..to think that Labour is rotten from the inside?

[bounceoff]

I’m not a Tory voter, so I’m not posting to say how good they are (cos clearly, very clearly, they’re not!).

Has anybody else listened to The Labour Files on Al Jazeera English? (Link to podcast and web page below)?

Basically Al Jazeera got given years of communications from the Labour Party and investigated it. It details anti-Semitism, but not from Jeremy Corbyn - against even holocaust survivors, deep seated Islamophobia, racism/xenophobia any misogyny. To be honest the Labour Party primed Labour votes to vote Tory.

Labour councillors and members were followed and had files kept on not only their movements, but those of their children.

It actively took steps to avoid Muslim members being elected.

It actively purged members who joined to vote for Corbyn.

Brickgate had no brick ever found.

The list goes on.

I have zero faith in politicians, but this is something quite different. The level of control exerted to stop alternatives views being heard, to prevent democratic processes happening is quite horrifying. There is a clear thread that the party only likes democracy when it’s controlling it.

I have been confused about why the Labour Party lacks so many people of colour in the parliament and this was squarely answered. Same with why there’s not been a female leader. Because from what we hear from the party it makes zero sense. After listening to this report, I’m surprised anybody other than a handful of white men vote for it.

The party seems completely rotten from the core.

AIBU thinking this after listening to the investigation? Anybody else heard it?

www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/23/unprecedented-leak-exposes-inner-workings-of-uk-labour-party

podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/al-jazeera-investigates/id1488977521?i=1000581016758

No we didn’t. We used private finance to provide new buildings. If the NHS had been sensible enough to employ contract experts it would have been an excellent idea. As it is it got ripped off.

Which was labours fault for instigating the policy, when in fact it would have been cheaper for them to borrow the money to build theirselves.

The public sector in this country is very badly run, was under Labour,

Unfortunately, the facts say otherwise.

www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/default/files/field/field_publication_file/independent-audit-nhs-under-labour-1997–2005-sunday-times-march-2005.pdf

It was a Tory policy begun in Major’s administration. 🤷‍♀️ It would have been fine if the NHS had known how to negotiate a contact.

@Againstmachine given that we are stuck with FPTP, it's a straight choice between Labour and the Tories for the next GE. When we get a change of government, we can push for a change to PR. Until then voting for a party that gives you the feelz is a vote to keep the Tories in power. I will say it again: if you cannot be pragmatic and vote to get the Tories out, you are complicit in keeping them in.

@pointythings

Absolutely not I won't vote for labour do you know where I live the Tories wrecked my town, and labour condemned it.

Labour in my town let child abusers get away with it, so don't tell me to be pragmatic and get the Tories out it's insulting.

After all we’ve seen in the last 5 years are you still saying that the Labour Party can be worse than the Tories? Don’t you realise that there’s never been a political party anywhere that has policies that are all “acceptable” ?

The thing that really matters is the economy. Will the party in government tax progressively and equitably? Will they provide money to the things that matter? Will they not write ious that future generations can’t afford to pay?

The gobshites in power have shown they’re willing to do none of those things. So regardless there’s only one party that can give credible government at the moment. And I’ll hold my nose while I vote for them if I have to!!

There always seems to constantly be a Labour -smearing post on the first page of AIBU.

Nice try, Labour will be infinitely superior to the current cabinet of corrupt cockwombles. 12 years of Tory government, the country is in dire straits, and we are finally scraping the bottom of the barrel of utterly inept and deluded leaders.

Labour government can’t come soon enough.

Labour is no better.
www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/06/report-into-croydon-council-collapse-reveals-leadership-dysfunction

Not sure what the answer is. Vote for a completely different party SDP maybe.

Too subtle for me clearly, but maybe I've spent too much time reading Johnson fans on twitter

If we take just one key measure, under Labour the target of a GP appointment in 48 hours was met. The Tories are not confident they can meet their aspirational target of two weeks.

Labour investment delivered a lot, we all loved through it, we've lived through the Tory dismantling project, it is gaslighting to pretend services weren't better.

You can't run public services like a corporation, as everyone knows.

@jgw1 stay away from the spoons.

Al Jazeera is owned by the Quatari government. Just saying.

You might think that, but it was explained to us many times by exceedingly knowledgable trolls posters that Boris wasn't responsible for any of those things, many of which were the fault of but Jeremy Corbyn or Keir's beer. In fact Boris was responsible for the pot plants.

@Blossomtoes now, now, you know very well facts are used by experts, and we don't like experts. Just look how successful the last budget was when we ignored all the experts and just did our own thing.

Just playing with a fork.

That report doesn't say anything about the public sector being well run.

It's easy to throw money (billions of pounds in this case) at something to make it improve.

What's harder is to make something improve without spending, or while spending modestly, or even (gasp) while cutting costs at the same time. The entire public sector needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up. The whole "job for life", "I can't be sacked" and "working for the pension" ethos needs to be ended and replaced with people who are there to work hard and be the best, or be gone.

@Florenz How long do you think that would take? One would think after 12 years of your beloved Tories they might have made some progress on it.

The Tories haven't tried to make anything better or more efficient, they've just cut services on ideological grounds and sod the consequences.

They've had twelve long years to enact change but have only succeeded in fucking everything up.

Life expectancy is falling, poverty rising, unsolved crime rising, waiting lists rising, homelessness rising.

Their record speaks for itself.

As for the jobs for life - don't forget the Tories suddenyly want a high wage economy apparently - you won't get any decent services with Amazon-style job rights.

@Florenz do you know how many NHS jobs are fixed term contracts, and have been for a very, very long time? You have a typical Tory view of the public sector that dates back to the 1970s and you haven't bothered to look at reality for an update.

That report doesn't say anything about the public sector being well run

Either you don’t know that the NHS is part of the public sector or you haven’t read the report. Either way you’ve just destroyed what limited credibility you had.

That completely misses my point.

We don't need an alternative to the Tories, what we need is an alternative to neoliberalism. If you're insisting (as you seem to be) that the only way Labour can get elected, and thus be at all relevant to the conversation, is by embracing neoliberalism themselves, then they are not that alternative.

You can say all you like about how "opinion is formed" but if the only result is that you have a Labour-branded cabinet rather than a Tory-branded one presiding over grotesque levels of inequality, an economy that locks out large numbers of people from a decent livelihood and the increasing ravages of climate change, then so what?

You seem to think that simply changing who is in government will solve the country's problems, regardless of the structural factors causing those problems in the first place that apparently need to remain unchanged in order to effect that change of government in the first place.

@jollyrogering you are right up to a point, but we have to start somewhere.

So step 1 is to get the Tories out and Labour in. Step 2 is to exert all possible pressure to change our electoral system so we get PR. Step 3 is going to be a period of chaos where new political parties emerge and get elected, and we all get used to coalition governments.

Then we'll see, but we will have a better chance of getting somewhere than we do now.

I agree. Labour are bloody awful.

@Stationsofthecross You are not wrong. Just look at the awful mess they have got us into over the past 12 years.

@Stationsofthecross quite, they've been terrible. Cost of living crisis, Covid, lying to parliament - oh, wait...