That Corbyn fella...

I've only read the ex summary / foreword. It reads as exceptionally damming of absolutely everyone.

I’ve tried to engage in your perspective in measure terms. That doesn’t seem to fit with your narrative though and, ironically, only strengthens the position of an historically incompetent, dishonest and corrupt government. Forget the process, look at the outcome.

Specifically responding to your post, anyone who does not take your absolute perspective you dismiss in derogatory terms. So, yes, sneering is not helpful apart from, as above, for the government as it plays into “they are disorganised communists controlled by the Union barons” BS narrative. And that repels the floating voters that needs to be meaningfully engaged in making a change.

I’m not sure why you continue to associate me with Kier Starmer - it’s absolutely possible that it’s not a binary choice - but if you want to continue down that route drop me a PM and I’ll put you in touch with my wife who has first hand experience of “Stalinist purges” that lead to disappearance, fake names, political prisoners and political parties that are outlawed to this day.

I’ve listened to and respected your truth. Listen to others. Or carry on down your own rabbit hole. Choice is yours.

Read it all. It is literally a litany of evidenced wrongdoings by one side and a 'caveat' of 'both sidesism' with precious little or no evidence against the other.

But there, in black and white, is independent evidence one faction tried to lose the election on purpose. The faction that had not, as it happened, been overwhelmingly democratically elected.

FTR, the Forde report was commissioned to investigate the leaked report. It wasn't intended to investigate how bad the Labour party was, but you lift a stone, you find all sorts of shit.

I'm not sure how you can reasonably 'both sides' this. One faction was fighting to win a general election, the other was doing everything it could to lose said GE. Saying 'they're both as bad as eachother' is knowingly disingenuous at best and outright truth twisting to put it mildly.

Mate, all I know is I was fighting an election to get rid of the Tories and this report shows there were cunts in the party at the highest level doing their best to lose it. Not only do I feel ripped off because the subs I paid were wasted, I also resent the fact I walked the streets trying to persuade people to vote for a better future when the cunts now in charge of Labour were doing their level best to undermine that.

The people now in charge are purging left-wing members of the party under false pretences and on spurious grounds. What do you call that? Because those currently in charge of the party would have called it 'Stalinist' had it been practised by the former leadership. And they, in fact, did call it that on numerous occasions. You have a problem with the language? Take it up with them.

Me? I've had to listen to others giving it the 'tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist' nonsense for the last six years. Now I've been vindicated, at least afford me the fucking respect to ram it down the throats of people who called me a crank for it.

This is not directed at you personally. And I'm not personally associating you with Starmer. But if you support what he did and what those he is associated with did having seen the independent evidence that proves it and you're still OK with that, then I reckon it's not me who has to worry about rabbit holes, frankly.

Dude, people will respect you doing you. Less so when you are being disparaging about anyone else having another view.

Following that, “I don’t associate you with Starmer but if you are” and then the insult comes over as the most lame of straw man stuff.

I suspect we are boring people now (ok, maybe half a dozen exchanges earlier!) so feel free to slide into DM if you want to discuss further

The clue is in the 'if', dude. To wit, you should only feel insulted if the cap fits. If it doesn't, then you're good.

Own your straw man as if is doing a hell of lot of heavy lifting for you there!!

Sorry, edited as incoherent even for me!

I don't really see the straw man here... there's actual independent evidence said straw man is only too real. So again, if you're happy with the current leadership and the coterie surrounding him despite the evidence of this report showing what they did and their reasons for doing so, that's your prerogative. But you shouldn't take umbrage at being called out for it. If you're not, it doesn't apply, does it?

All said, I think you're probably right about boring people with this, so...

Read it all

No thanks. I've skimmed it and from my reading of it and your posts I am comfortable in dismissing your summations. However, I take on board your wider grievances and think how you were treated was shitty.

I'm not sure how you can reasonably 'both sides' this.

Let me have a crack;

One side thought the other was doomed to failure and didn't put their weight behind them because they constantly hoped that they'd be able to steer the ship back towards their view. The other sat by happlessly while serious issues built and built, everytime they were brought to them the response was a version of "some of my best friends are black" and "it's all conspiracy theory".

Both sides spent the last 10yrs wrestling for control of the party. On this last point I'd add that people need to excersise a bit of perspective. Momentum took over the Labour Party to push it to the left. They were well funded and well organised. If your view is that Labour should be more left wing, or that the left needs greater representation you would have viewed that as a good thing. However, it was still a power grab by a faction, and no different to the centre ground / right of the party doing the same. The only difference is the extent to which you support their view.

I think the (perceived) difference is that the left said ‘we’ve put up with holding our noses for years, now it’s our turn to steer the ship’, and the right just started purging people willy nilly.

Who should take responsibility for that? "the right" of the Labour party or the leader who failed to control it? both?

People who perceive things that way would say they are one and the same.

I find it disappointing all round, which apparently makes me a filthy centrist 🙄

Yup, it feels like a failure of the party leadership stoked by warring factions and the various factions are taking this report as PROOF that they are right to be warring with the other faction. Its puerile.

It’s even worse than puerile as this internecine bickering is exactly what puts off a good chunk of the floating voters that are essential to win an election and actually enact some policies.

Judean Peoples Front v Peoples Front of Jude’s - stop it!!!!

Having been gaslit by sensible society for 4 or so years, yeah, it’s pretty shitty that the obvious gets printed by a QC and suddenly the superior types are “well, yes both sides of course”. Except that’s a complete volte face from the public line that’s been taken for the last 4 years, which has basically been “the left are dirty antisemites and it’s all their fault”. Now we are pivoting to “ah yes both sides are bad” so fast it should make your head fall off. If it’s “both sides” - which fine I’ve long stated that Corbyn should have been more ruthless and fucked the right directly into the sun before they could do all this damage - then why has it taken an internal report to discern that fact? What was the press doing in the interim? Because it sure seems like there was a lot of scrutiny on one faction in the Labour Party, and a mysterious lack of scrutiny on another. You’d think something like “senior members of the party ringing a bell in celebration when they expel a member” wouldn’t be too difficult for a dogged lobby hack to unearth.

Countless people on the left - including many Jewish members - have been tossed from the party and suffered public opprobrium for saying the exact same things that have been said in this report. Will there be any similar consequences for those on the right who have cynically made a political weapon out of antisemitism (which is, btw, a grossly antisemitic thing to do), not to mention all the other horrible racist and ablist behaviour they demonstrated? I strongly doubt there will be, and that is highly demonstrative of how politics and the press operate in the UK.

Having been gaslit by sensible society for 4 or so years, yeah, it’s pretty shitty that the obvious gets printed by a QC and suddenly the superior types are “well, yes both sides of course”. Except that’s a complete volte face from the public line that’s been taken for the last 4 years, which has basically been “the left are dirty antisemites and it’s all their fault”. Now we are pivoting to “ah yes both sides are bad” so fast it should make your head fall off. If it’s “both sides” - which fine I’ve long stated that Corbyn should have been more ruthless and fucked the right directly into the sun before they could do all this damage - then why has it taken an internal report to discern that fact? What was the press doing in the interim? Because it sure seems like there was a lot of scrutiny on one faction in the Labour Party, and a mysterious lack of scrutiny on another. You’d think something like “senior members of the party ringing a bell in celebration when they expel a member” wouldn’t be too difficult for a dogged lobby hack to unearth.

Countless people on the left - including many Jewish members - have been tossed from the party and suffered public opprobrium for saying the exact same things that have been said in this report. Will there be any similar consequences for those on the right who have cynically made a political weapon out of antisemitism (which is, btw, a grossly antisemitic thing to do), not to mention all the other horrible racist and ablist behaviour they demonstrated? I strongly doubt there will be, and that is highly demonstrative of how politics and the press operate in the UK.

To be fair, I think that most people who vote Labour don't follow these things and will base their opinions on this report and how the factions react to it.

Either way, time to stop this shit and win an election.

Cross posting on both the relevant threads. I thought this was a pretty even handed interpretation of the report.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/20/forde-report-labour-factionalism

100% this

If it’s “both sides” - which fine I’ve long stated that Corbyn should have been more ruthless and fucked the right directly into the sun before they could do all this damage

So your view is that if both sides are at fault, Corbyn should have sacked the right off as they caused the damage? Eh?

If we are faulting Corbyn for allowing this to happen under his leadership - and I am - then I see no other means of preventing this than either a) hard tacking to the right in order to placate the right faction (which lol we all know wouldn’t have worked anyway) or b) ejecting them into orbit with their arses turned inside out.

He brought a spoon to a gunfight. That’s his fault. But if anyone wants to pretend like that gunfight wasn’t going to happen regardless then sure, nice fantasyland you have there. Install a rollercoaster whilst you’re at it, why not?

Implicitly this dismisses any criticism of how those in the left of the party other than for not getting rid of the right, though. Your argument seems to be not that factional behaviour is bad from both sides, but that the real issue is that the left wasn’t factional enough.

In other words “let’s ignore all this inconvenient shit that completely contradicts what everyone has been saying for the last five years”

Had I come in here three days ago and stated the blindingly fucking obvious - that the Labour right had weaponised antisemitism against the Labour left - then I would have been hounded out again as a conspiracy theorist, and likely accused of being an antisemite.

Three days later, that blindingly obvious fact is now acceptable discourse, thanks to a chap with some letters after his name giving everyone permission to believe their own lying eyes.

To me, that is a very interesting phenomenon, worthy of reflection, highly reflective of how ideology functions in the UK, and strongly indicative of the horribly corrosive nature of our press in particular.

But no, “both sides bad”, file in the big black hole we dumped the chilcot report into and let’s go win an election.

One argument I'm hearing a lot is that the left of the Labour party had a democratic mandate but the right of it did not. See Sultana's tweet today for example.

Can anybody explain this to me?

But no, “both sides bad”, file in the big black hole we dumped the chilcot report into and let’s go win an election.

Its not that though is it? Nobody is saying ignore the massive problems the report has put a focus on. Labour clearly are a party in a shambolic state. They're saying stop the public infighting and fix the problems to move on. If Labour go into the next GE with the question of antisemitism, racism and infighting still bubbling away...it will not do as well as it could.

This stuff is a total fucking gift to the Daily Mail tbh. The Labour party NEEDS to be seen to address the problems and move the fuck on.

We need grown up reconciliiation...not shit like this. To settle differences you have to stop pointing fingers and engage with each other...together.

https://twitter.com/zarahsultana/status/1549848545317904384