ALB
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Just seen the election communication of the Labour candidate (now MP) for Newport West and Islwyn. It consists entirely of a letter from Starmer in which he promises:
”a Britain rebuilt by Labour so the British economy works for working people.”
That’s physically impossible of course but, if he wants to be judged by trying to do it, fair enough.
The absurd rumour that Mark Matlock, the ReformUK candidate, did not exist but was created by AI continues to circulate on social media.
In the meantime, despite what the Green candidate was reported as saying, it seems that there was no hustings at which he didn’t turn up and to which we were not invited.
I think by “hustings” she must have meant the count. In this case, she would have been using the word hustings in its original sense, since in the days before the introduction of the secret ballot in 1872 MPs were nominated and elected at hustings.
Robbo is right. The article by Dapprich on tokens as an alternative to money is much more interesting.
In it he starts from what Marx wrote in his Critique of the Gotha Programme where Marx discusses (I would say rather than proposes) non-circulating tokens based on labour-time as the alternative to money in socialism/communism pending the development of the productive forces to the point where people can have free access according to self-determined need.
He proposes a different type non-circulating tokens and a different way of “pricing” the goods they can be used to redeem. That basically is his alternative to money.
He accepts that, as far as the production of producer goods is concerned, Marx and Engels “proposed some kind of in-kind planning. The constraints, benefits and costs of production are to be evaluated in purely physical terms.”
His concern is the distribution of consumer goods and services in a socialist/communist society and here he makes some criticism of Marx’s token system. He thinks that his own version obviates the need to go over to full free access as it would ensure that people’s needs are satisfied. In other words, that a system of non-circulating tokens should be a permanent feature of socialism/communism.
He even mentions the argument (which we have used) that “since we have seen significant increases in productive capacities since the nineteenth century, during which Marx was writing, perhaps the token system is already outdated”, even though he says he is not convinced by it.
Clearly he is somebody arguing from the same basis as us and so much more interesting to discuss with than dealing with the latest offerings of so-called “Austrian scholarship” that his article with Dan does.
I think this link will take you there:
https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/revepe/v4y2023i3d10.1007_s43253-022-00091-6.html
More on this but I can’t believe it’s true, otherwise someone has committed a serious criminal offence:
Reform UK accused of using AI generated candidates in the UK election
byu/GruffJM inmorningsomewhereInteresting but presumably not literally true story here in which the ReformUK candidate for Clapham and Brixton Hill features:
More serious is a reference by the Green Party candidate to a hustings. If there was one we were not invited but should have been.
We are investigating.
or maybe the Left of Labour groups will now look towards the ‘Independent’ tag as a long term electoral strategy.
I wouldn’t have thought so. There is no real advantage to any group to do this even if it might well bring their candidate more votes.
If we strip out those Muslim candidates standing on an anti-Gaza War ticket who oppose the war not because it’s a war or even as “anti-imperialists” but simply because the victims are fellow Muslims, I suspect most of the others will be expelled Labour Party members, including councillors and former councillors. Their motivation will be to get as many votes as possible and increase their personal profile. At some point they will probably join the Greens or even rejoin the Labour Party.
As for the non-left Muslims, the result could be entirely negative — the formation of a Muslim communitarian party.
The reasons an organisation might contest as an organisation will mainly be, as somebody says in the comments, to raise its profile. I suppose this would include us, though, unlike all the others except perhaps Communist Future, our main aim is to put across ideas. In this respect, the others all play the game of conventional politics by making promises and pledges to do this or that but even more unrealistic than those of the parties represented in parliament, basically more and better of everything as if capitalism could be made to do this. In other words, they encourage reformist illusions.
In the case of SPEW which doesn’t contest in its own name but through its front organisation TUSC the aim is to recruit new members.
Galloway’s Workers Party will probably go the same way as Respect, which had a few local councillors but after a while deregistered as a political party. A flash in the pan.
No, I think I just caught the arse end of Macmillan’s reign of terror
I think I missed out the 14th Earl of Home, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who took over from Macmillan in 1963 before being booted out to the following year, after “14 years of Tory misrule” as the Labour Party put it, in favour of Harold Wilson. So it will be the Profumo scandal that you remember?
This table, copied from the general
General Election thread, shows that all those on the list, with the exception of Scottish Socialist Party, are in the same league as parties averaging under 1 percent of the votes cast as in most constituencies you need to get more than 350 votes to reach that percentage.Interesting that those who compiled this table did not include Galloway’s Workers Party, presumably because they did not consider it appropriate to because of its position on immigration, policing and sexual minorities.
Another letter from a member in this week’s Weekly Worker:
“Five independent pro-Palestine candidates, including former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, have won in United Kingdom general elections with Israel’s war on Gaza among key issues for voters.
The other four independent candidates who won their seats from Labour on Friday include Shockat Adam in Leicester South, Ayoub Khan in Birmingham Perry Barr, Adnan Hussain in Blackburn, and Iqbal Mohamed in Dewsbury and Batley.”
For the record, the London branch member who dealt with email enquiries sent to our candidate in Clapham and Brixton Hill from members of pressure groups and single issue campaigns that are sent to all candidates at election time reports that he sent a standard reply and appropriate link to 217 such enquiries.
I don’t think you know what a landslide victory is so here’s the definition:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landslide_victory
You could say that the Conservative won a landslide victory in 2019 when he got 65.2% of the votes cast. But not that he did just now when those opposed to him totalled 64.2%.
He won because he was the first past the post, ie got a plurality of votes defined as where “the number of votes cast for a candidate who receives more than any other but does not receive an absolute majority.”
Comment from another forum about Labour’s performance:
“Only 2% vote up from last time, lost several seats, total vote share a pathetic 34%, leader loses 18,000 votes in his seat, overall turnout a near historic low. Labour’s 9,700,000 votes is clearly fewer than the 10,300,000 votes the party received under Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 election.”
If you are talking about Christchurch the Conservative Party got 16941 votes or 35.8%.
Last time in 2019 the same candidate got 33894 or 65.2%.
Their vote was halved and you call it a landslide. Typical.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/constituencies/E14001171
