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Steve Howell
@FromSteveHowell
, 7 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
1/7 Paul Mason says he'll "circle the wagons" around Corbyn - but it looks like that's to starve him into abandoning his principles and throwing some his best allies to the wolves.

His article is not the answer to a coup but the manifesto for it.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2/7 At the heart of Paul Mason's attack is the claim that Labour's 2017 electoral advance was based "above all" on "large scale" tactical voting by Remainers. This is the basis for his assertion that Labour must embrace Remain and a 2nd referendum. But it's a false premise.
3/7 Even the author of the study Mason relies on admits her model shows "relationship" but "does not imply causation". True, it's likely some Remainers voted tactically, but many factors contributed to Labour's vote going up from 9.3m (30.4%) to 12.9m (40%), our best for 20years.
4/7 2017 was a different ballgame. Most voters saw Brexit as settled. UKIP's vote collapsed (3.9m > 0.6m), many of them won to our anti-austerity message. Likewise, new voters: registration of 18-24s was up 51%.

Our 2017 coalition is at risk but NOT just from losing Remainers.
5/7 Paul Mason, Owen Smith & co call for Remain & Reform but we need substance. What reforms? State aid? Competition? Capital freedom? Fiscal stability (austerity)? And how will we get 28 states to unanimously agree them? I voted Remain & Reform in 2016, but is it realistic now?
6/7 The Right has advanced in these EU elections. Remain & Reform puts our chance of socialist change at their mercy. But Paul wants to put that on hold anyway. He says "no amount" of "pledges to nationalise stuff" or "appeals to class solidarity" will defeat the Right. Hmm.....
7/7 Paul Mason wants us to abandon socialism. But this isn't a binary choice: the anti-racist fight against the Right is inseparable from the struggle for economic justice. Brexit has created a false division among working people. A Labour U turn now would be a gift to Farage.
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More from @FromSteveHowell see all

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Steve Howell
@FromSteveHowell
1/3 If this Labour MP had read our energy policy before joining Tory attacks on it, he'd know that 1) valuation (cost) will be decided by parliament, 2) payment will be by govt bonds (not taxes) & 3) the current rip-off is not a good use of anyone's money.
2/3 A delay in reversing the privatisation rip-off only adds to it.

National Grid's annual results published today show it made a £3.4bn profit in 2018-19. But it cut investment in the UK by 7%, while increasing it in the US. It's paid nearly £6bn in dividends in the last 2yrs.
3/3 Jones is, perhaps not surprisingly, echoing Chuka Umunna's attack on Labour's public ownership plans. Both reveal their ignorance of the precedent that Welsh Water became a not-for-profit through a bond issue of the kind Labour is now proposing. See: steve-howell.com/you-cant-have-…
Read 3 tweets
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Steve Howell
@FromSteveHowell
1/4 Labour ended with a net loss of 63 seats (Tories 1,269). The pattern of Labour losses/gains is key. The 248 Councils where seats were contested split roughly 3 ways: in just over a third Labour made gains, in under a third we made losses - of these, 21 saw losses of 5+ seats.
2/4 Labour losses were geographically very concentrated: the 21 councils where we made losses of 5 seats or more were ALL in Midlands and Northern Brexit-voting areas, with the north east/Cumbria and former mining areas (Barnsley, NE Derbyshire and Bolsover) to the fore.
3/4 Labour gains - there were hundreds! - were spread fairly evenly across nearly 100 Council districts. Half of the 14 where Labour gained 5 or more seats were in the South. But there was also a handful of Brexit-voting Northern/Midlands councils where Labour gained 5+ seats.
Read 6 tweets
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Steve Howell
@FromSteveHowell
1/ Observer wants Corbyn to explain how replacing 'the' with 'a' customs union "will make Britons...more in charge of their destiny."
To save him trouble:
THE customs union: rules made by EU, we're 'rule takers'.
A (new) customs union: rules agreed jointly by UK & EU.
#PLPwatch
2/ The @Guardian Observer is supporting Labour rebels who want UK to be in THE customs union. This could not be more at odds with the idea of "taking back control". People are not stupid. They will see through it and will know it is a Trojan horse to sabotage Brexit. #PLPWatch
3/ The Labour manifesto said unequivocally "we accept the result of the referendum". It was adopted unanimously on 11.5.2017 at Labour's Clause V meeting representing all sections of the party. It's the basis on which we won nearly 13m votes. That has to mean something #PLPWatch
Read 9 tweets

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Brian Cates
@drawandstrike
Democrats are going 'all in' on the narrative that the extremists who now run their party cannot be called out or criticized for the extremist things they say.

To criticize them is to 'incite violence' against them.

theepochtimes.com/democrats-atta…
My God it hasn't even been 5 months yet since they got to Congress and they are already setting the agenda for the party.

This is FANTASTIC.

All the sane people still left in the Democratic party are literally going to be FORCED to bolt from it by 2020....
I think Wictor is in fact correct about this....SOMEBODY in D circles flipped and helped *engineer* and *clear the way for* radical extremists who ordinarily wouldn't have had a shot to actually win their elections.

Radicals who DON'T follow Alinsky's 'Rules for Radicals'!
Read 15 tweets
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Brian Cates
@drawandstrike
Yep, we're all POUNCING on this guy like a buncha hungry lions!

I may even POUNCE on this guy and ROAR LOUDLY 2 or 3 times today!
So he's admitting he put blackface on, just not for this picture, which he'd never seen before in his life before yesterday and had no idea it appeared in his med school yearbook.

Read 36 tweets
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Yascha Mounk
@Yascha_Mounk
Folks, I know way more important things are going on in the world.

But I honestly find it nuts that so many people in the serious reaches of academia and the thoughtful left are simply dismissing Sokal Squared.

Here’s my response to the main criticisms.

(Thread.)
The main pushback I’ve seen:

1) The journals they pranked aren’t serious
2) No control group
3) Other academic fields are also bad
4) It’s unethical to make people do work under false pretenses
5) They are tools of the right in the culture war

I’ll take these in order.

2/n
1) The canine rape culture paper was published Gender, Place, and Culture. The authors who contributed to the latest issue teach at UCLA, Temple, Penn State, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Manchester, Berlin’s Humboldt University, etc.

3/n
Read 20 tweets
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Far Left Hate Watch ❌Labour is a racist endeavour
@FarLeftHate
Why is it the Tories make the case for true conservatism so hard, especially in the time of #Corbyn and #McDonnell the rise and stupidity of the extreme Far Left it should be the easiest time for them to do it? #TheBattleforBrexit Thread 1/10
When I was younger, the Conservatives were the party of aspiration, law and order people if they wanted to improve their lot in life voted Conservative, you wanted a small state and low taxes and if you worked hard you were successful. 2/10
If you were lazy, feckless or belonged to a union and had no real ambition then you voted Labour because you wanted a big, nanny state because you were someone who wanted to be infantilized and never grow up because you were incapable of taking care of yourself. 3/10
Read 10 tweets
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Laura Walker 🍸🦈
@LauraWalkerKC
Two years after ditching the @GOP and their new alt-right mandate of Hating Liberals as some kind of virtue, it is interesting to look at the RNC as a whole and wonder what the point is. It obviously isn't small government and fiscal responsibility. /1
And frankly it's hard to keep a straight face on the National Security Hawk GOP thing when they are excusing Russia and coddling Wikileaks/Assange /2
I was never personally a big social conservative, but from outside the @GOP it is pretty clear they've given up any claim to moral authority by embracing Mr. Grab-em-in-the-When-You're-a-Star-They-Let-You-Do-It. /3
Read 6 tweets
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Chootchy Face
@chootchyface
Two serving Jewish Labour councillors have spoken out for the first time to expose the “extraordinary” levels of “institutional anti-semitism” in Momentum’s Haringey heartland in north London - thread 👇

thetimes.co.uk/article/jewish…
Joe Goldberg and Natan Doron said they had been repeatedly abused to their faces by pro-#Corbyn #Labour members — including fellow councillors — with crude allusions to their race or insulting references to the #Holocaust 👇
Goldberg the council’s cabinet member for economic development was accused by #Labour councillor of “bagel-barrel politics”

Same councillor said academy schools comparable to “Kristallnacht”, the Nazi pogrom in which 1,400 synagogues were attacked & dozens of Jews murdered 👇
Read 13 tweets

Trending hashtags

#Cuba #ItsOver #Momentum #karma #Clause #victim #HumanRights #AmendmentA #Letwin #Holocaust #sexualization #PM #SaveOurNHS #MilacreMission #Amendment #lookforward #EUref #Colombia #FelizJueves #Looks #Article50Extension #UNCharter #Margin #Conservatives #antisemite
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