news & politics:discussion

[steviewevie]

must remain neutral.

[eFestivals]

21 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

I think you might have the wrong poster mate, Stevie has generally been pretty supportive of Labour under Starmer. He’s only said a few critical things after the elections which is fair enough. 

Yeah maybe u have the wrong target but there's plenty of people trying to heap itall on Starmer who haven't been supportive of Starmer. 

[eFestivals]

I ive just seen ontv that rayner was responsible for picking the hartlepool candidate. But I've seen lots of mud thrown starmers way for a bad choice  and plenty of rayner did nothing wrong. 

[Fuzzy Afro]

I’m thinking Labour should go with Paula Sherrif for Batley & Spen

[mattiloy]

Between restricting the right to protest and now moves towards disenfranchising voters... who was the one who said fascism was an exaggeration?

Maybe it is. I don’t think the people at the top really care about advancing British ethno-nationalism but just use that to get power and enrich themselves and their pals. More accurately then, the UK is sliding quickly into putinist gangster capitalism. A rotten disinterested regime which continues to increasingly rig the system in order to gild their own palms.

Maybe in 20 years time we’ll see dodgy British oligarchs buying up real estate, football clubs and getting poloniumed overseas.

[LJS]

1 hour ago, eFestivals said:

Yeah maybe u have the wrong target but there's plenty of people trying to heap itall on Starmer who haven't been supportive of Starmer. 

just like there used to lots of people trying to heap it all on Corbyn who hadn't been supportive of Corbyn 🙂

[steviewevie]

I mean, I guess part of taking reponsibility for a shit election result is sacking the person in charge of the campaign?

[topmarksbri]

11 hours ago, mattiloy said:

Be that as it may, the death toll is considerably worse than most countries per capita, even with amongst the most severe lockdowns, an attitude early on which underplayed the seriousness of the virus, decisions not taken which undoubtedly led to the loss of life. Its been a catastrophe. Starmer has laid low throughout this total shambles only to find Johnson pull the rabbit out of the hat at the end with the vaccines. The opportunity to bash the tories on decisions that to me border on manslaughter by negligence, cronyism and corruption, lockdowns.. gone begging.

Its been such feeble opposition.

And now Starmer’s voice double Rachel Reeves is shadow chancellor so even if by some miracle they get into power, expect an austerity fiscal programme that will lock us into another flat growth decade without ever actually getting near to balancing the books. Madness.

 

[steviewevie]

3 minutes ago, topmarksbri said:

 

I don't know about Reeves right/left thing...but she has been much more vocal on criticising the govt over the last 12 months than Dodds. Dodds is super clever etc., but not she's a very good politician.

[eFestivals]

28 minutes ago, LJS said:

just like there used to lots of people trying to heap it all on Corbyn who hadn't been supportive of Corbyn 🙂

Corbyns flaws were always obvious and what happened proved the criticisms correct.

[mattiloy]

Just now, eFestivals said:

Starmer’s flaws were always obvious and what happened proved the criticisms correct.

 

[eFestivals]

12 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

I mean, I guess part of taking reponsibility for a shit election result is sacking the person in charge of the campaign?

Yeah as he appointed the person responsible for the shit campaign that's sort of taking responsibility, at least he's no claiming it as a victory or endorsement of what he's been doing?

[steviewevie]

So looks like Starmer is shifting labour away from 2017/2019 manifesto and further to the right.

[eFestivals]

3 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

So looks like Starmer is shifting labour away from 2017/2019 manifesto and further to the right.

Shifting labour away from rejected policy positions towards something which might be accepted.

[Fuzzy Afro]

In what bizarre alternative dystopian universe can Rachel Reeves be described as “far right”? 🤨🤨🤨

[steviewevie]

Like Dodds I think Starmer might be very clever, but not sure he's that good at politics.

[Fuzzy Afro]

On the voter ID thing, isn’t postal voting fraud much more of a problem than voter impersonation at the actual polling booths? Have heard anecdotal reports from Tory activists of “community leaders” in parts of East London filling in hundreds of postal votes on behalf of the community that they lead. No idea whether this is actually true or not but I know a lot of Tory activists have concerns that this sort of thing is commonplace. 

[topmarksbri]

12 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

In what bizarre alternative dystopian universe can Rachel Reeves be described as “far right”? 🤨🤨🤨

I think the criticism mainly stems from what she said about benefit claimants in 2013

[ace56blaa]

8 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

On the voter ID thing, isn’t postal voting fraud much more of a problem than voter impersonation at the actual polling booths? Have heard anecdotal reports from Tory activists of “community leaders” in parts of East London filling in hundreds of postal votes on behalf of the community that they lead. No idea whether this is actually true or not but I know a lot of Tory activists have concerns that this sort of thing is commonplace. 

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/our-views-and-research/our-research/electoral-fraud-data/2019-electoral-fraud-data

"595 cases of alleged electoral fraud were investigated by the police. Of these, four led to a conviction and two individuals were given a police caution."

voter fraud is not and never has been a problem. Voter ID policies is literally to surpress voting.

the same as conservatives in America. 

[mcshed]

10 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

On the voter ID thing, isn’t postal voting fraud much more of a problem than voter impersonation at the actual polling booths? Have heard anecdotal reports from Tory activists of “community leaders” in parts of East London filling in hundreds of postal votes on behalf of the community that they lead. No idea whether this is actually true or not but I know a lot of Tory activists have concerns that this sort of thing is commonplace. 

I'm not sure if racist rumours by Tory activists is an issue but I'm certain there is no large scale voter fraud in person. Voter ID laws are voter suppression and it's just this sort of thing that makes be a unionist hard, economic decisions that are broadly disagreed with up here can be waved away as the ebb and flow of policy parliament to parliament but attacks on democracy are another kettle of fish. If the Tories don't want to preside over the end of the UK as we know it this sort of thing has to stop.

[Ozanne]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/10/boris-johnson-under-investigation-caribbean-holiday?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
 

Boris Johnson is under investigation over who paid for his Caribbean holiday with Carrie Symonds during Christmas 2019.

[Mimo]

This tory voter repression thing is only going to strengthen the SNP’s case. 

[mattiloy]

Even Brown warning of a return to ’97...

[steviewevie]

Stephen Bush's morning call.

Good morning. Keir Starmer has conducted a mystifying 37-hour reshuffle that has left Labour MPs bewildered and his authority diminished. The headline moves: Angela Rayner moves from the role of party chair to shadow Michael Gove, while Anneliese Dodds is demoted from shadow chancellor to party chair. Rachel Reeves moves from her role shadowing Gove to shadow chancellor, while a host of MPs are promoted to the Shadow Cabinet shadowing roles that do not exist as separate government departments. 

Let's start where the reshuffle did: with the move of Rayner from the role of party chair and national campaign coordinator to shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, shadow secretary of state for the future of work, shadow first secretary of state. As deputy leader, Rayner is entitled to a seat at the Shadow Cabinet or, on the rare decades when Labour is in office, the Cabinet proper. Her previous role of party chair and nominal one of national campaign coordinator in theory meant she could range across the whole of the policy piece - but their nebulous nature meant that Starmer could contract or expand her reach at will. 

Now she has a formal role. Because of Boris Johnson's distaste for the challenges of administration and the relative lack of ideological direction from Downing Street as a result, many of what we would usually regard as the core functions of the Prime Minister are performed by Michael Gove, Rayner can range across the whole of the policy piece, but without the ability of Starmer to contract or expand her reach at will. 

If you believe Team Starmer's widely-briefed account of the last 37 hours, they have voluntarily exchanged a situation where they could contain Rayner if she made mistakes or caused them difficulties, to one in which they cannot contain her or easily duplicate her functions elsewhere. In addition, they did so while significantly fattening the number of shadow secretaries of state, when one of the aims of this reshuffle was to thin the herd of special advisers to cut costs.  In a political first, that's a situation where it would be more damning if you believed the case for the defence rather than the prosecution. 

That there are competing claims flying between the two camps is something that has perplexed Starmer's closest parliamentary allies. Don't forget that the MPs who are the most committed to Starmer are overwhelmingly likely to have backed Rayner for the party leadership. There are some MPs to Starmer's right who backed him but not Rayner, but largely out of a sense of expediency, and some MPs to Starmer's left who backed Rayner but not him, but, largely out of a sense of expediency. But for the most part, the MPs who actually believe in the Starmer project are keen supporters of Rayner, and vice versa. 

The dispute seems to be largely personal, with much of the aggro at a staff level. Starmer's allies feel that while Rayner has backed him in every vote on the party's ruling national executive committee, she has been reluctant to get involved in a big policy brief, and that her team spends more time thinking about the next leadership race than the next general election. Rayner's feel that Starmer's team are high-handed, that promises are not kept and that there is insufficient appreciation for the fact Rayner delivered for him on the NEC, on everything from his preferred general secretary to action on antisemitism. 


That reality is one reason why, for all it is Rayner's team who feel - in my view rightly - that they have won out from the reshuffle, they need Starmer as much as he needs them.  Strip away the personal politics and they have the same base of support in the parliamentary Labour party, and close to the same politics. There is no path to success for the Starmer project that does not rely on a close working relationship with Angela Rayner, but also, no plausible route to a Rayner leadership that does not run through an at the least, partially successful Starmer project. Given everything Starmer himself has said and everything his close allies have said about his politics, there is, at present, no available candidate in the parliamentary party whose politics are closer to his own should he for one reason or another be unable to lead the Labour party any longer. 

That Starmer does not seem to understand that part of his job is balancing his immediate political project with the understandable ambitions of his frontbench team speaks to the wider anxiety that the parliamentary Labour party has about the events of the weekend: that he at his core does not really 'have' politics in a recognisable sense, that he is, as an MP who had never held a properly political job until he was elected as an MP in 2015, is a neophyte learning in the ropes and that he has little in the way of direction. 

That's one reason why despite the fact that this reshuffle saw Rachel Reeves, who most on the Labour right see as one of their brightest and best, promoted to the role of shadow chancellor, the Labour right is no happier this morning than the left or the centre. They don't think this is a sign that Starmer has their politics or aims. They think it's a sign of a lack of grip and direction: and that Reeves faces the challenge of a lifetime, and quite possibly an impossible one, in providing that direction in her new role shadow chancellor. 

[mattiloy]

23 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

Pretty sure he isn't saying Corbyn's ideas are the right ones either...

He is basically saying its not 1997 - which is correct...  You can't just lift Blarism and drop it on 2021 anymore than you could do with Thatcherism ...  but you can recognise that Blarisim and Thatcherism did win the day and its all about aspiration - which Labour offer nothing in regards.

Idk Brown was always one of the more academic amongst new labour - maybe he’s kept abreast of the latest thought in academic economics. Namely that Thatcherism, Blairism (/Reaganism if you’re a yank) failed to deliver on people’s aspirations with more people worse off, than there were better of than their parents for the first time on record and only the top 1% appearing to benefit.

Its just not sustainable to pursue a neoliberal economic plan any longer. Biden realises it, the fed is also full of tax and spenders nowadays. Times are a changing.

Edited May 10, 2021 by mattiloy