the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

I see Dan Jarvis is trending - more than enough to drive me back into Jeremy's arms. But this new story is concerning

The story has a lot of merit except it will be used by his enemies who want him out - and given the amount of controversy (Ken and all) he has survived over on this. It is his statement so the apology has to be stronger. Unfortunately it will be clouded over by fucking Owen Smith.

Stronger statement now:

New: Corbyn statement on anti Semitic mural. pic.twitter.com/ElB0KAMbMK

— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) March 23, 2018

i do love the cable street mural

i used to cycle by it every day

fuck oswald mosley

i also love cable street although the cycle lane there is terrible and full of canary wharf wankers who hate natural fibres

if he was referring to a work by half Jewish Diego Rivera, then it's a non-story innit?

politics home link not working for me

fuck Owen Smith - trying to game the Brexit referendum is just terrible politics and they have to keep being told. Glad to see Corbyn's apologized more profusely for that mural. Not sure if he really did miss the context first time round but at least he's got the sense to take it seriously now.

if he was referring to a work by half Jewish Diego Rivera, then it's a non-story innit?

He wasn't. He was tracing a paralell between Rivera getting censored by Rockefeller and a different piece of public art getting torn down in London. Said piece of art features a lot of hooked-nosed old men under an illuminati pyramid.

The link itt isn't working but if you google "Jeremy Corbyn condemned for defending" you can find it pretty quick.

It's kind of difficult to think he missed the context/should've looked more closely when you see the actual FB interaction, shit ain't subtle.

the absolute goy

i was having a big conversation about the rockefeller mural just on saturday funnily enough

the image is blatantly antisemitic, but i find antisemitic tropes strangely unfamiliar and unreadable often. So i would just see that image as "bankers." although the illuminati thing is just embarrassing.

i do think the twits by roald dahl is horribly antisemitic but this seems never to be mentioned (despite all we know about roald dahl)

omg, even Goebbels would have considered that mural lacking much subtlety.

Artist who drew it also did a Limp Bizkit album cover!

well yes, i guess that's the point i'm making? its a real difficulty.

anyway ghastly thing, limp bizkit are also terrible, doubt it suggests corbyn's secret jew-hating proclivities so much as laziness. i suggest that he felt a lot more casual about these kind of statements as a career backbencher with a side of cnd rallies

that would be my guess

its hardly ben bradley style reddit shenanigans

A lot of young left people are really disappointed about this. This has always been the thing that hung over Corbyn like a cloud for me. He deserves the criticism he’s getting. This got a sad lol from me:

So fucking pissed off with that anti-Semitic shit I can't even enjoy Owen Smith being sacked

— fff (@UKIPBLACKPOOL_) March 23, 2018

Yeah it's laziness more than anything else, but this tolerance towards ppl "on the right side" whose NWO/illuminati theories land them in anti-semitism, it's really gotta stop and the left can't keep brushing it off just because the Blairites are obv fucking opportunistically using it to beat Corbz & co with.

OTM x 1000

He needs to kick the crank faction into touch, it’s way overdue.

And someone needs to have a serious talk to him because he really, really doesn’t get it and this is incredibly hurtful and just way past not good enough.

until they can move beyond Palestine good/Israel bad as a shibboleth then this shit will riddle the party and the broader Left

Ugh, I remember that mural and the controversy around it, thought it was gross and noted that ‘bankers’ references are anti-Semitic dog whistle shit to that section of the population keeping dogs on strings.

Owen Smith is such a dick; really looking forward to three days of FBPEs denouncing Corbyn for sacking a shadow frontbencher who undermined the entire shadow cabinet (which never results in anything other than a sacking) and probably just fucked up Labour’s entire Northern Ireland strategy, too.

Peter Hain has referred to Smith's sacking as a "Stalinist Purge". If he's never read any Kotkin, Conquest or Fitzpatrick or indeed any Soviet history at all, he should refrain from such nonsense and stfu. It is simply just the sacking of a complete bellend, who was undermining the party and the authority of the leader.

Hain may not know his Soviet history but he does know his bellends

come to think of it, he shd know a fair bit about purges too, the Tory cunt

Considering that I've seen James Franco getting airbrushed from "Vanity Fair" described as stalinism recently, I fear ol' Joe's stock has plummeted so far down that any punter can lay a claim.

just thinking of Stalinist purges is making me want to photoshop Micheal Gove's head onto that famous pic of Yezhov next to Soso!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/Voroshilov%2C_Molotov%2C_Stalin%2C_with_Nikolai_Yezhov.jpg/330px-Voroshilov%2C_Molotov%2C_Stalin%2C_with_Nikolai_Yezhov.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/The_Commissar_Vanishes_2.jpg/330px-The_Commissar_Vanishes_2.jpg

Have just seen a bunch of people allowing another liberal type to assert that Corbyn is more interested in getting the (larger) Muslim vote than the Jewish vote, and that’s why he is the way he is. Coming from a place where a lot of Jewish people sent the first Muslim to Congress, and being the sort of person that’s been calling out anti-Semitism since childhood, even to close relatives, I have had it with these arses who only notice Jewish people when they need to beat up on a politician on the left of them.

Considering that I've seen James Franco getting airbrushed from "Vanity Fair" described as stalinism recently,

show me the lie tho

Vanity Fair's latest cover story on how we should move forward w/ the mass collectivisation of agriculture was a surprise, I'll admit.

lol!

Breaking: Just issued via Bindmans, an extraordinary attack on Theresa May’s political secretary Stephen Parkinson by Shahmir Sanni.

Sanni accuses Parkinson of outing him as gay in a statement released on Dominic Cummings website earlier today pic.twitter.com/5Du30ZJgu9

— Sam Coates Times (@SamCoatesTimes) March 23, 2018

"attack on...Stephen Parkinson"

ooooookay

Stalinist denunciation.

yeah I foolishly commented on that story before reading up on it - much more comfortable with corbyn dismissing that opportunistic dweeb smith now

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/if-corbyn-wins-emigrating-to-israel-is-my-clear-escape-route/

Possibly the best reason ever to vote Labour.

I hope they've got some prime real estate somewhere on the West Bank preferably, reserved for the little scrote!

I reckon if Israeli immigration did a thorough background check, they might not even accept him.

why not Syria Toby? he'll never find you there

trying to game the Brexit referendum is just terrible politics and they have to keep being told

Long post coming up with the caveat that I think Owen Smith is a slimy fuck with some toxic opinions whose motivations are unlikely to be just about Brexit here. There isn't actually anything objectionable in the article itself - it's less about gaming the referendum result and more about acknowledging that public opinion can and will change and if you think it's going to be completely disastrous for the country (especially in poorer Leave-voting areas) then you have a duty and a right to keep campaigning for it. And taking a pro-Brexit position is probably incompatible with being Northern Ireland Secretary, given the obvious dangers and the fact that NI overwhelmingly voted Remain.

The problem is that public opinion hasn't changed enough. Most polling indicates that "stop Brexit" is a minority position once you've taken into account the committed Leavers plus the "I voted Remain but let's accept the will of the people and get on with it" crew. That second category is mushy obviously and most of it would probably back Remain again but you wouldn't bet the house (or more) on it. On the other hand, if Corbyn proved anything in 2017 it's that "people won't vote for that" could well be wrong, you just don't know until you give them the option.

Thing is I just don't think that the "stop Brexit" crew have really thought through the consequences of a second referendum with the same result. That would be it, it would be double-stamped, Britain would be out of the EU and it would be very difficult to see any way back. As things stand, if demographic changes (a euphemistic way of saying 'Brexiters dying off') continue then it's pretty easy to foresee a scenario in which Britain demands to return to the EU after a decade or so. This is especially the case when you imagine the kinds of well-funded Return campaigns that will be set up, and the likelihood of Brexit leading to economic disaster.

Another obstacle is Labour MPs in Leave-voting areas, many of whom are worried about their seats and aren't exactly fans of Corbyn in any case. They are likely to be a bigger obstacle than Corbyn's personal Euroscepticism (although I maintain that he doesn't really seem to care much about the issue one way or the other). The fact that the Conservative Party themselves, even the Remainy bits, are also an obstacle should go without saying. Obviously there's the rage of the hardened Brexiters (but fuck those guys) and the bigger issue of a betrayal narrative. If Remain wins by a narrow margin, what's to stop furious demands for a third referendum? It would go on and on.

Agreed with xyzzz that the row over the mural is worse and more significant. The fact that it'll be used against him by internal opponents doesn't and shouldn't matter (stopped clocks and all that). That Corbyn himself is antisemitic I very much doubt but some of the people he's associated with clearly are (in a largely unacknowledged way, I suspect) and as others have said he needs to jettison them. Either he didn't look closely enough at the mural, which isn't great for an elected representative, or he's including overt antisemitism within the grounds of free speech, which is equally problematic. I doubt the building owners were exactly thrilled to have it on their wall either.

What this all adds up to is probably Corbyn's Achilles heal, too much tolerance and loyalty to people he considers to be on his side, (even when they're crazy bigots and hugely damaging by association), combined with a naive bluntness in the way he deals with internal opponents. I suppose it's the difference between healthy and unhealthy dissent - I'm perfectly willing to believe there's something unhealthy going on with Owen Smith - but a public dressing down might have been better than a sacking at this point. Not that Smith is a big enough beast to make a martyr of course.

I think every poster on here (myself included) has made a "I don't think Corbyn himself is an anti-semite" disclaimer, and the thing is, whether he is in his heart shouldn't really matter: enabling anti-semitic propaganda and tolerating anti-semitic discourse does damage regardless of what he himself thinks about the issue.

Newspapers that splashed George Soros conspiracy theories all over their front page also going big on this can fuck off though.

your 2nd, 3rd and 4th paragraphs there Matt sum up most of the reasons why i think campaigning for another referendum is terrible politics at the moment