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Plus FTPT is a thing. I spent my voting life voting for parties that are even vaguely close what I believe in - in '17 and '19 that happened to be Labour, but in my super safe Labour seat I can go right back to spurning them without worrying about the Tories. But that road leads to voting Lib Dem "to keep the Tories out", and that's not a place your brain wants to go.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:18
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Bobby Deluxe posted:If you vote Labour, things might stay mostly as they are with a few token gestures. But my vote has absolutely no impact on the tories getting in or not. Unless I move somewhere I can make a tiny difference. So your argument is the one for some kind of pointless purity whereas I just think you should vote for what you want.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:18
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EvilHawk posted:Not a lick of criticism from Starmer in response to Boris's "corona only affects you if you're out after 10pm, like some sort of gremlin" statement. Its because ultimately he's trying to appeal to old white men, who are the key swing voters in a large number of ex-industrial swing constituencies and one of the two groups Labour lost in 2019 (along with lib dem/green leaning centrist remainders). The real problem with Starmer is that he's fundamentally unwilling to articulate a vision outside of the idea that your civil liberty to go to the pub/restaurant is the most sacred thing and that consumption is the only acceptable way to express yourself. Which means he can't articulate a vision of how we actually *fix* anything to got Labour into this position in the first place - see continuing to harp on about Blair when the constituencies that flipped from Labour to Tory provably *hate* Blair and Blairism, or as I mentioned above to talk about a radical economic change that the majority of Labour supporters want. Part of that is that I think that Starmer is terrified of not having the press on side, but honestly I think the press are so loving rotten its a fools errand. I don't agree with a lot of the thread on what Corbyn should have done but one thing would have been to yell in every interview "Rupert Murdoch is lying to you" and refuse to engage the press in good faith. Would have been worth a shot!
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Sep 22, 2020 13:18
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I had this argument recently with my friends. Both about Labour and Joe Biden. They kept touting compromise and moderation as electorally sucessful and 'good' qualities. When you point out that compromising on climate change for the last 40 years has pretty much doomed us, they have nothing to say.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:18
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Kernel Monsoon posted:
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Sep 22, 2020 13:19
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Guavanaut posted:You can organize in an extraparlimentary manner, form pressure groups, form mutual aid societies, donate to unions and socialist groups instead of Labour, and still put a cross in a box. You do you, I'll do me, but I no longer consider liberal democracy legitimate and I'm not willing to vote for reformist capitalist parties, since I fundamentally oppose them. We are all going to be extinct in a hundred odd years anyway, so it's all just rearranging deck chairs in the end regardless Also this JoylessJester posted:I had this argument recently with my friends. Both about Labour and Joe Biden. They kept touting compromise and moderation as electorally sucessful and 'good' qualities. Barry Foster fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Sep 22, 2020 |
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Sep 22, 2020 13:20
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Bobby Deluxe posted:If you don't vote at all, and the tories get in, things get actively worse for vulnerable groups. But those who didn't vote or engage because there were no 'good' options get to sit there pleased with themselves while everything gets worse for the disabled and vulnerable. I'm disabled and vulnerable and voted for Labour under Corbyn but no more. Starmer said today that Labour deserved to lose. gently caress him for that forever. Labour now deserve to lose going forward in eternity for the poo poo they pulled to stop Corbyn winning in 2017, and I refuse to vote for them again just to stop the Tories because without their sabotage we'd have won.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:21
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Kernel Monsoon posted:
I know it's a few pages old, but this is just absolutely excellent.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:23
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Bobby Deluxe posted:If you vote Labour, things might stay mostly as they are with a few token gestures. Yes but the thing you aren't getting is that under this Labour things aren't going to "stay the same". It's going to continue to get worse. Some Oxbridge wonk will come up with a new name to rebrand PFI/PPP type stealth privatisations which New Labour so adore and bash on. The end result is effectively the same as the Tories but slightly slower. It's not stopping diabetics from getting insulin ot whatever, it's just kicking the can down the road so it's a different generation of diabetics who get hosed. The Labour Party will not ever be a vehicle for the bold change that would be necessary to save this country from itself. Denying that reality after the last 5 years is far more "blackpilled" than confronting reality, that parliamentary democracy does not work for us.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:24
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^^^ Do you honestly think that Labour is going to be WORSE than the tories? Or at precisely the same level of bad? Your choice is between a badly burnt cake and actual poo poo, and one of them is going to get smeared across your mouth, so you may as well ask for cake. All we have left at this point is damage mitigation, might as well use it. Communist Thoughts posted:So your argument is the one for some kind of pointless purity whereas I just think you should vote for what you want. Guava worded it better than I could: Guavanaut posted:You can organize in an extraparlimentary manner, form pressure groups, form mutual aid societies, donate to unions and socialist groups instead of Labour, and still put a cross in a box. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Sep 22, 2020 |
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Sep 22, 2020 13:24
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Labour make it very easy for me not to vote for them because the people currently in charge have spent the last five years claiming that us on the left are stupid, child-like cultists/thugs and then actively sabotaged a project that we got personally invested in that might have improved this country even the tiniest of fractions in order to run on a "these Tories have some nice ideas actually" campaign. Now they're demanding we shut the gently caress up and get in-line behind them. They can gently caress off.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:24
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Tbh kiers career makes him at least as ominous as bojo Bojo is a wanker who wants people to like him and in another party w Could probably be convinced to do good things if they would make him popular because he doesn't care about the sacred calves of the British state. Kier is up and down a government man. He doesn't think anything is wrong with British society just that people aren't filling out the forms right. Where bojo has casual racism kier has spent his career indulging in systemic racism, which we could see in his contempt for BLM. "black people HAVE to trust the police" When it comes to state power and violence kier is significantly more worrisome than Boris. His government will leap at the chance to prosecute a "smart war" so if he wins some unlucky country is getting libya'd
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Sep 22, 2020 13:25
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If you believe voting achieves anything it is difficult to suggest that it does anything other than legitimize what you vote for, as you can see by the perpetual wails of "what about 1997" that the centrists trot out. So if you correctly understand the blair government as following exactly the same path as the tories but doing a jig along the way, it is difficult to see why you would want to legitimize that or, again, why you wouldn't see that as just another form of accelerationism.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:27
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I just feel if theres a choice between a boot pressed against the face or getting curbstomped, you don't lie there and do nothing, especially if doing nothing means curbstomping by default. Especially if it's not your face under the boot. Nobody here who says disengaging with the Labour Party and parliamentary democracy is proposing following that up with nothing though for fucksake. Just because "extraparliamentary action" isn't explicitly described in every post doesn't mean the implication isn't there.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:27
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Gorn Myson posted:Labour make it very easy for me not to vote for them because the people currently in charge have spent the last five years claiming that us on the left are stupid, child-like cultists/thugs and then actively sabotaged a project that we got personally invested in that might have improved this country even the tiniest of fractions in order to run on a "these Tories have some nice ideas actually" campaign. Absolutely this. I'm voting big veiny cock next time
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Sep 22, 2020 13:28
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Bobby Deluxe posted:^^^ Do you honestly think that Labour is going to be WORSE than the tories? Or at precisely as bad? Perhaps the more reasonable decision in that instance is just saying gently caress you, until you die? Like it's a bit weird to look at someone in that position and go "erm, actually if you had done this instead you could have maximized the amount of time you spent in misery"
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Sep 22, 2020 13:30
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It is extremely funny that their big opposition wheeze that was worth shitcanning the corbynists is to support bojo while he kills tens of thousands Kier and his team has SO much more respect for Boris Johnson than any of us. Mind you I would too if I expected half the morons I just sabotaged would still vote for me anyway.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:30
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Kernel Monsoon posted:
This is doing the rounds on twitter today.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:33
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I did have this same argument with a friend of mine. Its funny cause that guy spent the whole of Corbyns last 2 years fuming at Corbyn and saying he was gonna vote libdem and now he wants me to vote kier lol
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Sep 22, 2020 13:33
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MikeCrotch posted:Its because ultimately he's trying to appeal to old white men, who are the key swing voters in a large number of ex-industrial swing constituencies and one of the two groups Labour lost in 2019 (along with lib dem/green leaning centrist remainders). I honestly don't understand what Starmer's strategy is (and how that leads to an electoral victory). It is quite clear he does not want to be seen as "obstructionist" (as if he even could be with the Tory majority), so he "supports the government" in whatever they're doing. How does that translate into votes? When people go to the polling booths are they going to put a cross in the box next to the guy who supported the government, or a cross in the box next to the government. I agree he's terrified of the press reaction, but there's been plenty of times the press have rallied against the government (iirc the original lockdown came after a couple of weeks of pressure, the testing debacle) but Starmer is, at most, quietly in the corner saying "...that's bad". Maybe I'm an idealist but I'd like to think that someone with an ounce of charisma and ambition would be able to take those causes and rally around them. Sure you'd look like a populist, but the majority of these decisions are, broadly, left wing anyway - support for unemployed, housing crisis, health service - and can be ensconced in media-savvy terms to avoid the press talking about the loony left again. The conference this morning was a joke, all this talk about no policies at this time nonsense. I don't speak to the general public often but what I hear from my neighbours is that they want some policies.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:33
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Communist Thoughts posted:
This is the key issue for me. Why would Labour change in any way when they can rely on the Left to keep voting for them, no matter how far towards the Tories they swing?
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Sep 22, 2020 13:34
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Red Oktober posted:I know it's a few pages old, but this is just absolutely excellent. A third pane with him looking even more stressed and drenched in the sweat of indecision would make it perfect.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:35
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I think I asked last time but what is the method of changing the Labour party from within? I am pretty sure with a Corbyn bench and some good people on the NEC (I am not 100% knowledgeable about how the party is setup so forgive if I am wrong) we still got sabotaged by the same party. People saying Corbyn should have purged but I thought the party was not set up in that way? Is it? If not and we have to have these wreckers, then how do you enact change within in? Moreover how do we enact change now when the wreckers, who were very successful in 2017 and poisoned 2019, will put barriers to left entry in again? How do we make the party move left when it is controlled by someone rightwards who has the backing of the terrible parts of the party as well as the msm giving him an easier ride? This is a genuine question, not a series of gotchas or anything, I just genuinely want to know what else I can do other than join a union.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:36
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forkboy84 posted:As an unemployed extremely poor underqualified failson millennial who will only have any wealth when my parents die in a mysterious simultaneous fall down the stairs I say kill em all. Wait, that's not right. Absolutely 100% loving  and 
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Sep 22, 2020 13:36
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VideoGames posted:I think I asked last time but what is the method of changing the Labour party from within? I am pretty sure with a Corbyn bench and some good people on the NEC (I am not 100% knowledgeable about how the party is setup so forgive if I am wrong) we still got sabotaged by the same party. People saying Corbyn should have purged but I thought the party was not set up in that way? Is it? Genuine answer - you can't
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Sep 22, 2020 13:38
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I'm not sure he is frightened of the press. As you say kier has had the government's back even when the media doesn't. I really think his primary aim is to prevent any kind of destabilisation of the government. Which is obviously very possible as we head into plague and brexit famine. Using his own reputation as either a crutch or in extremis as ablative armour to protect the state has been his entire career, now he's just using the whole labour party to do that. If he's not an mi5 asset they were really sleeping on the job
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Sep 22, 2020 13:38
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Voting Labour to keep the Tories out would make sense if it did at least keep the Tories out, but they've been in government for a decade now, and the one election where Labour came close they sabotaged themselves to spite people like me. What material advantage is this realpolitik getting me?
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Sep 22, 2020 13:38
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VideoGames posted:I think I asked last time but what is the method of changing the Labour party from within? I am pretty sure with a Corbyn bench and some good people on the NEC (I am not 100% knowledgeable about how the party is setup so forgive if I am wrong) we still got sabotaged by the same party. People saying Corbyn should have purged but I thought the party was not set up in that way? Is it? There's no way to reform the party now, if there ever was. The wreckers are in charge
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Sep 22, 2020 13:41
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Continuity RCP posted:The wreckers are in charge I think they always were.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:42
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namesake posted:There probably wasn't any way Labour could win in 2019 without going back in time several years and playing a very different game both internally and externally, meaning it's a fantasy counterfactual at best (Given the pandemic that's probably a good thing in retrospect at this moment in time). That doesn't mean the sub groups of Labour and external enemies who pretended to stand for things while sabotaging ways of achieving those things or abandoning them once their actual objectives have been met deserve anything but total scorn when they claim to be worth listening to. If you don’t learn from your actual mistakes, you are going to be reduced to cargo-culting the last person who had any level of success. A simple position of ‘if we are elected, Brexit will not happen, so there is nothing to discuss. Now, about..’ would have been sellable to everyone who was fed up with discussing Brexit, and wouldn’t have required expelling more than 20 MPs, few of whom would be missed. You just need to make the thing that follows ‘now about’ sufficiently appealing to win over some number of soft core Brexiteers. Even the BBC would have to change the focus of the story if the alternative isn’t ‘23rd shadow cabinet minister confirms Labour policy.’ They might even have to cover the announcement of the destination of the next 10% of the resources made available by that policy. Is it going to be an Underground system for Birmingham, a nationalized alternative to Uber free to over-65s, a crash program to prepare for the pandemics scientists say are coming, or a British-led Mars base? The total cost of Brexit is now estimated to exceed that of the International Space Station. If you agree to have a single medium-sized country pay for all that, the resources left over mean you are going to have a less exciting list of policies than Gordon Brown in 2010. If so, you can’t entirely blame the media if they are uninterested in the details. So why _should_ anyone even vote for you?
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Sep 22, 2020 13:42
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Ultimately as someone who is basically entirely dependent on societal change to have any hope of a future, all observation suggests that labour is so utterly unwilling to do anything to help me out that the small, fractional amount of dignity I might retain from not voting for them is actually worth more to me than the possibility of them being in government.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:42
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Lungboy posted:I think they always were. They're actually wearing the boss hat, rather then just quietly doing their thing
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Sep 22, 2020 13:43
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radmonger posted:If you don’t learn from your actual mistakes, you are going to be reduced to cargo-culting the last person who had any level of success. What fantasy land are you living in where any of this had anything to do with the last election and how do I go there, it sounds fascinating.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:45
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Barry Foster posted:Genuine answer - you can't Continuity RCP posted:There's no way to reform the party now, if there ever was. The wreckers are in charge Then I honestly cannot vote for them. I think about what they are currently representing and the drastic difference from "everyone should live well and have nationalised services" to "oooh hang on, cannot tax the rich in a recession" and "britain first! (please ignore jo cox)" is just disgusting to me. If all I can do is pick an evil, then I would rather not pick at all.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:52
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OwlFancier posted:Perhaps the more reasonable decision in that instance is just saying gently caress you, until you die? People will die under a Starmer Labour that changes nothing. A lot more people will die if the tories continue to get in. The total number will be much, much higher, there's no denying that. You can't deny that a lot of people are not only blackpilling right now, but pretending that it's the sane and healthy thing to do. You don't have to get out on the streets and protest. You don't have to literally fight nazis. You just have to put a tick in a box once every four years and bung a monthly donation to momentum and a union. And you can put that tick in that box and vote for the least poo poo option, apply the brakes as gently as possible. Or you can exercise the privelage of knowing that your ideology is unmarred, that you didn't have to lower yourself to vote for Labour while things get worse and a greater number of people die. Because when the car hits the bottom of the hill maybe there will be glorious revolution for the able bodied, prepared few. The rest of us die in a loving fire, and by the rest of us I mean people who rely on medical care, disabled people, people who need this system to distribute food and resources to them. Are we going to rooftop farm insulin or chemo meds? No. People loving die. The idealogical privelage I was talking about is the privelage of people knowing they'll be fine in an accelerationist culmination, so essentially saying they're willing for other people to die for their revolution, so they can piss off with any talk of accelerationism being a good thing. I don't seem to be getting my point across the way I want so I'll stop. TLDR use your loving vote, support the unions and Momentum, abstaining does worse than nothing either way. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Sep 22, 2020 |
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Sep 22, 2020 13:55
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VideoGames posted:Then I honestly cannot vote for them. That's the ethical position imo Bobby Deluxe posted:Only assuming it's your face under the boot. Not voting, not engaging means the tories get in by default. Tory ideology kills. People are dying. We are not blackpilling, and voting is not in any way a substitute for protesting and fighting nazis. I'm trying not to be rude but you clearly don't understand what we're trying to tell you. That's ok - overcoming hypernormalisation is loving difficult and it's painful - but don't insult us by trying to insinuate we're somehow mentally ill for not agreeing with you
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Sep 22, 2020 13:59
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I think the either/or question of "does the left support/stay in Labour" and "do extra parliamentary stuff" is not terribly helpful, realistically we need to do both to cover our bases. I think people ITT really underestimate the clout the Labour name gives when used appropriately (like stuff done by left CLPs at a local level) Keeping a socialist thread in Labour is important I think to give an avenue for people to gain access to socialist activities - how many people here were radicalised by Corbyn himself after all? I certainly was.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:59
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VideoGames posted:I think I asked last time but what is the method of changing the Labour party from within? I am pretty sure with a Corbyn bench and some good people on the NEC (I am not 100% knowledgeable about how the party is setup so forgive if I am wrong) we still got sabotaged by the same party. People saying Corbyn should have purged but I thought the party was not set up in that way? Is it? There's an obvious one to be mad about at the moment, the lockdown. We sat and watched as Italy fell sick, then Spain, then France, while the government did nothing, and the opposition didn't oppose. Where were the flight quarantines? Where were the thermal image units at ports and airports? Where was the test and trace and PPE in February? Instead we got a disastrous lockdown that has cost 700,000 jobs, knocked 21% off the GDP, and ruined thousands of businesses. Why wasn't JOBSJOBSJOBS loving livid over that dereliction of public duty? Why are the only critics of the lockdown Qanon protestors, anti-maskers, and Toby Young's smoothbrain skeptics? The answer is that isn't true, there's plenty of working people who are furious about it, but resigned that it had to come to that because it became clear that Whitehall would do gently caress all else. Repeated hammering on to anyone that will listen that this was avoidable and a failure of governance is how you create it as a public perception and shift the narrative. And then, like steering a tanker, eventually parts of the political apparatus come round to hammer on the same. If that can be gotten rolling that the whole thing was avoidable, or at least heavily ameliorable, that could be bad for both Tories and Keir. We've got a few years before box ticking exercises become relevant, so there's enough time to get something like that rolling if enough joined in.
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Sep 22, 2020 14:00
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If you actually believe in electorialism, surely the only plan of action that makes sense is to cause Starmer to lose the leadership, allowing the left of the party another opportunity to take it back - preferably with a leader who's willing to actually put the boots in and get rid of the wreckers. Another 5 years of Tory rule is poo poo. Another 50 years of overall neoliberal rule is unconscionable
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Sep 22, 2020 14:00
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Only assuming it's your face under the boot. Not voting, not engaging means the tories get in by default. Tory ideology kills. People are dying. You keep saying that but no, literally all starmer is doing is supporting everything the tories do. What is the difference because I do not see one? Even if there was a difference, what do you think the long term effects of legtimizing his position are? Do you think that the current state of the tories, the UK, and labour has anything to do with the legitimization of Blair's government? Because I certainly do. The effects of a vote do not stop the day after it is cast, the votes in 1997 are still used as a weapon for the right. Bobby Deluxe posted:You can't deny that a lot of people are not only blackpilling right now, but pretending that it's the sane and healthy thing to do. You don't have to get out on the streets and protest. You don't have to literally fight nazis. You just have to put a tick in a box once every four years and bung a monthly donation to momentum and a union. People are telling you that they will be the ones to suffer as a result. I would suggest that there is not a "healthy" choice when both choices likely lead to you being utterly hosed, but that spitting bile is about the only expected choice. Bobby Deluxe posted:Because when the car hits the bottom of the hill maybe there will be glorious revolution for the able bodied, prepared few. The rest of us die in a loving fire, and by the rest of us I mean people who rely on medical care, disabled people, people who need this system to distribute food and resources to them. Are we going to rooftop farm insulin or chemo meds? No. People loving die. Again, everyone here is pointing out that they are the ones who will die. If you're going to ignore all that and pretend that everyone saying it is actually going to be fine, you're not going to get anywhere. If you're facing the reality that the people who most need a better government are telling labour to gently caress off, you can't just pretend that they are not the people they are. Or rather you can but that's literally what starmer and his lot do, they pretend that the only people who want serious economic changes are actually posh kids and that real working class people want the important things like racism and wars.
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Sep 22, 2020 14:04
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