WaffenThinMint Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 How desperate are they to get back into power? How about this desperate? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11376427/Ed-Miliband-has-sold-Labours-soul-for-3.5p.html It’s not the racist dog-whistling. Or the political stupidity of trying to outflank Ukip and the Tories on territory where they simply can’t be outflanked. Or the moral cowardice in not taking a stand on an issue where every mainstream party now has to take a stand. It’s the hypocrisy of Labour’s new anti-immigration leaflet that cuts to the bone. The sheer, naked, self-righteous, two-faced, hypocrisy. Two months ago I sat in the audience at Senate House in London, as Ed Miliband made his fightback speech in the wake of the abortive Bonfire Night coup. It was a rambling, at times almost paranoid, defence of his leadership, laced with warnings of the dark forces that were out to get him. But it contained one clear and passionate passage. “Unlike the Tories, what we will never do is try to out-Ukip Ukip,” he said. It was “time we levelled with people about Ukip”. The moment had come to take on “Mr Farage and his gang”. Their vision was “rooted in the same failed ideas that have let our country down”. A vision of a country where “you feel safer when you don’t have someone who is foreign living next door”. He had a clear message for the Ukip leader. “Mr Farage, you may want to live in that world. But come the general election, I don’t believe the people of Britain will follow. We’re Britain - we’re better than this." Britain may be, but Ed Miliband isn’t. It emerged yesterday that the man who pledged not to out-Ukip Ukip has signed off on a strategy of out-Ukipping Ukip. Instead of levelling with people over how he intended to deal with the Ukip threat, Miliband was lying through his teeth about how he planned to deal with the Ukip threat. Rather than taking on Mr Farage and his gang, he had in fact taken the decision to join Mr Farage and his gang. Even as he spoke, he was preparing a leaflet campaign that contains the same failed, divisive rhetoric on immigration that has consistently let Britain down. The leaflets themselves have an image of a uniformed immigration official. “The Tories have lost control of our borders,” they warn. There aren’t enough border staff, or fingerprint checks. The time has come for someone to “clamp down on illegal immigrants”. The clear implication being that with Ed Miliband as Prime Minister, you needn’t worry so much about one of those dodgy foreigners moving in next door. Tottenham Labour MP David Lammy, who blew the whistle on the campaign yesterday, expressed his “surprise” at the content of the leaflets. I’m not sure why. They’re not an aberration. I just had a wander over to the online Labour Party “Campaign Shop”. I found that Labour have produced another leaflet. This one doesn’t try to match Ukip’s tough line on immigration. It attempts to go further than it. “You can’t trust Ukip” on immigration, it warns. Ukip would “reduce unemployment rights, making it harder to stop dodgy firms exploiting immigration”. Ukip would “make it harder to get France to deal with illegal immigration from Calais”. And it concludes: “You don’t have to risk Ukip’s dangerous NHS policies to get change on immigration. Only Labour is proposing a fair system to make sure immigration into our country can be managed and controlled.” Contrast those two statements. Ed Miliband: “Unlike the Tories, what we will never do is try to out-Ukip Ukip." Ed Miliband’s leaflet: “You don’t have to risk Ukip’s dangerous NHS policies to get change on immigration. Only Labour is proposing a fair system to make sure immigration into our country can be managed and controlled." Vote Labour. Because Labour will be even tougher on the immigrants than Ukip. Labour is flogging those leaflets at £35 for 1,000, or 3.5p. That’s the price Ed Miliband has placed on selling his, and his party’s, soul. All the tough talk about confronting Farage and his gang. All the moving portraits of his own family experiences of seeking sanctuary in the UK. All the pledges about talking about immigration “on the basis of Labour values, not UKIP values”. It was all a lie. I asked a Labour official if Miliband and his office knew about the leaflets. I was told they did. They had signed the leaflets and the strategy off. If Ed Miliband wants to dog-whistle his way to Downing Street, fine. If he thinks out-Ukipping Ukip is what it takes to get into power, fair enough. But he could at least be honest about it. You’re the Labour leader. You’re supposed to be better than this. Should we be even surprised? Not really. Labour will say anything to anyone to get their snouts back into power to get back to lining their own pockets. That it was revealed this week one of their ilk drank himself to death on a tax payer funded junket abroad says it all During the referendum campaign, Jim Murphy called a UKIP supporter a "fascist" over their immigration stance - what does that make his party now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
an86 Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Worse than Tories. At least the Tories are completely up front about being total c***s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ForzaDundee Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 British nationalism is really disgusting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael W Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 I actually got this leaflet. This 'new immigration policy' was on page 3, following something about hiring 20,000 nurses and 8,000 doctors. They pledged to hire another 1,000 Border Force officers as well. Nothing telling you how all this will be funded, right enough. Standard stuff, really - Tories have lost control of our borders, Labour will bring control back. The Tories will probably blame Blair's government for the same thing and insist they'll bring back control. Neither side will do anything about it, and the same mud-flinging will be practiced in five years time at the 2020 GE. Easy way of point scoring. I'm not entirely sure why Labour bothered to leaflet this particular area of town either. It's probably the safest they have in the South east. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oddly optomistic Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Interesting to see which of Labour's views gets promoted during the debates ( assuming they go ahead). It's quite sad to see though. You always hear people saying that immigrants don't integrate. Can't really blame them if this is all they hear from Westminster and the media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Young Joseph Stalin Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Being ashamed to be British is really disgusting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baxter Parp Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Being ashamed to be British is really disgusting. So I take it you're all for demonising immigrants? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crùbag Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Sickening stuff. When do they start closing down the curry houses and pizzerias? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Young Joseph Stalin Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 British nationalism is really disgusting. Are you a Scottish nationalist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1320Lichtie Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Being ashamed to be British is really disgusting. I'm guessing you're being serious so I'll ask.... How's that then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Young Joseph Stalin Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 I'm guessing you're being serious so I'll ask.... How's that then? From inventions, music, sport, colonisation etc is there another nation that's contributed more good to the modern world than the UK? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strichener Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 From inventions, music, sport, colonisation etc is there another nation that's contributed more good to the modern world than the UK? Don't look back, look at the here and now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotThePars Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Let's look back. How great was our conduct in Kenya over the last couple of centuries? Fair enough and give some acknowledgement to individual Brits who have contributed real good to the world but the British state by and large has a history of being fucking awful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HaikuHibee Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 During the referendum campaign, Jim Murphy called a UKIP supporter a "fascist" over their immigration stance - what does that make his party now? Difficult to say. It is certainly turd-like, but turds have substance.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flippin Eck Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Let's look back. How great was our conduct in Kenya over the last couple of centuries? Fair enough and give some acknowledgement to individual Brits who have contributed real good to the world but the British state by and large has a history of being fucking awful. Can't think of any other imperialist/expansionist state, throughout history - from the romans onwards - whose conduct couldn't reasonably be described as 'fucking awful'. Again, can't think of any empire that was/is particularly benevolent. So let's not look back, it's hardly worth the effort. Better by far to look forward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dorlomin Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Let's look back. How great was our conduct in Kenya over the last couple of centuries? Britain only directly rules Kenya from 1895 till 1962. Its involvement came from the Royal Navies efforts to crush Arab slavers based out of Zanzibar. British control of Kenya was not really all that bad by the standards of either African empires or the foreigners who had empires in Africa. The last few years against the Mau Mau the UK fell well below the standards people would have expected in the 50s, but only by the standards of a liberal democracy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dorlomin Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Can't think of any other imperialist/expansionist state, throughout history - from the romans onwards - whose conduct couldn't reasonably be described as 'fucking awful'. Its not just empires, how many states internal policies were anything other than awful before 1900? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BerwickMad Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 It's a bit stupid to judge what a state did hundreds of years ago to today's standards. It's also like constantly reminding Germany of the nazis as a stick to beat them with, and that's far more recent. Move on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotThePars Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 Well of course but it's worth dredging up Britain's conduct in Kenya and other places that occurred relatively recently when people want to portray the UK as somehow better than the rest of the world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HaikuHibee Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 It's a bit stupid to judge what a state did hundreds of years ago to today's standards. The BritNat logic. Keep blundering into places. Forget history. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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