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

*often enough or early enough

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I'm not convinced we can pin all this on the Terrible Old Left btw.

i blame the future

it's not what it used to be, that's for sure

xx..xxp Is there anything you can see on this page that might count as specific old-left baggage

well we're all talking abt politics in english

As I see it people are routinely complaining about how Corbyn -- while acknowledging how much of this is driven by a press that is hostile to him -- has dealt with the anti-semitism as an issue, which goes back to parts of the old left that minimised this as an issue. xp lol

is that while old ppl go away all the time

Actually I read a tweet from an anarchist who joined Labour last year saying that loads of the old lot are fucking up Momentum. I don't know how much of that is true.

while we're talking about the various ways in which the Corbyn project could go horribly wrong, I've seen some people raise the concern that it could degenerate into something like Blue Labour, based on the reluctance to defend freedom of movement, the 'vote labour to protect our police' stuff etc?

something like this thing that Oskar Lafontaine and Sahra Wagenknecht are pushing in Germany:

As well as rallying around traditional leftwing causes such as disarmament and a reversal of Germany’s Hartz IV labour market reforms, an unsigned position paper circulating around Berlin political circles in recent weeks suggests the movement will also advocate law and order policies and a tougher stance on immigration. “Open borders in Europe means more competition for badly paid jobs,” says the paper, which is headed “fairland”.

Stegemann, who is not a member of any political party, said he was frustrated with middle-class leftwing intellectuals lecturing working-class Germans for their sceptical reaction to Angela Merkel’s decisions at the height of the refugee crisis.

“We are dealing with an absurd situation when the winners of neoliberalism tell the losers that they must be more humane. And it galls me when politicians think it is enough to pass down moral judgments. No, politics must act.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/22/german-leftwingers-woo-voters-with-national-social-stance

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/07/24/lafo-j24.html

What Corbyn has done -- and what mark s sorta hinted at in one of his posts above -- is to appear nice and affable but also staying under the radar in these periods of attack. All I've seen from Corbyn is a statement for one event. Note the young Novara crowd are going "Corbyn must say cranks are not going to be tolerated blah blah" and he he has rightly said nothing to that. Any left Labour leader will find themselves and this project under severe attack and it needs someone of just this kind of temperament to lead it - so whatever his faults..xps

The problem with this is that it doesn't distinguish between the times when sailing above the fray is justified and the times when it's (both morally and electorally) unjustified or actively damaging. Just because the press are after you doesn't mean they won't occasionally have a point. This is the second case and that's why it's so damaging. If your main reaction is "this won't really affect Labour's electoral chances" then you're not really taking it seriously and that's a problem in itself.

On a moral level it's a disaster because *we should expect better*. On a political level it could be the difference that loses them another election.

Don't think most Jewish religious groups are particularly arsed which group leads the Labour Party tbh. As far as they're concerned that's trivial shit.

OJ has definitely wobbled (as has Ellie Mae O'Hagan and Abi Wilkinson).

This purity test bullshit is just that. Are you just casually saying that the ongoing nonsense - putting aside factional and opposing motives and arguments not made in good faith - will blow over without any damage? Because that’s not true and hugely dismissive.

but without that specific old-left baggage.

Criticism isn’t the same as an attack. Corbyn has long had dissenting voices in the shadow cabinet and the party but he’s weirdly stubborn on this and it is absolutely not doing him any favours.

tl;dr if you’re sick of the press talking about antisemitism in Labour, it helps if there’s nothing to back that up on. Some of the old stories brought up this week have been pretty flimsy but it’s the new stuff that keeps it going.

Also a lot of people will be thinking - if Corbyn can't even keep this one party issue under control, or even demonstrate that he's willing to do what it takes to get to grips with it, how's he going to react when faced with a genuine crisis as PM?

weirdly stubborn

i keep going back to this but his stubbornness is closely connected to how he's learned over a lifetime in politics to steer away from vituperetive splits (which are endemic on the far left) -- and therefore not weird, in the sense that it has actually to date (medium- and long-term) served him well. i absolutely think they should have got in ahead of this problem earlier, but with the best will in the world this can only have meant between the election last year and now, and whenever it was confronted it was always going to lead to something like this

In light of the awful new legislation passed through Israel, is it not reasonable to say “it’s fine to criticise the government and it should be done” while drawing a firm line across the kind of people who use Israel’s atrocities to harass Jewish people in this country?

Corbyn agrees with you. The harrassment applies to a small minority in the Labour membership. The baggage doesn't apply to Corbyn himself but the range of people in the left he is able to connect with so they become Labour Party members.

Pressed submit early:

This purity test bullshit is just that. Are you just casually saying that the ongoing nonsense - putting aside factional and opposing motives and arguments not made in good faith - will blow over without any damage? Because that’s not true and hugely dismissive.

Its not a purity test. iirc OJ went concern trolling when he should've used his brain. He's shut up since the election, apologised and even hung out with Alastair Campbell for his sins! You go ahead and read his column. Waste your time with that.

Sounds like you’ve got me pretty bang to rights there. Absolutely those were the points that I was making.

xxxp I'm going to have to ask you to have another go at the second sentence there - as it is, it reads as "there aren't a lot of left-wing Jews so *shrug*"

If you mean that it's fine because the anti-semites aren't a large enough group, they are still larger than zero, and growing. I've always been one of the first to make the point that the longer you've been involved in left-wing politics, the longer you've seen the right use the left's natural position on Palestine as a stick to beat us with. But there's a councillor in Bognor Regis half Corbyn's age posting on Facebook about executing blood-drinking Jews - that seems like a reasonable sign that enough is fucking enough.

Yes, and a lot of the angriest people on this are the natural allies, the left wing Jewish members and voters and commentators, and they are upset because they’ve had Corbyn’s back on so much and yet this he can’t deal with.

From what I see twitter Left Jewish Labour haven't abandoned Corbyn but they have been erased in these debates.

That’s not the issue, have they abandoned him. Should it have to get to that point? Look at the timeline of any of the people who have defended him, just utter shit from both supporters and opponents both. Do you think that any of these people want to be talking about antisemitism constantly?

It will always get to that point because of Corbyn's pro-Palestinian politics, that's ultimately what's driving this. Removing him isn't going to stop the next leader getting attacked in some way.

Corbyn and many on the left are anti-imperialists and as I said a bit above, because the conversation isn't carried out in good faith it will always get to that point and it will be constant because the groups raising it basically don't want to pay tax.

This is really just trolling now, right? Who would read mentions of people defending Corbyn who share most of his views (including on Palestine) and conclude that the problem was tax dodgers?

Everyone seems to have forgotten Ed Miliband was criticized for being anti-Israel and the worst Labour leader for the Jewish community ever etc etc etc.

Everyone seems to have forgotten Ed Miliband

could have stopped there tbf

the reason for taking action isn't to reduce or deflect media criticism, bcz this won't happen (bcz too much of it is in bad faith)

it is to place labour in an unimpeachable *rhetorical* position when it comes to tackling racism in general, and to build cross-community support: at the moment it is clearly more vulnerable than it wants to be to the usual media whataboutery, and this can be leveraged beyond places where it's ignorable (the telegraph, the spectator) just by constant squall

gyac's point abt loyal corbyn supporters left in horribly over-exposed positions right now, attacked by both side, is pertinent bcz it can and will exhaust and deplete in-party support. i continue to think that something very much like this would have taken place had this been firmly addressed say 12 months ago, and this trial-by-fire was always coming. obviously i'd hugely prefer it was now a bad memory from last year deftly finessed (but it was never going to be finessed)

ed was good not bad, shut up

tbh I'm not sure what to think of a labour leader's stance on Israel till I've heard Maureen Lipman's very thoughtful take!

Catching to more past points, sorry:

xxxp I'm going to have to ask you to have another go at the second sentence there - as it is, it reads as "there aren't a lot of left-wing Jews so *shrug*"

The minority I refer to is the minority carrying out the harrassment.

On a moral level it's a disaster because *we should expect better*. On a political level it could be the difference that loses them another election.

On a moral level I agree but the next election will be fought on roughly the same lines as the last one, with more on Brexit and its potential aftermath.

Anti-semitism could lead to an incident, a question at a debate and it goes wrong but you can never plan for that - this issue has been going on for a long time and when it came to the last gen election there was nothing.

This is really just trolling now, right? Who would read mentions of people defending Corbyn who share most of his views (including on Palestine) and conclude that the problem was tax dodgers?

― gyac, Thursday, 2 August 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Most of the ppl driving this convo in this particular way are from the right-wing media who don't want to see any form of socialism. Is this controversial?

I don’t care about those people. I’ve already pointed out that many people are acting in bad faith. It’s not those people whose opinions concern me. Do you have anything to say to the points I’ve actually raised?

Don't act like I didn't address anything you've raised because you didn't like what I said.

there's actually a serious tension between (A) "this is a moral issue that we should address because it's right" and (B) "therefore we should step up and do something instant and media-facing RIGHT NOW"

A: this is unarguably true, and shd be part of labour's thinking
B: this actually *not* necessarily always true, if the things you need to do are reorganising structures and rebuilding trust -- bcz the seemingly effective things you can do overnight to address this kind of moral issue can go horribly wrong and undermine the new structures and the trust

(B is is the lesson to learned from the adventures in "humanitarian intervention" that began to be undertaken in the 90s: insofaras they were undertaken to address "something must be done" they have on the whole made things much much worse

matt made a good point upthread abt ppl judging fitness for leadership through perceived effectiveness of leadership of yr own party -- and obviously many voters do reach for this shorthand BUT the extent to which the discussion is transmitted thru a media increasingly distrusted renders this much more of an open question than it was even three years ago

I'm quite sceptical of the notion that Corbyn is just drifting through this whole row using his usual cool distance from the media, and not just blinking like a rabbit in the headlights because he can't think what to do.

The alternative is that he just doesn't see anything wrong with what's been happening - either out of a blind spot or wilful stubborness, and that's more worrying than anything else.

BUT the extent to which the discussion is transmitted thru a media increasingly distrusted renders this much more of an open question than it was even three years ago

Yes except now it's also filtered through other channels that are even less trustworthy and even more distorting.

The fact that we’re talking about this at length when the major political story of the day is that Michel Barnier has basically told the uk govt. to F-off in 20 European newspapers because their white paper proposals threaten the stability of the single market is pretty indicative of where we are.

Barnier was always going to kick those proposals into the dust.

Attempts are being through much of the party to make it right with the much criticised code of conduct, but still. And Momentum's decision last night was correct.

That shorthand is good and all however its certainly something that Corbyn has made it this far and Labour gained seats at the last election, given how much the PLP hate him.

A quiet day so I'll just put this out there...John McTernan follows me on twitter now.

does it seem weird to anyone else that Jon Lansman is personally calling for Carolyn Harris to stand down, tweeting about the homophobia allegations etc? does he not have proxies who can do this sort of thing for him?

he follows me too: he's very into books

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/03/jeremy-corbyn-antisemitism-labour-party

It's a solid piece.

Seems well put.

The JLM leadership has dismissed it as ‘another article bemoaning a situation of the party’s own making’ and called for action, in the form of the full adoption of the IHRA code and Willsman’s expulsion, rather than words - though it does seem to have been well received elsewhere.

The best they can come up with is How Dare He Allow This To Be Published On The Sabbath, which is pretty pathetic.

Hard to find much fault in it and at the very least he's taking on the "it's all a right wing media lie" dorks

"and even one individual who appeared to believe that Hitler had been misunderstood"

and at least he has thwarted Ken's attempt at rejoining with a nom de plum sock!

We're all doomed and here's why, according to the Daily Telegraph, 3rd August, 1918 2018...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/08/03/etonians-shunned-modern-cabinet-will-new-talent-come/

as PWEI once said, Charles Moore knows the score

once again that Torgraph paywall-fadeout replicates the walking away from a pub bore meme!