[The Weeping Angel]

Personally I think they're more likely to double down on such policies.

[mattomac]

"Yourparty"....

Only kidding

[mattomac]

Blair lost Brent East and Leicester South on far worse swings to be fair and Thatcher lost Ryedale on a big swing. Both were elected as PM a year later.

[Youngian]

Swap Gaza for the Iraq War and the Green campaigning doesn't look disimilar to Lib Dems by-election wins in the later Blair wars.

I wouldn't mind betting that the drugs position becomes appointing a Royal Commission before too long.

Farage has held an even more libertarian line on drugs than Zack so its curious why Labour gives Reform a pass on the issue but not the Greens. Is drug decriminalisation more of a problem for conservative muslim parents than white working class Mancs? What's the harm in a bit of sniff and puff on Friday night, good ol Nige knows the score.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Farage only mentions that policy if he's around edge lord young people. Which mostly he isn't, so he doesn't.

[Youngian]

I enjoyed Stewart Lee making jokes at crisps, last night. But I doubt we'll hear him having a go at Muslim snacks on the politically correct BBC *

*

[The Weeping Angel]

I think I've found the dumbest take on this result.

The whole thread is just unbelievable.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Don't I remember Jez having some awkward moments with the Labour conference, who were much more pro-second referendum than he was? Agitator Starmer did well to get that going. And I think I also remember the Lib Dems snapping up remain voters till Labour shifted. And the John Smith analogy doesn't work. Smith had the choice of blocking the whole treaty or allowing it though. He only allowed it through after taking lumps out of Major by amending it with the Social Chapter. He only took this position after trying very hard to defeat the Government.

I think that guy is a Lexit goon. I don't know what the rest of his lecturing is like, but this is deeply unimpressive.

[Boiler]

I enjoyed Stewart Lee making jokes at crisps, last night. But I doubt we'll hear him having a go at Muslim snacks on the politically correct BBC *

*

What if they were all Greggs vegan sausage rolls? I actually prefer those...

[Youngian]

I think I've found the dumbest take on this result.

The whole thread is just unbelievable.

This jerksock's an IR lecturer at Queen Mary University
Well quite

[The Weeping Angel]

He also fails to mention that plenty of people had problems with Corbyn's approach to Brexit, including those well-known right-wingers John McDonnell and Dianne Abbott.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah, and nearly all the younger left are pro-EU- as you can see from the Greens. The idea all these people were led astray by Keir Starmer (perhaps in concert with Alistair Campbell) is risible.

Here is Richard Johnson from Briefings For Britain days, in which he approvingly quotes Glasman and Larry Elliott. A particularly shit quote from Larry Elliott too.

It echoes the debate over joining the Euro fifteen years ago when, as Larry Elliot reflected, ‘People who liked the Euro were civilised, supported the arts, went to Tuscany or the Dordogne for their holidays. People who didn’t like the Euro drove white vans decorated with the flag of St George’.

This is absolutely horseshit. This is Larry Elliott mythologizing himself as the brave outsider, which is how this guy sees himself.

Brown got in expert economic advice- I know Simon Wren-Lewis was involved, don't know who else was- and they recommended that we didn't join. There was very little pressure to change that. Do Elliott or Richard Johnson think Simon Wren-Lewis drives around in a white van wolf-whistling?

His argument that Brexit was right (aside from the practical one of accepting the result of the referendum) is some rubbish about the nation state. Well that's all going well for us.

https://www.briefingsforbritain.co.uk/l ... tradition/

[mattomac]

I am sure he was quite vocal on a second vote, in fact I am sure it was Starmer who pushed it at conference.

Goes to show Goodwin isn’t the only bellend academic, but I knew that.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Here's another of his. He was an absolute Brexit maximalist.

https://www.briefingsforbritain.co.uk/w ... ft-brexit/

Johnson told B4B: “Outside of these trading institutions, including the Customs Union, we can forge humanitarian trade policies which are focused on restoring connections with former countries in the Commonwealth and so on. From a moral perspective I think we have an obligation to be engaged with these countries around the World in Asia, Africa, in the Americas, and Australia and try and have an outward looking partnership with these countries which we just can’t do if we stay in the Single Market or the Customs Union.

“I think for Jeremy Corbyn, who is an internationalist and interested in Latin American politics in particular, that gives up a huge opportunity to have trading relationship with these countries on a much more equal and humanitarian basis. “

Pure Farage, with a bit of "humanitarian" stuff at which Farage would have laughed his socks off. Has Johnson even heard of Everything But Arms?

It's incredible to see the people involved with this site, and he thought "Yeah, I'll work with them". Doubtless he thinks this makes him a daring free thinker, like Tony Benn knocking about with Bill Cash. Most Lexiters would have had the sense to run a mile from it.

[The Weeping Angel]

Rob Ford has thoughts.

Of course, Rob doesn't really present a solution to this problem or the consequences.

[The Weeping Angel]

I think I've found the dumbest take on this result.

The whole thread is just unbelievable.

This jerksock's an IR lecturer at Queen Mary University
Well quite

Academia is a profession whose reputation has really suffered in the social media age.

[Tubby Isaacs]

In fairness, lots of them have been good, and were good on Bluesky before it became "populist". But there are a number who I think, crikey, I'm not paying to study with that chap. Maybe this fellow is interesting on Labour history, that's where his Euroscepticism seems to come from, but I don't want to sit there listening to the "moral obligation to rebuild trade with the Commonwealth" or whatever.

[Samanfur]

I am sure he was quite vocal on a second vote, in fact I am sure it was Starmer who pushed it at conference.

He did.

When the cameras were off, he was extremely blunt about Corbyn's lacklustre campaigning in the Brexit referendum, as well.

[The Weeping Angel]

Tom Watson has thoughts.

https://tomwatsonofficial.substack.com/ ... irect=true

I had a day off. It was a mistake.

I got to see and hear every response to the election result in Gorton and Denton. All the briefings and demands and score settling and tears and joy and agony and despondency. It was like watching a party conduct its own autopsy while the body was still twitching on the TV studio sofa.

But by far the worst piece of analysis, delivered to a broadcaster by a “high placed Labour source”, was this: we lost because Labour’s immigration policy was too punitive.

Oh, for fuck’s sake

Sam Coates of Sky News went on air and told the nation, words to that effect, that young Muslim men deserted Labour because Labour’s new immigration policy on earned citizenship had alienated them. Somewhere in a regional party office a pointy head with a lanyard looked up from his spreadsheet and said, “Yes. That’s it. That’s why we lost Manchester.” And everyone else was either too sleep-deprived or too frightened to tell the truth, which is that this is a glib excuse that would not get you a pass in GCSE politics.

Sam Coates will defend himself by saying he was only repeating what a senior Labour source was telling him, and that is fair enough. But other than his disastrous review of Neil Diamond at Glastonbury in 2008, he normally has better antennae for accuracy. Sometimes the job is not just to relay the briefing but to smell it first.

I had a day off. It was a mistake.

I got to see and hear every response to the election result in Gorton and Denton. All the briefings and demands and score settling and tears and joy and agony and despondency. It was like watching a party conduct its own autopsy while the body was still twitching on the TV studio sofa.

But by far the worst piece of analysis, delivered to a broadcaster by a “high placed Labour source”, was this: we lost because Labour’s immigration policy was too punitive.

Oh, for fuck’s sake

Sam Coates of Sky News went on air and told the nation, words to that effect, that young Muslim men deserted Labour because Labour’s new immigration policy on earned citizenship had alienated them. Somewhere in a regional party office a pointy head with a lanyard looked up from his spreadsheet and said, “Yes. That’s it. That’s why we lost Manchester.” And everyone else was either too sleep-deprived or too frightened to tell the truth, which is that this is a glib excuse that would not get you a pass in GCSE politics.

Sam Coates will defend himself by saying he was only repeating what a senior Labour source was telling him, and that is fair enough. But other than his disastrous review of Neil Diamond at Glastonbury in 2008, he normally has better antennae for accuracy. Sometimes the job is not just to relay the briefing but to smell it first.

I had a day off. It was a mistake.

I got to see and hear every response to the election result in Gorton and Denton. All the briefings and demands and score settling and tears and joy and agony and despondency. It was like watching a party conduct its own autopsy while the body was still twitching on the TV studio sofa.

But by far the worst piece of analysis, delivered to a broadcaster by a “high placed Labour source”, was this: we lost because Labour’s immigration policy was too punitive.

Oh, for fuck’s sake

Sam Coates of Sky News went on air and told the nation, words to that effect, that young Muslim men deserted Labour because Labour’s new immigration policy on earned citizenship had alienated them. Somewhere in a regional party office a pointy head with a lanyard looked up from his spreadsheet and said, “Yes. That’s it. That’s why we lost Manchester.” And everyone else was either too sleep-deprived or too frightened to tell the truth, which is that this is a glib excuse that would not get you a pass in GCSE politics.

Sam Coates will defend himself by saying he was only repeating what a senior Labour source was telling him, and that is fair enough. But other than his disastrous review of Neil Diamond at Glastonbury in 2008, he normally has better antennae for accuracy. Sometimes the job is not just to relay the briefing but to smell it first.

If young Muslim men left Labour to vote Green yesterday it had nothing to do with Labour’s immigration policy and everything to do with Gaza. This is not complicated. The Green Party did not win Gorton and Denton because of the quality of their policy platform or the depth of their thinking on immigration reform. They won it because they had the cynicism to wrap themselves in a flag of conscience on the one issue that mattered most to a community in pain, and Labour handed them the match. Let us not dress this up. The Greens ran a single-issue campaign on Gaza with the discipline of a military operation and the moral certainty of people who will never have to govern. It worked. That does not make it admirable. It makes it effective, which in politics is a different thing entirely.

The other strain of post-match delirium is the claim that we would have won the by-election if only Andy Burnham had been the candidate.

No, we would not. Andy dodged disaster yesterday. The gap was too big. Look at it.