>>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.

>>92481
Hopefully they're both fucked.

>>92481

Starmer is fucked regardless. Labour are never winning a majority again.

>>92484
I'm tempted to vote Tory or someone in the May local elections to try and give Labour a bit of a wake up call.

So Dishi Rishi has done the following:

* Increased corporation tax
* Except for 1.5 million smaller companies with profits of less than £50,000
* Extended furlough
* Widened access to grants for 600,000 self-employed people
* Increased the minimum wage
* Set up a new UK Infrastructure Bank in Leeds

Among other things like funding for domestic abuse victims, art galleries and £150m for community groups to take over pubs at risk of closure

This is what a "Labour are well-and-truly fucked" budget looks like. Next PM confirmed. The Tories will soon be the only party to give us a female PM and an ethnic minority PM. Whodathunkit?

>>92486
Despite the idiotic contribution of Shaun "The poor will just spend any money you give them on drugs, I know this because that's what I would have done" Bailey, both Leeds and London are poised to try out UBI schemes.

>>92486
>Set up a new UK Infrastructure Bank in Leeds

When they advertise jobs do you reckon this will be on the usual Civil Service portal?

https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk

>>92486

I don't know if I've finally hit the 'tories might be ok' age, or if this is just what a conservative budget is capable of when a world-changing disease blights the land, but I suppose I can't complain.

>>92489

>>92489
The Tories aren't really so bad, provided you're not a poor person or a public sector worker. The impression that Starmer gave in his response to the Budget was that Labour are squarely the party for public sector workers and those on benefits, the rest don't matter to them.

>>92488
Yeah, you might want to have a look at the other jobs in the meantime. Last I heard at least DHSC have some converted health centre thing with a swimming pool and that.

>>92491
>The Tories aren't really so bad, provided you're not a poor person or a public sector worker.

Wages have essentially been stagnant for the past 10 years (a drop in real terms, on average) and the NHS is the single largest employer in the UK.

>>92493

Actually, double checking that, the NHS has been listed as the fifth largest employer in the world, let alone the UK.

>>92494
That just leaves the other ~97% of adults in the country that don't work for the NHS.

>>92495
... and their stagnant wages.

If this polling was accurate the Tories would end up with a ~92 seat majority.

>>92497
Hardly Kier's fault the voters are stupid.

I don't think polling is really valuable right now. The question is how they'll hold up three years from now when they don't have the Brexit trump card any more.

Unless that's it now and Brexit will be with us forever, storming to victory on the slogan "KEEP BREXIT DONE"

>>92499
>I don't think polling is really valuable right now

The opposition being so far behind is never a good sign.

I imagine Sunak will become PM and we'll get the usual bounce and momentum that follows it, plus all the mistakes of the past can be blamed on the previous Tory regime; he certainly was under the radar under the Cameron/Osborne and May years so won't be tarnished too much by them. The SNP will also be used as a boogeyman because Labour won't be able to get in power without being propped up.

>>92497
Fucking hell, the Greens are overtaking the Lib Dems.

>The question is how they'll hold up three years from now when they don't have the Brexit trump card any more.

That's probably the same for everyone bar Labour and Plaid Cymru. Scottish independence got a big boost from Brexit but realistically how long can that last.

>>92500
>I imagine Sunak will become PM

I don't rate his odds because his hike in corporation tax is already getting the knives out and to make matters worse he's too green. He's like a Rory Stewart, popular with a broader demographic but rubbish at party politics.

ARE Liz will get it and the rivers will run yellow with melted cheese.

>>92501
The point of announcing tax rises now is to pledge making cuts in your manifesto right before the election.

>>92497
Why Opinion Polls Don't Matter Now That My Guy Is In Charge Even Though I Spent All of 2015-20 Tweeting Bad Opinion Polls With Glee by A. Prick - Labourlist - Mozilla Firefox.

>>92503
Whilst I largely agree with this sentiment, for the majority of those years we were looking down the barrel of an election basically every month. Overall though the hyposcrisy of Labour's centrists is quite baffling. If you and I were mugs for thinking all Corbyn's "ideas" and "policies" were a bad play, then quite why we should think that Starmer's lack of either is a great and brilliant idea is beyond me. Imagine how bad these current polls might be if Starmer was already facing a leadership challenge and constantly being publicly and privately undermined by the left of the PLP too?

>>92504
>constantly being publicly and privately undermined by the left of the PLP too?

The impression I get from Labour is that there is a lot of sniping from the left and that the entire party is still beset by infighting.

>>92504
>Imagine how bad these current polls might be if Starmer was already facing a leadership challenge and constantly being publicly and privately undermined by the left of the PLP too?

So he's got the same polling as the 2019 general, after the Tories posted a broadly popular budget, but he's still managing to keep the party together? Oddly much is being made of Ed Miliband predicting the result:
https://order-order.com/2021/03/05/watch-milibands-unfortunately-timed-polling-prediction/

>>92505
Sniping, sure, but we don't have weekly broadsides being published in The Mail on Sunday or backbenches standing up and calling Kier a bastard and a traitor.

>>92506
Right, but for the first half of 2019, and I know that's the unimportant half, Labour were ahead. This is why it wasn't so bonkers for left-wingers to think that Labour still had a shot by the time of the election. However, now we've got elections in May and Labour are already in the pits and there's no plan to turn that around, no vision to offer voters. I've said it plenty of times before but you can't win at politics by doing what the other lot are doing, just less so, or even more so, you need to have a direction of travel all of your own. If you don't do this, even if Labour really get into gear before a general election, what you're going have is Joe Bloggs saying things like "well... Labour, they don't stand for nowt these days, do they?", he's not going to give a monkeys about Labour's plans for expanded private-public partnerships or free school meals for the children of single parent essential workers over half-terms.

>>92507
I don't think Labour could ever offer anything to an electorate stupid enough to yield 45% Tory support while said Tories are utterly mismanaging the country.

>>92508
That's not a good reason not to try.

>>92508
There is something to be said about a world where the electorate are simultaneously smart enough to know that Labour's proposed budget deficits carry the risk of creating excessive consumer demand which would force the Bank of England to increase interest rates to cool down the economy and head off inflation, and thick enough that they can't get their head around the fact that more British civilians have been killed by this government's awful Coronavirus response than have been killed by German bomber pilots. (and the pilots were trying!)

>>92510
>simultaneously smart enough to know that Labour's proposed budget deficits carry the risk of creating excessive consumer demand
They're not that smart.

>>92508

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYAuR5bkIlQ

>>92512
Nice meme. Go on, post it again.

>>92513

>>92511
It's the ultimate sort of thinking behind the assumption that Labour needs to set out a credible budget which necessitates dropping the policy of doing anything but tinkering around the edges. (Really more of a Miliband era problem thanks to Coronavirus, but who knows. Starmer might want to play Mr. Reasonable at the 2023 election.)
If you assume that the electorate are all idiots who don't really know anything about anything, the natural conclusion is that your budget doesn't have to be credible: you can bluff the electorate into voting for anything. The question isn't one of economics at all, it's one of PR.

>>92515
>If you assume that the electorate are all idiots who don't really know anything about anything, the natural conclusion is that your budget doesn't have to be credible: you can bluff the electorate into voting for anything.
Right. The fact that this has literally happened multiple times in the past 5 years would suggest that it is indeed the case.

>>92503

The fuck are you on about dickhead, I'm the lad who's always going on about class based socialism and shit.

It's just really quite pointless getting worked up about polls this far away from an election. You've judt got a chip to butty about Keith.

>>92517
>You've [just] got a chip to butty about Keith.
Sounds like he made something of that bag of spuds.

>>92517
It's a joke. Would you like me to explain the joke, or now that you know it's a joke can you put together what the joke is?

>>92519

I'm a Labour voter, I don't have a sense of humour.

>>92519

Oh yeah sure, the classic "it was just a joke" defense. I'm not buying it sonny, you thought you were epically owning a nasty Blairite didn't you. But I called you out, and now I'm the Internet victor.

>Long-term expats 'to get vote in UK elections'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56265898

Most expats I know tend to be fairly right-wing, so this'll probably boost the Tories.

>>92522
>Most expats I know tend to be fairly right-wing

I wouldn't mind seeing the data on this. It's removing the 15 year rule so I'd hazard that by then your political views will match whatever locality you're in, likely Europe or otherwise those living in China or Africa I imagine to be professions more likely to vote Labour (ESL teachers, NGO people). They're obviously not going to have been in favour of Brexit at any rate and will be more educated than the general public (so Lib Dems?).

At any rate, now that they have representation I think it only right that they can have some extra taxation. 150% tax on all forms of income seems a fair number.

Hartlepool by-election: Frontline doctor – and arch-Remainer – to fight totemic seat for Labour

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hartlepool-byelection-labour-paul-williams-b1819452.html

Labour narrowly clung onto Hartlepool in 2019, the incumbent has had to stand down for being a sex pest and they're standing an 'arch-Remainer' in an area that voted ~70% leave. Sounds like they're fucked.

>>92525
But BoJo Got Brexit Done^TM so that shouldn't be an issue anymore. Plus he works in ARE NHS innit.

>>92526
The difference between Labour and the Tories in 2019 was 3,595, with 10,603 voting for the Brexit Party. It's going to boil down to where those BXP votes now go.

>>92525
>Frontline doctor

As opposed to someone with a doctorate in archaeology?

>>92525

Labour's problem is that their politicians are entirely disconnected from the people they're supposed to represent. Even if he's an NHS doctor, that's certainly not working class, and as such his interests and worldview simply don't match theirs.

Someone like Starmer isn't the problem, he's a leadership figure and people don't mind leaders being posh, they see that as well suited to the job. The problem is appointing people like Starmer into regional swing seats and vital Northern strongholds. They can't afford that, they need to keep their poshos in the cozy metropolitan inner London seats they'll get votes in.

Labour as we know it will probably never get over this and we're probably going to live under increasingly half-arsed Tory governments until some kind if drastic sea change occurs.

>>92525
Heard about this a couple of days ago. My brain's in knots every time another Starmer clanger bursts forth and the party's dead silent on it. They were never more than two weeks from stringing Corbyn up to a lamppost, but shite like this is 4D chess, apparently. Not even sure what I'm saying, I don't want another civil war, but what's the point of Starmer if he's got no policies, plan or passion?

My only hope for this byelection is that the Northern Independence Party beats the Lib Dems.
(and in my more wild dreams, gets enough media attention to bootstrap it into a serious political contender, at least the local authority level.)

>>92530
It's the logical conclusion of where Labour have been heading for some time. They've rested on their laurels and the main case they put forward is "vote for us, we're not the Tories."

In Starmer they've managed to take that to the next level. He won the leadership contest on a platform of "Vote for me, I'm not a crazy Trot like Long-Bailey. Vote for me, I'm not a crazy man-hater like Phillips. Vote for me, I'm not completely up myself like Thornberry." He is absolute nothingness. You name it, he isn't it. Any cause that can be split down the middle and he won't be on either side, so that can't be used against him. Who needs reasons to vote for someone when you can devote your time instead to reducing the number of reasons why someone shouldn't vote for you?

>>92532

"Vote for Me, I'm not a cunt" is actually a noble platform. It's just that... a large portion of voters have been [strike]influenced[/strike]inspired to act like cunts with their votes in pursuit of impelling the phantom adversary of the week.

>>92533

Aww fuck my bbcode and all that.

>>92530

Candidate selection is the responsibility of the local CLP. The leader's office don't have a say in the matter. It would appear that the leader of Hartlepool CLP decided to stitch up the selection process before Mike Hill had even tendered his resignation.

https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1372217904926765062/photo/1

>>92535
IS TONTY BLAIR BEHIND THIS?

>An internal briefing to the Labour LGA leaked to Guido admits that “large majorities” are giving the government the benefit of the doubt over its handling of the Coronavirus pandemic. Despite some Labour MPs focusing relentlessly on death tolls, polling commissioned for the Labour Party found that a big majority of the public agree with the statement that:
>“Responding to the Coronavirus would have been hard for any government and on the whole the government has done as well as could be expected”

>The document also warns Labour campaigners in capital letters that “VACCINATION IS POPULAR!” – encouraging local parties to instead be positive about the rollout, and focus on thanking the NHS. Seems the pandemic hasn’t been “a good crisis” for Labour after all… A companion document prepared for LGA Labour by consultancy The Campaign Company, and also leaked to Guido, tells the party that “last year has not fundamentally re-set the terms” of politics. Instead it recommends that the most effective points of attack on the Government are not the lockdown delays, rather messaging should instead focus on bread and butter “services, council tax, development, outsourcing”. Looks like Labour squandered their “great opportunity“…

>The Times’ Patrick Maguire points out that “the firm that drafted this briefing for LGA Labour – The Campaign Company – was founded and until last June run by David Evans, Labour’s general secretary. Also used to employ Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff”. This is Team Starmer’s thinking…

https://order-order.com/2021/03/19/exclusive-leaked-labour-briefing-admits-public-give-tories-benefit-of-doubt-on-coronavirus/

>>92525
>A tweet posted by Dr Williams from 2011 referring to “Tory milfs” is also already proving embarrassing.

Seems pretty innocuous really. Who would you lads choose?

>>92538
She's top MILF even without having kids.

>>92539
Forget Rishi, she is the next PM.

>>92537
>polling commissioned for the Labour Party found that a big majority of the public agree with the statement that:
>“Responding to the Coronavirus would have been hard for any government and on the whole the government has done as well as could be expected”
It is difficult to put into words the contempt I feel for the Labour party over this statement. I'm sure some Labour people will quietly blame the public for being thick, but it's not the public's fault the opposition has failed to draw their attention to the problem.

They let the bastards get off with perhaps the most cack handed response in the world because apparently the only gang of dribbling imbeciles less competent than the government is the so-called opposition. They're going to lose the next election and for the first time since 2010 I can say without ambiguity that they fucking deserve to.

>>92541
How do we know how much of that is the government's fault? The UK is the mostly densely populated country in Europe, has a huge amount of international traffic, a large elderly population and we're one of the fattest people's in the world. We're a dream target for this kind of virus.

>>92542
> The UK is the mostly densely populated country in Europe
u wot m8

>>92542
We should have entered lockdown sooner rather than letting the likes of Cheltenham Festival go ahead. We shouldn't have let people just walk freely into the country out of airports. Mask usage should have been encouraged much earlier on. Test and Trace has been a complete shambles and the amount of money that has been pissed away or given to cronies is frightening. Arguably there should have been a lockdown towards the end of last year, with their hand eventually forced by the various mutations. The short notice for kids not to go back to homeschool this year was also a farce.

That's just off the top of my head but there's a lot that could have gone better, although who knows how many lives that would have saved. You could say that coronavirus has been worse for Labour than the Tories.

>>92544

>coronavirus has been worse for Labour than the Tories.

Just like Brexit?

Apparently one of the reasons why support for Starmer has dropped recently is because he misread the public mood and came out in favour of Meghan Markle rather than the royal family after the Oprah interview. Things like that and taking the knee are turning people off.

>>92546

It's funny how every time he does something the bleeding hearts on Twitter and Rudgwick approve of, his ratings go down, and vice versa. Yet they remain convinced it's his Blairite Tory in disguise status that will lose him the next election, and if only he listened to their lot he'd be onto a winner.

Half the Labour party's problems are it's own supporters.

>>92547
Most posts I see on there about Starmer are criticising his position on trans rights, you know the burning issue that is the top priority for most voters.

>>92547>>92548
What the fuck are you retards moaning about? Shut up, shut the fuck up, you fucking manchildren. Every fucking discussion about politics on here it's "I saw something on Twitter...", "what they're saying on rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk is..." and so on. Moronic cunts.

>>92549
You would be hard-pressed to find more useless barometers of the electorate's mood.

>>92550
Did I fucking ask, you hopeless cunt?

>>92549

I'm pretty sure I know your rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk username mate. Go get mummy to rub some bepanthen on your eternally inflamed arsehole, christ.

>>92552
Why are you talking about my arsehole, you big carpet-bagger? Stop talking about rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk every fucking time people are trying to talk about politics and maybe I wouldn't have to shout at you, I've asked nicely in the past.

>I'm pretty sure I know your rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk username mate.
I think a lot of people just call you thick wherever you go on the internet.

>>92553

Are you confused and angry because you can't find the downvote button here?

(A good day to you Sir!)

>>92554
What is this "that's what you are but what am I?" nonsense? Talk about rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk and Twitter on rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk or Twitter or shut up, that's it.

>>92555
Not him but it's relevant to talk about these sites when they quite clearly are influencing Labour policy. What's popular on a given day on twitter and with the steam-enthusiasts does impact reality as we can see from Hansard suddenly talking about topics that are 'trending'. That's the world we're living in and you have to accept it.

That such a connection is complete nonsense and Labour have entirely misjudged the sway of right-on web2.0 types is a worthy criticism to make.

>>92555

You've got to be really bumsore to ban over that. Someone clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed today didn't they.

>>92556
>Not him but it's relevant to talk about these sites when they quite clearly are influencing Labour policy.
[citation needed]

>>92557
I hate to burst your indignant self-righteous bubble, but I was the one who placed the ban and I haven't contributed to this thread until now or even read it beyond your string of posts. Tedious forum war bullshit is the exact reason the rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk wordfilter exists and you would absolutely be banned for engaging in it by any of us regardless of which side of the bed we woke up on.

>>92555

/r/foundtherudgwicksteamshow.co.ukuser/

>>92558
Hansard actually hosts a good deal of data analytics on this:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/the-use-of-social-media-by-mps-in-parliamentary-debate/
(Worth pointing out that SkyNews is apparently Labour territory)

RLBs campaign has been highlighted for dropping 'progressive patriotism' in a story that matches what we known of 'One Nation Labour'.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/01/jeremy-corbyn-labour-twitter-primary/604690/

>>92538
Heidi Allen. She's a babe, plus she's a Remainer who left. A true goddess in every respect.

Here's my own epic hot take: Labour's base no longer exists. Class war is largely outdated. Terry the car dealer who left school at 14 and owns a chain of BMW dealerships isn't going to vote Labour. Coal miners can't vote for Labour; there are no coal mines left. Pretty much anyone of the traditional Bruce Springsteen class have now been assigned a new place in society, either in call centres or shopping centres, or just on benefits in Middlesbrough. The Labour image of the "workers" is an image of an almost-extinct demographic. Every builder in the country could vote Labour, and it wouldn't be enough. But still, Labour want to be the party of class war. They get the new generation of povvos, Hannah with a Masters degree in French Theatre who now works in Starbucks, but I am arguably one of those as well, and I have never voted Labour in my life (in the three different elections that took place in 2019, I voted Change UK, Women's Equality Party and the Liberal Democrats. My votes are literally worthless lmao).

I also passionately think that the modern left in general needs to abandon its obsession with the moral high ground. People don't like to be lectured by sanctimonious twats. Brexit started out as a bunch of swivel-eyed racists, but everyone listened to them and said, "I don't agree with all of it, but I agree with some of it." I saw countless interviews with Trump voters in America who said the same thing: he's monstrously unpalatable, but he's the only one saying good things as well. So people need to listen before they can form an opinion. Otherwise, they just listen to Rupert Murdoch and the Daily Express because they're not wanky and Labour are.

The really wild corollary to all this is that Labour, and Jeremy Corbyn in particular, would have done a lot better if they'd said they wanted to storm the City of London and go full trial-of-Ceaucescu on any motherfucker in a suit who couldn't outrun them. Obviously calling for violent massacres isn't a good thing, nor is it a vote-winner in itself, but once you've put that idea into the public conversation, you can then accustom people to a less murderous punishment for the bankers. People won't like you, but they'll absorb your ideas, and you'll get elected anyway. It worked for Trump, it worked for Brexit (but not for Nidge the Fridge, admittedly), and a lot of people hate the bankers a lot more than they have ever hated the European Court of Justice. The moral high ground is a hindrance to electoral victory.

Liz Sugg is another Tory MILF.

>>92578
>I voted Change UK
>People don't like to be lectured by sanctimonious twats.
I can think of at least one person.

Whilst you're being hyperbolic and silly, I do tend to agree with the ultimate point of your post. If Labour had a bit more needle and came off a bit less like they wanted the country to be a primary school with more PFI they might be doing quite a bit better. Starmer's going to spend the next few years being called a Great Britain hating, Communist, daft militant wog-lover and his response will be "no, I completely reject that". You're not going to unleash a load of secret neo-Jacobins because you rile up people about flat wages and piss-taking tax-dodgers, so I agree that "they go low we go high" is generally a losing strategy. That's not to say they should become completely amoral, before the lad who thinks they just need to be more racist pipes up.

>>92578

This strikes me as a really naïve accelerationist view of politics. It "worked for Trump" because Trump had the support of a complicit media in being allowed to act as an attention-grabbing, view-gathering clown. Such an approach would not work for Corbyn because his views were intolerable to the establishment, especially to anyone involved in matters of military or foreign policy, and our news media (even supposedly left ones) are embarrassingly pro-war/pro-"intervention".

The idea that class war is outdated because of a bunch of stereotypes you've cobbled together in your head is also absolutely bizarre.

>>92578
>Class war is largely outdated
Class in the class war sense is about economic interest rather than cultural markers. Hannah and Daryl the lad from the call centre are both working class regardless of how refined and sophisticated her taste in French theatre is. Tony the car dealer does not share Daryl's economic interests even though they have the same accent.

Everyone thinks they are the squeezed middle class. Regardless of if they make more than 200k a year or less than 20k.

>>92584
>>92582
>>92578

The problem is "workingclass" now squarely includes people who went to university, whose mams and dads were doctors and barristers.

They don't think they're working class because working class means you're called Gaz, you follow the footy, and you drink Stella down the Four Lampposts. You can't be working class if you eat tapas and watch Big Bang Theory. Working class people go to Benidorm on holiday and lie on the beach getting sunburnt, whereas you go to Amsterdam and visit the Anne Frank museum. You're clearly nothing alike- Except there's a good chance Gaz is earning every penny the same as you, and it doesn't make a blind bit of fucking difference what class you think you are.

Class war is not outdated, it's just been cleverly misdirected and people thinking the way you do about it means it worked. You swallowed the bait.

Class-based party loyalties no longer hold. Labour now represent a mostly urban, mostly young middle-class demographic who like Europe and social justice; the Tories now represent older people who live in towns, have lower levels of education and strongly identify as British or English. People vote based on identity, not self-interest.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/04/25/demographics-dividing-britain

>>92586

Which is largely what people have been saying. Labour is doomed to failure as long as it primarily appeals to those urban student lefty types.

If only there were some way for it to shift its focus and change its image to recapture the demographics it formerly enjoyed huge support from. But sadly there isn't, not without becoming literal Nazis anyway. It's a shame really, we'll just have to live with the Tories forever.

Oh well. Luckily I can afford to be performatively unhappy about this situation from my position of relative privilege.

The only real solution I can see would be deposing Murdoch and replacing his propaganda with pretty much anything else at all.

>>92585
>Except there's a good chance Gaz is earning every penny the same as you, and it doesn't make a blind bit of fucking difference what class you think you are
So maybe Gaz is middle-class? People have been saying "everyone is middle-class now" since the 1990s at least. You still get the occasional prole, like the cleaners at my work, but otherwise we all talk the same and all act the same, and we're posher than some but less posh than others. Sounds to me like we're all in the middle.

>>92589

Well, yes, that''s exactly what ol' Thatcher wanted everyone to think. Anyone who earns full time minimum wage, and cohabits with a partner, can basically afford the baseline signifiers of "middle class" life. You can live in a small semi up north, have two cars on the drive, and still have change for a Nandos every week or two, on a combined income of £40k. The middle class dream come true, right?

Of course it's self evidently absurd to suggest the very baseline of acceptable living is the "middle". You don't have to be a political genius to realise what's wrong with that concept. If the bottom is the middle then where's the real middle, and what on earth is at the top and bottom?

Reminder that the median wage is £25k. The overwhelming majority of people in this country are barely above minimum wage in the grander scheme of things, they've just been conned into thinking that's the middle.

>>92590

In fact here's a little diagram I made to illustrate the issue with modern conceptions of class.

>>92590

They have conned themselves, no one needed to con them. In 1904 someone made a board game called the landords game that was purposefully cruel and rewarded being ahead to teach the dubious feedback loop inherent in property ownership, rent and a flat rate tax.

It didn't catch on. Then parker brothers bought the licence removed all the pejorative about success in that system and renamed it monopoly, and it is the most successful game of all time. People want to be that winner.

People are aspiration and have ideas above their position, this in many aspects of life is considered a positive it means they advance. It is however shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to shaping public policy. No one wants to be told you are trying your hardest but you still need help, that's a euphemism for you are a failure, to most.

Lads, if the Labour party is going into the dustbin of history and the Tories are turning into a more northern and state intervention/crony capitalist party then isn't it high time we found a new champion? One that would oppose authoritarianism and support a new capitalism with the living wage ideally?

If only we had a party like that...

>>92579
Not him but Change had some pretty good MEP picks that I remember commenting on at the time.

>If Labour had a bit more needle and came off a bit less like they wanted the country to be a primary school with more PFI they might be doing quite a bit better.

Corbyn lost hard m8. Sorry if I'm the one finally breaking the news in your bubble.

>>92581
Trump didn't have the support of the media at all. You can argue that he eventually had Fox (after the nomination) or that the negative press helped him but the idea that the likes of CNN supported him is laughable.

>>92592

No, there definitely was a concerted effort to con them. It worked quite effectively and now nobody even questions it.

Plenty of people think they're self made middle class products of aspiration and enterprise, when in reality they were just lucky beneficiaries of the right to buy their council house, and in material terms are probably worse off than before. (Back in my day you could buy a deck of fags for 50p! etc)

It might be a hard pill to swallow but people have to stop deluding themselves if anything is to improve. They know something isn't right (BROKEN BRITAIN!) they just prefer comforting lies rather than facing the truth.

>>92593
>If only we had a party like that...
Greens have more momentum, as well as connections to Green parties in other, more significant, countries.

>>92592

>No one wants to be told you are trying your hardest but you still need help

It doesn't have to be about "needing help", it should be about the fact you deserve better.

Of course the classic lefty refrain about making sure nobody starves and so on does sound a bit absurd in a first world country where, by rights, even a doley lives a relatively privileged life compared to, say, a starving Ethiopian. But people should still be angry that their wages have stagnated for the last decade, while in real terms everything else has become more expensive. People should still be angry that their hard work isn't valued appropriately, while some people make millions for doing fuck all. People should still be angry that the government pisses our tax money away on such blatant cronyism, even in the midst of a global crisis.

It's just weird how the Labour party can't seem to tap into that.

>>92594
>Plenty of people think they're self made middle class products of aspiration and enterprise

I read a good post a while back about how it's all the little things across an entire community that help build a person, without many people realising how much it shapes them, but how a lot of this has been lost as society is now a lot more selfish.

>>92596
When Labour do it they have a habit of coming across like a student rabble espousing the politics of envy. They're gonna take your money if you work hard and give it to fucking scroungers.

>>92596
As well as Labour's complete and utter uselessness I get the sense there's an element of "fake it till you make it" felt among some of the more important middle class voters.
To recognise the shitness of their situation is to realise their ascent up the ladder has come to a crashing halt and that it's only downhill from here. If they refuse to recognise that they can at least dream about when they'll be richer. By keeping the dream alive, they give themselves a marginal advantage over those who give up when it comes to actually achieving the dream. (But in aggregate: none of them will.)

Similar to the idea of premium mediocrity (In that case: paying a little more for mediocre "aspirational" products to signal that you're striving upwards, because if you admit that you're broke and buy the apparently more efficient cheap option it shows everyone that you're not really trying, that you think success is a matter of chance rather than work on your own part. And it is, but if you tell people that you think it is, that lowers your chance of success.) but constrained within the mind of your own family. (To a degree. The ballot is private, but lots of people still share their feelings at election time...)

>>92590
The national median income is over £30,000 now. As someone who earns between £25,000 and £30,000, this upsets me greatly ;_;

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/householddisposableincomeandinequality/financialyearending2020provisional

>>92599

But why does it upset you. You are in the majority of the population who earns less than £30,001 why would that be something to be ashamed of?

>>92593
I posted on Facebook in 2010 that I had voted, and I voted Liberal Democrat. I then added, "They'd better not win and ruin the country now."

Obviously I'm glad they had their moment in the spotlight, but they really didn't do much with it. Even the 5p charge for plastic bags; I swear that money was originally meant to go to environmental charities, rather than lining the pockets of the supermarkets. But now, the bags are smaller, worse quality, and you can be charged up to and above 50p for them. It was a great policy, and it's gone wrong now. I'd like to think they could have done a better job with the AV referendum too, although I don't know if they'd have succeeded, given both major parties agree on enforcing the two-party horseshit we currently have. Plus, of course, tuition fees. I have voted for the Liberal Democrats many times, and will probably vote for them occasionally for the rest of my life, but by God, they're not very competent, are they?

>>92600
I have rich parents, and I had a posh upbringing. My entire childhood consisted not of "Here's how to get a good job and become rich", but rather, "You will get a good job and become rich; here's how to handle it gracefully and with class." I am seething mad about being robbed of what I was told was my birthright, when my birthright is still going to others. The message that I am a failure, honestly, lingers over me like a spooky ghost at all times. Obviously if the commies took over and redistributed everyone's wealth, that would be an acceptable reason for me not to be rich, but when my entire childhood was based on a lie, I feel cheated. It's not great or noble or righteous to feel this way, but I do feel this way and it's perfectly noble and righteous to demand justice when the government is on TV, constantly gaslighting me that everything's fine and I haven't been fucked over at all.

>>92602
If your posh, rich parents can't sort something out for you then you're not as posh and rich as you think.

>>92603
They worked for the EU. They have no connections in this country at all, so I couldn't network my way into comfy nepotism. They can afford to support me if I don't have a job (and this has happened repeatedly), but for my own emotional wellbeing, I would like to live like a normal person instead of a mama's-boy sponge.

>>92601
I remain convinced that the fact they agreed to a coalition in exchange for AV was utter deranged insanity. The slightest glance at precedent from other countries would suggest that bigger parties tend to eat up their coalition partners. A quick tactical calculation would point out that a disproportionate number of their seats were in Scotland. The best tactical case that can be put forward for coalition is that it shows how responsible they are, something there are other ways to achieve while retaining some control.
I swear that parties make the stupidest decisions when they think they're putting party before country. In the process they wind up fucking both the country and (in the interest of giving the audience some catharsis) themselves. The Lib Dems would've been in a much stronger position if they'd given the Conservatives confidence and supply, or held out until someone broke and offered full PR, but that would've meant not giving in to the hysterical idea that we needed a majority (coalition) government right away because the budget was crying out for an axe and confidence and supply agreements apparently no longer exist.

I don't think there's an upper bound on how much I dislike the Lib Dems for their miscalculation. It's one thing to hurt the country in the name of helping your party, it's quite another to hurt the country in the name of destroying your party, guided only by the sort of orange book idiocy that saw the party totally fail to capitalise on Labour's implosion and actually fall back on the 2005 result in seat terms.
It's honestly enough to make me look back more positively on Cameron. Smart bastard, stealing the credit for the popular policies while telling his base it was the Lib Dems fucking everything up. Say what you will about the idiotic pileup of miscalculation and lessons not learned that was the EU referendum, his party is in government with an increased majority while the Lib Dems are (one hopes) spiraling the drain. The lesson speaks for itself.

>>92604

That's household earnings you div. Posh upbringing my arse.

I find it hard to feel anything towards Starmer other than apathy.

>>92617
About time for another divisive leadership campaign and pick someone else from the broad pool of electable candidates?
Get your shit together or embrace the wilderness.