The end of the Labour party

[truman]

So because they supported it in the past they aren't allowed to change their minds? When can we expect an invasion of the Falklands?

 

It's a bit late to change minds now....we're into PFI for about £300 billion..what do you suggest we do? Walk away from the debt?

[sgtkate]

dont get the Falklands bit

 

I was taking a pop at the Tories who once upon a time decided to allow the Argentinians a free run at the Falklands by pulling our soldiers and warships out, mainly so Thatcher would win an election. If Labour can't change their mind on something from the past then I expect the Tories to once again re-enact the Falklands.

 

---------- Post added 03-03-2017 at 15:31 ----------

 

It's a bit late to change minds now....we're into PFI for about £300 billion..what do you suggest we do? Walk away from the debt?

 

Like the EU debt some on here seem to think we should walk away from? I've never understood or supported PFI. A child with a calculator and rudimentary maths could see the costs were going to be horrendous, and yes I fully understand sometimes we need to take a loan as somethings need covering now, we can't wait 10 years to save up, but PFI? Gah!

[alchresearch]

OK, I admit it was a late night rant.

I'll get back to it later. I have things to do.

A quick squint through your replies looks like I'll have a lot to say. I'm quite happy to defend my point of view.

 

Take your time Anna, I see you've been hiding for a few days, but been quite active here today.

[phil752]

It's a bit late to change minds now....we're into PFI for about £300 billion..what do you suggest we do? Walk away from the debt?

 

instead of hs2/3 we should have been hard nosed and bought the pfi contracts back

[truman]

instead of hs2/3 we should have been hard nosed and bought the pfi contracts back

 

Nowhere near enough..

[blake]

I was taking a pop at the Tories who once upon a time decided to allow the Argentinians a free run at the Falklands by pulling our soldiers and warships out, mainly so Thatcher would win an election. If Labour can't change their mind on something from the past then I expect the Tories to once again re-enact the Falklands.

 

this is so deluded, it's funny. Anna seems to be trying to make out here that 'the Tories' withdrew the Endurance and other vessels from the South Atlantic in this vague hope that the Argentines might invade, enabling the government to assemble a Task Force to re-take the islands and thus enable the Tories to win the election.

 

but the Tories would have won the 1983 election anyway regardless of the Falklands. They'd recovered in the polls by the spring of 1982, and the economy was turning round. Thatcher was already beginning to get quite popular prior to the Falklands, which definitely helped but ultimately made no difference. The Tories would have won the 1983 election handily regardless of the Falklands.

 

Labour had a leader then, who was nearly, but not quite, as much of an un-electable total joke as the current one Corbyn is and they had no chance in that election with the SDP/Alliance taking a quarter of the total, splitting the anti-Tory vote. The Tory vote FELL between 1979 and 1983 - 700,000 less people voted for them - but because the opposition was split they greatly increased their number of seats in parliament.

 

the so-called 'Falklands Factor' and the 1983 election is a leftist political myth, like 'The Sun Wot Won It' is for the 1992 election which is not true either. Thoughts of the election had no bearing at all on any of the decisions taken during the time of the Falklands war, and nobody has ever been able to find any specific references or recollections by anybody, that the election, due by 1984, was discussed in any detail at all. When the writer of the 'Falklands Play', Ian Curtis, was pressured by BBC people into including such references into the drama, he flatly refused saying that there was no evidence that any such discussions had taken place.

 

talking about the 1983 election's split left-of-centre vote, from some of her other posts, Anna seems to be suffering from the curious delusion that the UK is becoming more left-wing.

 

this is totally wrong, because in the 2015 election, for the first time ever, over 50% of the voters voted for right of centre candidates, Tory and UKIP ones. All through the 1970s and 80s, all the way through the Thatcher era, more people voted for left of centre candidates than right of centre ones. In 2015, that all changed, and that is one of the reasons why I am sure 2015 will go down as a historic re-aligning election. It showed that Britain is just not the left of centre country any more that it had previously been, and that even Ed Miliband was far too left-wing to have a chance of winning.

 

How stupid of Labour, when having received clear evidence from the election in 2015 that people were no longer as left-wing as they previously were, to choose the most left-wing candidate, Corbyn, that they possibly could.

[unbeliever]

So because they supported it in the past they aren't allowed to change their minds?

 

They should change their minds. But to pretend that an idea you so recently supported is ridiculous or evil is just false.

[LeMaquis]

Remember how Benn was nobbled through an inexplicable diagnosed illness when he challenged the leadership?

 

Do you have any evidence for this or are you suffering from Stalinist paranoia?

[the_bloke]

You ever notice how the same poster comes back every two months with a new username?

[unbeliever]

I liked Tony Benn. A lot. I don't like Corbyn and I especially don't like McDonnell. I hold them responsible for the threats and intimidation by Momentum &c against the more moderate Labour voices, most notable Angela Eagle. I don't like Eagle either, but nobody deserves that kind of treatment.

The media often write with an axe to grind, for certain. But Corbyn is a born loser and McDonnell is bad news on every possible level. Abbot's fine most of the time, although somewhat lacking in moral courage and as far as I'm concerned wrong about most things.

Corbyn is essentially the anti-Trump. The thing people don't understand about anti-matter is that it is not an opposite. It is identical to the matching matter in almost every way but with a striking difference in a couple of properties. Kind of like a reflection. This is what Corbyn is to Trump. Shouting at the media, ranting nonsense at anybody who will listen and crippling the normal democratic process as they go.

This is a feature of democracy. The nutters get on the big table from time to time. But it soon passes.