Am gracing you all with the tweets below, because I can’t stand the Labour intra-party bitching I’m seeing on twitter and facebook (could be a certain irony in going on twitter to attack people for being on twitter, but let’s do it).
Labour failed for a million reasons, supreme among which was and is a poisonous and self-indulgent factionalism that couldn’t be less interesting to 99.9% of the rest of us.
The main moral of the teachings below: get off fucking twitter and go and do something useful for the many people in poverty who really will need support when Boris Johnson gets going (those already making such contributions are of course excused from this instruction. Go well).
The harsh truth: outside of lefty and Labour circles, nobody gives a damn what goes on in those circles. I’ve been talking to people at jobcentres and foodbanks for over 10 years and literally nobody has ever said anything along the lines of, “how about that Owen Jones then,” or, “isn’t Margaret Hodge a witch,” or “yay, Novara media,” or “oh, Jeremy Corbyn,” or, “can I get involved in my local Labour branch,” or “how do I join Unite,” or anything remotely near those. People say things like, “I’m in arrears and they’re going to evict me,” and “I’m at court next week for council tax,” and, “I only got 2 days’ work this week and they didn’t text me this morning, so I’m fucked.”
So:
I’m not a Labour party member which puts me in a good & bad position to say this – the bitching and fingerpointing in the party on here atm is exactly what alienates people. The thing failed for a host of reasons and so what. Nobody outside the circle cares.
— Kate B (@hangbitch) December 14, 2019
It’s frustrating. Nobody outside the party circle gives a fuck what Margaret Hodge did or didn’t do or whether Milne exists or what Novara media is. Maybe get off twitter & go lend a hand at a community centre. Seriously. Lefty petulance is a luxury that the world can’t afford.
— Kate B (@hangbitch) December 14, 2019
If there’s one lesson that people MUST take away from this disaster it is that the really serious problems of our era – homelessness, poisonous poverty etc – are not solved by calling your own party members cunts on twitter. That approach really isn’t working out.
— Kate B (@hangbitch) December 14, 2019
I’ll end this teaching by saying – Labour lost & it’s already time to get over it. Many people are really going to need a hand at jobcentres, housing meetings, etc. You’re needed as a buffer, not as someone who calls Owen Jones or Hodge or whoever a cunt on twitter all day.
— Kate B (@hangbitch) December 14, 2019
So that’s twitter told. Simple stuff, I know, but surely no less sophisticated than a tweet in which some thinker calls Jonathan Freedland a prick, or Owen Jones a cock, or Watson a fanny, or Corbyn a bellend, or whatever.
How you can help
Going to add to this list – here are some activist groups that I work with and you can get involved in. Leave your politics and views (and goddamned phone) at home, and put people who need support at front and centre:
Kilburn unemployed workers’ group – user-led benefits support group which holds a weekly meeting and clinic for people who are struggling with what remains of the benefits “system.” Leaflets regularly at jobcentres.
Stockport United Against Austerity – same as above, in Stockport.
Charlotte’s weekly leafleting, advice and food parcels session at Ashton Under Lyne jobcentre.
Focus E15: weekly leafleting session outside Wilko on the Stratford Broadway. Hand out leaflets. Talk with the many people who have shocking housing problems. Offer to go to housing meetings at the council if people want that.
There will also be your local foodbank(s) – usually plural. If there are limits to the time you can spare, make donations.
Etc
PS – took the Get Over It out of the heading because misinterpretation. The rest of it – carry on. Am in the last couple of weeks of finishing my book, so normal service will resume in the New Year.
So Polly Toynbee is recommending that the UK should/could/can spend its way out of Recession instead of more disastrous spending cuts, and I tend to agree. Pity she didn’t back Corbyn a couple of years ago, because that’s what he would have done too.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/03/interest-rate-rise-labour-keynesian-policies
What a nest of Vipers, how can I ever bring myself to vote for this shit show?
“Corbyn-era legal costs could blunt Labour general election campaign”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64248136
Jeremy Corbyn: Labour to vote on banning ex-leader standing as candidate
In a statement, Mr Corbyn criticised the the Labour leader, claiming Sir Keir “has broken his commitment to respect the rights of Labour members and denigrated the democratic foundations of our party”.
“I joined the Labour Party when I was 16 years old because, like millions of others, I believed in a redistribution of wealth and power,” he added.
“Our message is clear: we are not going anywhere. Neither is our determination to stand up for a better world.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65088130
“Labour must be a broad church. Starmer’s purge of the left puts his future government in peril”
“When any leader says ‘it’s my way or the highway’ – as he effectively has – they sign their project’s death warrant”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/16/labour-keir-starmer-left-government-leader
They really are like rats in a bloody sack that lot. They’re the same round here – local Labour purged one of their number who has now set up his own party for the council elections blah blah blah blah cost of living who cares all that matters to Labour is infighting. I hope they all go fanny up in a ditch.
If they turn up here to doorknock, I’ll water cannon the self indulgent fuckers
Lol I like your turn of phrase. Starmer and his supporters, whether they’re post-Blairite neoliberals or Centrists, the ‘Progress’ lot, and probably the Glasmanite Blue Labour people too (who backed Ed Miliband), are so scared of rocking the Establishment boat that they make themselves ineffective, but do so as a strategy to get elected, at the expense of excluding and alienating the Left-wing Socialists that the Labour Party are meant to be! It’ll be a fucking miracle if they win a general election, and even if they do little will change. For now we’ve got an ineffective Opposition that are at war with their own members. Meanwhile in the real world outside Westminster the rest of us fight for survival.
Purging the left and ditching socialism could see Labour lose voters, Sir Keir Starmer warned
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/keir-starmer-warned-alienating-labour-voters-socialism-2355733
Cold, cynical and paranoid: if this is Labour in opposition, what will it look like in power?
John Harris
“Keir Starmer’s party is pushing the idea that you can pursue progressive ends through nasty means to its limit”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/11/labour-opposition-power-keir-starmer-party
Knight shift: Keir Starmer and Labour’s move to the right
A review of The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right, Oliver Eagleton (Verso), £12.99
http://isj.org.uk/knight-shift/