Alistair Campbell

[scawsby steve]

That arrogant gobshite has been suspended from the Labour Party for voting for the Lib Dems last week. I hope he joins them; they deserve each other.

On another note, the Labour Party is being investigated by the Race and Equality Commission, on accusations of anti-semitism.

This day just gets sweeter.

[Filo]

That arrogant gobshite has been suspended from the Labour Party for voting for the Lib Dems last week. I hope he joins them; they deserve each other.

On another note, the Labour Party is being investigated by the Race and Equality Commission, on accusations of anti-semitism.

This day just gets sweeter.

The Labour party have again embarressed themselves, to be consistent Kate Hoey should have been expelled as well for backing the Brexit Party

[albie]

Steve,

In fairness you should also point out that the Tories are under investigation for Islamophobia.

I don't agree with expelling people for a one off vote outside the party they joined.
It is a private vote after all!
Constant whining and attempts to undermine the party at every opportunity is another matter though.

[scawsby steve]

That arrogant gobshite has been suspended from the Labour Party for voting for the Lib Dems last week. I hope he joins them; they deserve each other.

On another note, the Labour Party is being investigated by the Race and Equality Commission, on accusations of anti-semitism.

This day just gets sweeter.

The Labour party have again embarressed themselves, to be consistent Kate Hoey should have been expelled as well for backing the Brexit Party

Did she vote for them though? Big difference if she didn't.

[scawsby steve]

Steve,

In fairness you should also point out that the Tories are under investigation for Islamophobia.

I don't agree with expelling people for a one off vote outside the party they joined.
It is a private vote after all!
Constant whining and attempts to undermine the party at every opportunity is another matter though.

The reason I didn't mention the Tories, Albie, is that at the moment they're not under investigation; but the Muslim Council of Britain are requesting that they will be.

I hate the Tory Party as much as anyone, and if Islamophobia is prevalent, it needs rooting out.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Steve,

In fairness you should also point out that the Tories are under investigation for Islamophobia.

I don't agree with expelling people for a one off vote outside the party they joined.
It is a private vote after all!
Constant whining and attempts to undermine the party at every opportunity is another matter though.

The reason I didn't mention the Tories, Albie, is that at the moment they're not under investigation; but the Muslim Council of Britain are requesting that they will be.

I hate the Tory Party as much as anyone, and if Islamophobia is prevalent, it needs rooting out.

And yet you support Farage's party? Didn't you see the Brexit Party supporters at the count in Birmingham on Sunday night shouting at an Asian woman who'd been elected as MEP to go home?

[sha66y]

Has anyone here actually lived in an Islamic country ?

[ravenrover]

Have I read somewhere that Corbyn congratulated George Galloway after he won the election over a Labour candidate back around 2012?

[wilts rover]

Have I read somewhere that Corbyn congratulated George Galloway after he won the election over a Labour candidate back around 2012?

Ah but did he campaign for him during the election and/or come out on national tv after the election to say he had voted for him against an official Labour candidate? Which is against Labour party rules as stated in their rule book!

I think you are allowed to congratulate people for winning - you just can't come out on national tv to say you voted for them and expect to get away with it.

[albie]

Campbell could have kept his vote private. There is no issue if he does so.
He chose not to do so for a reason.

He knew full well what the rules of the party are on supporting candidates opposing the Labour candidate.
I disagree with some of the rules in place, but they need to be changed at Conference.

Hard to avoid the conclusion that this is a political move, to generate a media storm in the image of the failed "chicken coup".

Expect a co-ordinated campaign, with all the usual suspects frothing at the mouth to max pressure on the Labour Party as the UK staggers towards the GE needed.

That is the real reason why Campbell should be expelled.
That and the memory of the civilians killed in Iraq.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Yet apparently you CAN campaign with Nigel Farage and have photos of you gurning at his side splattered all over the internet and that's just dandy.

You can also twice vote against the whip and against party policy on Brexit and remain as Party Chairman.

You can make death threats against another party member and not even be investigated.

But if you say AFTER the vote that you agonised over, for the first time in your life, voting against Labour, it's hatchet time.

Strange days we live in...

[BillyStubbsTears]

Albie.

He was asked directly. He answered honestly.

I thought this Corbynite New Politics was supposed to be all about openness and inclusivity?

[Bentley Bullet]

He admitted he voted LibDem so to avoid questions that he couldn't answer in Labour's defence.

[albie]

Billy,

I said quite clearly I do not agree with some party rules.
They belong in an earlier time, and need to be revised at the first opportunity.

You will surely agree that Campbell is about as trustworthy as a wounded rattlesnake.
If he chose to respond to a question in that way, he knew what he was doing.

Any other interpretation would be perverse, would it not?

[BillyStubbsTears]

You tell me Albie. I don't claim to know what goes on in his head. Or particularly like him to be honest (although I DO understand where he came from - a culture where the Left had made Labour so toxic in the 1980s that we needed a Rottweiler to take the fight back to the press...easily forgotten).

Odd though that, if he's such a calculating so-and-so, he (like me for what it's worth) campaigned for a Corbyn victory in 2017. Which is more than some of the people currently running the party ever did under Blair and Brown.

[wilts rover]

Yet apparently you CAN campaign with Nigel Farage and have photos of you gurning at his side splattered all over the internet and that's just dandy.

You can also twice vote against the whip and against party policy on Brexit and remain as Party Chairman.

You can make death threats against another party member and not even be investigated.

But if you say AFTER the vote that you agonised over, for the first time in your life, voting against Labour, it's hatchet time.

Strange days we live in...

Well yes. You can campaign with members of other parties for a People's Vote even though it is against Labour policy and is the policy of those other parties.

What you can't do is come out on national tv to say you voted against your own party. It's in the rule book. As you know. And as Campbell knows because he said so in an interview with Owen Jones before the election.

Personally I think any Labour member who votes for an opponent against Labour should resign. Yes by all means campaign to get policy changed but voting against the party, well. But maybe that's just me and I have different morals to other people.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Wilts.

I assume you know the precise wording of the relevant clause of Labour's rules?

And it's strange morals that condemns voting of one person out of 65million against the party, but presumably thinks it's OK for 1 MP out of 650 (i.e. someone with 100,000 times the vote power) to vote against agreed party policy. Like the current party Chairman did. Twice this year. And the current party leader did countless times before he became leader.

[scawsby steve]

Steve,

In fairness you should also point out that the Tories are under investigation for Islamophobia.

I don't agree with expelling people for a one off vote outside the party they joined.
It is a private vote after all!
Constant whining and attempts to undermine the party at every opportunity is another matter though.

The reason I didn't mention the Tories, Albie, is that at the moment they're not under investigation; but the Muslim Council of Britain are requesting that they will be.

I hate the Tory Party as much as anyone, and if Islamophobia is prevalent, it needs rooting out.

And yet you support Farage's party? Didn't you see the Brexit Party supporters at the count in Birmingham on Sunday night shouting at an Asian woman who'd been elected as MEP to go home?

No I didn't, and apparently neither did anyone else except you, because it hasn't been reported anywhere, even by the liberalist media. Are you sure you haven't dreamt it?

What's it to do with Farage anyway? A pretty p*ss poor post that, Billy.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I sense today looking like a defining moment for the Corbyn-led Labour party.

There's one key fact about a FPTP electoral system. No party ever wins under FPTP unless it is a broad church. If it becomes a narrow sect, it is finished.

Today, the party has jumped at the chance to finish an old score against someone from the Right of the party. There's loads of history in that decision of course, but it comes after 4 years of the Corbynistas pouring bike and hatred (and that's not too strong a word) on anyone they consider to be "centrist" or "Blairite".

In many ways, a more telling issue today though, has been the fact that the Corbynistas have turned their guns on Paul Mason. Mason is a deep thinker on socialism and what is needed to achieve it. He's been a constant and unwaivering supporter of Corbyn from the outset. He's in the left-most 5-10% of the population.

But yesterday, he committed heresy.

He criticised Labour's Brexit policy. He criticised members of Corbyn's inner circle for getting strategy wrong on that topic, leading to last week's disaster.

The result?

A shit storm of abuse from the true believers.

It started with a hit piece from Len McCluskey's puppet who runs SkwawkBox, claiming that Mason was "imploding".

Aaron Bastani dived in to accuse Mason of plotting a coup against Corbyn.

McCluskey's minions piled in to accuse Mason (a comp school kid from Leigh) of being part of the metropolitan elite who have contempt for the working class.

Others followed up calling him a Blairite, a Traitor to the Party, accusing him of being out to destroy socialism and telling him to f**k off and join the Lib Dems.

Fascinatingly, I didn't see a single piece taking in his actual argument. Just a stream of vitriolic ad hominems.

Now. I could just about see a Labour party that excluded Alastair Campbell still being a broad enough church to win an election. Just about.

But once you get to such a laager mentality that a Paul Mason is the enemy...nope.

It's hit me today. It's f**ked. The whole project is f**ked. It's being devoured by the f**king idiocy of the ideological Left that destroys everything it touches.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Steve,

In fairness you should also point out that the Tories are under investigation for Islamophobia.

I don't agree with expelling people for a one off vote outside the party they joined.
It is a private vote after all!
Constant whining and attempts to undermine the party at every opportunity is another matter though.

The reason I didn't mention the Tories, Albie, is that at the moment they're not under investigation; but the Muslim Council of Britain are requesting that they will be.

I hate the Tory Party as much as anyone, and if Islamophobia is prevalent, it needs rooting out.

And yet you support Farage's party? Didn't you see the Brexit Party supporters at the count in Birmingham on Sunday night shouting at an Asian woman who'd been elected as MEP to go home?

No I didn't, and apparently neither did anyone else except you, because it hasn't been reported anywhere, even by the liberalist media. Are you sure you haven't dreamt it?

What's it to do with Farage anyway? A pretty p*ss poor post that, Billy.

You're s bright lad SS but you scare me in your obsessive refusal to look at stuff dispassionately.

Here's an example of the not-very-liberalist (unless you are WAY over to the Right) Evening Standard reporting it.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/britishasian-labour-mep-told-to-go-home-by-brexit-party-supporters-during-acceptance-speech-a4152196.html%3famp

What's it got to do with Farage? It's HIS party. He controls it from top to bottom. It doesn't have a constitution or a rule book. It's HIS party.

[bpoolrover]

So it’s farage fault that a couple of d**kheads heckle someone, momentum is full of d**kheads does that mean people like yourself should be held to account

[SydneyRover]

So it’s farage fault that a couple of d**kheads heckle someone, momentum is full of d**kheads does that mean people like yourself should be held to account

It's the company he keeps the people he attracts and the reputation he has BP and I can't think why anyone would actually want to be seen to support him either unless one doesn't care about one's own reputation.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farage-defends-ukip-breaking-point-poster-queue-of-migrants

[Glyn_Wigley]

So it’s farage fault that a couple of d**kheads heckle someone, momentum is full of d**kheads does that mean people like yourself should be held to account

So you think it was just a couple of randoms doing it, do you? This was at the count. They only let people in nominated by the party/candidate as counting agents, so they are there as representatives of the party and their candidate.

[Bentley Bullet]

I don't get this. So a Brexit supporter shouted, "Go home, you lost". Bearing in mind that would have been aimed at someone who hadn't lost, and actually won, do you think there's even an ever so slight chance that it was a pro-Remainer shouting at the Brexiters?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Nice try BB.

But given that the Brexit Party won several seats, that attempt at dissembling doesn't come up to your usual standard of logic does it?

Edit.
D'oh. I'm very slow this morning. You made a funny didn't you? Well done!

[Bentley Bullet]

Nay Billy lad. I just think you're looking for anything to detract from what was a great Brexit party result.

I've seen that clip and I think it has been used by the Evening Standard to distort the actual truth of events in order to convince gullible people like you. You have gladly taken it on board as gospel truth in your desperate hour of need.

[selby]

  I might be miss reading you Billy, but, are you insinuating that the term go home is racial, meaning to another home country, or as could be intended for an early nights sleep after a defeat to a house around the corner.
  It is a big call on your behalf if it is the first meaning, not knowing for sure and assuming, and leaves your instincts questionable, which lets face it is the trend now, assuming the worst of people you don't agree with, a trend just as prevalent in the far left as the right wing, and mostly spouted by the   life style educated uneducated in the Westminster London bubble.

[selby]

  While people are on about Alistair Campbell, he is an unelected gobshite who's opinion counts for no more than you or I, but is constantly wheeled out by the BBC for his opinion and to rudely talk over anyone with the opposite view making a nonsense of decent debate.
   A political non entity that promoted an illegal war costing lives of soldiers for no reason, was an adviser to a government that presided over an economic catastrophe never seen since the 1920's in peacetime, and should be doing time in prison along with Blair.
   In another era we would have shot the barsteward.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Selby.

A supporter of a Far Right party, headed by a man who in 2016 stood smiling broadly at the unveiling of a poster of migrants with the words "Breaking Point" plastered over it, and who has regularly used immigrants as a political football, shouting "Go Home" at a Sikh is...well, let's be kind... showing some lack of understanding of the context.

I don't know for certain what that person meant. I Lord knows I do err on the side of trusting people's motives (which has cost me very dearly this past couple of years). But adults make their judgements based on the overall context of information. Farage has spent years carefully weaponising the subject of immigration, and gently normalising anger towards immigrants (see AL here...). So, to be frank, I don't think that Farage's party has earned the right to be given the benefit of the doubt.

If Farage came out consistently, clearly and unambiguously against anti-immigrant rhetoric, then I'd be with you. Until he does, I reserve the right to make negative judgements on the intentions and attitudes of him and his supporters. 

[BillyStubbsTears]

SS.

I've no axe to grind for Alastair Campbell, but f**k me, blaming him for the global economic crash...