The UK Politics Thread [Wot did Jez do now...]

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Originally Posted by Lewis

I think MPs should have to be re-selected. There should be open primaries as well. If you can't convince the local activists to support you then fuck off.

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Yep.

It'd be nice if a load of Labour careerists who were previously given safe seats got deselected and people actually from the areas were elected. Probably won't happen but it'd be nice.

I still think there should be a residency requirement of about five years before you're allowed to stand for a constituency. Labour should even introduce it for their own candidates. I reckon it'd go a long way to helping the whole 'out of touch elites' view of politicians that people currently have (and you can hardly blame them).

When did This Week become a sketch show?

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Useless.

There's about 40* people in most party constituency branches, I'm sure they can organise a vote once every five years to make sure they still all like their nominated dickhead.

*probably an exaggeration

Perhaps, but activists are usually nutters and the last thing you want are a series of candidates palatable to the activists and who will make decisions to appease said activists to secure further selection down the line. I much prefer a centralised party view on this - the democratic part comes from the whole constituency at the election itself.

Jez is campaigning today and claimed that the media had refused to report good news for Labour - that they'd taken Thanet from UKIP. It turns out it was a *parish* council by-election. I know we joke, but fucking hell mate.

I mean I don't care either way - central nominations versus branch elections are fine, it's up to the voters to decide either way, my point is more that the difficulty of organising a nomination or confirmation vote before each election shouldn't be a constraint, 'coz it's easy to get 40 people together in a room in Shropshire compared to running a national or statewide campaign in the US.

I personally prefer the more democratic approach, it works fairly well for the most part here and I believe in increasing democratic legitimacy wherever possible.

I think it would work okay if you assumed that the activists were non-nutters. I would be very wary of ending up in the American Republican or British Labour situations where you have activists from the 'hard' wing of the party (right and left respectively) using selection primaries as a way of forcing more extreme candidates on a constituency. The moderate Republicans seem to spend half their time either appeasing the hard wing of the party or undertaking fundraising activities to sustain their own campaigns. Similarly, Labour MPs over here are now facing the constant threat of deselection if they don't conform to the 'socialist ideal'.

It's best avoided, in my view, through central nominations - it lets the MPs in question just get on with their job, and the electorate can decide for themselves next time around if they're worth another go or a change is needed. The whole electorate - not 40 activists who think reading Marx makes them a revolutionary.

I don't like parachuting of candidates, mind you, but that's a different question.

If you can't convince the local activists of your approach, or recruit enough 'moderates' to out-vote them, then maybe you shouldn't be in the trade union-funded Labour Party.

Well, the plan to "save Labour" seems to have been a waste of time so out-recruiting the nutters doesn't seem to work.

The nutter fringe will always be more motivated. They can't win though normal means, so they aim for small victories and shout about them. Like parish council by-elections.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...P=share_btn_tw

How seething do you reckon Dave would be if this was signed off? Not that the Eurosceptic wing of the Tory party want anything other than a hard exit, but fucking lol that the European lads are even looking at it. Rules, lads. Rules.

"We can give Dave a shit deal. It's not like they're going to vote out, are they?"

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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has agreed to give Labour MP Sarah Champion her frontbench job back - after she asked to be re-instated.

Ms Champion - who was a shadow Home Office minister - resigned the position along with many other Labour frontbenchers following the vote of no confidence in Mr Corbyn.

However, she has now asked Mr Corbyn for her job back. Mr Corbyn's office said the Labour leader had now written to "welcome her back".

The move will be seen as a significant coup for Mr Corbyn and will fuel hopes that the revolt among Labour MPs may crumble. A source close to the Labour leader said: "You saw what happened when the first miners went back to work, so let’s see what happens.”

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Jeremy's mate comparing his strategy favourably to the one employed by St Margaret. I'm not sure they've thought that one through.

A new ICM poll has the Tories on 43 and Labour on 27. That's a 100+ Tory majority. May needs to let Corbyn win the Labour leadership and go to the country in the autumn. Labour would be sub 200 seats, for fuck's sake.

Doesn't the fixed-term bullshit stop that? Unless they can collapse themselves, at which point Jezza is asked to form a government, and then they get an election when he obviously fails to do so. I can't remember how it works.

Collapsing themselves would be the easiest way. Or they can go to a vote in parliament where 2/3rds of MPs voting for dissolution is enough. Only anti-Corbyn Labour MPs would vote against, you'd think. Not sure if that would be enough to stop it or not.

I figured that the SNP would vote against it (or at least abstain) to prevent a stronger Conservative government.

Doesn't "a Tory government we didn't vote for" strengthen their argument for independence though?

I want to know Andy Burnham's thoughts on all this.

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Originally Posted by Lee

Doesn't "a Tory government we didn't vote for" strengthen their argument for independence though?

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There's no guarantee whatsoever they'd win a vote if they put it to the country.

It comes down to an emotional argument of identity, really, because you can effectively torpedo too many of their other points.

On Scotland, Comrade Jeremy moving Labour to the left to 'make them more competitive' is working out:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoUYHqfXEAEZy_R.jpg

Owen 'Who?' Smith has proposed a top, top policy programme. It would obviously ruin us, but how do you 'focus on equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity', and why would you want to?

Why is every 'major' political speech I read these days made up of six line sentences? Look at it. It reads like it was written by a twelve year old.

You mean six word sentences?

I write like a twelve year old.

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Originally Posted by Lewis

Why is every 'major' political speech I read these days made up of six line sentences? Look at it. It reads like it was written by a twelve year old.

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Because people don't have the attention span for longer sentences.

They want key messages.

They want them understandable.

They want them quick.

And they want the message distilled in five-second clips on the news.

As for 'equality of outcome', doesn't that just mean communism?

Yes. It's a shit idea.

Read his speech, no one will vote for any of that. I'm starting to think the whole Labour party is packed with Tory moles.

It's presumably designed to undermine Wor Jez, but with typical short-termism he'd never row back from it in a general election campaign and would get 'smashed'.

It'd be an appalling policy programme to force on the country, but you expect that.

On a separate note, he does a rather unappealing line in wife beating analogies.

Where are the Labour MP's who could oppose an actual leadership challenge? Their party is burning and they're nowhere to be seen.

Absolutely disgusting shirking behaviour.

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Originally Posted by Yevrah

Where are the Labour MP's who could oppose an actual leadership challenge? Their party is burning and they're nowhere to be seen.

Absolutely disgusting shirking behaviour.

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I'd shirk as well. Either let somebody else do a bit of a cleaning job before being ousted in 2020 or, more likely, watch Corbyn tank badly and go for it then. Nobody wants to be Kinnock.

At the moment most of them would probably give their left testicle (ovary) to be half a Kinnock. And not just because they fancy a family dynasty based on sponging off the EU (of course they'd want that too). Their race is run.

I saw earlier that Neil Kinnock's son concealed (he denies it, inevitably) that his daughter was going to a £29K a year private school when he was seeking selection for a safe seat.

Do as we say, not as we do. Welcome to Labour.

Jezza is in Hull on Saturday speaking for those People's Assembly dickheads. I might go.

I saw earlier that there's a report out that is incredibly critical of the IMF, suggesting it engaged in groupthink, had no clear decision making process and imposed ludicrous conditions on Greece solely to prevent contagion - effectively condemning the country to misery through misjudgements on their part on a colossal scale. It then sticks the boot into the rest of the Eurozone by suggesting that as they were going to be the beneficiaries of it, they should have put the money up.

Monetary Union, lads. We're better off out of that clusterfuck.

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Originally Posted by The Telegraph

Senior Labour rebels are so convinced that Jeremy Corbyn will win the leadership contest that they are planning to elect their own leader and launch a legal challenge for the party's name. Leading moderates have told The Telegraph they are looking at plans to set up their own “alternative Labour” in a “semi-split” of the party if Mr Corbyn remains in post. The move would see them create their own shadow cabinet and even elect a leader within Parliament to rival Mr Corbyn’s front bench and take on the Tories.

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lol at how pathetic that is. Have some dignity.

They love a good half-measure, those lads.

David Cameron's leaked resignation honours list has got even the sycophants seething. And on the day that Theresa May was revealed to have a 'general prejudice' against Chinese investment. A new dawn has broken, has it not?

A gong for the wife's stylist is a new low, and this comes after the various handouts under the Lord Blair.

I like that Will Straw is getting most of the grief as well.

Getting a CBE for fucking up the remain campaign is a right effort, but I think my favourite political failure is Ryan Coetzee.

His last two jobs were director of strategy for the Lib Dem general election campaign and director of strategy for the remain campaign.

You'd think he'd be laughed out of the room from now on.

George Osborne always managed to surround himself with impressive-sounding people, but you wonder about half the idiots dishing advice out. Bearing in mind that the people behind the Remain campaign seemed to think that it was a life and death matter, could they seriously not have found somebody better than Will Straw?

I suspect it's like the way English football is run - players getting moves based on a series of 'recommendations' from their mates / contacts and the same managers moving about constantly despite their record being demonstrably shit. It'll be the same here - political 'operators' moving about campaigns, think tanks or policy shops on the basis of knowing someone or being 'recommended' by a party hierarchy.

The state of UKIP. Fucking hell, lads.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Co39BnPWIAErKK2.jpg

"What's up with Owen Jones?"

The PURGE is starting. :drool:

He's having a shit time of it at the minute. It was easy to whinge from the left when it looked like everybody was on board with Ed Miliband, and opposing the Tory-led ideological cuts Nick Clegg mate was an end in itself, but now that Labour (and the left in general) needs constructive solutions in the face of imminent irrelevance he has to act like he's above the fray.

Which is the problem, I suppose. Wor Jez has spent a lifetime protesting from the sidelines, but when required to present actual coherent policies to fix the things he's protesting about he hasn't a fucking notion.

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:drool:

They're idiots if they don't vote themselves into an election the minute Jezza wins the leadership contest.

They like the certainty of power too much. Wankers.

They probably also want to let Jezza spend a few more years destroying the British left forever.