The Fifty Seventh Republic - the joy of bank holiday marking

[StaffRepFeistyClub]

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Going back to the conversation about education and politics, the current thread about Angela Rayner is pretty horrific. I'm not a great fan of hers, but for a lot of people it seems that her crime isn't her politics but that she is common and uneducated, and how could someone common and uneducated possibly be given a prominent position in the Labour Party??

It harks back to the Lord Young article about the meritocracy that I linked to. If we don't accept that working class people can rise to power without a suitable A-levels/degree route, then you are leaving a lot of people without leadership that represents them. I think Rayner came up through the unions which is a pretty traditional Labour route, now unacceptable.

Yeah, so you see that's when I think the Tory grassroots true colours come out. They very people they now crow about voting for them/turning to them are people they would be more likely to call common, thick, uneducated (obviously, they should know their place). And in the same breath they'd call Lisa Nandy part of the urban elite. There is a rich seam of misogyny here, too.

She is 'uneducated' of course because she was a young single mother. And we all know what Boris and co think of them.

Where is that thread? I don't get out much these days!

Tory party anti semitism did go rather unreported.

I think because people expect better of Labour in that regard.

There was the assumption when I argued about Labour's antisemitism problem on MN that I would therefore be voting Tory and didn't I know that they had an antisemitism problem too...

I've been called a Tory on MN as much as I've been called a Momentum bot and a secret Union rep!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4239615-Angela-Rayner-sacked-shock

She is 'uneducated' of course because she was a young single mother. And we all know what Boris and co think of them.

I had an interesting conversation with my mum who is unimpressed with the young single mother aspect, who was unable to justify why it was more acceptable for Boris to have abandoned his children and created single mothers.

Because Boris is rich and so not a 'benefits scrounger' maybe?

I don't think she'd ever thought about it. She wasn't even particularly aware that he'd left a trail of kids behind him.

Talking about anti-vaxxers, a lot of those 'microchip in the vaccine' conspiracy theorists end up blaming the Jews as well Agreed.

I don't think many people realise just how similar the 'jews ruling the world through the banks and the media' stuff is to the propaganda of the 1930's. Having to revisit that propaganda recently it really struck me how similar it is to stuff I heard from lefty friends when I was younger.

I've been anti super states my whole life and grew up with the news celebrating countries regaining independence from Russia and celebrating their national identities and traditions and freedom, the fall of the Berlin wall etc. I have always believed power is best kept as close to the people it is supposed to represent as possible and I am, consistently therefore, happy that we have left the EU.

It is entirely consistent with my views about power and with my leftist past believing in the protection of workers rights and ability to command decent working conditions.

During the referendum I had to 'come out' on facebook because it felt so strange being in an echo chamber where everyone assumed that everyone else felt exactly the same way and happily threw out insults constantly about the strawmen leave voters they had created.

I explained my reasoning, the consistency in my beliefs about power and representation and my concerns about the power of multinationals in a globalised market etc and many were able to go gosh your reasoning is interesting and I agree with a lot of that but.... and there were some quite interesting discussions. I'm sure some just went oh well I guess she's turned into a tory voting, flag waving, racist.

I feel like I'm coming out again on this thread because notably everyone assumes everyone is a remainer.

I can get my coat if you like?

I genuinely don't care what you did honey. You weren't alone.

That AR thread is really vicious, noble!

What I do care about is the witch hunt in at actual Tory party of pro European MPs, so they now only have identikit MPs who voted the 'correct' way for the party to gobble up all the Brexit Party /UKIP voters. Alistair Burt/ Heidi Allen/ Ken Clark/ Anna Soubry. etc. People are being elected as MPs now who aren't very good MPs/very nice people and who aren't very effective (eg Gav!) just because of loyalty on Brexit. And some of them supported Leave entirely opportunistically, of course...regardless of whether it was good for their constituency.

Interestingly, in the case of Heid Allen, that's an area that is now leaning to Lib Dem/ Green/ Labour so the Tories have got it wrong in some places : see also St Alban's.

I probably feel the same when I have to out myself about liking Corbyn on here mind!!

Nervousness about 'outing' fairly mainstream political opinions because of fear that instead of generating discussion you will be dismissed/ostracised or lose status has got to be part of the problem.

What really put me off of Corbyn was that he was held up as honest and consistent and no spin. If he had stood up and said actually I'm anti-EU as you'll all be aware but I will go with whatever my party as a whole wants as I'm here to represent I could have respected that and it would have dealt with the issue head on.

The weasly avoidance and fence sitting and stuff really killed the idea of him as this brave authentic, stands by his politics person for me and I couldn't understand why he didn't address it head on and honestly.

I'm of the unpopular opinion that if Labour had been pro brexit and articulated why in terms of protections of workers they'd have won the election. I'm sure there were very many brexit voters who would have traditionally seem themselves as Labour but got handed over to the tories.

I feel the same about my ignorance of womans rights and transgender. It literally just doesn't come up in day to day life. Equal pay etc yes , racism yes but not that. I still aren't sure of all of the issues or really have an opinion either way. Maybe I should. Will get my coat too. 🙈

It's definitely part of the problem and they just refuse to reflect on that and double down on the dismissal and demonisation tactics.

Imo this is why polls and other predictors can't be relied on anymore. If you demonise opinions or viewpoints and pile on dissenters people don't talk about their views.

Outing yourself on here or on fb as voting Remain but very reluctantly and seeing the flaws in the EU and nodding along to reasons such as Honey's and understanding the reasoning behind wanting more restrictions on immigration, not to mention not outright hating your own country (me) was hard enough, Honey.

I don't know anybody with antisemitic views who isn't a Labour voter - that I know of, of course. It may be because my friends are on the spectrum from far left through to slight left, centre, slight right and, of course, apolitical, but nobody far right (afaik).

I'm of the unpopular opinion that if Labour had been pro brexit and articulated why in terms of protections of workers they'd have won the election

I think if they'd done that, they'd have lost Remain voters because suggesting that the Tories would be better in control of workers rights than the EU (who introduced e.g. the working time directive) would have not been convincing. The issue there was whichever way they fell, they'd have lost the other side, so they thought that fence sitting was the way forward. What happened then was that instead of keeping both happy, they pleased neither and lost both.

My next door classroom teacher voted Leave. He's an excellent colleague and we get on very well.

I just don't know anyone British who is anti Semitic tbh. I know people who are anti Israeli, but again v few people who are interested in the Middle East. Not sure how interested most people are in foreign policy, full stop. Casual slurs of America / Americans is the most common thing I hear.

I remember during the Brexit stuff trying to start a conversation about politics in our office. Tumbleweed.

I don't personally know anyone antisemitic either, piggy. MN was full of it in the Corbyn days, I reported loads, but if you didn't go on those particular threads, you'd be completely unaware. Same for twitter, I had to leave edutwitter behind to find it, but it wasn't buried or anything, I just didn't see it in my usual interactions.

When Rebecca Long Bailey was sacked for sharing that article that contained an antisemitic conspiracy theory, I can imagine that it was because she had seen lots of that sort of thing pass uncritically and it didn't even register.

honey I don't think any of us would fall out with you over politics. I know I've never fallen out with anyone over politics (robust debates, yes, proper fallouts, no). I quite probably agree with a lot of your reasons for voting leave, but opted for remain at least partly because of the blatant lying and lack of a plan from the leave campaign.

My conversation with mil yesterday started out with politics, and ended up with outright racism from mil. I was happy to just politely disagree with the politics (she's conservative, I'm more left leaning and voted for an independent candidate on Thursday). I wasn't happy about the racism and can't just politely disagree about that. I don't know if she's anti semetic as well, but here comments yesterday lead me to believe that anyone who is not white British would come under fire from her.

Our office was a hotbed of political debate in the run up to Brexit. Most of us voted remain but not all, and all of the political discussions stayed polite with all sides listening to other perspectives (often nodding along to some points and disagreeing with others). I really do think that the delivery of some opinions is far more offensive than the opinion itself.

I knew people who were antisemitic when I was younger but it was dressed as being anti Israel and being anti-Israel was the norm and it was difficult to draw a line as to where support for Palestinians ended and hatred of Jewish people began. Looking back there was plenty of the latter and it went unchallenged.

After living in the middle east I was aware that that Jews were widely seen as untrustworthy by muslims and this was often justified by citing the fact that their religion allegedly allows them to lend money and charge interest so long as they lend to non Jewish people which feeds into a very similar rhetoric to the you tube conspiracy world of Jews controlling the world through banking etc and the kind of narrative that has been around for hundreds of years and was tapped into so well by Hitler. These conspiracy theories and 'jokes' etc have really long historic import. Whilst Islam allows a muslim man to marry women from any of the Abrahamic religions it was really only seen as acceptable if she is Christian because of the real dislike of Jews according to many people.

Maybe part of the Israel issue is whether people actually think there is a solution that would be acceptable or if when you actually dig down into their views they just want Israel to disappear and actually don't care at all what would happen to Jewish Israelis if that happened? Or that they're actually hoping for the destruction of Israel and the people in it? I presume that the latter is where the disdain and disregard for Jewish people cuts in rather than just criticism of the actions of Israel?

I'm not entirely clear. I haven't lived in a time of violence against Jews and I remember being surprised when I was doing work with faith communities in my town that the location of the synagogue isn't publicised and that Jewish people still feel wary about being openly Jewish. I genuinely didn't get it and couldn't understand the need.

I think the long history of these ideas and the ways they have been used over history creates a climate in which there is a fear that those stories never go away and could at any time be picked up by extremists once again and used against them?

I'm really ignorant because I spent so long in a bit of an echo chamber with any criticism levied at it being labelled Zionism. I was mystified a bit by the accusations of anti-semitism but I'm coming to think that is because of that echo chamber I grew up in and I'm still not sure how to unpick it all.

See where I grew up the Palestine flag is seen as solidarity with places like Catholic NI. Celtic fans fly Irish and Palestinian flags.

I think I must be terribly naive over anti-Semitism as I was a bit surprised by the revelations that it was rife within the Labour Party. It obviously completely passed me by, which is awful.

I did vote Remain - but completely understand why you didn't, Honey. I voted Remain largely because I support freedom of movement and was hoping for a hassle-free retirement abroad. DH and DDs have dual nationality so they are all still good to go. I never thought the EU was perfect (far from it) but tended to think we would do better trying to change/reform it from within, than having to deal with it from the outside.

Yes I think it is very common. I hadn't really considered when I was younger how that might make actual Jewish people here in the UK feel. Obviously you can be highly critical of Israel with good reason but I'm trying to consider how that might make Jewish British people feel given at least some people who doing that will also be anti-semitic. I don't know. I'm currently doing some reading and watching trying to understand the issue better.

By 'it' I mean huge support for Palestine and flying the flag etc.