The referendum became a vote on immigration and opened doors to Britain’s darker places; however the forces of light have not reacted well. I am still hopeful that facts and reason will prevail, but recent history does not auger well. …
Over the weekend, Dan Hodges, a right wing commentator, who claims to be ex Labour, wrote a piece stating that Owen Smith had lost the Leadership election. Essentially he argues that relying exclusively on his alleged superiority in winning an election is bogus, because he can’t. His argument was that while many Jeremy Corbyn supporters are maybe prepared to compromise to win the next election, they are not prepared to compromise to lose. This is pretty insightful for Hodges. What he and many in the PLP underestimate is the massive anger felt by many of the 200,000 Labour Party members who fought the 2015 general election being asked to concede the political offer to an inadequate front bench, an eventually demonstrably inadequate manifesto and an inadequate campaign. …
This is what I think happened in the Courts who have I believe let the Labour Party’s members down. …
This is awful, worse than last time, probably because Corbyn’s opponents know this is their last chance. It’s also completely unnecessary and a diversion from the task of opposing the Tories in Parliament made more acute by the Referendum result. I shall continue to support Jeremy Corbyn for four reasons and this blog looks them; about the policy platform, the electoral strategy, together with a vision about the desired role of Labour’s members and finally, sadly abuse and cheating. Possibly most importantly, it’s about the role of the membership in the Party, because as John McDonnel and Chunky Mark have said, “It’s not Jeremy Corbyn they fear, it’s you”, a Party of ½ million and still growing. …
This was my storify about the coup against Jeremy Corbyn in 2016.
I am fed up hearing about the PLP’s 9m vote mandate. Firstly, the total labour vote is ~8.7m. Secondly just above 5m voted for winning candidates i.e.the members of the PLP, the other 3.7m voted for Labour candidates that lost and thirdly, they won because they were Labour candidates, and that is chosen by the Party membership. …
Many the implications of the vote to leave the EU has been exercising my mind. I have finally got my notes & thoughts to publish my initial views on the politics of the aftermath; this article attempts to limit itself to the events and thoughts of the first week after the referendum. I have published them as at the date I started my storify where I collected the sources I wanted to quote. This is because it is one of a planned series, I plan to follow up with a piece on immigration, one on Labour Party and Left unity and one on the mutation of capitalism and politics.
One of the reasons for my delay was that I was asked for a number of quotes in the IT trade press which took some writing time. I have posted the complete quotes as three articles in linkedin pulse, on Cybersecurity, Privacy & Trade and the single market, covering innovation, TTIP & Privacy and net neutrality. …
The highest levels of international judiciary have been busy over the last week, I report and comment on the Microsoft vs. FBI on linkedin Pulse, in an article called “Citizens Win”. It was quite simple in the end, the law under which the FBI was seeking search warrant powers was not on of the post 911 laws, but an earlier one and the US District Court says that the law grants no power of inspection abroad. The spooks are going to have to apply for an Irish warrant. In Europe however, Tom Watson’s & David Davies’s judicial review on DRIPA have reached the Advocate General. This reported by Tom Watson here, and by Glyn Moody here. Watson writes about the need for strong judicial review of the search warrants, and Moody brings up that mass surveillance can only be used in the fight against serious crime. …
That was a shock, a soul deadening shock. In the words of the meme, I felt a grief for the loss of the future I thought I and my children had. How did this happen? How could we have voted to follow the corrupt and the vain, Johnson and Farage. The answer may have been most rapidly and accurately identified by John Harris of the Guardian in an article, entitled “If you’ve got money, you vote in … if you haven’t got money, you vote out” in which he identifies those whom we’ve known about for years, who can be described in a number of ways. In my micro blog post, “Pebbles”, I describe them as ‘globalisation’s losers’, the working class whose towns, communities and institutions have been smashed during the neo-liberal ascendency, communities that Labour stopped listening to and representing in 1997 leading to a loss of 5 million votes between 1997 and 2010. Making this even more problematic for Labour is that nearly ⅔ of Labour’s voters, voted remain, and just as globalisation’s losers cannot be ignored, nor can Labour’s majority of remainers. What is to be done? …
I was hoping to write a piece on a response to the “Leave”vote and a response to the Chakrabarti Inquiry but Ann Black of Labour’s NEC in a circular wrote and asked what her maillist thought of the shenanigans. I had to reply and decided to share it with you all. She stated she planned to vote to include Jeremy on the ballot paper, which I support but asked for opinion on if there should be a freeze date for inclusion on the electoral roll and what to do about registered supporters. I argue to include all members, including those that have just joined in the ballot for Leader. I also argue that the Party should offer its supporters an opportunity to register and join in the ballot. I also commented that the collapse of the National Policy Forum is an opportunity. …