I like the 1st tweet in respose to this - 'not even a household name in his own household'
Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)
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I like the 1st tweet in respose to this - 'not even a household name in his own household'
Hang on didn't the corbynistas say he was going to win back the Scottish votes.
Gone by this time next year I think
I don't want it to be, but its just not what you expect is it?
Looking at the data a bit more there's a couple more interesting bits.
Again it looks like corbyn is only getting traction with Greens, where he has a positive favorability rating. Approval among SNP, Lib Dem and UKIP voters is negative.
Nicola Sturgeon has better ratings than Corbyn among Lib Dems, Kippers, Tories and Plaid Cymru voters.
Corbyn's only one point better off than Nigel Farage, who has -20 points.
That said these poll results exist within a range and I would guess this one is much worse than most others will be.
In terms of positives, there seems to be a very real possibility now that the tax credit cut wont get through parliament, or that it'll scrape through with a decent number of Tories voting against. Clearly there are a fair few factors in play (not least that it's a bad policy) but I would argue that this is the sort of thing you see when you have Labour offering a real alternative. Labour and the Lib Dems both being pro-austerity during the last parliament created something of an ideological consensus in which individual Tory MPs had no reason to question their party's rhetoric. With that gone, we could see Cameron and Osbourne's pet projects being put under a lot more scrutiny than during the last parliament.
Sorry, in what way is Labour offering a real alternative?
In terms of negatives though they look like an unelectable joke with a militant geography teacher trying to take them back to the 1970's
Did you copy and paste this from the comments section on a Daily Mail article? I only ask because it doesn't really answer anything I said or contribute to the debate.
The Tory stance is basically 'cuts are good, regardless of the consequences' whilst current Labour's is 'cuts that hurt people are bad'. Regardless of your opinion on the how realistic or heartless or whatever you find either of those viewpoints, you can't really deny that they're different.
For the sake of argument, do you think we'd have seen the tax credit cuts take up anywhere near as much column/headline space if we had a Labour leader who agreed with them in principle, if not in execution? All the other leadership candidates (until late-on when Burnham was trying to scrape back some of the leftist vote) were pro-austerity. With Corbyn in charge there's a solid debate which people can get involved in rather than two sets of politicians arguing over specifics whilst basically agreeing in principle.
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I suspect he means an alternative to the Tory light that New Labour and the Liberals had become. Whether Corbyn's electable or not it's nice to have a genuine left wing voice back in British politics defending the working man against cuts, it was extremely worrying when the only real alternative voice to the Tories was from the loony right wing with Farrage. Hopefully an opinionated left wing leader will drag the debate back from the right and force some MPs to look to what their constituents might actually want rather than simply pandering to the right wing media.
At least we still had some industry and pride in the 1970's, all we've done since Thatcher is paper over the cracks and lie to ourselves about being a service economy whilst crucifying and demonising the working classes for holding the nation back.
In general, I suspect that Labour offer an alternative to the Conservatives as they're not actually the children of Satan.
Agree with the two above posts by Bury Red and jeff. No matter how bad this leadership goes, PLP needs to understand the message from its supporters and don't just see any future leadership election as an excuse to force their idea of what a Labour candidate should be on people. The last set were entirely uninspiring and just seemed like Tory apologists. Remember having an hour chat with a Kendall campaigner and coming away from the conversation with absolutely no idea what made her different from voting Tory apart from her desire to focus on early-years education.
I'd say most of the issues we see now are being caused by the division within the PLP - the fact that Corbyn has never really been given a chance by much of the party - highlighted by the day 0 resignations which were absolutely atrocious.
He hasn't exactly passed his first few tests with flying colours but you get the feeling that he's not being given the help from the PLP that the party membership who overwhelmingly voted for him, deserve. We knew we were getting someone who would be inexperienced at the leadership side of things so having those within the party make it as difficult for him as possible is not helping the party in the slightest.
They know exactly what they are doing really though. No kidding ourselves on that.
They want another leadership election as soon as possible.
If that does happen and the candidates are roughly of the same type as the last election, minus anyone left wing. Well I think a lot of people will turn away from the Labour party for good.
It seems at the moment that many within the PLP are
I'd say most of the issues we see now are being caused by the division within the PLP - the fact that Corbyn has never really been given a chance by much of the party - highlighted by the day 0 resignations which were absolutely atrocious.
He hasn't exactly passed his first few tests with flying colours but you get the feeling that he's not being given the help from the PLP that the party membership who overwhelmingly voted for him, deserve. We knew we were getting someone who would be inexperienced at the leadership side of things so having those within the party make it as difficult for him as possible is not helping the party in the slightest.
They know exactly what they are doing really though. No kidding ourselves on that.
They want another leadership election as soon as possible.
If that does happen and the candidates are roughly of the same type as the last election, minus anyone left wing. Well I think a lot of people will turn away from the Labour party for good.
It seems at the moment that many within the PLP are
In episode 4013 of 'Selling our country to China' this week, it's noticeable that few posters mentioned the loss of UK jobs due to the import of Chinese steel; a real sign of our times, when unpleasant facts are ignored, forgotten, or down-played by dissemblance.
Cue today's awkward headline:
Cue today's awkward headline:
I suspect in any future leadership election they will do away with the £3 to vote option... (possibly with only full memebers at the time the election is called? if not certainly a much shorter sign up period)
Corbyn will probably manage to get together enough MP's votes this time without people "lending" them to him but I suspect there would be 1 candidate against him and they would have a much more united campaign behind them and would probably win - especially if labour take a tanking in the may elections.
Dan Jarvis gets mentioned a lot but I dont think he will have the profile / experience needed by the time a vote is forced - possibly Hillary Benn?
Sadly I suspect you are right about the goals of the PLP, @Shamwow, if it does happen it will effectively be the end of them for the forseeable future as there is little point them peddling the tory-lite line. It really saddens me but I guess I'm no longer the sort of supporter Labour really want, I had hope that Bliar would turn things around for about 5 minutes but Ken Livingstone and John Smith were the last two Labour MPs I believe genuinely made any difference (for the good) and these days I'd probably veer more towards the likes of Dave Nellist who was the Labour MP in Cov when I was at Uni there but sadly the chances of the SWP wasting a deposit on a seat in Tunbridge Wells are nil so Labour's the only left wing option available.l
I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it
On the one hand you've got Labour, who wouldn't do anything at all about tax credits be they flawed or not; on the other there is Osborne, who whilst only reducing expenditure to 2007 levels is implementing these reforms without laying the groundwork. Naturally such things as the new LW and a growing economy are welcome news, but the benefits of either will only be felt over time. In its haste to enact further tightening of departmental budgets, and that is causing no small amount of unrest among cabinet colleagues, the Treasury has put the cart before the horse on this one.
I suspect that scenes like those witnessed on Question Time last week will have made a greater impact on Tory MPs than anything Labour have said, an incident which was covered quite prominently by the Telegraph.
I suspect that scenes like those witnessed on Question Time last week will have made a greater impact on Tory MPs than anything Labour have said, an incident which was covered quite prominently by the Telegraph.
Time to end the 'broad church' thing for me now. I'd rather see one genuine left socialist party and one separate centre-left, as each group is being held back by the other. Whether one of them is called the Labour party, or something new or merged I don't really care. Strange to be feeling this way after supporting Labour for so long, including the SDP breakaway, but however it's come about, that's how I feel.
personally id be all for that - but for that to actually work well I think we need a PR system so people feel they can vote with their heart rather than tactically in a fptp system
It would make a lot of sense. I often think, if somehow all parties were swept away and politicians were grouped together from scratch into new groups or parties, you would end up with something very different to what we have now. @sun_tzu is right as well, it would work better if we moved to PR where there was less need to have large and unwieldy party machines, whose main advantage is the ability to win FPTP elections.
It feels like something that really has to happen within Labour. I'm all for parties which have a wide range of views, but it's just incredibly bizarre to see full-blown socialists in a party with outright centrists. The sole reason the Labour party in its current form still exists is that it doesn't want to disintegrate and give the Tories even more leeway to rule. And that's the problem. The Labour party as it stands no longer exists because of a firm set of ideas or principles; it merely exists to provide opposition to the Tories.
Those aren't the stances. What the Tories claim is the cuts are painful but necessary, Labour claim they're not necessary but a choice. However since Labour have no policies out at the moment (other than the ones from the 2015 GE) its hard to argue that this represents an alternative.
I've no idea what you were up to this time five years ago, but the idea that strong opposition to the Governments cuts is something new is just ridiculous. The furore 5 years ago dwarfs what we've seen so far this term, the scale of proposed change and non-stop challenge was dizzying back then. Don't you remember the Coalition having to invoke the arcane financial privilege process to overturn the welfare bill defeats? Or the LASPO defeats, or the challenge to the Health and Social Care Bill? Bearing in mind the Coalition had a much bigger majority than the Tories do now and the sheer volume of the changes being brought in, Labour made some pretty decent fists of challenging the Government.
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that if Labour were miles ahead of the Tories in the polls with a popular leader, Osborne would probably have u-turned already.
All the polls of the last few weeks show the same thing, that Labour has lost the support of about 20% of the people that voted for it in May.
As for the PLP - put it this way, if you put a weak manager with no experience who wanted to play longball football in charge of Man United, would you blame the players for not performing? Or if a key player went off in a strop or moaned to the press? Up to a point certainly, but ultimately you'd also say that the buck stops with the manager. If he can't keep his players in line & performing well with some combination of inspiration, discipline and fear, then he's not up to the job. Same applies here.
The buck stops with the manager, but there was politicians publically throwing their toys out of the pram before he even had a chance to put his name on the office door. That is completely unacceptable.
The polls are showing that Labour has lost a lot of support but I would estimate that while much is undoubtedly because of Corbyn's (supposed, in many cases) views and policies - much of this is due to the overall disarray in the party and infighting. A divided party will never win an election. Most of this could have been averted if the PLP accepted the overwhelming choice that the party membership made in voting for Corbyn and at least gave him a chance.
What happened instead is we got some people ruling themselves out of the cabinet instantly (reducing any chance of compromise between Corbyn and the more centrist people in the party). Others scaremongering about the prospect of him. Some briefing to the press anonymously and some doing it on the record.
In a climate where the right-wing papers are ready to pounce on Corbyn straight away, the worst possible thing the PLP could have done is give them all the extra ammunition that they did from the start. This paints a horrific picture to the public and allows the likes of the Sun and the Telegraph to do their usual smear tactics unchallenged.
Going to your analogy - no matter which manager we got in, if some players resigned on day 1 or started briefing against him in the press from day 1, or refused to play in defence from day 1. Well yes I would blame that 100% on the players. Corbyn never had a chance.
And what these "players" were in essence also doing was telling the 60% of the Labour party who voted for him to feck off.
Hate Corbyn all you want - I've always been of the opinion that he was the best choice out of a bad bunch myself - you must accept that many within the PLP have been a disgrace from day 1 and that if the party does go to the shit completely, it will their fault, not Corbyns.
Corbyn needs an 'issue' to give him national attention in a positive way, and broad cross-party support. A strong push for PR would be exactly that.
valid points... but as corbyn voted against labour more times than cameron voted against labour you can see why a lot of people in that party have f all respect for him - and isnt it valid they come out and make their position on working with him clear if they hold strong views?
Or it it only acceptable for a person to put their conscience before the party line if you happen to agree with their point of view
What exactly is their conscience in this case? Those who went against the whip and abstained in the fiscal charter vote - are they being principled on the issue itself, or are they making a stand on the events surrounding it? If the latter then I don't see that as being principled.
In answer to your question, I definitely think they should at least have made a concerted effort to be seen to be giving him a chance to getting him to compromise. It's not just about Corbyn but about the 60% of the party that voted for him. By spitting in Corbyn's face they have also spit in the faces of their own party membership.
All in all I see the week 1 actions by some as childish behaviour, nothing to do with conscience.
There's nobody in the centrist labour party with a grip firm enough to hold a strong view, that's the reason 60% of their party support turned against them and voted Corbyn in. If they don't like the way their members have voted and it's against their core beliefs then maybe they were in the wrong party all along and it's time they left and joined the libs or tories. The Labour Party was never supposed to be the place for Eton, Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge educated moderate tories but sadly they make up the majority of its MPs these days and it's well past time that Labour's core support took the party back from those whose abiding memories of The Full Monty was how much better having a laugh and a dance with your mates and giving the ladies a thrill must be than grafting in a steel mill all week.
Firstly, as Ive pointed out before, Corbyn's had a big negative favourability rating as far back as July and August. Its nothing new, it pre-dates the leadership election win.
I'd also point out that the all white male senior cabinet, allowing journalists to overhead the reshuffle and the spin, sacking Ivan Lewis by text, not singing the national anthem, making the unpopular McDonnell shadow chancellor, saying he'd never press the button despite our policy being pro-Trident, failing in his attempt to get conference to make a resolution against Trident, failing to meet the Queen, the u-turn on the fiscal charter, the story about endorsing the Brighton bomb, talking to a protest rally when an adjacent protest rally was spitting at the Tory conference delegates and failing to meet the Queen a second were all down to Corbyn. They may have been legit fails, or just Daily Mail nonsense, but they weren't down to the PLP.
possibly - but as I said before I dont think they will have affiliated supporters in the next lot of elections - and less than 50% of the full party members voted for corbyn in the first ballot - so with a credible alternative to vote for its quite conceivable that he wouldn't win
A lot will depend who the centrist people unite behind in the coming months and how well they present a credible alternative (and how many of the registered supporters become full members)
But 1 on 1 against a strong candidate - hilliary benn or dan jarvis (though lack of experience should rule him out) for example I think corbyn looses - and then what is it time to tell the leftys to join the greens?
As early as July and August you say? The undermining was going on back then too - e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33625612
Don't have time to write a proper response to the rest. You make valid points and Corbyn has made mistakes but the fact is some of those mistakes you list really are minor in the scheme of things and many in the PLP have been instrumental in helping to blow them out of proportion when they could have helped minimise the impact.
Bottom line - the PLP should have respected the Labour membership's choice from the start and many have instead spit in the faces of the membership.
Corbyn won the election in all categories of voters. I think it was 49.5% that voted for him as first choice out of full party members.
The membership voted overwhelmingly for the only anti-austerity option they had.
Instead of "telling the leftys to join the greens" now, maybe you should respect the overwhelming view of the membership.
Spit in the faces of the membership?
Bottom line - people should not have lent him their votes if they didnt believe in him - stupid decision which in the long run is going to cripple the party for a decade
Correct, maybe you would prefer a milder metaphor.
If that's all they take from this then I am done with Labour.
Still amazes me that some think it will do the poorer sections of the country good for them to tell moderate Labour voters to join the main electoral rivals. As does complaining about cuts to tax credits at the same time as saying the last Labour government did nothing for the poor.
yes as I say less than 50% of party menbers voted for him in the first round - so in a one on one against a string centrist candidate (which he will face within 18 months I think) there is a very good chance he looses.
the point i made about the leftys joing the greens in of course sarcastic as the fact is a successful left of centre movement needs to represent a broad range of views - I feel corbyn makes the party unelectable - time will tell
49.5% of first round votes is still massive. I'm surprised to see you downplaying it (actually that's a lie). You can make up hypotheticals about the next election all you want but the fact we just had an election and Corbyn did win the overwhelming support of all categories of Labour members.
The sad thing is we will never truly know if Corbyn is making the party unelectable because a large portion of the PLP is making it their aim to get rid of him as soon as possible and part of their strategy is publically undermining him.
In my view, the writing is on the wall for Corbyn. He hasn't got a hope. But he might have had if the PLP had made more of an effort to respect the views of its own members.
You jest, but you might actually be right. If the PLP really is as centre right as it seems then maybe it is the time us old lefties moved to another home, it won't make Labour any more electable but at least a strong leftist party might get some of their points back on the parliamentary agenda to oppose the right wing voices that are almost celebrated in the media. As I said before, I've not felt my voice really belonged with the Labour party since John Smith's death and despite enjoying the cantankerousness of the likes of Ken Livingstone and Tony Benn, the majority of Labour MPs and policy turn my stomach more than the Tories as at least the Tories can't be arsed with the faux sympathy for the working classes while merrily selling our remaining industry down the river for a back hander.
Two members of my family voted for Corbyn, and they seem to represent the two poles of Corbyn support. My 20-something year old cousin, who is a fully fledged Corbynista. And his dad, who though Cooper and Burnham were nothing candidates, though Kendall was a Tory, realised we weren't going to win 2020, and figured if we weren't going to win then we may as well have the nice bloke talking the proper socialist talk for the next 5 years.
My cousin is still fully behind Corbyn. Meeting him invariably ends in a very long conversation about the untimely death of the post war consensus. He'll support Corbyn for a long time I suspect.
But talking to my uncle, he knows its not working and is even more pessimistic than he was before the leadership campaign started, because he can see its not working. He wouldn't vote for a centrist, but I suspect he'd vote for someone who looked like they could unite the party.
So does that mean that when when Blair was made leader by members, Corbyn was spitting in their face for speaking out against him?
No he stormed the last election - but it was almost him vs the others - I just think that one on one it would have been closer
As for the PLP - you also have to remember that the MP's have been elected (on the 2015 manifesto) to represent their constituencies and not just the new registered supporters of the labour party.
I dont see it ending enything but badly for Corbyn and the whole party as the inevitable splits and infighting wont be good for anybody.
Perhaps the final nail in the cofin though will be the scottish election vote - if the SNP get a large majority and push for independence (possibly with the conservatives getting close to the votes labour does) then realistically the party has to look at how to win power based on english + welsh votes alone and honestly do you think there is any other option than centrist policies? - or do you want to remain a party of opposition
its time for PR -
UKIP, Conservatives, Libs, New labour, old labour,greens - that would about cover it (though you would probably have to find better working titles than new and old labour) - but it would allow a better spread of opinions - better debate and may actually engage more people into voting (im assuming the scottish just leave - infact can the whole of the UK vote in their next refferendum)