People like to blame Corbyn, because it’s real easy but I feel like the 2017 election and the narrowing split here, whatever the actual result, disprove that theory.
Exactly. Even if we had someone else in charge of Labour, this would still be a big problem. Labour simply cannot adopt a solidly pro-remain stance, because too many of their supporters aren’t remainers. If they’d gone full-remain, they would have cannibalized some LD votes from the remain side, but also lost probably significantly more votes to the Tories or the Brexit party (who I feel I should remind everyone, are not a political party, but a private company somehow being allowed to operate as a political party).
I mean, what, would Tom Watson or McDonnell have done better overall? I very much doubt it. I’m pretty sure they doubt it too.
They haven’t because all the research indicates that people don’t give a shit. I get that, on a rational level, obviously Boris has a much worse deal than before and particularly his 12-month deadline is utterly suicidal (and may well bring down his government), but people don’t care. They just want any deal that they can claim they were told was good, and to abdicate responsibility for it.
So yeah, Labour and the LDs could push that, but everything they can find out says it wouldn’t work. I guess like, the wisdom of the RPS messageboard says they’re wrong, and even I want them to be wrong, but I doubt that they are wrong.
A lot of idiots do, yes. And the BBC, being “fair and balanced” in that FOX News way has been quite aggressive in promoting the view that he is not only being truthful on this, but has come out with bullshit to suggest he might be very successful in keeping it off the table (which he will not be, or not without giving away everything else).
Laura Kuenssberg for example, the BBC’s idiot reporter in chief, who has spread Tory lies repeatedly, and failed to then admit she did so (most recently YESTERDAY when she actively insisted a Tory aide had been “punched” - which was an outright falsehood), for example had a piece on BBC News where she basically rolled her eyes and said obviously Boris was being honest, Corbyn was just lying about there being any evidence to the contrary (uhhh, nope, especially not with the unredacted version), and claimed that Boris could totally do it.
“Fair and balanced” BBC.
So when you have a bunch of aging white people with a victim complex, some poor, but many wealthy and delusionally still seeing themselves as victims, who are both reading some right-wing rag like The Times or the Mail or the Torygraph, AND seeing supposedly “neutral” BBC reporters (and Boris is still threatening the BBC and C4 for not pushing his line hard enough) repeating these lies re: the NHS, which they actually do care about, they believe them. I mean, there’s no finer example of the victim complex than Mr £80K.
You guys may thankfully have missed this, but on Question Time or something similar, some bearded wanker got up to attack Labour’s claim that their tax on people making over £80K would only impact 5% of earners (which is correct - I believe it was actually 4.9% or 5.1% depending on how you regard “earners”), and claimed that he made £80K, but he wasn’t in the to 5% of earners, he wasn’t even in the top 50% of earners. He was obviously, a fucking moron. £80K put him exactly where Labour said he was, and 50% is at between £23k and £28k depending on how you calculate it.
But he’s representative of a whole giant section of middle England. Pretty much all Tory voters think like him. They think they are “victims”, and that it’s all “lies”, and the papers, and even the BBC, have essentially fed this delusion. These people are completely out of touch with reality. They think that their 5-bed with a garage, two cars, and their pension that is, just by itself, above average earnings, makes them “poor”.
Much of the 42% is that or variations on it. People who genuinely think £80K is “poor”, and that actual poor people are just lying, and have parked their two cars around the back. People who live in a dream world. The rest is desperate idiots who have been told by the Big Blonde Man that he will use his Sky Magic to make them rich, and who are totally willing to sign on to this.
The issue is that they are centre-left. Centre-left parties are not capable of making the decisions needed to address the problems we are facing in the 21st century. Centre-left parties won’t tax wealth, they won’t address transparency of ownership, and won’t make major efforts on climate change, because that’s not the centre-left ethos. To make any effort to address these things, you’d need an actual left-wing party.
Wealth has to be taxed. The only way to do this is for tax havens to be destroyed (possibly literally). Their existence has essentially caused a “wealth vortex”, which is getting more and more powerful, and locking away more and more wealth. The 10% turned into the 1% and is turning into the 0.1%, and quite rapidly. I know people don’t like to hear it, but saving needs to be discouraged, not encouraged, too. But that’s incompatible with house prices being what they are, so people need to build houses. But capitalism has failed, because the housing market isn’t directed at consumers any more. You basically cannot get a house built unless you own a house. Capitalism can work, but only if it’s going directly to consumers, not solely to investors, because their interests are at odds with consumers, particularly in this sphere. Property accrues false value (to be destroyed the moment a war or pandemic or whatever kicks off), which can be turned into real cash by investors, regardless of whether it’s actually used. Hence we get only “luxury” properties that no-one can actually afford being built, and not even many of them, because they’re valued higher (even though the valuing is a nonsense - as seen with so many of them sitting empty). Climate change can also only be addressed with pretty hardcore socialism, and international action. Centre-left parties aren’t interested. It’s not profitable enough in the short term. So again we need actual leftists. Who can’t get elected because both the entire right AND the centre-left have been scare-mongering about them for decades.
