I’ve often pondered such a policy myself, but discovered it was quite complicated and in many cases counter productive to the goal.
I cannot stand Gove, but I thought his idea of taxing private schools and sending that money to state schools was quite an elegant idea.
This Labour policy seems problematic on a number of levels, but maybe the biggest is going to be the effect on public perception of what Labour is about now.
All the people I personally know who attended UK private school are 2nd/3rd gen immigrant BAME’s or wealthy SE Asians or Africans.
Corbynista Labour never understood BAME wealth and lifestyle aspirations. Rich=evil was never a value for us, our grandparents and parents rose from third world poverty and dont see wealth and education as the enemy.
Most of Corbyns front bench are privately educated and send/t their children to private school, Corbyns kids being famously an exception to the rule. He himself went to private school.
I’m willing to let the latter criticisms go. Any politician pushing for green policies has flown, etc.
strategy
6184
It would be a lot easier to take this seriously sans the hyperbole.
If Corbyn is stupid, he’s still been competent enough to stymie BJ’s attempt to hard Brexit so far. No doubt that there are odious people associated with him, and no doubt some of his policy ideas would be disastrous to the UK. But odious as they may be, Godwinning him at every opportunity really doesn’t do your arguments any favor.
If everything you supposed in this thread was true, the UK would have crashed out of the EU hard a long time ago.
Blessed Allāts tits, what a fucking shambles this is. Corbyns Labour couldn’t organise a wank in a brothel.
https://mobile.twitter.com/rowenamason/status/117606826171849523
The NEC have been trying to subvert, disrupt any attempts at support for Remain, pushing a phone vote out to lexiters and leaving remainers unable to respond. The “neutrality” is a lie.
Banjax
6186
I think attributing that to Corbyn is a rather ‘generous’. The work has been done by the usual remain suspects like Hillary Benn, Dominic Grieve, Kier Starmer, Gina Miller, John Major, et al.
All that Corbyn has managed to do is say to no to the election. If I was in his position in the polls I would also not be wanting to rush to one. Johnson has the subtlety of a Wil E Coyote when laying
a pile of corn.
HumanTon
6187
Not strictly related, but richly symbolic that it should happen now:
It’s related. Just a factor rather than sole cause
Also related :
Fuck Business!™
*Fuck Business!™ Is property of the Conservative Party. All rights reserved.
The delegates at the Labour conference had a show of hands, the lifelong Lexiters in the Leadership looked at the hall,decided the vote hadn’t carried and Labour is not to support Remain, and refused allow a transparent card vote. The cultists are now singing “oh Jeremy Corbyn” and drowning out people calling for due process. They are now kicking the can down the road for a few more months until a special conference where the leadership will do everything possible not to allow a member vote, as the membership are overwhelmingly Remain and not so eager to sell minorities down the river to win the racist vote. Business as usual at Labour. Nothing has changed. They are back to sitting on the fence in a fucking race war, the fucking ****s.
Just 9 hours ago:
The two main parties are lying, duplicitous, dishonest, sneaky, underhand fucks. Trumpian politics rule the roost. Just lie your faces off constantly.
wavey
6191
Counterpoint: the Labour strategy is the only realistic way to stop Brexit. (I’d have prefered them to have got here 3 years ago, but…)
We need another democratic event equivalent to the last referendum for a mandate to reverse it. A general election, with a party in government with - let’s say - 35% of total votes, simply isn’t a big enough mandate to revoke (sorry LibDems). And we wouldn’t want it to be - otherwise what’s to stop a hardline Brexit govt getting in a few years down the line after revocation, with a similar 35% vote share, and unilaterally deciding to crash us out of the EU with no deal? (Of course the underlying problem here is FPTP, but we’re stuck with it for the time being.)
So we need another referendum. We need a non-remain option on the ballot, and that should be a super-soft brexit, reflecting the original 48/52 vote, and the only possible way to uphold the GFA. The govt negotiating the new deal with the EU needs to negotiate in earnest - if they had already declared they were backing Remain no matter what, leave voters would be up in arms over the stitch-up. We should be trying to reduce the suspicion the the govt purposefully negotiated a bad deal to improve the chances of Remain in the next referendum.
Let’s say all this is in place and the referendum happens. Labour leadership remains officially neutral, and gives their MPs and members free rein to advocate for either side. 1) The vast majority will campaign for Remain anyway. 2) Corbyn is, as you never miss an opportunity to remind us, a hugely divisive figure who great swathes of the electorate can’t stomach. Why would you want him campaigning for Remain? Especially as (I suspect) a significant proportion of the previous Leave vote was anti-establishment / anti-Cameron. There were complaints about Corbyn’s half-hearted campaigning last time costing votes - why would you think he would be a net good in this situation?
It’s about solidarity. A few years ago post ref once it became clear that it wasnt a simple yes/no then neutrality + referendum on deal/no deal/remain might well have been appropriate. Now its pro-Brexit marches throwing Nazi salutes and a naked, racist, ethno-nationalist rhetoric from Brexit leadership and its no longer a case for sitting on the fence. Corbyn’s mob have been defending their anti-Semitism with cries of “we’re lifelong anti-racists” for 3 years and now faced with a choice between rejecting a far right ethno-nationalist project populated and lead by racists or embracing their goal, Labour have decided to sit on the fence, rejecting solidarity with minorities and progressives.
and just upthread a few hundred posts Labour was Remain. Lots of rage with what is basically absolute dishonesty and a refusal to state what their actual position is.
I must say though I know the Guardian comments arent reflective of anything but the sheer volume of people who sound as angry as me in the Livethread is somewhat heartening.
I sort of I agree with you. But I also sort of think that there’s very little way to truly put the genie back in the bottle. The referendum injected into our democracy a second form of legitimacy for a government, beyond a general election. This is very dangerous - both sides are now claiming their mandate is superior to the other - but what’s done is done. I’m not sure putting more referendums into play is necessarily the smart move either.
I really don’t see a way out of this mess.
More on the shenanigans at the conference from Robert Peston
Because the conference votes were done by a show of hands. And guess what? There just weren’t many Remainers on the conference floor.
I wonder how that happened?
It’s a bit like how two crucial 8am NEC meetings were cancelled and requests for emailed submissions on the Brexit policy were made at around midnight on the prior evenings, making it almost impossible for Corbyn’s critics to get their act together.
The Brexit position of the trade unions was always a red herring, what magicians call misdirection. What mattered was who was in the hall.
And that was sorted weeks ago though the choice of delegates.
For spectators like me - who spent 15 years observing the tactics of China’s leaders - all this is quite familiar and funny.
“neutral” my arse. Im now of the opinion that even if Labour won a GE they wouldnt offer a referendum. There is no reason at all to believe anything that comes out of Leaders Office.
This is a good one too
Things quickly turned nasty in the hall, as many of the grassroots members who were brandishing placards saying “Labour members say stop Brexit” began to suspect that the party hierarchy had packed the room with stooges. Old habits die hard. Never hold a vote unless you know the outcome in advance. Something David Cameron should have remembered three years earlier.
Speaker after speaker came to the podium to declare undying loyalty to Corbyn. Brexit had become a side issue, a neoliberal conspiracy to stop the country from talking about Corbyn’s anti-austerity policies. Remain and leave were just arbitrary constructs of false consciousness. Nothing was more important than maintaining belief in Jeremy. To have even a trace of doubt in Corbyn’s divinity was a complete betrayal. There could be no challenge or sign of original thought. Total belief was all that counted.
Come the votes, the NEC statement and composite 14 were passed overwhelmingly. Chants of ‘Oh Je-re-my Cor-byn’ broke out around the room. The good old days were back again. Composite 13 appeared to be too close to call. To everyone except Nichols, who was having her ear bent by Jennie Formby, general secretary of the Labour party, sat beside her on the stage.
“Um, I though the vote had gone one way,” Nichols said, “But Jennie’s just told me something else. So the vote is lost.” VAR had ruled. Cue uproar and demands for the vote to be rerun on a card count rather than a show of hands. That way there would be no room for error and no votes accidentally included from anyone ineligible. Heaven forbid.
Nichols hastily doubled down on her own fuck-ups. “The vote has been passed,” she said. Formby pulled out a gun and pointed it at her head. “I meant lost. Lost. Lost. LOST.” Jeremy had definitely won. He had at least 110% of the vote. It had been the most democratic vote in the history of all democratic votes. The confusion had been that all the remainers couldn’t see all the people who had voted for Jeremy who had been standing just outside the hall.
In the early days of the American republic, early 19th century we’re talking, there was a lot of discussion about the popular referendum, and some who advocated for it as the ultimate decision making system for important issues. Most folks though realized that it was both impractical and dangerous to the idea of a republic, especially a federal republic with a complicated system of direct and indirect representation and multiple levels of sovereignty.
I mean, what’s the point of a representative government if you don’t actually use it? There are still parts of local and state government in the USA that include referendums as potential pathways, so the idea is still kicking around, but in pretty much every case it’s caused more trouble than it has solved. At the national level, hell, we don’t even elect our president that way.
wavey
6196
I do agree with @Fifth_Fret that another referendum would be a terrible idea. It’s just that, at this point, all the other available options are even worse.
A ideal world would see a revoke electoral alliance between Lab, LDs, SNP and Greens. An actual opposition to government.
Any post revocation trouble would only come from the Brexit protestors marching right now, and those neonazi shitstains can be dealt with under terror laws.
But unfortunately we lost control of Labour to a bunch of lexiters so now opposition to the Tories is split. The one good thing about the conference is Labour aren’t going to take the Remain vote. Any remainers voting for them would be fools, not a chance Corbyn, Milne, McCluskey and co would allow a second referendum. You’d get another 3 years of can kicking, obsfucation, lies and bureaucratic shenanigans.
Not a chance of this happening of course. An actual opposition? Sheer fantasy.
In a way, Labour’s stance is at least consistent. It’s hard to push for a referendum if you are against one outcome - this tension is probably why the Lib Dems switched.
Corbyn’s plan is pretty clear at this point. He wants a no-deal Brexit he cannot be blamed for. Then afterwards, when the nation is in shambles due to the no-deal, he can act the glorious reformer with a population that will support anything that will improve their lot.
wavey
6200
Well of course. I mean, the multiple times he has taken action to avert a no-deal, worked cross-party to pass legislation to force the PM to ask for an extension rather than face no-deal, and whipped his party to support the no-deal-avoiding options in the indicative votes were all a clever smokescreen for the real underlying conspiracy.
spiffy
6201
I don’t think he wants to have it happen on his watch; I just think he’d be quite ok with a No-Deal, as long as he’s not associated with causing it, so that he can be charged with picking up the pieces.
I think everyone is aware that being blamed for a NoDeal, once things start falling apart, is the end of you politically speaking. Leavers-in-charge are ok with it because they wind up walking away with their millions, but it’s also why I think Boris will fold once he’s truly in the headlights, because he likes power more than book deals, and would prefer not to lose it when the pitchforks come out, as they will, when the Leaver masses who are crying for No Deal get it and then can’t afford groceries.
