mboy
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Post by mboy on Sept 25, 2019 9:24:23 GMT
Can we safely say there wont be a Labour Conference poll bounce and could be a dip like last year? I suspect the massive defeat inflicted on your leader yesterday will lead to a small Labour boost.
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The Bishop
Labour
Down With Factionalism!
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Post by The Bishop on Sept 25, 2019 10:37:51 GMT
Have to say that the statements of @barnabymarder on his exit from my party have been very sobering and thought provoking.
I don't think most people applauded that speaker out of prejudice against Jews, they did so out of tribalism and protectiveness towards Labour.
But if the effect is the same - to make Jewish people feel unwelcome in the party - that cannot be dismissed out of hand.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2019 10:39:47 GMT
Have to say that the statements of @barnabymarder on his exit from my party have been very sobering and thought provoking. I don't think most people applauded that speaker out of prejudice against Jews, they did so out of tribalism and protectiveness towards Labour. But if the effect is the same - to make Jewish people feel unwelcome in the party - that cannot be dismissed out of hand. A remarkably sensible, non-tribal post from you there Bishop, steady on now.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2019 10:46:04 GMT
I think thats part of the problem which I'm guilty of I will think this is damaging rather than this is unacceptable. I think I've got long way to go myself
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Sept 25, 2019 10:51:11 GMT
The tipping point was the sheer farce of yesterday afternoon. Instead of a debate on the most important issue of our generation we had a test of loyalty to Corbyn. The stitch up vote, with Formby grossly exceeded her powers over a horrendously weak Chair ( I suspect given that session because they knew how maleable she would be). And the football style chanting of Corbyn’s name after the stitch up was not the behaviour of a serious political party, it was that of a cult of personality uncaring and ignorant of politics and of winning elections. Genuine question, is that how it works? I always thought the chair position was allocated on some sort of "Buggins turn" mechanism, not least to avoid such accusations.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Sept 25, 2019 10:54:09 GMT
Wendy Nichols is no fool, and had been doing well up to that point. I'd say she must have been given firm instruction.
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Sept 25, 2019 10:56:20 GMT
Wendy Nichols is no fool, and had been doing well up to that point. I'd say she must have been given firm instruction. Fine, but what about my question? (when I saw you had posted, I presumed you were answering it)
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Post by curiousliberal on Sept 25, 2019 10:57:16 GMT
I think thats part of the problem which I'm guilty of I will think this is damaging rather than this is unacceptable. I think I've got long way to go myself My experience of being on the other side is that I feel a good deal freer - I daresay my judgement has improved since - but if you have ties to the local party, there may be some lingering guilt. I never delivered those leaflets I'd collected, and emails from various officials (not many are personal, but the general calls to action still *feel* a bit personal) are still sitting, unread, in the inbox. It also makes one more prone to pessimism, because the first instinct is (at least, it was in my case) to look elsewhere, but the reasons why I never joined another party are, I've been reminded, still valid. Now I'm not in a party, I realise that even fewer people than I'd previously estimated agree with me on most of what I care about. In short, it's a little colder out here, but at least I know where I stand.
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Post by Merseymike on Sept 25, 2019 10:58:57 GMT
As far as I am aware it's fairly random - everyone gets a turn. Given how obviwous the vote was (just look at the TV coverage - it's a clear 60-40 against) I think she got flustered and simply made a mistake. I'm not going to criticise her . It's a tough job and noone is perfect
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Sept 25, 2019 11:00:40 GMT
Wendy Nichols is no fool, and had been doing well up to that point. I'd say she must have been given firm instruction. Fine, but what about my question? (when I saw you had posted, I presumed you were answering it) Wendy Nichols is chair of the NEC, which is done by seniority. She is therefore chair of conference (which I don't think is ex officio but was traditionally voted on as the first item of business - never challenged). I assume that the chairs of individual sessions are picked by the Conference Arrangements Committee by negotiation with NEC members. (Luke Akehurst chaired some when he was on NEC, for instance)
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Post by Merseymike on Sept 25, 2019 11:05:42 GMT
I think thats part of the problem which I'm guilty of I will think this is damaging rather than this is unacceptable. I think I've got long way to go myself My experience of being on the other side is that I feel a good deal freer - I daresay my judgement has improved since - but if you have ties to the local party, there may be some lingering guilt. I never delivered those leaflets I'd collected, and emails from various officials (not many are personal, but the general calls to action still *feel* a bit personal) are still sitting, unread, in the inbox. It also makes one more prone to pessimism, because the first instinct is (at least, it was in my case) to look elsewhere, but the reasons why I never joined another party are, I've been reminded, still valid. Now I'm not in a party, I realise that even fewer people than I'd previously estimated agree with me on most of what I care about. In short, it's a little colder out here, but at least I know where I stand. Yes. If you leave after feeling really unhappy for a long time there is a certain sense of relief. Clearly I am on the other side of the argument from both @barnabymarder and timmullen1 and I am not going to be hypocritical and pretend that I sympathise with their position because I simply don't. However I certainly remember when all sorts of things were going on in the party which I had fundamental differences about. During the Blair government I was entirely opposed to the doctrine of liberal interventionism and Iraq was just the final straw. There were many other areas of policy I wasn't happy with particularly in relation to PFI and education. I didn't join another party either and returned to Labour to vote in the 2010 leadership election when I hoped we could finally bury New Labour. It took a bit longer and even now there are clearly some not happy with the direction of travel. I suppose this will always be the case unless there is a more thoroughgoing realignment.
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Post by Forfarshire Conservative on Sept 25, 2019 11:15:56 GMT
I might add that I am very honoured to have been given a regular spot in Jewish News. I will be bound to refer to this incident in my next one since it has been so little publicised. Yes, I read your post, very interesting seeing a viewpoint on this coming from a staunchly Socialist perspective. Shame about the idiotic Facebook comment on it though.
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timmullen1
Labour
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Post by timmullen1 on Sept 25, 2019 11:23:41 GMT
Fine, but what about my question? (when I saw you had posted, I presumed you were answering it) Wendy Nichols is chair of the NEC, which is done by seniority. She is therefore chair of conference (which I don't think is ex officio but was traditionally voted on as the first item of business - never challenged). I assume that the chairs of individual sessions are picked by the Conference Arrangements Committee by negotiation with NEC members. (Luke Akehurst chaired some when he was on NEC, for instance) From going back and checking Ann Black’s NEC reports each member of the NEC is supposed to Chair some part of Conference based largely on tenure, the sessions are allocated by the NEC at its meeting the week before Conference, but the Chair of the NEC traditionally opens and closes Conference, often with a few remarks, Chairs the Leader’s Speech session and any overseas speaker. Therefore, presuming they haven’t changed the system since Ann’s departure from the NEC last year (and neither my CLP Secretary or me as an individual member has received an Constituency delegates report since) the NEC would have allocated that session, but it’s unusual for the NEC Chair to preside over a “business” session. Just for the record can I reassure(?) Merseymike that like he I will not be joining another Party, and I look forward to being able to rejoin a real Labour Party, not a UK arm of the Moonies.
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Post by Merseymike on Sept 25, 2019 11:39:33 GMT
Just for the record can I reassure(?) Merseymike that like he I will not be joining another Party, and I look forward to being able to rejoin a real Labour Party, not a UK arm of the Moonies. I am not really into the leader-personality worship stuff either - whether it be for Blair or Corbyn. It's something I feel a bit incongruous in a socialist party. However I do like the policy direction. And want to ensure that stays whenever we change leader - no-one is there forever
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Post by curiousliberal on Sept 25, 2019 11:43:31 GMT
Just for the record can I reassure(?) Merseymike that like he I will not be joining another Party, and I look forward to being able to rejoin a real Labour Party, not a UK arm of the Moonies. I am not really into the leader-personality worship stuff either - whether it be for Blair or Corbyn. It's something I feel a bit incongruous in a socialist party.However I do like the policy direction. And want to ensure that stays whenever we change leader - no-one is there forever To be fair, the traditional authoritarian variants do advocate the reverence of a vanguard party, and Corbyn did vote to rehabilitate the reputation of a certain L. Trotsky. There has been an uptick of openly Trot groups at uni this year, though whether they're affiliated with Labour or not I don't know.
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timmullen1
Labour
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Post by timmullen1 on Sept 25, 2019 12:22:17 GMT
Just for the record can I reassure(?) Merseymike that like he I will not be joining another Party, and I look forward to being able to rejoin a real Labour Party, not a UK arm of the Moonies. I am not really into the leader-personality worship stuff either - whether it be for Blair or Corbyn. It's something I feel a bit incongruous in a socialist party. However I do like the policy direction. And want to ensure that stays whenever we change leader - no-one is there forever They’re pretty much my feelings, and why, as I said to Merseymike I’m not jumping ship to another Party (although I’ve received a Tweet this morning from Antony Albanese inviting me to join the Australian Labor Party as a “proud Victorian” (I assume the State not my age). Policy wise, although I’m not totally sold on mass renationalisation, whatever one’s political philosophy, the trains are a damn site more disabled friendly than they were in my youth when college friends had to travel from Coventry to for example Bournemouth, Cardiff or Chester in the guards van surrounded by parcels and occasionally zoo animals, I can happily live with most of it. Probably my gripe is as much presentation as content, although I’ll never subscribe to the current school of thought that the 1997-2010 period was merely thirteen years of Conservative-lite government. I still can’t escape the fact that when we wrapped up canvassing in 2017 18% of our 2015 vote specifically and unprompted identified Jeremy as the reason why they weren’t voting Labour, and that message was still being given to us in May’s Council elections.
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Post by Merseymike on Sept 25, 2019 12:28:49 GMT
I am not really into the leader-personality worship stuff either - whether it be for Blair or Corbyn. It's something I feel a bit incongruous in a socialist party.However I do like the policy direction. And want to ensure that stays whenever we change leader - no-one is there forever To be fair, the traditional authoritarian variants do advocate the reverence of a vanguard party, and Corbyn did vote to rehabilitate the reputation of a certain L. Trotsky. There has been an uptick of openly Trot groups at uni this year, though whether they're affiliated with Labour or not I don't know. Trots (I'm not one, though as a sociologist I'm interested in social theory) come in many varieties, though. You have the old fashioned workerists of the Militant/SP, the more Gramscian influenced groups , and all sorts in between including the democratic centralise authoritarian of the SDP. And the group who are now part of the Brexit Party coalition who use Trot language to justify right wing libertarianism! No Trot groups are affiliated to Labour. By definition Labour are a reformist party though that doesn't mean that you can't share some Marxist analysis.
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Post by curiousliberal on Sept 25, 2019 12:34:36 GMT
To be fair, the traditional authoritarian variants do advocate the reverence of a vanguard party, and Corbyn did vote to rehabilitate the reputation of a certain L. Trotsky. There has been an uptick of openly Trot groups at uni this year, though whether they're affiliated with Labour or not I don't know. Trots (I'm not one, though as a sociologist I'm interested in social theory) come in many varieties, though. You have the old fashioned workerists of the Militant/SP, the more Gramscian influenced groups , and all sorts in between including the democratic centralise authoritarian of the SDP. And the group who are now part of the Brexit Party coalition who use Trot language to justify right wing libertarianism! No Trot groups are affiliated to Labour. By definition Labour are a reformist party though that doesn't mean that you can't share some Marxist analysis. I suppose that's true, though I'd put the many varieties in part down to Trotsky's latent hypocrisy over the course of his political lifetime. Support for the vanguard party remains a mainstream Leninist/Stalinist (and Maoist? not sure here, and I thankfully don't encounter many of these at all) talking point if I am not mistaken, but for some reason Trotskyism appears to be the biggest of socialism's anti-democratic variants here.
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Post by Merseymike on Sept 25, 2019 12:36:24 GMT
I am not really into the leader-personality worship stuff either - whether it be for Blair or Corbyn. It's something I feel a bit incongruous in a socialist party. However I do like the policy direction. And want to ensure that stays whenever we change leader - no-one is there forever They’re pretty much my feelings, and why, as I said to Merseymike I’m not jumping ship to another Party (although I’ve received a Tweet this morning from Antony Albanese inviting me to join the Australian Labor Party as a “proud Victorian” (I assume the State not my age). Policy wise, although I’m not totally sold on mass renationalisation, whatever one’s political philosophy, the trains are a damn site more disabled friendly than they were in my youth when college friends had to travel from Coventry to for example Bournemouth, Cardiff or Chester in the guards van surrounded by parcels and occasionally zoo animals, I can happily live with most of it. Probably my gripe is as much presentation as content, although I’ll never subscribe to the current school of thought that the 1997-2010 period was merely thirteen years of Conservative-lite government. I still can’t escape the fact that when we wrapped up canvassing in 2017 18% of our 2015 vote specifically and unprompted identified Jeremy as the reason why they weren’t voting Labour, and that message was still being given to us in May’s Council elections. I think the improvement in the trains and other access issues is down to the success of the disability movement. Thing is that Stoke is a bit of a special case. Labour did do very badly there and have been on the slide for a while. I have always taken the view that not liking the leader is the easy way out in terms of finding a reason. Clearly there's no way of proving it but if we had a more centrist leader then their much more pro remain stance wouldn't go down so well. Perhaps a Eurosceptic right winger might go down better there but having Ruth Smeeth as leader would hardly appeal to much of the Labour coalition elsewhere.
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Post by Merseymike on Sept 25, 2019 12:38:31 GMT
Trots (I'm not one, though as a sociologist I'm interested in social theory) come in many varieties, though. You have the old fashioned workerists of the Militant/SP, the more Gramscian influenced groups , and all sorts in between including the democratic centralise authoritarian of the SDP. And the group who are now part of the Brexit Party coalition who use Trot language to justify right wing libertarianism! No Trot groups are affiliated to Labour. By definition Labour are a reformist party though that doesn't mean that you can't share some Marxist analysis. I suppose that's true, though I'd put the many varieties in part down to Trotsky's latent hypocrisy over the course of his political lifetime. Support for the vanguard party remains a mainstream Leninist/Stalinist (and Maoist? not sure here, and I thankfully don't encounter many of these at all) talking point if I am not mistaken, but for some reason Trotskyism appears to be the biggest of socialism's anti-democratic variants here. Yes. There aren't many out and out Stalinists. When I get accused of being a Trot I usually respond with " no, thank you. I'm a Stalinist" it usually silences them.
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