RS – what you think doesn’t matter if you can’t drag enough of the electorate along with you. You can either campaign, persuade, cajole folk over a long enough period that you eventually change their minds or you compromise to get more of them on board and at least get some of your policies implemented.

democratic socialist manifesto

AS yet nobody has managed democratic socialism. The talented/hardworkers leave so you have to get autocratic to stop them.

Fortunately we have two experiments on two different countries so we know exactly how socialism ends up:

West and East Germany started from *exactly* the same starting point. Which of those would you rather have been poor in?

North and South Korea started from *exactly* the same starting point. Which of those would you rather be poor in?

I’m all for conducting further experiments in Socialism, just not in the UK. If it works elsewhere we can adopt it.

Yeah, but that wasn’t real socialism.

Don’t be so cynical. It’s going great in Venezuela

Funny you should mention Venezuela because when I saw this exchange:

Surely there has to come a time for listening to the actual electorate instead of preaching to them?

If that were true we’d be out of the EU now so be careful what you wish for.

I couldn’t help but reflect on this:

President Maduro acknowledged PSUV defeat, but attributed the opposition’s victory to an intensification of an economic war. Despite this, Maduro said “I will stop by hook or by crook the opposition coming to power, whatever the costs, in any way”.[173] In the following months, Maduro fulfilled his promise of preventing the democratically and constitutionally elected National Assembly from legislating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela#Suspension_of_constitutional_rights

When people start telling us we’re too stupid/badly informed to govern ourselves I get a bit jumpy. I accept we *are* stupid and badly informed, but as Thatcher said “each generation has to stand up for democracy.” and part of standing up for democracy is being slow to accept that we’re better off with well informed leaders making decisions for us. ‘They’ may be better informed than us, ‘they’ may make faster better decisions than us but sooner or later totalitarianism always ends up in a worse place than democracy.

Rusty – I don’t have that much of a problem with the last labour manifesto. I voted for it. 

Yet you’ve ignored and marginalised it.

And I have a problem with him as his cabal as they look like they’d quickly and happily follow the well-trodden socialist mould of becoming very very authoritarian, very very quickly

Oh I agree. He’s a knob.

How the **** is Corbyn still the main talking point when Boris ******* Johnson is the alternative!?

Johnson has widened the appeal for his party by offering Hard as Hell Brexit to those barking for it, and increased borrowing and public spending to people who just want Brexit ‘out of the way’ and austerity ended. Both those groups think he is a liar… but he’s offering what they want… wrapped up in winning talk and the Union Flag, so will take a punt on him.

Corbyn needs to widen the appeal for his party as well. And his campaign should have started when Johnson’s did. Or, if it did, it needed to be carried out more effectively.

In the (2020) election, Labour will do better, and the Conservatives worse, than they are polling now… but I don’t see that ending up with a Labour majority… like many people I’m just hoping a Conservative majority can be avoided via tactical voting and regional swings to anyone but Johnson’s party.

AS yet nobody has managed democratic socialism

Whereas social democracy…

…means the same as democratic socialism:

noun: a socialist system of government achieved by democratic means.

…and nobody has managed it. Historically once you take all the means of production, distribution, and exchange into state ownership, you have to kill democracy off because everyone wants to go back to capitalism and people start to escape to go to capitalist countries. So then you end free speech to stop people complaining and you put up a wall to stop people leaving, and then you end up shooting people to stop them escaping.

Maybe this isn’t inevitable in which case another experiment in Socialism might be worth a go, but let’s not make the UK that experiment. Let’s see how it goes elsewhere and do it once we’ve seen it work.

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/the-bbc-vox-pop-morons-guide-to-the-general-election-20191025190122

So we have just had a remainer elected for our strongly leave – labour (ex John Mann) constituency.

We will be Tory at the next election.

Bet ya.

Any of you Corbynites still delusional enough to think that Labour is in any position to fight a general election should read Andrew Rawnsley in todays Observer

Turkeys won’t vote for Christmas when the polls are telling them they’ll be stuffed

With the cabals obsession with ‘restoring democracy to the party’ (read: getting rid of everyone who doesn’t agree with Jeremy) they are actually in a position, with their trigger ballots and mandatory re-selections, where they have key marginal constituencies where they don’t actually have candidates in place yet. With a General Election imminent. Unbelievable. Well… it should be. In any serious political party

Meanwhile Dom and Dommer started their election campaign 3 months ago and are dictating the narrative

This country is in desperate need of an effective opposition, that’s a realistic party of government. Instead we’ve got a bunch of pious, sanctimonious, preachy, self-regarding, self-serving incompetents who seem to be completely detached from reality.

Maybe, after the 5 years of Boris that they’re helping to deliver, and god only knows what that will take us, a grateful nation will be ready to vote for the socialist revolution next time, eh?

Maybe that’s the ‘plan’. I’m sure everyone about to be bent over while the Tory party go in dry will eventually be thankful for the left wing utopia it’s certain to deliver… eventually

What a bunch of ****ing clowns! To call them sixth formers would be unfair on your average sixth former. They’d probably cobble together a more credible election campaign than Corbyn and his gang of imbeciles

How anyone can keep supporting unfettered neolibralism is beyond me. By design it cannot work – it concentrates wealth and doesn’t reward some of the most difficult jobs in society. It breeds massive inequality and poor public services.

It’s working fine in Somalia.

SQUIRREL!!

When do we talk about Orange Unicorns. Lib Ds all weekend and again this morning pushing hard that they will win a majority and revoke A50. I assume they are not delusional, just cynical.

Combined with never doing an alliance with Corbyn even on a 2ns ref – but some guff about reaching out to like my need MPs across Parly

A plan to maximise LD votes and MPs with stopping Brexit as banner headline but actually opposing the only likely way to do it – Labour led Govt, prob with support from SNP, LDs and 2nd ref

One thing that I hadn’t thought of is that Bercow retires this week. He has been a key player. I’m sure that in the interests of fairness Corbyn will want a staunch leaver as speaker.

Aren’t there about 400 applicants for the speaker’s position?

I reckon Mark Francois will get it

Aren’t there about 400 applicants for the speaker’s position?

Quite a few.
The Speaker really does seem like a bit of a crap idea nowadays. It means four constituencies arent properly represented.

Isn’t it just a case of simple arithmatic?

The Lib Dems want an election because they will increase their number of MP’s

The SNP want an election because they will increase their number of MP’s

The Tory’s want an election because they think it will deliver them a majority

The Labour party most definitely don’t want an election as they’ll be losing lots of seats to all the above.

As for potential coalitions… any statements about who you will and won’t work with will go out of the window half a millisecond after a hung parliament with no overall majority