British Politics (was Spain Emulates Belgium...)

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Re: Spain emulates Belgium, stays 10 months without government

Postby jamescfm » Mon Oct 10, 2016 2:56 pm

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Re: Spain emulates Belgium, stays 10 months without government

Postby Reddy » Mon Oct 10, 2016 3:38 pm

jamescfm wrote:
Siggon Kristov wrote:
Aquinas wrote:unelectable

Electoral politics is such bourgeois nonsense :roll:

That's irrelevant to Aquinas' point though. He was referring to the fact that the Labour Party, under Jeremy Corbyn can't win a general election (which is a fair assessment) and given that the Labour Party is operating as the major left of centre party in an electoral system, it's rather important that a candidate for the leadership is electable. As a member, I'd be rather disappointed if we decided we were happy to become a protest movement.


But James, who needs election to office when you can have a revolution :lol:
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Re: Spain emulates Belgium, stays 10 months without government

Postby Siggon Kristov » Mon Oct 10, 2016 5:55 pm

jamescfm wrote:
Siggon Kristov wrote:
Aquinas wrote:unelectable

Electoral politics is such bourgeois nonsense :roll:

That's irrelevant to Aquinas' point though. He was referring to the fact that the Labour Party, under Jeremy Corbyn can't win a general election (which is a fair assessment) and given that the Labour Party is operating as the major left of centre party in an electoral system, it's rather important that a candidate for the leadership is electable. As a member, I'd be rather disappointed if we decided we were happy to become a protest movement.

Well if you reduce all politics to electoral politics, and left of centre is the furthest left you'll go, of course you will have this stance. This isn't a stance I didn't expect Aquinas or you to have, but I stand by what I said. Of course you'll have a petty bourgeois stance if your scope is limited to bourgeois politics.
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Re: Spain emulates Belgium, stays 10 months without government

Postby jamescfm » Mon Oct 10, 2016 6:24 pm

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Re: Spain emulates Belgium, stays 10 months without government

Postby Siggon Kristov » Mon Oct 10, 2016 6:38 pm

jamescfm wrote:
Siggon Kristov wrote:Well if you reduce all politics to electoral politics, and left of centre is the furthest left you'll go, of course you will have this stance. This isn't a stance I didn't expect Aquinas or you to have, but I stand by what I said. Of course you'll have a petty bourgeois stance if your scope is limited to bourgeois politics.

You'll be disappointed (and probably unsurprised) to hear that I don't accept 'bourgeois politics' as a term.

I didn't expect you to accept it. I don't care whether you do or not. Just like you, I'm just expressing my views (which I'll say are heavily influenced by Muammar Gaddafi, Richard Hart, Michael Parenti, and others).

jamescfm wrote:Sounds like Marxist jingoistic nonsense to me.

I'm not sure how exactly the term is jingoistic. Would you elaborate on that? Nowhere did I claim Jamaica is superior to the UK, or claim that the UK's political situation is uniquely a bourgeois one whereas Jamaica's isn't; on the contrary, I hold electoral politics in general (including in Jamaica) to be bourgeois politics. I don't think that labelling my statement as jingoistic makes sense here. I'm also not sure how Marxism and Jingoism would tie in together in any case, when both a local and international critique of Marx is that he is anti-Nationalist.

jamescfm wrote:I said Labour was the only major left of centre party, by which I meant left of centre at all- not in the sense of the position which is referred to as 'left of centre'.

Oh, this wasn't clear. I guess out of all the major parties that have ever existed in the UK (including the LibDems), I would agree that the Labour Party is the only one that is left of centre. But if so, it shouldn't be hard then for Labour to capture the Left vote, since the right-wing vote would be divided among more parties. I don't think the way to make Labour more electable is for it to pander to the centrists and the right-wingers.

jamescfm wrote:I object to your characterization of my views, though. I actually agree with some of what Corbyn stands for: scrapping Trident, renationalising the railways and so on altough there are some things which I disagree with him on, like widespread quantitive easing. However, the main problem with Jeremy Corbyn is that he really, genuinely cannot win a general election and for any left wing policies to be implemented we need a Labour government. Therefore, the sensible, pragmatic response is to elect a 'third-way' leader who will introduce left wing policies as a part of their agenda. Tony Blair, much loathed as he is, is the best example. Whilst he himself was fairly centrist, his government introduced the minimum wage, the fox-hunting ban and the ban on new grammar schools. That, unfortunate as it is, is the way the left wins power in modern Britain.

It's not the Left... it's Centrist sellouts who should be sent to a firing line by a real Left government.
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Re: Spain emulates Belgium, stays 10 months without government

Postby jamescfm » Mon Oct 10, 2016 7:13 pm

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Re: Spain emulates Belgium, stays 10 months without government

Postby JuliaAJA » Tue Oct 11, 2016 5:12 am

While I enjoy a good firing squad for a violent criminal, I do not think it is a good substitute for democracy when debating political rivals. ;)

Aquinas, want to explain why the LibDems are not doing better? They are at least nominally classical liberal.
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Re: Spain emulates Belgium, stays 10 months without government

Postby jamescfm » Tue Oct 11, 2016 6:37 am

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Re: Spain emulates Belgium, stays 10 months without government

Postby MichaelReilly » Tue Oct 11, 2016 9:26 am

jamescfm wrote:Since the 1960's, a Labour leader's 'Leftness' has directly correlated to their chance of failure in a general election.


A total myth that's easily dispelled. Of the 9 leaders since the 1960s, only 2, Foot and Corbyn can be described as on the Left of the Party, and even 1 of them (Foot) was by the time he was leader disowned by the rest of the Left. (Miliband was straddling the border between left and centre, but he was still very much in the New Labour mould, and cannot be described as 'Left' in any true socialist sense of the word).

Saying Labour lost in 1983 because the Labour Party was too left-wing is incorrect. 1983 was conducted against a quagmire of problems for the Party, bitter infighting and defections, on top of a strong economic recovery in the run-up to the election and the Falklands War. Four people are responsible more than any for Thatcher winning a second term: Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers. The SDP (who can probably quite fairly be described as utter traitors by those in the Labour Movement) siphoned off so many Labour votes it's unfathomable. Combine this with the attractiveness of a Party engaged in a 3, 4 year long civil war between Left and Right, and you've got right there why Labour lost 1983.

Defeat in '83 was inevitable, whether Healey or Foot was in charge. In fact, Healey if anything would have made things worse; his right-wing iron-rod style of leadership would have caused even more defections than Foots conciliatory tone would have done.

Corbyn will lose if anything because he is untelegenic, unorganised, seen as an eccentric, not a strong enough leader (particularly in comparison to May), and, most vitally, the Labour Party is at war with itself again.
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Re: Spain emulates Belgium, stays 10 months without government

Postby jamescfm » Tue Oct 11, 2016 3:48 pm

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