Also, RLB was utterly unconvincing as leader material. The real failure of "Corbynism" is that it didn't find a successor.
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Indeed, NS - there seemed to be an awful lot of people kidding themselves. Not particularly convincingly, either.Comment
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They were also kidded pretty thoroughly. Starmer ran a left campaign appealing to his record as a Human Rights lawyer -(ironically on the Maclibel trial- which was riddled with spycops) and supported by trade unions. There was reason to hope that he would have offered some Left policies, based on his 10 pledges, the fact that he;d servied in Corbyn's cabinet and the fact that those policies were extremely popular. I don't thimk anyone expected his war on the left to be so hard fought and so extreme.Comment
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And so immediate.Comment
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I wasn't wholly sold on RLB as a leader (though I voted for her as the best of a mediocre field), though I do have a lot of time for her as a diligent, attentive politician, precisely the sort of politician, in fact, that the Sensibles said was sorely needed everywhere.
And much of Starmer's 'leadership material' seemed to boil down to his age, gender and skin colour.Comment
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As for the "what to do now?" question, am tempted to quip that there's only one thing worse than staying in the Labour party right now amid all this, and that's leaving the Labour party now amid all this. I've been in the party during much worse times than this, though I accept that doesn't make the argument one way or another. Though there's even less potential in a left of Labour party now than there was in 2001.Comment
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Meanwhile, Lee Harpin, wriing in the Jewish Chronicle has claimed:"In comments that sparked anger from other Jewish members who attended the virtual meeting, Ms Wimborne-Idrissi suggested it was wrong Jews had been made gatekeepers of what can and cannot be discussed at meetings.
"At one stage, it is claimed Ms Wimborne-Idrissi openly asked new delegates, who are members of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), to identify themselves to the meeting – and suggested that if they had any criticism of her speech they should speak out to all members rather than comment in the online chat."
Note weasel words - "suggested" and "it is claimed".
JVL have published the video and transcript of the opening remarks by the now suspended members which reveals what Wimborne-Idrissi actually said was "Do we really want us Jewish members to be seen as gatekeepers – as people who prevent others from discussing issues of importance?"
That's a significant difference. Harpin is claiming she is saying "Jewish members will control what we can talk about" (arguably anti-Semitic) when she is actually warning that people may feel that Jewish members can control discourse, i.e. it may encourage the spread of anti-Semitic attitudes.Comment
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this lee harpin
https://twitter.com/jrschlosberg/status/1334891738142552068?s=20
,libel cases lost by Harpin and Steven pollard at the Jewish Chronicle banrupted the paper - it was then bought by a consortium including John "Panorama" Ware, Sir Robbie Gibb, former BBC head of politics who went on to be Theresa May's Brexity Head of Comms, and Corbyn hating MP John Woodcock. None of them are Jewish afaik. Pollard was kept on as editoe <thinks emoji>
Last edited by Nefertiti2; 05-12-2020, 00:19.Comment
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I think this moment is worse because of the antisemitism smear and the fact that in 2001 at least Labour was keeping the Tories out of power and thus postponing the things they have done in office since 2010. And its worse than 1979-94 because at least then you could still call yourself a socialist in the knowledge that Clause 4 made the party at least socialist in principle.Originally posted by E10 Rifle View PostComment
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two more very bad decisions
https://twitter.com/Juliadoe51/status/1335870941931376640?s=20
and
https://twitter.com/jsternweiner/status/1336004955556212739?s=20
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I imagine pre- and post- Iraq must have been pretty fraught.Comment
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There's plenty of good replies to this, but it's a shame they need to be said.
https://twitter.com/KateGreenSU/stat...91182330093568
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I was out of the party during the early Noughties so missed the internal Iraq bunfights, though heard a lot about them. They sound utterly grim, but it was pretty grim in the late Noughties too (when I was back in), when the party felt utterly directionless and moribund, an empty shell that didn't seem to stand for or argue for anything. Though it was an interesting period to be on the party's left, as that was when John McDonnell was kind of presiding over the start of a more youthful revival - this is when people like Andrew Fisher and Owen Jones began to find a voice, and his Left Economics Advisory Panel started to kickstart a challenge to the consensus.When were times worse than this for you, E10? Not a dig at all, just curious.
Also, post-92 was pretty demoralising.Comment
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Latest e-mail from David Evans:
I wanted to put on record my thanks to the Branch and CLP officers who have been implementing the guidance around motions that I circulated recently. The Labour Party is dependent on the hard work of its volunteer officers, and only with your support will we succeed in changing the culture of the Party and making sure our meetings are a welcome space for all.
I can understand the desire of people to discuss contentious and controversial issues that they feel deeply about. But to be clear, the Labour Party was found guilty of breaking the law on anti-Semitism. We are now not trusted to run our own affairs until we satisfy the EHRC that we have fully addressed the issues that meant our Party is not a safe space for Jewish members. Just as we should have zero tolerance for all forms of racism, homophobia, sexual harassment and other prejudicial behaviour, our responsibility to double down on anything that may cause members to continue to feel unwelcome and unsafe must take precedence over our rights at this time.
I also wanted to confirm that the effect of my guidance was to rule motions on the topics mentioned out of order. This means they should not appear on the agenda or any other meeting papers, and that there is no requirement for Chairs of meetings to make rulings (nor should there be any resulting challenges to such rulings). I hope this clarification will help avoid any further unnecessary confrontation.Comment
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he's a fucking liar.Comment
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Labour now considerably to the right of the Union of Jewish Students on Israel.
https://twitter.com/jewdas/status/1336373538215899139?s=20
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Starmer has thrown in his lot with the most useless and awful wing of Labour, people who appear only to have joined the party to suppress socialism. That might be fine by a lot of the centrist commentariat but Starmer is so pitifully inert that sooner or later even some of them are going to recognise that you can only subsist for so long on Not Being Jeremy Corbyn. He's throwing a growing demographic under the bus to appease a dying one. Under advice from people who know nothing but that. The sort of instinct that prompted Patricia Hewitt in 1987 to say that Labour's emphasis on gay and lesbian rights was a mistake as it was putting off the pensioners. Meanwhile, the party is losing hundreds of members a day. So what, some might say, the Tories only have a membership of 120,000 but the problem is if Labour is not a grassroots organisation, living off the honest contributions of subscriptions, it falls back on big donors, considerably less honest people, who, Bernie Ecclestone-like, expect a return on their generosity. Starmer continues to get good press from The Guardian etc but sooner or later his uselessness as a politician is going to become impossible to ignore.Comment
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Yes they were a terrible bunch allright, I don't even think it's as ideological as that for a lot of them. They were a bunch of really unpleasant toadies who'd come of age in the suck-up punch down era of Blair and Mandelson. When Gisela Stuart and Caroline Flint and Wes Streeting were the new face of Labour. They were on a meal ticket and they would fight anyone who tried to take it away.Comment
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