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David Laws in his accounts of the negotiations:

> [Besides the option of supply and confidence] there was, according to the Conservative leader, ‘a case for going further’ into a full coalition. The case was based in part on the need to tackle ‘the biggest threat’ to our national interest – Britain’s huge budget deficit.
That required, according to Mr Cameron, ‘a strong, stable government that lasts [and] . . . which has the support of the public to take the difficult decisions that are needed. . .’

> [...]

> The prizes for Mr Cameron were obvious: government, not opposition; stability, not chaos; joint responsibility for tough decisions, not sole blame for the painful cuts to come; and an opportunity to change the entire perception of the Conservative Party and to reshape British politics.

And later, more explicitly:

>Finally, David Cameron and his senior team seemed to have decided that a coalition agreement was not merely something that they wished to be seen to be trying to secure; it was something that they actually wanted to secure. This may have been because of doubts about how easy it would be to fight and win the second election, which we all felt was inevitable if a coalition agreement could not be struck. But there were also, surely, major advantages of a coalition from both a national and a Conservative Party perspective. The coalition gave the Conservatives the votes to govern strongly and to push through tough measures on the economy, while getting another political party to share the pain.

Well…

As to those with absurd views, like those about lizards, I would likely ignore them. However, to suggest that readings of New Labour as having conservative tendencies is anything like believing people in power are secretly lizards is itself the sort of claim that I would normally like to ignore... (and which you would mock).

Moving on...

Note first that you’ve yet again conflated Conservative with conservative. I’ve never maintained that New Labour was a Conservative party, only that in many respects it was conservative. Think of the following aspects: privatisation of public assets, anti-trade union reform, income tax cuts for the wealthy. All of these things indisputably occurred under Blair, and they were an extension of the kind of conservative approach to economics and politics that Thatcher introduced. It’s neoliberal ideology in practice, and neoliberalism was first advanced by right-wing think tanks and pressure groups.

Consistent with neoliberalism, big business effectively lobbied Blair’s Labour MPs, and this was really quite unprecedented for Labour. There were many well-publicised scandals about this—I didn’t mention Hewitt and Hoon for no reason in my earlier posts. Add to it Blunkett, Milburn, (David) Milliband, Byers, and others. They satisfied the demands of certain big business firms, by reducing relevant trade union power, and paving the way for privatisation “reform”; and they really benefitted, personally, from these manoeuvres. This is a matter of public record.

The relationship with right-wing press, facilitated by Blair and Campbell, was also crucial in securing and maintaining New Labour’s power. Blair became Godfather of one of Rupert Murdoch’s children. Strong relationships with media barons and other wealthy individuals were previously the preserve of conservative figures. Yet Mandelson said that he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” and holidayed with a Russian Oligarch (along with a young George Osborne, no less!).

Blair consistently ignored what Trade Union groups had concluded (e.g., demands on renationalising and social housing). His ’97 election pledge included not increasing taxes on the rich; indeed, his reign saw him gradually reduce corporation tax. (Brown was very effective at slashing this.) As you’ll see from another debate in this thread, public spending did increase, which made it look less conservative. Yet, traditional left policies were abandoned here, since public services suffered when privatisation carved out more in-roads than even under Thatcher.

When I said that New Labour was essentially conservative, this is what I meant. They were, in some cases quite transparently, committed to a right-wing political-economic policy in neoliberalism. Any claim as glib and quick as "New Labour were the same as the Conservatives" (note the big 'C') is likely not to be supported by a range of intellectuals. But the subtler point I've been arguing is indeed supported by many. A cursory Google search will help you.

Here are some to get you started:

Bob Jessop

Stuart Hall

Paul Smith

Owen Jones

Of course, there are plenty more besides. And there will be plenty of neoliberals who dispute the key points. But that doesn't take away from these and other authors as presenting an intelligible, respected opinion to the effect that New Labour continued elements of Thatcherism which are right wing in nature. That's a view that you're either misrepresenting (with your big 'C'), or simply laughing at.

I find Moore very hit and miss, myself. I love "From Hell", but I really do not like super-hero stuff, and I found his "Promethea" series to be just dull, really.

I'd recommend "Maus" above all others if somebody wants to explore the genre. It won a Pulitzer Prize for good reason :)

You haven't listed (and shouldn't miss) "The Arrival", which is beautifully illustrated. It contains zero words, yet tells a beautiful story.

> because it doesn't seek to be and overall ideology

I think that's a really remarkable thing to say.

> it helps people as individuals identify where they want to go, why and the path to get there

Sure, within the extremely narrow constraints of dialectical materialism. Later strains of Marxism famously don't prescribe alternative societies, and it was something that Adorno, Foucault and others were strongly criticised for. More broadly, I don't think utopian, teleological ideologies are a good thing. Amartya Sen has a great critique of this in his response to John Rawls.

> They weren't Marxists, they were being agitated, inspired and led by Marxists.

By a new breed of demagogue. I don't think that construction is productive, as it gives as much credence to Trumpian populists as it does to explosive figures like Lenin.

> Ho Chi Mihn? Or the Americans? Or the French? D:

The Best & The Brightest - Halberstam

Everyone on the left should read 'The Political Brain'. It explains the importance of emotions in how people decide to vote.

Basically, when it comes down to emotional brain vs rational brain, people will always side with their emotions.

People don't sit down and study manifestos before they decide who to vote for, they use the values of the party, leader, and a few key policies the party articulates to decide which party matches their values most closely.

TL;DR: People are emotional creatures and we need to learn how to appeal to that.

There's a book called "Learning Legal Rules" which I read at the start of my law studies which is a bit dense but it's a really good introduction to how the law and the judicial system in the UK works - unfortunately that kind of stuff is too dry to make really interesting haha. I'd recommend it if you read it in bits and pieces rather than trying to go through the entire thing.

You can get the penultimate edition for £2.81 on Amazon.

This is all historically accurate off the top of my head? Stalin was an utter piece of shit and the death of Stalinism is a great moment for humanity but that doesn't excuse all the aboslute rubbish that people come out with about Stalin and the USSR though.

If that article is Stalinist then me, a bunch of actual historians and all the lecturers I spoke to about Stalin are all hardcore Stalinists.

>But this article is literally saying that [in comparison with Hitler] Stalin wasn't that bad, which is the scale used in the diagram.

>And if the only way you can make someone look good is by comparing them with Hitler...

I dunno what Milne's aim is but Stalin is often twinned with Hitler and this is misleading. Not only in morality but also the nature of their dicatorship and repression. Maybe Milne was is trying to make Stalin look good or better than Hitler, but his claims are all consistent with historical research so it's not exactly reivisionist. And in general the information he is using is not about apologising for Stalinism, it's about historical accuracy and placing two awful men in the proper context.

There is a good book on the subject, I think I still have it, if I can find the title I will edit it in.

Edit:

Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison edited by Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin. The book is a collection of essays which were inspired by a conference held to reanalyse the history of the USSR. It attempts to look at the two systems free of the common biases created by trying to excuse the German people, to rehabilitate Stalin or to demonise the Stalin/the USSR due to the Cold War.

There is all sorts of bits I could quote from it but I think this bit from the introduction gives the best general idea of the tone of the analysis

>A final example of politclaly motivated distortions of comparison in the continuing reappraisal of the recent past of both countries returns us to the Holocaust and what one might call the 'atrocity toll' of each regime. Not only German nationalists and apologists for Nazisim, but also vehmently anti-communist Russian nationalists, empahsise that Stalin claimed even more victims than Hitler (as if that excused anything in the horrors perpetrated by Nazism), the other to appropriate to Stalinism genocide of a comparable or even worse kind than that of the Nazis in order to stress the evil they see emodibied inCommunism itself.

>Stalinist terror does not need to be played down to underlin the uniqueness of the Holocaust - the only example which history offers to date of a deliberate policy aimed at the total physical destruciton of every member of an ethmic group. There was no equivalent of this under Stalinism. Thought the waves of terror were massive indeed, and the death-toll immense, no ethnic group was singled out for total physical annihliation. A particular heavy toll among Stalin's victims was , of course, exacted from the state and party appartuas.

>The application of the term 'Holocaust' to the Stlanist system is inapprioarite. The best way to reveal the pathology and inhumanity of Stalinism is by shcolary attention to the evidence, and not by abusing the moethods of comparitve history through the loose- and often far from innocent - misleading trasplantiaton of terms imbued with deep historical significance.

Ian Kershaw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw

Moshe Lewin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Lewin

Just so you know this isn't some weird fringe history book. There are also 11 other contributors.

I recommend it to anyone interested in this area of history with some basic background knowledge already. Although the theme of the book is bringing out the differences and similarities between the two systems, not why the lies and myths existed in the first place. And obviously it is a million times better than anything Milne has to write on the subject.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stalinism-Nazism-Dictatorships-Kershaw-Lewin/dp/0521565219

Edit: Does anyone actually have Corbyn's foreword to see if he condemned the anti-Semitism?


___
Here's a PDF of the book:

http://files.libertyfund.org/files/127/0052_Bk.pdf

Can someone point to something overtly anti-Semitic in it?

Edit:

It's there, page 64.
_

Edit: So I bought the Kindle edition here which is supposed to have Corbyn's foreword. It doesn't.

The Guardian describes it as "Changed the contours of social dialogue." So it's clearly not controversial to praise the book's academic merits.

Interesting meta stuff. Seems like there are plenty of people on Ken's side of the antisemitism debate, and who think all the mods are pure evil.

I recommend those people read What's Left by Nick Cohen.

I dont, I'm afraid.

All I know is it's from this edition:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imperialism-Study-J-Hobson/dp/0851247881

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Escape-Camp-14-remarkable-odyssey/dp/0330519549

Here is the mobile version of your link

the bolsheviks were all pricks^1

KGB secret archives are filled with information about what MPs in various European countries were on the payroll or agents of influence. Allende was on their payroll too.

A Journey. Worth reading just for his recollection of the mutual masturbation episode with Gordon Brown alone

He was behind this in the early 2000s when he thought that the Left was becoming toxic, especially after Iraq.

http://eustonmanifesto.org/the-euston-manifesto/

Essentially a manifesto that says universal values should be upheld instead of relative oppressor/victim politics and the politics of anti-imperialism.

He also wrote the book 'What's left'.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whats-Left-Lost-Liberals-Their/dp/0007229704

This book was a critique of modern double standards in leftists which excuse Islamists, horrible dictatorships and other nasties in the name of anti-imperialism. His principle is that someone like Putin should be opposed, and not supported because he is an enemy of the USA. Same with people like Chavez, Iran, Hamas, Hesbollah and so on.

A few months ago he made a 2 minute video in a spectator column on why he 'left the left'. Critizing Corbyn, though mostly his politics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQQw5T2T94M

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/09/why-ive-finally-given-up-on-the-left/

Shiit, her mum was a college-educated woman in America who came to the UK, and her father was a jewish business-man who wanted nothing to do with the result of his affair.

If that's the only thing she ever said about the holocaust, then perhaps. She said this on Today, which sounds a lot less disgraceful.

>"every single death of every single person no matter what their race, no matter what their culture, is an awful thing. No one genocide, no one holocaust, is in my opinion worse than any other. I'm an internationalist – that's what it means to be an internationalist."

She also wrote a book about her mother's life and the institutional racism that she suffered during her childhood that seems to have been well reviewed. Really doesn't sound like the one-dimensional monster that you're trying to paint her as, and sounds way more like just a person.

You don't see the irony of going to a specific UK party sub and telling actual members of the Labour party they're not left wing?

This stopped being about the MP when someone decided to 'fact check' me with a bunch of bullshit. You're just deflecting now.

I'm sorry but no, the same regime is in power now that was 50 years ago. I note you didn't respond to my questions on what happens to political dissidents and those trying to establish independent trade unions in Cuba today?

I do not consider it significant progress that they've stopped executing people. You set a ridiculously low bar for people that have showed themselves not to respect human rights.

It's not at all controversial to not support revolutionaries, in fact if you do support revolutionaries you're going against clause 1 of the Labour party constitution and it's grounds for expulsion.

> If there were a revolution tomorrow that put in place the exact ideas you wanted for your society you wouldn't support it?

No. This is really simple stuff. As a democrat I do not believe political power should be in the hands of some sort of mob rule, a revolution, popular or not, has no legitimacy and undermines many of the institutions and rights that exist to uphold democracy and the rule of law.

> The only way to make progress is the voting booth? Ridiculous.

Ultimately yes. It's really not that ridiculous, you can protest things and get concessions but the only lasting change comes through reform. Revolutions are built and survive on violent oppression of political opponents - in every case.

What reasons are those again? I'm racist because I think Fidel Castro wass a piece of shit? Nuance? You talk to the familes of those killed about nuance, you're fucking pathetic. The fact you believe every single criticism of Castro must be weighed an measured with "But the west did X bad also" shows how fucked up your logic is. The way you speak about Castro's legacy shows your political priorities, torturing gay people doesn't matter, he was too busy 'supporting liberation' to focus on not imprisoning and killing his political opponents.

I don't know what mickey mouse outfit gave you a history degree, but I'm guessing you didn't write anything along these lines. Socialism isn't built by killing and imprisoning those that disagree with you.

The Labour party exists as the political wing of independent trade unions, the idea that we should support a country that would kill or imprison us is ridiculous.

You seem like a useful idiot to their cause more than anything and the fact you're ignoring the questions that you clearly have no answers to in my replies shows how shallow your arguments are.

You accuse me of not being left wing as if I should be ashamed that I support things that you find 'irrelevant to Castro's legacy' but I will not apologise for supporting gay rights, independent trade unions and the right to hold whatever political position I want. The irony of course is if you held the opposite view to yours now in Cuba, you would be silenced by force. But you see that as a good thing.

I'm glad you live in Canada, because I would be ashamed if you were a member of the same political party as me. Your opinions are fucking vile mate, seriously, you seem to have this idea that literally anything but anything western is superior. It's the kind of political masochism I was mentioning earlier. Idealism without ideals.

Take your vacuous poison somewhere else, or better yet, actually reflect on your own political views, read about some real fucking left wing achievements why don't you.