Psychoactive Substances: Rolling UK Politics in The Neo-Con Era

Kendall seems so far to the right even a description of "Blairite" looks misleading. Burnham, Cooper and Miliband are / were all pretty much Blairite for the most part, Kendall seems to lack even that wonky moral compass. She's also a terrible communicator. If you want to propose a platform that is out of step with almost everyone in your grass roots party, you need a more convincing sales pitch than whining 'but we lost the last election'.

Burnham seems fairly personable in comparison but i'm not convinced he isn't an idiot .

Cooper is she's extremely capable and intelligent as an individual but either unable or unwilling to give any sense of what she'd do as a leader. I think the idea her game plan is to not say anything controversial and let the others dig their own graves is probably correct. She'd probably make a fairy effective PM but idk whether she'd be a good leader of the opposition.

Corbyn might not be electable but, at this stage, i doubt any of them will be for another two terms so you may as well have someone willing to articulate an alternative platform. He's not as Marxist as the press is keen to make out - most of his ideas are fairly solid-Smith-era Labour, he has been a decent and principled constituency MP for decades and speaks more directly and more honestly than the rest of them put together. His presence in the race, even if he has always known he has no real chance, has been effective in shaming the rest of them.

I think it's very obvious who Kendall is meant to appeal to, her problem is there aren't anywhere near as many of those people in the Labour Party as she thinks there are. Say what you like about 1994 Blair he could at least sell his own policies to his own party.

It's actually quite difficult on the basis of this campaign to understand what Yvette Cooper actually stands for because as far as I can see she hasn't really talked about policy at all. I don't really believe she actually believes a lot of the guff that's coming out right now, but there's close association with Gordon Brown which I suspect is electoral suicide.

Burnham appears to be tacking slightly left in the softest least committal way possible. He also just doesn't appear to be particularly bright. Also I've seen it mentioned that his (entirely laudable) involvement with the Justice for the 96 campaign means that at some point he will need to choose between facing the full wrath of The Sun or alienating much of Liverpool and looking like the world's worst sellout in the process.

Basically, they're all three unelectable, so may as well go for the other unelectable guy who won't triangulate the party into irrelevance.

Perhaps a year of Corbyn in charge might help realign what the Labour party wants to stand for. Then they can replace him with someone who might be more 'electable', but now leading a party with a clearer vision of what it wants to be (and that vision being less like 'the Tories but not in power'). It's not as if they're operating as any kind of opposition as it stands.

Andy Turnham seems wooden and awkward - but I'm not sure where all this 'not very bright' is coming from.

(says the person who gets his name wrong - no finer endorsement)

Burnham didn't exactly shine as Health Secretary and was passed over as a possible replacement for Ed Balls as Shadow Chancellor because Miliband thought he didn't have the capacity for it.

good poker joke missed

Which was?

Burnham & turnham

I know nothing of poker but I trust you that that is a good poker joke <----- post in the style of Pinefox

ha

from: Nancy Dell'Olio <✧✧✧@ben4dep✧✧✧.o✧✧.u✧>
to: conrad
date: 23 July 2015 at 20:09
subject: Strictly Ben for Deputy 💃

Dear conrad,

Put on your dancing shoes and join me at the Southwark Rooms next Wednesday!

I will be with Deputy Leadership Candidate Ben Bradshaw MP for a fun evening of drinks and mingling.

I've known Ben for years, as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, but also as a great dancer. This is your chance to get to know him too, and hear his ideas.

From 7.30pm on Wednesday 29th July, we'll be at: Southwark Rooms, 60 Southwark Street, London, SE1 1UN (Nearest tube station: London Bridge)

I hope to see you there!

With love,

Nancy Dell'Olio[/i]

from: conrad
to: Nancy Dell'Olio <✧✧✧@ben4dep✧✧✧.o✧✧.u✧>
date: 23 July 2015 at 20:28
subject: Re: Strictly Ben for Deputy 💃

you what?

from: Ben Bradshaw <✧✧✧@ben4dep✧✧✧.o✧✧.u✧>
to: conrad
date: 24 July 2015 at 16:43
subject: Re: Strictly Ben for Deputy 💃

Hi Richard,

Thank you for your message.

Nancy is a long-time Labour supporter, and friend of mine. Aside from being a lawyer, Chair of Truce International, and a British Red Cross ambassador, she has also done a great deal of work on behalf of the Terence Higgins Trust, our leading AIDS and HIV charity, as well as other LGBT causes which I hold dear. She wanted to support my campaign, and I'm pleased that over 300 other Labour members have so far signed up to come along.

I have always thought that politics, though a very serious business, should also be fun. Maybe that is one reason we have managed to build such a successful Party in Exeter, where with over 700 members we trebled Labour's majority on May 7th in a former safe Tory seat. If we'd done that everywhere, we'd now have a Labour Government, and could put our serious values into practice.

Thanks for your support for our Party.

Best wishes,

Ben

decent snark, Richard

I imagine it was a stock response gawker's psychotic monkeys

sad lols at John Cryer and Lord Hutton actually blaming the Militant Tendency for Corbyn's recent popularity

Yep:

http://i.imgur.com/prdIQo8.jpg

Meanwhile, British society continues as it always has.

They keep saying it is £3 when it is actually £3.88. I wouldn't even risk that much for a vote that will be subject to Red Tory sabotage. Fucked if they are getting a penny, especially when I already had to cancel the charity direct debits last year.

Interesting contribution on the problems of drug abuse and prostitution by one of Tony Blair's chums

sad lols at John Cryer and Lord Hutton actually blaming the Militant Tendency for Corbyn's recent popularity

― pop addicts should "do their thing", whatever that may be (soref), Sunday, July 26, 2015 1:14 AM (21 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wonder when one of the losers is gonna crack and start whinging about entryism distorting the election, either from the left or the right

― regret it? nope. reddit? yep. (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, July 22, 2015 11:46 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, I was looking for that post earlier. John Rent-a-fucking-Mouth Mann has called for the leadership contest to be halted because of "Militant Tendency types coming back in"... with their zimmer frames and walkers I assume.

might rewatch Bleasdale's GBH this week, the time feels right

so does the Telegraph still want tories to register as labour supporters to vote for Corbyn or what <confused face>

Imagine a decade from now, when we live in the utopian Corbynfutur where property is theft and all men are equal, we will be able to look back upon the Torygraph of 2015 and say THANK YOU COMRADES

BTW, Go on then, who do you reckon will win? The Labour Leadership contest, that is... (I realise that's where most of the focus in UK Politics is at the moment)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyashton/the-tories-are-staying-off-tv-so-everyone-watches-labour-tea

Buzzfeed News Reporter Emily Ashton

My guess would be that a significant chunk, if not a majority, of the people voting for Corbyn weren't even born when the Militant Kru were expelled.

xp Formerly of the Sun, you mean?

the gap between 1985 and 2015 is so ludicrous as to make discussing Militant irrelevant- but as an organization it was hardly more covert or subversive of the Labour party than the Fabians or any one of the umpteen "Tories for pretending to be Labour MPs whilst enacting Tory policy" subcliques that still exist

the coverage of this whole election and the focus on electability and therefore The Next Election is a neat summary of why parliamentary democracy is a sick joke

"never mind what we stand for, we must be ready to stand"

the-tories-are-staying-off-TV-so-everyone-watches-Labour-indulge-in-democracy

That's apart from all the Tory journalists, commentators, pundits, reporters etc.

Buzzfeed: with few exceptions almost entirely worthless

if buzzfeed didn't exist how would ilx clown matthew perpetua?

Every candidate from now on should be required to state what they believe the Labour Party stands for and what they intend to do to achieve those aims.

The problem with "centrism" here is that if you accept the argument that austerity is now inevitable, then the "centre-ground" that New Labour and other nominally social-democratic parties occupied ceased to exist sometime around 2008. Ed Balls briefly tried to make a Keynesian counter-argument very early in the last Parliament but effectively gave up within a couple of months. Any form of reheated Blairism that basically accepts austerity a) isn't Blairism at all b) accepts the need to dismantle most of what New Labour actually achieved and c) validates the majority of what Osborne has done and will continue to do, while giving the Tories the opportunity to crow about having won the argument. Corbyn may not be an election winner but the alternative is also complete electoral suicide.

This is also the first time that there's been a genuine groundswell of enthusiasm for an English politician (except maybe Farage/Boris/early Cameron) for as long as I can remember. I suspect it's the sort of thing (although probably not the actual thing) that Ed Miliband had in mind when he changed Labour's voting rules, creating much wider engagement with the Labour Party. If the PLP acts to choke this off (and they are never charitably nominating a token lefty ever again) then they can forget about engaging a whole generation and let the Greens/SNP/something else hoover up all that disaffected energy.

It's also worth noting that, with tax credit cuts, the voter demographics of the UK will be very different in five years. Poorer constituencies will have had a big influx of poorer families from urban centres and the South of England in general. Some of the richer constituencies will be doing a London and becoming so wealthy they effectively become dysfunctional even for middle class people (and especially for the young), all of this presents and opportunity as well as threat for Labour. I suppose somewhere in there there's a kernel of an 'aspirational' politics that isn't overtly neoliberal, if only because of the growing evidence that neoliberalism is now hollowing out the life prospects of even relatively well-off young people. I don't really believe that any of the current lot have the foresight to get to grips with any of this though.

Burnham and Cooper in particular seem to be banking on making themselves attractive to the electorate purely by virtue of never saying anything that might put them off. It won't work.

This is also the first time that there's been a genuine groundswell of enthusiasm for an English politician (except maybe Farage/Boris/early Cameron) for as long as I can remember.

*cough* Cleggmania *cough*

*hands dog latin a lozenge*

it's an interesting thought experiment to treat Burnham, Cooper et all seriously and describe what their political vision actually might be, what they see as the function of politics and what kind of world they think shd be aspired to/is achievable

booming post MDC btw

yeah v much

Ditto.

Right, I think I'm gonna pay my three quid...

Can anyone confirm whether if you just pay the £3 rather than joining as a full member you still get relentlessly spammed by June Sarpong? I'm still having to block e-mails from the last time i signed up.

You do. Except she texted me instead of emailing.

cameroon says “It is important the House of Lords in some way reflects the situation in the House of Commons."

wut?

apologies to cameroon, phone having fun

Been wondering about this since the Sewel revelations came out. The tabloid press usually don't give a shit whether some Lord most people have never heard of is having an orgy behind closed doors. But now there's a Labour-LibDem blocking majority in the Lords, they'll be doing everything they can to dig enough dirt up to force a change in that situation.

Activist Lords really could make a difference in this parliament, Sewel was totally a warning shot

Wonder if they are starting at the top. Still don't understand the nazi queen splash