Labour is still set to sweep into power with an overwhelming majority with support from most of the media and little scrutiny. Their manifesto pledges now confirmed - which will they stick to I wonder? Probably only the one about corporation tax.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-69111362
<NHS: "Cut NHS waiting times with 40,000 more appointments each week, during evenings and weekends, paid for by cracking down on tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes"
<Immigration: "Launch a new Border Security Command with hundreds of new specialist investigators and use counter-terror powers to smash criminal boat gangs"
<Tax: "We will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT" and "Labour will cap corporation tax at the current level of 25%, the lowest in the G7, for the entire Parliament"
<Energy: "Set up Great British Energy, a publicly-owned clean power company… paid for by a windfall tax on oil and gas giants"
<Antisocial behaviour: "Crack down on antisocial behaviour, with more neighbourhood police paid for by ending wasteful contracts, tough new penalties for offenders, and a new network of youth hubs"
<Education: "Recruit 6,500 new teachers in key subjects… paid for by ending tax breaks for private schools."
<Voting age: "We will increase the engagement of young people in our vibrant democracy, by giving 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in all elections"
<Parents: "We will support families with children by introducing free breakfast clubs in every primary school"
<House of Lords: "Legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords… Labour will also introduce a mandatory retirement age [from the House of Lords, set at 80]">>597633I know those kinds of people though, people who previously supported Corbyn but let themselves get brow beaten into supporting Starmer instead, I used to get a lot of angry pushback from them when I doubted Starmer would keep his "Corbyn but electable" image up.
Frankly, I'm laughing and crying at the same time over the situation.
>>597630I honestly couldn't care less about this election. Point to any country in the world in or just out of an election and i probably know more about it than in the country i inhabit. It's just so dull. formless and changeless.
Anyone else feel the same?
>>597637And what would be the point anyway? A single term isn't long enough to do shit, presuming he'd see out a whole term if he'd openly tricked the electorate, Johnson didn't manage it and Starmer is far less liked than him.
No, the only people Keir is going to lie to just to get their vote and then betray in favour of his real values are the Labour voters and members who are currently hoping this was all a double bluff and that he will come through for lefties when elected as PM.
>>597645Basically after Corbyn was ousted by the party insiders, there was another leadership election held to the membership, Starmer was one of the people who was running as a 'continuation candidate' basically saying he would continue Corbyn's work - once he was in charge of the party he helped the staffers purge all left wing and Corbynite elements in the party, using the 'antisemitism' hoax to do so, he enacted a rightward turn in terms of policy and presumably courted the media owners and oligarchs, now he is being sworn in by the media as the sensible pragmatic pro-business candidate. Oh and he also has a shady past as the head of prosecutions and is highly suspected to be an intelligence asset or at least working with UK and US spooks.
>>597646Yeah it's crazy how they get to have their snap election before us, ours is on US independence day though for extra humiliation.
>>597645He's gonna do neoliberalism exactly like Blair and his minion Brown did 1997-2010. The main difference is that there have been fifteen years of more neoliberalism managed by the tories since then - the libdems for the first five years of that were just their useful idiots and they deserved their subsequent annihilation - coinciding first with the great financial crisis post 2008, then with all the Brexit fiasco - all those years of theatre and madness to get exactly at the point they were before - and finally the Corona Pandemonium, when BoJo and his goons put in plain sight how psychopathic and at the same time incompetent they were. All in all, the last years have completely destroyed any credibility the Bong system had before that, most people are poorer and worse off than before, the nhs is basically dead, infrastructures suck beyond belief and maybe the only silver lining is that there won't be a far right party in power for the next five years at least. But a centre-right or at best centrist party at that. The left has been completely purged from Labour, and even if the promised landslide materialises and a good number of left-leaning MPs are elected, they will be watered down by the massive majority of "Starmerites".
>>597647>Yeah it's crazy how they get to have their snap election before us, ours is on US independence day though for extra humiliation.Cor blimey! I didn't even notice the 4th of July symbolism… Aside from the fact of vooting on a Thursday instead of a weekend as basically 99% of the world, civilised and uncivilised…
+
KEK at that picture
+
To be fair to the Beeb, Would I Lie To You is still an entertaining piece of telly. Special mention for The Chase on ITV, it's my favourite quiz game, Bradley Walsh is one of my favourite hosts and a brilliant comedian and all the Chasers are amazing characters.
>>597643they'll do whatever they want and it will get spicy - but the style of "turning all NHS hospitals into foundation hospitals in preparation for full privatization, with the NHS name kept for the resulting single-payer insurance scheme" , not in the style of "nationalizing electricity generation"
>>597645imagine if blair stayed in government in 2024 on the same trajectory (i.e. from a sort of neoliberal-but-liberal-ish reformist in 1997, to an openly racist warmonging authoritarian creep in 2005) as when he was in government, and if the blood price he paid for this was to lose all of his charm and gain the voice of a substitute teacher you hate. he is worse than blair, and blair was for a long time the nadir of "center-left" politics anywhere save perhaps Germany. it's beyond farce. the real story is that nobody is enthusiastic about either candidate, but the press will deliver Starmer a bigger win than Blair by only emphasizing negative stories about the Conservatives while ignoring Labour's problems, open lies, etc, etc.
even if you listen to Morgan McSweeney, who was "at war with blairites", his basic reasons are that they were still too cosmopolitan, too liberal, and that they wanted a new center party instead of trying to "save" labour from Corbyn. this objection is presented as moral (how dare you try to "just have less poor voters" in your electoral coalition!?) but it is bascally strategic: starmer/mcsweeney thinks he can keep poor voters by being racist, blair thinks they should just make a new middle class party.
frankly, i have more sympathy for blair here - watching Le Blairites En Marche! would be less tedious than watching these freaks abuse the party's corpse, watching them "openly" abandon the working class might vacate space for nice little impotent regional niche parties, while this covert shit is just depressing… plus, if this government doesn't kill Labour entirely, the party still has the baggage of being capital's B-team… Roll the dice on a new one, maybe it could be the A-team, who knows?>>597652why in all that is counted in GDP figures? would our benevolent wealth creation focused labour wealth creation regime crack down on the wealth creators who provide housing?
>>597658tory boys are going to get sent to the shadow realm if this keeps up.
reform got the far right vote, labour got everyone elses vote, lots of people just not voting at all
imagine the weirdos who are still voting tory
>>597657>The monarchy does serve one very useful function: it reminds us that politics is not rational. In Britain, we are ruled by the descendants of an illiterate Viking warlord who came to this island one thousand years ago to massacre its people. When William I had his coronation at Westminster Abbey in 1066, his soldiers mistook the acclamation for a riot, and immediately set about burning and looting half the city. We can’t delude ourselves that the state exists for our benefit; it exists to serve a cabal of weird, leathery perverts, and so do we. We know that sovereignty is made of lizards and black magic. (Charles knows this too, by the way; he wrote an entire book about it. The only difference is that he likes Jung and Guénon and thinks this is all actually good.) The royals might not actually govern our lives any more—that role has been passed on to the international bond markets, just like everywhere else—but they let us see power as it really is: arbitrary, meaningless, and absurd. They remind us that all our dry fiddling around with interest rates sits at the end of a very long chain, stretching back to the first man who smashed another man’s head in with a rock.
>It’s the people in republics who live in a fantasy-world. You’re still acting out some eighteenth-century vision of democracy. You still imagine that you’re governed by consent, and not simply ruled. You still pretend—how quaint—to be modern.https://samkriss.substack.com/p/in-englands-dreaming >>597652Britain is a landlord country in many ways due to its provincial history. Common law was obviously instituted here as man's natural rights, where "a man's house is his castle" and so on.
But when you look at residential properties they are all semi-detached red brick monstrosities that look like the british version of soviet planning. Interspersed with these 350k beauties are council flats owned by massive estate agencies sponsored by the government. The council flats are so badly built that a recent news story came out about a young boy dying from black mold in the walls.
Housing is one of the main industries here but its more akin to slumlording that digs into people's pockets by unpayable mortgages.
On landlords specifically, thatcher totally deregulated all relations between tenants and owners, so whatever is included and precluded in the contract is abided by.
>>597663I like that
Should also boted that all of the american presidents are cousins and literal nobility that diguise their elitism in a secular liberal state.
>>597678guardian readers. this is a top comment
>Personally l would rather have a trustworthy boring politician like Keir Starmer any day of the week rather than the last five utterly disastrous prime ministers of this country.>Each one of them brought us a disaster, Mr Starmer and his manifesto might be safe and sober without many risks but the vast majority of this country will welcome that after the relentless catastrophic Tory shitshows and psychodrama's of the last 14 years>trustworthy lmao
>>597680It has a point, tho: at this point Labour is just profiting off the literal shitshow the various tory governments have been. And despite that, you would expect Labour numbers in the polls being higher… That said, the electoral system should still give them a very large majority, possibly the largest or one of the largest in Bong history and at the same time the tories will be routed like never before, to such a degree they would take at least a decade to just rebuild. If Starmer was something slightly better than a damp rag, Labour could easily have gotten like 70 or 75% of all seats, but at this point he's winning by default thanks to the conservatives being unhinged lunatics and not even pretending anymore, so much that even a lot of their voter won't just turn up this time.
But in the end, who gives a flippin' fuck about Guardian readers, mate… As "boring" as they say KS is…
>Rather than cherrypick policies and pledges, which is the normal business of political commentary, Farnsworth does big-data analysis. He feeds an entire manifesto into a computer, and codes and categorises terms, phrases, patterns: the meanings and sentiments, how often they appear and the contexts in which they’re used. Drawing on the decades-long research of political scientists at the award-winning Manifesto Project, based in Berlin, he gauges where the language is located on the political spectrum: “nationalisation” is more leftwing, say, while “national way of life” is more rightwing.
>Analysing Labour and Conservative manifestos going back to 1945, he can illustrate how party ideologies have changed over decades, showing when they are fairly close together – Theresa May’s platform of 2017 was, he judges, “easily the most leftwing Tory offering of modern times” – and also when they are miles apart. Over the past few days, he has been subjecting the latest manifestos to this statistical analysis, shared exclusively with the Guardian. Many of his findings are strikingly different to what you’ll hear and read from Westminster.
>In the pantheon of Labour leaders, Starmer has made clear who he is not: Jeremy Corbyn, who represents “the dead end of gesture politics”. His great inspiration, he has said, is Harold Wilson.
>Farnsworth compared Starmer’s manifesto with Corbyn’s in 2017 and 2019, Wilson’s in 1964 and Clement Attlee’s of 1945. His first finding is that Starmer’s manifesto, in language and values, is way out of line with Labour tradition. Whether on state schools or universities, progressive taxation or pensioners, Corbyn was the heir to Wilson and Attlee. Where Corbyn’s manifestos are unusual in Labour history is in their emphasis on inequality – which is attacked with more frequency and force than in those of other Labour leaders. But Starmer’s manifesto is the complete opposite: it mentions the word inequality only once.
>On Farnsworth’s analysis, Starmer’s platform in 2024 is closer to the Tory Ted Heath’s in 1974 than it is to almost any Labour manifesto. Perhaps that should come as no surprise, given that Starmer’s team mentions poverty only 14 times in 130-odd pages, while “business”, by my count, gets about 60 mentions. So what, you may say: get the Tories out first, and then trust Labour to do the right thing. But if you want a well-funded NHS and a decent social security net, you need a big party to argue for them.
heh
>>1883377
How did a colonizing power become economically cucked by its own former colony?
>From assets to businesses, the high street to the internet, US investors have a stranglehold on Britain’s economy.
<Nowhere has America asserted its economic dominance more strongly than in Britain, where around two million people now work for US companies. Tens of billions of dollars per year are transferred across the Atlantic in the form of dividends paid on the proceeds of British work, conducted on behalf of American owners. A jaunty little map on the Office for National Statistics website gives the good news that our goods exports to America actually outweigh our imports by a few billion. Go, Global Britain! But a less accessible chart, found in the deeper reaches of the website of the American tax authority, the IRS, tells a different story: in 2020 (the latest year on record) the revenue recorded by American companies in the UK was over $707bn, more than ten times the amount made in the entire continent of Africa. In 2019, large US corporations made an (aggregated) profit of £2,500 from every household in the UK.
>The X account of Adam Wood, Reform candidate for Rawmarsh and Conisborough, reveals a worldview that many in Reform denounce, socialism, and regularly retweets The Communist Party of Great Britain Marxist Leninist.<Wood’s tweets show a mixture of anti-immigration politics and social conservatism and anti-capitalism..
https://bylinetimes.com/2024/06/10/reform-party-2024-general-election/Reform have got a rug merchant insider.
>>597714Been seeing some people entertain that the LDs will be replacing them as the official opposition lmao
We'll probably have Reform bitching about the absolute meme tier democracy in the UK for half a decade which is one good thing that will come out of this since Farage is basically on the TV 24/7. Tories and Reform could get less seats than the LDs with twice or almost three times the vote share
>>597720It could very well be. Maybe a warning shot, or maybe they'll personalize it against Keith when the time comes for him to stand aside and let Streeting or Reeves take over.
Though it'd be an unexpected choice for the latter: after all, the press have the exact same hierarchy of racism as Labour does.
>>597722>LargeI hope this guy has giant hands.
Fucking joke country jfc.
>>597725>let millions of people in>potatoes don't get any bigger>portions of chips get smallerThis post has been fact checked by True Brexit Geezers
Simple as ✅
Matt Goodwin (Mr. Eaty-Book from 2017) has done a poll for GB News (all his polls are for GB News or "Sex Matters"…) showing Reform on 24% to the Conservatives 15% and Labour's 35%.
Now, you can say that's an outlier, you can say it reflects a reform surge already picked up tentatively by YouGov, or, if you're conspiracy inclined like me, you might start wondering if Reform replacing the Tories is the whole idea here… such a poll (from such a dubious source, but who's counting?) would be tremendously useful to reform in proving that they're not a wasted vote and as such, making them not a wasted vote by moving enough voters over to them…
It's curious, isn't it, that it's the GB News aligned right-wing crank on the Waterstones diet who finds Reform, the political wing of GB News, is surging and not - say - Survation or Ipsos. That's all.
>>597733Theres no infighting, really
Reform is just supposed to be the anti-migrant tories. No new economic or cultural ideas.
In fact, one of the contributors for the "lotus eaters" (partisan right wing organisation) was kicked out of partnership with reform for being too problematic.
But look at biden in the US for example. One of his pedges is to finish the border wall. Immigration is just a placeholder for populist support yet it never gets sorted. Same thing with economic decline.
Believe me, in 5 years, starmer will still be complaining about what the tories did to the NHS.
i hate democracy…
>>597734But why fuck around with the system they have stitched up so much? They've got their Tories and they've got their Labour, so what's the benefit? It's not like bongs are rioting demanding change, they're just moaning a bit more than usual and doing this draws attention to FPTP. If they toned down all this nonsense they could have their comfy Thousand Year Starmerreich, but instead they're pivoting to anti-immigration, despite loving immigrants and it being in their self interest to get more immigrants? What's the end game here exactly. This sort of nonsensical plot makes me think they're infighting and even though it looks entirely rigged some bourgs are actually having it out.
Basically what I'm saying is yes it's obviously rigged, but the people doing the rigging are fighting
>>597740Well i personally never said the tories were far-right
I already said how the far-right has been purposefully excluded from their constituency
>>597738Yeah but they're unpopular because the media won't stop bitching and whining non-stop. Like really the D-Day scandal? Boris put a wreathe upside down because he was shitfaced and the BBC ran cover for him playing old footage and nobody ever heard about it again, and I'm supposed to be shitting and farting about someone leaving early kek. They're brazenly picking winners and losers. Also suddenly the deluge of articles about how the Tories are the worst government in centuries, everybody hates their immigration policy etc. I mean it's true but the media has a tendency to completely ignore reality most of the time when it's inconvenient for them. They have carte blanche to dictate reality in the UK and instead they're directing all eyes on how shit FPTP is, which is ultimately what maintains their power.
They've obviously not suddenly become liberal democracy enjoyers, so what's the purpose of it all?
>>597742The purpose is the liberal-left bias in the media obviously
I can see the walls close in even on "socialist" platforms like joepolitics or novara media that give a symbolic favour over to starmer in a machiavellian bid against their enemies.
I agree its all hypocritical, but thats all it is. Theres no greater plan except to keep labour as majority
>>597743Cameron was much harsher on immigration than Boris, Sunak, Braverman and Patel.
I think it's also hard to predict what will happen with the Tories until after the election when we know who still has a seat. That poll from today predicted Sunak and a third of his cabinet losing their seats for instance.
>>597750> If I had studied something useful like maths or chemistry maybe my prospects would be better and my life wouldn't be so shit.Don't be silly anon, we're British.
You were born poor you will die poor.
Your life will be shit no matter what you do.
>>597751I still buy the FT. But agree.
>>597756Lol I did wonder who you are meant to be 'servicing' in the 'service industry'. Where the money is supposed to come from for said services.
Sucks that i don't have any fam that can die and give me a house, I'll probably just move or kill myself, hope you anons have better luck.
>>597711It's kind of a "bird of a feather flock together" thing because neocons came out of the liberal tradition in international relations. Neocons are hawkish liberal interventionists. They favor the use of military force to promote democracy which they also believe will mitigate threats. Democracy promotion is as fundamental as hawkishness is for the label.
This gets all muddled and the term is mostly used as a pejorative but in the U.S. a lot of them trace their influence back to Woodrow Wilson. In the U.K., Douglas Murray is pretty emblematic of it I think.
>>597766The future of this country is syndicalism. Let me explain.
Electoral politics, due to FPTP, the oligarchic nature of the parties, demographic distribution, and the decline of the industrial proletariat is a dead end. It can yield mild social democratic reforms but we are not seeing something Attleeian again.
Along with this, fundamentally most working class institutions are dead. They didn't die of natural causes, they were deliberately killed by Margaret Thatcher and were denied resuscitation by Blair. The only way to restore the link between the cultural middle class (who hold progressive, reformist views) and the working masses is to rebuild the organs of the working masses.
As such the primary focus of the left should be unionisation; either through building up memberships of existing unions and rising through the ranks to direct them towards useful efforts (not just political socialism but actually bothering to help precariat in industries they exist in), politicising the apological associations (BMA, RCN), supporting the new Independent Unions (IWGB, UVW), creating unions in specific places where it is required (GWU, UPHD), and supporting the nascent tenant union movement. This should be done in any and every industry possible, from construction to coffee shops, from steelworks to saunas. We also need to start rebuilding the spatial infrastructure of trade unions. People dont retain jobs in the same industry nowadays, let alone at the same workplace. The old Trade Union Councils should be revived as geographical expressions not just of existing unions in an area, but bodies that can help elements be organised within those spaces. This also applies to cultural communities, the Indian Workers' Association is a great example. Go to the Pakistanis in Urdu, go to the Arabs in Arabic, go to the Somalis in Somali,go to the Poles in Polish.
This needs not just to be a case of getting union members and striking, but rebuilding working class culture. May Day is a national holiday in most parts of the world, the british needs to learn this and highlight it to those who celebrate it. We need paid days off with no reduction in holiday on the 1st of May written into contracts, We need to highlight Peterloo, Tolpuddle, Orgreave, Durham as cultural events the trade union busses people to.
If the expansions of unions gives them enough clout to re-establish control over the Labour Party that is a huge W, if they dont and Labour continues to ostracise them then we form a syndicalist party whose policy and positions are directly dictated to it by the trade unions.
I want to write a programme at some point, but in short we need to adopt a policy of industrial, spatial, and cultural unionism that is able to expand beyond the previous ideals of Fordism (Fordist unionisation has its place, Amazon shows that) and truly capture both the precarious and service driven elements of our economy. Only through mass unionisation can we bridge the gaps between generations, and between the downwardly mobile middle class and the suburban working class.
I want criticism, i need to refine this.
>>597773Everyone already agrees we need to rebuild the unions, that is something everyone from reformist Corbynites to Marxists Leninists agrees. The unions themselves aren't going to form a party that is anything more than a party demanding some reforms, though, even if they manage to reestablish control over the Labour Party or form a new party. A new major reformist party can be helpful (eg: if Enough is Enough formed a political party back during 2022 socialism would be a much more important political power at the moment) however it's not going to lead us to socialism.
What we need is to work with the existing socialist parties and organisations and build unity. There's a lot of various groups with a membership of about 1,000 or so, if these groups can unite (or at least form some sort of common electoral front) we could actually start to build a serious organisation at an electoral level capable of at least getting a decent vote share for a few seats. Then we need to start building this organisation into a mass political party, a project which is probably going to take decades. This project cannot realistically start, however, until the existing socialist groups can rally around some form of unity. At the moment each group of 1,000 members is trying to build the mass organisation themselves, rather than working together, and therefore don't actually manage to build a mass organisation.
>>597774I don't disagree, been an electoral reform nerd for a while, my point is that even following that recapturing the Labour Party as an organised body of labour would be beneficial. I agree that a third party strategy is not really useful atm, but a syndicalist party wouldnt have to be an independent element. I am very much modelling it on the Spanish example.
>>597775I mean the CPB and Trotskyists barely try, they nominally support unions but even when put in the leg work their miniscule size doesn't impact much.
And unionism has achieved great results to move us towards socialism, as a result of the unions during the 1910s-1950s the actual gains for the working masses were demonstrable. Central direction by a party is pointless, there is no movement worth its salt that could command the loyalty of the working class, that can only be done through demonstration of value to them ass an organised group: unions achieving gains with them, by them, and through them.
>>597778>Everyone already agrees we need to rebuild the unions, that is something everyone from reformist Corbynites to Marxists Leninists agrees.The issue is that they don't have a plan for this, by idea is to make one.
>What we need is to work with the existing socialist parties and organisations and build unity….Tbh this strategy has been tried, Stop the War & RESPECT was it in the 00s, People's Assembly & TUSC in the 10s, now its the Palestine movement & Collective. We need to organise the working class first, not have Trot parties form a common electoral front.
It is also worth mentioning something I heard Mick Lynch say: a majority of TUC Unions aren't affiliated to the Labour Party anymore, its only about 11/40.
>>597780My galaxy brain fantasy copium is the LDs taking centre stage in killing FPTP and dropping their stupid manifestos that will never be implemented, and trying to hoover up literally everyone else in an alliance of convenience under a temporary electoral name. However this would require someone to take initiative and making something happen, and nothing ever happens.
Then again this could occur naturally due to LDs making a comeback and Farage seething for half a decade about only getting a few seats (if he's lucky).
>>597775If the CPB have been doing it, the reason it has failed is not for want of a party. I would go so far as to venture that it's because of a party: I'm a communist and even I think the label is a byword for LARPy borderline-wrecking that nobody who values their reputation would go anywhere near.
>>597773I have nothing deep to add at this moment, but your thinking is very much in line with my own. The only point of difference would be on the attitude to parties: I think Labour is hopeless (and should be scorned) and that engagement with electoralism, if at all, should only happen in local authority elections for the foreseeable future. This wouldn't be true under Corbyn, I'm not some bloody minded anti-socdem, but present conditions, and conditions for most of recent history have made Labour a money pit for unions with almost nothing to show for it. Break with Labour and you run into all the problems that come with running a micro party at the national - if the former first minister of Scotland can't make a good job of it with his institutional contacts, coming from outside is a hell of an ask. Remember it's £500 a head or something to run a no hoper election campaign - that's not nothing! Better to start small, if at all, when working with existing institutions. Get an MP off the back of your helpful councillors. (And in the meantime, figure out how to make an MP useful - one can't get much done legislatively and speeches are usually just talk - and find a way to make sure their interests remain aligned with the people who put them in office - not with the bastards they now share an office with!)
>>597784the far right in your country are mad at the tories because post brexit they raised immigration rates by 10000000000 percent
it seems tories are being torn to shreds, normies are voting labour, the far right are voting reform, and no one is voting conservative
>>597780>as a result of the unions during the 1910s-1950s the actual gains for the working masses were demonstrableThis didn't bring us any closer to socialism. This is why unionism is a dead end; it will just bring concessions for the working class and not a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It's just as bad as any other useless form of oranising.
>>597790Police give me the ick, can I cancel them? I'd say about 50% of pigs are rapists or have the capacity to be rapists.
>>597793concessions to the working class is not a
useless form of organizing: it has a use in the form of providing those concessions. even when those concessions are incredibly banal shit like adding slight support to an unfair dismissal hearing, they're a marginal improvement over nothing. a lemonade stand may not bring a DOTP, but you know what it does? it provides refreshing lemonade.
micro-parties, on the other hand, serve only to LARP. to draw up a program for a dictatorship of the proletariat that they will never run.
if you're lucky. more often it's cringe shit about why the sewell convention means communists must give (un)critical support for the UK govt's TERF culture waring with the scottish govt. that's not a union, that's not even lemonade, that's an embarassment.
"the purpose of a system is what it does" should be the maxim of every thinking communist, and the record of dismal failure by would-be vanguard parties should be judged by said maxim. when you see a pile of corpses beneath a high tower, do you don your feathery wings and jump like all the others in the hopes that
you'll be the one to finally fly like the birds, or do you go back to the drawing board for a fundamental rethink? (why not try selling bikes for a while, or being brazillian?)
>>597811Yeah exactly
If anyone is coming to britain, it should be loyalists
>>597820Both think there is something wrong with the UK (Russian propaganda), and both wanted to leave the EU (Russian scheme, right out the Russian playbook)
I think you might be on to something
>>597817>do you think the rugmen know about leftypol?I certainly wouldn't be surprised to find out one of them was posting here for a while.
>>597818Well they shoulda thought about that before spending their pennies on caravans shouldn't they!
>>597832I can see it going two ways:
1. Like the Democratic Party of Japan (not the LDP, the DPJ in 2009), where they get one term despite a big win and then totally collapse. (sadly, probably in part as a result of a massive earthquake that levels London.)
2. Like Blair, where they get say 10-13 years out of it, then lose.
I've upgraded my assessment of how well they'll do in power, slightly, which opens up a chance for #2, because I've noticed that if they find a way to do PFI again (ONS accounting changes were supposed to put an end to that scam…) then they can (very expensively) hide debt off balance sheet, which would mean that although you'd be paying ten times more than you have to and most of the investment would go to porky, you
could improve things minutely, you
would increase investment, etc… so you might get outcomes better than "literally nothing".
>>597846His power is derived from the FPTP system and gives him his ability to sabotage the Tories from the right by potentially denying them seats if they don't pander to him, but FPTP also stops him from grabbing actual power, which also works in his favour because…
>>597847Getting the Tories to carry out his wishes also keeps his hands clean, because he can just blame the Tories when the policies don't turn the UK into the land of milk and honey
>>597853Some of our national bourgeoisie are hopeless romantics, it could be actual interest in turning the country around even if it's built on dubious logic. Lots of them practically sabotaged themselves with Brexit for reasons that don't really make sense.
Britain is a bit of an echo chamber which could explain some of it, the politicians, businessmen, glowies and media barons and journos all know each other in some way, pretty much all of politics revolves around a Westminster/Establishment circlejerk. None of them like rocking the boat, and they don't really like thinking outside of the box to solve problems, and they absolutely do not want to look at how other countries solve their problems. British media would have you think it's the centre of the universe but it hardly gets a word in on the international stage. This is a good atmosphere for a bunch of self perpetuating faulty logic. It definitely doesn't help that (I suspect) we have some of the most glowed social media on the planet, but all the actors involved have no long term plan besides staying in or securing power and keeping dissidence down or controlled. Examples of these actors would be the 77th Brigade, Tufton Street, Cambridge Analytica, GCHQ, and there's probably a lot more in public knowledge I'm forgetting.
>>597855the media decide who gets boosted and who doesn't, and they absolutely love boosting her dumb ass because she's a leading contributor to the culture war anti trans hysteria that will keep people distracted from how this country is economically teetering on the brink
remember that this country is practically ran by rupert murdoch and other kingmaker oligarchs like him at this point
>>597855as well as being a fully inducted member of the establishment nonce club ("CH OBE FRSL") she's an agenda-setting "journalist"'s wet dream: a rich hasbeen reactionary with historic "progressive" credentials, reliably providing "better-things aren't possible" nonsense to labour right hacks for the best part of a decade.
(Zoomers hate Rowling for being a TERF, Millennials hate her for her attacks on Corbyn, TRUE O.G. boomers hate her for bankrolling Better Together.
They are all correct.)
>>597863>There's no arguing lol everyone is on the trans side here.Lol. That's certainly not true of my experience ITT.
Either way though the question remains, why the obsession?
>>597861>>597864there's been an unhinged anti-trans turn in british politics in a very short period of time: in 2017 even the Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May wanted to bring in self-ID* (
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/18/theresa-may-plans-to-let-people-change-gender-without-medical-checks ), as late as 2022 they were still trying to position themselves as vaguely progressive, though having walked back that earlier commitment: (
https://x.com/KemiBadenoch/status/1542477744176599040 ). By 2023 the UK government was taking the unprecedented step of vetoing Scottish legislation on introducing self ID*. In Labour, the same is true: Keir Starmer has to go around talking about who's got a penis because in 2020 he misjudged the direction of travel and said one of his TERF MPs was wrong. it hasn't been an organic, bottom up process of awful transgender people running riot either: it's a mixture of the website mumsnet becoming radically deranged, and a top-down phenomenon led by middle aged journalists and public figures, almost all of whom don't hate trans people so much as they hate young people and all social change since the year 2001. (the "middle aged and deeply uncool" demography is why the CPGB-ML and CPB have also taken a TERF line - part opportunism, but mostly
crossover.)
*a very radical sounding name for "letting them put the right words on your death certificate without having to go through a baroque and humiliating process". most of the stuff with day-to-day implications is irrelevant to this reform! it's not about the medical process of transitioning, which is 99% unrelated! (you need to transition to get the certificate, not vice-versa.)
our trans healthcare is, of course, dismal. waiting lists run into the decades because we insist on a bottlenecked joke of a system even to prescribe hormones. but that doesn't even enter into it - all public figures will act like anyone who wants to can just go ahead and transition on a whim. we'll debate the merits of giving hormones to kids as though any kid who joined a waiting list today would be seen before retirement. >>597868might've been their mealy-mouthed embarrassment of a statement supporting the UK government's veto of the Scottish gender recognition reform. (which included a few token warm words for trans people, but which clearly had an overall anti-trans thrust - uncritical acceptance of the UK govt's framing of their reasoning for the veto, portraying it as a basically sensible response to a bad bill that was rammed through [it took 7 fucking years because of Sturgeon trying to avoid controversy! it
should have been rammed through!], rather than a clearly political response on bullshit grounds [nobody was whining about the cross-border operation of the equality act when Scotland and England legislated gay marriage in different years!], emphasizing that communists should oppose self-ID, calls to define "sex" in the equality act as "biological sex", and with all the "pro trans" verbiage conveniently left out of the summary…)
it really soured my view of the CPB as an org. when you don't take things too seriously, you can sort of appreciate the AWL's contrarianism in being Labour Friends of Israel with a newspaper or the CPGB-ML marching with Stalin Banners against "the reactionary nightmare of gender fluidity", good old fashioned silly posturing in the proud tradition of the small-party left. hell, i'll go to bat for Galloway the Cat: going on big brother to stay in the public eye wasn't an indefensible idea - and it didn't sink his electoral changes in the long run, did it? he might even get back in
again.
but uncritically restating a culture-warring Tory government's legal argument under the hammer and sickle, mostly in the form of a dull legal analysis which engages
totally uncritically with the government, the law itself, and the liberal conception of "rights" as a whole? that has no such charms. it's indefensibly
embarrassing. it's such a boring, joyless thing to do that you can't enjoy it on any level: it's not funny, and it's not correct. it's just fractally horrible.
>>597876Yeah that sounds about as clownish as I'd expect at this point. There was also Red Fightback(?) that tried to be as progressive as possible and then imploded due to some word salad of sexism, racism and colonial mindsets or whatever.
>>597877Starmerbros need to answer for their misogynistic rhetoric
>>597876>>597870>I wonder to what extent the "terf island" phenomena is because the whole trans thing is pretty American and the Britts want to/already have an indipendent culture but shared language.TERF Island is just twitter nonsense divorced from reality.
In the UK you have many trans people who move here because it is easier and safer than much of for example Europe.
In America lower class trans people are constantly protested in anything they do, murdered and are forced often in to street prostitution.
It's basically a term that comfortable upper-middle class Americans came up with when they read to many tweets getting their social-media-addiction fix because a JK Rawling tweet from across the sea is the closest thing they've personally come to violence, subjugation or prejudice.
>>597884>. I think a lot of Brits buy it off the grey market from some amateur biopharmacist in Brazil, so there's not much corporate interest there. From within Europe usually if they're not going through their doctor.
>>597883>I was under the impression that hormone sales are pretty lucrative. Obviously the surgeons are making bank, and I suspect a lot of unqualified surgeons are moving to the field from other surgical fields.Im not sure how you think it would be particularly lucrative. If you're doing private then you are already on a doctors wage because you almost certainly work for the NHS also and it's not a particularly common set of surgeries nor is Britain a world leader so even to begin with many who actually get surgeries are going to be going out of country. There are simply going to be far other things to go in to if one wants to make bank than specifically surgeries for transgender people.
>>597895Atlanticism is pure cancer so someone as influential as Farage attacking it is only a good thing. I'd rather have LDs as official opposition and a huge % Reform vote with little representation seething about FPTP than a Farage that says all the Sensible and Correct things for an extra 2% in the polls.
Reform as official opposition would be fucking mental, but having them having a higher vote share than the LDs, the official opposition, is not just very funny but is massively delegitimising to FPTP.
>>597906My feeling is that reform is just the tories jumping ship. Like some right wing commentators have already said, their manifesto and platform is 2010 tory tier. Its just more failed promises.
The ONLY thing that really attracts people is farage, but farage ultimately is a cowardly grifter who wants no political responsibility.
He could have been prime minister after brexit but opted for big chingus cameos and a GB News desk job.
Farage, Corbyn and Galloway are the only true personalities in british politics and none want to work together, yet all fail on their own.
>>597907>Hello Chungus, it's me, Nigel FromageKek. Have you seen the IRA ones? Don't have them saved sadly.
Main difference with Reform is that Big Chungus Farage seems far more likely to implement PR and crack down on immigration, although he's obviously mostly an immigration/EU guy I think he will also adopt PR when he realises that his current plan to take over the Tories and become LOTO isn't going to work under the current system. He will get greedy when he sees that the Tories are dead in the water and he's got 15-20% of the vote even outside the EU
>>597908Yeah it's all so unpredictable that it's pretty much fan fiction and wish casting, but I do think the Tories are absolutely fucked
>>597883Not to come back to this topic but: The main hormones they give you to transition are exactly the same products they prescribe for menopause, so they're all cheap generics which are already sold to 50% of the population across their lifetime. The ratio of the effort it takes to alter social views on gender nonconformity to the market growth you'd see as a result just does not stack up - you could beat the income gain that comes from the growth in people transitioning a thousandfold simply by sitting back and enjoying the fact we've got an aging population, by prescribing menopause medication to cis women a year earlier, by suggesting slightly higher doses, or sitting back and allowing the combo of third world income growth and resultant longer life-expectancies.
Then you can throw in the occasional HRT shortages, which would make it questionable that the firms actually have the capacity to support the demand growth they're already seeing.
which, in traditional fashion, is occasionally blamed by nuts on the demand from trans people as though (a) that's anything more than a rounding error. (b) the NHS waiting lists aren't longer than the nile, meaning most of them are getting fuck all. >>597867>almost all of whom don't hate trans people so much as they hate young people and all social change since the year 2001Indeed. People don't mention enough how radically anti-youth these "anti-gender" movement are, the trans demographic is very young compared to the median age. They really hate any and all expression of youth vitality and the agency said vitalism creates. All their measures against "the trans agenda" is just more suffocating statism and bureaucracy in every array of the youth's life as long as possible.
Their new psyop is claiming that you are still a child until you're 25 now, lol. We had Alexander conquering West Asia as a teenager but wait! Some old 2nd wave feminist PMC and her cuckold husband decided that it's problematic ackshually!
There's a reason every single one of those explicit anti-trans rallies are populated by disgusting obese male boomers, old austere hags and the occasional hysterical gen-X-soyllenial fag/dyke who resent not being a desirable ephebe anymore. If Gender Ideology was that Civilizational threat that will kill hoomanity and is LITTERALY MUTALING DA KIDS RIGHT NOW (or something), there would be the youth present, but there isnt, not even the transphobic youth will bother as they do not believe these stupidity and are fully aware the anti-gender side hates them too.
Very disgusting Last Men, both in mind and body.
>>597883>I was under the impression that hormone sales are pretty lucrativeI don't know if it's lucrative but estrogen coast basically nothing to make and produce. T needs a bit more technique still but very easily available and cheap (just to go to any serious gym and half the guy there are on it). I had both an FTM and an MTF colleague when i was working in China (both chinese, or at least asian) and it was even cheaper there from what i gathered, you could also get it over the counter at the pharmacy without having to go through a lenghty humiliating bureaucratic process at the hand of some statist pervert.
I think it's puberty blockers or stuff like HGH that are very expensive, partly artificially because a few companies can make them legally, but sexed hormones are mass produced globally for a while now.
>>597882>TERF Island is just twitter nonsense divorced from reality.Yeah it's bullshit made up by upper middle class retards in America. But the upper class and PMC do seems to be a pain in the ass there regarding trans issues.
>>597913Zelensky is so gonna ends up Noriegaed no matter who win man. RIP but he shouldve seen it coming.
>>597915>They really hate any and all expression of youth vitality>Some old 2nd wave feminist PMC and her cuckold husband>disgusting obese male boomers>old austere hags> hysterical gen-X-soyllenial fag/dyke>some statist pervert<screeching: the postEven retard Dutch zoomers don't believe your extremely selective analysis any more anon. It's over.
>Their new psyop is claiming that you are still a child until you're 25 nowNew? This is a trope that's been around for 15 years now, long before the decline of the west and it's narratives became apparent. Who knew that spending every waking hour online would make a generation less emotionally and philosophically mature than previous generations?
>Hormones cost nothing to produceYou're right about this. People talking about surgery and hormones having a profit motive are as ridiculous as anti-abortion types talking about Big Abortion Inc. It's a much more insidious societal campaign that ironically has united the world against the west.
>>597918>name is Dick Shill-cock>Shills the party to TERFs like a dick.hehe, hoho.
See
>>597876 for some background/groundwork of this turn.
>>597924It was pretty on point so reading you insist it's screeching makes me think you're in the post and don't like it
Also you should lurk for another few years so you can learn to tell posters apart, or at least until you learn a few better replies than "replying to me = i win heh"
>>597932she doesn't really hate labour, she's just engaged in factional shithousing as usual: she's always deepthroating Duffield. has she even said she
won't vote labour? the last i've seen is "i'll struggle to vote for it" - not "i'd struggle to vote for it", the hypothetical, "i'll" struggle, which suggests she
will vote for it.
she's also gone out to bat for Joanna Cherry even though she
does hate the SNP.
>>597938Absolutely
The "cool king" scenario is the endgame of his coup
>>597941I don't want to jinx it or sound cringe for saying it before he's elected given he's a bastard who never stops showing he's also spineless in the face of reaction, but it's one of the scenarios I'd like to see: she keeps doing this mad shit while the
people who matter just want their Will Hutton approved private water company protection vehicle passed through parliament, the water lobbyist MPs are tired of her @'ing them on Twitter to talk about penises, so suddenly HMRC start investigating irregularities in her tax filings… or it turns out she was slightly overpaid benefits 40 years ago… or (most realistically) some newspapers more aligned with MPs than with other establishment freaks start asking where it all went wrong for the former icon, from beloved author to badgering Luke Akehurst about /tttt/…
nothing so optimistic as to imagine it'd destroy or even damage her, best case she'd probably just fuck off stateside where she belongs, but it'd be gratifying to see one of the more annoying sideline-carpers of british politics bite the hand that feeds one time too many and get bopped with a newspaper for it.
>>597918I did some digging. This was the statement the CPB candidate gave:
> We stand in support of recognising the nature of biological sex, defending sex-based rights and signle-sex services and sports, changing the Equality Act such that 'sex' means 'biological sex', and for calm, comprehensive discussion of these issues. We oppose gender self-identification and the new gender ideology. We oppose all forms of conversion therapy applied to lesbian and gay people and we oppose including trans identities in such a ban. We recognise the Cass Report as authoritative and we oppose 'gender-affirming care' and 'social transitioning' in nurseries and schools.This is deffo not party policy (especially redefining the equality act), seems like this is a single party candidate taking it upon themselves.
>>597947> We oppose all forms of conversion therapy applied to lesbian and gay people and we oppose including trans identities in such a ban. Is he saying that they explicitly opposes conversion therapy when it's for trans people?
Kek that's so extreme i wouldn't be surprised if he breaks the law advocating this.
>>597954>LonghiMh… And in France you have
>Bardella>CiottiI'm noticing a trend here…
https://nitter.poast.org/ThePartyistBloghttps://thepartyist.com/A new Journal or Magazine similar to America's Cosomonaut or an Organisation like Marxist Unity Group.
This seems like good news for the Communist Movement here, if there are people attempting to unite what dispersed groups we have and unite them, probably slowly and probably agonisingly, into a greater communist party.
Thoughts Anons?
>>597963the only thing they support is the reputation of the CPGB-ML as the UK's most serious communist party.
and that is emphatically not because the CPGB-ML are serious about anything except selling rugs. their position is a complete and utter embarrassment: it's tediously "sensible" in summary, the kind of thing that would be cute if a specky 14 year old who just wants everyone to be nice might come up with, but risible in practice, as you can see when they repeatedly trip over their own dicks: we support trans people, but we send out opportunist statements to transphobic lobbyists. we support trans people, but we also support the UK government's legal position against simplifying their access to a government service. We support trans people, but the equality act should be modified to make it easier to discriminate against them.
no trans person or indeed trans-sympathetic sane person is going to dignify that position with more than laughter or a curt "fuck off" - but the best is yet to come, because not only does this position alienate trans people, it also alienates TERFs! you're not going to buy off people addicted to the ambrosia that is
getting mad at strangers online and hoping everyone like them *cough* disappears with a compromise where they get one or two of their short-term demands, then everyone holds hands and coexists forever. The kind of idiot who makes such a promise might be that naive, but the kind of person who wants it fulfilled certainly is not. By drawing attention to the position in full, a shameful opportunist turn becomes a shameful showing-your-arse-to-everyone-in-the-class turn. Put it away!
>>597951Straight men cant be turned gay. The prison gay thing is so prevalant bc so many criminals are unironically giant faggots who have a suicidal desire to end up in jail (the modern bath house) or to die trying.
Being gay comes from a primal repression of women so cant be reversed without unravelling the entire person which would be so traumatic that they would kill themselves
>>597978Well the paradox of the homosexual that while he is repelled by the object of female sexuality, he still idolises the feminine as such (since he gets his influence from his mother). So he seeks to replicate her while he is essentially disguated by her.
This same situation is true with women's attitudes to homosexuals, where they like having gay male friends, but are essentially homophobic. If you have ever noticed, hetero men are disgusted by homosexual acts, but give appeal to the essence of gay men, while women celebrate gay men, but despise his essential being, which concords with homosexual misogyny.
This dialectically aligns with the heterosexual man being the only creature who can love a woman, yet is bound to her only by his oedipal frustrations, which becomes a possessive nature he holds over her.
So political homosexuality would be woman-friendly yet would still retain a patriatchal leadership. Brocialism is thus heterosexual in kind since it appeals to the male-only space.
>>597988John locke (a british empiricist who is one of the founders of liberal philosophy) believed in the "blank slate" (tabula rasa) model of the mind, which inferred that because knowledge was derived purely from the senses, that if humans are brought up in a rational education, then everyone can be enlightened. Contemporary liberals like steven pinker hold to this, but many factors complicate this worldview such as the strength of heredity in intelligence and personality.
I would argue the theory of the unconscious also gives life to this contradiction too, where we are determined by things out of anyone's fundamental control. Gay conversion camps attest to this where no matter how hard you try, you cant change what you are. These essential aspects of us i would say begin as traumas which the unconscious protects us from.
>>597989Lesbians hate men, but arent disgusted by them. Thats why they might have sex with men but would never be able to love one. Its flipped with gays, who would never use a fleshlight (in comparison to the lesbian's dildo) and would never have casual sex with women. So a gay man is disgusted by vaginas but can still have deep friendships with women.
>CPS HAS DESTROYED ALL RECORDS OF KEIR STARMER’S FOUR TRIPS TO WASHINGTON
>The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), England and Wales’ public prosecutor, has deleted all records of its former head Keir Starmer’s trips to the US, it can be revealed. Starmer served as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) from 2008-13, a period when the body was overseeing Julian Assange’s proposed extradition to Sweden to face questioning over sexual assault allegations.
>During Starmer’s time in post, the CPS was marred by irregularities surrounding the case of the WikiLeaks founder.The organisation has admitted to destroying key emails related to the Assange case, mostly covering the period when Starmer was in charge, while the CPS lawyer overseeing the case advised the Swedes in 2010 or 2011 not to visit London to interview Assange. An interview at that time could have prevented the long-running embassy standoff.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/cps-has-destroyed-all-records-of-keir-starmers-four-trips-to-washington/ >>597990But the political lesbian isn't necessarily a lesbian, I assume a lot of them are misandrist bisexuals
>>597991Didn't Assange just get freed? Odd timing.
>>597993Freud's theory is that it comes from the broaching of the oedipal relationship (where no father figure is present to arrest the young boy), and so trauma here is just the repression that is instilled in the neutralising of the maternal figure, that is transposed onto all women. Thus female sexuality is associated with violating the mother, which brings disgust and even horror. This is why its "traumatic" - not because there was an action that "caused" homosexuality (like molestation), but it was a sort of inaction that spurned in a fraternity of feminity that continues through the man's life.
>>597994Well oedipus is also historically located (dont forget that humans are inherently symbolic creatures), so homosexual behaviour in animals can be seen as a virtuality immanent to animal life more than the assumption of a gender role. This thing was approximated in pagan greece for example, where the homosexual identity did not exist (where too, eros [love] was a general concept rather than particular). Socrates for example had gay sex, but there was nothing "gay" in his description.
My personal, unprofessional opinion is that homosexuality proper begins in modernity, which aligns with its inherent leftist politicisation.
>>597998Well most gays are momma's boys
The whole norman bates archetype was meant to express that, with his ambition to be with a woman, but then the spectral mother threatening this possibility
(The point isnt to say gays are homocidal - that is jjst a homophobic abridgement people add like in "the silence of the lambs", but that the figure of the mother, even when she is dead, still lives).
The femininity of the gay man even from a very young age has a freudian explanation. Its better than absurdities like "female brains". Some suggest hormones, which again, essentialises the feminine gender role. Oestrogen =/= being socially feminine.
So the answer must lie in a type of feminine self-identity, which appears archetypally in the mother.
>>598006Where do people even do that nowadays? I desperately need some benzodiazapines.
>>597966>I think you've become disoriented due to the complete irrelevance of our largest communist party, but this is the CPB not some random twitter transesAdmit it, if the CBP did not have positions on trans people none of you Anon fuckers would be talking about them.>>not just buying the drugs off the internet
>>598012I just learned the state is making him pay the $500K+ for the flight they chartered for him as they wouldn't let him take public.
Damn. I take the jokes back that's fucked.
>>598015See also
>>597991Starmer also gave the legal cover for the security services to torture people
>>598017Those "communists" have repeatedly aligned themselves
with Rowling. they're not a
bit stupid, they're continually mining new depths of stupidity.
(sooner or later they're going to reach Mr. Natas)
>>597963Yeah I don't get why the UK left has this insane maximalist position on trans anything and sees "transphobia" JK rowling as the biggest issue rocking the country.
TRA positions are all incoherent, constantly shifting BPD horseshit anyway so it's not actually a hill worth dying on, and it only affects probably like 0.1% of the population.
It's like Labour and "Jewish voters" despite Jews made up 0.005% of Labours vote even during the Blair years.
>>598020because you always have the option of
remaining silent, yet they chose to say something stupid. tweet one little flag and then spend the rest of your time talking about how workers demand (whatever your tiny, irrelevant, powerless org is "demanding" as though it can do anything about being totally ignored - a de-facto "no") and nobody would have any problems. but no, we must speak our brains, we must give in to the compulsion to tweet and play the discourse game, this is the hot-button culture war issue, and we as communists can see everyone else is having fun throwing themselves off a cliff - so let's join them in the hopes of being relevant, and in true communist fashion, let's do the worst possible job of it.
the primary problem with the CPB's position is not that it is insufficiently pro-trans. the CPGB-ML has a stronger anti-trans line and "transphobes" rarely enters into our mockery of their Stalin-banner-marching-rug-merchantry. the problem with the CPB position is… wait, didn't i already write an essay about this?
but then you, too, cannot hold your tongue and let your point stand without throwing out a jab at the "TRAs". it's a hill not worth dying on, and yet there you are at the summit: death poem composed, katana pointed at the belly, retainer at the ready…
>>598023Funniest part about UK electoral politics is the only two with an actual realistic chance of disrupting the political duopoly are a party that was kicked into third party status a century ago and some guys who thought the Tories weren't extreme enough
Should unironically mash all three of them into one party solely fixated on smashing Labour and the Tories
>>598025"trans rights activist" in acronym form. but no trans rights activists call themselves a "TRA", it's a term used almost exclusively by TERFs.
presumably they disliked the asymmetry where their opponents had an acronym to call them, and they didn't have anything to shout back.
>>598024>a party that was kicked into third party status a century agoI wouldn't call them a serious disruption force. They just sit in the middle with the Greens and soak up a few votes. It's better that these parties exist to dilute the big two, but their ideas don't really matter. It could just as well be the clown party or free marshmallows for everyone party.
>some guys who thought the Tories weren't extreme enoughNot only not extreme enough, but also not competent to do their jobs. I'd rather the government were not neoliberal capitalists, but if they're going to be they need to know *how* a neoliberal capitalist economy works so they can run it somewhat efficiently. Reform appear to know what they're doing, where most of the Tories don't anymore.
>mash all three of them into one partyI don't think it would work, simply because democratic statecraft is dialectical and therefore requires both a left and a right in order to function. Even in communist governments there are conservative hardliners who call everything new revisionist, pitted against reformers who want to continue the revolution.
What I do find encouraging is that the combined Labour-Conservative vote share is projected to be incredibly low. It's possible that in 2029 Galloway might be able to do to Labour what Farage is currently doing to the Conservatives.
>>598032they are running on a platform to the right of that of the Conservatives in 2019 in every respect. they're not even pretending to be socdems. all of the high ranking people are personally unpleasant, neither looking nor sounding like serious leaders. the current leader, the knighthood-holding Sir Keir Starmer, lied in the 2020 leadership election and insisted his vision was to do what Jeremy Corbyn (a left-wing socdem) wanted to do, then once he took the leadership revealed that this was a lie and actually, he wanted to do the opposite, starting with stripping democratic control from party members.
the press is largely engaged in a conspiracy of silence / minimization of all the awkward information because it wants Labour to take power and continue the status quo under a fresh set of faces.
>>598030>I don't think it would work, simply because democratic statecraft is dialectical and therefore requires both a left and a right in order to function. Even in communist governments there are conservative hardliners who call everything new revisionist, pitted against reformers who want to continue the revolution.Well it would just be all three parties running in parallel, and not competing with each other and instead running under the same ballot. I guess sort of like France's current Popular Front, although I'm not 100% sure how France's electoral system works.
It's a pipe dream though because while Farage could go for it if he didn't succeed in taking LOTO, it's probably too "populist" for the LDs. Also it's British politics so NOTHING EVER HAPPENS.
>>598034Because Brits are fucking retards and never learn any lessons. Keir is a member of the Trilateral Commission and they were all told this and wrote it off as conspiratorial thinking.
>>598034he never believed in them and just wanted to take power. he was closely associated with a bunch of right-wing figures who realized the only way they'd retake control of the party was to lie.
party members were eager to believe his lies, though, because they were worn out after years of attacks on Corbyn and 2 election losses (one a surprisingly good result, one a pretty bad defeat).
"just replace Corbyn and you'll get everything Corbyn was promising, plus the attacks on the party will stop (since they strongly targeted Corbyn specifically)" was a tempting message, even if it was also too good to be true.
>>598037they're bad, arguably back to being preferable to Labour on balance, but still bad. iirc part of their current manifesto is tougher restrictions on unions, which is a baffling thing for a party in their position to be offering.
>>597880Dunno, maybe a local independent
I'd be tempted by green because of the wealth tax
>>597880NTA but in the same situation. I'm voting Reform, because if I can't destroy the Labour Party I'll settle for destroying the Conservative Party.
>>598032>idk anything about english politicsLabour = Fake neoliberal globalist left. Usually either in government or leading the opposition.
Conservative = Fake neoliberal globalist right. Usually either in government or leading the opposition (but losing more than ever in this year's polls).
Liberal Democrats = Descendant of defunct old parties that just hangs around. Standard third option for people who don't like the big two. Once did a coalition with the Conservatives.
Greens = Standard environmental advocates. Not much else to offer.
Workers Party = Actual left wing. Overt goal is to replace Labour as the main left party.
Reform UK = Actual right wing. Overt goal is to replace Conservatives as the main right party.
>>598036>it would just be all three parties running in parallel, and not competing with each other>it's probably too "populist" for the LDsCould work in theory, but you're right that the LibDems would never go for it. Also I'm sure Galloway and Farage would piss off a lot of each other's core voters, so it would be difficult for them to work together even if they wanted to.
>like France's current Popular Front, although I'm not 100% sure how France's electoral system worksThat kind of thing is a lot easier in France, because they use two-round run off ballots, which avoid tactical voting and two-party hegemonies.
>>598037>Are LibDem any good?lolno. Mix Labour and Conservative policies in a hat. Pick them at random like a raffle every 5 years. That's LibDem.
>>598042>deregulating both businesses and unions for a bit of cash, which I understand is how Sweden does itHow does that actually work? Like if the union is picketing their workplace and the business hires private security as strikebreakers, what does the government do? Just sit back and let them fight to the death?
>>597773If you rebuilt unions the government would just break them up again. You cannot prevent this because, as you already said, electoral politics is extremely limited in scope. Everything you do needs to be either a private club or a literal secret society. It should be totally outside the government's radar to avoid regulation.
Lets say, for example, you get a dozen friends together and meet at someone's house for a reading group. When you have too many members, rent a room above a pub. When you have lots of members, form a mutual aid society and help each other. Slowly become more dependent on each other than on the government.
Membership should be by invitation only. You should get to know someone socially before you invite them. This drastically cuts down infiltration and entryism. You can connect with other groups, but direct action should always be local and need-to-know.
If you succeed in building a large network you can eventually form worker coops to compete against business. You can also do agitprop aimed at swing voters to put pressure on government.
>>598026Jezza has always been a good man and a man of principle. He had an ungodly amount of shit thrown at him for years just for having decent positions on fundamental issues and that shows British society cannot really be reformed or changed by playing by the establishment's rules. I wish him all the best.
>>5980311. People with such an obvious Scottish accent shouldn't be allowed to talk on UK-wide telly unless they conform to King's English. Until then, they should only feature on broadcasts north of the Hadrian Wall. If they have German-sounding surnames they should be invited to consider a change of career.
2. You are motivated by petty, base contrarianism. And it shows.
>>598056This is going to hurt if Corbyn loses. It
will be a giant propaganda victory for all the worst people in British politics.
>>598058i didn't think anything could come as a negative surprise to me in election, but all i can think seeing this poll is: "me on suicide watch"
it wouldn't be so bad if labour at least had a half decent candidate, but no, it's a fucking NHS privatizing crook under investigation from the council for his conflicts of interest.
admittedly, on the "whatever makes everyone as mad as possible" model of things, there's a scenario where Corbyn loses the election, then wins a subsequent byelection after Benty McCrookface resigns
>>598022You can't remain silent because TRA's always push their idiotic slippery slope horseshit that turns off regular people. Another issue is that the British left is obesessed with purity testing along TRA/LGBT issues and this shit is pushed relentlessly.
I mean, look at the line of attack from most leftists against The Workers Party, they don't bend over for the Rainbow mafia and how dare Galloway state that most people aren't gay, so everyone should vote for the Upper-Middle Radlib NIMBY Greens who are anti-renewables because wind and solar "ruins views".
The British left fucking suck and the cocksucking of the rainbow mafia (who btw, have one of the strongest Tory voting demos, DIGays) is a massive part of it.
>>598032Labour is controlled by Starmer who is literally on the CIA payroll, and he's turned the party into an even more authoritarian version of the old right wing Liberal party. Starmer is literally to the right of Cameron (former conservative PM) on much of his platform, but most will vote for him because the Tories are now just openly looting the country.
>>598037They are better than Lab and Con, but they hold the same economic views as both, they are Wet Tories who are actually Socially liberal, unlike spycop glowie Starmer and "personal responsibility except when it comes to anything we don't personally like" Tories.
>>598058Why you need a Vanguard. The general public are literally retarded. Literally getting rid of one of the best MPs in the country for a Private Healthcare lobbyist because he has "LAB" next to his name.
>>598064>they don't bend over for the Rainbow mafia and how dare Galloway state that most people aren't gayreally anon, do you think you can get this nonsense past people? do you think this thread is made up of goldfish who're really going to buy the line that only the profoundly unreasonable could think Galloway's a blowhard addicted to chatting often-reactionary shite?
"I fight for small business, the hardest working people in the country" - fine, let's concede to you on the poofs: "exterminate all the homosexuals and fascism will vanish", but
defend this.
>>598065I have no problem people thinking Galloway is a blowhard. I have a problem with the British left dicksucking the LGBT Gender Brigade train so hard that they will throw any leftist under the bus if they don't stuck a "girldick" on national television, but are fine with "leftists" who simp for Neoliberal dogshit like GBE or Future Funds or are fine with the Greens rampant upper-middle class homeowner NIMBY liberalism.
Literally go read any major leftist community on plebbit, "TERF" and "Transphobe" is all the give a single shit about. They would vote for Rishi if Rishi came out that he fucked ladyboys.
>>598064>You can't remain silent because TRA's always push their idiotic slippery slope horseshit that turns off regular peopleNo regular workers are obsessed as tou about trans people.
Please fuck off and make a thread about it instead if deciding every week leftybritpol is the platform for your autistic hyper-focus.
Absurd self-absorbed autistic… give it a rest for just one day… jfc.
>>598065>He thinks the Muslims care about Palestine.LMAO.
That has to be the most fantasy Galloway take so far.
>>598066>They would vote for Rishi if Rishi came out that he fucked ladyboys.We have a test case that this isn't true: Theresa May, who was more progressive on this issue than any of the major parties in this election.
Here's the practical thing, and you're not going to like it: someone being a TERF is a great sign that they've got brainworms in general. A lot of pro-trans people are cunts or have brainworms, sure, but that's offset by the number who don't have brainworms or who aren't cunts - who're simply boring. The idealized "regular person" who holds a few "problematic" views
stays quiet rather than constantly bringing them up, so they don't fall into th TERF camp: Your gran might not be socially progressive, but she's also going to have no fucking idea what a TRA is. She's not appearing online tweeting out #Womenwontwheesht despite living in the home counties. Like most contemporary politics, the issues in question are secondary to the social signalling.
As such, it makes a brilliant shibboleth. Corbyn? Doesn't make anti-Trans statements, generally sound. Weak, sure, but no brainworms. Galloway? Anti-Trans statements, check. Oh, look at this, he's also sucking the dick of small businesses. Starmer, pretending to be Corbynism without Corbyn? Doesn't make anti-Trans statements. Starmer, mask off? Anti-Trans statements peppered between his genocide apologia.
Yorkshire party? Nothing on trans people at all. Boring, sure, but no brainworms detected. CPB? Anti-trans statements, but in the most grotesquely incompetent fashion possible, showing they can't even be TERFs correctly. You don't get consistent results like this by random chance: someone being
vocally anti-Trans is always a reliable indicator of poor judgement at best or active malice at worst.
That is why it is of interest if a person or org is transphobic: if their judgement was half as good as your gran's, you'd never find out about it on the internet…
>>598065I see nothing wrong with the contents of those letters. If I lived in Rochdale I would vote for him.
>Sir Keir Starmer, a top supporter of Israel, out.This is the only hope I can see for the British left. If Labour voters can be confronted with the Palestinian blood on their hands, there might be a "never Keir" phenomenon similar to the "never Biden" phenomenon that has been seen in the US over the same issue.
>>598068It has worked for him before. It will probably work again.
>>598069>someone being a TERF is a great sign that they've got brainworms in general. A lot of pro-trans people are cunts or have brainworms, sure, but that's offset by the number who don't have brainworms or who aren't cunts - who're simply boringBoth are doing idpol for their respective groups instead of changing the economic conditions from which identity-based oppression is downstream. If either got their way they would just become controlled opposition for neoliberal globalism. Marx would have kicked both out of the First International.
How many left wing movements and parties have to be destroyed by idpol before you start just saying no to it?
>>598071>I see nothing wrong with the contents of those letters. You think the hardest working people in this country are small business owners? You think that God made us? You think there's nothing wrong with sending one of them to ethnic minority residents, another to white residents? You're not Galloway himself, by any chance?
I may agree or disagree with you depending on the specific implications of "saying no to idpol": If by that you mean what I mean when I say to be quiet, then we are in full agreement. If by that you mean to be vocally "anti-idpol", we do not. I would say, however, that most left-wing movements are not
really destroyed by idpol: they are destroyed by interpersonal and factional conflict in which idpol is merely a weapon. Left groups have been imploding spectacularly for inane reasons for so long as there has been a left, doing so over social issues is just a new set of graphics for the same old gameplay mechanics.
>>1895481
>The Cass report BTFO'ed TRAs and is being implemented
If there's one thing we learned from the Beeching report, the Widgery Report, the Hutton Report, the Penrose report, the Franks Report, the Dearing Report, the McCrone report, the Greenbury Report, the Hampel Report, the Scarman Report, the Taylor report, the Scott Report, and so on to infinity, the British state can always be trusted to investigate things fully, openly, and honestly, to invite a wide range of discussion that considers all possible options, and to come to a fair set of balanced recommendations independent of political pressure. In the rare instances where they bungle it and turn out something silly like the 1978 Pearson report, with unworkable recommendations clearly resulting from a transparent political fad, those ideas are correctly left to languish on the shelves.
The UK left should march behind figures of establishment repute where such figures are well respected in their field and by good chaps more generally. Perhaps we could chair a royal commission with recommendations on how best to implement socialism in this country? Might I suggest, say, Alan Sugar as a good chap to chair it?
>>598058words can not describe the rage I feel.
I swear if this actually happens, Britain deserves to be swallowed by the sea.
>>598073>You think the hardest working people in this country are small business owners?Depends how "small" we're talking. I would say being a self-employed sole trader is hardest of all, since you are doing all the work while also managing and selling it yourself - 3 jobs in 1. Some petite bourgeoisie still live primarily off of their own labour even if they have a few employees, so they end up working about as hard as the proletariat (these would be the ideal people to manage co-ops post-revolution).
>You think that God made us?Yes, but not directly. I'm a deist, not a follower of "holy" books.
>You think there's nothing wrong with sending one of them to ethnic minority residents, another to white residents?That's just intelligent campaigning. You don't fight by Queensbury rules when the other parties are kicking you in the bollocks.
>You're not Galloway himself, by any chance?No, but it would be cool to see what he thinks of leftypol. Maybe I'll send him a link and see what happens.
>>598073>If by that you mean what I mean when I say to be quiet, then we are in full agreement. If by that you mean to be vocally "anti-idpol", we do not.I mean to not just be quiet, but actively reject those who cannot be quiet about it. If you let them in they will destroy everything you work for.
>>598092Some schizo Jewish-convert with an IDF-shirt stomped on his head while he was lying on the pavement before an Arabic constituent who incidentally asked for a selfie from Galloway prior and was a doctor could stop the attacker.
He got away with a lesser charge despite the fact that any sensible human would classify kicks to the head while someone is lying on the floor until stopped by a third part an intent to murder this person.
>>598098Only the Russians and the Chinese ever had a tangibly and implemented plan to stop migration and brain-drain from the third world yet we never follow their examples. funny that.
American's dog. But an old one they're thinking of putting down.
>>598005If you dont have a gay voice then ur not a true gay(tm). Sorry sis.
>>598035Yes. Goebbels was still a thinker who saw where history was going.
Hitler had no real economic knowledge so was easily swayed by the industrialists like krupp who ran germany's munition economy. Hitler wasnt an economic figure (like most right wingers) except for what he expressed in mein kampf, which was that communists destroy countries by arresting labour to unions, where strikes stop people from getting jobs. Basically, since he was homeless he wanted to be a scab but the unions made it harder. He also bemoaned of the communist propaganda spread by unions which was internalised by workers, where hitler was just a total nationalist, whose first grief was the surrender of germany in ww1, which he chalked up to cowardice and jewish subversion at home.
>>598118a book from 2004 containing a collection of essays by prominent lib-dems trying to re-emphasise the "liberal" part of the lib-dems over the (social) "democrats" part. basically as a pivot to give them the coherent ideology of "more neoliberal blairites", rather than more incoherent "opposes bad things, supports good things" stance they were perceived as having. (even though this was winning votes thanks to blair loving bad things!)
they were often very right-wing: one idea was moving the NHS to a privatized social insurance model, which gave us this odd new Labour press stunt.
"orange book liberal" or "orange bookers" is the accepted way of referring to them as a lib-dem faction. Nick Clegg, Ed Davey, and Vince Cable are among some of the big names who fall into that faction (and as such, are most responsible for the coalition and their undereperformance in 2010…), The orange bookers are the right wing of the lib dems, in contrast to the Social Liberal Forum and the Beveridge Group, which are more center-left inclined. (if you oversimplify a bit: the orange bookers see the liberal tradition as that of the victorian "laisse faire" era liberal party, while the others see their tradition as more Lloyd George / Keynes / Beveridge building a welfare state era liberal party.)
>>598122what a fucking stupid frontpage, a masturbatory tribute act to their slavishly labour 2007 election idiocy.
in a reasonable number of seats it's still a SNP-v-Tory race, but what's a few tory gains to hit the real enemy, the SNP, the usurpers of scottish labour's birthright?
>>598125On the bright side - one party rule is often not very sustainable. The ultra-dominance of Labour will likely lead to strife in Labour as various tendencies conflict, we might even see a Labour split like in the 80s where the more left wing factions try to defect and set up their own thing.
But overall, yes it's the era of bleakest reaction and so on, that just means we have to go to the ground and work at the local level.
floodfloodflood
>>598117>>598098https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/imperialism-coffee-cup/the £20 paid to Primark or M&S for a shirt made in Bangladesh, at most £1 will appear in Bangladesh’s GDP, of which perhaps 1p will be paid to the garment worker whose 70-hour week will not earn enough to feed her children. Leaving aside the cost of the cotton raw material, the vast bulk of that £20 will appear GDP of the country where this product is consumed.
Around 40% of the final sale price will end up in the hands of the government—not just 20% VAT, but also taxes on the profits of the department stores, landlords and other service providers, and on the wages of all those who work for them. The government uses this money to pay for the army and police, the NHS, pensions etc. So, when anyone says “why should we let migrants use our NHS?”, they should be answered, “because they’ve helped to pay for it!”
>>598136What do you mean?
Genuine or Sarcasm.
>>598137Sarcasm, almost nobody talks about immigrants using the NHS as a specific issue. They talk about them using everything in general because the UK is a perennially poorly run shithole that cannot expand its infrastructure (including housing) fast enough to keep up with natural population growth let alone immigration. A lot of the time the infrastructure isn't even expanding, and if it does its rate of expansion basically never increases, further exacerbating any issues.
Not only that but pensioners also paid into the pension system, they just didn't pay in enough so now we're all paying to make up the difference for a system that we'll likely not get to use and pretty much everyone is aware of that. So to say someone in a foreign country paid for yet another collapsing system isn't going to convince anyone that pays attention to the absolute state of the UK, especially if they're aware of net contributors while actually in the country.
People wouldn't have such a problem with immigration if the economy was growing and they were getting richer, but immigration is being used to paper over the fact that isn't happening so instead it contributes to people getting poorer and getting less for their taxes. They're not capable of challenging the people who run the country, so they see cracking down on immigration as an ad-hoc solution.
>>598151It was really a 3-days-of-electricity-for-most-commercial-users-because-we-decided-to-try-to-bully-the-miners-during-an-energy-crisis week, and even then if you worked in an "essential" industry you got 7 days of electricity as usual.
(I wonder, did people in "unessential" industries get the powerless day off, or did they still have to go in to sit in the dark? or are we mostly talking office workers who just worked from home?)
>>598155It's a combination of a decade of complete and utter incompetence, the first past the post system being an utterly anti democratic pisstake, and the corporate media fully abandoning them ahead of this election
tories still poll above reform in total vote share, coming second to labour. it's just that they lost "just enough" support in the polls for fptp to fuck them. once you get past the schadenfreude, it should show you just how totalitarian fptp is.
>>598149>prime ministers were not meant to smoke 14 pipes a dayWhat if you only smoke one pipe, but refill it 14 times?
>>598155They just aren't the party they used to be. They don't really stand for anything anymore, so they can never decide whether they want to appeal to the centre or to their core base. The result is they unpredictably flip between being the party of woke capital and the party of reactionary boomers, disappointing both in the process.
Reform UK are gradually soaking up the right wing vote, because they are actually sincerely right wing and have a plan. For now this is only splitting the vote and not necessarily winning them a lot of seats, but in 5 years from now they could become a mainstream party.
I also suspect a lot of Tories will defect to Reform when they realise there is no future for them elsewhere. The Conservative party have already proven they have no loyalty to their candidates, going so far as to withdraw funding from the ones in marginal seats and order them to help with campaigns elsewhere. The smart career move would be to get off the ship before it sinks.
>>598155a mixture of alienating each part of their class base in turn over a long period in power (e.g. brexit drove away liberal pro-european capitalists, then johnson fucked off a lot of small businesses through covid lockdowns, then truss pissed off a lot of businesses and the financial sector by drinking the kool aid), and winning the last 2 elections off the back of a flagrantly corrupt press and a mendacious labour party establishment more interested in destroying its own activists than in taking power. in short, this country in 2019 and 2024 is a managed democracy, with the tories fucked because they have no organic support base remaining to offset the damage that the democracy-managers turning against them will do.
this is why they're going to get super-fucked while labour, even with the deck stacked maximally against it in 2019, still held on to 200+ seats: labour still had a core working-class (marxist sense) support base, while the tories are hated by their base
and no longer propped up by institutional powerbrokers.
(you can also, for fun, contrast Scotland in 2015, where the press were generally still anti-SNP but scottish labour's working class support base shifted massively to the SNP, since Labour had gone mask-off during the referendum and allied with the conservatives to yell "better things aren't possible!". this victory of popular spite over the establishment would be heartwarming and optimistic except the way it played out was Sturgeon going "meet the new boss, same as the old boss…" and pivoting to slavishly align with that establishment.) which is now gleefully kicking the shit out of the SNP because it liked its first dog, Labour, better. >>598181Don't be a cuck.
I've spoilt my ballot by writing in IRA since the 90s, voting does not matter
>>598191>workerist partyI like that
Galloway has said before that he is not "left" but is just a socialist. This is why i say that class politics is anti-politics (like how certain bookish MLs will claim that communism is not political, but is just "the real movement" or whatever).
>>598191Climate change was a lie introduced by finance capital and magret thatchet to shut down the mines.
Also lad, UK's climate policies are irrelavant. So don't know why your wanking yourself off over it. In context of declining Britain , the only impact of climate polcicies is the mild emiseration of the working class.
>>598193utterly retarded. the mines were shut down with the misleading justification that they were "losing money", she didn't jump on the climate bandwagon until years after the miner's strike, when mining employment was already in freefall, in response to the rising results of the Green party. (specifically: miner's strike is 84-5, her brief "green" rhetorical turn is 1989, correlating perfectly with the Greens coming 3rd in the 1989 EU elections.)
a coherent climate strategy would be a boon for the working class because it would require a fuck-ton more production, ideally domestic production at that. our current incoherent strategy is one of doubling down on the shit that fucked us to begin with (yes! inject more US-owned north sea oil into our veins! i love the dutch disease! i love the dutch disease!
i love the dutch disease!!)
moreover, the idea that the problem was shutting the mines is romantic nostalgia. the line that labour shut more mines than thatcher is entirely true: the difference is that labour did it in a sensible, managed way that didn't decimate the economies of the local areas. under the most benevolent social democratic government imaginable, there would still be zero mining communities today. the difference is that they'd be just like everywhere else, rather than bearing the scars of sheer economic vandalism.
there's a brilliant report from the NUM and some economists at the time of the miner's strike. it does not argue that mining is a viable and expanding industry: it argues that the accounts show that it's cheaper to wind it down slowly than to pull the plug quickly, since the revenue from coal meets wage costs and the big-ticket losses are pensions and land damage payments that have to be paid anyway. the strategy they advocate is: stop hiring new men, slowly wait for the old ones to age out, and then pay off a handful of people to take early retirement when so many have gone that you can't keep the pit open anymore. do it that way and you give places a chance to slowly move over to other industries - do it as thatcher did and you utterly fuck them over by creating huge dead zones where there's suddenly mass unemployment, meaning nobody has any money to buy anything, meaning a bunch of secondary industries (shops etc) go under too, meaning you're left paying a huge dole bill with nothing to show for it.
but of course, thatcher was acting out of open, naked class spite - not good budget management and certainly not environmentalism.
>>1898163
Within the discursive context of Britain and the west more wildly "the climate" acts as a floating signifier to which different parties inject value and meaning. For elite neo-liberals they provide climate change with meaning by the actions they take to adress it. In this context it always meant restriction, austerity, and removal of jobs. It is always a sacrafice, this sacrafice is counterposed with the moral virtue of 'saving' the climate, being good citizens, 'scientific' knowldge holder etc. Therefore the inverse , an opisition to this is seen as anti-restriction, pro growth, peoples direct interest over the interest of climate. Now this can be projected in various different ways and formats given its a floating signfier without fixed meaning. And you see this in the varying of positions within the climate afirming camp. Your discursive position in relation to this signfigier is what places you inside the relevant chain of equivalance. Now between these position, we know that the discursivly elite or minoritrain position (This is Laclauin term, don't jump down my throat that Oil companies hate climate change policies , I know) is for climate action. It puts the virtues of actions above the immediate sacrafice and self interest of people. Therefore in order to place yourself within the chain of equivalance of anti-elite, pro people you take on position of some climate skeptcism.
Now I understand your idea, IE ideal social democracy could make climate production the makework project for expanded economy, but this has not been the realirty of any previous climate movement. And even when it is, this has been for a vanishing minority of workers as when compared the impact of broad restrcitions. So therefore even if you are climate affirming placing yourself within the discursive space of 'sacrafice' for climate is not productive. If you wanted to say - we are going to expand production , with state planning and then some of that ends up being wind turbines you can sell to overseas, this would seem fair and worker orintated. But interest of policy and position must always be worker first climate secound.
Also agreed RE mines, that bit was a joke. - Although I still think they could be kept open to this day, and discursivly Thatcher should be blamed even if your position is economically it was actually inevatable.
>>598177He needs more than just hardcore reactionaries to win though. He needs to persuade normie conservatives to switch from tory to reform.
>>598178You would either be removed in a week or last a decade and move on to NGOs and think tanks. Think of all the institutions Tony Blair picked fights with, for example. He was able to permanently change the way they worked. Now if only we had someone like that who isn't a neoliberal stooge.
>>598181>>598185The Worker's Party are the only ones actively trying to destroy the Labour Party. A vote for anything else is just a vote for more New Labour.
>>598186If you're going to spoil your ballot anyway you'd might as well vote for a smaller party. You've made the effort to go to the polling station.
>>598190I doubt it would cause a revolution. It would just mean the WPB are gradually replacing Labour as the standard left wing party to vote for. Reform UK are doing the same thing on the right. Essentially people are just tired of parties triangulating each other in a race to the centre.
>>598191Climate problems are not solved by politics so much as technology and innovation. Think of all the alternative refrigerants we already have to replace CFCs, for example. International agreements on CFCs were just the icing on the cake - it's the technology that makes it all possible.
Anyone who wants to solve climate change should therefore direct their efforts toward the material interests of high tech workers, particularly R&D. They should also support local industry to reduce outsourcing (international shipping is a huge chunk of the total pollution load).
>>598194This.
>>598196>Therefore in order to place yourself within the chain of equivalance of anti-elite, pro people you take on position of some climate skeptcism. I feel like this is more likely to lead to you credibility-washing "anti-elitist elites" than it is to lend credibility to you actually being pro-People. In your framework, if we looked at this like some kind of grand game, my immediate strategy would be to re-investigate the possibilities of playing at rad-libbery. If the well of being "pro-People" is poisoned, why not adopt a madcap program of appealing to everyone not on their status as "the people", but on their specific little identity group, with a program of specific promises tailored to them but ultimately for you? a madcap program that microtargets everyone: don't vote oldLabour because we stand for "the people" against "the elite", vote for us because, like you, we love undertale, we're willing to listen to Fócurc voices, we're here for people of TOFMIC ("Thatcher Obliterating Former Mining Industry Community") backgrounds, we're willing to have a dialogue with the rug seller community, etc, etc. grab the identity, then sell it on your program: as a person of historically marginalized /leftypol/ background, don't you deserve to be appointed chair of the bank of England?
Obviously this would mean adopting "elite" adjacent PMC linguistic tics, but I don't think that'd sink the project: after all, a lot of "anti-elite elite" types already get away with this: tell a reactionary woman to shut up, get accused of "speaking over women".
>>598197The problems are more political than technological. Take transport: for the areas in which most people live we've had the single most important technology for moving people energy-efficiently (and, overall, cost-effectively) for a hundred years - it's called the electric train. The problem is that we're politically unwilling to make serious use of it. Then there's the Jevons paradox, always waiting in the wings to fuck you.
>>598198Well yeah, that's why I'm saying the most important thing is the material interests of the R&D workers. It needs to be an attractive career choice so that the most talented people will pursue it instead of just being analysts for a bank.
>>598199The problem with electric trains is surely the high initial building cost. This is, again, a technology problem - we need a more efficient way to build high speed railway.
Jevons paradox will persist as long as we are still using the same energy sources, but again this is a technology problem. We need replacement energy sources rather than just more efficient uses of the existing ones.
The one thing I'll grant you is nuclear power, since governments have decided to deliberately retard its development. If it were allowed to develop we would have a massive wealth of carbon neutral electricity by now. Also thorium reactors could potentially use the waste from old uranium reactors as fuel, actively cleaning up all the dumping sites.
>>598199>I feel like this is more likely to lead to you credibility-washing "anti-elitist elites"These are the most succesful politcal actors our time, yes we would like to follow their discurcive strategy.
>if we looked at this like some kind of grand game, my immediate strategy would be to re-investigate the possibilities of playing at rad-libbery. Failed strategy and anti-marxist.
>>598200You aren't going to get a much more efficient way to build a high speed railway, mainly due to another effect that loves to fuck you: Baumol's cost disease.
In short: Wages in "inefficient" sectors have to rise in line with those of "efficient" sectors, leading to persistent above-productivity cost growth. The go-to example is a string quartet: the musicians are not
one percent more productive than they were in the year 1700, it takes exactly the same number to do exactly the same work, but they're not paid 1700s wages. construction, obviously, has gotten more efficient - but not at the same pace as manufacturing or other sectors. ultimately it's just too finicky. The cost disease is a problem that only gets worse with time, so avoiding building rail today because you think it'll be cheaper tomorrow just means that - if and when you do decide to stop dawdling - you pay even higher costs.
>>598204>These are the most succesful politcal actors our timeThis speaks to class power, not to their grand rhetoric.
Look at Johnson vs Corbyn. The anti-Elitist elite versus the anti-Elitist non-elite. Do you think Johnson won because he was a rhetorical genius, or because he was propped up by bourgeois institutions? Which better explains the way his support was turned off like a lightbulb?
Do you think the reason Farage outpolls Galloway is because he's better at anti-Elite posturing than Galloway is, or because the BBC, the press, and
the fucking Labour party love giving Farage attention while seeing Galloway as a side show? (Labour are actively trying to undermine their own candidate running against Farage! Do you think they're giving up Rochdale with similar ease?)
>>598207>This speaks to class power, not to their grand rhetoric.You are litterally r-tarded please read Laclau. These stategies originated on the left and have been used extensivly outside the west.
>Do you think Johnson won because he was a rhetorical genius or because he was propped up by bourgeois institutionsBoth are true. More down to the failures of Corbyn.
>Do you think the reason Farage outpolls Galloway is because he's better at anti-Elite posturing than Galloway is?Yes
>>598205this is basically the case.
what's disappointing from the left is that what we really want is to find a way to bring back, in one way or another, fordism. a green new deal to replace the old new deal, or climate denial so we can all mine coal for the smoke factory. it's nonsense. nobody wants to seriously think about how you could totally restructure day-to-day life. happiness remains something to be measured by GDP figures - if the line does not go up, the result must be misery.
i think about this a lot:
https://robinmcalpine.org/thank-goodness-for-cheap-stuff-eh/ >>598212Wouldnt work
The reason the commonwealth sustains is precisely exactly because there's not much materialy behind it.
>>598219As far as I understand we already take others waste, thanks thatcher, so we may as well get one at last.
Not saying we should keep Hinckley Point either, on the other hand, its french and also looking at my local water company or bus company I'm thinking any reactors we do get should be up in Scotland or on them little islands from the coasts.
>>598217No you let Corbyn off, for his weakness , lack or organsation and will. His campaign and partymanagment was a shitshow. His communication strategy was dogshit.
Also this same thing could of been said of Russia 1917.
>>598223We are infinitely closer to both Russia 1907 and Russia 1996 than to Russia 1917.
Corbyn made many unforced errors - but see how many unforced errors Starmer makes and tell me with a straight face that the dice are not loaded. Or, since we're obviously not going to agree on that point, have an exercise: Articulate for me why Farage is a better communicator than Galloway, rather than his popularity being a simple function of press indulgence.
>>598206>Solar/windSolar is low yield, but also low maintenance due to the absence of moving parts. Wind is low yield and high maintenance, while also posing a threat to wildlife. All the resources put into wind farms would be better spent fitting every roof with solar panels and every building with a battery system. Some input from power stations will still be needed, however, which nuclear power could provide cheaply with zero carbon emissions.
>>598207>Baumol's cost diseaseThis is another tech problem though, namely building multipliers for the sectors that are lagging in productivity. Your example of the string quartet actually illustrates this perfectly - the musicians themselves may not be producing more music, but they can sell you a CD, bluray or streaming service to listen to it. 4 very skilled musicians can therefore perform for millions of people at a time, instead of the concert hall that their 1700 equivalents would be limited to.
>avoiding building rail today because you think it'll be cheaper tomorrow just means that - if and when you do decide to stop dawdling - you pay even higher costsThis would only be the case if there were some material upper limit to efficiency that we had already reached. Have we really reached peak efficiency for track laying machines? Why can't other tasks like levelling and preparing the ground also become more heavily automated?
>>598213It would set an example for how to do it though. The technology could also be sold to other nations so they can do the same.
>>598216That's why thorium development is so important. You can reuse all the spent uranium as fuel instead of burying it.
>>598219Ideally we would have mass solarisation and insulation of all buildings combined with a nuclear program. The nuclear power would only need to cover the gap between solar supply and total energy needs. That would keep everything running efficiently for a long time, allowing scientists to move out of the oil and gas sector and work on even more long term solutions like enhanced geothermal.
>>598227This, plus they reify the nation state as if it were some kind of natural law. People who believe the propaganda are more willing to risk their lives for the nation. If we had a different social structure like, say, a world of autonomous cooperatives you would expect to see the opposite - people who believe in cooperatives would sign up for their local co-op militia while reactionaries would make excuses to avoid service.
>>598229>nuclear power could provide cheaplyIsn't nuclear power wildly expensive, takes 30 years to set up, and is then wildly expensive again when you have to dispose of the waste?
It might be green but it is not financially sound.
>>598228>Corbyn made many unforced errors - but see how many unforced errors Starmer makes and tell me with a straight face that the dice are not loaded. Simply not an argument. Yes its far easier to win political power when you have the backing of press and elite power. Thats not some brain wave its a known fact. This is not an arguement against thinking about how the left places itself discussivly.
>articulate for me why Farage is a better communicator than Galloway, rather than his popularity being a simple function of press indulgence.First of all, as you will see from my intial post , I was actually talking about discurvice positioning not political communication so I will awnser on that basis. These are just some thoughts off top of head but I may write up in more detail in a couple days
- Galloway position on Muslim interests/Gaza/Relationship with Iraqi/Syrian Goverment and - This position places him at odds with a large portion of the public as well as being anti-majoritain. It places him as an exlcusionary rather than inclusionary chain of equivalance. AKA Alientates people because he's seen to be siding with an out group. Linked to this is various meetings with IRA/Sinn Fein representatives.
-The essence of populist politcal cotestation is as outlined by Laclau, is meeting demands which cannot be met by the current political order. These are then bound in the chain of equivalance to create a politcal and social identity.
Farages core issue of contestsation is simply far more salient than Galloways (Which I would is its most specefic the above mentioned opposition to Isreal and resperentations of perceived Muslim group interests). Now you can say press indulgence ya ya - but this has been a salient political issue right or wrong in pretty much every place which has experinced migration at scale. Even with different press models and elite interests. Because this issue is so much more salient with a far larger portion of the public of course Farage would be more popular and create a more popular identity.
-Galloway says things which disturb his chain of equivalance where Farage doesn't. Galloway leans into contrevertial and not always popular issues which prevent him creating a chain of equivalance and therefore voter identity. Farage on the other hand is able to create an identity which is broad and popular. Futher it is more focused on a tigher range of largely popular issues, if Farage is ever in public, he's always talking about the 2 things that make him popular Immigration and EU, occasionally sprinkled in with braod anti-elite rhetoric. Where as galloway has a broader range of far less popular and salient issues.
Also obviously Farage has an easier job because of press support/media coverage
I may write up far more but I would have to delve back into more of the details of Galloways past public statements and contreversies.
>>598229>Your example of the string quartet actually illustrates this perfectly - the musicians themselves may not be producing more music, but they can sell you a CD, bluray or streaming service to listen to it. This constitutes an entirely different service, and arguably one provided by a separate recording industry. Fundamentally, the efficiency of producing the actual music has not changed one jot. The live concert today is no more efficient than it ever was.
Let's look at it from another angle: What do you think is better for stimulating effective railway research, so that we can actually develop magical track laying machines: building a lot of railways and seeing what the inefficiencies are in our existing processes, or sitting on our hands waiting for someone else to invent the machine so that we can make use of it? (and hoping, by-the-by, that the cost of doing so hasn't increased
further still, which it may well do if the productivity gains of the new technologies don't keep pace with the most productive industries)
Fundamentally if you want something done, you ought to do it. "It's too expensive" is a cop out for doing nothing on the state level. "Maybe it will be easier tomorrow" is a cop out for doing nothing on every level.
>>598223>His campaign and partymanagment was a shitshowYes they were. That doesn't mean there aren't also institutional forces working to keep the Labour party neoliberal.
>>598228>see how many unforced errors Starmer makesA great multitude. That doesn't mean Corbyn wasn't useless. If you want an actual opposition to New Labour™ it does need competent leadership to succeed.
>Articulate for me why Farage is a better communicator than Galloway, rather than his popularity being a simple function of press indulgence.He honestly is, although that's not the only reason for his greater success - the Conservatives are just not very skilled at dealing with opposition flaking them from the right, whereas Labour are extremely good at defaming people who try to flank them from the left.
The left could learn a lot from the Farage communication style, which is divisive at the group level while being personally non-threatening. For example, if you shout "racist" at Farage he will shrug it off with a smile and explain his actual views on immigration. Galloway will respond to the same insult with a lecture on why you are the racist for supporting Israel, complete with moral fervour like a preacher denouncing a heretic. Both are powerful, but Galloway scares normies.
The Farage style is better for generating media coverage. His ideas are controversial enough to generate sensational headlines, but when people hear him speak they don't feel threatened. This is absolute gold for a broadcaster looking to maximise ratings, so of course they keep covering him.
>>598230It's wildly expensive if you don't use it long enough to pay for itself because you gave in to anti-nuclear protestors and decided to regulate it away. Also thorium breeder reactors can reuse waste from uranium reactors as fuel, while producing very little waste themselves. Future nuclear projects could therefore have a negligible waste disposal cost if the initial setup is done correctly.
>What do you think is better for stimulating effective railway researchSupport the material interests of people who do the research. Make it an attractive career so that highly intelligent people with STEM training do it instead of going into finance or making iphone apps.
>building a lot of railways and seeing what the inefficiencies are in our existing processesOptimising the existing processes can only get you so far. The game changers occur when someone develops a completely new process based on a completely new technology. Think of when diesel replaced steam, for example. A diesel engine doesn't develop from gradual improvements in steam engines, it is a completely new technology that has to be designed from scratch.
>Fundamentally if you want something done, you ought to do it. "It's too expensive" is a cop out for doing nothing on the state level. "Maybe it will be easier tomorrow" is a cop out for doing nothing on every level.By this rationale everyone should be working on asteroid mining, as there is more mineral wealth there than in the Earth's crust. The fact is it just isn't viable yet. Space travel needs to get orders of magnitude cheaper first.
>>598234One of them might be an actor. Not sure about the others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXfsgy7jxRw>>598235My local got turned into a spoons. Feels bad man.
>>598233>Yes they were. That doesn't mean there aren't also institutional forces working to keep the Labour party neoliberal.When did I ever say there wasn't.
This is "lefty"pol. Its a given that any leftwing movement will be visciously attacked. Thats why the tatics have to be as close to perfect as possible. Mistakes are unaccaptable
>>598231>>598233Assuming you're different anons, but i don't have much to add beyond being fair and saying: Not bad posts. I disagree with what I take to be their overall thrust (that there's much in Farage-and-similar's content/positioning that is useful to the left), but i think you're onto something with the broad framework you're looking at things through. Full credit for coming at things from an interesting angle.
Though when it comes to scaring normies I have to wonder if the problem isn't in large part (British, non Marxist) class autism: Farage is a southern wanker, Galloway, an angry Scot.
>>598238Thanks for the praise Anon, that is a diffetent guy
I'm the first one. And I would really recomend giving Laclau a read if you have the time.
specifically on populist reason if you only want to read one of his books.
Although his other book the making of political identity has great chapters as well.
Geniunly having read a good ammount of contempary theory, the most valuable person you can read to understand liberal demoractic politcal dynamics.
>>598246I recognise that 'It's the end why don't you admit it … it's the same from Auschwitz To Ipswich' would have been more topical.
Oh well.
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