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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » LAB’s GE17 performance is misleading as a tactical voting guid

So far the LAB GE19 campaign has been dominated by furious attacks like the one above from the Jewish Chronicle and nearly half a dozen candidates having to stand aside because they are on record as stated things that can be seen as anti semitic.
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I ask everyone thinking of voting for him, or voting for an MP that would make him Prime Minister, to really think of solidarity for your fellow citizens.
https://twitter.com/HuffPostPol/status/1192637004321886208?s=20
A former Labour MP has confirmed he will run as an independent in the general election after the party withdrew its support for him after he backed protesters in an LGBT teaching row.
Roger Godsiff, 73, who had been the Labour MP for Birmingham Hall Green, was told this week by the national executive committee (NEC) that he would not be endorsed as a candidate in the December poll and someone else would run in his place.
On Thursday Godsiff announced he would run for election in his former constituency as an Independent Labour candidate.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/08/ex-labour-mp-to-run-as-independent-after-being-dropped-over-lgbt-row
To give a non Corbyn example even if you believe some of the worst things that people believe about Johnson you probably aren't going to win much more neutral people around to your cause by talking about him as the source of all evil. If you are exposed to partisans of both sides it just becomes people shouting that the other person is evil...
There was a comment from someone in Labour (maybe an MP anonymously) not long after Corbyn got elected leader (I think I remember Stephen Bush talking about it sometime afterwards) about how rather than going over the top with their attacks on Corbyn they needed much more subtle softer attacks to bring him down. So rather than Corbyn being some figure of hatred just deride him as not very effective or not doing the job well.
TBH Corbyn's support is partially based on policy so it wouldn't have won everyone round and I think he could have survived attempts to remove him still but I do think it would have been a far more effective method of attack. Going too hard, even if you think it is fully justified as I do with Johnson just puts less partisan people off.
Edit: At this point the neutral turns off, which being the cynical person I am makes me suspect it was the whole point of it from a right wing perspective, shut down complaints about being racist by accusing the other side.
Lawmakers are pursuing new safety issues with two Boeing jets — the 737 MAX and the 787 Dreamliner — and questioning how in each case managers at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) backed Boeing’s contention that there was no cause for concern despite objections from the safety agency’s own technical experts.
The revelations, contained in a letter from the leaders of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, come a week after they chaired an intense public hearing where Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg was grilled about the 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people.
The letter sent Thursday cites “serious, potentially catastrophic safety concerns raised by FAA technical specialists that FAA management ultimately overruled after Boeing objected.”
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/new-questions-raised-on-safety-of-both-737-max-and-787-dreamliner/
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faa-to-loosen-fuel-tank-safety-rules-benefiting-boeings-787/
Current policy dictates that airplane engineers must design three independent layers of protection in any conceivable scenario that could produce a spark.
“To this day, we have not had one manufacturer that has been able to demonstrate compliance with that rule,” said Ali Bahrami, head of the FAA’s Seattle office dealing with commercial-airplane certification. “We decided it’s time to re-evaluate our approach.”
Airbus applied for certification of its newest plane, the A380, before the regulation, so it did not have to comply....
It’s hard sometimes to move from an intellectual appreciation of “anti-semitism” to what it means for real people, but that piece does it very well
https://mobile.twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/1192479638381043712
The “neutral”, as you put it, would be pretty turned off by both parties. There is clearly a degree of acceptance of Islamophobia in the Tories - polling indicates half their members would not accept a Muslim PM:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/24/tory-members-would-not-want-muslim-prime-minister-islamophobia-survey
Labour’s attitude towards Jews is every bit as dismal, but appears to be top down, whereas with the Tories it seems to be ground up.
This is not just “right wing newspapers” but a very real fear among part of our community
It is deeply depressing that a minority group feels like this about a party that has a very real chance of being the next government
There really isn't a comparison between Corbyn and Johnson but it suits partisans to pretend there is, Johnson has repeatedly said racist stuff for electoral effect in national newspapers and elsewhere, the accusations against Corbyn mainly consist of him meeting x or y (sometimes people who are Jewish themselves) talking about another piece of graffiti getting washed off in response to the monopoly board mural and criticising two specific people and pretending it was about all Jewish people. To pretend there is some kind of equality between the two is a joke.
TBH Labours attitude is the same ground up as it is top down, not many on the left think opposing Palestinian oppression equals anti semitism in the same way protesting apartheid wasn't anti White.
The FTC on the other hand...
I don't think it is only a minority group worried about the Conservatives getting in. There is a solution, we can stop them by not voting Conservative!
I mean if you really are worried about minority concerns about the next government....
Whether or not they are justified, the fears of a group of our fellow citizens are real.
And you choose to joke about it.
More Jewish people (as a percentage) voted for a Corbyn led Labour party than Muslims (as a percentage) voted for a May led Tory party. Anyone wanna bet on Johnson beating Corbyn in this race by any significant margin?
Even with national newspapers trying to smear Corbyn as a racist and ignoring or excusing Johnsons many racist actions I'll be surprised if Corbyn doesn't win this particular race again.
Corbyn, to be fair, criticises Israel but also Saudi Arabia. He criticises Netanyahu, but also Modi. His problem is that his sympathy with the Palestinian cause blinds him to what looks like racism in some of his supporters.
BTW, I don't think this racism is always antisemitism. Think about why some on the left criticise Netanyahu but not Modi, who is surely at least as bad. I think there's a kind of racism (or "West-centrism") Modi can't really be blamed on the West and the US, whereas Netanyahu can. It confuses Europeans who see "Western" powers as the only ones capable of having agency, so they ignore it, so a kind of racism in a way.
He's apparently looking to file for the Alabama primary (deadline Friday). Seems like keeping options rather than anything else
Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, is laying the groundwork to enter the Democratic presidential race months before voters in Iowa and New Hampshire kick off the fight to choose the 2020 nominee.
https://www.ft.com/content/f836f8ca-01b1-11ea-b7bc-f3fa4e77dd47
The Jewish community is terrified and nearly half are considering leaving the country.
Of course there are some racists in the Tory party - as in every party - but they have a Muslim heritage Chancellor (I believe he’s agnostic?)
The Muslim community may not vote Tory, but they are not afraid of them.
You've got to stick with it for at least 30 secs for it to make a comment.
Underestimating the sticktuitiveness of other people is rarely a shrewd strategy
I also have several extended family members, none of whom I've ever met, who have retrospectively been labelled "objectively dumb" for still being there in 1938 and finding they were unable to leave.
These are not the sort of mistakes one makes twice. And we have a long collective memory for these things. I know several very smart people not given to overreactions who are quietly putting contingency plans in place for leaving this country.
The difference is that the Labour party is institutinally anti-Semitic - its proicesses and procedures actively discriminate against Jewish people. Hence the EHRC investigation. This is not some right wing plot, it is just a statement of objective truth. Labour members' failure to recognise it - and, even more shamefully - to deflect from it guarantees that we are a long, long way from the problem being sorted out.
There are Jewish supporters of Corbyn, if Sajid having Muslim heritage means Johnson is okay then so is Corbyn, going by the last election Jewish supporters of Corbyn are more representative of their community than Muslim supporters of the Tories and that was under May not Johnson, who is certainly worse from a Muslim perspective.
https://twitter.com/ManufacturingNI/status/1192564837345353728
https://twitter.com/timandraharknes/status/1191115421421846529?s=21
That it is happening - and under cover of a party of the Left - is even more unthinkable. But that is where Corbyn's Labour Party has taken us. Under him, a small tumour has been allowed to metastasize, as the surgeons of Labour's moderate MPs stood by and refused to perform surgery. And now they are retiring. The patient can't be saved.
If you are Jewish, that is just history repeating itself.
Anybody voting against their natural inclinations to support Labour to defeat the dreaded Tories needs to take a long, hard look at their moral compass.
I knew what I was signing up for when I signed up, which is why I don't understand some of the complaints from Brexiteers about bias in the articles...
I'm not Jewish. So this doesn't affect me directly. Except that it does. I can now more allow the oppression of Jews than I can persecution of any group. Its wrong. Its racism. Its the DIRECT OPPOSITE of everything the Labour Party stands for.
In Stockton we have celebrated the 1933 "Battle of Stockton" where fascists were chased out of town. And yet here we are with the same people celebrating the seeing off of Jew hate providing it not just succour but openly welcoming it in the same party.
This is beyond party politics, this is about basic human decency.
However, the Labour party is institutionally anti-Semitic. That is shameful. Many of those who opposed Corbyn in 2015 and again 2016 did so precisely because they knew what his leadership of the party would lead to. And so it has come to pass. That not only means Labour itself is now a cesspit being investigated by the EHRC, but also that a racist liar is going to lead the country for the next few years. The self-indulgence of Labour members will never, ever be forgiven. And rightly so.
I'm not sure what if any military assistance we do offer India, which is probably reflective of another aspect of it. If your under 40 then the Middle East has been a huge area of discussion and focus in terms of foreign policy (particularly Western involvement) and war in a way which swamps other areas of the world.
The country is heading on a downward course for the foreseeable future. The only question is which downward course.
I hope you get mightily annoyed by Labour losing a chunk of its seats in this election, of Corbyn standing down, humilated, with 99.9% of his anti-semites washed away from power by the Domestos of democracy.
However you look at it, the NEC seem to be doing their damndest to alienate al their activists and lose the seat.
With Labour, the real problem is not that they made such a dreadful mistake with Corbyn, but that they (a) are unable to correct it by removing him and (b) even if he resigns, it's entirely possible the membership will replace him with somebody even more loathsome and incompetent, for example, Bailey, Cat Smith, Pidcock, Burgon or Lavery.
So in a binary choice the Tories offer a potential way back but Labour don't. That's different from saying the Tories will improve, but I'm struggling at this moment to see how Labour recover.
What a shambles this is.
For those in the Labour Party and in particular the leadership, for transparent ideological reasons, there is but one minority that receives their ire.
They wanted to advertise how tolerant and progressive they were, especially as they thought there’d be no price to pay.
Then they realised they’d laid a 1000/1 shot that won
Same could be said for the other sides centrists who enabled an option they simultaneously thought of as disastrous and not going to happen
I’m not entirely convinced that the Tories have retained that kind of ruthless pragmatism, as SO suggests. There are equally likely now to replace him with someone worse.
Following next year, (1) loses much of its potency. Therefore (2), the dominating Tory trait in every leadership election of the last 80 years save 2001, suddenly becomes vital. Remember how obsessed Hyufd was with polling showing the Tories would win x million seats under Johnson.
If the membership are convinced that a centrist candidate will win them an election, they will vote for that candidate. It really is that simple. What’s worrying about Labour is they voted twice for Corbyn even though they knew it would cost them any chance of forming a government.
Do not mistake phases for ideology.
Personally I see a future where we continue to improve our standard of living, continue to work to undo the damage done to our environment with renewable energy, electric vehicles and more and better infrastructure, where new homes are built to higher insulation standards and with their own renewable sources, where the stain and embarrassment of Corbyn is finally expunged by a once great party, where we find ourselves with a surprisingly good and close relationship with the EU and wonder what all the fuss was about, where the world continues its long term trends towards peace, less violence and increased tolerance. Surely those who will enjoy the bulk of this century rather than a part of it will live in the best of times that man and women kind has ever known.
What I do think is possible is that we would see an increase in antisemitism more generally and a government unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
(Don’t recall if “actively considering” or merely “considering”)
@MikeSmithson @TheScreamingEagles @rcs1000
Those were fake arguments. You shouldn't give in to arguments like that to enable things that you don't want. Don't nominate someone you won't vote for and don't hold a referendum that proposes a change you oppose.
A section of our community is scared and you come out with fucking polls.
You disgust me.
I see a society, contrary to the doom mongers, which actually takes the control of power seriously as the Supreme Court did with the government all too recently, where we are almost too painfully aware of the undesirability of causing hurt to others but for all our moaning about it recognise this is important, where technology is helping to create the most informed generation in history by a massive margin, where the truth will ultimately out and lies will ultimately be exposed in a way that would never have happened before, there is really a lot to be cheerful about.
Our bemoaning our failures, the failures of our leaders and even the failures of our politics is how we drive ourselves to do better. We are not heading downwards but upwards. The path is crooked (like some of our politicians) but it is upward.
Right or wrong over racism should cross lines of right or left on economics.
Dr. Foxy, you've phrased that as a choice, but both could be true.
On-topic: not been watching the news much. How much time has this front cover received?
Bottom line is, no way back for Labour, possible way back for the Tories.
Here’s hoping I’m wrong and Labour elect a sane and intelligent leader who doesn’t work for neo-Nazi regimes in the New Year.
I’d add ‘don’t try and overturn the result when the thing you nominated insincerely turns out to be the most popular option’