Rayvin

Just read the reports on this in detail. Sounds utterly horrifying. Assad is a total psychopath who clearly couldn't give a shit about the populace in his country. This US-Russia bollocks is getting fucking old tbh, it's wrought only devastation wherever it rears its head. How is Assad going to unify the country after this ffs. How are the people who carried this out going to live with themselves. I'm half tempted to suggest that Russia may as well absorb the fucking place because anything that Syria once was, it surely no longer is.

Yes, doesn't make sense to lose him even if we're anticipating bringing in better quality in the summer.

I don't want a socialist utopia though, I want a pragmatic and effective state that doesn't put corporate interests and the super wealthy ahead of those at the bottom. I want a return to social mobility, better standards of education and, if I could have everything, greater expenditure in the sciences. Hardly socialism 101. I'm not far left ffs, I just don't believe the centre is in any way interested in achieving these things.

I'm sure the centre will sweep back to power again one day off the back of a compelling vision of mediocrity and general beigeness.

Have you flagged this up to demonstrate that the far left are backing Russia following my discussions with Gloom? If so, thanks - it's useful to see. I take the point.

Fair point actually. I think it spills into the Trump thread because the issue has become global rather than UK only, but sure, happy to continue in here instead.

Good post - the Trump v China thing is going to be fascinating. If he makes friends with Russia, the Chinese are going to feel really isolated.

I'm not going to google shit because I've expressed multiple times in the past the exact sentiments you've just put over. The thing is this though, I thought exactly like this until the referendum because I was insulated in my bubble of relative affluence. Just because you and I were well off and enjoying things (my family wasn't actually especially well off but then I credit the fact that I ended up in University to Labour so I won't suggest that they didn't work for me on some level) doesn't mean that the working and unemployed classes were. Labour pushed the Neoliberalist mantra by offering tweaks to the social order with the idea of benefiting those at the bottom. Those tweaks were exposed as meaningless when the world came tumbling down in 2008. You know I don't think the crash was Labour's fault, I've said it a million times on here. I'm not actually critical of what Blair and Brown were doing in the sense that they thought it was working (and it seemed to be at the time). Where I am critical now, with the benefit of hindsight, is in considering that anyone thinks that returning to that is what we need. They didn't 'fix' anything, they just papered over the cracks. If we get another New Labour aligned with Blair's position, we'll enjoy a decade of benefit while they're pointing at good things and hiding the serious underlying issues and then end up back in the shit again as these changes don't do enough. That said, you make an interesting point in a sense, and I wonder if, had the Tories never been allowed near power, we might not be where we are. The thing that makes me think we would be anyway though, is that this issue isn't limited to just the UK. It's happening all over the place. The economic situation is the only common denominator really, unless you look at immigration I suppose. How about this - globalisation (as you have identified many times) is the main problem. The centre are the most serious backers of globalisation on the political spectrum (the right hate the immigrants and the left hate the corporations) so the centre has been punished for the excesses of the globalists. The left could accept globalisation if it took more people with it, I believe. The right can't ever accept it, logically. So yes, I would head back to the centre if I could somehow be persuaded that they were actually going to change things enough to help more people. I don't believe they want to do this though, and that's my issue.

You're right but let's be honest, Trump was a shocking candidate who seemed to go out of his way to make it hard to vote for him. The stuff that came out about Trump would have sunk any other normal politician in the world. The fact that he was within 2.8m votes of Clinton despite this surely suggests that the sentiment backing his side has more popular support than Hillary's. I would suggest that a good number of the people voting for Hillary did so because Trump was just so offensive. Had the far right put forward someone with charm, intelligence and charisma, Clinton would have been buried, IMO. Policies would have been the same though.

Sorry but, Corbyn is only answerable for the last year and a bit of Labour. The previous 20 years they had opportunities to 'deliver' what you're talking about. This is all on them. All of it. If you think that the current shitstorm is at Corbyn and the left's feet instead of those who abdicated all responsibility for the socially vulnerable, you're utterly blind. And the real issue we have here is that people like me can't go back to the lies and failures of the centre left. People like you have too much to lose by going to the left. The answer should be for both sections to split - the problem with that is, as soon as we do it (and we effectively seem to have done so already), the Tories are unopposed. You guys bang on about Corbyn being too far left to garner much support but realistically, I don't think the centre leftists would be faring much better - because people like me, the poor, and sure as fuck UKIP supporters, wouldn't be voting for your policies any more than Corbyn's. So I say again - we're fucked. And we're fucked because the centre failed and turned on the left instead of the right. Probably, I would argue, because the right is safer to their bank accounts.

Who is voting for the centre? The politically intransigent risk averse middle class who can't comprehend what is happening. Have I missed anyone out? There's a larger section of our society in the 'poor' category than there used to be. According to the IFS at least.

Well we're fucked then because they don't want the centre left either. Although the left wasn't rejected this year. The centre was. The left didn't even manage to get to a point where it could be considered because the centre Blairites consider it more threatening than the far right, apparently. Same with the DNC.

I think we need to put this to bed. So you understand why the fuckwits voted for Trump but don't get why Hillary is held to a higher standard by the intelligent left. It isn't actually to do with standards. There was nothing she could do, say or be, in my view, that would have averted the disillusionment from the left. The problem for the left was that she was coming from the exact same line of failures who had allowed the social order to fail and wealth to be hoovered up by the top. So yeah, we didn't like Trump, but we sympathized with those who voted for him because they wanted someone, somewhere, to notice that they were pissed off. Had we had a left wing populist figure, that individual could have captured the centre, the left, and a good number of the working class who desperately wanted to rage against those leaving them behind. The left wing populist would have won. So really it's as PL says. And fwiw I said this before the election also. Hillary represents neoliberalist status quo. My question to you is, if people at the bottom have nothing to lose, and those of us on the left can see this, and can see the tide turning, why are you still thinking that the centre left has the answers? What makes you think the centre left can do anything at all to turn this around given its comprehensive defeats? Corbyn isn't going to change things himself, the democrat reinvention is also unlikely to. But IMO they are the left rebuilding itself. A proper left unblemished by the demonstrable failure of the third way. That's what I'm banking on. Have been since I voted Corbyn the first time. It'll take time but it absolutely needs to happen.

Because their centre left candidate just did so well, of course. I can see your concern but the left needs to be forced to give a fuck about people again and apparently the only way for this to happen is for them to be given a collective kicking.

Yep, pretty sure I said I'd take Clinton over Trump. Doesn't make her a good candidate though. Nice to see even the Democrats have noticed this now, and appear to be undergoing their Corbyn moment.

I don't read the Indie much so won't comment on them. Is the leader like a statement of a newspapers beliefs? If so I probably should read that. It wasn't character assassinations with Sanders, it was the fact that they endorsed Hillary. Anyway look, I respect your views on this and will continue questioning my outlook until I'm satisfied with it.

True. Although I don't think Corbyn has all the answers either.

I have mixed feelings on Jones. He has some good ideas but is a proponent of identity politics and therefore, in my view, hasn't fully grasped the wider issues at play here.

Yep, true that Miliband should have been countering it. But papers interpret political realities at the end of the day, and I see plenty of articles now that challenge austerity after the fact. Maybe I expect too much from them in terms of their ability to see this stuff coming. You're right about the commentators. It's just that there should be an opposing view, and their frequently isn't. This bothers me, but maybe the issue is simply that most journalists think the same way... If I did a piece of research and found that the Guardian, in its US election coverage from back when Sanders and Clinton were vying for nomination, had a pro-Clinton bias in terms of articles of 75:25 (I'm not claiming this is the case, I'm just talking hypothetically), would you consider that they had an agenda? Or that they had a preferred candidate? And if so, would it be fair to assume that this candidate was chosen because their views aligned with that of the newspaper? Or would you argue that this is coincidence and simply reflective of the submissions they receive (which I'm prepared to accept as a feasible argument even if I disagree with it).

I wanna caveat all of this, Gloom, and say that I still believe they're capable of quality reporting. I just don't think they're doing the job we need them to do any more (if they ever were).

I don't think the Guardian challenged the austerity narrative as much as it should have done, no. One of the key causes of this entire fucking mess can be traced back to everyone just accepting that the Tories were right about the economy, I don't think anyone in the entire fucking world was loud enough about how detrimental that whole shambles could be. But I do expect the Guardian will have been more in line with my views on this. I'm struggling to think if any others would have even been likely to challenge austerity, let alone if they actually did so. As for Corbyn, they were railing against him all last year. I know they were, I saw it - they didn't succeed of course, because no one is listening to them anymore, but they tried. With Sanders, I remember fucking Freedland wrote that article saying how we on the left should 'compromise' because 'bigger' (read: Neoliberal) issues were at stake. All compromising with people in the centre gets us at the moment, apparently, is the fucking far right. Because people in the centre are generally affluent and removed from the widespread malcontent. And I fully, fully, include myself in that. Up until the referendum. Anyway, I stand by my previous post.

I see the MSM as largely passive actors who have been left behind by the tide of populism that was evident in its forming to anyone who looks beyond the MSM for their world view (or in my case, anyone who decided, following the referendum, that the MSM didn't have a fucking clue what was going on anymore - as was proven again in the US). They're passive actors but they're still dangerous as they allow those in power to believe that the status quo remains acceptable. I don't think they're driving the Neoliberalist narrative knowingly (Parky would disagree) but their adherence to the demonstrably collapsing centre left order of the world, their support of austerity, and their refusal to look reality in the eye (at least up until Trump - as I've noted, things are improving now) has lost them the faith of millions. They're the mouthpiece of the establishment, not the check on it. They've become this unwittingly, I grant you, but there it is. And yes, they have different agendas so this takes different forms for each newspaper. Just to take the Guardian on its own, it went out of its way to destroy Corbyn - a populist figure on the left (regardless of what you think of him) and so lost the faith of people on that side. It went out of its way to criticise Sanders. Another populist leftist figure. And now they've got a populist right figure. Fucking idiots. They've totally lost the plot on what they're supposed to be representing. Hint - it isn't the comfortable middle classes.

After my post though...

Never said the Guardian was Neoliberal, I said they (were strongly supportive of the faction that) split the left and in so doing enabled the Neolibs. Never said Neoliberalism was a conspiracy. It's the prevailing philosophy of the West and needs to be challenged though. Other than that, would be interested in examples (as they come up) of articles in the FT or Economist that support public sector ownership, actually. That's not the be all and end all of Neoliberalism but it'd be eye opening to see that point.