I've been wondering if I'm suffering from the Nirvana fallacy myself having decided not to vote for Labour in a Tory-Labour marginal constituency. OK, maybe I don't like Corbyn but I still like Labour more than the Tories, and Labour ostensibly have a greater chance of winning than the Lib Dems.
The problem is that with Corbyn in charge, Labour may have the right policies but not the right principles. I do not think Corbyn actually believes in compromise or negotiation - his "kinder politics" was a shoddy piece of bullshit code for "do whatever I say". Cameron - and I'm loathe to say this - was right about him.
Secondly, the "safe seats" idea appears to be passing, given both the previous general election and recent by-election results. Cardiff voted for Remain, which makes a Lib Dem surge here not so implausible.
And the clincher : Brexit. With Corbyn in charge, a Labour win would do nothing for me on the most important political issue of the day. The man wants Brexit to happen and doesn't appear to have any plausible strategy to even get us a good exit deal. So with Labour now effectively campaigning for (in my opinion) a major political disaster, why should I vote for them ? On the most important issue of this generation they're no better than the Tories - so even if they won, I'd have voted for something I didn't actually want, which would defeat the purpose of voting.
I could be persuaded back to Labour but it would take two radical actions that must happen (and I doubt very much will given the short campaign of a snap election) :
1) Corbyn needs to go. Not change policy - go. Yes, I'm making an ad hominem attack, and quite happily, because it's not his policies but the man himself I do not trust. No point having nice policies if I don't trust you to implement them.
2) Labour needs to either campaign very strongly and very loudly against Brexit or at the very least for getting us to retain the massive advantages of EU membership somehow, a la Switzerland or Norway.
The Liberal Democrats claim to have raised more than twice as much as Labour from individual donors since a snap election was called. All parties have made cash appeals to supporters after Theresa May's surprise decision to hold an election on 8 June. The Lib Dems say they raised £500,000 in 48 hours. A similar Labour fund-raising drive is reported to have raised £200,000. Labour has yet to comment on the figure, reported by the FT.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39665212
What would it take to get Corbyn out of the driver's seat of Labour's rickety old bus?
ReplyDeleteA very large brick.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor Point taken. Seen from afar, Corbyn has buggered Labour's message to the point where it's hard to tell what the point is anymore. What do Labour believe? What's their objective? Honestly, the LibDems, treacherous and cretinous as they are, seem to be the only politically-adept party in the hustings at this point.
ReplyDeleteDavid Lazarus Cretinous ? No. Treacherous ? Certainly - however, I'm willing to give them another shot. They deserved the hammering they got at the last election - I'm hoping they've learned their lessons from it.
ReplyDeleteIs this in response to my post about Prime Minister May?
ReplyDeleteDavid Lazarus Nope, I didn't see that one. It's a response to... well, lots of things. More later.
ReplyDeleteQuite simply, IMO, Brexit must happen. The politicians and/or media are not seeing the big picture. The US Empire is falling. The EU will not be far behind. It will behoove the UK to allow Brexit to happen.
ReplyDeleteBupSahn Sunim They had one of those, but the Corbynites decided he wasn't bonkers enough so they didn't vote for him.
ReplyDeleteBupSahn Sunim That's how I'm thinking, too. Corbyn's elderly cronies seem to be repressing any new growth in Labour. And I'm not close enough to the situation to see any credible alternatives who might, you know, stand for the working man.
ReplyDeleteBupSahn Sunim I suspect my reasons are not the same as the general populace, but here's my take as a former Corbyn supporter :
ReplyDeletehttp://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2016/09/the-fall.html
I read down to the "agreement rather than diktat" part. Being that I don't watch mainstream media much and I'm on the outside looking in, I really don't have much of an opinion about Corbyn. Though I'll say that he's on point with regard to supporting Brexit even if his reasoning is a bit nationalist. I have to say that I kind of like Corbyn from the couple of soundbites I just heard. But, yes, those were just soundbites. So, I'm not saying that I fully endorse his ideals.
ReplyDeleteI'm in the same quadrant as you as far as my political compass. However, I'm much closer to "Centrist". I'm a little bit more left leaning than Libertarian, but not as far left as you are according to the screenshot.
BTW, is the pen now mightier than the cigarette? 😃
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/zPcXlPETYvuqMnTOJAem_64KiimqNlsT2DO4R1h263f41Tt7n5Z1hpjb_IzjEc_9JtUJzY9PiNPvXPKyCV_fzZdrO3BrbtKhcYCr=s0
David Lazarus I simply don't understand the Brexit mentality at all. Or rather, I do understand the Brexit mentality of the xenophobic idiots that dominated the campaign. But you're definitely not a xenophobic idiot, so why do you conclude it's a good thing ? How will it benefit the UK, and how would you have us avoid economic disaster during the leaving process ?
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor - Think of Brexit in a similar fashion to what Bernie would have done for the fall of the US Empire. He wouldn't have stopped it. The US reached the point of no return circa 2012. However, his ideals would have softened the blow.
ReplyDeleteDavid Lazarus Then why do you believe the disintegration of the EU would be a good thing ?
ReplyDeleteIt's not that I think it's a good thing. It's that the US Empire is falling and, thus, the EU won't be far behind.
ReplyDeleteCan't say that logic makes any sense to me.
ReplyDeleteDavid Lazarus The EU doesn't suffer from the same problems as the USA. There are plenty of problems, but here are the plusses and minuses of the EU - and why the EU should be strengthened:
ReplyDeleteMinuses first: The EU is an economic confederation. It lacks enough central authority to do very much: oh, it has some centralised structure, but not enough political heft to force these individual nations into compliance with every iota of regulations.
The USA began as a confederation and it was a disaster. While they were fighting the British, the barrel hoops of a common cause united them, but that war went on, for far too long, because the states entertained suspicions of each other. At war's end, they had a political confederation but not an economic structure. Hamilton solved that problem by having the proposed federal government assume the debts of the states, accrued during the Revolutionary War. It was a clever bit of work - but the political confederation required sweeping troubles under the carpet, chiefly slavery. That lump didn't stay under the carpet very long and the USA would fight its Civil War. Appalling carnage. But one interesting artifact emerges from the Civil War; before the war, USA used a plural: these United States. After the Civil War, it became a singular: the United States. It was the triumph of federalism and it came at a terrible price.
The EU is enduring a crisis of identity. Though I'm appalled at the UK's stupidity, leaving the EU, I'm not surprised: the UK's participation was grudging and piecewise. They retained the GBP pound. Nobody else got that right. If the UK leaves, the situation will deteriorate, much as in the post-Revolutionary War in the USA - Scotland will secede - England's economy will become a dog's dinner - eventually a humbled England will re-apply for EU membership - and the conditions will be much stiffer.
The Pluses of Remaining:
As pointed out upstream in this tediously long comment - the UK has rights and privileges afforded no other EU member. As a nuclear power, it would stay in the driver's seat, geopolitically. As an economic power, it would have the advantages of migrant labour: a ready supply of exploitables makes for a dandy economy. For godsakes, the British ran a planet-encompassing empire on that basis.
As for the American Empire, that's a bit of a fiction. The Americans couldn't find their own buttocks in the dark with a map and a torch, much less run an empire. America is the world's garbage dump, read that poem on the Statue of Liberty, the refuse of your teeming shores . It's been the steady stream of poor immigrants who've kept America on top of the heap, economically. When that gets stoppered up, America will enter a precipitous decline. And the UK will follow suit.
Rhys Taylor - Again, envisage Bernie Sanders' ideals and what they likely would have done for the US.
ReplyDeleteDan Weese - No. You are "hearing" me. The fall of the US Empire will bring the fall of the EU.
What is the current real unemployment rate across the EU? The real unemployment rate across the US is more than 40%. Much higher in some areas. Please, don't take my word for it. Peruse this site:
eig.org - Distressed Communities Index - Economic Innovation Group
David Lazarus America's always been a collection of distressed communities, from its inception. Every generation, it's something or other, some fresh hell arises, slavery, boll weevils destroying the cotton economy, bank failures, depressions, wars, every conceivable form of bollox. When were things ever good? I defy anyone to point to such an era of Peace 'n Prosperity.
ReplyDeleteDavid Lazarus If I interpret you correctly, you're saying that Bernie would have been good for the US but failed to prevent its disintegration, and Brexit serves the same purpose for the UK. Simultaneously, the US break-up will precipitate the fall of the EU. Is this what you're saying ?
ReplyDeleteDavid Lazarus I worked very hard for Bernie Sanders' campaign here in Wisconsin. We won the Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton, yet Trump took the state. And Bernie's win didn't translate into wins down-ticket. I also worked hard for the campaign of a Democratic judge for the Wisconsin Supreme Court: she lost because all those Bernie People didn't vote for the Democrats.
ReplyDeleteIf Bernie Sanders had gotten elected, he wouldn't be able to pass a burrito fart without being vetoed by the GOP Congress. I'm growing increasingly tired of what passes for left-wing politics in the USA: it does not know how to put its head down and push into the scrum. It's fundamentally useless. And there sits Bernie Sanders, sulking in his tent like some Achilles, he's not a Democrat, he'll never be a Democrat, thinking he's going to change the party from the outside. I'll never vote for such a Hero again.
Rhys Taylor - In essence, yes.
ReplyDeleteDan Weese - I voted my conscience for the past two elections rather than voting for one of the two major parties. I voted for Gary Johnson.
FWIW, Bernie is not merely sulking. He's still quite active. However, he did upset a lot of people. Including me. He said that he was going to stay in the race all the way through the convention. Not only did he concede to Hillary before the convention, but he also all the DNC to screw him over. He had them by the balls. All he had to do was squeeze. Instead, he let go. So, yeah, I understand where you are coming from.
That said, most the 80s were pretty good to us overall. As we're the last half of the 90s. Then, everything starts going to Hell as soon as it's announced that GWB won the election in 2000. It's been steadily downhill ever since.
I'm truly starting to entertain the idea of the "art of not being governed".
ReplyDeleteDavid Lazarus I'd agree that if the disintegration of the EU was inevitable, we should leave like rats from a sinking ship. However, while the break-up is certainly a real possibility, I don't see much evidence of inevitability. If anything, Brexit seems to be having the opposite effect. Nor do I think that if the (even less likely) break-up of the US were to occur, the EU would follow suit.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor - Exactly what the US will look like after the Empire is completely dead is anybody's guess, but the fact is that the US Empire is already falling and people like Jim Rickards and David Stockman believe that the point of no return was reached in 2012.
ReplyDeleteMichael Tellinger's Ubuntu movement and Contributionism. That's what I want to see succeed.
ReplyDelete