> Despite the uproar, the government's opposition failed to scrutinize any significant amendments and abstained from the final vote. Killock said recently that the opposition Labour party spent its time "simply failing to hold the government to account".
What the hell is the point of the Labour party these days? They are absolutely not an effective opposition. Worthless bastards, one and all.
What is Jeremy Corbyn supposed to do? He was elected twice by the overwhelming majority of party members on a socialist platform, but the majority of his MPs aren't socialist and support a "Blairite" (neoliberal) agenda. Since his election, those MPs have tried to force him to resign, staging various incidents (an MP calling Ken Livingstone a Nazi apologist for pointing out the existence of the Haavara Agreement, a heckler at a Gay Pride march who it transpired was an employee of a Blairite PR firm, a brick through an MPs window, except it wasn't her window and there was no brick, and several other incidents) and forced an unnecessary leadership election (and a court case challenging the incumbent's right to stand), when they could have been attacking the Government's policies. They refuse to join his shadow cabinet, so many of its members lack experience.
That's the current situation. Those MPs who caused the trouble can't be deselected until the next election. If Jeremy Corbyn was replaced by neoliberal, Labour wouldn't oppose government policies to anything like the extent it now does, and would almost certainly lose any subsequent general election. Or we could dispense with democracy altogether.
The trouble with this is that Corbyn has done nothing whatsoever to oppose the Snooper's Charter or Brexit or the Psychoactive Substances Act or the (now delayed) attempt to neuter the House Of Lords (in fact I suspect he fully supports all of those).
>Corbyn has done nothing whatsoever to oppose the Snooper's Charter or Brexit //
Corbyn campaigned on the ground against Brexit all over Britain. It largely wasn't reported on in the national press though. Actually getting out amongst the people is seemingly his thing.
Corbyn appears to be being a socialist, shock!, and not dictating the position people should take but suggesting a position and fronting the position of the members of his party.
My take on Corbyn is if you want him to act then get the Party to support it.
He expended orders of magnitude more effort on the ground campaigning for himself weeks later. Of course, one campaign might have involved him sharing a platform with other political parties (more unacceptable, in Jeremy Corbyn's head, than attending IRA funerals or events run by SWP front groups that fellow leftists pointedly asked him to boycott) and preferably not use his supposedly pro-EU speeches to dismiss the economic arguments they'd made in favour of staying in the EU. The other involved attend rallies of people that had turned out to deliver him unquestioning applause and adulation.
It's Corbyn's closest ally in the Labour Party who is now suggesting that anyone with the temerity to still think leaving the EU is a bad idea is "on the side of certain corporate elites". That's certainly not following the lead of the membership.
On the Snooper's Charter he abstained, and whipped his party into abstaining. You can't blame anybody but Jeremy Corbyn for that.
What the hell is the point of the Labour party these days? They are absolutely not an effective opposition.
Hear, hear. They've even done a 180 over Brexit, which they now support, against the majority of their supporters.
Labour claims this is because they respect the referendum, which is ridiculous. It'd be like the Democrats becoming pro-life and anti-immigrant to "respect" the presidential election. You don't just give up your own ideals and platform for what won - well, not unless you're the modern Labour party.
Why would they oppose it? It was their idea in the first place. Putting the entire population under constant electronic surveillance may be the one thing they agree with Tories about.
The reduction of the exchange rate is unlikely to actually help the UK. Have a look at some of the academic research, while business leaders and politicians believe that a reduced exchange rate helps exporters there's not that much evidence for it. Also, even if it does help exporters from the perspective of average voters costs and inflation will go up - which they may not have thought through.
>Worthless bastards, one and all.
Why write this crap? The labour party is the biggest left wing party in Europe, are you saying everyone inside it is worthless?
They are also staggeringly ineffective and can't seem to decide what they stand for. Miliband was OK despite the "controls on immigration" equivocation, but since then the party has turned into a circular firing squad.
Going back into history, I'm fairly sure we saw attempts at invasive surveillance under Blair's Labour; Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, and the failed ID cards scheme.
It's not even clear whether they're able to oppose Brexit.
That's because Blair's Labour Party was as right wing and authoritarian as the Tories they replaced. Both Corbyn's supporters and opponents know well what they stand for. The problem is it isn't the same things.
The only people who have any moral right to oppose Brexit are the Scottish nationalists and the Northern Irish republicans. England and Wales voted to leave.
That's because Blair's Labour Party was as right wing [..] as the Tories they replaced.
That's revisionist, and demonstrably false. The Blair government brought in gay adoption, a minimum wage, the Freedom of Information Act, the Human Rights Act, civil partnerships, banned fox hunting with dogs, increased NHS investment by >25% in real terms, achieved the lowest unemployment in 50 years, slashed child poverty, and more. Minimum wage alone was considered a bold left wing move at the time. Blair made modern Tories softer, if anything.
It's sad that the Iraq debacle caused people to write off what was the most progressive and beneficial government this country had seen in decades - I can't see how anyone could equate it to the governments of Major or Thatcher.
I think it's a good example of why a simple left-right dichotomy doesn't cut it. The Blair government had a lot of great social-democrat policies and was genuinely redistributive. It also relied on control-freakery and media management; all policy had to come from the Blair-Campbell office. There was no mechanism for incorporating friendly critique. And some of its policy was genuinely illiberal, especially in the antiterrorism & surveillance area.
That may have been a hidden tradeoff for taking on the security establishment enough to get a peace deal in NI.
It wasn't just Iraq - it was PFI, identity cards, workfare, privatize-everything and a bunch of other stuff including the above-mentioned (and already pretty crap) RIPA. The "tough on crime" tabloid-feed propaganda ended up creeping into their actual political platform (thanks to Blunkett and friends), and by the end Blair just wasn't listening to anyone, completely lost in a Catholic neocon trip with authoritarian undertones. It wasn't just people writing him off, it was him shutting out everyone else and refusing to reconsider what had become untenable positions.
I stand corrected. Still right wing, but less right wing than, and similarly authoritarian as, the Tories during Labour's time in government. Source: https://www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010
Not hugely true. Blair's government improved the NHS and vastly improved the mess with Railtrack and decades of Tory underfunding of the railways.
They were more right wing than the proceeding labor administration which was what 1979? But then that's probably a good thing otherwise they'd never have been voted into office.
Parties have to shift with public sentiment and clearly Blair saw that and shifted to the New Labour ideology as evidenced by his 1997 landslide.
Looking at it from the continent, it seems to me that Corbyn is entirely happy with getting out of EU, and is only "opposed" because he's supposed to be "in opposition".
The Labour Party's abstention on this bill is unforgivable. We need to hold the Conservative government to account for their deceit and utter incompetence. We need a strong opposition party now more than ever. But Labour have completely failed in that regard.
Yes, I realise Labour is up against our mostly Labour-hating right-wing national press who seem as culpable as our politicians in perpetuating lies and untruths to push their own agenda. (Is there any country in Europe that has a national press as vile, racist, and nasty as our national press in the UK?)
Labour should be pummelling the Conservative party for their endless lies and dishonesty. They should have ripped the Conservatives to shreds over this bill (as they should have for Brexit too).
Politics in the UK has never felt so oppressive, depressing and dysfunctional in recent memory than it is now. And it's probably only going to get worse.
From the Labour wonks and spads I know, Corbyn was against it, but Burnham was adamant that he needed to support the bill to be seen as "tough on terrorism". Little comfort. Horrible, inevitable news.
A place to corral dissent, nothing more. Putting Jeremy Corbyn in charge and getting all the radicals to sign up as members to keep in there (in the wildly mistaken belief that he would stand up for the causes the radical left holds dear) was simply a way of getting an up-to-date list of radical thinkers in the UK, who ave now identified themselves as such, and indeed paid a few quid each for the privilege.
Assume your primary political platform has already been compromised and start setting up new loosely connected networks now.
What the hell is the point of the Labour party these days? They are absolutely not an effective opposition. Worthless bastards, one and all.