Sensible discussion on Labour Leadership hopefuls

I'm not sure we will have a great deal of choice MaizieD. What we do know is what has happened. The "party of government" basically fooled the opposition into an election they didn't need to have. The strategy of "me or Jeremy Corbyn" and "get Brexit done" succeeded, probably beyond their wildest dreams. Our electoral system doing what it was set up to do.

There are now going to be a series of problems for the government to deal with; they haven't gone away except for one. Brexit will happen. We don't know what kind of Brexit that will be. We don't know what the consequences will be and this will happen while we, like the rest of the world, are almost certainly heading for an economic downturn.

On all sides in the election, there were promises. Everything on the Santa's lists was offered. The Labour Party said we will tax you and give you a better life. People voted against that. In difficult financial circumstance how and what the government can do is also an unknown.

As Grandad hinted, it is quite possible that we will not have a proper opposition - apart from the Scots Nats for anything up to 18 months. During that time we will have the government we have but how anyone other than the very arrogant, can be sure what they will do is beyond me.

Meanwhile, parties do have a chance to build an opposition. My guess, for that is all it can be, is that the government will do one of two things. It will either drag the majority into the Slough of Despond meaning they will not be able to get any sort of majority next time around or they will appeal to just enough to get back as a minority. With the mix of those who voted for them, I cannot see them winning them all back, but who can tell.

Whatever happens, it gives the parties some time to sort themselves out while Boris wrestles with all the things that weren't made clear. My "wish for a government" as Maizie called it, or rather a potential government, is the rise of smaller parties and perhaps even a split in the Labour Party so that people can vote for what they actually want, a coalition can be formed and PR brought in. In typing this I realise my views haven't changed. I also doubt that many people's have although they may, over the course of the government

Just read the link you put up Maizie. Thank you. I just wish I could find the party he describes.

Gaga that is typical socialist thinking.The huddled masses cannot follow fine/logical/ intelligent thinking and must be led by the nose by their betters.They are brainwashed by social media/ newspapers etc and oh! If only they were more intellectual and understood economics and socialism then they would definitely vote for it.
Hogwash!
Credit them with some intelligence please, they saw the kind of man Jeremy Corbyn is and they didn’t believe his Christmas wish list of having (free )anything they wanted.
They also saw his fence sitting attitude on Brexit, and his being willing to hold another divisive referendum on staying in the EU, and cosying up to the SNP and giving Scotland another referendum next year.
Unless LP members see this and accept it, how can the LP change and begin to win GE’s again.
Working class people are as aspirational as anyone else, and see the lumping together of them with food bank users and
Homelessness as patronising.

Some comments on the rioting in France and what we can do ideas
??? ?? ?????? | #SocialistMail #RESIST
@syhawkes
Just gathering numbers here but how many are ready to take to the streets against this Tory Corporate Dictatorship inflicted on us by a Billionnaire corporate media & press?

Are you ready to take the French approach to remove a far-right dictatorship?

Please RT after voting ✊?

@Redcountessa
Replying to
@syhawkes
and
@campbell582000
Thing is it would need millions. We've marched & shouted till our lungs bleed, where's it got us? We'd need a massive plan of peaceful Civil disobedience & to win public over. Latest vote doesn't look like that at the moment! I'm beginning to give up on the UK working classes!

??? ?? ?????? | #SocialistMail #RESIST
@syhawkes

There will be a role for everybody, you can use social media to grow our numbers & spread awareness because we can be sure the mainstream media & press won't want to be reporting it as it doesn't fit with their biased right wing narrative to make Britain look attractive to visit.

Randall McMurphy #GTFTO
@respeak_uk

Replying to
@syhawkes
and
@Georgin36410016
Taking to the streets won't help

We need to get smart and break the grip the right-wing media & BBC has on the UK

There is only one way to do this - persistent engagement with those in our immediate vicinity

Over the next 5 years Johnson's betrayals will help our case hugely

Dear oh dear Grany.....is he your guru?
How about accepting democracy, we have just had a GE and the voters have spoken.
Acting like Wolfie Smith ( up the revolution) is childish, he sounds like a student in the first flush of love for Marxism.

The reason a far left/ socialist party won’t get into power is that the electorate don’t want it.

The problem is, lemon, that they may not want the LP, but polling and vox pops show that they do want their policies. I've posted this graphic before, but here it is again. These are mostly socialist policies.

What I'd like to know is what you, and others on this forum, actually think 'socialist' means. Because the word itself has somehow become a frightener when the policies put forward by the LP are, in the main, really nothing more than we've lived with in the past and been perfectly content with.

I absolutely agree with Gagajo:

The vast majority of the UK population do not understand Keynesian or Monetary economics. They do not understand the theory of laissez faire or know what a command economy is.

As the 'vast majority' includes politicians and commentators it's going to be a long, long time before the 'household economy' myth is dispelled. But some party really needs to seriously try to re-educate 'the vast majority' as to how a national economy actually works. Because at the moment people's ignorance is being used to exploit them...

Lemongrove, it is impossible to have an intelligent, theoretical debate with you. You just go on the offensive. I respect your different point of view, but will not engage with what is just hostility and retaliation.

IF you would like to posit an argument that has some factual basis to it, I will happily read and engage with it. But if all you want to do is rant on about an on-the-way-out leader, throw insults and simply repeat your opinion in a multiplicity angry posts, I don't intend to respond to you.

Over and out.

Excellent posts by MaizieD and Gagajo

France
@thepileus

Striking electrical workers in France are reconnecting service to poor families while cutting off power to police stations, management and large companies

That is what you call Class Solidarity!

A typical post Gaga from you, in fact apart from the word Hogwash there is nothing in my post to you that contains hostility/retaliation/ throwing insults etc ( that is simply you going on the defensive because you dislike my comments.)
I did posit an argument that has some factual basis to it......it’s what working class voters in the North, (former strong Labour seats )have been saying all along, but the far left of the party
Had it’s socialist blinkers and headphones on and wasn’t listening to them.
Both you and MaizieD are still not listening or accepting but are just bemoaning the workers not understanding Keynesian or Monetary economics and saying they need to be ‘re-educated’..........you have to laugh!

I agree with Lemon and think that a good proportion of the so called working class are far more savvy, intelligent and aspirational than the left give them credit for, and not only resent the implications of the phrase 'working class', but consider it patronising, degrading and frankly old fashioned, which of course it is! People from whatever walk in life resent being considered stupid, easily conned and in need of guidance by superior intellectuals, they can actually read and write and make their own validdecisions, not always socialist ones!! The working class of yesteryear simply don't exist any more, something the election has just proved and something the far eft seem to fail to understand.

If Grany agrees with you ......you must be right.?

Here is the link to France electricians strike

thefreeonline.wordpress.com/2019/12/26/electricity-strikers-in-france-light-up-poor-homes-this-christmas-cut-power-and-gas-to-bosses-and-police/

Striking electrical workers in France are reconnecting service to poor families while cutting off power to police stations, management and large companies

That is what you call Class Solidarity!

It is excellent! Direct action helping the poor.

Wonder why they want to cut power off from police stations !

Utterly ridiculous, lauding action which cuts off electricity to
Management/large companies/ police stations.
What about the workers affected, what about the effect to police with not being able to actually work or use computers?
If you see this as ‘excellent’ then it confirms what I already thought of your political views.

Cutting off power in police stations will help criminals

How can they reconnect services to poor people, did they knock doors and asked proof of earnings ,

Load of rubbish sorry.

Totally hair brained if indeed true! How on earth can this sort of action help the disadvantaged particularly disabling the Police?! Hope nobody needs their help, ie a missing child, burglary, terrorism? Just be too bad I suppose!!!! Not sure that this sort of class solidarity would be entirely welcome!!!!

Just looked at this thread and why am I not surprised that it's gone off topic and some posters are now encouraging anarchy in the streets? Laughable. If you feel that's the answer to a socialist (or is it communist?) party not being elected, you don't understand the British electorate at all, and your party doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of ever being elected. Which suits me fine ........

Does anyone know of a nice forum where people are less arrogant and rude? I have a feeling this has had it's day.

Explains why once labour supporters voted Tory

Why don't you right-wing sympathisers start your own thread? Simple!

Because when we do, the left-wing sympathisers jump on and ruin it for the rest of us. Annoying, isn't it?

No, I'm not at all bothered. It's to be expected.

Angry right wing ranting. Water off a socialist ducks back Opal. Predictable. A social system that requires the unquestioning complicity of its electorate hits back hard at anything that questions the status quo.

interesting of course that so many people like many of the things in the Labour manifest. Sadly they didn't like Corbyn or his leadership team. That's what came over on any radio phone in or from any activists/MP's who knocked on doors, met with constituents.
The other concern was the way in which significant policies, eg Waspi Women and Free Broadbant simply popped up every morning, with no prior discussion with MP's party activists.
Reading this thread has been a demoralising experience for me. It's like bliddy Groundhog Day. Who was it who said "ah yes but we won the argument". (don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question)