BREAKING: journalists never to be allowed to clock off ever again as ruling class across the world agrees to release huge stories at two-hourly intervals forever.
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Michael Chessum
@michael_chessum
Socialist activist and writer | Author of This Is Only The Beginning: the making of a new left | Work for a trade union | All views my own.
Michael Chessum’s Tweets
The most amazing thing about listening to Rachel Reeves row back on the £28bn green commitment this morning is that she doesn't mention the climate crisis once.
In the UK's political bubble, "being realistic" means divorcing yourself from the biggest reality facing humanity.
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Braindead politics by people whose only strategic appraoch appears to be "be more right wing and party like it's 1999".
If you asked an AI engine to generate a New Labour manifesto for 2023, I really think you would get something much more human and in touch with reality.
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BREAKING: Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves delays planned delivery of £28bn green prosperity fund as result of poor economic backdrop.
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An absolutely huge loss to the left in parliament.
Caroline is one of the highest-calibre politicians and most effective communicators of her generation. Very few MPs are as reliably sharp, principled and open.
Under PR, she could have been PM. As it is, well...
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In 2010 #Brighton Pavilion made history by electing me UK’s 1st Green MP & it’s been the honour of my life. My open letter to residents & friends explains why I’m not standing at next General Election. With love & gratitude, I hope I've done you proud 
carolinelucas.com/caroline/parli
carolinelucas.com/caroline/parli
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Don't Pay did a lot with very little institutional buy-in, and while overshadowed by some other initiatives which produced much less real-world activity.
A good initiative which will hopefully provide some infrastructure to allow people to organise.
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A year after it was set up, has decided to finally end its campaign for an energy bill payment strike.
It's worth reflecting on why the Cost of Living crisis has seen so little general mobilisation beyond the - striking - uptick in industrial militancy.
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Being on the Labour left right now carries the strong sensation of sitting on top of an elaborate sandcastle with the tide coming in.
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Whoever you are, whatever mistakes you've made, console yourself with the fact that you are not the Austrian Social Democrats, who announced the *wrong* result in their leadership election this week.
Andreas Babler, the left candidate, in fact won.
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Michaela Grubesa, Leiterin der Wahlkommission erklärt: Aufgrund eines technischen Fehlers, wurden am Parteitag die Stimmen falsch zugeordnet.
Das korrekte Ergebnis der Voristzwahl lautet:
Hans Peter Doskozil: 280 Stimmen (46,51%).
Andreas Babler: 317 Stimmen (52,66%). (1/2)
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Generally speaking, I am positive about humans' capacity for social solidarity. Every time I visit a men's toilet, my worldview is tested
What is it about men - across time zones and continents - that makes us want to cover the floor with urine and smear our faeces up the walls?
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Without big renewal, you've got to wonder what the future of the Labour left is. Having candidates picked off one by one isn't a strategy. Neither is "doing what we did in the 2000s" - fine, it's nice to have a marginalised MP at your protest, but it's not a strategy for the left
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It’s been a week since I’ve returned from Kyiv. Still processing and writing up some thoughts for an article. But here’s a 🧵 with some initial thoughts.
Huge thanks to , , and for facilitating the visit
🇺🇦✊
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I’ve been barred from standing as North East Mayor by @UKLabour. No explanation has been given.
I’m proud to have created thousands of jobs, fought child poverty, built affordable homes and delivered our Green New Deal. I believe in democracy. Share if you do too. More to follow.
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I’ve been barred from standing as North East Mayor by @UKLabour. No explanation has been given.
I’m proud to have created thousands of jobs, fought child poverty, built affordable homes and delivered our Green New Deal. I believe in democracy. Share if you do too. More to follow.
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This Starmer Express line is so embarrassing.
"We've already said we'll deport migrants more than the Tories. All that's left is a dog-whistle line about thieving Europeans".
"God, isn't that a bit undiplomatic?"
"Fine, we'll call them 'our European friends' in the same line".
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Consistency, honesty and respect for the electorate.
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Labour will make Brexit work for Britain.
express.co.uk/comment/expres
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It's worth observing people's response to this. So much of it is crude distraction and apologism.
Shouting "Stalinism" often creates more heat than light. But there's a toxic mix of kitsch, orthodoxy, conspiracy, and sectarianism on the left at the moment. We need to sort it out
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The Holodomor was an act of deliberate mass starvation by Stalin's Russia that claimed the lives of 1 in 8 Ukrainians.
Yesterday I called for Parliament to officially recognise it as a genocide.
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On the downside, I'm now 34 and so undeniably in my mid thirties. On the upside, I entered the twilight zone of sort-of-middle-age in the the Georgian highlands, which are stunning.
Turns out late May is still off-season, meaning amazing (if challenging) snowy conditions.
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Well, the Labour leadership might be turning right so many times it goes in a circle on most issues - but if this is going to be in its next manifesto, that will be a genuine moment of progress.
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You can look at 2010 from 2 angles - as the start of the radical 2010s, but also as the last gasp of an old HE world before marketisation. We always spoke about that 'tipping point' in 2010-11; maybe another wave will prove it false, but for now it looks scarily accurate. 6/6
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The case of student activism is also interesting. Seth is right to say that it provided a space for fulltime militancy. But as marketisation took over the sector, it has also collapsed - no national networks to speak of, no intervention into the national politics. 5/6
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The broad picture is positive - the public is largely behind radicalish economic change and climate action. But is the shallow movement we've managed to build (or rebuild) capable of really turning those passive opinions into an epoch-changing moment outside of saying "2017"? 4/6
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All combines to give us a very shallow model: raw conventional electoralism (shifting between consecutive moments of hope and despair), leader-worship, a professionalised left, some (often good) top-down worker mobilisation, glitzy comms, and endless social media focus. 3/6
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It sort of feels like we're living in a kind of stripped-down left world: the lack of space a time (dole and squats and subculture), the rise and rise of NGO-ism, the collapse of the organised far left, the (so far) still unrecovered rank and file networks in the unions. 2/6
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This by is a really important bit of observation on the sociology of the left and I think something that often gets missed when writing about generations/left culture.
Adding a couple of bits... 1/6
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I love London. It's my home and I've lived here longer than I've lived anywhere.
But every time I have to go through the process of looking for somewhere to live, I really do wonder what the fuck we're all doing here.
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The new far right: mass immigration is not sustainable for public services and housing.
Also the new far right: our number one priority must be breeding more babies, who famously combine needing housing and public services with being completely economically inactive.
Genius.
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"Do you love being Right Wing enough to send your potentially LGBT child to a school that will isolate and damage them?"
"Do you love punching down enough to Tweet under your own name?"
The Tories are producing a generation of good orators spouting mad, and oddly niche, garbage
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How much do you love your country?
Enough to tweet under your own name?
To change your child's school to one that is less woke?
To do more than chat to your friends who already agree with you at dinner parties?
For heaven's sake, man, stand up and be counted.
-@Miss_Snuffy
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I love Left Twitter. Some bloke Isaac has accused me of campaigning with Alastair Campbell to destroy left youth politics. The brave anonymous pumpkin is back. And "Lexit Lover 69" is fantacising about having me killed.
What are the bets this is, in fact, all the same person?
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Whether it's anti-protest laws, or immigration, or right to buy, Labour follows the script of "clever politics".
But it isn't clever - it's a proven disaster.
Wrote this for the blog in March, and I have a bad feeling it will continue to be relevant.
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No other country can do this.
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No other country can do this
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No other country can do this.
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No other country can do this
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A lot of talk about how the monarchy is a source of meaning. What a sad perspective.
It's meaning as a holiday from your own life. Momentary community spirit which is then washed away by alienated daily grind. Imagined connection to a family you don't know, who rule over you.
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The claim of modern Monarchism is that the monarchy is a politically neutral, benign force fully compatible with democratic life.
There's an easy test for this: can republicans protest events like the coronation without being harassed and arrested?
Apparently not.
#NotMyKing
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Greetings on #MayDay2023
Solidarity to workers and unions in #Ukraine resisting Russia's invasion and defending workers' rights
Please donate to UA trade unionists on the frontline: crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-ukra
Join us @ NHS strikers' march in London, St Thomas' Hospital, by 1pm
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One of the golden rules of good journalism is: "beef on Twitter is not news".
If you start to make it news, you end up down rabbit holes inside rabbit holes. There will always be something on here that will confirm your biases and work with whatever line you want to spin.
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A nostalgic trip down memory lane with the Corbynista bots and cranks.
Me on the reaction to that interview
thetimes.co.uk/article/a-trip
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For what it's worth, I think it's really unfair to accuse the Labour Right of having nothing to say about anti-traveller racism and persecution in the context of the furore around the Diane Abbott letter.
They have a long, proud record on it. Just look at these examples:
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A great bleak interaction in Sainsbury's to end the weekend
Man, pointing at the free range chickens: "they say they're happier; they don't look like they're feeling happier to me"
Me: "well, they're not feeling much at all"
[Pause]
Man: "I suppose that's a kind of happiness"
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