ToffeeDoug
Player Valuation: £35m
When you say Labour, who or what do you mean here? Not being funny, but the leader, the PLP, the membership, the NEC? All probably have a different view.
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Hilary Benn Sacked From The Shadow Cabinet - wider political debate
- Thread starter summerisle
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When you say Labour, who or what do you mean here? Not being funny, but the leader, the PLP, the membership, the NEC? All probably have a different view.
It's supposedly just a few Labour backbenchers, and some of the Lib Dems.
Mountfield1985
Player Valuation: £8m
I would assume it is coming from the leadership.
Whistlin' Dixie
Player Valuation: £50m
ToffeeDoug
Player Valuation: £35m
Me too. Mere bravado. No one else would be mad enough to want a GE at the moment, unless by those wishing to speed up an irreversible split in the party.
The 'real leadership' is she voted for the Iraq war. Then showed absolute 'real leadership' and went AWOL, that is until the furore died down a bit. 'Real leadership' is going missing so she didn't have to 'justify' why she fell for the dodgy dossier.
Consider this story.
Martin's already lost almost everything – he voted leave to spread ..
Unemployment
Opinion
Martin’s already lost almost everything – he voted leave to spread the pain
Frances Ryan
He’s unemployed, has had his benefits suspended and been summonsed for non-payment of council tax. For him, the EU referendum was a chance to kick back
‘Over three years, his jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) has been sanctioned on six separate occasions. ‘Sanction on top of sanction’, he says. ‘Like a layer cake’.’ Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images
“Leaving the EU might make my life [Poor language removed], but it’s [Poor language removed] anyway,” Martin Parker, a 62-year-old jobseeker says, bluntly. “So how much worse can it get?”
On the outskirts of north London, sitting in his rented box room (“the size of a cell”, as he puts it), Parker could be said to represent a section of the country the remain camp failed to reach. The voters who weren’t swayed by fears of the economy failing – not because they didn’t believe them – but because, as Parker puts it to me: “I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Through the 1980s and 90s, Parker worked as a precision engineer, making aircraft engine parts and suspension units for tanks. But work dried up and he bounced between signing on and taking casual work: from computer programming to office work. His last job – selling studio glass in an art gallery in Piccadilly – ended in 2011 and he’s been out of work since.
“Unemployment, benefits … it doesn’t resemble how it used to be,” he says. “You could do a short contract job and you knew you could sign on after ‘cos it was simple. Nowadays, it’s so hard … Their approach isn’t to support you. It’s to get rid of you.”
“Get rid of you”, to Parker, has come to mean stopping the money he needs to live on. Over three years, his jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) has been sanctioned on six separate occasions. “Sanction on top of sanction,” he says. “Like a layer cake.”
The misdemeanours varied: an “inadequate” CV; being late for an appointment (“I was always early,” he says); or a failure to provide information. “Petty things”, Parker says. “Things you hadn’t actually done or things you were supposed to do but they hadn’t told you.”
At one point, his JSA had only been reinstated for 19 days before it was stopped again. But in 2014 the final hit came: he missed a Jobcentre interview – the letter informing him he had to attend arrived on the same day, he says – and was handed a three-year benefit sanction. Or a “156-week termination” of JSA, as the official notification put it.
As the sanctions started, he says, “everyone piled in”. By 2011, with his rent rising and his housing benefit also suspended each time his JSA was stopped, he gave up his two-bed flat and moved into a shared house: eight adults crammed over three floors. “We’re all squashed up,” he says. “It’s like being suffocated.”
Parker has now been here for almost five years but barely anything is unpacked. There’s no room. Instead, he lives out of boxes and bags – five stacks mounted on the floor. “You develop a good memory of where everything is,” he says.
Many of his possessions are gone, sold to get by. Two years into his three-year benefit sanction, he survives by “begging for small favours”: cleaning someone’s garage in return for food, say. Friends give him meals or bits of cash.
“It’s funny,” he laughs, quietly. “They’re all foreign. Polish. Italians. No one English has helped me.”
The government, he says, wouldn’t mind if he starved. Something as seemingly minor as council tax changes is for Parker, not only less money to live on but evidence “the whole establishment’s determined to make my life as ghastly as possible”.
As of last year, Parker’s council has increased his council tax by 130%. He’s been taken to court twice for non-payment and has just had a third summons.
“I haven’t even got a cupboard,” he says. “There’s no possibility of doing anything different. There’s nowhere to go.”
The “take back control” slogan of the leave campaign seems increasingly fitting. As well as concerns over immigration or sovereignty, it spoke to a lurking, widespread feeling of powerlessness, betrayal and anger.
Parker wouldn’t normally have bothered to vote – “I couldn’t really care less about the EU” – but last week he walked through a rainstorm to put his cross next to leave. His vote was not only a sign that he, like many, had no prosperous future to risk but a message to the elites that he feels have let him down.
“People are sick and tired of being ignored,” he says. “I don’t suppose I’m the only one to use this opportunity. It was a chance to kick the whole establishment where it hurt, for us to send pain the other way. And we took it.”
There are thousands of stories like this up and down the country. Are the likes of Martin likely to be put off by Corbyn or are they likely to think, maybe voting for him will give the establishment a kicking?
Martin's already lost almost everything – he voted leave to spread ..
Unemployment
Opinion
Martin’s already lost almost everything – he voted leave to spread the pain
Frances Ryan
He’s unemployed, has had his benefits suspended and been summonsed for non-payment of council tax. For him, the EU referendum was a chance to kick back
‘Over three years, his jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) has been sanctioned on six separate occasions. ‘Sanction on top of sanction’, he says. ‘Like a layer cake’.’ Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images
“Leaving the EU might make my life [Poor language removed], but it’s [Poor language removed] anyway,” Martin Parker, a 62-year-old jobseeker says, bluntly. “So how much worse can it get?”
On the outskirts of north London, sitting in his rented box room (“the size of a cell”, as he puts it), Parker could be said to represent a section of the country the remain camp failed to reach. The voters who weren’t swayed by fears of the economy failing – not because they didn’t believe them – but because, as Parker puts it to me: “I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Through the 1980s and 90s, Parker worked as a precision engineer, making aircraft engine parts and suspension units for tanks. But work dried up and he bounced between signing on and taking casual work: from computer programming to office work. His last job – selling studio glass in an art gallery in Piccadilly – ended in 2011 and he’s been out of work since.
“Unemployment, benefits … it doesn’t resemble how it used to be,” he says. “You could do a short contract job and you knew you could sign on after ‘cos it was simple. Nowadays, it’s so hard … Their approach isn’t to support you. It’s to get rid of you.”
“Get rid of you”, to Parker, has come to mean stopping the money he needs to live on. Over three years, his jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) has been sanctioned on six separate occasions. “Sanction on top of sanction,” he says. “Like a layer cake.”
The misdemeanours varied: an “inadequate” CV; being late for an appointment (“I was always early,” he says); or a failure to provide information. “Petty things”, Parker says. “Things you hadn’t actually done or things you were supposed to do but they hadn’t told you.”
At one point, his JSA had only been reinstated for 19 days before it was stopped again. But in 2014 the final hit came: he missed a Jobcentre interview – the letter informing him he had to attend arrived on the same day, he says – and was handed a three-year benefit sanction. Or a “156-week termination” of JSA, as the official notification put it.
As the sanctions started, he says, “everyone piled in”. By 2011, with his rent rising and his housing benefit also suspended each time his JSA was stopped, he gave up his two-bed flat and moved into a shared house: eight adults crammed over three floors. “We’re all squashed up,” he says. “It’s like being suffocated.”
Parker has now been here for almost five years but barely anything is unpacked. There’s no room. Instead, he lives out of boxes and bags – five stacks mounted on the floor. “You develop a good memory of where everything is,” he says.
Many of his possessions are gone, sold to get by. Two years into his three-year benefit sanction, he survives by “begging for small favours”: cleaning someone’s garage in return for food, say. Friends give him meals or bits of cash.
“It’s funny,” he laughs, quietly. “They’re all foreign. Polish. Italians. No one English has helped me.”
The government, he says, wouldn’t mind if he starved. Something as seemingly minor as council tax changes is for Parker, not only less money to live on but evidence “the whole establishment’s determined to make my life as ghastly as possible”.
As of last year, Parker’s council has increased his council tax by 130%. He’s been taken to court twice for non-payment and has just had a third summons.
“I haven’t even got a cupboard,” he says. “There’s no possibility of doing anything different. There’s nowhere to go.”
The “take back control” slogan of the leave campaign seems increasingly fitting. As well as concerns over immigration or sovereignty, it spoke to a lurking, widespread feeling of powerlessness, betrayal and anger.
Parker wouldn’t normally have bothered to vote – “I couldn’t really care less about the EU” – but last week he walked through a rainstorm to put his cross next to leave. His vote was not only a sign that he, like many, had no prosperous future to risk but a message to the elites that he feels have let him down.
“People are sick and tired of being ignored,” he says. “I don’t suppose I’m the only one to use this opportunity. It was a chance to kick the whole establishment where it hurt, for us to send pain the other way. And we took it.”
There are thousands of stories like this up and down the country. Are the likes of Martin likely to be put off by Corbyn or are they likely to think, maybe voting for him will give the establishment a kicking?
DownOnTheUpside
Player Valuation: £30m
Give up on uk politics cause theres no party catering to libertarian ideals
The uk libertarian party dosent even field candidates in my ward
The uk libertarian party dosent even field candidates in my ward
Seems like Angela Eagles and the gang led by Kinnock, only follow the rules when it suits them. And if they don'y like them will take no notice.
How Angela Eagle Got to Be MP for Wallasey
by Bob Pitt
"In December 1991 the regional office was forced at last to agree a selection timetable with the constituency officers. Duffy received over 70% of the nominations including the support of five of the six local party branches, the women’s section and numerous trade unions. His 24 nominations far exceeded the tally of five achieved by his nearest rival, Angela Eagle, a COHSE full-time official, former chair of the Oxford University Fabian Society and a supporter of the LCC [Labour Co-ordinating Committee].
In January 1992 the NEC decided that the imminence of a general election demanded the intervention of an emergency ‘by-election panel’ to interview potential candidates and shortlist contenders in those constituencies without a Labour candidate already in place. Quite why an NEC panel could operate any faster than local party officers was not explained. During the panel’s interviewing of Wallasey candidates, Roy Hattersley asked Lol Duffy how he would reconcile his personal beliefs – notably his support for unilateralism and repeal of all anti-union laws – with the party’s present policy. From a man who had regularly denounced party policy in the past, this was pure cheek. Duffy made it clear that he would have no problem with this. Many other candidates found themselves in the same position, but to no great surprise, Hattersley’s NEC panel excluded Duffy from the Wallasey shortlist. John Evans explained to reporters the panel’s reasoning: “On almost every area Mr Duffy said that although he would campaign on agreed policies he didn’t personally agree with them.” In other words, Duffy was being punished not because he was personally unsuitable but because he did not share the politics of the Labour leadership.
Under the rules of the Labour party, if more than 50% of those who vote in a parliamentary selection return blank ballot papers the selection must start from scratch with new nominations. Contrary to party rules, no independent scrutineer was allowed into the Wallasey count held at the regional office in Warrington. When pressed, Eileen Murfin [Labour party regional organiser] admitted that the officials had not bothered to count the blank votes, again in contravention of the rules. But sources leaked the total to the media, which reported that 163 blank papers had been returned by local members in protest at the exclusion of Lol Duffy. Only 57 votes had been cast for the ‘winning’ candidate, Angela Eagle. Under the party constitution the selection was null and void; but party officials glossed over this detail. To add insult to injury, the NEC not only dismissed the complaints of party members but threatened to mount yet another ‘investigation’ of the constituency after the general election.
Lol Duffy worked diligently for Angela Eagle during the general election. “I’m not going to go off and sulk just because the NEC has broken every rule in the book to prevent me being a candidate,” he said. Thanks to the years of hard work put in by himself and others in the constituency the seat was taken from the Tories and Eagle became the first Labour MP for Wallasey.
Given this record, it is hardly surprising that Angela Eagle has shown such contempt for the democratic decision made by party members last September, when they elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader with 59.5% of first-preference votes, and has joined his enemies in the parliamentary Labour party in a disgraceful attempt to overturn that decision. She is firmly embedded in, and indeed owes her parliamentary career to, a political culture that accepts party democracy only when it produces the ‘right’ results". Novara Wire.
How Angela Eagle Got to Be MP for Wallasey
by Bob Pitt
"In December 1991 the regional office was forced at last to agree a selection timetable with the constituency officers. Duffy received over 70% of the nominations including the support of five of the six local party branches, the women’s section and numerous trade unions. His 24 nominations far exceeded the tally of five achieved by his nearest rival, Angela Eagle, a COHSE full-time official, former chair of the Oxford University Fabian Society and a supporter of the LCC [Labour Co-ordinating Committee].
In January 1992 the NEC decided that the imminence of a general election demanded the intervention of an emergency ‘by-election panel’ to interview potential candidates and shortlist contenders in those constituencies without a Labour candidate already in place. Quite why an NEC panel could operate any faster than local party officers was not explained. During the panel’s interviewing of Wallasey candidates, Roy Hattersley asked Lol Duffy how he would reconcile his personal beliefs – notably his support for unilateralism and repeal of all anti-union laws – with the party’s present policy. From a man who had regularly denounced party policy in the past, this was pure cheek. Duffy made it clear that he would have no problem with this. Many other candidates found themselves in the same position, but to no great surprise, Hattersley’s NEC panel excluded Duffy from the Wallasey shortlist. John Evans explained to reporters the panel’s reasoning: “On almost every area Mr Duffy said that although he would campaign on agreed policies he didn’t personally agree with them.” In other words, Duffy was being punished not because he was personally unsuitable but because he did not share the politics of the Labour leadership.
Under the rules of the Labour party, if more than 50% of those who vote in a parliamentary selection return blank ballot papers the selection must start from scratch with new nominations. Contrary to party rules, no independent scrutineer was allowed into the Wallasey count held at the regional office in Warrington. When pressed, Eileen Murfin [Labour party regional organiser] admitted that the officials had not bothered to count the blank votes, again in contravention of the rules. But sources leaked the total to the media, which reported that 163 blank papers had been returned by local members in protest at the exclusion of Lol Duffy. Only 57 votes had been cast for the ‘winning’ candidate, Angela Eagle. Under the party constitution the selection was null and void; but party officials glossed over this detail. To add insult to injury, the NEC not only dismissed the complaints of party members but threatened to mount yet another ‘investigation’ of the constituency after the general election.
Lol Duffy worked diligently for Angela Eagle during the general election. “I’m not going to go off and sulk just because the NEC has broken every rule in the book to prevent me being a candidate,” he said. Thanks to the years of hard work put in by himself and others in the constituency the seat was taken from the Tories and Eagle became the first Labour MP for Wallasey.
Given this record, it is hardly surprising that Angela Eagle has shown such contempt for the democratic decision made by party members last September, when they elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader with 59.5% of first-preference votes, and has joined his enemies in the parliamentary Labour party in a disgraceful attempt to overturn that decision. She is firmly embedded in, and indeed owes her parliamentary career to, a political culture that accepts party democracy only when it produces the ‘right’ results". Novara Wire.
Toffeelover
Player Valuation: £80m
It was the Labour MP who is in charge of election affairs for the party. He is also a supporter of Corbyn. He was not calling for an election but for the party to unite and get ready by preparing a number of ideas.
ToffeeDoug
Player Valuation: £35m
Yep, the Director of Election Strategy or something, has put the Labour Party on an election footing with something of a bring it on message.
Toffeelover
Player Valuation: £80m
Consider this story.
Martin's already lost almost everything – he voted leave to spread ..
Unemployment
Opinion
Martin’s already lost almost everything – he voted leave to spread the pain
Frances Ryan
He’s unemployed, has had his benefits suspended and been summonsed for non-payment of council tax. For him, the EU referendum was a chance to kick back
‘Over three years, his jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) has been sanctioned on six separate occasions. ‘Sanction on top of sanction’, he says. ‘Like a layer cake’.’ Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images
“Leaving the EU might make my life [Poor language removed], but it’s [Poor language removed] anyway,” Martin Parker, a 62-year-old jobseeker says, bluntly. “So how much worse can it get?”
On the outskirts of north London, sitting in his rented box room (“the size of a cell”, as he puts it), Parker could be said to represent a section of the country the remain camp failed to reach. The voters who weren’t swayed by fears of the economy failing – not because they didn’t believe them – but because, as Parker puts it to me: “I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Through the 1980s and 90s, Parker worked as a precision engineer, making aircraft engine parts and suspension units for tanks. But work dried up and he bounced between signing on and taking casual work: from computer programming to office work. His last job – selling studio glass in an art gallery in Piccadilly – ended in 2011 and he’s been out of work since.
“Unemployment, benefits … it doesn’t resemble how it used to be,” he says. “You could do a short contract job and you knew you could sign on after ‘cos it was simple. Nowadays, it’s so hard … Their approach isn’t to support you. It’s to get rid of you.”
“Get rid of you”, to Parker, has come to mean stopping the money he needs to live on. Over three years, his jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) has been sanctioned on six separate occasions. “Sanction on top of sanction,” he says. “Like a layer cake.”
The misdemeanours varied: an “inadequate” CV; being late for an appointment (“I was always early,” he says); or a failure to provide information. “Petty things”, Parker says. “Things you hadn’t actually done or things you were supposed to do but they hadn’t told you.”
At one point, his JSA had only been reinstated for 19 days before it was stopped again. But in 2014 the final hit came: he missed a Jobcentre interview – the letter informing him he had to attend arrived on the same day, he says – and was handed a three-year benefit sanction. Or a “156-week termination” of JSA, as the official notification put it.
As the sanctions started, he says, “everyone piled in”. By 2011, with his rent rising and his housing benefit also suspended each time his JSA was stopped, he gave up his two-bed flat and moved into a shared house: eight adults crammed over three floors. “We’re all squashed up,” he says. “It’s like being suffocated.”
Parker has now been here for almost five years but barely anything is unpacked. There’s no room. Instead, he lives out of boxes and bags – five stacks mounted on the floor. “You develop a good memory of where everything is,” he says.
Many of his possessions are gone, sold to get by. Two years into his three-year benefit sanction, he survives by “begging for small favours”: cleaning someone’s garage in return for food, say. Friends give him meals or bits of cash.
“It’s funny,” he laughs, quietly. “They’re all foreign. Polish. Italians. No one English has helped me.”
The government, he says, wouldn’t mind if he starved. Something as seemingly minor as council tax changes is for Parker, not only less money to live on but evidence “the whole establishment’s determined to make my life as ghastly as possible”.
As of last year, Parker’s council has increased his council tax by 130%. He’s been taken to court twice for non-payment and has just had a third summons.
“I haven’t even got a cupboard,” he says. “There’s no possibility of doing anything different. There’s nowhere to go.”
The “take back control” slogan of the leave campaign seems increasingly fitting. As well as concerns over immigration or sovereignty, it spoke to a lurking, widespread feeling of powerlessness, betrayal and anger.
Parker wouldn’t normally have bothered to vote – “I couldn’t really care less about the EU” – but last week he walked through a rainstorm to put his cross next to leave. His vote was not only a sign that he, like many, had no prosperous future to risk but a message to the elites that he feels have let him down.
“People are sick and tired of being ignored,” he says. “I don’t suppose I’m the only one to use this opportunity. It was a chance to kick the whole establishment where it hurt, for us to send pain the other way. And we took it.”
There are thousands of stories like this up and down the country. Are the likes of Martin likely to be put off by Corbyn or are they likely to think, maybe voting for him will give the establishment a kicking?
A truly horrid story. See my parts in bold, clearly he had a good skilled job, and it came to grief possibly because of cuts in MOD sopending I do not know.
But think about the thousand in Barrow who depend on BAE making submarines and Corbyn wants to knock this on the head, what about them?
Jib in lad
Player Valuation: £25m
Thought that myself ,she put herself up, somebody else does, is seen as a compromise candidate and gets elected.
In a bad way the labour party, Corbyn clearly no chance of winning a general election and surrounded by oafs like Abbot who have no appeal to most of the country, needs to have a good look at itself , evey man and his dog said Miliband was a liability a half decent leader that election was there for the taking, and this fella is even worse.
If we have an election they will get hammered, for the first time in my life I will not vote for them in a general election, most of my family and workmates have said the same, seems a have decent man but totally lacking leadership quality or charisma.
Why wouldn't you vote for him Edge? Do you disagree with what he campaigns for, or do you just think he's a bit boring?
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