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.

I took the Gramsci reference from the article. Terminology is a shorthand for allocating ideas and of course puts people off. It’s also used to obfuscate and prove elite status like Johnson and his classical allusions. The role of an organic intellectual was to translate complex analyses into accessible language to help bring about change, so Gramsci and Daz agree!

I live in Rishi Sunaks constituency, yes i am the only communist in the village 🙂

Last week a mail shot from Rishi landed on my door mat. It did not include the following words “Tory, Conservative” or any form of Tory party branding and all of the twitter, facebook refs etc were “Rishi”

It is obvious that he is distancing himself from Boris and the rest of the Tory cabinet and copying the approach that Blair took in the 90s.

I think Rishi is aiming to be in Boris’s job before the economic pain really sets in and he has transferred that bag of shit to some other Tory minister.

I have seen Rishi in my local gastro pub and heard him discussing with a member of staff how many times he was in the press last month (this was before his chancellor job)

He is smart and very ambitious, he has unlimited sums of family money behind him. He can easily outsmart Boris and the ERG, however like Boris it is not clear what he wants to do if anything if he gets to be PM. He is very similar to Blair when he was younger.

The Tory faithful will vote for him regardless of his ethnicity.

He has also given the farming community a significant back hander that has not been in the press, if you can demonstrate a drop in revenue for the same period last year you got a £10k grant.

Dazh,

Yep, that was funny. Stuck in the 20th Century, a complete anachronism that flies in the face of reality. But part of the problem is that we haven’t yet moved on from the last Century with regards our thinking. Everything is a re-tread of 20th Century ideologies. Neo Liberalism, New Labour, Post Modernism, Neo Marxism, Neo Conservatism.

Everything is a New, Neo, Post something or other. We have to get our heads round the idea that that these old ideologies just don’t have the answers for the connected, technologically driven world we find ourselves facing.

We’re stuck in a world which we think is driven by ideology. We look at current events and see them through the prism of Orwells’ 1984 when in fact we are entering a brave new world. Aldous Huxley posited that the coming world would be shaped by technology and human beings relationship to it rather than ideology.

There has yet to be any 21st Century thinking. We might start to see it emerge next year, I feel certain new figures will emerge from this chaos that try to make sense of the world in terms that don’t rely on trotting the same old 20th Century cliches.

The phrase Working class is meaningless. As is the phrase Marxism. Come the next election half the world’s population won’t have even been born in the 20th Century.

In the meantime, as somebody has already said, the best Starmer could do is to get on telly a bit more.

The phrase Working class is meaningless. As is the phrase Marxism.

My word, a postmodernist!

There’s a good few on here who articulate very meaningfully on the working class experience on redundancy, debt, short hours, housing, food and sadly, more to come.

Quite right Bill, there’s quite a few on here who like to gasslight using their working class credentials.

If the working class still exist as a political entity or voting block they have switched over to Boris and they now identify themselves along cultural (Nationalistic) lines. And that working class experience you describe is an experience that isn’t alien to many middle class people.

The class distinctions of yore aren’t as applicable anymore in the gig economy. The middle classes are shrinking and their fortunes are more closely aligned with those you describe as working class than they were in the last century. The more we pit the working classes against the middle classes the better it will be for Boris and chums.

I tell you one thing, the salt of the earth Northern Working class massive turning out to vote for Boris has absolved me of any lingering middle class guilt I might have had.

Grinding out the working class narrative will only serve the Tories.

And that working class experience you describe is an experience that isn’t alien to many middle class people.

Lets be honest, many people who regard themselves as middle class are anything but. Owning an audi does not make you middle class. The whole class debate is very boring though. I’m not sure it’s irrelevent but one thing I will agree with Mason on is the division along the lines of those in stable salaried jobs versus gig workers and the self employed. The third group are those who don’t need to work as they can fall back on income derived from their wealth and the rent it generates. The rentier economy is where labour should be focusing it’s efforts.

Grinding out the working class narrative will only serve the Tories.

It will as long as the working class hold on to the view that the labour party abandoned them under Blair. It did, and now that Boris has captured them with his dog-whistle identity politics it’s almost impossible for labour to claim them back because that would involve them jumping on the racism/immigration is bad bandwagon. Andy Burnham tried that and look what happened to him.

You knows it oldmanmtb, the Tory faithfull would vote for Rishi regardless of his ethnicity. Don’t think he’s in Cummings or Johnstones pocket either.

When Javid resigned on principle (hold that thought for a minute, a current Tory who actually acted out of principle) the consensus was that Sunak was a stooge. Covid conspired to thrust him from and centre as the most competent and reassuring figure in Government. Likeable even. My first thoughts when I saw him commanding the podium were ‘Boris isn’t going to like this’

It could all go tits up and it probably will but Sunak is the most Blair like figure in Parliament.

On the flip side don’t count Javid out either. In resigning he can say he put Parliament and due process before party and self interest, never mind that he’s reportedly the most Ayn Randy of the lot of them! He’s the least damaged goods in the Conservative party at the minute and he’s Covid free.

Crazy I know but you could see a party leadership run-off between Sunak and Javid.

I wouldn’t vote for either. I’d vote for Starmer but I’d much rather see either of the aforementioned potential candidates lead the country than the current incumbents and I feel a good portion of the non Tory voting public would too. Either of them would be a formidable appointment for Starmer.

Starmer still rising, but the party isn’t…

On who would make best Prime Minister:

Keir Starmer: 34% (+3)
Boris Johnson: 32% (-1)

via @YouGov, 04 – 05 Aug
Chgs. w/ 31 Jul

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) August 7, 2020

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-boris-johnson-prime-minister-pm-poll-yougov-a9659026.html

He’s making a good impression. In the long term that has to be a good thing.

I know but you could see a party leadership run-off between Sunak and Javid.

Quite possibly. When Brosis runs out of steam or the backers stop backing him because they’ve Got Brexit Done and no longer need him.

Sunak will need to keep his nose clean, which could prove tricky as part of the Covid Cabinet.

Just for clarification, your class is determined (irrespective of how you identify) by whether you sell your labour or you own or control capital with which you employ labour. So ‘middle class’ workers are workers like ‘working class’ workers. These categories are not very illuminating and have their origin in the development of the RG classification of occupations in the early C20th (which was based on reactionary and moralistic judgements). They were wrong then but sadly their errors survive.

Just for clarification, your class is determined (irrespective of how you identify) by whether you sell your labour or you own or control capital with which you employ labour.

Determined by whom? The Precariat may very well fit your description, but so do permanently contracted homeowners.

The Conservatives and Labour are neck and neck in the polls for the first time since mid-2019 pic.twitter.com/HUR1ZbrqOr

— Opinium (@OpiniumResearch) August 29, 2020

Well he’s made up 26 points

But Johnson still has a 40% base

& As long as he keeps waffling on about the proms & Rule Britannia , they’ll keep on backing him

Does Starmer really want to sink to the level of the lowest to win them over?

LibDems will be at 4% or lower by the end of the year, thanks to their choice of leader, and Labour will be a few points higher than the Tories without anyone having to give up on Johnson. Next year? That’s when Johnson will lose his shine.

RS, not ‘determined by whom’ but where you stand in the process of production. RG 3N put white collar clerical workers above 3M skilled manual electricians, bricklayers and plumbers. They would have had less skill and training but were regarded as ‘superior’ to the morass of manual workers. Owning a home, unless you’re a landlord, should not be included in your ‘wealth’ as it is a long-term consumer durable and you can’t use it to ‘make money’ and by including it makes the distribution of wealth seem more equal than it is. Class is determined by what you do not what you own or how you might like to see yourself, didn’t ‘Mrs Bucket’ explore this area of status and stratification on the telly? Most people are not ‘class conscious’ in that they do not see this relationship and imagine class is determined by your accent, net curtains and the labels on your clothes or car. As leader of the loyal opposition, Sir obviously enjoys the pageantry and symbolism of inequality and he is rewarded for it accordingly.

Class is determined by what you do not what you own or how you might like to see yourself,

Again, determined by whom? Your definition is reductionist to the point of uselessness.

Anyway , the Starmtrooper has gained my vote, Mrs zip’s and my parent’s.
That’s the important bit.

Your relationship to selling or buying labour power is what determines your class ie do you own and/or control the means of production or do you sell your labour power to the owners of capital?
It might be reductionist in that it gets to the heart of the matter and doesn’t consider status or ideology but it’s how the system works. Well-paid ‘middle class’ mortgaged workers with shiny cars and shoes will also find themselves done over when it suits the management.

Your relationship to selling or buying labour power is what determines your class

You’re doing it again. Class definitions are not inscribed on tablets of stone, and I suggest that historical definitions are less than useful for describing contemporary society.