the famous if you are against the Israeli state you are against Jews.
Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)
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the famous if you are against the Israeli state you are against Jews.
He's still trying to find a middle ground and I think it's the only effective strategy when the country is getting so divided. I don't see any other route to getting enough support for a 2nd ref in the general election.
Labour couldn't after the referendum simply pick a position and stuck to it because of the mix of leave and remain voters it had. Plus coming straight out for another referendum after the last one had just finished would have been a disaster for the 2017 election. So they instead campaigned for a soft brexit, wither that was possible or not is another argument but they did have a soft brexit as their plan(So I'm not sure what you've missed here).
''Ripe for the taking'' but you've said ''around a 50/50 split in the UK right now on Brexit'' so clearly the tories have some support, no ? Your right that the Tory Party is there for the taking but if it's to die it won't be from a one liner zinger from Corbyn or anyone else from the Labour Party but the very social conditions the Tory Party have put in place(The outcome of Thatcherism, the power of change in capitalism, dying voter base etc etc). All the Labour Party can do is offering a alternative vision of the UK and the world(Which has only happened since the left and Corbyn took over the labour leadership).
Corbyn dislike Europe well the EU because of shite like this -
Or all the dead brown kids in the sea, or the misery the EU forced onto Greece and the countless austerity that happened all around Europe. Corbyn is a internationlist socialist and yet he stilled campaigned for Reman, voted Remain and is now offering a second referendum!
As for why other former leaders would done been better, the answer you gave was well not a answer and based on nothing more than your feelings.
I think this comparison is also flawed tbf because it's pretty obvious that a Remain campaign which thinks that Cameron and Osborne are assets are going to think that Corbyn is a liability (and probably with some justification given his infamous 7/10 appearance on the Last Leg).
I've long maintained that Labour made a strategic error by affiliating themselves with the official campaign.
Oh yeah almost certainly and it's also probably skewed by the media's obsession with the Conservatives' internal drama.
Although I'd argue that in hindsight it was Cameron and Osbourne who were the liabilities.
That ship's sailed mate. Everyone knows it's about more than that.
Thanks!
It was fecked from the start as soon as the tories won in 2015 and put forward the referendum. No matter how good the Remain campaign could have been it was never going to beat Leave.
If people wanted to Remain in the EU they should have voted for Ed.
Realistically this would have been his only option to stop no deal (up to this point).
We're all in agreement that the WA is bad and only better than the catastrophe that is a "no deal" and no where near as good as remaining. Better deals are also easily conceivable if May's old red lines were binned. How is the leader of the opposition at fault for anything when all he does is vote against a objectively terrible piece of government legislation? I don't get it. For the record I don't consider myself a Corbyn fan.
Oh, yeah, they were hugely unpopular figures who made it incredibly easy for Leave to portray Remain as an establishment position. Thinking they were assets in the first place was a mistake.
But Corbyn's appearances were hardly a masterpiece in campaigning and messaging and if their campaign team initially thought he wasn't an asset he did little to prove otherwise.
A plan which ostracized large numbers of their own supporters, led to the reinvigoration of the Lib Dems and has left them at a pathetic 25% in the polls. Go Jeremy..
And your alternative is what exactly ? Well apart from voting for a liberal party that welcomes people who want to test immigrates for H.I.V.
Freedom movement for all but now with testing ?
Also we have to wait until the next election is over to see if Labour strategy has worked.
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I'd say that's fairly subjective. I've seen plenty of people hating on 7/10 but also plenty saying they thought it was a good argument.
Corbyn's strong point probably isn't campaigning for the status quo though to be fair.
I think it summed up how a lot of people felt, which is fine, but it was a damaging contribution in a referendum campaign which had already become one of absolutes.
And no, it isn't, but that's one of the reasons why I think it was a mistake for Labour to think that an outright alliance with the Tories was a good idea. There are enough positives about the EU to appeal to Labour's traditional base but by the time those were highlighted it had already been tainted by the Tory support of it.
Suggest a Labour policy on Brexit that would not have done this. They have lots of Remain and Leave voters, so by very definition any policy is going to ostracise a substantial amount of people. What they've tried to do is adopt the path of least resistance and adopt a Leave policy that was as "soft" as possible and could have harboured support from Remainers like myself who begrudgingly accepted the result of the referendum. It worked well enough for them in the 2017 election. Smaller parties like the Lib Dems and Farage's Gammonfest were/are always going to benefit from Brexit because they can afford to adopt more unequivocal positions than anyone else, and be more vocal in what they want. Obvious example being the Lib Dems making the meaningless claim that they'd revoke Article 50 if they became the largest party; they know full well that will not happen so they thus will never have to push for that, but it boosts their Remainer credentials. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that Labour's Brexit policy has been anything close to perfect and the communication of it in particular has been sloppy, but a lot of the criticism it gets is based on emotion rather than fact. If they had come down in favour of a second referendum and Remain from the start then there is no reason to believe their position in the polls would be any better or that they'd have more seats currently in the HoC.
They had to choose between pissing off leavers or remainers and despite being a 60%+ pro-Remain party they chose to piss off the remainers. While simultaneously staying so floppy of the position that the serious leavers went Brexit party or Tory anyway.
I could of course be wrong but I’m damned if I see how that position caused their better than expected (but still pretty shit) 2017 result. Theresa May ran one of the worst campaigns in political history, and still won. Why are we suddenly setting expectations for Labour so low?
Any form of Brexit is bad for the UK.
The current WA is the only way of leaving the EU with an agreement unless the UK stay in the CU/SM. It may not be great but it's the best you're going to get without a Brexit in name only which is pointless and not what Corbyn wants.
Corbyn has voted against the WA. Furthermore he doesn't want to stay in the SM and he doesn't want to stay in the CU.
He wants to be in the SM without the 4 freedoms and to be in a CU where he can do his own deals - if the Tories had said this they would have been laughed at by Labour supporters but because Corbyn said it they think it is a viable course of action. What is wrong with everybody?
For his acolytes, Corbyn isn't a politician, he's an unimpeachable way of mind.
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But it is a tough issue with the country split right down the middle and the leave faction already having won the referendum. It's like saying Clinton won the popular vote and Trump is bad, so we should do the honorable thing and storm the White house. I'm not saying go head first and fall into the well of no deal but surely people can see it's a tough situation? 3 years of haggling with no results to show is proof enough that it's just not Corbyn not putting his back into it
They haven't pissed off Remainers. Recent analysis of their 2017 vote showed that their strongest support came from people who identified as "Strongly Remain". That was on an unambiguous Leave platform. It's also not true that Leave Labour voters will turn to the Conservatives, but some will inevitably go to the Brexit party and Labour need a policy that can stymie that outflow. Likewise, they need to minimise the loss of voters to the Lib Dems. Any analysis of Labour's base of support should tell you why their Brexit policy cannot afford to adopt an extreme position because a significant loss of support from either the Leave/Remain side and they are screwed electorally.
The 2017 result was a triumph for Labour when you look at how they had been polling and how they had fared under Miliband. As for lower expectations, you need to remember gone are the days of Blair having the press in his back-pocket. Labour are not going to have that luxury now that they have shifted leftwards, and it's a hell of a lot tougher to win votes when the mainstream media is incredibly hostile towards the party's leader and his ideas.
You realise 2017 was two years ago, right?
In 2017 Labour stood on a platform that was unambiguously to leave the EU/honour the referendum result, and yet their largest base of supporters remained people who strongly identified with Remain and their share of the vote increased. Thus, the idea that their Brexit policy has alienated its core base of Remain voters does not appear wholly valid to me. Their policy is now no longer unambiguously to leave the EU and includes a second referendum with leading figures openly advocating for Remain i.e. Thornberry, McDonnell, Starmer, Watson. We'll find out the truth at the next election.
Labour Momentum are a reactive bunch of leftie ideologists led by Jon Lansman. None of them have had a real job and spend their time looking for causes to campaign for as long as it’s against the Tories. If May had come back with the best deal in the world the hatred inside Labour/Momentum and others would have blocked it. They have switched sides so many times you just don’t know wtf they stand for other than a communist state. Corbyn will lose the next election by himself. All the Tories have to do is put up a ‘ Do you want Diane Abbot as Home Secretary?’ and they will walk it. There are no parties that seem to want to get this country performing as it should. Tories will spend a bit of dosh on social projects whilst bunging big tax breaks to their mates. Labour would bankrupt us, again. Lib Dem’s are clueless. It’s very worrying.
Give this man a job at the Daily Express! I fixed it slightly for you though.
Isnt that photo with Paul Hill who was wrongly convicted and later totally exonerated of any involvement?Jeremy Corbyn goes to the wedding of an innocent man?
Got him this time eh...
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I love the way 2017 was supposedly a triumph despite the shitty situation being one of Corbyn’s own making. Don’t get me wrong, I was as impressed as anyone with the comeback from so far behind, but Labour have been on their arse for a long time, and the idea that it’s all someone else’s fault is just nonsense.
Corbyn continually inflicts avoidable damage on himself and his brand, and yet no matter what it seems like people are happy to leap to his defense. How exactly is this helping anyone? It’s been years now, and Labour are still nowhere in the polls. Even if it’s true that it’s all someone else’s fault, so what? Progressives get to win a moral victory while never winning an actual electoral one?
Yeah. That's the point. I didn't bother responding myself.
It didn't alienate voters back then because Brexit played a smaller role than was expected in the campaign. Since we'd not long activated Article 50 Brexit almost took a bit of a backseat because negotiations were largely only starting. While a lot of people were unhappy we'd left the EU, it was also largely accepted that the result meant we democratically had to leave: even the Lib Dems, for example, while hardly advocating for a No Deal Brexit, weren't really arguing for a complete revocation of Article 50.
Labour's polling slump and the Lib Dem surge in recent months quite clearly indicates they alienated a lot of their Remain voters by flip-flopping on the issue. It's all well and good to be coy about an issue but for a long time Corbyn essentially didn't seem to have a view on the biggest problem facing the country. He's been a bit stronger on it recently though.
I think the comeback was initially impressive insofar as we'd all expected Corbyn to fail and his sudden improvement meant Labour were now seen as a viable electoral party again: many expected his poll surges to continue and for him to start establishing regular leads over the Tories, which is what you'd expect any halfway decent opposition leader to do. The problem is that never really happened - by all accounts support for the party has dropped significantly since 2017.
Yeah exactly. And as a progressive I’m sick of it. I have absolutely no desire to see the progressive movement die on that hill.
At this point I think he's still got a decent chance of getting power if Boris cocks up Brexit - and if he gets in I think he'll enact plenty of solid policies, but yeah, for as much as "Who else would you have?" is a somewhat decent retort when there aren't that many big names in Labour who'd be well-suited to the leadership, it's hardly a particularly convincing or reassuring defence of Corbyn all the same.
Literally anybody. Except Alan Johnson, who was put in charge of Labour's remain campaign and was so good at it that he managed to deliver a 68.0% leave vote in his own constituency. Admittedly centrist faves Tom Watson and Yvette Cooper had him beat with 68.2% and 70% respectively.
The guy put in charge of Labour Remain, who'd go on to tell Momentum they weren't needed, everybody! Then three places below him is the moron who put him in that position, when she wasn't abstaining on the Tory welfare bill to look tough on scroungers.
But, you know, all Corbyn's fault.
Progressive movement? Isn't that all just harping on about how great the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony was and how you'd like the inventor of imaginary wheelchairs for work capability assessments to be Prime Minister?
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If he gets into power then I’ll be quite happy. I’ve been firmly behind most of his domestic policies since the global financial crisis. There’s some personal red lines he crosses on the likes of NATO/nuclear arms but I know he would lack the parliamentary numbers for that regardless. My criticism of him is chiefly just based around his electability.
There really is a cult surrounding Corbyn. It's odd.
Yeah no denying that Brexit was not as central in 2017 as it will be now. I think it still demonstrates that Labour do not have to be shouting from the rooftops how much they love the EU to still retain the support of a lot of their Remain supporters. The ambiguity on precisely where Labour stand (although I'd actually argue their policy has been for the most part quite clear, what has not been clear is what they actually desire) has harmed them. I think it's been poor communication and the lack of consistency across all leading figures in stating what they want that has done the most damage. Ultimately I'm less critical though because I believe a loss of voters to the Lib Dems was inevitable. As I said, the Lib Dems undeniably will benefit the stronger they push the Remain cause, whereas it's never been certain for Labour that that would apply to them. It remains to be seen if the greater clarity and leadership Corbyn has now shown will prove effective in reducing the turn to the Lib Dems.
Yvette Cooper, you know, the Progressives' Princess. Back in the glory days where 'progressives' were happy to do anything to rip money out of vulnerable people's hands she was right at the heart of it, including coming up with the idea of using 'imaginary wheelchairs' in work capability assessments. She was also more than happy to look the other way regarding the Tories' immigration plans, despite famed thick as shit Diane Abbott predicting it would lead to things that bear a remarkable resemblance to the Windrush scandal.I wish I knew what any of the things you just said actually meant..
Still, at least she's not Corbyn.
Fairly sure I’ve never been a vocal Yvette Cooper supporter. And definitely sure I’ve never given Diane Abbott any shit. In fact I’ve pointed out to numerous people in the past that Abbott is a highly accomplished woman, and considerably smarter than 99% of the people who call her stupid.