In a ludicrous statement, the Crown Prosecution Service argues that Conservative Party agents and candidates did not dishonestly submit false returns – because the Conservative Party told them it was legal.
That really is what the decision says. I quote:
“However, it is clear agents were told by Conservative Party headquarters that the costs were part of the national campaign and it would not be possible to prove any agent acted knowingly or dishonestly. Therefore we have concluded it is not in the public interest to charge anyone referred to us with this offence.”
So the Conservative Party broke electoral law, that is not in question and they have been fined for it by the Electoral Commission. But no individual may be prosecuted because Conservative Party HQ told them to do it? Their defence was that they are collectively all crooks, and this was accepted by the “independent” Crown Prosecution Service?
On top of which, the Crown Prosecution Service also colludes with the Tory Party by repeating the lie the Tories have assiduously spread that the allegations only related to the “Battlebus”. Of course for generations every Party Leader has campaigned from a “Battlebus”, singular, and the public are familiar with it. The Tory meme then goes everyone does that, why is it illegal?
In fact this was about something much bigger. Not one bus, but scores of buses, bussing activists and campaign directors in to marginal seats where they were also in paid for accommodation. The CPS statement refers to no allegations at all except a “Battlebus”, singular. By repeating this Tory lie in presenting the issue, the Crown Prosecution Service prove beyond any doubt that they are directly in collusion with the Tory Party.
The agents and candidates were apparently informed by Central Office that the battle bus was financially kosher. Should they have questioned this? Their assumption was that CCO wouldn’t tell lies. Naive, yes. But explicable. As it turned out CCO hung them out to dry. The bus was cleared by CCO lawyers, again apparently. Who had sanctioned illegal expenditure – the law is clear, even if the CPS isn’t.
Only professional negligence or deliberate malpractice would seem to explain the lawyers’ guidance. At the very least the SRA should be involved:
http://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/solicitor-check/publications/disciplinary-guidance.page
Having stood for election I seem to recall that it is part of the election agent’s ”job” to ascertain/establish the legality of ALL such matters especially financial restrictions!
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
That they were responsible for due diligence in ensuring the return was correct.
Not enough for them to say that someone else told them it was correct.
That argument doesn’t work on your tax return, for example.
If your return is wrong it’s down to you, and there’s no way of passing the blame to your accountant who said it was all correct.
Basically what the CPS have done is apply a sort of chain of command bureaucracy argument.
But that’s not how it’s supposed to work. The local returns people are supposed to be independent and do their own research and not rely solely on what Tory Head Office tells them.
Perhaps worth checking cases that have been prosecuted in the past to see has such an argument been refuted before.
Intriguingly, the links for guidance on spending by candidates and agents currently return a 404 error:
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/214516/UKPGE-Part-3-Spending-and-donations.pdf
The link just worked fine for me.
I was an agent once. All agents were called in for a meeting in which council officers laid out the spending limits and what it covered. As we had a budget of zero I didn’t even bother reading most of the literature they made available but I think it was basically he rules as on the commissions web site.
I meant two redirecting links on the (yes, working) page I cited. Under ‘Forms and explanatory notes’ – the others under this heading work.
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/87932/Declaration-candidate-UK-Parliament—Final.pdf
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/87933/Declaration-Agent-UK-Parliament—Final.pdf
The document couldn’t be more explicit in placing full legal responsibility on both candidate and agent. One would assume that the equivalent document for the 2015 election would have been similarly explicit, though that would have to be checked. It should be archived somewhere.
I put a post on Facebook yesterday not quite as eloquently as your good self Sir, I wrote the whole Rotten to the Core City Establishment I
Is Corrupt and The CPS are not fit for Purpose
How can you trust the with the economy if they cant even get their election expenses in order? No wonder the NHS is going to the dogs.
I think the NHS is going to the dogs because that’s precisely the way they want it to go.
Their policies, the debt, the mismanagement, the media stories are all designed to make the case that the only solution to take the NHS forward is to privatise it.
Did the same with the railways back in the day.
And now we know how bad the railways are under privatisation.
It’s a fraud, a money making scheme for their elite friends.
Vote Labour or lose it forever.
This is the problem – people believe the NHS is up shit creek because silly politicians don’t know their arse from their elbow, they don’t realise that it’s far more vindictive than that. And what is happening is a long slow campaign to manufacture the public consent of a new privatised health system based on ‘efficiency’
As is the same with the education system, Herbie. Deliberately dumbed down intentionally through constant faux changes. The end result and intention being privatisation. Or ‘Sell the lot off to our own rich mates’ in Toryspeak.
Secret Barrister has this explanation damning
https://thesecretbarrister.com/2017/05/10/myth-busting-the-tory-election-fraud-a-10-point-guide/
Jools.
This is from your excellent link.
“The CPS in fact said the opposite, concluding, as we’ve seen, that there was evidence to support a prosecution of failing to submit true expenditure reports, but declined to prosecute as an act of clemency on public interest grounds.”
An act of clemency, on public interest grounds, if I’m not mistaken, removing the Tories is greatly in the publics interest. I smell a rat.
There is plenty here to legitimately criticise the Conservative party for, not least the obstruction they put up to the original Electoral Commission investigation and the subsequent outright lying regards the outcome of the CPS investigation (local spending was clearly NOT properly reported despite T May’s claims to the contrary) as well as the frankly appalling comments of McCartney, but it is not a cover up. And rather than all commentators, including our blogger, claiming so, I think they would be better served using the ammunition of Conservative deceit and dishonesty (and there’s plenty of it) that has already been revealed in this case to attack the Topry’s with.
https://i1.wp.com/thelincolnite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Karl-McCartney-battlebus.jpg
Here he is. Lady Pidding, who I have referred to before in connection with the Mark Clarke/Elliott Johnson suicide scandal, is standing 3rd on the left front row, holding a McCartney placard.
from
http://thelincolnite.co.uk/2017/05/karl-mccartney-exonerated-by-cps-after-tory-election-fraud-investigation/
Or indeed nests of them. And sharp sh*thouse ones at that.
The nasty party, getting nasty over the Tory expenses scandal.
“Conservative Party Chairman Patrick McLoughlin has threatened anyone who thinks Tory election expenses are still worth discussing. He called for people “on the internet” to stop talking about it:”
https://www.thecanary.co/2017/05/10/the-tory-party-chairs-chilling-threat-to-anyone-who-still-wants-to-discuss-the-election-expenses-scandal/
Keep talking and posting about our glorious imperialist, isolationist party online, and we’ll come round to your door and @#*¿ you right up.
Reminds me of a young Boris, RoS!
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2009/mar/29/boris-johnson-channel-4
Right. He’ll do. Handcuff him.
” I have to advise you Sir that you are being arrested under section … and anything that you do say will be taken down as evidence and may be used in a court of law against you.”
” Please get in the car Sir. Let’s do this the easy way”
” Back-up support please. Suspect resisting arrest . Thanks. Over.”
That slug doesn’t look like he could survive much of a battering. Didn’t his predecessor die in a chemical bog on some Tory jolly into the countryside?
It may be represented clearer by mentioning the Crown. The Monarchy rules supreme. This is HM Government after all and true Democracy is really not possible in a Monarchy where the upper house is full of serfdom to that Crown. They have been got at without a doubt. Something of the night has turned up in the wee small hours at their door or office and cast a spell upon them.
Indeed, the unaccountable power of the crown, implemented & enforced by the privy councilor system.
It’s the same system that wheels out the likes of past sell-by-date politicians like Gordon Brown et al whenever needed by the establishment to shore something up – all shadow cabinet politicians have to become members of the privy councilor system.
Rotten to the core but very few know of the power of this system – I urge all to read the essay linked above ‘My experiences, the Scott Inquiry, the British Legal System’ by Gerald Reaveley James.
These three recent news pieces are all connected:
http://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/scandal-bring-british-govt-knees-wont/
http://www.king5.com/news/local/hanford/tunnel-collapses-at-hanford-no-radiation-released-officials-say/438227872
http://wtkr.com/2017/05/10/south-korea-election-shakes-up-us-north-korea-dynamic/
“Woke up, fell out of bed,
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
And looking up I noticed I was late.
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke,
Somebody spoke and I went into a dream”
Jeff Beck – A Day In The Life (Live at Ronnie Scott’s)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHHY3eRUMsM
And the original (this is well worth watching)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usNsCeOV4GM
Thanks, RobG. Any song beginning with ‘woke up’ always reminds me of this Nazareth song! Apologies for going in a different direction.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lcjgyV3PWYg
Nazareth always make me think of Gram and Emmy-Lou
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ivVJzGgcq0
No worries, JOML. I enjoyed the Nazareth song. Anything that makes people think is ok by me.
I know you’ll think I’m an old git, but I’ll get back to ‘A Day In The Life’:
Abbey Road studios, London, January 1967: George Martin was somewhat bewildered when he had been asked to provide farmyard noises, including a pack of fox hounds in full cry. Then there was the Victorian steam organs, and then the 41-piece orchestra with no score to play, and hours spent searching for a note which only dogs could hear. A Day In The Life was inspired by the recent death of Tara Browne, the Guinness family heir, who had been killed in a car crash. Tara was friends with both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. John Lennon started scribbling lyrics and asked Paul McCartney to help him out. McCartney contributed some lines beginning with ‘Woke up, fell out of bed, Dragged a comb across my head’. The finished song didn’t fit in with the overall theme of the Sergeant Pepper album, and so it was put in as the closing track on side two. During the recording, Lennon wanted “a sound building up from nothing to the end of the world”. That was the night George Martin faced a 41-piece symphony orchestra and told them there was no written score. All he could tell the orchestra was the highest and lowest notes to play, and inbetween it was every man for himself.
‘A Day In The Life’ was recorded at Abbey Road amid a gala of pop aristocrats, such as Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull. The orchestra wore full evening dress and carnival regala. Studio One thronged with peacock clothes, eastern robes and exotically-tinted smoke. The pace was frenetic. The Beatles worked from 7pm to 3am simply to produce a chorus of gibberish for the album’s play-out groove. Towards the end of the recording session, Ringo Starr declared that he was going to keel over, and promptly did so. The final touch was a note at 20,000 hertz frequency, audible only to dogs.
‘A Day In The Life’, a song produced by George Martin (who died last year)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usNsCeOV4GM
In some positive news it looks like every other party in Scotland is refusing to go into collations with the Tories so their ‘resurgence’ won’t count for much. The wonders of a modern voting system.
That Westminster is still FTPT is tragic. That English local elections are still FPTP is beyond belief.
One day people of another land or language, culture or millennium will talk ancient history about swivel-eyed Blair invading Iraq or Cameron attacking Libya like we talk about Caligula or the murder of Julius Caesar.
Somehow we have found ourselves in a little vortex or hotspot of total madness in which the capability of erasing whole continents is possible at the same time of suppressing knowledge about it from 90 % of the general public.
By rights, with the sum total of absolute corruption we have experienced in my short lifetime, it ought to be possible to shunt the UK parliament and all who dwell in it into the river Thames by driving one of those 3 lane quarry bulldozers down the M40, through Buckingham Palace, Pall Mall, Whitehall, taking in the Foreign Office and turning left through Westminster Abbey and Winston Churchill’s statue which is permanently lit internally by natural gas.
Who the fuck do these war criminals think they are that they think any one of them deserves a vote from us?
^Mods, please note the terrorist fantasies above. It’s the converts you have to watch.
Are these ‘terrorist fantasies’?
“William Blum
Overthrowing other people’s governments: The Master List.”
https://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list
They’ve been watching for 20 years and they haven’t found anything yet. David Cameron and Tony Blair are the terrorists. Sadly they didn’t stick to fantasy.
“They hate us for our freedom and democracy” is a very hollow phrase when you live in the most undemocratic and un-free societies on Earth.
The power of propaganda, ay.
Giyane – your comment reminded me of Percy B’s wonderful “Ozymandias”
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Everyone gone out to buy HSBC shares? Looks like you’ve started something rolling RobG.
You are so right. You stood against Jack Straw in Burnley in 2005 and, when you took the police evidence of ‘treating’ another electoral offence, you were told it was just ‘an old law’ – so is murder. They did not want to know. After the same election – the last where I campaigned for Liberal Democrats, riding high on their principled opposition to Blair’s Iraq War – I discovered that the Tories had also used dirty Ashcroft money to run a ‘dirty campaign’ against us using fake telephone ‘pollsters’ to slur our policies. Evidence is now emerging that more of the same Ashcroft money was used in 2010 in the same vein to smear Lib Dems in particular. The ‘lack of evidence to provide a criminal conviction’ is not surprising in the failure of either the individual police forces or the CPS to consider charges of conspiracy which widen the scope of permissible evidence. The Crown Prosecution Service and the Police forces are hardly independent – they all know which side their bread is buttered.
Hyacinth Bucket on QT tonight. Another few thousand votes for the Tories.
About as interesting and amusing as a serious disease. I believe there are reasonably-priced courses in ‘Fall-flat Comedy’.
Can’t take much more.
Cameron and Brown rise from their graves.
http://news.sky.com/story/hugs-and-selfies-as-cameron-and-brown-hit-campaign-trail-10873105
Cameron was in a butchers admiring the sausages. No pork jokes please!
Not even jock pokes?
QT 22.50 BBC1 Edinburgh
David Dimbleby +
Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry
Conservative Home Office minister Ben Wallace
SNP’s Joanna Cherry
Actor David Hayman
Financial Times columnist Merryn Somerset Webb.
Angry, but not at all surprised. CPS not fit for purpose.
One page letter from Yanis Varufakis in this evening’s Standard to the effect that EU will not negotiate in the best interests of the EU but of the ruling elite. There is little or no point in negotiating with them as they will prevaricate and prevent any reasonable deal. Either offer a Norway type deal or instead unilaterally guarantee rights for EU citizens to remain in the UK thereby seizing moral high ground, withdraw from negotiations forcing EU to come to Britain (or a stalemate).
So the bbc left out some Important bits from last nights Newsnight Chomsky interview..Wonder why.
The BBC‘s Newsnight programme featured an interview with Noam Chomsky on 10 May. But the BBC didn’t air the entire chat between Chomsky and its presenter Evan Davis. And what it left out speaks volumes.
” They should ask me to vote. I would vote for them.
He continued, on Corbyn in particular: ”
” I think he’s a very decent, good person. I’ve followed his career for some years.”…
” If he had a fair treatment from the media – that would make a big difference. ”
https://www.thecanary.co/2017/05/11/heres-the-moment-from-yesterdays-newsnight-the-bbc-didnt-want-you-to-see-video/
No surprise Brian. The anti Labour bias on the BBC is appalling and a disgrace.
Thanks for your other note btw. I dropped a line to Squonk offering my condolences.
Aww Cheers Mary
I Thought you would want to.
All the bast to you
Best 🙂
I personally think the levels of corruption in politics is the worst I’ve ever seen – in both countries where I can vote. Australia is just as bad, to the point that good old Joh Peterson looks like a fairly average crook, compared to the scoundrels in Canberra. Privatization is the most blatant form of this corruption. It’s essentially a case of selling of assets that don’t belong to you, to mates and allies who will ‘look after you’, and all for a price much, much lower than value. If this isn’t corruption, I’m not sure what is. Of course, it’s dressed up in all sorts of fancy non-economics from the Chicago school of crookery and bullshit, but it’s a crock, and always has been. I’m pleased Corbyn has a manifesto commitment to re-nationalization, though perhaps the UK public are too indoctrinated to see a good idea for what it is.
I believe it was Dewy who wrote that politics is the shadow cast over society by big business. Smart fellow. Corruption starts at the top – always – and burrows down like a diseased rat. So, no wonder Tory HQ gave shonky advice to their troops; it’s what they are paid to do, by their benefactors and sponsors. Alas, in both the UK and Australia, the law enforcement bodies are hopelessly, systemically, institutionally bent, at pretty much all levels. I’d argue it’s even worse in Oz, where the AFP are essentially the storm troopers for the Liberals. Can’t expect them to tackle corruption either.
Nevermind though. Some people are forecasting economic collapse this year. This could prove cathartic.
It’s all going belly-up sometime soon.
There will be total chaos – as always with Capitalism – and when the dice land people will make-up their own mind.
Spot on. The cps are far to busy prosecuting harmless people for crimes committed because of poverty, and putting them in prison. The cps and the IPCC are all part of the machine keeping people down. I am at a complete state of shock that some people find this behaviour acceptable
Some virtual mugs here to send as presents to any Tories you happen to know. So witty.
https://markdoran.wordpress.com/mugs/
The |Secret Barrister. Myth-busting the Inverted Commas Tory Election Fraud Inverted Commas.
Solicitors main job is obfuscating the law, then circumventing it for THEIR clients. This piece is no different:
https://thesecretbarrister.com/2017/05/10/myth-busting-the-tory-election-fraud-a-10-point-guide/
From the outset it talks about and concurs with the decision of the CPS which is simply that the local agents were not responsible for the law-breaking activity of using Tory HQ funds to boost local campaigning.
The CPS is obviously correct that no agents had any control over the national ( funded by HSBC ) mega spending, nor did they know where it originated from or how it was spent. if they made any errors it was because they were mis-informed ( that is lying to anybody but a politician ) by Tory HQ. It isn’t reasonable for a local agent to expect Tory HQ to lie blatantly and grossly to their agents.
The CPS, by using the word ‘ agent ‘ has conflated the local agents with HQ agents . In typical solicitor double-speak, they are implying that the common English term ‘ agents ‘ of the Tory party who work in HQ are covered under the same ruling as ‘ local agents ‘. No agents are to blame = nobody working for the Tory party in any capacity is to blame.
I am extremely proud to say that from the age of 10, when I first understood that the ‘professions’ were instruments of money-making by fraud, I have never been lured into any one of their thieving systems, either as a practitioner nor as a client.
The solicitors here are trying to exculpate the agents of Tory HQ by pointing out that local agents although technically guilty of giving false information, were not primarily to blame. In a sane world where journalists ask investigative questions in order to sniff out the truth there would be a clamour of demands asking who then was to blame, to which the obvious answer is the CEO of Tory HQ.
But we don’t live in a sane world , do we ? The world we live in is where a British Prime Minister can tell the Houses of Parliament brazen lies about Saddam Hussain’s WMD, and the mostly solicitor class of MPs who know absolutely that he is lying, choose to accept the lies as part of the British neo-colonial 20th century re-vamp that was put into cold storage by World Wars 1 & 2.
What a good thing there was a solicitor handy at the time of this little crisis for the Tory party, to helpfully intervene.
Just look at today’s Mail, Sun and Telegraph front pages.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-39892048
Corbyn did not run over the cameraman’s foot. The car in which he was being driven by a police driver ran over it. There was a press mêlée around the car as it arrived.
In any case, Laura Kuenssberg was on hand to administer first aid.
It’s a wonder they didn’t imply McCluskey was drunk.
The Tory corporate media are in danger of overdoing things. The people might rumble them. You never know.
Not long now till the headline “Corbyn Tries To Eat Baby, Kuenssberg Saves The Day”. Followed by an article on how the “true working class” love austerity and can’t get enough of it.
Nearly 10am and Jeremy hasn’t offered me any free stuff yet.
#worried
You can read all the slime on today’s front pages to be going on with.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-39892048
Theresa will stuff you and charge you for it, any time of day.
#disgusted
QT became quite riotous last night. The Scots have more backbone than the English.
Dimbleby was a JAM – ‘just about managed’ to keep control. His accent gets more and more plummy as he ages. ex-Charterhouse like Hunt dontchaknow.
The audience got the measure of Ben Wallace ‘security minister at the Home Office’ aswe were told. Ex company commander Scots Guards and then a stint at QuinetiQ where he was director of overseas business.
I have just gone back to Wikipedia to check the actual sentence and could not believe my eyes. Just after midnight, his entry was altered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Wallace_(politician)
Before
In 2003 Ben Wallace joined British aerospace company, [[QinetiQ]] as their overseas business development director. During his employment he worked with a number of overseas Government security agencies.
NOW
+ From 2003 to 2005 he was overseas director of [[QinetiQ]], the UK’s part-privatised National Defence Laboratory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ben_Wallace_(politician)&diff=779944719&oldid=776195610
You have to copy and paste the whole line to be able to see what I am talking about. The user name is not given. Just an IP address.
Do they think we are thick or something? So now we know for sure that there is interference on Wikipedia. Is this the Tory crowd’s work.
The bit about his being a member of the Royal Company of Archers, Her Maj’s bodyguard stayed in. LOL.
Why doesn’t the Labour party actually try to hit the Tory party?
Right-wing points in the Labour manifesto include
* support for NATO
* support for British nuclear weapons
* support for the arms industry
* support for Israel
Near the beginning, it has this right-wing muck:
“Labour understands that wealth creation is a collective endeavour – between investors, workers, public services, and government. Each contributes and each must share equitably in the rewards.”
That makes any serious left-wing person cringe.
Stupid crap includes
* bilge about gay and transsexual rights
* lowering voting age to 16 (i.e. the Facebook vote)
Positive promises in the document include:
* higher income tax for the top 5%
* higher corporation tax
* ban zero-hours contracts
* higher penalties for employers who pay less than the minimum wage
* taking action on tax havens
* a public register of beneficial owners for all companies and trusts
* cutting waiting time for NHS treatment
* renationalisation of rail
* renationalisation of what used to be a state mail service
* renationalisation of energy
* extension of Freedom of Information Act to companies that run public services
and a measure which is in the right direction but goes nothing like far enough:
* making private schools charge VAT
Unfortunately, the manifesto contains absolutely nothing on
* inheritance tax
* abolition of the monarchy
* hitting the banks
* other necessary nationalisations (pharmaceuticals, telecommunications)
The proposed National Investment Bank will be funded by public money leveraged with private sector finance, with the aim of filling “gaps in lending” by private banks. In other words, Labour proposes a government of bankers’ lackeys, rather like the existing one.
Corbyn is no Mélenchon.
Just to add to the Blokes list
There is nothing for voters either, Cath Smith previous comments, that the Labour Party would look at PR again, offering its members and voters across other parties a fair and proportional voting system for the first time ever, seems to have been just supposition.
That a Labour Government which has wallowed in Tory policies for bear enough 15 years from PFI/PPI to today’s acceptance of a Tory offshore kingdom for the already rich to carry on fleecing our tax system, flouting tax laws and hurting the economy.
Theresa wants to give these 0.1% some 79 billion, Labour claims today, but it is prepared to take on the Trident program costing far more than that, especially if Scotland votes for Independence and ask that repositories for WMD’s and facilities for nuclear submarines are shut down, or replaced with a massive mushroom farm and a lucrative deep water Harbour for just about any trade one cares to mention.
It’s almost as if they are focussing on popular policies that are easy to argue for and very difficult to oppose.
Rather than going all out for the abolition of the monarchy which would be playing into the hands of the right. The road from this current moment to socialism through the ballot box requires victories that strengthen the working class to the point where they can recognise the contradictions inherent in their circumstances and create change from below.
This manifesto is not only fantastic for this election it’s hugely important in the battle for Labour’s future and the general cause of raising class consciousness.
Don’t worry, Stu – I will vote Labour and I think Corbyn would join Wilson as one of the best two PMs since Attlee. But support for nuclear weapons, the arms industry, NATO membership, and Israel? And no hitting of Big Pharma? Also how about hitting the private schools harder? That last point is especially important, and on that matter this manifesto falls behind some of the Labour manifestos of the past. Let’s hit the effing Tory scum where it hurts – and in areas they don’t want to talk about, because when they talk about them they expose themselves as the population-hating, elitist, “f*ck you, I’m all right Jack”, inhuman barbarians that they are.
My understanding of working class strength and where consciousness comes from is different from yours, but let’s talk realpolitik because this is a general election on Smartphone Planet, and please please can Labour hit the Tory enemy, hit them hard, and fight dirty. I deeply want Labour to win this election. Personalise attacks on Theresa May. This isn’t an intellectual debate. She says the Tories aren’t the “nasty party”, well why is she so keen on ripping foxes to pieces and smearing their blood on young children? Why did Boris Johnson plot to have thugs beat the shit out of someone? They are as nasty as nasty can be. Of course they are the nasty party. This is what needs to be brought home to the electorate by any means necessary.
Don’t forget that Theresa May’s stated reasons for calling this election (House of Lords, SNP, Brexit negotiations) are total lies. The next election would have been in 2020, a year after the probable conclusion of Brexit negotiations, so it couldn’t have interfered with them. Nor do general elections affect the House of Lords. As for the SNP, they will still have a fair-sized contingent in Westminster. All of these are obvious facts for anyone who cares to think about them. The only true bit in the election announcement was the idea that there shouldn’t be any “division” in Westminster any more. (Never mind that a forum for division is precisely what the bourgeoisie says parliamentary democracy is about.) The Tories are aiming to smash the Labour party to smithereens, and UKIP, and probably the Lib Dems too. We haven’t seen the half of it yet – all the “this traitorous bomber-applauder isn’t fit to be at a monarch’s garden party or give instructions to the armed forces” stuff that they will throw at Corbyn. As you probably know, there is a massive fifth column in Labour’s PLP and NEC, and MI5 have been drooling down their chins running material against Momentum (in whom doubtless there is also a big fifth column). My orientation is way to the left of the Labour party, and not Leninist as yours appears to be, but given the gravity of what is happening I have no hesitation in supporting the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn in this election.
Hi again, Stu. Just to respond to your first sentence: remember that this isn’t an intellectual debate. Don’t take a knife to a gunfight. The question of the Tories responding to say the proposed renationalisation of the railways doesn’t really arise. It’s good that that’s in the manifesto, but don’t expect to have much of a debate about it. The Tories called this election to try to annihilate the Labour party and they are on the offensive. Our side needs to rain kicks on them where it hurts them most. If attacks aren’t personalised against May and Johnson we could be in for a very bad time indeed. It would be totally pathetic of Corbyn to whinge “oh, but you’re not answering what we say in our manifesto”. Attack!
Jarvis Cocker covers the topic exhaustively. What more needs to be said?
https://youtu.be/Xd6E1JpwMj4
Why would any moderate Scottish Conservative want to stay in the party?
With Brexit they are no longer the party that looks after the interests of business.
With trying to make Scotland Brexit against the voters wishes it is no longer a democratic party.
Every day there are fresh revelations about dodgy Tory candidates and elected councillors. The average Scottish Tory council candidate now seems to be an Orange Order, BNP linked, anti-Muslim and highly prejudiced type who likes to tweet offensive material about just about anyone who isn’t ultra right.
May and her supporters have made it as crystal clear as it could be short of saying so that devolution will be rolled back post brexit. Taking Scotland back to the fifties. Whether the 1950s or the 1850s is difficult to say.
Uh? What is a moderate Tory? And if such animals exist, and exist in Scotland, what do you think they might do rather than stay Tories? As for devolution, be aware that the SNP government is unpopular – not among “its” half of the population, of course, who don’t blame it for anything, but to a great and increasingly great extent among the other half of the population. Of course Tory council candidates are obnoxious, prejudiced, and mostly racist – look what party they are in!
I suppose a moderate Tory could be defined as someone who although believes in policies suited for the business community nevertheless is opposed to casino capitalism, the privatising of everything and the drastic rolling back of welfare. Some of these types of Tory appear to be moving towards the Liberal Democrats down south, appalled at Brexit and the virulent British nationalism that has caused it.
In Scotland there is always the option of joining the SNP. Although the vast majority of defectors over the years from unionist parties to the SNP have come from Labour and the Liberals there has occasionally been a defector from the Tories. Notably Iain Lawson – dismayed by Thatcherism – in the 1980s.
As for any unpopularity of the SNP. You seem to be greatly influenced from down south by the unionist party and mainstream media narrative that has been stepped up over the last year and been relentlessly put across. The SNP remain by far the most trusted party in Scotland.
What is your source for believing that some “moderate” Tories are moving towards the LibDems in England?
And no, my view of the SNP is from what I hear around me in Scotland. The population is very divided. Many of those who do like the SNP like them a lot, as with supporters of Trump in the US. But then there’s the other half (in fact, more than half) of the population – and they tend to be very irritated and riled by SNP, who are viewed as ultra-politicians and absolutely full of it. For instance, you just said that I was English-influenced to think what I think about the SNP. I am inured to that, but I can tell you that that kind of reasoning annoys a lot of Scottish people a great deal – including those who vote for one of the main three Scottish opposition parties and many who don’t vote.
Never said you were English. I assumed, wrongly as you’ve now made clear, that you were not in Scotland since you seemed to have completely believed the SNP are failing badly in government narrative. Which many people in Scotland who don’t vote SNP have recognised as a ridiculous caricature.
Journalist Rachel Johnson – sister of Boris – has left the Tories over Brexit recently to join the Liberal Democrats.
Germany has taken in 1.2 million refugees during 2015/16 and one might want to take a look at what this involved and still involves, there are no illusions there it will take a decade or longer.
What response these mainly civilians would have got in this country is not to debate, I’m posting this for educational purpose.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/integrating-refugees-in-germany-an-update-a-1147053.html