BC UK

If anyone's thinking to spend the weekend fantasising about a left split from Labour, here's an updated summary of why it's crazy ... 1/ Labour is the only route to a left government in Britain. Even Podemos ended up in power as junior partners to PSOE...

2/ 56% support for Scottish independence and Labour on 13% in Holyrood polls mean 2024 is the last chance saloon. If Scotland is out of the UK there'll have to be something akin to the US Democrats, or Popular Front in 36 - until the demographics change https://t.co/x7Ny2tCWYI
3/ The culture/values conflict is unavoidable and will be intensified inside any left party. Trans rights, migration, Brexit - all the issues that divide the Labour left would divide anything to the left of it: so then there'd be two left alternatives... https://t.co/x7Ny2tCWYI
4/ What we need is an organised left alliance in the Labour Party - bigger than the SCG and Momentum and based around policy and activism... instead we get the self-defeating project of disaffiliating Unite slice by slice... https://t.co/x7Ny2tCWYI
5/ The scale of the Covid and climate crises mean even traditional social-democrats are having to re-think - just as French liberals did in the 1930s. That means an anti-capitalist left in Labour has to engage constructively... https://t.co/x7Ny2tCWYI
6/ It may be temporary, but look at the poll bounce Labour got when the front bench took the gloves off over school meals. The entire PLP was lined up in one direction... that's what we need now... https://t.co/x7Ny2tCWYI
7/ I hear people saying "I'm going to concentrate on activism". Great. But activism without a party just lets people in suits decide the outcome of your protest/riot/occupation... the elite can live with "activism". Power is what matters... https://t.co/x7Ny2tCWYI
8/ So here's a proposal. The left chooses one issue - strategically it has to be the Green Industrial Revolution - and we slim it down to 5-10 points, and we get CLPs to sponsor a virtual conference to produce a radial plan... https://t.co/x7Ny2tCWYI
9/ RLB did a lot of work on this; it needs to be used and developed. If there's a vacuum of policy formation, let's fill it. If there's a vacuum of political education ditto. https://t.co/x7Ny2tCWYI
10/10 I would also take the whole of party democracy online, like Podemos and M5* - removing the need for interminable, over-controlled physical meetings. https://t.co/x7Ny2tCWYI

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This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".


The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?