Fergus

Merry Hadaway @kindjourneys.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:15 UTC

I'm going to take every win gladly when Labour do something right over the coming days/weeks/months. Partly because all good things are good, I mean obviously. Partly because it frees us all up to target fighting them where they're dreadful.

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Fergus @ferrousmu.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:46 UTC

It remains to be seen how Labour's vanishing left faction will work with Corbyn and other independents, and Greens and others. Obviously, many high up in the party want everyone on the left out of the party, especially those from minorities. Will they stop now? Was the Shaheen fuckup a watershed?

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Fergus @ferrousmu.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:42 UTC

Right: it's absolutely clear that we need a mainstream party/group of the left, and that the Labour Party cannot and will not be any part of it. Can the Greens fill the gap? Maybe, but probably not on their own. A lot of people have viewed A New Party Of The Left as just a mirage, for a long time.

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Fergus @ferrousmu.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 19:16 UTC

Where does Labour go from here? Where does the left go? Where does the right go? Which of the timebombs we're sitting on will go off first, and will it set off the others? How will we weather the coming crises? How do we stop the ones holding the levers from preventing us from saving ourselves?

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Fergus @ferrousmu.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 19:14 UTC

...meanwhile, practically all the public services in Britain are barely functional, after 14 years of obsessive, ideologically-driven under-investment. The workforce is sick, demotivated, anxious and financially struggling. Labour's plans for tackling any of these serious issues are... minimalist.

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Fergus @ferrousmu.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 19:11 UTC

But climate change is starting to hit hard, more people than ever are disabled thanks to the disastrously handled pandemic, Brexit turned out to be a terrible idea, British manufacturing is not doing great, natural resources are depleted, the population's aging, we may be on the brink of more war...

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Fergus @ferrousmu.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 19:08 UTC

They have promised to follow Tory spending plans, and to avoid raising any of the obvious taxes that they could use to invest in making Britain better... Their few promises that imply any spending are predicated on economic growth. Where will this come from? Nobody knows. Maybe somewhere? Somehow?

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Fergus @ferrousmu.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 19:07 UTC

This is an incredibly unstable political moment that Labour has manoeuvred its way into presiding over. 12.9 million people voted Labour in 2017, and the new leadership's consistent message to those people has been: you were wrong, and we never should have gone along with your wild political ideas.

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Fergus @ferrousmu.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 19:03 UTC

But this means we're in a situation where only 20% of the electorate voted for a party that now has an unassailable majority in parliament - and that party got where it was by the leader lying to its members and waging war against its own left-wing supporters, members and especially representatives.

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Fergus @ferrousmu.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 19:01 UTC

Starmer's faction took a gamble on doing everything they could to convince tory voters that they had nothing to fear from them, while waiting for the official right wing parties to destroy themselves/each other. It certainly paid off in terms of winning seats for Labour, and losing them for Tories!

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Fergus @ferrousmu.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 18:53 UTC

I just keep thinking about the way that our electoral system has handed an overwhelming victory to a party that FEWER people voted for than in their "worst electoral defeat since 1935" five years earlier.

From 32.1% of votes, to 33.8%, on a smaller turnout...

From 31% of seats to 63%.

#democracy!

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