The Politics Thread

[Prufrock]

Will come back to this when I have a minute, but see the appeal is happening now 're: the freeze date. Should be overturned as high court got it wrong IMO (and that's legal opinion, not personal bias - I didn't want Corbyn on the ballot but he court was right to rule he is).

Interesting.

Your legal knowledge will be vastly better than mine but I'd have thought letting people join with no implication that they would not be considered voting members .... & then putting an applicable date in, in retrospect, was very dubious.

Drawing a line,whether a minimum pre-membership period or saying 'no-one from x date' (ie. The date a vote is announced) is reasonable but disqualifying this way seems odd.

The CORRECT thing would be to weed out infiltrators but there are too many, no real mechanism to do it nor ... in many cases ... a will to.

The game's over I'm afraid.

The party rules give the NEC the power to set a "freeze date" on eligibility. They also give it the power to decide if there are any disputes or arguments over definitions (this apparently led yesterday to legal sediment over the definition of the word "definition").

The second bit means that it's not enough when challenging the NEC to persuade the court that it would have decided otherwise, instead you have to show that no reasonable body in the NECs position with have decided the way it did.

The High Court found that this test was passed because they found that a freeze date had to be a future date. That you couldn't set a freeze date in the past. That seems bonkers to me: firstly, I just don't think a freeze date has to be in the past. When the initial decision was announced with the freeze date I don't remember a single person saying "that's mad, you can't have a "freeze date" in the past. Secondly, even if you personally think a freeze date has to be in the future, I just don't think it can be said that no reasonable NEC could have decided otherwise.

[Hoboh]

There is something noble about the fact that the Trotskyists are still here. They may even have gone through their own New Labour-esque process of revision and reform: the Militants I knew always assured me that their revolutionary plan was based on nothing less than the nationalisation of the top 200 companies, but I see from the Socialist party website that this has now been reduced to a modest 150.

Aside from all that, the Militant founder and big cheese Peter Taaffe reckons not just that he has a good chance of soon being readmitted to the party that chucked him out all those years ago, but that when it comes to the Corbyn insurgency, “The lava of this revolution is still hot” (tssss!) and that the new leader’s adversaries will not “stop the winds of history as they’re developing at the moment”. On the face if it, then, he is now a paid-up Corbynite. Or maybe it’s just more “transitional” mischief. That’s the thing about Trotskyists: you can never tell.

[thebish]

meanwhile...

Farridge has grown a moustache!

[Hoboh]

meanwhile...

Farridge has grown a moustache!

That's clever, deflect the subject, wheel on Farage.

Nothing will alter the fact a fifth column type movement has infiltrated the Labour party and turned it in to a laughing stock.

A small core of commie's, leading a few thousand righteous twits, backed up by violent, should be shot on sight, Ninja's, have hijacked HMG official opposition.

Sounds like what Putin did in the Crimea.

[Worthy4England]

Anyone can join and vote (or could have). They can hardly sit there complaining that they didn't. You feel strongly about it. Join up and vote the other way.

[Hoboh]

Anyone can join and vote (or could have). They can hardly sit there complaining that they didn't. You feel strongly about it. Join up and vote the other way.

Who moi?

Wouldn't pay to be a labour member in a million years.

[Worthy4England]

Surely that makes it a bit difficult to bemoan where they're heading then?

[Hoboh]

stop being silly, you know that In order for a democracy to live you have to have healthy alternatives.

I'm not saying 'd never vote Labour, merely that the party has been re-hijacked by the old Commie leftie unions and others.

BTW Blair and his henchmen ruined it by using the party for their own gain and changed it to a deceitful, cap doffing charade.

[Hoboh]

Corbyn’s campaign team openly attacked both the court of appeal judges and the party’s HQ for fighting the appeal, castigating the decision as wrong “both legally and democratically.” Shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said lawyers had used “a grubby little device” to win the appeal.

Not sore losers are they?

[Enoch]

Shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said lawyers had used “a grubby little device” to win the appeal.

What's that then, the law?

[bobo the clown]

Corbyn’s campaign team openly attacked both the court of appeal judges and the party’s HQ for fighting the appeal, castigating the decision as wrong “both legally and democratically.” Shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said lawyers had used “a grubby little device” to win the appeal.

Not sore losers are they?

Nothing of this matters. Corbyn will win, he will take over the machine and there will be a very, very left of centre party in the making.

The typical Labour Party as we know it will split. Millions of centre-left voters will have nowhere to go.

Some extremely dubious people will begin to run that shower and it ain't going to be nice.

[Worthy4England]

Not disagreeing with much of that although there is a reasonable argument that it was a party much further left than its current position and was moved more towards the centre under Smith and then Blair. Opponents may see a hijack whilst supporters probably see it as moving closer to where it used to be pre-1992.

[Enoch]

Not disagreeing with much of that although there is a reasonable argument that it was a party much further left than its current position and was moved more towards the centre under Smith and then Blair. Opponents may see a hijack whilst supporters probably see it as moving closer to where it used to be pre-1992.

The wilderness?

[Hoboh]

Not disagreeing with much of that although there is a reasonable argument that it was a party much further left than its current position and was moved more towards the centre under Smith and then Blair. Opponents may see a hijack whilst supporters probably see it as moving closer to where it used to be pre-1992.

It is what voters think that matters, not a few thousand misfits.

[Worthy4England]

@Enoch - Yes, the wilderness

@Hobes - Yes and No. Is any Party there to lead the debate on their manifesto and hope to persuade enough voters that they're right or to just set a manifesto according to what the voters want? I'd suggest the latter if you want to form a government, but setting a manifesto around an ideology is also fine. There is no law that says all parties must try and accommodate all voters - they'd all end up with the same manifesto if they did that.

[Hoboh]

@Enoch - Yes, the wilderness

@Hobes - Yes and No. Is any Party there to lead the debate on their manifesto and hope to persuade enough voters that they're right or to just set a manifesto according to what the voters want? I'd suggest the latter if you want to form a government, but setting a manifesto around an ideology is also fine. There is no law that says all parties must try and accommodate all voters - they'd all end up with the same manifesto if they did that.

The idea is to attract voters and get elected, not try to promote old, failed, policies to the point of being so obsessed that elections and the electorate don't matter.

[Worthy4England]

@Enoch - Yes, the wilderness

@Hobes - Yes and No. Is any Party there to lead the debate on their manifesto and hope to persuade enough voters that they're right or to just set a manifesto according to what the voters want? I'd suggest the latter if you want to form a government, but setting a manifesto around an ideology is also fine. There is no law that says all parties must try and accommodate all voters - they'd all end up with the same manifesto if they did that.

The idea is to attract voters and get elected, not try to promote old, failed, policies to the point of being so obsessed that elections and the electorate don't matter.

You and I might think that and if you were forming a party, that's what you'd try and do - from what I'm reading. Reality is the party is there to follow it's members wishes (not the general voters) - so if they want to go on a ticket of renationalize the top 150 Companies, scrap Trident, disband the army, give free beer to everyone on Fridays, that's entirely up to them.

It's certainly not for non-members such as you, me, Bobo (well maybe Bobo, if he really stumped up his three quid ), Insano etc. to tell them what they should or shouldn't do. You pays yer money, you get a vote...

[bobo the clown]

^^ I didn't.

It over excited the Bish so much I never got round to denying it. There. I've said it.

[Worthy4England]

^^ I didn't.

It over excited the Bish so much I never got round to denying it. There. I've said it.

[thebish]

^^ I didn't.

It over excited the Bish so much I never got round to denying it. There. I've said it.

Awww - and you were so pleased with yourself at the time!

I smell B0llox!!