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

Our town's CLP has over 840 full members now and hundreds of registered supporters (which is amazing, as there's never been a Labour MP here or anything even close to a victory). We also voted for Corbyn by a landslide.
 
Ubik said:
Jesus christ, parties have the right to choose their electorate for leadership contests. Every other party has membership freezes. Selection of Labour PPCs uses membership freezes. It shouldn't be interfered with by courts.

If you're really desperate to be annoyed at someone, perhaps be annoyed at Corbyn for leaving the NEC meeting to go and celebrate to the media about being on the ballot, before the votes on the rules of the election. With his vote, they'd have passed a motion having the cutoff date far later.

He's still going to win easily anyway.
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So you're not at all disappointed in the party that they actively campaigned for people to join up to vote only then to tell them they couldn't ??

Ignoring the legality of what the NEC can do and the reasoning of why they did so. Taking members money like that and then using something obscure in the rulebook isnt the way to run a party. Its a scam.

I would have agreed with a freeze if it hadn't been backdated before the election announcement. It should be written into the rules and not at the NECs discretion.
 
Ubik said:
Jesus christ, parties have the right to choose their electorate for leadership contests. Every other party has membership freezes. Selection of Labour PPCs uses membership freezes. It shouldn't be interfered with by courts.

If you're really desperate to be annoyed at someone, perhaps be annoyed at Corbyn for leaving the NEC meeting to go and celebrate to the media about being on the ballot, before the votes on the rules of the election. With his vote, they'd have passed a motion having the cutoff date far later.

He's still going to win easily anyway.
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Still not letting facts get in the way of your argument then?
 
Ubik said:
A little rich coming from one of the people that think Jeremy Corbyn isn't a disaster for a party leader.
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Thats a little unfair and a bit of a misrepresentation of the position I've held on this.

The issue at stake here is not whether Corbyn is any good or not but whether Smith (or Eagle before him) would represent an improvement on Corbyn. I'm yet to see anything to suggest that he is.

My point has always been that Labour's infighting and willingness to cut its nose off to spite its face (by doing things exactly like the appeal) because of Corbyn is more damaging than Corbyn would have been if he'd been supported.
 
Chorley1974 said:
No worries about the slab. The fact is that most voters are in 'the middle', Corbyn will never win a general election, so it comes down to the question what the party wants to do, be either unelectable, or moderate views and become electable.
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With out Scottish seats Labor will never win an election. Scotland is not going to vote for Tory-lite in the near future. The only chance labor has is moving away for Tory policies and creating a mandate that will appeal to the combined public of Britain.

New Labor can clone the Tory party as much as it wants it wont beat the Conservatives in England it needs Scotland and Wales.
 
Fully Fledged said:
With out Scottish seats Labor will never win an election. Scotland is not going to vote for Tory-lite in the near future. The only chance labor has is moving away for Tory policies and creating a mandate that will appeal to the combined public of Britain.

New Labor can clone the Tory party as much as it wants it wont beat the Conservatives in England it needs Scotland and Wales.
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So it's unelectable for the foreseeable future in that case.
 
Fully Fledged said:
Maybe. We have to see how far to the right Theresa May takes us. Things might change but for the foreseeable future Labor will need Scotland if it wants to rule and Scotland is left of centre.
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I can't see May lurching too far to the right. I can see Labour being embroiled in a lengthy dispute between the Corbynites/Unions, and the modernists in the party.
 
Shamwow said:
Circular argument?
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Pretty much, considering just about everything we've seen from Smith indicates he'd also be a complete disaster of a leader. Those who don't like Corbyn seem to ignore that though.

Fully Fledged said:
With out Scottish seats Labor will never win an election. Scotland is not going to vote for Tory-lite in the near future. The only chance labor has is moving away for Tory policies and creating a mandate that will appeal to the combined public of Britain.

New Labor can clone the Tory party as much as it wants it wont beat the Conservatives in England it needs Scotland and Wales.
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Scotland's pretty much dead to Labour no matter what. Corbyn's election has done nothing to indicate improved results - the problem is that the party offer nothing we can't get from the SNP. A middle-ground Labour is something we essentially have with the SNP, but with the perceived honesty and light anti-establishment vibe that some people hoped a Corbyn-led Labour would bring.
 
Cheesy said:
Pretty much, considering just about everything we've seen from Smith indicates he'd also be a complete disaster of a leader. Those who don't like Corbyn seem to ignore that though.



Scotland's pretty much dead to Labour no matter what. Corbyn's election has done nothing to indicate improved results - the problem is that the party offer nothing we can't get from the SNP. A middle-ground Labour is something we essentially have with the SNP, but with the perceived honesty and light anti-establishment vibe that some people hoped a Corbyn-led Labour would bring.
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This is just a complete false equivalency.
 
Ubik said:
This is just a complete false equivalency.
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I mean...what has Smith done to demonstrate that he is in any way even semi-competent? He's the central figure of a coup that has largely been disastrous thus far and is now likely to fail, and is also only really the candidate because no one else wanted it bar Angela Eagle.

Some of his interviews thus far have been dreadful. The one someone posted in the thread from last week sometime had him, during an interview, argue that immigration was too high in certain areas whilst coming up with no plans to address it, and then argue that we should both simultaneously respect the Brexit result and negotiate toughly on Europe whilst also admitting he'd eventually plan to keep us in the EU anyway, and that we wouldn't even leave at all. Those three statements are all largely contradictory in themselves and demonstrate someone who doesn't really know what he wants his policy to be...just that he wants it to be different from Corbyn. Which is quite funny when people talk about the lack of clarity and convinction that's been under Corbyn.

There's really little to suggest thus far he's actually all that more competent or impressive than Corbyn. He may be surrounded by more intelligent, competent and savvy people than Corbyn's bunch...but even that is a stretch when seeing the success, or lack thereof, of the coup up until now.
 
Cheesy said:
I mean...what has Smith done to demonstrate that he is in any way even semi-competent? He's the central figure of a coup that has largely been disastrous thus far and is now likely to fail, and is also only really the candidate because no one else wanted it bar Angela Eagle.

Some of his interviews thus far have been dreadful. The one someone posted in the thread from last week sometime had him, during an interview, argue that immigration was too high in certain areas whilst coming up with no plans to address it, and then argue that we should both simultaneously respect the Brexit result whilst also admitting he'd eventually plan to keep us in the EU anyway. Those three statements are all largely contradictory in themselves and demonstrate someone who doesn't really know what he wants his policy to be...just that he wants it to be different from Corbyn. Which is quite funny when people talk about the lack of clarity and convinction that's been under Corbyn.

There's really little to suggest thus far he's actually all that more competent or impressive than Corbyn. He may be surrounded by more intelligent, competent and savvy people than Corbyn's bunch...but even that is a stretch when seeing the success, or lack thereof, of the coup up until now.
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I just don't get this comparison of the "leadership" of the MP rebellion and the leadership of the party. They are different in almost every aspect. If you want to make it a direct comparison - Tony Benn's challenge to Kinnock in '88, of which Corbyn was a leading proponent (think I'm right in saying he was the campaign manager), netted them 11.4% of the vote. Now that's a shit coup.

If you think that Smith would achieve the levels of incompetence ably documented by former shadow ministers like Thangam Debbonaire and Lilian Greenwood then all power to you, I personally don't regard someone giving a politician's answers to questions in interviews as being on quite the same level.

In the end, Corbyn's going to win, I'm resigned to that and have accepted it. We'll have to wait until the GE is called to really assess how damaging he was.
 
Ubik said:
I just don't get this comparison of the "leadership" of the MP rebellion and the leadership of the party. They are different in almost every aspect. If you want to make it a direct comparison - Tony Benn's challenge to Kinnock in '88, of which Corbyn was a leading proponent (think I'm right in saying he was the campaign manager), netted them 11.4% of the vote. Now that's a shit coup.

If you think that Smith would achieve the levels of incompetence ably documented by former shadow ministers like Thangam Debbonaire and Lilian Greenwood then all power to you, I personally don't regard someone giving a politician's answers to questions in interviews as being on quite the same level.

In the end, Corbyn's going to win, I'm resigned to that and have accepted it. We'll have to wait until the GE is called to really assess how damaging he was.
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I think everyone knows Smith is pissing in the wind with this leadership bid. Any thoughts on rumours that David Milliband is being put forward by the chickencoup to contest Jo Cox's old seat as a potential challenger to Corbyn? More rumours suggest Galloway will contest the seat to try to stop them.
 
DenisIrwin said:
I think everyone knows Smith is pissing in the wind with this leadership bid. Any thoughts on rumours that David Milliband is being put forward by the chickencoup to contest Jo Cox's old seat as a potential challenger to Corbyn? More rumours suggest Galloway will contest the seat to try to stop them.
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It is obviously a stalking horse to some extent. This is why Cooper, Starmer and Jarvis haven't said anything, let alone announced that they are standing.

I doubt Miliband would stand. However, if he does, then there would potentially be a dilemma for Corbyn and Momentum. If even some activists do not wholeheartedly support Miliband, you can already imagine the headlines regarding Momentum, Militant and the hard left not supporting the Labour Party.
 
Labour members who have been denied a right to vote in the forthcoming leadership contest will not challenge the judgement in the Supreme Court, it has emerged.

On Friday three Court of Appeal judges upheld an appeal by Labour’s governing body, the National Executive Committee (NEC), against a High Court ruling that 130,000 people who joined the party between January and July should get a vote in the contest.

Permission to appeal the case to the Supreme Court was denied by the Court of Appeal but an application to the UK’s highest court could have still been made. A Corbyn ally, however, told The Independent last week this was “unlikely”.

In a statement the members said: “This has been an odd, emotional-rollercoaster of a week for all of us. Thank you for supporting us through this, it’s been a huge help to see how many of you care deeply about this unfair and unjust situation."

“Unfortunately, given the costs involved in pursuing the case further (the fee for getting the case even heard at the Supreme Court is around £8,000), we have taken the decision that this where this particular legal case has to stop. But the case wasn’t in vain - although we didn’t succeed in reclaiming votes for the 130,000 disenfranchised members, we did win in the High Court, exposing facts which have spurred important conversation about the role of the Labour Party membership and the NEC,” they added.

Most of the barred members were thought likely to vote for Mr Corbyn rather than his challenger Owen Smith. However, some of the 130,000 disenfranchised members may get a vote because they also paid £25 to become registered supporters.

The Appeal Court also ordered the five Labour members who brought the case against the party to the High Court to pay £30,000 towards the Labour party’s legal costs. This is in addition to their own legal costs.

But a crowdfunding page set up to support the members in their legal fees - at the time of writing - had received £93,000 in donations from members of the public. Their final target is £100,000.

A spokesman for the Jeremy for Labour campaign said: “The strength of solidarity shown to the give claimants campaigning for the democratic rights of their fellow Labour party members has been truly remarkable”.

“It is clear that there exists a huge amount of support for Jeremy’s vision of a democratic Labour party that is open and inclusive for all, so that we can achieve a Labour government that can transform and rebuild
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...n-legal-challenge-supreme-court-a7190106.html
 
DenisIrwin said:
What does it say? I refuse to click dailymail links.
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He compares Corbyn and his supporters to Nazi stormtroopers. The Mail has printed it alongside a photo of Adolf Hitler. And it shows how much trouble Labour in this country is in, because I can't believe that I would vote for the same party as him, but he clearly feels the Labour party is his as well.
 
Untied said:
At least Michael Foster has revealed that he is actually one of the bad guys

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/a...opers-Jewish-Labour-donor-MICHAEL-FOSTER.html
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And he calls it a victory for democracy :lol:

What a scumbag, of course if anyone else called someone a nazi they'd be rounded on but hey when youve got money its okay i guess.

I think someone needs to explain to these people that Labour is a political party not a fecking country club where money keeps the riff raff out. Perhaps they should increase the fee from 25 to 1000 next time.
 
I can be bold. I can be stupid. I can be completely out of it. That's why I'm not putting myself forward. It's handy though, being in the background. It's nice going to pubs and pretending to be more pissed than you are... This group of very, very fit Poles didn't welcome me into their close knit group. A few simple short questions was all.. "You guys underpin society with your hard work. Shouldn't you have a vote?" was met with: feck off mate. I admit, I was pissed.
 
There will be groups that have no faith in common justice. It's clear. The police are underfunded. Worker's rights are non-existant for the vast majority of hard-working immigrants on zero hours contracts. Robert Tressell called his book The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists because he wanted to draw attention to the fact that the abused working stiifs are, by their struggle for suvival, ensuring that the well-off are comfortable. Go home. Take the shoes off. Turn on the BBC. Maybe give a thought about the people struggling to pay their energy bills, even though they've been very careful but have to pay the daily rate for what they never used anyway. Ah... Look... It's simple... You might think you're doing well, thank you very much, and have no real connection with those ne'er do wells out in the grey - but... The actual fact is... the Tories support the 1%. We're the 99%. Turkeys should vote for Christmas - if it was just a bit different.
 
Smores said:
And he calls it a victory for democracy :lol:


I think someone needs to explain to these people that Labour is a political party not a fecking country club where money keeps the riff raff out. Perhaps they should increase the fee from 25 to 1000 next time.
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It has always been the case that you had to be a member for a period of time to vote to pick your local MP candidate or local councillors and it would seem logical that the same reasoning would apply to a voting for the leader - the strange thing was allowing people in the previous election to join up and vote straight away - I honestly don'y recall much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the years regarding the selection process that had always been in place.

Corbyn will win - the party will split then momentum can put whatever new selection process in place they want - presumably across the board for all levels of representation... I await with much anticipation to see how many Burgon clones they can find to stand for power because at least when you have people that incompetent put in front of microphones you are guaranteed a but of light entertainment.
 
sun_tzu said:
Corbyn will win - the party will split then momentum can put whatever new selection process in place they want - presumably across the board for all levels of representation... I await with much anticipation to see how many Burgon clones they can find to stand for power because at least when you have people that incompetent put in front of microphones you are guaranteed a but of light entertainment.
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Well if Owen "Austerity is right" Smith is leadership material in the eyes of the Abstainers, Burgon might be head hunted by them.
 
Dobba said:
Well if Owen "Austerity is right" Smith is leadership material in the eyes of the Abstainers, Burgon might be head hunted by them.
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quite clearly he is not seem by either wing of the party as a viable leader... he is just going through the process imo to justify the inevitable split

Corbyn, Mcdonnell, Abbot Burgon etc will stay with momentum / labour
Jarvis, Umunna, Kendall, Benn etc will become a new centrist party (and the official opposition which will literally relegate corbyn to the sidelines of UK politics) - my guess would be Jarvis or Umunna for leader - certainly not smith.

its a shame that we wont have any functioning opposition whilst this drags out - personally I wish they have just split formally after the no confidence vote
 
sun_tzu said:
It has always been the case that you had to be a member for a period of time to vote to pick your local MP candidate or local councillors and it would seem logical that the same reasoning would apply to a voting for the leader - the strange thing was allowing people in the previous election to join up and vote straight away - I honestly don'y recall much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the years regarding the selection process that had always been in place.

Corbyn will win - the party will split then momentum can put whatever new selection process in place they want - presumably across the board for all levels of representation... I await with much anticipation to see how many Burgon clones they can find to stand for power because at least when you have people that incompetent put in front of microphones you are guaranteed a but of light entertainment.
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Its easy to pick a thread of logic out of any situation to try and indirectly argue against a point. What you've said is logical but its also not what people are up in arms about. No one would have cared if it was decided months ago its the fact it was done for political purpose and after their campaigns to get people to join up and vote.

The argument that the right of the party can offer better leadership is laughable when they can't see that through such obvious scheming and constant bullshit they're just burying the valid criticisms. If 80% of what you see is agenda driven crap no one is going to believe the other 20%

Thats politicians for you i guess.
 
sun_tzu said:
explain that to me - what rights are different
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There are loads. If the agency calls and says you've got a 02:00am start for a driving job and gives you the address, you might find when you get there that they didn't actually want a driver, they wanted someone for the warehouse with maybe a couple of hours driving per week. They say "We told the agency what we wanted. They're always doing this. I can understand if you want to go home". This is exactly what happened to me a while back. I had already done about 30 mins before I asked when I should start loading. I went home, called the agency later that morning. They apologised. That's it. No money.

That afternoon they called to say I had a 06:00 start at another company for the following day. I arrived and sat around until 09:30 when they said there had been a mix up. They had asked for 3 drivers, the agency had sent 3 drivers (including me), but 4 drivers had turned up. One EU guy had turned up, having worked the previous day, and been sent on a delivery run, even though the agency hadn't sent him. Again, home I went with no money.

Another day I was delivering for IKEA. 06:00 start. My driver's mate called at the end of our 2nd run to say we were heading back to the (Bristol) depot from rural Oxfordshire and would be back at about 19:20 (according to my satnav). Someone in the office said one of their lorries was having a bad day and we were to rendezvous with them in Oxford and take 4 deliveries off them and deliver them on our way back. They were big deliveries. By the time we'd unloaded the flatpacks from the lorry onto our van and made the deliveries it was 23:20 when we made it back. That's a 17:20 working day with a 30 minute break. When I got my pay it showed as a flat daily rate of £90. When I complained that it was effectively under minimum wage they eventually gave me an extra £50.

Also, you never know if or when or where you'll be working. Yeah, quite a bit different to a normal job.
 
Smores said:
Its easy to pick a thread of logic out of any situation to try and indirectly argue against a point. What you've said is logical but its also not what people are up in arms about. No one would have cared if it was decided months ago its the fact it was done for political purpose and after their campaigns to get people to join up and vote.

The argument that the right of the party can offer better leadership is laughable when they can't see that through such obvious scheming and constant bullshit they're just burying the valid criticisms. If 80% of what you see is agenda driven crap no one is going to believe the other 20%

Thats politicians for you i guess.
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Yep, pretty much spot on. People who are defending this are ignoring the central reason why people are annoyed; the fact that it's been done for the sole reason of who's leading the race. This just wouldn't have happened if the new members were signing up for Smith. Showing such contempt to new members is embarrassing.

And the second part is correct too. Smith's a wet blanket who lacks any form of charisma and is leading an unsuccessful coup - if he's the best to offer then quite frankly he won't do much better in 2020 than Corbyn against a PM who seems to be snapping up the centre vote quite well.
 
DenisIrwin said:
There are loads. If the agency calls and says you've got a 02:00am start for a driving job and gives you the address, you might find when you get there that they didn't actually want a driver, they wanted someone for the warehouse with maybe a couple of hours driving per week. They say "We told the agency what we wanted. They're always doing this. I can understand if you want to go home". This is exactly what happened to me a while back. I had already done about 30 mins before I asked when I should start loading. I went home, called the agency later that morning. They apologised. That's it. No money.

That afternoon they called to say I had a 06:00 start at another company for the following day. I arrived and sat around until 09:30 when they said there had been a mix up. They had asked for 3 drivers, the agency had sent 3 drivers (including me), but 4 drivers had turned up. One EU guy had turned up, having worked the previous day, and been sent on a delivery run, even though the agency hadn't sent him. Again, home I went with no money.

Another day I was delivering for IKEA. 06:00 start. My driver's mate called at the end of our 2nd run to say we were heading back to the (Bristol) depot from rural Oxfordshire and would be back at about 19:20 (according to my satnav). Someone in the office said one of their lorries was having a bad day and we were to rendezvous with them in Oxford and take 4 deliveries off them and deliver them on our way back. They were big deliveries. By the time we'd unloaded the flatpacks from the lorry onto our van and made the deliveries it was 23:20 when we made it back. That's a 17:20 working day with a 30 minute break. When I got my pay it showed as a flat daily rate of £90. When I complained that it was effectively under minimum wage they eventually gave me an extra £50.

Also, you never know if or when or where you'll be working. Yeah, quite a bit different to a normal job.
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Yes... but that's not workers rights
You know safety in the workplace minimum wage etc (which you say applies to you hence you get the same rights as non zero hours contracted staff)
I actually use zero hours contracts for some of our subcontractors as their company can't afford the insurance premiums for them on certain sites... or the legalities of a contract only allow 2 or 3 sub contract tiers ... good tool for those circumstances but their actual rights are no different to directly employed full time labour (and I typically have to pay around 50% more than I pay my direct staff)

Workers rights and contract specifics are very different things... I agree the contracts can be mis-used but it is their mis-use rather than their existence that is the issue imo
 
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