Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)

"If the Labour Party had selected David instead of Ed Milliband, we'd probably have a Labour government right now, and would still be in the EU." Discuss.

I read this comment in the FT yesterday and thought it was an interesting proposition.

Its obviously impossible to know, really. But as far as Corbyn is concerned, the whole problem can clearly be traced very directly back to the leadership election reforms brought in by Ed. Ed specifically said he wanted to turn the party into a movement. A classic example of needing to be careful what you wish for. So at the very least we can say if David had been leader of Labour, if he had failed, we probably wouldnt have had the conditions in the following leadership election from which Corbyn could prevail. So it is not a stretch to say the whole Labour Civil War would never have happened, because the hard left would never have got a foothold. Those kinds of members may have drifted away, Labour may have lost a lot of support, but it would at least be a coherent entity.

That is as far as I think I would go though. Im not sure about the whole "Red Ed" thing, I dont think he was that far to the left of his brother - so as to make them unelectable, where his brother may have got them back after 5 years. Would David have offered a real alternative to austerity? If Ed didnt, and people think Ed was too far to the left, then probably not. And if he hadnt, maybe people would have voted Tory anyway. If the Tories had won, they would still have offered a referendum - it was UKIP that forced that issue, not Labour. Maybe a united and functioning Labour Party could have changed the course of that vote but I doubt it. I dont think David would have solved the problem of the Scottish Labour implosion, or disaffection among Northern Labour voters. So it may still be in terminal decline.

So in summary, my best guess is Labour would still have had a fairly major crisis on its hand in terms of connecting with core voters, and we would still have a Tory government. It would probably not be run by Corbyn and would therefore not have that particular issue to contend with, but with Scotland abandoning it and many Englishworking class voters feeling it didnt speak to them about immigration, it would arguably be on the same track, just not so far along it. Maybe that would be worse, maybe this civil war, damaging as it is, can resolve issues that might have taken many years to work through, and lead to a more viable party, or parties, more quickly than would otherwise have been the case.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
Most of Corbyn's supporters were not even in the Labour party before he appeared on the ballot. Do you really think that Corbyn's camp wants this to work anyway? This is what they want. I have said before in this thread that neither side had any real interest in working with each other.
Click to expand...

And? They're still members. They've still paid. If you create a system which allows this; it's up to the MP's to at least follow that system. Instead of simply throwing their toys out of the pram once that membership doesn't conform to their own viewpoint.
 
berbatrick said:
The popular press was all for criticising Ed Miliband's eating habits. This hypothetical new Labour leaders needs to bring them onside ASAP, give them everything they want. Then the press can write stories about how insubstantial the Tory attacks are.
Click to expand...

And how is this going to happen? Murdoch and co are happy with the Tories right now; there's no reason whatsoever for them to jump ship to a sinking Labour party, even with someone other than Corbyn in charge. This is the long-term problem with Labour courting big media figures - those figures are always going to jump back to the Tories when the Tory party are doing well, and for the foreseeable future the Tories look like they'll be successful.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
Labour have been out of government for only two terms FFS. New Labour won three on the bounce. Gordon Brown was stained by being the chancellor around the time of the banking crisis and the fact that he had no official mandate. Ed was too left wing, not trusted to run the economy because of that and too weak a personality. All that said, Labour remained relevant despite that.

Corbyn and the hard left will destroy that remaining relevance, everyone knows it except for his supporters.
Click to expand...

Wow i didnt think id see such an obvious admission from someone thinking Labours decline has all been the fault of the economic crisis. A decent leader and those votes will just magic back right :lol:

Corbyn isnt hard left either. I keep seeing this far left nonsense, what official policies are far/hard left?
 
Cheesy said:
And how is this going to happen? Murdoch and co are happy with the Tories right now; there's no reason whatsoever for them to jump ship to a sinking Labour party, even with someone other than Corbyn in charge. This is the long-term problem with Labour courting big media figures - those figures are always going to jump back to the Tories when the Tory party are doing well, and for the foreseeable future the Tories look like they'll be successful.
Click to expand...

I think it can happen with a negligible probability, but all I wanted to point out was that the sandwich smear was meaningless without the press being completely onside and splashing it everywhere without irony.
 
berbatrick said:
I think it can happen with a negligible probability, but all I wanted to point out was that the sandwich smear was meaningless without the press being completely onside and splashing it everywhere without irony.
Click to expand...

How, though? In what world is any major media outlet that's currently Tory going to switch to Labour?
 
Classical Mechanic said:
A centre left Labour is something to build on at least. A hard left Labour is suicide.
Click to expand...

Challenging austerity, fighting against crippling welfare reform and opposing trident renewal are hardly 'hard left', if that were the case much of Europe would be putting hammers and sickles on their flags.

The trouble is, Labour went so far to the right under Blair that any attempt to shift leftwards is seen as shifting to the far left.
 
Kaos said:
58% of the population favour nationalising the railway, and for good reason - we have some of the worst private rail operators in Europe.

Would you categorise 58% of people in the UK as 'hard left' ?
Click to expand...
no - but unlike myself I'd suggest 58% of people dont work in the rail sector and dont understand just what an absolute clusterfek that would be
 
Smores said:
Wow i didnt think id see such an obvious admission from someone thinking Labours decline has all been the fault of the economic crisis. A decent leader and those votes will just magic back right :lol:

Corbyn isnt hard left either. I keep seeing this far left nonsense, what official policies are far/hard left?
Click to expand...

Indeed.

I still remember what Corbyn propogates as being Normal Labour values.[/QUOTE]
 
Smores said:
Wow i didnt think id see such an obvious admission from someone thinking Labours decline has all been the fault of the economic crisis. A decent leader and those votes will just magic back right :lol:

Corbyn isnt hard left either. I keep seeing this far left nonsense, what official policies are far/hard left?
Click to expand...

I don't think those are the only factors but I do think that politics is a shallow business essentially and those factors are more important to most people that make up the electorate.

Most people don't care about ideology one jot and they don't have lists of which way certain Labour MPs voted on one issue or another.
 
sun_tzu said:
no - but unlike myself I'd suggest 58% of people dont work in the rail sector and dont understand just what an absolute clusterfek that would be
Click to expand...
Or perhaps amongst the 58% are regular rail users such as myself that have to endure awful, unreliable services while paying an extortionate premium. Privatisation of the railways has failed miserably and commuters across all political spectrums are first to feel the effects of it.

Regardless, it quashes the idea that it's a far left ideal.

Next - what's another far left ideal Comrade Corbyn wishes to impose on us?
 
sun_tzu said:
no - but unlike myself I'd suggest 58% of people dont work in the rail sector and dont understand just what an absolute clusterfek that would be
Click to expand...

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the original point you made.

Bad policy or good policy, hard left or no, it's clearly an issue that the public and Corbyn agree on.
 
Kaos said:
Or perhaps amongst the 58% are regular rail users such as myself that have to endure awful, unreliable services while paying an extortionate premium. Privatisation of the railways has failed miserably and commuters across all political spectrums are first to feel the effects of it.

Regardless, it quashes the idea that it's a far left ideal.
Click to expand...

I would be in favour of renationalisation of the railways if it was feasible, is it?
 
NinjaFletch said:
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the original point you made.

Bad policy or good policy, hard left or no, it's clearly an issue that the public and Corbyn agree on.
Click to expand...
renationalisation of private enterprise is not left wing... tell me what is?
58% of people might want to bring back hanging - it does not make it any less right wing
 
Classical Mechanic said:
I don't think those are the only factors but I do think that politics is a shallow business essentially and those factors are more important to most people that make up the electorate.

Most people don't care about ideology one jot and they don't have lists of which way certain Labour MPs voted on one issue or another.
Click to expand...

They might not care about the detail and i agree the electorate can be swayed by shallow arguments but there's a long list of lessons the Labour party has to learn beyond just replacing the leader and going back to New Labour.

New Labour lost a lot of voters well before the economc crisis or Ed and Corbyn. Those lost voters may never come back and if thats the case the only hope will be to gain votes from a popular grass routes campaign.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
I would be in favour of renationalisation of the railways if it was feasible, is it?
Click to expand...
Sadiq Khan has suggested TFL take control of the shambolic southern rail services. TFL themselves have run a relatively stellar services in and around London.

No reason why it can't be feasible, or at the very least why it shouldnt be given a go considering how awful the current private contractors are.
 
Cheesy said:
How, though? In what world is any major media outlet that's currently Tory going to switch to Labour?
Click to expand...

They need an uptick in the polls, the new leader to please Murdoch personally, and May to say something good about human rights :p
 
Classical Mechanic said:
I would be in favour of renationalisation of the railways if it was feasible, is it?
Click to expand...
you can rentaionalise anything - but id expect safety to be fecked, productivity to be fecked, prices to rise dramatically (unless increased direct subsidy was done instead) - but most of all I suspect most people calling for re-nationalisation don't remember why British rail was commonly called British fail
 
sun_tzu said:
renationalisation of private enterprise is not left wing... tell me what is?
58% of people might want to bring back hanging - it does not make it any less right wing
Click to expand...
The whole appeal of privatisation is to provide competition, which in theory should offer us better service for much better value. Except what we've got instead is the worst rail service in Europe at the most expensive prices, so its clearly failed. In which case reversing that decision isn't a hard left one, but rather a pragmatic one.
 
Ffs rail nationalisation is not hard/far left.

It just shows if you keep repeating something in the press it gets picked up as truth. Corbyn has yet to introduce any hard left policy at all but hey lets just carry on pretending as it fits a narrative.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
If Jezza wants to be taken seriously that doesn't really cut it as an answer though.
Click to expand...
The current system is failing miserably so let's change it? Seems pretty reasonable to me. From what I understand he supports Khan's call of TFL taking over South eastern rail services.
 
Kaos said:
The whole appeal of privatisation is to provide competition, which in theory should offer us better service for much better value. Except what we've got instead is the worst rail service in Europe at the most expensive prices, so its clearly failed. In which case reversing that decision isn't a hard left one, but rather a pragmatic one.
Click to expand...
we also have infrastructure dating back 100 years that we have to try and repair / replace whilst still using it - we have a freight network with pinch points that wont allow shipping containers to pass because they were developed before shipping containers - and to widen it we have to reconstruct motorways, knock down schools etc - frankly whoever owns it that wont change but I know how much better things are now than they were and I know that the only way to make it better is to pay a lot more money to fund the improvements... my experience around the world of working on large infra schemes that have private control as opposed to government funding is that they are a lot more efficient
 
sun_tzu said:
renationalisation of private enterprise is not left wing... tell me what is?
Click to expand...

I didn't say that. The point CM made was that Corbyn's 'hard left' politics would destroy the relevance of the party and be 'suicide'. Then you picked up on it with an example of a radical left wing idea, apparently, that actually polls well with the electorate and suggests that it's not really that radical at all. Surely left wing/right wing ideals have to be relative to the electorate no?

In fact a lot of 'hard left' ideas poll well with the electorate, and Theresa May (!) has suggested another 'radical' left wing idea of putting employees on the boards of companies.

Public lack of faith in Corbyn is nothing to do with his policies, but in perceptions of his competence and leadership abilities, if you want rid of him focus on that.
 
The idea that Corbyn is hard left is through his history of behaviour within the Labour party, being an acolyte of Tony Benn and ally in his many attempts to drag the party to the hard left, through his history in Labour fringe elements like the Campaign group and LRC, and through close associations with groups that had Communist Party and SWP figures as officials.

This thing people are coming out with - "what policies of his do you disagree with?" - well, it would be helpful if he had some well established. Even someone that was on the economic advisory panel until recently has been saying over the past week that the "anti-austerity" line is just that, a line to sell, there are no actual policies.

And the idea that being for Trident renewal is anti-Labour is utterly absurd - not only was the Labour party the one to authorise Britain becoming a nuclear state, Unite literally the other day voted to be in favour of renewal. It is the mainstream view.
 
sun_tzu said:
we also have infrastructure dating back 100 years that we have to try and repair / replace whilst still using it - we have a freight network with pinch points that wont allow shipping containers to pass because they were developed before shipping containers - and to widen it we have to reconstruct motorways, knock down schools etc - frankly whoever owns it that wont change but I know how much better things are now than they were and I know that the only way to make it better is to pay a lot more money to fund the improvements... my experience around the world of working on large infra schemes that have private control as opposed to government funding is that they are a lot more efficient
Click to expand...
If that's the case how would you explain Britain's failing railway system since privatisation? And moreover how would you fix it?
 
NinjaFletch said:
I didn't say that. The point CM made was that Corbyn's 'hard left' politics would destroy the relevance of the party and be 'suicide'. Then you picked up on it with an example of a radical left wing idea, apparently, that actually polls well with the electorate and suggests that it's not really that radical at all. Surely left wing/right wing ideals have to be relative to the electorate no?

In fact a lot of 'hard left' ideas poll well with the electorate, and Theresa May (!) has suggested another 'radical' left wing idea of putting employees on the boards of companies.

Public lack of faith in Corbyn is nothing to do with his policies, but in perceptions of his competence and leadership abilities, if you want rid of him focus on that.
Click to expand...
unilateral nuclear disarmanent... pretty left wing
and pretty unpopular
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...ar-weapons-programme-poll-shows-a6831376.html
 
Kaos said:
If that's the case how would you explain Britain's failing railway system since privatisation? And moreover how would you fix it?
Click to expand...
it is going to take 50 years to fix because of the chronic underfunding for generations... you want a better railway then people need to pay for it and ideally we startfrom scratch and build soething based on 100 year lifecycle costs rather than patch up in the cheapest way we can.
Private companies do this much more efficiently than used to happen under british fail and far less people get hurt doing it
 
sun_tzu said:
it is going to take 50 years to fix because of the chronic underfunding for generations... you want a better railway then people need to pay for it and ideally we startfrom scratch and build soething based on 100 year lifecycle costs rather than patch up in the cheapest way we can.
Private companies do this much more efficiently than used to happen under british fail and far less people get hurt doing it
Click to expand...
I'm already having to pay a ludicrous amount to travel 10 miles into central London, I dread to think how much more I have to pay to get anywhere near a reasonable service.

Alas you're digressing, it's not a far left service, and overwhelming public support for it reinforces that notion.
 
NinjaFletch said:
Well maybe you should have picked that as your example rather than nationalisation then?

Worth bearing in mind that the SNP stand on a platform of not renewing trident and unilateral disarmament and are a hugely popular party though.
Click to expand...

In scotland - though can we differentiate if thats because of the independence or the trident issue? - but when they get their independence how the fek is comrade corbyn going to win the votes he needs in the rest of the UK...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.