I'm not sure the Labour party, who did badly, can, at present, be described as socialist. Certainly not as left wing as I remember in the past.

The SNP who probably had the most socialist of all the manifestos of the major parties did pretty well although Plaid Cymru, who also had quite a socialist manifesto, didn't do as well as they expected they would.

All in all I have no idea what point I'm trying to make but just wanted to contribute

'Lies to the masses as are like fly's to mollasses...they want more and more and more'

No. You just can't see that so called socailist policy flies in the face of reality most of the time.
There also seems to be an inability to take responsibility for one economic disaster after another. The people in Britain who have a brain will keep your beloved Labour Party out for the forseeable hopefully. Now trot off back to the BBS Ghosty.

I have no love for Labour. The policies of the previous Miliband-led election were hardly socialist and more like 'conservative light'. The rest of the post is irrelevant.
Luckily Judy i can visit the BBS. Coming? No, thought not.

I was talking about the tossers that campaigned as "The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition"... did they get their deposit back on any seat?

Labour were just pathetic that was what "sank them".

When Alan B'Staad returned after being thrown out of power with most of the other Thatcherites, it was under Blair's New Labour. He explained that this was entirely natural because, unlike the Tories, New Labour was "Much younger! Much more sexy! And much more conservative!"

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Regarding Bernie Sanders, he is being mostly ignored by the media for whom the narrative around him is that he's a socialist kook. Meanwhile, he's raising money like crazy from the grass roots; no where near Hillary's mega corporate donors, but still a lot for a small campaign like his. Fund-raising, in American politics, being a barometer of future success.

The real difference, though, is the enthusiasm for his campaign stops. Where the major candidates (their glitzy announcements aside) are happy to get a few hundred people at campaign stops (some even happy to get enough to start a kick around), Sanders has been getting thousands, sometimes near tens of thousands.

The sad reality, though, is that the money raised by the major candidates will have far more play in the final outcome than all the crowds that Bernie can raise. His only hope is to hit multiple home runs on the televised debates (something he is more than capable of doing), and that still will probably not be enough. Most likely, his value will be to drag Hillary's campaign to the left during the primaries, before she crabs back to the middle in the head-to-head.

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Here's the NY Times on Sanders' crowds.
[Link]

A decent report, spoiled (IMHO) by the dig that people are only showing up to Sanders' events to prod Hillary, which is a silly concept and frankly insulting.

Edited by Ray in Houston (06 Jul 2015 7.31pm)

We don't do possession; we do defense and attack. Everything else is just wa**ing with a football.

I've put a tenner on Cooper so I want her to win.

...we must expand...get more pupils...so that the knowledge will spread...