Off Topic Politics Thread

A lot of it is stupid stuff really. The way he always comes out of his house and is rude to reporters outside. We all know that the majority have it in for him but you really need to be charming towards your enemies as mush as your friends. Corbyn voted against virtually everything put up by Blair simply because he didn't like him. It's childish and I think he comes over as petulant and grumpy. McDonnell comes over far better.

 

Think that map is slightly out of date because EU decided in 2018 to launch negotiations for a free trade agreement with a few more countries including NZ and Australia.

I would certainly want to stay with the EU to negotiate trade deals as a collective than try to do it alone where everyone knows we are desperate and would use that to make us compromise on our standards.

 

The thing is, when you negotiate a trade deal with another country, it helps if you have something they want. At the moment we don’t really manufacture anything, and our resources consist of little other than fish, agriculture, and sick people to sell drugs to.

Edit: agriculture contributes 0.59% of the GDP of the UK and fisheries 0.1%.

 

Keep your friends close , your enemies closer !

 

I like this.

 

What I find offensive is the 'impartial' BBC journalist has to immediately classify the truth that man speaks as 'clear Labour supporter'. We are in a media mess.

 

We need some high quality and fearless investigative journalists who are prepared to do some real research into what Boris and his cronies are doing, especially with the creeping privatisation of the NHS. It needs to be broadcast in the manner of a Panorama Special so the message can't be twisted and a light is shone on the true facts.

The state of main stream journalism in this country is appalling but surely there has to be a few high quality people out there who feel deeply enough to start digging?

 

There are, but it all gets covered up.

Look at the whole cambridge analytica stuff from the netflix documentary.

Its literally terrifying. But because these tactics are still being used to great effect by Bojo and Trump, it hasn't made it's way into the wider consciousness.

 

Well there you go. You can't put it plainer. Elon Musk chose Berlin [Brandenburg] as the site of its new Europe Gigafactory 4, consisting of a car production facility, and in addition, he intends to put a battery plant and a research-and-development centre there for Tesla Inc. Elon Musk didn't consider the UK [which has the Honda and Ford [Wales] factories closing and would have been perfectly fine] because of Brexit. Other business leaders will waffle, but Elon tends not to. This is the certainty over the utter stupidity of Brexit:

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tesla...-in-germany-not-uk-as-elon-musk-blames-brexit

 

I' m a life long Labour supporter and I' m 68 so I've been round the block. The Labour Party should be so far ahead in the polls but ... Good old Jeremy keeps on scoring own goals. His latest comments on Bolivia and Morales seem to me to be based on a knee-jerk assessment. A considered response that went along the lines of..' If the Morales regime is guilty of election rigging then his resignation is a just result, however much that happens in South American democracies is at best opaque and it might be wise to collect more evidence before jumping to conclusions.'.... Might have enhanced his claim to the role of Statesman, but now we have a cross section of the serious press criticising. Another own goal...

 

Anyone still proud to be a Tory voter?

 

Seventy seven years after one incompetent dictator watched his tanks freeze solid in the snow around Stalingrad General Winter is on the march once more. How Pfeffel must wish that he was tripping through the darling buds of May instead of uselessly swilling mud around the floor of a Sheffield opticians. The editor of the Yorkshire Post was on the radio this morning saying how the delusion of competence that the PM was clinging to by his fingertips was slipping from his grasp. The fat, ( and unless the camera lies rapidly getting fatter) oaf is losing it.

 

Seriously, wtf? What has Corbyn’s opinion on the President of Bolivia got to do with the U.K. election? This is desperate stuff from the British press looking for literally anything they can to undermine Corbyn.

I know nothing about Morales btw. But if pushed to investigate the issue, I’d certainly give more credence to JC’s opinion, than Dominic Raab’s.

 

Morales has done quite a bit of good, though he has also undertaken actions in recent years that have consolidated power and generally ran counter to democratic norms. Bolivia, and Morales' movement, would have been far better off had he ceded leadership to someone else, but that doesn't justify what is pretty well a coup, and will likely lead to a lot of people being harmed.

Far more indefensible is Corbyn's position on Maduro in Venezuela. Maduro isn't a socialist, he just speaks the language of one. He's a kleptocrat who has siphoned off billions and rendered the legislature inert while his country sheds all of the gains it made during the first part of Chavez's time at the helm (the second half wasn't quite so good, as Chavez himself discovered the joys of self-dealing). There's a near-universal consensus that Maduro needs to go, but Corbyn can't find it in him to criticize someone who styles themselves as left-wing, even if the primary difference between a Maduro and a Noreiga is a fondness for self-awarded medals.

 

Do you know what Corbyn’s “position” on Maduro is? I don’t. What I do know is that Shami Chakrabati, who has been unequivocal in her own criticism of the Venezuelan regime, recently defended Corbyn's remarks regarding US interference in Venezuela, saying Corbyn was a “lifelong human rights defender, who struggled to get a fair hearing in the media”. Sounds about right.

 

Godders was talking Alliance in the past tense and the LibDems policy is Remain not 2nd vote, so they disagree

And post-election having to support something isn’t an Alliance

Aside from that, IF Labour win then obvs the Liberals will be happier with 2nd vote than Tory Brexit, but not a foundation for an “Alliance”

I wish progressive parties did work together more but UK politics is built on opposing everyone else. All part of the 1st past the post system

 

Sure, the best thing you can say about Corbyn now is that he makes mealy-mouthed non-statements.on the matter. But there are times when you need to show a little more leadership; I don't hold his support for Chavez against him, even if I think it was misplaced in his last few years. But when you vocally support a movement, and it backslides into brutal dictatorship, that bears mention!

And no, I don't really think it's a surprise when a member of Corbyn's shadow cabinet states that his comments are fine, and look at the contrast there. Chakrabati, a member of Corbyn's party, has been unequivocal in her criticism. Why can't Corbyn? Bromides about respecting the rule of law are pointless when the rule of law is controlled by those flouting democratic norms.

Which, again, is what I find so infuriating about Corbyn. One can talk about a media conspiracy to poison people against him until they're blue in the face, but so many of his own problems are self-inflicted, because the man is a perpetual motion vacillation machine. It sucks that the false dawn of the Chavista movement has ended in Maduro's brand of crony capitalist rent-seeking (though that's the end state of roughly 50% of all Central and South American regimes, whether on the left right or centre), but if you want to tell the world what democratic socialism is, it really helps to be vocal about what democratic socialism is not when someone is falsely waving the flag.

 

He has his faults, granted. He wasn’t my choice for Labour leader, but he was elected by an overwhelming majority of the party members, not once but twice.

With that in mind, I find it particularly infuriating when voices from within the labour movement join in the chorus of denunciation orchestrated by the right wing media circus. Something he deals with btw, with extraordinary good grace and restraint.