UK - December 2019 General Election

[dudalb]

Absolutely. He’s old school militant Labour and one of their trends was support of the PLO. Much more anti Israel than anti Jew. As I think, most of the supposedly anti-Semitic stuff in the Labour Party is - though I’m sure there are some genuine issues as well. His dealing with it was pathetic though, which kept it rumbling on.

There is a big difference between being critical of specific Israeli Government Policies...which I am..and advocating the destruction of Israel..which I am very,very, strongly opposed to. I think a lot of the Anti Zionist rhetoric really blurs the border between the two.
I aslo think the holding the Palestiaian leadership totally blameless for the mess is stupid.

 

[LondonJohn]

I don't think that Corbyn is anti semitic, for example, but his hobnobbing with some of the more extreme "Anti Zionist" made him vulnerable to the charge.
He never understood that as Party Leader he would be under a lot more scrutiny then he was as the leader of a faction in the Labor Party. Should have dumped some of his radical connections the instant he was elected party leader.

I don't think Corbyn could ever grasp the importance of presentation and being "on message" - two things at which, for example, his Labour predecessor Blair excelled.

Corbyn should - and could - have dealt early on and decisively on this whole antisemitism thing. But by dithering and refusing to put his cards on the table until well into the 11th hour, he left voters with a confused and ambiguous message about his stance on the issue.

And, I might add, Corbyn made exactly the same type of mistake over Brexit. It's an open secret that Corbyn prefers the UK to leave the EU; he should either have made his personal position crystal clear early on (and he could still have left plenty of room for pledging to put his deal to a confirmatory referendum alongside the Remain option), or he should have declared early on that the Labour party position was for Remain. If he'd done that, then of course there'd still have been many within his party who were staunch Brexiteers and who might seek to undermine the official Labour Remain position, but he was inevitably going to have to face that sort of issue regardless; and by coming out for Remain, he'd have immediately set out a polar differentiation from the Conservative position, from the only party which stood a realistic change of gaining more seats than the Conservatives in the GE.

I genuinely think that if Labour had officially come out for Remain, this could have been at least a very close-run election. But now we'll never know.

 

[Ethan Thane Athen]

Agree with water, power and roads, but not so sure about railways. You don't see much clamor in the US for the Railroads to be nationalized.
Communications I disagree with. Don't want a government monopoly on the Internet.

Not the ISPs, just the cabling / networks. Can have multiple operators leveraging market competition on a solid, national infrastructure. TBH we’re not a million miles from that now as it’s still mostly BT and they’re the only ones who seem to muster genuine engineers.

Anyway, we digress.

 

[Sideroxylon]

It's not good for the UK that both parties now seem to be dominated by the hard line ideologues.

Because fixing a rigged economy is extremism.

 

[dudalb]

That joke in a "Fish Called Wanda" about "Britian being the smallest province in the Soviet empire" might not be so funny.

 

[Ethan Thane Athen]

There is a big difference between being critical of specific Israeli Government Policies...which I am..and advocating the destruction of Israel..which I am very,very, strongly opposed to. I think a lot of the Anti Zionist rhetoric really blurs the border between the two.
I aslo think the holding the Palestiaian leadership totally blameless for the mess is stupid.

I agree. I’m stating Corbyn’s position, not my own.

 

[dudalb]

Because fixing a rigged economy is extremism.

Should have guesses a Bernie Bro would show up.

 

[trustbutverify]

I don't think that Corbyn is anti semitic, for example, but his hobnobbing with some of the more extreme "Anti Zionist" made him vulnerable to the charge.

If there's a limit for how many barely camouflaged, anti-jewish racists one can apologise for before pathetic excuses for doing so no longer hold water, Corbyn far exceeded it quite a while back.

 

[dudalb]

Before this debacle, talk like that would have been considered war-mongering, Zionist treason within Labour's power center. It probably will remain that way for quite a while.

I would have voted for Corbyn's party, Had I held British citizenship. But with my nose firmly clamped.

I said in a previous post,that if I were a UK citizen I would have voted Labor, but probably would have threw up once I stepped outside the voting booth.
Seriously, if Labor stick with Corbyn they will go to gradual destruction the way the Liberal Party went ..

 

[KDLarsen]

The Tories finally managed to sway the 'Workington Man'.

 

[Giz]

Oh I suspect that Tom Watson and Emily Thornberry (at the very least) had already put the mechanism of a challenge in place before polling day. They will have either sounded out or secured funding sources, and built a support team from amongst other senior Labour MPs.

And as such, I fully expect things to be well underway by Monday. I expect Corbyn to announce he's stepping down (following the election of a new leader) some today (Friday). Things will be going gangbusters behind closed doors today and over the weekend as potential candidates try to figure out what level of support they might muster, and how they'll pay. I also imagine that the bosses of the 7 largest trades unions will be fairly heavily engaged today and over the weekend.

Interesting times ahead.....

I hope you’re right.

My misgivings are due to political parties often retreating into their comfort zone after traumatic events... and that goes double for Labour with their mass membership. The political operatives and MPs may want to replace him with an electable blairite... but will the membership go along?

 

[dudalb]

If there's a limit for many barely camouflaged, anti-jewish racists one can apologise for before pathetic excuses for doing so no longer hold water, Corbyn far exceeded it quite a while back.

Yeah, if a lot of the time some people consider any criticism of Israeli Government policy...(and in some cases any criticism of Bibi) to be Anti Semetic...and you do see that ...it also true that 'Anti Zionism" is often just a front for Anti Semitism.
For me the deciding points are
A. The existence of Israel and
B. The willingness to be just as critical of Palestinian Policy and the Hamas as you are of the Israeli Government.
I have been accused of being a blind supporter of Israel despite my statements that the West Bank Settlements were an incredibly stupid idea, and Bibi is right behind Trump on my Politicians I despise list.

 

[dudalb]

I hope you’re right.

My misgivings are due to political parties often retreating into their comfort zone after traumatic events... and that goes double for Labour with their mass membership. The political operatives and MPs may want to replace him with an electable blairite... but will the membership go along?

Problem is the membership seems to be secondary to a what a few party bosses want...and they tend to be hard line ideologues.
At least in the US the rank and file party member had a direct voice in who his party leaders are, but in the UK I get the impression that in both major parties it's a Old Boys Network who make the decisions.

 

[BobTheCoward]

I think the UK is a system to be proud of. Parliament was at a standstill. And a snap election may have cleared the deadlock.

 

[dudalb]

Given the Bob does not believe in government, period...

 

[Giz]

Problem is the membership seems to be secondary to a what a few party bosses want...and they tend to be hard line ideologues.
At least in the US the rank and file party member had a direct voice in who his party leaders are, but in the UK I get the impression that in both major parties it's a Old Boys Network who make the decisions.

In the Labour Party, it is mass membership that has a lot of power. For example in Corbyn last leadership challenge:

Corbyn was re-elected as Labour leader on 24 September, with 313,209 votes (61.8%) compared to 193,229 (38.2%) for Smith – a slightly increased share of the vote compared to his election in 2015, when he won 59%. On a turnout of 77.6%, Corbyn won the support of 59% of party members, 70% of registered supporters and 60% of affiliated supporters.

 

[dudalb]

The whole past decade has been overall a disaster for Labor.
The Anti Blair, hard liners have had their chance and is has proven to be a disaster.
Labor has to change or face extinction.

 

[dudalb]

I predict next crisis after Brixit; Scotxit.
If Johnson is going to try to deny Scotland a second referendum he needs to remember how well trying to keep a nation under British Control in the past by sheer force has worked.

 

[dudalb]

And to think this all started because Cameron made a bad political miscaluculation.

 

[Sideroxylon]

Should have guesses a Bernie Bro would show up.

Just one among a bunch of centrist boomers.