The Independent Group for Change | Have decided to disband after ten months

[NinjaFletch]

I thought we were discussing how realistic getting and winning a PV actually is, and how you think it can be achieved, and you've had nothing to offer on that aside from it might change the discourse.

Well go back to the start of the conversation then.

At any rate, you're very keen to ignore the fact that Labour are struggling to keep up with May's Tories on the path they set on. Whether you're convinced Labour had alternatives or not they've played their hand badly and the country (and the party) has suffered for it.

 

[Shamwow]

Well go back to the start of the conversation then.

At any rate, you're very keen to ignore the fact that Labour are struggling to keep up with May's Tories on the path they set on. Whether you're convinced Labour had alternatives or not they've played their hand badly and the country (and the party) has suffered for it.

I'm not ignoring anything, I just disagree that Labour is stupid for not supporting the 2nd ref which seems to be your position.

 

[NinjaFletch]

I'm not ignoring anything, I just disagree that Labour is stupid for not supporting the 2nd ref which seems to be your position.

Yeah, you really need to go back to how the conversation started.

 

[Shamwow]

Yeah, you really need to go back to how the conversation started.

It started with me saying "What is the realistic route to getting a people's vote in the first place? Even if Corbyn whipped for it there would be too many Labour rebels."

 

[NinjaFletch]

It started with me saying "What is the realistic route to getting a people's vote in the first place? Even if Corbyn whipped for it there would be too many Labour rebels."

No it didn't. You jumped in halfway through.

 

[Shamwow]

No it didn't. You jumped in halfway through.

Okay i thought you meant our conversation.
Anyway, that the part I was interested in, and you didn't have an answer for it. No one ever does .

 

[Untied]

I mean, that's interesting, do you genuinely think that anyone other than you looks at that and thinks 'ah, feck, well there's no point bothering with a second referendum then, there's no chance Remain will win'?

The problem with the People’s Vote campaign is it is predicated on an inconsistency: that a referendum wasn’t sufficient to solve an issue and therefore to solve that issue we need a referendum

But it’s not clear to me how that second referendum is going to solve the issue.

1. What would you put on the ballot paper?

2. If Remain is on the ballot paper, and wins by anything less than a landslide why does this referendum settle it when you were so adamant the last one didn’t? Best of 3?

 

[Mozza]

What, like bringing in a national minimum wage and bringing equal rights to the LGBT community?

Iraq

 

[dumbo]

I think of 'centrist' as a guise under which you can hide your callousness towards society. As a Centrist you would support socially liberal ephemera such as Elton John getting married, female equality in the form of Hillary Clinton, open immigration (so long as business is still calling for cheap labour), polar bears on melting ice bergs and a black leader of your breakaway political party company. This cloak of respectability allows you to then encourage market liberal abuses such as austerity, zero hour contracts, rebranding The Living Wage so as not to pay an actual living wage, private policy meetings with Rupert Murdoch and not having to really care about funny tinge people in wider society.

'Centrist' belongs to that alternative lexicon of political descriptions with 'alt right' and 'corbyn wanker' (or whatever we call them). Not necessarily a precise description, but a useful generality to identify someone acting the twat in a particular way.

 

[NinjaFletch]

Okay i thought you meant our conversation.
Anyway, that the part I was interested in, and you didn't have an answer for it. No one ever does .

Or rather you didn't like the answer.

I'm not hugely anti-Corbyn (or rather I wasn't) and I do think he has his qualities which is why many of us were swept up in early enthusiasm for him, but there are many things that he is and there are many things that he isn't.

What he isn't is a media savvy, slick, political operator. He can't keep factions onside and he lacks the charisma to carry him if he has nothing of substance to say. If he were that type of leader Labour's approach may have worked. What he did do well was appear genuine, appear to be passionate about the issues people faced, and appear to want to make a difference and do the right thing even when the 'right thing' was not necessarily popular.

When Labour have done well under Corbyn they've done it because they've appeared to offer something different to the same old shit of Blair, Cameron and then May. That's his strength and Labour had to play up to it. Instead they tried to play politics as usual, but their main player was a bloke who isn't very good at that game and the result has been a predictable failure.

Approaching it differently, actively supporting Remain, actively opposing the Tories and having a cause to champion is a high risk strategy that might have backfired, but Corbyn was a high risk choice in leader who was never, ever going to be able to effectively play both sides and outmanoeuvre the Tory media machine. It's not his skillset, and that was why he was liked.

The problem is, is that with the way he has tried to approach Brexit an awful lot of his appeal has been lost. If you're going to play it like Blair and make decisions concerned with electability rather than genuine beliefs (not that I think Corbyn genuinely is an enthusiastic remainer anyway, but that's another issue) then it's much harder to excuse all the frankly daft shit that comes with Corbyn that makes him be seen as unelectable by the wider political world. We've ended up with a leader who is neither competent or savvy enough to pull off what he needs to do with the path Labour have gone down, and has absolutely shredded his reputation for what enamoured him to people in the first place.

The problem with the People’s Vote campaign is it is predicated on an inconsistency: that a referendum wasn’t sufficient to solve an issue and therefore to solve that issue we need a referendum

But it’s not clear to me how that second referendum is going to solve the issue.

1. What would you put on the ballot paper?

2. If Remain is on the ballot paper, and wins by anything less than a landslide why does this referendum settle it when you were so adamant the last one didn’t? Best of 3?

I don't agree with your original premise in the slightest. I think it's a perfectly reasonable response to what's happened since, the electoral fraud of the original vote, and the lack of plan offered by Leave to go back to the electorate and say: 'Look, this is what the situation is and this is what you will get, are you absolutely certain that you still want it?'. If it is the case that the electorate do still want to Leave then fine, they vote to Leave again and if they don't then the country deserves better than to be dragged out against its will.

This is part of my point about discourse though. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever that that should be a controversial opinion or that politicians should be scared of going back to the electorate if they are genuinely acting on what they believe is the will of the people. You're allowed to change your mind in a democracy, hence why we vote every five years in elections

More generally I do think referendums on divisive and technical issues like Brexit are fecking terrible ideas and completely at odds with the entire point of representative democracy, but hey ho, Cameron let that genie out of the bottle and it's not going back in.

 

[Mozza]

Right winger 'let's shit on migrants'
Left winger 'let's not'
Sensible centrist 'shitting on them is too much, piss on them instead'

 

[Reiver]

Highly unlikely. Unfortunately Tony Blair is a tainted politician which to me is a shame.

He is tainted for one reason. The Iraq war. I can imagine loads of people telling me how bad he is but quite honestly apart from Iraq which I fully acknowledge is a major problem he was a pretty good leader. The NHS, Police and Schoolswere in a significantly better position than now.

He had vision and let's not forget won three elections in a row.

But as I said he is tainted so I could not imagine Independence wanting him anywhere near them.

Don't know how I feel about him returning to politics, whether it is likely or not.

I have a friend who swears he never would have been to Uni if it wasn't for New Labour policies, given his background. It's hard to say with any certainty but he's not the only person I've met who feels this way and is grateful for it. Labour certainly did good things in education and with Sure Start. I love the fact they had a policy of ending child poverty. Unachievable and grossly optimistic at best but it came from a good place.

I think his tainted image has more to it than Iraq but that is the main thing for a lot of people and it should be.

Anyway, without either a proper big hitter politically to lead them, or the silver bullet of party policies, I think the Indies are doomed. They should also resign, force a bye election and run as an independent if they really believe they have the backing of their constituents. But of course they won't, they might lose their seat on the Westminster Gravy Train. It's this kind of self serving, zero integrity shithousery which leads to people viewing our politicians with contempt.

 

[DavidDeSchmikes]

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Another one

 

[dumbo]

I love this company.


@Penna is nothing like this dopey person, what an insult.

 

[Dobba]

Oh shit, not Joan Ryan. Labour are finished.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

I think of 'centrist' as a guise under which you can hide your callousness towards society. As a Centrist you would support socially liberal ephemera such as Elton John getting married, female equality in the form of Hillary Clinton, open immigration (so long as business is still calling for cheap labour), polar bears on melting ice bergs and a black leader of your breakaway political party company. This cloak of respectability allows you to then encourage market liberal abuses such as austerity, zero hour contracts, rebranding The Living Wage so as not to pay an actual living wage, private policy meetings with Rupert Murdoch and not having to really care about funny tinge people in wider society.

'Centrist' belongs to that alternative lexicon of political descriptions with 'alt right' and 'corbyn wanker' (or whatever we call them). Not necessarily a precise description, but a useful generality to identify someone acting the twat in a particular way.

So that covers all the bases. Which part of the political spectrum escapes your ire? Don’t think you’ve left any wriggle room there.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Right winger 'let's shit on migrants'
Left winger 'let's not'
Sensible centrist 'shitting on them is too much, piss on them instead'

Not sure if you’re aiming for humour or satire there? Missed the mark, either way. Kudo for crowbarring in your pet subject though. Any chance, right? At least the days of Michael Carrick being criminally under-rated gave a little more variety to your repertoire.

 

[Ubik]

Still a very predictable bunch so far.

And here's the youth wing's take

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[sun_tzu]

Still a very predictable bunch so far.

And here's the youth wing's take

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Most definitely no institutional anti Semitic things to see here... Move along and sing oooooh Jeremy Corbyn

 

[Untied]

Fair point. It just seems very unscientific (and I know @berbatrick is a scientist) to put the 2008 recession down to “centrist economic policies” without any control group to give us an idea of how things could have turned out differently.

This is one of the dumbest takes I have seen on here. The notion that somehow you cannot attribute causality to policy without a control group renders the entirety of politics futile. "Just do whatever. We can't know if it caused anything because we cannot see the control group!". The hostile environmentt might seem like a bad policy but without a control group to give us an idea of how things could have turned out differently, how can we say?

But less facetiously, there some clear causes for the 2008 crash. We can assess these causes, evaluate the effect centrist policies had, or would have had, on those factors, and conclude that those policies not only fail to prevent, but actually exacerbate, the conditions for 2008 to occur.

 

[Mozza]

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Another one

It's with a heavy heart I celebrate

 

[Sweet Square]

This is one of the dumbest takes I have seen on here. The notion that somehow you cannot attribute causality to policy without a control group renders the entirety of politics futile. "Just do whatever. We can't know if it caused anything because we cannot see the control group!". The hostile environmentt might seem like a bad policy but without a control group to give us an idea of how things could have turned out differently, how can we say?

But less facetiously, there some clear causes for the 2008 crash. We can assess these causes, evaluate the effect centrist policies had, or would have had, on those factors, and conclude that those policies not only fail to prevent, but actually exacerbate, the conditions for 2008 to occur.

Tide goes in tides goes out you can't explain that.

 

[Drifter]

Not Joan Ryan, former chair of Labour Friends of Israel. What will Labour do now.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

This is one of the dumbest takes I have seen on here. The notion that somehow you cannot attribute causality to policy without a control group renders the entirety of politics futile. "Just do whatever. We can't know if it caused anything because we cannot see the control group!". The hostile environmentt might seem like a bad policy but without a control group to give us an idea of how things could have turned out differently, how can we say?

But less facetiously, there some clear causes for the 2008 crash. We can assess these causes, evaluate the effect centrist policies had, or would have had, on those factors, and conclude that those policies not only fail to prevent, but actually exacerbate, the conditions for 2008 to occur.

You can do all the assessment you want. Fill your boots. You obviously see yourself as a bit of an expert so tell me this. Specifically, what “centrist policies” (i.e. policies not shared by parties on the left or the right) caused the 2008 crash and what policies that a centrist party would never implement could have kept everything hunky dory?

 

[Mozza]

Not sure if you’re aiming for humour or satire there? Missed the mark, either way. Kudo for crowbarring in your pet subject though. Any chance, right? At least the days of Michael Carrick being criminally under-rated gave a little more variety to your repertoire.

Moved you enough to comment, I'll take that as a success then

 

[sun_tzu]

Not Joan Ryan, former chair of Labour Friends of Israel. What will Labour do now.

Tweet and then delete shit like this probably then I dunno presumably blame the Jews?

Still a very predictable bunch so far.

And here's the youth wing's take

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[Sweet Square]

Don't know what's worse that tweet or finding out who Ubik follows on Twitter.

 

[Mozza]

6 of 8 members of LFI, hmmm

 

[Drifter]

Tweet and then delete shit like this probably then I dunno presumably blame the Jews?

Who's blaming the Jews . He's talking about the current Israeli government and the treatment of the Palestine's

 

[Ubik]

Alas it was re tweeted onto my time line. (Theo Bertram is worth a follow even if you're deep in hammer and sickle twitter).

 

[Untied]

You can do all the assessment you want. Fill your boots. You obviously see yourself as a bit of an expert so tell me this. Specifically, what “centrist policies” (i.e. policies not shared by parties on the left or the right) caused the 2008 crash and what policies that a centrist party would never implement could have kept everything hunky dory?

Two off the top of my head
1. no separation of investment and retail banking
2. private ratings agencies

The first is a Clinton administration action. The second, well there have never been nationalised credit rating agencies, but trusting the market failed completely, and I haven't seen centrists calling for state control of important parts of the financial sector, as the left would.

Saying policies not shared by the left or the right is setting me up to fail because the entire point of centrism is that it ties right-wing liberal economic policy with a more left-leaning social policy. It's right-wing economics with a stronger social-security net. But it's misleading to view economic policy on a single axis, e.g liberal vs protectionist, marketised vs socialised, etc.

 

[Untied]

Most definitely no institutional anti Semitic things to see here... Move along and sing oooooh Jeremy Corbyn

Ill advised, but I cannot see how this is anti-semitic?

 

[altodevil]

Why is it antisemitic to be sympathetic to Palestine all of a sudden?

 

[Sweet Square]

Alas it was re tweeted onto my time line. (Theo Bertram is worth a follow even if you're deep in hammer and sickle twitter).

Well I've given him a follow now. Maybe it will be a nice change up from all the random Marx quotes(It's way easier this way than having to read all his boring books)

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Two off the top of my head
1. no separation of investment and retail banking
2. private ratings agencies

The first is a Clinton administration action. The second, well there have never been nationalised credit rating agencies, but trusting the market failed completely, and I haven't seen centrists calling for state control of important parts of the financial sector, as the left would.

Saying policies not shared by the left or the right is setting me up to fail because the entire point of centrism is that it ties right-wing liberal economic policy with a more left-leaning social policy. It's right-wing economics with a stronger social-security net. But it's misleading to view economic policy on a single axis, e.g liberal vs protectionist, marketised vs socialised, etc.

Well, exactly. So maybe don’t call people dumb for challenging the glib assumption that centrist politics are to blame for the 2008 crash. Even with the benefit of hindsight it’s clearly much more complicated than that. All the more so when the seeds of what we eventually reaped were clearly sown under conservative/right wing governments.

 

[sun_tzu]

Ill advised, but I cannot see how this is anti-semitic?

90% of the vitriol aimed at her is because she was in labour friends of Israel... It's like that's not allowed in labour anymore
Though in fairness Corbyn has not even spoken to Berger since 2017 despite the racist abuse and threats she was getting...
Honestly the party are making themselves unelectable and actually untill they get rid of comrade jezbollah that's probably just as well

 

[Sweet Square]

90% of the vitriol aimed at her is because she was in labour friends of Israel... It's like that's not allowed in labour anymore
Though in fairness Corbyn has not even spoken to Berger since 2017 despite the racist abuse and threats she was getting...
Honestly the party are making themselves unelectable and actually untill they get rid of comrade jezbollah that's probably just as well

So the tweet wasn't anti semitic then ? It was stupid but not anti semitic

Also the 90% line is just something you made up.


For all the talk about peope caring about anti semtism they don't half go around and throw accusations all over the place. Which again just like that tweet is a rather stupid thing to do.

 

[Untied]

90% of the vitriol aimed at her is because she was in labour friends of Israel... It's like that's not allowed in labour anymore
Though in fairness Corbyn has not even spoken to Berger since 2017 despite the racist abuse and threats she was getting...
Honestly the party are making themselves unelectable and actually untill they get rid of comrade jezbollah that's probably just as well

Criticising a non-Jew for supporting Israel is anti-semitic? Good to know.

Well, exactly. So maybe don’t call people dumb for challenging the glib assumption that centrist politics are to blame for the 2008 crash. Even with the benefit of hindsight it’s clearly much more complicated than that. All the more so when the seeds of what we eventually reaped were clearly sown under conservative/right wing governments.

I'm not sure what you think warranted "Well, exactly". I noted two policy issues, one actively undertaken by a centrist administration, one which would never appear on a centrist platform. I mean your conclusion basically seems to be 'centrism isn't to blame because it just accepted right-wing free-market economic policies, so really it's the right's fault'; as if not reversing or countering those policies is not itself a policy failure.

 

[That'sHernandez]

So the tweet wasn't anti semitic then ? It was stupid but not anti semitic

Also the 90% line is just something you made up.


For all the talk about peope caring about anti semtism they don't half go around and throw accusations all over the place. Which again just like that tweet is a rather stupid thing to do.

Honestly while I do think antisemitism is a problem, possibly in society as a whole more so than specifically in Labour, if it is really this prevalent I the Labour Party then it has been just as prolific under Blair, Brown and Miliband. While I don’t doubt that it is incredibly hurtful to those on the end of it, this is something that could have been raised before but hasn’t been because it kind of hasn’t suited anyone to raise it...

 

[jeff_goldblum]

90% of the vitriol aimed at her is because she was in labour friends of Israel... It's like that's not allowed in labour anymore
Though in fairness Corbyn has not even spoken to Berger since 2017 despite the racist abuse and threats she was getting...
Honestly the party are making themselves unelectable and actually untill they get rid of comrade jezbollah that's probably just as well

Just so I know where we're at.

Corbyn's apologism for terrorism - bad.
Labour friends of Israel's apologism for state-sponsored murder, mass incarceration, segregation - a-okay and any criticism of it must be down to anti-Semitism.

Am I doing this right?