How pissed off with NL would you have to be...

[Azrael]

A 'tory' is someone who only believes in what will benefit themselves at any given point ...

No, that's an opportunist, and no point on the political spectrum has a monopoly on that creed.

I do agree that the Conservative Party is not, by any reasonable measure, conservative. Certainly not since Baroness Thatcher, an ideologue and neo-liberal radical, made her unwelcome entrance, and probably not since Churchill made his equally unwelcome exit. I'll not bother to credit Boy Cameron with an opinion. The party has proven woeful at conservation. Burke's dictum that, "A society without the means for some change is without the means of its conservation," has been abandoned for, at best, mindless reactionaryism, and at worst, Thatcherite blitzkrieg.

So I wouldn't vote for 'em. But if they, or the Lib Dems, or, heaven forbid, Labour came up with a decent manifesto, I'd hope that tribalism wouldn't block my support.

 

[belboid]

History is irrelevant here (and it's not often I say that ).

Labour is not the party it was thirty years ago, or even ten years ago. They're just as happy to implement cuts as the Tories, I'm not convinced by what you're saying at all. Unless you've got anything specific to back up your argument beyond "Well, you know, they're Tories, they're the baddies".

well, if you want to ignore history, you could try looking at what tory councils do, or the actual plans that cameron has announced

 

[KeyboardJockey]

I,d never ever vote for Tories, I,d go for the Green Party or one of them little socialist parties.

But voting for a socialist groupuscule is a wasted vote they will not get enough support to block a bad NL candidate. Maybe not so for the greens depending on the consituency.

 

[nino_savatte]

But voting for a socialist groupuscule is a wasted vote they will not get enough support to block a bad NL candidate. Maybe not so for the greens depending on the consituency.

Better to vote according to one's conscience rather than vote for such and such because "everyone else does it".

 

[nino_savatte]

First of all I'm not coming from this from any party political position let alone a tory one. The point is just how bad will NL in all ways not just HR and Iraq get and on how low a turnout will they get their majority from
before people have to think the unthinkable and vote tory just to get rid of them. The low turnout helps the blairites. We have blairism because of voter apathy. We've dropped nigh on 20% over the average turnout since 1959. Bearing in mind that the LD's are more slippery than tories when in local govt although
I've every support for their LGBT policies and I'm friends with a few DELGA people.

.


The Labour party was incredibly divided at the time. There were some utter wankstains on the right of the party like Bob Mellish etc and also a number of ultra leftists as well. I agree that Kinnock was getting stick but it was stick that he really had no alternative but to act upon to not have acted would have given the tory right a scalp. It is a shame that Kinnock
didn't deal with the rights as well they were also dragging down the party.


Re Loony Left. This was 90% a tabloid invention. Ironically a lot of the stuff that the majority of reasonable people accept as now as part of life like LGBT rights etc were seen as revolutionary at the time.




And so do I.



I would say that Kinnocks biggest mistake was promoting Blair. The Labour party could have modernised under a different leader with out the excessive and moral vacuuity of New Labour. The more I think about it it was a crying shame John Smith died* he could have moved the party away from the disasters of the Foot years and tied up some of the loose ends in party structure and constitutional matters that Kinnock left open for the blairscum.













*<dons tinfoil hat> or was he murdered by blairs supporters / lizards / (insert conspiraloonery here)

The expulsions gave the Labour Party no immediate benefits: it was another 10 years before the party would win an election. The bulk of expulsions came in 86 or 87. The expulsions were reactive. Interesting that you should mention the right and folk like Mellish; while it was acceptable to expel left wingers fromt he party, they retained all the right wingers who didn't jump ship to the SDP.

I agree that Kinnock was getting stick but it was stick that he really had no alternative but to act upon to not have acted would have given the tory right a scalp.

One of Thatcher's declared intentions was to "destroy socialism" in this country; to achieve this she had to get the LP to literally destroy or reinvent itself. While it didn't destroy itself, it sustained damage and, rather than rebuild from the bottom up, it reinvented itself as a party of trendy bourgeois interests. Kinnock sold the party's soul to the highest bidder and expected to become PM himself (Sheffield?)

I would say that Kinnocks biggest mistake was promoting Blair.

I sometimes think that Blair was a Tory trojan horse that was sent to destroy the party...but that's tinfoil hattery. His rise was rapid to be sure. He didn't hold any of the classic socialist portfolios either; he held only treasury and Home Office portfolios iirc

 

[In Bloom]

well, if you want to ignore history, you could try looking at what tory councils do, or the actual plans that cameron has announced

Or you could back up your own argument instead of resorting to a lot of handwaving and rhetoric.

 

[northernhord]

But voting for a socialist groupuscule is a wasted vote they will not get enough support to block a bad NL candidate. Maybe not so for the greens depending on the consituency.

It would have to be LIB Dems then, there is no way I would ever vote Tory, I'd rather eat my own shite

 

[belboid]

says he! you havent offered one practical fact yet IB. Just go and have a quick peek at council services, compare levels of childcare and nursey provision in tory councils and in Labour councils. Have a look at camerons announced policies - all those 'efficiency savings' - what do you think he's gonna find inefficient? hardly likely to be the consultants is it?

 

[KeyboardJockey]

says he! you havent offered one practical fact yet IB. Just go and have a quick peek at council services, compare levels of childcare and nursey provision in tory councils and in Labour councils. Have a look at camerons announced policies - all those 'efficiency savings' - what do you think he's gonna find inefficient? hardly likely to be the consultants is it?

I agree there. Hammersmith and Fulham went tory and now they hardly have a library service worthy of the name.

 

[KeyboardJockey]

Better to vote according to one's conscience rather than vote for such and such because "everyone else does it".

There is a difference between voting for ones concsience and voting effectively. You've got to have an element of realpolitik in this. At some point NL will get so bad that you may well have to consider voting tory as they might be the only way to get rid of NL.

 

[glenquagmire]

Not to mention cutting funding for the law centre, closing schools, cuts in adult education, a freeze on recruitment in some areas, reduced creche places, etc.

H&F Tories are a prime example of why even NL are often the least worst option.

 

[Jografer]

Labour were never really for the british working man (or woman), they were always just for a slightly less unpleasant capitalism.

That does imply that "the british man (or woman)" wanted something different from "a slightly less unpleasant capitalism".... when the evidence is exactly the opposite.

There are any number of groups offering various versions of the socialist revolution/millenia/paradise.... and none amount to very much in terms of their support.... thank fuck.....

I know it's hard to stomach, but most of us know what we are voting for, what we are getting, and its not the fruit loop left...

 

[belboid]

they didnt want 'in place of strife' or the job cuts that labour imposed, or a whole host of other labour acts. They might not have wanted a thorough going bolshevik style revolution, but they wanted a damn sight more than Labour managed in government (even in the 45-51 one)

 

[Jografer]

P.s. Take it from somebody who was on it until very recently, the minimum wage is shite.

so, you'd prefer nothaving the minimum wage ??

 

[Jografer]

they didnt want 'in place of strife' or the job cuts that labour imposed, or a whole host of other labour acts. They might not have wanted a thorough going bolshevik style revolution, but they wanted a damn sight more than Labour managed in government (even in the 45-51 one)

you are confusing 'they' with 'some'..

... my point is that there have been various left 'options' for many, many years.... yet even after 10 years of a Blair government the 'left' alternative is marginal & irrelevant.

Presumably then, the 'analysis' that a right wing Labour govt would make the scales fall from the eyes of the working classes, and show them the need for a revolutionary alternative is a tad mistaken**.

But even if the 'want' is less than a full blown revolution, where is the left political opposition ??

** I use 'tad mistaken' in this context as shorthand for 'a load of deluded bollocks'.

 

[belboid]

whose analysis was that? no one i ever knew.

As for the 'left opposition', we had all noticed that things arent going to well there either generally, but, like it or not, people vote green respect or bloody lib-dem because they are seen as to the left of this shitty government.

 

[lewislewis]

Across Europe there is a precedent for a left party as an antidote where the Social Democratic parties have failed.

Respect appears to have been an attempt to mirror this in the UK but is limited because of it's Islamist leanings. Why doesn't the left establish a broader secular left party? Like the Scottish Socialist Party in Scotland?

In Norway Kristin Halvorsen's Socialist Left Party is in government supporting the Labour Party, in Germany the Left Party has about 50 seats in the Bundestag, in Sweden the Left Party has 22 seats in the Rikstag, that's how you build a left-wing political profile by winning elections, then the social movements outside of parliament can be built on the back of those votes.

 

[Genghis Cohen]

No, that's an opportunist, and no point on the political spectrum has a monopoly on that creed.

In order to be an opportunist you have to be deviating from something you could have otherwise been easily predicted to do, the only thing the tories can be predicted to do is whatever benefits them.

There was a documentary not too long ago, may have been an episode of dispatches, where they were investigating cameron (think it might have been mental hitchens doing the investigating actually,) some fella he used to work with put it rather succinctly and said "I dont think david cameron believes in anything," the idea that a party can go from someone who pre NL was one of if not the most authoritarian man to have ever set foot inside a cabinet meeting to someone like cameron suggests they only seek power for power's sake.

I do agree that the Conservative Party is not, by any reasonable measure, conservative. Certainly not since Baroness Thatcher, an ideologue and neo-liberal radical, made her unwelcome entrance, and probably not since Churchill made his equally unwelcome exit. I'll not bother to credit Boy Cameron with an opinion. The party has proven woeful at conservation. Burke's dictum that, "A society without the means for some change is without the means of its conservation," has been abandoned for, at best, mindless reactionaryism, and at worst, Thatcherite blitzkrieg.

Was thatcher an ideologue (the ideology, namely hayek seemed to distance itself from her) or just plain stubborn ? She was saved by north sea oil and galtieri on the two occasions it all looked curtains for the miserable bitch, thankfully there was no reprieve from poll tax and the other bizarre behaviour she engaged in around that time.

 

[JoePolitix]

The Conservative party is an eternally irritating force for wrong that appeals exclusively to bigots, toffs, money-minded machine men, faded entertainers and selfish, grasping simpletons who were born with some essential part of their soul missing. None of history's truly historical figures has been a Tory, apart from the ones that were, and they only did it by mistake. To reach a more advanced stage of intellectual evolution, humankind must first eradicate the "Tory instinct" from the brain - which is why mother nature is gradually making them less sexy with each passing generation. The final Tory is doomed to spend his or her life masturbating alone on a hillside, which, let's face it, is the way things were supposed to be all along.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2048048,00.html

 

[belboid]

no need to shout old boy

 

[JoePolitix]

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