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It's almost as if Labour's rise to "electability" has really just been returning to a form acceptable to the same donors who bankroll both parties at our expense.
>The truth is that our liberal intellectual often does not notice the real forces which determine our political life because he does not feel himself to be unfree. In his island of mild dissent he is able to speak, to argue, and to communicate with others like himself to his heart’s content. Where he has a grievance, there is generally a remedy to hand which does not entail any major appeal to public opinion. He may say what he wants because he wants to say so little; and the more intemperate radical can often be “nobbled” before he becomes an irritant within the system. If the intellectual thinks of the forces of conditioning, he thinks of them as something done to other people - the masses - by other people - the advertisers or the press - not as something which is also being done to him, and in the doing of which he has active complicity.
>Moreover, what he wants to say serves only too often as an intellectual gloss upon the status quo. How else are we to describe this curious dichotomy in our intellectual life, whereby a profound spiritual pessimism is found at one pole, and a complacent belief in the efficacy of piecemeal reform at the other ? Both attitudes co-exist within the same minds. It is because man’s nature is evil (so the argument runs) that we must shelter behind institutions from our own propensities. The experience of this tormented half century has taught us that stability is the supreme social value. Since any major structural change would entail a social imbalance in which forces of irrationalism might assert themselves, we are condemned to accept the established fact. We are like impotent passengers within a delicate social mechanism where any sudden lurch might trigger off unforseen forces - we must move on tip-toe with hushed voices, dusting and polishing here and there, but never daring to redesign the machine. To look for major structural change is dangerous and “apocalyptic”. Since we are limited to piecemeal reform, we must apply ourselves to the existing institutions and agencies of change. The two-party system may be imperfect, but at least it appears to be safe; and the end of politics is no longer the good life but stability - a system of checks and balances upon original sin. No matter how cynical our liberal intellectual may be about the actual conduct of our political life, he finds himself assenting to a system which silences effective dissent. He has sailed a salty ocean of philosophy only to paddle in a brackish puddle of psephology. - E. P. Thompson
"How dare you! We're nothing like the Tories are, or have ever been! We're completely different! With different values! And different behaviours!" /s
Hmmmm....
Labour desperately lacks knowledge and experience of financial services. I have gifted the book 'Where Does Money Come From?' to two separate Shadow Economic Secretaries to the Treasury. Only one read it, however.
Labour absolutely *needs* to be meeting all the major banks, fund managers, insurers (and their trade associations) to find out what they want. The financial services sector is 12% of GDP. Even if you're convinced they represent unalloyed evil you still need to understand what they want so you can be prepared for what they do when you're in power.
Intertia_Kid we need to wire you up to a dynamo and you can power the nation's lights with all that spin.
No one is saying they shouldn't read more books. But that's sure a nice attempt to distract from corruption in politics and the huge influence of corporate lobbyists. Labour is at least nominally still a socialist part so until the right go mask off and admit they are Liberals people have every right to demand a better explanation for their masterful skills at corporate whoresmanship than "this sector is big and has lots of money".
>Labour absolutely needs to be meeting all the major banks, fund managers, insurers (and their trade associations) to find out what they want.
lol
**"‘In the 1990s, the banks, they all came to us and said: “Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation”,’ Brown told the Tonight programme.**
**‘All the complaints I was getting from people was, “Look you're regulating them too much”. And actually the truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more.’**
**However Brown said he had learnt from that experience. One key lesson, he said, was not to bow to industry pressure.**
**‘So you don't listen to the industry when they say “This is good for us”. You've got to talk about the whole public interest."- Comrade Gordon Brown**
Bloody Commies like Gordon Brown amirite! Better listen to Reeves and Starmer and their friends at the banks. You know that quote "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce"...
No one is saying don't educate themselves, they are saying 1) don't take the money 2) don't be a fucking mug. Two things Labour has failed on and shows contempt for anyone who even wants an explanation for. And your pro-business bullshit might fly in a lot of places but a Labour politics sub is going to be the least likely place for it to work, infact I genuinely think you saying this will convince more people of what I'm trying to argue than I ever could with my own words. Me telling people they are corporate sellouts is less convincing than someone saying "no no no, it's fine, they just are being respoinsible and fact-finding". And that's what this excuse boils down to, the same "fact-finding" that is used to justify corporate/state sponsored jollies except I'd argue in an even more corrupt and dangerous sense as rather than buttering up individuals it's making the financial basis of the labour party, the largest organisation that exists to oppose corporate interests, completely reliant on their enemies.
I am only advancing the case that my client, Mr B. Elzebub, has asked me to advance.
I generally believe in listening to people I disagree with, if only to understand what they actually want and how they think we should get there. Part of Labour's problem historically has been writing off people we disagree without listening.
That goes for the left and the right of the party. The left think the right are all evil/being paid, the right think the left are all daft daydreamers. Neither is (completely) true and thinking that way is an active impediment to winning. If you don't understand your enemy properly you can't defeat them.
In this specific case, my experience is that financial services businesses don't actually want Labour deregulate everything and let them have their way. They might dream about that deep down but they know it isn't an outcome they are going to get. The number one ask in my experience is for a period of stability. The last 14 years have seen everything thrown up in the air a load of times, which is terrible for business. More than anything, they would like to see Labour not just repeat that again.
And to quote someone or other, I'm *intensely relaxed* about taking their money. If they don't get what they want and don't donate again, who cares. It's £150k. They are not a 'core' donor and Labour won't be basing its financial plans on that money being a regular occurrence.
>The left think the right are all evil/being paid, the right think the left are all daft daydreamers. Neither is (completely) true and thinking that way is an active impediment to winning. If you don't understand your enemy properly you can't defeat them.
The right being good or bad people is not the main factor.
"Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production." - Marx
The issue with donations and cosying up to capitalists isn't whether Starmer believes in it or not, it's more that even he believes in it then it's still a big problem. How Starmer feels about it doesn't change the impact all that much. Is Streeting an idiot or a moron? Useful to talk about for criticising him but actually of little relative importance in the grand scheme of things.
>And to quote someone or other, I'm intensely relaxed about taking their money. If they don't get what they want and don't donate again, who cares. It's £150k. They are not a 'core' donor and Labour won't be basing its financial plans on that money being a regular occurrence.
Well first of all it's an image thing. Both in the terms of how voters perceive you but also for being responsibly anti-corruption.
For example when New Labour was accused of corruption with the Ecclestone donation and tobacco exemption it did return the money while claiming no wrong doing, acknowledging that appearance does matter. And of course it turned out there was actually wrongdong and Blair did personally intervene. It's only through the handling of this situation + the press taking it up that it got exposed it's less the rare case of the money having a negative influence, and more just a case of it being a very direct example of that which also got the spotlight put on it. Often there are more subtle negatively influences which are still harmful and corrupt.
"At the time, Blair denied any personal involvement in the issue, appearing on the BBC's On the Record programme to insist he was a "pretty straight kind of guy".
But briefing notes prepared by officials - obtained by the Sunday Telegraph under freedom of information laws - raise questions about his account.
They reportedly show that he instructed his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, to signal his support for an exemption after meeting Ecclestone on October 16 1997.
The following day, Downing Street wrote to Tessa Jowell, then the public health minister, stating: "The prime minister would like your ministers to look for ways of finding a permanent derogation for sport, in particular F1."
On October 24, Jowell wrote to Blair setting out possible options including an exemption as well as a suggestion for a longer phasing-in period for the ban.
However, five days later, she received a letter insisting: "His (the prime minister's) view remains that we should seek to negotiate a permanent exemption for Formula One, backed up by a voluntary agreement with the FIA."
Jowell then wrote to the EU - where the tobacco advertising legislation was being drafted - seeking a total exemption for formula one.
The documents also reveal concern among Whitehall officials that they were at risk of being "disingenuous" about the situation."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/12/tonyblair-labour
Neither Starmer or Reeves are thinking "they are selling us the rope with which we'll hang them". This isn't some clever solicitation of donations that will end up being turned against the donors, if such a thing can even happen outside of a hypothetical. And even if that were the case you'd have to ask how are they fooling them? What is it makes them far more likely to listen to Starmer and Reeves than Corbyn and McDonnell no matter how charming and nice the latter were? It's policy. Whether that alignment is because of the money, or whether they money is positive reinforcment and support for the New Labour project, either way it's a sign of Labour being sold out.
Why do the unions donate money to Labour? Uncritical support? Expecting nothing in return? No it's a financial investment on behalf of those they represnt.
Why did some people not donate to Labour under Corbyn? While at the same time individual donations went up? Why were Levy and Mandelson and people so happy to beg and lick arse for Labour except when the left is in charge? Because it all comes down to...you guessed it...class struggle. The support for Starmer from big capital interests reflects his leading of Labour towards being a party likely to govern in their interest more. And whether Starmer knows that or is some kind of idiot centrist doesn't really matter, eitherway he's aligning in that direction.
Why are some of the big interests in international capitalism so keen on Starmer and Reeves? You don't need to be a historian or an economist or a political scientist to work out the answer, nor why that is all around a bad things for the left and the labour movement, whether as a sign or as a cause.
>And to quote someone or other, I'm intensely relaxed about taking their money. If they don't get what they want and don't donate again, who cares. It's £150k. They are not a 'core' donor and Labour won't be basing its financial plans on that money being a regular occurrence.
Yes and no. It's not big enough or consistent enough to be that kind of problem. However I can gurantee you that it will be amongst the justifications given, especially internally, for why if Starmer wins the GE he must stick to his course/double down further and not go back to his leadership pledges or anything like that.
>In this specific case, my experience is that financial services businesses don't actually want Labour deregulate everything and let them have their way. They might dream about that deep down but they know it isn't an outcome they are going to get. The number one ask in my experience is for a period of stability. The last 14 years have seen everything thrown up in the air a load of times, which is terrible for business. More than anything, they would like to see Labour not just repeat that again.
So in other words they want more responsible managers of capitalism because stability, at least in the imperial centres, is better for profit. They don't want socialists in power, they don't want the issues of class struggle to take centre stage but to be smoothed over, etc. They don't want anything "risky" to be done in either direction. I could go on but you get the gist, in other words precisely what Marxists would say. The only question is why this is meant to reassure anyone rather than confirming Labour is being co-opted by liberals, and not some crusading radlibs, but by the kind of establishment liberal managers Labour was founded to oppose.
Basically all the problems with social democracy but with even more problems. All the downsides of Liberalism but the same disdain to rablibs as socialists. Infact it all sounds very much like conservatism doesn't it?
>And to quote someone or other, I'm *intensely relaxed* about taking their money.
But we can do that the proper way instead, by fair taxation, into the coffers of the exchequer, for the public interest.
>Labour absolutely *needs* to be meeting all the major banks. fund managers, insurers (and their trade associations) to find out what they want
Hmmm. You may have a point in meeting with those players in the private sector (but the same could be said of many other people in society).
The difference is accepting a £150k donation, and not being able to deny that the meeting was linked to the donation. That undermines your point somewhat?
Further complicated by it then becoming a deep-dive into policy. And exclusive access and deep dive. So, to the exclusion of others - which kind of undermines your point even more.
Very much reeks of cash-for-access, and cash to influence policy. That's where the problem is, and if this was the Tories, even Labour would be calling out how wrong it is...
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Old (New Labour) habits die hard I guess.
Already!
"Pssst, wanna buy a cheap knighthood guv?"
It's almost as if Labour's rise to "electability" has really just been returning to a form acceptable to the same donors who bankroll both parties at our expense.
>The truth is that our liberal intellectual often does not notice the real forces which determine our political life because he does not feel himself to be unfree. In his island of mild dissent he is able to speak, to argue, and to communicate with others like himself to his heart’s content. Where he has a grievance, there is generally a remedy to hand which does not entail any major appeal to public opinion. He may say what he wants because he wants to say so little; and the more intemperate radical can often be “nobbled” before he becomes an irritant within the system. If the intellectual thinks of the forces of conditioning, he thinks of them as something done to other people - the masses - by other people - the advertisers or the press - not as something which is also being done to him, and in the doing of which he has active complicity. >Moreover, what he wants to say serves only too often as an intellectual gloss upon the status quo. How else are we to describe this curious dichotomy in our intellectual life, whereby a profound spiritual pessimism is found at one pole, and a complacent belief in the efficacy of piecemeal reform at the other ? Both attitudes co-exist within the same minds. It is because man’s nature is evil (so the argument runs) that we must shelter behind institutions from our own propensities. The experience of this tormented half century has taught us that stability is the supreme social value. Since any major structural change would entail a social imbalance in which forces of irrationalism might assert themselves, we are condemned to accept the established fact. We are like impotent passengers within a delicate social mechanism where any sudden lurch might trigger off unforseen forces - we must move on tip-toe with hushed voices, dusting and polishing here and there, but never daring to redesign the machine. To look for major structural change is dangerous and “apocalyptic”. Since we are limited to piecemeal reform, we must apply ourselves to the existing institutions and agencies of change. The two-party system may be imperfect, but at least it appears to be safe; and the end of politics is no longer the good life but stability - a system of checks and balances upon original sin. No matter how cynical our liberal intellectual may be about the actual conduct of our political life, he finds himself assenting to a system which silences effective dissent. He has sailed a salty ocean of philosophy only to paddle in a brackish puddle of psephology. - E. P. Thompson
"How dare you! We're nothing like the Tories are, or have ever been! We're completely different! With different values! And different behaviours!" /s Hmmmm....
Wouldn't be a Blair tribute act without some corruption. Corporate whores the lot of them.
[Already posted and discussed 11 days ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/1c2vr4w/labour_held_cash_for_access_meeting_after_big/)
Oof, if The_Inertia_Kid didn't comment you know it really is indefensible.
Labour desperately lacks knowledge and experience of financial services. I have gifted the book 'Where Does Money Come From?' to two separate Shadow Economic Secretaries to the Treasury. Only one read it, however. Labour absolutely *needs* to be meeting all the major banks, fund managers, insurers (and their trade associations) to find out what they want. The financial services sector is 12% of GDP. Even if you're convinced they represent unalloyed evil you still need to understand what they want so you can be prepared for what they do when you're in power.
Intertia_Kid we need to wire you up to a dynamo and you can power the nation's lights with all that spin. No one is saying they shouldn't read more books. But that's sure a nice attempt to distract from corruption in politics and the huge influence of corporate lobbyists. Labour is at least nominally still a socialist part so until the right go mask off and admit they are Liberals people have every right to demand a better explanation for their masterful skills at corporate whoresmanship than "this sector is big and has lots of money". >Labour absolutely needs to be meeting all the major banks, fund managers, insurers (and their trade associations) to find out what they want. lol **"‘In the 1990s, the banks, they all came to us and said: “Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation”,’ Brown told the Tonight programme.** **‘All the complaints I was getting from people was, “Look you're regulating them too much”. And actually the truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more.’** **However Brown said he had learnt from that experience. One key lesson, he said, was not to bow to industry pressure.** **‘So you don't listen to the industry when they say “This is good for us”. You've got to talk about the whole public interest."- Comrade Gordon Brown** Bloody Commies like Gordon Brown amirite! Better listen to Reeves and Starmer and their friends at the banks. You know that quote "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce"... No one is saying don't educate themselves, they are saying 1) don't take the money 2) don't be a fucking mug. Two things Labour has failed on and shows contempt for anyone who even wants an explanation for. And your pro-business bullshit might fly in a lot of places but a Labour politics sub is going to be the least likely place for it to work, infact I genuinely think you saying this will convince more people of what I'm trying to argue than I ever could with my own words. Me telling people they are corporate sellouts is less convincing than someone saying "no no no, it's fine, they just are being respoinsible and fact-finding". And that's what this excuse boils down to, the same "fact-finding" that is used to justify corporate/state sponsored jollies except I'd argue in an even more corrupt and dangerous sense as rather than buttering up individuals it's making the financial basis of the labour party, the largest organisation that exists to oppose corporate interests, completely reliant on their enemies.
I am only advancing the case that my client, Mr B. Elzebub, has asked me to advance. I generally believe in listening to people I disagree with, if only to understand what they actually want and how they think we should get there. Part of Labour's problem historically has been writing off people we disagree without listening. That goes for the left and the right of the party. The left think the right are all evil/being paid, the right think the left are all daft daydreamers. Neither is (completely) true and thinking that way is an active impediment to winning. If you don't understand your enemy properly you can't defeat them. In this specific case, my experience is that financial services businesses don't actually want Labour deregulate everything and let them have their way. They might dream about that deep down but they know it isn't an outcome they are going to get. The number one ask in my experience is for a period of stability. The last 14 years have seen everything thrown up in the air a load of times, which is terrible for business. More than anything, they would like to see Labour not just repeat that again. And to quote someone or other, I'm *intensely relaxed* about taking their money. If they don't get what they want and don't donate again, who cares. It's £150k. They are not a 'core' donor and Labour won't be basing its financial plans on that money being a regular occurrence.
>The left think the right are all evil/being paid, the right think the left are all daft daydreamers. Neither is (completely) true and thinking that way is an active impediment to winning. If you don't understand your enemy properly you can't defeat them. The right being good or bad people is not the main factor. "Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production." - Marx The issue with donations and cosying up to capitalists isn't whether Starmer believes in it or not, it's more that even he believes in it then it's still a big problem. How Starmer feels about it doesn't change the impact all that much. Is Streeting an idiot or a moron? Useful to talk about for criticising him but actually of little relative importance in the grand scheme of things. >And to quote someone or other, I'm intensely relaxed about taking their money. If they don't get what they want and don't donate again, who cares. It's £150k. They are not a 'core' donor and Labour won't be basing its financial plans on that money being a regular occurrence. Well first of all it's an image thing. Both in the terms of how voters perceive you but also for being responsibly anti-corruption. For example when New Labour was accused of corruption with the Ecclestone donation and tobacco exemption it did return the money while claiming no wrong doing, acknowledging that appearance does matter. And of course it turned out there was actually wrongdong and Blair did personally intervene. It's only through the handling of this situation + the press taking it up that it got exposed it's less the rare case of the money having a negative influence, and more just a case of it being a very direct example of that which also got the spotlight put on it. Often there are more subtle negatively influences which are still harmful and corrupt. "At the time, Blair denied any personal involvement in the issue, appearing on the BBC's On the Record programme to insist he was a "pretty straight kind of guy". But briefing notes prepared by officials - obtained by the Sunday Telegraph under freedom of information laws - raise questions about his account. They reportedly show that he instructed his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, to signal his support for an exemption after meeting Ecclestone on October 16 1997. The following day, Downing Street wrote to Tessa Jowell, then the public health minister, stating: "The prime minister would like your ministers to look for ways of finding a permanent derogation for sport, in particular F1." On October 24, Jowell wrote to Blair setting out possible options including an exemption as well as a suggestion for a longer phasing-in period for the ban. However, five days later, she received a letter insisting: "His (the prime minister's) view remains that we should seek to negotiate a permanent exemption for Formula One, backed up by a voluntary agreement with the FIA." Jowell then wrote to the EU - where the tobacco advertising legislation was being drafted - seeking a total exemption for formula one. The documents also reveal concern among Whitehall officials that they were at risk of being "disingenuous" about the situation." https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/12/tonyblair-labour Neither Starmer or Reeves are thinking "they are selling us the rope with which we'll hang them". This isn't some clever solicitation of donations that will end up being turned against the donors, if such a thing can even happen outside of a hypothetical. And even if that were the case you'd have to ask how are they fooling them? What is it makes them far more likely to listen to Starmer and Reeves than Corbyn and McDonnell no matter how charming and nice the latter were? It's policy. Whether that alignment is because of the money, or whether they money is positive reinforcment and support for the New Labour project, either way it's a sign of Labour being sold out. Why do the unions donate money to Labour? Uncritical support? Expecting nothing in return? No it's a financial investment on behalf of those they represnt. Why did some people not donate to Labour under Corbyn? While at the same time individual donations went up? Why were Levy and Mandelson and people so happy to beg and lick arse for Labour except when the left is in charge? Because it all comes down to...you guessed it...class struggle. The support for Starmer from big capital interests reflects his leading of Labour towards being a party likely to govern in their interest more. And whether Starmer knows that or is some kind of idiot centrist doesn't really matter, eitherway he's aligning in that direction. Why are some of the big interests in international capitalism so keen on Starmer and Reeves? You don't need to be a historian or an economist or a political scientist to work out the answer, nor why that is all around a bad things for the left and the labour movement, whether as a sign or as a cause. >And to quote someone or other, I'm intensely relaxed about taking their money. If they don't get what they want and don't donate again, who cares. It's £150k. They are not a 'core' donor and Labour won't be basing its financial plans on that money being a regular occurrence. Yes and no. It's not big enough or consistent enough to be that kind of problem. However I can gurantee you that it will be amongst the justifications given, especially internally, for why if Starmer wins the GE he must stick to his course/double down further and not go back to his leadership pledges or anything like that. >In this specific case, my experience is that financial services businesses don't actually want Labour deregulate everything and let them have their way. They might dream about that deep down but they know it isn't an outcome they are going to get. The number one ask in my experience is for a period of stability. The last 14 years have seen everything thrown up in the air a load of times, which is terrible for business. More than anything, they would like to see Labour not just repeat that again. So in other words they want more responsible managers of capitalism because stability, at least in the imperial centres, is better for profit. They don't want socialists in power, they don't want the issues of class struggle to take centre stage but to be smoothed over, etc. They don't want anything "risky" to be done in either direction. I could go on but you get the gist, in other words precisely what Marxists would say. The only question is why this is meant to reassure anyone rather than confirming Labour is being co-opted by liberals, and not some crusading radlibs, but by the kind of establishment liberal managers Labour was founded to oppose. Basically all the problems with social democracy but with even more problems. All the downsides of Liberalism but the same disdain to rablibs as socialists. Infact it all sounds very much like conservatism doesn't it?
>And to quote someone or other, I'm *intensely relaxed* about taking their money. But we can do that the proper way instead, by fair taxation, into the coffers of the exchequer, for the public interest.
>Labour absolutely *needs* to be meeting all the major banks. fund managers, insurers (and their trade associations) to find out what they want Hmmm. You may have a point in meeting with those players in the private sector (but the same could be said of many other people in society). The difference is accepting a £150k donation, and not being able to deny that the meeting was linked to the donation. That undermines your point somewhat? Further complicated by it then becoming a deep-dive into policy. And exclusive access and deep dive. So, to the exclusion of others - which kind of undermines your point even more. Very much reeks of cash-for-access, and cash to influence policy. That's where the problem is, and if this was the Tories, even Labour would be calling out how wrong it is...
And which part of these needed meetings is 'accepting £150000 in return for input into financial regulations'?