General News Thread

^Who's he?

(07-05-2021 12:51 )Charlemagne Wrote:  Bring back Andy Burnham

This

(07-05-2021 12:51 )Charlemagne Wrote:  Bring back Andy Burnham

Why, do you need someone to clean your windows?

Bring back Alistair Campbell!!

You can point to many reasons as to the results today. First of all the left need to stop acting like the British public see everything through the prism of the Labour Party & look at the Tories.

It's less than 18 months since they won a landslide, Governments tend not to lose that kind of popularity that quickly, there have been many stories of Tory scandal & cronyism but that has always been the Tories & it has never stopped them winning before & many of them are bubble stories that don't cut through to an electorate that are mostly apolitical. Like it or not Johnson is a popular politician with a lot of people, you can say he did this and he did that but again is it really any different from what we have seen from him in the past when he won two elections as Mayor of London, Brexit, The Tory leadership election & the 2019 landslide. On top of that he will have received a lot of goodwill from the public after having covid & a new baby, it shouldn't matter but it does.

The Tories mishandled the pandemic but as we saw in the US the electorate are not holding that against government's because the pandemic is a once in a century catastrophe and again a lot of the errors made are bubble stories that don't cut through, The UK has one of the best vaccination rates in the world & it stepped up and paid the wages of 11 million people with the furlough scheme. Which comes to my next point, that Johnson's own ratings are buoyed by the fact that he has the most popular politician in the country as his Chancellor.

Finally they got Brexit done, you can argue about how well, the fishing industry will be destroyed & many small businesses will go bust but they got it done and thats what people wanted.

Looking at the Labour Party where do you start ? It is hampered by the fact that of all the left wing parties it had the largest number of Brexit voters & that its support stretches the Urban/Rural divide more than any other party & that FPTP like the Electoral College, benefits conservatives more than liberals. Starmer's attempt to bridge that divide can make him seem like a fence sitter. The pandemic has worked against him, he hasn't really been able to get any message to the people because it takes the oxygen out of everything else, it has been the main & pretty much only story for the last year, which has focused everyone's attention on Number 10 & given the government a pulpit to control the agenda. The response has seen a rally to the flag affect from the public, boosted by The PM's own brush with covid who want national unity at this time instead of partisan bickering.

That's not to say that Starmer is not blameless, he is a bit of a bore, he could do with relaxing & becoming more authentic not the next edition of the Ed Millitron 3000 & he has not really done enough to placate the left in the way that Biden did when he set up a joint policy taskforce with Sanders. No doubt they will take today's results as vindication that Starmer is the wrong choice and they need a socialist leader because we all know that if the British public are voting Tory then it must be because they want Labour to move left & get back to the real issues that the British public care about like Palestine, Julian Assange & standing up to American Imperialism. I mean honestly if the left (in this case Livingstone) could not beat Johnson to become Mayor of the most liberal, metropolitan & diverse city in the country what fucking chance do they have at a general election ?

Keir Starmer has decided who was to blame for the disasterious showing in the elections. It was everyone except him.
He's already sacked Angela Rayner as chairman of the party, and the shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds, and the shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth. Angela Rayner continues in her role as vice leader. And the shadow defence minister Khalid Mahmood has also resigned.

I seem to remember watching the TV this morning where he took full reponsibility for the defeat.

Rayner was always putting her foot in it sure she was under investigation in the past for anti semtic comments

she is a corbynite main reason she got the votes to be made deputy leader

if Owen Jones and the like are whining about her sacking says something about her politics

turns out she isnt being sacked but being moved to a more prominent postion in a reshuffle according to some people

^Is there something more prominent than being the chairman.
But Starmer can't remove her as the deputy leader, as this position is voted by the membership.

The party conference in September should be interesting.