Sir Keir Starmer - Labour Party Leader

[Etienne]

The lib dems are throwing everything at North Shropshire, while Labour are ignoring it and aimed at bexley.

[Gas In Name Only]

Labour aren't winning Bexley surely? If anything that Wandsworth result this week (retained the seat by one vote after a huge swing against them) shows they're in reverse in London

[ooh aah]

Yeah well, when the party you vote for join in with the metropolitan elite bashing, hardly surprising that you might think twice next time

[Nocturnal Submission]

Keith's shuffling his pack: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59461674

[Snake Plissken]

And doing it just as Rayner launches her big attack on Tory corruption. They can't fucking help themselves, can they?

[Gas In Name Only]

Cat Smith departs of her own volition:

https://twitter.com/CatSmithMP/status/1465287943669657600

A rare acknowledgment of the collapse in activism from members and former members

[Discordant Resonance]

Seems to be a very centrist shadow cabinet:

https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1465386405970989066

[Snake Plissken]

In case you were wondering how centrist, when Theresa May was Home Secretary and not only coming up with the "Go Home" vans but setting up the conditions for what would become the Windrush scandal, Yvette Cooper stated that she wasn't being tough enough.

[ooh aah]

Perfect, I need a new mug for the office.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Channel-hopping, I watched a few minutes of new shadow NI Secretary Peter Kyle being interviewed by Emily Maitlis on Newsnight last night. I know nothing about Kyle, but bloody hell did he come across as a smarmy principle- and content-free slimeball from Central Casting. Edit: his main message was "we are hungry for power". Less strong on wanting to do anything in particular with that power.

[Duncan Gardner]

He should join Sinn Fein then

[NHH]

He's such a condescending dick. My only meeting with him was about 15 years ago when I lived in Hove and was a Labour member. We met up for a canvassing session, and whilst sitting outside a cafe having a coffee, the subject of tuition fees came up; I expressed opposition to this, and it was the contemptuousness of his response that stayed with me - the notion that anyone who thought as I did was clearly a fucking dickhead, someone who'd clearly not thought it through like the good Dr Kyle. Prick.

[E10 Rifle]

And if this reshuffle says anything it's that Kyle's sort are back! back! back! baby, with each and every lesson of those 15 years completely unlearned. Only with a new generation of idea-vacuums in their slipstream such as Streeting.

[Discordant Resonance]

Shades of the Kevin McNamara fiasco from the Nineties - though his replacement ultimately proved to be the most successful NI Secretary.

[Duncan Gardner]

though [McNamara's] replacement ultimately proved to be the most successful NI Secretary

Apart from her being neither ultimate nor successful, you mean?

[Discordant Resonance]

She concluded the GFA, which immediately gives her the crown.

[Duncan Gardner]

Without being unnecessarily cynical, the main objective of Brit ministers in NI has been selling out the Unionists with just enough subtlety that they don't notice. Neither Mowlam nor any of the others have managed that yet

The GFA was intended to a) end decades of systematic violence, b) set up structures for future public administration and c) support elected locals in running them. So one and a bit out of three...ain't that good.

Treating it like the Peace of Westfalen or Gettysburg Address is over the top

PS did you ever work in marketing for our Inland Revenue? (Their response to a chaotic taxation system was little more than renaming it after Ma Windsor)

[E10 Rifle]

So one and a bit out of three...ain't that good.

True but miles better than anything before or since during the 100 years of partition.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

the main objective of Brit ministers in NI has been selling out the Unionists

Not really the thread or the time for a big debate on that, but I do feel it requires a formal objection for the record. Unless changing the way things were run prior to the late 1960s counts as "selling out", in which case some sell-outs are preferable to others.

[E10 Rifle]

I'm intensely relaxed about Brit ministers selling out unionism, tbh. But they're not very good at it.

[Sporting]

Is this important?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...itical-funding

[Snake Plissken]

The Sensibles will portray it as something to brush off but considering that donations from members have collapsed and not been replaced by business leaders with large cheques, it's not going to help. (Any businessman with money to spare is going to give it to the Tories, who now have a proven track record of shovelling millions of pounds of taxpayers money your way without you even needing to ask for it.)

[Gas In Name Only]

You'd have to question Labour's ability to contest a GE full bore at this stage considering the collapse in membership, funds and activism

[Gas In Name Only]

Labour continue to go backwards in Scotland it seems - not far off polling behind the Greens

https://twitter.com/LeftieStats/status/1466019411798597632

[Lang Spoon]

The Sensibles have invested so much in Sarwar they don't seem to have noticed the piss poor election result (save a decent candidate beating the Nat terf in Embra South, and fucking Jackie Baillie winning the nuclear base cunts vote again with her dog whistle Proud Scot routine), or that they've gone backwards since. They'd be wanting (admittedly useless) Leonard filleted on the same numbers.