Labour party finances look bleak

[SirSamVimesCityWatch]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fcc4cab2-ad3e-11ec-8378-1c1dfedc8742?shareToken=495ceb1f0209153e9fda3096c4bdfeb6

Article in the Times today. Labour are looking for new big money donors to help pull themselves out of a slight financial black hole.

"Labour’s new fundraising drive comes after its ruling national executive committee (NEC) was given a “bleak” financial briefing in July last year, which revealed the party had ended 2020 with an unplanned deficit for the first time since 2006."

...

"Party membership has also fallen by more than 100,000 to just over 400,000 since Starmer took office, although insiders say Labour has recorded a “mini-surge” in recent months following the scandal over Boris Johnson’s involvement in lockdown parties."

Lots of comments. Top ones all about the fact that labour can't tell what a woman is.

@Iwassonaive that's the article I commented on before I was banned. My comment attracted two likes in the seconds it was up.

People ARE commenting, but the comments are being removed.

A bit of a tangent, but re Brexit as I recall Corbyn refused to pick a side publicly. I suspect as a Marxist he was a Brexit supporter. The Marxists I knew were brexiters for some ideology I can’t now remember.

IIRC, the Morning Star was anti-EU, and there is no way you can call that a rightwing paper.

@sharksarecool

I think it's a shame they don't formally count or record the number of spoiled ballots, because that would be really telling.

The number of spoiled ballots is counted and recorded. What isn't recorded iswhy they were spoiled. It's likely to be impossible to tell in most cases.

Constituencies recorded a 32% surge in rejected ballot papers at last week’s election, with 2,552 in 2017 rising to 3,363 in 2019

www.swlondoner.co.uk/news/20122019-surge-in-voters-spoiling-ballot-papers-across-south-west-london

"32% surge" is insignificant given the figures involved. Roughly 32 million votes were cast. 3, 363 were spoiled.

I wonder if this means labour will accept trans lobbying money and dive even deeper down the rabbit hole?

Send a letter to your labour representative/candidate to let them know how you feel. I emailed Tonia Antonazzi who I voted for when I lived in her constituency some years ago. I congratulated her on her speech about womens sports but told her I could never vote labour if they couldnt define woman. She replied and wanted to meet up but I couldnt as no longer a constituent of hers.

Anyway i think letting labour know how we all feel is pretty important.

And yet I will have to vote conservative, which is something I NEVER thought I would have said but I have to place my vote in the party that will defend womens rights, especially important as all these laws are currently being worked out.

And this time I might actually see the party I vote for win! Never experienced that.

@sacredfeminina

I wonder if this means labour will accept trans lobbying money and dive even deeper down the rabbit hole?

Whose to say all the parties done this 'rabbit hole' haven't already done that? I can't think of any other single reason to so blatantly alienate 50% of the electorate. Them: 'We don't want you in our party if you don't believe TWAW.' Electorate: 'Oh okay then...'

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@sacredfeminina

Send a letter to your labour representative/candidate to let them know how you feel. I emailed Tonia Antonazzi who I voted for when I lived in her constituency some years ago. I congratulated her on her speech about womens sports but told her I could never vote labour if they couldnt define woman. She replied and wanted to meet up but I couldnt as no longer a constituent of hers.

Anyway i think letting labour know how we all feel is pretty important.

And yet I will have to vote conservative, which is something I NEVER thought I would have said but I have to place my vote in the party that will defend womens rights, especially important as all these laws are currently being worked out.

And this time I might actually see the party I vote for win! Never experienced that.

I had a very interesting conversation with my local Labour candidate today, on this very topic. I was a Labour member, but left after the Starmer ‘it’s wrong to say only women have a cervix’ fuck-up. It was an interesting discussion with her, about that, and the fact that they haven’t taken the open goal opportunity to be strong opposition to the Tories.

So I’m not surprised their finances are looking bleak.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

IIRC, the Morning Star was anti-EU, and there is no way you can call that a rightwing paper.

Being anti-EU is totally normal for the left. Being very pro-EU is a major change.It reflects all kinds of normative left viewpoints both on international trade agreements and maybe more importantly, what political sovereignty means. Trade unions also tended to oppose EU membership.

I have wondered whether Labour MPs who seem completely unaware of this are just pretending for the sake of convenience, or actually don't have any real roots in the leftist tradition.

Before I stopped bothering to read the Guardian, I noticed that the ironically-named 'Comment is Free' section was heavily censored. A very narrow range of political and social views was allowed.

Sometimes it was fun watching the speed with which comments poured in and were deleted. If you kept refreshing the page, you'd see the same kind of (reasonable and non-abusive) comments put in by scores of different posters. Each presumably thought they were making a new point, since the many previous attempts had been instantly deleted. The final result was nothing like a cross-section of the views that had been expressed.

I imagined the censors were like video-gamers on speed, shooting down incoming missiles as if their lives depended on it.

@Scorchedterf

A bit of a tangent, but re Brexit as I recall Corbyn refused to pick a side publicly. I suspect as a Marxist he was a Brexit supporter. The Marxists I knew were brexiters for some ideology I can’t now remember.

He did clearly pick a side publicly. He said that there were many problems with the EU, but on balance the UK would be better off remaining within it and addressing those from within, than leaving it.

Since then the idea seems to have developed that Corbyn was so rabidly anti-EU that he is almost solely responsible for Brexit (due to his position of influence within the governing Conservative party who brought it about, natch). The thinking seems to be that if he sticks doggedly to one political position he's being "ideological" and preventing Labour from being pragmatic enough to win. But if he works pragmatically with the various wings of the party to agree on a consensus position (as per Brexit), it can't possibly be honest so we should just ignore it and call him a dogged ideologue anyway.

I don't know about that, but maybe if the LP had treated people who were EU skeptics with the least bit of respect and gave their concerns the kind of attention they deserved, which someone like Corbyn ought to have been in a position to do, they would have been more convincing.

My Labour supporting friends are still posting memes on Facebook about gammons and Brexiters, failing to see how this comes across and then rant about the culture wars being entirely right wing in origin. They really think others are beneath them and could only have voted for Brexit out of stupidity and/or hate.

By the end of this year, the various crowdfunders for GC legal cases will have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds. I wonder if any of the parties on the left will reflect that we have money to spend to support this cause and donations would head their way if they stop being cowards and stand up to the gender bullies.

Great post Crouton19

I saw someone (a beardy bloke, natch) wearing a Jeremy-Corbyn-as-Che-Guevara tshirt yesterday. Had to chew my bottom lip to keep from laughing.

Just had my commenting privileges permanently taken away from me by The Guardian, because I said someone who doesn't know what a woman is shouldn't win an election.

I wondered why there wasn't a torrent of posts from women about this - but obviously:

a. this is the Guardian so they don't publish on this issue much except XX is now so happy and is brave and stunning after her transition, so some of its readers are in blissful ignorance, and

b. They are deleting almost all GC comments that are made

As a result Labour will think the comments that get through show the thoughts of left-leaning people, not realising they are missing swathes of other views.

It sounds like Putin being told that Ukraine would welcome an invasion with open arms and it's all be over in a few days, as to say otherwise would mean being sacked at the very least.

But as far as I can tell the conservatives are not doing anything to stop men accessing women's spaces. There is the occasional comment, but we still have rapists in women's prisons, men in women's changing rooms, toilets and wards. Men taking awards and nominations away from women. Words are cheap. Women are having to crowd fund every single challenge to this.

Starmer doesn't like intolerance and wants open discussion, so he claims.

twitter.com/lbc/status/1508363760834129921?s=21&t=kZadbpXH7tn6TEHomtgu0g

[quote OhHolyJesus]Starmer doesn't like intolerance and wants open discussion, so he claims.

twitter.com/lbc/status/1508363760834129921?s=21&t=kZadbpXH7tn6TEHomtgu0g[/quote]
Ah so that will be why he has been so supportive of Rosie Duffield (sarcasm)

He has been fucking silent while one of his own MPs has been abused and threatened

Starmer doesn't like responsibility and wants to stay on the opposition benches, more like.

Shall we write to Fran Perrin (in the OP article)? A long shot perhaps but I don't want Labour to go bankrupt. I might write and say why they are unelectable.

@endofthelinefinally

But as far as I can tell the conservatives are not doing anything to stop men accessing women's spaces. There is the occasional comment, but we still have rapists in women's prisons, men in women's changing rooms, toilets and wards. Men taking awards and nominations away from women. Words are cheap. Women are having to crowd fund every single challenge to this.

I wonder if eventually women will be able to bring a class action lawsuit for having to fund the upholding of our rights that were already in law and should have been applied.

Against who I'm not exactly sure - the Government? The Equalities Commission?

IANAL so quite possibly not but it's utterly ridiculous we have to pay money to enforce that which is already law.

And yet I will have to vote conservative, which is something I NEVER thought I would have said but I have to place my vote in the party that will defend womens rights, especially important as all these laws are currently being worked out. And this time I might actually see the party I vote for win! Never experienced that.

The tories aren't doing a good job of defending women's rights (in prisons, NHS, academia etc etc). And as a socialist, I oppose them in many other areas.

But they're the only major party that's not actively dedicated to destroying women's rights. And that's the issue that outweighs everything else for me at present.

@endofthelinefinally

But as far as I can tell the conservatives are not doing anything to stop men accessing women's spaces. There is the occasional comment, but we still have rapists in women's prisons, men in women's changing rooms, toilets and wards. Men taking awards and nominations away from women. Words are cheap. Women are having to crowd fund every single challenge to this.

This is true.

Labour have people like Rebecca Long-Bailey who said in a press interview that she would ban us from establishing women's-only refuges (she may not be a front bencher currently, but that doesn't mean her political career is over; look at Johnson's. He got sacked from the cabinet for lying and now he's prime minister) and the conservatives mostly just sit there and observe it all.