What just happened?
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robbo203 wrote:It seems now that Labour has overtaken the Tories in the popularity contest . Had the election been two weeks later we could be talking about PM Corbynhttp://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/labour-now-has-a-six-point-lead-over-the-tories-new-poll-finds/ar-BBCssDl?li=AAmiR2Z&ocid=spartandhp
Seems the tories are stuffed either way. Try and manage parliament and Brexit with the DUP pulling their chain, which is bound to end up like pig's breakfast, increasing their unpopularity. Or go to the country again, face the wrath of Brenda from Bristol and the general public, for having "another bloody election".Seems to me that the sooner we get that "nice Mr Corbyn" into No 10, the sooner we can demonstrate that capitalism can't be made to work in favour of the working class, no matter how nice the Prime Minister is.Then we can get on with the business of replacing it with a genuine Socialist society!!!
The Sinn Fein angle is significant, their success has made a Tory majority easier, but, they are now two seats short of being the largest party in the 6 counties: Belfast North is in sight, and the fall of Belfast South to the DUP may mean SDLP voters will back the Shinners next time. (Although there is an Independent Unionist out there).DUP support for the Tories may well come back to hurt them in the way that happened to the Lib-Dems, and re-unification is the easy business solution to the Hard border problem.
For psephological trainspotters:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40331136The telephone box must be where our voters in London gathered.
ll I think with this Corbynite thing it is tempting to make the analysis of here we go again back to the 1970’s labour party thing again etc. However I don’t think we, and the working class in general, as far as understanding how capitalism works is in the same position as the 1970’s. Just for starters the word capitalism itself was not in the mainstream even in the early 1980’s. I am sure I never heard the word in the mainstream media then; it would be interesting to do a literature search I think on how many times the word was used in the mainstream media press around then. Without wanting too much to sound like the working class hero kind of stuff. My father in the 1970’s, who was a bastard, was dyed in the wool left labour party person and a very active trade unionists and shop steward etc. However he didn’t know what capitalism was he just hated the rich bastard tories and wanted to strike his way towards nirvana. He was also a bit of a labour aristocracy worker being at the top of that tree being an electrical engineer. Fitters or spanner monkeys were lower down in the pecking order and deserved to earn less and nothing would get him agitated more than the erosion of that pay differential. Shop floor workers and machine operators were dross and beneath contempt. I mention it as I am just slowly reading through Paul Mason’s book at lunch time at work 5 pages at a time. He talked briefly about his experience at a metal pressing shop on the river Mersey and how the engineers would look down their noses at the shop floor workers. When I started again working in a factory in the mid 1980’s it was still there and the engineers were still split into the ‘fitters’ and ‘electricians’. In the same place now they are fused and there are just engineers and I don’t think they are as shitty as they used to be. In 1979 at a tender age, yet thinking myself a bit of a clever bod, I came across the labour theory of value and capitalism from a ex CPGB and Irish nationalist grunt on the shop floor in another factory. I had never heard anything like it before as it wasn’t around like it is now even in the rightwing press. I was a bit pissed off because he didn’t have a O’level but was running rings around me. Such material as below wasn’t there. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/04/22/heres-an-unlikely-bestseller-a-700-page-book-on-21st-century-economics/?utm_term=.1d42152a1ab2 Corbynism is just politicised trade union consciousness and getting the best deal out of capitalism; but I think many of them now understand that there are brick walls as to how far you can take it.
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