I have to be honest, I'm a leaver and I'm really not worried at all it won't happen, one way or another. As I've indicated before, I want the uk to disentangle from this iteration of the EU as soon as possible.

However, the only thing I worry about is the possibility of the significant rise of ukip on the back of brexit being 'frustrated' in a way the brexit loving press can easily exploit.

It's a real concern. If I didn't think it was so important that we stay in or at least remain very closely aligned with the EU then I would also take your view about stopping ukip.

UKIP doesn't have the professionalism of most of the eurofascists. The eurofascists are mostly shrewd, suited poltically astute people. UKIP are a bunch of senile eccentrics.

You can get away with this in the US where intelligence itself is seen as suspicous but not here. This thing about Nuttall pretending to have mates at Hillsborough is symptomatic of the problem: they really had to just do nothing to pick up Stoke and they may have screwed that up.

We can't rely on no-one emerging who is competent enough to take advantage of all those people.

It's a terrible mistake in politics to ignore the underlying problems/phenomena because it's not currently manifesting in a way that causes a real problem. That's how we get into these messes in the first place.

Indeed. Exactly what New Labour did to get us to this point IMO.

Blair willingly sold us a total lie so he could go to war.
He was convicted in 2011 of committing crimes against humanity during the Iraq war by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Lord.

You're not a happy man are you?

Putting posters and ideas into the wrong box is the essence of your posting history and political motivations. Put it in the SJW box, job done.

No, he didn't. The principal lie was one of omission by MI6, who deliberately failed to tell the prime minister that the Iraqi agent Curveball was a liar and a fantasist, though they knew this long in advance of the invasion. (And that's in Chilcot, by the way. Chilcot's headline conclusions were not justified by the evidence he took.)

No, he wasn't, because that isn't a real thing. It's just a club put together by some Islamist nutter in Malaysia. The ICC, the only authority with any competence, is not even making a case against Tony Blair, because there isn't one to make.

Absolutely no problems with Blair or New Labour.

Iraq war obviously total **** up, but I am not as bothered by some over this as I dont think he took us to war due to some cynical political arithmetic to further his own domestic political agenda.

As far as parliamentary politics is concerned, a Blair.2 would be an absolute wet dream for Labour.

I know New Labour did not rush in to re nationalise the railways, but cmon, compare NL to the present souless heartless no faqs given for human life ****s and its no contest.

As I argued many moons ago a centre left party in power is the best one can hope for, Corbyn and his ilk should forget parliamentary politics and engage totally in meta politics and concentrate much harder on moving the conversation in this country to the left, the internet is a thing and the opportunities going forward are massive.

Life is about to get much much much much ****ter for large cohorts of British Population. Win the explanation war on why and then you can refocus parliamentary politics further to the left. So far it is losing this war badly, its pretty pathetic to be frank.

That said the Corbyn left has to drop much of the baggage it has from the 70s and focus and adopt much contemporary leftist ideas such as currency reform, that dont seem to have much traction in Corbyn's back to the 70s agenda.

Count me out if that happens. I considered New Labour no different from the Tories. When Corbyn goes, one way or another, I'm done with Labour and probably voting.

I think you will find those of us on the far left are not prepared to grin and bear it a second time.

Im totally fine with losing you if it means I get good cop over bad cop.

Considering NL no different to the Tories is just LordGvK level analysis. Its a very lazy hand sweeping generalisation based on some very removed criteria.

Actually the One Nation Tories such as Heath (and probably Macmillan) were significantly to the left of Blair on the whole, an indication of how far Thatcher shifted the landscape.

Well aware of this and have stated such in a recent post maybe in Ukpol.

The point is NL are still to the left of Tories.

Yes the landscape is shifted, shifting it back needs to happen outside of the Parliamentary Labour party.

Its just being grown up and tactical, how left can we be and still be electable = somewhere around NL.

If we want government to be more left than that we have to engage in a massive amount of agit prop, this should be handled separately to the machinations of the Parliamentary Labour party.

Chilcot concluded that the dossier "did not justify" Blair's certainty
Regarding his conviction.
The ICC were looking at introducing the same "crime of aggression" but wouldn't apply it retroactively.

Blair's a criminal and should be imprisoned just for taking money from the President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Explain to me what actually New Labour achieved in the way of demonstrably left-wing policies? Surestart centres?

What about widening social inequality, fiscal prudence, the decline of manufacturing industry, financial service deregulation and excessive militarism is noticeably left-wing?
Exactly why do you expect the working classes and the intellectual left to vote for a resurgent New Labour? What is different from the Tories and the LD's? Because it looks pretty much like the same sh** in the same suits taking the working poor for granted.

Did it ever occur to you that the policies might not be the problem? That it might actually be a bigger problem to be perceived as a bunch of slimy, manipulative, PR-obsessed deceitful careerists who'd sell out their own grandmothers for power? Because, who would trust someone like that?

The most popular candidates in the recent US election were Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Ideologically they were as far apart as you get. They both acquired massive support because they were perceived as being straight talkers and the yanks were just tired of all the bull****.

I vote for a slap in the face over repeated stamps on the bollox, its that simple.

I wont vote unless there is a unicorns and fairies party that represents all my political ideal perfectly is just childish.

Also what makes NL electable is not that lefties vote for them, but that middle england votes for them.

Simple but quite possibly a bad mistake. You take the slap in the face now and look forward to a much more severe and repeated kick in the balls later.

If we are willing to vote for something we really don't want then we pretty much guarantee never getting what we do want.

Except I already covered that.

Also in life you rarely get the option of choosing the exact thing you want, thats just reality.

It doesn't have to be exact but if the left wing party know we will vote for them whatever, then their optimum strategy is to be slightly to the left of the tories. That's our fault if we don't refuse to vote for them unless they are actually something we generally want.

This sounds a lot like the rationale that led a decent number of Berniebros to stay home and let Trump in.

I'm on your side of the Blair position though. The man is scum, and led us into an obviously illegal and immoral war for the sole reason that he made a stupid, weak promise to support Dubya and didn't have the stones to renege on it. His insertion into the anti-Brexit campaign is the first event that's caused me to feel uncomfortable about opposing Brexit.

I totally agree it breaks down in extreme circumstance.

If Labour moves further the left to "give us what we want" then it losses middle England and does not get elected giving power to the Tories, something I really dont want. If after two Tory govs, people cant see how NL really is a much lesser of two evils I dont know what to say.


The whole point, as I have stated several times, which you are ignoring, is that the left should be focussing on moving middle england and other cohorts to the left, there is massive opportunity for this now and will only increase going forward, at present they seem to be failing hard.

Therefore there should be a two prong strategy, electable damage limitation centre left Not the Tories parliamentary party + agit prop to win more of the national conversation to make a more leftist government electable in the future.

So look moderate until elected, then be radical. Wasn't that what Thatcher did?

You seem to be confusing what media pundits are saying with what is actually happening.

Labour's liberal middle-class vote turned out at the last two elections. It was the working classes failing to turn out that caused the problems for Labour.

If you actually study what is going on with the demographics of voting patterns you get a completely different perspective (and some very profitable betting opportunities).