Rayvin

He really is.

Just came across this video from a few months back of Monbiot on Frankie Boyle's show.

My bad, I barely slept last night and it's apparently showing with short term memory loss. I still think it's risky.

It's risky. The more I think about it, the more it narrows the vote pool of people whose votes can be used to theoretically win a remain situation.

We've all been saying that for months now, but there is a bigger issue at hand here - if all our dreams come true and Labour sweep into power, cancel Brexit, and lead us into the sunlit uplands of a mixed economy - we will have a very pissed off 50% of the country who will feel that their democratic vote has just been rode over roughshod. Corbyn's position up until now had been a healing one - if we go full Remain, as much as I've wanted Labour to do this for months now, what will that mean in practice? They go for straight revoke? If they were going to do this, it had to be done a year ago. Now it feels too late and I'm tempted to say is only going to cause more confusion in the Remain side. I could see a way for Remain to come out on top with the lay of the land before - I mean the Lib Dems already had the revoke crowd covered, and Labour's muddled position was probably covering a few Brexiters. All I can see here is us potentially cutting away a slice of the public nearer to the leave side and hoping that there is enough to take back from the LDs for an outright Labour victory...

Sounds like some intensive behind the scenes work is going on from Labour high command though... Not convinced Remain will win this.

I guess that's what we want, but I don't really think his neutral stance was necessarily wrong. I've never been convinced that Corbyn was a closet leaver, but I am sure that he's openly indifferent. Let's hope whatever outcome it is plays well to the public.

What would that mean though - I was coming around to Corbyn's position as the best way of bridging the divide. Going out and out Remain seems polarising.

I just can't bring myself to watch it

Well in that case I'd say we're broadly aligned on who actually needs help and just talking ideology which, when we're pragmatically aligned, is a little pointless. I think money should be creamed off the super rich over and above anyone else. I do think inheritance should be looked at, since it flies in the face of "people worked hard to get where they are" (no they didn't, their dad did - in those cases). I don't believe McDonnell should start taking away homes from people who have worked hard and are just well off, but I do think that people with excessive property portfolios making places like London unaffordable for normal people absolutely should be dealt with.

Yeah I see what you're saying, but not investing in poor communities and increasing social mobility has led us to exactly the same place. People going 'what's the point?' There is no point without a more level playing field and more equal spreading of wealth, not for those starting at the bottom.

20% of people in this country have or have shown signs of depression and anxiety, thus making their fight to 'do something to better their chances' far harder than someone who didn't go through that. What about them? https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/statistics/mental-health-statistics-depression

Not having a dig at you personally btw, just the view. And by and large I think the money does go where it's needed. Who is it that you think doesn't need it?

Gonna add to that as well - what if you're just made of sterner stuff than other people. Call it a genetic lottery. Does that mean they deserve to live in ever worsening conditions, always looking over their shoulders as society and the economy leaves them behind? More and more of the lower middle class are starting to struggle. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/03/demise-middle-classes-british-politics-digital-age We actually do -need- to start doing something about it. And I don't necessarily mean you're the problem since you worked hard and deserve what you have, but the 1% super rich I mean... there are limits to how far people should be allowed to go, and the fact that CEO wages have gone from 2 or 3 times that of workers to something like 150 times now is a sign that society has really lost control of this.

Have you ever been homeless? How would you have any idea how 'easy' it is to be on the breadline, or how difficult it is to be impoverished. The only way we can understand it is by listening to people who are. We've reduced mental health spending, we've reduced homelessness funding, and we live in a world where it is getting harder and harder to raise yourself up with social mobility - so much so that even the Labour party recently abandoned the notion. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/15/social-mobility-in-richest-countries-has-stalled-since-1990s What if your experience to get to where you are simply can't be recreated now? What if you had it easy?

Feel free to challenge me robustly I get worked up about this issue more than most tbh.

Are you saying that the same opportunities are available to younger people as they were to older people? I mean, I shouldn't have to pay the pensions of people who retire at 65 when I will probably be working until 78 (or more likely the day I die) - and yet I have no choice. I mean seriously, I recall in the early 2000s my parents bought a house for around £90k and then 5 years later sold it for £200k immediately paying off their entire mortgage. If that kind of benefit occurs in my lifetime as an adult I'll be absolutely amazed. That generation were lucky as sin to live through the era they did, a Labour era I'll stress, while all my generation has had is years of 'drawbridge pulling up' Tory bollocks. In answer to your question - if I had worked hard through my young age, as I have, and put spare funds away, as I have, and bought property with the money - and then was told later in life when I'm comfortable and without financial concern that someone was going to buy the house I was renting out at some kind of agreed upon rate that would enable them to have a better life and had the net positive effect that society wouldn't literally tear itself apart further down the line, then yeah I probably would be ok with it as long as it was being done in a fair and equitable way. I would expect them to start at the very top of society and work down - you know, the ones who haven't actually worked all that hard but were born into their wealth and network based privilege.

Well, maybe they could do that then? Put the policy in place against people who have more than 2 homes.

It's the corporations that need to change, not the people. But yes, that needs to count in India as much as in the US.

I don't have a very high opinion of him either, but given long enough with the Tories and Brexit causing an absolute clusterfuck, people might well go for it.

So what do you propose we do? I'm not an advocate of this policy but we have a situation where if you haven't bought a house by the age of 39, you probably never will. Less than 50% of young people will ever be able to afford to. What about their futures and pensions? Ah right yeah, they work until they die. Eventually wealth HAS to be redistributed in a less ridiculous way or we will get full on social collapse.

Maybe? And if Corbyn was his Deputy Leader and constantly undermining him, he'd want him gone. I'm not taking Corbyn's side here since for one thing he doesn't appear to have been involved since he has no power to do anything about Watson anyway and for another thing he actually seems to have encouraged everyone to drop it before the news even hit this morning - but from a purely pragmatic point of view, can you imagine another political party where the Deputy Leader spends so much time taking up contrary positions to the main party policy? The situation seems to be that a large chunk of the membership have wanted Watson out for ages but couldn't get the 20% of PLP MPs to back a vote on him, and the NEC finally felt it had enough support to try for it by eliminating the role, the only way members could actually have a say in it. It failed, losing the vote, and Corbyn subsequently intervened to tell them to back off. Gosh, how frightfully Stalinesque. Venezuela must be more democratically normal than I thought. I mean Watson's Brexit position is referendum then election. Labour's is election then referendum. Would it really have been so hard for him to just fucking side with the party? He's the Deputy Leader ffs.

Lemme ask then, has Labour high command gone to war with Watson, or has Watson gone to war with Labour high command (over the course of several years)? It's the latter. I don't agree with them ousting him, it's not the right time and it's just going to be used to make Johnson look coherent, but Watson has done himself absolutely no favours. Although it does look as though he survived the attempt so I'm not clear on what exactly everyone is getting so excited about. Also, this statement from him is just unforgivable: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7488679/Tom-Watson-slams-attempt-oust-Labour-deputy-leader-says-Jeremy-Corbyn-stop-it.html "Ousting me is like something that would happen in Venezuela" If Watson gave a shit about Labour's electoral chances over his own fucking career, he would not have said that. The Venezuela comparison has been haunting Corbyn with no legitimacy for a couple of years now. Why in fuck would Watson say that if not for petty, personal, bullshit revenge reasons?

Corbyn wasn't deputy leader though. Nailed on he would have been ousted by Blair for similar public displays of disagreement if he had been. Agree on the second part up to the potential voters bit. The membership maybe, although I'm not convinced - potential voters I really don't know. Depends who the potential voters are. Labour have been fairly clear for some time that the potential voters aren't you and I. Being honest about it, as much as we may agree with him, he's consistently been setting himself up as an obstacle more than a support.

How do you handle the fallout of outright revoke though? I wouldn't have had the original referendum to start with but now that we have I don't see any other politically legitimate way of resolving it.