[Tubby Isaacs]

Seem to be quite a few Campaign Group people who've bailed on Loach and not signed this letter. The letter is predictably pathetic, with no engagement with the substance of Loach's expulsion.

[Youngian]

Loach's semi documentary style isn't a radical innovation anymore. Its TOWIE in Jaywick instead of Chingford.

[Abernathy]

no engagement with the substance of Loach's expulsion.

This is typical. They don’t care that Loach is a sponsor of Labour Against The Witch-hunt, an organisation proscribed by Labour for denying anti-semitism in the party, and was as such auto-expelled, let alone that he is a holocaust doubter, founded a rival political party that contested elections against Labour, and had children beaten (“Kes”) because he thought it would look good on film.

All they tediously bang on about is what a fine socialist he is, who has made loads of right-on fillums. Both of which are totally fucking irrelevant.

[Tubby Isaacs]

"Loach's expulsion is an attack on the left", say people who misleadingly say Loach was expelled for being on the left.

See what they did there?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Biden withdrew because he wants to threaten China.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Chair of Young Labour here. Somebody will explain "to the right of the Tories" to me one day.

[RedSparrows]

I know it's not the same thing, and has roots far more valuable, but I can't help but hear 'thoughts and prayers' when the word solidarity is thrown out all over the place.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's not that which bugs me. I can't offer more than words. It's the dissonance between "we're the problem" and "we need to take in all the people who are scared for their lives now we've left".

[The Weeping Angel]

Biden withdrew because he wants to threaten China.

What I've come to expect from these clowns. Also ignores the fact that Afghanistan was a fully independent nation for much of the twentieth century and was admitted into the UN in 1946.

[Youngian]

Chair of Young Labour here. Somebody will explain "to the right of the Tories" to me one day.

I'll have a go. Stop the War will employ any argument to justify the answer they already have. That includes appropriating isolationist conservatives like Hitchen and Oborne which they mistake for gravitas. Anyone arguing differently must be more right wing than Peter Hitchen.

[Tubby Isaacs]

There's a lot of unspoken "faraway country" about this lot, though I suppose they support refugees unlike most of the right counterparts. It's rather like Lexit, which has a lot of Kipperishness to it when held up to the light.

[Arrowhead]

It seems that Steve Turner, the candidate endorsed by Len McCluskey, has almost certainly fallen to a shock defeat in the contest to become the next head of Unite.

The likes of Len, Bastani, Loach, Burgon etc can rage at Starmer all they like, but at some point they are going to have to confront the cold, harsh reality that they had their big chance and completely blew it. Everything that has happened since then is part of the fallout from that failure.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Why didn't their candidate drop out so as not to split the left vote?

[Arrowhead]

Why didn't their candidate drop out so as not to split the left vote?

Presumably it was assumed that Howard Beckett pulling out would be enough for Len's pick to win the throne.

I should imagine Team Starmer find all of this highly amusing. They've finally got Len out of their hair and, although Sharon Graham is clearly no centrist, they will at least find themselves dealing with a Unite boss seemingly more inclined to pragmatism and reality rather than having a Len stooge babbling insincere nonsense about them on social media.

I suspect the ultra-Corbynites will be absolutely foaming at this section from Graham's manifesto: "The collapse of the Left within Labour" and openly addressing the reality of the end of the Corbyn era

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah, I was being sarcy- they all said Graham should pull out so as not to split the vote.

I like the cut of her jib from what I've seen. I don't see her paying for Sqwawkbox libels. Some good work was done under McCluskey, for sure, he was just the world's worst politicker.

[Abernathy]

I get the distinct impression that Sharon Graham, for all that she has explicitly eschewed the McCluskey approach of micro-involvement in Labour's policies and political strategy in favour of a broadly pragmatic approach, still recognises that Unite remains a significant power within the labour movement, and can play an important role in actually electing a truly progressive government that will benefit working people.

It seems to me that she is ready to work with the party leader to achieve this - something that McCluskey would never do.

[kreuzberger]

Contentious view, perhaps; keep vainglorious men out of politics. Completely. No exceptions.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Contentious view, perhaps; keep vainglorious men out of politics. Completely. No exceptions.

This.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Steve Turner sounded like a "concentrate on the day job" sort of guy, then he started taking Howard Beckett seriously.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Not one of Howard's madder tweets, but this isn't really true.

The last Tory Health Secretary to go down the road of "Well, the problem we have is that we don't have enough private healthcare" was John Moore in about 1987. Tory backbenchers (who waved through the Poll Tax) spotted what a liability this talk was, and from then on, you just did privatization and talked about it as little as possible.

Better attack line is surely that they lie/try to hide the privatization they do.