UK Politics: Statues of Limitations

[polishgenius]

20 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

 

You said she needs to be carfeul what she says. You criticize her for not speaking up for the Palestinians. Why? Nobody expects her to come up with a solution.

I'm not criticising her for not speaking up for the Palestinians. I'm criticising her for randomly bringing up Israel in relation to George Floyd and not then making it a wider conversation about brutality, thus giving the implication that Israel hold some responsibility for Floyd's death.

You say she's an actor and so it doesn't matter, who cares what she says. She's a big enough name to get an interview with a national newspaper, her voice matters, but even if she wasn't, it still wouldn't be okay.

 

20 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

We need our actual leaders to tell the Israelis to just fucking stop.

Obviously. You seem to think that wanting people to avoid being deliberately or accidentally antisemitic and being okay with Israel's brutalisation of Palestine are the same thing. 

[Heartofice]

Thread on this topic:

 

[williamjm]

8 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

What I find so disappointing is how cheaply he allegedly sold himself out. If I'm saving someone 30-50 million, I want a bigger kickback. 

Maybe he's just so keen on the idea of denying a Labour council some extra tax money that he didn't need any personal gain?

[john]

A whole slew of militarised police departments/security services could be theorised to train dodgy restraint techniques as standard practice, if you go straight to Israel, then yeah, that’s anti-semitic. That’s on Peake more than RLB, though she shouldn’t really have retweeted it.

RLB’s problem appears to be that she didn’t immediately comply with the direction she got from the party about taking down the tweet and clarifying it. Seems like there was some confusing instructions about what she was to do but ultimately she delayed, wanting to speak to Starmer about it and that’s when she got binned.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Update from maxine Peake

[The Mance]

So apparently there's been a bit of a diplomatic incident  involving tea, tang, and a microwave oven.  

Sheesh!  Tea is tea, no?  *runs away*

 

[Werthead]

30 minutes ago, The Mance said:

So apparently there's been a bit of a diplomatic incident  involving tea, tang, and a microwave oven.  

Sheesh!  Tea is tea, no?  *runs away*

 

I think it was quite blatantly obvious the original TikTok was a massive piss-take, but the British belief (in some quarters) that Americans don't do sarcasm or irony seems to have convinced some people otherwise.

Still, it was quite funny, and now Italy's been dragged into the whole thing.

[mormont]

Maxine Peake is an actor, yea, but she's also a political activist. She speaks on politics a lot - and good on her, because I usually agree with her. But in this case she fell into the mistake of repeating something, on the record, that she hadn't got a good source for. Essentially, it was gossip. And if you're going to assign blame to Israel for events in which they had no actual hand, on the basis of gossip, then yes, you are at the very least fueling anti-Semitism, because that's one of the ways in which anti-Semitism has spread and operated historically.

As for Long-Bailey. if you're a politician retweeting an interview like this and don't agree with everything in it, it's good practise to say so and possibly even to mention which parts you disagree with. If you give only an endorsement with no qualification, it's difficult later to add that qualification credibly. The damage is done. That's compounded by this:

This is a choice by Long-Bailey to put a matter of her 'good conscience' over what the party leader had asked her to do for the good of the party. This sort of thing, particularly relating to criticism of Israel, is pretty typical of the sort of situation that got Corbyn into trouble over anti-Semitism. It's one thing to say criticism of Israel should be allowed. It's another to treat it as uniquely important. By refusing to take down the tweet without a press statement, that's what Long-Bailey was in effect doing. She was refusing to toe the line over what was, in the end, an invalid criticism of Israel: putting her own conscience ahead of the party line. Which she's entitled to do, but I don't think you can complain when someone gets sacked from the front bench for it.

[Heartofice]

I think a big take away is really what this means for the Labour Party. Starmer has just sacked a major rival and shown a powerful hand to the momentum mob. All good news in my opinion.

Momentums response has been rather muted, urging its members to not quit the party but to send in their complaints to try and get her reinstated. I think it shows they have fallen quite heavily in influence, you could imagine them kicking off had this happened earlier. Even whining Owen Jones was not especially passionate on the issue.

Hopefully this marks a change in Labours position and the hard lefters will be slowly herded our the door

[Maltaran]

52 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

 Even whining Owen Jones was not especially passionate 

I mentioned that yesterday, he was basically agreeing with you - saying yes, she was wrong, but sacking her is an overreaction. I disagree with that view, I think given the optics post-Corbyn that Starmer needs to come down hard on this sort of thing.

There was a lady from the Board of Deputies on the radio this morning saying basically it’s a good start from Starmer.

[Heartofice]

12 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

I mentioned that yesterday, he was basically agreeing with you - saying yes, she was wrong, but sacking her is an overreaction. I disagree with that view, I think given the optics post-Corbyn that Starmer needs to come down hard on this sort of thing.

There was a lady from the Board of Deputies on the radio this morning saying basically it’s a good start from Starmer.

I think if Starmer keeps this up and can also sort out Labours position on Brexit then the Tories should be very worried in a few years time.

[The Anti-Targ]

I imagine in a few year's time the position of the vast majority on Brexit will be that it might have been an OK idea if a competent government had managed the thing. But since "competent government" seems to be an oxymoron ultimately Brexit was a bad idea.

On 6/26/2020 at 7:37 PM, mormont said:

Maxine Peake is an actor, yea, but she's also a political activist. She speaks on politics a lot - and good on her, because I usually agree with her. But in this case she fell into the mistake of repeating something, on the record, that she hadn't got a good source for. Essentially, it was gossip. And if you're going to assign blame to Israel for events in which they had no actual hand, on the basis of gossip, then yes, you are at the very least fueling anti-Semitism, because that's one of the ways in which anti-Semitism has spread and operated historically.

 

I don't think repeating an un-proven allegation was the mistake, though it was stupid to repeat a claim that is not proven to be true from reliable sources. Because even if it was proven true, the murder of George Floyd has nothing to do with Israel. Connecting Israel in any way shape or form with George Floyd's murder is anti-Semitic adjacent at best. 

The lesson for RLB in all this is that Twitter is poison for political discourse, because you can't have nuanced discussions 250 characters at a time. Go old school and start a blog, then just tweet links to what you have written in your blog.

I do feel like Starmer was primed from day 1 to very publicly drop the hammer on the first instance of public anti-semitism by Labour MP. It was something that has clearly plagued Labour for a while and Corbyn did not handle it well. So, Starmer seems to have felt the need to deal with it severely. Given all the optics around the issue it was probably politically necessary to deal with it that way. In a different context a telling off and a contrite press release might have been fine, but not right at this political moment.

[ants]

On 6/26/2020 at 7:14 PM, Heartofice said:

I think if Starmer keeps this up and can also sort out Labours position on Brexit then the Tories should be very worried in a few years time.

Unless Johnson fiddles around for four years, Stamer won't need a position on Brexit.  It will just be on how to handle post Brexit going into the next election, and how to make whatever has happened look as bad as possible for the Torries.  

[The Anti-Targ]

Quite fascinated by Jonathan Pie's latest rant about RBL, statues and transphopbia. I think he's right and wrong, sometimes in the same sentence, which is the problem when seeing things from a very binary perspective with no allowance for context and nuance.

[HexMachina]

On 6/26/2020 at 10:14 AM, Heartofice said:

I think if Starmer keeps this up and can also sort out Labours position on Brexit then the Tories should be very worried in a few years time.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/27/starmer-overtakes-johnson-as-preferred-choice-for-prime-minister

Polling also indicating this. Lots can change by the time another election rolls around but its a big swing for Labour since the start of the year

[Heartofice]

6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Quite fascinated by Jonathan Pie's latest rant about RBL, statues and transphopbia. I think he's right and wrong, sometimes in the same sentence, which is the problem when seeing things from a very binary perspective with no allowance for context and nuance.

I’d say he was mostly correct in his latest video. 
 

It generally is the same ‘perms outraged woke t**Ts’ who will be happy to defend RLB for committing the same crime they love to accuse people of. 

Pulling down statues has had very little effect and saying so doesn’t make you a racist
 

Where he maybe is off the mark is that the blame is, I think, to be laid at the feet of social media. It has just given a voice to the most idiotic in life and incentivised outrage at the expense of nuance. Woke Warriors are just the symptom.

[The Anti-Targ]

You're not a racist for saying pulling down statues has had very little effect, but you are wrong.

[Heartofice]

11 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

You're not a racist for saying pulling down statues has had very little effect, but you are wrong.

Matter of opinion. But I clearly disagree.

[dog-days]

Just listening to the Food Programme on Radio 4. According to it, Boris Johnson had an epiphany about the effects of weight on health after his own experience of Covid-19, and has resolved to Do Something about obesity in Britain. 

It follows that we should hope the Prime Minister is exposed to as many deeply unpleasant experiences as possible to push him towards socially compassionate policies. What first? 

[Conflicting Thought]

8 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Woke Warriors are just the symptom.

Hmm i thought the preferred nomenclature was, SJWs.