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

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.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/22/fitness-to-work-assessments-are-brutal-says-daughter-of-man-who-killed-himself

Loving the silence from The Guardian over Milne btw. Bet they are gagging to get another useless MP to write in Comment is Free.

The problem is there are almost no sympathetic titles: Daily Record, Mirror?

yeah the record had an article the other day p much saying that the 21 labour mps who rebelled re the fiscal charter had betrayed labour voters

xp Don't worry, there's always Newsnight. Ridiculous Milne shoe-horning by Kirsty Wark last night in an environmental/China interview with Lisa Nandy, who said she hadn't read the articles KW was quoting single sentences from, so couldn't make any useful comment.

I have read the articles they were quoting and I don't think it unreasonable to say Western foreign policy choices before 9/11 had something to do with why that particular attack happened (people on ILX were saying as much) or that what happened to Lee Rigby was terrifying, but not actually terrorism (his killers were mentally ill AFAICT).

Not going to defend Milne, but I would be surprised if he ends up in prison like Cameron's pet prole did.

Lee Rigby was a brutal murder not terrorism, yes. Like Corbyn and his quote on Bin Laden I am sure plenty can be distorted. No amount of skillful amount of expert Canadian or Aussie spin doctoring is going to soften it.

I have only read some Milne but I think I get the drill of where ILX is coming from. Smug-ish writer, member of far left who has probably said a few questionable things but mostly stuff that most people on here would meet with half-way?

Campbell had a low-ish profile didn't he? Look at how that turned out. xp

Basically they shouldn't let him talk about foreign policy at all, which is going to be quite tricky. Actually he should pretty much keep his mouth shut full stop - his job will be to define strategy, not do to rank and file spin-doctoring. Campbell was a scumbag but you have to admit he was very good at his job, until he went off the rails.

What's the perception of Corbyn in Scotland right now? My (very limited and nuance-free) understanding is of a somewhat comical volte-face from 'RED TORIES!' to 'UNELECTABLY LEFT-WING!' but that's mainly from Sturgeon. I mean obviously Corbyn can't make Scottish Labour magically not useless overnight but still you'd expect him to be at least theoretically more palatable to the electorate.

I'm not sure I personally know anyone up here whose voew on Labour has definitely changed since the election of Corbyn. Small sample though. Otherwise, as an observer with no specific party allegiances, it feels like SLab are hoping that a Corbyn bounce will do some heavy lifting for them.

From the small sample I know, the view on Labour has definitely changed since the election of Corbyn. We're talking Yes voting Labour supporters though, or non-SNP voters to be more accurate.

I thought this was interesting, I don't know if ppl here who are more familiar with Scotland + Scottish politics think it's accurate?

http://modies.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/corbyn-and-snps-new-playbook.html

Rather, I'd assume the SNP are delighted with Corbyn's victory. I know I would be, if was in the SNP. Their genius is that they combine triangulation with Corbynite rhetoric when it suits them, which it did in the West of Scotland. They are the Blairite party par excellence in UK politics today and it is, to me anyway, utterly inconceivable that a Corbyn-lead Labour party will be a match for them. Instead, the script is going to go something like this, "We disagree with Jeremy Corbyn on some things but we're both against austerity and Trident. Look what happens to someone in England who shares these views we've been so awesomely successful with in Scotland. Look what happens to him in his own party! Just shows how very different our two nations are..."

Here's a preview. This is the line we'll get on a loop.

Nicola Sturgeon ✔ @NicolaSturgeon
If Lab can't quickly show that they have credible chance of winning UK election, many will conclude that Indy only alternative to Tory gov
12:35 PM - 12 Sep 2015
974 974 Retweets 812 812 favorites

The bloom's going to come off the SNP and Sturgeon eventually.

Who is Jeremy Corbyn? Chinese daily analyses Xi Jinping meeting with Labour leader

Cameron to Xi: "You see, he is the opposition: here. Opposition. We are here to introduce you to the queen and family and talk nice about nuclear power, and he is here to talk about human rights and steel works and so on. He's not with us, he is the opposite of us. I know, it's a bit weird, but.. "

Xi: "Can't you just run him over with a tank in Trafalgar Square?"
Cameron: "I wish!"

Xi: "So, how do you, like, interact with this guy then?"
Cameron: "Well, I call him a threat to national security and accuse him of hating Britain"
Xi: "Right, with you now."

Cameron: That guy protesting Tianmen Square and those Tibetans with signs, shall I have them arrested by Met police and get them to raid their homes for computers and whatnot?
Xi: Sure, knock yourself out.