#labour split

[ailedhoo]

Owens Jones talks of the Labour split and The Independent Group.

Owen critiques what they claimant to be the “centre ground.”

The Independent Group’s MPs need to consider by-elections...

Side note: I have given my position on the matter on my reply blog.

[ailedhoo]

Dead Center

The Labour Party defectors keep repeating the tired centrist refrain that the public is hungering for moderation. The whole history of the past generation shows otherwise.

In this article of the Jacobin magazine Dawn Foster criticises the recently formed British centralist political organisation known as The Independent Group.

Highlighting the policies of the group:

Asked what they stood for, the new grouping championed austerity and the Conservatives’ previous public service cuts, oppose both nationalization (one of the most popular of Labour’s policies) and increases in marginal tax rates on the wealthiest, and oppose Brexit. In an interview with the BBC, former Conservative MP Anna Soubry said the group was in favor of “sensible policies for a stable economy,” a phrase utterly devoid of meaning: no party is openly advocating “absolute lunacy for a blazing garbage fire of an economy”.

But it speaks to the patronizing philosophical core of centrism: that conservatism, liberalism and democratic socialism are all mere distractions, and that a Frankenstein’s monster of a party combining the worst of all their aspects is what the public are crying out for. What have “The Independent Group” created? A party squarely of the establishment, almost designed by committee to appeal exclusively to career politicians and newspaper columnists. 

Dawn Foster further highlights the practices of the new party’s apoplectic centrism, the defeat of Ed Miliband in 2015, the realities of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition that governed around 2010-2015... the author a particular example from the coalition to highlight the practices of the centralist Liberal Democrats:

With the Labour Party now returning towards social democratic policies, including a doctrine of renationalisation, The Independent Group may find following the paths of Labour’s time with neoliberalism and the Liberal Democrats before them: electoral decline. As Dawn Foster puts it:

Centrism will always fail for as long as it attempts to sanitize conservative policies in the guise of a vanity project. Come polling day, the “Independent” MPs are in for a sharp shock.

I will take this opportunity to recommend another Jacobin magazine article by Dawn Foster titled “Avocado Toasts for All” on recent tendencies to boil class down to consumption habits, tendencies that ignore the material realities.

[fanzonesports]

Smokey Thomas To The Rescue

Smokey Thomas To The Rescue @OPSEU @OPSEUSmokey @CanadianLabour @JerryPDias @UniforTheUnion

(TORONTO, ON) – Registered Practical Nurse and Ontario Public Service Employees Union president, Warren (Smokey) Thomas, is deeply concerned about Unifor’s recent decision to resign from the Canadian Labour Congress. So much so, he has decided to be the deal maker willing to work with both sides to help resolve current differences. The dispute centres on Unifor’s contentious disagreement with a…

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[evolvepolitics]

A Labour split is now inevitable, & for Corbyn to succeed, it's virtually essential.

A Labour split is now inevitable, & for Corbyn to succeed, it’s virtually essential.

Ten months to the day after Jeremy Corbyn’s astonishing election as leader of the Labour Party came a make-or-break moment for Labour’s resurgent left, and one of the biggest in the party’s post-war history. Plagued throughout his tenure by seditious rumblings from prominent members of his own party, which exploded into an all-out mutiny after the European Union referendum, the rebels tried to…

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