Johnson's majority cut eh?
It's good to live in hope innit?
Wishful thinking, I know.
for obvious reasons I have not been following as closely as usual but I am glad to see Starmer getting rid of all the useless diddies like Raynor and Nandy
Labour need a professional setup not ignorant no nothing ranters
'Bloody lefties and your idealogical (sic) purity. You might be a useless ****-wit but you share my opinions on Palastine (sic) so the jobs (sic) yours' and btw Labour is a proper noun (that means a big L).
Is this some kind of attempt at left behind white working class inverted snobbery? Would it have also been 'idealogically pure' to have opposed apartheid in SA?
I’m starting to hope there is a snap election
What makes you think that?
A snap election is the tories preffered tactic. they need one before the covid bills come in and before the brexit damage becomes separte and obvious from the covid damage.
Ill bet my house the fixed term parliament act is scrapped in the next westminster session and that there is an election in a year or so
This nails it. No one will vote for a party which doesn’t believe in itself.
What makes you think that?
Think what? That there might be a snap election? Or that Labour would lose if there was one? Or that I no longer see a snap election as such a wholly negative thing, despite assuming Johnson and his party would still have a majority after it?
This nails it. No one will vote for a party which doesn’t believe in itself.
You don't support Starmer's cunning strategy of telling voters that Labour are shit?
What could possibly go wrong?
And just to drive the point home he's gone out of his way to be a shit Opposition Leader.
It's obviously a strategy which the Parliamentary Labour Party fully backs as there are barely any murmurings of moves to oust him. The PLP won't hesitate to mount a coup against a leader that they don't support.
Would it have also been ‘idealogically pure’ to have opposed apartheid in SA?
No. What's your point? My point is that opinions shouldn't be a reason to give someone a job. It should be based on competency
What we have here is somebody being dismissed because he worked in Blairs press office. I'd say thats quite a good thing to have on your CV, as it suggests he was rather good at his job.
But no, apparently
You don’t support Starmer’s cunning strategy of telling voters that Labour are shit?
Not only is the strategy to repeatedly tell voters how shit labour are, but also to drive away the last remaining core supporters by calling them anti-semites. The AS joker card worked so well on Corbyn now they're using it on their own voters. I'm beginning to think the crazy lefties on twitter who say Starmer is a tory agent are right.
It's all pretty irrelevant anyway.
'It shows that, if you were born before the early 1970s, then a plurality of your cohort have won almost every election you have ever voted in. If you were born after the mid 1980s, a plurality of voters in your age group have lost almost every election you have ever voted in. For those born after 1990, that “almost every” drops to “every”.'
Boomers...
Which is what I have been pointing out many times on various posts on here.
The biggest voting population are older people
Older people vote Tory more than anything else
If voting age was cutoff at say 55 then Labour would be winning the elections.
He’s not actually an MP. He’s not writing policy. He’s head of communications. You know… the actual practical stuff
And yet you're so scathing of other party employees Seumus Milne Cummings etc.
Centrists balance on such a tight rope of logic that they're bereft of an actual idealogical position.
This fascistic Government needs to thank the liberals for their constant support. They sure know how to hand their lack of idealogical values straight to the right.
Think what? That there might be a snap election?
Yes just interested in the comment.
(A while back I thought that was plausible too.)
And yet you’re so scathing of other party employees Seumus Milne Cummings etc.
What were Seamus Milne's qualifications for the job? He once wrote a few Guardian articles? He was there purely for his beliefs ie: 'I agree with Jeremy about absolutely everything' rather than any actual aptitude for the position.
In fact, he was absolutely terrible at the job. If your job is to communicate, you're probably best not immediately starting a massive spikey confrontation with all of the media, bar the Canary and the Morning Star, then locking yourself in a bunker.
And say what you like about Cummings, he was devastatingly effective at his job, but he had no particular ideological attachment to the Tory party. Far from it. He hated most of them and they hated him right back, but put up with him because they knew he could deliver. Which he did. Repeatedly. Mainly, it seems, just to show how clever he is.
Obviously now he's served his purpose, he's been dropped like a hot turd.
Let's just scrap this idealogical purity vapid nonsense now.
It's called having a vision Binners - that pushes back against 40 years of decay.
Without it you end up exactly where Starmchair is going - nowhere.
For the many not the few was a damn good thing to be on-side with.
How many times are current Labour going to rebrand with their awful PR?
"Stronger Together" is at least a step in the right direction.
What were Seamus Milne’s qualifications for the job? He once wrote a few Guardian articles? He was there purely for his beliefs ie: ‘I agree with Jeremy about absolutely everything’ rather than any actual aptitude for the position.
He was bang on with the "Enemy within."
Jezza was correct about lots of things so I'm not having your nonesense.
(A while back I thought that was plausible too.)
Well, I still think a snap election is highly unlikely, but that the government will make sure that they can call one if need be. If anything, I think it’s become less likely, but am far more sanguine about one then I was. There could be benefits to be gained from one for the opposition parties (it would bring Starmer’s term as leader to an end though, unless they repeated the mistake made after the 2017 election and pushed on with someone just because they increased support and lost by fewer seats).
He was there purely for his beliefs
Whereas Starmer and his now former top team were there purely for their 'competence' and absence of any ideological constraints. How's that going?
If there's one thing that Starmer and his catastrophic 'strategy' have proved, it's that managerial competence is massively less important in the running of a political party than having a vision that people can get behind. Or in other words, an actual ideology. Someone might want to tell Starmer that he's a politician, leading a political party, and not the CEO of a small to middling consultancy.
Pretty telling that binners admires Dominic Cummings and hates Seamus Milne.
Correct
They both bear as much responsibility as each other for Brexit, then a Tory election victory delivering a huge majority
One ensured those things through his competence, the other through his incompetence
Hate and admiration aren't mutually exclusive though. You can admire how effective someone is while intensely disliking what they're doing and the reasons why they do it
I feel the same way about Jurgen Klopp 😉
Pretty telling that binners admires Dominic Cummings
I've always been a fan of Cummings. I disagree with his politics to the extent I understand them, but admire his willingness to try new things and reject tradition and entrenched and established practises. Labour could do with some people like him, and in fact I wouldn't be outraged if labour employed him. They won't of course, because they are as attached and dependent on the old school establishment as the tories are, and that's the central problem.
Hate and admiration aren’t mutually exclusive though. You can admire how effective someone is while intensely disliking what they’re doing and the reasons why they do it
Yep, like how effective Hitler was (which we would all agree he was) yet was pure evil (which I hope we would also all agree on)
Starmer is unfortunately not very effective and I don't think many like him.
Labour could do with some people like him, and in fact I wouldn’t be outraged if labour employed him.
Agree. He could be of use to actually getting Labour elected although I would have to hold my nose while employing him as he is morally bankrupt.
Are you saying that Jurgen Klopp is worse than Hitler?
He will never be as effective
I see the racist Burnham is making a complete clot of himself again with stupid attacks on Sturgeon and Scotland. His statements make it clear that like most of London labour he has no idea about what the constitution is and how Scotland operates
I wonder if this is going to be a labour tactic - make spurious attacks on Scotland
I wonder if this is going to be a labour tactic – make spurious attacks on Scotland
It's hardly spurious. I think that in this case he has some justification.
I like Sturgeon but you can't complain about a Westminster government imposing remote decisions without consultation with regional authorities, then go and do exactly the same thing yourself.
Which is exactly what she's done. It's absolute hypocrisy
I see the racist Burnham
The who now?
Burnham the racist. Made a series of disgraceful racist statements to get elected Mayor.
If there’s one thing that
Starmer and his catastrophic ‘strategy’BoJo and Trump have proved, it’s that managerial competence is massively less important in the running of a political party than having a vision that people can get behind.
...is the problem
Made a series of disgraceful racist statements to get elected Mayor.
Like?
(and I'll be honest, given the demographics of his mayoral constituency and how racist statements would go down there, I'm sceptical)
It’s hardly spurious. I think that in this case he has some justification.
I like Sturgeon but you can’t complain about a Westminster government imposing remote decisions without consultation with regional authorities, then go and do exactly the same thing yourself.
Apart from its non of Burhams buisness what happens in Scotland - Sturgeon has no power over him
did he ask for compensation from all the countries that refused entry to brits or has he demanded compensation from the netherlands which has the UK on a no fly list?
He simply does not understand the constitutional arrangements and is simply looking for someone to attack to make him look good
His intervention was crass, without any merit and ignorant.
Apart from its non of Burhams buisness what happens in Scotland
Don't be ridiculous. Of course it's his business if a decision taken in Holyrood has an impact on his constituents and is taken without any consultation at all.
If it was Scotland that was making the same complaint about Westminster, you'd be up in arms and claiming it was entirely justified.
You can't have it both ways
He simply does not understand the constitutional arrangements and is simply looking for someone to attack to make him look good
He does understand them, and he's doing what he does... he's an opportunistic weathervane of a politician who will use anything to gain support. Some might say that's what the next Labour leader should be like. But I still don't trust him one bit. What he's working on here is that a large segment of the English vote can be mobilised by attacking the SNP. He's not stupid. He knows his stuff. But he's the kind of politician that makes my skin crawl.
IHN
Its was a load of anti immigrantnt doq whistle racism. I cannot see the quotes now but it was racist doqwwhistle of the most blatant kind.
It was a constant theme in his first mayoral campaignb
He said immigration undermines community cohesion. He called for less aslyum seekers to be placed in Manchester. He also blamed "asian communities" for the spread of covid IIRC
some of the most blatent bits of dogwhistle racism
Sturgeon would not make the same complaint because she would know it to be nonsense. Its precisely non of his business. There is no relationship. did he ask the netherlands for compensation?
Demanding compensation? he has no idea even if this did cost anything?
the man is a racist ignorant creep. and a opportunist wethervane
Its was a load of anti immigrantnt doq whistle racism. I cannot see the quotes now but it was racist doqwwhistle of the most blatant kind.
You always bring this up. You've been repeatedly asked to provide examples, but haven't.
He said immigration undermines community cohesion. He called for less aslyum seekers to be placed in Manchester. He also blamed “asian communities” for the spread of covid IIRC
He's done none of those things. If you think he has, then provide some examples. It's hardly the first time you've been asked.
This is what Burnham said on Asylum seekers, I am not sure it is racist.
Mr Burnham told MPs that places such as Greater Manchester “continue to take in the vast majority of the country’s asylum seekers and refugees and largely they do so without any strife or difficulty. I don’t want to hear anyone claim that people in places like Leigh that voted to leave are in any way xenophobic or racist.
“They are welcoming, generous people but they also want fairness and they don’t think it’s fair that the country’s least well-off communities should experience pressure on wages, on housing, on public services… without any help to manage it.”
He goes on to say,
Mr Burnham, who is MP for Leigh, stood by his comments, today telling Sky News: “I believe we’ve got to have a system that is more linked to people coming to fill a specific job in the labour market rather than speculative free movement, which has actually caused some difficult challenges in parts of Greater Manchester. We’ve seen downward pressure on wages.”
Is that racist or xenophobic?
I found this, and it was when he was in parliament, not his mayoral campaign, and about the same time as cultsdave's quote above:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/16/take-back-control-immigration-debate-labour
*EDIT - apologies, it may have been during his campaign. Anyway, I found this too:
I think it's more along the lines of "people have concerns about immigration, so we need to be able to talk about those concerns without being labelled as racist for doing so", which is difficult to disagree with
Apologies for paraphrasing, but it's basically... "we can pat ourselves on the back for being a welcoming nation, while also stopping those foreigners coming here and driving down our wages and damaging our public services". All lovely proud British heartwarming comments about "others", while making sure they're kept well away. We'll control those immigrants for you, because you'll vote or us if we promise to save you from them.
It's hardly 'disgracefully racist' anyway is it. You can argue it gives fuel to nationalists etc but actually people should be able to discuss these things without it being blown up into a massive drama.
Apologies for
paraphrasingmaking up my own version that sounds much worse, but it’s basically…
Is that racist or xenophobic?
If you ask our brexit thread colleagues it's bordering on being a goose-stepping nazi. 😄
I don't much like Burnham for his bandwagon jumping tendencies and his childish flounce after he lost to Corbyn, but one thing he does have going for him is he knows how to connect with the public, and appears to be sincere in his dealings with them. Like Rayner, he doesn't set himself apart or above normal people, and that's exactly what labour needs right now. He's wasted as Manchester mayor, and needs to get back on the national scene.
