2019 UK election

Michael Moriarity wrote:

To get some idea of how honest the Lib Dems are in their use of polls, take a look at this interview, starting at about 7:40.

Brillaint move. She can use the poll to create whatever impression she wants, and with the fine print she has the cover to say, "but I told the truth." Technically she did, but she left people with a wrong impression.

Ken, I suspect it is all academic in the shor5 run. corbyn’ abysmal Unpopularity has assured Johnson a majority.

if this happens there will be a civil war in the Labour Party between those will have learned the lessons flowing from a monumental defeat and those who have not.

What lessons would you like Labour to learn? 

That the PLP, the last antisocialists still a part of the party, should be able to force out a leader even if the majority of the party doesn't want that leader forced out?

That Labour MUST abandon the non-wealthy majority by permanently renouncing socialism?

That the party should act as though anti-Semitism is the most prevalent form of bigotry in the UK(it's actually the least-prevalent) and that the only way Labour can prove it opposes anti-Semitism is to make public criticism of what the Israeli government does to Palestinians grounds for instant expulsion?

That a fight for one outdated and reactionary trading alliance is more important than the creation of a society where poverty and exploitation don't exist?

What you want, clearly, is an antidemocratic conception of what Labour is supposed to be about:a conception free of core values or internal party democracy; a conception in which Labour MPs are treated as if they are the party and no one else is; a conception in which Labour supports the preservation of the status quo for the rest of eternity.

What other possible interpretation can be made of all you have posted here in the last four years?

There's no way what you have done could possibly be consistent with socialist or even social democratic values or with a belief that the Labour Party should be controlled by those who do the work of electing Labour MPs and Labour governments.  There's no way what you have done could possibly be consistent with any interest in fighting poverty or ending austerity in the UK-only the Labour Left opposes poverty and austerity, "modernizers" are fine with those things, as they proved by abstaining on May's cuts.

When you could have used your time here to give support to those who want poverty and austerity ended in the UK, who want the climate crisis addressed, who want the damage done by years of Tory governance ended.  But you've refused to do that.  All you have done is attacked a good, decent human being, the first leader Labour has had in decades who isn't a cynical hack or a coward-and abetted a campaign designed to convince the electorate of the UK that he is a monster.

I actually proposed an option which might have achieved your objective of having Corbyn stand down-that the PLP guarantee that there be a left-winger on the leadership ballot and guarantee that Labour would fight this election on the socialist policies most of the party wants.  You refused to even address that proposal.  You can't seriously think it would be legitimate for the PLP to be able to block all socialists from the ballot and impose an election platform that repudiated socialism.  You can't seriously think anyone would rally to Labour if it did that, or would accept someone put in through a rigged ballot as in any sense a legitimate leader.

Why didn't you support what I suggested there?  Corbyn's supporters are most of the party.  Most of the party supports the ideas Corbyn fights for.  Do you honestly think that is irrelevant, or that a leader imposed on an all-moderate ballot, or just by a vote of the PLP itself could possibly be legitimate?  Could possibly connect with the voters?
 

Here’s a quote for you Ken:

We may lose the vote today, and the result may deal this party a grave blow. It may not be possible to prevent it, but there are some of us, I think many of us, who will not accept that this blow need be mortal: who will not believe that such an end is inevitable. There are some of us who will fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love. We will fight, and fight, and fight again, to bring back sanity and honesty and dignity, so that our party – with its great past – may retain its glory and its greatness.

• Hugh, Gaitskell, Speech at the Labour Party conference (5 October 1960)

nicky wrote:

Here’s a quote for you Ken:

We may lose the vote today, and the result may deal this party a grave blow. It may not be possible to prevent it, but there are some of us, I think many of us, who will not accept that this blow need be mortal: who will not believe that such an end is inevitable. There are some of us who will fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love. We will fight, and fight, and fight again, to bring back sanity and honesty and dignity, so that our party – with its great past – may retain its glory and its greatness.

• Hugh, Gaitskell, Speech at the Labour Party conference (5 October 1960)

Gaitskell said that while arguing that Labour should support keeping the nuclear deterrent.  What the hell was there to love in that?  It was useless for the UK to have the bomb or to be on anybody's "side" in the Cold War.

What is the Labour Party that YOU love, nicky? 

A party where socialists and labour activists are out in the cold and donations from CEO's call the tune?

A party where no one but a right-wing leader and the right-wing, antidemocratic PLP have a say?

A party which still supports the discredited doctrine of "humanitarian" intervention?

A party which would never undo all the barbaric Tory cuts in social benefits or repeal the barbaric benefits sanctions regime?

A party which goes back to the capitalist-triumphalist "end of history" doctrine?

A party which was fine with the slow death-by-privatization of the NHS?

A party which equates criticism of the Israeli government with hatred of Jews-Corbyn agreed to every part of the IHRA "guidelines and examples" other than those related to opposition to the occupation and the settlements-?

Is that the party you support?

A party which goes back to standing for nothing? 

If not, could you kindly tell me what party you DO support?

Obviously Labour can't lower itself to the Third Way again-not in a time where people all over the globe are rising against greed and austerity.
 

Which Labour Party do I support Ken?

One that is electable and therefore able  to help people.

Wnich is exactly what Corbyn’s narrow, bigoted, myopic, humourless, self-delusional, exclusionary, mendacious little cult is not.

Another poll for you to explain away Ken.

Latest polling in Scotland:

25 point lead for the SNP

Labour down 15%

Conservative 22%
Labour 10%
Lib Dem 8%
SNP 47%
Brexit Party 5%
Green 8%

YouGov/The Times/Sky 5-6 Nov

..i don't care what the polls say this stuff matters..more than brexit..more than remain.

Mothers promised full year of maternity pay in Labour manifesto

Mothers will be given maternity pay for a full year after the birth of their children and all employees will have a right to work flexibly as part of a Labour manifesto pledge to improve life for parents.

She said Labour would stick with its 2017 pledge to increase statutory maternity pay from nine to 12 months, allowing mothers or partners sharing parental leave to spend a full year between them with their newborn babies.

The party has also promised to give workers the right to choose working hours that suit them through a “presumption in favour of flexible work” – putting the onus on employers to explain why if they could not offer that.

Butler said all large employers, under Labour’s proposals, would be forced to introduce a menopause workplace policy to break the stigma associated with it and pledged to do more to tackle sexual harassment in the workplace.

She said she was “sick of how women are treated at work” and argued that “audits are not enough” in an implicit criticism of Theresa May’s moves to measure inequality in the workplace.

Butler said: “Next Thursday, it is equal pay day, the day when women effectively stop getting paid for the rest of the year compared to their male counterparts. It’s a disgrace.

Labour has already pledged to create a workers’ protection agency with powers to fine organisations that fail to report their gender pay, publish action plans to reduce pay gaps or take satisfactory measures to close the pay gap.

Dawn Butler, Labour’s shadow women and equalities secretary, said she wanted to see a “step change in how women are treated at work”, which would be reflected in the party’s manifesto when it is published in a few weeks’ time.....

..on labour raising money

nicky wrote:

Better news for Labour in Gedling, They have only lost a quarter of their votes.

Gedling, constituency voting intention:

 

LAB: 42% (-10)

CON: 37% (-6)

BREX: 13% (+13)

LDEM: 6% (+4)

GRN: 1% (-) 

 

via @Survation, 04 Nov

Chgs. w/ GE2017 result

Actually less than 20% of their support. But if the Lib Dems are paying for polls in ridings like this, they're going to run out of money pretty soon.

'Mothers Promised Full Year of Maternal Pay in Labour Manifesto'

https://twitter.com/tfbrexit/status/1192576569916755975

"But how can you promise any workers' rights outside of the EU?!"

"Left-wing politics is slowly going through a process of embourgeoisement. Right-wing politics is being proletarianised."

https://twitter.com/post_liberal/status/1192813055584788480

Babble continues to advance the process.

How the Political Class Sold Our Sovereignty

https://t.co/WQuhFYBegU

"National independence is an essential condition for democracy and socialism..."

nicky wrote:

All that is true Robbie

i bring this anD other polls to Ken’s attention to show, contrary to his position, that Labour is losing tons of votes under Corbyn.

I think its quite possible that Corbyn will fall short of the impressive 40% result Labour obtained under his leadership in the 2017 election. But we should not lose sight of the fact that that result was Labour's best result since 2001, an election which delivered Tony Blair a massive majority. A more realistic target for Corbyn is to try to get somewhere between the 30% Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband obtained in 2010 and 2015, respectively, and the 35% Blair won in 2005 when he got his last majority. If Corbyn can do that, and enough of the Conservative vote scatters between the yellow Tory remainer Lib Dems and the hard Brexit Faragists then Labour has a decent chance of forming at least a minority administration at the end of the day. IMO that would really be the best possible outcome, especially if Corbyn can find enough votes from the SNP, Plaid Cymru and/or the Greens to be able to pass legislation without having to rely on the LDs who I don't trust.

nicky wrote:

All that is true Robbie

i bring this anD other polls to Ken’s attention to show, contrary to his position, that Labour is losing tons of votes under Corbyn.

And it's been pointed out before in this thread that the constituency polls nicky posts are out of sync with the national polls that show LibDem support static or falling and Labour support increasing.

And since nicky knows that it's not possible for Corbyn to stand down as leader, there's no valid reason to continue to try and discredit the man-and it wouldn't make any possible difference in the polls to replace Corbyn with a "moderate"-nobody would think the election even mattered if anybody on the right wing of the party took over as leader, and nobody from the right wing of the party could possibly demonstrate any personal popularity.

Ken Burch wrote:

nicky wrote:

All that is true Robbie

i bring this anD other polls to Ken’s attention to show, contrary to his position, that Labour is losing tons of votes under Corbyn.

And it's been pointed out before in this thread that the constituency polls nicky posts are out of sync with the national polls that show LibDem support static or falling and Labour support increasing.

To be fair, it's a comparison with the last election, when the Lib Dems had 7.4%

But epaulo13, nicky says this election is all about Corbyn's personal (un)popularity. Do you mean to say that nicky might be less than honest in his posts, and leaving out a few important factors? Why on earth would he do that?

..with all due respect i see the constant interaction going on with nicky and want no part of it. it goes nowhere and repeats. imo that makes for a dull thread. nicky is free to think what he likes.  

..the left has been looking for something like this for a long fucking time. why isn't there more talking about it? 

Michael Moriarity wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

..with all due respect i see the constant interaction going on with nicky and want no part of it. it goes nowhere and repeats. imo that makes for a dull thread. nicky is free to think what he likes.  

..the left has been looking for something like this for a long fucking time. why isn't there more talking about it? 

Sorry, I didn't mean to distract from what we all know is the really important stuff that will happen if the U.K. elects a Labour government, but one of my faults is that I can't resist poking fun at people like nicky. I won't use any of your posts this way in the future.

..just so you know i wasn't offended by your post. you asked and i didn't want to ignore you..so i answered. 

Corbyn and Rayner vow to open a Sure Start centre in every community

Labour will open a Sure Start centre in every community with 1,000 new centres across England as part of a radical expansion of childcare provision, Jeremy Corbyn is set to announce on Saturday.

Visiting an early years art project in Leeds with education spokesperson Angela Rayner, the Labour leader is expected to promise £1bn investment to reverse the Tory cuts to Sure Start and provide support to parents in every community across the country.

The announcement comes after new analysis that shows childcare costs have risen twice as fast as wages under the Conservatives. Labour has set out its plan, which is intended to unlock the potential of children in the UK. The plan includes:

• Rolling out 30 hours of free childcare a week for 2-4 year olds;
• Opening 1,000 new Sure Start centres;
• Providing free school meals for all primary school children;
• Building a million genuinely affordable homes, including the biggest council housing programme in a generation;
• Investing in schools and fully reversing the Tory cuts;
• Ending the public sector pay cap and introducing a real Living Wage of £10 to boost the household income;
• Ending the benefit freeze, two child limit and scrapping universal credit.

quote:

House of Commons analysis shows that Labour’s expansion of 30 hours of free childcare would benefit over 880,000 three- and four-year-olds, and over 500,000 two-year-olds by the end of the next parliament.

Perhaps you will this this poll is also mendacious Ken.

SNP voter support in Scotland up to 42% while Labour backing collapses, poll

The SNP has increased its share of the vote in Scotland since the 2017 election by five points, according to a new poll conducted by YouGov.

The poll conducted from October 23 to 25, showing voting intention when compared to the 2017 general election revealed that in Scotland SNP support has risen from 37% to 42% now.

But the survey will make bleak reading for Scottish Labour , as it shows the party support collapsing from 27% to 12%.

It means that Labour is currently running in fourth place behind the Lib Dems whose support has risen from 7% to 13%.

According to YouGov, if this figure remains the same on election day it will be the worst Labour result in Scotland for more than 100 years.

even worse than a choice between Trudeau and Scheer.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/10/boris-johnson-versus-jeremy-corbyn-for-number-10-battle-of-unfittest

The levels of dissimulation are even more elevated on the Labour side where many, quite possibly a majority, of the party’s candidates in winnable seats do not regard Mr Corbyn and his cabal as people who ought to be allowed near the machinery of power. Three years ago, Labour MPs held a confidence vote in which just 40 of them declared him fit to be their leader against 172 who argued for his removal. None of the reasons that the 172 cited then have changed in the time since and some of the objections to the Labour leader have become more compelling. That confidence vote happened before it was fully apparent how toxically antisemitism in the party has spread on his watch. I have a huge collection of quotes from Labour MPs about why their leader would be a calamitous prime minister and a government led by him would have frightening consequences for security and the economy. The very same people are now pinning on their red rosettes and urging a vote to put Mr Corbyn into Number 10 even while believing he is utterly unsuitable for the office.

I guess they will rationalise this behaviour by telling themselves that trying to stop Brexit trumps every other consideration or that the Tories are even more hateful or that Labour can’t win anyway, so what’s the harm? A lot of them deployed that latter excuse during the 2017 campaign. Confronted on the doorstep by the Corbyn-wary or the Corbyn-averse, many of Labour’s candidates told these voters that it was safe to pick Labour because the party couldn’t possibly win and once it had been defeated they’d get rid of him. Labour didn’t win, but they then didn’t get rid of him. This time around, it won’t be possible for Labour candidates to offer honest guarantees that a Labour vote won’t put Mr Corbyn into Number 10, because it possibly might.

For the voter, and there are many of them, who regards both men as terrible candidates for the premiership this election is a struggle of the unfittest. It poses the nation with a hideous choice. Our electoral system doesn’t offer the opportunity to cross a box marked Labour (but not Corbyn) or Conservative (but not Johnson).

The best hope for all who shudder at the thought of either man at Number 10 is another hung parliament. That will at least place some constraints on the havoc that either can inflict.

George Galloway, The Mother of All Talkshows, Ep 21 (and vid)

https://youtu.be/IqZKnK-Tpts

"Joining us on the show is Chris Williamson - former MP for Derby North, who will discuss antisemitism in UK's Labour Party..." Listen also to caller Chris Mclade, long-time UK Labour voter and supporter on why he won't be this time @ 2:46:49. 'An authentic voice of England.' To Corbyn and  UK Labour Remain: 'they are many and you are few.'

Westminster voting intention in...

Core cities:
LAB: 31% (-23)
CON: 26% (-5)
LDEM: 22% (+15)
GRN: 8% (+6)
BREX: 7% (+7)

via @YouGov
Chgs. w/ GE2017