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you're right, they don't. but there's probably bigger fish to fry here.

McDonnell is economically illiterate

Are you still buying the austerity/trickle down horseshit?

And hasn't Hammond just abandoned the Tories austerity agenda?

No, he's paused it.

What the fuck are you on about? Still? When did I ever say I bought austerity? You clearly don't know me.

@greenhell asked what the problem is with Abbot and McDonnell. Thinking McDonnell is out of his depth and utterly hopeless at articulating Labour's current economic policy, doesn't mean I don't support the policy.

You've misunderstood - this isn't a discussion about Abbott being a hypocrite, it's about you being a crypto-Tory. Because that changes the subject from the Abbott thing.

Sorry, I edited my post while you were typing that. Can you explain?

Whenever anyone criticises Corbyn and co, the usual suspects change the subject by accusing the person making the criticism of being a Tory or a Blairite. I'm not sure which is supposed to be worse.

Ah, gotcha. Yep.

You're not a Tory. Therefore you must be a Blairite. Whatever that is.

Abbott and McDonnell are hardly titans. Abbott's political highlights can be summed up as getting cosy with Portillo. McDonnell pre corbyn highly just seem to consist of abuse. Post corbyn he's not managed to make a dent in tory economic policy.

Corbyn getting the top job is an indication of a desire for change. Those 2 getting the next 2 jobs is an indication of the lack of talent available to corbyn

That's a fair position but it wasn't clear from your initial post where you seemed to be saying McDonnell = the policy.

On the subject of Abbott being a hypocrite, I've also seen people criticise Corbyn for putting his principles over his family (divorcing ex-wife over sending children to local comp instead of fee-paying school) so it's hard not to see both as criticism for the sake of it.

This.

This Corybn lot are all second-rate politicians of local authority calibre. Seriously unfit for any form of government. But that's not a problem as there is no chance of them ever gaining power.

Trolololol

Perhaps we need professionals in the act of screwing us all over, like the past Tory gov, Boris Johnson, May...? ;)

It's not ideal no, but years of professionals brought us here. I don't know what the answer is, people don't want to vote Corbyn Labour, they don't want to vote Green, then it's back to the Tories.

What do you mean about professionals? Professional politicians? As in spent there career in politics?

I was in response to boristrump's comment: He seems to think Abbott and all aren't "professional" enough.

But yes, then what IS professional.
-Career politician?
-Coming from another background but politics can fit?
-Whatever your favourite paper says is professional?

I'd hope knowing your job and not being a tit is enough, but there are no neutral ways to evaluate this. The bitching about Corbyn shows a lot of this.

Time for a big computer I say...one that doesn't hate us (too much) ;)

It's a brave new world. One that hates everyone.

I don't know what the answer is

Lib dems?

A center ground libertarian party unlike the fascist fuckwitts we've had for the past 5 terms.

They're not libertarian.

Yeah I guess you're right.

They have a bit of a split personality in places.

I would still class them as the most libertarian party with more regard to civil liberties than the other parties.

Both Lab and Tory have firmly established when in power they give zero shits.

My comments is RE the general perception of professionalism.

LibDems are a little too economically neolib for me, though I don't hate them either. Their idea of a referendum on changing STV was very good I thought.

Corbyn is merely "normal" left for mainland Europe, but that's bleeding left heart commie here ;)

The stark raving loonie party TBH would do a million times better job than what we have now :)

"Both Lab and Tory have firmly established when in power they give zero shits."

Power corrupts and all that ;)

Perhaps politics is sick atm and we don't know how to fix it...
[STV would help, we have in NI but there's some fucked up shit going on here too. I thought England would be more sensible than our sectarian voting, but nope, the brexit vote shot that right in the head. Except the "themmuns" was the EU...]