ALB
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Brian wrote:Yes we always need to be prepared for the "whatever" for with a hung parliament a further election can be called at any time.
Not quite. Under the Fixed Term Parliament Act there's another condition — that two-thirds of MPs vote for it, i.e whoever the new Tory PM is they'll have to have the support of Labour to call a snap election. Maybe Labour will agree, but that could be a miscalculation. Might be better from their point of view, as YMS hints, to let the Tories make an even bigger mess of things first. But that's conventional politics. Interesting but only as a soap opera or passing show.As far as we're concerned, it's going to mean that the Trots and other leftists are going to be staying in the Labour Party. Back to the 1960s and early 1970s when we were the only "socialists" challenging Labour in elections.
Here are the detailed results:Swansea West:
Quote:Geraint Davies Labour 22,278Craig Lawton Conservative 11,680Rhydian Fitter Plaid Cymru 1,529Michael Ely O’Carrol Liberal Democrats 1,269Mike Whittall Green Party 434Brian Johnson Socialist Party of Great Britain 92Turnout: 65.5%At 0.2 percent (1 in 500) that's par for the course for us in general elections. The other two results are well below par.Battersea:
Quote:Labour 25,292Tory 22,876LD 4,401Ind 1234Green 866UKIP 357Socialist 32That's 0.06 percent or 1 in 1666, i.e. over three times worse than Swansea.Islington North:
Quote:Labour (Corbyn) 40,086 (73 percent)Tory 6871LD 4946Green 2229UKIP 413Ind 208Monster Raving Loony 106Ind 41Socialist 21Communist League 7Turnout: 73.3 percentThat's 0.04 percent or 1 in 2500. Corbyn, incidentally, got more than 50% of the whole electorate. In 2015 we got 112 (0.2%, as in Swansea yesterday). This drop is to be explained partly by the increased number of candidates (and so a wider spread for random votes) but also, maybe, that others were also prepared to vote for the Labour Party under Corbyn (see the other thread).
alanjjohnstone wrote:I'm hoping that the minority government is too unstable to maintain and we have another election at the end of the year.Oh no, not another one! People won't stand it. There are local elections in London next year. That's what we need to concentrate on.
Piece of electoral gossip received at Head Office:yesterday
Quote:Earlier this evening I had Greg Hands,Conservative Candidate for Chelsea and Fulham,come canvassing. He was one Smug sort. When I told him I would be voting Labour on June 8th he viewed this as a challenge and cited an article in the current Socialist Standard as an example of how divided the Labour Party was and his pleasure at your advice to NOT Vote Labour on June 8th. I did try to explain that The Socialist Party and The Labour Party are not the same but it went over his head. I find it a bit of a concern that The Conservative Party are using your publication to attack Jeremy Corbyn. I was not going to Vote however that Smug git made me so angry I am going to Vote Labour.How does Greg Hands know the Socialist Standard? Have other Tories been using this argument?
We published lots of old general election statements on the SOYMB blog in the run-up to the 2015 General Election. Check there first before you duplicate work already done. Some of them were never published in the Standard anyway.I'm sure Alan will be able to help the two of you track them down.
Five people out in and around Battersea yesterday. Stall outside Head Office and leafletting at Clapham South and Wandsworth Town stations in the constituency. Only a few hundred leaflets left now. Remains to be seen if the online versions of the two local papers covering the area, the Wandsworth Guardian and the South London Press, deign to give their readers information on who is standing and what they stand for.
Matt wrote:I was fiddling with the subtitles.Subtitles? I wonder how they handled his frequent use of the Ancient Greek orators' device of temesis.
4 June, 2017: Added to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive:Should We Join the Labour Party?, May 1923 A. J. Cook Returns to the Fold, April 1929 The King's Question Answered, April 1936 Socialists and General de Gaulle, July 1958 More Trouble in Africa, April 1959 They Never Had It So Good in 1860, February 1962 The Grim Liberal Record, May 1962 Labour Governments and Armaments, March 1965 A good time coming?, February 1972 Not Piffle but Propaganda for Capitalism, October 1974 Going Private, February 1983Click on to read. Once again all but originally on from Imposs1904's MtSpace blog.
gnome wrote:I think there's a far simpler explanation. Corbyn comes over as being far more radical than Blair and Brown ever did. So much so it seems that even some of our own 'inexperienced' members have been taken in by the rhetoric.Something like that was what I was trying to say. We know that one or two have already left to join the Labour Party.
gnome wrote:ALB wrote:That's going too far. The member who voted for the SDP only got hanged.No drawing and quartering then?
Voluntary exile would be the lesser evil, an argument they will surely understand. That is, if anyone does actually vote Labour rather than simply discussing whether or not to. Why we shouldn't is an argument worth going over but asking questions about it is not something that is out of order in itself. It's only actually voting Labour (or anti-Labour as for Seaham Popular Front) that would be.There is another aspect to this. The fact that even a few of our own members are questioning this is a sign of a change in the mood of critics of capitalism. After all, we never had this discussion when Blair and Brown were the Labour Party leaders. No member even dreamed of voting Labour in 2001, 2005 or 2010.The Green Party, apparently has the same problemwww.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-40110713and, despite being wishy-washy and touchy-feely, don't let it pass ….
It's not that rare. I think we've already got more than one copy. Better for it to be in circulation than stored in our archives !
The Tories are going to win, especially now that "security" has become an issue. They always were but this is going to seal it. Even so, it seems that Labour is going to do better than the media pundits predicted (and wanted). This in itself is an interesting phenomenon worth discussing. After all, the people who will be attracted by Labour under Corbyn and its leftwing programme are the sort of people who will be open to what we have to say, i.e discontented with capitalism as it is and wanting to do something about it.I think one of the reasons Labour is doing better than expected is that its current programme (a bit like the one Harold Wilson won the 1964 election on, less radical if anything) is attracting back not just the Trotskyists and other Old Labourites who deserted it when it openly embraced capitalism but also Greens (whose party stole their old clothes) and even UKIP voters (May is harbouring a big delusion if she thinks that the traditional working class voters are going to flock to her as a snooty vicar's daughter who still goes to church).
Yes, he's right. The money is there, in the form of accumulated profits that in theory the government could tax or borrow. Our case is not that it isn't (as the Tories claim), but that if a reformist government took too much of this it would provoke an economic downward as profits are what makes the capitalist economic system go round, i.e it wouldn't work and the government would have to backtrack and accept and apply that priority has to be given to profits and conditions for profit-making. As we've seen time and again. In short, the money is there but you can't touch it without disrupting the system. Profits are the forbidden fruit on the Money Tree.Incidentally, in the video that follows the one you link to, the bloke interviews Aaron Bastani who once advocated "Fully Automated Luxury Communism". Now it's Jeremy Corbyn. Quite an effective pro-Labour video, I'd have thought. Trouble is it would all end in tears.
