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Bobby Deluxe posted:Have you perhaps entirely lost your perspective? There's not much difference, no. There is some difference, but not all in the same direction - it's quite possible Labour would be worse for people on benefits in the same way Blair was worse than Major for example. But even if the Tories would enact worse policies than Labour in all areas, a Starmer govt will be followed by a Tory one after wasting all hope for an alternative. It's a way of extending Tory rule, not opposing it.
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Apr 24, 2022 14:29
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Yeah that's the big thing, if labour gets in I can see the future, if labour keeps loving losing then I am ready for chaos (with ed milliband)
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Apr 24, 2022 14:33
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Apr 24, 2022 14:35
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it's easy for me because the tories will never get in where i am registered, it'll be the SNP with labour as runner up. regardless, i'll vote for a party to the left of them whether it's green or scottish socialist party (i don't think they have candidates where i live though). if i was in a place where it was a close race between labour and tories, then i'd have a decision to make, but i think i would still vote left of labour. but i'd need to look at stuff in a lot of detail before i could really be sure. since labour are loving useless in broadstrokes, it would come down to things like - will they improve the benefits system and raise the amount for people who need it, will they stop being hilarious about asylum seekers, and things like this. not just what they put in their manifesto, i'd want to see some sort of evidence at least a few important things would change. because, and it's probably a bit too online of me, but i have a sort of accelerationist instinct where if it's between 70% dogshit and 100% dogshit, let's have the 100% and hopefully enough people will wake up. if the price is a few more people go into poverty for a period of time, or whatever consequence, maybe it will be worth it in it the end. if the current labour party get in, i think it will just sort of coast as it has been, and then will swing even farther to the right afterwards with barely an obstacle in place to stop it. the issue of tactical voting and it's actual effects over time is something i really should read about, because it comes up every election and i do not have an answer i'm satisfied with.
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Apr 24, 2022 14:35
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Honestly, the idea that the current Labour front bench represents a meaningfully lesser evil seems more of an article of faith than a position with actual evidence. They've ignored for actively sabotaged every opportunity they had to establish any sort of moral opposition to Tory policies, and they're currently trying to present themselves as more aggressively authoritarian than Priti loving Patel.
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Apr 24, 2022 14:40
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crispix posted:is anyone in thread actually going to hold their nose and vote labour next general election? :/ The only scenario where I can see that happening is if I suddenly move between now & the next general & suddenly have a Labour candidate who is one of the few good ones. And I have no plans to move as it stands because that involves money that I don't have. I'm an accelerationist now. Kieth made me one. If we're going to have 2 parties in a race to the bottom I'd rather we have the guys who'll get us their first so we can start rebuilding sooner, rather than the Slower Managed Decline Party who'll drag this poo poo out for a few decades longer.
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Apr 24, 2022 14:50
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I say the fact that only multiple labor front bench members are making terf talking points (and one wants to smack kids) is really a breath of fresh ia.r
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Apr 24, 2022 14:51
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I'd have considered voting Labour as my local MP does some ok stuff but his response to my questions on why Labour MPs were trying to amend the Council of Europe report that stated the UK is hell for LGBT+ people was so pathetic I could never hold my nose for him. Plus, if the left collectively hold their noses and vote for this centrist shite then there's absolutely zero chance of forcing Labour back to the left as it just vindicates all the Wes Streetings of this world.
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Apr 24, 2022 14:55
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Lungboy posted:Plus, if the left collectively hold their noses and vote for this centrist shite then there's absolutely zero chance of forcing Labour back to the left as it just vindicates all the Wes Streetings of this world. Yeah it's gonna happen though, especially as an actual election nears and people start talking about "pragmatism", meaning Labour can just carry on taking the left for granted. I'm surprised to see people are already getting their wallets out in case the wallet inspector arrives, we're years away from an election.
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Apr 24, 2022 14:59
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A quick reminder that it was Labour who kickstarted the genocide of the disabled in the UK. They introduced the Work Capability Assessments, moving the decision making process away from medically trained doctors, and created a horrific privately run system that is designed to belittle, reject and humiliate the claimants at every step of the process, and that even the UN has strongly criticised this process - a first for a Western country. As a disabled person, I see my future no different under Labour than it would be under the Tories (zero hope and limited viability, similar timeframe etc), so gently caress off to anyone who expects me to vote for any of this...
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Apr 24, 2022 15:00
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Guavanaut posted:The big one would be how terrible Yvette "tories are too soft on crime" Cooper would be as Home Secretary. I'm glad someone said this, because that was the first response I had too. Listen to the WDTATW episode where they look for 'The Worst Person In New Labour' (they decide it was Blunkett, btw) but it's just a catalogue of authoritarians, racists, classists, grifters and bigots whose pet policies are often indistinguishable from current Conservative ones. And then remember all the rhetoric about benefits cheats, 'illegals', single mothers, the disabled, the bizarre hostility to children and young people, all the means testing, capability assessments and workfare schemes, the strange boners for military intervention...and then see it all alive and well in the current Labour Party. Becoming politically aware in the late 1990s/early 2000s I never considered myself any sort of leftist, despite my instincts, for ages and ages because I loving hated New Labour and they were apparently the moderate, centre-left, so the actual left wing must be even worse... The state of things at the moment is the end result of 'not as bad as the Tories', triangulation and prioritising power over doing anything meaningful with it. New Labour did a lot of awful poo poo and did nothing to change the UK's Overton Window or the state of our national discourse - they eagerly dragged it further rightward to chase media approval and a phantom voting base. The good stuff that New Labour did either had good results in the short term but based on underlying lovely principles (spending on public services and infrastructure by hosing money at the private sector and marketising virtually everything), amounted to tinkering around the edges or relied entirely on the largesse of government. While the Attlee government set up a socio-economic system that lasted the next 30 years (30 years which mostly saw Conservative governments), much of New Labour's legacy evaporated instantly as soon as the Coalition's economic project started, meaning that 1997-2010 achieved...what? The right-wing ratchet, like any ratchet, is a machine of two parts. The Tories are the toothed wheel and a neolib Labour Party are the pawl - the pawl lifts, the wheel advances another tooth, the pawl drops in place. The direction of rotation is only in one direction and the pawl cannot actually stop it.
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Apr 24, 2022 15:16
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my long-term goal is to have a viable leftist party to vote for and frankly that seems a lot more achievable if Labour crash and burn than if Starmer wins the next election and decides that chasing the Tories further to the right is a winning strategy
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Apr 24, 2022 15:17
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crispix posted:is anyone in thread actually going to hold their nose and vote labour next general election? :/ Nope. Not that they need my vote anyway.
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Apr 24, 2022 15:18
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That's the other thing, we are currently living in the tail end of what happened the last time everyone held their nose and voted for tory lite labour, and I do not have that many more decades left to wait for it to happen again.
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Apr 24, 2022 15:23
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I'm conflicted about voting Labour at the moment. My local MP is Nadia Whittome who as far as I'm aware is a good, socialist egg, but on the other hand it also implicitly supports Keith's Labour and the weak focus group neolib poo poo that it consists of.
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Apr 24, 2022 15:31
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The fact is a Labour government is still going to make things worse for people but in a way that any anger is just going to be defused by people saying at least they aren't the Tories.
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Apr 24, 2022 15:35
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I honestly don't believe the 2022 labour party would be any better than the 2022 tory party. I could hold my nose and vote for Milliband's Labour Party but Starmer's tenure hasn't even managed to convince me they'd be marginally better than the tories - I'm of the opinion they'd be the same or possibly even worse which is impressive given how awful the tories are being. I could maybe be convinced to vote Labour if the candidate/MP was good but I live in a tory seat and lol as if labour's future candidate isn't going to be a useless ghoul interchangeable with the current tory MP.
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Apr 24, 2022 15:43
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A selfish thought I just had as a Londoner was that if someone influential like Corbyn quit Labour and started the London Socialist Party aiming for local domination of a cluster of city constituencies, people might see that as feasible and be more willing to jump aboard thanks to the existing example of the SNP. Idle musing that will never happen anyhow, I feel v hopeless about politics
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Apr 24, 2022 15:46
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Surprise T Rex posted:I'm conflicted about voting Labour at the moment. My local MP is Nadia Whittome who as far as I'm aware is a good, socialist egg, but on the other hand it also implicitly supports Keith's Labour and the weak focus group neolib poo poo that it consists of. Nah Whittome isn't good OP.
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Apr 24, 2022 15:48
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BalloonFish posted:I'm glad someone said this, because that was the first response I had too. quote:It suggests that while some transit centres would be in areas of upheaval and displacement, others would be at key locations on the borders of Europe or near transport hubs. That's worse than Patel's plan. Patel's plan loving sucks and will doubtlessly end up in Rwandan prison guards robbing everyone sent there, but that's like they put together a dream team of Thomas Bambridge, Thomas Thistlewood, and Pol Pot on how to make it even worse. "So they come here from a war zone, and we put them in a camp, but they have to pay for their stay, only they can't, so we put them into debt bondage, and get this, the camp is also back in a war zone. This sends a powerful message of 'gently caress you'."  This is what happens when Blairist thunk tanks are allowed to call themselves 'left wing'.
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Apr 24, 2022 15:52
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BalloonFish posted:I'm glad someone said this, because that was the first response I had too. Which episode was that?
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Apr 24, 2022 16:12
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Dabir posted:Which episode was that? Episode 129, from 01/10/2020 - Titled "Then there gathered the spirits of the dead, brides and unwed youths, old men worn out by labour." Guavanaut posted:Also they kinda buried the lede in Blunkett's not-Rwanda-but plan: I remember the same website which hosted the Daily Mail-O-Matic headline generator used to have the 'Blunk-e-tron' ('producing authoritarian rhetoric with a single click', iirc). It consisted of [target demographic] + [draconian punishment] + [second awful idea]. So you had gems like: "Give paroled prisoners an on-the-spot fine, and then fit them with electronic tags." "Arrest children, and then detain them indefinitely under the Terrorism Act" and one of the finishing statements, which seemed to be weighted to show up more often than not was "...and charge them for it". Which really seemed to be at the heart of so much that came out of New Labour home offices - not only doing awful thing to people for the worst reasons, but making them pay for the privilege. "Fit Muslims with electronic tags, and then send them to an offshore processing centre, and charge them for it" BalloonFish fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 16:16
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David Blunkett is absolutely a piece of poo poo but did he actually get to nationalise the people trafficking of victims of conflict into concentration camps? If we're counting genocide fantasies then patel still tops him with the "resettle them in the bowels of Vesuvius" idea. E; despite the whataboutery I'd only vote labour here if it's one of the people that have stuck it out to make Duffields life as unpleasant as possible - there's no reason for me to believe that a seat that has been swung through local activism efforts is going to tip a ge and I'm totally uncomfortable signing off on paying an unemployable slacker 70k to be a professional terf Spangly A fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 16:16
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If you guys don’t want to vote Labour, then perhaps you’ll be tempted by… a new centrist party?! https://twitter.com/aaronbastani/status/1518248933847359488
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Apr 24, 2022 16:33
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New labour policy: Well, if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand, I've seen your face before my friend, but I don't know if you know who I am.
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Apr 24, 2022 16:38
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Comrade Fakename posted:If you guys don’t want to vote Labour, then perhaps you’ll be tempted by… a new centrist party?! Grrr...the sheer gall of anyone from the soft left/centre deciding their the home of 'hopeful politics' after what they've done over the past six years in just incredible. Let alone anyone who looks at Macron's France and think "hmm, yes, that's a political project that's got real legs...let's emulate that!".
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Apr 24, 2022 16:39
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Emmanulate Macron
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Apr 24, 2022 16:50
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Comrade Fakename posted:If you guys don’t want to vote Labour, then perhaps you’ll be tempted by… a new centrist party?! so... do they think Labour is too left wing? I'm confused why you'd try for a new centrist party in this political environment? Both major parties are trying to weave together neo-liberal centrism with garnishes of populism.
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Apr 24, 2022 16:52
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Once you find the perfect middle ground in the middle of all politics then everyone will vote for you, this is how hopeful politics works.
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Apr 24, 2022 16:54
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Voting Labour as long as they’re even marginally less shite than the Tories is a complete validation of the tactics of triangulation and guarantees they’ll stay as far to the right as possible
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Apr 24, 2022 16:56
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I think they all fancy themselves to be the most amazing politician and think they can do incredibly well if only they could just talk to everyone. So the problem with labour is that he isn't in charge of it, and the problem with starmer is obviously that he personally is just not cool enough, we need to find someone who is cool, like tonty blair.
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Apr 24, 2022 16:57
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OwlFancier posted:I think they all fancy themselves to be the most amazing politician and think they can do incredibly well if only they could just talk to everyone. Imagine looking at any British PMs ever and thinking "yeah, that's what cool is"
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Apr 24, 2022 17:02
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I mean to the kind of utterly warped mind that ends up as a hanger on to high officials that probably is what cool is.
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Apr 24, 2022 17:05
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Guavanaut posted:Once you find the perfect middle ground in the middle of all politics then everyone will vote for you, this is how hopeful politics works. Political Curling
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Apr 24, 2022 17:11
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The only cool PM was Bonar Law but that's 100% just the name
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Apr 24, 2022 17:12
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It goes powdered wig dorks, cravat dorks, bowtie dorks, beard guy looks kinda cool maybe, mustache pervs, business suit nonces, Boris Johnson.
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Apr 24, 2022 17:13
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crispix posted:is anyone in thread actually going to hold their nose and vote labour next general election? :/ Nope. Spoilt ballot, most likely.
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Apr 24, 2022 17:17
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Guavanaut posted:It goes powdered wig dorks, cravat dorks, bowtie dorks, beard guy looks kinda cool maybe, mustache pervs, business suit nonces, Boris Johnson. So we've entered the binbag era
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Apr 24, 2022 17:18
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To me it seems obvious that the system has become so corrupted that change cannot come from within. But I also cannot conceive of the British doing a revolution, or, more importantly, a majority of us actually wanting it enough. If the Turkeys/Face-Owners eagerly vote for Christmas/Leopards, who am I to say I know better?
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Apr 24, 2022 17:25
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Umbra Dubium posted:To me it seems obvious that the system has become so corrupted that change cannot come from within. As a longtime Face-Owner I somewhat support Christmas
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Apr 24, 2022 17:28
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