Provocations likely to continue over next few weeks. Labour supporters should ignore
A few Labour MPs intend to spend the next few weeks attempting to provoke reactions from Labour supporters in any way they can. Their allies in the media will do all they can to amplify.
It’s a scrabble for relevance, but even more those MPs fear that with Tory splits intensifying as their leadership contest progresses and Labour strengthened by the Peterborough by-election victory, Jeremy Corbyn and the party under him will benefit in polls and voter perception.
To prevent that, they’ll try any tactic to bait for a reaction. Engaging will give them what they’re looking for. Ignoring them – and focusing on Labour’s positive messages – won’t.
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The oracle has spoken……..
Just because you’re paranoid ……
Peterborough was a narrow squeak. A brilliant ground campaign can’t mask the dire state of support and the genuine questions about strategy.
… and whistling in the dark never put off the real homicidal maniac.
Labour have been on over 40% this year, and are now in the low 20s. Yet nothing has changed so far as Labour is concerned to justify such a stark drop. The cause of the change is external to Labour: the rise of the Brexit Party.
There is no reason to believe that changing policies to chase illusory and transient polling boosts will be better in the long run than sticking with the tried and tested popular policies.
Ultraviolet 17/06/2019 at 9:35 pm
“sticking with the tried and tested popular policies.”
Are you intentionally taking the piss.
Actually, the decline for Labour starts way before the Faragos and is related much more to a rise in support for the LibDems and Greens. That loss is 4x some drift to the Brexit Party. It’s the Tories that got hammered by the Brexit Party.
Do you really think that Party support that is overwhelmingly in favour of ‘Remain’ is going to drift significantly to the Brexit mob?
The loss is from the fluid voters who change from day to day depending on how much coverage some topic or other gets. Seeing this ridiculous tory leadership and the coverage its getting, then this loss is hardly surprising. Once it has been resolved and the same people see that nothing has changed…
Deselection is the way to go with these cuckoos.
The only people who are trying to split the Party are those who will not accept that the time came long ago to follow the Conference resolution and CAMPAIGN to go back to the electorate, which in no way prevents us from also pushing for a GE.
Some unions and union members should take a serious look at themselves and realise they are standing in the way of a Jeremy Corbyn Socialst Government.
But what’s the point in campaigning Jack – except to sow division amongst the left – when it’s never gonna happen? And as I understand it, much of JC’s program – if he won a GE and formed a government – would be illegal if we were in the EU. Given that the majority of Tory voters voted Out – and given that the Tories are never gonna call a GE unless they are way ahead of Labour in the polls and are guaranteed to win it – there is no conceivable possibility that they will hold a second referendum or a PV. It just ain’t gonna happen. Nor was it ever going to.
And I suspect that yourself and RH and SteveH have known that all along.
It is absolutely true that many democratic socialist objectives would be illegal if we were in the EU. This issue did not get much of an airing at the referendum.
Renationalisation of many of our public services sold off by the Tories and Lib Demos would certainly be illegal. In the rail, mail, gas, electricity and telecommunications sectors, the market system is explicitly safeguarded and guaranteed by the EU liberalisation directives – which are unrepealable for practical purposes. Any firm operating in those sectors could simply bring a legal action in our own courts to stop the Corbyn government in its tracks.
Public monopoly in all other sectors would be open to legal challenge wherever you have a market operator from another Member State. That corporation could simply apply to the British courts for an interim injunction to secure its “freedom of establishment” under the EU Treaties.
Very true, Allan Howard, and equally so , Danny’s follow up on the role of Single Market rules in blocking entire industry/utility/service re-nationalisation under a Left government. Still, our paid resident, all-day-long, Trolls , including RH and SteveH (or one Troll with multiple identities) , don’t give a monkeys . Nor does that perennial wrecker, Tom Watson, all over the media today with his blather. They just want to keep hammering at that “Brexit policy wedge” to confuse and split the, pro Corbyn membership, of what is today the ONLY surviving mass-voting and membership based social democratic party in the whole of Europe – precisely because the 2015 ongoing Corbyn-wave of mild Leftish radicalism reversed the pre 2015 ongoing tumble of Blairite neoliberal Labour into that same dustbin of history .
jpenney 17/06/2019 at 2:38 pm
You are entitled to your opinion just as you were a few months ago when you were slagging off Corbyn and his team. Nobody took much notice of you then, why should we now.
Allan, I keep hearing that if we remain in the EU a Corbyn government would not be able to do this or that. Each time I hear it, I refer people to Monkton Associates, the legal firm which specialises in competition law. Their lawyers say the opposite.
Jack T 17/06/2019 at 4:17 pm
UK NATIONALISATION: THE LAW AND THE COST
Nationalisation is on the agenda in the UK. The Labour Party says that, if it wins the next general election, it will nationalise the railways, water and energy companies, the Royal Mail and possibly private finance initiative (PFI) companies.
This paper considers how, as a legal matter, nationalisation would work, and the legal constraints that may limit a Government’s ability to nationalise for less than full market value.
Nationalisation for less than full market value will, almost inevitably, trigger compensation claims by investors. The investors likely to
have the best chance of launching a successful claim are those based in a jurisdiction that is party to an investment treaty with the UK, including, for example, China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Investors who do not benefit from investment treaty protection, including UK investors, would have a potential claim under the Human Rights Act 1998 and/or the European Convention on Human Rights, but these claims are likely to face greater challenges. However, UK and other investors may benefit collaterally by virtue of another investor bringing a successful investment treaty claim. The UK Government may not want to pay higher compensation to a foreign investor than to a UK pension fund. Hence the final result may be that there is little practical
choice but to offer the higher value to all.
https://www.cliffordchance.com/content/dam/cliffordchance/PDFDocuments/nationalisation.pdf
‘Jack T 17/06/2019 at 4:17 pm · ·
Allan, I keep hearing that if we remain in the EU a Corbyn government would not be able to do this or that. Each time I hear it, I refer people to Monkton Associates, the legal firm which specialises in competition law. Their lawyers say the opposite.’
https://youtu.be/ZgcIMjEzPJA
Do you have a link Jack?
There are of course pros and cons on both sides of the debate, and the NHS *IS* on the table, along with GM crops/foods and chlorinated chicken etc,etc,etc if we leave without a good deal. The Biggest Lie – or certainly one of them – was the oft-repeated platitude ‘Take Back Control’, as if to say, on the one hand, that WE, the proles, once had control and, on the other, that we WILL have when we leave. The Few – the Establishment – will do all in their power – and THEY have ALL of it – to prevent that from ever happening, as we have witnessed since the moment it became clear to them that Jeremy would be elected leader of the LP.
We live in a Psychopathocracy, a Corporatocracy in which the Elite keep their minions well greased by privatising everything
Allan, please see this article by George Peretz QC from Monckton Chambers:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/27/four-reasons-jeremy-corbyn-wrong-eu-state-aid
Some unions and union members should take a serious look at themselves and realise they are standing in the way of a Jeremy Corbyn Socialst Government.
There’s plenty of Labour members, too.
And serwotka’s Jeremy’s mate?!
I hope all of us who desperately want or need a Corbyn led government will take notice of this article and act accordingly.
There have been many times when the actions of some Labour in Name Only MPs have enraged me. Then I have cooled down and realised that that was the object of the exercise – to provoke us into making an angry on line (or otherwise) response which their pals in the MSM could then report as ” vile abuse” and/or “hard left bullying” etc.
These MPs despise us and hold us and our party democracy in contempt yet want us – the dogs, scum, entryists, Trots, Marxists, Stalinists, antisemites bullies and racists – to fund their election.
Comrades rather than being drawn into retaliating when these MPs provoke you, concentrate your efforts on deselection. This is more appropriate way to deal with these people and achieves a much better result.
‘To prevent that, they’ll try any tactic to bait for a reaction. Engaging will give them what they’re looking for. Ignoring them – and focusing on Labour’s positive messages – won’t.’
I do not agree with this statement as the lack of a response will embolden them and lead people to think that there is something in it. And so people must respond. It is how you respond that counts.
Did ‘not responding’ work for Michael Dukakis or Al Gore? I think not.
Here is the full text of the speech that Tom Watson is giving at the Centre for European Reform think tank today.
https://labourlist.org/2019/06/tom-watson-issues-new-call-for-labour-to-back-remain/
Here’s an extract, it’s a long speech.
“We’re more comfortable warning of an ineffable catastrophe, because we’re hard-wired to be unable to say the words that I’ve come here this morning to say:
The European Union is not something to apologise for. It is a good thing. It is Good with a capital G. An enduring, deep, benevolent collaboration between sovereign states unique in the history of the world.
It produced a lasting peace from the ashes of war. It produced prosperity where there had been deprivation. It produced transnational partnership where once there was suspicion and division. It’s not perfect, but what large institution is?
The core values of the EU are internationalism. Solidarity. Freedom. Those are British values. And they’re Labour values.
I’m a European Democratic Socialist. I don’t go along with the EU despite being a socialist, I embrace the EU because I am a socialist. Democratic Socialism is achieving common causes by the strength of collective endeavour.
That’s what Europe is.
We’re lucky to be living through this golden age of European cooperation. We are extraordinarily fortunate to live in peace.
I am a democratic socialist, a British patriot and a proud European. These are not identities that rub awkwardly up against one another – they are mutually reinforcing. Europe is who we are and have been for centuries.”
Dearie, dearie, me, Tom Watson (and the Troll,Steve H) : is it really true that :
“The core values of the EU are internationalism. Solidarity. Freedom. Those are British values. And they’re Labour values.” ?
Nope. That is a completely historically and analytically ignorant and lying misrepresentation of what the “core values of the EU” really are. The “Core Values” of the EU, as clearly enshrined in detailed statute and treaty, are actually the “Four(capitalist) Freedoms” of the undemocratic, entirely neoliberalism-enforcing, capitalist Single Market. Complete freedom of movement of Capital, unlimited Labour Supply, and goods and services, with a European Court to oversee that the European labour movements, or individual, elected, national state governments, take second place behind the interests of globalised Big Business.
If Tom Watson believes his Lib Dem-style ignorant drivel about the EU’s role ( and Kier Starmer certainly does, from his Conference speech) he simply hasn’t been paying attention to the political convulsions currently engulfing the EU’s nation states, arising from the disfunctional chaos the EU’s neoliberalism is wreaking in state after state, or the economic wasteland being created in the Southern European states by the mainly German Capital-benefitting Eurozone structures.
Far from today’s neoliberal, aggressively expansionist neoliberal EU ( risking WW3 over the last few years with Russia simply in order to absorb the Ukraine – under its corrupt openly Nazi militia-supported government), being the vehicle for continuing peace on the European continent, surely even SteveH and Tom Watson can spot that thinly camouflaged mass “populist” neo-fascism (IN GOVERNMENT) is growing as a major political force right across the EU states , PRECISELY because of its neoliberal social and economic destructiveness and innately disfunctional Eurozone ? Maybe not. Their pro EU gibberish is aimed purely at attacking Jeremy.
jpenney 17/06/2019 at 3:03 pm
My apologies. my reply above was intended to end up here.
You are entitled to your opinion just as you were a few months ago when you were slagging off Corbyn and his team. Nobody took much notice of you then, why should we now.
It’s for the rule makers to get their finger out and deal with the traitors but the rebel mps have been encouraged by the lack of enforcement of the rules which the plotters break on a daily basis.Thanks for the warnings ,but isn’t it shameful that loyal Labour party members have to be protected by squawkbox from being used for sacrifice once again.NEC,what’s the explanation? ?
How very profound from the arsehole that is tom watson.
”An enduring, deep, benevolent collaboration between sovereign states unique in the history of the world.”
How ‘benevolent’ the EU’s been to Greece & Cyprus, for example…
‘It produced a lasting peace from the ashes of war. ‘
Errr….Think you’ll find NATO, plus the UK & france’s nuclear capabilityes did their part more than the EU/EEC. The UK wasn’t even n the first echelon of the eu or the second….The French didn’t even want us to join until de gaulle snuffed it – And after all Britain did for them?!
”It produced prosperity where there had been deprivation.”
Nobody I know can ever remember kids going through bins for something to stave off their hunger…Including those old enough to have lived through rationing.
”The core values of the EU are internationalism. Solidarity. Freedom. Those are British values. And they’re Labour values.
I’m a European Democratic Socialist. I don’t go along with the EU despite being a socialist, I embrace the EU because I am a socialist. Democratic Socialism is achieving common causes by the strength of collective endeavour.”
Dafuq is watson to preach what socialism is F complete FS? He’s doing his level best to get rid of his socialist boss. Don’t get me started on watson being in any way shape nor form ‘democratic’
”We’re lucky to be living through this golden age of European cooperation.”
Cooperation? Nope. Only the British followed the rules explicitly…to their detriment.
”I am a democratic socialist, a British patriot and a proud European.”
Bully for you. I’d say you’re the last, but have major doubts over your first claim (See earlier) and a doubt over your second.
”Europe is who we are and have been for centuries.”
Ermmm….How long was it since you said the EU gave us lasting peace from the ashes of war?
In few sentences we’ve gone from the ashes of war – with our european neighbours – to being ‘european for centuries’.
You just can’t make this sycophantically europhile tat up. The man’s a cretin.
The irrelevant gibberish of political and economic illiteracy that claims the Lexiteer pretend label of ‘true socialism’ is a wonder to behold.
The reality would be (a) a doubtful ability to command a majority in a general election as voters defected to LibDems and Greens as Labour became its own caricature of sectarian irrelevance. Why would the offer from Labour trump the world class incompetence of the Tories if it just echoed Tory policy on a major issue? (b) a large proportion of members and supporters alienated (c) even given a possible win, a government mired in dealing with the economic consequences of Brexit and struggling to replace a whole framework of trading agreements (d) a continuing economic ball-and-chain inhibiting all aspects of innovative policy, and stifling the opportunities of re-animating alternative models of ownership (d) increased scorn and irrelevance in terms of the international negotiating framework.
In sum : a worse position in every respect than that under the undesirable current constraints of competition rules.
Net result : Public ownership and redistribution given another kick in the teeth for a few more decades, plus a propaganda gift to the re-animated Tories who have achieved a key neoliberal policy aim and left the shit on Labour’s doorstep. Get out of jail free card!
Wow! Brilliant strategy!
Nationalisation Is Not Against EU Law
Sam Fowles
Fellow in Law, University of Birmingham
4 mins read
“Sorry Nigel but EU law will not prohibit a properly handled nationalisation of energy utilities………”
“Sorry Nigel but EU law will not prohibit a properly handled nationalisation of energy utilities………………..”
“There are many forms of “nationalisation” that would never be touched by the TFEU (such as taking utilities into municipal control, as has happened in Germany). Furthermore, EU law wouldn’t prohibit the sort of nationalisation proposed by Mr Corbyn. ……”
“Let’s be clear, the Corbyn plan isn’t for complete nationalisation. Mr Corbyn wants to nationalise the grid (the infrastructure that transports gas and electricity from generator to supplier), the “Big Six” energy companies and the railways……….”
“EU law explicitly protects the right of member states to nationalise industries. Art. 345 TFEU states “The Treaties shall in no way prejudice the rules in Member States (MS) governing the system of property ownership.” ……………”
“In summary, the Corbyn plan may well face a challenge in the ECJ. But so might almost any piece of legislation. EU law would by no means, immediately prohibit a properly handled nationalisation. This is important. Debate about progressive ideas can too often be choked off by assertions of illegality. Those of us who care about the environment (or just about our energy bill) should fervently hope that doesn’t happen here.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sam-fowles/nationalisation-is-not-ag_b_8231336.html
Dont forget the domino effect
Any good hatchet man will tell you if you pick on the right one then the rest will fall silent,
I choose anyone of Blair, Mandelson, Watson or Hodge
Only practical problem is Tinge party failure has made it harder to shift them in significant numbers,
So will need reselection green light sooner rather than later and rule change to stop sleepers keeping their heads down until after GE,
That’s democracy for you, dirty job but has to be done for the millions screaming out for a Labour government
Yes think Watson with his infantile political comments sounds more like Deputy Leader of the Lemming Party.
It is probably true that the Right of Labour have a loyalty to Neo-Liberal Supra-National EC structure which primarily serves capital, and that most Labour members hearts are with remain but they need perhaps to engage their brains with the fact that 66% of Labour constituencies voted leave.
Follow Watson’s trap and Labour is finished, the Corbyn dream is over, and Labour could end up like Pasok in Greece.
There were two routes for building a left wing democratic socialist society as an example to the World (for those who actually want one) – via partners in the EC or via independent nation states and the Peoples Vote of 3 years ago meant it had to be option 2 (and it was not the wrong people).
Our priority as socialists should be to try to get a socialist Brexit and to fight a hard right Tory Neo-Liberal extreme Brexit.
You can have a transformative Labour Govt. that addresses poverty, homelessness and builds the homes needed etc. OR a second PV?
You can’t have both.
There is nothing sadder than seeing a significant number of people (including some comrades) failing to recognise that history has passed them by.
A socialist Brexit and JC4PM!
Bazza 17/06/2019 at 5:03 pm
Why not?
Cos if Labour supports a 2nd PV it destroyed Dickhead!!
Bazza 17/06/2019 at 9:00 pm · ·
“Cos if Labour supports a 2nd PV it destroyed Dickhead!!”
Why? The majority of Labour supporters support a CV and remaining in the EU.
FFS – Are you really trying to claim that unless Labour ignores its membership and voters it will be destroyed?
I am sorry but you are talking nonsense.
” the Corbyn dream is over” … if the leadership doesn’t look after its real support base and regains electoral credibility by ditching the shadowing of Tory policy on Europe.
At present, the likes of Watson are being given a free pass by strategic and tactical incompetence that sees only a continuing dive in support. You can’t out-Brexit the Brexiteer duggies.
TWatson is the first name springing to mind. We really need a deputy leadership election. The points he stood on are now recognised as a lie.
Watson OUT.
Allowing Watson to seize the initiative the way he has is madness. A strong and unequivocally pro Corbyn MP should have done it months ago.
A socialist Brexit would democratically control labour supply so with job offers needed we could take workers we needed from any country in the World (unlike the racist resolutions calling for free movement only in the EC).
We could democratically control capital supply.
Bring back migration adjustment funds for councils.
Have a customs union on our terms so companies trade free with Europe (ends need Irish Backstop).
Trade unionise migrant workers.
We can make history.k
Bazza, I’m afraid you are dreaming. Brexit of any sort will destroy trade and leave a Labour government without the funds to do all the things we want to do. Don’t be fooled by the far right, even with a ‘Socialist’ Brexit it will take years to replace lost trade just to get back to where we are now. Take the USA for example, a spokesman said the average trade deal with the US takes 45 months.
You forget, Jack. Unicorns rule O.K.
Bazza 17/06/2019 at 9:09 pm
If that’s the case then Labour should put their case to the electorate. What is there to fear?
If the Government is confident in negotiating a deal that working people, our economy and communities will benefit from they should not be afraid to put that deal to the public.