More fundamentally, Labour will have to work very hard to win back the trust of Northern voters.
Add in the planned Tory pork barrels aimed at these regions and you’ve got a recipe for a very long stay in opposition.
The reason they get away with it is the media also lies just as much. For two years now, we’ve been hearing Trump sold out to the Russians and was Putin’s butt boy. That’s all the news, 24/7.
Turns out the entire thing was a fraud, apparently bought and paid for by the DNC.
So now, Trump can lie about whatever and the media has destroyed its own credibility, so there is no one trustworthy to call him out.
It’s unfortunate all the way around.
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It’s still news in Russia 24/7. It’s just that it stays in Russian and doesn’t get translated into English for consumption on Zerohedge, FOX and Breitbart as does other Russian propaganda.
As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov returned home from his visit with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office last week, Russian state media was gloating over the spectacle. TV channel Rossiya 1 aired a segment entitled “Puppet Master and ‘Agent’—How to Understand Lavrov’s Meeting With Trump.”
I’m sure something along these lines is making the rounds on US conservative media:
Dmitry Kiselyov, the host of the Sunday news show Vesti Nedeli , accused the Democrats of joining forces with Hollywood, carrying out various conspiracies in order to undermine Trump’s popularity.
Basically, if you speak Russian, you can find out a week in advance the talking points defending Trump that will be peddled on FOX.
Also, it’s worth noting that Russian State TV basically said Putin and co prefer doing business with “corrupt leaders preferring the concept of managed democracy” that a naive idiot like Corbyn, whose adulation for the USSR is so 1970ies.
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Can you inform the Guardian? I think they’re pivoting to say that Corbyn lost due to Russian hostility (lol).
Edit: not that I’m shocked that the Labour pravda is trying to pivot away from the policies and personage of the man they’ve spent several years propping up.
I thought it was because it’s not “proportional representation”?
I’m always confused when people who are shit at one game believe they’ll be less shit if they just changed the rules.
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Oh, I’m sure that CIF will blame all and sundry. Some may even grasp that a terror apologising communist, whose only main achievement is his vegetable allotment and his recipe for blackberry jam, may not appeal to folks outside of Islington.
I wouldn’t go nearly that far, @thefourthruffian…
Trump has essentially been “mafioso-like” (without being “made”) his whole life, thus being VERY good at covering his tracks and letting others do his dirty work.
’
So, you seriously still believe Trump conspired with the Russians to get Hillary’s emails? And Trump is being blackmailed by the Russians using a whores peeing on him video?
That’s the allegation. It was bogus. So said Mueller, various people at the DOJ, and now apparently even Comey.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I fully expect Trump did something stupid (and will again).
It’s just that this absurd allegation had nothing to support it – and, to the extent someone can prove a negative, Mueller (reluctantly) proved a negative.
And yet the media, 24/7/365 for two years reported it as the Gospel.
THAT is the problem. Trump now has free reign to lie because, yes, indeed, the media and certain career government people have lied and were, indeed, out to get Trump.
My sole point is: don’t cry wolf. The media cried wolf. So when the wolf comes, no one will believe them.
Who cares what lies the Russians tell themselves?
They’re nobodies with lots of nukes.
I’ve had first hand experience with the Russian oil industry – the sole thing, besides weapon sales, that makes them any real money. Their geology is OK, but not competitive to US shale and their infrastructure absolutely sucks. They are rapidly heading towards irrelevance.
And yet they have giant egos.
So they make up big lies to help them go to sleep in the cold.
I don’t think trump gets away with things because the media messed up. He gets away with things because his base does not care what he does, and the senate goes along with it (because his base listens to him). His base is pretty happy as long as he stokes their fears of immigrants, socialism, the “attack” on the christian right, their place in social hierarchy, etc.
As a “regular” American…despite all of the investigations, money spent, and weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, @thefourthruffian…no one has answered a fundamental question that will gnaw at me until the day I die…
Why were all of the revelations that came out…from Wikileaks, to the Clinton and DNC e-mails…ALL of them…why were they so “one-sided”, and ultimately beneficial to Trump and the Republicans?
Are Trump…and the Republicans so much better at Cyber Security?
Are Trump and the Republican so “Clean and Transparent” that there was nothing there to report?
I’m calling Bullshit. I am also smart enough to know that Trump is smart enough to cover his tail. And the DEMS are dumb enough to get stuck in Trumps web time after time after time.
Trump…the ultimate “Teflon Don”… will always be 3 steps ahead of the DEMS, count on it.
It has been answered, repeatedly. The Russians (like me and everyone else) thought Hillary was going to run away with the election. They knew Trump would be a sore loser and all that bad information would be kept alive and weaken/tarnish Hillary’s presidency. The weak minded among the Republicans would never let it go.
Basically, the Russians were as surprised (like me and everyone else) that Trump won.
There are ample sources on this.
You can see the Plan B in Loppar’s post with their incessant “Trump is our pawn” crap. But here it’s the weak minded (or hyper partisan) Democrats who won’t let it go.
Milne and Jones haven’t been reading on their Lenin (after all, they’re bourgeois class enemies, much like that idiot from Islington - Jeremy and his brother Piers. From their names it’s evident they’re class enemies). Revolutionary defeatism, the tactic practiced by Labour doesn’t work through the ballot box - quite the opposite, it works only if there’s an armed revolt. Bolsheviks famously cocked up the election under Kerensky and had to resort to violence.
If anything, Trump has a intuitively better grasp on the concept, only applying it to the quasi-right of the political spectrum.
For example, you should care when the POTUS repeats their lies word for word.
Or his lawyer, for that matter. And conservatives are applauding him from repeating more outlandish Russian State TV propaganda from 2015.
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???
So…the Russians so lopsidedly exposed information only detrimental to Clinton and the DEMS…because they knew Trump would be a sore loser?
You’ve lost me, @thefourthruffian…and I am far from being a partisan Democrat.
I see that you guys need a primer on revolutionary defeatism - it’s understandable since y’all lack the required Marxist-Leninist theoretical background. It’s ironic how both Boris and Trump intuitively understand the concept while self professed Marxists in Labour haven’t got a clue.
BTW, Easter Rising was a textbook example of revolutionary defeatism, preceding even the Bolsheviks themselves, but I digress.
So how does it work? First, you need a heroic defeat. A valiant, desperate effort doomed to fail against the omnipresent and omnipotent foe - Theresa May’s attempt at Brexit or Trump’s 2016 campaign (Trump actually won so he had to improvise to this day) fit the bill perfectly.
The enemy appears formidable - Brussels’ bureaucrats and Remain sleeper agents plotting to keep Britain perpetually in the EU, or Hillary, the MSM and the hordes of SJWs - so defeat seems logical at first.
However, further introspection discovers that disparity in power was not the reason for the defeat instead it was lack of ideological purity and internal sabotage. So a period of penance has to follow - closing the ranks by cutting off all communication with the enemy, rebuilding one’s ideological tenets and cleansing the traitors (closet Remainers among the Tories, Nevertrumpers in GOP) so that in the ensuing catharsis even the label itself becomes and insult (Trotskytes in the USSR, for example)
After that, it’s time to take the fight to the vastly superior foe. And since the game is rigged (a million fake votes in California per Trump, for example) and the fate of the country itself hangs in the balance, one simply cannot play fair. One’s need a strong, decisive leader willing to eschew the rules to defeat the enemy who’s trying to literally destroy/enslave his followers.
It’s a matter of life and death, there’s no time for laws and procedures. The enemy who’s paradoxically too weak and too strong at the same, sensing that a great man is leading the noble struggle, tries feebly to counter with inconsequential legal nitpicking. Whether it’s the Mensheviks of post-Tsarist Russia, an UK Parliament who refuses to listen to the will of the people, or know-it-all bureaucrats in the FBI and the State it doesn’t matter.
The leader, with a wink and nod to the faithful, who are all in on the true state of facts, parries each of those trusts with his own doublespeak and against all odds emerges victorious, but just.
The tentacles of the enemy are everywhere, so constant vigilance is required. Each allegation, each breaking news is just a pathetic attempt by the vast network of enemy agents to turn back the clock and stop the inexorable march of history.
UK Labour did the first two steps - lost to May under Corbyn, doubled down on ideology with the Manifesto and cleansed the ranks (“fuck off red Tories”) but unlike Boris and Trump failed to contextualize the modern equivalent of the Bolshevik armed uprising.
Instead, they’re stuck in a circle, doubling down on another defeat and, I suppose, more ideological cleansing.
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Interesting loppar however Britain is and always has been conservative at heart. Being an island nation it has its suspicions of outsiders hence the role immigration played in turning labour heartlands into Tory votes or more accurately anti-immigration votes.
Its a scarcity = power issue. During the boom times, when jobs were aplenty the scarcity belonged to the working classes i.e. there were more manual jobs than people who wanted to fill them. The immigrants were doctors, engineers etc who didn’t challenge the working classes but the middle classes, the professionals. Nobody gave a shit. During periods of recession its the opposite way round, its the doctors who have scarcity power and there are too many manual workers for the jobs. Its always been thus. Traditional Labour governments create manual jobs, traditional Tory governments look after the middle class professions. Brexit made this election a one issue election and unfortunately there was only ever going to be one winner, the ‘send em back’ lot.
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Out of interest, do you view Boris’ (and the Tories’) majority as a positive or a negative?
I’d never vote for them but the uncertainty surrounding Brexit is what’s hurting us currently. With a Tory majority we may actually make some progress on that front.
Labour have their part to play now as The Opposition too. I hope they are up to it.
Unquestionably positive. For one thing, the Trots are finished, they’ve been hammered with such a force that there may actually be a chance for Labour moderates (assuming any are left) to oust them from the party.
Second, the DNA of the Tory majority means that Boris will have to focus on the North, which no government since New Labour had any reason to.
Now, Boris being the center-right (at best) figure will unquestionably mean some policy that will make me physically ill, but you take the good with the bad.
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Pretty much how I see it too.
I did chuckle at his ‘victory rally’ in the North East. Boris reeling off a list of local constituencies such as Bishop Auckland just reminded me of a Brit abroad trying to work out which Métro stop he needs to change at.
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Agreed, I’m not disputing that, I’m just saying that Boris followed the template of revolutionary defeatism to the letter.
Marx himself was scathing about the British working class and its capacity for revolution, but I’d guess that even he would be surprised how the Tories used textbook revolutionary language and methods (“will of the people”, “let me people go”…) in this whole Brexit saga.
Before 2016 it was assumed even by Farage that Brexit would entail access to the EU common market, only to evolve into a ideological concept, a test of ideological purity, the mythical “true Brexit” yardstick against which the waverers, traitors and “closet Remainers” are measured.
The purge of Tory rebels by Cummings and Boris was revolutionary politics 101, the only difference that these rebels that failed the test of ideological purity (true social…I mean true Brexit) weren’t sent to the Gulag.
Of course, Boris ditched this approach literally five seconds after winning the election, but it did help him win.