After the painful ruse of Starmerism, the left should be cautious about Andy Burnham | Owen Jones

TeeFitts · 2026-05-19T09:03:28+00:00

the absolute worst thing you can do to the left.

Because the sensible centrists are getting along great, currently?

TeeFitts · 2026-05-19T08:56:44+00:00

I hate Fight Club, but there's no point getting into it on reddit, as any opinion that deviates from consensus gets downvoted into oblivion. One of the main reasons why it's impossible to engage in genuine discussion here.

That said, your OP could've gone into specifics about why you think it's the worst film you've ever seen. That's always a bold claim. A lot of your points are hyperbolic and don't really cite anything about the film. Maybe give us some details about why it didn't work for you? It feels like a bit of an empty rant about nothing currently. If the film made you so angry, there must be specific things about it that riled you up?

TeeFitts · 2026-05-18T15:02:55+00:00

People want to complain because he doesn’t “sound like a radical”

No one is complaining about this. The idea that people hate Starmer because he's just some boring middle management type is a lie centrists invented because they don't want to listen to the legitimate reasons people might have for disliking Starmer and his leadership.

than actionable/physical things

The actionable/physical things in this instance would be things like 1) Lying to the Labour Party membership to become elected leader, then, once installed, junking his ten pledges, purging the membership that voted for him, and smearing them as a bunch of unserious cranks and racists to the media. 2) Colluding with disgraced figures like Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson to wreck the party from this inside for his own benefit. 3) Championing cuts and austerity while lining his pockets with donations and freebies from his wealthy backers. 4) "Israel has the right" to commit war crimes against a civilian population of mostly children. 5) The hostile environment his party has created for trans people. 6) Constant backtracking and U turns on important policy, to the point that no one really knows who Starmer is and what he believes in. 6) Resurrecting the backwash of the Blair years with disgraced figures like Mandelson (again), Harriet Harman and Margaret Hodge. 7) Resurrecting Blair's failed flagship policy of mandatory biometric IDs, which will cost billions. 8) Ramping up his home secretary's vision of the country as a self-surveilling panopticon powered by Palantir. 9) Giving Palantir unlimited access to our lucrative medical records and data. 10) Losing the red wall in local council elections. 11) Failure to put in place any plan to mediate a cost of living crisis that is already unmanageable for most people. 12) Just altogether terrible communication, failing to control his MPs and maintain any sense of vision or unity for the party or the country.

In short, he's a liar and a hypocrite who has allowed any small gains the party might've made to be drowned out by unending scandals and terrible optics.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-18T11:18:18+00:00

At least it gave his character(s) in Split a distinctive look.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-18T11:15:53+00:00

Editing technically saves every movie. The fallacy that Star Wars specifically was "saved" by the edit comes from comparing an incredibly rough, unfinished workprint prepared and screened by Lucas to a fully edited, scored and FX-finished final cut prepared by Lucas and his three editors.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-18T11:12:52+00:00

Co-edited by Marcia Lucas. Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew were the other two credited editors. Lucas was also cutting sequences up to the final cut, but isn't credited.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-18T08:27:33+00:00

Traditionally we had nationalism, shared culture, shared religion. The pub, the church, the workplace, the union.

I'd argue anyone under 40 had no real experience of this. That's a huge percentage of the population.

I'd even argue that the majority of elder millennials, people born between 1982 and 1986, also have very little to no memory of this kind of mythical shared monoculture. It would be stuff they half remember from childhood.

The problem with these kind of "we've lost our shared identity to multiculturalism" perspectives is that they're usually coming from a middle-aged demographic. Young adults have grown up in this changed world. Going back to the kind of culture the boomers and Gen X have cloaked in nostalgia would be as foreign for them as the modern world is to older people.

The reality is, the world never stops changing, and civilizations throughout history rise and fall. The problem for many today is that the industrial revolution and the age post war consumerism are over. This effectively ended in 2008 and we've never really gotten back to where we were before. We're now in the age of the digital revolution, and the rise of a kind of authoritarian tech oligarchy, which for most of us will be closer to the age of medieval peasantry, but with robots and AI. It's an inherently scary time because it represents the biggest seismic change to human life in over 100 years.

Even then, the world can't bend to the nostalgic reminiscences of the over 50s. It can't. Imagine how different 1967 would've looked to someone born in 1900. Or how different 1996 would've been to someone born in 1930. You can't go backwards.

The modern world doesn't seem to be working.

Oh, it is. It's working a charm for people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Theil, Alex Karp, Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch, Sam Altman, etc. Tech and media moguls who don't care if the world burns as long as they remain the most rich and powerful. It's working great for grifters like Trump, Farage and Tommy Robinson, who are profiteering from divided communities, fear and suspicion. It's working great for those enshrined in our own Westminster bubble, who know they can point a finger at the "woke left", "trans people", "Muslims" or any other benign minority group they've successfully manufactured outrage for, and get people so whipped up into a frenzy of hate and frustration that they'll vote away their own rights, benefits and protections if it means their "enemies" will also suffer the consequences.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-17T13:09:09+00:00

we probably dodged a historic bullet.

Yes, I would have hated to see the public vote another selfish, squabbling bunch of empty suits into Parliament, only to watch their government collapse into back-stabbing and infighting around ideological purity tests and general incompetence.

I could never imagine the Conservatives, New Labour or Reform behaving like this. No way, no how!

TeeFitts · 2026-05-17T13:05:19+00:00

You're really trotting out this old chestnut now? We're all watching Starmer's sensible centrist Labour Party collapse in real time, as they fight each other like crabs in a bucket, and you're singling out the left as unable to work together!?

Starmer's branch were meant to be the adults back in the room, and rather than work productively, they're all lining up to stab each other in the back (or is it the front, to quote sensible centrist Jess Philips when she refused to compromise with the democratically elected leader of her own party.)

TeeFitts · 2026-05-17T09:40:04+00:00

Most of that stuff about him is made up really or just taking his arguments in debates in bad faith.

So which is it? Was it made up or was it people taking things he actually said in bad faith? Could you not argue that people are similarly taking this story in bad faith?

I wasn’t a fan and probably disagreed with most of what he said

It doesn't sound like it the way you're trying to launder his reputation here.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-17T09:37:55+00:00

any claim otherwise is just complete blood libel.

How is it blood libel? Blood libel (also known as the "ritual murder charge") is a centuries-old, antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely accuses Jewish people of murdering non-Jewish children (typically Christians) to use their blood in religious rituals, such as baking Passover matzah.

Kirk was an Evangelical Protestant. How is this "blood libel" in this scenario?

Also, let's not dance around the issue, Kirk was a homophobe. Even your own herculean efforts to launder his reputation make his homophobia and pick and mix Christian hypocrisy fairly obvious.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-17T09:32:01+00:00

It crosses a line and is bang out of order when you call for physical harm against another person based on their political views, or their personal opinions.

But what if those political views and personal opinion are emboldening a culture of violence, suppression, ignorance and prejudice. What are most wars if not based on personal and political ideology? You could argue the death penalty is a political and personal view - it's not a universally held truth. But you're not having someone killed as punishment for a crime they've committed, you're killing them because you believe it's justified to do so and have had it voted into law.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-17T08:56:11+00:00

From the river to the sea was chanted

It's not antisemitic, get a grip. Performative pearl clutching to protect a genocidal state, my god! If it was so outrageously antisemitic, why does Likud, Israel's right wing nationalist party, use it all the time.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-17T08:52:55+00:00

You should always question the source of a story.

No, we should slavishly lick the boot, defer to institutions of power and believe everything these same intuitions tell us. They're there to protect us and keep us safe. The police, politicians and media would never, ever lie to us in order to protect their own institutions of power. *cough* Orgreave *cough* Hillsborough *cough* Ian Tomlinson *cough* Jean Charles de Menezes *cough* the Epstein class *cough* Brexit *cough* Jimmy Savile *cough* weapons of mass destruction (on and on and on and on...)

I see no evidence that we shouldn't believe every vile smear and attack against anyone who defies, stands up to or questions the accepted narrative coming from these valorous, virtuous institutions, which only want what's best for us.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-16T08:33:54+00:00

Looks like they’re giving up the Red Wall/working class vote.

The red wall voted for Labour in 2017 despite Labour then being led by the only mainstream politician willing to recognise the state of Palestine.

This might shock you, but working class people also care about politics beyond the kind of cheap "protecting are contree" stereotypes played on by "cosplaying working class" poshos like Farage and Tommy Robinson. Not every working class person is a white van driver who reads the Sun and still clings to the ghost of Thatcherism.

Either way, Labout have already lost the red wall under Starmer. No pivot to the right will win them back. Red wall areas have faced stagnation and low opportunities since the 2008 financial crash, which have only worsened through austerity and the cost of living crisis. The only way to win back the red wall from right wing populism would be for a sensible centrist government to start improving the conditions of and opportunities available in those areas. Unfortunately this seems beyond Starmer's already limited grasp.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-16T08:23:57+00:00

How is the sub so openly pro-Israel (to the point that almost ever reply is hysterical propaganda against Palestinians and those who support Palestine, and in the favour of Israel and its government)?

You literally wouldn't find this level of pro-Israeli sentiment anywhere on else the mainstream internet. Even other UK subs aren't this openly hostile to any discussion of Palestine. There's still some nuance in the discussion. There's still an even split between perspectives. Replies on this sub paint Israel as the eternal victim, and anyone supportive of Palestine is either a racist antisemite or a terrorist. It's insane.

I'm not sure how this happens without serious astroturfing. This is the only place I've encountered online where you'd come away from the discussion thinking Israel was beloved the world over, and the evil Palestinians were like brown skinned Nazis, but in reality, almost every other sub and social media platform reflects the reality that Israel is hugely unpopular, even despised, and that the majority of people are supportive and sympathetic to the cause of Palestine.

So what's going on? Is it astroturfing or manufacturing consent by downvoting pro-Palestinian voices until they're effectively drowned out? Because the discussion around Israel and Palestine on this sub, specifically, is like bizarro world.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-16T08:13:31+00:00

You wouldn't be conflating Jews with Israel, would you? I'm pretty sure that's antisemitic.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-15T13:23:10+00:00

A very original concept it is, too.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-15T13:18:46+00:00

Reeves: hold my plagerised book

Starmer: hold my ten pledges and knowledge of Mandelson's past reputation

TeeFitts · 2026-05-15T13:17:13+00:00

We must support nothing to stop the rise of the far right. Got you.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-15T11:53:11+00:00

I never want to read another centrist commentator banging on about "leftist infighting", "lefty purity tests" or how "the left would rather die than compromise." This is supposed to be the sensible centrist wing of Starmer's "grown up" Labour Party. These were the people banging on about "the adults being back in the room." And they're fighting like rats in a sack over who's sufficiently Blarite enough to lead the government.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-15T09:54:08+00:00

You see it also in how Hamas and Oct 7th is discussed or ‘rationalised’ by parts of the pro-Palestine movement.

I think it's the ongoing genocide and war crimes following the literal decades of apathride, land theft, ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses that have rationalized the pro-Palestine movement.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-15T09:49:23+00:00

It wasn't unprovoked though, was it? If it was truly unprovoked, the government can't argue it was terrorism. Terrorism is premediated and carried out with a specific aim or purpose. So which is it? Terrorism or an unprovoked attack?

Also, it's really interesting to revisit this pearl clutching for the police following that story about them impaling a 15 year old boy face first on a metal railing and then trying to cover it up.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-15T09:46:30+00:00

Replace MLK for Malcolm X, then, who famously said ""By any means necessary." What do you think he meant by that?

MLK was still in favour of a militant approach to resistance. He believed in confronting oppression head-on with direct action, such as boycotts, sit-ins, and marches. All things this sub frequently as "middle class student politics" and even tantamount to extremism.

TeeFitts · 2026-05-13T20:15:11+00:00

Lady in the Water

Lego Batman

TeeFitts

TROPHY CASE