Didn't you say you're voting Lib Dem in the G.E thread?
Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)
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Oh yeah definetely its daft which is why i cringe when McDonnell does it on TV as people don't know what it means.
Doesn't put them on the hard/far left though, the hard left would be the militant revolt side of things. None of Labour policies come under that label at all. Sharing the socialist ideals isn't anything to hide as if ashamed. Would you describe Owen Jones as hard-left for instance?
Still this is all in a world where Milliband got called a communist with accusations his father hated Britain
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aye - tactical - cant give my vote to that unelectable idiot... so anything to get rid and get an electable candidate who can actually take the fight to the conservatives
Ah look one of those famous Labour supporters who doesn't vote Labour.
Nothing says wanting to take the fight to the Conservatives like 'Yeah, 5 more years of that please'.
The only positive for me about Corbyn going, whenever he does, is people like yourself demanding everyone gets behind the latest 'centrist' to plop out of the mould.
yeah - I mean forget Ive given over 20k in donations, forget Ive campaigned etc in the past - I mean I wont blindly follow corbyn into a resounding loss so I must be blairite scum...
I mean its probably a good job he is going to get obliterated otherwise id be in a gulag / re-education facility...
nothing guarantees it more than having corbyn as leader
Anything to make you voting against the party you support feel like having principles, pal. Not going to try and carry this conversation on over two threads so I'll add my reply to that here, mine is milk and two sugars when you and New-New-New Labour get the immigration mugs out of the dishwasher. I won't be sticking around to learn how you'll be tougher than the Tories on welfare or that you don't represent people out of work, so I'll pass on the biscuits.You keep on mentioning the immigration mugs, and you keep on avoiding saying what you think about Labour's current immigration policy of getting rid of free movement.
The silver lining to that extremely dark cloud would be that a number of MPs that have been critical of him would have lost their seats. It would seem that his detractors have done worst in elections recently - worse than his supporters have. Sure - a lot of members would blame him for a defeat like that, and that would no doubt be reflected in the way they vote in a future leadership contest. We are talking about something I believe will not happen though. There are a lot of young people that have registered to vote recently, and he, and therefore Labour, has majority support amongst younger voters. May's popularity will tank in the coming weeks, I reckon, as Corbyn's rises.
farcical
Pragmatism or principles its a genuinely interesting debate... I mean would you rather achieve nothing or 50% of what you want to do... there isnt a right answer as its subjective but fundamentally for me you have to govern for the whole country and that will probably involve compromise.... or not compromising but accepting that you probably wont get to implement any of your platform.
How in the feck is losing seats beneficial when they're going straight to Tories?
Young people will still (on the whole) abstain. They're a big Labour demographic but they don't get out to vote like old people do, and that's not going to suddenly change.
All you've said you want is 'an electable leader' and 'to take the fight to the Tories'. Forget achieving 50% of what you want, you're not even getting 0.1%.
It's about control of the Labour party for them, it's regarded as an end in itself.How in the feck is losing seats beneficial when they're going straight to Tories?
Young people will still (on the whole) abstain. They're a big Labour demographic but they don't get out to vote like old people do, and that's not going to suddenly change.
yada yada... tax credits, introducing a national minimum wage, 85,000 extra nurses, 32,000 extra doctors, paternity leave, free nursrey places or 3 and 4 year olds... I mean the conservatives would have done all that right...
yup... crush the blairite scum... it does not matter what happens to the country and general population
It would certainly have been better for them to have been replaced by MPs more in tune with the idea of democratic socialism.How in the feck is losing seats beneficial when they're going straight to Tories?
Young people will still (on the whole) abstain. They're a big Labour demographic but they don't get out to vote like old people do, and that's not going to suddenly change.
Blimey, the Lib Dems have quite the record.
You. Are. Voting. For. The. Lib. Dems. Because. You. Don't. Like. Corbyn.
It quite frankly means feck all when it'll be the smallest opposition the Commons has seen for generations.
yeah... I know... probably thousands upon thousands like me as well... thats why he is unelectable
To be fair you've definetely been spotted as hypocritical here. You can't vote Lib Dem because you don't like the current leader whilst moaning about people making decisions negatively effectively Labours electability.
If an unpopular centrist was in you'd no doubt be telling the more left leaning to still vote Labour despite their concerns. Heck it's what they've been doing for years.
So stop pretending you give the first feck about 'what happens to the country and general population'.
wow... now thats a sweeping statement isnt it...
Yeah, even as someone who thinks Corbyn's gotten increasingly hopeless and inevitably needs the boot, I think this is a pretty fair point. Corbyn's not that extreme; economically he's pretty democratic socialist, albeit he's got some wacky views on other matters.
Left voters had been switching to the Lib Dems and Greens for years FFS
What "wacky views"?
Labour isn’t Marxist. Labour is a social democratic party; a tradition that was influenced by Marxist ideas, but developed quite differently over time. Corbyn – as far as I can actually understand his economic ideas – is also more of a social democrat than a Marxist. Or at least just some kind of hybrid, who doesn’t have an entirely coherent view of the world.
I think Marx is profoundly misunderstood even by most people who claim to be Marxist. Marx was an outstanding social scientist for his time. His ideas didn’t come out of nowhere, but by criticising existing ideas and developing them further. Classic economics (e.g. Mills, Smith, Ricardo), German philosophy (German idealism+ Kant, Feuerback&Co), French utopian socialism, and historic interpretation of French history.
Just like with most scientists of the past: Ultimately it turned out that most of his ideas are wrong, but his contribution was vital in the development of various fields.
Following classic Marxists ideas means that you follow science that is 150 years old, which isn’t a great idea. Thats why we got a plethora of different schools, that criticised and developed his ideas. It is often overlooked that many schools, that have Marxist roots, have been or still are quite influential in social science. If Marx would be reborn today, he’d draw quite different conclusions, because he would have much more data and information. He’d probably be a big supporter of behavioural science, but who knows. Fair fecks to anyone who agrees with some form of Neo-Marxist economics or any other school in any field that adopted some of his ideas. Nothing wrong with that. Completely random examples would be Neo-Gramscianism (Cox) or critical theory (Habermas).
The problem with Marxism is, that it wasn’t just an academic theory, but also a practical political philosophy. Yet over time many followers of this radical and revolutionary political ideologiy didn’t keep up with the intellectual advancements and became reactionary. They are essentially stuck in time. There is a certain sense of irony in that. It is not unreasonable to link a politician, who calls himself a Marxist, to this rather reactionary interpretation of the term, because that is how it is often used.
There is no definitive right or wrong here, because the meaning of labels is constantly changing and these concepts are also contested.
My personal (100% subjective) opinion is, that the most useful way to differentiate between Social-democracy and Socialism/Marxism is the following: Social-democrats are in principle in favour of private ownership of the means of production and free markets, while Socialists (Marxists) are not. Socialists want some form of collective ownership or mixed model.
So how does Corbyn fit into this? Well. Officially he is committed to social democracy and Labour is completely committed to social democracy. Sometimes when you hear him talking he shows a lot of admiration for socialism so. Once you start to question property rights, you are radical by anyone’s standards. That’s why I think it is fair to call Marxists “far-left-radicals”. That said I see Corbyn more as a staunchly left-wing social democrat. McDonnell is imo a socialist (he is probably even more).
Left voters had been switching to the Lib Dems and Greens for years FFS
Significantly i dont think so, a lot more have voted Blair despite objections. You may have had some vote Labour previously who flitter between the left parties sure.
We had it in the US thread, 90% saying people had to vote Clinton over wasted votes on independents despite objections. That kind of logic seems to only be presented when its the left who have the objections.
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In the US thread, 90% of people (including me) would have been saying exactly the same thing had Bernie been the nominee. The US is a rigid two-party system and the Republican opponent was a bigot that wanted to ban muslims from the country.
Over here, my apparently traitorous vote last Thursday actually managed to help a Lib Dem take a Tory seat.
John Lewis
Well the isle of white has to be used for something.
Last election I thought Ed(Although somewhat of a nice guy)ran a horrible campaign, the list written in stone shite, immigration cups(Overall anti immigration rhetoric), going against worker strikes, talk of cuts to welfare and failing to challenge austerity. So really there no reason why I should have voted for him, but I did for one rather big reason -
He wasn't a tory.
Recently all the talk from liberals is that the left has to vote for their candidate to stop the bigger evil - wither that be Clinton in the US or Macron in the France yet when it's their turn to step up, they suddenly go missing.
This isn't one of those elections though. For all her wrong doings and obvious failures, Theresa May is neither Trump nor Le Pen. Brexit can't be changed anyway, it will happen. And I can understand people trusting Corbyn leading this country even less than May. He's one of those bumbling far left candidates which spring from social democrats all over Europe thinking that after they have been crushed in elections again and again, moving even further to the left will miraculously get them more votes. It's the wrong way and they need to realise that.
She's not a bad as Le Penn but I'd put her in the same bracket as Trump. Her record around immigration and LGBT rights is sickening.
His policies really aren't that left wing, though. Perhaps the most left wing policy he has is to nationalize the rail industry, and polls show that the public support that movement. Corbyn is a victim of his own image, the split between membership and PLP, as well as the perception he's weak because he can't bring the PLP into line.
The problem is simple. The PLP think he's unelectable, so they sought to sabotage him before any election could take place. Whilst they're probably correct that he would have been unelectable regardless, they've fecked themselves over because now they're the biggest contributors to Labour's current woes. The party split is the biggest problem.
He wasn't exactly a "bumbling" candidate "crushed in elections again and again" for leadership of the party now was he? It's pure spin at this point.
He's been quite impartial to certain communist dictators in the past - not supportive as such, but not particularly condemning them either. He's said there should be a 'dialogue' over the Falklands when no such thing is needed, and I believe he was in favour of homeopathy...might have changed on that one now. Overall I don't mind him and much prefer him to May, but he's got a few weird views here and there that just aren't going to swing with the British public.
I mean, to be fair...he was up against some other pretty crap candidates. Beating out Yvette Cooper or Owen Smith isn't much to shout home about. Especially when leadership elections aren't essentially a small part of the electorate and don't reflect what's going to happen in a wider sense.