Westminstenders: Penny dropping time

[RedToothBrush]

Johnson already seems to be hinting at protections for workers rights and the environment that he promised are to be dropped.

Along with enshrining Brexit in law to the end of Dec 2020 thus creating another Brexit no deal date. This time without any safety net in parliament.

"won't Johnson be more liberal than he suggested" they cry

About that...

Its no wonder the Vermin party wants to disenfranchise as many young as they can

They can not reclaim whilst momentum is control of the NEC.

Meh, the members voted who they wanted in charge of the NEC, why do you think the right of the PLP should have stayed in charge of the NEC?

Not all Labour members even on the left are momentum members, what would you do to address the falling number of members that was happening under the 'Blairite' wing? If there was a mass exodus of members if we went back to the policies of Blairesque dimensions what would the right of the PLP do to counter that, we need to bring both wings of the party together, this constant divisiveness fuelled by both the left and the right need to be addressed but that wont happen while the right of the PLP keep screaming Corbyn, move on we lost there are plenty more battles to come but I feel the right of the Labour party cant stop being divisive, and as remainers in the Labour party we need to address the fact that the difference in policy between 2017 and 2019 was our stance on Brexit we were no longer the party of soft Brexit but the party of PV, our northern voters let us know what they felt about that, they stayed home

Dh pointed out that in Yes (Prime?) minister a long time ago, Sir Humphrey explained that was why the M4 (London to Oxford) existed long before the M11 (London to Cambridge).

The M4 goes to Bristol - and might just manage to sneak into S Wales.
It's the M40 which is the London to Oxford route, but until about 1991 or thereabouts, it stopped well short of Oxford at Stokenchurch. I think the M11 was already completed by then.

Or were we all too blind as remainers and I include myself in this to accept that maybe the country did want Brexit, either way its going to happen now and it will be the hardest of hard Brexits because the Vermin are in charge

Also unlike the situation with change at al there is now a majority government. Little chance of a snal election.

I know many of us feel that there won't be any change, but regimes totter when sufficient people are against them.

For all the Tory crowing, they haven't yet got the majority of the country behind them. They don't have very many London constituencies and there are still many cities with no Tory MPs.

If they do a complete about turn and start building lots of council houses and really do start to put money into the NHS then yes, they might win people over. But this is so different from Toryism from 1979 onwards that a lot of their current voters really won't like it.

One of the questions Labour need to ask its self and solve is how do we cross that age gap with a hostile media and without fucking over the young membership and them leaving the party, I dont think just centrist policies are going to do that

I personally think we will be on the right side of history as far as remaining is concerned but until we rejoin the EU its a moot point

One thing I think could help is good old Ed, he's kind of endeared himself to the young membership as of late and I think the right trust him enough so I think who ever becomes leader should get Ed to serve as a cabinet minister if we will, I hope we solve this in the next 5 years but I have a feeling we wont especially if Boris courts the north, theyre still angry enough and it will take time for the falling quality of life to make it up the 'food chain'

I think we will be on the right side of history too.

I just read a quote by Lao Tzu:
Real gold does not fear the test of fire.

I will add that the volunteer work I do in the US is only carried out by qualified professionals in the UK.
It has given me a fascinating insight into the US court system and its social services.
But I really struggle with the idea that it is done by volunteers with minimal supervision over here.

I’m sure this tedious fact has been posted before, but you go “up” to London from anywhere, because railways.

As always, thank you to all the friendly, human posters for keeping the flame alive. Haven't read a paper or watched any news since last Friday (need to focus on what I can do to survive this government's occupation of our democracy - FPTP ) so these threads really help me to stay in touch. An invaluable resource.

I don't think Labour can split, tobee's right about the name (and funding & data) - the Party without that would die under FPTP (as BigChoc says).

I think Just is wrong in implying Labour should have backed 'Leave': the data suggests that would have been fatal.

I know a lot of Corbynites are pushing a narrative that it was the Second Referendum that undermines victory - but, again, the data really doesn't support that.

The age issue worries me a little, BigChoc. Alas, one or two people think it just shows that if 'we' dig down, weather out the next 20 years out of power, victory will ultimately be
'Ours'.

That's kind of cynical, really. What of all those people who can't wait 20 years? (I would put myself in that category - I could do with a well-funded NHS right now). And what makes them think a Hard Right government is going to sit on its hands, waiting patiently for it's inevitable toppling in 20 years? And what will 20 years of watching Labour act like an irrelevance do to the political leanings of that 'youth' vote?

The one thing I am praying for is an end - Dear God, let there be an end - to the talk of 'Blairite and 'Blairism'.

It's used as a kind of a scapegoat/bogeyman/ 'othering device' to keep people in line.

A mass outbreak of critical thinking would be good.

No-one, absolutely no-one is proposing a return to 1997. It is, as they say, history.

I've also seen proposals from hard Left people that Labour now work with Johnson to accomplish Brexit. Which is the inevitable result of the 'it was allowing the centrist Remainers to take charge that caused the defeat' line of reasoning.

There is so much wrong with this, it is hard to know where to begin.

Having said all that, I put most of it down to grief about such an awful GE result.

It's going to take time to process.

It's enormously sad.

The U.K. is now facing a Hard Right government and a pretty drastic remodelling if it's economic base and ultimately it's social and political fabric.

Children are going hungry, schools underfunded, the NHS facing underfunding and creeping privatisation.

It is truly grief-inducing. It's absolutely sad.

And there are an awful lot of Labour members who truly believed the GE result wouldn't just be a hung Parliament but a victory. They really, really did. And this is a massive shock for them.

We talk about the cognitive dissonance of Leave voters - but there was a hell of a lot of that around Corbyn.

I was out campaigning with people who really, genuinely believed they were going to wake up on Friday in utopia. It's no surprise that things are a bit crazy on social media, as people try to understand what happened. They genuinely didn't see it.

So, it's all going to take a while.

If Labour had backed Leave this time around, I would have voted MRLP, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

That age chart is interesting. No point in just waiting, sounds awful and passive and who knows where we’ll be by then. And no account for how people vote as they age.

But it’s red enough at the young end to have the right policies, leader and forget Brexit (which will no longer have the promise of sunny uplands to dangle), then if Labour don't screw it up with Corbynites (puts everyone else off) then they can be a decent opposition. And also have a hope of getting somewhere.

KS saying policy overload and broad church sound right. And he’s got good enough character to follow that through.

I'm not sure there is going to be a forgetting of Brexit.

Sadly, a massive, massive problem the Opposition now face is how to handle Brexit as an Opposition - and a small, weak Opposition at that.

-Do they criticise and highlight the Hard Right version of Brexit? Every job lost? Every eco infraction? Every pulling back of workers' and consumer's rights?
How do you do that, when you didn't set forward a clear alternative? When you then risk sounding as though you are undermining Leavers' wishes? All this when you are an Opposituin and can actually deliver nothing on your criticisms by way of actually moderating its implementation?

• Do you go along with it? Tacitly enabling a Hard Right project? Adding to the narrative of Johnson's great success?

• Do you just ignore it? And focus on other stuff? That's ignoring an elephant.

Sadly, I think Labour's policy of fudge, of not laying out the groundwork for either a vision of an alternative to Hard Right Brexit or explaining how damaging Brexit will be, is going to cast a long and pernicious shadow.

And there are still those who are hoping there will be some kind of national disaster, and Labour will sweep to power, so all we have to do is hold tight.

It's all quite tricky.

Yet Brexit might not deliver much at all, if any material difference to the people who voted for it.
Don’t go along with it for sure. But this excitement people are feeling I’m interested in seeing what becomes of it. Maybe ‘being out’ is happiness enough.

Although there’s an element of thinking about it because we’ve had to endure this stalemate for three years.

Quite frankly I don’t know it’s a let’s see. But the next election is a long way away and it’ll feel different by then.

I had never heard the expression up to London before moving closer to London and meeting a colleague who originally hailed form the East End born. The Up lines do not run north of London. No one in my town (unless ex Londoners) talks about Up To London and definitely no one in the North or Scotland thinks of London as up! I always thought that was a very Londoncentric term for some reason.

I grew up in Glasgow and we had a funny expression for going into town which has evaded my memory, if anyone cane help?? It wasn't 'going down town' but something similar... perhaps it was 'are you going up town' but I think not..

At the risk of over-posting, even if Brexit is a disaster, there is no guarantee people will 'see the light'.

Rather, no-one likes to be told, 'I told you so.'

People will dig in and believe any comforting narrative that protects their self-esteem.

And Johnson will come up with 'plenty' of comforting narratives ('it's the fault of the EU!!').

I mean, look at the Left - everything is Blair's fault: a narrative that is absolutely illogical. But works.

Johnson knows this. And I'm sure every senior Labour politician does too. Or they should by now.

It's a mountain to climb.

There are plenty of voices in the Arms who are passionate about Brexit but also have voted Labour in the past. They are as keen on social justice and helping those in need as anyone on here. They seem to be arguing that Brexit will give us greater scope for doing so in a bespoke way. Not everyone in the Arms but plenty of them.
In short, I hope people who post on here also lurk in the Arms to find out what the opposite view to you is thinking and how it isn't so opposite on every score.
"There be dragons" here and there. And people who want the same thing as posters on here but by a different route.

I’m sure this tedious fact has been posted before, but you go “up” to London from anywhere, because railways.

But in everyday parlance northerners don't. They go down to London.

More serious matters though:

The U.K. is now facing a Hard Right government and a pretty drastic remodelling if it's economic base and ultimately it's social and political fabric.
Children are going hungry, schools underfunded, the NHS facing underfunding and creeping privatisation.

Here Johnson has a dilemma. To keep the northern seats Tory, the 'tax cuts and privatise at all costs' approach of Thatcher onwards won't be a vote winner. I mentioned on one thread the new Tory mayor in the north-east who has taken a failing privately run airport back into public ownership. Johnson will need to see that those new hospitals do get built, the 50,000 new nurses are employed, the new teachers are put in front of classes. Much of this is social democracy, which is what a lot of people in the UK were perfectly happy with, but it's not what Johnson's backers want.

Piggy 'I'm away doon the toon'?

I lived outside Glasgow in a town.

But when we said 'I'm away into town' it meant Glasgow.

May just have been my family though as it was where our roots were