I agree with a lot of your points about pragmatism but there absolutely is factionalism on the left in the UK, unless (as it looks like you are doing) you say some of them are not actually leftist and therefore the remaining group is small enough that it's not arguing with itself.
The right are also split but in normal times they are better at keeping the worst of it behind closed doors and rallying around the leader when the dust settles. Lack of message discipline is what kills the left at the ballot box. New Labour were good at it and they won; Starmer is trying to do the same - sensible tactic in my opinion.
The neoliberals are not actually leftist. This is a 100% fact, if you are arguing that the capitalists are leftists then you are also not a leftist. They are centre right. The transphobic neoliberals and privatizers trying to destroy the nhs and build a "free and open" energy market for the sake of preventing our attempts at nationalisation can eat my ass, so can their by-association transphobic mysogynistic supporters. You can get to fuck with your "yeah they're actually toooootally leftists dude belieeeeeve me" bullcrap. It is unbelievable that you would mention New Labour under Tony Blair, a party that killed 2 million people and exploited the fuck out of the middle east and continue to pretend that you are left wing, you are not, you are an imperialist, capitalist neoliberal.
It is blatantly clear why you didn't answer the question about what union you're in and did not cite any organising, you don't do any for the left and you've made that abundantly clear to anyone that knows these parties and groups. The only reason you have any votes at all is because the majority of people here are americans and they have absolutely no fucking idea what we're talking about now.
All they need to know is that you support neoliberals. The crowd here definitely knows neoliberalism isn't leftist.
No surprises that this conversation started off with you trying to discredit me by screeching "tankie", you knew that if you made it clear what your actual political affiliations are and made a real political argument it would be unpopular.
I'm a different user to the guy you were originally having a conversation with.
No need to get so personal!
Oh well doesn't change much does it?
There is nothing personal about pointing out your support for transphobes. It's just a political fact. If you don't want to be a transphobe, do not support transphobes. Much like if you don't want to be called a neoliberal, don't defend neoliberals, and definitely don't try to claim they're left. You'd get laughed out the room in any offline scenario.
I'm not a transphobe and you have no information on which to base that assumption. If you call everyone a transphobe it ceases to have any meaning and you have nothing left for when someone is being actually transphobic.
You support Starmer. Starmer's labour is transphobic, he has given interviews to mumsnet where he says explicitly terf things. He has explicitly come out in favour of segregating trans people from women's bathrooms and other spaces. You support this. Ergo you are transphobic. The party needs shot of him he's a disgrace.
This is such tenuous reasoning. Firstly I didn't say "I support Starmer", I commented on whether or not I thought his tactics would be effective in getting elected. I often comment on things the Tories do and say in the same way, and saying " I think X will work" is not an endorsement of X.
Secondly, even if I do intend to vote labour it doesn't mean I'm endorsing 100% of everything the party/leader says. On an individual level you say don't care about peoples views and only what they do / achieve so this attitude towards Labour seems completely bizarre to me?
The 'perfection or bust' attitude to political parties and leaders gets you another Tory government whereas the pragmatic option might actually get us some incremental improvement. Ironic that we've ended up here in a conversation that started as a discussion about left wing factionalism where you claimed it doesn't exist.
Honestly, as a left wing person in the UK who made some reasonable points higher up the thread about actually achieving something that improves the lives of people now by being pragmatic, who are you going to vote for in the 2024 election?
The ‘perfection or bust’ attitude to political parties and leaders gets you another Tory government whereas the pragmatic option might actually get us some incremental improvement. Ironic that we’ve ended up here in a conversation that started as a discussion about left wing factionalism where you claimed it doesn’t exist.
And this attitude is the one that has existed up until now. Good job neoliberals! Well done! You're responsible for everything that is wrong in this country!
Honestly, as a left wing person in the UK who made some reasonable points higher up the thread about actually achieving something that improves the lives of people now by being pragmatic, who are you going to vote for in the 2024 election?
The issue is that you don't actually participate in anything outside of voting once every 5 years. You have barely any idea what fighting to improve workers lives involves, and your assessment of the struggle against neoliberals as a supporter of them is trash. Why am I vicious about them? Because it is precisely what is necessary to get the leadership change we need to get even a mild centrist in. Starmer is not just any neoliberal, he is an arch neoliberal selected by Kissinger and friends at their clubhouse the Trilateral Commission, where they all rub shoulders deciding the future of neoliberal politics and strategy in the world. We can't get a leftist into power, it's not happening for at least 10 years, all we can do is try to get this shitbag out, try to undo the dismantling of party democracy he has performed internally, try to purge the zionists and those funded by fucking mossad, and try to get some sort of normal back from which we will have a starting point for leftist politics in the party again. They went scorched earth once they got Corbyn out. They completely fucked everything.
That's why I'm vicious about it. Because anything other than it does not display the gravity of the situation to naive people that still think everyone in the country simply has different ideas about "what's best for everyone" and that some of them are a little incompetent. None of these people are incompetent people that want to do good, they are competent and want to do awful shit things for the vast majority of people for the benefit of the finance industry backers that own pretty much everything.
So who are you voting for?
Decide when we get there. Rumours still flying around that Peace & Justice are considering a run, which would essentially function as a pressure party to Labour the way ukip functioned as a pressure party that achieved Brexit, but from the left obviously. There are some other projects but it's uncertain what kind of base they'll have until we get into an election season. For now you can put me down as "not Starmer".
I can't say I've heard of them. Are you in a rural or urban seat? I think labour have votes to spare in urban areas so it's unlikely to be very successful but if you can get lots of people to vote like that in a rural seat you might be successful.
Personally I think what the UK needs is PR, and we'd probably need a big coalition of left and right to achieve it. Without PR a lot of the time the smaller parties achieve very little.
You won't have unless you're actively involved politically in some way outside of just voting once every 5 years. It's one of Corbyn's organising projects: https://thecorbynproject.com/
There have been longstanding rumours about backroom talks with union leaders about spinning out a new party and taking the unions(and their memberships) to it. But this partially hinges on having leftist leadership in all of the major ones which isn't the case at the current moment in time. There are 2 union leadership elections between now and the next election that will be fairly major in determining whether this strategy can work down the line.
PR is never going to happen without mass unrest there is literally no incentive for either party to support it without a political collapse occurring where it is used as a concession to prevent further unrest. Both parties benefit from FPTP and literally every leftist would immediately leave the labour party for proper democratic socialist and communist parties that would very suddenly gain massive amounts of power because more than a third of the country would vote for them if not for FPTP. It's just unrealistic to even discuss it because it's not happening, the libdems sank that ship, you can thank Nick Clegg for that, President of Global Affairs at Meta, best bud of Zuckerberg with the same powers as him at the company.
"I totally wasn't saying I support Starmer when I said what he's doing to labour is actually a good thing and also that New Labour, who he is an ideological successor to, were good!"
Pull the other one mate. At least have this conversation without the dishonesty.
I agree with a lot of your points about pragmatism but there absolutely is factionalism on the left in the UK, unless (as it looks like you are doing) you say some of them are not actually leftist and therefore the remaining group is small enough that it's not arguing with itself.
The right are also split but in normal times they are better at keeping the worst of it behind closed doors and rallying around the leader when the dust settles. Lack of message discipline is what kills the left at the ballot box. New Labour were good at it and they won; Starmer is trying to do the same - sensible tactic in my opinion.
The neoliberals are not actually leftist. This is a 100% fact, if you are arguing that the capitalists are leftists then you are also not a leftist. They are centre right. The transphobic neoliberals and privatizers trying to destroy the nhs and build a "free and open" energy market for the sake of preventing our attempts at nationalisation can eat my ass, so can their by-association transphobic mysogynistic supporters. You can get to fuck with your "yeah they're actually toooootally leftists dude belieeeeeve me" bullcrap. It is unbelievable that you would mention New Labour under Tony Blair, a party that killed 2 million people and exploited the fuck out of the middle east and continue to pretend that you are left wing, you are not, you are an imperialist, capitalist neoliberal.
It is blatantly clear why you didn't answer the question about what union you're in and did not cite any organising, you don't do any for the left and you've made that abundantly clear to anyone that knows these parties and groups. The only reason you have any votes at all is because the majority of people here are americans and they have absolutely no fucking idea what we're talking about now.
All they need to know is that you support neoliberals. The crowd here definitely knows neoliberalism isn't leftist.
No surprises that this conversation started off with you trying to discredit me by screeching "tankie", you knew that if you made it clear what your actual political affiliations are and made a real political argument it would be unpopular.
I'm a different user to the guy you were originally having a conversation with.
No need to get so personal!
Oh well doesn't change much does it?
There is nothing personal about pointing out your support for transphobes. It's just a political fact. If you don't want to be a transphobe, do not support transphobes. Much like if you don't want to be called a neoliberal, don't defend neoliberals, and definitely don't try to claim they're left. You'd get laughed out the room in any offline scenario.
I'm not a transphobe and you have no information on which to base that assumption. If you call everyone a transphobe it ceases to have any meaning and you have nothing left for when someone is being actually transphobic.
You support Starmer. Starmer's labour is transphobic, he has given interviews to mumsnet where he says explicitly terf things. He has explicitly come out in favour of segregating trans people from women's bathrooms and other spaces. You support this. Ergo you are transphobic. The party needs shot of him he's a disgrace.
This is such tenuous reasoning. Firstly I didn't say "I support Starmer", I commented on whether or not I thought his tactics would be effective in getting elected. I often comment on things the Tories do and say in the same way, and saying " I think X will work" is not an endorsement of X.
Secondly, even if I do intend to vote labour it doesn't mean I'm endorsing 100% of everything the party/leader says. On an individual level you say don't care about peoples views and only what they do / achieve so this attitude towards Labour seems completely bizarre to me?
The 'perfection or bust' attitude to political parties and leaders gets you another Tory government whereas the pragmatic option might actually get us some incremental improvement. Ironic that we've ended up here in a conversation that started as a discussion about left wing factionalism where you claimed it doesn't exist.
Honestly, as a left wing person in the UK who made some reasonable points higher up the thread about actually achieving something that improves the lives of people now by being pragmatic, who are you going to vote for in the 2024 election?
And this attitude is the one that has existed up until now. Good job neoliberals! Well done! You're responsible for everything that is wrong in this country!
The issue is that you don't actually participate in anything outside of voting once every 5 years. You have barely any idea what fighting to improve workers lives involves, and your assessment of the struggle against neoliberals as a supporter of them is trash. Why am I vicious about them? Because it is precisely what is necessary to get the leadership change we need to get even a mild centrist in. Starmer is not just any neoliberal, he is an arch neoliberal selected by Kissinger and friends at their clubhouse the Trilateral Commission, where they all rub shoulders deciding the future of neoliberal politics and strategy in the world. We can't get a leftist into power, it's not happening for at least 10 years, all we can do is try to get this shitbag out, try to undo the dismantling of party democracy he has performed internally, try to purge the zionists and those funded by fucking mossad, and try to get some sort of normal back from which we will have a starting point for leftist politics in the party again. They went scorched earth once they got Corbyn out. They completely fucked everything.
That's why I'm vicious about it. Because anything other than it does not display the gravity of the situation to naive people that still think everyone in the country simply has different ideas about "what's best for everyone" and that some of them are a little incompetent. None of these people are incompetent people that want to do good, they are competent and want to do awful shit things for the vast majority of people for the benefit of the finance industry backers that own pretty much everything.
So who are you voting for?
Decide when we get there. Rumours still flying around that Peace & Justice are considering a run, which would essentially function as a pressure party to Labour the way ukip functioned as a pressure party that achieved Brexit, but from the left obviously. There are some other projects but it's uncertain what kind of base they'll have until we get into an election season. For now you can put me down as "not Starmer".
I can't say I've heard of them. Are you in a rural or urban seat? I think labour have votes to spare in urban areas so it's unlikely to be very successful but if you can get lots of people to vote like that in a rural seat you might be successful.
Personally I think what the UK needs is PR, and we'd probably need a big coalition of left and right to achieve it. Without PR a lot of the time the smaller parties achieve very little.
You won't have unless you're actively involved politically in some way outside of just voting once every 5 years. It's one of Corbyn's organising projects: https://thecorbynproject.com/
There have been longstanding rumours about backroom talks with union leaders about spinning out a new party and taking the unions(and their memberships) to it. But this partially hinges on having leftist leadership in all of the major ones which isn't the case at the current moment in time. There are 2 union leadership elections between now and the next election that will be fairly major in determining whether this strategy can work down the line.
PR is never going to happen without mass unrest there is literally no incentive for either party to support it without a political collapse occurring where it is used as a concession to prevent further unrest. Both parties benefit from FPTP and literally every leftist would immediately leave the labour party for proper democratic socialist and communist parties that would very suddenly gain massive amounts of power because more than a third of the country would vote for them if not for FPTP. It's just unrealistic to even discuss it because it's not happening, the libdems sank that ship, you can thank Nick Clegg for that, President of Global Affairs at Meta, best bud of Zuckerberg with the same powers as him at the company.
Your reading comprehension is terrible
"I totally wasn't saying I support Starmer when I said what he's doing to labour is actually a good thing and also that New Labour, who he is an ideological successor to, were good!"
Pull the other one mate. At least have this conversation without the dishonesty.