Where's the hope for the United Kingdom

ITT post rare corbos

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Trump could never win an election either.

Thing is, they said he couldn't become Labour leader. They also said, he couldn't get reelected.

Thing is, the media has a hate boner on Corbyn. The shy tory effect will bite them in the ass so hard, they are going to rename it.

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All my jezzas.

I understand a lot of Trots are entering the Labour party since Corbo came along. Is this true? Because I think it could be a very good thing if they can start to steer the party's direction.

But he could and did

Becoming the leader of labour and the PM require very different things. May is the PM but could never lead labour.

Who else bring back /militant tendency/ here?

youtu.be/yUVAYRkdvfc

I haven't yet but its very likely. The blairites, in particular Tom Watson the deputy leader of the party made trots an issue in the second leadership election last summer when he claimed the party was being flooded by trot entryists, bringing back terms most anglos haven't heard in decades, but was widely mocked for it.
Realistically there probably aren't enough trots around to affect the Labour and most of the new membership are energised young people and old labour members who left when Blair came in.
But there are definitely more actual socialists in the part now and the policy direction will hopefully become more and more leftist.

pick one

Americans

who Brit/pol/ here?

Just look at how membership has been spiking lately. It's especially funny to see how it barely increased after the 2008 crisis.

Rebuilding trade unions is more important than raising Labour membership IMO

Outside of living the standard of living is literally Poland-tier.

*Outside of London

As you can see in the grafs, Margaret took good care of the unions…

I'm starting to think the 80s should never have happen. And I wouldn't be born

Watch the pound get to parity with the Euro

twitter.com/SkyNews/status/820391486860578816

twitter.com/SkyNews/status/820391486860578816

does anyone in the Brexit camp give a shit about the ramifications these things could have on Northern Ireland and the peace process

At last!
They are leaving!

…

Eventually.. Again…

Modern trade unions are mostly just arms of the capitalist system which merely serve to facilitate communication between Porky and his slaves.

Sounds like how America is with the big west /east coast cities. Everywhere else your drinking water is brown or someshit.

honestly most people just don't care about NI any more

some unions like RMT are strongly socialist and very militant

They didn't give a shit because they didn't think that they would win.

if they do care they're probably happy about it because they'll kick out the REPUBLICAN TERRORISTS FOR GOOD THIS TIME BRITANE STRONK

idk, if you want a mesage of hope there's this.

The people of Britain are totally convinced that Jeremy Corbyn is a mad evil communist who wants to collectivise everything, slaughter the jews and destroy our society. The press, across what little "spectrum" exists in the mainstream media, have tirelessly repeated the same narrative about him. Yet he still retains the support of 30% of the electorate.

In my mind, those 30% of people are at the very least, open to socialism and are potential recruits to the cause. That's not to mention that all the radicals in the country (there's not many but probably more than you think) probably don't count themselves among Corbyn's supporters in the first place.

I would say that 30% is a pretty good proportion of progressives in a population, better than most countries, and gives hope for the future.

People of the """"united"""" kingdom:

LAS ISLAS MALVINAS SON ARGENTINAS !

FUERA PIRATAS !!!!!!!!!!!!

VIVA PERON CARAJO

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_sovereignty_referendum,_2013

absolute madmen

Elsewhere you have lead in the drinking water. Sometimes it even catches fire :^)

lol

lmao

I for one am not looking forward to the incoming 100 year Tory reich.

They're already deliberately sabotaging the NHS so they can privatise it and bring in a US-style system (our health minister literally wrote a book on how to break up the NHS).

Now with Brexit removing the """left-wing""" EU buffer zone they can completely tear up worker's rights and human rights to usher in a never-ending period of serfdom for the working class.

It's a complete shitshow in all honesty and I for one can't see it changing any time soon considering how unbelievably class-cucked the general population is…

t. Londoner who never visits the provinces

British housing and public transport are absolute shit though, I'll give you that.

There is literally less hope economically for the UK than there is for the United States in the coming decade and after.

Everything in the future, is going to be shit, and we're witnessing the sinking of unsinkable Western states as unsinkable the Titanic, for the most part, due to Capital having no option to self sacrifice or do anything to prevent itself from its own self destruction, and a system in place (defense/deep state) that generates assloads of cash that only fuels more hatred in and out of the West (not mentioning NATO expanse).

More or less, the future is fucked, we're all going to be in poverty, and most of all the UK's economy is quite fucked whether it left or not.

AHAHAHA

Corbyn is our only hope. Therefore we need a revolution

I don't live in the UK

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2617938/Revealed-How-parts-Britain-poorer-POLAND-families-Wales-Cornwall-Europes-worst-off.html
I wasn't just memeing either fam, even if it is daily mail its still a decent article.

That's like asking Israeli settlers if Jerusalem is either Jewish or Arab.

youtube.com/watch?v=rPBx6Vt5pbo

listen to the callers and you'll see what a classcucked mong the average brit is.
there's no hope for them.

WHO'S READY FOR ANOTHER DECADE

I AM

Sunny Jim was a based Social Democrat though

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is this man even capable of doing a wrong thing?

I…miss him

Blair, Schroeder, Kok and their ilk should all burn in hell.

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anyone notice the "I used to love Jeremy, but I'm on the lib dem train now" crowd

they're pathetic

I haven't but I wouldn't be surprised. Lib dems are the most pathetic people in british politics.

/r/unitedkingdom is full of em

Well that explains it.

If anything, they're more likely to secede from the UK and join the republic. Apparently they actually want to stay in the EU, and nowadays Ireland is a better place to live than the UK. What a time to be alive.

There's a lot of people in Northern Ireland who would live in Somalia tier conditions as long as the British flag flew over the rubble.

The more middle of the road unionists will increasingly come to the republican side though as the economic necessity becomes clearer.

They are both terrible people who did terrible things. Is stealing from the public domain supposed to be a good thing?

this
based centrism

Don't forget a couple of illegal wars which killed hundreds of thousands and an economic policy which privatised the NHS.

wew

He didn't even come close to Stalin's high score.

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One of the first things Corbyn said was that the people responsible for the Iraq war should be in Prison. Since then Blair has been spooked out of his shit of a Corbyn victory.

come to Liverpool, its deffo shit round here la

The Falklands weren't colonised and no natives were displaced though.

I'm Welsh and it's heartbreaking seeing the poverty around the country. People here have been abandoned for so long they're even starting to vote UKIP in high numbers.

London needs to be cut down to size and a more equitable distribution of wealth and economic activity achieved around the whole of the UK.

Militant Tendency still around?

god, i want to see blair in prison so fucking badly

make it happen, corbo

these memes are shit

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I confess I have a reverse reflex for smearjobs. The more I see someone being criticized, the more I sympathize with them. And Corbyn seems to be more universally panned by the media than Trump was, which is no small feat. Onwards to victory, Chairman Corbyn.

The militant tendency left the labour party and became SPEW, of which I am a member.

then you'll love this guy

If UK votes for Corbyn, abso-fucking-lutely

The only reason why i fucking loathe liberals. Even if you dislike him as a person, get behind his platform

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Ok, so the very poorest parts of Britain are below the Polish average. That just shows that we're unequal, not that we're poor as a whole.

If you haven't watched this interview with Sarah Olney, watch it now.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=C-DHqFikHoA

He won 3 elections you ungrateful little shit.

I know how you feel. The UK is utterly unsalvageable from our perspective as well.

Why the fuck would we be "grateful for that"!? What line of reasoning are you snorting you fucking numbskull? Its one thing to so B-BUT MUH ELECTABILITY in the company of soc-dems, but why the fuck would Marxists be impressed by blairs successes?

I love her

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I fully admit I felt some sympathy for Trump. Not that he deserved it, of course, but still. But there's nothing quite like seeing someone take on the entire world and winning.

When more than half of your party, and has been in bed with the media during a certain big eared individuals long leadership, it's difficult for you to actually say anything.

Gulag the queen.

I suppose there's only one thing left to do.

the increasingly more moderate suckdem

Jeremy Corbyn, if he can pull himself from the bad poll numbers (which tbf is more of the fault of the Labour Right) and listen to John McDonnell more.

HERE YA GO, SEMPAI

was that enough for ya?
Ill enlighten you some more

u cheeky cunt

I seem to remember that from Harry Potter

but seriously, what's the Socialist Party England and Wales like? Should I join?

Steptoe has fractured the labour party and has set the voters against the party. let us never forget that he is a lying sack of shit.

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37167700

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loads of Holla Forumsyps hate Churchill for refusing to ally with Hitler, Dresden etc.

I think it's important to remember that Callaghan is remembered as an "overspending socialist who brought the country to the brink of collapse" in popular memory. (Also, Edward Heath only existed for 2 minutes while he took us into the EEC in 1975, but Labour goverened for the entire 1970s and it was basically the winter of discontent 24/7, also Britain was the only country in the world to have economic problems in the 70s.)

He actually introduced the earliest monetarist-ish policies in the UK (based on treasury figures that had been intentionally fudged by mandarins to show the UK needed 10bn borrowing, instead of the 5bn it actually needed.) at the behest of the IMF.

I'm sort of meandering. I feel very sorry for Callaghan because of circumstances, he basically got the blame for events as they were ongoing while his government carried out a heroic feat in lasting as long as it did, leaving with the bloody-nose of the winter of discontent (which wouldn't have happened had Callaghan not fucked over "In place of strife", a proposal for trade union legislation in the late 60s Wilson government.), on top of that some of the reading I've done suggests that the Labour vision during the 70s came closer to actual Social Democracy than anything else - which is certainly preferable to our current nightmare world, and would've made an interesting experiment to see the results of.
He compromised, he did bad things, he made mistakes and he sometimes worked against the wider interest of the Labour movement for political gain, but I'm strongly inclined to say he's a better man than any PM we've had since.

I'm genuinely surprised at the hero worship people have for a chauvinistic, racist, imperialist, dumb sack of shit like him. Opposing Hitler was probably his only good idea and it still shouldn't earn him anything but contempt.

Where can I read more about this?

Yeah? Well I won 4, lead the party for longer AND met the Beatles.

It's hard to say. I'm not quite sure where I get half of it from myself (though I tend to remember what to google when someone requests a source for a claim I've made.)

I tend to just dig for history, reading about past governments - especially Labour ones. Wikipedia, newspaper opinion pieces, random blogs or other sites, then cross-reference claims between them all and coalesce a view out of it. Wikipedia is always good for an overview, then little policies or details can be crosschecked.

If you want me to elaborate on anything specific, I might be of more use.

I find the Bennites interesting. For some reason I'm always fascinated by left social democrats, despite me being far to their left

Well elaborate in general if you can

hopefully they don't start raping everyone

How can we secure a Left Wing Brexit (Lexit) lads?

If you just want a general historical outline, I mean, I could try something like that. What tends to stick with me are the interesting little statistics or facts. I'm quite scattershot with it.

Going back, I suppose. In 1970 Harold Wilson lost the election even though all the polls said he'd win. So we got Edward Heath. Heath had some flirtation with more market-oriented policies than Labour, but later balked and went with the "Dash for Growth" instead, which was highly inflationary. His government then tried to bring down inflation with a deflationary budget and pay-restraint, but this caused the miners - who were paid less than recommended by inquiry - to strike - so we got the 3 day week (commercial electricity users limited to 3 consecutive days starting January 1974) and an election on "who governs Britain"

By a small margin in February 1974, the British people shrugged and said "Eh, Heath" but the magic of FPTP said "Nobody governs Britain"
The state of the parties:
Labour 301 (11,645,616 votes)
Conservative 297 (11,872,180 votes)
Liberal 14 (6,059,519 votes)
SNP 7
UUP 7
Plaid 2
I've included some minor parties because their commons sympathies help with the numbers of forming a government (Heath with the UUP and Liberals, Wilson with the SNP, Plaid and Liberals.) The SNP are rather interesting here because Heath initially backed devolution ("Declaration of Perth" 1968), then turned against it in government. There was a commission on it under Wilson (Started 1969, report delivered 1973) which suggested - *drumroll* Scottish and Welsh assemblies.

With 318 required for an overall majority, this was a perfect old mess because nobody could realistically form a government. Heath negotiated with the Liberals but they demanded electoral reform (and his resignation) for them to accept any deal. He considered this unworkable so resigned and Wilson formed an administration. Highlights of the election campaign included Enoch Powell telling everyone to vote Labour because they were offering a referendum on the EEC, whereas the Conservatives had taken us into it without a vote. Labour were split on the issue, so Wilson rather cannily suggested to put the issue to the country. (hmm, a PM calling a referendum to solve internal party divisions…)

Without a parliamentary majority he couldn't really do anything but sit and wait. The union situation settled somewhat, the three day week was ended and things established somewhat so Wilson called another election in October.

Now it's tangent-time, because this is important!

Why was the three day week so necessary in 1973? Why did inflation suddenly go all crazy in the 1970s?
Well, in 1973 Israel was invaded by Egypt. The situation was panicky for a while as it seemed they may fall - or go nuclear. They started to prepare for nuclear weapon use in a way that the USA would see. (The USA officially being neutral-of-sorts and not arming Israel) The USA was forced to blink and airlift supplies. Israel won the war in the end, leaving the Arabs very angry.

This lead to the OPEC oil embargo on the US and US friendly states, combined with price hikes. All of this was at a time when petroleum was hugely important and demand was still growing, so it was a huge economic shock. I'm definitely aware the government reduced allocation of fuel to airlines, for example (We had a minister for aerospace in those days, I think it was Heseltine.) because they might need some kerosine for energy elsewhere. This was a huge shock to the economies of most nations - as such the USA was also in a battle with inflation through the 70s, which is also interesting to watch. (Callaghan and Carter, like Thatcher and Reagan, were good friends.)
1/2

I'm no economist, but my basic understanding is that the primary cause of this inflation was cost-pull inflation. Basically, the running costs got higher while things didn't get any more productive. Other explanations come up - the monetarists (i.e. Mrs Thatcher at the time) held it was actually too loose a money supply, or excess pay demands, or so on, but cost-pull inflation seems the most decisive answer. (And also correlates more with the experience of the 80s: Thatcher failed on inflation.)

But there's another dynamic to this: Capital. Until 1971, the world was dominated by the Breton-Woods exchange system. This eventually fell apart thanks to a thing called the Triffin Dilemma. Basically all money was pegged to the USD, and the USA ran into a choice between domestic self-interest and international obligation and picked the former. Boom, free floating currencies. The UK would maintain capital controls until 1981, however. This is perhaps one of the most important occurrences of the 20th century, but I'm going to gloss over it. I do suggest however that whenever you can, try to find statistics going back to before the 70s - you'll note for example that the wage-productivity gap begins to emerge after 1971. Very telling.

Finally there was a global recession from 1973-1975

MEANWHILE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS circa October 1974 post-election:
Labour 319 (11,457,079 votes)
Conservative 277 (10,462,565 votes)
Liberal 13 (5,346,704 votes)
SNP 11 (839,614 votes)
Plaid 3

And so with the narrowest of majorities Wilson returned again. He did not, however, move into Number 10 as living-space.
Now begins the story of the last Labour government.

I'll let Wikipedia cover the detail of policy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_government_1974–79#Major_contributions while I just cover over some other details. There's a lot of good stuff in there, but most of it is rather mundane policy. Increasing pensions is lovely, but it rarely makes for a good story.

Now, I'm going to gather my thoughts while I think about how I lay out the rest of this. I've some difficulty setting it out properly, as usually I'm just oriented towards refuting certain claims made historically that don't stand up to scrutiny, as opposed to "positively" setting out history.

enjoyed these posts

Against the backdrop of a mediocre economy, a prime minister with a narrow majority and a party split over Europe decided to call a referendum to decide the matter. The government position was that the UK should remain in the EU. The opposition were, if anything, more pro-europe than the government. The Scottish Nationalists campaigned with the idea in the back of their minds that if Scotland voted differently to the UK, that would be a good reason to secede.

Within a year, an outsider running as a reformer will take the US presidency against a candidate badly tarred by association with past scandals.
Meanwhile in orbit, the world comes closer to detente as Soviet and US spacecraft symbolically dock in or– What's that look for?

There was some sneakiness here, because in the October manifesto Labour re-worded their promise to say that they would give the British people their say "Through the ballot box" on whether they accepted the renegotiated terms. This was possibly a measure to justify a 1975 election if they were still short of a majority, since they could double up and use a Labour majority as acceptance of Common-market entry. But they had one (and I do mean one.) so that wasn't necessary.

The decision to hold a referendum at all was mildly controversial, because that's not really something Britain did. (This being the first nationwide referendum) It sort of fudged parliamentary sovereignty back when the principle sort of meant something on paper because there weren't devolved administrations to muddy the waters and precedent in past referenda. Also cabinet collective responsibility was ditched.
Because of the small majority of the government, it required opposition support to actually get the bill through most of the votes.

So we got a neat little showdown:
EEC Yes: Most of The Wilson government, The Conservatives (including Thatcher, but don't tell anyone.) and the Liberals.
EEC No: The Labour left (Michael Foot, Tony Benn, Peter Shore, Barbara Castle, a number of backbenchers. At one point 148 Labour MPs voted against their own party. This rebelliousness would come to cause problems.), The UUP (Including Enoch Powell, recently defected.), DUP, Plaid Cymru, SNP, National Front and the Communist Party of Great Britain. The 1975 Labour conference rejected continuing EEC membership.

Officially Labour itself took no position, because of how widely the membership had voted against entry. The vast majority of the press backed entry, as did the CBI.

Naturally, the anti-establishment radicals took the day. Without a shot being fired…
Wait, wrong script.

Naturally, moderate consensus took the day and Britain voted 67% to 33% to join the EEC, with all but two counting areas (Western Isles, Shetland) rejecting entry. The SNP could take some solace in the fact that Scotland had the second lowest "yes" vote in the country. (58.4%, NI was lowest at 52.1%)

Wilson's position was strengthened both in the party and in the country. The referendum could be interpreted partially as support for his government, and both sides of the Labour party had been appeased by the referendum (The left glad it happened, and glad they kept the party machinery away from "Yes", the right glad they'd finally gone into Europe.), That said his wife voted "No" to entering the EEC.

Now interestingly, most of the time if you ask people to look back on this they'll say "We only voted to join a common market, now they've tried to make it political!" but this is disingenuous - or at least wishful thinking. Both "no" and "yes" campaign noted that joining meant losing some sovereignty, though "yes" usually noted that Britain would gain influence which was of more practical value. This is an interesting illustration of the kind of memory-distortion that tends to take place.

I've read that the loan wasn't actually necessary at all.

If you want a good overview of the 1970s I recommend When the Lights Went Out by Andy Beckett.

"When the lights went out" transcribes one of the most disgusting blocks of ideology I've ever seen, courtesy of the BBC. I'm quite glad I found it while looking for something else, it came up in the Google Books preview.

I'm devastated that I can't find a video-copy of the episode in the picture online.

The level of skulduggery in the British Establishment in the 70s is stupefying, the way global problems were thrown at the doorstep of the Labour party maddening. This alternates between hilariously blatant and infuriating that they got away with it.

Recent British political history is way more fascinating than American history, which is just center-right vs center-right

I think the Sun backing Blair was a pretty big warning

eh, 1997-2015 was pretty much that too.
Though I suppose there was enough intrigue in the Blair administration to make it interesting.

leaving the EU, and with trump in the whitehouse and may playing hardball, it's looking up for britain!

I would recommend it. I cant speak for the whole of the UK, but in my region at least its 100% made up of down to earth local working class people who are well read and very active but also aren't students or middle class intellectuals or tankies that have disappeared up their own arses. Where abouts are you?

That acronym is fucking diabolical.

That reminds me. It's fascinating that Rowling is more Blairite than Blair. Someone who was on the dole ardently defending a government that kept JSA (instead of reverting to prior, less punitive systems) and introduced work capacity assessments. (Alongside their "New Deal" shitery.)

Then again "'Cool Britannia' Billionaire backs Blair" is about as newsworthy as whatever the royal baby is up to these days.

I'm in Wales

We rarely use it to describe ourselves, we usually just say we're "the socialist party"

What's the deal with the TUSC?

It's basically the trot coalition like the AAA-PBP in Ireland.