MPs quitting Labour & Conservative parties discussion thread

Folkstonian wrote: »

I just think that politicians, especially those who aspire to the ‘great offices of state’ need to have a certain sharpness and authority to them.

They need to be able to walk into a meeting room full of civil servants, or address the public in front of a television camera, and be able to deliver the message with a high degree of confidence. I don’t see it with Diane Abbott and I never have. She’s generally slow, ponderous, and very light on any actual substance. The ‘10 thousand coppers at 30 pounds a head’ debacle before the last general election was a bit of a case in point.

You mention the likes of Raab and Rees-Mogg and I agree to an extent, but even they (on a good day) can deliver a punchy, often relatively compelling message and look, at least for a few minutes like they know what they are doing.

This is all before you get to things like her defence of Mao, her comments about Finnish nurses, West Indian mums, white people playing divide and conquer.. and so on. She honestly doesn’t seem like a particularly switched on, or particularly pleasant person.

I get that she was a trailblazer for women of colour back in the 80s, and her place in labour history is assured for that reason. But is she really the best they have to offer in the here and now for the job of shadow home sec? I just can’t see how she can be.

I don't disagree with you. But I have to admit huge disappointment with the general fare in the HoC, where faced with a national crisis of massive proportions, very few are able to stand up and deliver a cogent argument that is not either incomprehensibly muddled or deliberately disingenuous. I especially find the former to be far more prevalent than I would have thought possible.

My comment was tongue in cheek. The only thread I saw with a rolling title was on After Hours about a certain female writer.

I'm not saying any number but the attitude of the MP was staggering in it's consequence.

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

The most important metric.

Defined by whom, you?


Do you know when there was record real wage growth in the UK? Around 1985.



Does that mean we should try and reinvent the 80's with old hat economic policy? No, of course not.

Picking out a single metric from the 1970's and using that as cause and motivation to pretend that that decade was lovely, is purely deluded.

You admitted yourself you weren't around for it, yet for someone who lived through it take it from me, you would have hated it. You dont know how lucky you are to be honest.

You just didn’t like those facts.

I don't disagree with the fact that wage growth of the 70's may be higher than now. That does not mean we should or even can revert back to that era and follow similar economic policy when the world is a vastly different place economically.

That is the danger of looking back, anyone can pick out a fact and claim that the past was great, and we should go back there.
Economic data coming out of 1930's Germany was pretty impressive, does not mean we should advocate building up submarines and tanks today to improve unemployment and wage growth?

The 70s were better for workers in the UK than now. That was my initial claim. I then proved the claim with stats.

You didn't prove anything, you posted up something about wage growth as if that is the single metric that matters, as Moses himself stated its all that matters to make reasonable objective judgments on the past.

What about life expectancy?
1970 it was 71, today it is 81

What about death rates at work?
There has been an 85% reduction since 1974

What about education levels?
The average school leaver is 7 times more likely to go to University or a Polytech today than in 1970

What about women's place in the workforce? Do you think the '70s was a great time for them?

What about if you were a minority or Gay, the latter was legally a fireable offense.

So long as you didn't mind dying younger, more likely to have a fatal accident at work, not mind having the same educational opportunities, not be a woman, a minority or gay, then MAYBE you might be better off working in the 1970's than now.

"Make the UK great again"

You don’t have a rebuttal so it’s just a list of excuses. If it is true that China is the reason that wages in the west are stagnating (and I don’t disagree that it’s a factor) then one of the shibboleths of free market theology is incorrect. Globalisation and trade were supposed to lift all boats.

It does actually in the main but as you know there are caveats. Just because wage growth has stagnated, does not mean there are no benefits to Globalisation and free trade.

Its the Brexit argument again, the EU is somewhat dysfunctional, so lets leave and revert to the 1970's (Corbynista's) 1950's (Tory Brexiters)

Again that might be true but economics claims migration, open borders and free trade are what makes us richer.

It does actually.

Productivity should increase wages in real terms if distributed evenly. After all more stuff is being produced. And again this is arguing against another free market shibboleth - that technology raises living standards.

Only if you think that all and every metric of prosperity, growth, and progress can be encapsulated in one and only metric, of wage growth. If you really believe that.....

I’m not sure that Trump has anything to do with my position given that, like you, he is a free market fanatic.

LOL, This is the same guy who raised tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum and threatens a trade war with China? That free market fanatic? At least engage honestly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs
Trump is many many things, but a free market fanatic he is not.

Trump is very pertinent to this question, as he was elected on a populism, much like how Corbyn hopes to be elected.

judeboy101 wrote: »

To me it seems that anything anti-Zionist is now conflated with anti-semitic. Not all jews are zionists and not all zionists are jews.

I have real problems with the use of that word. 'Zionism' is usually taken to be the movement for the development and protection of the Jewish nation of Israel. It now seems to be conflated loosely to mean a hawkish Israel intent on widening its borders at the expense of Palestine. The former meaning is a statement of a situation that pretty much the whole world (bar those few nations who want to wipe Israel off the map) agrees with. The latter seems to be interchangeable in its meaning and being anti-Zionist can sound reasonable in one context and abhorrent in the other. And it seems to me that that interchangeability can be used as a dog whistle for anti-semitism whilst simultaneously being a defence against any such charges.

Some people in LB, fanatics, need a basic lesson in democratic principles. An MP is elected by the people to be their Member of Parliament for as long as that Parliament sits.
They are charged with acting in the best interests of the people, not slavishly taking direction from them. Go back and read Edmund Burke.
This is similar to governing of the basis of ongoing polls, and not the national interest.

c.p.w.g.w wrote: »

Genuine question...is supporting Palestine deemed anti-Semitic?

I would say that to many, yes it is. Certainly IMO, that is the view that Israel takes.

hill16bhoy wrote: »

Recall elections are a regular event in the US, most notably when California governor Gray Davis was recalled in 2003 and lost the subsequent election to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Likewise in the US, any representative can be primaried and effectively de-selected from within their own party. That's how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the Democratic candidate in her district.

Trump could theoretically face this in 2020.

I don't particularly agree with the concept of allowing the recall of MPs (outside of the existing provisons to do so) but to say such a proposal is "Orwellian" is considerably overegging the pudding, in my view.

But recall elections only go as far as state level. And the rules differ from state to state. Some have to pass judicial scrutiny. As for primaries, they are part of the elction process and therefore can only remove a sitting representative at the end of their term. Pretty much what can happen here or in the UK. Although it's very rare that a sitting TD would be removed from a constituency prior to an election. But it is possible.

It may be a stretch to call it Orwellian, but I'm thinking of the pledge that's been going around social media recently as well. But the real issue is the notion that a party can 'own' a seat and therefore decide who sits in it and now is looking to increase that power to remove dissenters from them is stretching democracy to breaking point.

Leroy42 wrote: »

I would say that to many, yes it is. Certainly IMO, that is the view that Israel takes.

When you say 'Israel' do you mean the government or the people? Because that distinction is important since many Israeli people do not support the government's attitude to Palestine or the Palestinian people. So it's back to the distinction between Israeli government policy, Israel as a nation and the Israeli people. All subtly different but nonetheless important distinctions.

prawnsambo wrote: »

Aaaaand they're off.

I thought Anna Soubry would have quit last week, but I suppose now with the platform of the Independent Group she has somewhere to jump to.

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Defined by capitalists or indeed modernists when they deal with economic growth since the capitalist era.

Can you show me these modernists that say this?

I doubt that graph,

Convenient.

This is all good stuff, but was all driven by and large by leftwing ideologies.

Yes, it ALL happened under the Blair years :rolleyes:, who ironically the Corbynistas hate more than the Tories.

I think that Brexit is lunacy,

So why isnt Corbyn willing to try and stop it?

He has imposed Tariffs yes..

So not a Free Market fanatic so, glad we cleared that one up.

in fact there is a growing body of economic position that globalisation hasn't worked,

It depends on who you ask. For the 500 million Chinese who have been lifted out of extreme poverty, it certainly has worked, not mentioning the other billions world wide.

For the coal miner in Yorkshire, perhaps not.

The point is to not let the problems masks the huge achievements.

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/09/19/decline-of-global-extreme-poverty-continues-but-has-slowed-world-bank

“Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history. This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said

Harry Palmr wrote: »

It's really exiting (god I'm a nerd)

Are these numbers of defectors big enough to make any difference?

prawnsambo wrote: »

No mention of them joining The Independent Group that I've seen yet, but their Twitter account is now following the three of them, so maybe they are.

It says they are in the letter

robinph wrote: »

I thought Con+DUP only gave a majority of 2? So only needed one to jump ship to tip the balance.

May's Deal was defeated by over 200 votes..

What is it that these ten help parliament agree on?

Realistically May's government was always a minority government