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The Political Thread

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

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CalHab

And yet, despite that defeat, the most incompetent government of our time looks likely to stand, thanks to the most incompetent opposition of our time.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: CalHab on 16 January, 2019, 07:53:34 AM
And yet, despite that defeat, the most incompetent government of our time looks likely to stand, thanks to the most incompetent opposition of our time.

I'm curious as to how you think the competency or otherwise of the opposition can magically create a majority in a vote of no confidence? The Tories won't vote themselves out of government, and the DUP has a billion quid of taxpayers' money to keep them on side. I'm not defending Labour's performance here, but the most competent opposition in the world wouldn't have been able to change the parliamentary arithmetic.

Corbyn has to move a vote of no confidence, because party policy won't allow consideration of other options on brexit (like, say, a second referendum) until the possibility of a general election is ruled out. Corbyn appears not to be a fan of that option, but the membership very much is, so we'll have to see how that plays out.
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IndigoPrime

We'd best hope the VONC isn't successful, frankly, given that polling suggests the best-case scenario would be no viable coalition (i.e. like now, but with fewer Tories), but the most likely end result would be a Con majority. The smartest move right now for ERG would be to vote the government down along with Labour, get a GE, wipe the floor with Corbyn and May alike, and head for the chilly embrace of hard, hard Brexit.

As for "until the possibility of a general election is ruled out", senior Labour figures today suggest we're in Groundhog Day there. They will apparently keep going for VONCs rather than moving on to "all other options", because they're authoritarian arseholes who don't give the slightest shit about the membership. Oh, to have Cooper in the leadership right now...

Professor Bear

If Cooper was Labour leader it'd be great.  For UKIP.

Proudhuff

DDT did a job on me

Professor Bear

Tommy Cooper - who I see no reason to assume isn't Yvette's husband - didn't introduce the benefits sanctions regime that's shifted the paradigm of the welfare state from a safety net against poverty to a means of punishing it, so he'd probably still be better than Yvette, a woman who only avoided coming dead last in her leadership bid because Liz Kendall was also running.

Leigh S

#15201
'd for truth.  The homogeny of middle ground politics got us in this position in the first place, what with Ed Milibands "Immigrant's suck" mugs and giant concrete replica of the "There's no money left" note shockingly failing to swing the hearts and minds of the UK population against austerity and isolationism.

It isn't hard to work out why voters are voting for change options, the problem being the change options available to them were Trump and Brexit,

Quote from: Professor Bear on 16 January, 2019, 03:29:07 PM
Tommy Cooper - who I see no reason to assume isn't Yvette's husband - didn't introduce the benefits sanctions regime that's shifted the paradigm of the welfare state from a safety net against poverty to a means of punishing it, so he'd probably still be better than Yvette, a woman who only avoided coming dead last in her leadership bid because Liz Kendall was also running.

Professor Bear

We probably should have guessed as much years ago when Tony B colonised the left and seeded it with now-entrenched neoliberal passengers, but centrists are the new conservatives - the saddest part of which is that this isn't even necessarily a bad thing because the actual conservatives are generally such utter head-the-balls that one of them can now quote the motto of a death camp as justification for benefits sanctions that have killed the sick and disabled and the media just gives it a pass.

Quote from: Leigh S on 16 January, 2019, 04:59:10 PMgiant concrete replica of the "There's no money left" note

I liked Stonehenge unironically, though admittedly more as a concept than how it was executed.  Engraving FREE NHS in stone and sticking it in No 10's garden is ballsy as fuck if you can pull it off, but engraving a bunch of long-winded spin-talk like "affordable housing for families where possible and appropriate for their income and status" ruins the whole point of a simple, blunt statement of intent.  I also can't quite shake the notion that engraving it on a marble obelisk and writing it on the side of a bus are pretty much the same thing.

IndigoPrime

Cooper has been consistently deeply impressive with Brexit. Corbyn, meanwhile, has been shown up to be more or less incompetent at PMQs, a liar regarding Brexit, and an anti-democratic authoritarian while promising something different. Corbyn is awful. I was full of hope at the time, but that hope has all gone. Even if it wasn't for his utterly deluded Brexit stance, his appalling attitude towards other political parties that Labour could actually work with, his repeated lies and/or ignorance about the EU, his awful ideas about democratic reform that are basically entirely lacking in integrity (because it's all about Labour rather than what's best for democracy), and the way in which his frontbench claims to be about the members but ignores their wishes, he'd still be shit.

And, yeah, perhaps Cooper is too status quo, but if Corbyn is really the best Labour has to offer, we're in deep fucking trouble.

JayzusB.Christ

I've lost track of Brexit now; listening to MPs and PMs squabbling is like watching that Big Bang-related grey static you used to get after closedown. 

If you want your Irish passports you know where to find us.  I've a spare berth in my boat.

"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

IndigoPrime

Although if you want your Irish passport and you're not already on the birth register, I'm reliably informed that you're basically fucked pre-Brexit. Nine months is the current waiting time, according to the Irish passport office person who emailed me.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 17 January, 2019, 04:36:46 PM
but if Corbyn is really the best Labour has to offer, we're in deep fucking trouble.

No... he was the least bad. Literally every other candidate when he won was running on a platform almost indistinguishable from the Tories with at least a couple trying to say the Tories weren't tough enough on things like immigration, benefits or various other areas of public spending.

I, like more than a few others I suspect, voted for him as a placeholder for the left, as the only alternative to a concerted attempt to drag the party still further to the right. There was every expectation back then that there would be a full five years before the next general election, during which time someone more obviously electable from the party's left might be persuaded to stand for leader, possibly even with Corbyn's blessing (since he never actually wanted the job).

What no one expected was for May to call a snap election and for Corbyn to become the first Labour leader in twenty years to increase Labour's number of seats, to the astonishment of everyone.
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JOE SOAP

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 17 January, 2019, 07:17:01 PM
Nine months is the current waiting time, according to the Irish passport office person who emailed me.

You multiply that by 3, Irish-Time.

IndigoPrime

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 17 January, 2019, 07:31:29 PMa couple trying to say the Tories weren't tough enough on things like immigration
Frankly, with his bullshit on EU movement, he's no better; and while I sympathise with the crap Diane Abbott is flung through being a black woman, I have no time with her after listening to her recent xenophobic attack on EU and EFTA citizens. That neither of them (nor others in Labour's front bench) care remotely about free movement sickens me. (And that they conflate it with straight immigration, rather than noting it's a reciprocal right, is exactly the tactics used by the right of the Conservative party. Horseshoe political theory in action.)

QuoteWhat no one expected was for May to call a snap election and for Corbyn to become the first Labour leader in twenty years to increase Labour's number of seats, to the astonishment of everyone.
Although Labour still got a kicking, but Owen Jones and others acted like Labour won. And Labour continued throughout that entire campaign to be arrogant wankers when it came to any kind of collaboration effort with anyone else, arguing the SNP and others should back Labour policy for no return, because, well, otherwise it would somehow be their fault if the Tories got back in.

So I think of the promise and potential and hope from when Corbyn was elected, and compare it to now. His stance sickens me. Their idiocy surrounding FPTP angers me. (I mean, Richmond Park. Labour had no fucking chance, and the majority was 45.) And on Brexit, his utter disregard for the poorest people in society, and how his ideology is going to fuck them over, combined with his apparent thinking that 'socialism' means 'Brits only' is rooted in a place I really don't want to be.

Corbyn is a dinosaur and a disgrace. Worse, under the current political deadlock, he will be the one that ushers in a hideous flavour of Brexit – and that's what he wants.

Leigh S


Admittedly I only googled Coopers record on Brexit on the bus on the way honme and the only two highlights I could see were _ "We shouldn't stop Article 50 and it would be anti-democratic to do so" and "we have to fight to stop no deal", so fundamentally, Corbyn's position?

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 17 January, 2019, 04:36:46 PM
Cooper has been consistently deeply impressive with Brexit. Corbyn, meanwhile, has been shown up to be more or less incompetent at PMQs, a liar regarding Brexit, and an anti-democratic authoritarian while promising something different.