British Politics

I agree with this and was making a similar point. Nearly all labour MPs and a good few Tory MPs would have voted for this in a free vote.

Of course, it's possible Starmer or someone else could have been the great left-wing reformer, but how many great left-wing reformers have their been across the West in the past 30 years? Trudeau? Obama?? these are pretty low bars. I don't see it as a question of giving up. Rather it's a question of accepting the currently geopolitical reality and trying to build a Labour Party capable of governing for 10-15 years. That would be a huge achievement by any reasonable measure, and while that may mean you have to accept somewhat modest achievements it's far more palatable than the alternative.

As far as Zarah Sultana goes, mimicking AOC will take you so far but she's always going to be a self-serving pressure group rather than a serious political figure. I assume most of her "likes" are related to Palestine, so I assume it's only a matter of time till she can't help herself and gets booted for anti-Semitism.

There have been none. The right has been totally dominant. The left was sold out by Blair and now starmer in the uk. Others elsewhere.

Now we're nearing the end game and the far right is exploiting the spoils.

Another way of explaining recent history is the working class were sold out by the left, and the far-right are exploiting the spoils.

To further emphasise the point I just made above, the first PMQs question from a Labour MP to Kier Starmer is about transkids and puberty blockers…

If you think hat inequality, housing, NHS etc etc aren't the problem then we're just going to disagree.

I'd agree that new labour only made things worse overall but i wouldn't call blair remotely left wing. starmer looks like continuing the descent.

I’m saying those things are the problem - strange then that a labour MP, when given the opportunity to ask about any of those things or indeed about the two child benefit cap, chose to ignore the evidence presented in the Cass report and ask him when he was going to lift the ban on trans kids getting puberty blockers.

It seems we can agree that the problem is the left failing to address the major systemeic problems.

I dont agree it's related to issues such as puberty blockers. It's not these issues that are preventing the left implementing major refoms to tackle inequality etc etc

If Labour MPs are choosing to waste their opportunity to hold their leader to account on issues like inequality and the NHS, and instead talk about puberty blockers, then it is an issue.

We can disagree on the degree to which it is an issue, but it is an issue.

I also agree that the problem is the left (and the right) failing to address major systemic problems. Where we disagree is the motives behind this. You attribute more to political will, and I attribute more to pragmatism, although we would likely concede it's a combination of the two to some degree.

He's not going to lift the ban and Whittome is, as ever, an embarrassment.

I just saw a tweet saying that Starmer has withdrawn the whip from an eighth Labour MP, this time for giving money to a homeless person outside Westminster, and I couldn't immediately tell if it was a joke or not.

The main systemic problem is there isn't enough money, so the government's got to produce growth (despite the fact that the 'green' left, largely middle-class and prosperous, is opposed to growth and pretends to want a return to mud huts and the wooden plough). Another problem is that the NHS is pouring unprecedented sums down a hole in the ground for surprisingly little result -- people were not left to die on a stretcher in a corridor after a 48-hour wait in Tony Blair's day.

The other big thing is housing, since the country's economy is badly deformed by housing costs (costs driven by the essential shortage), huge amounts of monthly household income going into that unproductive sump. The government wants to address this by revising planning controls and building on Green Belt sites, but of course you can't just build houses, you need power and water, shops, transport, GP surgeries, hospitals, police stations and all that to support the new communities, which all comes back to the 'not enough money' problem. We don't yet know how the government is going to address this in practical terms.

I dotn think PMs questions is indicative of anythign much or of any importance beyind rare occasions. The problem is that we've just had a major debate on the mains stuff and it's all right wing policies.

We haven't had a remotely left wing government in my adult ifetime and I'm old.

Part of the reason for that is that although leftist policies may be popular the Labour party some time ago became something to be sneered at and support for it denied, because of its unfashionable associations with unions and normal working people instead of the trendy aspirational class we constantly hear about.

This came about of course as an intended consequence of Thatcherism's aim to create a new class of opportunist (or spiv, as they might more accurately be called), that working people could apparently migrate into, buying their council homes in the process, foregoing workers' rights and sneering at Labour while feeling truly liberated no doubt.

And as Thatcherism is alive and kicking in the shape of every government since including Starmer, that's where we are.

no there isn't enough money or growth because no-one has tackled systemic problems since thatcher started dismantling everything. It's a testiment to the strength of our national institutions that it's taken so many decades of privatised plunder and neglect to get them on their death beds

KS is going to use private equity. he is going to have an open door for the private sector. it's not a mystery. It will work. Just as I could live like a king for a while if I maxed out my credit cards, cashed in my pension etc.

Found this to be an interesting thread

FTFY

Cheers. Just noticed I’d left the full address in.

"Hippy-punching" in Number 10

This country has become so toxic.

Hippy punching... is that in the Olympics? Would watch.

The idea of 'vegan constituencies' is quite funny also. You could profitably run coach tours to 'vegan constituencies' (if they actually existed, which they don't) just so people could spend an afternoon punching hippies.

It's part of the utter contempt they have for the left. Partly deserved because so many have allowed their vote to be taken for granted.

That may be changing. Hippies with teeth ftw

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/art...
While I knda like them to do something if it's taxes on the rich, it's so staggering contemptuously dishonest.

and somehow I expect it well be a furtehr excuse to honour their pledge to do nothing about anything very much.