Vitamin P posted:

Presenting a potential British state that works to alleviate hardship for the many is feeding the wood chipper.

Renters suffer to benefit landlords, employees suffer to benefit employers, desperate people just about surviving in the grey market suffer to benefit their abusers, the modern UK is a pain factory where 96% of the populace needlessly suffer so the richest rentiers can take everything from them and spaff it on cocaine and child prostitutes, and every single possible organ of the establishment is cemented in preserving that dynamic. There is literally nothing a good person can do that won't be monstered in the establishment press it's a logical impossibility.

That said it is possible to be a lovely person in really specific tactical ways and hope you outplay the establishment enough, and have material circumstances on your side enough, to win electorally and potentially a McDonnell could have done that where a Corbyn couldn't but as said, Corbyns affability was a crucial factor and either way it's a big loving if, much better to just recognise class interest is a thing that exists.


You don't just sue the Sun, British libel law is a bullshit and if you don't have silly money and silly time you won't beat a newspaper through it. Starmer was stupid enough, and honestly not even that stupid given the context, to not realise 'yo if I kick Corbs he'll have silly money and silly time, I'll get owned' but that doesn't mean people can generally be suing hostile newspapers just because they were Mean.

therattle posted:

I don’t altogether agree (as I’ve outlined already) - don’t shake hands with a wood chipper, but don’t keep feeding it either. But in this case we aren’t talking about the press response but the party’s. That’s a material difference.

Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:

Coohoolin posted:

Cool! I'm really psyched for youse. I know a handful of people in Northumbria who might be keen, if you want you can get in touch with me on twitter @KlezmerRouge and I can put you in touch. Also if you want to network with the republican socialist faction of the scottish independence movement I'm a member and can help facilitate. Or just DM me on here.

OwlFancier posted:

It's really weird to suspend him, then unsuspend him, then say he was wrong and act like you didn't want to unsuspend him.

Like pick a decision and stick with it you nerd.

OwlFancier posted:

It's really weird to suspend him, then unsuspend him, then say he was wrong and act like you didn't want to unsuspend him.

Like pick a decision and stick with it you nerd.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

This is how Corbyn should have responded:


In loving memory of Parliawint, unfairly killed by Twitter, Wariotifo is reposting as much of their stuff as he can tonight.

ThomasPaine posted:

If Corbyn did run a leadership challenge I think he'd probably win lol

e: whether that would be be a good strategic move I don't know, but it would be extremely funny and why the hell not when the alternative is captain forensic over here

OwlFancier posted:

It's really weird to suspend him, then unsuspend him, then say he was wrong and act like you didn't want to unsuspend him.

Like pick a decision and stick with it you nerd.

mediaphage posted:

OwlFancier posted:

I can't imagine what would possibly make you want to start.

Jaeluni Asjil posted:

Masochism.

ThomasPaine posted:

If Corbyn did run a leadership challenge I think he'd probably win lol

e: whether that would be be a good strategic move I don't know, but it would be extremely funny and why the hell not when the alternative is captain forensic over here

quote:

Rescind all suspensions of members who supported Jeremy Corbyn
Supplementary statement: Things have moved swiftly since we issue the statement below. We would therefore add to it that:

We welcome the news that Jeremy Corbyn’ suspension has been lifted by the NEC three weeks after it was unjustifiably imposed by the General Secretary David Evans.

We strongly urge the Party to apologise to Jeremy Corbyn for the highhanded and public nature of his suspension and the consequent distress he has inevitably suffered as a result of media intrusion and the ongoing attacks that have continued following his reinstatement.

We reiterate the call we made earlier for the party to lift the suspensions and investigations into all those who have supported Jeremy and expressed solidarity with him.

This would demonstrate that the NEC decision will pave the way to the development of the party unity to which Keir Starmer insists he is committed – and on which platform he was elected by the membership. The people of this country and the world desperately need this to provide a coherent and united opposition to Boris Johnson’s callous and inept government.

JVL believes that Jeremy Corbyn’s statement on the EHRC report said nothing that should have led to his suspension.

His words were:

“One antisemite is one too many, but the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media. That combination hurt Jewish people and must never be repeated. My sincere hope is that relations with Jewish communities can be rebuilt and those fears overcome.”

We deplore what has clearly been intolerable pressure put upon him to step back from this. He has the right to defend his own record and those of the members who support him, however much the incumbent leadership might disagree. They have cynically exploited Jeremy’s loyalty to the party he has served for 50+ years; and which, as leader in difficult times, he made huge efforts to hold together.

It is undoubtedly true that many of Corbyn’s opponents, both inside and outside the party have exaggerated the numbers of cases of antisemitism. Jeremy has never said, as has been alleged, that the hurt any Jewish individuals have felt has been exaggerated. Such a misinterpretation is just the latest in a long line of distortions that have been used to attack him and those whose political ideals he articulated.

The EHRC report did not comment on the numbers of antisemitic incidents, so questioning their prevalence and the reporting of them was not, in any way, in contradiction to the report. Indeed, one of the peculiarities of the report is that it makes sweeping assertions about the scale of the problem facing the party without making any effort to estimate that scale.

JVL members are angry that many Jews have been frightened by allegations of Labour antisemitism while very few Jews have actually experienced any antisemitism themselves. Those who have deserve everyone’s fullest support and the aggressors should be sanctioned. Beyond those few; many more have been made anxious by misrepresentations and distortions and unfounded claims that a Corbyn-led government would be hostile to British Jews. His clear record of standing up for his Jewish constituents has been ignored. The responsibility for this unnecessary pain is with those who have lied about Corbyn’s alleged personal antisemitism and about the culture inside the party. The EHRC report, shamefully, did nothing to reduce that anxiety. JVL and others have published repeated and detailed rebuttals of the most frequently repeated false allegations: these rebuttals have been assiduously ignored by those who felt they had something to gain by promoting the allegations and overlooked by the EHRC.

This whole saga has revealed a distressing hostility to a culture of free debate within the party by the current Leader and General Secretary. The issues raised by concerns about antisemitism and its handling are of fundamental importance. They are not settled by the flawed EHRC report or by leadership dictats. Progress is made through free discussion and learning. This is why a repeated mantra of ‘accept the report and its findings in full’ is dangerous and counterproductive as it would be for any single report on a complex and emotive subject.

We call on the party to reinstate immediately those members suspended for trying to debate these issues and to challenge the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn. It has been an abuse of power for the leadership to put the circumstances of Corbyn’s suspension into the public domain where it can be debated in every location except where it is most pertinent – in Labour Party meetings.

We have previously commented on the claim that there is a singular ‘Jewish community’ that has to be accommodated, a claim that is used to give illicit moral force to partisan political stances. This claim is used to limit Jewish voices to those which support the views of bodies such as the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council or the Jewish Labour Movement. Each of these bodies has a constituency but there are many others. Like all communities, Britain’s Jews have diverse and often deeply conflicting views. Jews are Zionist and anti-Zionist; religious and secular; left-wing and right-wing; kosher and eaters of pork and shellfish. The Labour Party, like all other bodies, should engage with communities within and outside its own borders but such consultation must include as many elements of the diverse communities as possible, not just the convenient ones.

Our demand is that the party leadership lift the suspension of Jeremy and all those who have supported him – but this must never be at the price of suppressing debate. Argument and disagreement can be untidy and sometimes uncomfortable but it is the essential proof of a healthy, vibrant, thinking party.

OwlFancier posted:

It's really weird to suspend him, then unsuspend him, then say he was wrong and act like you didn't want to unsuspend him.

Like pick a decision and stick with it you nerd.

jabby posted:

Have to say watching Starmer's former allies like JLM and Margaret Hodge immediately turn on him, despite him desperately trying to stay out of this, is very satisfying. He did say we should judge him on how he handles antisemitism, after all.

forkboy84 posted:

He was a bad leader and the character traits that made him unsuited to the job at that particular time haven't suddenly changed.

That said, it'd be funny so go for it.

quote:

Among Jews, a strong majority expressed support for the Conservative Party (63 per cent), with about a quarter (26 per cent) saying they voted Labour. This was a similar picture for the 2005-2015 general elections. Andrew Barclay, lecturer at Manchester University, says research carried out by the Institute of Jewish Policy Research shows Jews to be evenly split between the main parties as recently as 2010. But he says Jewish voting patterns have swung substantially from Labour to Conservative since then. A 2017 Survation poll confirms the YouGov data, putting Jewish voting intention for the Tories at 72 per cent and for Labour 17 per cent.

quote:

This was made clear last month at a dinner for the Community Safety Trust, a charity which provides security for Jewish venues. When a fundraising video was screened featuring Miliband, his image was greeted with loud and widely joined-in booing. It was, says Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, ‘an astonishing moment’.

For much of the Jewish community, Miliband was a blank sheet when he was elected Labour leader. This is not altogether surprising. His parents, wrote Miliband in 2012, ‘defined themselves not by their Jewishness but by their politics’ and they brought up their boys outside the community.

On winning the leadership, Miliband appeared to embark on something of a journey. He was, says one former Labour party staffer, ‘forced to get to know the community’. At times, he seemed to enjoy the experience of finding his Jewish self. Dinners, receptions and well-received speeches to Labour Friends of Israel’s annual lunch followed. The journey culminated, last spring, in what appeared a highly personal choice for his first major overseas trip: a visit to Israel.

Miliband returned home to declare himself a ‘friend of Israel’, committed to ensuring ‘Israel’s security and right to protect itself’. That commitment would, however, be put to the test within weeks, as — following the murder of three Israeli teenagers and a wave of rocket attacks on Israel from Hamas--controlled Gaza — Israel launched Operation Protective Edge. Miliband responded by condemning Israel’s actions and suggesting that David Cameron’s ‘silence on the killing of hundreds of innocent Palestinian civilians’ was ‘inexplicable’. It was not so much Miliband’s condemnation that angered many British Jews, but its fiery nature, its lack of nuance — the apparent lack of context or empathy for Israeli civilians who found themselves under sustained attack from Islamist terrorists — and the suspicion that he was using the issue as a political football.

But for many, what was to follow was worse: the Labour leadership’s four-month silence as anti-Semitic attacks doubled at home. ‘Only when things got really bad did they feel they had to say something,’ says one community activist. ‘It felt like it took a very long time.’ This was the hardest thing for British Jews to bear, and it made many of them confused and angry.

Instead of attempting to heal the rift, however, Miliband went on to widen it, whipping his MPs last October in support of a motion backing unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state — proposed by a Labour backbencher who the month before had compared the Israeli army to Isis.

But why? What could his motive be? Some think that Miliband wishes to erase all traces of New Labour, others that he’s simply weak and has let Diane Abbott and the hard left to dictate his foreign policy. Then there are those who believe him to be a cynic, keen to keep in step with the rise of anti-Zionist, anti-Israel sentiment: these cite his so-called ‘35 per cent’ core-vote strategy. Many British Jews, however, have come to believe that this is simply where Ed instinctively is. For this last group, Miliband is part of the left for which the Palestinian struggle is of central importance.

Jews don’t form a homogeneous voting bloc, but they have in the past been a barometer: long left-leaning, they strongly backed Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s before swinging heavily to New Labour in 1997.

This week, a poll for the Jewish -Chronicle found that 69 per cent of Jews intend to vote Tory next month, with Labour trailing on only 22 per cent. Moreover, while 64 per cent said David Cameron had the best attitude towards British Jewry, only 13 per cent picked Miliband as the best supporter of the community. The Jewish Chronicle poll found 73 per cent of Jews said the parties’ approach toward Israel and the Middle East was ‘very’ or ‘quite’ important in determining how they would vote, and by 65 to 10 per cent Cameron led Miliband on having the best attitude.

Community activists believe Miliband’s position on Israel has become such a sticking point that many Jews who traditionally vote Labour can’t bring themselves to do so. One said: ‘They have been forced to choose between their party and their support for Israel in a way they never thought they would be.’ Some have already made that choice: last autumn, Maureen Lipman declared that, for the first time in five decades, she wouldn’t be voting Labour. At the same time, Kate Bearman, a former director of Labour Friends of Israel, resigned her party membership.

Even some Jewish Labour activists believe the party has written the community off electorally. This could turn out to be a costly miscalculation. There are a string of marginals — Finchley and Golders Green, Hendon, Brent Central, Ilford North, Hornsey and Wood Green, Hampstead and Kilburn, Harrow East, Harrow West and Hove — where Miliband has little room for error and Jewish voters could provide the difference between victory and defeat.

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

Apparently my wife's office has a rule that no-one, ever, can take two consecutive weeks or more off as annual leave. How legal is that? I know employers generally hold the cards on when and how leave is taken, would be keen to know what posters who know more about it think

His Divine Shadow posted:

Not in the UK but even by your standards of workers rights, that sounds illegal. How the hell would I live without 4 weeks off in the summer. So I can actually get some work done.

Jose posted:

this is a good twitter thread of centrists showing themselves up but this is truly spectacular

https://twitter.com/jrc1921/status/1328417517283454978?s=20
https://twitter.com/jrc1921/status/1328419898444410884?s=20