UK Politics
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!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
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It's perfect for Labour. They get to shower Rishi in shit until the general election and then quietly deselect her or move her aside for an actual candidate. Why wouldn't you?
My main worry is that she's just so mad that she might cause trouble for us even in the limited time she's going to be in the PLP. If I were in Starmer's shoes, I'd have had her sign some sort of contract promising not to speak to the press, at all, ever.
Well, if she does then Starmer can just kick her out again. He gets to have his cake and eat it that way; all of the embarrassment for Sunak of having an MP cross the floor, and the chance to performatively sack an MP that crosses a line.
Principles
Maybe its hard for the current labour party to understand that, but the party of the workers should not welcome hardcore right wingers no matter what the circumstances are
This is nothing but arrogant posturing. Who put you in charge of what the party of the workers should and shouldn't do?
Because it is a direct contradiction for the party of workers to welcome people with anti worker views?
What is an 'anti worker view'?
Accusing union activists who heckled her for showing up at a protest in support of P&O workers who her government failed to support of being 'hard-left militants' might be such an example
That's not an anti worker view, it's a description, either accurate or not, of a few shouty people at a protest.
Slurs against the supporters of the organisations who won workers all their rights isn't anti worker?
How about repeatedly voting on bills to reduce the rights of workers to collectively bargain for better treatment? Or does she have to shoot striking people on the picket line for you to accept she doesn't care about labour
There you go, some actual facts! Much easier to have a conversation when we talk about those instead of grandstanding, isn't it?
I don't agree with her votes on union issues, of course. But now she's joined the party promising to reverse those, she's implicitly endorsed reversing them. I assume she voted with the Whip. Maybe she's changed her mind on that stuff, maybe not; maybe she never believed it and just did what the Whips said. I guess we'll see if and how her voting record changes now she's joined Labour.
She's also campaigned for rent controls, which puts her to the left of current Labour policy. So, where does that leave us? She's anti-worker but pro-renter? She's left of some MPs, right of some others, so... just like every MP, then?
I think you've got principles and policies mixed up. What you've described is a policy.
A principle for a party of workers might be: To champion workers rights for the betterment of society.
A policy for that principle could be: to not accept right wing nutters into your party because they are inherently anti worker.
But equally another policy could be: publicly humilate incumbent anti worker government in an election cycle by accepting a defector from their party knowing full well it will be temporary because they're standing down in the next election.
In a crucial election year one policy is infinitely better than the other.
This government don't need any more humiliation, this only humiliated Labour by having a former member of the government be allowed to sit among them
That's not how the news cycle sees it. If we are to believe the left wing rhetoric that the entire media is against Labour always and forever then the media proclaiming a win for Starmer and a humiliation for Sunak speaks volumes. And that's what most of the electorate will see as well.
There are two points here, and I'm going to sidestep whether her joining Labour is a good idea and focus on the other.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with this. We have seen repeatedly that people's memories are like goldfish. You have to keep it up for an extended period to stick, otherwise we will end up with the news cycle burying positive news for boosting the Tories.
All it takes is a bad angle of a bacon sandwich, and the press vultures will completely blow up any negative thing they can to derail Labour.