(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Join the conversation: Readers’ thoughts on Labour, Gaza and tomato paste [1] [] Date: 2024-05 Welcome to openDemocracy’s first weekly reader comments round-up. We receive so many carefully considered messages about our work, that it seems a shame to keep them to ourselves! Once a week we will be showcasing some of the most interesting or thought-provoking comments made on our website or emailed to us that week. We know our readers are intelligent people from all walks of life, and this will offer a space for us to share your opinions, and maybe even engage in some healthy debate. This round-up will be emailed to subscribers of our daily newsletter on Fridays, while the rest of the week we’ll continue to send the best of our investigations, analyses and op-eds. Sign up to our newsletter here to ensure you don’t miss out. You can send your comments to be included by replying directly to any of our emails, or by commenting on our articles. If you’d prefer your comments to be anonymised or not published please let us know in your message. We’re a small team and we receive a lot of comments, so if yours isn’t featured one week, it’s not a reflection of its quality or importance to us – please do keep sending them! I can't help thinking that Labour is heading toward a 1992-style shock. Then, as now, it ignored its working class and progressive base and chased the mythical “middle ground”. Consequently, it lost more votes than it gained and John Major (who did the opposite and looked after the Tory base) slipped through when everyone expected a Labour landslide. There are big differences now, of course. This government is so inept that it makes Major's divided and economically clueless shambles of a government look positively competent. And, in comparison to Sunak, even John “Mogadon” Major looks charismatic. Moreover, there was no Reform UK scooping up a substantial proportion of the Tories' “fruitcake and loony” constituency. But if enough of the young, poor, ethnic minorities and progressive cohorts are motivated to vote Green, independent or Nationalist, or, more likely, just stay at home, Labour could well get a nasty surprise on the morning of the count. - BCcantsignin You have summed up pretty well the concerns many have about the Starmer-led Labour Party and its right-wing tendencies. I do not envisage it enacting some of the redistributive policies the Blair Government did. It seems to want to run the economy as the Tories have done, but, for a short while, being less corrupt than the Tories and, perhaps, a bit more competent. There will be no attempt to make any constitutional changes to distribute power to local levels or to change the electoral system, because the current system suits right-of-centre parties and the centre is no longer where it was when, say Harold Wilson was PM. I fear, too, that Starmer and most of his cabinet are English nationalists and share the growing contempt expressed in Parliament and the media towards Scots (as I am), Welsh and Irish. Sunak, yesterday, included supporters of Scottish independence (as I am) as 'extremists'. I feel apprehension when Labour spokespeople say that they intend to 'secure Scotland's place in the union.' So what does 'SECURE Scotland's place in the union' mean? In addition to the cogent points Professor Rogers makes regarding the likely troubles an incoming Labour government will experience it seems as if the UK is simply falling apart, crumbling under the weight of corruption, asset-stripping by the very wealthy and the dire lack of basic public services investment. Large numbers of people are disenchanted with politicians and Labour's opinion poll support is about severe hostility to the Tories and not in favour of anything Labour vaguely proposes. I recall the words of WB Yeats: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; - AlasdairMacdonald Read the original story here. The OpenDemocracy coverage of the conflict is embarrassing. It's one thing to provide one-sided commentary. At least that might be consistent with a progressive ideology. It is quite another to leave out one side altogether. That is simply invalid analysis. Paul Rogers tells us what allegedly motivates Israel, the USA, Iran and others which explains their actions. However, not a word about the motivations or policies of Hamas. -Efraim_Perlmutter Read the original story here. Yes, this is clearly an appalling case that shows clearly why the right to freedom of speech is important and must be upheld. But we didn’t need to go as far as Nigeria for it. The Scottish Hate Crimes Act, which you have studiously avoided mentioning for the last couple of weeks, is a terrifying restriction of freedom of speech, which defines objectively provable statements of biological reality as hate crimes, but not apparently death and rape threats, as long as they are made against gender critical feminists. In light of the way Israel is currently using the concept of hate speech to deplatform legitimate criticism of its depraved behaviour, and in the context of UK libel laws which encourage libel tourism, we need to return to the standard socialist position exemplified by Noam Chomsky, that free speech must be an absolute right which must be protected, and nobody’s commercial interests or fragile delusions can take precedence. - Bobbins 123 Read the original story here. Have more thoughts? Sign up to our newsletters today! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/reader-comments-labour-election-scotland-union-gaza-israel/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/