Shaun Lawson Profile picture
Sep 23, 2020 37 tweets 6 min read Read on X
Yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition - whose aim is to lead his British party into governing the British people, and needs the votes of British people to do so - said he loved his country and wanted to prioritise it.

So far, so normal. But not on Twitter. Not in this madhouse
Apparently, the leader of a major political party seeking to govern a nation state and hence, prioritising that nation state and all its people is OUTRAGEOUS. DISGUSTING. Fascism has descended on the Labour Party. 🙄🙄🙄
Nothing - and I mean nothing - better sums up how (parts of) the (mostly online) left has completely lost the plot than its apparent disgust at something which is the norm in literally any other democracy on Earth.
Imagine the leader of France saying not France, but Czechia is his priority.

Imagine the leader of Germany saying not Germany, but Lebanon is her priority.

Imagine the leader of Canada saying not Canada, but Italy is his priority.
Imagine a country in which hundreds of thousands have died thanks to both austerity and Covid under a disgusting, lethally incompetent government - but in which some on the left think that wanting to HELP the people of that country is monstrous.

That country is Britain.
I've seen some nonsense on here in my time. I have never, ever seen such offensive, disgraceful gibberish from out and out narcissists as I did yesterday.

In the process, all those laying into the Labour Party for the crime of caring about the UK showed exactly why we lost.
The scores and scores of working class voters we've lost over the last two decades think we don't care about them, or the country. Frankly, plenty of people on here proved them right yesterday.
Imagine having to choose between heating and eating - imagine your kids starving in latter day Dickensian Britain - only for the message from some on here to be "sorry, Palestine is more important than you. Yemen is more important than you. And loving your country is RACIST".
Imagine all those who love Britain being told "you're one step away from fascism". What utter, unadulterated, juvenile bollocks.

That the left has vacated any sense of patriotism over the past generation is very much part of why we lose.
We've allowed far right nutcases to drape themselves in the flag while riding roughshod over the entire population... and we are so pathetic, we don't even challenge them and seek to reclaim REAL patriotism, inclusive patriotism, caring for everyone?

If so, we deserve to lose.
It would be unthinkable - literally unthinkable - for any party anywhere in the world to decry patriotism and expect to be elected by the people it apparently despises.

But no no: that's not how the political illiterates and inadequates on here see it.
Political illiterates and inadequates who:

1. Do not understand the yawning chasm which has always separated patriotism from nationalism. The former is about loving one's country. The latter is about hating other countries.
2. Have the brass neck to lay into the Labour leader for supporting patriotism while... also supporting Scottish independence. You couldn't write this script.

3. Think that the British working class want some sixth form version of socialism, and are oblivious to their wishes.
4. Apparently have no conception whatsoever that patriotism is part of human nature itself. And why? Because everyone needs a place called home.

5. Think that someone born working class who rises up through their talent and hard work is some kind of enemy. You what?
6. Deliberately ignore everything the Labour leader highlighted about the need for diversity in our society and its pernicious, racist inequalities: which Covid has only exacerbated even more.

People who behave in such a way are acting in bad faith: plain and simple.
7. Think, completely incomprehensibly, that patriotism and internationalism cannot coexist side by side when THEY ALWAYS HAVE - never more so than under Clement Attlee. The leader they claim to adore, while apparently knowing precisely zero about his government or foreign policy.
8. Act like their clicks and their retweets from their ridiculously stupid, regularly bad faith takes are more important to them than the life and death issue of getting a Labour government sometime before hell freezes over.
9. Are so wilfully oblivious to reality, act as though the last Labour leader somehow got just about everything right despite being smashed out of sight at election after election after election... and do not understand what Labour's brand being trashed for a decade even means.
What it meant was that under the new leader, we started miles and miles behind. Well over 20 points behind.

What it means is we need millions of people to vote for us who do not trust us and think we hate them.

What it means is that we have to get a hearing before anything else
We're not going to get a hearing if we act, ludicrously offensively, as though patriotism is somehow 'racist'.

We're not going to get a hearing if we don't appreciate people's aspirations and desires as well as their communities.
We're not going to get a hearing until we even sound like we have the first clue what people's ordinary lives actually involve - and build a real coalition of middle class and working class, professionals and blue collar workers, ethnic minorities and whites, young and old.
And getting a hearing is just step one. It's literally just base camp. But oh no: HOW DARE Starmer not alienate those we need to vote for us if we're ever to do anything good for the British people? Doesn't he realise that Twitter is all that counts?
It is pathetic. It is risible. It is beyond embarrassing.

Never mind all those demanding long term economic plans from the opposition when we don't even know where the country will be in a month, let alone a year or 4 years from now.
And I'll tell you what it leaves me concluding. Those who continue with this nonsense - those desperate to sabotage Starmer for the crime of him actually reaching out to those millions of lost voters - can only be one of two things.
Either they hate everyone and everything, and want things to get even WORSE for everyone - nihilists, in other words - or they are viewing all this from the most horrific, unimaginable positions of privilege. It's one or the other.
The single mother desperately trying to keep a roof over her head, or the disabled woman whose life has been wrecked by this wanton government, or the black man dealing with racism every single day, couldn't give a damn who the Labour leader is.

THEY JUST WANT THE TORIES OUT.
The young person horribly fearful for their and the planet's whole future, whose family needs foodbanks and whose friends only have one meal a day, doesn't give a damn who the Labour leader is.

THEY JUST WANT THE TORIES OUT.
The hundreds of thousands who've lost loved ones in this pandemic and haven't even been given the dignity of burying them couldn't give a damn about how 'left wing' or 'socialist' the Labour leader is.

THEY JUST WANT THE TORIES OUT.
And millions and millions and millions of people who despise the Tories but regarded Labour as an angry, shambolic rabble have been frantic for an opposition they can finally take seriously.

Now, at last, they've got one: which is a Mark of Cain in bizarro world on here.
The extent to which some people on here appear to view literally everything in politics through their specific (in many cases, absurd) demands ("give me exactly what I want, or else") doesn't speak of socialism at all. It reeks of selfishness beyond belief.
The extent to which some people on here seem to view the entire world through their own selective echo chamber - a parallel universe in which some of them thought the election was rigged, cos Corbyn was very popular on Twitter 🙄 - boggles my mind.
And the level of ignorance from those who claim to be all about the working class while showing, each and every day, that they know nothing about working class voters in any way whatsoever, is just completely breathtaking.
No wonder we as a party fell so far down the rabbit hole for so long. And the thing about some of those I've referred to in this thread is: they cannot bear the idea that we might actually right the ship. That we might actually become credible again. And you know why?
Because if that happens, they lose influence on here. For some people, in the perfect mirror image of venal right wing Labour (and ex-Labour) MPs, this is all about territory. All about their petty online fiefdoms.

The public? They can go to hell apparently.
I will never abide such a course - and thankfully, most people on this platform won't either.

Guess what folks? There's never been a Labour leader with my exact politics. Some have been to the left of me, others to the right of me. Yet I've kept voting Labour.
And the reason I've kept doing that, supporting every leader in the process, is I know which side my, my loved ones', my community's bread is buttered on.

Everyone I care about in Britain NEEDS a Labour government. Desperately. Urgently.
And I simply cannot tolerate those who seek to prevent a Labour government coming about. Period.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Shaun Lawson

Shaun Lawson Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @shaunjlawson

May 29
THREAD: Sangita Myska, James O'Brien and LBC.

When I was a kid, such was the sheer quality of the news coverage on British television, I thought journalists told the truth. And were motivated by exactly that: holding truth to power, essential to any flourishing democracy.
I watched Newsnight and Channel 4 News avidly. I read the Sunday Times news review every weekend.

And the BBC's coverage of conflict in the Middle East, through fearless reporters like Jeremy Bowen, Orla Guerin and John Simpson, was consistently outstanding.
Back then, there were next to no fears on British journalism's part of being denounced as 'antisemitic' for telling the truth about Israel's conduct.

Media whitewashing went on all the time quite disgracefully in the US - but not in the UK or across Europe.
Read 30 tweets
Apr 18
THREAD: The Supreme Court, trans rights, and the left.

Many times over the last 4 or 5 years, I've warned again and again about the ludicrous rabbit hole of its own making which the contemporary left was disappearing down over trans rights and women's rights.
A rabbit hole which would inevitably be exploited by the far right for its own appalling ends. As is currently happening, to the horror of so many looking on, in the United States and elsewhere.

I had hoped the Supreme Court's clarification would help the UK left see sense.
The Labour Party, thankfully, gradually has: bit by bit.

But the online left, very left wing Labour MPs, the Greens, large swathes of the SNP and of the US Democrats haven't at all. It's all too plain that hardly any of them have learnt anything.

I do understand why.
Read 66 tweets
Mar 23
I was talking with my aunt about this yesterday. We talked for over 8 hours (not only about this!) - that's a lifetime record for me!

I was very shocked at just how low wages were and how high bills were. She really DID scrimp and save massively. So did plenty of others.
That's not to say I'm in any way oblivious to the insane levels of inequality and unfairness now. I told her it was harder to buy a house now than at any time since the nineteenth century.

But very many boomers DIDN'T "have it easy". Not at all. Especially single ones.
- If someone failed the utterly appalling, disgraceful 11 plus, that consigned them to a massively harder life than the few who didn't

- Yes, university was free. But most people DIDN'T GO TO UNIVERSITY

- Wages were pathetic and there was NO minimum wage at all
Read 41 tweets
Feb 25
THREAD: Mr Starmer goes to Washington.

There's already been plenty of complaints on here that the Prime Minister is 'sucking up to Trump'.

No folks. He's trying to maintain the most incredibly fine balancing act. And so is Macron by the way.

Both of them have to do that.
Macron has more leeway for several reasons.

1. He's known Trump for much, much longer. He's one of very few world leaders who's been in office almost as long as when Trump first became President.

2. He has no more elections to fight, so can be a little freer in what he says.
3. The long, long tradition of Gaullism in French foreign policy means that France usually sides with the US - but is more independent and critical in how it conducts itself.

Yet despite that, and the images yesterday of Macron challenging Trump, he also did the following.
Read 49 tweets
Feb 4
So, Reform are ahead now, if only just. What are their prospects?

1. No, there won't be a deal between them and the Tories any time soon. Reform's next goal is to wipe the Tories out altogether and replace them.

2. They will have a MAJOR problem breaking through 30%.
I fully expect them to stay ahead of the Tories throughout the rest of the Parliament.

But actually looking like a credible party of government to enough voters is another thing entirely.

Remember: they and Farage are Marmite. Huge numbers hate him and are scared of them.
Remember: they're not even a democratically accountable party yet.

Remember: without Farage, they have no-one else. And they're gonna have all sorts of problems preventing overt racists standing for them.
Read 21 tweets
Jan 28
UNPOPULAR OPINION (among the left and probably many of my followers): the modern liberal left, of whom I've always been a card carrying member, got it VERY wrong on mass immigration.

And all because it didn't try to remake society after Thatcher wrecked it and the working class.
What the UK has been crying out for for many decades now has been huge investment across the country.

When Johnson spoke of 'levelling up', he was more than onto something. He'd hit the nail on the head. But because the Tories are a bunch of shysters and crooks, nothing happened
Britain's has been a quite ludicrously unbalanced, unsustainable economy for as long as I can remember now.

Skewed completely towards property, financial services, speculators and billionaire leeches. And quite unbelievably skewed towards south-east England too.
Read 53 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(