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Labour Leader: Keir Starmer V

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I see Labour have decided to have a trans rights row at the conference.. *bangs head against wall*

Emily Thornberry: "I think we need to have a little more tolerance and a little less shouting at each other, quite frankly. I am personally really sad that a great party like ours is having this kind of level of debate. It is just people trying to live their lives and we should have a bit of understanding."

Yes please.
 
Le Baron said:
All that was newly-issued spending. Granted it could and should, as you say, have been spent elsewhere in the public sphere, but I'm just making the moot point that not one single penny of it came from any tax you or anyone else paid. This is precisely why there is that panic talk about 'rising debt'.... (or 'ballooning deficits) itself a mirage of government accounting terminology.
All central government spending is spent into existence. Central taxation is the destruction of (part of) that, not recycled. People may thing this is a petty point, but it's crucial.
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I think the crucial point is that the selection process for who got the freshly minted £billions was whether or not the firm was owned by Mat Hancock's landlord mate or Mat Hancock's sister.
 
paulfromcamden said:
I think the crucial point is that the selection process for who got the freshly minted £billions was whether or not the firm was owned by Mat Hancock's landlord mate or Mat Hancock's sister.
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Yes, that is a major issue to contend with. An utter failure of the budgetary and public accounts committees. The government made use of 'emergency pandemic powers' to do a lot of overriding.
 
Tony L said:
No surprise. There are few things around that are less democratic than the trade union movement. Irrelevant 20th century dinosaurs.
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Clive Lewis suggests that the leadership isn't interested in PR either:

https://twitter.com/novaramedia/status/1442527216533917700

Sounds right. Starmer could have thrown his weight behind this and tried to persuade the unions but chose not to.

To be fair, Corbyn didn't pay much attention to PR either but that was for different reasons (rightly or wrongly, I think he saw it as an unnecessary distraction).
 
Clive Lewis often talks sense, and he’s certainly doing so there.

I suspect Corbyn was far more ‘20th century Labour’, just rooted in the past.
 
So agree, unions became irrelevant 30+ years ago, full of intellectual lightweights who fancy themselves as Karl Marx. I was involved with the swp back when student and their selfish obsession with principle over practicality drove me out.
I remember a senior activist saying they couldn’t support the anti hunt lobby as the sabs didn’t believe in violent overthrow of the state. Doh!
 
droodzilla said:
Starmer could have thrown his weight behind this and tried to persuade the unions but chose not to.

To be fair, Corbyn didn't pay much attention to PR either but that was for different reasons (rightly or wrongly, I think he saw it as an unnecessary distraction).
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Perhaps they are both right on this, I hate FPTP but straight PR is no answer either.
 
Tony L said:
In other news: Comrade John Bercow (BBC).
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Whatever the stance he takes (and he's talking to that rat Freedland) there's no denying his trajectory has been astonishing. I went from waving my fist at the telly when he was first elected and made that Thatcher eulogy, to wondering what had happened to him in the years up to being elected speaker. To the point that I thought I'd confused him with someone else (Alan Duncan!). He was so utterly right-wing I would never have believed he'd end up where he is.

Clearly not everyone ends up 'more conservative' as they age.
 
SteveS1 said:
Perhaps they are both right on this, I hate FPTP but straight PR is no answer either.
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There's clearly something right and fair in the idea that, in a democracy, every vote ought to have the same value (in some sense). That's why referendums carry such moral force. I accept that a completely pure version of PR might also have problems but I expect they can be fixed or mitigated (don't ask me to do it though).
 
Tony L said:
Clive Lewis often talks sense, and he’s certainly doing so there.

I suspect Corbyn was far more ‘20th century Labour’, just rooted in the past.
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Whatever Corbyn thought about the issue, he would have made the party more democratic had he held on for longer, and I suspect the pressure from members for PR would have become irresistible. Starmer's attack on internal party democracy this week has closed down that possibility for the foreseeable future.
 
Frizzy said:
I remember a senior activist saying they couldn’t support the anti hunt lobby as the sabs didn’t believe in violent overthrow of the state. Doh!
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Just says it all tbh.

Complete aside but as I trundle through middle age I find my tolerance for needless cruelty to intelligent sentient mammals has dwindled to zero. I've been a supporter of the League Against Cruel Sports for a while and recently signed up as a supporter of HSA. I realise there are some 'interesting' characters involved in sabbing but if it means one less terrified fox being torn limb from limb I'll gladly carry on sending them my money.
 
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