UK PoliGAF |OT2| - We Blue Ourselves

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pulsemyne said:
So in another U-turn Hunt has finally decided to go to ACAS to settle the Junior Doctors dispute. Good day to hide such humiliation.
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lol. I'm glad I wasnt the only one to notice that :)

It's common sense. And hopefully given the better news regarding the nations finances everyone involved can come to a realistic agreement that benefits all going forward.
 
Dan27 said:
The funny thing is the Mao bit takes the attention away from how bad of a response it was..
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It was a dreadful rambling speech which failed to hammer home any really overarching points. But yes in a funny kind of way the red book thing has saved him from that critical analysis. Whether that's a good thing is in the eye of the beholder.

The leaders of the Labour party don't look fit to run a local rotart club at the moment though.
 
Kuros said:
It was a dreadful rambling speech which failed to hammer home any really overarching points. But yes in a funny kind of way the red book thing has saved him from that critical analysis. Whether that's a good thing is in the eye of the beholder.

The leaders of the Labour party don't look fit to run a local rotart club at the moment though.
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In all fairness Corbyn is asking some excellent questions right now.
 
Kuros said:
It was a dreadful rambling speech which failed to hammer home any really overarching points. But yes in a funny kind of way the red book thing has saved him from that critical analysis. Whether that's a good thing is in the eye of the beholder.

The leaders of the Labour party don't look fit to run a local rotart club at the moment though.
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To be fair, I can count on the one hand the number of Budget or Autumn Statement responses which have actually put the Government under any pressure. Unless the papers have trailed the speech the opposition gets no prior notice of what the Chancellor is about to announce. You're not going to get any forensic examination on the day.
 
Dan27 said:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcparliament

Syria Statement discussion going on right now.
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Sounds like there's no plan on how to beat ISIS, and we're just going to take part in the bombing to show solidarity with France and the US. 70,000 moderate opposition fighters to beat ISIS on the ground? Give me a break. There's only one group that can beat ISIS on the ground, and that's led by a monster who's killed 200,000 people and used chemical weapons on his own people.
 
I hope we don't get involved in Syria, is there really any need. This isn't out of fear that they might retaliate on the UK, but rather what will it achieve.
 
So it looks like Corbyn wants a whipped vote against action, but the majority of the Shadow Cabinet want a whipped vote for it, saying the requirement of action as per the conference agreement was high but has been satisfied.

Something's going to give, and it's going to be messy either way.
 
I do not believe that the PM today made a convincing case that extending UK bombing to Syria would meet that crucial test. Nor did it satisfactorily answer the questions raised by us and the Foreign Affairs Committee.

In particular, the PM did not set out a coherent strategy, coordinated through the UN for the defeat of ISIS. Nor has he been able to explain what a credible and acceptable ground forces could retake and hold territory freed from ISIS control by an intensified air campaign.

In my view, the PM has been unable to explain the contribution of additional UK bombing to a comprehensive negotiated political settlement of the Syrian civil war, or its likely impact on the threat of terrorist attacks in the UK.

For these, and other reasons, I do not believe the PM's current proposal for air strikes in Syria will protect our security and therefore cannot support it.
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Corbyn's reponse. I've highlighted the part where he is absolutely right. If his shadow cabinet overrules him on this, I will be furious. There are so many other issues they can use their political capital on, e.g. where Corbyn is wrong. We can bomb ISIS in Iraq because gained ground is handed back to the Iraqi government either directly or to the acknowledged autonomous Kurdish areas. In Syria, we cannot conduct a bombing campaign without impacting in some way the relative position of the government and the opposition. This has a real and detrimental affect on our ability to then negotiate with those sides.
 
What were the main bulletpoints agreed on in the Labour conference that the Shadow Cabinet say have been satisfied then?

Does Corbyn really risk a whipped vote over a free vote in all this?
 
Dan27 said:
What were the main bulletpoints agreed on in the Labour conference that the Shadow Cabinet say have been satisfied then?

Does Corbyn really risk a whipped vote over a free vote in all this?
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The conditions were:

Authorisation from the United Nations (met)
A comprehensive plan for humanitarian assistance for any refugees who may be displaced by the action (unclear)
Assurances that the bombing is directed exclusively at military targets associated with ISIS (met)
Military action is subordinated to international diplomatic efforts to end the war in Syria (unclear)

Corbyn is arguing that this military action won't help end the war in Syria because it will destabilize negotiations between the government and the opposition; and also that there is no strong plan for humanitarian assistance. His shadow cabinet disagree. They are wrong.

And fuck it, Corbyn should set the three-line whip. This is important. More lives are at stake here than any recent parliamentary vote in a long time, this shouldn't be used as an issue to pander to populists. If the shadow cabinet disagree, they can disobey the three-line whip and resign the shadow cabinet.
 
Cheers, much appreciated. I don't think those points are unreasonable in the least, in fact I agree with them all, especially the last one.
 
Completely with you Crab.

Not a Corbyn fan, but when it comes to Syria he is spot on.

Have to say though, that I am pleased to see proper, respectful debate between Corbyn and Cameron. Both behaved properly and in ways I would expect serious political figures to behave. Unlike with the spending review.
 
Most Shadow Cabinet ministers are tough enough to deal even with a furious lobbying operation. But they wonder how the party is practically going to manage the next few days. It’s a long time for MPs to be at liberty to criticise this decision in public, to discuss it with one another – and for Corbyn to do other things that they hadn’t predicted. ‘It’s terrible from a media management point of view,’ complains one old hand.
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That's right, how this is managed in the media is clearly a pressing concern.
 
Uzzy said:
Sounds like there's no plan on how to beat ISIS, ...
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I don't think we can judge that. Of course there might not be a plan.

But if there is a plan then one thing that you wouldn't do is announce it to the enemy through the medium of Hansard. And if there is a plan then almost certainly an early part of it will be building the biggest possible coalition against ISIS - the biggest possible military and diplomatic coalition. And our contribution to such a coalition isn't merely a matter of whether our bombs would make a difference right now. It's that if we aren't in it then it isn't the biggest possible coalition.

All I mean really is that if there's a plan there's reason that we'd know about it, or that we should expect to be told what it is.
 
Crab said:
If they're going to vote for this, they should well resign. As a Labour party member, I will simply not vote for anyone associated with voting for this, be they Dan Jarvis or Clive Lewis.
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I thought Clive Lewis was against military intervention in Syria?
 
Kuros said:
Honestly in all the years of the Tory's being a total shambles between 97-2005 they never approached this.
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The Conservatives have always had a lot more control over their party electoral process, though, which means they've always been more unified than Labour. That's why rightwing divisions have manifested themselves in the emergence of on alternative rightwing party (UKIP), unlike leftwing divisions which have been expressed within the Labour Party.
 
Moosichu said:
Isn't the problem that the leadership had too much control over who was in the PLP for a long time, meaning that the PLP is just that different from the CLP.
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Sure, but they need to fix that first. IMO the power should flow Members CLP -> PLP -> Leadership. By having a system that makes it easy to bypass that middle bit, they've created a situation where the leadership and the PLP can be really quite opposed - as now - when in reality they are the two groups that need to work together the most.

Anyway, I'm sitting in LAX at the end of my 3 week fact finding mission. My main discoveries have been that American "appetisers" are, more often than not, larger than the "entrées" and that there really are homeless nutters everywhere on the west coast.


Edit: oh yeah, and I bought Dan Hodges' book to read on the flight. I'll let you all know how it is - Inc glorious prose.
 
I only got through about 60 pages on the flight (I was Giant Bomb'ing it up mostly) but goddamn,the prose actually makes it kinda hard to read. Anyone familiar with his style could recognise it a mile off (the ol "He is X. Well, he's not X but..." And "The problem is Y. The solution, though, is Y.") But I'm half way through the third chapter and it's jumping all over the shop. The first chapter describes the 3 leaders as children via vignettes but they're obviously invented even if they're indicative - ie one about Ed playing Cricket. Not hard to find evidence that it happened but he'd add in flourishes about the sounds and someone hitting a 6, which, like, just seems like a Channel 4 fictionalisation.

Similarly he often takes on the "tone" of whoever he's talking about. So one early example is about Michael Howard changing the Tory leadership system and he names David Davis and David Cameron as being the two front runners but then name checks "Liam", " Ken" etc. Now you and I know he's talking about Foxy and Clarke, and he does it because he's trying to talk in the "voice" of Howard's inner monologue. But it could be a bit alienating.

That said, I'm still enjoying it. The details which are reasonable to expect he actually knows are interesting and that's the best you can hope for given we all know how the story "ends". He tells some interesting stories about the inner workings of the coalition and Ed's camp. So yeah... We'll see how I feel about it when I get to the end.

I'm knackered.
 
It's more complicated than that. The Labour Parliamentary Committee, which decides the speaking order and who speaks at Parliamentary Labour Party general meetings, is elected by the Parliamentary Labour Party, and as such is actually full of I guess what you'd call 'Kendallites', with 17 out of 28 MPs in the group having supported Kendall. As such, while they have to allow Corbyn to speak because he's the leader, they more or less shut down anyone who they don't approve of from having significant talking time, and inversely give a lot of time to people who agree with them. Corbyn's allies pointed out that this is unfair, particularly because Benn is a member of Corbyn's cabinet and therefore should not have a separate view to Corbyn with which to address the PLP. They asked that if the LPC wasn't going to let any Corbyn allies speak, Corbyn should be allowed to represent the shadow cabinet himself. This then gets reported as trying to gag Benn. It's gagging only in the sense that if five people are beating you up and you ask them to at least just make it four on one, you're handicapping your opponent.

The new style of politics would be a lot easier of the old style of politics didn't keep muscling in. I genuinely have no idea what is going to happen to the Labour Party at this rate.
 
Atm no one has said what the plan for Syria is except for bombing targets of opportunity. Is there a strategy? Is there a reason why it will suddenly be more effective now than in the past? Any reason to think this won't make the UK less safe from the blowback?

Also the Tory aide who bullied a person into suicide had been reported to party HQ, despite them lying earlier and saying they had no idea. Blood on their hands.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics...bullying-youth-wing-warsi-grant-shapps-letter
 
Cameron's seven-point plan involves those six bombers crossing a non-existent border with the hope that one day, somehow, after enough Toyota pickup trucks have been bombed, that the opposition groups (who are being targeted by Russia) defeat ISIL.

Splendid.
 
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/27/ken-livingstone-labour

Even so, there is no more assiduous aborter of his own achievements than Ken.
...

Happily, he can still get the gigs with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. In fact, when I heard about the “kinder, gentler politics” back in the summer, I just knew there would be a place in it for Ken. There’s no show without Punch. Just as you couldn’t have “back to basics” and “family values” without everyone including John Major being at it with someone that wasn’t their spouse, so you couldn’t have political feel appeal without a man who knows just when to laugh it up about disappointingly miscast Jews or people who have suffered mental health problems.
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It's quite an interesting read. I do wish I could have a conversation with Ken Livingstone about what he thinks. He seems to want to achieve one thing, and then do everything that will alienate people from his cause, it's bizarre.
 
Tedious semantic discussion of mandates incoming:

With it being brought up a lot that Jeremy Corbyn has a mandate for his views given he was elected leader, and that this means that his Cabinet should either get with the program or leave the front-bench, I'd like to present a rebuttal based upon a different mandate. The mandate MPs were given at the last election. After all, we live in a country with a parliamentary system, not a presidential one. Thus, people have directly elected their MPs rather than being assigned them. Thus, people have voted for those MPs who they feel best represent them. Thus, MPs are bound by their pledge to the wider electorate to propound their views and to speak for them as best they can. Thus, can those who challenge Corbyn because of their views be seen as, instead of fighting against Corbyn's mandate, speaking based upon the mandate their constituents gave them at the election. One could thus argue there is no hypocrisy in speaking against Corbyn, if they view the mandate they were given at the election by the people who voted for them as more important to them personally than Corbyn's mandate. After all, is this not the basis behind Corbyn's constant rebellion against the leadership during his time on the back bench?

The principle is that, as Corbyn owes it to those who voted for him to represent them, so these MPs owe it to those who elected them to represent them over those (Labour members) who didn't.
 
Yes, but they have two separate hats, so to speak: their hat as an MP, and their hat as a member of the Labour shadow cabinet. If they can't square those hats and fulfil both duties, they need to resign one or other of the hats. If they think that representing the interests of their constituents (or rather, the constituents that voted for them, otherwise politics would be pointless) conflicts with being a member of the shadow cabinet, or heaven forbid, a member of the Labour Party, they are within their rights to leave the shadow cabinet or the Party respectively. It's a shame that the last Labour establishment member with a backbone was Robin Cook.
 
Crab said:
Yes, but they have two separate hats, so to speak: their hat as an MP, and their hat as a member of the Labour shadow cabinet. If they can't square those hats and fulfil both duties, they need to resign one or other of the hats. If they think that representing the interests of their constituents (or rather, the constituents that voted for them, otherwise politics would be pointless) conflicts with being a member of the shadow cabinet, or heaven forbid, a member of the Labour Party, they are within their rights to leave the shadow cabinet or the party respectively. It's a shame that the last Labour establishment member with a backbone was Robin Cook.
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But I would argue that disagreeing with your leader is not necessarily a problem, even if you are in the shadow cabinet. After all, is there any great advantage to a party run by yes men? And if Corbyn cannot convince his own MPs, what chance does he have of convincing the electorate?
 
CCS said:
But I would argue that disagreeing with your leader is not necessarily a problem, even if you are in the shadow cabinet. After all, is there any great advantage to a party run by yes men? And if Corbyn cannot convince his own MPs, what chance does he have of convincing the electorate?
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You can disagree with your leader, in the privacy of a shadow cabinet meeting, where you have an opportunity to persuade your leader of your views. If you fail to do so, then, by the principle of collective responsibility, you either keep your disagreements to yourself, or you resign. It's not a particularly complicated concept. Clare Short and Robin Cook understood it admirably.
 
Crab said:
You can disagree with your leader, in the privacy of a shadow cabinet meeting, where you have an opportunity to persuade your leader of your views. If you fail to do so, then, by the principle of collective responsibility, you either keep your disagreements to yourself, or you resign. It's not a particularly complicated concept. Clare Short and Robin Cook understood it admirably.
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But what if you feel that your leader is not acting in the best interests of the party and the electorate? In that case, you owe your leader loyalty, but you owe opposition to your party and the electorate. An incompetent leader does not deserve support, in my eyes.
 
Incidentally, I just replied to my email from Corbyn asking for my views. My view is that I cannot say what the right action is, but I believe that it should be a free, un-whipped vote.
 
CCS said:
But what if you feel that your leader is not acting in the best interests of the party and the electorate? In that case, you owe your leader loyalty, but you owe opposition to your party and the electorate. An incompetent leader does not deserve support, in my eyes.
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If you feel your leader is not acting in the interests of the party, you resign the shadow cabinet and challenge him to a leadership election. Again, this is not complicated. Even John Redwood figured it out, and he's a Conservative.
 
Crab said:
If you feel your leader is not acting in the interests of the party, you resign the shadow cabinet and challenge him to a leadership election. Again, this is not complicated. Even John Redwood figured it out, and he's a Conservative.
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And it seems like we are heading that way. Everything else is just posturing for the inevitable election. I find it hard to be angry at MPs for going against the leadership in order to try and swing the inevitable election the way they want when Corbyn made being an uncontrollable rebel a key part of his election strategy.
 
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