And somehow manage to make her look even cooler in the process
24 | Labour member | ✝️ 🏳️🌈
283 followers 113 following 3,194 posts
view profile on Bluesky
And somehow manage to make her look even cooler in the process
Again, the key divide within the Democratic party does not map onto a left/right axis: It is between those who want to fight back forcefully, like Pritzker, and those who can’t/won’t shake the impulse to accommodate, appease, and uphold “normalcy.”
Of course!
I mean, not if you're trying to convince LGBT voters it isn't
Well sort of, he's generally very non-committal on the subject
One could argue that he lied to the British electorate as well, but I don't think he perceives it that way. It's more that he's just always done what his advisers have told him to do to win elections (leadership and general) without stopping to question whether the platform is actually deliverable.
Yes, I've heard mutterings to a similar effect
Especially (and this is when I start to lose the sympathy of my audience) given a lot of the technical changes are actually counterproductive to certain progressive goals, to some extent at least
People wished for a return to "Old Labour" and that's what we got. Specifically the Labour of 1968.
His friendliness with Mothin Ali would suggest otherwise though
We had a normally right-of-the-party guy on the verge of tears in CLP over the 'island of strangers' speech a few months ago. And a lot has happened since then.
And it's not much of a left-right thing either. Members aren't up in arms about nationalisation or trade union rights or what have you. The anger is about the disregarding of what most members would consider basic egalitarian principles.
It's not one single thing, it's the fact that we don't seem to be sticking to our values on anything. Not on child poverty, not on disability, not on LGBT rights, not on anti-racism. All of it compounds into this overwhelming feeling of having been taken for a ride.
I'm on the right of the party! (the liberal bit of right at any rate) – and I'm unhappy
I mean, I myself am one of said people who wanted Starmer in! Not that I was ever any great fan of his, you understand: he was just the best of the three options we were offered in 2020.
It doesn't get reported on that much, but the party membership is deeply, deeply unhappy at the moment – which was not the case in 1998. The extreme drop-off in membership numbers, and in the numbers of activists turning up to canvass, is starting to filter through to MPs.
Next year's locals will be a big turning point, I think. If we lose lots of seats to the Lib Dems and Greens (and there's a good chance we will), there'll be mounting pressure to change course, and if he refuses to listen there could be serious drama.
Leeds is weird because our opposition is split so many different ways! It's difficult to envisage a governing coalition that wouldn't involve Labour, not least because the Tory group is likely to shrink further over the next few years and the LDs/Greens are not going to want to govern with Reform.
I remember reading that when it was published and hoping you were wrong
I agree with you: what he's suggesting *might* work for a Tory government, but this is a Labour government whose continued existence is dependent on delivering improvements to public services and reductions in poverty as soon as possible. So we need to raise taxes.
I mean, losing control of urban councils when we're in government isn't without precedent. We didn't control Liverpool 1998-2010, either Leeds or Newcastle 2004-2011, or Lambeth 2002-2006.
Ironically the current approach is much more elitist and sneery than just authentically expressing the average centre/centre-left voter's position on the subject would be
Possibly, yes, but it would require a fair bit of North Shropshire style leapfrogging. Don't know if that's doable outside of a by-election or not.
Yeah, I grew up in Middlesbrough in a strongly Labour area, but just south of there is rural North Yorkshire which is just about the most steadfastly Tory bit of the country – so I know the type
The Tory brand *is* toxic to a lot of voters, but there is about 15% of the electorate (mainly rich rural voters) for whom it's the opposite. Which is why the right may now have to deal with a permanently split vote in the way that the left has had to for decades.
Yep, and that's less likely to happen here for a bunch of reasons, hence why we might end up with a permanent split on the right
You say that, but the Greens are increasingly a coalition that will take all sorts. They've won local elections in areas with lots of conservative Muslim voters, and their policy of not whipping representatives means they can run candidates essentially as well-financed independents.
Yep, although the key difference is that support for Canada's Reform party was concentrated in the western provinces, which allowed them to win scores of seats on a relatively low vote share. Reform UK by contrast, has a wider geographic spread and often is in direct competition with the Tories.
It's easy to see the RW vote swinging behind Reform in Labour-held seats where they're currently 2nd, but Tory-held seats and traditional Labour‐Tory marginals will be more of a challenge for them
I mean, Reform are doing well in the polls at the moment, but by the standards of a main opposition party their polled vote share isn't *that* high, and their vote is too evenly spread for tactical voting on the right to be effective
My prediction is still that we'll probably see a Canada-style reverse merger at some point
I picked a good year to try and get elected as a Labour councillor for the first time, didn't I
Not that they were a formal party as such, but they were a significant political force
Yep, and you missed possibly the most significant one, which is the defection of scores of left-wing Liberals to Labour in the 1920s!
I think for the leadership it's basically a question of either responding to it or being removed after a disastrous set of local elections
Yeah, I can't stand the guy (not least because he was very rude to me on Twitter a few years ago), but I'm very willing to concede that we need an obnoxious left-wing outrider party to balance out the obnoxious right-wing one
I do wonder if 'Your Party' will end up being a left equivalent of Change UK – i.e. a holding bay for disaffected Labour people while they process the fact they really just need to join the Greens
So, as an (increasingly unhappy) Labour member, it's hard to know what to make of it really
Polanski as leader is probably not going to help the Greens win seats under FPTP, but they will put pressure on Labour's left flank in a way that hasn't really been the case since 2015
Case in point...read the Australian governments response to far right xenophobic marches in Aus...and compare it to the UK with talk of "island of strangers" and "legitimate concerns" You enforce the norm by...calling a spade a spade, not by kowtowing to ethnonationalists
Spain is a bit higher than Italy in the rankings. I couldn't tell you about differences within Spain though, it's one of the few countries in Western Europe I haven't visited!
I went to a café in Eindhoven where the barista didn't speak Dutch
IIRC in the most recent survey of English proficiency Italy actually came slightly above France!
It's true that French people's English proficiency has come a long way, *BUT* they are still the least proficient in Western Europe. You can get by with English in big cities, but you'll struggle even in large-ish towns (which is not the case in Germany).
I'll always be very grateful that I didn't get sent to Paris on my year abroad. Working in rural Alsace for 7 months did wonders for my French.
I don't disagree with the first two sentences, but I think in general there's been far too much movement from 'not really noticing the problem' to 'despair'. Let's experiment with 'people and organisations try and enforce the norm' and then see if it is actually hard for it to be re-bottled.
It's just so unbelievably awful, isn't it
Aaaargh this is such a difficult question to answer! There are just so many that I adore!
You might give it a different name (not least to avoid comparison with the very different White House CoS role), but you do need a SpAd in that role, because controlling access to the PM and coordinating the other SpAds across government is a full-time job. There's no way an MP could do it.
I don't disagree that there needs to be a single powerful minister for the Prime Minister's Office, but I think the Chief of Staff position is the wrong target for criticism.
And yet, it's not even how children speak, it's just vacuous PR-driven damage-control-ese
One of my recent realisations was how much I – despite ostensibly being on the same side of the party – have an instinctive aversion to the Fabian way of doing things
Very clear now, I think, that councils need stronger powers to 'in-source' SEND provision, including devoting more resources to supporting children with SEND – whether or not they have a diagnosis or EHCP – in mainstream schools near where they live. www.ft.com/content/6a15...
The fact it doesn't take that much money (in the grand scheme of things) for a lobby group to be better funded than a major political party is a serious weakness of the UK's political system. It makes capture of politicians by interest groups far easier than it should be.
With council selections and even a lot of parliamentary selections, there literally aren't the staffing resources there to vet people properly – which IMO is a strong argument for state funding of political parties
(For what it's worth, I don't! I finished my teacher training and got QTS, but never completed the PGCE. But then again, politics is littered with people who've tried to be teachers and failed lol.)
Now I'm worried that if I become a politician there'll be some minor scandal over whether or not I have a PGCE
It does seem like stand-up is the only route into comedy now
If I were trying to win elections and arguments, I simply would be doing everything I could to move UK political conversation away from a website run by an avowed enemy who believes and writes this stuff about me:
IIRC older British cooking did use garlic more (as well as other strong flavours like horseradish) but rapid urbanisation, industrialisation and population growth made things a lot more bland
Right, and that's less a matter of ideology and more one of mentality
I remember reading said New Statesman piece at the time and wondering what all the fuss was about (one might expect me to have been more sympathetic than you, but no!)
😭😭😭
There's that, and then there's the fact that Labour's core voters genuinely are a good deal more liberal. Which is something I'm constantly having to remind people of when they suggest we emulate the Australian Labor Party's ideology.
Just caught up with last Thursday evening's Prom, whose centrepiece work was Saint-Saëns's 3rd Symphony 'With Organ'. Fantastic to hear it on the Royal Albert Hall organ. And it reminds me to listen to more of Saint-Saëns's works, because I always appreciate them when I come across them.
That’s a good graphic.
Look, there's no doubt in my mind that Bell is very bright, very accomplished in the technicalities of policy. But the same was true of Harold Wilson, and it didn't stop him from making the wrong choices.
Completely agree with this. My concern is more about what Bell's economic/fiscal approach will be. Will he push for broad-based, economy-friendly tax rises? Or will he continue with the same 2015-esque 'tax anything but income or sales' approach that his boss has thus far pursued?
The right: turn off spending on everything. Also the right: why trains no work!?! Must be the immigrants!
I mean, I don't dislike Poor Things – it's very fun – but the film press does seem to think it was rather more profound than it actually was.
The critics' response seems to be 'we expected something more substantial of Tony McNamara, let's blame the director for clipping his wings'. To which my response would be 'what are you talking about, this is no more insubstantial than Poor Things'.
Went to see The Roses and didn't read any of the reviews beforehand. I enjoyed it, so I was surprised to see so many people have been critical of it.
He might be unwell but not dead yet
And I think you're right that factionalist thinking means they can't bring themselves to back sectors that are in any way left-coded, despite the UK's comparative advantage often being in such sectors.
So you end up with 'New Labour funded public services by backing the financial sector', rather than the right lesson, which is 'New Labour was understood the UK's economy at the time it was in office and governed in a way that maximised the chances of success in the most promising sectors'.
You can see the structural side of it in Rachel Reeves's many attempts at a sort of finance corporatism. It's an example IMO of how this government tries to draw from the New Labour but ends up learning all the wrong lessons.
He is, as he and his aides often point out, deeply embedded in the socialist traditions of Britain. It's just that he's deeply embedded in the part labelled "be racist and useless", which makes him a Wilsonite socialist
bsky.app/profile/nath...
What are you planning to do your PhD on?
My uni approaching me a month before the start of term to suggest that I transfer from the taught MA Linguistics programme to an MA by research feels like a massive vote of confidence, but it's also pretty daunting
While hating most of Blair's actual policies
Much easier now for us to make a socially-minded economic responsibility pitch to those voters than it is to do whatever it is we're attempting at the moment
I can get why Tories would look at the tax level during the late 80s and 90s and *think* we're a high-tax country now, but unless they find a) a whole new load of oil and gas under the North Sea, and b) a way to get people to have loads of children, there's no electorally viable route back to that.
Exactly, and it's not as if the UK is either a) a high-tax country, or b) phenomenally generous to its retirees (it's just average in that respect)
Many of the other Westminster systems (Australia, Canada, Ireland) – have a separate body responsible for civil service management, spending control and procurement – freeing up both the Prime Minister's office and the finance ministry to take on a more strategic role. The UK should follow suit.
(If it wasn't clear, by this I'm talking about the base the Lib Dems have now!)
I mean, this is essentially another example of trying to get the private sector to do social policy and it going badly wrong. If you want more housing at social rents, get the state to build and finance it. Don't tax private developers into oblivion and choke off economic potential in the process.
It's a very good piece. What I will add, from the political side of things, is that making things better for private developers is an easier sell if you're investing in council housing as well. So it's ultimately not a choice between one or the other – it's both or none.
Don't disagree with your overall point, but Lincoln is not an example of it! It's a university town and a cathedral city, it's closer to a traditional marginal than a Red Wall one.
This is why it is IMO imperative that we lose a *ton* of seats to the Lib Dems and Greens next year, much as that will mean losing councillors I respect. There needs to be a wake-up call to the party leadership about where our real base is.
In the end it comes down to a) lack of direction from the top, and b) a corrosive sentimentality about areas that used to be Labour strongholds, despite their socioeconomics having changed beyond all recognition.
It's obvious why Reform and the Tories are competing for these people. It's less immediately clear why Labour is, as the path to re-election doesn't run through them.
Whereas what the today's 'centre-right' demographic base actually wants is something akin to what the early SDP was proposing: participatory, localist social democracy for the middle classes, with no great desire for redistribution or egalitarianism but no real hostility to the state either
Just wait till people find out that Zionism used to be firmly associated with the left of the party...
I wouldn't say it was even true today!
I'm biased of course, but considering Labour's electoral coalition was significantly more socially conservative back then, my view is that New Labour was essentially about as pro-migration as it could feasibly be.
It's easy for us to understand the switch from Blair/Brown to Starmer as an illiberal backward step, but the same was true of the switch from Gaitskell to Wilson. People tend to forget that Gaitskell was insanely liberal on race relations and immigration by the standards of his time.
I think it's pretty nuanced. The 45-51 and 97-10 governments presided over significant increases in immigration. 64-70/74-79 and 24-present are the backlash to that.
I do think people generally overrate the importance of think tanks staffed by highly skilled people churning out detailed reports vs. a totalizing ideological framework with a small group of well-connected true believers pushing it