John McDonnell just wrote himself out of the race.

[EmilyKent]

June 8, 2010

Labour contender John McDonnell applauded for ‘kill Thatcher’ joke
Tom Baldwin, Chief Reporter

John McDonnell, a Labour leadership candidate, was applauded loudly yesterday for telling a trade union audience that he wished to go back to the 1980s and assassinate Margaret Thatcher.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7145786.ece

[T_i_B]

1. I bet you're outraged eh?

[EmilyKent]

4. 'Jokes' about assassination

aren't funny. No matter who you're for or against politically, that crosses the line.

The UK is a democracy, not a third-world hot spot.

And such remarks say something about a politician who is unaware he isn't just speaking to his mates at a local meeting, but to the world via the web.

He is now unelectable.

[miscsoc]

9. no, sorry, it IS funny if it's thatcher

you are wrong

also he was always unelectable, it makes unreconstructed socialists like me warm to him though

[EmilyKent]

10. It is never funny in a democracy.

We traded ballot boxes for guns a long time ago.

[Hopeless Romantic]

11. I agree actually Bulldog. A stupid thing to have said, doubtless a joke but

in very poor taste nonetheless and certainly not the sort of thing that a prospective leader of the Labour Party should be saying, even in jest.

If a Tory had said it about one of ours we would take a very different line.

[EmilyKent]

13. Yes, no matter who it's said about, it's wrong.

But then so is your persistence in assuming anyone new on here, is someone old.

I'm Lib-Dem. Is this site restricted to Labourites?

[Hopeless Romantic]

15. Well, if you're not Bulldog then...

Who's Spartacus?

[EmilyKent]

18. How many times do you have to be asked

to discuss a topic, instead of attacking a new poster?

Don't you think anyone can look things up if they need to?

Has British courtesy disappeared completely?

[Hopeless Romantic]

19. I wasn't attacking you! I agreed with you above!

Jeeze Bulldog, you're a touchy bugger sometimes!

[EmilyKent]

22. Kindly stop playing games,

and discuss the topic.

[miscsoc]

12. she was totally indifferent to human suffering

she did things far worse than making jokes about death, she caused death, and she ruined lives.

[EmilyKent]

14. That's not the point, as you are well aware.

[miscsoc]

16. of course it's the point

I'm sorry, I remain ignorant of why the actual moral despicability of a person is irrelevant to whether joking about killing them is wrong or not

[EmilyKent]

17. Thatcher was the elected leader of the time,

and whether you personally liked her or not, the majority did.

There are a lot of people in politics I don't like, but it's not acceptable to joke about assassinating any of them.

We put in, and remove govts, by ballot box. We are the UK, not Somalia.

[oldironside]

20. The majority actually detested her.

She was great at polarising opinion, and never got more than 43% of the vote.

[EmilyKent]

21. Re-electing her was an odd way of showing that.

[oldironside]

27. Perhaps you could explain to us all...

... how 43% is a majority?

[LeftishBrit]

29. We have a 2-party voting system and 3 or more parties...

Hence a slight plurality can give a leader almost-dictatorial powers (both Thatcher and Blair).

Except not this time, for which I am thankful.

We do need *some* sort of electoral reform.

[EmilyKent]

32. Yes, the system is the system.

It's worked this way for a very long time, so we can't just discount it whenever it's not the result we personally want.

I am very much cheered by current results, and maybe next time it will be even better.

[LeftishBrit]

33. So you think all those who want electoral reform are just 'discounting the system'?

And I would question whether it has always 'worked'. Excessive parliamentary majorities for leaders with small pluralities aren't always a good thing.

I don't want to end up with the government totally hijacked by small fringenut parties, as happens in some countries, so we have to think carefully about the reforms but that doesn't mean we need them.

'I am very much cheered by current results, and maybe next time it will be even better.'

Well, I'm very *relieved* that the Tories have to share power; but 'very much cheered' by the overall result would be a bit strong. 'Next time would be even better' = the Tories not getting in at all!

[EmilyKent]

34. The system has always been the same.

My point is that it's not 'wonderful' when it gets you the result you want, but 'horrible' when it doesn't.

I am cheered by the Lib-Dems doing so well. It's been a long time coming.

[LeftishBrit]

35. And it's always been a problem.

I wanted Labour to win in 1997, but I still think that Blair's huge and unrepresentative majority did enabled him to do some very bad things with insufficient checks.

I am surprised that a Lib Dem supporter would not want any changes to the voting system.

[EmilyKent]

36. There is no 'perfect' system,

but of course we need change! I'd just rather we cleared the deck and started over instead of adding to all the tweaks and props we've worked into the current one.

[miscsoc]

23. yeah, we shouldn't fetishize our parliamentary system

as some objective barometer of the popular will

it's the ramshackle result of centuries of struggles and concessions between social groups. becoming prime minister doesn't confer some transcendent democratic legitimacy that renders you beyond vicious criticism.

[EmilyKent]

24. Beyond criticism? Of course not.

'Joking' about assassination is quite another matter.

[miscsoc]

25. I don't see the problem with the joke

I mean it incorporated time travel for goodness' sake, it's just a joke about a despicable person. It's not inciting anyone to anything.

[EmilyKent]

26. Obviously not.

[B Whale]

38. The majority actually did not support. That is

statistically and factually wrong. as you know the labour party fucked themselves in the early 80s, then the split and the SDP splitting the vote and bla bla. she NEVER won more than 50% of the popular vote. Not even close.

as a lib dem you should know that the system is unfair, surely...

,,,anyway, i know in my neck of the woods we have bunting ready for the day she dies. there will be street parties. all my ol dad wants to do is outlive the bitch.

she was an ideological fanatic, and dogmatic in her pursuit of inhuman economic policies that cause irreperable suffering in the north.

she was poisonous

[oldironside]

39. Frankie Boyle...

... had a great routine about Thatcher's state funeral.
"3.2 million pounds? For that you could buy everyone in Scotland a shovel and we could dig a hole deep enough to hand her over to Satan personally."

[Anarcho-Socialist]

44. I'd happily assist such a worthy endeavour n/t

[miscsoc]

42. It was a throwaway joke.

He wasn't genuinely advocating killing her or anyone else. If he'd done THAT it would have been unacceptable, but he didn't.

[LeftishBrit]

28. Since going back to the 80s is an impossible fantasy...

the whole thing was clearly an impossible fantasy. It's not as though he was actually making a threat.

'He is now unelectable.'

He always was, simply because he is too left for the party as currently constituted. He knows it. He isn't standing to win; he is standing to make a statement.

[Nihil]

40. Maybe so ...

> Since going back to the 80s is an impossible fantasy...
> the whole thing was clearly an impossible fantasy.

It still rankles for those of us who remember precisely who DID attempt
to kill her at that time ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_hotel_bombing

Five people were killed, several permanently disabled and the gutless
bastard who did it was let off after 14 years (of a "life" sentence, hah!).


> He isn't standing to win; he is standing to make a statement.

That's all well and good but the statement that he's ended up making
is "I am a dickhead who isn't fit to do the job anyway". YMMV.

:shrug:

[Anarcho-Socialist]

2. Who cares? He isn't going to win

He is a socialist and the Labour Party isn't keen anymore on those Bolshie types.

[oldironside]

3. The funniest part of the story...

... is the assertion that "large sections of the party remain tilted to the Left". Blair obviously didn't do a good enough job of ridding Labour of genuine Lefties as far as Mr Murdoch is concerned. We should be grateful for small mercies.

[EmilyKent]

5. That WAS odd.

I haven't seen anything in 'New Labour' that's 'tilted to the left'.

[non sociopath skin]

6. So they're not all unreformed Trotskyists now, then?

:evilgrin:

The Skin

[oldironside]

7. I meant...

... funny ha ha, not funny peculiar. Funny as in the Times without irony can suggest it wants to see a Labour Party shorn of all Lefties, and merely there as a sort of pseudo centre left party that claims to want a more equal society, but in fact is willing to screw anybody over if it pleases its corporate masters. Hang on... something's just occured to me.

[EmilyKent]

8. Oh, well I picked that one at random.

The story was also in the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Sun I believe. Probably others.

It was the story that concerned me, not the way any one paper writes it up. They all have their biases.

[LeftishBrit]

30. The others you mention are even more RW than the Times!

[EmilyKent]

31. I picked a headline.

What possible difference does it make? He said it.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LeftishBrit]

41. In any case, McDonnell has now pulled out of the race to support Abbott.

[T_i_B]

43. He never stood much of a chance anyway

In all honesty I don't think that joking about killing Tatcher made any real difference. The sort of people who are likely to get outraged by that appear to all be backing Andy Burnham.

[BolivarianHero]

45. No sympathy through me...

Nobody liked this witch and she won because first-past the post is a shitty system in states with more than two strong parties. She's the primary reason why Liberals in Canada who defend first past the post must have been dropped on their heads at birth