Maybe Kuenssberg edited the article?
Watch it on iPlayer Bill.
It's normally up to the person making the claim to provide evidence. I'm not really interested in watching Newsnight as successive Tory governments have reduced the BBC to a government PR agency Putin would recognise.
I just find people slagging off DA in personal terms is usually indicative of racism/sexism, as TJ said. Is it coincidence that the no 1 target of vile hatred and abuse in UK politics is a (left wing) black woman? Of course not.
successive Tory governments have reduced the BBC to a government PR agency Putin would recognise.
I love those sort of comments, when I have to listen to my parents berating the BBC for its left wing, anti Tory, anti-Brexit stance on everything 🤣
Yeah but I'm right and they're wrong 😉
I think the BBC has traditionally been lefty/liberal leaning but those days are long gone. Anti Brexit maybe to a degree but that's just being pro-reason. And they've done an awful lot to promote Farage.
I think people who claim the BBC is left biased are comparing it to the rabid right wing billionaire owned tabloids.
@grum - McCluskey made a reference to Mandelson roughly saying he should stay out of it and stay at home counting his gold. An old anti-Semitic trope.
He's since apologised, didn't know PM's religiong blah blah blah. It is fair to assume that he knew that some of his family are Jewish. It's on Twitter if you can be arse to look.
Regarding Abbot, watch the interview
Thanks ELShalimo - yup hard to believe he didn't know the context, what an idiot.
Anyone slagging off Abbott would be well advised to spend a couple of minutes reading this:
I like Abbot. And I fully expect her to speak her mind. The Newsnight piece did make it look like she was (with others from all wings of the party) sabotaging the party at this point, just when the public are turning away from the government, and towards Labour. Is that 90% on whoever put the piece together? I think it might be. She knows enough not to do the remaining 10% of the work though... and it is clear that she is a shadow of her former self... which will come to us all I'm afraid. I find watching recent interviews with her, whether long form or snipped up like this, very depressing on many levels... made worse for knowing about all the ongoing abuse she has to live with.
Yep she was great.... but the glory days were a long time ago. Her performances in the last few years have not reached those stellar levels.
What I don't understand is what does she, McCluskey etc achieve by publicly slagging off Starmer. The editing looks like a hatchet job by the BBC but they should be shrewder than that. What is their agenda?
Do they have something to hide in the soon to be released anti-Semitism report? Or is it just sour grapes? It's as mind-boggling as the BBC article was strange
🤔
What I don’t understand is what does she, McCluskey etc achieve by publicly slagging off Starmer.
They've spent their entire careers relentlessly committed to keeping the Tory's in power, they're not about to stop now.
I didn't really think my opinion of Len could get any lower but I nearly spat my organic fairtrade Argentine Malbec all over my sourdough crackers and brie when he came out with that statement about Mandleson.
If any of the usual suspects would like to now pop on and tell me how the Corbynite wing of the party definitely aren't anti-Semitic, in light of that, that'd be lovely
You can't label that many people because of the words and actions of McCluskey. He is a special level of odiousness not shared by many others, whatever their political allegiances.
Mandelson celebrated people getting filthy rich under New Labour, getting ennobled and boasting of his daily divisive behaviour. Can we find something to say about him that isn't a 'trope' or is he above criticism?
Can we find something to say about him that isn’t a ‘trope’ or is he above criticism?
You could write chapter and verse about Mandleson without resorting to anti-Semitic tropes.
That tells you all you need to know about Len McClusky
But theres no antisemitism in the labour left, is there? Of course not.
Peter Mandelson is Jewish? Anyway McCluskey has been successful again at winding up his haters. Instead of talking about Mandelson's money though he'd have been better off highlighting his links with Russian oligarchs and american paedophiles. A missed opportunity if ever there was one.
There is a strand of anti semitism in the left of the labour party, and it should have been rooted out much sooner, but it's a shame that the labour centrists were more interested in weaponising it against Corbyn than they were in criticising a prime minister who calls black people grinning picanninies and Muslim women letterboxes.
Genuine anti semitism is to be reviled but there's also a hefty campaign to conflate any even legitimate criticism of Israel as anti semitic. The difficulty is in the grey areas between the two.
Can we find something to say about him that isn’t a ‘trope’ or is he above criticism?
We can say his "contribution" in that Newsnight piece was as bad as anyone else's. Again, not entirely his fault, but it couldn't have happened without him being willing to throw useful rocks to be edited into the stoning. Historically... I hated his "comfortable with people getting filthy rich" line... and he long ago rowed back from it...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/jan/26/mandelson-people-getting-filthy-rich
But the "counting your gold" comment is a very odd phrase to use. And I long ago stopped giving Len McCluskey the benefit of the doubt... I don't think anyone should be by now. Backing him because you are on the left is entirely counterproductive. Labour needs rid of him.
Mandelson was an utter shit - a tory in the wrong party and did massive damage to labour
Well, Mandelson is one of the people that stopped me from voting Labour back then. Probably the key person. Now, the Left (I include my self there) need to acknowledge that McCluskey is keeping people away from Labour today. And how it can be any other way?!? Just listen to him! Stop taking sides… distance the party from him ASAP. Call him out for being the self serving game player and stirrer that he is.
Call him out for being the self serving game player and stirrer that he is.
Or just ignore him? Honestly most people haven't got a clue who he is so why give him a platform?
Labour do need to disassociate themselves from his comments and actions. Many people rightly or wrongly still think of Carry On at Your Convenience when they think about Labour and Unions. It's a myth kept alive by the right to good effect.
Or just ignore him?
I’ll pass that on to the media and press, and millions of voters.
Delete
Andy Burnham is doing a great job of taking on the Government.
Slaps down on the utter lameness of Starmer in this process. This is what an opposition should look like.
The government / BOE bought back £300 billion of bonds this year through Q/E. Covid has cost nothing in net terms. No tax increases needed. And that's before the fact the money was simply paid out for covid - just like that.
They can absolutely afford it.
Absolute lying ideological ****s.
He’s not bad that Burnham… shame that he had to leave the parliamentary party.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1318937847924076545
Help.
Just where did the Tories get +3 from?
Did Starmer have good PMQs recently? I'm sure Jonathan Freedland said he did.
Maybe time to quit the long game - stop being forensic and start having a crack?
start having a crack?
Tune into politics occasionally, the opposition are attacking the government every day, in parliament and in the media. There’s a debate on in the commons right now that gives the public a clear dividing line… one that it is very easy for the public to step over the floor to Labour’s side… it’s almost a no brainer.
Always worth looking at a poll of polls to see trends…
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/
What happened in April?
Just where did the Tories get +3 from?
Statistical noise.
Starmer shit at pmqs again. When will he start about Tory party corruption? Or if he's scared to do that he could couch it as Tory's wasting money on bad PPE deals.
This lot happened this week: ffs!
Russ (@RussInCheshire) Tweeted: 1. NHS staff were polled on whether, in recognition of their efforts to fight Covid 19, they would prefer to be given a badge or a snack box
2. It was reported 2 out of every 3 hospices will have to make redundancies. In a pandemic. https://twitter.com/RussInCheshire/status/1318525201282420736?s=20
Starmer shit at pmqs again. When will he start about Tory party corruption? Or if he’s scared to do that he could couch it as Tory’s wasting money on bad PPE deals.
The last opposition day debate was about exactly this, with strong contributions from across the Labour benches.
Maybe next week then?
It was last week.
Starmer shit at pmqs again
No, he wasn't.
He is right to use his 6 questions in a very focussed way to expose johnson as incompetent.
Any questions about tory corruption will just be laughed off and batted away by johnson.
The same for PPE...we used the emergency provision in public sector procurement regulations to support the NHS and care homes.
Yes, I know that is bollocks but that is how johnson would respond.
PPE and other dodgy contract awards are, as you know, being challenged in the courts by the Good Law Project.
kelvin
Full Member
It was last week.
Why is he ignoring it then? Maybe there is a good reason?
The reason Boris is +3 is because Burnham was daft enough to put a figure on the rescue package. 65 million sounds a lot but is no where near enough to support the North during another lockdown and Boris knows this. He offers 60 million as a token gesture and the vast majority think he’s being reasonable even generous and Burnham is playing politics with COVID. I wish they’d sat down and realised the figure they would need would be too big to ask for in a lumper and instead negotiated an extra support package on an individual business basis.
Why is he ignoring it then?
He isn’t, you are.
The reason Boris is +3 is because Burnham was daft enough to put a figure on the rescue package. 65 million sounds a lot but is no where near enough to support the North during another lockdown and Boris knows this. He offers 60 million as a token gesture and the vast majority think he’s being reasonable even generous…
Check the period that poll was conducted over. I don’t think your narrative, even if it made sense, fits the timeline.
Keir hasn't asked a question about it in pmqs. Why doesn't he put Boris on the spot?
He's probably waiting for the next calamity to occur
A week is a long time in Politics nowadays. Can you remember what we were discussing last week?
Keir hasn’t asked a question about it in pmqs. Why doesn’t he put Boris on the spot?
If you're referring to PPE and other questionable contract awards, Starmer has 6 questions and he must use them as effectively as possible.
johnson knows there are legal actions being fronted by The Good Law Project; Starter knows the same and him weighing in now won't add anything to the legal case(s) so he's using his PMQ allocation judiciously to highlight johnson's incompetence and inconsistency,
re-inforcing the message that johnson has lost control and doesn't have a plan to regain it; that he is wilfully damaging the nation's health and economy.
That is a far bigger issue than mis-use of public funds - and, yes, I know that the PPE scandal has caused deaths and is, in essence, a government approved fraud.
Starmer is, rightly, focussed on the bigger picture.
An interesting article by my former Labour MP, who lost his seat last December by 100 votes.
I was a red wall Labour MP – this is what Keir Starmer can learn from Andy Burnham
I think, like a lot of people (myself included), Starmer needs to start being a lot bolder and more visible and vocal in holding the government to account now. With the North in lockdown with no way out, the test and trace still a total shambles, and the debacle of free school meals, the Labour party need to be landing some blows now.
Any national unity and feeling of all being 'in this together' is long gone, so the labour party should start being a lot more vocal and pointing out the mess the government is making of all this. The reticence to be seen to 'play politics' surely no longer applies
Is this part of the long term strategy?
Keir and cyclists
Yeah I also just saw another news source and thought 'when worlds collide'
BBC Kier collides with cyclist
Fortunately it sounds like a relatively minor incident.
Obviously trying to woo back the red wall Brexity Labour voters by tackling those pesky cyclists!
I'm very much with Binners on this now. Stop being reasoned. Put Boris on the rack* at PMQs and ask "what happened to the billions that hadn't delivered the track and trace that you said was needed before schools could go back", "when will we get a refund that will help pay for the furlough costs required because T&T didn't deliver", "could you have sorted the free school meals with that money you wasted", "what is your plan to get us out of this mess that your incompetence has created before we risk deaths spiralling again you incompetent buffoon"
*I'm happy if he actually uses a proper rack btw
