Maybe you should leave the common room
Are you planning to? Nothing in your track record suggests that's likely.
Actually, I can think of quite a few names for them. Some of them quite sweary. None are complimentary
I find your political banter hilarious.
It's so funny and outrageous with all your hilarious nicknames and all that.
What's brilliant is that you treat politics like supporting a football team.
In many ways, you do for politics what Greavsie did for 80s soccer chat.
And like Greavsie used to say - politics is a 'funny ol' game'.
Well done.
Evening comrade! Thanks for your insightful contribution, as ever. Always educational.
No problem. And I'm always happy to help you with anything you don't understand.
In many ways, you do for politics what Greavsie did for 80s soccer chat.
And like Greavsie used to say – politics is a ‘funny ol’ game’.
Well done.
Thanks. But I always thought myself more...
“Frankly, the display from Jeremy was shambolic...unforgivable...“
Maybe you should leave the common room and engage with reality?
You really are a very tiresome individual and whats funny about your constant sixth form bilge is that it shows you have the debating power of a child.
Thanks. But I always thought myself more…
I think it's apparent that self awareness isn't your strongest suit.
No problem. And I’m always happy to help you with anything you don’t understand.
like people thinking Jeremy Corbyn could ever be prime minister?
Do feel free to enlighten me with the benefit of your obvious wisdom, brother ....
Do feel free to enlighten me with the benefit of your obvious wisdom, brother ….
Why on earth would I waste energy on trying to educate pork?
The worst thing about politics, for me, is the tribalism.
I'm neither left, right, upside down or other.
It seems to me in UK politics at the moment you have to subscribe to a camp, which is utter nonsense.
Every issue that every government faces will have it's own sensible balanced solution. But they can't do it, for "reasons".
A solution that will never be reached in the current UK set up, as it's not towing the party line.
There are three answers to any UK political question, or millions if you think about it, but let's boil it down to three.
1. the tory way
2. the labour way
3. The correct way... heaven forbid a consensus - unthinkable.
So far Starmer has convinced me that he's dull and one of them, as in one of the privileged pricks too quick to cite his credentials and too slow to address issues that concern people who might vote for him. The last PMQ before the Summer recess was dismal. I really don't give flying duck about the Russian report, there's the prospect of millions of jobs going, companies going to the wall, parts of the economy close to collapse and the questions were so lame, they cast more doubt on the intelligence of the general public than the did on Boris. It's never good telling people they were stupid stupid enough to swallow foreign propaganda, you alienate them.
Comrade Corbyn was ****ing irritating with his 1974 brand of militance, Starmer is equally ****ing irritating with his whiny lawyer nit picking. Is there no one in the Labour party who can read the writing in huge letters on the wall and tell people who aren't stinking rich what's wrong with society for them and how to fix it?
Labour needs a voice that represents anyone who isn't stinking rich and Starmer is stinking rich.
Who thinks we're going to see a Starmer vs Johnson contest in a bit over 4 years time?
What we are going to see next year will be the banking crisis + the 80's recession + the 70's discontent + the social upheaval of the 60's. All at once. I can't see our political status quo surviving that.
Our traditional politics are now meaningless, they've literally flipped north-south, the two parties don't even represent any political fundamentals anymore.
If Macron could challenge the political status quo in France in a pre covid world, I find it impossible to think that outside figures won't succeed in challenging our political establishment over the next 4 years.
Sorry rone, I can't see Labour cracking the red/blue wallers. They lost them and I can't see them getting them back.
Corbyn's Labour let the genie out of the bottle. The blue/red wallers were already conservative with a small c, and many of them were racist and xenophobic but voted along class and economic lines. In switching their vote they have made a cultural identification no longer based on class identity.
If Keir doesn't go after the Tories hard on this PPE scandal then what is he for?
PPE is a detail. If Starmer goes after them on that it's more wasted questions. Inkster has correctly identified tha major issue:
What we are going to see next year will be the banking crisis + the 80’s recession + the 70’s discontent + the social upheaval of the 60’s. All at once.
Labour needs to tell people how it will keep roofs over people's heads, food in their stomachs, the bailifs from the door, their savings intact... .
Nah. It needs to show people the corruption. Tories are great at woolly promises and people lap them up.
Wasted questions?, they're all wasted. Pmqs is a sham, Boris can avoid questions and lie with no comeback. Starmer needs to get on the telly more.
If what is being reported is true then its imo en9ugh to bring the govt down.
The UK will never ever elect a socialist government. Especially not one fronted by some bearded weirdo
Not when people who claim to be Labour supporters hate anyone left of David Cameron.
The worst thing about politics, for me, is the tribalism.
There are three answers to any UK political question, or millions if you think about it, but let’s boil it down to three.
The worst thing is that the tribalism is fake as ultimately the two/three sides are usually in agreement with each other and don't challenge how the system works. Corbyn came up against such vicious opposition because he threatened that cosy consensus. Noam Chomsky summed it up very well:
"In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population."
Sorry rone, I can’t see Labour cracking the red/blue wallers. They lost them and I can’t see them getting them back.
This. The red wallers are thick small-B bigots with a chip on their shoulder against anyone with an education or who doesn't talk with a thick regional accent. Under Starmer (and Corbyn before him) labour represents a hand-wringing, do-gooding metropolitan elite which cares more for immigrants and transexuals than the interests of plumbers, welders and carpet fitters. They're so bloody thick they genuinely think Boris and Cummings represent their interests. The only way Starmer will get them back is if he starts blowing his dog-whistle on immigration and benefits claimants, and that's not going to happen.
The red wallers are thick small-B bigots with a chip on their shoulder against anyone with an education or who doesn’t talk with a thick regional accent.
And that's how all this started 10 years ago. Gordon Brown called that Gillian Duffy woman bigoted (he was right, she was) and rather than then explaining to her why she was wrong (and bigoted, and stupid...), ha had to go back and apologise on national TV and it validated her view across the nation.
Careful, you're not allowed to call dumb racists dumb and racist, that's elitist - and that's much worse apparently.
It will be interesting to see if this potential downward social mobility leads to increased energy and ideas for change. Those who see themselves as 'middle class professionals' will realise they are workers too. Nonsense categories though. I passed up the opportunity for an apprenticeship as a Thames Lighterman and went to university instead, but I'm still working class.
Not my area of expertise but Starmers.record asna barrister seems very very good so he is clearly capable and bright.
The key to going after PM/Govt over all the current issues is surely timing and picking your arguments. A well timed strike with the relevant evidence is better than constant sniping over anything and everything.
Would love to see a starmer led labour government but it's about waiting for the right moments and opportunities? And accepting that may be a slow process to change people's minds as others have said.
The only way Starmer will get them back is if he starts blowing his dog
Rather unfortunate line wrapping on my iPad.
It would certainly get their attention....
No one cares about being right or moral or having evidence any more though, so all his barrister-y nitpicking isn't going to get us anywhere.
No one cares about being right or moral or having evidence any more though, so all his barrister-y nitpicking isn’t going to get us anywhere.
The main reason why I wanted Rayner to stand for leader. She's the only one of the current crop who can pull on the emotional heartstrings and identify with the northern idiots. Of course she'd have the opposite problem of turning off the self-congratulating hipsters and cultural snobs and may lose some of them to the lib dems, but I reckon most of them would vote tactically in any case.
Who do you think the red wall idiots will listen to on the subject of racism, mysogyny, immigration and all the other liberal political correctness issues? Someone from their background who knows what it's like to raise a kid as a teenager and clean floors for a living, or a middle class barrister with a posh accent?
Someone from their background who knows what it’s like to raise a kid as a teenager and clean floors for a living, or a middle class barrister with a posh accent?
It shouldn’t be so, and I see your point, but disappointingly, I fear a posh accent still works. 😔
…or a middle class barrister with a posh accent?
Sorry, but are these the voters that need to be swung away from voting for Johnson? The voters you patronisingly think need a working class northerner to vote for?
Don't they like Johnson because he's 'a lad' though? You know, cheats on his wife, racist, and LOVES THE BANTER. Starmer is definitely not a lad.
True. I’ve said before… he’s too “dull” to win over the “Boris is a laugh” voters. And I like Rayner, but she wisely realised that more experience was needed to lead the party out of its current hole.
^^^^ This. The bluster and the long words make people think he's funny, cheeky and loveable, and not some racist, power-hungry, untrustworthy narcissist being told what to do by his financial backers.
He could shit on the table at a party for sick kids and it would get laughed off in the press as "Boris being Boris".
If another party wants to beat him at that game, they need to, well, beat him at that game. Sadly, that would mean a race to the bottom and the beginning of the rise of President Camacho.
The voters you patronisingly think need a working class northerner to vote for?
TBH I don't know who they will vote for any more. I'm long past trying to understand what will please them, because they're so full of prejudice and contradictions, and have proven themselves completely incapable of simple judgements about what is in their own best interests. If they want to vote for someone like Boris or Farage who will lie and say anything to take advantage of their bigotry and ignorance then fine. Labour and other parties should forget about them and concentrate on the majority who are capable of putting brains before brawn.
Agreed.
[ not sure it’s a majority though ]
I think the problem is that there's a big angry group whose voting has been defined as "against something" rather than voting "for something".
Anti Europe.
Anti Corbyn.
Etc.
It's scary times in politics. 1930s stuff.
I don't think they'll be converted to pro-starmer, it's not a Messiah they want but a scapegoat to blame.
The question is more whether they'll be more anti-Johnson than anti-starmer when it matters.
But then the Tories/Cummings also have the option to just change the puppet (sunak?) if this one becomes a vote loser. Although media control might mean they don't need to.
sunak?
You think they’re going to vote for someone with brown skin?
It's not about voting "for" anything.
But there's 365 of them.
You're probably right that it won't be him, but if there's an anti Johnson feeling then it's easy enough to just pop another puppet in.
I think the problem is that there’s a big angry group whose voting has been defined as “against something” rather than voting “for something”.
Well done, you just summed up Scottish politics.
In response to you question dazh,
Yes.
I can still remember where i was when i heard that John Smith had died.
My second thought was *it has to be Blair*
Sometimes you have to be realistic - the Tories only ever think this way - you have to win.
It's like Lear - nothing will come of nothing - we can weep as Cordelia for our loss or we can be more Regan.
These people are becoming ruthless - we must stop them before they make us just like them.
I don't want to set binners off but I had quite a good laugh reading the following. If anyone was wondering at the delusion of 20th century socialists this is a good start. I mean, he uses the phrase 'petit-borgeois' 3 times 🙂
I wish them luck in persuading working class culture warriors in Sunderland to join the cause of workers solidarity and class unity.
https://www.socialist.net/storytelling-culture-wars-and-the-left-a-reply-to-paul-mason.htm
My second thought was *it has to be Blair*
Here’s where I get to say… you were right, I was wrong. Labour lost me then, just before I got my first chance to vote… and it wasn’t ‘till Corbyn became leader that I voted Labour. I was wrong. I should have voted Labour under Blair, Brown & Miliband… sorry. A Labour leader needs to lead for the country, not just for people of the left, like myself.
We don’t need another Blair now… or another Brown or Miliband… but, just as importantly… we don’t need another Corbyn… and those annoyed that Starmer will not be Corbyn2, or continually looking back and moaning about how unfairly treated Corbyn was need to wake up to the reality that he’s gone… and, in my opinion, not gone away as completely as he now needs to.
Mason will be wheeling out Gramsci's 'Prison Notebooks' next, written in code and wide open to interpretation, as did the Eurocommunists. He'll be claiming 'organic intellectuals' were people with allotments. Postmodernism is a relativistic reactionary load of guff and in the social sciences it has sort of disappeared. Find me a postmodernist book with any 'evidence' in it, it's all anecdote, conjecture, ultimately conservative and really offers nothing to help our understanding of the present. If a society is built on production then the first point of analysis has to be the process of production and how a system allocates its resources. Similarly that analysis has to inform the possibility and process for change and it ain't about squabbling over great parliamentary leaders and who'll do what in four yeas time. We're in the here and now, and it's serious.
Well that gets my vote🙄
Mason will be wheeling out Gramsci’s ‘Prison Notebooks’ next
Don't get me wrong, I'm not using that example as a defence of Mason, I've found much of his latest stuff far too academic and hand-wringing for my liking. He was much better off sticking to the economic stuff about post-capitalism than getting involved in pointless arguments about Marxism and labour factionalism.
The point was more that many on the left are hopelessly out of date with their language and messaging, and far too academic in their arguments to be making any real impact in the real world. The problems of today can be understood fairly simply in terms of tax, regulation and corruption of government for the interests of a tiny few rich people. All this stuff about class and postmodernism deflects from that.
When was the last time we heard Boris, Farage or any leading tories waxing lyrical about narratives, class, the petit-bourgeois, economism, neoliberalism, postmodernism or any of the other elitist academic phrases which turn people away from politics? They don't, they talk in language people understand. Even Tony Blair understood that, and so should Starmer.
