Get a couple of ringers in to accept some non-answers to some incoherent question on a platform that non of the target audience use? You’ve got to start somewhere I guess.
Next Labour leader - Starmer and Rayner win
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) was joined by comedian Ali Woods to look back at the best and worst moments of a rollercoaster season with the annual United Hour Awards.
Has Ten Hag been sacked yet? We're not sure and we hope not, but it's looking more likely as the days pass.
Who should replace him and why is it taking so long to make a decision?
Those are tough questions?
I'd rather she was asked about real issues and things like who she plans on having in her cabinet and how she plans to convince people that all the things she says are well thought out and will be do able. The end bit about facing Johnson was so cringeworthy I had to turn it off too. Also I like how the fella said they completely misread the electorate, and she proceeds to bang on about going out and talking to "our voters". I guess she meant talk to the people they've lost and those they want to gain, rather than exactly what the fella already said, but it was mildly amusing.
I guess that kind of video is hardly aimed at me though.
How does immigration stop the woman getting an appointment for her GP ?
It seemed slightly racist to me and Rebecca just ignored it completely
Welcome to Labour policy post Tony Blair.
Personally I thought the video was a load of old shite(And in general RLB campaign has been rubbish).
Video looked fake to me
‘we’re very concerned about Momentum having too much power (who are they again)’
’Yes Momentum exist but so do Progress so it’s OK’
’I’m a gobshite’
’me too’
‘Shhh, you’ll give it away’
No white text ?
I've talked to people before who have been very concerned about Momentum and it's ''communist'' tendency. It would be great if these people were actors but no sadly they really do exist and there's plenty of them.
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And you complain about us wasting your time! Did you post the right one?
fair play.I'm a socialist so I think it's only fair to suffer collectively. I mean christ Keir is boring(And I sort like the guy).
He is. I watched him on the Sunday morning programmes and he said bugger all on both of them, except 'I want to bring the party together', which may get him votes in the contest, but it's not what I wanted to hear. Come on Lisa!
I'm a socialist so I think it's only fair to suffer collectively. I mean christ Keir is boring(And I sort like the guy).
Momentum the hard left trot.............oh
I'm guessing Starmer is miles a head.
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I'm guessing Starmer is miles a head.
I think RLB and Nandy are more impressive having watched a few debates. Not that keen on Starmer.
Seeing lots of tweets calling Starmer a centrist. What planet are these guys on?
If I was a Labour voter then someone who somehow comes across as a centrist without actually being a centrist would be my ideal candidate. Like left-wing policies, don't like alienating everyone who is to the right of those left-wing policies. After all, the hard part is being able to sell that platform to those who aren't immediately inclined to agree with it, not those who are.
Unless he has levels he’s yet to show, I think Starmer might be a mistake for Labour. I always preferred Nandy but thought he was ok, but now I’m not so sure.
He fixes the worst problems of Corbyn but that’s about it. He’s good at details but appears to have no vision for the country, or even the party. He doesn’t even have a decent diagnosis of what the problems are in either case. He looks like he should be good, but in truth he’s said nothing of any substance that I’ve come across. If that apparent lack of insight is genuine, rather than just him being over cautious in the campaign, he could turn out to be a dead end for Labour.
Imagine setting up a set piece like that, where you've clearly scripted the questions, and edited the answers, and yet still failing to say anything of any interest. Yup, that's exactly what I want to see.
I think he's basically 2020's Dan Jarvis. Completely devoid of interest, but middle aged, middle class, white and male, so seems like a safe pair of hands.
From what I've from Starmer I tend to agree with @711he is awfully dull. The Starmer vote is basically boils down to Oh God we've fecked really badly, lets call for a lawyer.
Apparently he votes with the right quite a lot in his local labour party and didn't vote against that welfare bill in 2015(Plus backed Owen Smith in 2016). He's at best on the centre ''left''.
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Starmer Comedian would be a brilliant name for an Edinburgh show
I told you all he was dull as feck when everyone was clamouring to announce him as the saviour. Still dull isn't the worst thing and he's still getting my vote, voters won't trust Nandy or RLB.
Blair dishing out his wisdom again calling on everyone to reject culture wars or lose. I still find that an odd position to take considering that's exactly what is driving western election victories these days. Are we saying the right can win through these methods but the left absolutely can not?
Blair dishing out his wisdom again calling on everyone to reject culture wars or lose. I still find that an odd position to take considering that's exactly what is driving western election victories these days. Are we saying the right can win through these methods but the left absolutely can not?
Not absolutely of course, but its an uphill struggle. In a country that is largely socially conservative, its going to be hard for Labour to win if their primary method is engaging in a culture war, with Labour on the side of liberal causes and the Tories on the side of socially conservative causes. In the UK, 'family values' will beat equality issues any day of the week. That's always been the case, but that's especially true now as social conservatism seems to be on the up in most Western democracies.
I think that is true. The numbers are simply not with the left.
The problem is when someone like Blair can find it easy to say do not engage because he and his demographic are not under threat from the relentless attacks from the right.
Nandy has to be the one with the best chance of building the red wall again, the others haven't got a prayer. Starmer will hold the vote in the big cities, but won't get anywhere in the North...even if Boris 'fecks up' bigtime.
RLB been too close to Jeremy, she has ridden to prominence on his coat-tails but now he's back to his anorak. If after 2024 election the 'Brexit project fear' has become a reality she might have a chance in 2029.
RLB been too close to Jeremy, she has ridden to prominence on his coat-tails but now he's back to his anorak. If after 2024 election the 'Brexit project fear' has become a reality she might have a chance in 2029.
I can't see any of them lasting until the next election anyway. Plus the mass activist base will slowly fall away if RLB doesn't win(Both Starmer & Nandy will push policy to the right).
Might not be a bad thing? There seems to been some sort of law of inverse proportionality in action at this last election, the larger the membership, the less votes/seats gained in the GE?
I (eyebrows clenched) agree (veins pulsing) with (fists curled) Tony (eyes go red) Blair (heart explodes).
edit - though i'm pretty sure i disagree about what he means by culture war.
Yeah perhaps you're right it just paints a grim outlook of the electorate (at least from my perspective) and clashes with the idea that the voters are there for a competent centre left party.
It's probably more accurate to say votes are there for a dishonest centre left party but that's what put people off of Blair in the end.
I really don't like the idea that the Tories can not only get away with Trump like politics but ride it to victory whilst Labour has to hide it's progressive views to even be relevant. The right are engaged in a culture war so to say the left should avoid this really means not only letting the right run rampant but to also pretend we're fine with it.
I think what he’s saying is you can advocate for these things but just don’t make them defining issues in the public eye, ie prioritise the issues the broad electorate most cares about. Then when you get into power, you can still make the changes you advocated for.
You have to be careful you don’t let the issues that concern only a few people define you in the public eye. Which I think Labour finds hard. Not to say you can’t address them when in power, it’s just what drives the passion of activists and the public might be different - and it’s the public who needs to come first - if you want to win that is.
Politicians should be boring. My main requirement for a job running the economy isn’t ‘does he look like he’d be a good laugh down the pub?’. I think as a country we desperately need to move away from this idea that politicians need to be interesting and entertaining, all it does is get us clowns like Boris, and make wannabe politicians spend all their time on media training instead of actually learning important shit.
I'm a socialist so I think it's only fair to suffer collectively. I mean christ Keir is boring(And I sort like the guy).
Let’s elect a bunch of boring number crunching wonks and ignore them for 5 years while they get the country running smoothly again, and leave the entertainment to the comedians.
Well said.
The boring ones don’t inspire people though. I’d rather have a bunch of accountants and academics running the country, but the electorate doesn’t want that
But most people are fine with it, and of course they are all out of step!
I really don't think that's true, most are not fine with the Daily Mail or Bannon style culture war politics. You can draw many things from the election victory but not that.
I'm sorry but that is exactly what you can draw from the election victory.
In functioning democracies all politicians, or most of them, say what they think the voters* want to hear and then appear to act on it. Political life can be long-lived for one or two frontbench politicians, or it could be in days gone by, but for most political leaders/frontrunners today they get 5 or so years 'in the sun' when they can 'do something positive', always assuming that is they want to do something positive, not merely develop their own legacy. Thereafter most become only a shadow of their former selves, they do something wrong politically, or mess up in their personal lives, or try to swim against the tide.
Arguably the two most successful British politicians in the last fifty years have been Margaret Thatcher, because she did what she said she would do, and stuck to it whatever the cost. Thatcher only failed when she realised the EU was heading for the buffers, but allowed some of her cabinet to undermine her and she didn't follow through. The other was Tony Blair who carried New Labour to victory in election after election, but he became so convinced he was almost invincible and that if need be he could charm the birds from the trees, he even believed that he could dictate to George Bush.... but we all know how that ended.
Most of the people (mob rule = democracy) are tuned in to simple ideas/slogans, we see it time and again. The problem is that the right gets a slogan going, promotes it endlessly but avoids explaining exactly what that entails. The left has its own slogans and is getting better at promoting them, but then it can't resist immediately try to explain every nuance!
Most *voters i.e. those of eligible, age , residence etc. want to go to the polling station not weighing up the pros and cons, they just want to put their 'X' in the box, against the name/party behind the slogan, because they agree with that, or if they disagree the opposing name/party. 'Tactical voting' on a large enough scale to have any effect is a myth, the closest to such an outcome was the Brexiteers who formed themselves into what appeared to be a new political party (i.e. not just a pressure group within a party) and then threatened to stand in certain seats.
Most voters are not gullible, but they are not genuinely interested in the political process and the recent debacle over Brexit has highlighted the dangers of either assuming they are gullible, or ignoring what they say, the left needs to take note and quickly.
Didn't we try this in the mid 90's and all the way until 2016 ? I understand the feeling people have for this technocratic vision of the world considering the threat of the right and the failure of the left but these bunch of boring number crunching wonks produced the 2008 crash, implemented policies like austerity, mass murdering foreign policy and didn't address the future of the climate crisis we are now living in. Even the new incarnations of these wonks like Macron, have spend the last months kicking the shit of the french working class and is now going after french muslims. These people and their politics were never running the world smoothly but were slowly driving it off a cliff. So let's give them another go ?
Also I would argue that the likes of Boris aren't offering entrainment or anything remotely interesting but plain old anti intellectualism. Boris and the new global right are about embracing the disaster, they don't believe in a future. The main positives for brexit put forward by its advocates is about how they'll all be dead before the benefits kick in. It's about accepting most vulgar views on society even if these views aren't based on evidence because well whats the use, there's no more future. It's the contradictions of thatcherism in a death spiral coming to ahead and leaving a shit stained mess for the rest of us to deal with. I don't suggest anyone does this but if you must, talk to a conservative and ask them about their world view. The answer given will be one of a dystopian nightmare, where people on the dole starve to death but hey be grateful that at least we don't have child slavery like in the Congo, one where productivity is almost non existent but hey just imagine how bad things would be if the
But(Adam Curtis impression kicks in and burial music starts to fill the silent void)the wonks also don't believe in anything anymore. Instead of disaster politics it's a retreat into arguing against any future.
Better worker rights, free university, tackling climate change, nationalisation, ending the suffering of people on benefits etc all falls under the banner of fantasy politics, even the most ''progressive'' of these wonks(Elizabeth Warren)is trying her best to stop americans getting basic universal healthcare. There's a great scene in the film Children Of Men, where the main character Theo goes to visits his cousin who lives in giant building filled with famous works of art(Because the world has got to shit as women have stopped being able to have children)and Theo says to his cousin ''Whats the point of all this art if in hundred years time no one will be around to see it, and the cousin simply replies - ''I try not to think about it''. That's the viewpoint of every wonk liberal when faced with our current situation.
And while all of these views come out social and material conditions, it worth saying that people enjoy these ideologies. The Brexit wankers love the idea of the potential suffering that would happen as a result of Brexit, it brings out in them memories of things they've never experienced like the blitz and the wonks well they get to feel smug that they've a read a few GDP charts. Yet both sets of these politics offer nothing in how we should address the real problems the world is facing.