Purge the Labour party of the lefties

[Viviennemary]

Just seen on BBC news that Labour wants a purge of the left. Bring it on I say. It was unelectable under Corbyn and that idiotic Momentum lot. Why doesn't Diane Abbott just retire gracefully. But loòks like its all going to cause a big row with the Tories rubbing their hands in glee. Will they ever learn.

That wasn’t the subtext at all I don’t think. She was talking about an aspect of her own culture, not criticising others.
few backbench politicians have had their every utterance and deed scrutinised as she has. Let’s face it, we all know why that is.

Considering he's simply a Democratic Socialist who'd not be out of place in any of the socialist parties in parliament in any other country in Europe I think it says more about you that you think he's "far left".

What's this "Starmer can only do so with what he has to play with nonsense"? There's a perfectly sound economic argument for rejecting the neoliberal orthodoxy Starmer has committed to following.

Labour did it after the war, in circumstances not too different from the situation we're in now. It grew the economy by spending on public services, housing and infrastructure and created the NHS and the welfare state.

Do you really think the people Starmer surrounds himself with; Streeting, Reeves and that vile attack dog Luke Akehurst are committed to the cause of Democratic Socialism?

What do you think a Labout Party that's set itself up to fail to deliver is going to do to the cause of Democratic Socialism? It'll end it for at least a generation and probably longer.

You might not care that's she's a black woman on the left, but the Labour right do. They've consistently undermined, failed to support and worked against black women on the left.

Fair enough. I guess no-one knows the subtext except her anyway. I don't scrutinise every utterance and deed of politicians (from any party), but I do expect that their decision making in private will broadly align with the values they spout. She made this remark in 2010, in relation to being questioned about sending her son to private school. Yet she has claimed to be a life long socialist, and frequently critcised the private education system. In 2003 she was publicly critical of her colleague, Harriet Harman, for sending her son to a grammar school. Again, in a 2018 article for the Labour List website Ms Abbott wrote that socialism “cannot be elitist or sectoral”.

Practice what you preach. There shouldn't be one rule for you, and another for everyone else. And I totally apply this to the Conservatives too! British people are usually scrupulously fair, and it is a trait that is valued. It's not unreasonable to expect people to act in a way that they have advocated for others all their lives.

Exactly. I've got a number of French friends who thought Corbyn's Labour was pretty mainstream.
British politics have moved so far to the right now, that people have skewed points of political reference.

@BlueJamSandwich and how do you propose we do that- I'm not criticising , I'm interested- because if it's borrowing then we have a problem as the Tory's have trashed the ability to borrow cheaply.

I'm not disagreeing by the way- I do think we need to do those things- my mentality though says the money has to come from somewhere -

We cannot borrow due to obr and Covid. I think Labour would have done the same. The old issues will surface about Labour and the economy if they spend, spend, spend. They just cannot promise that.

@TizerorFizz you see I think that too- so am interested in what @BlueJamSandwich says as to how we do get to invest and spend huge money

I'm very open minded - but can't see you can do it without causing other big issues further down the line.

@Zimunya

"West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children" - the subtext being that if you were a parent of any other race you were second-class parents.

That was such a laughable statement given that boys of West Indian heritage have education outcomes on a par with, if not worse than WWC boys. So much hot air.

I will always remember the morning after the 2019 General Election. My sister and I both cried down the phone to eachother about the result. We didn't know what to say. Just so astounded that so many people fell for the lies and/or don't care about other people, especially marginalised people.
We knew a Boris Johnson government would be bad. We couldn't have predicted just how catastrophic the next few years would become. Brexit 'got done', an appallingly mishandled pandemic, a prostrate NHS and a housing crisis with a marked increase of homelessness and food bank use.
People have died, and many more living in misery whilst the rich have multiplied their profits.
But still people make excuses for them, and blame asylum seekers and benefit claimants instead.
It's all so heartbreaking 😔

Not that many true working class now. Education and decades of university education has bitten a big chunk out of it.

This and one left in our wider family are often center right/right wing.

Also think many areas are looking at their traditional representatives and think what has your party done for us lately - I think that's why Boris got the red wall vote why the electorate are considered volatile this election.

I didn't like Momentum at all - and while I can see Diane Abbott made a huge contribution over decades I don't think she's the powerhouse she once was.

@SmileyHappyPeopleInTheSun Also think many areas are looking at their traditional representatives and think what has your party done for us lately - I think that's why Boris got the red wall vote why the electorate are considered volatile this election.

Can only speak for the area I grew up, but Labour's 13 years in power did sweet fanny adams to reverse the decline and their vote share started going down during the Blair years. It was only because they had such big majorities in the red wall it never mattered. The ONLY time they increased their vote share, and by thousands in some cases, was when one Jeremy Corbyn was leader in 2017. The hatchet job that was done on him following that election when the establishment realised how close they came to having someone running Britain who was going to put the interests of the many, not the few, front and centre of policy, was unreal. No Labour politician could have won that election with that amount of crap thrown at them. The likes of Blair, Mandelson and that bunch lost the red wall and were also, imho, responsible for Brexit.

I didn't think Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson were credible PM candidates and local candidates weren't enough to overcome that downside so voted for another party.

I also think Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott have made anti sematic comments and I don't think those can be waved away as hatched job by shadowy media forces.

I respectfully disagree that Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott made anti-Semitic remarks.
Jeremy Corbyn is probably the least racist person in the world!
There definitely was some anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. It would be disingenuous to say otherwise. Obviously anti-Semitism is utterly disgusting and needs to be robustly repudiated. But, to be honest, there was less of it in Labour (a tiny percentage) than in the general population; and far fewer anti-Semites within then Labour's ranks than among Tories. The Tory party was awash with racism. Boris was quite blatantly racist on occasion.

I learnt recently that it was a deliberate campaign to attack the left with the thing it isn't. A trick they learnt from the Republican Party in America. They realised attacking Corbyn with facts about who he actually was had little effect. Deliberately smearing him, and accusing him of being guilty of the very thing he's opposed all his life was completely intentional. People believed it.
The Tories and the right-wing press are devoid of morality honestly.

I respectfully disagree that Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott made anti-Semitic remarks

Our RL Jewish friends found their remarks and behavior antiemetic worrying so - and frankly someone denying that on here doesn't change my view or theirs about what was said and done at the time.

I think Stammer may have got this dealt with - I hope so - but all the attempts to explain it away dismiss it just makes the left look bad.

Jeremy Corbyn lost to a Tory party with less than stella track record led by Boris Johnson - that's how unpopular Corbyn was. I dislike the authoritarian bent on the left and the idea electorate are stupid comes from the USA and frankly does no-one any good.

I will I think be voting Labour this time because they look better but if Momentum start up and looks like it may gain ground - a party so confident of it's popularity it hides in another -then I may not.

https://jacobin.com/2019/10/labour-party-antisemitism-claims-jeremy-corbyn

This article from 2019 explains it well.

This paragraph especially -

Yet for all the headlines about “mounting antisemitism” in Labour, we are rarely given any sense of its scale. Data released by the party in February 2019 showed that it had received 1,106 specific complaints of antisemitism since April 2018, of which just 673 regarded actual Labour members. The party membership stands at over half a million: the allegations, even if they were true, concern around 0.1 percent of the total.

Obviously, even one single incident of anti-Semitism is one too many. But, it was very irresponsible of the media to create so much fear.

I’m fairly sure it’s been proven that the media outright lied about Corbyn being anti semitic. It was a tactic to distract from the campaign.

Personally I don’t believe people are stupid, but to be upset about the state of education, NHS etc and then refuse to vote for a party who was offering a costed solution to these problems is odd.

I completely agree. Labour needs to get back to it's roots.
Previous Labour manifestos...
1900 Nationalisation of Land and Railways; Abolition of the Standing Army, and the Establishment of a Citizen Force; Public Provision of Better Houses for the People; The object of these measures is to enable the people ultimately to obtain the Socialisation of the Means of Production, Distribution, and Exchange, to be controlled by a Democratic State in the interests of the entire Community, and the Complete Emancipation of labour from the Domination of Capitalism and Landlordism, with the Establishment of Social and Economic Equality between the Sexes.
1910 Abolish the House of Lords
1918 Labour demands a substantial and permanent improvement in the housing of the whole people. At least a million new houses must be built at once at the State's expense, and let at fair rents, and these houses must be fit for men and women to live in. Labour will press for a really comprehensive Public Health Act co-ordinating all health authorities, based on prevention rather than cure, and free from servile or inquisitorial features. It will also press for real public education, free and open to all, with maintenance scholarships without distinction of class, and for justice to the teachers, upon whom education finally depends.
And not forgetting that 1918 saw the introduction of Clause 4
“To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry of service.” Clause IV, part 4.
The Labour Party today is unrecognisable from its inception but not in the way you appear to think.

We're a currency printing economy. Every pound invested in things that improve an economy make a return above the initial investment. It's how the economy turned around post WWII.

For example, investing a pound in education generally adds £3 to the economy. https://equitablegrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/102620-education-investment-report.pdf

The Labour party didn't find them to be antisemitic though, despite being investigated.

Neither did the group Jewish Voice for Labour, made up of mostly leftwing Jews find them to be antisemitic.

The Jewish Labour Movement however, an avowedly Zionist group whose leading members receive thousands in funding via pro-Israeli groups & whose members include many non-Jews did.

I wonder why that was and why the majority of expulsions under Starmer from the Labour Party have been of leftwing Jews?

I don't think people who disagree with me are simpletons. I don't think people who fail to check party policies are simpletons either.
We've all got gaps in our knowledge and I can fall victim to sound bites as much as anyone.
It's just a pity that happened on such a scale to such disastrous effect in 2019. It was so important, and our one chance for some time to really make the country kinder and fairer 😔

The Labour Party is measurably more authoritarian and less democratic under Starmer than under Corbyn. But that's no surprise considering Starmer is a member of the explicitly anti-democracy group the Trilateral Commission, along with Mandleson's mate Epstein.

It's also worth noting that the number of candidates deselected under the authoritarian left was zero yet under Starmer it's already well into double figures.

@Crikeyalmighty @TizerorFizz don't take my word for it, Nobel prize winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman agree and were amongst a significant group of world leading economists arguing against austerity at its implementation years ago.

Keynes, Minsky, Michal Kalecki etc there's plenty of sound theory and historical evidence to back this view up.

@BlueJamSandwich I would have preferred a slower travel for austerity and agreed with Ed Balls on this. Labour had few choices now though. Any policies they might have had are up for review. Borrowing to fund growth is virtually impossible. We cannot borrow any more! So what people used to think about spending on services must bear in mind our really poor fiscal position. Way worse than 2010!