Labour isn't Working - Thread 35

[Nuthatch26]

A chat thread for those who don't like this Labour* *government. 💙

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

Previous thread
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5538300-labour-isnt-working-thread-34?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

There’s some absolute Labour nonsense out there. Even when they’re about to lose the bollard.

And agree re this term, I hope mnhq delete it by now.

I think it’s Burnham not Starmer who wants the September timetable. Burnham doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t have a plan and could really use the extra months to scramble around and get his ducks in a row. There is nothing in it for Starmer except months of further frustration and humiliation.

It amuses me when they slag us off on this thread or say they're being watched elsewhere on the board. Masses of hypocrisy and zero self awareness much?!

👋 to the thread monitors! 😁😁

I do think Lammy would be a good dinner guest, even if he’s no thinker. He does seem personable and decent, and possibly funny.

A suitably humiliating end to the premiership of one of the most unprincipled, dishonest, sanctimonious, authoritarian hypocrites ever to besmirch our public life.

If Burnham meanwhile wants a mandate, he should call a GE.

He’s too misogynistic for me, with that dinosaur comment. Perhaps that’ll come back as karma and he’ll be out.

Ha @AfishcalledLindayes truly befitting.

Beautifully put.

Oh yes, sanctimony - that’s exactly right, it’s worse than me for me than the policies, the overwhelming conviction like a bunch of hardline American evangelicals that they alone are the good people, the bearers of the truth and everyone should give them all their money, their choices and their trust.

Sanctimony, arrogance and hypocrisy. People can’t stand it. Out he goes.

To change the subject for a moment, there is another thread running on the private rape gang inquiry. I haven’t read the report- I don’t think I could bare it. A poster summarised the abuse. It blew my mind and turned my stomach.

Why isn’t the msm covering this? I am confused. Something definitely happened. Rupert Lowes inquiry is either true or not. Either way it’s news. Leaving all this swirling around with no discussion feels very disorienting.

I haven’t read no idea of the facts. But the lives if wirking class young women matter very much Why aren’t we acting like it?

Perhaps if the political left retained any class lens, they would be more amenable to see how the structures of power mobilised against working class girls to keep them silent and vulnerable at the alter of community cohesion.

But you can't stick a progressive flag on working class, there's no social or political capital in it.

It's all of that and the feeling that he holds the population in contempt.

Absolutely. It means people return the favour via votes.

I'm reluctant to get into this, because - for reasons that I don't quite get - some people react very angrily to criticism of Rupert Lowe.

I'll say up front that the core of the report - the very upsetting testimonies from the women who gave evidence - needs to be on the record.

I have multiple other issues with the report: that Lowe's "inquiry" didn't have any powers to compel witnesses (this is why Maggie Oliver advised Farage against having a private inquiry); that it's been transparently used to boost the profile of Lowe's party; that Lowe employed Lotus Munchers podcasters to write the report, with predictably unprofessional results; that the presence in Lowe's party of open white nationalists and neonazis gives ammunition to every denier who wants to say the whole issue is a far-right dogwhistle.

So I'm not convinced that Lowe has done the survivor community a solid, and is entitled to preen himself about how he is their sole champion.

Nevertheless, that wouldn't be half as much of an issue if these women hadn't been failed for decades by people who aren't Rupert Lowe.

Yes I don’t get the silence on this. Labour and the BBC I take it has nothing.

I agree. A private inquiry is not formal and cannot command respect.

I will not rely on any initiative of Lowe’s, or anyone else’s, that lacks the proper powers and judicial independence necessary to make fact finding and conclusions respectable.

Yes, there are all these horrendous accusations…but no one rebuts them. I assume we are supposed to believe that there is nothing to see here. I am not a fan of Rupert Lowe, but it does not logically follow that all the accusations are false just because Lowe is involved. I really want the media and government to go on record telling me that they are false.

You were less reluctant on the other thread...
At least, you are now leaving Sammy Woodhouse out of it.

Thank you for your personal snark.

You obviously feel that Sammy agreeing to be a keynote speaker at Martin Sellner's white supremacy conference doesn't do anything to undermine her credibility.

I disagree.

Really? There are words from the victims there. I can’t see why that alone would be dismissed.

Yes just something. It’s weird to see stonewalling to this extent.

It feels similar to just blanking Rhiannon Whyte’s mother because she says politically uncomfortable things.

Well, I'm mixed. I think, at least, there is a body of collated work that cuts through institutional squeamishness and provides a space for the voice of victims that hasn't been sanitised for delicate political sensibilities.

It was never going to have the clout to compel evidence or enough gravitas to wash away its activism origins. That's fine. I'd agree with those limitations and others too.

But, and it's an important but, the establishment has eviscerated all its trust capital employing the many tactics to fudge and minimise previous and upcoming enquiries and perhaps what was needed, and which Lowe has provided, is an account outside of that, which is not to convince the establishment but to lay down in writing what happened, how this happened as a corrective to the industrial grade gaslighting.

I suppose I have to say now, for the benefit of watchers, that I'm no fan of Lowe, yada, yada, not that it will be believed. But, as a working class white girl who watched classmates picked off and resigned to this misery in a town that never even makes the headlines, I do have some skin in this game and the rage that girls were left to to rot fills me with rage.

There’s ample evidence of rape gangs. The victims need to be heard and supported. And investigations need to happen into particular crimes and into broader reasons of agency failure. But the courtroom is the place for the first; and proper inquiry with powers of compulsion and demonstrable authority is the place for the second.

I doubt we’d disagree that Labour should hang their heads in shame about ‘dog whistles’ and the rest of it.

We've all been through many years where there was ample evidence and it was shut down with "these are just Nick Griffin or Tommy Robinson talking points". It was in bad faith but it was effective.

I don't like Rupert Lowe. I think far too many people assume he's "credible" because he's a very rich man with a plummy voice and a seat in Parliament. Maybe that will help amplify some valuable testimony. I don't dismiss the idea.

I also don't believe in handing ammunition to deniers. Lowe stans on X are currently going after Camilla Tominey for not showing deference to Dear Leader. Tominey is very far from being a grooming gang denier, and I'm afraid the pattern of targetting female journalists is becoming very obvious.

There's a certain type of activists whose activism is not about achieving anything, it's about having an identity and sense of community. I'm too old for that and would rather achieve things.

If the victims just put their voices straight to the press it’d be the same words. Would people still ignore them?