This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Christian Wolmar, another person who has been desperate for a while to get in parliament, also probably in.

[CumbrianLefty]

He is about the same age as Corbyn, so perhaps unlikely.

[Pericles]

Amazing how a Tory MP talks and Labour talking points come out. "The Shadow Chancellor stands for exactly the same as the last Labour government", come on guys, how out of touch can you be?!
https://twitter.com/GullisJonathan/status/1791393845722137061

[CumbrianLefty]

Mind you, its Gullis. There have been more sentient boulders.

[Blair]

Thought the scale of vacancies was worth posting here alone; John Cryer the PLP chair is quitting, along with former Ministers like Kevin Brennan.

Virendra Sharma is also standing down.

Much like in 2010 & 2017 it will mean the NEC will be in a position to appoint in some rather safe seats...

[CumbrianLefty]

A few more Labour MP retirements today too.

Some at least were clearly meant to be announced in the summer and had to be brought forward because of the PM's "surprise" decision.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Missed this at the time:

For those interested, David Lammy has just dropped an essay on the next Labour government’s foreign policy, progressive clichéism.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-kingdom/case-progressive-realism-david-lammy?

“Progressive Realism”

 

[Pres Mike]

Anyway, do we know how many of the rest of the Thirty Seven are still alive? There's obviously Kinnock himself, of course.

What is the 37?

[Ancestral Republican]

Abdul Hai stabbed a child to death in an unprovoked, racist murder and now his good pal Sir Keith (who he worked with on a 'youth safety taskforce') wants to get him into Parliament.

As long as he didn't support Corbyn in 2015 he's a good man in Keir's book.

[Pres Mike]

Presumably a woman, otherwise we would have had two non-heterosexual Prime Ministers in a row and three non-heterosexual major party leaders in the 1970 and the two 1974 general elections.

What?

[Hnv1]

Missed this at the time:

For those interested, David Lammy has just dropped an essay on the next Labour government’s foreign policy, progressive clichéism.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-kingdom/case-progressive-realism-david-lammy?

“Progressive Realism”

 

I actually found it as a decent approach all things considered. A strong scent of Blairism though, I wonder how that will go down.

[Pericles]

The General Secretary of Unite attacks Labour for refusing to 'rebalance the country in favour of working people'-

The imbalance in power in the workplace is borne out by two facts. First, weekly median pay for full-time workers in Britain is lower in real terms now than before Labour was elected in 1997. Second, the profit margins of the average British business have increased by 30% since before the pandemic.

Is Labour going to change in any serious way the balance of forces? I am increasingly sceptical. The rowbacks on specific issues, such as moving away from a total ban on fire and rehire, signal the direction of travel. For further evidence, look at the planned introduction of sectoral bargaining, which is now on life support.

Limited to one sector and lacking any sort of clarity as to whether actual negotiations on issues such as pay will take place, this important policy will without doubt be watered down still further as part of the much-trumpeted “consultation”. If collective bargaining is not restored to a respectable level, the new deal will not deliver real change for workers where it matters, in their pockets.

She did make clear she is endorsing Labour in the general election though. Even so, the timing of this article is likely to be more attention-grabbing than its content.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It is a very silly argument, but then her audience is neither the general public nor the bulk of her union's members. Unite's toxic internal politics are what they are.

[CumbrianLefty]

Presumably a woman, otherwise we would have had two non-heterosexual Prime Ministers in a row and three non-heterosexual major party leaders in the 1970 and the two 1974 general elections.

What?

Harold Wilson was very much heterosexual, no need to worry on that score

It is a pretty undisputed matter of record that Jeremy Thorpe was primarily attracted to men - though he did marry and have children, neither of which was true of Edward Heath. About whom there were rumours even at the time, but very little has ever been reliably confirmed. Very possibly a "gay incel".

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Abdul Hai stabbed a child to death in an unprovoked, racist murder and now his good pal Sir Keith (who he worked with on a 'youth safety taskforce') wants to get him into Parliament.

As long as he didn't support Corbyn in 2015 he's a good man in Keir's book.

This post has been deleted presumably because Hai was acquitted.

[TheTide]

Presumably a woman, otherwise we would have had two non-heterosexual Prime Ministers in a row and three non-heterosexual major party leaders in the 1970 and the two 1974 general elections.

What?

Harold Wilson was very much heterosexual, no need to worry on that score

It is a pretty undisputed matter of record that Jeremy Thorpe was primarily attracted to men - though he did marry and have children, neither of which was true of Edward Heath. About whom there were rumours even at the time, but very little has ever been reliably confirmed. Very possibly a "gay incel".

I'd rate Heath as being the least charismatic Prime Minister since television became the primary medium in politics (which would be mid to late 1950s). This would almost certainly have had a negative impact on whatever sexual and romantic desires he might have had. Sir Keith Joseph would have this 'prize' if he had made it to the very top.

[Wiswylfen]

As long as he didn't support Corbyn in 2015 he's a good man in Keir's book.

This post has been deleted presumably because Hai was acquitted.

The post has been deleted because I got a very fancy Twitter DM from 'Urgent Legal Correspondence'.

[Zinneke]

As long as he didn't support Corbyn in 2015 he's a good man in Keir's book.

This post has been deleted presumably because Hai was acquitted.

The post has been deleted because I got a very fancy Twitter DM from 'Urgent Legal Correspondence'.

How did they doxx you?

Also do the Labour folks read this forum?

[Wiswylfen]

As long as he didn't support Corbyn in 2015 he's a good man in Keir's book.

This post has been deleted presumably because Hai was acquitted.

The post has been deleted because I got a very fancy Twitter DM from 'Urgent Legal Correspondence'.

How did they doxx you?

Also do the Labour folks read this forum?

Oh, no; they found me because I replied to a Michael Crick tweet, he quote-tweeted me, and it got 50,000 views.

[Ancestral Republican]

Been reading more about Luke Akehurst, the self described "Zionist sh**lord" and thumb with glasses from Oxford who's being parachuted into safe seat Durham North (selected by himself because he's, unbelievably, on the NEC.) Gotta say it nukes any of Keir's remaining credibility that his left wing purges have been anything but personal - if he sees no issue with this unqualified, extremist hack (who had to delete thousands of tweets beforehand) standing for Labour, then all of his moral equivocating about other candidates goes out the window.

[CumbrianLefty]

Akehurst has views on Israel/Palestine that place him on the fringe of Labour party opinion, yes.

He also likes to wind up his factional opponents (and always has done going back to the 1990s)

Apart from that, however, he is pretty bog-standard mainstream right wing Labour. In fact he is even to the left of continuity Blairite types in some respects and voted for Ed (not David) Miliband in 2010.

[Wiswylfen]

Akehurst has views on Israel/Palestine that place him on the fringe of Labour party opinion, yes.

He also likes to wind up his factional opponents (and always has done going back to the 1990s)

Apart from that, however, he is pretty bog-standard mainstream right wing Labour. In fact he is even to the left of continuity Blairite types in some respects and voted for Ed (not David) Miliband in 2010.

Yes; the party has, shamefully, forgotten men like Chris Mayhew who saw the reality behind the illusion. Blind support for states that hate us and wish our soldiers dead is stereotypically limited to the fringes of the left, but in the case of Israel it is the consensus of the party's right.

[CumbrianLefty]

i mean, not really. Labour Friends Of Palestine hardly wants for members, even with the current PLP.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Akehurst has views on Israel/Palestine that place him on the fringe of Labour party opinion, yes.

He also likes to wind up his factional opponents (and always has done going back to the 1990s)

Apart from that, however, he is pretty bog-standard mainstream right wing Labour. In fact he is even to the left of continuity Blairite types in some respects and voted for Ed (not David) Miliband in 2010.

He's an odd duck. The old joke, as you'll know, used to be that he is actually the last surviving Menshevik (or, in other versions, Orthodox Marxist/Kautskyist. But there's no real difference there) which in most respects is as silly as any case of applying a long-dead label to someone born in a fundamentally different World, but it does capture something about him. Used to be a councillor in Hackney, of course, and got on reasonably well with Diane Abbott by all accounts (the classic jovial sparring etc). Of course everyone was younger then.

[Wiswylfen]

i mean, not really. Labour Friends Of Palestine hardly wants for members, even with the current PLP.

I'm not quite sure what Diana Johnson and Wes Streeting being 'parliamentary supporters' is supposed to prove, except the absence of any standards whatsoever. The not blindly pro-Israel tradition on the party's right is dead and I don't think you can really deny that with any seriousness.