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

I quite like his new logo, looks a bit like a gas company's but better than Owen Smith's 70s typeface.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
I am sceptical. I can't see the aisle in the BBC shot represented in the larger shot.
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They were at the Lowry Theatre. These image from another event might help. Aisle doesn't go all the way down

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DenisIrwin said:
I have to say I'm disappointed in the Guardian. Worse, the BBC! That's an institution, or corporation, that I have praised glowingly many, many times. They do such a fantastic job, on the whole. Their treatment of Corbyn shows they're slipping, and slipping badly. I would certainly expect them to report more accurately and fairly than they did.

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BBC are under political pressure to be biased against Labour and Corbyn.
 
DenisIrwin said:
I found it somewhere surfing thru twitterland. Why?

Edit: Found it...

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Was interested to know the context of the story and the narrative they were attempting to create.

It's increasingly becoming par for the course with the Beeb.
 
DenisIrwin said:
I'm sceptical about this but... Have seen a few things on twitter that suggest the rebel MPs will force annual leadership elections until JC goes or they get deselected. Obviously, that would hand the Tories the GE. I hope it's bs.

Edit: Oh hell! It was reported on Thursday and I missed it... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...r-of-attrition-to-force-him-out-a7149086.html
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Corbyn has repeatedly endorsed this idea. I'm not sure it's a very good one, however.
 
DenisIrwin said:
Source? It would seem stupid.
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http://labourlist.org/2016/07/jeremy-corbyn-on-annual-leadership-challenges-in-his-own-words/
On the topic of leadership contests, we spoke about his view that a leader should face re-election every one or two years, which he had mentioned in an early leadership hustings on the BBC.

In our chat, I asked Corbyn for his views on the best system for doing this. He cited the 1988 challenge Tony Benn made against Neil Kinnock as a potential model – which will be of interest to those who claim it as a precedent for an incumbent leader needing nominations to be on the ballot. He also noted that after the Collins Review, “the Parliamentary Labour Party’s role in all this is limited to being the gatekeepers of the campaign”.

He added that “I don’t necessarily have the last word on all this”, and argued that “you could do it lots of ways”.

Ahead of this afternoon’s crunch NEC meeting, here is the transcript of our conversation about leadership contests:

CP: At the Newsnight debate back in June, I think it was, you said that you would like to see a Labour leader face re-election every year or two years, to improve the democracy of the party and the labour movement. What do you think is the best system for doing that? Would that be through conference?

JC: There used to be originally a system where the Labour leader was theoretically elected every year, but it was hardly ever challenged.

CP: I think that was through conference wasn’t it?

JC: No, it was a wider election, because from… [Corbyn ally and Momentum founder] Jon Lansman I’m sure would know the answer to this question, is he still there or has he gone?

CP: I can’t see him, actually.

JC: I’m sure he would know the answer. [To third party walking past] Is Jon still around?

Other person: John McDonnell?

JC: Jon Lansman.

Other person: Lansman, he’s downstairs on the stall.

JC: We have a question for him.

CP: I can chase him up later.

JC: No we’ll get him to come up, he’ll know the answer straightaway.

As far as I recall it, it was an annual election after the party changes in the early ‘80s, and that’s how there was a challenge to Kinnock in ’88 by Benn and Heffer.

Then after the election of Blair in ’94, ’93 sorry, ’93, the system was then changed. I don’t see why the party should be denied the right to elect people to senior office.

CP: Wouldn’t it be very expensive…?

JC: Well…

CP: Send us bankrupt?

JC: [Pause] Yeah, but there is a democratic issue involved, you could do it lots of ways. I just feel the leadership of the party and the Parliamentary Labour Party should be more accountable to the party and the movement as a whole. I don’t necessarily have the last word on all this, but I just feel there has to be a principle of accountability about what goes on.

Other socialist parties in Europe don’t have such hang ups about this. The SDP in Germany doesn’t, the French Socialist Party doesn’t, Die Linke in Germany has quite open election processes. There’s quite a lot. I just think there’s an issue of accountability.

The difference in this campaign, and this is the interesting point about it, it’s a wider franchise, it involves very much larger numbers of people than any other previous election, and the Parliamentary Labour Party’s role in all this is limited to being the gatekeepers of the campaign. Now I realise that gate was barely opened in my case, but y’know…

CP: Just open enough to get through!

JC: [Laughs] It was open enough to squeeze through, so we got through.

So I just think the principles of accountability and greater democracy in our party are important.
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Both Corbyn and Smith are in safe Labour seats.

Corbyn, in Islington North, increased his share of the vote for Labour in each of the two most recent elections, getting 54.5% in 2010 and 60.2% in 2015, up from 51.2% in 2005, but well short of his (and Labour's) best results for the electorate in history of a staggering 69.3% of the vote in 1997.

Smith, in Pontypridd, got 38.8% in 2010 and 41.1% in 2015. The electorate has always voted Labour. Never in history have Labour had a lower %age of the vote than in those two elections.

Smith is running because Labour under Corbyn is deemed by the PLP to be "unelectable", yet he won more votes in the leadership contest than anyone in the history of the party.
 
DenisIrwin said:
Both Corbyn and Smith are in safe Labour seats.

Corbyn, in Islington North, increased his share of the vote for Labour in each of the two most recent elections, getting 54.5% in 2010 and 60.2% in 2015, up from 51.2% in 2005, but well short of his (and Labour's) best results for the electorate in history of a staggering 69.3% of the vote in 1997.

Smith, in Pontypridd, got 38.8% in 2010 and 41.1% in 2015. The electorate has always voted Labour. Never in history have Labour had a lower %age of the vote than in those two elections.

Smith is running because Labour under Corbyn is deemed by the PLP to be "unelectable", yet he won more votes in the leadership contest than anyone in the history of the party.
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Membership's only a small portion of the overall electorate, though. Being electable to members doesn't necessarily translate to the wider public. Still though, the party has continually and relentlessly tried to sabotage any chance Corbyn's had of being electable. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 
DenisIrwin said:
Both Corbyn and Smith are in safe Labour seats.

Corbyn, in Islington North, increased his share of the vote for Labour in each of the two most recent elections, getting 54.5% in 2010 and 60.2% in 2015, up from 51.2% in 2005, but well short of his (and Labour's) best results for the electorate in history of a staggering 69.3% of the vote in 1997.

Smith, in Pontypridd, got 38.8% in 2010 and 41.1% in 2015. The electorate has always voted Labour. Never in history have Labour had a lower %age of the vote than in those two elections.

Smith is running because Labour under Corbyn is deemed by the PLP to be "unelectable", yet he won more votes in the leadership contest than anyone in the history of the party.
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Even ignoring the absurd logic, it's not even true. Go have a look at the dreaded Blair's election in '94.

In share of the vote terms, it's worse than Smith and Kinnock (twice). And prior to Kinnock, it was only MPs that elected the leader.

But yeah, All Hail Corbo and all that.
 
Ubik said:
Even ignoring the absurd logic, it's not even true. Go have a look at the dreaded Blair's election in '94.

In share of the vote terms, it's worse than Smith and Kinnock (twice). And prior to Kinnock, it was only MPs that elected the leader.

But yeah, All Hail Corbo and all that.
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Sigh. I'll ignore the "ignoring the absurd logic" dig. I'll have to be more careful with this sort of thing though, and you're right to pick me up on it. Blair did get more votes in '94 as there were vastly more trades union member votes.

It is difficult to directly compare the results from 1994 with 2015. Different times, different demographics, different rules. There were a lot more union members at the dawn of New Labour (around 780k in 1994) than in their wake (70k in 2015) and he only had two opponents (as Brown had made a pact to step aside) while Corbyn had three. Also, the rules were different, with the massive number of union members' votes being afforded the same weight as the meagre number of PLP votes in 1994.

What is relatively similar in the two elections is what was called the "Constituency Labour Party" in 1994 and split between "Party Members" and "Registered Supporters" in 2015.

Blair got 100,313 votes from the Constituency Labour Party (which were afforded equal status with votes from the Affiliates and PLP).

Corbyn got 121,751 from Party Members and another 88,449 from Registered Supporters.

Had there been 780,000 union members eligible to vote for Corbyn I think it's reasonable to assume he would have got something like the 57.61% he got when there were only 70k.

Edit: Oh yeah... In case you missed it, my point was that Corbyn has shown much more ability to win votes than Smith has to date, in any measurable way.
 
DenisIrwin said:
Edit: Oh yeah... In case you missed it, my point was that Corbyn has shown much more ability to win votes than Smith has to date, in any measurable way.
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Have you been to Islington? Inanimate carbon rod would win an election if it ran as a Labour MP.

You can't compare national electability by how well an MP's done in their own seat - the country's too diverse and divided for that.
 
ThierryHenry said:
Have you been to Islington? Inanimate carbon rod would win an election if it ran as a Labour MP.

You can't compare national electability by how well an MP's done in their own seat - the country's too diverse and divided for that.
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The only measures we have to compare are where they've won votes previously. It's not much, but it's all we have to go on. Corbyn has done well. Smith has, in each of the two elections he stood in, got the lowest votes ever recorded in his constituency.
 
DenisIrwin said:
The only measures we have to compare are where they've won votes previously. It's not much, but it's all we have to go on. Corbyn has done well. Smith has, in each of the two elections he stood in, got the lowest votes ever recorded in his constituency.
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Smith ran in 2005 as well but lost (different constituency though). He was known as "Oily Smith" in that campaign, apparently because he seemed a bit of a shifty one.
 
DenisIrwin said:
The only measures we have to compare are where they've won votes previously. It's not much, but it's all we have to go on. Corbyn has done well. Smith has, in each of the two elections he stood in, got the lowest votes ever recorded in his constituency.
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In that case we should get Stella Creasy in as leader post haste, she got an even higher level of support in 2015 than the MP in the '97 landslide.

Of course, she's also one of those rightwingers.
 
I missed Owen Smith claiming he's going to have an ethical foreign policy. :lol:

Yes he said the Iraq war was "a noble endeavour" and last week voted in favour of reloading Britain's nuclear holocaust launchers but he's going to be ethical starting...now...no wait...now.
 
I'm starting to really worry now for the Party, I like Corbyn and his ideas but his supporter seem hell bent on ''purity'', not to mention they struggle to point to any fault of time as leader of the party. I mean just look at this stuff -

Ubik said:
a faultless leader
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Ubik said:
In that case we should get Stella Creasy in as leader post haste, she got an even higher level of support in 2015 than the MP in the '97 landslide.

Of course, she's also one of those rightwingers.
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Who knows where the party will be with such supporters. What somebody think of the center. :(:(:(:(
 
Dobba said:
I missed Owen Smith claiming he's going to have an ethical foreign policy. :lol:

Yes he said the Iraq war was "a noble endeavour" and last week voted in favour of reloading Britain's nuclear holocaust launchers but he's going to be ethical starting...now...no wait...now.
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He reminds me of a contestant on the Apprentice, you know the one who spends the whole moring coming up with ''brand'' ideas on a whiteboard, ''ethical foreign policy''(Voted for Trident), ''money where our mouth is on austerity''(Abstained from the Welfare Bill),''You would'nt buy a car without looking under the bonnet''(Talking about a possible second EU referendum) and finally ''British New Deal''.

They normally get the boot around the 4th week. Here's hoping.
 
Sweet Square said:
I'm starting to really worry now for the Party, I like Corbyn and his ideas but his supporter seem hell bent on ''purity'', not to mention they struggle to point to any fault of time as leader of the party. I mean just look at this stuff -





Who knows where the party will be with such supporters. What somebody think of the center. :(:(:(:(
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Say what now?
 
Sweet Square said:
Just making a light jab at your mentioning of Corbyn supporters calling Stella Creasy a right winger, has anyone said this(Anyone sensible, not someone on twitter) ?

All I know was that she got some abuse for voting to bomb syria - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a-prime-target-for-deselection-a6759516.html but that's to be expected.
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Depends on whether you class the Momentum in her constituency as sensible.

But she's on the moderate (Progress) side of the party, at any rate.
 
Ubik said:
Depends on whether you class the Momentum in her constituency as sensible.

But she's on the moderate (Progress) side of the party, at any rate.
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For "moderate" read "tory-light". Look at who funds Progress. It aint us working folks.
 
DenisIrwin said:
For "moderate" read "tory-light". Look at who funds Progress. It aint us working folks.
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Oh bore off. Stella's work on payday loans, social housing, and campaigning in parliament for her constituents is exactly what you'd want in a Labour MP. You need to end this tribal nonsense, you're going to look back one day and realise what an idiot you're being.
 
Dobba said:
...last week voted in favour of reloading Britain's nuclear holocaust launchers but he's going to be ethical starting...now...no wait...now.
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This is exactly the kind of thing I find frustrating. You may believe that the right decision would be to unilaterally disarm, but you have to recognise that there are very good arguments on both sides of the debate (as there are on most occasions where there's a split on policy within the party). Castigating people for coming down on the other side of a complex and finely balanced argument - especially when they are voting in line with official party policy as with Trident - makes it pretty much impossible to run a party with broad appeal.

I personally think it would be kind of crazy to abandon our nuclear deterrent at this time - did you hear Trump's statement about potentially not protecting NATO allies? Very, very scary.
 
ThierryHenry said:
Oh bore off. Stella's work on payday loans, social housing, and campaigning in parliament for her constituents is exactly what you'd want in a Labour MP. You need to end this tribal nonsense, you're going to look back one day and realise what an idiot you're being.
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Maybe. Just right now I am so pissed off with the way the privatised essential services are ripping me off. I have to pay for water, energy and local transport whether I like it or not. People own shares in those privatised companies and are doing well out of them. Which people? Rich people. It's fecked up.
 
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