How much attention are Britons paying to Keir Starmer's response to the Israel-Palestine conflict?All BritonsA lot: 7%A fair amount: 25%Little to none: 68%2019 Labour votersA lot: 9%A fair amount: 37%Little to none: 53%https://t.co/LQccM6e6Nb pic.twitter.com/Hkj03Nn7QA
Comments
I wonder what the Venn diagram of that support and mistrust is.
Just as there is no right answer to the troubles in Israel/Palestine, there is no popular approach to it either. It is a subject that all wise politicians and commentators should avoid.
An interesting piece on what's happening in the West Bank while eyes are on Gaza.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Tories now looking for swans even blacker than the blackest of black.
How much would the leaders of Israel and Palestine be willing to listen and change course right now? 1%? Probably closer to 0%.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
It will have ZERO relevance for a General Election.
Next.
I wonder whether there’s a case for the members producing the ‘long list’ and the MP’s deciding from there?
But every by election defeat and every month that passes makes it more likely that things really are that bad for the blue team.
Keep a lookout for a new wind power record today as new capacity coming on stream this summer finally gets to test its limits. The number to watch is around 22gw. Currently at 18.6gw.
The real long term answer is one that never gets mentioned. Get "normal" people more involved in the Conservative and Labour parties rather than just fanatics.
It won’t be the current polling numbers. Might not even be the polling closer to the time. Major comprehensively beat the polls in 1997 yet the result was still a huge shock. Everyone had factored in massive swingback.
If an election were held tomorrow I reckon anything above a 50-60 Lab majority would be greeted with surprise (by journalists and public, not necessarily punters), despite what the polls say.
https://www.racingpost.com/news/gambling-review/seven-new-commissioners-join-gambling-commission-but-none-of-them-comes-from-a-gambling-background-aBBuS4Z5pWau/
Jobs for the usual boys and girls on the quango circuit. It could spell trouble for punters.
Rochdale is effectively arguing for the return of regular wars of territorial conquest. That would likely present problems greater than that of refugees.
And it's pretty unlikely that another 5m displaced Palestinians would contribute greatly to stability in the region, or accept their fate with the equanimity he notes in Poland.
The latter, of course, came only after centuries uf conflict in the region, and a long period of Soviet repression.
Polish leaders in exile were unusually ling sighted in arguing fur accepting the new boundaries as fixed, and seeking common cause with European democracies - including their bitter adversary Germany.
It's an attractive model, but not a very realistic one for the Middle East.
.
They are much more concerned about inflation, interest rates and the cost of living.
Of the less than 10% who are paying a lot of attention Starmer will be more focused on Jewish voters in marginal Tory seats in areas like Barnet than Muslim voters in largely Labour safe seats
A selection process for the most important role in the land (or even reaching the final 2 for that role) should be based on getting people who are at least vaguely suitable through that process.
If everyone realised that I am right about it all then we could be done with much of this senseless and fruitless debate/
If you tried this at the local level there would be endless "gotchas" where someone was quoted saying something "outrageous" (just as we saw in the last thread in relation to Boris's texts). It is the childish way that politics is played and I can't see how we get it back (and there may be some idealising of the past in that word "back") to something sane.
Our politics is broken and only the loons have the energy to play the necessary games. The rest of us just try to cope with the consequences.
A shocking thought, I acknowledge.
The downside is that if journals don't get involved, we leave politics to the worst people.
With the consequences we see in the papers today.
Besides, as Rumsfeld observed, all the good targets were in Iraq.
I assume they don't use terms lightly and hence we can all agree that Israel and Gaza are at war.
David Lammy put it well this morning on R4 (note: I'm a big fan of DLammy) - what Israel is doing is not necessarily a war crime, just that it falls to Israel to explain why it isn't.
Anyone over a certain threshold gets through, then MPs make final decision on who the leader is from that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdK-A01OUjs
Israel/Palestine is El Clasico of Internet discussions. If you've got a chance to get on the pitch then you lace your boots up.
You could describe it as opportunism and probably other much ruder things, and he incenses some of my friends on the Left over it, but it's proving to be both effective and enduring.
That's if you think winning power matters, which apparently Corbynistas don't.
#ToyHamas, #ToyNetanyhu
My youngest went through a phase of worrying levels of tidyness…
People find it satisfying and we get a lot of normal-looking participants. But we're all clear that having a discussion isn't actually going to change anything - again, much like PB. We occasionally send a resolution to the NEC, who I'm sure find it very interesting . By and large, members are realistic about not changing national policy and simply enjoying the chance to discuss issues with Shadow Cabinet people who do, as well as with local people of broadly similar outlook but perhaps quite different views on a specific issue.
I gather that some constituency parties have a more strident atmosphere, and it perhaps does depend partly on local leadership style. I don't try to force any particular views, and consequently get along with all the different types of member. The price for that is that I'm not especially influential in the local party decisions, but so what?
But SKS knows that, and that his support is wide but soft, which is why he's being so careful.
The Curious Story of Jimmy Apples
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-is-too-late-the-ai-monster-is-at-the-door/
A cynical politician might want to avoid the subject. A brave one would pop their head above the parapet.
In opposition they absolutely should have the final say on who their party's candidate for PM should be which voters can confirm or not at a general election. In government then yes MPs can have the final say as they have to work with the PM and if MPs have removed a PM as they have no confidence in them they need a PM they do have confidence in for government to work effectively.
Of course don't forget members picked Blair, Cameron and Starmer, MPs alone picked Foot, Hague and Theresa May and Sunak so it is not as if MPs judgement is always far superior to members anyway
*I know that it is possible for a party member to vote for a different party, but there was a lot of vitreol on this forum during the 2019 Euro Elections that a significant chunk of Tory members were voting for the Brexit Party, including calls for those voters being removed from the party.
Then again, we have the May example of a collapse in support overnight as a counter example. My excuse for this was that her polling level was extremely soft.
You say that Starmers support is soft. But he (and the Labour party) have hit a number of headwinds recently. Not vast, but noticeable. Israel/Palestine is the latest. They have weathered each one, reasonably quickly, and without a noticeable long term effect.
*in Canada https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_River
I find it very hard to see Labour not forming the next government though, if I’m honest. That requires a significant level of implosion of the Labour position given what they’re up against. Is it possible? Yes, but v unlikely IMHO, because Starmer has shown he is pretty good at avoiding pitfalls, so such a huge unforced error would be out of character.
Both sides had little support internationally (some money for the political wing from America, but guns were pretty much stopped by the mid 80s by the FBI). This isolation meant that when the Irish and British Governments agreed on the peace process, they had control.
Compare that to a situation where one party is a nuclear armed state (with intercontinental reach at that). And everyone i the UN seems to be involved.
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
The 2017 victory was as you say a pretty clear cut example of the campaign mattering. 2015 could also be seen as that, given the unexpected swing to the Tories (possibly though again debatably as a result of Miliband’s comments re the last Labour government not spending too much and the SNP factor).
Without the very effective Labour negative campaigning and the Cleggasm I think the Tories would have won a majority in 2010 too.
FWIW, I read Alistair Meeks post FPT on this. I found it quite clear and well-laid out. His analysis builds towards a conclusion that a clear landslide is likely based on current evidence, but there is a wide range of error in it and the prospect of events over the next year.
The joker is that the people wanting relocation from Gaza are the people of Gaza. How can people call this ethnic cleansing or forced relocation when the people who would be relocated want to be relocated?
The only argument is relocated to where.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJEAwrBU/
@DPJHodges
·
1h
Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
https://reader.foreignaffairs.com/2023/10/25/what-palestinians-really-think-of-hamas/content.html
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.