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

Oh...

http://press.labour.org.uk/post/131566490399/seumas-milne-appointed-labours-executive-director

Oh for shit's sake.

I'm voting Tory.

Why the actual fuck would you go ahead and appoint a Director of Communications who, at a stroke, underlines all your detractors' worst impressions of you? I mean, I know Cameron did it but look how that turned out.

kinda lol mostly sad

"Who can we get it to convince the press I'm not a closet Stalinist? I know... Seumas Milne!"

every seamus milne article ive ever read has been the most simplistic, kneejerk, stereotypically "lefty" load of crud imaginable. sort of a perfect fit for the corbynites, but can we all just agree now that electorally labour are absolutely doomed?

Milne was the business manager of Straight Left, a monthly publication of an orthodox factional group within the Communist Party of Great Britain.[8] Milne worked as a staff journalist for three years on The Economist before joining The Guardian

Genuinely intrigued as to what he must have said in his Economist interview.

I was a member of a far-left grouplet as a student (not CPGB) and the senior comrades were always encouraging us to read the Economist, thought very highly of it

know your enemy

there's that old observation about the articles in Militant and the Economist being almost interchangeable, just replace the last paragraph from 'this shows the need for a fighting Labour party that will nationalise the commanding heights of the economy etc etc' to 'this shows the needs for liberalising the labour market, dead hand of government etc etc'

That may be the case, but I was always under the impression that the Economist liked its journalists to be true believers.

"The pace of these reforms is s too hard and too fast"

and like is the slower fucking strangulation of disabled people a more palatable option, you tory twat?

Seamus Milne is a guy whose comms 'policy' will be to tell the Mail to go fuck itself, repeatedly.

When will the good news stop?

My take (which is probably naive) is that he picked someone who he could trust for a position where the wrong candidate could undermine and potentially destroy him. And there are already plenty enough people trying to do that.

Seamus Milne's opinions/outlook align with Corbyn. Both are on the same page re: LOL Media, except Milne has extensive experience and operates within it. Stalin? Is that some guy from the 30s?

Corbyn didn't get to be leader by winning people over - he'll be PM or destroy Labour.

Remember the days when Ed did one over the Mail for being rude about his dad? Look at how far we've come. Progress.

The guardian are reporting the potential lords rebellion as "Lords forced to back down on tax credits motion as Tory rebellion grows" as if it were already a done deal and they had already been quashed. *sigh*

PLP finds it really hard to hear the truth about itself huh?

if there's one thing press bullies will pounce on it's equivocation or weakness and if there's one thing they'll praise to the skies it's some notion of authenticity. so maybe corbyn's doubling down with true believers like mcdonnell and milne might actually be a good thing? i.e. disagree with 'em all you want but you can't say they're writing their policies by focus group. i realise i am probably deluding myself yes.

and yes i've rarely been able to make it through a milne op-ed without rolling my eyes and turning the page, he's like the glenn greenwald of leftie guardian editorials

Literally nothing good has ever been said about Milne on ILX - I had a look in the archives and pretty much the closest thing is a neutral Pinefox post stating that he'd bought his book and had yet to read it.

Corbyn didn't get to be leader by winning people over - he'll be PM or destroy Labour.

None of this is true at all - winning people over was exactly what he did, and he won people over in pretty large numbers. One of the reasons he did is that he's capable of sounding consistent, reasonable and principled when other people were falling over themselves to triangulate and capitulate. He has been winning people over and should be capable of doing so if he doesn't just surround himself with bruisers, frauds, yes-men and people who are actively out to get him. Whether there's anyone out there who doesn't fall into one of those categories is a different question. I don't think it's true that he'll either be PM or destroy the party either, unless something with both wide appeal and funding magically appears to replace it. Stepping down midway through this term still seems like the most likely option.

I think Xelab's take is probably right but then that speaks to the level of hostility within the PLP and how few allies Corbyn actually has. Wherever you are on the spectrum there are pitfalls to surrounding yourself with people who basically agree with everything you say, as New Labour found out. A Director of Communications doesn't actually have to be 100% ideologically aligned. They just need to be not actively hostile and able to do their job in a professional manner (which includes asking difficult questions).

If all you need is someone to go 'lol media, FU Daily Mail' then why appoint anyone at all? Ultimately the Mail and the Sun are never going to be anyone other than hostile. What you do need is someone who can keep gaffes to a minimum (like, say, your Shadow Chancellor unilaterally deciding to support the fiscal charter and then making the right decision too late) and outline a proper strategy for nominally neutral or sympathetic titles. What they can't be is someone who's going to be a lightning rod for negative press. It's what broke Campbell, nearly destroyed Blair and undermined Cameron's first term.

He would probably have been better off getting someone lower profile from Canada or Australia or somewhere. Whether such a person exists I don't know.

The only vaguely positive things i've heard about the appointment are that Milne has good contacts in the wider press and it might be harder for the Guardian to go after one of their own.

He's awful, though.

The change in the rules as to who could vote in that election, exhaustion of the Blair/Brown camps and Corbyn not changing his views that made him a fringe figure for the majority of his time suddenly became a bagful of pluses for a lot of people, but it happened by accident. He won people over - from one point of view...but the way I look at it is that all these things aligned at the right time for him. It can't be discounted that Corbyn is nice and friendly.

So you see this accident playing out in the appointments of people who align with his views but don't sound as reasonable or what have you: McDonnell, Milne and the like. The problem is there are almost no sympathetic titles: Daily Record, Mirror? Don't feel its a huge deal, or a massive mistake. I think many difficult questions are asked already by many members of his own shadown cabinet.

"He'll be PM or destroy Labour" yeah ok, no it probably won't be either/or. xp

for nominally neutral or sympathetic titles.

er, lol.

Two things that aren't negotiable in that position are loyalty to the leadership, and a large capacity for bullying control-freakery. Pop those in the algorithm, you come out with Milne, I guess. He's also media aristocracy, albeit a black sheep politically, as son of ex BBC DG Alasdair Milne (which may help in the job- this is England after all. On the other hand it may be more of a stick to beat him with). It's always a bad idea to have a spin doctor become the story though, it'll be bad news if that happens with Milne.

Aside The Record or Mirror that is (?)

Guardian reporting this in the dullest way possible. Far more on the policy chief. xp

From what I've seen, the Mirror has been fairly sympathetic, or at least has continued to attack the tories rather than labour, unlike the Graun, the New Wasteman, etc.

xp an appalling blasphemous heresy for a big media organisation to hint at, but maybe the policy chief is... more important?

lol look at me doing a 180 degree flip on the Guardian within thirty seconds

http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article6670819.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/MAIN-Jeremy-Corbyn-state-banquet.jpg

Any other thread fashion critics onto this?

neolab black ops unit steps things up but taking Michael Meacher :(

That's a shame. Always wondered what might have happened if he had not launched that ridiculous libel action in 1984.

michael meacher was apparently nearly the token left wing candidate instead of corbyn, now he'll jave to make do with a nice evening out

he's dead

oh! inopportune moment for me to get the wrong end of the stick

Murdered

... uh, no, he wasn't.

No he was not.

http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article6670819.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/MAIN-Jeremy-Corbyn-state-banquet.jpg

Any other thread fashion critics onto this?

― voodoo rage (suzy), Wednesday, October 21, 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No fashion critic but hey I know what I like.

This is beautiful:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11945164/By-hiring-Seumas-Milne-Jeremy-Corbyn-shows-his-utter-contempt-for-real-Labour-voters.html

real Labour voters, are more likely to read Richard Littlejohn than open up a Twitter account.

So they won't know who Milne is? What's the harm.

Tom Harris is a former Labour MP and now runs his own lobbying company. drummer for gay dad.

these real labour voters are surely from wigan

its #rockism I tells ya!

as a real Labour voter and the son of real Labour voters i can categorically say none of us wd spit on Littlejohn if he was on fire

tbf my mom and dad don't have Twitter accounts tho as far as i know

You've all been in the Army though at some point, am I right?

only my dad and he really didn't want to

there's a non-trivial point that Tom Harris is a ridiculous lying wanker pretending he's never heard of the pacifist, republican working class who have been "real Labour" since before Labour existed to open it's doors to scum like him

So, let me get this: Tom Harris is a former Labour MP who now writes for the Telegraph. One thing cancels out the other, right? With knobs on, right?

There is a hilarious piece on the Indepedent about this from some MP. Mention Iraq and the attack starts falling apart.

Tom Harris managed to turn a 12,000 Labour majority into a 12,000 SNP majority at the last election so is obviously well placed to talk about electoral catastrophes.