#41

there is a way to do “progressive patriotism” that centres economic justice and offers a more positive vision. but it needs to tell a delicate and nuanced story that is critical of the state of things and what brought us here. the last guy who tried that was was called a commie spy who wanted to bankrupt the country for hamas, and by dumb luck avoided at least 2 assassination attempts. the swine are not desperate or mature enough to be receptive to that story yet. i was hoping brexit being a bust and the government response to covid might take them down a peg and soften em up for some home truths but if anything it has driven them further off the deep end.

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#42

Bet the two Scottish Labour leadership candidates are delighted to hear this. :scream:

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#43
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#44

genuinely wonder if they even bother checking anymore. like just whatsapping each other gifs and playing minigolf because the ultimate result will be the same.

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#45

I mean, they probably are. Probably think this will be a rallying call for unionists in the face of an impending independence referendum.

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#46

True. Kind of undermines their bollocksy attack line of ‘focusing on nationalism instead of a pandemic/poverty/schools/broad-sweeping-gesture’ against the SNP though.

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#47

one of them will be tbh

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#48

throwing marginalized groups under the bus to appeal to racist pensioners is not my idea of a good move

especially if the end game is to win power and then to not enact any fundamental change but to merely tinker at the edges, leaving exactly no one happy except those who already had money and power.

that’s why people accuse Keith of being a tory

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#49

OK back now. Yes up to a point Lord Copper. There are significant differences between being furloughed and being unemployed; in the former you’re getting paid and you still have attachment to a job (that at least in theory still exists). Self employment and underemployment are tricky issues and obviously structurally both are more prevalent than in the past, but not specific issues unique to the current situation

But to return to the original point: if the furlough system were abruptly cut off then the unemployment rate would rocket, probably to at least the 9 odd percent level; that would count as mass unemployment and the societal effects would be significantly worse than they currently are.

#50

All understood and thanks for the reply. Lord Copper?

#51

Affectionate nickname for you, maybe?

#52

I’ll take affectionate! :slight_smile:

#53

Guess I abused the reference a bit to be honest.

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#54

Guido Fawkes posting a video where Keir Starmer says he wants to abolish the monarchy - gee, it’s almost as if Labour trying to appeal to reactionary shitheads never works because they’ll always hate you anyway

#55

First thing he’s said that would make me happy to vote for him

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#56

Not meaning this as a dig, but the idea that the left of the Labour party doesn’t want to be in power is a bit of a Mail/Times/general dickhead-columnist talking point, and isn’t really true from my own (somewhat limited) experience of people on the left of the Labour party.

The ‘left’ wants to be in power, and wants to do so by creating a positive message of how things can be better through things like public ownership of utilties, while the ‘right’ wants to triangulate towards victory (hence vigorously fucking the flag at every opportunity). Starmer seems (IMHO) to be trying to do a bit of both at times, but doesn’t seem to have much in the way of a positive vision guiding him, so ends up defaulting towards the latter.

Neither route is an easy road to power in a country where the mass media is owned and controlled by about 6 people who will dig up any shit they can, but the idea that the left just wants to be “IdEoLoGiCaLlY pUrE” is (generously) a naively reductive way to look at the left of the Labour party’s aims.

hadn’t even seen this when I wrote my post but yeah, this is why pivoting right and joining in the culture wars will fundamentally not work.

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#57

Let’s put the press to one side, because we both agree there.

When people in the thread are calling the leader of the Labour Party Keith, and calling him a Tory - that doesn’t appear to me as something that’s furthering the cause of left wing politics, and not something that creates this positive message that you talk about.

And before I’m accused of being a tory myself, it works both ways - there were far too many people being dickheads about Corbyn too. It seems that there should be more focus on the common aims within the Labour Party than giving the press reason to amplify the differences.

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#58

I mean… what? We’re not the leadership of the Labour party, we’re people stuck at home while the actual leadership (and people who should be furthering the cause of working people in this country) decide to do this by falling into every single bear trap the right-wing media set for them.

wasn’t gonna do that

Yes, and even when Corbyn put forwards a really positive vision for what Labour could be, those fucksticks wouldn’t shut up, whereas when Starmer hints at something half-decent, the left of the party arae pretty much on board with it.

Where is Serious grown-up suit vision on what the Labour party can be, and why is he basically just focusing purely on image? That leads fucking nowhere.

Meanwhile, the guy he rammed in as NEC chair is actively doing his best to destroy and delegitimise party democracy - should the left of the party just obediantly smile while entire CLPs are basically gutted of their top staff for genuinely no reason?

Genuine question.

This is my point - for a tranche of the Labour party, things like publicly owned utilities are not only ‘politically not going to work’, but they’re actively bad. Look at the likes of Angela Smith, or loads of other New Labour sorts who are actively working for private utilities companies.

There aren’t really any common aims with these ghouls, they’re just suits who prefer the conservative party to genuine social democracy.

[SORRY THIS WASN’T MEANT TO TURN INTO A LINE-BY-LINE RESPONSE IT JUST HAPPENED LIKE THAT]

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#59

Glad I stopped giving these people money almost a year ago now.

#60

As others have said it’s possible to articulate a patriotic, Britain-first version of socialism. It’s a dangerous road to go down but there’s so many open goals that the Tories have left to exploit - a very simple thing to do is to hijack their taking back control message and frame nationalisation as exactly that, getting back control from the private equity parasites and Victorian poorhouse sadists that run this country. It’s not as if Brexit will deliver any such thing to the average feller, they’ll remain as alienated and frustrated as ever.

But that’s to mistake who Starmer is. He’s a scion of the managerial model of politician Blair created, people who react to ideological groundings or using politics to actually change society with disgust. He cannot articulate a ‘nation and family’ version of Labour because he has no vision of what he wants the party to do in the first place, he only knows he’d be a better administrator than Johnson is. He’s turned to a focus group to explain why he’s not making any progress in the polls despite the cataclysm of corruption and ineptitute we’re living through, and they’ve told him he needs to stick more flags on his podium.

He’s done nothing and he’s all out of ideas, in other words. Liberalism is a total dead-end in this era, all it knows how to do is hold onto its own power structures with its cold, forensic hands.

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