Who is our next Prime Minister?

[HoHoHo]

djohnson said:

s2art said:

Its very scary. They have stated that they will borrow (or print) something like half a trillion to create this socialist dreamworld.

It’s a trillion!

That’s absolute bks.

Dianne Abbott said it’s only £374.86.

[djohnson]

HoHoHo said:

djohnson said:

s2art said:

Its very scary. They have stated that they will borrow (or print) something like half a trillion to create this socialist dreamworld.

It’s a trillion!

That’s absolute bks.

Dianne Abbott said it’s only £374.86.

Phew I was worried for a minute.

[Robertj21a]

HoHoHo said:

djohnson said:

s2art said:

Its very scary. They have stated that they will borrow (or print) something like half a trillion to create this socialist dreamworld.

It’s a trillion!

That’s absolute bks.

Dianne Abbott said it’s only £374.86.

No - she revised it to £37,486 bn

[HoHoHo]

Robertj21a said:

HoHoHo said:

djohnson said:

s2art said:

Its very scary. They have stated that they will borrow (or print) something like half a trillion to create this socialist dreamworld.

It’s a trillion!

That’s absolute bks.

Dianne Abbott said it’s only £374.86.

No - she revised it to £37,486 bn

Those figures are so close it’s an easy mistake to make I suppose.....

[andy_s]

Helicopter123 said:

You might see an attempt to nationalise certain industries, like rail and utilities, but these have been in and out of public ownership over the years. They are also failing to deliver on many (but not all) measures. Taxes will go up, and money will be spent on the NHS and education. It's not really that scary?

"Oh, Western freedom-loving "left-wing" thinkers! Oh, left-wing labourists! Oh, American, German and French progressive students! All of this is still not enough for you. The whole book has been useless for you. You will understand everything immediately, when you yourself — "hands behind the back" — toddle into our Archipelago."

[B'stard Child]

Helicopter123 said:

Faced with political reality, and the civil service, a Corbyn government won't fee much different to any other Labour government.

A little more tax to pay for better public services.

We won't turn into Venezuela overnight.

Absolutely correct - amazing I find myself agreeing with you Budgie

It took Venezuela just one year to go from "prosperity to a deep recession"

In then next two years "Seventy-five percent of the country’s population has lost an average of 19 pounds of bodyweight between 2015 and 2016 due to food shortages throughout the country. " - Clearly with the UK becoming the next USA in terms of obesity this could be a good thing

In the fourth year "he (Maduro) held a rigged election for a special legislative body that supplanted the country’s parliament — the one branch of government that was controlled by his political opposition. The new superbody has carte blanche to rewrite the country’s constitution and expand his executive powers."

What's the parliamentry term in the UK 5 years Just imagine how st it could be in 5 years - After all Uncle Corbyn and Jolly old McDonnell reckon the issue with Venezuela was

McDonnell said:

I think in Venezuela they took a wrong turn, a not particularly effective path, not a socialist path.

There are lessons to be learned on the mistakes all around."is that they just weren't socialist enough

Anyway I think a Labour Government is exactly what is needed to show the youngsters just exactly how ste life can be under a proper one!!!

Gonna give me loads of sts and giggles while it lasts

[djohnson]

B'stard Child said:

Anyway I think a Labour Government is exactly what is needed to show the youngsters just exactly how ste life can be under a proper one!!!

This is the only potential upside of a Corbyn victory, it shows show another generation that Socialism is flawed and hence hopefully pushes it to back the lunatic fringes of UK politics, where it belongs, for many more years. However it'd be a shame if we really have to go through it to do so, given the precedents and plentiful and easy to find and to understand.

[B'stard Child]

djohnson said:

B'stard Child said:

Anyway I think a Labour Government is exactly what is needed to show the youngsters just exactly how ste life can be under a proper one!!!

This is the only potential upside of a Corbyn victory, it shows show another generation that Socialism is flawed and hence hopefully pushes it to back the lunatic fringes of UK politics, where it belongs, for many more years. However it'd be a shame if we really have to go through it to do so, given the precedents and plentiful and easy to find and to understand.

Do they listen to you?

They don't listen to me

I can happily "ride out" 3-5 years of labour lunacy if it does what the last proper Labour government did *

Note - which is lead to Conservatives/Conservative Lite governments for 38 years plus

[2xChevrons]

B'stard Child said:

McDonnell said:

I think in Venezuela they took a wrong turn, a not particularly effective path, not a socialist path.

There are lessons to be learned on the mistakes all around."is that they just weren't socialist enough

Anyway I think a Labour Government is exactly what is needed to show the youngsters just exactly how ste life can be under a proper one!!!

Gonna give me loads of sts and giggles while it lasts

I want to dig into this because I'm getting annoyed by people either taking McDonnell's quote out of context or deliberately misinterpreting it. 'Socialism' has a precise political definition, especially if you're invested in it as McDonnell is. He is not using it here in the sense that people moan about New Labour being socialist (i.e. "things I don't like = socialism") or under the pretence that socialism is a fixed sliding scale - that the UK is at one end, that Venezuela is somewhere further down and he wants to the UK to go beyond that.

'Socialism' in the true sense - the one that McDonnell means it - is a social-economic system where the working class (as defined by Marx) control the means of production. That is absolutely not what happened in Venezuela.

Venezuela's politics are certainly a strain of left-wing and certainly use socialist rhetoric, but any actual form of socialism as an economic system was not, and has not been, acheived in that country. And don't think I'm being shifty and saying "it doesn't count as socialism if it doesn't work" - I'll happily state that the USSR, Maoist China, the DDR, Tito's Yugoslavia etc. were all socialist countries, and utterly st with it, too. I suspect McDonnell would agree.

Venezuela's economic problems are mostly because Chavez's way of 'distributing control to the workers' was to put all his political mates and supporters in direct charge of PDVSA - Venezuela's state oil company - where they could collect lavish salaries and bribes while generally running the entire edifice physically and financially into the ground because they knew nothing about running a major oil industry. The level of corruption and kleptocracy throughout Venezuelan politics and economics was horrific - basically a social and political elite gutting the entire fabric of a country for their own power and financial gain and then becoming literal dictators to keep it that way. The fact that a few truely excellent social programmes and changes came out of this mess in the first years before the looting started in earnest does nothing to redeem the regime or its supporters but doesn't make them in themselves wrong.

But the only way this bears any comparison with Labour is if you genuinely think that Corbyn is going to nationalise the entire City of London and put random Momentum members in charge of all the FTSE 100 companies, and then suspend parliament when this proves unpopular.

Given both Corbyn and McDonnell's lifelong commitment to actual bottom-up socialism (as witnessed by McDonnell's drive to extend worker representation and ownership throughout the economy) and parliamentary democracy I really don't think this is a likely scenario. Even on paper Labour's programme is not extreme or reckless - it only seems so viewed through the narrow and right-shifted Overton Window of UK politics. And I agree with those who say that many of their more radical proposals will, unfortunately but inevitably, be smoothed off or abandoned due to the nature of politics, parliament, the civil service and whatever economic climate they find themselves in.

TL:DR? I think Jeremy Corbyn will be the next PM and I very much look forward to that being the case.

[The Dangerous Elk]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnjyAcHUkS4

if after watching this (if you are young enough not to of seen these sts before) you think Corbyn and his cabal are anything new...watch again.

[B'stard Child]

2xChevrons said:

B'stard Child said:

McDonnell said:

I think in Venezuela they took a wrong turn, a not particularly effective path, not a socialist path.

There are lessons to be learned on the mistakes all around."is that they just weren't socialist enough

Anyway I think a Labour Government is exactly what is needed to show the youngsters just exactly how ste life can be under a proper one!!!

Gonna give me loads of sts and giggles while it lasts

I want to dig into this because I'm getting annoyed by people either taking McDonnell's quote out of context or deliberately misinterpreting it.

TL:DR? I think Jeremy Corbyn will be the next PM and I very much look forward to that being the case.

In Bold - yep

And edited to add - you seem to mistake me for someone who wants serious debate on a forum

The Who summed it up in Won't get fooled again

All we will ever get with change in UK Politics is

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

[djohnson]

B'stard Child said:

djohnson said:

B'stard Child said:

Anyway I think a Labour Government is exactly what is needed to show the youngsters just exactly how ste life can be under a proper one!!!

This is the only potential upside of a Corbyn victory, it shows show another generation that Socialism is flawed and hence hopefully pushes it to back the lunatic fringes of UK politics, where it belongs, for many more years. However it'd be a shame if we really have to go through it to do so, given the precedents and plentiful and easy to find and to understand.

Do they listen to you?

They don't listen to me

I can happily "ride out" 3-5 years of labour lunacy if it does what the last proper Labour government did *

Note - which is lead to Conservatives/Conservative Lite governments for 38 years plus

Nope they defo don’t listen. It seems to be the kids and the public sector employees who back him in terms of the people I know. Agreed it might not be that bad long run but I’d really rather we didn’t have to endure 5 years of it added to which the subsequent pain of clearing up the resultant debt pile and general mess.

[Robertj21a]

There's a good reason why public service employees would vote for Labour !

[djohnson]

2xChevrons said:

. Even on paper Labour's programme is not extreme or reckless -

National debt at current circa 1,500 billion is too high but just about manageable. Labour have a further 1,000 billion of spending planned. To me this is reckless.

Even the institute for fiscal studies said there was a massive unfunded spending commitment in Labour’s plans. This is reckless.

Upping corporate tax and taking 10% of every sizeable business (the latter is extreme) will cause business and inbound capital to go elsewhere on a big scale. This is especially unusual policy post Brexit when most would advocate exactly the opposite. Risking jobs, inbound investment and the value of Sterling in this way is reckless.

[JagLover]

Robertj21a said:

There's a good reason why public service employees would vote for Labour !

Not really

If the state is bankrupt then true austerity would be to cut public sector salaries and accrued pension rights, not holding down general pay rises to 1% on top of pay rises driven by climbing pay scales.

If you have an entitlement to a generous final salary pension scheme for 20+ years in retirement it is very much in your interests that the employer promising this stays solvent.

[djohnson]

JagLover said:

Robertj21a said:

There's a good reason why public service employees would vote for Labour !

Not really

If the state is bankrupt then true austerity would be to cut public sector salaries and accrued pension rights, not holding down general pay rises to 1% on top of pay rises driven by climbing pay scales.

If you have an entitlement to a generous final salary pension scheme for 20+ years in retirement it is very much in your interests that the employer promising this stays solvent.

Yep but many don’t see that link.

[Robertj21a]

JagLover said:

Not really

If the state is bankrupt then true austerity would be to cut public sector salaries and accrued pension rights, not holding down general pay rises to 1% on top of pay rises driven by climbing pay scales.

If you have an entitlement to a generous final salary pension scheme for 20+ years in retirement it is very much in your interests that the employer promising this stays solvent.

True, but you're confusing common sense with Labour dogma.

[The Dangerous Elk]

djohnson said:

JagLover said:

Robertj21a said:

There's a good reason why public service employees would vote for Labour !

Not really

If the state is bankrupt then true austerity would be to cut public sector salaries and accrued pension rights, not holding down general pay rises to 1% on top of pay rises driven by climbing pay scales.

If you have an entitlement to a generous final salary pension scheme for 20+ years in retirement it is very much in your interests that the employer promising this stays solvent.

Yep but many don’t see that link.

Because they are told they are "an investment" not a cost ?

[caelite]

I think we will get a Labour/SNP/Green coalition.

It'll all go tits up, Corbyn will disappear to some island somewhere, Nicola Sturgeon will end up PM.

[Helicopter123]

caelite said:

I think we will get a Labour/SNP/Green coalition.

It'll all go tits up, Corbyn will disappear to some island somewhere, Nicola Sturgeon will end up PM.

Caroline Lucas is a very impressive performer.

In many ways, she would provide the fresh start that our politics needs.

I can't see it happening though.