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Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
- The Scottish National Party do really well in the elections.
A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 3rd 2023 at 11:15:30 AM
A bit late, but a few days ago the Privy Council met virtually for the first time. [1] [2]
I had been wondering about whether that was possible, given how much the government will be relying on statutory instruments over the next few months.
There are also moves underway for a virtual House of Commons. [3][4][5] The reports largely neglect to mention the Lords so I can't be sure if they're also part of the scheme.
It finally happened - Priti Patel presents the COVID-19 press conference. People were starting to wonder if she'd gone into hiding over the last few weeks.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
The full report is huge and incredibly damning. It defies summary - there's something completely insane on nearly every one of its 800 pages.
Edited by Iaculus on Apr 13th 2020 at 11:48:42 AM
What's precedent ever done for us?
''It was intended to be submitted as an annexe to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) inquiry into Labour’s approach to dealing with antisemitism.
However, it is understood it will not be sent, following an intervention by the party’s lawyers. The report’s conclusions clash with complaints of whistleblowers, formerly working for Labour, who told BBC Panorama last year there had been political interference in the process from the top of the party under Corbyn.''
This sounds like someone wants to sweep it under the carpet.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
A procrastination in of itself
This wasn’t just Corbyn by the way, said people also worked against Ed and Burnham because they regarded the pair of them as to far left, anyone to the left of Brown was regarded as a Trot.
However it seems that Corbyn May have managed to get rid of most of them after 2017, so while the lingering effects of them probably did impact 2019 they should hopefully not be able to screw over Starmer (who let’s face it is more an Ed type than a Blair type).
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Tief girl with eartude
If nothing else, perhaps fighting against Corbyn weakened the right wing of Labour enough that they'll be powerless to turn it into Tory lite again.
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
One of the main villains of the report is Emilie Oldknow, who's assistant general secretary of Unison and the wife of the current Shadow Health Secretary John Ashworth, (who you may remember for some very ill-timed 'banter' in 2019). There's been a widespread impression in the media that she's one of Starmer's top picks for general secretary of the party.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
The Indy digs into the electoral sabotage part of the Labour report.
Edited by Iaculus on Apr 13th 2020 at 1:39:26 PM
What's precedent ever done for us?
I'm reading the report for myself. It'll take a few days. It's incredibly long but also rather interesting.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Apr 13th 2020 at 9:52:37 AM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Captain of the Dead City
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I'm going to be super interested to hear your thoughts. I don't have NEARLY enough patience to go through it.
Also, Starmer and Rayner have announced an investigation into the report? And it looks like the investigation is more about how did this (the leak of the report) happen, rather than how did this (all the underhanded shit mentioned in the report) happen. That was my impression, and I'm slightly concerned as a result.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
I'm reading it as well, though I'm sure Wyldchyld's opinions on it will be much better informed than mine.
From what I understand, GLU was mainly staffed with Blairites more intent on keeping the left-wing of the party out of power than anything else (including handling complaints about racism and antisemitism in a timely and appropriate manner). This was reflected in their hiring practices (favouring ideological compatibility over competence), their relationship with Jeremy Corbyn and his direct staff (hiding information and refusing to follow officially published guidelines) and their handling of complaints (patchy and resolutely biased). They even went so far as to lament the influx of new party members (because most came in on the left wing), trying to disenfranchise those new members (including raising the fee to £25) and trying to sabotage the party during the 2017 election (in which they wanted Corbyn to lose badly so he'd be replaced by someone more to their liking).
A procrastination in of itself
Their statement says that it’s a three point investigation looking at; why the report was written and by whom, the contents of the report/the allegations it makes, and how the report leaked.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Captain of the Dead City
I mean why the report was written and by whom and how the report leaked are points that to me seem aimed at either discrediting the report and trying to stop a possible future repeat incidence, it feels cover-uppy to me, but it might be standard due diligence, I don't know the correct procedures w/e for this kind of thing. If its just a standard verify that's one thing, if its an attempt to soften the accusations that's another.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
Three disclaimers:
- I use the blanket term 'disparaging' in this post. It does not convey the extent to which the report accuses the 'clique' of using language in a sexist, racist, Islamophobic, dogwhistling way, or the level of violence they joke about inflicting on the people they don't like (which is not limited to just Corbyn).
- This post should not be taken as a sign I believe the report is truthful or accurate. I have no way of vetting that. I am only summarising the content I've read so far.
- Nothing is redacted. Twitter accounts, email addresses, names on chat transcripts, the name of the person the 'clique' relied on to leak information to the media, etc, are all easily identifiable. I'm not touching that information. Instead, I'm just using the term 'clique' to summarise the group the report is accusing.
The report claims that it was an internal review of the complaints process, investigating cases back as far as 2014 (in a few cases, 2010) to understand the full scope of the process and how they've been handled. The intention was to submit it to the EHRC so that the EHRC would have context of the HQ culture to sit along side the interviews and evidence it was collecting directly from HQ.
The report claims that it found factionalism within HQ to be a large reason for why the complaints/disciplinary process was being mishandled and wasn't fit-for-purpose right across the board: not just Antisemitism cases, but also abuse, racism, Islamophobia, etc. The report claims that HQ was more willing to investigate party members for having left-wing beliefs than actual complaints of abuse or racism, and it only started being addressed when Jennie Formby took over in 2018. The report identifies improvements she made and improvements that still need to be made.
The report identifies four main factions in the party. It briefly mentions the Old Right and Far Left (such as real Trotskyists) but doesn't discuss them much as they're small, remnant groups. The four factions (from right to left) are: Blairites (Right), Brownites (Centre or Centre-Left), Soft Left (Ed Miliband types), and Bennites (Left).
The clique identified by the report are a group of Blairites who call everyone to the left of Brown 'trots', who aren't really fans of Brownites either, and who feel the party has been screwed ever since Blair stood down as leader. The 2015 election had four candidates, one from each faction: Liz Kendall (Blairite), Yvette Cooper (Brownite), Andy Burnham (Soft Left) and Jeremy Corbyn (Bennite). Corbyn was only added to the ballot because MPs felt it fair to let the Bennites have a voice.
The report claims the clique engaged in disparaging treatment of: Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, all MPs who nominated Corbyn to the ballot (Sadiq Khan gets singled out), every MP who joined Corbyn's first unity shadow cabinet (most were not Corbyn allies), Owen Smith (the 2016 leadership challenger, for being another Ed Miliband), and every MP who decided to start supporting Corbyn after the unexpected 2017 GE result (Yvette Cooper gets singled out).
The report also claims there's a clique within the clique, where the inner clique will disparage other members of the clique (as 'trots') they think are not disparaging enough of the party members the clique opposes.
The report makes wide-ranging accusations against the clique, including: racism against ethnic minorities (including Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Sadiq Khan), sexism (including clique females against other females), Islamophobia, nepotism (ensuring only people who share their ideology work in HQ, isolating people with different ideologies, looking for ways to fire staff with different ideologies, suspending or de-registering members based on ideology, etc.), sabotaging the LOTO office on a range of matters from every day work to election campaigns to investigating the problems with handling Antisemitism cases, and so on.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Apr 14th 2020 at 4:09:22 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Figure of Hourai
If accurate, that means that party members have been intentionally kneecapping the party because they'd rather it not be too left than actually do anything. Eugh.
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Would that it were so simple.
That's incredibly surreal to read.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Per the Guardian liveblog, Starmer's response on the leaked report is not encouraging:
Here are two of the main points.
Starmer said he was “shocked” by the contents of the report and by “the circumstance in which it all came about”.
He insisted that Labour had to reject factionalism. He told the Today programme:
We absolutely have to turn our back on factionalism and that was the whole basis of my leadership campaign.
He refused to commit to expelling people from the party for undermining Corbyn. Asked on Sky News if he would commit to getting rid of people who were actively working against his predecessor, Starmer replied:
I’m not going to pre-empt the outcome of this investigation. I’ve set it up. I want it to be speedy. And I’ll obviously look at the result when we get it.
The internal report runs to 860 pages. Sienna Rodgers at Labour List has a very thorough summary of it here.
This is also a good thread from ITV's Shebab Khan on the report itself - who made it, who knew about it, and where it got its info from. The most interesting revelation is that Starmer probably received the report before he promoted Wes Streeting (who does not come off at all well in it) to the Shadow Cabinet.
Edited by Iaculus on Apr 15th 2020 at 10:13:15 AM
What's precedent ever done for us?
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
'But where did it come from' seems kind of daft given that we already know it was an official Labour report written up by the general secretary's office and sent to Starmer a week ago.
What's precedent ever done for us?
A procrastination in of itself
It comes down to if Starmer had seen the report and had time to process it before all of this broke loose, because if he wasn’t fully aware of it before it leaked than it makes sense he’d had a ton of questions about it (probably along the lines of “What the fuck is this? Can I trust it? How the hell did it get out?”).
The leaking probably has to be looked into simply for legal reasons, the entire thing is probably a huge GDPR breach and could land Labour in hot water legally.
Then there’s how relevant it is, are the people who did this stuff still around? Are the people they hired still around? If they used their official positions to interfere in several previous leadership elections did they mess with the one we just had? If so what did they do and who was aware of it?
My best understanding is that this was the hard-right of the party, not simply people opposed to Corbyn, but ones opposed to everyone but David Miliband and Liz Kendal. That group doesn’t match up with Keir, he’s from the same area of the party as Ed and Burnham, both of whom were apparently targeted by this group.
Isn’t the report itself half about how Labour’s internal officials have been pushing agendas? I’d say it’s reasonable to want to know who exactly put it together so they can determine if it can be trusted or not.
It makes huge accusations, it’s probably worth double-vetting stuff before people start getting expelled.
Edited by Silasw on Apr 15th 2020 at 10:56:04 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Again, it implicates Wes Streeting, a present junior minister in the shad cab, and Emilie Oldknow, junior general secretary of Unison and shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth's wife. Even if Ashworth wasn't involved in any of this (which honestly seems pretty unlikely), he now has a huge and unsustainable conflict of interest as a shadow cabinet member.
What's precedent ever done for us?
A procrastination in of itself
Implicates in what way? I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.
And yeah members of the front bench team being implicated (though guilt by association is going to be a messy one to untangle) is good reason to double verify it, if the evidence is solid but the author had a bias (which they probably did) then you need to detach the evidence from the author before acting upon it.
Also we can’t change Shadow Heath right now, any action on that specific post is going to have to wait until the pandemic has calmed down.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Captain of the Dead City
Such due diligence as checking the sources for bias etc is expected, I hope this isn't used to brush anything under the rug that shouldn't be. But you know, I'm to the Left of Bennites, so that's my bias showing.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
Gordon Brown just proving himself a decent human being, yet again.
Gawd, but the Press hated him. And, it impacted his tenure badly.