5 ms·

While I believe this might not have come out under a Labour government, do you think Starmer will backpedal on it? Of course not, and his excuse will be "the T

by sph 3y ago

While I believe this might not have come out under a Labour government, do you think Starmer will backpedal on it? Of course not, and his excuse will be "the Tories will use that to paint us as anti-children", when in reality, the surveillance state is older and more engrained than any party. The Tories have ruined the country, but I wish people stopped seeing them as pure evil against the pure good that is Labour, which is far from the case. They're all rotten in their own way, and it's not them pulling the pervasive surveillance strings. I wouldn't know who is for certain, but it's a combination of being in the Five Eyes, our friendship with the USA, the very favourable media, and the cultural fact that British people have been OK with total surveillance for decades.

dijit 3y ago
The weird effect right now of conservatives winning elections is that more parties will be more like them in order to attract voters away. We all lose. That's why "starmer is a red tory" doesn't jibe with me, Blair is also a "red tory" and is/was painted as such; but he won by a landslide on that. The media was so against Corbyn, progress away from conservative ideology will be long and it requires people to show determination to move away. Even if it's little by little.
pydry 3y ago
Starmer wouldn't but Corbyn would have and people voted against him in a landslide. Even now there are millions of people convinced that this is better just as there are millions still convinced that Brexit was worthwhile. As HL Mencken said, Democracy is the theory that common people know what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard. The UK really did have an alternative and they chose to be ruled by psychopathic, greedy incompetent old Etonians.
- sph 3y ago
  Well, we might not have had Brexit if Corbyn had had a little spine and/or actually was against it himself.
  - pydry 3y ago
    It wasn't his job to manipulate the public into voting against it, nor was he able to do so. It was his job to present his honest opinion and he did. If you want somebody to blame you need to look at the British media barons. Lord Rothermere, etc. They were the ones who manipulated two rather pathetic warring tribes into existence and played them both like puppets against each other.
    - sph 3y ago
      Oh certainly, Tories and perhaps the Russian influence on the Brexit fiasco had much bigger effect than Corbyn. I do not disagree.
  - stephen_g 3y ago
    It was kind of the opposite - the party forcing Corbyn to support a second referendum lost a lot of votes in the North and led to them losing the election. The alternative that possibly could have happened was a sanely negotiated Brexit, which would have been fine (lots of countries aren’t in the EU but have extensive trade relations etc.) but no brexit wasn’t really going to happen at the time.
  - Fluorescence 3y ago
    Blaming Corbyn for Brexit is one of the dumbest agro-centrist bits of nonsense that will not stop. It was concocted on the day after as part of the "chicken coup" to try and push out the democratically elected party leader and hasn't stopped since. You'd think the head of the Remain campaign might deserve a little blame? Totally blameless for their failure apparently. The actual strategy of the campaign is never even discussed. It's just "how dare Corbyn cause Brexit! The Fiend!" How about all the other names and faces leading the Remain campaign? Cameron, Osborne? Nope. He gets more blame than fucking Farage. I have no respect for anyone that pushes this shit. It's just disgusting post-factual factional lying crap. Stop it.
    - coremoff 3y ago
      OP didn't say that Corbyn caused brexit, but that we might not have had it if he had behaved differently, and I broadly agree; government could not agree what brexit should look like and rather than stopping to think it through, they bickered us into a corner - there was a brief (litterally hours) moment when the "rebels" had control over the order sheet and could have done something useful, but instead were fighting over who should be the figurehead. Corbyn is a long way from blame for brexit, but he was part of the lunacy.

by sph 3y ago

dijit 3y ago

The weird effect right now of conservatives winning elections is that more parties will be more like them in order to attract voters away. We all lose. That's why "starmer is a red tory" doesn't jibe with me, Blair is also a "red tory" and is/was painted as such; but he won by a landslide on that. The media was so against Corbyn, progress away from conservative ideology will be long and it requires people to show determination to move away. Even if it's little by little.

pydry 3y ago

Starmer wouldn't but Corbyn would have and people voted against him in a landslide. Even now there are millions of people convinced that this is better just as there are millions still convinced that Brexit was worthwhile. As HL Mencken said, Democracy is the theory that common people know what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard. The UK really did have an alternative and they chose to be ruled by psychopathic, greedy incompetent old Etonians.

sph 3y ago
Well, we might not have had Brexit if Corbyn had had a little spine and/or actually was against it himself.
- pydry 3y ago
  It wasn't his job to manipulate the public into voting against it, nor was he able to do so. It was his job to present his honest opinion and he did. If you want somebody to blame you need to look at the British media barons. Lord Rothermere, etc. They were the ones who manipulated two rather pathetic warring tribes into existence and played them both like puppets against each other.
  - sph 3y ago
    Oh certainly, Tories and perhaps the Russian influence on the Brexit fiasco had much bigger effect than Corbyn. I do not disagree.
- stephen_g 3y ago
  It was kind of the opposite - the party forcing Corbyn to support a second referendum lost a lot of votes in the North and led to them losing the election. The alternative that possibly could have happened was a sanely negotiated Brexit, which would have been fine (lots of countries aren’t in the EU but have extensive trade relations etc.) but no brexit wasn’t really going to happen at the time.
- Fluorescence 3y ago
  Blaming Corbyn for Brexit is one of the dumbest agro-centrist bits of nonsense that will not stop. It was concocted on the day after as part of the "chicken coup" to try and push out the democratically elected party leader and hasn't stopped since. You'd think the head of the Remain campaign might deserve a little blame? Totally blameless for their failure apparently. The actual strategy of the campaign is never even discussed. It's just "how dare Corbyn cause Brexit! The Fiend!" How about all the other names and faces leading the Remain campaign? Cameron, Osborne? Nope. He gets more blame than fucking Farage. I have no respect for anyone that pushes this shit. It's just disgusting post-factual factional lying crap. Stop it.
  - coremoff 3y ago
    OP didn't say that Corbyn caused brexit, but that we might not have had it if he had behaved differently, and I broadly agree; government could not agree what brexit should look like and rather than stopping to think it through, they bickered us into a corner - there was a brief (litterally hours) moment when the "rebels" had control over the order sheet and could have done something useful, but instead were fighting over who should be the figurehead. Corbyn is a long way from blame for brexit, but he was part of the lunacy.