Off Topic Politics Thread

Labour have to go for this, as much as the Tories are in a mess, I think there are still identity issues for labour too. Lab Lib coalition makes sense. Amazingly Libs now the largest party in Tunbridge Wells, the alleged bastion of Conservative Britain.

 

Lib Dems took Somerset County Council in May with 66 out of 110 seats.

Let that sink in.

Somerset.

 

Unfortunately I see labour tearing themselves apart with purity tests and falling into obvious traps (likely culture war based) set by people more on the right

How important the culture war points are in a cost of living crisis - time will tell

 

I understand that Johnson is going to try and buy support by extending the right to buy, with good discounts, to more social housing.
We need a government that will not only outlaw the sale of social housing but commit to a massive building campaign to increase the stocks of social and council housing and also affordable housing for sale, separate to those built for the rental market.
This would have so many benefits such as increasing the availability of affordable rented accommodation, which would hopefully impact on the sky high rents that are being charged for private rentals. And low cost, affordable housing for first time buyers would hopefully stop the rampant price hikes in houses due to a shortage of properties.
Alternatively, if it is okay for social housing to be sold off at discounted rates, maybe tenants in private rented accommodation should be given the same right to buy. As if Johnson would ever let that happen, when so many of his fellow MPs are landlords.

 

If you frequent any Labour platforms online it can be pretty depressing.

Many want Starmer to be fined and resign and still post Corbyn articles.

Starmer supporters are painted as ‘Red Tories’, Lib Dems are still ‘Yellow Tories’ and more time is spent attacking these fronts than Johnson and the Tories. Hell many would tell you Starmer is as bad as Johnson so it doesn’t matter.

Ideological purity is more important than actually bringing about change.

You would think they might learn from 2019 where Johnson was basically handed it on a plate by Corbyn and Swinson bizarrely spending more time going after each other than the Tories despite having almost no overlapping battlegrounds.

 

I am kind of aware but mainly from just following any kind of left wing or progressive channels

I used to listen to the off shoot show of TYT (The Young Turks) because the live version lined up with the end of my work day and also I was trying to listen to some right leaning news sources so wanted a left leaning one that wasn’t really long. But they are basically swivel eyes loons in their own right on certain issue (mainly culture / society related ones). Basically harangued the Biden admin from pretty much day 1

Then of course there was Owen Jones who fresh from bullying / piling in on women online did an opinion piece that was heavily critical of Starmer for what was essentially the crime of “being a good politician” (saying what he needed to say to win the leadership and pivoting to make his message palatable to the country). Wasn’t he also against Corbyn at least initially ? Or am I misremembering. I wonder what kind of labour leader he actually wants

People may screw there faces up but recently Blair and Clinton have had some very good commentary on exactly this point - in fighting and purity tests costing the left ANY chance they have of doing anything

There are now plenty of people who claim online that they were on the left / liberal and now appear to be making money off of right wing (mostly culture) arguments. You can potentially say that is all part of the “grift” but I am not sure it is. This attitude of their only being one “correct” position is a real problem. Because when people don’t share it they are simply bullied away and the claim seems to be “we don’t want people like that anyway”.

That both loses supporters but also makes the people doing this lose the ability to make clear rational arguments. It becomes “you should agree with me because I am right and if not you are stupid and/or a bigot”. Not effective. It is a really big problem that some people on the left are having.

 

This specifically comes down to two elements, IMO: outright grifting, and being reflexively opposed to established centers of power (and the corollary: being far too invested in one's self-perception as a brave, truth-telling outsider).

Don't get me wrong: a lot of established centers of power are really awful! But if your whole identity politically is unflinching opposition to 'the establishment', it's really easy to get led down the garden path of finding common cause with others whose identity is unflinching opposition to 'the establishment', even if those others are just the worst people in the world. Glenn Greenwald still thinks that he's a brave truth-teller as he's carrying water for Tucker Carlson, and a depressing number of purported leftists have had similar flirtations with the extreme right, because of their shared interest in blowing **** up.

The second, even larger problem is that it's basically impossible to govern; that'd make you the establishment, and then you'd have to make compromises and difficult decisions and all the things you are critical of others for doing. So it's much easier just to play the Purer Than Thou game while also sabotaging those who share 90%+ of your aims, because then the superiority of your agenda can remain purely theoretical.

 

Thanks for this. Very insightful

Explains the moves of certain types who claim to have been left or centre left (Tulsi Gabbard comes to mind. As does George Galloway, Russell Brand and Joe Rogan)

Isn’t there a claim that a bunch of “Bernie Bros” voted Trump when he didn’t win the nomination? Or did they just stay home. I know some on the left try to blame them for 2016. They would fit the “tear it down” kind of idea since they probably believe trump as an “outsider” would do that. Trump’s “drain the swamp” rhetoric always made me laugh as his administration was one of the “swampiest” in a long time. And people refused to acknowledge that

 

When you say low numbers I'm thinking of a qualifying percentage. There's enough raving loonies in parliament already what with bonkers Boris, mad Nad, the Moglydyte, Nosebag Gove and ragin' Raab to name but a few of the incompetent incumbents.

 

The jury is still out on how many 'Bros' voted Trump, because there's a really weird and peculiarly American sidebar that kinda relates: there are a lot of Democrats, clustered in a handful of states, that aren't really Democrats in any meaningful sense. They are registered Democrats in some southern and particularly the Appalachian states (a corollary to the white, working class industrial regions that swung hard to the Tories in recent years), but basically never vote for Democrats in general elections. They just...never spent three minutes to update their voter registration for some reason, so they still participate in Democratic primaries. Where they invariably vote against whoever the popular Democratic candidate is, because they aren't Democrats in any meaningful sense.

In the Sanders era, this led to two things. One is a likely overstatement of how many committed Berniephiles actually voted for Trump, because a fair number of that crossover vote (Bernie primary/Trump general) were really Trump voters all along, but voted for the blow-****-up option in the Democratic primary for which they are inexplicably participants. The second is a gross overstatement of Sanders' appeal to those white working class voters in West Virginia and similar places; they didn't like Sanders, they'd have voted for literally anyone other than the establishment candidate in the primary before inevitably voting Republican in the general.

And I'm not even joking about the 'literally anyone': in 2012, when the Democratic primaries were functionally uncontested (Obama was running for reelection and didn't have a meaningful challenger), a guy by the name of Keith Judd took more than 40% of the primary vote in West Virginia. Judd was in prison at the time, serving 17 years for extortion and making threats. And also mailing a semen-stained copy of Playboy as part of that extortion. Point being: not really a good candidate, but 40% of WVa Democrats picked whatever name on the ballot wasn't Barack Obama.

 

I think that this exact issue was beautifully captured in the 'Life of Brian' scene where The People's Front of Judea cared more about the Judean People's Front (Splitters!) than they did about the Romans. (I may have mis-remembered the faction names, but the principle doesn't change)

 

I am sadly ignorant of these things, so was the (No) Confidence vote by Tory MPs a secret ballot? In other words, will we, and more importantly, will members of their local Tory parties, know which MPs voted for or against Boris?

 

It was secret and apparently the ballots were shredded immediately. So “no”

 

Royston Smith voted to save Johnson, if it helps anyone in his constituency.

 

What about his namesake, Royston Vasey?

 

Footnote to the above, a story on the BBC about high rents and property shortages.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61650382?fs=e&s=cl

 

Exactly. They certainly don’t need people on right to set traps.

 

Which online ‘Labour Platforms’ are you referring to?