[noemon]

How on earth do these leftists imagine you can have an economically damaging brexit (any brexit), end austerity, nationalise multiple industries, increase spending on multiple areas all at the same time with a deficit like ours? I mean the shadow cabinet also insisted no tax rises on anyone under 80k because it included head teachers or whatever.

The tories are not the only ones chasing unicorns.

Lib Dem’s and the snp are the two most rational parties right now.

I do not believe that soft Brexit(Norway style, Corbyn/May version) will have any economic consequences for the country. I believe it is the best solution as it respects the referendum result and prevents the far-fringes from arguing of a "national betrayal" for the next decades to come. Such a thing has the potential to cause various political issues in the country in the foreseeable future. The Lib-Dems are a dishonest party that got elected on the promise of scrapping tuition fees and tripled them instead. They were active enablers of the worst Tory austerity to date.

The only thing I am worried about is that Corbyn's Labour might increase taxes more than is sustainable. That would be the only issue that would make me have second thoughts regarding Labour. And Corbyn is a bit silent on the specifics of this matter.

[Sivad]

soft Brexit(Norway style, Corbyn/May version)

Fake brexit isn't gonna cut it. People don't want nominal sovereignty, they want neoliberal supranational technocrats off their necks.

[noemon]

And why do you assume that is what they are going to get in this neoliberal country that invented supranationalism and global capitalism? The argument of the Brexiteers is that they want to go into neoliberal hyperdrive and that they are being held back by socialist Europe. They want to privatise the NHS, bring in US pharma, reintroduce EU-abolished nominee-company-directors in the Cayman islands, reduce taxes, abolish social benefits and so on and forth.

The EU is the least neoliberal developed place you are going to get. In fact neoliberals are the ones promoting the destruction of the EU as it is the only significant thorn in their shoe.

[Sivad]

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour vs. the Single Market

If the next Labour government is to be truly transformative, it has to free itself from the constraints of the single market.

In recent weeks there has been intense debate in Britain about the Labour Party and the ongoing Brexit process. Advocates of the European Union have sought a range of concessions from the party leadership ranging from another vote on Brexit, to continued membership of the single market and Customs Union, and focusing on Brexit at party conference.

Underpinning this campaign to change Labour’s position on Brexit has been a barrage of articles arguing that European Union or single market rules would not impinge on Jeremy Corbyn’s program for government. These have come from a wide range of sources including the journal Renewal, the New Statesman, the Fabian’s website, the New European, LabourList, Open Labour, OpenDemocracy and Open Britain. But are they correct in their assertions?

In three interrelated areas EU rules would place severe restrictions on a future Corbyn government: State Aid, public procurement and nationalization. These are not minor issues. They lie at the heart of any attempt to transform Britain’s economy in a socialist direction, especially when it comes to industrial policy. As the debate over Brexit rumbles on it is clear that the EU would place unique barriers to a Corbyn-led Labour government—making even a reversal to WTO rules more advantageous than either EU or Single Market membership in these respects.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/05/corb ... mic-policy

[noemon]

In recent weeks there has been intense debate in Britain about the Labour Party and the ongoing Brexit process. Advocates of the European Union have sought a range of concessions from the party leadership ranging from another vote on Brexit, to continued membership of the single market and Customs Union, and focusing on Brexit at party conference.

Jeremy Corbyn has already adopted the single market and customs union unreservedly and has whipped his MP's to vote for it:

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/po ... rway-style

Your article is relatively old.

[Sivad]

Jeremy Corbyn has already adopted the single market and customs union unreservedly and has whipped his MP's to vote for it:

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/po ... rway-style

Corbyn was always going to sell out the left but that doesn't change the fact that brexit is a necessary prerequisite for meaningful social democratic reform.

[noemon]

Social democracy is only practiced in Europe and the EU more specifically. Your argument does not follow, especially when the abolition of the EU is explicitly argued by Brexiteers(and other euroxiteers) so that social democracy can be torn down. Your assumption is quite naive, every time there is a change in the system in the west, it changes towards the bottom of the barrel not the top. Social rights, worker's rights, pensions, welfare, holiday pay, maternity/paternity leave, deposit guarantees are only institutionally protected by the EU in the entire planet. And that is why neoliberals want to take her down and unashamedly they say so out loud. The abolition of the EU and Brexit Britain will only accelerate and enhance US casino-capitalism. The EU is the only obstacle against the neoliberal juggernaut.

[Sivad]

When Farage is your next PM you can all thank Corbyn's sell out ass for making it possible.

Social democracy is only practiced in Europe and the EU more specifically.

What the EU calls social democracy is just welfare state liberalism. Macron is considered a social democrat by EU standards, the EU is just co-opting the label as pr gimmick.

[noemon]

What the EU calls social democracy is just welfare state liberalism. Macron is considered a social democrat by EU standards, the EU is just co-opting the label as pr gimmick.

It does not matter what you call it, it is the most social version that exists in the world today. The fact that EU people enjoy the highest level of worker and welfare rights in the world today is not a PR gimmick but reality. Rather, denying it is what is a gimmick.

[layman]

@noemon why must the Liberal Democrat’s be - uniquely - never forgiven for breaking a promise when other parties lie all the time. There soon will have been multiple leaders since.

Seems just a tad over the top. I mean coalition partners can only do so much anyway. If voters hadn’t come down so hard on the libs the eu referendum would have been avoided. Cameron was said to be relying on this but instead they acted as a blame sponge.

[noemon]

Not forgiven, just held up to the same standard as Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. Besides they have expressed no remorse, have defended their actions and have no political program or argument other than cancelling Brexit. They seek a blank cheque and refuse to talk about anything other than Brexit. That's a con.

If you are looking for uniquely, the treatment and attacks Labour is receiving for unsubstantiated claims, not even policy, are uniquely of an extravagant order way beyond the very kind treatment the Lib-Dems are receiving with the Guardian and several others acting as their official party newspapers.

The Lib-Dems are probably the most privileged political party in Britain, not poor victims of peoples unforgiveness and have only themselves and their arrogance to blame for their meagre results despite all the media support they have.

[skinster]

Article about our next PM:

Corbyn can lead in the exposure of establishment psychosis
Just like the plot lines against fictional Harry Perkins in A Very British Coup, a multi-fronted campaign is now well underway to take down Jeremy Corbyn.

And on this occasion it might well be titled A Very Establishment Meltdown.

A relentless media-driven frenzy has seen Corbyn maligned as everything from a Hamas/Hezbollah/IRA asset to a Czech spy.

Shortly after his election as Labour leader, a British army general issued dark warnings of a "mutiny" should he ever look likely to reach Number 10.

Other dark messages imply that Corbyn cannot be trusted with high office and official secrets.

We also now learn that two British soldiers have kept their jobs after being caught using a figure of Corbyn as target practice.

On another key front, senior civil servants have briefed The Times that Corbyn is in frail health and not up to the job.

Disappointingly for the mandarins and the media, this was met with wide incredulity, as even the usual smear press couldn't match such claims to the real garden-chilled, fit-as-a-fiddle Corbyn.

But the botched leak is yet another indication of increasing elite anxiety and panic.

Of all the attack lines, the establishment is placing its greatest hopes in the 'Labour anti-Semitism crisis'. Led by a mutual-serving coterie of Blairite and pro-Israel coup-makers, a ready platform media is now gaslighting the public on a relentless scale.

Look, they shriek, how riddled Labour is with the 'anti-Semitic disease'. And if you can't see this, they howl, you need to question you're own deep anti-Semitism. Thus runs the self-doubt, yield-to psychology of the McCarthyite witch-hunt.

The establishment are acutely aware of how close Corbyn came to power in 2017. And as another general election looms, the calls for a decisive purge are being raised to even more hysterical levels.

In an article for The Spectator, Stephen Daisley wrote:

There is no more pressing moral cause in Britain today than the total destruction of the Labour party. An electoral drubbing will not do. A change of leader will not suffice. The Labour party has spent almost four years defaming, taunting and intimidating Jews. They have made Jews feel unsafe; they have made Jews feel unBritish. There must be a reckoning for this intolerable measure of evil, for both retributive and deterrent purposes. Another party will come along one day and try this again and there must be a warning in place, an object lesson in the wages of anti-Semitism and its indulgence. The debris of a once-great party would make for powerful teaching materials.

In effect, smear and smite.

As Jamie Stern Weiner warns:

The rhetoric has become so deranged. The 'Labour antisemitism' smear campaign is taking on the dimensions of a psychosis. The headline is another useful warning for the left to resist the temptations of censorship - the norm will be turned against you.

Daisley is, of course, a known zealot and regular exponent of such biblical bluster. But elite fear of a Corbyn government is now so intense that the smear project does, indeed, appear to have turned effectively psychotic.

Only in such a febrile atmosphere could Jeremy Hunt have said these words:

When I went to Auschwitz I rather complacently said to myself, "thank goodness we don't have to worry about that kind of thing happening in the UK" and now I find myself faced with the leader of the Labour Party who has opened the door to antisemitism in a way that is truly frightening.

This utterly despicable comment should have ended Hunt's leadership candidacy with immediate effect. The media response? Nothing. Just a sickly, obedient silence, a malady of compliance, ensuring there's no awkward interruption to the main anti-Corbyn narrative.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also assured a pro-Israel group of Jewish leaders that he would intervene to prevent Corbyn being elected.

Again, this was treated as nominal news rather than headlined as a menacing threat of interference from an external state. Imagine if a senior Russian politician had uttered such words.

The latest wave of hysteria has seen MP Chris Williamson not only suspended but abandoned by faux left 'vanguards' like Owen Jones, Ash Sarkar, Jon Lansman and Billy Bragg.

In a fine examination of The Fury And The Fakery behind Williamson's suspension, Media Lens remind us of the solid body of evidence undermining claims of 'Labour's institutional anti-Semitism'.

The key forces and agenda behind the whole fabricated 'anti-Semitism crisis' is also perfectly addressed by Jonathan Cook in The Plot to keep Corbyn out.

It's also worth noting, as context, how Williamson was hounded by right-wing party elites like Tom Watson because of his campaigning for open selection, a clear effort to seize power away from the party membership.

In turn, as Asa Winstanley shows, the membership overwhelmingly want Williamson returned to the party.

You can find much other excellent comment and analysis across alternative media. In contrast, try finding anything remotely rational and informative in the 'mainstream'.

Since Corbyn's election in 2015, a mere 0.06% of Labour members have been investigated over anti-Semitism. Only a mass, concerted campaign of political and media propaganda could have turned that nominal problem into a 'crisis'.

Amid the continuing media freak-out, Matt Kennard asked Noam Chomsky for his thoughts on Williamson and the 'crisis', receiving this reply:



Media coverage? Again, dutiful silence.

And from Jones and Bragg? Awkward dismissal and ridiculous mitigation.

Beyond such reticence, an admirable letter of support for Williamson from prominent Jews, including Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, declared:

As anti-racist Jews, we regard Chris as our ally: he stands as we do with the oppressed rather than the oppressor.

In a questionable act of censorship, the letter was subsequently taken down by the Guardian "pending investigation", rather than simply edited and maintained.

A further statement supporting Williamson has been signed by other notable figures, including Ken Loach, Yanis Varoufakis, Francesca Martinez, John Pilger, Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Alexei Sayle, Media Lens and Roger Waters.

And it's here we see the case for a much more confident positioning.

Rather than falling to the hysteria, Corbyn should be asserting himself as the only sane and rational alternative to this alarming establishment psychosis.

As Cook notes:

Corbyn offers a unique opportunity to hold up a mirror to British society, stripping away the beautified mask to see the ugly skeleton-face below. He risks making the carefully concealed structure of power visible. And this is precisely why he is so dangerous to the status-quo-supporting centrists.

It's also why the establishment is so feverish in trying to hold and control the anti-Semitism narrative.

It's the same false intensity behind the 'Brexit crisis'. The establishment have somehow managed to convince an entire public that 'leave or remain' is now the defining issue of our times, a test of 'our national health' - with, of course, Corbyn offered up as the scapegoat villain.

This is classic elite projection: their crisis, the crisis of their making, somehow becomes 'our' crisis, all serving to hide the structural conflicts, schisms and fears within the establishment itself.

In the same vein, ex-MI6 chief Sir John Sawers also laments that the country is having "a nervous breakdown".

Besides Brexit, Sawers expressed his alarm here over any Johnson, Hunt or Corbyn premiership.

But as Mark Curtis notes, it's always useful to see what lurks behind such comments:

Ex-MI6 chief Sawyers is also on the board of BP, which has major investments in just about every dictatorship the UK govt is supporting in the world. This might be slightly relevant to his not being over-ecstatic about having a govt led by Corbyn.

In effect, what really matters is preventing any political disruptions that may invoke a further nervous breakdown of the corporate order.

Sir John's 'health warning' for the nation was dutifully carried by the Guardian, which now seems to be the main host platform for head spooks.

Matt Kennard reports how ex-Guardian deputy editor Paul Johnson did his own 'health-restoring' bit for national security by joining the 'D-List' committee.

On retiring from the post, Johnson was thanked by committee head, Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds OBE, for his service to the censors. Shortly afterwards, as an apparent reward, the Guardian was granted an exclusive interview with serving MI5 chief Andrew Parker, warning on this occasion of an 'increasingly aggressive' Russia and its 'threat to the UK'.

As with its relentless 'health warnings' over Corbyn and craven reporting of Labour's 'anti-Semitic infection', it's a further measure of the Guardian's own moral decay that mass murderer Tony Blair is still welcomed there.

Likewise, Blair's chief war propagandist Alastair Campbell is being regaled across media studios as a sage voice on Brexit.

It's illuminating to watch Blair's and Campbell's exasperated pleas on both Brexit and anti-Semitism, seemingly oblivious to, or able to block out, their own dark moral disorders.

You needn't be an expert in medical psychology to see the perversity of these figures still at large after the catastrophe of Iraq being accorded such eager media attention.

Shouldn't it be of deep concern that Corbyn, who rightly opposed every call to illegal war, is so screamingly maligned, while Blair, Campbell and other mass killers are openly feted?

Of course, this kind of media dissonance is part of a wider liberal deflection of state psychopathy.

Indeed, it would be difficult for any rational person to see in the brutal history and ongoing barbarism of the British state any kind of moral authority.

Even the critical questions of more progressive-minded journalists seem safely tempered, almost fearful of looking too deeply at the dark structures of British/Western criminality.

Thus, Alex Thomson may ask how, in covering events like earthquakes, "why do affluent US lives mean more than poor African/Asian ones?"

And Mark Curtis answers:

I think @alextomo it's because UK 'mainstream' culture is deeply imperialist, often racist. Same question on Yemen: why have journalists generally not asked May, Hunt, Johnson about their obvious complicity in mass deaths? Because they couldn't care less about unpeople.

Any state that can bomb, murder and export warfare on such a mass scale and still proclaim itself a 'protector of international human rights' must surely be liable for sectioning.

It seems not. Sending bombs to eliminate children in Yemen is still seemingly a sane and acceptable activity. So is sending arms to and conducting friendly military exercises with a murderous, oppressive regime in Israel - imagine seeing those last words applied in the 'mainstream' media to official allies rather than official foes.

If the art of hegemony lies in maintaining public consent for such power and criminality, the elite and its supporting agencies must always be striving to turn defensive narratives into attack narratives. Parties may come and go, politicians lost or sacrificed, so long as there's little critical examination of the actual structural forces and calamitous impact of corporate power.

Think only of the careful media narrative around climate emergency, and the deep failure to probe corporate culpability.

Contrary to the prevailing hype around Corbyn, the establishment itself has never been more structurally exposed, divided, fearful and, therefore, vulnerable.

There's a veritable choice of crisis faults for any progressive leader or party to highlight and attack. Why not use the moment?

From the 'Brexit trauma' to 'Labour's anti-Semitism crisis', the public have been assaulted by waves of elite propaganda all intended to deflect attention from the establishment's own internal failings and psychosis.

And, as we've seen, no amount of appeasement, mitigation, apology or reform will stop the set of forces now determined to break Corbyn.

As the brave Israeli journalist Gideon Levy argues, it's time to fight back:

This vicious circle should be broken...We are not ready to play those game any more in which they shut our mouths with accusations which in most of the cases are hollow.

In a more direct statement on Corbyn, Levy warns that:

such smear campaigns and the weaponisation of anti-Semitism must be criticised and fought against: “We should not surrender to those labels and those accusations, because they are there in order to blackmail, in order to fight anyone who dares to criticise Israel”.

So, the lesson is: use the difficulty. It's important to see that this is a concocted and superficial 'crisis', peddled by those who have much to lose. It doesn't rest on any deep popular feeling or belief that resonates with the public. It's a crisis only for the establishment.

And it's in the assertive exposure of that crisis, and the elite narrative serving to mask it, that Corbyn and anyone else who cares about building a real, humanist and caring politics for all can best advance that cause.
https://johnhilley.blogspot.com/2019/07 ... f.html?m=1

[SolarCross]

You can see why he doesn't really want the whole brexit debate which is up in everyone's grills right now. He is old school socialist, he wants to sick the poor onto the rich to get himself up on top. All this EU vs Brit, traitor vs loyalist, is just not the contest for which he was conditioned. The rhetoric is weird and unfamiliar to him.

[skinster]

You're not very good at psychoanalysis.

[SolarCross]

You're not very good at psychoanalysis.

It's not psycho-analysis. If you get a car salesman and get him selling cars then he is happy because he is on familiar ground. If you get a car salesman and get him selling make-up or cake decoration implements then he'll be lost, a bit awkward and fumbling around for a way to get back on cars.

You can teach old dog new tricks but it is a lot easier with a young dog.

[skinster]

OK, you don't sound mental at all.

As you were...

[skinster]

[B0ycey]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49076118

The next female Prime Minister everybody.

Can't do worse than the last two and a true female idol.

[skinster]

^

[colliric]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brit ... SKCN1UH2JQ

I hope he delivers on his promise of a NO-DEAL-BREXIT!!!