Current Affairs - The Bear and Badger

equinox_code

Yossarian wrote:

He was unelectable against Cameron, I expect he’d be running rings around May.

Like this?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/05/pmqs-verdict-jeremy-corbyn-dances-rings-round-may-on-brexit

Yossarian

God no, I was hoping more like this;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23892783

JonB

Wait, is Corbyn still unelectable?

I thought he was an existential threat now. It's hard to keep up.

Yossarian

He’s mostly an irrelevance AFAICT.

GooberTheHat

Yossarian wrote:

God no, I was hoping more like this;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23892783

Considering Assad has now used chemical weapons multiple times, do you think that was the right decision?

Yossarian

I genuinely have no clue, TBH. Getting involved in the Middle East never seems to end well but maybe in this case it would have been better?

I was more talking about inflicting defeats in parliament on big issues.

LarryDavid

Miliband got treated as someone vaguely stepping towards the left (in comparison to the Blair/Brown years) - it was considered outrageous at the time and he got pelted. The Mail would slag off any Labour leader, especially around an election, so it doesn’t really matter on that front. Sell out enough to Murdoch (ala Blair) and you might win them over. The Guardian was far more friendly towards Ed than they have been to Corbyn, and the BBC treated him fairly respectfully rather than the continual negative spin they give Corbyn. If Ed came back now we’d get lots of articles saying what a fine man he is, because he’s more moderate and less threatening than Corbyn. If they’d known what was to come he’d have gotten an easier ride.

Anyone who doesn’t follow free-market orthodoxy gets dragged through the shit. Anyone with any power thought they’d seen off any possible threat from the left, especially a scruffy old leftie dinosaur like Corbyn who doesn’t even have the decency to wear a Ted Baker suit whilst voting to bomb some Arab goat herders (sorry, I meant ‘intervene on humanitarian grounds in troubling middle-eastern development’).

I’m sure Ed was an okay guy, I voted for him. But he was very wet and hugely unconvincing. To go back to that after a brief taste of what an actual left-wing Labour Party might be like would be demoralising. For me personally, obviously the Guardian et al would love a nice wish-washy liberal doormat who never dared step outside their defined parameters of what is acceptable politics.

I know, I know - ‘b-b-but Brexit’. Meh, that’s what they want - if the anti-Semitism doesn’t work we’ll get a useless ‘centre-ground’ party created for us to take votes away on the grounds that they’ll ‘fight Brexit’.

Yossarian

I'm not sure that Corbyn's platform is particularly to the left of Miliband's. Maybe on a couple of issues here and there, but a large chunk of Corbynism was lifted directly from Miliband.

Edit: a year old now, but this covers a bit of this at least:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2017/04/what-corbynism-and-milibandism-do-and-dont-have-common

monkey

That anti-semitism stuff really doesn’t bode well for what a Corbyn govt with the Labour PLP would be like. Regardless of whose fault it is, there was months of mud-slinging from both sides over a couple of lines in some text. The consequences of it were what some nutters on left-wing message boards may or may not get banned for.

Not a huge endorsement that these are the people who can sort out decades old structural deficiencies in an advanced 21st century economy.

In a slightly better world than this, everyone could perhaps come to the realisation that Corbyn hasn’t really got what it takes to step up and lead people that don’t agree with him as a decent national leader is supposed to*. Then you could have 4 or 5 people from the PLP and a decent leadership contest without all this rancour. The change in Labour membership and the general state of the world isn’t going to produce a contest and a victor who just wants the status quo and loads of money to the big corps. Anyway, that’s not going to happen because both Corbyn and crew and Umunna etc aren’t going to let it. They’ll skew it by whatever means to benefit their politics.

It’s a state now though. It’s all so divisive. You can’t be anti-Corbyn without then apparently supprting war-mongering right-wingers. You can’t be pro without being a raving mad dickwad who hates Jews. The whole thing just needs a reset and Corbyn hasn’t got it in him to do that.

*yeah yeah the Tories don’t do this. The idea is surely to be slightly better than the Tories.

Gremill

LarryDavid wrote:

Miliband got treated as someone vaguely stepping towards the left (in comparison to the Blair/Brown years) - it was considered outrageous at the time and he got pelted. The Mail would slag off any Labour leader, especially around an election, so it doesn’t really matter on that front. Sell out enough to Murdoch (ala Blair) and you might win them over. The Guardian was far more friendly towards Ed than they have been to Corbyn, and the BBC treated him fairly respectfully rather than the continual negative spin they give Corbyn. If Ed came back now we’d get lots of articles saying what a fine man he is, because he’s more moderate and less threatening than Corbyn. If they’d known what was to come he’d have gotten an easier ride.

Anyone who doesn’t follow free-market orthodoxy gets dragged through the shit. Anyone with any power thought they’d seen off any possible threat from the left, especially a scruffy old leftie dinosaur like Corbyn who doesn’t even have the decency to wear a Ted Baker suit whilst voting to bomb some Arab goat herders (sorry, I meant ‘intervene on humanitarian grounds in troubling middle-eastern development’).

I’m sure Ed was an okay guy, I voted for him. But he was very wet and hugely unconvincing. To go back to that after a brief taste of what an actual left-wing Labour Party might be like would be demoralising. For me personally, obviously the Guardian et al would love a nice wish-washy liberal doormat who never dared step outside their defined parameters of what is acceptable politics.

I know, I know - ‘b-b-but Brexit’. Meh, that’s what they want - if the anti-Semitism doesn’t work we’ll get a useless ‘centre-ground’ party created for us to take votes away on the grounds that they’ll ‘fight Brexit’.

Sums up my feelings nicely LD.

Brooks

Never trust a 'lefty' paper with a fashion section.

djchump

monkey wrote:

...You can’t be pro without being a raving mad dickwad who hates Jews.

Maybe don’t buy into that horseshit then?

monkey wrote:

The whole thing just needs a reset and Corbyn hasn’t got it in him to do that. ...

Corbyn doesn’t control your opinions, only you can reset them. Do you have it in you to do that?

Yossarian

Does this thought experiment also involve resetting your opinions about whether or not Brexit is the stupidest thing any country has ever done to itself?

hunk

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/sep/07/reader-it-is-glorious-watching-vladimir-putins-own-tv-show

Corbyn needs Putin's PR team to fix his image problem.

Diluted Dante

The problem with replacing Corbyn now is that too much of the PLP are cunts who arent going to make the mistake of nominating a left wing MP for leader again.

Yossarian

Surely the nomination process can be changed.

monkey

Diluted Dante wrote:

The problem with replacing Corbyn now is that too much of the PLP are cunts who arent going to make the mistake of nominating a left wing MP for leader again.

The left-wingiest of the candidates would probably be elected. But yeah it would probably be Owen Smith all over again. Umunna-types suddenly going all left-wing for a couple of months.

monkey

djchump wrote:

monkey wrote:

...You can’t be pro without being a raving mad dickwad who hates Jews.

Maybe don’t buy into that horseshit then?

monkey wrote:

The whole thing just needs a reset and Corbyn hasn’t got it in him to do that. ...

Corbyn doesn’t control your opinions, only you can reset them. Do you have it in you to do that?

Sorry what is it you want me to do? Reset my opinions so they agree with yours?

Diluted Dante

No, mine.

hunk

2nd ref incoming?
Would be the wise thing to do.

That and have a think tank explore all possible and likely outcomes.

djchump

monkey wrote:

djchump wrote:

monkey wrote:

...You can’t be pro without being a raving mad dickwad who hates Jews.

Maybe don’t buy into that horseshit then?

monkey wrote:

The whole thing just needs a reset and Corbyn hasn’t got it in him to do that. ...

Corbyn doesn’t control your opinions, only you can reset them. Do you have it in you to do that?

Sorry what is it you want me to do? Reset my opinions so they agree with yours?

You complain that:

monkey wrote:

It’s a state now though. It’s all so divisive.

And yet you are parroting the statements and ideas that make it “so divisive”. I’m saying that you are part of the problem you are complaining about, and there’s nothing Corbyn or anyone else can do to change your mind for you.

I_R

There isn't the time to get legislation through parliament for a second referendum apparently, you'd need no opposition to it at all.

Yossarian

I’m fairly confident an Article 50 extension could be granted, especially if it looks like the alternative is no deal.

monkey

djchump wrote:

monkey wrote:

djchump wrote:

monkey wrote:

...You can’t be pro without being a raving mad dickwad who hates Jews.

Maybe don’t buy into that horseshit then?

monkey wrote:

The whole thing just needs a reset and Corbyn hasn’t got it in him to do that. ...

Corbyn doesn’t control your opinions, only you can reset them. Do you have it in you to do that?

Sorry what is it you want me to do? Reset my opinions so they agree with yours?

You complain that:

monkey wrote:

It’s a state now though. It’s all so divisive.

And yet you are parroting the statements and ideas that make it “so divisive”. I’m saying that you are part of the problem you are complaining about, and there’s nothing Corbyn or anyone else can do to change your mind for you.

Those aren’t my opinions though. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here.

Maybe I could have written it more clearly but it’s pretty obvious I’m describing (and possibly exaggerating) the positions of two sides in an argument. Surely.

djchump

Sure, and by exaggerating and perpetuating those positions, you are part of the problem in spreading the “divisiveness”.

Yossarian

Nothing like accusations of being part of the problem to help combat divisiveness.

monkey

So, if I describe something I want to change, I’m perpetuating it? How does anything get changed then? How does anyone ever know what they’re changing if they can’t talk about it?

Anyway, good to know that my opinion carries such weight with the upper tiers of the Labour leadership.

monkey

This is a better than average article from an MP. https://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/lisa-nandy-21st-century-power_uk_5b900128e4b0162f472936fb?guccounter=1

Facewon

monkey wrote:

Maybe I could have written it more clearly but it’s pretty obvious I’m describing (and possibly exaggerating) the positions of two sides in an argument. Surely.

That's how I read it.

LarryDavid

The Tory aide Boris is getting divorced for being caught shagging turns out to be the long term partner of ex-Guido Fawkes cunt Harry Cole, who’s spent years relentlessly promoting Boris and his agenda.

That’s really made my day.

Howdy, Stranger!

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