Labour Party facing bankruptcy

April 2024 Forums General discussion Labour Party facing bankruptcy

Viewing 15 posts - 136 through 150 (of 150 total)
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  • #250457
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Starmer may well be sacrificing more than just one seat because of his pro-Israel stance. This from before the Rochdale fiasco:

    https://theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/10/labour-mps-facing-wave-of-independent-challengers-over-stance-on-gaza

    George Galloway is standing in Rochdale for the Workers Party. How well he does should be a sign of what might be in store for the Labour Party. The coming general election may see Labour shadow cabinet members fall as well as Tory ministers.

    #250557
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Mick Lynch and the RMT have said they will support Corbyn if he stands as an independent in the general election:

    But elsewhere they will be supporting Starmer’s Party of Business:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/24/mick-lynch-says-voters-must-grow-up-and-see-starmer-is-only-alternative?CMP=twt_b-gdnnews

    #250713
    imposs1904
    Participant

    Local news.

    #250715
    ALB
    Keymaster
    #250716
    Moo
    Participant

    Refusing to send weapons to Israel would be a much better way of ending this conflict than calling (i.e. asking) for a ceasefire.

    #250825
    ALB
    Keymaster

    We may as well keep on recording these threats, even though by now people must be perfectly well aware of what a Labour government will be like.

    Here’s one of their future ministers declaring:

    “Under our changed Labour party, if you can work there will be no option of a life on benefits.”

    She went on to criticise the Tories for not having been tough enough on benefits:

    “She took aim at what she described as “Tory claims about being tough on benefits”.”

    https://theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/04/life-on-benefits-under-labour-will-not-be-an-option-says-liz-kendall

    Talk about “Labour, Tory, Same Old Story”.

    #251111
    ALB
    Keymaster

    In another of her speeches, yesterday, to reassure big business that it had nothing to fear from a Labour government, among the names dropped by Rachel Reeves was Joan Robinson:

    “As Joan Robinson understood when she wrote sixty years ago, economics is not just about quantitative models and abstract theory – it is about values, rooted in political, philosophical and moral questions, about human nature and the good society.”

    Robinson (1903-1983) probably did vote Labour in her time but here’s what her Wikipedia entry says of her:

    “Robinson also made several trips to China, reporting her observations and analyses in China: An Economic Perspective (1958), The Cultural Revolution in China (1969), and Economic Management in China (1975; 3rd edn, 1976), in which she praised the Cultural Revolution. In October 1964, Robinson also visited North Korea, which was effectively a single-party Communist state, and wrote in her report “Korean Miracle” that the country’s success was due to “the intense concentration of the Koreans on national pride” under Kim Il Sung, “a messiah rather than a dictator.” She also stated in reference to the division of Korea that “[o]bviously, sooner or later the country must be reunited by absorbing the South into socialism.”

    Reeves needs to be careful whose names he drops. Otherwise, there is going to be a headline in the Daily Mail: REEVES INFLUENCED BY ECONOMIST WHO SAID NORTH KOREA WAS SOCIALIST.

    Incidentally, Robinson is credited with getting academic economists to take Marx seriously with her 1942 book An Essay on Marxian Economics, reviewed in the January 1944 Socialist Standard. It is very critical but mentions at the end:

    “In spite of her academic outlook it must be conceded that Joan Robinson admits the exploitation of the workers, and here and there hints at expropriation of the capitalists as the remedy 
.”

    An Economist Misses Her Marx

    #251184
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Said to be the last Corbynista in any high office Jamie Driscoll, the North of Tyne Mayor, has an article in this weekend’s i paper. He was deselected for talking to Ken Loach and is standing against Labour as an Indeoendent.

    https://inews.co.uk/opinion/left-wing-voters-must-oppose-labour-weak-starmer-government-boost-far-right-2971217

    Of course his programme is just common or garden reformism but he does have a point about the “magic growth bunny”.

    Reeves herself has admitted that if there is no growth — if she can’t magic it into existence – the Labour government will be in an impossible situation and will have to impose austerity:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68602668.amp

    Governments can’t decree growth. That depends on how capitalist enterprises judge the prospect of making an adequate profit. She might be lucky and growth might happen but it wouldn’t be anything to do with the Labour government might do. It would just be a coincidence.

    On the other hand, she might be unlucky ..

    #251194
    ALB
    Keymaster

    We missed this one. Well-known leftie Owen Jonas has left the Labour Party and now opposes it but not reformism of course. In fact his case seems to be that the Labour is longer a reformist social-democrat party.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68622127.amp

    #251374
    james19
    Participant

    Owen posted about Gaza yesterday on X. But he has blood* on his hands, he didn’t say much about the Iraq war, lost his voice but he might have thought was it a ‘just’ war. Probably didn’t want to rock the boat. The 1m slaughtered. If he had any principles, he would have left the Labour Party back then!!? This war when a Labour government was in office**.
    He writes for the Guardian, the newspaper that reported Julian Assange to the authorities when he gave them evidence of US military slaughtering civilians in Iraq. He is facing extradition and possible execution if the Government allows his extradition.
    *If you’re a member of the Labour Party you carry its baggage
    **Labour are a recruiting Sargent for capitalism wars.

    • This reply was modified 1 month ago by james19.
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    #251578
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Starmer says next Labour government will further develop weapons of mass destruction:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68790435.amp

    Why is this not a surprise? After the Party of NATO, the Party of Business, why not the Party of the Bomb?

    What is perhaps surprising is his description of the development of the British A-bomb as one of the “towering achievements” of the post-war Labour government. They didn’t used to boast about it in the past.

    #251580
    Bijou Drains
    Participant

    “The development of the British A-bomb as one of the “towering achievements” of the post-war Labour government.”

    He could have also cited these examples of the Atlee Government doing its best to support the British Capitalist Class and waving the butcher’s apron.

    Greek Civil War (1946–1948)
    1945 Sheikh Bashir Rebellion (1945)
    Indonesian National Revolution (1945–1949)
    Operation Masterdom (1945–1946)
    Corfu Channel incident (1946–1948)
    Malayan Emergency (1948–1960)
    Korean War (1950–1953)

    That would clearly remind the ruling class that they have nothing to fear from the Labour Party

    #251733
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Here’s the ex-prosecutor general Sir Keith Starmer praising National Front flag-waving day.

    See also:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13332805/amp/Are-listening-Emily-Thornberry-Keir-Starmer-says-Labour-not-flinch-flying-St-Georges-flag-blasts-Tories-no-longer-patriotic-party.html

    I think he is trying to say that the Tory party is no longer the Tory party but that this is what the Labour party now is.

    #251737
    robbo203
    Participant

    Here’s the ex-prosecutor general Sir Keith Starmer praising National Front flag-waving day.

    ______________________________

    Will the (anti) Labour Party now be accepting applications from members of the English Defence League? Starmer is in danger of making Sunak appear positively libertarian. It’s enough to make anyone want to reach for the nearest bucket….

    #251772
    ALB
    Keymaster

    “We’ll be the most pro-business government ever, vows Reeves” is the headline across two pages in today’s Times.

    More pro-business than Gladstone in the 19th century, the Tory governments of the 1920s, or Madame Thatcher in the 1980s? That would be some achievement but the incoming Labour government is clearly intending to have a go.

    The actual quote, for future reference and for throwing at Labourites and those who say we should vote Labour (it’s from an interview with the Times) is:

    If I become chancellor, the next Labour government is going to be the most pro-business government this country has ever seen.

    Never has Labour’s intention to govern in the interest of the capitalist class been so openly and unashamedly proclaimed.

    Lesser evil? What lesser evil?

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