>>92282
No, it definitely was.

>>92283

But, stay with me here, what about if it wasn't?

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/leaked-labour-report-should-have-been-explosive-scandal/

>>92283
Only for the latter part. He was close to smashing it before he was given too many opportunities to fuck it up.

I'll never forgive him for pissing about with his stance on Brexit. He threw the vote away.

On a niche internet website that servers to aggregate content to be read and reread, there seems to be a bit of a rift between "Fuck Starmer" hard left labour and "We like welfare" left, is this reflected in the party itself?

Corbyn was a Liberal Democrat?

>>92286
Is this real? I haven't voted for them since they fucked me hard with their tuition fee bullshit. Clegg is a bastard.

>>92284
It definitely was, though.

>>92286

I'm not sure where they got those numbers from. 67 billion works out to £18.95 a week each. That isn't remotely enough to fund a UBI, no matter how you slice it.

>>92287
Yes.
https://www.libdems.org.uk/a20-ubi

>>92289
I'm wondering what the fag packet maths look like - presumably it is built on top of the welfare expenditure.

>>92289

I suppose you can factor in the money already spent on welfare, because in theory UBI would just replace those existing systems and the £67 billion is all you need to add on top.

How much does it cost to staff the jobcentre with useless administrative wankers? We'd save a packet sacking every last one of those cunts.

>>92289 >>92290 >>92291
https://works.bepress.com/widerquist/119/download/

>>92291

Total pre-pandemic spending by the DWP was £227bn pa, including state pensions and admin. Split between the whole population, that works out to £64.20 a week. Without some massive tax increases, an extra £67bn doesn't get us anywhere near a workable UBI.

>>92292

>a marginal tax rate of 50% on net beneficiaries

Ah, there we are.

>>92293

If you only give it to working age people instead of the whole population you'd have it up to £85 a week.

There'd be loads more tax revenue anyway, on account of everyone earning an extra £340 a month. Pays for itself.

>>92288
I know I'll just sound like a nutter, but I don't like to trust this sort of poll for making this sort of argument.
Leadership was the main thing the press (and the party itself) talked about. So it's obviously the sort of thing someone would reply to with "Oh yeah, I didn't vote Labour because their leadership was bad.", but if you strip away the bad leadership and re-run the 2019 election the press and party would talk about something else and you'd get a very similar result. Just because Labour couldn't win with Jeremy Corbyn doesn't mean it could've won without Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour's problems run much deeper than an incompetent leader, a specific set of policies, or even a stance on Brexit that nobody could possibly like. One would hope that Scottish Labour's complete collapse the minute an alternative cropped up would have UK Labour more afraid of going the route of the Liberal party, but it's pretty plain that they're completely blind to the threat, that they think a little tweak here or there can resolve an existential threat. It would be comical if it wasn't so tragic.

>>92296
>I know I'll just sound like a nutter, but I don't like to trust this sort of poll for making this sort of argument.
Thanks, that saves me wasting time reading whatever bollocks you were going to follow up with.

>>92296
Luckily for you, Corbs was a big part of the problem whether you agree or not, and now he's no longer there, being a big part of the problem.

You still have plenty of insane carpet-baggers in the Labour party though, I have faith.

>>92295
If everyone has a guaranteed income, surely scummy lenders are going to lend against that, because it's not quite enough for an emergency need - boiler breaks, Lisa needs braces, whatever. Or BrightHouse.
Repeat, until repayments don't leave enough to live on.
Then what happens? Is there no other safety net? Just bankruptcy and go around again?
Come to think of it, it's not just UBI, although the guaranteed nature of the payments makes it feel more likely.

>>92298
I don't disagree that Corbyn was part of the problem, but I object to the casual idea that the biggest problem with his leadership was that the public didn't like him, rather than his failure to change the parties long term trajectory away from oblivion.
It feels rather like watching the passengers of the Titanic celebrate the election of a new captain an hour after the iceberg was struck. (But look at the opinion polls, 70% agree that this new captain won't strike another Iceberg... Oh dear, those people over there are arguing whether it was the last captain, or the captain before last who got us into this mess...)

>>92288
How did 35% of people who voted for Corbyn in 2017 decide not to in 2019? Was he preferable to May but not Johnson?

>>92301
Increased antisemitism hysteria and a Brexit policy so awful if you boiled it and served to a starving dog it would take one sniff and walk away. May also ran a campaign with a headliner policy about the compulsory purchase of care home resident's houses, or something like that, which wasn't quite as awful as Labour's 2019 Brexit offering, but it still stank.

The "problem" with Corbyn was that he wasn't a liar. He was a genuine, honest, decent person. He found a lot of supporters because of that- a record-breaking number. That wasn't enough to win an election because the population are ignorant, partly as a result of a deliberate, lifelong campaign to keep them so, and partly because of the momentum of pre-existing ignorance.

The idea of fixing this condition by continually telling the truth seems to have merit, but it doesn't work quick enough to win elections.

Starmer seems to have given up on the idea of fixing the country's collective headfuck and has just doubled down on lying. He's throwing away all the votes from reasonable, informed people and chasing after Tory votes by trying to out-Tory the Tories. It isn't going to work. It's cynical and short-sighted. It makes people more ignorant, and less engaged, and those kind of people vote Tory.

It beggers belief that anyone could look at the Tories and think, "Yes please! More of this!" They're transparently utter shite. You can't steal the Tory vote by trying to be worse than them. You have to fix the country.

>>92303

Corbyn was just very bad at his job - he was very good at being an activist, but that's a very different set of skills to being a leader of the opposition or a prime minister. He was excellent at rallying the support of likeminded people, but so utterly hopeless at persuading the unconvinced that he lost the support of tens of thousands of lifelong Labour members.

Also he's a sneering egotist who the electorate rightly had no confidence in; if he's so genuine, honest and decent, why didn't he ever accept responsibility for losing two elections?

>>92303

The bit those reasonable well informed people are perpetually ignorant of is that they make up a tiny portion of the electorate he can easily afford to lose.

If they were any more than that, the Greens, SDP, SWP, SDWP, TUSC, SWDUSP, TUSPD, DUSSDP or whoever else they're going to vote for instead would be storming it.

>>92304
>Also he's a sneering egotist who the electorate rightly had no confidence in; if he's so genuine, honest and decent, why didn't he ever accept responsibility for losing two elections?

Jesus Christ, mate. You've been banging that drum for a long time without ever producing a tangible reason why you think that way. I think you've taken the media 'narrative' about this at face value and without an iota of critical thought.

I remember carefully putting together posts full of LSE studies and alternative views showing a measurable bias against Corbyn in print media at the time, reflecting a hostility toward his policies (with one former MI6 even labelling him a national security risk) and pointing to his long career as an activist.

If I remember right, you brushed off the research completely, and went on to say that Corbyn's activist career was just an extension of his supposed narcissism, which is cynical and completely divorced from reality. I don't know if you've ever been involved with a just but unpopular cause, but I can assure you it is not an ego-boosting exercise. You only stay with that kind of unrewarding work for the length of time that Corbyn has if you really believe in it.

And then you go on to post a Times video of Alan Johnson, who worked under Blair, as though it's some kind of smoking gun. Of course he's going to say that, the entire platform of that government was the ideological polar opposite to Momentum/Corbyn, and the result has been two and a half decades of unbroken economic policy, with slight variations in PR on social issues.

>>92301
In 2019 Labour lost the votes it had gained in 2017 from the Lib Dems, UKIP and the Tories, but the biggest problem was that many people who usually vote Labour were disheartened and simply didn't vote at all.

>>92307
Cool, and how do you imagine that answers my question?

>>92307
I read that post in Adam Curtis' voice.

>>92306

Not them, but I distinctly remember when I started distrusting Corbyn. It was about the time he wasn't setting labour policy. The shadow ministers would use their own initiative and then he would directly contradict them and stitch them up a kipper. Imagine having a boss like that. Imagine having that boss run the country.

Corbyn is very good at picking the cause to support that is on the right side of history. But being in charge doesn't afford that luxury, sometimes you need to apply the 'problematic' solution just to get through the day. And that is something Corbyn would wash his hands of dirtying himself with.

>>92310
>But being in charge doesn't afford that luxury, sometimes you need to apply the 'problematic' solution just to get through the day.

What does this even mean?

>>92304
>but so utterly hopeless at persuading the unconvinced that he lost the support of tens of thousands of lifelong Labour members.
You say this as though he didn't deliver a massive net increase in membership to a party that's always desperately in need of more money.
Losing lifelong Labour voters was unconscionable, but lifelong members? Find someone else willing to throw away £4.42 a month and it could not matter less.

>>92310
Labour's single worst policy came from the initiative of a shadow minister. (In his token defense, Labour had little option but to pick a policy that would piss a lot of people off. They did not pick the least worst option though.) If anything, Corbyn's mistake was being afraid to confront that particular policy with what he must surely have believed.

>>92311

It means you don't always get to pick the perfect answer to a problem because it doesn't exist or isn't practical, but you must nether the less still take responsibility for the decision for the imperfect solution you apply.

Corbyn's modus operandi for his career up to the point of being leader has been being able to sneer at the imperfect solution and always paint what he would have done as perfect even sneering at the actions of his own party members, in this he could pick and choose his battles and never have to face the uncomfortable truth of practical action or negative consequences. As leader he was suddenly faced with no longer being able to disappear into the shadows claiming he could do better. That said Trump somehow did it, but I assume British people to not be as stupid as to fall for such obvious projection.

>>92313
I would say that British people were stupid enough to fall for it, but that Corbyn wasn't smart enough to lie to them.
Of course he did the standard little lies of omission and so on, but that doesn't work. People just see you being evasive. Corbyn was never willing to do the sort of thing Trump would do - rock up to the people's vote wankers and go "We're going to stop Brexit folks, Brexit is over, the next Labour government will cancel Brexit", then go off to the general public and say "We've got a great Brexit deal here, Labour's going to make a success of it. You voted for it and we're sticking to that".
(Hell, despite unequivocally picking a side that's what Johnson more or less did. An oven ready deal that will get more concessions than May's deal, which he'd rather be dead in a ditch than delay...)

As glad as I am we avoided that, I'm now disappointed he wasn't willing to have a similarly antagonistic relationship with journalists. It wouldn't have saved him, but it would've made politics much more interesting. (And potentially even straight talking, honest...)

Aye, if there's one thing Trump's four years made American politics it's "more straight talking", you utter cretin.

If the chief criticism against Corbyn is that he couldn't win elections, the chief criticism against Starmer is that, like his predecessors apart from Corbyn, he's chasing "electability" without the substance to make Labour worth voting for. The Conservative Party needs neither electability nor sound policy. It has a more or less fixed base of voters that will always vote Tory no matter what. Labour can't steal these votes. They can only increase their vote share by inspiring those voters who wouldn't vote for any other parties otherwise.

Momentum was aptly named because it built slowly. Corbyn vastly inflated Labour membership and built up an army of normal people to campaign on Labour's behalf. Starmer has decided to shit all over the membership and piss away any hope of them campaigning on his behalf. That only leaves the possibility of favourable media coverage and "experts" to promote a new Labour policy of lies and appealing to the lowest common denominator, which Labour voters detest.

His hopes of the next GE victory depend largely upon Johnson doing a poor enough job that Tory voters turn away in disgust. No chance.

>>92315
Congratulations, you managed to miss the point of a separate paragraph. You utter cretin.

>>92316

>They can only increase their vote share by inspiring those voters who wouldn't vote for any other parties otherwise.

That was Corbyn's strategy, but it never works. Convincing a non-voter to vote for you gains you one vote. Convincing someone to switch from the Tories counts double, because you gain one vote at the expense of the other side. Persuading someone to change parties is considerably cheaper and easier than persuading a non-voter to turn out.

>Corbyn vastly inflated Labour membership and built up an army of normal people to campaign on Labour's behalf.

That vast army was actively harmful, because it was comprised of unlikeable people pushing an unappealing agenda. Somewhat fortuitously for Corbyn, bad electoral strategy meant that those worse-than-useless activists were mainly deployed to inconsequential constituencies where they couldn't do much real harm.

The left of the Labour party refuses to engage with some pretty obvious facts: The size of the party membership has negligible causal relationship with electoral success. Labour party members are overwhelmingly more middle-class than the general population; the membership became substantially more middle-class under Corbyn's leadership. Elections are decided by centrists with limited interest in politics, because they represent the bulk of winnable votes in winnable seats. Tony Blair is the most successful leader in the history of the Labour party, at both the ballot box and the dispatch box. A centre-left Prime Minister can do more to advance a left-wing agenda than a hard-left LOTO.

The fundamental question is whether you want political change or ideological purity. You can't have both.

>>92318
>Persuading someone to change parties is considerably cheaper and easier than persuading a non-voter to turn out.
This. Not only because it counts double, but also because you don't have to do the work of convincing them to vote in the first place.

>>92319
>>Persuading someone to change parties is considerably cheaper and easier than persuading a non-voter to turn out.
>This. Not only because it counts double, but also because you don't have to do the work of convincing them to vote in the first place.
Citation needed. What are the metrics for spend & effort, how did you quantify this, gather the data, etc?

>>92318
>Elections are decided by centrists with limited interest in politics, because they represent the bulk of winnable votes in winnable seats
Pretending the average voter is a centrist in the aftermath of Brexit is tenable only by completely abandoning any common understanding of the term.

(You've also got to love the idea that the pre-Corbyn membership of Labour was anything but a slightly older gang of unlikeable people pushing an unappealing Agenda.)

>>92319

That's a great strategy when you're playing Age of Empires with a priest, but it doesn't take into account the Tory floor. The only time hardcore Tory voters drifted their voting intentions away from the Tories was when the Tories intimated that they might be moving away from a hard Brexit. Politically, that was never going to be a window for Corbyn to use, and unfortunately it was the only window that counted in the last election.

Genuine socialists might represent a relatively small sector of the voting population, but unless liberal voters and socialists vote together they can't beat the Tory floor. Socialism is growing in popularity today; young people from middle-class backgrounds can't break into middle-class incomes. Those "middle-class" voters the "working class" so detest are actually a part of the contemporary post-industrial working class. The liberal labour voters are the real middle class ones. It's a shrinking demographic.

Starmer has just been unnecessarily spiting socialist Labour members/voters to chase after what he clearly thinks is the "thicko vote" and just taking it for granted he'll hoover up the liberal vote. It's just not going to work and there's no reason to want it to. The best we can hope for from a Starmer government is less than complete incompetence.

Did anyone ever do an equivalent chart for 2019? YouGov don't seem to have done one.
I'd rather work with 2019 than 2017 since obviously we know how things went, but when you look at a chart like this it's very hard to maintain the idea in your head of some kind of nice median voter who just wants a little pledge card promising 10,000 more police and a balanced budget when you start to break down the electorate like this and go: hang on, everyone but the coffin dodgers voted for this nutter and his too-left-wing manifesto. (That, despite the fact that May's big blunder was the "Dementia Tax", a policy that would primarily hurt elderly retirees!)

I'm not saying Corbyn was ever going to be electable, but if you were him doing 2017 all over again you'd do much better to figure out what the biggest barrier to old people voting Labour is and go for that rather than pissing about trying to get Mondeo man to vote for you by abandoning policies left and right.
(That's not even getting into what you do if old people are just stuck-in-their-ways Tories. If you can't swing them your options quickly dwindle to boosting youth turnout or wait for them to die.)

>>92322
>unless liberal voters and socialists vote together they can't beat the Tory floor.
Right, which is one of the two reasons Corbyn was never going to actually win a general election. The other being that he was utterly fucking useless as a leader.

>The best we can hope for from a Starmer government is less than complete incompetence.
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but this would actually be an improvement over the current situation.

FUCK A DUCK FOR LUCK

>>92321

>Pretending the average voter is a centrist

The average voter is not the same as the average swing voter in a marginal constituency. >95% of the electorate are wholly insignificant to the outcome of a general election because they've been disenfranchised by FPTP, because their views are too entrenched or both.

>>92322

The demographic breakdown you're describing has absolutely no basis in reality. We have very tight political spending limits, so campaigns have to be laser-precision targeted.

The votes of "genuine socialists" are completely irrelevant, because there aren't very many of them and they overwhelmingly live in safe Labour seats. Young people don't matter because they have very low turnout and they overwhelmingly vote Labour anyway. Older voters lean heavily Tory, they're very entrenched in their views and their propensity to show up on polling day depends mainly on the weather. People who follow the news and have strong opinions are no good - they take far too much time and money to persuade. The poor never vote, the rich reliably vote Labour until their mid-20s and Tory thereafter. That doesn't leave a lot of people who are actually worth targeting.

For many decades, the decisive demographic has been lower middle class and aspirational working class voters aged 30-49 with low levels of political engagement. You win elections by looking sufficiently plausible to people who live in Barratt houses and drive a Nissan Juke and have an inspirational slogan stencilled on their living room wall next to a vase of twigs. Find the subset of those people who live in marginal constituencies and you've found the only people who actually count in our "democracy".

Corbyn doesn't look or sound like a Prime Minister. He wasn't willing to try and probably couldn't pull it off, so the whole project was fucked from the outset. We all know that Cameron blaming the 2008 financial crisis on Labour spending too much was total bollocks, but it sounded vaguely plausible to people who aren't paying much attention, which is the only thing that matters. Elections are won and lost on slogans, soundbites and gut instinct.

That's the bleak reality of our political system. The way we choose our leaders has about as much substance as a reality TV show. Deal with that reality or face an eternity of Tory rule, because those chinless born-to-rule cunts will do anything to stay in government.

>>92325

Also:

>>92326

Would you say that BoJo looks and/or sounds like a Prime Minister?

Can't forget Murdoch. The Sun, for example, has not been wrong on an election or poll since 1974, with the exception of 2010, but even then, the Tories were still basically in power.

It'll be interesting to see as the print media's influence diminishes how this progresses, but then again the Mail Online is still the most-read "news" site in the world.

>>92327

Young voting age people tend to live in major metropolitan areas and have more progressive views, whilst older wealthy retired people tend to live in more rural areas and tend to favour the status quo, and their vote is worth more.

http://m.voterpower.org.uk/about-voter-power-index

>>92329

Also, Paul Dacre is basically the Mail personified and he is about to be in charge of Ofcom.

>>92326
Other than some quibbles about youth turnout I agree with basically everything you say - and yet I get the sense that our views on Labour's internal politics are implacably opposed.
The burning reason why I cannot stand the center and right of the Labour party is that they fail to understand the vacuousness of the contest: They will undertake a bonfire of worthwhile policies to appease middle class swing voters, but not think twice about having the entire enterprise fronted by an implausible weirdo. It would be one thing if they were just cynics and wreckers, but they aren't: They're genuinely the sort of people who believe that policies win and lose elections. That Blair's big achievements were clause 4 and a modest manifesto, not a pretty face and a good speaking voice. That David Miliband would've won.

The left says "We believe in these policies, they're morally right", etc. Then it marches headlong into electoral oblivion.
The center says "These policies aren't perfect, but they'll improve people's lives more than sitting in opposition" and then it marches headlong into electoral oblivion.
The right says "These policies aren't perfect, but they'll improve people's lives more than sitting in opposition" while actually thinking "We believe in these policies, they're morally right" and then it marches headlong into electoral oblivion.*
My vice is that I sympathise with the left. They are nice but dim. I can imagine teaching them to be more cynical. They might not oppose targetting swing voters if you explain you're going to do it by making the election adverts a nice shade of lilac rather than by tinkering with their manifesto. The others are a mixture of the stupid and dim and the evil and dim, already cynics but completely unaware of how to put that to any use. They're already convinced of the need to target swing voters but they're about as appealing to that group as a textbook on tax accounting.

So we're stuck sitting here watching Sphere Starmer awkwardly drape himself in the flag as his personal poll numbers start trailing a clown responsible for more deaths than the Blitz, and the big question on our minds isn't "How do we find a replacement?", "How does Labour get him some media presence?", or "So what are our plans for 2029?", it's "So is he better or worse than the last guy?"

>>92332
Forgot my *, which was just to say:
*The right have a legitimate claim to have won under Blair, but their wider political project to make Labour a natural party of government has been a comical failure.
And I would assign at least part of the blame for that on their own need for ideological purity. As Blair himself said: Even if he could win on a Corbyn manifesto, he wouldn't want to because it would be wrong for the country. That's utterly the wrong mindset to have if you want to be the natural party of government. That's why the Tories are the natural party of government and the natural party of running the country into the ground.

>>92328

>Would you say that BoJo looks and/or sounds like a Prime Minister?

Tragically, yes. For all his floppy-haired shambolicness, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is still an old Etonian with all that implies.

>>92332

If Labour do seriously try and work towards being electable, it's going to take a long time to turn the ship around. Starmer might genuinely the least-worst option for leader right now, because of the total dearth of talent on the opposition front bench. I mean, who the fuck are you going to replace him with? Angela Rayner? Jon Ashworth? Wes Streeting? Thangnam fucking Debonnaire?

Long before Corbyn, Labour has been actively repellent to anyone with an ounce of sense. The unions stitched up the 2010 leadership election, we got the shit Miliband and it's all been downhill from there. You could argue that it's Blair's fault for stuffing the back benches with yes-men, you could argue that it's cyclical, but any project to revive Labour as an electoral force needs to start with the reform of candidate selection to rebuild the talent pool.

>>92331
Topically, Murdoch is winning in Aus:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/feb/18/facebooks-australia-news-ban-what-is-the-social-media-giant-up-to-and-how-will-you-be-affected

News Corp lobbied their Tories (confusingly called the Liberals) to bring a law in which would require sites like Facebook to pay news publishers if 'news content' was shared from the news publishers to their website, under the pretense of 'fair pay'. Facebook turned around and went 'yeah nah cunt' and all news content (including that of the ABC) is now blocked on Facebook in Australia.

It's expected that Facebook and the big publishers (i.e. News Corp and Fairfax, both massive supporters of the aus Liberal party) will eventually enter into some sort of sharing agreement, but smaller, independent news sources will be left out in the cold, effectively turning social media in Aus into another news corp mouthpiece.

If they can make it work there, I don't see why it won't spread to here.

>>92335

Well, the traditional Conservative ideology is economically liberal. Our Conservatives abandoned their ideology when they lined up behind Brexit. They really don't stand for anything any more.

>>92326

Genuine socialists aren't a small demographic any more; young people are mostly genuine socialists. It's a different socialism from the socialism in the UK during the Soviet era; it's still heavily influenced by 19th Century theory but it doesn't flow from the influence of corrupt union bosses or foreign communist agitators. Young people are looking at the world as it is, and seeing what they don't like, and adapting dusty old theories to the current world in order to understand the problems and how to fix them. They aren't trying to shoehorn those dusty old theories into a world that has made them irrelevant.

Even a mere ten years ago, traditional socialist theory was seldom discussed; it was very much a fringe, niche obsession. Now I find people on my facebook posting Marx memes and berating capitalism every day. These aren't people I've gone looking for because they matched my political biases. These are people I've just run across out in the world and who have independently absorbed socialist ideas.

Perhaps that's just my own biased, unique perspective. But I'll take my own perspective over one packaged for consumption through someone else's political bias any day.

>>92336

Young people don't vote in particularly large numbers and they overwhelmingly vote Labour. Corbyn had two goes at the "youthquake" strategy of mobilising young voters and it failed on both occasions. Corbyn was more popular than Miliband among young people, but that didn't translate to an increase in turnout. There also aren't very many young people - fiftysomethings outnumber twentysomethings and the imbalance is getting worse.

It fundamentally makes no difference whether most young people are slightly left-of-centre or raving Stalinists, because Labour gets their votes either way. There just aren't a meaningful number of people who don't currently vote but might be persuaded to vote by a sufficiently left-wing leader.

>young people are mostly genuine socialists

Young people are mostly politically apathetic. There's a noisy minority on social media, but most young people just don't give a toss - the majority of 16-24 year olds don't know the name of their MP.

https://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Sky-Youth-Poll-Tables.pdf

>>92335
>News Corp lobbied their Tories (confusingly called the Liberals) to bring a law in which would require sites like Facebook to pay news publishers if 'news content' was shared from the news publishers to their website
Yeah, god forbid poor little Facebook should have to pay for a resource that drives traffic for them.

>>92340

Facebook decided not to use that resource and the Aussies have thrown a massive tantrum. It's a blatant shakedown. Much as I loathe Facebook, they're entirely in the right in this situation. They don't need news content and they're not going to be extorted in this manner.

We need better international tax treaties so that the tech giants can't funnel everything through Ireland, but that's a separate issue.

>>92340
You can't bill people, or Facebook, for posting links. Insane precedent to set. What if you've got a wee blog fifteen people read and you hyperlink to an external site? Are you liable then? How many people have to have a mental connection between a website and the discussion of wider news stories before you've got to give Murdoch kickbacks?

>>92341
>Facebook decided not to use that resource and the Aussies have thrown a massive tantrum.
But that's not true, is it? Facebook have decided not to allow their users access to that resource, while still using the resource themselves. You didn't seriously think their Aussie news boycott extends to not collecting data from Aussie news websites, did you?

>>92342
>What if you've got a wee blog fifteen people read and you hyperlink to an external site?
That depends. Are you posting the link because you want people to read it, or are you letting people post it so you can drive traffic to your multi-billion dollar operation?

>>92340
Here's the problem though - this is entirely designed to benefit News Corp and Fairfax. Consider that Google and News Corp have already done a deal, it's not a stretch to imagine that Facebook would do the same.

If you're a small news blog though, it's not like you can do the same deal with Facebook and it's not likely they'll pay you, so they'll probably just outright block you.

What about online articles that use news articles as sources? Are you going to have chuck a few dollarydoos to Murdoch to publish a paper?

>>92345
>What about online articles that use news articles as sources? Are you going to have chuck a few dollarydoos to Murdoch to publish a paper?
This is a disingenuous argument and you know it.

>>92343

>You didn't seriously think their Aussie news boycott extends to not collecting data from Aussie news websites, did you?

Facebook can only track activity on third-party websites if those third-party websites choose to embed Facebook's tracking resources. Facebook is a big website, not the CIA.

>>92347
>Facebook can only track activity on third-party websites if those third-party websites choose to embed Facebook's tracking resources.
... or if those websites embed something else that embed's Facebook's tracking resources. Either way, they're not disabling ingest from those sites that for whatever reason have left it up.

>>92344
Functionally they are the same, is what I'm saying. How big does a site need to be before it owes money to other sites its users post links to? People post links all over this place in order to discuss the news stories featured on the other side, does Purpz owe The Ecomonmist? Laws are about precedents as much as anything and this one sets out a very harmful line in the sand. Not for Facebook, they could just buy these papers tomorrow if they were so inclined, but much like suggestions of ending online anonymity, there are unforceseen consquences to these ideas because the people having them are technologically illiterate and politically biased.

>>92349
>Functionally they are the same, is what I'm saying.
Right. And you're wrong on that, is what I'm saying.

The rest of your post is reminiscent of people who say raising the minimum wage will kill jobs and call anyone that disagrees "economically illiterate".

Facebook should just be banned from having links to any kind of news articles at all, frankly.

It has been disastrous for the state of global human interaction and discourse, and I don't beleive for a minute that their manipulation of algorithms etc doesn't lead to biases with what people see and all that. Funnelling people into reality tunnels.

We should also just ban twitter full stop.

>>92351
You had me at "Facebook should just be banned". There's no reason the world should be dependent on a shitty web app some mediocre student wrote to help him get laid.

He's definitely a robot.

>>92353

I see he's using the patented David Cameron invisible fork of power.

>>92353
You don't see Zuck posting much himself because of reCaptcha.

I think I may have zero hope for Kier Starmer as Labour leader.

>>92381
I've realized who he reminds me of.

>>92383
Mark Speight's final days make me really sad to think about.

>>92384
I miss the bastard. He was a pretty cool kids' presenter.

>>92389


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P5BYgPEFOo

Fond memories of SMarT

>>92403
I wonder what Jay is up to these days.

Regarding Starmer: it's one thing for him to be daft, I went in two-footed sticking up for Corbyn plenty of times, but what exactly am I supposed to do, as a Labour member, when he's not even got any policies? I don't really know what I'm meant to be defending here. I feel hopeless generally and Nova Labour aren't helping. Is Labour still in the bit where people start a new antidepressant and get told "this will make you feel worse or even induce suicide for the first six weeks"? What's going on?

>>92437

>What's going on?

The next general election is more than three years away and we're in the middle of the biggest crisis since the war. There's no point in laying out a manifesto when nobody has any idea of what the country will look like in three months time, let alone three years time. Starmer might be running against Johnson, Sunak or someone who doesn't have much of a profile right now. He might be campaigning in the midst of a grinding recession or a post-crisis recovery boom. He might be campaigning against a new even nastier form of austerity, or a government that is still shaking the magic money tree.

Starmer's job right now is to do the boring, unglamorous work of getting the party in order, clearing out the Corbyn-era deadwood and building strength in depth. Going into campaign mode now would be a waste of effort and would look opportunistic and divisive.

>>92438

>clearing out the Corbyn-era deadwood

I'm of the view he'd have been far better off building bridges with the more "hard left" of the party and proving them wrong about any intentions of a Blairite takeover, but so far he's only succeeded in furthering the division. It's not as if the centrists don't have plenty of deadwood themselves; in fact it's hard to say the dead weight in their camp was ever alive enough to be called dead.

(And to be clear, I think Labour lefties are by and large a set of moaning cunts who would rather be in opposition than government, because they're already privileged enough that they can stand on principle and tolerate another ten years of Tory rule without really feeling the bite.)

>>92438
>Starmer's job right now is to do the boring, unglamorous work of getting the party in order, clearing out the Corbyn-era deadwood and building strength in depth.
There's very little evidence he's actually doing this. Or if he is, he's doing it with the cack handedness that defines the Labour party.
Even though Labour has no actual policies it could still be going harder on the government's failures while doing some competent marketing that promises nothing but suggests a lot about "values". Instead it has had about as much media presence as David Steel. (and the coverage is about as positive as well)

When it comes to deadwood the Corbyn era is a few small twigs. Labour's a forest of deadwood. It's easy to clear out the legacy of one leader the party has always hated, it's quite another to recognize that the party has been fucking things up for decades and that those fuckups charge compound interest. In my eyes Corbyn's greatest failure was not managing to get some kind of one-off reselection introduced, not to drive the party left (the experience of the 70s/80s suggests that lefty MPs will drift all over the place with time) but to take a gamble that might deliver some much needed talent to the Labour benches. A lot of Labour's current crop would seem like vacuous nonentities even in the Scottish parliament, and there's still nobody who looks like a prime minister amongst them. The ridiculousness of the fact that Gordon Brown is only Labour MP of the past decade worthy of being prime minister cannot be overstated.

>>92440

That cack-handedness you speak of is relative though. The Conservative party is in complete disarray, with a voting base that doesn't care. If Labour sorted out its problems, it wouldn't lure a single Tory voter.

Ultimately, the problem, from a political point of view, is a very fickel country and a broken electoral system. The entire political system is paralysed by it. Even if a party can get the Tories out by chasing electability, it has to do so on the back of abhorrent policies that defeat the purpose of getting the Tories out in the first place. And as long as the Tories are in, everyone loses but them.

>>92440
It does raise the point that with Scottish Labour being an absolute leaderless shit-show this would be a good time for Starmer to be more involved but all he's done is mealy-mouthed points on the status quo.

>>92438
I don't want a complete manifesto, but with local elections coming up in May I have literally nothing to tell people about what the Labour Party currently stands for. If his plan is simply to disappear into the woodwork for several years and burst forth like an electoral cicada I don't think it's going to work nor is he doing especially well at it.

>>92441
The Tories are not in "complete disarry", they have minor gripes with one another as to when and how lockdown should end, but are largely on the same page. I could moan for hours about these things, but I need to go shopping and it's otherwise very disheartening.

>>92443
Every PMQs Starmer is trying WAAY too hard to be middle ground and compromising, to the extent that you could just record him saying "Mr Boris you're doing the right thing but here are some minor details you should change", then stick it on loop and you wouldn't notice any difference.

>>92444
I mean was the consensus really that the problem with Corbyn was he called out the Tories too much? People always tell me Labour lost the election because of antisemitism and Brexit but I never hear it's because Jeremy was a meanie to Boris.

Tories don't like the NHS like they're Inclement Attlee. Get it? It would be a good bar for some horribly white, political hiphop.

>>92452
The problem with Labour and a large part of the left is that they assume everyone hates the Tories as much as they do, to the extent that if you were to say something like "I don't support the Tories but I don't believe they're pure evil incarnate" you may get dirty looks. It all stems from the fact that they believe what they're doing is morally right, so if you disagree you're not just wrong; you're wicked.

This has led to a bit of complacency. You believe you're on the right side of history and people will inevitably see this, but the Tories have been in power since 2010 and currently have a huge majority. Austerity didn't bring them down. Privatising the NHS further didn't bring them down. Grenfell didn't bring them down. Brexit didn't bring them down. Labour have expected people will come around to their point of view because they're morally in the right, but they're not actually connecting with them. There's also the fact that if you constantly whine about the Tories no matter what you'll turn into the boy who cried wolf so people will tune out and won't pay attention when you actually have valid criticism about them.

It's not about getting the right level of criticism of the Tories, it's about ensuring that this is communicated out effectively to the wider public and actually resonates with them. After all, the point of an argument is not to convince the other party to your way of thinking; it's to sway the people listening in on the sidelines and Labour have no idea how to target floating voters rather than simply preaching to the choir.

>>92454
You sound like a Tory m8

Actually said to me when I was a member of the party

>>92454
>Labour have no idea how to target floating voters rather than simply preaching to the choir

I don't think anyone does, really. Have you ever talked to a "floating voter"? To the extent that they actually have any political views, they are by and large incoherent. There's nothing there that unites them as a group that can be targetted.

I think one thing that Labour supporters and members could do is distinguish between The Tories and their voters. Far too many people talk as if Bob Smith from Leekesdale, occasional voter, frequent normal man, is the same as George Osbourne or Priti Patel, and go off like Cato the Elder whenever politics is being discussed. I'm not saying I've never done this myself, but actually trying to convince people can work.

>>92453
Is the world ready for DemSoc-hop? It can't be any worse than chap-hop.

>>92457

>Far too many people talk as if Bob Smith from Leekesdale, occasional voter, frequent normal man, is the same as George Osbourne or Priti Patel

A lot of those people have never had a real conversation with anyone like Bob Smith. "I don't understand how a working-class person could vote Tory" isn't hyperbole - to a lot of the Labour Left, Red Wall voters might as well be Martians. They don't understand the vast cultural gap that has opened up between cities and towns, they don't recognise the values that the Labour party is failing to connect with. It's not as severe a disconnect as the one blighting the Democrats in the US, but it isn't far off.

>>92458
>"I don't understand how a working-class person could vote Tory" isn't hyperbole - to a lot of the Labour Left, Red Wall voters might as well be Martians. They don't understand the vast cultural gap that has opened up between cities and towns, they don't recognise the values that the Labour party is failing to connect with.

The whole point of the term "red wall" was that it described constituencies which, because of their industrial legacy, reliably returned a strong Labour vote despite sharing characteristics (age, rate of homeownership, deprivation, etc.) with other constituencies which would swing or return a Tory.

>>92454
>It's not about getting the right level of criticism of the Tories, it's about ensuring that this is communicated out effectively to the wider public and actually resonates with them. After all, the point of an argument is not to convince the other party to your way of thinking; it's to sway the people listening in on the sidelines and Labour have no idea how to target floating voters rather than simply preaching to the choir.
This is all true as it goes, but it's a problem of public relations - not politics. That is the most deeply frustrating thing: Labour is going to waste a lot of time on internal bickering and policy change when fundamentally what it needs is a good marketing team and a consistent message. (And a good leader, but there isn't a single MP in parliament for any party eligible for that position.)

I am all but willing to put money on the idea that at the next election Starmer will try to connect with voters by pushing "Aspirational" policies and by trying to portray himself by his actions as "The adult in the room", ignoring that he could be the reincarnation of Christ himself lifting the burden on the NHS by healing the sick with his own two hands and with Labour's PR and communications team responsible for getting his message out there he'd be lucky just to hold the votes of his twelve disciples.

>>92460
Indeed, people I speak to, who have political opinions, are by and large of the opinion that Tony Blair is political kryptonite, despite the often confusing myriad of falsehoods, half-truths and mental gymnastics that form a lot of the thought process. It still seems to be the case that whenever Blair is brought up, there's an immediate, gut-felt reaction of dislike across a wide variety of people of all classes, levels of education, career etc.

I don't understand at all why Labour are going for the Blair-esque route with Starmer, when the "Blair brand" is unquestionably fucked and probably about as big a turn off as the Clinton brand in the States.

I don't know, Starmer is simultaneously portrayed as being a massive shit for being hyper-critical of the government at all times (seriously!) and for doing absolutely fuck all to oppose the government. So when the election cycle is started off again, people already have those pre-conceptions in their head that he's either ineffectual or spiteful. This mental disconnect is useful to fulfil the sense than you cannot question Big Boris. You must obey your media luvvie overlord, Big Boris.

>>92461
The main reason people dislike Blair in this country is because of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan rather than to do with neoliberalism.

Anyway, what people want is someone who appears like a Prime Minister. As long as you can give the impression of being statesmanlike you've won half the battle because that is enough to sway a lot of people. It worked for Blair. It worked for Cameron. Johnson didn't even have to try because he was up against the kind of scruffy Geography teacher that has a sleeping bag in the store room for when he's had too much to drink and slightly whiffs of piss.

>>92462

Media play a huge role in shaping the idea of who is statesmanlike and who is not. I would say that the support of the media in buying in to your "image" is a huge part of whether you appear to fit the role.

With Johnson, there is a real complicity in the media with allowing him to take on the "bumbling charm" role, as when he wandered out of his house and evaded legitimate questions with a tray of tea.

>>92462
Sad to say, I don't think it's ever been much different from that kind of popularity contest. Doesn't matter what sort of shite anybody says, it just has to be the right shite at the right pitch and cadence. Ultimately you're right, I can't stand either Starmer or Johnson on a base, instinctive level of being boring af and a scruffy cunt respectively, and that's all a lot of people have to go on if said candidate is incapable of building that narrative that suits your interests. Not that much really changes anyway.

Watching the budget, if Rishi becomes PM before the next election then Starmer will be completely fucked.