Rayvin

Quiet you extremist young person!

Yeah but is that coming from the left or is it coming from the resurgent right? I'm not saying you're oversensitive btw, not because youre Jewish anyway. Tbh i think you are a bit oversensitive sometimes because you work in media and become totally consumed by these breaking stories, which is why i say yeah, to politicians and journalists this seems like a big deal. To ordinary people, I just dont know. But is a rise in even left wing inspired antisemitic events comparable to the number of people in poverty or forced to become homeless. We've cut support for homeless by half and have seen the number of homeless double. No one talks about that and yet the consequences are real and unimagimably sad. So when i say antisemitism in Labour is a distraction, i dont mean it isnt a serious issue, i mean that there are really bigger fish to fry based on what i have seen the consequences to be so far. Granted if there is a widespread campaign of violence against Jewish people now underway then that changes things.

Fair point I guess. Where do they go afterwards though.

You were the one who introduced New Labour into this. I'm not saying their policies fucked the young, I actually agree that they didn't. But the generation in control then, have definitely fucked the young. New Labour or otherwise. Which was my point. I was just having a dig at Renton really, he washed his hands too readily of all of this

I need it to be visible. Was she driven out by antisemitic abuse on Twitter or in the party itself? Would be amazed if the latter although yes that would clearly signify that some people need to be thrown out. On Twitter I suspect there is no way of verifying who is saying what or if they are Labour members at all. I dont see what the deal about the Palestine lives thing is. A dog whistle I assume you're saying. The implication being that her resigning demonstrates that a blow has been struck to an oppressive regime in the middle east? I'm not sure that's antisemitic. I'm not trying not to see this by the way (you could argue I am if you see an attack on Israel to be equivalent to an attack on Jews though), but i honestly don't see any real and tangible effects that this stuff is having day to day. I can see people living and dying on the streets, I can see racism on the rise, and i can see the county being torn apart... But I can't see any actual impact that what i assume are a number of Twitter based antisemites are having on the lives of people in this country.

ouch. Although I'm curious, what ideological position prevents them from teaming up..

There was almost no difference under Miliband. Partially this was because the Tories were attempting to be the party of the centre, admittedly.

Nick Forbes is a total waste of space, so I'm having a hard time sympathizing with him.

Yeah just saw this. It's good I guess although I'm curious as to why Grieve hasn't gone.

Open goal that one. Failing to oppose austerity. Next? Anyway i wasn't pointing the finger at Labour specifically. More the generation in power.

You guys literally created this and now wash your hands of it Amazing. It's like a microcosm for the political fuck up in general. Blame the young people who we've shafted over and over again for being radicalized in their desperation to find lube to make the shafting less painful. There really is a generational war mixed into this.

For it not to be a distraction there need to be profound and noticeable consequences. Are there any? Also, I'm a bit lost on the first things you posted. There seems to be a lot of anti Israeli stuff but I'm seeing nothing about Jews in general. I thought they were distinct issues.

Yeah totally pointless move from Labour. They gain nothing from it really.

What the fuck though In their entire history, I bet no team has been as excited about beating Gillingham as Sunderland are now. God damn..

And the championship is what, a non-physical league?

I sometimes wish I was capable of that level of bluntness

I thought this too initially, but the longer this total distraction has gone on, the more I personally would be prepared to just do whatever it took to make it go away.

Yeah it's pointless but I really do feel that on some level, to fix any of this, everyone has to look at 'their side' and accept the areas in which 'their side' were actually responsible for this. And I do see, or feel like I see, at least, the areas in which Corbyn has failed us and been a disaster. I'm totally with you on that because I want Brexit to go away as much as you do. But it's not the whole picture at all. This has been an unmitigated fuck up from the entire political class, and while Cameron's stupidity was something that I guess the centrists in Labour couldn't predict, the fact that they were so poorly positioned to deal with it at the time is on them. The £3 membership would have been a good idea tbh, if they had just had someone between Corbyn and everyone else (politically), and no Corbyn option present.

I don't think I said that... wait, lemme just... no, didn't actually say that anywhere. Huh. Weird. I mean for one thing I was talking in the past tense about a view held 5 or 6 years ago, ewerk...

I'm not blaming them for austerity, I'm blaming them for failing to actually oppose it. As much as Corbyn has totally failed to oppose Brexit, letting the Tories control the narrative and do whatever they like actually appears to be a time honoured Labour position. Momentum are angry because they believe that the centrists in Labour are trying to pull the whole thing down - mostly because that's exactly what they did try to do for the first two years. So let's also not forget that bit. The Blairites have been pretty quiet since the GE but before that there was absolute hell on in Labour. I don't recall anywhere near as much ill feeling prior to the multiple attempts to oust Corbyn, so if they're being accused of treachery it's because yeah, there was a fair amount of fucking treachery. They're supposed to be politicians man. They're supposed to understand this shit. Anyone could see that the second leadership contest was going to give them the biggest kick in the bollocks they'd ever experienced from their own party, and they went ahead with it anyway. That's not 'principles', it's political stupidity. If they had backed the whole thing then Corbyn could well have run out of steam by now, people could have seen through him and it could be over - but instead they made it clear that they were not happy and effectively made themselves the enemy. Maybe the super hardcore lefties in Momentum were pushing that too but honestly, I wasn't exposed to anything they were saying - I was exposed to plenty of open attempts to bring Corbyn down in the national media though, from the Blairites themselves. So my ill feeling towards them at the time came very much from their own doing.

I am sure if we go back through my posts, this is actually my exact reason for choosing Corbyn at the time. So yes, fully agree on that. And yes, fully intended to include left leaning centre. Ultimately I had no issue with the way Labour came together under the Blairites to tackle this, and I recall that I used to be continuously annoyed with the LDs because in my view their supporters were generally also left wing, so there was a split in the left for no good reason. I don't actually believe this is true anymore, I think I had a fairly incomplete view of the political makeup of LD voters, but still. This was why I was so outraged they joined the Tories though. It was like they picked up 2 million left wing votes and delivered a right wing government with them. Anyway, yes - we indeed never will get PR. The fact that none of the politicians actually talk about it is damning, really.

This is a difficult one for me because I agree that a centre that actually gives a fuck is exactly where politics should be. I just don't think that's where we were. Also, I'd have more time for your views on this if you ever admitted you were wrong about the many, many things you have been wrong about.

We are where we are because no one was listening. The Tories rolled out ideological austerity and Labour waved it through. The two parties of the centre, creating the rise of Corbyn, the 'far right' (who always capitalise on economic disenfranchisement, to the point where I recall the BNP actually saying that this was their strategy in general, rather than winning people over in elections), and Brexit. They pushed the lefties to the left, and the loonies to the right. This much has been totally inevitable for a political structure that really just did not give a fuck and thought that all it had to do was turn up to win. As for where we go from here, it has to be PR IMO. The country is polarised as fuck but I still believe that there is an overall majority left wing consensus. Until we lose Scotland anyway.

Can't quite bring myself to say I regret voting for Corbyn since the alternatives were so dismal, but you have to accept something that you really haven't ever managed to - the centre, in entirely, was fucking shit. Completely, unbelievably, fucking shit. I've never lived through a period, while I retained any political awareness at least, where the centre wasn't in control - so choosing Corbyn made total sense to me; and honestly, Brexit aside, still would. The only reason he's lost me is Brexit. If not for that, I could handle the generally rubbish way he conducts himself because he seems able to turn it on in the run ups to GEs. So let's not pretend it was all sunshine and roses and that the centre had no hand in getting us here. It had the biggest fucking hand. A lot of what has followed the referendum is on Corbyn for absolute certain, but he had fuck all to do with why it happened unless you believe that 66% of Labour voters going Remain was too low, and that the party should instead of had higher numbers than both the LDs (68%) and the Greens (70%), both middle class as fuck. Don't say you weren't warned about the fucking centre either.

Gloom, as a Jewish man do you feel under threat from hard left thugs - am I just not seeing this somehow? I'm curious as to how exactly a few anti-Zionist conspiracy nutters are actually impacting anything. I know it's a slippery slope etc.