I have a real problem being civil with these people.

We put up with them for decades. We supported their candidates who sold out the working class every bit as much as the Tories.

Now, we have an elected left-wing Labour leader. If you cannot respect that decision until the next general election, then you can f*** off. Respect the members, respect democracy or you will get nothing but utter contempt. They are de facto tory fifth columnists.

I can oppose NI increases on the basis that they are a flat rate on everyone earning 8k and would prefer people earning more pay proportionately more

This budget and NI thing really emphasis were we are at in general.

With all the totall bizarre **** that is going on, hey guys they raised NI seems almost totally moot and not worth talking about, as does hey guys tories gonna tory.

Almost glad to have reassurance of Tory gonna torry and not Tory gonna do some weird russian political technology influenced post modern symbolic post rational rando ting.

I think I have a kind of burn out.

I mean, ultimately the budget was pretty moderate for a Tory budget and all the WURST BDGT EVAR types clearly don't remember as far back as, well, the last budget.

It was three elections in eight years. Election wins do tend to indicate electoral success. Except in your house, apparently.

You believe in the fairies at the bottom of the garden, so...

That's because you're so childish.

QED.

Blackest of the pots and kettles given some of the lunacy you come up with

Intersting post from Owen Jones (former Corbyn supporter) about why he's leaving social media. Strangely the BBC have the story headlined as him leaving because of death threats from the far right but his own statement seems to say otherwise. I disagree with a fair bit of what Jones has to say but he's spot on about the far left here

News Feed
Owen Jones
4 hrs ·

I'm going to take a break from social media except to post articles and videos and the occasional events.

This isn't flouncing off. It's just it has come to point where it is a) totally unproductive and b) frankly just completely and utterly depressing.

On a daily basis I have angry strangers yelling at me, on the one hand, that I'm responsible for the destruction of the Labour Party, and on the other, I'm a right-wing sellout careerist who's allied to Tony Blair and possibly in the pay of the Israeli government (and that I'm a Blairite **** who needs to go **** myself, and so on and so forth).

What unites both of these groups is an almost chronic inability to accept political disagreement in good faith. Nope: there has to be some sinister ulterior motive. Their belief is so righteous and pure than the only possible reason for someone disagreeing with it is malice or greed. That I'm a careerist, obsessed with my own profile, driven by selling books or making money, that the Guardian have brainwashed me, that I was never really left-wing, and so on and so forth.

Nobody who actually knows me thinks I'm driven by anything other than what I believe, even when they disagree with me. Both my parents are staunch supporters of Jeremy Corbyn; they're leading members of their local Momentum branch. They don't agree with lots of what I've said. Unlike the increasingly frothing keyboard warriors, neither doubts for a second that what I says comes from the heart.

I find myself constantly engaging with people denouncing my motives while sending abuse. And my friends ask: What are you doing? Why are you wasting your life on this nonsense? And they're just right.

Added with the usual far-right extremists sending ever more creative descriptions of how they're going to torture and murder me, I'm no longer convinced social media is as useful a tool for political debate and discussion as it once was.

I know the obvious responses to this. Put your violin away, stop pitying yourself. Get a thick skin. You put your views out there, expect to get attacked. That's how this works.

But to be honest it isn't about that. I'm just wasting my life. I wouldn't choose to walk every day into a room full of total strangers screaming mindless abuse and making up what I think and what my motives are, but in a sense that's what I'm currently doing.

I can't help look at some of it as distressing, not because of me, but because of the cause I love and have devoted my life to, the left, the movement that exists to rid society of injustice, exploitation and bigotry. I always wanted a left that was inclusive, welcoming, warm, that tried to convince the great mass of people who don't take a daily interest in politics that a better world was possible. If it is overtaken by a loud minority who are, increasingly, bound by utter hatred towards anyone deemed to deviate from their sanctity of their cause, then there is no future. None. I know there are some on the left who relish hunting down traitors, and hate them more than any Tory. But I'm afraid, if they succeed, they'll turn the left into an ever diminished rump that, to the rest of the population, comes across as vicious, vindictive, and spiteful, and certainly not a cause they'll want to be part of.

Look, I'm told all the time that these angry and bitter people are completely unrepresentative. I know that to be true. In real life, nobody ever comes up to me and behaves like this, not once. Which is probably an argument for spending less time arguing with strangers and more engaging with decent, good-natured people in real life.

I never wanted to write or do any of the stuff that I do. I only wanted to do it to fight for the things I've believed in, and over the last few years I've done everything I can in this limited position to expose the injustice of Tory policies, promote alternatives that could build a just society, give a platform to people who are otherwise demonised or airbrushed out of existence, support the labour movement, oppose injustice abroad, and so on. Above all else, I wanted to encourage other people to stand up to injustice and make their voices heard. Yes, I worry now that the things I believe in more than ever face being buried and discredited by a frighteningly right-wing Tory government, not because those things aren't right and popular, but because of totally avoidable failures, yes, even despite all the odds stacked against any movement that seeks to confront injustice. That's not because I'm a traitor, or a turncoat, or corrupt, but because it's a sincere fear that haunts every moment of my waking existence, and something I'm beyond desperate to avoid.

I only wanted to do what I do to make a useful and constructive contribution to the causes I believe in. I don't even enjoy writing, I do it to champion the things I believe in with all my heart. It is getting to the point where I'm not sure whether I can do that, whether there's something else I can do with my life that actually helps people. Some write because they enjoy it; maybe some enjoy the limelight (and there's nothing wrong with it if they do). But I don't, and there is no point doing something if you think the consequence of what you do - whatever your good intentions - is only harm.

Whatever the future, I'll never stop passionately believing in the things I do: a society run in the interests of the majority, not a tiny, a society run for people's needs and aspirations, not profit, where exploitation, oppression and all injustice is overcome. I still believe that cause will, one day, be vindicated with the right strategy and vision. It'll be others who achieve it, and they won't be bitter, or malicious, or vindictive, but people driven by humanity and a sense of justice.

And yeah, I'm sure there'll be loads of comments about how self-indulgent all this is. But I won't read them, I'm afraid. I'd just end with an appeal. If you have beliefs driven by a sense of humanity, then that same sense of humanity should always influence how you behave. We can win, but only if we persuade people that don't currently think like us. It can be done, but it isn't easy. One day we'll do it, and build a world far more just than the one we have today.

Both Chavs and the Establishment are must-reads imo, he's a good socialist. I wouldn't call him a 'former' Corbyn supporter because firstly he was lukewarm in the first place, and secondly he is still supportive of the left in Labour generally, and of Corbyn, but doesn't believe Labour is going to win elections with the current leadership and is asking questions, some valid, some not so valid, and he also should accept the degree of accountability which comes with having a public profile. He is also being too impatient with the change in the party imo.

He's right, this does come across as self -indulgent whining, I guess this comes with the territory of being more on the academic than activist side. A lot of what he has been saying is unhelpful and you have to expect in this era some crap from both left and right when debating online, but for a serious activist this is just the terrain you choose to work on.
It's not true you have to be die-hard for Corbyn, Galloway for instance has been critical but still supportive of the general project, as have some in momentum. It's just that Owen Jones has a public profile more than most, so more sensitivity is expected and actually required, else Jones risks becoming a poster boy for the Labour right as Husker demonstrates.

Three elections in forty years of modernization. You can't just draw a line around the eight year sample to justify your sub-intellectual drivel.

It really is depressing I have to explain stuff like this which is stats 101 stuff. If I wanted to communicate with stupid people I'd go on youtube or something.

I didn't vote for Corbyn.

He was however democratically elected. I am astonished at the level of contempt for the membership and disloyalty.

It is "oh we know best" middle-class wanker media village punditry, that motivates me to support him.

Absolutely nails the posting of GBV.

Maybe you can use your "stats 101 stuff" to explain why it's absolutely fine for this study you cited to not use inferential statistics?

I didn't cite that study. This is getting tiresome. If you are just going to make **** up then there isn't much point continuing with this.

People like me supported the right of the Labour for quarter of a century. We had our doubts about Blair and Brown, but we got behind them for the greater good. We got essentially a decade of tory policies presented with a liberal sheen.

From the moment he was elected people like you have tried to undermine Corbyn not to mention actively depose him by coup d'etat.

No, I don't think you are acting in good faith. People who oppose democracy to that extent are not acting in good faith. People who stab you in the back are not acting in good faith.

If you were acting in good faith you would shut the f*** up and get behind the democratically elected leader of the party.

This is frothy mouthed hysteria.

Labour is not my party, its one of three major parties that loosely comes closest to offering a platform that I might vote for.

I can say what the **** I like about its leader and it is in good faith thereby. Whatever internal process happened amongst the ranks of the Labour party to arrive at such a Leader is an absolute irrelevance to any questions of good faith.

Your post could not be a more absolute validation of the claim made about you.

Whether you are inside or outside the party is irrelevant. By implication, you are offering support for a undemocratic coup d'etat.

Btw Good faith simply refers to honesty or sincerity. It does not mean conducting yourself according to some arbitary rules of etiquette as if you were at a middle-class luncheon.

There is absolutely nothing insincere about me thinking Corbyn is an electoral liability and your attempts to censor me from expressing such an opinion in free and open discussion in the name of democracy shows how utterly twisted your "reasoning" on this issue has become.

Its mind blowing how it can escape you that however the Labour party, who to me are just some removed third party, elected their leader is in anyway relevant to my good faith when making statements about said leader. The integrity of my opinion is not in anyway causally linked to the constitution of the Labour party.

Corbyn doing a .....Corbyn

Scottish Labour opposes the idea of a 2nd Scottish independence referendum and now Corbyn has come out and said he's 'fine' with the idea of another one.

Ian Murray's making his feelings clear about it

Husker thanks for the lolz - Corbyn is wrecking everything for being unelectable, coming from Labour in Scotland which suffered THE most embarrassing set back in Labour history.

I would be very concerned if a leader opposed a democratic discussion and procedure btw.

Labour's result in Scotland came under Corbyn's leadership.

^ only in a parallel universe.

Childish retorts aren't doing you any good. Corbyn was leader of the Labour party which seen the incredibly poor results at the Scottish elections. He isn't trusted or liked all that much up here.

Sorry if I offended you, I thought it obvious I was referring to the 2015 general election when Corbyn was but an irrelevant backbencher, and Labour lost all but one seat if I recall correctly, which was the whining Ian Murray referred to above.
Maybe you are referring to some much less important election rather than trying to re-write history.

Probably the elections for Holyrood where Labour won less seats than the Tories.

Under Corbyn the Tories have more MSPs than Labour.