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

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

is there really a consensus that the composition of the lords should reflect that of the commons?

nazi queen seems like a simple distraction rather than anything ideological

catchy single IMO

is there really a consensus that the composition of the lords should reflect that of the commons?

I'm not sure there's a consensus on anything but it's tough to defend as it is. It's manifestly cynical to be raising this now, having blocked the democratising reforms the Lib Dems proposed in 2012, but it's not particularly easy to justify the Liberal Democrats getting under 8% of the national vote and 8 MPS but having 21% of the Lords, for example, while the Greens and UKIP had twice as much and are stuck with four Lords put together.

lol Economist and all, but this sums up some of the issues at play: http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21654084-house-lords-aged-overcrowded-and-increasingly-effective-democratic-embarrassment?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/ademocraticembarassment

having blocked the democratising reforms the Lib Dems proposed in 2012,
and now expressing regret that "they" failed to deliver the changes "they" wanted!

I'm not sure about the idea that voters in the general election were unwittingly participating in a list-system PR experiment?

it's not particularly easy to justify the Liberal Democrats getting under 8% of the national vote and 8 MPS but having 21% of the Lords

I think it's harder to claim the lords as a democratic institution. I know uk politicians love to tell people what their vote was actually for after the fact but pretending that the general election had something to do with the lords is a new one to me

One of the Lords' few qualities has been that it *doesn't* reflect the HoC as formed at the last election but evolves over time.

It would be entertaining watching Cameron on this, if it wasn't so infuriating. "We need to cut the cost of politics by losing 50 MPs from the HoC and reforming the boundaries to suit us" comes in the same breath as "and we need more Lords". He does sweat nicely when pressed on the hypocrisy.

seems heinous to pretend the various viscounts, earls and lords spiritual have any democratic mandate. you don't vote for a baron

Obvs but the further the UK gets from being a two party system, the harder it is to justify the mechanism by which representation is balanced up - the PM of the day stuffing the house with their own people.

it's so unclear what the lords role is now, "the mechanism by which representation is balanced up" once meant it was a check on democracy and representation rather than a functioning part of it. I think the less partisan nature of the lords is one of its few redeeming features rather than something to be amended

Potentially, but the lack of accountability in appointments means it has next to no argument for being able to justify those checks. Having a panel of experts from across British society capable of feeding back on law, science, civil liberties, etc, is potentially attractive even if there is no direct electoral mandate but that's so far removed from what we've got as to be laughable. It's a resting home for MPs no longer able to sustain their position in the Commons and anyone willing to grease the right palms - it's overwhelmingly affluent, male and, at the very least, small-c conservative. The only justification for keeping it as it is would be that nobody has come up with a convincing alternative.

it seems pointless to have it function in the same way as the commons (only older), or to try and borrow its legitimacy, but yes the process of modifying a 14th century institution to make it fit for modern purposes is kind of lolsy & I'm not sure where to find people trying to concoct something more visionary

So Labour passed the welfare bill with the passive silence of a married orgasm. It has lost touch so badly that it is now getting lectures on empathy from someone from Paisley.

Holl', less o' that, Boyle

"A swarm" of migrants. Fuck this guy already.

Cameron is such a careless, lazy halfwit.

ComRes - Conservative lead of 12 - CON (40%) GRN (5%) LAB (28%) LD (7%) UKIP (10%)

40!

The British Public: Name Your Reasons Why They Are So Bad & Hated.

The leadership election is obviously taking most of the attention but the race to see who is going to lose to Zac Goldsmith next year has been pretty grim as well.

Jowell is one of the least inspiring choices imaginable but it's tough to argue that she wouldn't have a better chance than Khan given the current political climate.

i don't know much about zac goldsmith other than his rep as being a left-leaning tory, and his dad in the mayfair set documentary. i guess symbolically a tory win would be bad.

am always a little well-disposed towards those who care about the way we're vandalising this planet, but i'm sure suzy will be along in a second with a list of deeply unpleasant personal characteristics

That's a very ...interesting opinion to hold, built as it is on sand and bullshit.