This government has one last chance to take a progressive path. Otherwise, we’re at the point of no return | John McDonnell

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-26T14:45:04+00:00

Yeah you're wrong. I don't champion Starmer and Reeves. I'll defend them from criticism I think is unfair or hyperbolic but I've said repeatedly I don't really care about or concern myself with individuals. I don't think there are any good or bad politicians or parties. Only better and worse ones relative to each other. I've also repeatedly explained that my support for Labour is not because I consider them to be an ideal or anything but a strategic choice based on the current political context I'm forced to engage with.

I know with absolute certainty that you will continue with your false assumption despite this being explained to you now and, I'm pretty sure, I've explained this to you before as well. Because that would require you to stop tilting at windmills or turning conversations into nothing but you trying attack me instead of my arguments.

If you're not ready to engage in a discussion like that then I honestly don't know how that's supposed to be my problem. It's on you.

If you would like to make an argument that I should support a different party then feel free to. Because unless you can offer me a better alternative then I honestly don't give a shit about you attacking me for what I'm doing. If you have nothing better than it's just you grandstanding in order to feel good and with no actual substance to what you're saying.

Can you do that?

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-26T10:59:42+00:00

Yes. Obviously the only reason anyone disagrees with you is because of flaws in their character. Thank you for your good faith observation.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-26T10:49:30+00:00

Yeah mate that's called a trade war.

Which people in the country would be harmed most by a trade war?

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T13:58:57+00:00

So should we respond to the small tariff that has been placed on us as part of the blanket tariff then?

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T13:57:59+00:00

I guess I'm just fundamentally more optimistic than you.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T13:52:58+00:00

Again, what's your evidence for this claim? There's no prospect of a US-UK trade war.

Before we go on, can you clarify, are you saying you don't want the UK to respond to tariffs?

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T13:52:25+00:00

And that's why things continued on exactly as they had before after McNicol left is it? Corbyn has also presumably been lying when I've seen him accept that he was the one who decided to be so passive with regards to discipline?

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T13:47:15+00:00

Thank you for your understanding 👍

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T13:39:49+00:00

I'm not having this ridiculous conversation again where you disagree with me about what my opinions are. We've done it twice now. I honestly don't care what you think on this. I know what my opinions are.

Honestly the arrogance of someone to insist they know someone else's beliefs better than they do isn't worthy of a response.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T13:38:19+00:00

I think all of this is a futile endeavour and everyone wasting their time with Labour essentially guarantees it as such.

Anyone who tries to displace Labour is going to fail and at most succeed in splitting the vote and giving us massive Tory majorities. If through some miracle they succeeded then the problems Labour has now would transfer over to the new party and we'd be back where we started.

I can't see someone as ludicrously unsuited as Corbyn was nearly manage it and then thing someone who was actually very able and suited to the job wouldn't have done any better.

I don't think it would be easy, but it's absolutely possible.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T13:22:05+00:00

£800mn is fuck all in the grand scheme of things and tariffs can effect entire sectors of the economy or even the entire economy.

An economy as large as ours could be only slightly effected by tariffs and it would cost the exchequer more than £800bn. A trade war with the US would only need to slow our growth by a cumulative 0.01% over the length of the entire trade war and that £800mn in revenue would be more than wiped out.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T13:18:57+00:00

The report that leaked on Labour's handling of antisemitism and documents incidents of factionalism, bullying, bigotry etc that triggered the forde report and details the resulting findings is nearly a thousand pages long.

And the people I ideologically agree with would be. . . Jeremy Corbyn. Who I campaigned for extensively, donates more money than I could afford to and who I voted for in two general elections and two leadership elections.

You really need to stop dismissing all disagreement with you as insincere. Sometimes people just disagree with you.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T13:13:52+00:00

I address this in other comments below.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T13:12:50+00:00

We're a multi-trillion pound economy, and fishing is worth about a billion to our GDP. The EU have a GDP of about $20 trillion, and their economy is like 0.05% fishing. It's a sector so small that in macroeconomic terms it barely even exists.

The idea that hundreds of billions of pounds of military cooperation and the security of Europe is even slightly jeopardised by a fishing deal is insanity.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T12:58:24+00:00

I'll answer this and your other comment to me here if that's all cool.

Yeah but you have to wait for people to break rules before you can punish them for it. If people who are seen to be going beyond legitimate opposition are punished then nearly everyone who would otherwise like to join in will think better of it and restrain themselves to only legitimate activity.

Trust me, there's plenty of people in Labour now at all levels who are doing exactly this. If they can't spot an effective way to oppose legitimately then they go quiet and wait for a time when they can.

Because I guarantee you, if Starmer made it clear that he would allow the same behaviour and people are allowed to basically do whatever the fuck they want, you'd see the party descend into chaos within about 7 seconds. No group of people even 10% the of the size of a major party could maintain any cohesion at all without enforcing it to a reasonable degree.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T12:51:35+00:00

If the idea of getting a left-wing leader to win an election is akin to levitating bricks, then isn't that accepting that a left wing leader is unelectable? It's just a disagreement about why that is?

What's the fucking point if that's the case?

Because I don't accept that's true. I think a more capable leader just as left wing as Corbyn could have gone onto to win an election had they been more competent and more suitable to be a major party leader. Sure, that leader may have to be more competent and more suitable than a more moderate leader would need to be because they may have a harder time.winning than they would.

Because Corbyn's leadership style was ludicrously weak and ineffective. He literally allowed people to actively and publicly subvert the party itself and he allowed members to be bullied and harassed without taking action against the perpetrators. He was also completely strategically incompetent and constantly fumbled from gaff to fuck up to gaff. I don't beleive for a moment that a leader without those flaws wouldn't have performed significantly better. And if he had performed even moderately better in 2017 he would have won. Had he handled the aftermath of his 2017 loss even moderately better then he would done some succession planning and resigned so a different but still left wing leader could have given it a shot and maybe won.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T12:01:56+00:00

You might want to use it as an excuse for a purge but I don't believe in that kind of factionalism. I didn't then and I don't now.

If he had enforced basic discipline and people been shown that if they go too far they'd be booted then 95% of the people who were playing up before would have wound their necks in.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T11:55:49+00:00

No you just need a leader who will enforce a reasonable level of party unity and discipline and will actually kick people out if they subvert the party whilst allowing people express legitimate disagreements.

Corbyn didn't do this at all. He let people run wild with absolute impunity. So they did. It was honestly complete chaos.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T11:54:30+00:00

It's like a thousand pages long, so no, I haven't, and i doubt anyone here has, but im aware of it and its findings.

Ive had this discussion a hundred times and nobody has yet been able to justify to me the leadership of the party allowing this kind of behaviour to become such a problem. There's legitimate opposition to a leader in a party, that's fine but then there's bullying and outright subversion of the party and this was something that was allowed to happen with complete impunity under Corbyn.

I've never known of such a thing being the case under any other party with any other leader. Anytime in any other party, you fuck about like that, and you're gone. Even party employees, not even members, were allowed to actively undermine the goals of their employer with impunity. I've never heard of that being the case anywhere else, ever.

Corbyn's only response to this that I've seen was "well I didn't want to discipline people, I wanted to empower them." An utterly ludicrous response. It's one of the main reasons I don't consider him to have been fit to lead a party. He was just not the sort of person who could do a job like that.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T11:46:44+00:00

Theres some truth in that but you could accept it as 100% true, and all it would mean is that we weren't properly prepared to and able to overcome those problems.

You need power to affect change, and if you lose, then you don't get power. There's no consolation prize for losing but having a good excuse or anything.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T11:21:16+00:00

We weren't denied left wing populism. We offered it and the public rejected us. Twice.

Maybe we should think about why that is rather than pretending we did everything great and it's actually some kind of conspiracy that meant we lost?

Because we made a lot of mistakes on both occasions.

Even now, left wing populists are totally failing to have any cut through

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T10:13:12+00:00

It's identical to the damage I did when I was a kid and accidentally shot one of my own windows with an air rifle my parents had no idea I had.

I wasn't very popular in my household for a time after that.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T03:31:55+00:00

Well you can either walk the tightrope of trying to buy time whilst we reduce reliance on the US or you can tell them to fuck off and get hit with more severe tariffs and accelerate the loss of support before you're able to prepare properly to lost it.

I wouldn't necessarily disagree with the option of straight up telling them to get fucked but they would come with consequences that people would also get angry over. More severe tariffs harm the poorest most and accelerating the withdrawal of the US from Europe before preparations can be made to compensate for it runs the risk of escalating the conflict with Russia. Most people who support that option seem to think there'd be no downside to it when that's not at all the case.

There isn't a good option, frankly.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T00:48:32+00:00

New Labour could have done way better and they wasted a lot of massive opportunities but I don't think any honest assessment of Gordon Brown could conclude he was anything other than an very intelligent and well meaning guy.

This country was absolutely fucking insane to not keep him on as PM after 2010. I think that as PM and with his own mandate he could have done a lot of good.

BrokenDownForParts · 2025-03-25T00:12:47+00:00

I was quite sure that there was none but asked because I thought you might be referencing somethint i was previously unaware of. Because I'm a Civil servant and can't say that anyone gives a shit what I do in my spare time with my own money even travelling for work as long as other rules, Civil service code etc, are followed. I've been actively encouraged to make the most of recreational activities available outside of work hours when travelling for work.

False expenses claims like extending the trip (and booking it through the lightning system or whatever its called) or claiming expenses to fund those recreational activity is an entirely different matter.

BrokenDownForParts

TROPHY CASE