Main Menu

The Political Thread

Started by The Legendary Shark, 09 April, 2010, 03:59:03 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Michael Knight

Dear God Chuka Umuuna please no. Pompous, vain snobby nosed bastard. Common knowledge amongst those in Labour circles. Please no! Blairite though and they still not gonna back down and recognise this result/mandate!
Bit rich May mocking Corbyn at last PMQ's bearing in mind the Pope was was actually more 'elected' than her.  :lol:

IndigoPrime

Chuka "we should sacrifice single market membership to axe freedom of movement" Umuuna. And then "clarifying" things by saying his position was impossible (retain membership while having an alternative to FoM). So basically the same position as Boris Johnson, then. And he was on Remain, too, and is now part of Open Britain, despite apparently wanting Not Actually Open In Fact Fuck Off If You Are A Foreign Britain.

COMMANDO FORCES

At least good old Jezza stood his ground on Trident today :lol:

Professor Bear

I would have thought a Liberal voter would appreciate someone selling out their principles.

COMMANDO FORCES

I detest all who do such a thing but Jezza is supposed to be the Messiah and above such things. Obviously he's just like the rest :'( :'(

Professor Bear

If you detest such things why are you a Liberal voter?

Will Cooling

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 03 September, 2016, 01:26:14 PM
Quote from: Michael Knight on 03 September, 2016, 02:24:49 AM. The architects of the project wanted this from day one. 

Any chance of a citation for this claim? A fairly solid and credible one if possible?

Try googling European Political Community and European Defence Community. Both were advanced by Jean Monnet as the logical development of the European Steel and Coal Community but were scrapped after De Gaulle led a nationalist backlash. The European Economic Community was a retreat back to economics after this setback.

As to why pro-European mocking of Eurosceptic 'scare stories' are not taken seriously it's worth looking at is the Roy Jenkins vs. Tony Benn debate in the 1975 Referendum. Jenkins mocked Benn's talk of the Commission wanting a Single Currency, saying it would never happen in his lifetime. The first attempt of currency harmonisation was made within five years (the 'snake' protype for ERM) and within sixteen years agreement had been made to proceed with full EMU.
Formerly WIll@The Nexus

Will Cooling

Quote from: GordonR on 25 September, 2016, 01:20:07 PM
I don't think anyone - even Owen Smith himself - seriously expected him to win.  I think he was essentially a stalking horse, standing and taking  a bullet for the party (as he would see it) in order to see how much support there was out there for a Not Corbyn candidate.  And now he and the people behind him have their answer - 38%.

As I've said elsewhere, I suspect cold, hard eyes are looking at the numbers and figuring how much of the anti-Corbyn section of the party - most of the MPs and more than a third of the membership - might follow them the pastures new.

Peace is not about to break out in the Labour Party, now that the leadership contest is over.

I think they hoped to force Corbyn to quit. When that failed they hoped to keep him off the ballot paper. When that failed they were stuck with challenging him. While stalking Horse isn't the right metaphor* I imagine Smith knew he couldn't win once Corbyn was on the ballot. He probably hoped to do well enough that he'd become the leader of the moderates and would have the credibility to stand again in eighteen months time. That obviously didn't happen (not just the result but also the fact that he ran a gaffe-prone, uninspiring campaign).

*A stalking horse is a diversionary tactic to cover an advance. In elections it made sense to describe an ideological challenger under the old Tory election rules because the winner needed to get more than 50% to prevent a second round and there was no bar on additional candidates joining in later rounds. Therefore a hopeless candidate could stand in the first round to bloody the leader in the hope of inspiring more credible candidates to enter the next round (this was Redwood's strategy). Doesn't really work with the Labour rules because the effort involved in getting onto the ballot means its not practical to run hopeless challengers.
Formerly WIll@The Nexus

COMMANDO FORCES

Quote from: Professor Bear on 26 September, 2016, 09:26:11 PM
If you detest such things why are you a Liberal voter?

Are you saying I shouldn't have a vote anymore?

Professor Bear

I'm asking why, if you detest those who abandon their principles, you vote for a party that was wiped out in the last election for doing just that in coalition.

COMMANDO FORCES

Are you talking about the tuition fees, as that was explained by the party after they got crushed. As soon as they knew what it was like to be in government, they should've explained the reasoning behind it.
The liberals for their tiny size did quite well during their time in government. There are a few articles out there that confirm this but I'll pick something from the Guardian

Hitting above their station

IndigoPrime

The Lib Dems did actually manage to get a large amount of their manifesto into policy, along with derailing a fair chunk of bad Conservative stuff, such as the IP bill. The problem is they screwed themselves with that daft pledge on tuition fees (which people on my Twitter timeline still bang on about whenever the Lib Dems are mentioned), forever ruining their credibility as something different. That the reality of coalition means you have no choice but to compromise is irrelevant – although the party should have stood fast against any rise in fees, because that made them all look ridiculous.

For my money, they made three bigger mess-ups: Clegg should have had as a red-line one major position of state (ideally him as Foreign Sec.); the referendum on voting reform should have been AV+, as per the recommendation (although I suspect it would still have lost); and the Health Bill should have been killed in the Lords (rather than Lib Dems helping it through). 2015 would still have seen the party get a serious kicking (not least due to the Lib Dems being inept from a press standpoint and the Conservatives taking all the credit for everything the Lib Dems did, not least, brazenly, gay marriage), but not quite to the extent we saw.

Theblazeuk

Tories taking the credit for the gay marriage bill* and avoiding any blame for Iraq** is the reason we can't have nice things.

*134 against vs 126 for, vs Labour's 217/22 and Lib's 44/4. So really I'd say it's taking credit for what Labour did.
**146 for and 3 against, though in this case it's simply that Labour couldn't have done it without them tho.

I liked the Lib Dems enough to vote for them in 2010. Compromise would have been one thing but the Dems rolled and surrendered where they didn't actively assist.



Professor Bear

The LibDems could have put their money where their mouths were and attempted a broad coalition of parties of the center and left, but the coalition happened because of them and they have to take full responsibility for that coalition's failures - which Tim Farron hasn't.
Clegg - even though I don't believe for a moment that he's learned anything - at least knows to fake it now he's got a book coming out.  He seems relatively on-point about Brexit, too, which is quite disheartening seeing as he's not actually in any position to do anything about it - though his time as deputy PM suggests it wouldn't much matter if he was.

Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 27 September, 2016, 03:17:04 AM
Are you talking about the tuition fees, as that was explained by the party after they got crushed. As soon as they knew what it was like to be in government, they should've explained the reasoning behind it.


I see - you contest that when people do something at odds with what they previously stated, there might be a reason for it.  I understand.

QuoteThe liberals for their tiny size did quite well during their time in government. There are a few articles out there that confirm this but I'll pick something from the Guardian.

Much as I trust the Guardian to report objectively on the Liberal Democrats despite one of their editors once standing as one, I'll take your word for it that article is great.

Will Cooling

Quote from: Theblazeuk on 27 September, 2016, 11:25:48 AM
Tories taking the credit for the gay marriage bill* and avoiding any blame for Iraq** is the reason we can't have nice things.

*134 against vs 126 for, vs Labour's 217/22 and Lib's 44/4. So really I'd say it's taking credit for what Labour did.
**146 for and 3 against, though in this case it's simply that Labour couldn't have done it without them tho.

I liked the Lib Dems enough to vote for them in 2010. Compromise would have been one thing but the Dems rolled and surrendered where they didn't actively assist.

But that's not how politics works - oppositions can't push laws through, only Governments can. Gay Marriage would never have become law if the Tory Government hadn't support it. So whilst you note/criticise the Tory party for having a large proportion of homophobes...Cameron's Government clearly deserves credit for supporting the measure (i.e. drafting bill, championing the cause, allotting parliamentary time and allocating resources to implementation).

Likewise on Iraq. You can attack IDS as a blithering idiot who failed to hold Blair to account (unlike Milliband over Syria), but no matter how much the Tories supported the war, it would never have been considered if Blair hadn't have wanted British involvement. 
Formerly WIll@The Nexus