ronmcd wrote:The question is, then what?

General election with the Tories possibly getting a majority but certainly being the largest party would be the most likely outcome

I might waste my vote next time and vote for this group as opposed to simply not bother voting at all.

Personally I would just suspend parliament and put the CEO's of Mcdonalds and Amazon in charge, at least we would get our Big Mac Value meals delivered on time

mrjonno wrote:

ronmcd wrote:The question is, then what?

General election with the Tories possibly getting a majority but certainly being the largest party would be the most likely outcome

I might waste my vote next time and vote for this group as opposed to simply not bother voting at all.

Personally I would just suspend parliament and put the CEO's of Mcdonalds and Amazon in charge, at least we would get our Big Mac Value meals delivered on time

There's a poll that says they have 11% support in an election.

Thing is, that's spread over 650 seats. There's 11 of them, and they aren't a party ...

I'd think that a rotting corpse could probably get 10% of the vote right now so long as it opposed Brexit.

ronmcd wrote:
Thing is, that's spread over 650 seats. There's 11 of them, and they aren't a party ...

It could be the SDP all over gain.

5,10,20% doesnt really matter = very few if any seats.

Where I live a corpse with a red Labour rosette would get 75% + of the vote, never seen a single Labour or Conservative politician or even leaflet in a decade, with FPTP I simply don't count as part of the electorate.

Coming to the conclusion if you want your vote to count, you need to move to a marginal seat

GrahamH wrote:I just don't know what to make of allegations of antisematism. Understandably the media doesn't report the substance of incidents. Are people being attacked because they are jewish?

My take as a fairly moderate Labour member from outside the momentum / arch-Corbynite tent, FWIW:

Noone's being attacked because they are jewish. (Well, I'm sure some people are, as always, but there's no evidence that this is a particular problem with the Labour party). It really all comes down to how you view political attitudes to the Isarel-Palestine conflict and the state of Israel itself.

A lot of people within the Labour party believe strongly in the importance of standing up for the Palestinians as an oppressed, dispossessed people. Some - largely but not entirely on the left of the party - take this as far as denying the right of Israel to exist as a jewish state. They say that a state with rights based on ethnicity (eg the fact that jewish people who have never set foot in Israel have the right to citizenship there, but Arab Palestinians chased out during the wars don't) is inherently racist and undemocratic. Some favour a one-state "secular" solution. Although Corbyn himself is careful not to go this far, there is a suspicion that that is his position due to his long involvement with Palestinian human rights issues.

According to some jewish lobby groups such a the Jewish Labour movement, some within the right of the party, and the definition of anti-semitism that caused such a ruckus as Labour resisted accepting it, denying the right of the state of Israel to exist is anti-semitic, therefore when people make these kinds of arguments they are being antisemitic. Therefore there is a huge problem with antisemitism in the Labour party.

According to the left, anti-Zionism is completely separate from anti-Semitism and this argument is really just a cynical smokescreen for attempts to discredit and topple Corbyn by any means possible.

I belong to a CLP that has been torn apart and largely rendered inoperative by this internal conflict. My considered view is that the left are basically right. I don't personally deny the right of Israel to exist as a jewish state but I don't think those who do are necessarily anti-Semitic because of it. I know a number of jewish people who hold that position. And some of the claims about antisemitic behaviour are so unbelievably tenuous it's hard not to believe they're politically motivated.

The one caveat to that is that I have met thoughtful and intelligent people within the party who I respect arguing the opposite - ie that anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic - so I'm unwilling to write that side of things off completely.

Fair enough beatsong. My theory is that Corbyn is just a completely crap leader with no ability to put pragmatic considerations ahead of dogma. So he is in a mess on several fronts.

Beatsong wrote:

GrahamH wrote:I just don't know what to make of allegations of antisematism. Understandably the media doesn't report the substance of incidents. Are people being attacked because they are jewish?

My take as a fairly moderate Labour member from outside the momentum / arch-Corbynite tent, FWIW:

Noone's being attacked because they are jewish. (Well, I'm sure some people are, as always, but there's no evidence that this is a particular problem with the Labour party). It really all comes down to how you view political attitudes to the Isarel-Palestine conflict and the state of Israel itself.

A lot of people within the Labour party believe strongly in the importance of standing up for the Palestinians as an oppressed, dispossessed people. Some - largely but not entirely on the left of the party - take this as far as denying the right of Israel to exist as a jewish state. They say that a state with rights based on ethnicity (eg the fact that jewish people who have never set foot in Israel have the right to citizenship there, but Arab Palestinians chased out during the wars don't) is inherently racist and undemocratic. Some favour a one-state "secular" solution. Although Corbyn himself is careful not to go this far, there is a suspicion that that is his position due to his long involvement with Palestinian human rights issues.

According to some jewish lobby groups such a the Jewish Labour movement, some within the right of the party, and the definition of anti-semitism that caused such a ruckus as Labour resisted accepting it, denying the right of the state of Israel to exist is anti-semitic, therefore when people make these kinds of arguments they are being antisemitic. Therefore there is a huge problem with antisemitism in the Labour party.

According to the left, anti-Zionism is completely separate from anti-Semitism and this argument is really just a cynical smokescreen for attempts to discredit and topple Corbyn by any means possible.

I belong to a CLP that has been torn apart and largely rendered inoperative by this internal conflict. My considered view is that the left are basically right. I don't personally deny the right of Israel to exist as a jewish state but I don't think those who do are necessarily anti-Semitic because of it. I know a number of jewish people who hold that position. And some of the claims about antisemitic behaviour are so unbelievably tenuous it's hard not to believe they're politically motivated.

The one caveat to that is that I have met thoughtful and intelligent people within the party who I respect arguing the opposite - ie that anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic - so I'm unwilling to write that side of things off completely.

Thanks for that perspective.
I hadn't heard reports of that being the core issue.
The impression I got from news sources was that it was something personally abusive.

I would say that denying the right of the state of Israel to exist IS anti-Semitic, but that's different to discussion of possibly racially biased aspects of the Israeli state.

I suggest any further comments on this are posted in the antisemitism topic
UK: Can someone explain how and why Corbyn is anti-semitic?

Corbin appears stuck in a hole. He is 'known' to be anti Europe, so has some backing from the like-minded within Labour; yet has a sizeable vocal army of youngsters who love the guy, but are largely liberal thinking pro Europe. If he voices a firm opinion on either side.. he's sunk. His hesitancy too, isn't helping.

Ironclad wrote:Corbin appears stuck in a hole. He is 'known' to be anti Europe, so has some backing from the like-minded within Labour; yet has a sizeable vocal army of youngsters who love the guy, but are largely liberal thinking pro Europe. If he voices a firm opinion on either side.. he's sunk. His hesitancy too, isn't helping.

That's what it looks like from my very large distance also.

CarlPierce wrote:Fair enough beatsong. My theory is that Corbyn is just a completely crap leader with no ability to put pragmatic considerations ahead of dogma. So he is in a mess on several fronts.

The problem with that is that pragmatically, there's absolutely no way he can win the antisemitism battle. The accusations are based so much on contorted interpretations of what could, possibly, if you try really hard, be viewed as antisemitic, that there's no way to effectively fight them. He can't fight them with evidence because they're not based on evidence in the first place. The whole question of burden-of-proof has been thrown arse-over-tit. People are using statements and positions that could be motivated by antisemitism as "evidence" that he and his supporters are antisemtic, and then just figuring like Hitler that if it gets repeated often enough it becomes true.

Personally I've said all along that Labour should never have entered into all this and agreed to dance to their enemies' tune. They should have issued a clear statement that supporting Palestinian rights or a one-state solution in the middle east is a political position and doesn't imply antisemitism, and left it at that. People with an agenda would of course have continued trying to use it against them but it's not like there's anything they can do about that. Launching the Chakrabarti review, performing humble mea culpas and suspending or expelling a bunch of members because once ten years ago they liked something by Ken Livingstone on Facebook hasn't actually helped any. It's not like the people making these accusations actually have any interest in engaging with that process.

But I'm not a politician (thank God) and I understand why they probably couldn't do that.

Ironclad wrote:Corbin appears stuck in a hole. He is 'known' to be anti Europe, so has some backing from the like-minded within Labour; yet has a sizeable vocal army of youngsters who love the guy, but are largely liberal thinking pro Europe. If he voices a firm opinion on either side.. he's sunk. His hesitancy too, isn't helping.

In other words he's doing the only thing that he can do, politically, as the leader of a large and diverse party attempting to win an electoral majority: avoid annihilating Labour's traditional vote by wholeheartedly backing Remain, while staying sufficently more pro-Europe than the tories (eg by promoting the customs union) that Labour remains the choice of those Remainers realistic enough to understand that we live under a two-party FPTP system.

But apparently he's a blinkered idealogue with no idea of pragmatic politics. Oh well.

Gotta say that I'm disappointed with Chukka, I thought he'd eventually take the leadership before the next General . Ho hum

You couldn't rule it out in the age of Brexit. There's literally nothing too strange for UK politics in 2019.

Beatsong wrote:

CarlPierce wrote:Fair enough beatsong. My theory is that Corbyn is just a completely crap leader with no ability to put pragmatic considerations ahead of dogma. So he is in a mess on several fronts.

The problem with that is that pragmatically, there's absolutely no way he can win the antisemitism battle. The accusations are based so much on contorted interpretations of what could, possibly, if you try really hard, be viewed as antisemitic, that there's no way to effectively fight them. He can't fight them with evidence because they're not based on evidence in the first place. The whole question of burden-of-proof has been thrown arse-over-tit. People are using statements and positions that could be motivated by antisemitism as "evidence" that he and his supporters are antisemtic, and then just figuring like Hitler that if it gets repeated often enough it becomes true.

Personally I've said all along that Labour should never have entered into all this and agreed to dance to their enemies' tune. They should have issued a clear statement that supporting Palestinian rights or a one-state solution in the middle east is a political position and doesn't imply antisemitism, and left it at that. People with an agenda would of course have continued trying to use it against them but it's not like there's anything they can do about that. Launching the Chakrabarti review, performing humble mea culpas and suspending or expelling a bunch of members because once ten years ago they liked something by Ken Livingstone on Facebook hasn't actually helped any. It's not like the people making these accusations actually have any interest in engaging with that process.

But I'm not a politician (thank God) and I understand why they probably couldn't do that.

Corbyn could have visited Israel, done the looking solemn at the wailing wall shite while pretending to believe in god.

Done a tour of all the holy sites, gone to the West Bank etc

That would have helped massively

Ironclad wrote:Gotta say that I'm disappointed with Chukka, I thought he'd eventually take the leadership before the next General . Ho hum

I'm guessing he's going to be the leader of the Jump Before Pushed party, or whatever they're going to call themselves.

I suggest they call it "The hypocritical democrats"

Once again May's dawdle to Brussel has produced the usual.

No breakthrough in Brexit talks over Irish backstop

No breakthrough has been achieved in Brexit talks between Theresa May and EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker.

The UK's prime minister was back in Brussels on Wednesday hoping to win concessions over the Irish backstop.

May and Juncker said the discussions had been constructive and that the two leaders would talk again before the end of the month.

A wonder why? Nothing is going to change. May is on the wind down. The ERG would not want it any other way.

All this splitting is very interesting but with 36 days left if anyone wants to do anything it is getting late.

mrjonno wrote:Corbyn could have visited Israel, done the looking solemn at the wailing wall shite while pretending to believe in god.

Done a tour of all the holy sites, gone to the West Bank etc

That would have helped massively

Nah, then they would have just accused him of being a spy.