2019 UK election 2

(self-delete.  dupe post).

NDPP wrote:

@ Ken re #98

...Nor for the unquesioning acceptance and promotion of a relentless US-based geostrategic disinformation campaign of  xenophobia, neo-McCarthyism and militarism.

 

WATCH: Oxford Prof. David Deutsch on Brexit, 'Error Correction' & the British Political System

https://youtu.be/Y1hJEOirDtg

"...I think if there's anything worse than having a referendum to decide a national issue, it's having one and not implementing it as well. That is what has caused this lack of confidence in the legitimacy of the whole system not just the referendum. And if there was a second referendum, people would know that the arguments for the illegitimacy of the first one would apply double in the case of the second one because people would then want a third one. So long as the outcome of the referendum isn't implemented, nobody is proved wrong.

If the Remainers had taken my view of what politics should be about, as soon as they lost the referendum they should have transformed themselves into a 'Rejoin' movement, not a movement to delegitimize the national vote. And if they're right then leaving would be a disaster. (By the way we'd have left ages ago and this would all be over by now.) [If] leaving would be a disaster, they'd have swept into power,  with plans to rejoin. And these plans would have been endorsed by a general election, not a referendum.

Making a policy of not experimenting, which means not implementing what anyone thinks is the right thing to do but implementing something else that noone thinks is the right thing to do is a recipe for stasis and stasis in politics is a recipe for hell on earth..."

 

Promise Broken

https://twitter.com/Change_Britain/status/1188391133820309504

"This is a one-off choice between staying in and leaving completely." - Jeremy Corbyn

It's not as though anyone here is anti-Putin because of U.S. propaganda.  There's simply no Left case for being PRO-Putin.  He has no positive agenda for the world, is not working for redistribution of wealth, or social transformation, or against any forms of oppression.  There's no excuse for his violent homophobia, his Islamophobia, his repression of peaceful protest, including peaceful protest by left groups.  Putin is not working to make this a better world-he is simply working to restore the freaking Tsarist empire.  Why on earth would you want THAT?

Support for Putin is about buying into the totally discredited notion that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".  Nothing Putin does furthers anything the left supports-and he is not working against war in Syria, but simply wants to restore Assad to full control over the country-and Putin would gladly slaughter every Kurd in Rojava and destroy the non-repressive democratic, and people-controlled socialist democracy that is being constructed there in the name of that objective.

Why on earth are you an apologist for a man who is basically just another dictator?

I agree with the contention made earlier that Labour shot themselves in the foot with the push for a second referendum, but they were forced into a no-win position. It started with the Remain faction refusing to accept the fact that they lost. They made remain out to be the only issue that mattered. Since Labour's vote base is more pro-Remain, that forced them into a position where they had to support a second referendum. On the other side, Labour Brexiteers felt betrayed. So with Brexit as the main issue, if you want to Remain, the Liberal Democrats are your party. If you're for Brexit, then the Conservatives or the Brexit Party are your options. Furthermore, in terms of defending democracy, with the Remain camp refusing to accept that there was a vote and trying to get a second one because they didn't like the answer, they have forfeited any claim to be defending democracy, and have essentially ceded that field to the right-wing. Where does that leave Labour? Then the debate polarizes, and we see in this discussion nicky and NDPP representing both extremes on the Brexit debate screaming about what a traitor Corbyn is without even attempting to hear out the arguments made by the other side. The best chance for Labour is to change focus to its public policy programme, unfortunately given the prominence of the Brexit issue, it does not look like it is going to be able to do so.

Looks like a Conservative majority or a Conservative-Brexit coalition coming up soon. The one bright spot for me will be watching the Remain people throw a fit being unable to stop Brexit from going ahead, since it was their hubris and arrogance that brought about the one scenario they claimed to want to stop from happening.

Proof that Corbyn DID, in fact, condemn IRA bombings and was never a supporter of or an apologist for the IRA's tactics, but was simply working to end the conflict through negotiations and compromise-which was the only way it COULD be ended:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9uqq0Hi8KM

Aristotle, how is it undemocratic to allow people to vote.? Especially on something so important as Brexit? 

Your position ignores all the main arguments in favour of Remain.

1. The first referendum question did not specify the form of Brexit. It presented simply a binary choice - in or out

2. Leave prevailed in ‘16 with a campaign of misrepresentation and illegal spending. And only by a tiny ambiguous majority.

3. 3 and 1/2 years have passed. A vote is not carved in stone for all time. If so why are the Brits having a new general election after 2 1/2 years? Issues clarify. Things change. People change their minds.

4. As indeed they have on Brexit. Virtually every poll in the last 18 months shows a consistent Remain majority. Buyers’ remorse has set in.

5. Demographic change has also tilted the electorate. Millions of older voters have died and been replaced with millions who have come of age and whose future is on the line. They should have their say.

6. Voters in ‘16 may have been context with a soft Brexit negotiated by Cameron or May, not the harsh Brexit of Boris Johnson.

Ken Burch wrote:

C'mon, NDPP-you can't seriously argue that the only possible choices are supporting Putin or being a lackey for U.S. imperialism.  How can you even think such a thing when there is a global rising against austerity and neoliberalism underway which can bring down the status quo without replacing it with a police state?

What do you mean he can't?  He does.  Putin and Russia can do no wrong.  At least with the Soviet Union, you could argue ideological consistency.  But Putin's Russia is an authoritarian, reactionary regime.

[quote=Ken Burch]

C'mon, NDPP-you can't seriously argue that the only possible choices are supporting Putin or being a lackey for U.S. imperialism.  How can you even think such a thing when there is a global rising against austerity and neoliberalism underway which can bring down the status quo without replacing it with a police state?

[quote=NDPP]

I never 'seriously argued' any such thing nor do I believe that. What I do believe is your global rising against austerity and neoliberalism by Gilets Jaunes and other resisting Europeans isn't helped by UK Labour's subversion of a national referendum to leave the profoundly antidemocratic, neoliberal EU, no matter how mendaciously you try to spin it otherwise.

Here is a video in which Michael Brooks and friends discuss Corbyn. It includes a few seconds from a recent interview of Corbyn on British tv, which really do show what a decent person he is, despite all of nicky's despicable lies.

Also, if voters might have been content with a soft Brexit negotiated by Cameron or May, they would be much more likely to be content with a humane, non-disruptive Brexit negotiated by Corbyn.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=566404787468913&set=gm.768727843...

nicky wrote:

Aristotle, how is it undemocratic to allow people to vote.? Especially on something so important as Brexit?

They did vote in 2016. The choice was Remain or Leave. What's undemocratic is the Remain camp trying to find ways to invalidate the results rather than accepting that their side had lost.

nicky wrote:

1. The first referendum question did not specify the form of Brexit. It presented simply a binary choice - in or out

And they made that choice. They chose to Leave, and were taking a chance. Now they will experience the consequences of the decision they made. I do not believe in protecting people from the consequences of decisions they make.

nicky wrote:

Leave prevailed in ‘16 with a campaign of misrepresentation and illegal spending. And only by a tiny ambiguous majority.

I'll concede that one. This is probably the first time ever in recorded history that illegal spending and misinformation has had an impact on a referendum or election campaign in a democratic vote of any sort.

nicky wrote:

Virtually every poll in the last 18 months shows a consistent Remain majority. Buyers’ remorse has set in.

I'm sure that in the 1980s and 1990s there were public opinion polls in Quebec before and after each referendum campaign that showed majority support for sovereignty. That's the thing about public opinion polls is they can be very fluid. Going back to my earlier point, the people already voted, and even if you were to do the vote again, it's not clear that the Remain position would prevail.

nicky wrote:

Millions of older voters have died and been replaced with millions who have come of age and whose future is on the line. They should have their say.

I agree. Younger voters are very worried when they look to a future they see threatened with climate change, high student debt, unaffordable housing, and precarious, unstable employment, if they are even that lucky. All of those issues have been set aside for this argument over Brexit.

If I may nicky, I would suggest that the Liberal Democrats are a much better fit for you than the Labour Party. You have continually repeated so many right-wing smears about Corbyn, even though several posters here have responded to those claims, and you have never acknowledged those responses. You seem to believe that Remaining in the EU is the most over-riding issue that Britain faces. You have also not spoken on any other issue, such as climate change, income inequality, unaffordable housing, or war overseas. Actions speak louder than words, and what you devote your time to discussing on these forums says a great deal about what you feel is important. I have also tried to ask you in the past to outline what you feel are public policy goals, your views on the issues facing the United Kingdom and what should be done, independent of who the politicians in charge are. You have not, and instead continued to scream about how bad Corbyn is and anyone who supports him. On this basis, I cannot conclude that you are coming to this discussion in good faith.

(self-delete. dupe post).

This General Election is a Choice Between the End of Democracy or the End of Neoliberalism

In this general election, Britain faces a paradigm shift, argues Abby Innes: the essential choice is between a government of the economic hard right that will complete the already-failed supply-side revolution of the last forty years, and a government willing to implement a Green New Deal that in turn will end the era of Neoliberalism. She writes that we should be under no illusion as to which road offers a future worth having and which a dystopia.

Given the dismal empirical record of forty years of pro-market reforms, the only way this Conservative Government can create the low tax, low regulation, law and order state of Neoliberal fever dreams is under the cover of other projects. Brexit offers a unique opportunity: it allows a government of economic extremists to manipulate our cultural identity to endorse a rewriting of the entire institutional rule-book. The recent assertion by Michael Gove that Brexit offers no lesser a liberating moment than the fall of the Berlin Wall is exactly wrong. Electoral success for the Conservatives will complete the capture of state authority by private business actors and consolidate the Conservative Party as a self-serving broker, first and foremost, between the residual powers of the state and the now largely unrestrained economic power of large private business and increasingly extractive financial interests.

As we see in Russia, Hungary, Turkey and the US, such developments require the authoritarian redirection and suppression of social anger. Lest we be in any doubt, these techniques are already with us in the pre-election campaigning of the Conservative Party and its open deployment of the Bannonite playbook: a representative parliament is prorogued; only those journalists who act as transmission belts for the government message are granted access; opposition parties and the most senior judges in the country are ruled illegitimate players; the electorate in one of the most unequal societies in Europe is referred to as a single, undifferentiated whole, and flattered with the imagery of a ‘caged lion’......

Tony Benn, UK Labour, 1997

https://twitter.com/EnglishRadical/status/1203413909539033088

"Transfer the key decisions to people whom we do not elect and cannot remove and we abandon centuries of struggle by the common people to have some say in their future..."

"A one-off choice between staying in or leaving completely."  - Jeremy Corbyn-

https://twitter.com/Chge-Britain/status/1188804027905171457

"Broken Promises."

Learning From Brexit

https://twitter.com/simon_teifi/status/1203423041667182592

"Please share left thinker Costas Lapavitsas analysis of the emperial, anti-democratic, anti-nation state EU and their imposition by stealth [with collaborationist politicians] of divide and rule politics."

bekayne wrote:

Maybe just a tad biased...

Nightmare on Kinnock Street redux.

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/12/09/pb-ge2019-analysis-corbyns-satisfaction-ratings-at-elections/

Aristotle, anyone who cares about the issues you list can only despair that Corbyn is ensuring the election of an aggressively right wing government that will act regressively on every one of them.

nicky wrote:

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/12/09/pb-ge2019-analysis-corbyns-satisfaction-ratings-at-elections/

Aristotle, anyone who cares about the issues you list can only despair that Corbyn is ensuring the election of an aggressively right wing government that will act regressively on every one of them.

This post right here, nicky, is exemplifies the exact attitude that turns off average people from politics. No discussion of any problems or policies to address those problems. Instead, it's just finger pointing back and forth saying, "you're bad, you're worse!" Toddlers are capable of having a more mature conversation than what you are doing here.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

nicky wrote:

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/12/09/pb-ge2019-analysis-corbyns-satisfaction-ratings-at-elections/

Aristotle, anyone who cares about the issues you list can only despair that Corbyn is ensuring the election of an aggressively right wing government that will act regressively on every one of them.

This post right here, nicky, is exemplifies the exact attitude that turns off average people from politics. No discussion of any problems or policies to address those problems. Instead, it's just finger pointing back and forth saying, "you're bad, you're worse!" Toddlers are capable of having a more mature conversation than what you are doing here.

The whole point of nicky's presence here has been to prevent discussion.  All he-or perhaps "it", since nicky may be some sort of an alogorithm rather than a human- has done in any of the discussions of Corbyn nicky has tried to derail has been to parrot sneering, dismissive Murdoch/BBC/Tory/Blairite talking points.  There has been no phraseology in any of nicky's posts that reads in the way human beings put words together, no original contributions at all.

NDPP wrote:

On UK Labour: 'Instead They Sold The Jersey'

https://twitter.com/georgegalloway/status/1204011966433501184

"If Labour had stuck to its 2017 position on Brexit promising only to renegotiate the terms of Britain's relations with Europe, and if they had fought the anti-Semitism smear as I have in their defence, they could have won this election. Instead they sold the jersey."

Manifestos change at different elections.   Corbyn had to take the position on the EU he's taking now because 85% of Labour supporters back Remain-he doesn't have the option of imposing a manifesto commitment almost 9 out of ten people in the party oppose-at least not while the Euroskeptics like yourself keep refusing to address the fact that no deal Brexit, and the complete abrogation of the human rights/labour rights/environmental agreements would essentially leave the UK with no legal protections in any of those areas at all, and that it would be necessary to pass legislation, before Brexit occurred, that replaced those agreements.  Without that kind of commitment, you are asking these people to abandon people of colour, immigrants, and green values.  "no Deal" Brexit people have an obligation to address human rights issues, xenophobia, and the need to address climate and so far it doesn't sound as if you've made any efforts to do that.

Wow, did Ken really call me an alogorithm (sic) and a non-human? 

“There has been no phraseology in any of nicky's posts that reads in the way human beings put words together, no original contributions at all.” This from someone who largely simply cuts and pastes the same drivel.

I am criticized for questioning the holiness of St Jeremy. That may be so, but I have never called him a non-human.

More of the monster nicky is obsessed with destroying:

Mean Tweets With Jeremy Corbyn:

https://www.facebook.com/JeremyCorbynMP/videos/508571533082235/UzpfSTU2M...

josh wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

There has been a general trend in Labour's favor as the campaign goes on.  And there is good reason to distrust the polls showing larger Tory leads-they have been taken by pollsters such as YouGov-whose poll that had viewers saying Johnson won one of the debates by a margin of 52% to 48% was timestamped before the debate had actually happened.

UK general election polls have often been off from the final result.

There was no polling info during the 1945 campaign that gave any indication the Labour landslide of that year would occur-Attlee himself apparently thought the best Labour would be able to do would be to reduce the Tory majority to 30.  In 1955, 1959, and 1970, many if not most polls predicted Labour victory, but the actual results were solid Tory majorities in each case.   In February 1974, the Labour minority victory was not predicted by the polls.  In 1992, the polls had indicated throughout the campaign that the result would be a hung parliament or a Labour minority and the result was a Tory majority.

It was phenomena like that which led Harold Wilson to observe that, in politics, a week was an eternity.

I'm simply going to say that the outcome looks unpredictable, but that a Tory majority seems less and less likely, especially if the young aren't discouraged from going to the polls.

 

Good polling news:  https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/new-poll-shows-tory-lead-cut-...

Two polls showing 6, most others showing a larger lead.

Ken,I have never said Corbyn is despicable or beneath contempt. I think he is a bad leader who is leading Labour to defeat. He is shortsighted, unqualified, undistinguished and frankly not very bright. Those are very different things.

I think he is irresponsible in that he should long ago have stepped aside and allowed a Labour to choose a leader who could win an election. 

You say I would rather see a Labour lose with Corbyn than win with him. The inverse unfortunately is true. Corbyn, and you as well I suspect, would rather see Labour lose with Corbyn than win with a leader with broader appeal so long as the Corbynites maintain control of an increasingly irrelevant party.

Unfortunately it looks like you will get your wish.

as for anti-Semitism amongst some of Corbyn’s followers, if it is all a fiction why

1. Do 90% o& British Jews believe it exists? And

2. Why did Corbyn apologize for it last week?

nicky wrote:

Ken,I have never said Corbyn is despicable or beneath contempt. I think he is a bad leader who is leading Labour to defeat. He is shortsighted, unqualified, undistinguished and frankly not very bright. Those are very different things.

I think he is irresponsible in that he should long ago have stepped aside and allowed a Labour to choose a leader who could win an election. 

You say I would rather see a Labour lose with Corbyn than win with him. The inverse unfortunately is true. Corbyn, and you as well I suspect, would rather see Labour lose with Corbyn than win with a leader with broader appeal so long as the Corbynites maintain control of an increasingly irrelevant party.

Unfortunately it looks like you will get your wish.

as for anti-Semitism amongst some of Corbyn’s followers, if it is all a fiction why

1. Do 90% o& British Jews believe it exists? And

2. Why did Corbyn apologize for it last week?

1.  Because of endless repetition of the allegations, which Corbyn was too civil and decent to fight back against.  Do you remember who it was that said a lie, endlessly repeated, becomes truth in the mind of the public?  

2. Because the right-exemplied by reactionaries like Andrew  Neil, kept bullying the party over it, even though there had never been a massive increase in AS within the party under Corbyn at all.  And because the whole point of continuing to attack Corbyn on this, even though he had taken every possible step to address whatever tiny degree of AS exists in the party, was to force Labour to ban any public expression of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, not only within Labour, but if possible in the UK altogether.  If that was not the objective, it would have been considered more than satisfactory that Corbyn was willing to adopt every part of the IHRA guidelines and examples OTHER than those which anathemise all public dissent against what the Israeli government does to Palestinians.  

If you wouldn't rather see Labour lose with Corbyn than win with him, why have you continued to attack him at a time when even you yourself admitted it was too late to replace him before the election, when you knew that such attacks do nothing but help the Tories?  Why do you still act as if he could personally have won the referendum for Remain when you know full well there is nothing he or anyone else could have said or done and no argument he or anyone else could possibly have made that would have flipped the North and Northeast of England from voting Leave to voting Remain, when no pro-w0rker or anti-austerity case for Remain ever even existed?  

Corbyn has been treated with greater hostility and greater contempt by the right wing of his party than any other leader in Labour history.  It is abundantly clear that, if those of you on the Labour right had accepted that the 2017 election results put the leadership discussion to rest and had got behind Corbyn rather than continuing to smear him, a Labour victory would be a certainty.  There is nothing about the man which could possibly be so intolerable as to have created the conditions for a possible majority for Boris Johnson, the most bigoted figure in UK politics since Enoch Powell and Ian Paisley.

One way or the other, this will be Corbyn's last campaign as leader.  Can you accept the fact that what matters now is stopping Boris and that the only way to do that is for everyone on the left side of the spectrum to at least focus solely on attacking Boris rather than Corbyn between now and polling day?

Aristotleded24 wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

General election 2019

Your tactical vote can stop the Tories

WHAT IS TACTICAL VOTING?

Tactical voting lets you use your vote strategically to get the overall election result you want to see.

The UK uses an election system called first-past-the-post, where the candidate who gets the most votes in each constituency wins. This makes it possible for MPs to get elected without winning the support of a majority of the voters, if the opposition is divided.

By voting tactically, you can overcome this problem, uniting behind the candidate who has the best chance of defeating the Conservatives where you live. They may not be your first choice, but your vote for them can help stop the Tories. This website is a tool to help you decide on your tactical vote.

WHY TRUST THIS SITE?

We were the most accurate tactical voting site in the 2017 general election, thanks to our simple and transparent methodology.

So people are thinking about tactically voting for the Liberal Democrats after they rolled over and gave the Tories a de facto majority from 2010 to 2015?

..no they are thinking about how to prevent a tory majority. did you read the article at 127? what are your thoughts on that?

edit.