A man who was once encouraged and hopes to encourage others. An 'underground avant-garde hate figure' - @apiarism. Born sinner, the opposite of a winner.
Sep 29 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
It's entirely disingenuous on the part of whoever suggested it. 13,000 delegates is about creating a mirage of mass democratic participation whilst guaranteeing mass disempowerment. Ultimately, this many delegates empowers those asking the questions, not those answering them.
There's no way that many sortitioned delegates can make informed decisions in such little time, especially since factional observers with speaking rights are banned. This proposal makes a mockery not just of pure sortition, but of delegate democracy in general.
Sep 3 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
The new party shouldn't stand candidates in next May's elections. There isn't enough time to engage in the level of membership development required to ensure candidates of a high calibre, nor time to develop a new mode of representation unlike those of the capitalist parties.
Are we running candidates to administer misery at a local level by virtue of the nominal powers given to councils by the national government, or are we running candidates so that they be empowered to be local organisers of the working class and tribunes of the people?
Jul 31 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Whether he's conscious of it or not, what Jeremy is effectively proposing here is an alliance not with rank and file trade unionists but with the bureaucracy. This is really concerning and suggests Comrade Corbyn hasn't learnt much at all from his time in the Labour Party. Sad!
I'm all for local union branches affiliating to local party branches, but national affiliation would be a bulwark against the kind of work we need to do as part of a democratic process of class formation, namely the transformation of trade unions into schools of socialism.
Mar 29, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I left the Labour Party a few months ago. It wasn’t a rash decision, I’d been thinking about it for some time and finally decided to end my membership on my birthday (a sort of treat to myself). Here are the reasons that made me finally pull the plug...
1) The change in the nomination rules for leader or deputy leader make it impossible for a socialist candidate to run for either of those positions in the future, as there simply aren’t enough socialists in Parliament to nominate a candidate.
Sep 26, 2019 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
The post-Conference comments by Shadow Cabinet members should not come as a surprise. For as long as the Labour Party has existed there has always been a battle between the de jure sovereignty of Conference and the de facto autonomy of the parliamentary leadership.
The struggle to shift the balance of power inside of the party in favour of the membership has been in many ways hindered in the past four years by the blind faith that the leadership will do the right thing.
Jul 13, 2019 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Tom Watson is much harder to get rid of than you realise: a thread.
There's no point signing petitions calling on the NEC to pass a motion of no confidence against Watson, even if they did it would have no effect as such a mechanism doesn't exist in the Labour Party Rule Book.
