[Malcolm Armsteen]

You were right with the spouting antisemitic bollocks part.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Mohammed Iqbal, a Pendle councillor, said: “In the last few weeks there has been a culture developing from the national Labour party that seems to want to control anything that any councillor wants to say. Or where there is good hard-working councillors that have been serving the community for a number of years, the party nationally seem to dictate who can stand where and when.”


Iqbal was previously suspended from the party for 18 months over claims he had made antisemitic comments at a meeting.

[davidjay]

Imagine my surprise.

[Youngian]

the national Labour party that seems to want to control anything that any councillor wants to say. Or where there is good hard-working councillors that have been serving the community for a number of years, the party nationally seem to dictate who can stand where and when.

How about you stick to working hard repairing potholes in Pendle and keep it buttoned when the national stakes are so high.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Did we expect party discipline from Corbynites?

Don't be silly. The ego has landed.

[Abernathy]

the national Labour party that seems to want to control anything that any councillor wants to say. Or where there is good hard-working councillors that have been serving the community for a number of years, the party nationally seem to dictate who can stand where and when.

From time to time, I get asked to help out with the candidate selection process in my West Midlands region by being part of a three person Interview and Assessment Team, or IAT, whose job it is to interview individuals seeking to join the panel of potential candidates from which local parties subsequently select candidates to stand in local elections. We are expected to ask the would-be candidates about why they want to be elected as a Labour candidate, their campaigning record and history, their understanding of the core concept of equality of opportunity, of the role of a Councillor and the functions of a local authority, and, crucially and specifically, about their understanding of the importance of the October 2020 EHRC report on anti-semitism within Labour , and their personal commitment to upholding the recommendations therein in future.

The IAT then makes a recommendation on the interviewee's suitability (or otherwise) to be a Labour candidate . Due diligence here is of enormous importance, as we saw from the Rochdale by-election debacle, even though similar procedures will have been gone through in respect of Azhar Ali. So the Labour Party nationally may not be seeking to control everything any Labour councillor may say, but it does try to stop absolute twats from getting selected as Labour candidates. Standard practice, that these gobshites seem unable to accept - in which case, bye bye.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Indeed. So many unsuitables seem to want a party that represents just them.

[The Weeping Angel]

New Party Political broadcast

[Youngian]

New Party Political broadcast

People of a certain vintage will remember the classic Saatchi ad showing the low rates in the Tory street and the high rates across the road in the Labour borough. Effective take on the same ad. And people like and trust Tony, great to see him back in Labour.

The party is on a roll

[Crabcakes]

Whoever juxtaposed the Boris lockdown party headlines with the “putting party ahead of country” voiceover deserves a pat on the back

[Arrowhead]

“53 Missed Calls - Graham Brady”

[Crabcakes]

Looks like David Lammy is getting a dose of the pathetic ‘all as bad as each other’ smear nonsense that Angela Rayner is experiencing. And this is so, so feeble it’s laughable.

https://news.sky.com/story/ofcom-launch ... y-13110769

[Tubby Isaacs]

I've not heard his show, but doesn't he basically do a phone in? If some news breaks when he's presenting, is he not allowed to announce it?

That's not all that much like GB News doing it all the time.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Deeply irritated with Wes Streeting again.

And I say that as by no means a staunch NHS person. I like that the less well paid staff get paid better than they would in a private hospital, but I don't see any particular reason why it should provide all the care it funds or anything. So float all the reforms you like, as far as I'm concerned, But spare us the "middle class lefties" bollocks. And stop talking up your "taking on the system" stuff. Don't waste political capital now. Sir Keir almost certainly sees health the same way as Streeting, but he's not being obnoxious about it.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Could you provide a little context, please?

[Youngian]

Could you provide a little context, please?

“Middle-class lefties” will not stop a Labour government from using private hospitals to tackle the NHS’s huge care backlog, the party’s shadow health secretary has pledged.
Wes Streeting rejected the idea that paying private health providers to treat patients amounted to a “betrayal” of the NHS and insisted that quicker treatment was more important than ideology.
He used an opinion column in the Sun on Monday to make clear that a Labour government would continue the Conservatives’ policy of using health service funds to pay private hospitals to treat as many of the millions waiting for NHS care as possible. https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... eting-says

If Wes wants to take a grownup pragmatic approach to the NHS he should act like a pragmatic grownup politician instead hurling vapid insults.
My cousin is a nurse at Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon which had private management fiasco foisted upon it and won’t be convinced by having more of it. She’s certainly not a middle class lefty and probably been a Tory voter in the past, the sort of person Labour is supposed to be wooing.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

That's not what he's talking about.
The NHS did this under Labour 2000-2010. We didn't give any hospitals (or other services) to private health care, we booked patients in where there was spare capacity. Quite different.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The policy suggestions are fine. I'm not worried about him writing in The Sun, anything like that.

It's the unnecessary provoking that isn't fine. Something like 1.4 million people work for the NHS. You don't need to be talking up a big battle with them before there's even an election, let alone a white paper. Blair didn't do that. Starmer isn't doing that.

Who is the audience for this stuff? The audience now is basically Janan Ganesh and John Rentoul. Or perhaps a future biographer. "West Streeting immediately set out is his stall as an unwavering champion of reform." Let's do the reform first, eh?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Larry "Brexit" Elliott has done a balanced article on Rachel Reeves' tax collecting plans.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... hel-reeves

Richard Murphy makes his predictable appearance to tell them they're doing it wrong. I'm sure the people Reeves has put in charge are aware of where the missing tax is. Murphy's plan involves bringing back local tax offices. How does that work? Somebody thinking of hiding income drives past the tax office one day, shits themselves, and walks in saying "Fair cop, guv!"

In short, sounds like a fair bit more can be raised (it was before when the Coalition invested, to their credit), but £5bn sounds a lot.

[mattomac]

The policy suggestions are fine. I'm not worried about him writing in The Sun, anything like that.

It's the unnecessary provoking that isn't fine. Something like 1.4 million people work for the NHS. You don't need to be talking up a big battle with them before there's even an election, let alone a white paper. Blair didn't do that. Starmer isn't doing that.

Who is the audience for this stuff? The audience now is basically Janan Ganesh and John Rentoul. Or perhaps a future biographer. "West Streeting immediately set out is his stall as an unwavering champion of reform." Let's do the reform first, eh?

Tend to agree, the policy is sound idea but not sure why he needs to go disparaging, Starmer needs to rein him in a bit.