UK Election June 8th
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Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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Skids 
Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.
Joined: 11 Sep 2007
Location: Joined 3/6/02 . Member #175
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 good to see you back!
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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World politics is screwed. time to buy those acres in the bush and start digging a bomb shelter
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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ronrat
Joined: 22 May 2006
Location: Thailand
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Actually I think the Trumping of the US is going to have a fire season back burning effect. All of a sudden the peasants are asking "What is going on". ISIL and the like want a holy war and are now fighting on 10 fronts. In 5 years time Europe may have completely dumped the European ideal and countries like Greece and Spain will have to start earning their way in the world. Nations will rearm themselves instead of relying on the USA but will do so on a scale reactive to small terrorist attacks. Border security will tighten and with anyluck more of these fruitcakes will be caught.
Once the UK bugs out Holland and France may want out of the EU and that will.
It could be the beginning of a massive restructuring of the world economy and that might be a good thing. I know here in Thailand some idiot is keeping the local currency higher than it should which is ballsing up the 2 main industries, rice exports and tourism. Cynics say it do the military can buy the 12 submarines it wants from China that most sensible strategists seem as pointless. Still if you are getting a kickback that will make you very rich who cares about a few million peasants in the field and hospitality workers . They can all get factory jobs with the car industry now we have ripped it off Australia.
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Annoying opposition supporters since 1967. |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Here's how Corbyn can win:
Just kidding.
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| David wrote: | Here's how Corbyn can win:
Just kidding. |
I expect at least a dozen articles in The Guardian titled like this, then a few more after the election how he can still win following a Conservative landslide.
What will be interesting to see is if UKIP can maintain any gains they had now that their hot button issue has succeeded. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | Here's how Corbyn can win:
Just kidding. |
Yep. On the other hand, the Liberal Democrats, the "centrist" alternative to Labour who are pro-Remain, will probably roar back. It's going to be an interesting night in June. Though I expect a comfortable Tory majority, it is a more volatile scenario than I have ever seen.
If Labour and the Dems (and the SNP) had any brains, they'd propose a non-aggression pact, not competing against each other so that the pro-remain vote is maximized (we do not have preferential voting here, just straight FPTP). If that happened, the Tories might well get kicked out. The trouble is that they do not have many brains, and that would make Corbyn PM, which is a truly appalling prospect. Absent this type of pact, however, May should win comfortably.
Ps glad you're back, Wokko. Nick's politburo is a little saner for having a crazy libertarian 
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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^ Only trouble with that is that Corbyn's position on the EU seems mixed at best. That's one of Labour's biggest problems: they can't run an election on this issue, just as they couldn't wholeheartedly get behind the Remain vote to begin with.
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | | ^ Only trouble with that is that Corbyn's position on the EU seems mixed at best. That's one of Labour's biggest problems: they can't run an election on this issue, just as they couldn't wholeheartedly get behind the Remain vote to begin with. |
Yes, Corbyn sees the EU as a suspiciously pro-Capitalist organisation. He's a not-very-bright second-rate proto-Communist elected by £3 a vote students. A real Moomba birdman.
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| Surely after getting toweled up by Iron Lady 2 he's a goner. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| Wokko wrote: | | Surely after getting toweled up by Iron Lady 2 he's a goner. |
The Labour Party is so batshit crazy nowadays that anything is possible. Is the Iraqi Information Minister available to act as their Communications Manager when it is over ?
Personally I hope the Labour Party dies, to help precipitate a wholesale realignment that British politics badly needs. A truly Conservative Party and a reborn Liberal/Libertarian Party is probably what the age demands.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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As, funnily enough, Trump and Le Pen have shown, working-class politics is far from dead – indeed, it may be stronger than it's been for decades, now on both the left and the right. Sanders, let's not forget, got much further than anyone thought he would. And Melenchon, quite a marginal far-left figure, continues to defy expectations in France and could yet make it through to the run-off, in which case he'd have to be an even-money bet to gain sufficient middle-ground support to beat Le Pen.
Corbyn is no Sanders, but his victory at least showed that there was an appetite within the Labour rank-and-file to get back to the party's socialist roots; the only question is what will emerge in the wake of his party's near-certain annihilation – a return to the Blairite neo-liberal centre? A Bill Shorten-like figure who can competently bring a bit of class warfare to a reasonably centrist social and economic program? I guess we'll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, the LDP may well be able to suck up the urban progressive/'knowledge class' vote that mostly goes to the Greens down here. But otherwise, working-class politics is going to remain a potent force – whether that be via Labour, UKIP, the SNP or a mix of all of the above.
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^A large chunk of the Working Class are Conservative, and May is trying hard to bag their votes. I expect she'll succeed. The party they really hate are the Liberals and the trendy Left.
Stepping aside from polemic for a minute, I think the old Left working class politics, based on the "security trinity" of unions, high taxation and state spending is probably a dead letter, In an age of mobile capital and ultra-fast technological change, we cannot go back to the old securities and we cannot raise the taxes to fund them without killing off investment. Old Labour is dead. All that I think we can offer the working class is better education, social order and identity, with a safety net of social basics based on contribution through work. For example, the state pension can stay at 65 or so as long as you are prepared to put in a few days a week at a care home, funding it by displacing the need for costly care workers. Some new settlement like this sorely needed, if we are not to tilt over to angry Right or angry left politics.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Jezza 
2023 PREMIERS!
Joined: 06 Sep 2010
Location: Ponsford End
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| David wrote: | Here's how Corbyn can win:
Just kidding. |
That's a good one!
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Most people seem to agree that Corbyn's presentation and communication skills are average. But what about his actual politics? Helen Razer mounts an impassioned defence:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/04/20/why-the-left-should-love-jeremy-corbyn/
| Quote: | Why the Left should love Jeremy Corbyn
Helen Razer
Fierce and noble warrior queen Theresa May has called a snap election to heal a kingdom hurt by a crisis of identity. Bollocks. No, she didn’t. The politician, long more inclined to exploit national divisions than to soothe them, has done the thing that she said she never would in order to throw Tory blue bunting over two Tory screw-ups.
Not even free-market advocates had much that was nice to say about her tax proposals for the growing number of self-employed Britons — exasperating changes that would force Uber drivers to fill out forms at the traffic lights. There can be no positive spin on investigation for alleged electoral spending breaches by a reported two dozen Conservative MPs — a number that exceeds the party’s parliamentary majority.
Still. This false Boadicea has a great chance of victory. For this, we will have naked, unreasoned establishment hatred of Jeremy Corbyn to thank. This destructive work need no longer be done by May’s powerful allies. Both the Parliamentary Labour Party and the press of a purported “left” will do it for them.
It wasn’t surprising to hear David Cameron charge the Labour leader with looking scruffy. It was surprising to find that The Guardian had done it first. Assistant editor Michael White developed keen interest in Corbyn’s sandals long ago — actually, at about the same time the guy stopped being a lovable left-wing loser and started to build what has become the youngest and the largest political party in Europe. It’s odd that the paper that positions itself as a model of tolerance and the voice of the marginalised rebel found so little to like about “the MP on the demo with the beard and sandals”.
Even Owen Jones, for a time the paper’s single reliable Corbynite, has done his recent bit to diminish the leader. Actually, this disavowal seems to have done wonders for this unremarkable thinker’s career. In February, Jones was interviewed by another major British newspaper, happy to report that in the person of Corbyn, the left had “failed”.
It remains unclear to me how Corbyn, a politician consistent in his vindicated criticism of austerity and a socialist flexible enough to adopt one of Milton Friedman’s prescriptions, has “failed” the “left”. Or, at least, it is unclear until I consider the possibility that the “left” considers its failure to meaningfully influence policy for the past 40 years a success.
Through Jones, we can see the vision that an establishment left has developed for itself. Like so many progressive establishment pundits, he has built his brand through the public appearance of being personally marginalised. Jones is often offended by the cultural intolerance of others and keen to link his own experience of debate on major television shows to the struggle of real people — cf. Tara Moss and her campaign against the everyday problem of online abuse explored entirely through interview with celebrities. This is the prominent face of the “left” now: a group of modestly known people far more comfortable describing the hard time they had on Twitter than examining the possibilities for actually socialist policy.
At the passing of the execrable Margaret Thatcher, then-UK prime minister David Cameron declared “We are all Thatcherites now”. He’s right. Owen Jones and so many critics of Corbyn implicitly believe that “there is no alternative” to the market friendly regime they quit criticising so long ago. The “left” is very happy to go on talking about how the right is mean to its stars. They are content to leave economic policy, the core business of government, to Thatcher. They are profoundly annoyed that Corbyn talks about the dirty matters of money and of life.
Corbyn has not proposed anything outrageous. His program is one of finance sector regulation, reliable provision of social services and progressive tax. The guy may have Marxist inclinations, but these are not of the uncompromised orthodox sort. Commentators may call him Trotskyist and malign the hundreds of thousands of young people who have joined his party as “entryist” — Lenin forbid we praise Millennials for their political engagement. But upon examination, the Corbyn suite of policies is very modest. Corbyn advances a program of greater wealth equality that is indistinguishable from what those arseholes at the IMF say that they want for the world, but will never deliver.
This is how the “left” criticism goes: the man is poorly dressed; he doesn’t look or sound like an establishment politician; he just can’t get his message across and is therefore unelectable. And because he’s unelectable, we’re just going to keep saying that he’s unelectable to ensure that this message can never get across.
Such hand-wringing about modest and popular proposals for reform! Proposals so modest, even Piers Morgan says that he agrees with them. An interview this week captures the conflict of progressives who publicly endorse the implementation of such proposals but say that they despise Corbyn’s inability to communicate them. You just can’t get your policies across, says Morgan. Let’s talk about them then, says Corbyn. No, says Morgan. Because you just can’t get your policies across.
Jeremy Corbyn has not failed the “left”. He hasn’t even failed the hopes of moderates who would prefer that angry hordes of the impoverished do not run from their shuttered towns to destroy the grand homes of Knightsbridge. The only people he has failed are lazy establishment “leftists” who have built nice careers from the fiction that they are the forgotten people. By the time they recognise that “there is no alternative” to the centrist proposals of this man, the capitalism that currently rewards their piffling efforts will be in ruins. |
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