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

sorry, Inspiring Orator Hilary Benn

I didn't think the Benn speech was even particularly good as a piece of oration.

couldn't hear his speech tbh, there was a weird spinning noise in the background

The John Lewis Christmas ad of speeches

xp
probably a Bennerator you could hear there:(

Oldham results in, Labout increase their vote share by 7.5% but turnout is down compared to the GE, and so the bbc report it as "Labour wins but with a reduced majority", amazing.

With a higher % of the vote than Meacher managed in 1997, no less.

nice

I despair

Don't. This could be England's SNP moment.

lol like you can put a negative spin on 10,835 majority.

Dan Hodges is doing his best on that front, as you'd expect.

That arsewipe in the Graun who was calling UKIP the other day, what a complete twat.

sorry I have had a few beers

Hilary Benn 4 PM.

They had said they needed two days of debate. War. Peace. To bomb Isil. Not to bomb Isil. The issues were too complex. The stakes too high. The arguments too nuanced.
They were wrong.

didn't realise roy keane had a new biography out with eamon dunphy

I phoned Jeremy Corbyn and he agreed it was ridiculous.

There it is

Not really in the script this by-election result.

Tom Watson "warned that any Labour members who joined an anti-war protest outside the home of the Labour MP Stella Creasy should be thrown out of the party."

So a tweet showing she doesn't have the capability to take the decision she has should be allowed not to not even bequestioned? Thanks Tom, that's wonderful.

Not really sure why Stella Creasy is apparently getting more flack than the other 60-odd Labour MPs who voted for it, many of whom are also in London.

Farage throwing his toys out of the pram is very, very entertaining.

"To vote for war is grown-up politics about Britain’s place in the world, a solid reminder of what Labour in power used to feel like"

Reminds me of the story of Thatcher after the Reykjavik summit urging Reagan not to consider nuclear disarmament because it would make Labour's current policies look stronger.

Stella Creasy is apparently getting more flack than the other 60-odd Labour MPs who voted for it, many of whom are also in London.

Must be that utterly idiotic tweet. As for the other MPs - give it time.

The protest was not outside her house, it was outside her office. The office where she asked her constituency to consult with her.

The story that it was her house was completely false and planted by a fake facebook account. Come on, this has been debunked over and over again, but hey this is how smear campaigns work, right.

Reminds me of the story of Thatcher after the Reykjavik summit urging Reagan not to consider nuclear disarmament because it would make Labour's current policies look stronger.

Of all the many factors that would have gone into Reagan's decision-making process at the height of the Cold War I somehow doubt that the credibility of the UK Labour Party was likely to have swayed him either way. I totally believe that Thatcher was deluded enough to ask though.

Where exactly are all these pro-austerity, pro-war Labour Party members who are supposed to propel Hilary Benn to power?

Where exactly are all these pro-austerity, pro-war Labour Party members who are supposed to propel Hilary Benn to power?

working in the media?

xp Thatcher apparently did ask Reagan to reign in nuclear disarmament for party political reasons, though she didn't couch it in those terms to him http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n23/david-runciman/fear-in-those-blue-eyes

(xp) In Parliament

"rein in" of course xp

ffs

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVY-HMqWwAAkX1s.jpg

Hilaryous

lol she was at my school, dating the head boy

Jim McMahon (Labour) - 17,209 (62.11%)
John Bickley (UKIP) - 6,487 (23.41%)
James Daly (Conservative) - 2,596 (9.37%)
Jane Brophy (Liberal Democrat) - 1,024 (3.70%)
Simeon Hart (Green Party) - 249 (0.90%)
Sir Oink A-Lot (Monster Raving Loony) - 141 (0.51%)

Low Thousands = 10,722

subs must have amended 'low tens of thousands' somewhere along the line i guess

People have written off the Lib Dems, but they're a clear three percentage points ahead of Sir Oink-A-Lot.

Getting my lolz for the morning from Roy Greenslade - thought he was a benign media commentator? Think again

Instead of writing something around the pychotic treatment of JC at the hand's of the press (which would involved screwing over The Guardian so never mind) he gets into grand historical analysis mode, which is no such thing.

It has been inevitable for a long time. I recall a conversation some 10 years after the 1968 Paris événements when one of its young intellectual participants berated me for my continuing faith in parties of the left.

“They’re over,” he said. “They don’t reflect the will of the people. They are things apart... anti-democratic... they exist for themselves.”

I lost touch years ago with Jean-Michel, a professed “situationist”, when he decided to settle in the land of the free and the home of the brave. But his words, so earnestly expressed, have stayed with me, and I’ve come to view them as both prescient and increasingly accurate.

The political past is admitted to, then a 'mind-opening' conversation with a disappointed comrade - the kind who first saw the light.

Then the magic words:

We who peopled them grew up and moved on.

Becomes one of the more hilarious pieces of recent times - right up to the fretting over whether this would help the right-wing press. In The Guardian.

Well, someone's got to worry about that - according to Nick Cohen, "The Corbynites’ real enemies are not Tories, whom they rather respect for standing up for the interests of their class, but Labour MPs who fail to show the required radical virtue and betray the leftwing cause."

The hold of these stereotypes among the progressive, university-educated middle classes explains why you never hear a rightwing political comedian on Radio 4 or see a leftwing villain in a television drama. Comics and writers tear into Daily Mail and Sun readers but never Guardian and Observer readers.

Bombs over Syria, austerity marches on, a rampant housing bubble with Tory constituency boundary changes to keep this country Tory 4 evah but actually think Nick is got a point that the above is the pressing issue of the day.

That’s the reason I spent days wondering whether I should publish this piece because it appears to support their agenda. Staying silent however seemed counter-productive. The left have to come to terms with what is happening... and going to happen.

It's basically a precis of what the likes of Paul Mason have been saying for months. Publishing it makes no difference to anyone.

What he doesn't mention is the main issue that both the press and the Labour right have completely failed to acknowledge, that the financial crisis destroyed the illusion that you could have both neoliberal economic policies and social justice. This illusion sustained New Labour, much of the London media class, and a big chunk of the electorate, for such a long time that they aren't used to having to pick a side, even as they do so without realising it. They still cling to the idea of a charismatic unifying leader who can appeal to post-industrial Northern England, soft Tories and enough of Scotland to see off the SNP. As far as I can see there isn't a single prominent figure in the party capable of doing that.

xxp When people start writing about 'real enemies' and such, it only adds to this huge obfuscating cloud of party politics that seeps into every element of debate. Rather than asking 'how can we create a more fair and just society?', the question becomes 'how can we get the Tories out?' or 'who are our enemies, really?'. This is what seems to be leading a lot of blue Labour rhetoric - caring less and less about core values and courses of action that are best for the country, in favour of concern over what these mean for the party itself. Winning the debate becomes more important than doing the right thing.

I suppose if he wants to believe it's the result of a prophecy passed down by some student Trot in 1968 then that's his call.

Man that quote from Brecht is just brilliant. Nick and Hilary Benn really think they are in the 1930s, fighting Stalinist-type purges and a Nazi-type state, when its angry people with a twitter account and a terrorist group.

I don't know why he mentions the Paula Sherriff death threat incident, is Corbyn to blame for far right extremists in Dewsbury? They got the guy responsible and he certainly wasn't a Corbyn supporter.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2008/jul/29/bouncytechnomeetsterribler

^^^ Don't hate on the Guardian when they let John McDonnell MP write an article about the donk scene in 2008.

The web has its uses.

Elsewhere actual kind ppl vote for kindness in numbers!

Perhaps a few of those Corbyn-kicking opinion pieces were filed and all ready to go before the by-election win?

I keep seeing Nick Cohen at my nearest street market, looking very hung over/not right in the head/like he's been dragged backwards through several hedges. Rumour also has it pretty strongly that he's a ridiculous lech, so his glossing over left-wing sexism (which is much like right-wing sexism, because men) made me do a few LOLs.

Well he's called it out to say that the left can be as nasty as the right.

What was glossed over was Yvette Cooper's utterly brainless speech in favour of the bombings.

I know a whole bunch of working class ex-Labour voters who think - cautiously - that Corbyn is the best thing to happen to the Party in forever. that's not representative. I'm not trying to make any bold claim. but the ongoing "Corbynism is a middle class phenomenon betraying the aspirations of irl working class people" is a pernicious Blairista lie that wants putting to the sword, preferable literally

donk article proves mcdonnell is not quite the hero of the working class he's said to be, here's hoping the daily mail don't catch wind of it

Time for beddy-byes, Roy, you've had not a bad career so far, not a bad life, nothing to be ashamed of, but all fair to middling things must come to an end.