2019 UK election

John McDonnell to attack £100bn tax giveaway to UK's billionaires

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has ramped up his attack on the super-rich, describing their wealth as “obscene”, as Labour unveiled research showing one in three billionaires in the UK have made donations to the Tory party.

McDonnell is due to take a swipe at the richest people in the country in a speech on Tuesday and will also set out the tax breaks billionaires have benefited from under successive Conservative governments.

He will claim that the party’s latest analysis showed that 48 of the country’s 151 billionaires have donated to the Tories since 2005 while the government is on course to hand out £100bn in tax breaks and other giveaways by 2023/24.

McDonnell is expected to say that Labour will “rewrite the rules of our economy” at a campaign event in central London.

“Someone on the national minimum wage would have to work 69,000 years to get paid £1bn and a newly qualified nurse would have to wait 50,000 years. No one needs or deserves to have that much money, it is obscene.....

..it's almost 7:25pm in london right now. the corbyn johnson debate begins at 8pm. 

..you can watch here

Johnson v Corbyn: The ITV Debate

..debate is over now. will watch for reactions to it.  

..again i hate the format. it benefits the loudmouth schmuck. ie: foghorn leghorn..boris johnson

"On Brexit Corbyn promises he will 'implement whatever you decide.' We've heard that before..."

https://twitter.com/DrLeeJones/status/1196882610032648192

'Can I make it clear?'

http://rabble.ca/comment/5659106#comment-5659106

"How despairing it is to see Labour MPs displaying such open contempt for democracy..."

https://twitter.com/PaulEmbery/status/1196537059407646722

UK Labour: Delist companies that fail to tackle climate change

A Labour government would delist companies that fail to take steps to tackle the climate crisis, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell announced today.

Companies must contribute to greening the economy or else get “delisted from the London Stock Exchange,” McDonnell said in a speech in Westminster.

“The Corporate Governance Code and legislation will be amended to set out a minimum standard for listing related to evidencing the action being taken to tackle climate change,” the shadow chancellor said. The policy will appear in the Labour party's election manifesto which will be unveiled Thursday.

McDonnell cited publishing decarbonization plans and improved climate-related financial reporting as examples of steps that companies could take.

“Tackling the existential threat of climate change is Labour’s overriding priority as we enter government,” he said. “If we are to meet the climate change target to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, we need to ensure that companies are pulling their weight alongside government.”....

8 Things We Learned From the ITV Leaders’ Debate

Corbyn, as expected, showed his more nimble skills in the political cut-and-thrust against the lumbering and sluggish Johnson, who stuck so rigidly to his pre-prepared Brexit line that the audience was audibly groaning by the end. Have I Got News For You must seem like a distant memory for the increasingly dislikeable PM, whilst a fair referee would have granted Corbyn a narrow victory on points. But what can the rest of us take away from this heavily-promoted political slugfest?

quote:

7. Labour has found some serious weakspots in their opponents, but must point to a better future.

Corbyn’s other best moment of the night was entirely scripted – a smart and theatrical waving of the notes from a secret meeting between Conservative government officials and US trade representatives to discuss the NHS. The very real risks to the NHS from the Tory Brexit deal have been highlighted over and over again by Labour – as they should, since it is all-too-obvious that carving up our previously protected health markets for the benefit of US corporations is the biggest single prize the UK can offer in any future trade deal.

But for Labour this can’t be enough: it needs to say how the future will be different, and better. It’s essential that Labour owns the future, in contrast to the Tories’ miserable present. The full-fibre broadband announcement was a brilliant version of that – a single policy that encapsulated a radical, universal offer and a vision of different, better country. More should be made of this and those visionary parts of the Labour programme.

quote:

Perhaps the most telling moment of the night, however, didn’t come from either of the two contestants. It was when Corbyn made the unarguable point that climate change would affect the world’s poorest, but the jeering and audible heckling in response from a small section of the audience was chilling. The Tories have – deliberately and cynically – stirred up the very worst parts of British society, and those jeers were a brief glimpse into it. If Johnson wins, these will be the people walking taller on the morning of 13 December, and they will soon have their victims. The next three weeks matter.

robbie_dee wrote:

Is this for real?

Corbyn's pronunciation of Epstein enrages Jews on twitter

Quote:

Corbyn pronounced the disgraced sex offender's name as Ep-shtein, which some perceived as the politician going out of his way to emphasize his Jewishness.

Boris Johnson pronounced his name correctly.

Jeremy Corbyn's risible attempt to deceive viewers about his handling of Labour's anti-Semitism crisis was compounded by his bizarre and inconsistent pronunciation of the Jewish surname of the late billionaire sexual predator, Jeffrey Epstein, referring to him at one point as ''Ep-shtein,'" a spokesman for Campaign Against Antisemitism, said.

Jeremy Corbyn could be ordained as an Orthodox rabbi, and the professionally outraged would call THAT "antisemitic"

Again, Labour has had no "antisemitism crisis".  There is far less antisemitism within the Labour Party than there is in UK society as a whole, where antisemitism is almost exclusively a right-wing phenomenon.

And seriously, is there a goyische way to pronounce the name "Epstein"?

Ken wrote:

And seriously, is there a goyische way to pronounce the name "Epstein"?

Well, on Welcome Back Kotter, the Jewish-Puerto Rican guy's name was pronounced "Ep-steen", including by the character himself, I believe. And that's how I've always personally pronounced the name, the few times that I've had cause to mention that character. I personally would also pronounce Jeffrey Epstein's name the same way.

Someone said something about this being an American/British difference? My guess might be that Corbyn is just accustomed to hearing the name pronounced that way, and innocently refrained from the practice of using the pronunication common in the person's homeland.

Wouldn't the name have originally been transliterated from Hebrew/Yiddish script to the Roman alphabet as "Epshtyn" or something like that, before being semi-Anglicized into "Epstein"?  BTW, I've heard people pronounce that name at least three different ways in the States.

This mini-uproar is about trying desperately to keep the antisemitism slur going when everyone now knows it was rubbish all along.

Go ahead pronounce Lougheed Highway in BC and Premier Lougheed of Alberta.  A hint is they are NOT pronounced the same.

Remainers according to almost every poll for the past year or more constitute a majority of the electorate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Brexit/Post-referendum_opinion_polling:_Remain-Leave

Yet it now looks like a Tory  Parliamentary majority which will force a hard Brexit on the Remain popular majority.

This  article in the Spectator ( yes I know Ken) nicely sums up Remain’s dilemma and the reason for this. Corbyn has always been a Brexiter and it now looks like he will get his wish, although at the costs of a crushing Labour debacle and frustrating the popular will on Brexit.

The other problem is Jeremy Corbyn. He is determined to maintain ambiguity in Labour’s Brexit position, so as not to alienate the Brexit voters currently being targeted by the Tories. This position is often embarrassing for him when he’s asked to spell it out. He says that he wants to negotiate his own deal, then have a referendum but — remarkably — he won’t say which side he’ll back in that vote. In his television debate with Boris Johnson, he risked ridicule by repeatedly refusing to answer this question. The Liberal Democrats are quite right to say that under Corbyn, Labour is not a Remain party.

Aside from anything else, Remainers might find Corbyn’s political agenda too much to stomach. If Jo Swinson said that she would be prepared to put Corbyn in No. 10, she would end her chances of picking up Tory/Lib Dem marginals such as Cheltenham and Winchester. There are many voters who would prefer to remain in the EU but don’t think that a Corbyn premiership is a price worth paying. Of the Remainers who voted Tory last time, three in four regard a Corbyn premiership as worse for the country than Brexit. About a quarter of those who voted Lib Dem take that view too.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/remains-last-stand-the-collapse-of-the-anti-brexit-campaign/

From above:

"Brexit: Labour would rip up Boris Johnson's Brexit deal, negotiate a new one with the EU within three months, and then put the deal to a referendum within six months of coming to power."

So a weak-tea BRINO (Brexit-in-name-only)  which will be scorned by most of the 17.5 million cheated out of their democratic decision in the referendum decision Labour solemnly promised to implement in their last manifesto, hence, as intended, a Remain win. Like the other political choices, proven and demonstrated liars not to be trusted.

And stop with the nonsense of Corbyn as 'brexiteer'. If he ever was he certainly isn't now.

The long Conservative decline

During the terminal months of Theresa May’s zombie regime, a group of senior Conservatives launched a top-secret operation, which they code-named ‘Project Arse’ – a title chosen, according to one leading conspirator, ‘so that everyone knows who we’re talking about’. Like most recent Tory plans, it failed, and the ‘arse’ in question, a man Frankie Boyle once described as ‘a cross between a brain injury and an unmade bed’, is now Prime Minister.

Boris Johnson may win this election; regardless, the Conservative Party is in deep crisis. The proximate trigger for this is of course Brexit, long championed by those David Cameron referred to as ‘swivel-eyed loons’ and ‘closet racists’ inside and outside of the party he once led. This previously fringe position is now the animating force of the Conservatives, tying their raw political survival to a course of action opposed by the great majority of the capitalist class it has for so long been their job to represent.

Why has this historic dislocation occurred, and how deep is the crisis? To fully grasp its severity and scale – and why it may differ from comparable episodes in the past – we have to understand the role of the party within the British political system across its multiple stages of evolution. In the words of Edward Heath:

The historic role of the Conservative Party is to use the leverage of its political and diplomatic skills to create a fresh balance between the different elements within the state at those times when, for one reason or another, their imbalance threatens to disrupt the orderly development of society

Heath included organised labour as ‘an element within the state’, reflecting the post-war model of statist capitalism that entered into crisis during his premiership. But this role of ‘balancing’ divergent elements had long been played by the party, not least between different factions of a changing ruling class.

quote:

The other side of this relationship is that a crisis in the Conservatives reflects a transitional phase in British and global capitalism, to which the party is struggling to adapt, or more seriously a crisis in capitalism itself which is escaping effective political management in a more general sense. This is confirmed by history and by the obvious fact that the party’s present crisis coincides with and is closely related to the general crisis of world capitalism in its neoliberal phase.

This period, commonly associated with a political crisis for the left, has in the long-term caused severe problems for the Conservatives as a broad centre-right party. More specifically, the hollowing out of state capacity and competence under neoliberalism precludes the careful statecraft and long-term accumulation strategies once considered the hallmarks of Tory rule. Secondly, the ruling class itself has undergone a process of recomposition and fragmentation, gradually undermining the once organic relationship between capital and its hitherto impeccably reliable political representatives.

None of this makes electoral success in the near future impossible, or even particularly improbable. But it does suggest that, if the Conservative Party emerges from its present crisis, it will do so fundamentally transformed.

The Conservative Party, the state, and neoliberalism

Consider, first, the Conservatives’ role as state managers. To quote Neil Davidson, since the 1970s,

neoliberal regimes have increasingly abandoned any attempt to arrive at an overarching understanding of what the conditions for growth might be, other than the supposed need for lowering taxation and regulation and raising labour flexibility.

This is evidenced by the abandonment of policy instruments which once allowed governments to intervene directly in the economy: the abolition of exchange controls, the setting of interest rates by an independent Bank of England, the subordination of state budgets to apparently objective measures of fiscal responsibility.

The growing inability and/or unwillingness of state managers to do other than satisfy the immediate demands of the wealthy reflects the transition from what Wolfgang Streeck terms ‘the tax state’ to ‘the debt state’. This shift, he explains,

marks a new stage in the relationship between capitalism and democracy, in which capital exercises its political influence not only indirectly (by investing or not investing in national economies) but also directly (by financing or not financing the state itself).

The servicing of debt and the maintenance of favourable credit ratings, rather than any broader economic development, thereby become the overriding objectives of governance.....

the state can no longer undertake the radical planning and intervention that might make Brexit work. That would require not only an expert state, but one closely aligned with business. The preparations would by now be very visible at both technical and political levels…Brexit is a promise  without a plan.

..the labour manifesto is a plan

And as you AND NDPP both know, Labour can't go all-out Remain OR all-out Leave because doing either means forfeiting all of the voters on whichever side of the issue the party said no to.

It goes without saying that Labour can't hold Remain-prioritizing voters if it goes all-out Leave and that it can't hold Leave-prioritizing voters if it goes all out Remain.

It only serves the rich to push Labour to prioritize the EU matter over all OTHER issues.

..outside the bbc leaders debate waiting for corbyn to arrive

Momentum

Just look at this crowd in Sheffield cheering for Jeremy!

If Labour wins, public service workers get 5% pay rise in April

If Labour wins the general election next month and forms a government, public service workers will receive a 5% pay rise in April 2020.

Nurses, teachers, doctors, firefighters, police and others would all get a significant pay increase under Labour, which would award the average public service worker more than £1,600.....

NDPP]</p> <p>[quote=epaulo13]</p> <p><a href="https://labourlist.org/2019/11/corbyn-reveals-plan-to-adopt-neutral-stance-as-pm-in-eu-referendum/" target="_blank"><strong>Corbyn reveals plan to adopt “neutral stance” as PM in EU referendum</strong></a></p> <p>Jeremy Corbyn has revealed during the BBC <em>Question Time Leaders Special </em>programme that he would take a “neutral stance” as Prime Minister during a new EU referendum.</p> <p> </p> <p>[quote=NDPP wrote:

We already know which side he's 'neutral' on...

And remember his broken promise. 'Can I make it clear?'

http://rabble.ca/comment/5661151#comment-5661151

The promise, the betrayal and the lie won't be forgotten or forgiven...

For PM:

Boris Johnson: 41% (-3)

Jeremy Corbyn 22% (-)

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1197918508723638275

It was always obvious that you'd end up supporting the Tories in the end.  Corbyn betrayed no one and nothing.  He never promised he'd be all-out Leave if elected leader.

There's no way that the EU issue is more important than getting the Right out of power and implementing a radically different agenda than theirs.

But you don't care.  Like the WSWS, you operate on the assumption that everyone and everything on the Left that ever manages to build support for a real alternative to the status quo is a sellout and a phony, and must be destroyed.

Why on earth SHOULD Corbyn have gone all out Leave when doing so could've potentially thrown 80% of the Labour vote to the LibDems?  By the same token, I've repeatedly asked nicky why he keeps demanding that Labour go all-out Remain when he knows it would cost Labour every vote in won in the North and Northeast of England, in the "Labour heartlands", last time?

Going all-out Remain OR all-out Leave would be the death of the Labour Party

Why is that so hard to understand?

And why are you now just as fixated on vilifying Corbyn as nicky is, when you both know there's no way he can change the party's position on Brexit to what either of you want?  It's not the ONLY thing that matters, for God's sakes.

Saving the NHS matters.

Restoring the Tory cuts matter.

Ending the benefits sanctions policy which persecutes the differently-abled matters.

It's not as though the EU, one way or the other, outweighs all of those other issues.

NDPP wrote:

One of the things I do believe however, apparently unlike the Labour UK fanclub here, is that dishonest politics and lying to voters,  especially by those who claim to be precisely otherwise should never ever be unwisely and perversely rewarded for it. No matter that it is a long-standing political practice by the Canadian liberal-left.

Labour has always clearly opposed a no-deal Brexit and supported a relatively soft Brexit. They would be lying to the voters if they changed their position now. The fact is that the UK never voted on a clear type of Brexit. During the referendum many on the Leave side said that Brexit would entail the UK signing a deal with the EU that would keep all the benefits of being in the EU. Almost half of the UK electorate chose to remain in the EU over even a soft-Brexit. What would be the height of dishonesty now would be to hoist a hard Brexit or no-deal Brexit on the UK electorate that never voted for it. The UK electorate never voted for a Brexit devised by Boris Johnson or Corbyn. The only way to know if the UK electorate supports a Brexit deal devised by Johnson or Corbyn is to have a referendum that puts it to a vote. The people who want to now foist a no-deal Brexit on the UK are the ones who are lying and being dishonest. From the beginning this Brexit episode  was never about helping the UK. Instead it has always been about keeping the Conservative Party intact. It has been based on using racism, lies, and, deceit to benefit the Conservative Party.

Basically, you're pissed off because Corbyn didn't take a stand which would have cost his party around 80% of its support. 

NDPP wrote:

Yes, if I'm not for Corbyn and Labour I must be a Tory for BoJo. Or for Nigel and the Brexit Party. If I'm not for the Hillary and the Democrats I must be for Trump and the Republicans.  I'm also 'an Assadist', 'a Putinist', an 'Anti-Semite', 'a Marxist-Leninist', 'a Trotskyite' a 'rape supporter' (Julian Assange), and probably otherthings I've forgotten to mention.

Oh my God, people have called you mean names? I'm shocked, shocked. Especially since you never, ever post anything insulting about other babblers. What a disgrace.

Climate crisis topping UK election agenda is 'unprecedented' change

The climate emergency has risen to the top of the UK’s election agenda in a way that would have been “unthinkable” even five years ago, leading environmentalists have said, predicting that it augurs a permanent change in British politics.

On Wednesday, Labour took the unprecedented move of putting green issues as the top section of its manifesto, the first time one of the UK’s two major parties has done so. Jeremy Corbyn led the appeal to voters with policies including an £11bn windfall tax on oil and gas companies, a million new jobs in a “green industrial revolution” and commitments on moving to a net-zero carbon economy.

“Such focus on climate and the environment would have been almost unthinkable five years ago,” said Shaun Spiers, executive director of the Green Alliance. “Tackling climate change runs through this manifesto in a way that is unprecedented from either of the main parties ahead of a UK general election.”

“It would not have been possible five years ago,” said Tom Burke, chairman of environmental thinktank E3G and former adviser to several governments, who said the move marked a permanent change in British politics, as younger voters in particular were “energised” over the environment. Public anxiety had been fuelled by people seeing extreme weather around the world, and the rise of climate activism in movements such as Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strikes reflected that. “The politicians are following the public on this, not the other way round.”......

More than 300,000 people apply to vote in one day in largest ever pre-deadline surge

More than 300,000 people, including over 200,000 under-35s, registered to vote in the general election on Friday in the fourth-largest surge in UK political history.

The 308,000 total broke the record for applications on a single day before the final deadline to sign up. It was beaten only by deadline days ahead of general elections in 2017 – when a record 622,389 signed up – and 2015 as well as the EU referendum in 2016.

quote:

The figures, released by the Cabinet Office, represent a boost for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, which enjoys its strongest support among younger generations and backed yesterday’s registration drive. Some of those applying are likely already to be registered on the system.