Mailwatch(ed) Forum

https://liam-record.com/2025/07/24/an-i ... Vg3rrUyKng

An imagining of the first local meeting of the new Sultana / Corbyn party

Picture a room in a church hall or community centre in late September. The evenings are starting to chill but the heating isn’t on yet. There are about twenty five people and you recognise seven of them. Three are local SWP members who have been active in the area since Winstanley’s Levellers, not the dogs on string ones. Another is the eccentric with firm views on planning legislation who turns up at everything. The others are friendly faces from the Corbyn movement and are pretty sensible.

Note the "cuts to services", when a lot more money is being spent on them overall. No budget would ever go down in Jezworld. Not services be cut (this can happen when the budget is going up, because of underlying costs like staff pensions.

Meanwhile, this is what he actually ran on in 2017.

Labour manifesto ‘would keep £7bn of planned Tory welfare cuts’
This article is more than 8 years old
Analysis by Resolution Foundation shows Jeremy Corbyn’s party would go ahead with most of George Osborne’s planned benefits reductions

The cost of sickness benefits at this time was way lower than the level Liz Kendall would have cut them to.

Comments BTL from the fans are hilarious.

It's the DOGE definition of cuts and waste - money being spent on stuff we don't like.

He was going to raise Corporation Tax to 26%, which was considered quite a large raise then. Obviously, headline rates don't tell you everything, but the rate now is 25%, raised to that level by "Red" Rishi Sunak. Which I suppose is a vindication for Corbyn, but it rather jars with the narrative that the rich have been left alone.

Boiler wrote: ↑Fri Jul 25, 2025 7:22 am

Dalem Lake wrote: ↑Fri Jul 25, 2025 6:30 am Are the BBC and whatnot going to be asking Corbyn for his tuppence-worth on everything now he's got a party?

"Will he provide content/generate clicks?" is the question you should ask yourself here.

Exactly. The people who claim the media are promoting Farage have it arse about face, sadly, in fact Farage is promoting their programmes.
Sometime ago Phil Moorhouse produced a graph plotting viewing figures for Question Time, pretty steady every week but consistently shooting up when Farage was on the panel. I'm sure the same will be true of Newsnight and Kuenssberg's show.
Now put yourself in the BBC's shoes, what better ammunition is there against the Right-wingers who say the BBC should be sold off because nobody watches it anymore? They can't argue with high viewing figures. It's not Farage's politics the BBC love, it's the viewers he attracts.

Sometime ago Phil Moorhouse produced a graph plotting viewing figures for Question Time, pretty steady every week but consistently shooting up when Farage was on the panel. I'm sure the same will be true of Newsnight and Kuenssberg's show.

This isn't new, Labour would have run ins with the BBC in the Kinnock era who were sick of Hatton, Livingstone, Benn and Scargill getting so many invites. But they had the same gift of the gab as Farage and would raise viewing figures.

Diane Abbot was on telly an awful lot at one time. The corresponding Tory was the (then) relatively presentable Michael Portillo.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Fri Jul 25, 2025 3:27 pm Diane Abbot was on telly an awful lot at one time. The corresponding Tory was the (then) relatively presentable Michael Portillo.

The glaring difference was that by the time This Week started (2005) Portillo's political career was over, whereas Abbott was a serving MP in the ruling party and her career was yet to peak.

It was the last political programme I could stomach

I didn't watch it. Last political programme I watched was A Week In Politics, on Channel 4. Then Vincent Hanna dropped dead.

I am utterly convinced that BBC News' upper and middle echelons being the broadcasting wing of Tufton Street is purely coincidental.

In the U.S., the rabid right got their man back into the hot seat in four years. Without potential sedition charges and one year extra, their UK mob is coasting home.

They don't want to represent anyone but themselves or hold actual power. They could, in alliance with the "Gaza Independents" do well in local elections, but I expect that would just become a platform for sticking it to Starmer.

Frances should ask her fellow Guardian, columnist, George Monbiot, about a party he founded back in 2004.

Blair inherited a much easier economic situation, and could keep people onside by spending big. The idea that Starmer's position on Palestine is worse than Blair on Iraq is absolute bollocks, no matter how much people act like it is. Starmer is working towards tax being 3-4p in the pound higher than Blair's peak, pretty much because of demographics. That's a much tougher job.

Had Labour MPs not put Corbyn on the ballot in 2015, nobody would have heard of him now. Which leftist had Corbyn's profile in Blair's time? Galloway, I suppose. A much less cuddly figure than Corbyn. Talking of which, wasn't RESPECT a new political party?

Frances is a good writer on benefits, in fairness to her.

It's Another Angry Wank, so it's automatically bollocks. He seems to be stepping up his output of utter cobblers. He's popping up on my Fleecebook feed every bloody day. I honestly don't get this "complicit in genocide" crap. How the hell can Labour - a governing political party in a state many removes - both geographically and politically - from Likud in Israel and Netanyahu's murderous coalition partners , be said to be complicit in anything that Israel engages in?

The reverse is the case. Far from being "complicit", Labour has done everything that it possibly could to condemn or try to influence the actions of the Israeli state. Short of sending in a military invasion force, what on earth could it do?

Keir Starmer's genocide complicity has made it impossible for anyone who believes in international law, human rights, or just basic human decency to vote for his version of the Labour Party.
The rest of the Labour Party wilfully going along with his genocide complicity proves the party is irredeemably rotten to the core.

I think you put your finger on it when you said:

Short of sending in a military invasion force, what on earth could it do?

The RAF was transporting aid to Gaza and bringing UK citizens back from Israel. They should have been dropping bombs on Tel Aviv. That's what they want - the total destruction of Israel.

"What else could it do?" is easy for a protest group to answer. And that's all any organisation with Corbyn involved ever wants to be.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Fri Jul 25, 2025 8:15 pm Blair inherited a much easier economic situation, and could keep people onside by spending big. The idea that Starmer's position on Palestine is worse than Blair on Iraq is absolute bollocks, no matter how much people act like it is. Starmer is working towards tax being 3-4p in the pound higher than Blair's peak, pretty much because of demographics. That's a much tougher job.

Had Labour MPs not put Corbyn on the ballot in 2015, nobody would have heard of him now. Which leftist had Corbyn's profile in Blair's time? Galloway, I suppose. A much less cuddly figure than Corbyn. Talking of which, wasn't RESPECT a new political party?

Frances is a good writer on benefits, in fairness to her.

It was founded in part by George Monbiot.

Abernathy wrote: ↑Sat Jul 26, 2025 11:22 am It's Another Angry Wank, so it's automatically bollocks. He seems to be stepping up his output of utter cobblers. He's popping up on my Fleecebook feed every bloody day. I honestly don't get this "complicit in genocide" crap. How the hell can Labour - a governing political party in a state many removes - both geographically and politically - from Likud in Israel and Netanyahu's murderous coalition partners , be said to be complicit in anything that Israel engages in?

The reverse is the case. Far from being "complicit", Labour has done everything that it possibly could to condemn or try to influence the actions of the Israeli state. Short of sending in a military invasion force, what on earth could it do?

Keir Starmer's genocide complicity has made it impossible for anyone who believes in international law, human rights, or just basic human decency to vote for his version of the Labour Party.
The rest of the Labour Party wilfully going along with his genocide complicity proves the party is irredeemably rotten to the core.

If Reform gets in and wants to start persecuting opponents, I will happily give them Jolyon's name.

Yug wrote: ↑Sat Jul 26, 2025 11:55 am I think you put your finger on it when you said:

Short of sending in a military invasion force, what on earth could it do?

The RAF was transporting aid to Gaza and bringing UK citizens back from Israel. They should have been dropping bombs on Tel Aviv. That's what they want - the total destruction of Israel.

They want to ethnically cleanse* the Middle East.
*aka genocide.