And so it begins. The fraudian does their Hilary Clinton "suck it up" bit re: Starmer
Posted by RaskolnikovX on May 27, 2024, 6:44 am
all illustrated with a picture of Jess Phillips who "...has admitted her Birmingham Yardley seat could be at risk if an independent were to stand in the general election"
So while it is true that there are few existing Labour seats at risk, those that are include Debbonaire’s Bristol seat, where the Greens saw a breakthrough, and potentially Shabana Mahmood’s in Birmingham Ladywood, where the independent candidate for West Midlands mayor is running, and Jess Phillips’s seat of Birmingham Yardley if an independent were to stand against her. It would be a huge loss if any of these able and widely respected feminists were unseated.
Try not being so shit then. Also, what if the independent candidates are also feminists? Or what if that doesn't fucking matter?
The excuses are laughable. Starmer lied about and abandoned every pledge? That's what you have to do to become leader: " Anyone hoping to be PM would have to shift position between a leadership selection and a general election: a Labour leader’s most important job is to connect with potential voters, not to coddle members with the comfort blanket of a policy platform such as the “free broadband for all” 2019 pledge that was roundly rejected."
Hear that? Expecting him to deliver what he promised is wanting to be coddled.
and on, and on, and on. No comments open of course.
It is foolish and self-indulgent for the anti-Starmer left to split the Labour vote Sonia Sodha
The We Deserve Better campaign is guilty of promoting an absurd narrative
All political parties face a trade-off under a first-past-the-post electoral system. Governing depends on attracting a broad coalition of voters, inevitably involving compromises that leave a party’s base disgruntled.
So it is perhaps unsurprising that as we move closer to a general election, the discontent from the anti-Labour left who claim there is little to distinguish Keir Starmer from Rishi Sunak in the battle for the premiership is only getting noisier.
They have upped the ante in recent weeks. An umbrella campaign, “We Deserve Better”, that aims to unseat the shadow culture secretary, Thangam Debbonaire, and the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, among others, is channelling donations to Green and independent candidates, including none other than the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The argument is threefold: there’s no meaningful difference between the Conservatives and Labour; Starmer supposedly can’t be trusted because he has dropped pledges he made in the 2020 leadership election to shift his party towards the centre; finally, the “Tories are toast” and Labour can’t lose, so disgruntled left voters can safely vote for other parties, such as the Greens.
With Labour so far ahead in the polls, the urge to debunk these sentiments may seem like an expression of paranoia. But all three aspects of this narrative are comprehensively wrong, including the reassurance that it is safe for anyone who would prefer a Labour government to vote for another party in Labour-Tory contests.
Amid a very positive set of results for Labour in the local and mayoral elections earlier this month, the party experienced losses in some of its safer seats as a result of disaffection, including over its position on Gaza. So while it is true that there are few existing Labour seats at risk, those that are include Debbonaire’s Bristol seat, where the Greens saw a breakthrough, and potentially Shabana Mahmood’s in Birmingham Ladywood, where the independent candidate for West Midlands mayor is running, and Jess Phillips’s seat of Birmingham Yardley if an independent were to stand against her. It would be a huge loss if any of these able and widely respected feminists were unseated.
But what this underplays is the number of Labour-Tory marginals where a relatively small vote for other left candidates could cost Labour a win. James Kanagasooriam, of the polling company Focaldata, has written about the “sandcastle” nature of Labour’s likely majority; his forecast is that there will be many more marginal seats in the 2024 parliament compared with 2019. If more than predicted numbers of those who voted Green in the locals decide they can afford to do so in the general election because Labour is so far ahead in national polls, that will boost the Conservatives.
Next up is the idea that Starmer’s dropping of some of his leadership pledges makes him dangerously untrustworthy. But this is the product of a system in which the tiny unrepresentative slice of the electorate that is a party membership pick their leader before voters choose their prime minister. Anyone hoping to be PM would have to shift position between a leadership selection and a general election: a Labour leader’s most important job is to connect with potential voters, not to coddle members with the comfort blanket of a policy platform such as the “free broadband for all” 2019 pledge that was roundly rejected.
Liz Truss provides a cautionary tale of what happens when a party leader seeks to impose a membership-endorsed platform on the country without a general election. For Starmer to have stuck to his 2020 leadership election pledges, instead of spending the past four years understanding voters, would have been fundamentally anti-democratic.
The most egregious aspect of the anti-Labour left argument is there isn’t much to choose between Starmer and Sunak. Yes, Labour’s “Ming vase” election strategy has seen it take a much more cautious fiscal approach than many of us would like: it has effectively adopted the Tory macroeconomic worldview and with it a set of spending constraints that no one sensible thinks either party could stick to in the wake of the election.
That is frustrating for anyone hoping this election campaign may illuminate some of the tough trade-offs facing Britain; but it would have been incredibly risky for one side to go it alone on this. The alternative is Labour walking into the trap and handing the Conservatives a “Labour tax bombshell” election campaign.
From a commitment to scrap the Rwanda plan to making clear that in an ideal world Labour would discard the two-child benefit cap, there are plenty of reasons that it is preposterous to think that a Starmer government would make the same trade-offs as successive Conservative governments that have financed billions of pounds worth of tax cuts for more affluent families by cutting tax credits and benefits for low-income parents. The six pledges Starmer launched two weeks ago may be incremental, but Labour needs voters to believe they are deliverable, and they are indicative of a very different set of priorities than those that animate Sunak.
Finally, there has as of yet been less scrutiny of the independent and Green candidates trying to appeal to Labour-sceptical voters than there has of Reform on the other side of the spectrum. It is not just Labour that has changed: the Green party has mopped up enough of the cranks expelled by Labour that it has had to acknowledge its growing problem with antisemitism.
Akhmed Yakoob, the independent who came third in the West Midlands mayoral election and who is now running against Mahmood, promoted a video that was manipulated to falsely suggest a teacher campaigning for Labour used racist language, which prompted a viral hate campaign against her. (Yakoob says he did not intend to cause distress and that the video was hard to hear.)
Starmer is not without weaknesses, as shown by the days he took to clarify an interview last October in which he gave the impression he thought Israel had the right to withhold power and food from Gaza. But there is no doubt whatsoever he would make a vastly more compassionate and competent prime minister than Sunak. To encourage people to put that outcome at risk by casting a protest vote against a Labour government that does not yet exist is perhaps the ultimate form of luxury belief campaigning.
"...in an ideal world Labour would discard the two-child benefit cap". If that isn't pre-abadondoning a policy, I don't know what is.
This is desperate bollocks. ...no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
The Centrist demands originating from Centrist Dad central, namely the Guardian/Observer, has created huge hilarity among those on Twitter who were from the Left and who were instructed by Keith Stalin, Thatcher Reeves and numerous other Rightist Scum Labour fascist MPs that our votes were not desired and that our membership of the Labour Party was not wanted or desired - indeed, the message was, well, up until the calling of this GE, that if we supported Palestine or opposed any of Keith's/the Rightist scum changes to the Labour Party, or opposed genocide, criticised Israel or, were critical of Labour Councils imposing Tory cuts, well, not only did we know where the door was, but our uncouth, antisemitic, Leftwing vote was not wanted whatsoever.
Now, and here I'm only referencing former members, rather than former voters, a minimum 250K of us actually exited membership of the Party, indeed, many of these were formally banned, auto-excluded, forced out by very unpleasant Rightist scum or left out of disgust and betrayal - from a peak of 580K membership, actual membership is now below 300K, so, for an increase of 50K Centrists/Zionists joining the Party, Labour has lost 280K from its peak, which constitutes a fair chunk in actual membership fees, never mind other one off donations and, maybe more importantly, an ability to actually canvas at a local level - paid canvassing don't come cheap but I'm in little doubt Keith and Evans will try this given how few volunteer foot soldiers remain, i.e., the only ones canvassing for Labour are either Councillors, the family of Councillors or members of Labour First/Labour 2 Win.
Indeed, whilst taking the piss fully out of the buggers at Guardian/Observer Centrist Dad HQ, the authors of this tripe, as well as Harris, Michael White and many other of those who crucified Corbyn, we enquired why after 4 years and despite being told to piss off, that now was not the time to split the Left - not being funny, but one really has to be off their rockers to suggest a neoliberal/neoconservative, genocide supporting, anti-democratic & kid staving entity actually represents the Left, or for that matter the Centre of the UK political spectrum, which certainly ain't lost on many former party members and former voters now actually campaigning against the Keith/Reeves shitshow - this was shoveled down their throats.
Still, we must genuinely enquire, why after a full 4 years, the Keith/Reeves Shitshow now, not only expect our vote, but, actually demands our vote, lest we help the Tories - which Tories this oik enquires.
I mean, we've been told for at least 18 months that Keith is 20 points ahead in the Polls, and then some, and, under his glorious leadership, all brilliant Party changes and the slaying of Antisemitism within the Party that Keith would have a majority in excess of 100. And all with out the vote of the antisemitic Left.
What's changed then to put the willies up the UK elite and the coronation of Keith as Prime Minister?
On this front, and it was an opinion held by me, but one shared by The Duran are these two facts, namely, much has changed since October 7, the charges of antisemitism against the Left holds no water whatsoever given the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine and International condemnation of Zionists - this in turn has demonstrated clearly Labour is beholden to Israel and actually supports genocide itself, much as the Tories do - many Brits are appalled by these facts.
Further, George Galloway's win in Rochdale and the poor Labour vote in early May's Council elections underscored how unpopular the Keith Shitshow actually is across much of the UK, i.e., the Tories are detested, alas Keith ain't too far behind them in the detestation stakes. Further, both Labour and the Power Elite have counted on a very splintered Left unable to mount any challenge to Labour from the Left, and the same applies to the anti-Tory Right given the shitshow of Reform UK. However, the announcement by Galloway in late April, that the WPGB had lined-up 300 Parliamentary candidates, with the ambition of 600 by September, was another game changer, i.e., the Greens, Independents and WPGB were able to upset Keith's apple cart and hence coronation in the final quarter of 2024 by cleaving votes away from Labour, hence nuetralising Tory votes lost to the anti-Tory Right, meaning, either a small Keith majority or hung Parliament was a reality and it was time to act.
Given we now enjoy a UniParty State at the beck and call of the Power Elite, with its membership interchangable, i.e., not even a cigarette paper separates Labour & Tory policies, our Masters thought they were getting five years of stable governance under a leadership addicted to neoliberal economics and quite willing to beat the drum for war against Putin and President Xi.
So here we are with a surprise election with our pants around our ankles being told by our enemy that we must vote for one Tory lest we let another Tory win - such bollocks don't cut ice with many on the Left, however, one is still aghast that many social progressives yearn for Corbyn and treat him as a messiah, despite the fact, like it or not, that it was Corbyn who dug his own grave, assisted by the MSM. JC in July 2017 could have changed the Party structure and offered a genuine alternative, instead, both JC and McDonnell appeased the Right and underscored the lie of an antisemitism crisis within the Left and the Party. At least this bollocks has been destroyed and strangely by Israel's own actions. Funny that!
Yes I was straight over to Twitter to see how many people were taking the piss and wasn't disappointed. I'm not sure how they think they are going to get away with this denial of history and reality. If it was relatively ancient history, I could understand maybe but this is trying to deny things they've done and said months, or weeks(!) ago.
...no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
That phrase reminds me of Paxman sniding GG after he won Bethnall Green and Bow. Typical liberals, they only sing when they're winning. When liberals lose, the jackboots start showing.The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
on May 27, 2024, 6:44 am