DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

I always think about that bit of the 'Labour's Old Romantic' documentary where he's asked if he really wanted to be PM, and he pauses for a long time and says that he never really believed that he would be. Which probably makes him a better human being than any other major party leader in recent history, but maybe not a good candidate for the leadership.

only up to a point. the most obvious thing about the 83 election was whether anybody cd've beaten the Tories riding high on the back of the Falklands War. i suspect not. then there's the question of whether the purpose of a political party - and Foot's leadership was perhaps the last time that the Labour party (RIP) was in decent democratic shape and not the hierarchical shithouse that its corpse is now - is to win elections at any cost. i can understand why a Lib Dem peer thinks that's exactly what political parties are for, but that doesn't make it true. for all the internecine brutality happening within Labour in the early 80s there was, i think, a genuine debate about whether it was more important to try and win over the electorate to a set of principles that your party stood for or whether you just chased the apparent mood of the electorate.

campaigning for a set of policies that you've agreed on principle as a party is a long game, not measured over single parliamentary terms. the fact that it's a game that nobody wants to play in 2013 says more about the stinking corpse of democracy than it says about what Foot was trying to achieve as a politician.

so if you're saying that being thoughtful, long-termist, believing in a core set of values, are not good traits in a politician, i might agree, except you're then saying "fuck politics" afaic

the realistic non-Foot choice was Healey, who could probably have given Thatcher a tougher battle, but the fact that he abandoned Labour to form the SDP in a fit of pique, thereby scuttling Labour's chances, should not be forgotten.

Eh? Healey wasn't in the SDP.

Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams were the, ahem, big hitters from Labour that formed the SDP.

"so if you're saying that being thoughtful, long-termist, believing in a core set of values, are not good traits in a politician, i might agree, except you're then saying "fuck politics" afaic"

I think this is pretty much it, yes.

that's how right wing the SDP was, even Healey wdn't join

Don't forget Bill Rodgers

bends yeah that's fair enough, again i guess my point was that Oakeshott's conception of what politics is is nihilist thru and thru

hah sorry, I stand corrected, getting my early 80s Labour grandees confused!

Don't forget Bill Rodgers

Oh my, who could ever etc

Has anyone read Foot's collection of essays from the late 80s, 'Loyalists and Loners'? There's a chapter about David Owen that's this amazing demolition of Owen, and incredibly funny and cutting.

Like, the tone is impeccably restrained and gentlemanly, but it's a total hatchet job, it's fantastic.

will seek out

yeah wd like to read - his book The Pen and the Sword on the political situation in the period Swift wrote The Conduct if the Allies is good too.

re Labour grandee scalp hunting I also once sat next to Denis Healey on a cross-channel ferry. I think I must have been 13/14 and was reading The Brothers Karamazov - turned out he was a huge fan of Dostoevsky, and that he had been his favourite writer during his student days.

Benefit fraud could lead to 10-year jail terms, says DPP

Sort of thing that renders you speechless, n'est-ce pas?

NV, Fizzles, Neil S, bends = OTM

Posterity, you're a bourgeois whore.

There's a chapter about David Owen that's this amazing demolition of Owen, and incredibly funny and cutting.

That wouldn't have bothered Owen too much, I've heard, and I'm not sure if this is a well-known entirely untrue rumour or not, that he gets something of a thrill from pain and discomfort. It's all lies of course.

xxp the DPP is just recommending the maximum become ten years in prison instead of seven. Not that anyone gets sentenced to even that long now. It's just another attempt to plant the 'all people on benefits = criminal scroungers' opinion in Daily Mail voter's minds.

more watering and feeding than planting tbh

Well DM reader's minds already provide the compost.

Vince Cable attacks 'ugly' Conservative politics

http://i4.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article2278434.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/David-Cameron-2278434.jpg

https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/1186321_10153263960525374_69187892_n.jpg

Looking forward to them sneaking an "on their own" onto that Labour point if we end up with a differently hung parliament in 2015.

idk if you guys even want these guys but look

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2013/09/17/the-right-hook/

The Conservatives on their own cannot build a fairer society!

lol god knows they've tried amirite

"guys, need a little help here"

i know ashdown has probably been a tool for ages anyway but his shilling for the tories this weekend was just idk

He's always been a dick, his greatest achievement being to inspire this headline:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ThhguC97EdA/STWg53A9Z1I/AAAAAAAAARs/kg8v2L1eViw/s400/ITS-PADDY-PANTSDOWN.jpg

idk if you guys even want these guys

UHhhhhhh, what do you think?

Let him finish! If I want these guys to what, exactly?

I saw a brief story the other day that Tony Benn wasn't doing well - doesn anyone heard anything else about that.

Family sent him to hospital for tests, but haven't seen an update yet this week.

No news is good news I suppose. I know he's not necessarily a popular figure, but he had a big influence on me.

http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/faragebloksnorlololol.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Are_you_right_there_father_ted.jpg

gah

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ac/Are_you_right_there_father_ted.jpg

Is there any phrase that makes someone drop in your estimation quite as fast as "say what you will about Enoch Powell..." or some variant thereof.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/20/ukip-godfrey-bloom-calls-women-sluts

ppl voting for these clowns

ah c'mon, he didn't say all women

What a sexist comment is that. How dare you. That's an appalling thing to say. You're picking people out for their gender. You disgust me, get out of my way.

Appalling man. Sexist. You, sir, are a sexist. You take this and you've checked out the shape of people's sex organs.

The video of that is astonishing.

www.channel4.com/news/ukips-godfrey-bloom-biffs-michael-crick

!

My version:

"say what you will about Enoch Powell... NOW!"

without defending Mr Bloom in any way - everything he says is indefensible - it's absolutely clear from the recording that he used "sluts" in its archaic sense; which is a marginally different form of sexist shite

these pictures make me feel that I've just woken up in a world where gradually I realise that although things kind of look the same, something is dreadfully, dreadfully wrong:

http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/esmagazine/ukips-youth-club-is-generation-y-falling-for-farage-8824623.html

"Sanya-Jeet Thandi, a 20-year-old LSE student living in Holborn who joined UKIP when she was a sixth-former and was described at the party’s last national conference as future leadership material"

She was on Ch4 news in the week. I've never heard anyone more posh and clueless.

Something a bit weird is going on at the moment in that Ed Miliband has a) announced some policies and b) they don't appear to be totally stupid and reactionary and lowest common denominator.