Sir! Keir! Starmer!

By abstaining he is not supporting it!

By abstaining he is neither opposing it thus takes the RW press attack line away but neither is he supporting it.

Ah yes when in doubt dont challenge the rabid right press.
FFS the bowing down to the rabid right press is how we ended up in the current mess.

Resignations over it are utterly stupid and self defeating tho. It matters not how labour votes in terms of the bill passing

Yes heaven forbid that politicians actually do their jobs and vote against bad laws. Best they just phone up Murdoch and ask for permissions to abstain instead.

its that voting against will do nothing at all

Fortunately for Starmer with everything else dominating the news cycle this will gain little traction. He is already under attack from Patel for ” being soft on terror” just for abstaining

I do think this one was a no win situation but I’d rather those who voted agaist had held their noses and abstained. voting against is mere virtue signalling. It has no effect other than damaging Starmer

I strongly suspect that he sees some merit in the proposed legislation, or at least in the requirements that have been the instigation for them. I don’t… but then he has more experience in this particular area than every person who’s ever posted on this forum… ever. It would be interesting to hear an honest and straight forward (non-political) assessment of this stuff from him… but he’s not a backbencher… we’re not going to get that from him.

This sums up the left of the labour party perfectly.

Getting themselves worked up into a frenzy, having hissy fits, resignations etc over a piece of legislation that pretty much nobody outside the Corbynite Twitter groups has heard of

I don’t know if you noticed or not but we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, today is the cut-off date for a no-deal Brexit, the countries economy is heading for collapse, with the people that labour are meant to represent being clobbered the hardest, the government is in conflict with northern councils in open revolt and what are ‘the left’ wanging on about?

Nothing of any relevance to 99.99999999% of people lives, that’s for sure

Absolutely typical!

This sums up the left of the labour party perfectly.

The only thing it demonstrates is that some members of parliament have principles and morals which they’re not prepared to compromise in order to further their career. That’s something to celebrate in my book, because pretty much every problem that exists in our society is the result of policy created by people who would sell their own grannies in order to get a step up the greasy pole. We need more politicians who are prepared to stand up for their principles, not less.

Nothing of any relevance to 99.99999999% of people lives, that’s for sure

Absolutely typical!

Well said indeed.

The thing these loosers hate about the K-dozer is that he’s 110% win mentality.
Decent, normal working people couldn’t give two hoots about any of this lefty stuff.
What we want is protection against the immigrants, funding for miliary and respect our monarchy.
Sir Kee Kee is smashing it.

What we want is protection against the immigrants, funding for miliary and respect our monarchy.

Were you standing to attention singing the national anthem when you typed that?

Don’t read Copa’s posts literally.

Copas post read tongue in cheek to me

Yes, I’ve not been keeping up so missed the previous ones. Sorry copa.

I read them as if you posted them Dazh… they make sense then.

= ;8^)

Nothing of any relevance to 99.99999999% of people lives, that’s for sure

So why did the glorious leader make it a three line whip? He chose to make it an issue not them.
Can you really not see why people who have been involved in the trade union movement, for example, wouldnt be extremely opposed to the police being given free reign to carry out illegal actions? You dont think there is some history there which makes people somewhat wary?
Its a dangerous piece of legislation as it allows illegal actions to be signed off with pretty much zero oversight. Anyone sensible and sane on any side of the political spectrum should be heavily opposed to it.

I strongly suspect that he sees some merit in the proposed legislation,

There is – sometimes the police need to break the law in order to do their job – from speeding to drug deal stings to covert surveillance. IIRC recent court cases have meant there is no protection for them for doing so.

the problem with the legislation is that there are insufficient checks and balances

Nothing of any relevance to 99.99999999% of people lives, that’s for sure

….. Until the day comes when it does become relevant.

And

I don’t know if you noticed or not but we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, today is the cut-off date for a no-deal Brexit, the countries economy is heading for collapse

Is precisely the opportunity to slide in policies like this under the radar.

It’s possible to oppose things like this AND deal with the other issues above.

I’d say it was an error of judgement by Starmer. It would have gone through if they’d voted against it anyway.

If he’d made a stand and explained where the legislation was wrong people might have listened. But with everything else going on, the government are banging through shit like this while they can.

Ooof… Newsnight piece on Starmer… well, it wasn’t really, it was more just a chance for people from all wings of Labour to each have a go at sabotaging all the ongoing hard work to get the public to back Labour.

Nothing new then.

Yes I thought it was out of the blue and frankly weird

It confirmed one thing,  Diane Abbot is a joke politician. (I actually think she might be unwell given her displays in recent years).

McCluskey was overtly anti-Semitic too. It’s very strange timing, there is enough going on in the world so why spend so much time on a really poor hatchet job?

The vast majority of people are not watching Newsnight so pretty irrelevant what pieces they run and anyone that thinks what is discussed on Newsnight, Andrew Marr and so on are not realising how it works in 2020.

I didn’t see it but surely Dianne Abbot not liking you is a good thing?

For those who didn’t see it why is Diane Abbot getting abused online yet again?

racism

@grum – watch it. It’s quite a strange piece of “reporting”

Thinking back, it was very odd. Now I know the short clips used were provided by people from within the Labour movement… but the editing really was very odd indeed. Easy to imagine that most contributors gave an honest and fair assessment of who they think Starmer is, how he became leader, and the challenges in front of him… but the short clips used felt like it had a very clear aim. You could say that those interviewed were deliberately sabotaging the party… and that was partly my initial reaction… but I’m not sure that should really fall at their feet… they were edited to fit that narrative, I suspect.

Could you give us a quote from McLusky to support your allegation?

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.

https://lmgtfy.app/#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=Len%20McCluskey%20Peter%20Mandelson%20anti-semitic%20comment%20newsnight%20interview

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:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/29/how-diane-abbott-fought-racism-and-her-own-party-to-become-britains-first-black-female-mp

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.