Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #labourconference2019
Most recents (6)
Today Jeremy Corbyn promised to bring medical research into common ownership at #LabourConference2019. This is a huge campaign victory, and a huge challenge to the power of Big Pharma. Here’s what it means: (1/9) #Lab19
At the moment, medicines are produced by a monopoly of giant corporations for super profits. They cost our #NHS over £18bn last year - an increase of 4.6% from the previous year - and means it can’t afford some new medicines. People are dying, the NHS is being undermined. (2/9)
Luis Walker featured in Corbyn’s leaders’ speech is an 8-year old boy with cystic fibrosis. There’s a drug, Orkambi, that could alleviate his symptoms and slow the disease, potentially adding years to his life. But it’s too expensive for the NHS (£105,000!) (3/9)
For Labour to enact their amazing policies they need to win the election. They need to win over Labour leave seats to do this. By becoming a party officially backing remain, there's a real risk Labour will lose these seats by alienating voters in these constituencies. 1/7 #Lab19
Both the country & the party are clearly split on this. To sway one way or the other, as the Tories & Lib Dems have done, is surely not going to solve anything. There has to be compromise on both sides: leavers accepting that there should be another vote... 2/7 #Lab19 #LabConf19
the reasonable one being proposed by Corbyn & Labour - with leave still being an option - but under a much better deal; and remainers need to acknowledge that by Labour being pushed to adopt a staunchly remain position risks completely trashing how far the party's come 3/7 #Lab19
Sadly #LabourConference2019 matters:
#Ofsted was enthusiastically embraced (and reformed) under Blair / Brown ... so it is sad - but inevitable - that #Labour under #Corbyn want to abolish it. Yet Ofsted has been a key part of driving up #educational #standards in England. 1/
#Ofsted was enthusiastically embraced (and reformed) under Blair / Brown ... so it is sad - but inevitable - that #Labour under #Corbyn want to abolish it. Yet Ofsted has been a key part of driving up #educational #standards in England. 1/
Without any doubt children’s #education + #school outcomes are better with an #independent regulator. As a Blairite teacher put it to me:
“No one likes the referee in football but we need them”
Children’s education will be affected adversely if this plan goes ahead 2/
“No one likes the referee in football but we need them”
Children’s education will be affected adversely if this plan goes ahead 2/
Then #Labour votes to abolish #privateschools + “redistribute” all building/assets = steal!
- obvs Corbyn, McDonnell, Milne, Lansman all ➡️ private schools (Watson did not .. but he’s a Tory now!)
- real Q= how do they integrate 600,000 extra #pupils (+ pay for this)? 3/
#Lab19
- obvs Corbyn, McDonnell, Milne, Lansman all ➡️ private schools (Watson did not .. but he’s a Tory now!)
- real Q= how do they integrate 600,000 extra #pupils (+ pay for this)? 3/
#Lab19
Emily Thornberry tells @paulwaugh that she’s personally opposed to having a special Brexit conference after a general election: “I can’t see why we can’t make a decision now.” #WaughZoneLive
Thornberry: “The polling is there and makes the case that we will lose many, many more people who voted Remain than those who voted Leave.” She warns that Labour could lose 30% of its 2017 vote if it doesn’t go into an election with a clear Remain position #WaughZoneLive.
Thornberry: “The vast majority of Labour voters want to Remain. The vast majority of Labour members want to Remain. We are a Remain party” #WaughZoneLive.
Just been accosted by Labour Party Marxists' Anne McShane outside a pub. She wanted to know if I was proud of myself. #LabourConference2019 #Lab19
She accused me of assisting a witchhunt against the Labour left, which will be due to my calling out antisemitism, something I'd always regarded as a duty for socialists. I replied that I was ashamed I'd ever been involved in a group that was now facilitating antisemitism.
And that she should be ashamed too. LPM is a front for the CPGB, a group that didn't used to obsess about anti-Zionism but has done that these last few years, spawning Labour Against the Witchhunt and presenting all concerns about antisemitism as some sort of Zionist conspiracy. 
Having a sovereign conference, where the rank and file of the party can submit policies without having them subject to bureaucratic stitch-ups or obfuscatory composites, and then policies the conference votes for actually become party policy and are implemented in government...
...rather than policies being made up and announced unilaterally by ministers or having conference debates undermined by statements from the NEC or leader’s office issued right before they’re due to take place...
...is just such basic, 101 stuff in terms of party democracy and empowering the membership. It’s a scandal how poor “Corbynism” has been on this stuff so far. #Lab19 #LabourConference2019
