UK Politics Thread (Part 1)

Not a chance.

Hypocrisy is not the exclusive preserve of the tories. :face_with_monocle:

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I think McCluskey threatened to do this before Starmer took over the leadership, so I’m not surprised he has gone ahead with it. It’s just another step in the campaign against him, with the deliberate votes against the party whip etc.
Just last week Starmer reiterated his stance to continue with the commitments he made in the leadership contest, which McCluskey had previously been calling for him to remain faithful to.

It will be interesting to see just how Unite members feel about this as Starmer had won support from a wide range of labour members including from those on the left.

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It’s just another step in the campaign against him

oh boy

I’m a Unite member, and I’m fucking livid.

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The Starmer Out hashtag has been trending from the day he became leader, if not before. The party report came out as he took over - clearly not a coincidence.

I think it is a blessing in disguise. Unite has been a millstone for at least a decade, and has been worse in the past few years. The data suggests Unite does a woeful job of delivering member votes, and on the scale of things their financial contribution is not that large. Now Starmer doesn’t even need to do the awkward work of distancing himself from them.

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people on the left don’t like starmer because he’s an obvious centrist weasel, i don’t blame them

meanwhile the smear campaign against corbyn was so successful it’s now a blueprint for punching left

I don’t think she has provided anywhere near the ammunition that Corbyn has - if nothing else, Corbyn had a definite blind spot. Ocasio-Cortez has pulled out of a couple of events, presumably because of discomfort with other invited partners, and stated a position that anti-Semitism is an unacceptable form of religious discrimination rather than an unacceptable form of ethnic discrimination. Not a lot of grist for the mill there, that is the sort of stuff that convinces people that already wanted to believe the premise. Corbyn just plain lost people the more he tried to explain away his mis-steps, and probably could have made his life much simpler if he had just stepped away from problematic engagements that require subsequent awkward explanations the way AOC has.

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I think with Corbyn it’s that he is 100% pro Palestine. He aligns himself with their fight against oppression and the aggressive actions of the Israeli government.

Unfortunately that then means he attends events and associates with those who express antisemitic views. This is obviously problematic. He’s slow to condemn actions of terrorist organisations like hezbollah (and the IRA) possibly because he considers these actions not of terrorists but the manifestations of a people oppressed. This also doesn’t help his cause.

Compounding this are things like the endorsement of the antisemitic mural, attending the remembrance day event for those responsible for Munich etc and then the rather ridiculous and clumsy attempts to retrospectively justify or excuse, sometimes with false claims like he wasn’t there, when it’s later shown that he was.

I don’t know whether Corbyn is actually antisemitic but he certainly associates himself with people who are and failed to properly address problematic views and behaviour associated with antisemitism.

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I know I’m wading into troubled waters, but where do we draw the line between terrorism and fight against oppression???

It’s not just about Hezbollah, Hamas, IRA, ETA. The PKK is a terrorist organisation for Turkey (naturally) but not to all. But their objectives and modus operandi is same as other organisations.

I think if you deliberately target civilians in your fight against oppression you can’t complain if you’re described as a terrorist organisation.

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The whole town? I doubt it, although you get a few idiots wherever you go.

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They tried that against Sanders in 2016 as well. Supposedly he wasn’t Jewish enough.

https://nypost.com/2016/04/10/if-youre-jewish-dont-vote-for-bernie-sanders/

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that headline (knowing the ny post) is more anti-semitic than any remark i’ve seen attributed to corbyn

(i decided i’d give the column a chance but then i saw the byline, wow. i do not enjoy andrea peyser’s perspectives)

but corbyn’s rabid, virulent anti-semitism is so well-established that it can be used to implicate others (in this case ocasio-cortez, who reversed on attending a rabin commemoration after pressure from left activists) by mere association

boris johnson’s use of anti-semitic stereotypes in his own published work was never as controversial as corbyn’s pronunciation of the surname of a dead child pimp (who had close ties to two US presidents, the british royal family, and both british & israeli intelligence)

almost as if the state of israel functions mostly to advance the interests of the West in the region

The whole anti-Semitism debate is a sideshow. Even the smears and centralist vs left debate.

It was apparent that Corbyn was piss poor leader who made numerous strategic errors. His biggest asset was that he was different, a genuine politician with values.

However on the biggest decision the country has had in a generation (arguably lifetime) he failed to have a party position. When he did speak about Brexit (limited times before referendum) he did not appear genuine.

That’s what buried him. If you hold no position on the biggest political decision, default to a referendum and will of people. You can’t hold the government to account afterward. You appear as hypocrite/opportunist later when you do.

After the referendum he wasted a huge opportunities to shape Brexit. With numerous Tory desentors on select but key issues he even held a slim majority in parliament. He even had a speaker that would have enabled him to do so. What did he do ? He wasted it.

It was maddening to see challenge to the government coming only from the back benches. Likes of Yvette Cooper and Hilary Benn doing what Corbyn should have been doing. Worse still when the margins where so slim (decided by just 1 or 2 votes) seeing Corbyns Shadow cabinet abstain. Even using the whip against amendments.

This was a time where he needed to show leadership, compromise and unite all the opposition MPs (not just within his party, but including Tories, lib Dems etc) he failed.

Corbyns failures were not one of ideology (being socialist), smears, or race. He simply was a poor leader.

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Some of us won’t care as we’ll be moving to Canada.

I know it is commonplace in NY parlance, but I always find it unsettling when anyone refers to ‘the Jews’, in the sense of ‘not good for the Jews’.

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Chalk here, one of the few semi-competent MPs, owning Lammy

Seeing that 2/3rds of British is trending and looking at the vast majority of comments is further proof that a large number of remain-supporting individuals simply don’t get it. :disappointed: