British Politics Thread

"Moderate" wing.

It's Chukka Umunna and co.; this is the sort of person who thinks the correct response to losing the last scheduled GE was to move the party even further right.

Yeah this is the right of the party, you’re looking at Burnham and Ed Miliband for the center.

But they oppose that darn old radical Corbyn! Surely that makes them reasonable by default.

You know, maybe they could invite all those secret Remain Tories into their party of enlightened centrism.

Edited by 3of4 on Feb 18th 2019 at 3:15:51 PM

No no they’re not a party, if they were they’d be bound by funding disclosure rules, they’re simply a collection of independent M Ps working in a coordinated manner.

A radical who hates strawberry jam. Scandalous!

Outrageous!

I wonder if jam metaphors would work for the next general election.

A vote for the Tories is a vote for mouldy jam. A vote for Labour is a vote for homemade organic apple jam with no strawberry jam in sight. A vote for the SNP is a vote for chilli jam. A vote for the Lib Dems is...oh who are we kidding no one is going to vote Lib Dem.

Edited by M84 on Feb 18th 2019 at 10:26:11 PM

"But they oppose that darn old radical Corbyn! Surely that makes them reasonable by default"

not what I was saying. At all. To me this currently looks like the party is split between Momentum (which includes the Lexiters) and everyone else. So, first group broke away, other might or might not follow, but it won't be good for Labour at all, no matter how you label the group which left.

I doubt that this will be in any way helpful regarding Brexit, though, unless it encourages Tory members to break away too, which I don't expect to happen. But then, I didn't expect any Labour M Ps to do more than threatening either.

Also, for the nth time, outside of the Lexiter nonsense I actually think quite highly of Corbyn's political goals. It is his Anti-European stance and the way he indirectly supports the Tories by making similar pie in the sky promises they make which bothers me.

Edited by Swanpride on Feb 18th 2019 at 6:39:32 AM

Lib Dems are just low-fat mayo. Not even jam. UKIP is a can of cyanide.

And yeah, that Angela Smith interview is just *sharp intake of breath*. There's gaffes, and then there's what she just did.

And Swan, if by moderate you mean 'more centrist' then... yeah, that's the right wing of the Labour party.

You're doing exactly what the splitters want you to do, which is think that they represent a silent majority and that they're not the outliers.

Mind, maybe six of them are just daft like that and think being shady independents is somehow taking a stand. But the seventh is Chuka Umunna.

> oh who are we kidding no one is going to vote Lib Dem.

me im voting

What are the chances of them keeping their seats in the next election, anyway?

Edit: I kinda had to look it up after asking. Six of them are in pretty safe seats where Labour get 60% of the vote, but then I remember Iaculus saying that they'd contest marginals anyway, so one wonders if Angela Smith will try to win her old constituency for the Independent Group or try elsewhere, since that constituency only stayed Labour by two points last election.

So, they're going to end up splitting the left-wing vote, most likely.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Feb 18th 2019 at 2:54:45 PM

not very high

I want a strawberryjam party

and you are doing the thing again, where you proudly refute something I have never said and actually don't believe. I said that there is a split between two groups. I didn't say that any of the groups is bigger than the other. The only thing I ever said about the issue is that most Labour voters are Remainers and won't forgive the party if it doesn't speak for them.

Btw, I am actually not overly pleased with this development. More resigned. Because that only means that Corbyn has gotten rid of some of his detractors. It will most likely damage the party, but it will strengthen his position as a leader.

Edited by Swanpride on Feb 18th 2019 at 6:56:26 AM

... wait, your point is that Momentum is somehow a Lexiteer group? Is that seriously what you're saying?

I want a solidly marmalade party (with more Socialist than the current Lib Dems), dammit! To make marmalade, you need decent citrus. Which means close ties to Europe.

Go marmalade!

Edited by Euodiachloris on Feb 18th 2019 at 3:00:27 PM

Honda has confirmed its factory in Swindon is closing, putting 3,500 jobs at risk.

No, I am saying that Momentum and Lexiters are two groups which overlap (there are certainly some Lexiters within Momentum) and which both support Corbyn. The Lexiters maybe even more enthusiastic than Momentum because he is promising them the kind of Brexit they claim to want.

Err, no he isn't. The full-blown Lexiters are a minor faction with basically zero power, and I should know since I'm one of them, but if we were somehow writing Corbyn's speeches for him there would ideally be no SM/CU commitments and a desire to maintain as much freedom of movement as possible from day 1. Yes, obviously fudging will be necessary from that point, but we certainly wouldn't have written those Six Tests.

There's a much larger faction of Labourites that are willing to accept the referendum result and oppose a second referendum for a range of tactical reasons and principles, but wouldn't actively be arguing for a Lexit if one came, they tend towards the current CU/SM alignment stance and Norway Plus.

Swan here is where you imply that everyone who isn’t part of the breakaway group is part of Momentum, which is patently absurd, as there are M Ps on the right and center of the party who haven’t broken away or been badmouthing Corbyn in right-wing newspapers.

There’s also the faction (best represented by Lammy) who are strongly opposed to Brexit and want it stopped, but will be dammed if we’re going to throw in with the ringwing elements of the party that caused Brexit (by blaming every mistake they made in government on the EU) and are just using Brexit as a way to attack Corbyn becuse they want less regulation and more austerity.

Edited by Silasw on Feb 18th 2019 at 3:20:16 PM

Sorry for the awkward wording. I think I clarified what I meant, though.

I am btw not under the impression that the Lexiters are necessarily all pushing for the same version of Lexit either.

Did I mention already how much I like Lammy? And Starmer?

Edited by Swanpride on Feb 18th 2019 at 7:28:45 AM

See here’s the thing, I like both of them as well, and based on how they’re both reasonably close to Corbyn I trust their judgment that Corbyn is doing the best with the cards he has.

I think Corbyn probably is rather middling on Brexit, he doesn’t particularly like the EU but isn’t a Lexiter, instead he’s okay with Brexit because he’s fallen for so much anti-EU propaganda that he doesn’t realise what Brexit will do to us.

But if we can ever get him in a spot where he could stop Brexit I suspect that he would, because he’s got people around him who do recognise how bad Brexit is going to be.

And that's not what I see in Corbyn's action at all. I think that Corbyn wants Brexit, but one he can blame on the Tories. He certainly never fought for the EU, and I don't trust politicians which don't realize how important the EU is for our future.

Also, this is just a rumour, but supposedly Starmer is currently really p... at Corbyn because he was supposed to put the people's vote as option into the letter he wrote to May, and then took the lines out without even talking to Starmer about it. But even without that, I don't get the impression that Starmer is a close supporter of Corbyn at all, he seems to represent Remain M Ps who want to be heard without breaking up the party in the process.

Edited by Swanpride on Feb 18th 2019 at 8:00:14 AM

Some people seem to be evoking a connection between this new breakaway group and the SDP. Apart from the rather obvious fact that the Alliance ultimately failed to replace Labour or the Conservatives as the largest party, the main reason they had a plausible chance in the first place was that the "Gang of Four" gave them credibility.
Today's gang of seven, by contrast, strike me as relative nobodies. None of them have held more than junior ministerial posts, and those for fairly brief periods. The majority have only been in the Commons since 2010. None are in the Privy Council. None of them are famous for their oratory skills. I don't see any of them holding their seats at a general election without the power of the red rosette.

Wasn't that the group which had actually a good chance to succeed, but then the Falkland wars happened just in time to rescue Thatcher?