POLITICS CORNER

[Whyperion]

I don't think they need MO , they could try reading here.

[Stanley]

Worth looking at THIS, a BBC report on the opposing views surfacing between Cabinet members now that President May has been put in her box. You will make your own mind up about what is going on but what strikes me is that when Cameron got his bright idea about leaving the EU to placate his unruly backbenchers and stitch the Tories together he had absolutely no idea of the size of the can of worms he was opening.
Have a look at THIS as well. The Guardian reported that 'it seemed Windows XP was the OS on the new carrier's systems', this has since been confirmed. The Navy states that she is 'less susceptible to cyber attack' than other uses of the 17 year old OS. Is 'less susceptible' good enough?

[plaques]

BBC, Link, Enter then a tangled web of confusing language to describe a vast array of potential outcomes: and welcome to the politics of the next few years at least. This is the problem with them EU people they don't like confusing language. Their agreements have to be plane and logical. Avoiding all the "Yes buts", no built in loopholes and maintaining an overall sovereignty. The very thing we are claiming we want for ourselves but are prepared to give it away in Trade Agreements (read Investment Agreements) ie: a foreign company can make a legal claim against the Government for 'lost' profits if the government changes the rules. Re: climate change etc.
I don't know why but every time I hear Sir Michael Fallon make a pronouncement I always feel that I'm not getting the full story. All his statements seem to convey the impression that he has decided what he would like you to believe an no further than that. An old style smooth politician that gets up your nose.

[PanBiker]

Barlick Branch Labour Party, AGM, all officers re-elected to position and myself and Sally have been elected to be two of our five GC delegates to the CLP. Nominations put forward for CLP officers.

[Stanley]

Ian, Good!
Most politicians have convinced themselves that they are a breed apart and the safest way to say anything is to fill it with get-outs and above all never state anything clear and definite. Oh, and never answer the question. Stick to the prepared script.
The DUP bung paid off yesterday, I suppose that is success in politician's terms and value for money!

[plaques]

In the 'Growing Old' topic Thomo touched on the fact that the BBC is straying away from broadcasting 'News' and making more and more 'Comment'. I would agree with this analysis but extend it to all the newspapers. More often than not the Comment headline is larger than the News headline giving a totally false impression about what is Fact and what is opinion. Part of the BBC's brief is to produce a balanced view of the news. The difficulty now arises in commenting on Comment, known as a feedback loop. The newspaper media are now getting two bites of the cherry and since they are the 'Media' that the BBC has to track they are setting the agenda for what we are listening to.
Face Book is also coming under scrutiny Link. for having undue influence on young voters. Normally it is said that young people are apathetic about voting, this is not quite true its more a case of disillusionment where the media is pushing the point there is nothing the individual can do about things and they are wasting their time. Face Book, like it or not, has galvanized the young into believing their opinion does count and has shown its effect in this last general election. The Masters of the universe will now be looking at this very closely to see how they can control it. Watch this space.

[Tizer]

Theresa May tried to take advantage of Facebook for promoting the Tories but it backfired and had a negative effect.

[PanBiker]

At the recent Labour Party Branch AGM, Jean our secretary reported that in the last month we have had five new members sign up to the branch all are under 27 years of age. We have more young un's as well, we just have to engage them to become active now, some already attend the branch meetings and are not backward at coming forwards.

[Bruff]

The BBC has political editors and political correspondents. In fact, it seems they have editors and correspondents for everything. I’ve always thought that correspondents give you the story if you like and then the editors provide you with context and commentary. The latter in particular you can take as you please, agreeing with it or not. Newspapers are the same – there are news sections from correspondents and opinion and editorial sections that do what they say – provide for opinion by journalists and give an editorial line. Personally, the opinion and editorial sections (or Op Eds) are what I enjoy most along with the letters page and the obituaries. In the print media these come with an agenda as newsprint has it’s politically-derived editorial line to whit: right wing, centre right, centre, centre left, left wing.

Broadcast media by contrast must be impartial in this country and I know the BBC is steadfastly impartial. This is because lefties think it’s an establishment mouthpiece and bang on about Nick Robinson being a Tory at University; right wingers think it’s a Marxist hotbed and bang on about Andrew Marr being a Maoist at University. Well, if the left and right both think it’s agin ‘em, then for an impartial broadcaster that’s as good a back-handed compliment as you can wish for!

Richard Broughton

[plaques]

For years, and I mean years, I took the 'Times' and the 'Sunday Times' . Generally well balanced with no outlandish headlines or overtly stereotyped imagery. Then came Murdock and in my opinion down it went. Meanwhile the majority of the tabloids became unreadable comics. Headlines screaming false facts, over hyped comment, pictures that had more than their fare share of 'Photoshopped' attention, both positive and negative. The resulting manipulation of the media to give it the required propagander slant has reached such a pitch that sometimes honest reporting is seen as a conspiracy theory. Then we have as explained in this YouTube clip by Noam Chomsky.(9.41 mins) Link.. that words often have two meanings, the Official and the Technical. The technical term being defined by the people making the statement putting them on the right side of the argument and consequently never being wrong. Having been programmed down a pre-chosen path it becomes difficult to break the chosen logic and start all over again.
Take the present position on austerity. We built up an unsustainable National debt because we spent too much money giving everybody what they wanted. The way out is to cut back on what we give them = austerity. Meanwhile Warren Buffet exposes the myth that the US welfare bill is intended to help the poor Link. whereas it is just relief for the rich. We now see that austerity can start from a different point.
No wonder people have lost faith in politicians.

[Stanley]

I have no issue with comment, I can sort the bones out of that and good comments can reveal aspects of the situation that I was unaware of. I heard or read an analysis of the effect of social media on the young yesterday (Can't remember where but it seemed plausible) which suggested that the effect of 'social media' on the young was far smaller than the media themselves would have us believe. What bugs me at the moment is the 'attack dog' mode of interviewing on the BBC where the interviewer takes an opposing position and pushes it, often cutting answers short, in the hope of forcing a damaging quote out of the informant. I can see how it can be useful at times but I'm afraid the tactic is going too far and is part of the reason why informants don't actually answer questions in the main.
The thing that strikes me at the moment is that the supporters of austerity are using exactly the same arguments about 'sound money' that were in vogue in the 1920s and 30s. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. We survived WW2 eventually by adopting Keynesian deficit financed management of the economy which makes even more sense now with diminished interest rates.
I see another bung was thrown at Ireland yesterday on top of the Irish Billion, free abortions in UK for Irish women if they need it. I see nothing wrong with that but strange that it has happened through political expediency rather than compassion.

[PanBiker]

For a bit of light relief here is Dennis being interviewed about Jeremy Corbyn a couple of years ago. Watch right until the end and see a perfect example of BBC interviewer spin and the masterful put down by "The Beast".

[BBvideo=560,315]https://youtu.be/XHGDDMAP5qU[/BBvideo]

Go on Dennis..

[Stanley]

Lovely! (I had to go to the source to view it) I've always been an admirer of Dennis Skinner, usually right, never dishonest and he always answers the question. On the quiet he is perhaps one of the shrewdest members in the House. I'd love to hear his private views on some of my pet hates..... Imagine Dennis on Leadsom, Grayling or Hunt.......
Notice how the Brexit 'negotiations' seem to have gone quiet. PE reckons this is because Davies has had to agree to everything put to us because he has no proper brief. 'Sources' in Downing Street are saying that the roadblock is May's entrenched views.... Can anyone honestly see her or this government surviving much longer?
Later.
Have you seen THIS? Another small sign of the true facts of our 'miracle economy'. I know that many think I am a pessimist about the economy but I see so many signs that remind me of the past. In brief, savings over the last quarter by households is at 1.7%, the quarter before it was almost twice that and the average before 2008 and the advent of Tory austerity measures was around 10%. Wages are slipping behind inflation and of course this means that money is tighter. The only way the economy has been kept going is by domestic spending buttressed by lending and there are signs that the credit market is approaching saturation. Add in the fact that with every month that passes an interest rise becomes more likely and you have a very nasty brew bubbling up.
Still optimistic about the longevity of this crippled administration or their Leader?

[plaques]

I think Stanley has said everything but in the way of a slight balancing correction a YouTube interview with Chris Patten. Comes across quite well, a very interesting person. Link. (11 mins)"The worst time since Suez". Some of his other interviews are worth listening to.

[PanBiker]

I've always been an admirer of Dennis Skinner, usually right, never dishonest and he always answers the question. On the quiet he is perhaps one of the shrewdest members in the House. I'd love to hear his private views on some of my pet hates..... Imagine Dennis on Leadsom, Grayling or Hunt.......

I have had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Dennis. Back in the days of our previous expedition into socialist politics, Sally was the first female Chairperson of Pendle Constituency Labour Party. She chaired a public meeting up at West Craven school where Dennis was the guest speaker. I can honestly say that despite his beastly and militant reputation which he has carried since his early days in Clay Cross he is a very nice bloke. Salt of the earth would probably fit, analytic, straight talking and quite quiet in conversation. It was one of the event's organised during Gordon's parliamentary campaign when we were working for his election. I remember he wasn't a straight in straight out big gun guest. He took time to try and understand the issues that were prevalent in the constituency by chatting to the rank and file before addressing the meeting.

[Stanley]

P, I've always listened to Chris Patten, he talks a lot of sense. Not all Tories are bad!
Nice to have my opinion of Dennis confirmed Ian. I have always discounted the 'Beast of Bolsover' image. I once met Enoch Powell when he spoke at Ilkley once. I didn't like his politics but admired his brain and some of his opinions. I could have sat with him and talked for a long time.....

[Tripps]

Good cartoon in this week's Spectator - Wife to husband over breakfast table

"Remember when you thought it would be a good idea to join Labour for £3, vote in Corbyn, and make them unelectable"

[Stanley]

Nice one David.....
The pressure on the Public Service wage cap increases. The right wing press urge more 'fiscal responsibility'. I urge recognition of the history of the search for 'sound money'. We live in a world where the financial system, lauded by most of the austerity advocates as the epitome of money management, extracts money from phantom money in the form of paper assets by shuffling it round the system extracting profit from it. It is widely recognised that the combined value of these 'securities' is more than all the money in the world. Is that 'sound money'? This must be the biggest confidence trick ever!

[Whyperion]

If Corbyn etc, thought that they would live by 'Social Media' then they need to realise that this might just be used to cut against some areas that I have been ( probably for the past 35 years ) critical of Labour as it appears to be, particulary at local level. (my experience has mainly been in East and SW London, but I think it is not far off aspects of Burnley / Pendle). The words relate mostly to housing, but it remains much what I think I wrote here in relation to Tory Kensington and Chelsea in that there remains a disconnect between people at a low grass-roots level and those that purport to respresent their views in decision making.

Anyway, Simon (Architects for Social Housing) here makes much better writing than I can, so I copy verbatim - although emphasis is mine.
https://architectsforsocialhousing.word ... -assembly/
Feel free to ignore, savage, use for useful purpose or otherwise disagree, remember, like many other things, this website oft brings the news that other media does not cover so well.



Oh, Jeremy Corbyn! The People’s Assembly

Press, Protest and Propaganda

Tories Out!

Did I hear right, or was I making it up? As I stood outside the pub having a fag, the crowd shuffled past, branded like an Olympic team with flags and banners and placards bearing the logos of every Labour-affiliated union and other left-wing group, including several I thought no longer existed. I recognised the tune – it was the opening bars from the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army – but what were the words being sung over the top? Was I imagining it, or were they really chanting ‘Oh, Je-re-my Cor-byn! Oh, Je-re-my Cor-byn!’ over and over again?

We’d listened to a couple of speeches outside the BBC, where the People’s Assembly demonstration – titled ‘Tories Out!’ – had assembled, but this was too much. We decided right there and then to abandon any idea of joining the blushing throngs.


Later on in the day we joined Class War in the Chandos off Trafalgar Square for an ill-earned pint.
A small commando team had gone off to ambush Jeremy Corbyn in Parliament Square, and while waiting for him to arrive confronted Len McCluskey – the General Secretary of Unite the Union, which pretty much funds the Labour Party – with the record of Labour councils socially cleansing working-class communities from London through council estate privatisation and demolition. He simply turned his back on them, showed not the slightest interest in hearing what they had to say, or even in looking at the posters they held up listing just some of the 155 London council estates threatened by Labour councils.

Later on the Messiah himself arrived, and rather like Moses parting the Red Sea the crowd fell back to let him through. Quick as a flash Lisa Mckenzie of Class War ran up behind him and confronted Corbyn with the same question she had asked McCluskey. It’s a simple question, one we’ve been asking the Labour Leader for two years now, so far without receiving an answer:

"When are you going to stop Labour councils socially cleansing people out of London?"

Corbyn turned briefly to glance at the poster Lisa was holding up, a frown across his face. I guess, when everyone you meet wants to touch the hem of your garment, it must be surprising to see someone actually challenge you on your record rather than the rousing rhetoric and empty promises with which a nation has been deluded. But just like McCluskey, Corbyn turned immediately away and continued walking between the chosen people, who recovered from the shock of finding a heretic among their ranks and quickly closed in around their Saviour. Like McCluskey, Corbyn showed no interest in what Lisa had to say. Rather, like the practiced, professional politician Corbyn is, he immediately recognised that here was someone who hadn’t swallowed his lies, and walked quickly away – as practiced politicians do – and engaged in a far more pressing conversation with yet another Labour-branded functionary.

Class War continued to shout out their question, hold their posters up, and let the people around them know about Labour’s record of estate regeneration – precisely the estate regeneration programme that killed the residents in Grenfell Tower, about which not a single Labour speaker all day could end without saying something typically vague about poverty and austerity. What not a single speaker said was what had killed them.

In response to this intrusion by Class War, the Labourites first asked the watching police to disperse them, and when the constables didn’t oblige formed up in a line in front of them, held up their branded placards in front of the Class War posters, and started chanting the same chant I’d heard in the marching crowd: ‘Oh, Je-re-my Cor-byn! Oh, Je-re-my Cor-byn!’ They too – like Len McCluskey, like Jeremy Corbyn, like Momentum, like the People’s Assembly, like Unite the Union, like the Socialist Workers Party, like the Radical Housing Network, like the increasing number of so-called anarchists who voted for Labour, like, it seems, anyone who believes Corbyn is some kind of socialist and the Labour Party a social movement – had not the slightest interest in hearing about what Labour are doing to the lives and homes of working class people.

Similarly, the leaders and speakers and followers who have filled the airwaves with their lamentations and fury over the Grenfell Tower fire have shown not the slightest interest in hearing about the estate regeneration programme that caused it. On the contrary, they are willing to sacrifice everything – the hundreds of thousands of Londoners whose homes and businesses are being demolished by Labour councils and the truth about what killed the people in Grenfell Tower – to the electoral hopes of the Labour Party.

The Cult of Corbyn

Something very strange is happening to the Labour Party. As we know, the neo-liberals that make up its Parliamentary Party loathe Jeremy Corbyn, and even after the election that gave them back their seats they have continued to speak out against his promises of re-nationalisation (though less about his retention of Trident and government cuts to benefits). Because of this, and because of the huge support Corbyn enjoys personally from the party membership, under John McDonnell’s stewardship Labour now calls itself a ‘social movement’. Without anything being said to this effect, this allows the Labour membership to believe that, once their Leader is in power, it will be they, and not Labour’s Members of Parliament, who will dictate policy. ‘Vote us into power’, they tell us, ‘and we will return Labour to its real values’. However imaginary and divorced from history those values have become under the propaganda of, for instance, films like Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45, this belief allows the growing Labour membership to imagine its collective will – embodied in the fast becoming sacred figure of Corbyn – will one day govern the country. The fact the UK is a parliamentary monarchy and Labour a parliamentary political party which, if elected to government, will be subject to the vote not of its membership but of its members of parliament, is conveniently ignored.

That’s not quite accurate: not ignored, but suppressed, silenced. That’s why Class War and ASH and the Focus E15 Mothers and the RCG repeatedly drawing attention to the actions of the Labour Party at council level have met such extraordinary hostility from members of the Labour Party who are otherwise – that is, in Conservative-run boroughs – opposed to estate demolition. In the case of ASH, we know told that residents have been told by members of the Radical Housing Network not to work with us because of our criticisms of the Labour Party and its support for the estate demolition schemes of Labour councils. Against the promises of Labour’s manifesto on housing – which is in fact based on these demolition schemes – this is a rude reminder that far from being a social movement Labour is a political party seeking election to power of the government of the UK, and if we want to get an idea of how that government would govern we should look at the actions and attitudes of these councils.

From this inconvenient truth has sprung the mantra, repeated by Momentum et al, that Labour councils are run by ‘Blairite, Right-wing, Progress Labourites’ at odds with Corbyn’s housing policies – as if the Labour MPs so many Corbynites voted for at the last election are any different. ASH showing in detailed arguments based on Labour’s own statements that not only is there no difference between the housing policies of the Labour Party and those of Labour councils – and that, on the contrary, the former is based upon the latter – falls on ears as deaf to the truth as the crowd of chanting believers in Parliament Square.

Under the chants of ‘Oh, Jer-e-my Cor-byn!’ Neil Coyle can be re-elected Labour MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, while his record on the planning committee of Southwark Labour council’s estate regeneration programme is drowned out; Helen Hayes can be re-elected Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, while her collusion in the demolition of the Heygate and Central Hill estates and the eviction of the Brixton Arches is drowned out; Diane Abbott can be re-elected Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, while her record of failing to oppose the demolition of 18 estates by Hackney Labour council is drowned out (**); David Lammy can be re-elected Labour MP for Tottenham, while his record of standing by as the Haringey Labour council sells off £2 billion of land to property developers Lendlease, including two council estates in his own constituency, is drowned out(***).

Ideology under capitalism works not by censorship but by noise. Within increasingly reduced limits we can say what we like, but no-one will hear us over the noise of those with access to the media. We’ve seen this principle at work in the reaction of Labour politicians to the Grenfell Tower fire. Beneath the cries for justice and truth repeated again and again by Labour MPs David Lammy and Emma Dent Coad, the actual truth from which justice alone will emerge is being drowned out. Because Labour does not yet have the power to exert control over the media, which has been virulently opposed to Corbyn since his election to the leadership, it must make use of disasters like the Grenfell Tower fire and turn it to its own political ends. Labour, led by Corbyn, has shown absolutely no compunction in cynically using the dead of Grenfell Tower to attack the Tory party, while drowning out the truth about its own role in what killed them. However, since the Labour Party’s surprising electoral returns the media is beginning to change its attitude towards Corbyn.

He still hasn’t got the newspaper barons on side though, as Tony Blair took care to prior to his election as Prime Minister. The primary medium of Corbyn’s propaganda, therefore, is events like yesterday’s. Exactly as Trump – a similar political outsider without the support of his party – did with far greater success, Corbyn and his team have described their political ambitions as a ‘movement’, and have adopted the guise of being outsiders in their own party. This exactly replicates the feelings of those millions of Labour supporters who, reared on 13 years of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, have returned to the ranks and ballot box of the Labour Party with the dream that they may, once again, find themselves represented in it. The student radicals, middle-class liberals and elderly members of Momentum are all agreed on one thing: that they do not recognise themselves in the mediocrities that make up the Paliamentary Labour Party or the stony-faced ruthless businessmen and women that sit on Labour councils.

So instead – again, very much as the rust-belt proletarians of the US did with New York billionaire Trump – they focus all their attention on the figure of Corbyn, who in their eyes is relieved of all responsibility for the actions of the political party he leads.

The Spectacle of Activism

It’s clear that the Labour Party is on the up. Not only are the MPs that twice voted no confidence in Corbyn now opportunistically reconciled to his leadership, but Labour’s strategists seem to have accidentally laid their groping fingers upon the quickening pulse of politics in capitalist democracies. Labour’s electoral team has remarked how much they have learned from Bernie Sanders, members of whose campaign team came over to the UK to instruct Labour in the lead up to the General Election. It’s typical of Labour that they chose to be instructed by a campaign that lost; but looking at the spectacle in Parliament Square earlier this year, at which Owen Jones and Dianne Abbott spoke out against the election of Donald Trump, and hearing the chanting marchers yesterday, deaf to anything but their own declaration of absolute and unshakeable faith in the Leader, it seems to me that it is to the campaign and tactics of Donald Trump’s electoral team that Labour have been looking. Its not merely ironic that in condemning the election of Trump to the Presidency of the United States, Jones and Abbott used exactly the same propaganda tools and tactics that brought him to power.

Like Trump, Labour have adopted the spectacle of street politics – of a social movement, of political protest, of ‘grass-roots’ activism, of the repressed, silenced, overlooked outsider, of the rhetoric of rebellion and even revolution, of justice ‘for the many, not the few’ – to call for the election to the government of the UK of a social-democratic party whose members sit on the Cabinet’s of local authorities across the UK, the Mayorship of London, Manchester and Liverpool, in the European Parliament, in the House of Commons and the House of Lords of a capitalist country with the sixth largest economy in the world. I can’t remember any other leadership of either the Labour or the Conservative parties holding demonstrations that deliberately imitate the language of street protest, while at the same time having the political clout and financial resources to close down Regent’s Street with a campaign bus on a Saturday afternoon or – as they did in February – hold a rally with an erected stage in Parliament Square in the middle of a Government Security Zone.

Not only is this an appropriation of a form of protest created to oppose power by those who sit in positions of power, but in doing so it subsumes every other protest into its ranks, reducing the multiplicity of campaigns to the simple equation that lent its title to Saturday’s demonstration:

‘Tories out!’ What this simplistic message silences is, of course, who will take their place. Momentum, for one, has been very open about this colonisation of localised campaigns by Labour’s imperial ambitions for power, and it is typical of the naivety of the largely middle-class students who make up its numbers that this ambition is accepted at face value. Of course, as marketing companies know, the best salesman is the one who believes in his product; and the first customer of Labour’s sales pitch are the salesmen and women who sell it on the voter’s doorstep, who organise these demonstrations, who write propaganda about Labour policy, who promote Labour’s ideology in their media outlets, who make nostalgic films about Labour values, who dedicate poems to Corbyn, who invite him onto popular culture platforms, who have elevated him to his current and slightly absurd position as Saviour of the People. Anyone who is critical of this rhetoric or who seeks to challenge its relation to reality is anathematised as an unbeliever – or worse, a Tory – and subject to slanders against them personally and attacks on whatever organisation or group they speak from.

For drawing attention to Labour’s complicity in estate demolition ASH has been the subject of such attacks from Labour activists individually and collectively almost since we formed over two years ago, and they show no sign of abating.

The evidence that increasing numbers of British voters have fallen and are falling for this illusion of Labour as a social movement is a measure of just how successful it has been as a campaign strategy which. Initially adopted in response to the peculiar circumstances of Corbyn’s enormous popularity within the party membership and equally enormous unpopularity amongst his fellow MPs, it has subsequently embraced the spectacularisation of politics in which the USA leads and instructs the world, and which was pioneered by the fascist and totalitarian political parties and regimes of the Twentieth Century.
Like Trump’s Republicans and Corbyn’s Labour, these regimes understood that what the masses want is faith in a Leader, not detailed explanations of policy; subsuming within a collective identity, not the burden of individual responsibility; the comfort of banal slogans, not questioning of political practice; the illusion of ideology, not the inconvenient truths of reality. Anyone who believes that the 184 Labour MPs who abstained from voting against Tory welfare cuts will, upon forming a government, turn around and vote for Corbyn’s increases to corporation tax, or to re-nationalise the railways, post office, water and energy companies, or to build half a million homes for social rent is living under this illusion.

Class War

Anyone who is engaged in trying to dispel this spectacle knows that Western democracies – which is to say, the world’s declining capitalist economies – are moving towards a new totalitarianism that is once again looking to the lessons of fascism in how to govern an increasingly impoverished, scared and potentially rebellious population.

The Conservative government knows this, and over the past decade and more has quietly gone about effecting our transition to a state built on fear, hate and anger, with unmatched powers of surveillance, a press and media run by corporate interests, and a judiciary and parliament colluding in stripping our human rights. Theresa May’s electoral team tried to promote her as the Leader of this brave new world, but fortunately for us they had the worst possible material for the picture they wanted to paint, and one who visibly fell apart under the gaze of the media and questions of the press.

Corbyn, by contrast, whose team has been in campaign mode since his election to the Leadership of the Labour party two years ago, has emerged from the General Election not as Prime Minister, but as the populist Leader the state needs and the terrified masses want. If the press is changing its attitude towards him, it’s an indication that the captains of industry and members of the establishment that run this country no matter who is in power are beginning to think so too. The ruling class of the US has for some time now realised that they can run the most powerful nation in the world through an actor, buffoon or game-show host. I’m beginning to think that the ruling class of the UK is beginning to think so too.

Just as Corbyn’s enormous popular appeal among the masses as Leader of the Labor Party has all but silenced any questioning of the role of Labour councils in demolishing our homes and selling off public land to private developers, so Corbyn as Prime Minister may be just the figurehead the corporate leaders of our economy need to silence opposition to the jumble sale of every public asset this country owns. In the same way that the Press and City turned to Tony Blair as the free-market Leader the UK economy needed at that moment of its expansion, so Jeremy Corbyn may be the Leader the nation needs at this moment when the economy is collapsing in on itself, and the British people are discovering our masters have sold all the lifejackets to foreign investors.

Let me be clear about what I’m saying. I’m not suggesting Corbyn is a fascist, or that he shares the same politics as Trump, or that the UK is a totalitarian state – not yet, anyway, though it is undoubtedly moving towards being one. What I’m pointing to is the increasing spectacularisation of politics in the UK following the US model, in which elections are won or lost on image rather than reality. Of course, politics has always been about image; or rather, politics exists in the gap between image and reality. But just as the gap between the rust-belt workers in the US and the New York property developer they voted for has never been wider, so the gap between the rhetoric of Corbyn and the record of the Labour Party in power – in local authorities, in council town halls, and in the Greater London Authority – has also never been wider. It is essential that the noise of Labour propaganda, of which Saturday’s ‘Tories Out!’ march was an example, does not drown out the reality of the Labour Party’s policies, particularly on housing, and its record in local government.

The belief that the Labour Party will suddenly start representing the working class whose organised resistance to capitalist exploitation it was formed to manage and placate would be laughable if the consequences of that belief weren’t so dire for the millions of people who live on the housing estates Labour councils threaten with demolition, the thousands of small businesses Labour councils are driving out of London, and our continued public ownership of the land Labour councils are selling off to private companies. What is perhaps most worrying about the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn is not only that it is fully supporting this attack on working class homes, businesses and communities, but that under Corbyn’s leadership it refuses even to acknowledge that this is happening. Far from being a politics – as the Labour slogan goes – ‘for the many, not the few’, this is an ideology that deliberately deafens the many to the reality of both its policies and its practices, and tries to silence those who work to expose that reality. As the Leader and embodiment of this ideology, Jeremy Corbyn is complicit in its lies, its deceptions and its social cleansing. He may continue to turn away from us, as he has done for two years now, but we will continue to confront him and his chanting followers with the threat he presents to the working-class communities of Britain.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sinon is a political activist, but is involved with a team with hopefully a practical way of looking at some problems. I would not agree with all he writes, "precisely the estate regeneration programme that killed the residents in Grenfell Tower" in particular, although he does demonstrate a longer thought process leading to some of the actions in that bit of London which could be interpreted that way - and - it seems - the more information on that thought process that comes into public domain the worse the inquiry will either have to include, or noticibly ignore.

(**) I found Diane Abbott at least apparently concerned but seemingly without a clue as to which way to act - if at all.
(***) With respect to Grenfell initially Lammy I think was incorrect in conflating K&C action/inaction with Austerity policy, maybe understandably with his personal friend's loss of life. However as a responsibly MP I would have expected better thoughtful consideration of facts. On his own consitutancy doorstep he now appears to be attempting to bolt the stable door, 2mins after the horse ran away ( unless the local Lib Dems in this instance get a Judical Review on a blocking motion ).
( RCG = Revolutionary Communist Group) [ I must be carefull in picking the next leader/movement off the political roundabout that they don't deliver something even worse ] { I suppose that even if the popular media refers to the Labour Party/this present incarnation thereof as '''left-wing' there are those who see it as merely yet another 'establishment' puppy.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[Whyperion]

‘In housing and planning Labour councils are applying our established values locally in new and inspirational ways.’ – John Healey


PS Some friends at church of mine also on Saturday gently dripped a bit of I hope good information toward their local (tory) MP. they were a bit more subtle than I would have been so for that event I kept out of things.

[Stanley]

I note that Hammond has said that any relaxation of the cap on wages in the public sector would throw away the advances of the last seven years. Really. Could anything else better illustrate the sterility of austerity. In real terms, accounting for inflation, workers in the sector report cuts of £3 to £5 a week in their income while the fat cats get comparatively higher increases. Back to the 19th century lads...... No hope of improvement with this government.
Apart from anything else, the statement itself is a lie, it takes no account of simple measures like raising taxes, especially the ones that have been cut since 2010. The 'sound money' policies equal 'I'm all right Jack'.

[plaques]

Whyperion, "Oh, Jeremy Corbyn! The People’s Assembly". Clearly anti-Corbyn propaganda. From my reading of it the whole article sets out to give a negative image. Typically it slides from one point to another making half true statements, eg: about Mrs May:"and one who visibly fell apart under the gaze of the media and questions of the press." I never saw anything in the normal media or press that questioned her policies. This only became apparent after the election. Most of the article tries to make Corbyn a Messiah. 'God's anointed one' a Jewish word which is a bit strange since the media tried to paint him as anti-semitic. Are they trying to say God is a Dictator? Certainly Mrs May was going for the Presidency spot. A long rambling rant which would take longer than I'm prepared to analyse, reading it alone was an endurance test. If all the points were subject to a one to one debate between Corbyn and May I know who I would back and it isn't the failed President.

[PanBiker]

Trouble is Plaques, May won't get on a platform with him, must be hard defending the indefensible.

I'm deluded according to the article, pity I have just been nominated as one of our GC (General Committee) delegates to the Constituency Labour Party, oh well...

[Stanley]

Like you P I skimmed through the article rapidly losing the will to live. It's a bad polemic by someone who needs a course in political history and another in communication..... I agree with you about President May... She hasn't got a clue!
Nice one Ian, you are not deluded. The criticisms of Jeremy are either malicious or short on rational analysis. It's a puzzle isn't it how someone who is so transparent and honest, who holds individual positions instead of pandering to the LCD, gets vilified. My theory is that they are frightened of him.
Looking at Downing Street my impression, from what little information that is leaking out, is that she and her cabinet are in chaos. They went into deep shock after the catastrophe of the election, moved straight into full on damage limitation when they looked at the options and now are fracturing into factions over everything from Brexit to austerity. All this at possibly the most crucial time in UK politics since WW2. I always warned that the rotten foundations of their political philosophy would crumble and that's what we are looking at now. There is a certain element of schadenfreude around this but I try to avoid it, it is not to be crowed about but rectified and God knows how that can happen without complete melt down and an election. But in the meantime we sink deeper into a morass created since 2010.
Later.... More manifesto promises ditched. Support for fox hunting and changes in the free school meals system quietly thrown overboard.....
Later.... Another cloud on the horizon. The latest productivity figures show that we are doing worse than forecast and it is lower now than it was in 2007. Will anyone from Downing Street be mentioning the 'economic miracle' and education cuts?

[Stanley]

Some old news resurfaces this morning. See THIS for a report of Sir John Chilcot's interview with Laura Kuenssberg in which he says that while Blair may have believed what he was saying emotionally in the run up to Iraq he 'wasn't being straight' with the electorate. I think we all knew this already but it's good to have our view confirmed by someone who has seen all the evidence. Blair's office says that all these matters have been dealt with already..... That may be so but the consequences still echo down the years....
Meanwhile, there is a deathly hush in Downing Street. What is going on? Has anyone got a clue? Do we still have a functioning government?
I have great respect for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and their research into society. See THIS for a report they have issued on the continuing fall in income of ordinary families. What strikes me is that they are reporting the same circumstances that Joseph himself noted in his ground-breaking social research in the 19th century. Nothing has changed. That's sad isn't it.....