I think it’s a reflection of the desperate times were living in and how some are looking for a way out.

You really do type a lot of words without saying much. Is your point that the labour party should chase the votes of racist numbskulls in s***hole market towns? If so just say so without all the pointless flannel about zeitgeists and ‘tumultuous times’.

They should!
Then get in power and f*** them, that’s what the Tories are doing/did/about to do

You really do type a lot of words without saying much.

Having just read the last few pages, that is very true of you. Throwing about your patronising insults, and trying to put words into the mouths of others. Not sure what you’re trying to prove, or even if you even have a point to make Dazh.

dazh, I’m not suggesting Labour go chasing the votes of racist numbskulls in s***hole towns, I’m suggesting they chase the votes of non racist people (numbskulls or not), in the s***hole towns and the lovely towns. Those who once voted Labour.

Nandy may be a lot of things but thick she is not. She realises Scotland is a lost cause for Labour. Rayner on the other hand is thick as mince. That’s ok if your on the back benches but she’ll be ripped to bits as deputy. Starmer will only be keeping Nandy’s seat warm until the next election. I don’t see any real change happening until Labour have lost the next election. It could be 10 yrs before we see an effective opposition and it might not even be Labour.

I don’t see any real change happening until Labour have lost the next election.

Sadly, you are probably right.

Nandys comments on scotland shows she is at least politically a thick as they come.

Its anyone who compares the “solution” to nationalism in Catelonia to Scotland shows no understanding of the politics and gives easy attack lines but also her rhetoric about a social justice agenda – when the SNP have been running one for over a decade.

Nandy could just as well as referred to Belgium as Spain or France in regard to nationalist separatists movements. She would have got it wrong regardless. Does it bar her from leader, no.

As for the SNP agenda, competence matters, integrity matters. The scandals are stacking up the house of cards will fall. Stamping all over their ground as a competent alternative seems a decent strategy.

The fly in the ointment is the Labour party competence north of the border.

Also depends on how many of Scottish Labour are barred from drinking at party events, not allowed in a room alone with someone else who may be vulnerable or think it’s ok for 42 year olds to be grooming 16 year olds. Never mind the tailored trews on expenses.

Age of consent is 16 but crack on.

Nandy could just as well as referred to Belgium as Spain or France in regard to nationalist separatists movements.

What lessons on dealing with Scottish Nationalists can be learnt from the Spanish then?

Age of consent is 16 but crack on.

May well be but a 42 year old grooming a 16 year old is not a good look for a politician.

To me anyone who says something as stupid and ignorant as Nandy did has shown her unfitness for high office. Its the fact its both.

Tja Labour lost Scotland a long time ago. The Scots twigged a lot sooner that Labour had taken their votes for granted a lot earlier than the electorate in the so called northern heartlands. Maybe Nandy realises that a lot of the voters in the northern English seats that were lost don’t give a monkeys about Scotland.
They no longer care about what happens North of the border they want to see investment and change where they are now.
It’s how you react to defeat that matters. I haven’t seen many Labour politicians up here (North East) since the election, on the other hand Boris and his cohorts can’t seem to keep away.

Its not that long ago Labour had the largest share of the vote in Scotland. A lot of those votes would and could come back

The knives are out for Starmer now.

By appeasing the pie and chips racists? No thanks.

@dazh

I would love to gloat (I did actually have a mini-gloat on another thread), but I won’t because I know how disillusioned you probably feel right now.

You have come to realise what I already suspected then knew. The ‘just about managing’ in your average small to medium town are not directing their anger where it should go. I.e. at the Tories who are laughing at them behind their heads and can’t believe their luck.

No, they have been swayed by the likes of Lee Anderson with his cheap soundbites. They have swallowed the whole ‘Labour will take away your stuff and hand it to scroungers’ line. The fact that in a lot of cases most of that ‘stuff’ doesn’t actually really belong to them and is ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ unnecessary tat bought on tick is forgotten.

The SUVs (well, pumped up hatchbacks) with private plates, the Ugg boots and the Jimmy Choos the 100” flat screen TVs etc.

It has taken a long time to pull the strands of this trick together, to convince idiots that liabilities are assets and that anyone other than right wing populists will take it away and give it to someone else.

But suffuse it with a bit of implied racism and the morons have lapped it up.

They should!
Then get in power and f*** them, that’s what the Tories are doing/did/about to do

Yep, the bigger the lie and all that.

The major worry for me is that when the Tories do **** them over (which they will), will they realise their error or switch support to someone even more nasty and overtly fascist?

Islington North CLP has nominated Starmer and Rayner.

https://mobile.twitter.com/CLPNominations/status/1226139468073185280

Make of that what you will.

The ‘just about managing’ in your average small to medium town are not directing their anger where it should go.

Totally agree, they’ve worked the line that the Tories are for the hard working, Labour for the lazy and that tax cuts are always good thing.

But

It has taken a long time to pull the strands of this trick together, to convince idiots that liabilities are assets and that anyone other than right wing populists will take it away and give it to someone else.

But suffuse it with a bit of implied racism and the morons have lapped it up.

Then going and calling them idiots and morons is hardly the way to start to convince them any different is it?

Then going and calling them idiots and morons is hardly the way to start to convince them any different is it?

What is, then?

FWIW I reckon this is the second most unanswered question on any politics thread on here after ‘so what do you see as the benefits of Brexit?’

How do you soft-soap exposing stupidity and petty nastiness?

What is, then?

FWIW I reckon this is the second most unanswered question on any politics thread on here after ‘so what do you see as the benefits of Brexit?’

How do you soft-soap exposing stupidity and petty nastiness?

I guess just by asking them lots and lots of questions as to why they feel/think that way and then calmly and patiently give your reasons and evidence to the contrary.

Easier said than done obviously.

I guess just by asking them lots and lots of questions as to why they feel/think that way and then calmly and patiently give your reasons and evidence to the contrary.

Easier said than done obviously.

Given the type of person we are talking about I reckon you would get called patronising or elitist at best and chinned at worst.

They don’t want to understand.

Age of consent is 16 but crack on.

Vote SNP, we’ll make sure your kids are above the age of consent before our MSPs sexually groom them. Don’t worry it’s entirely legal!

@dazh
The labour party was formed to present the case for working class people. Globalization has taken away the industries and communities that unified the workers and replaced it with a narrative around GDP and trade that mollifies the middle class which because nothing has really changed for them they’re willing to buy. The working class are left to rot in their”shit hole market towns” by both labour and the tories. These towns have changed immeasurably from their heydays, crumbling from lack of investment whilst their occupants get by on service industry wages. Labour should have been able to mobilize this and speak to these people but it has utterly failed to do so. Instead they’ve been fed a twisted message of aspiration via FOMO, i.e. you can have a bright House financed lcdtv as long as the darkies/disabled/gypsies don’t get it before you. Ayn Rand for beginners. Basically the Tories have understood human motivation in those circumstances and labour haven’t.

The very least Labour has to do is what oldmanmtb2 and frankconway are suggesting, ie, a complete gutting of the infrastructure left by Milne and McKluskey. (And please throw the baby away with the bathwater as well)

I’ve come round to thinking that the voting systems used on ‘Love island and the ‘X Factor are prefferable and more in tune with the times than the system currently employed by Labour.

When Cameron became leader of the CP I recall him coming from nowhere at party conference, making his pitch to members with a flurry of open meetings and becoming front runner within a week. The whole process was more public facing. It became obvious to the party membership that he had the package to put to the electorate and the old guard were pushed aside in an istant. The pitch was directly to the public, the news media covered it thoroughly and the party reacted in relation to how the broader public were reacting to his emergence.

Cameron and Osbourne managed to start with a clean slate, the nasty party image dispensed with in an instant and the old guard condemned to immediate irrelevance. And here we are talking about how it’s going to take at least 5 years to achieve what the Tories achieved in a week.

That’s because the power base in Labour isn’t interested in winning the election or being in power. It’s more about forcing its socialist doctrine on the party. Reshaping Labour into what it deems appropriate. Well guess what the electorate is not buying it. I’d push the Houses of Parliament into the Thames and move them all to a factory unit in Doncaster and lock them in until they sort their $h!t out.

Good article, as always, by Andrew Rawnsley in today’s Observer on the leadership election taking place totally detached from reality, while in complete denial about the almighty electoral thumping they just received

A keep-it-dull campaign is a risky way to win the Labour leadership

Here’s hoping that he’s right. That Starmer is just mouthing Corbynite platitudes to get himself elected and that once he’s in he’ll be dropping it like a hot turd (which is exactly what it always was) and clearing out the idiots responsible for it. Milne, Lavery and co need hoofing in the slats on day one! Only by doing that can he turn the party around from its descent into complete political irrelevance

As inkster pointed out, the Tory’s dont gives toss about ideological purity, all they ask for in a leader is ‘can they win the next election?’

Once you’re in power, then you can start getting into ideology

Vote SNP, we’ll make sure your kids are above the age of consent before our MSPs sexually groom them. Don’t worry it’s entirely legal!

Yes, none of the other parties have ever been embroiled in such activities, have they?.

You’re living up to your handle there.

Vote SNP, we’ll make sure your kids are above the age of consent before our MSPs sexually groom them. Don’t worry it’s entirely legal!

Old enough to leave school, leave home, join the armed forces on 6 year contract, get married or have a child and occasionally vote too.

Even if you find it distasteful he has still done nothing legally wrong.

Just watching a documentary on Picasso… he would have probably made the same point Squirrel. But it’s totally understandable for many of us to expect higher standards of our politicians still.

Even if you find it distasteful he has still done nothing legally wrong.

Morally questionable (especially as he is someone “in authority”) but as far as we know, nothing illegal. He’ll be gone soon.

I’m still waiting to find out what ideas Lisa Nandy learnt from the Spanish treatment of Catalonians that she thinks should be applied to folk in the Scottish independence movement.

Yes Binners, I read that Andrew Rawnslay piece in the Guardian too. I mentioned earlier in this thread how painfull it is to watch the candidates campaign with their hands tied behind their back. It leaves us guessing as to what Starmer or Nandy are really thinking. We just have to trust that they’re chomping at the bit to dismantle the ‘legacy’ of the last five years and realise the party machine is not fit for purpose and needs a complete overhaul.

The Rawnslay article also suggests Labour needs to be bolder and more imaginative. There’s an interesting thread about empire 2.0 and the enlightenment on here, where thisisnnotaspoon talks about black swan events, where unforseen events have the greatest influence on proceedings. (Coronovirus anyone?) There’s a risk that caution can lead to complacency for Labour. If we’ve learned anything from the last few years it is to expect the unexpected.

Things could yet go tits up for the Tories and Labour will most likely be caught with their pants down again. The idea that Labour spends 5 years reforming then hoping to be in with a chance in 2030 sounds like a plan. That’s the easy bit. Labour needs to become an agile entity that can react to current environments and be able to react to unforseen events (gifts). Currently it spends too much time gazing into the future to notice what’s happening around it.

Oh, my other half has just read that the Tories are recruiting new staff and the quality Domonic Cummins is most looking for is unpredictability.

It leaves us guessing as to what Starmer or Nandy are really thinking. We just have to trust that they’re chomping at the bit to dismantle the ‘legacy’ of the last five years

I think we can safely say the candidates who aren’t members of the party within a party that is the “Socialist Campaign Group” are ok, and the ones that aren’t are not. So Starmer and Nandy are Ok, IMHO.

I’m still waiting

Well, I laid it out plain for you ages ago. She was talking about how the socialists were winning back support at the voting booth from nationalists in Catalonia. Her comments were not about how the Spanish government acted as regards the referendum. They were never words in support of the police action.

She was unwise (I’d argue politically very naive) to go anywhere near the Catalan question… it was always going to be misrepresented.

FWIW I reckon this is the second most unanswered question on any politics thread on here after ‘so what do you see as the benefits of Brexit?’

How do you soft-soap exposing stupidity and petty nastiness?

Because everyone who voted to leave did so because they’re nasty people?

Every time I vote Labour, I do so in the knowledge that they will make me financially worse off than the Tories. Maybe you think that makes me stupid.

I see the Corbynites have learnt absolutely nothing from their previous disasters and are in the process of repeating their attempted drive by shooting of Tom Watson, this time on Kier Starmer

Luckily, their usual epic levels of ham-fisted incompetence seem to be proving just as successful as with Tom Watson, and its having the opposite effect of actually galvanising his support.

The people I know that voted leave did so for reasons of community, belonging, patriotism, ideology. These are personal reasons, not for reasons of economics, money or our place in the EU. There are a lot of people on the breadline or who never recovered after the pits closed, they see the world differenlty to a lot of others who voted remain, especially those in London.

Should anyone be interested, Verso have published a free download of:
Anti-Semitism and the Labour Party Edited by Jamie Stern-Weiner (an Israeli born Phd candidate at Oxford)
You need the (free) app Calibre to read it on Windows.

The candidates are busy honestly facing up to the reason for the labour party’s whopping defeat, by addressing the essential issues facing the nation at this critical time in our history, and making themselves relevant in offering solutions to those pressing priorities

Labour leadership: Long-Bailey backs call to expel ‘transphobic’ members

Labour leadership contender Rebecca Long-Bailey has signed up to a pledge to expel party members who have expressed “transphobic” views.

It is part of a 12-point plan by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights

Finger on the pulse of the country, as ever there ‘Becky’. Finger on the pulse….

Well it is the right thing to do, as are many of the things Labour try to do. The key is to do it quietly and only shout about the things that the majority of people actually care about.
And keep the number down to 2 or 3 otherwise you will loose their attention.