2019 UK election

..great little video

The Labour Party‏Verified account @UKLabour

When politicians resort to blaming immigrants, you know they've run out of ideas

 

Sherelle Jacobs: Labour Is On The Brink Of The Most Seismic Wipeout in British Election History

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/14/labour-brink-seismic-wip...

"This could actually be it - the end of Labour. Some may scoff, pointing out that it has narrowed the gap with the Tories in some polls. But on the ground, in the heartlands, the party smells of death...As a Brexiteer from a dynasty of 'Labour men,' I can't help but reflect with a hint of melancholy. But to former supporters, the party is like the family Staffordshire bull terrier that has become feral. The kindest thing is to put it down - peacefully but resolutely."

Just deserts.

General election 2019: Labour pledges free broadband for all

Labour has promised to give every home and business in the UK free full-fibre broadband by 2030, if it wins the general election.

The party would nationalise part of BT to deliver the policy and introduce a tax on tech giants to help pay for it.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell told the BBC the "visionary" £20bn plan would "ensure that broadband reaches the whole of the country".

But Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was "a crackpot scheme".

The plan includes nationalising parts of BT - namely its digital network arm Openreach - to create a UK-wide network owned by the government.

Mr McDonnell said the roll-out would begin with communities that have the worst broadband access, followed by towns and smaller centres, and then by areas that are currently well served.....

More from that link:  

 

What about Corbyn himself?

If Jeremy Corbyn is truly antisemitic he must be the most unusual and eccentric example of antisemitism ever displayed by a British political leader and perhaps any political leader.

When you are told that a politician is a diehard antisemite you don’t expect to then discover that over the decades he’s signed dozens of Early Day Parliamentary motions condemning antisemitism; helped organised protests against anti-Jewish marches; visited the Terezin concentration camp to commemorate Holocaust victims; attended numerous Jewish events in his constituency; and read the war poetry of Isaac Rosenberg at his local Remembrance Day service.

The list of antisemitic ‘crimes’ by Corbyn which have been ‘unearthed’ to ‘expose’ his guilt all crumble for anyone who bothers to do some fact checking or examine the context in which they happened.

If I have criticisms of Corbyn over his handling of antisemitism it’s that he did not defend himself or his party more robustly.

He should have toured the TV studios during the spring and summer of 2018 to refute the allegations made against him. He should have invited his accusers, in particular Campaign Against Antisemitism, and the leaders of the Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council and the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, to debate face to face. He should have given a platform to Palestinian voices to demonstrate the problematic nature of the IHRA “illustrations” of antisemitism. He should have given a major speech setting out his understanding of Jewish history, of antisemitism, of what does and does not count as fair criticism of Israel and Zionism.

The strategy of not giving more oxygen to the allegations through direct engagement turned out to be wrong. It just encouraged more vilification.

[quote=Ken Burch]

The strategy of not giving more oxygen to the allegations through direct engagement turned out to be wrong. It just encouraged more vilification.

[quote=NDPP]

It wasn't 'a strategy', it was appeasement and prostration and allowing others to be thrown under the bus in hopes they would relent against him.

"...If Corbyn loses a lot of people in the Labour Party are going to blame it on those Jews who fomented the antisemitism witch-hunt hysteria. And the big problem there is it's true! Jews were the spearhead of the campaign to stop Corbyn. That's not antisemitism that's factually based. They played the most aggressive role and the most visible..."

Finkelstein - Labouring Under Anti-Semitism

https://www.rt.com/shows/renegade-inc/459776-labour-antisemitism-racism/

 

Not communism, but not nothing

Out of nowhere, the Labour Party last night made a game changing move in an otherwise dreary election. It promised to roll out full-fibre broadband to the doors of every household in Britain, for free, by 2030.

It will do so by nationalising the broadband business of former state telecoms provider BT, and funding a £20bn digital infrastructure spend out of long-term borrowing. The press immediately dubbed it “broadband communism”.

Hordes of centrists dads took to Twitter to complain that they should be allowed to spend £20 a month on a crap copper wire internet service instead of getting an industrial strength version for free.

Here I want to explain the political economy of the move. It’s not just a retail giveaway to catch votes - it contains the seeds of a serious rethink by British social democracy about the relationship between wages, information and work. Here’s why:

1. Public good. Labour just basically reclassified the digital infrastructure as a public good, like the road system. Up to now, during the digital comms revolution, the entire physical infrastructure has been used as a rent-seeking opportunity by private monopolies, whose “competition” always seems to produce the same rip off pricing. Labour’s move is a statement that this can’t go on: better that the public owns the natural monopoly of fibre-optic cables, and entrepreneurs compete on a level playing field to sell you services over it.

2. Data democracy. Because the big broadband providers could never profitably wire up Britain’s rural and coastal communities, these areas were lagging further behind the already piss-poor British broadband system. This is a social guarantee to treat every household equally, rolling out the fibre backbone to places it does not exist, and then connecting every doorstep with ultra-high speed fibre.

3. Cost of living. Traditionally union-backed parties like Labour don’t do much to cut the cost of living. The implicit assumption is that you equalise society upwards through wage bargaining - on the assumption that social pressure to cut costs eventually feeds through to pressure for lower wages to the workforce. But this is what I hope will be the first of several eye-catching offers on the cost of living.

4. Cheapness. According to the British government’s own study, though a state monopoly roll out might take longer, it is the only format that delivers 100% coverage and costs £20bn compared to £33bn through the “enhanced competition” model the Tories preferred (kind of giving away the weird outcome of “competition” in a rigged neoliberal market).

And though it is not communism, this is no longer business as usual for Labour. 

This 'Brexit Election' Exposes Britain's Political Malaise

https://www.thefullbrexit.com/brexit-election

"...To shore up the pre-Brexit ancien regime, Remainers have constantly belittled the rationality and capacity of ordinary voters while also depicting lurid scenarios of a post-Brexit future, featuring economic collapse, racist authoritarianism, imperial nostaligia, permanent austerity and rapacious American corporations.

Ironically, for all that pro-Remain campaigners have fulminated against Brexiteer 'fascism' and demagogy, it is the campaign for a 'People's Vote' - another referendum - that has ensnared British politics in a raucous plebiscitory populism, awash with menacing visions of dystopia, xenophobic rumours of foreign subversion and conspiracy theories of 'dark money' and 'Russian bots'. While they ludicrously accuse their rivals of seeking to restore the vanished glories of the British Empire, their no less fantastical aim is to restore the lost status-quo of 23 June, 2016.

The major factor weighing down the Labour Party's comparative political ambition is its inability to translate the democratic mandate embodied in the Brexit vote into national political renewal, as it seeks instead to reverse Brexit through another referendum after negotiating a new deal with Brussels. At best this means deferring the enactment of the Brexit referendum, prolonging the democratic purgatory we have been in since 2016. At worse, it will result in the squelching of a democratic revolt that Labour's radicals ought instead to have harnessed to their transformative agenda.

Instead, the leadership has caved to the Europhilic, professional middle-class membership, which chafes against the democratic demands of Labour's working class voters. Labour's spending splurge is intended to compensate for the negation of Brexit. Ironically, however, Labour's economic vision is subject to precisely the same opportunistic scare-mongering from empoyers and the business press that Labour Party supporters themselves happily indulge when attacking Brexit..."

NDPP wrote:

Take it up with Prof Finkelstein.

He's posting on Babble? Maybe we should also blame that on "those Jews?"

(self-delete. dupe post).

JKR wrote:

I agree that Corbyn is definitely not anti-Semitic. Moreover, many Jews are associated with Labour and many Jews support Labour. Many anti-Semites have even said that socialism and social democracy are a Jewish conspiracy to weaken other groups such as whites, Christians, Muslims, etc.... I think that because there are many people who blame Jewish people for being a cause or even the cause of the world's problems, it is very important to be very sensitive to the words one uses to avoid the impression that Jews are behind conspiracies against Christians, Muslims, and others groups.

And I'm with you on that.  My point is that the words of Dr. Finklestein, who is American and who has nothing to do with Corbyn or the Labour Party, should not be an issue in this election.  

Ken Burch wrote:

And I'm with you on that.  My point is that the words of Dr. Finklestein, who is American and who has nothing to do with Corbyn or the Labour Party, should not be an issue in this election.  

I didn't introduce him to this thread. Why's he here?

JKR wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

And I'm with you on that.  My point is that the words of Dr. Finklestein, who is American and who has nothing to do with Corbyn or the Labour Party, should not be an issue in this election.  

I didn't introduce him to this thread. Why's he here?

I know you didn't.  And you're right, what Finklestein said there should not be a part of this thread.  

josh wrote:

CON-ECR: 41% (+1) LAB-S&D: 33% (+3) LDEM-RE: 14% (-2) BREXIT-NI: 5% (-2) GREENS-G/EFA: 2% (-1)

https://mobile.twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1195796069826924550

Unsurprisingly, it’s become the usual two-party race.

 

In other words, all of those constituency polls which supposedly demonstrated a massive swing from Labour to the LibDems which could only be remedied if Corbyn stood down as leader and the party went all-out Remain are meaningless.  

In truth, the LibDems, who are hardline Remain, are falling in the polls; The Brexit Party, who are single-issue hardline "no deal Brexit", are collapsing in the polls, having revealed themselves to be nothing but the Tory fronters they always were.  The Tories are up very, very slightly, almost irrelevantly so given the massive gift the Brexit Party gave them in agreeing to stand down in all Tory constituencies.  Labour has gained more in that poll that  any other party in the election in that poll.  Corbyn is not, therefore, a disaster after all and there is no justification for anyone who identifies as Labour to still be trying to get him to stand down as leader.

bekayne wrote:

NDPP wrote:

Sherelle Jacobs: Labour Is On The Brink Of The Most Seismic Wipeout in British Election History

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/14/labour-brink-seismic-wip...

"This could actually be it - the end of Labour. Some may scoff, pointing out that it has narrowed the gap with the Tories in some polls. But on the ground, in the heartlands, the party smells of death...As a Brexiteer from a dynasty of 'Labour men,' I can't help but reflect with a hint of melancholy. But to former supporters, the party is like the family Staffordshire bull terrier that has become feral. The kindest thing is to put it down - peacefully but resolutely."

Just deserts.

In 1983, when the Alliance had popular vote parity with Lablour, Labour won 9x the number of seats. Current polling has Labour at twice the support of the Lib Dems.

And the Brexit Party is down to 5% overall support, while the LibDems are down to 15%.  

NDPP wrote:

"...Yes, the very same applies to my area. We are the disenfranchised, the betrayed, held in contempt. People here talk of 'being done with Labour'...'Done with voting'...This the former seat of one Tony Benn."

https://twitter.com/IronFelix17/status/1195763788760387585

 

Tony Benn - 'Britain Must Leave the EU to Restore Democracy'

https://youtu.be/dQY2CHx4d3U

"Leaving the EU is a democratic and not a nationalist argument."

Soft Brexit is the most sensible way of doing that.  It's not necessary to abandon the human rights, labour rights, or environmental protection agreements to get out of the economic and spending constraints.  And now that they aren't running in any Tory constituencies anymore, there can no longer be a left case or a working-class case for voting Brexit Party,

Why is it necessary to leave the non-economic parts though?  Isn't what matters getting out of the economic and spending constraints within the EU?  Why is it necessary to get out of the human rights, labour rights, and environmental protection statutes?  What's the point of risking never getting anything like those put in on a UK-only basis?  And what good comes of giving xenophobes in the UK to impose something like a White Britain policy?

I'm with you on getting rid of the economic and spending constraints.  Why isn't that enough for you?

And how could Corbyn or any other Labour leader get away with imposing a "no-Deal Brexit" policy on that party when 80% of Labour voters voted Remain-almost entirely on anti-xenophobia grounds?

The last thing I'd like to ask- and I ask this since you know Labour can't switch to a "no-Deal Brexit" policy at this stage in the election anyway and that, if you lived there, you'd probably vote Brexit Party in a Labour constituency just to punish Corbyn's party for not doing what you want- you can't really imagine that, if Boris gets a majority in this election and then does Brexit on HIS terms, that anything socialist could possibly happen after that?  Or that the left could ever even make any sort of a comeback if Boris did get a majority as a result of this issue?  

It's not going to prevent socialism for the UK to stay in the European Court of Human Rights.  It will prevent socialism to give Boris a majority with which to end the National Health Service and wipe out the rest of the welfare state.

I'm not pro-Remain.  I'm pro-Brexit with a human face. I'm pro-making sure it is done in such a way that it forces mass repatriation of innocent people out of the UK whose only crime is not being UK citizens.  And I'm pro-making sure that the only things good in an otherwise bad arrangement- the rights guarantees-are not simply discarded with no guarantee that they would be simply lost, or, if passed in a UK-only version, simply repealed or ignored by the next government with found them to be inconvenient.  That problem has cropped up a lot in UK history, due to the fact that the place has no written constitution.

Nationalising water, energy and Royal Mail would pay for itself within seven years, research says

The nationalisation of water, energy grids and the Royal Mail would save UK households £7.8bn a year and pay for itself within seven years, according to new academic research.

A report by Greenwich University’s Public Service International Research Unit put the total cost of compensation to private sector owners at just £49.7bn – around a quarter of the widely quoted £196bn price tag calculated by the CBI last month, which also covered rail.

Labour’s manifesto for the 12 December general election is expected to include commitments to take the rail network, National Grid, water and mail delivery back into public hands.

PSIRU director David Hall said his estimates were based on compensating shareholders for the amount they have invested in utilities being taken into public hands, rather than paying out a “market value” price as the CBI suggested.....

Join Us To Help Overturn Chris Williamson's Suspension and For A Democratic International Labour Party

https://twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1196366391793897475

"If I win on 12 December Derby North will continue to have a strong socialist voice in Parliament fighting for local people, demanding social justice at home - and an ethical foreign policy abroad"

Labour Can Make a Radically Fairer Britain

quote:

Doubts have come from predictable quarters. Today’s headlines have centered on the expense of this — but as even Tory Chancellor Sajid Javid points out, with government borrowing costs so low as to be below zero in real terms, now is the ideal time to borrow to invest. Paul Johnson of the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) has raised a different objection to the plans, expressing his disbelief in the Times that this scale of spending contemplated by Labour could be attempted. Yet a sober assessment of the economic mess the next Labour government will inherit suggests it will have little choice but to commit to major investments — and that’s even before we think about creating an economy for the future.

Report after report have made clear how big the problem of underinvestment now is. The Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) has estimated that the NHS needs another £5.6 billion a year in investment, every year, to keep up with demand. The IPPR researchers found that while the NHS today has some of the lowest numbers of CT and MRI machines in Europe, it has one of the highest numbers of fax machines — a glaring example of why continuous investment is needed to keep up with technology. There is now a backlog of £6 billion of critical maintenance issues on NHS sites — from cracks in ceilings to sewage leaks — that funding is not currently available to fix.

An alliance of charities, including CAFOD and WWF, have called for £42 billion a year to address what they rightly describe as the “climate emergency.” This would include £11.6 billion on transport improvements, £2.6 billion on rewilding and land management schemes, and billions more on improvements for housing. Labour itself has already committed to a £60 billion, multi-year program to insulate every home in the country to the highest standards of energy efficiency. This would not only reduce carbon emissions, but save households on their heating bill — and create, on Labour’s estimates, 440,000 jobs, right along the supply chain from insulation manufacture to installation.

If we want to install fiber optic broadband across the whole country, the bill could be £28 billion. Transport for the North have proposed a costed and hugely ambitious plan to create high-speed rail links across the North of England, linking the Northern cities from Liverpool to Hull and Newcastle. This would be transformational, generating (on their forecasts) an additional 850,000 jobs across the North, as the knock-on effects of a functioning, properly funded transport system filter out into the economy. But the cost would be £70 billion.

Set against the wreckage of our economy and public services, from the crumbling hospitals to the clapped-out trains, and then looking ahead at the challenges bearing down on us — climate change being the most obvious — the gap between where we are now, and where we ought to be is painfully apparent. The sad and simple truth is that a large part of Britain’s failure as an economy is not just a near-decade of austerity under Conservative-led governments, brutal and appalling as this has been. It is also the decades and decades of neoliberal governments that failed to invest, saddling us with a legacy of failing infrastructure and regions left far behind.

NDPP wrote:

Fully-Automated Luxury Sell-Outs

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/09/04/fully-automated-luxury-sell-outs/

"...In truth, beneath all the populist banker-bashing, Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell have been assiduously building bridges with financial power-brokers in the City, for many months. McDonnell also made clear his party's fundamental conservatism on financial matters when he committed Labour to a fiscal credibility rule in 2016. In the same year, he defended the independence of the Bank of England - one of the central pillars of modern technocratic rule - as 'sacrosanct.'

'Fully-Automated-Luxury-Communism' will be the ideological froth for the Corbynista vision for the state-led technocratic modernisation of the British economy. Capitalists will increasingly see the advantages - and state subsidies - in Corbynomics. Meanwhile, millennial socialists will promise the world to the workers - nationalised utilities, a 'green new deal'...Everything except the thing they actually voted for - Brexit."

It's not possible to take an all-out Brexit position when your party is split as Labour is on the issue.

What good would it do for Corbyn to go all-out Brexit when that could lose him the vast majority of the Labour vote?

What's wrong with Brexit with a human face?

Why does it have to be the loss of the human and labour rights agreements and the end of the environmental protection agreements?

Why should it have to mean leaving the European Court of Human Rights, when the UK legal tradition by itself has never guaranteed human rights in any recognizable form?

epaulo13 wrote:

..the uk isn't ready to take on capital today. it is fractured. and labour politicians can't do this alone. you have to give people a reason to fight. a reason to unite. something to defend. the manifesto is exactly that.

..there is no doubt in my mind that if labour pulls this election off all of this will come to a head. global capital will be coming after the uk government. the eu will be coming after the government. this is what the multiple global crisis is building towards. uk labour will be at the center of this fight. the peoples of the uk will be at the center of the fight. providing leadership amongst other things. with the manifesto at it's core. 

eta:..to reduce this as a struggle with the eu via brexit is short sighted.

Indeed.  The fight will just have begun when the votes are counted.