The Labour Party

The guardian have published a very random extract from Alastair Campbell’s diaries;

“Campbell’s diaries further reveal that in 2005 he asked the then Manchester United manager, Alex Ferguson, to join up with the Arsenal manager, Arsène Wenger, to attack the Conservatives’ hardline immigration policies under leader Michael Howard. One diary extract reads: “Alex was interesting on the Howard stuff. He felt he had a point but that every foreigner would hate it. I said he and Wenger should do a joint presser saying they would have to send all their players back to their own countries under a Tory immigration policy”
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/01/alastair-campbell-new-labour-tony-blair-immigration-brexit?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

What an incredibly strange attempt to counter the anti-immigration argument ha.

Walker’s comments about Holocaust Memorial Day are only half the story. She had some somewhat ill-advised comments about how Jewish organizations feel the need to have security at their events.

Also, Jews aren’t a race btw. We’re a religion, a culture, maybe an ethnicity if you want to go that route but we’re certainly not a race.

Thanks for correcting me!

Didn’t she speak about security regarding Jewish schools? I too would term her comments ill advised or not helpful given how she must have known how this would play out, but would you consider them anti-Semitic?

My big concern is that anti-Semitism is being used for political ends.

Well firstly, I’m not hostile to Momentum at all, as you know I share their political standpoint.

However, I often find that Momentum (or its members) use language such as “enemy” to talk about Tories or “traitor” to describe Labour supporters that don’t support Corbyn. Now I get the sentiment, but it’s not going to help to accomplish anything. Overall I think Momentum’s objective is to “beat” the opposition in Labour and then the Tories, and that victory is sought almost for its own sake, rather than build a Labour government that will actually deliver an acceptable and more fair society, and that after all includes Tories and other “Labour” supporters.

I think in short what I’m saying is I think they’re too insular, where what is needed is a broader appeal.

There are reasons for this.

Firstly its about trying change the nature of local councils, even Labour ones, which implement Tory policies not through necessity but by choice. The only way to fight this is to get better candidates selected to stand but this requires internal work as selection committees are in the hands of individuals who are basically Tory in outlook.

Then its a recognition that if you want good policy or party unity the only way you can do that is to make sure that the majority are properly listened to. This means you need to control party structures from the bottom up, which is exactly what Blair did when he was in charge, except of course he did this to stifle democracy rather than enhance it. Failure to do this, will result in the PLP toppling Corbyn and then our country will have no genuine choice again in who runs the country. Failure to control wards, means failure to control GC, which then means failure to control conference, policy forum, NEC, local councils and therefore failure to control policy and with it potential political outcomes. It’s a sad truth that no matter who is leader, without structural changes, the Labour party would deliver nothing if in power.

One final point, take the issue of Brighton, which was featured in the expose programme, where you would have heard Momentum people use terms like ‘Traitor’. This is a CLP which overwhelmingly voted to back Corbyn with a turn out of thousands. The NEC then suspended the entire CLP. Like the entire constituency Labour Party in Brighton Hove! Rather than the MP for Brighton Hove calling this an outrage, he supported the NEC’s decision. This is why they want to deselect him. He supported the undemocratic dismissal of his entire local membership. They are furious at him. You cant go to war with your own local members and expect them to back you. These kind of shenanigans are happening across the whole country. I’ve seen friends of mine suspended for doing absolutely nothing wrong. More people got suspended from Labour unfairly than voted for Owen Smith in totality. More than 100,000 people didn’t even get sent their ballot for the recent leadership election. It was a rigged election, even if Corbyn won.

Genuinely, if we just ignored internal matters, the PLP would have already toppled Corbyn and we’d go into the next election with a Blairite, and you’d see a huge bleeding of members, and the Labour party would die, and the Tories would be in power for another decade or more.

Despite all of this though, our main focus is still external. Most of what we do is not bitter in fighting, believe it or not.

Well thank you for that detailed and reasoned response, which was genuinely quite illuminating and indeed casts Momentum in a more favourable light.

I must say I find the absolute visceral hatred the PLP has for the idea of representing its voters quite depressing, doubly so because I believe the New Labour crowd would genuinely rather lose the next election than win it with Corbyn in charge and I think they will continue to make the party appear unelectable for that reason and I genuinely don’t see how that problem can be overcome since Corbyn apparently can’t or won’t go about the deselection of MPs.

Nonetheless, Momentum has to find a way to rise above this and further it’s cause without the rhetoric which makes it so easy to paint them as “hard left.” I get the anger because I feel it myself, but as long as they talk about “enemies” and “traitors” they make the Blairite job much easier. At the end of the day, we want to make the country a better place and that includes it being for the people we don’t like.

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Dianne Fucking Abbott, shadow home secretary.

I’m a Corbyn sympathiser, but fucking hell m8.

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Why do people hate her so much? Serious question.

My guess is Jeremy needed someone with experience who he could trust and had a list of about 1 person - her.

We are now in a world where Boris Jonson is Foreign Secretary. The bar is low.

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Do you really think someone as divisive as Diane Abbott inspires alot of confidence amongst middle and working class Brits who don’t live in London?

It can be argued that there no other prominent labour figure out there who better exemplifies the social and political divide between the London bubble and the rest of the UK. In a immediate post Brexit environment I don’t know how anyone can think she’s a smart or sensible appointment.

I think Labour supporters will learn some harsh lessons in 2020

First off I do get why he’s appointed her. She has a profile and is fiercely loyal to him, both of those things are in short supply for him.

She’s a socialist and has said that other politicians sending their children to private school is “indefensible”, and yet she sent her own child to one. As a socialist the right to equal education is a pretty strong principle of mine, I can’t necessarily speak for other socialists, but I would expect most to concur. It’s not just a political principle, but a moral one for me. The excuse is that it’s what her son wanted, but in my opinion you don’t just cave when your children want something. If my child wanted me to contravene an essential principle of mine the answer would be no, and I’d explain why I wasn’t willing to spend my money on their private education. This rank hypocrisy is my main problem.

Then there are the various questionable things she’s said with regards to race. Whatever the context, saying “white people love to play divide and rule” is unacceptable. It’s a slap in the face to white people who are vehemently anti-racist and anti-imperialist. It’s completely unacceptable to say that all members of an entire race can be defined by one characteristic or behaviour. I’m not someone who believes that it’s as bad as a white MP saying something derogatory about the behaviour of black people, I do get that it is worse because of the power imbalance etc, but I’m not one of these people who believe that you can’t be racist towards white people. There’s a reason why the terms systemic and institutionalised racism exist, and it’s to differentiate from the basic term “racism”.

She’s questioned the ability of blonde haired and blue eyed Finnish nurses to treat black patients, because they’d never seen one before. I doubt I need to elaborate on how that is deeply ignorant in more than ome respect.

Her response to the private school hypocrisy was to say : ‘West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.’ Clearly the implications is that West Indian women care more about their children than others, otherwise you’d drop the “West Indian” part. Better than Asian mums, African mums, white British mums, Eastern European mums? Who knows.

Plus I think she’s too concerned with her own profile with all the television she has been doing for years. I also think she sounds like an idiot a lot of the time and I don’t like the droning sound of her voice.

Apart from all of that, she’s alright :grin:

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Mate, most of the non London MP’s are either Conservative or Blairites. Otherwise they either don’t want roles, like Dennis Skinner, or too new for a big post, like Richard Burgeon. I really think this London bubble thing is a total dead end of an idea.

@JakeyBoy I’ll get back to you on Dianne Abbot. I want to do some asking around (in my London bubble :slight_smile: ) to see if she really holds these dumb ideas, or if she just says them lol.

Note: Corbyn didn’t appoint her to jack shit, when he had more people to select from.

A point worth making.

Hasn’t she held three positions, each one of increasing importance?

As for Abbott, I’d be genuinely interested to read what you hear.

Regarding Abbot - @JakeyBoy - nail, head, hit

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Corbyn has a problem in that he hasnt got a lot of people to choose from as the rest of the PLP’s either refuse to serve or will just use the opportunity to snipe at him.
I don’t like abbot as she is a racist but she has been loyal to Corbyn and so understand the aqppointment .
Thats as near to a real job as she will ever get and by next election she will be back on that sofa with Portillo !.

I’ve just seen that an ICM poll gives the tories a 17 point lead over Labour as it stands. Jesus, that is one monumental lead that Theresa May has over Corbyn- it’s very hard to see him turn it around.

Either way the Labour party as to forget this civil war and get their shit together. It’s important for them, as much as the country, that they offer a stern opposition to the government, even more so considering some of the shambolic comments that were made the Conservative Party Conference last week. The Conservative party should be there for the taking- they’ve seemingly abandoned the middle ground (regardless of what they claim).

I fear they wont be able to such are the divisions in the Party !

Again this morning more attemps to implacte the the party in this anti-semitism saying that nothing is being done about it. I still for the life of me why there is such an enfisis on anti-semitism in western media it’s cringe worthy how they use it so much it just lost it’s credability now everything is anti-semitish. The thing about this is that i did a little research and found that most of the cries of anti-semitism in the labour party has been wolf cry or just fabricated and the media just ran with it without any fact check what so ever. Like corbyns statement said they took testimonies from a very narrow selection of people so the investigation is very much skewed

There isn’t any anti-semitism. Because I’ve read up on each case. There are some Muslim councilers and Naz Shah who have all tweeted in the past about their disgust at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians during the bombing of Gaza where civilians districts, hospitals and power plants were all purposely levelled an mass murder was commited.

Naz Shah’s tweets in particular were all taken completely out of context. She posted a picture of the Gaza massacre with words on it stating '“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal” obviously showing both were legal and clearly immoral. You had Vanessa Feltz asking ‘why would you state everything the Germans did to the Jews was legal’, without stating there was a picture of the massacre obviously comparing the treatment of the Palestinians to the Jews in the Nazi state you utter utter misleading cunt.

The one incidence of actual anti semitism that I came across was from a Pakistani councilor who made some ignorant anti-semitic comment when she was 16 before she was a councilor.

There’s certain motivations for this media spin:

  1. To destabilise Corbyn, via New Labour
  2. To destabilise Labour, via Tory’s/right wing
  3. To make it clear that anyone who dares to speak out against Israeli war crimes is labelled ‘anti semitic’.
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Very true.

Tony Blair planning a return to politics. Unsure whether he wants to create another party or try to go with Labour.