government)
I find myself in a highly unusual position here in defending Blair, but it's only in this specific context of being put up against Thatcher that I'm able, and indeed confident to do so.

Ludders wrote:Point being, that despite all these things, (and more!) at least there are some good things to list about Blair, albeit almost all from his first term.
The Tories opposed all the things that he put in place to help the less fortunate. The obvious ones being the Minimum Wage, Tax Credits, and free bus fares for pensioners. Thatcher did none of these things, she opposed them.
There were other things in the LGBT area like the repeal of Section 28, the equalisation of the age of consent, and introducing civil partnerships.
Introducing greater transparency with the Freedom of Information Act, the creation of the Sure Start, taking half a million children out of poverty.
Oh, and the Northern Ireland peace process. (Credit to some groundwork done by John Major's government)
I find myself in a highly unusual position here in defending Blair, but it's only in this specific context of being put up against Thatcher that I'm able, and indeed confident to do so.

Well I'm no fan of Thatcher. She is certainly the second worst, but the Iraq War I feel outdoes all of those things.

That's your prerogative of course, but how we weigh them up against each other is subjective. The point is that at least those good things are there.

Jess Phillips now on Starmer's shadow cabinet, as shadow home office minister, dealing with domestic violence and safeguarding. I doubt Rob will be happy with that!

Not a fan of Jess, but it makes sense as her background is in domestic abuse victim support.