Current Affairs The Labour Party

[GwladysBlue]

Lower than a snake’s belly, this fella.

 

[degsy]

I'm asking for a road map, not what Starmer thinks is wrong about the Tory approach to Covid19. I can see that with my own two eyes.

What is this stuffed shirt's ideology, his vision, his society?

At the moment there is only one problem, one issue, one topic now and thats Covid...and perhaps how it effects Brexit
If Covid is still the main issue in 3.5yrs then all bets are off.

Lets say for the sake of argument there is some return to 'normal'
Then I'm sure he'll have one before the election, based on, as I stated sensibly targeted opposition - no mention of covid by me

If he doesn't hit or at least aim at those...whatever they turn out to be...issues
and those issues don't resonate with the voters... he's toast

Down the track, I think his main plan is to be still there and not a tory, because I think people will be all toried out...this, like it or not, is what usually happens
Oppositions don't get voted in. They find themselves in power by default because
Govts get voted out.

Unless they're total screw ups like Corbyn, that even Johnson looks a better option...see exhibit A

Exhibit A; safe Labour seats falling...erm...left, right and centre - no pun intended

 

[davek]

At the moment there is only one problem, one issue, one topic now and thats Covid...and perhaps how it effects Brexit
If Covid is still the main issue in 3.5yrs then all bets are off.

Lets say for the sake of argument there is some return to 'normal'
Then I'm sure he'll have one before the election, based on, as I stated sensibly targeted opposition - no mention of covid by me

If he doesn't hit or at least aim at those...whatever they turn out to be...issues
and those issues don't resonate with the voters... he's toast

Down the track, I think his main plan is to be still there and not a tory, because I think people will be all toried out...this, like it or not, is what usually happens
Oppositions don't get voted in. They find themselves in power by default because
Govts get voted out.

Unless they're total screw ups like Corbyn, that even Johnson looks a better option...see exhibit A

Exhibit A; safe Labour seats falling...erm...left, right and centre - no pun intended

How difficult is it to define who you are and what you're party is going to try and do in power to change the country we live in?

Are you saying that the LP cant look at anything other than what its next repsonse is to the government's Covid19 strategy?

 

[Spadge Vernacular]

There's always been a pragmatic side of the labour movement ('top hatted trade unionism' etc) and an ideological side of it. The latter were indeed in bed with imperialist interests before the second world war. But post war the trade unions and the LP were almost completely behind the various anti-colonialist / nationalist movements in the old empire, and they were 100% committed to public ownership of key industries and the need for a mixed economy.

This LP under Starmer stands (as far as we know because the coward wont tell us what his vision exactly is) in the tradition of Blair and Brown and their stable mate Thatcherites.

If he isn't, let's hear his thoughts.

Starmer is traditional Labour, no doubt. Corbyn was a chance to break from traditional Labour and move toward the left but you shouldn't let Corbyn's left of left team confuse you over Starmer representing true Labour voters. It is hard to judge at this point but my gut feel is that he will win the next GE and bring back the Labour voters that deserted the party under Corbyn.

Here is an interesting look at Labour and Corbyn.

How Jeremy Corbyn would break with Labour’s imperial past
The 70th anniversary of Indian partition should discourage us from romanticising Attlee’s government.

BYDAVID WEARING


Ask Labour members what their hopes are for a Jeremy Corbyn government and most will describe a modern parallel to Clement Attlee’s transformative administration of 1945 to 1951. Attlee rightly holds an iconic place in Labour history, but the 70th anniversary of Indian partition should serve to discourage us from romanticising his government. A wider re-examination of Attlee’s foreign affairs record shows that Corbyn is a Labour leader and potential prime minister without any historical precedent.

An array of culprits can be blamed for the horrors of partition, which caused as many as a million deaths and the creation of around 12 million refugees. Prominent among them is the British government of the time. Attlee’s Labour was not the innocent inheritor of a decomposing Raj. As Jawaharlal Nehru wrote from his prison cell in 1944: “The leaders of the British Labour Party have usually been the staunchest supporters of the existing order in India.” Central to that order was a policy of divide and rule, which proved a major factor in the subsequent violence.

As the historian Yasmin Khan has noted, the partition plan “imposed directly from London… was tragically unconcerned with human safety and popular protection”. The new borders were drawn up in a few short weeks by a British official on his first visit to India, using obsolete data and with no attempt made to visit the areas affected. Mass population transfer was neither predicted nor prepared for in the rush to dispose of a colonial possession that the UK was no longer able to exploit.

Attlee’s government was not the sole or even the primary author of the violence, but its role was real, its responsibility substantial. The catastrophe of 1947 and its enduring after-effects on the subcontinent are as much a part of that government’s legacy as the NHS. And, as events elsewhere show, its domestic achievements of the time and its role as an imperial power cannot be easily separated.

The relative economic stability required for the creation of the welfare state depended in part on various forms of imperial exploitation. In Malaya, commodity exports were the source of foreign exchange earnings that were crucial for the UK, given its precarious balance of payments, and Attlee’s government began a vicious counter-insurgency war to maintain British rule.

When Iran tried to wrest control of its oil from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (the precursor to BP), the Attlee government moved swiftly to retaliate. Nationalising key industries as part of a programme aimed at raising living standards was permissible only in Britain, not Tehran. Devastating sanctions were imposed on Iranian oil exports in the expectation that they would undermine the government and potentially lead to its overthrow. After the 1953 coup, backed by Attlee’s successor, Winston Churchill, and the US, the Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s helped sustain the Shah’s dictatorial regime.

“Progressive” politics, far from being an impediment to British imperialism, has often served as its enabling ideology. We heard echoes of this last year when David Miliband opined: “If the world is increasingly divided between firefighters and arsonists, then Britain has for centuries been a firefighter.” We saw it in Tony Blair’s conviction that an Anglo-American invasion of Iraq would be some sort of humanitarian endeavour.

What sets Jeremy Corbyn apart from his predecessors are his roots in the anti-imperialist tradition, one in which the British empire is seen as one long criminal enterprise and the UK’s subsequent role in the world as disfigured by attempts to cling to its former status. The inclusion of the crimes of empire in the national curriculum, as proposed by Corbyn, would do much to detoxify the predominant sense of our national identity.

Never before has an anti-imperialist politician come so close to power in the West. Corbyn would not be able to rewrite Britain’s entire international posture but it would be fascinating to see what he could achieve.

And a peek into the thinking of yesteryear.

Imperialism: The Basis of Labour Party Crisis by George Padmore 1944

www.marxists.org

 

[degsy]

How difficult is it to define who you are and what you're party is going to try and do in power to change the country we live in?

Are you saying that the LP cant look at anything other than what its next repsonse is to the government's Covid19 strategy?

Only you are mentioning Covid in relation to Starmer's position for a future election.

If there is only covid and maybe brexit as topics 6mths before the election they will be the topics...and not much else.
As of now these are the topics
Starmer will have to find topics as they crop up between now and then - there are no topics right now
This is a national emergency nobody is going to rock the boat too much...and as long as Cummings is doing the whipping, it's hard to overturn an 80ish majority in parliament.
Strange days

 

[davek]

Only you are mentioning Covid in relation to Starmer's position for a future election.

If there is only covid and maybe brexit as topics 6mths before the election they will be the topics...and not much else.
As of now these are the topics
Starmer will have to find topics as they crop up between now and then - there are no topics right now
This is a national emergency nobody is going to rock the boat too much...and as long as Cummings is doing the whipping, it's hard to overturn an 80ish majority in parliament.
Strange days

I dont care about short term politics over Brexit and Covid19. I;m asking why we should want to come through all that to support him? What vision does he have to persuade us it's all worth voting for or supporting the LP in the forseeable. I knew what Blair wanted; I knew what Corbyn wanted...but with this splinter arse Starmer I dont.

 

[davek]

Starmer is traditional Labour, no doubt. Corbyn was a chance to break from traditional Labour and move toward the left but you shouldn't let Corbyn's left of left team confuse you over Starmer representing true Labour voters. It is hard to judge at this point but my gut feel is that he will win the next GE and bring back the Labour voters that deserted the party under Corbyn.

Here is an interesting look at Labour and Corbyn.



And a peek into the thinking of yesteryear.

Imperialism: The Basis of Labour Party Crisis by George Padmore 1944

www.marxists.org

Starmer is traditional labour. How would we know if he never opens his mouth and tells us what he believes in?

 

[degsy]

I dont care about short term politics over Brexit and Covid19. I;m asking why we should want to come through all that to support him? What vision does he have to persuade us it's all worth voting for or supporting the LP in the forseeable. I knew what Blair wanted; I knew what Corbyn wanted...but with this splinter arse Starmer I dont.

Like I said, when he finds it you'll know what it is...and you probably won't like it, but hopefully the votes will and that's what counts - if you want Labour to get elected that is.

 

[davek]

Like I said, when he finds it you'll know what it is...and you probably won't like it, but hopefully the votes will and that's what counts - if you want Labour to get elected that is.

If it's like the Blair LP, no I dont want it elected.

 

[Spadge Vernacular]

Starmer is traditional labour. How would we know if he never opens his mouth and tells us what he believes in?

He has been Labour all of his life and raised in a Labour household. It's clear enough if you take the blinkers off

 

[davek]

He has been Labour all of his life and raised in a Labour household. It's clear enough if you take the blinkers off

...and?

Look at what he did as DPP. As right wing as you can get: backing the police and army up to the hilt and affirming the Tory welfare legislation.

 

[dead_soft]

...and?

Look at what he did as DPP. As right wing as you can get: backing the police and army up to the hilt and affirming the Tory welfare legislation.

He basically handled the public facing role as DPP badly but 'as right wing as you can get' is just a stupid comment. Your inability to ever see any nuance shows you to be foolish, not principled. It's an annoying trope of the media and the centrists that those of us on the left of the party would rather stay out of power and keep the Tories in than ever compromise but it really does seem that you'd rather that then ever have a Labour government that didn't do everything you wanted. Unfortunately for you, too many people need a Labour government and need it desperately, in order to survive.

 

[roydo]

He basically handled the public facing role as DPP badly but 'as right wing as you can get' is just a stupid comment. Your inability to ever see any nuance shows you to be foolish, not principled. It's an annoying trope of the media and the centrists that those of us on the left of the party would rather stay out of power and keep the Tories in than ever compromise but it really does seem that you'd rather that then ever have a Labour government that didn't do everything you wanted. Unfortunately for you, too many people need a Labour government and need it desperately, in order to survive.

I never knew the left were against the police and the military.

 

[Spadge Vernacular]

...and?

Look at what he did as DPP. As right wing as you can get: backing the police and army up to the hilt and affirming the Tory welfare legislation.

What is wrong with backing the police and the army, mate?

A high percentage of the army, that majority of working-class lads will be Labour (not Corbyns hijack). Same for the police, those UNISON members that form a part of what is Labour with the likes of Starmer & co, who understand this.

 

[davek]

He basically handled the public facing role as DPP badly but 'as right wing as you can get' is just a stupid comment. Your inability to ever see any nuance shows you to be foolish, not principled. It's an annoying trope of the media and the centrists that those of us on the left of the party would rather stay out of power and keep the Tories in than ever compromise but it really does seem that you'd rather that then ever have a Labour government that didn't do everything you wanted. Unfortunately for you, too many people need a Labour government and need it desperately, in order to survive.

No, it wasn't about presentation. He covered up the assassination of Menezes and he covered up torture by the British Army, and he found in favour of coppers going undercover and setting up dual existances which destroy people's lives (Stone/Kennedy affair). It's hard to spin that.