No, I do not think the labour party is institutionally anti-semitic.

I think you believe Labour is institutionally anti-Semitic, believe the EHRC will agree, would prefer it wasn't anti-Semitic but still want a Labour government because for you the pros outweighs the racism.

You'll speak about the importance of combating anti-Semitism when there's a leadership vacancy but not before since i) you consider yourself anti-racist and don't want to admit supporting a racist party & ii) Don't want to be perceived as "harming the cause" when what you perceive as a "United 93" election is imminent.

Let's bet lol

Preemptively refusing to accept the EHRC's findings is strange but I don't *totally* disagree with the rest. The hardcore anti-Semites are small in number but they're all LOTOs best friends. Hence the institutional nature.

Members, who don't care about anti-Semitism one way or another, when Jews attack LOTO for anti-Semitism, they just see Jews attacking LOTO. So Jews become the enemy.

The perception that Labour is anti-Semitic is seen as reducing the chances of a Labour government so the perception Labour is anti-Semitic must be attacked. I mean, do you really want five more years of Tory austerity? And it's not like he's going to deport Jews. So just STFU about anti-Semitism already...

I didn't ask that.

Do you expect the EHRC to give Labour a clean bill of health (they're not interested in whether .06% or whatever of Labour members are anti-Semites but specifically whether Labour is institutionally anti-Semitic as alleged by the Jewish Labour Movement and others)? If not why not?

I do, ye

Thank you. Hopefully whichever one of us turns out to be wrong will have the intellectual honesty to admit so and state why they ignored the overwhelming evidence.

Indeed, i'm not married to the labour party or anything.

Most of the last 20 or so comments belong in the general UK politics thread, not here.

Is there any general politics other than Brexit going on nowadays?

No. And this state of affairs is likely to continue indefinitely.

It's being drowned out but we are gearing up for a GE between the most profoundly different major parties for a very long time. The future direction of the UK on just about everything is at stake. One of the problems of brexit is that it's drowning this out in the media but it's still going on.

We are also seeing the real time development of constitutional changes playing out. The creation of the supreme court being one but also, I don't think anyone really understood the importance of the fixed parliament act (although that's also easy to change)

It's going to keep getting drowned out while there's such a large number of people on the left who'd rather do a culture-wars issue like not implementing the Brexit referendum than concentrate on the left's actual strong suits.

Nice analysis in the Morning Star:
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/arti...-and-dangerous

It makes no sense to make Brexit a "left vs right" issue. Most arguments in favor or opposed are not grounded in policy differences between those two wings.

Whenever a right vs left divide makes no sense, odds are pretty good you're looking at attempts to secure a political base rather than rational policy disagreement.

Yes but getting drowned out isn't the same as it not going on. I agree with some of the article but not all of it. I think the biggest danger for the left now is that if they go into the election with brexit dominating then we risk losing everything - on brexit and on the left getting crushed. Some chance we win but it's one hell of a risky situation.

The current brexit policy is so obviously an electoral liability but so would be any other position - there is no good position on brexit. Hopefully labour is becoming more aware of this fact.

They were aware of it when they whipped the party to trigger article 50 and put respecting the referendum result in the manifesto. They seems to have ceased to be aware of it.

The position that wouldn't be a liability would be to have already left the EU and be talking about a completely different set of issues.

Leave had to be given their chance but they haven't grasped it yet and we still have a chance to remain. Things move on and there still may be time to get it sorted before a GE. Although I don't think labour can officially advocate for it, I hope they will seize the opportunity if it arises.

Labour also need to be prepared for the possibility of fighting a GE after boris/etc have somehow got a deal through. Not quite as unlikely imo as some seem to think.

and we have to remember this is just a trivial withdrawal agreement. That's just the amuse bouche.

So how do you think the supreme court rules?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-b...-idUSKBN1W40L4

"Early this week" must mean tomorrow or stretching it, Wednesday.


And what do you think the MPs are doing right now?

Dunno but results come out at 10:30am tomorrow

Thanks. Let's sit down and wait then. I put more emphasis on that than seemingly generally is the case. "Boris can do it again" appears a bit stupid (with the queen and all...). And if it's not unlawful then it's immoral. We always win!

The likelihood of a Corbyn-McDonnell government may have receded somewhat due to the absolute scenes in Brighton. Having voted for the leadership's ludicrous Brexit position -- 'We won't open the box and tell you what our policy is until you have already given us absolute State power, ha ha ha' -- Conference then supposedly voted down Composite 13, the Remain option, or rather the chair just said it was voted down, on a show of hands which observers said was very close, and then refused to allow a proper card vote. Yer basic corrupt machine politics at work.

Some 75 per cent of Labour voters are Remain, so that won't go down well. And the leadership's narrative -- that the Leave vote was dominated by the working class in 'the northern heartlands' -- is a lie, which has been exposed several times by several studies. The Leave vote was dominated by well-off pensioners in the South and South-West. Brum was the only big city in England that wasn't Remain. Not just London but Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle were Remain. Wales was actually Remain except for a contingent of English retirees who swung the vote by a tiny margin. Scotland and Northern Ireland, of course, were Remain.

Corbyn and his crazy Communist Morning Star clique are Bennite Brexitards. They're all rich and privileged and they think they're insulated from the consequences of Brexit, which will allow them to live out their unpleasant power fantasies. That's the problem, which may yet bite Labour in the hindquarters quite hard.

For those who remember it better: why wasn't LOTO's fervent EU-loathing a bigger deal in the leadership contest, which took part nine months before the Brexit referendum among a pro-EU membership? Did his opponents neglect to mention it, or people assumed Remain would win so it wasn't a big deal etc?

Re: doing it again - the problem is that what he did was bad even if it was legal. This is an important point imo (made also by Ash Sarkar) - the real problem with shutting down parliament for so long isn't that it was illegal.

So yes it would be bad to find a legal way to do it because as above the real problem wasn't that it was illegal.

If on the other hand what he did was ok but had been done in an illegal manner (this happens sometimes) then of course it would be fine to redo it in a legal way.

MPs are on holiday and attending their party conferences or doing some gardening. The Supreme Court ruling will be given tomorrow morning and I certainly hope the judges saw Channel 4's Tories At War last night, when hedge fund manager Crispin Odey, financial backer of Johnson and Rees-Mogg, actually stated out loud on camera that the whole point of proroguing, and trying to get a General Election and then monkey with the polling date, was to circumvent Parliament and force a no-deal.

(Don't know if this is any use outside the UK. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/tories-at-war )

Ignoring the loathing bit. I mentioned this before, it barely, if at all, came up.

Maybe because JC didn't have a chance until suddenly he was unbeatable. I assume the rest all had the same views on the EU so it wasn't an issue.

Also huge complacency on the remain side - that's been going on for decades though.

You don't think the MPs are acting behind the scenes? I'm just trying to picture where they are gathering (and shouting). But if gardening in autumn is what they are after, so be it.

The leadership election rules were messed up by Ed Miliband. Corbyn was elected by the idiots in the cheap seats who had literally never heard of him till 2015 and therefore projected all their wish-fulfilment fantasies on to him.

Those of us who actually lived in North London in the early 1980s have always known exactly who and what he is -- a posh thickie crank who loved the IRA and Stalin and who belonged to the rogue Communist 'City of London group' (representing white far-left South African interests) which tried to wrest control of the Anti-Apartheid Movement away from the (mainly black) ANC. That last factor is why Corbyn was arrested at that anti-ANC picket, as seen in the famous photo, and that is why Mandela, who greatly appreciated Margaret Thatcher's successful efforts to gain his release and was very happy to meet her, always hated Corbyn and refused to have anything to do with him.

https://medium.com/@twlldun/the-righ...y-de2228da346f

Unhinged pro-Putin near-Septuagenarian crank runs for the leadership of the main opposition party for a laugh, never expecting to win. His opponents find him repellent but go easy because he's never going to win (didn't want to and people aren't dumb enough to elect him) and they want his supporters. Then he wins and his party keep quiet because obviously he's getting trounced in the next election. And then it will go back to normal. He loses the next election by a couple of percentage points but does better than people expected. Two years later his party is a cult.