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

Flying high said:
Look I get that angle. But it's the 'easily twisted baggage' bit that we will simply never get over.

Corbyn could very easily been painted by the media as a peace loving, kind, honourable leader, who has a long history of bringing people together to talk in difficult times. For standing up for those in need. That would have been much more representative of his political career. We all knew that wasn't going to be the case before his name was even mentioned though, right?

I would love a really personable Labour leader to come along, with great charisma AND a genuine record of supporting good causes and shunning those who seek to buy influence, who has never said a thing that can be twisted to hammer home a narrative. Since that isn't going to happen, we have a choice, vote for the politics you like, or for those the media like. You can say that it's better to have the Blair years than more of the tories, to which I would agree to an extent. However, after new Labour, come the tories, not a more left wing government. Because reality says we only have 2 parties and it's their turn next. If Labour spend their term basically doing what the other side does, just with a shade less extremism, then as I said, we are simply continuing the race to the bottom.

If Starmer(or whoever) is not conceived of as being a threat to the status quo, he will not receive the full Corbyn treatment. As soon as he is, he will.

Should a prospective Labour leader hide any lefty intentions to get elected? Be more like Milliband?
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You don't seem to be focusing much on Corbyn & Labour's economic standpoint, but as far as I could see, that was the main reason he lost by such a large margin. IMO there isn't the appetite for such left leaning economics and Labour will need to choose their next leader accordingly to stand any chance.
 
Sied said:
You don't seem to be focusing much on Corbyn & Labour's economic standpoint, but as far as I could see, that was the main reason he lost by such a large margin. IMO there isn't the appetite for such left leaning economics and Labour will need to choose their next leader accordingly to stand any chance.
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Well for sure mistakes were made with the 2019 manifesto. Adding more as you go along was a really bad idea. They were clearly desperate at that point.

Overall though, the economics of Corbyn and Mcdonnell were popular enough, as seen by the tories adopting many of them. Had they stuck more closely to the 2017 manifesto it might not have been so bad. But by the time of the election, far too many had simply stopped taking him seriously anyway.

The point you make isn't lost on me though, I have probably spent more time discussing the merits of the attacks on Corbyn, than I have the merits of his investment ideas, for example.
 
Grinner said:
Why are you all redoing the Corbyn thing? Didn't he lose and resign already?
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We have to decide who's fault it was that the UK didn't elect him when he clearly won the argument and had all the great policies.

There are two schools of thought, that people didn't like him because he was in fact a useless twat, or the voters are useless twats.

Third way thinking is both are equally true.
 
Don't Kill Bill said:
We have to decide who's fault it was that the UK didn't elect him when he clearly won the argument and had all the great policies.

There are two schools of thought, that people didn't like him because he was in fact a useless twat, or the voters are useless twats.

Third way thinking is both are equally true.
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The third way sounds like a winner.
 
nickm said:


From the above: "Any criticism of the leadership was the fault of the mainstream media. The print media has always held an anti-Labour bent, but has never stopped the election of Labour governments in the past. The lesson is: if you believe the press is not your natural ally, don’t make it easy for them. If you don’t want the press to write you are a terrorist sympathiser, don’t lay a wreath at the grave of a terrorist. If you don’t want the press to write you are a friend of Hamas or Hezbollah, don’t call them your friends. If you don’t want the press to write you associate with the IRA, don’t associate with the IRA. If you don’t want the press to doubt your patriotism, don’t give Russia the benefit of the doubt over the Salisbury poisonings or take money from Iranian state media. If you want the press to highlight your aversion to antisemitism, don’t share a platform with known anti-Semites and defend antisemitic murals.

"Only Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters can do all these things and think they can get away with them. They believe they are the most morally centred, so stand rigid in their certainty. They believe they are the most principled, so they occupy the highest of ground. The truth is that they are not virtuous, nor moral nor principled. They are vain, self-centred and narcissistic."
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Sweet Square said:


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The vote coming down from a historic landslide isn't particularly surprising, and seats like Bolsover with a leave vote and a pro-leave MP (Skinner, no less) also suffered a huge drop in Labour vote share.
 
Ubik said:
The vote coming down from a historic landslide isn't particularly surprising,
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But it was a sign of things to come.

Ubik said:
The vote coming down from a historic landslide isn't particularly surprising, and seats like Bolsover with a leave vote and a pro-leave MP (Skinner, no less) also suffered a huge drop in Labour vote share.
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Doesn't matter what the local MP thinks, sadly. The party as a whole was seen as a remain party(I actually agreed with labour second referendum policy) and it's one of the many reasons why it got fecked during the last election.

I just don't think it should be difficult for former Labour MP's to think Corbyn(And the imaginary left they've built up in their heads)is shit but also that they got a bounce in 2017. It's just so tiresome.
 
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berbatrick said:
While the Labour line is all over the place, the Try line from 2007-now is straight up. Quite remarkable for 4 elections by 3 different leaders against 3 different leaders.
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From a quick google of the demographics of sedge field(https://www.citypopulation.de/en/uk/northeastengland/county_durham/E34001771__sedgefield/) it's a small town filled with white people over the age of 45. The tories doing well in these places is a longer term pattern which has been accelerated by Brexit, imo.
 
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Sweet Square said:
From a quick google of the demographics of sedge field(https://www.citypopulation.de/en/uk/northeastengland/county_durham/E34001771__sedgefield/) it's a small town filled with white people over the age of 45. The tories doing well in these places is a longer term pattern which has been accelerated by Brexit, imo.
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Yep, spot on, but changing demographics can’t be blamed on Cobryn so you’ll rarely hear it mentioned. It’s a big problem for Labour, and why people who see Starmer as the saviour have very little understanding of the problems the party really faces. Nandy was, in my view, the best candidate from an electoral perspective by some distance.
 
BobbyManc said:
Yep, spot on, but changing demographics can’t be blamed on Cobryn so you’ll rarely hear it mentioned. It’s a big problem for Labour, and why people who see Starmer as the saviour have very little understanding of the problems the party really faces. Nandy was, in my view, the best candidate from an electoral perspective by some distance.
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I’m a little out of the loop atm, whatmakes you say that?
 
Cascarino said:
I’m a little out of the loop atm, whatmakes you say that?
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To put it simply the demographic in a lot of traditional Labour seats has been changing - younger people moving away, leaving greater concentrations of old white people. Culture and education are now bigger determinants of how someone votes than class. So with its traditional base no longer reliable Labour are challengeable in seats like Bolsover - but they can win previously unthinkable Tory seats like Canterbury as in 2017 and 2019.
Nandy seems the most likely to appeal in the ‘Red Wall’ areas that have been atrophying for some years now, purely because she’s the most skilful candidate and the most willing to pander to the views of Labour’s increasingly lost demographic e.g. has spoken of ‘legitimate concerns’ about immigration.
 
ZupZup said:
Has questions to answer? Answers you and the predominantly right wing media don't want anyway. You just want him to be portrayed in the worst light possible because it suits the narrative for your own political views..
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And you wanted him portrayed in the best light possible because it suited the narrative for your own political views, so you ignored the stuff the electorate didn't like. And now we have 5 more years of the Tories to show for it.
 
BobbyManc said:
To put it simply the demographic in a lot of traditional Labour seats has been changing - younger people moving away, leaving greater concentrations of old white people. Culture and education are now bigger determinants of how someone votes than class. So with its traditional base no longer reliable Labour are challengeable in seats like Bolsover - but they can win previously unthinkable Tory seats like Canterbury as in 2017 and 2019.
Nandy seems the most likely to appeal in the ‘Red Wall’ areas that have been atrophying for some years now, purely because she’s the most skilful candidate and the most willing to pander to the views of Labour’s increasingly lost demographic e.g. has spoken of ‘legitimate concerns’ about immigration.
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I like Nandy but I think there are important steps that come before that. in Starmer you have someone with the perfect background to hold the government to account and perhaps rebuild labour's reputation for competence and being on the detail. For now, Labour need to get good at opposition.
 
BobbyManc said:
To put it simply the demographic in a lot of traditional Labour seats has been changing - younger people moving away, leaving greater concentrations of old white people. Culture and education are now bigger determinants of how someone votes than class. So with its traditional base no longer reliable Labour are challengeable in seats like Bolsover - but they can win previously unthinkable Tory seats like Canterbury as in 2017 and 2019.
Nandy seems the most likely to appeal in the ‘Red Wall’ areas that have been atrophying for some years now, purely because she’s the most skilful candidate and the most willing to pander to the views of Labour’s increasingly lost demographic e.g. has spoken of ‘legitimate concerns’ about immigration.
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I think the problem is assuming that the 'pandering' to those demographics is compatible with holding on to Labour gains like Canterbury. The problem in 2019 was that Labour haemorrhaged votes compared to 2017 to both pro-EU and pro-Brexit parties because nobody trusted anything the party said on the matter. I think Nandy is a good politician and may have done a better job than Corbyn in playing that difficult balancing act, but I think given what she has said on Brexit she'd have a very hard time convincing Labour voters in areas where the party have made gains that the Labour party have anything to offer them.

That's not to say that Starmer will find that significantly easier, but that Labour are in a difficult position of needing to appeal to quite left wing, pro-EU voters in one part of the country and centre/right of centre Brexit voters in another. Assuming that you can get the second group and keep the first is a very dangerous game.
 
@NinjaFletch

Can't be bothered to find the nice graph, but basically Labour lost 10% of its vote to Lib Dems and gained more than half of it back (left/Corbyn defections + swings both ways with tactical voting), the major lost chunk was direct to the Tories with nothing in return.
 
berbatrick said:
@NinjaFletch

Can't be bothered to find the nice graph, but basically Labour lost 10% of its vote to Lib Dems and gained more than half of it back (left/Corbyn defections + swings both ways with tactical voting), the major lost chunk was direct to the Tories with nothing in return.
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Whilst that may be true their vote share was down around 8% overall amongst Remain voters and 12% among leave. Nobody was convinced they had a strategy.
 
I'm not saying there is a clear path forward, but there is some Remain/anti-Tory vote which seems to be transferable, while the new Tory vote will be harder to get back but equally crucial.
 
berbatrick said:
I'm not saying there is a clear path forward, but there is some Remain/anti-Tory vote which seems to be transferable, while the new Tory vote will be harder to get back but equally crucial.
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Oh I agree, I don't think it's lost to Labour, but I think it's a dangerous game to assume those voters will come back automatically (or those trends away won't continue) if Labour panders entirely to a demographic that want different things to those voters.

They're probably going to be easier to retain than to win back voters who left for different reasons simply because the Lib Dems are too far to the right to be a natural home for a lot of those voters, but it's still a difficult tight rope to walk and I wasn't convinced by Nandy's leadership pitch she was even aware of the issue.
 
BobbyManc said:
To put it simply the demographic in a lot of traditional Labour seats has been changing - younger people moving away, leaving greater concentrations of old white people.
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I think I spoke about this in the aftermath of the election, but demographics are a big unspoken factor in why my area (County Durham) has gone from Labour stronghold to electoral battleground over the last 2 decades. The area has been haemorrhaging young people for decades, probably half the people I went to school with in Durham have moved away since. On top of that, the last decade or so has seen an explosion of Newcastle commuter belt housing and retirement communities in and around post-industrial areas.

I'm not sure how the party can get round this under FPTP. People on both wings of the party can talk all they want about how to 'win back the heartlands' and blame each other (with some merit on both sides) for losing traditional Labour voters, but the fact is that the heartlands they're talking about don't really exist anymore.
 
jeff_goldblum said:
I think I spoke about this in the aftermath of the election, but demographics are a big unspoken factor in why my area (County Durham) has gone from Labour stronghold to electoral battleground over the last 2 decades. The area has been haemorrhaging young people for decades, probably half the people I went to school with in Durham have moved away since. On top of that, the last decade or so has seen an explosion of Newcastle commuter belt housing and retirement communities in and around post-industrial areas.

I'm not sure how the party can get round this under FPTP. People on both wings of the party can talk all they want about how to 'win back the heartlands' and blame each other (with some merit on both sides) for losing traditional Labour voters, but the fact is that the heartlands they're talking about don't really exist anymore.
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Thanks for that, I’ve read about the shifting demographic but it’s nice to hear a first-hand account of it.

Yeah I agree Labour is really in a tough place right now. The narrative that Corbyn is solely to blame for 2019 is dangerous because it’s simply untrue and Starmer, simply by shifting closer to the centre ground and been a more palatable mainstream figure, is not going to gain the votes that people seem to think he will.
 
BobbyManc said:
To put it simply the demographic in a lot of traditional Labour seats has been changing - younger people moving away, leaving greater concentrations of old white people. Culture and education are now bigger determinants of how someone votes than class. So with its traditional base no longer reliable Labour are challengeable in seats like Bolsover - but they can win previously unthinkable Tory seats like Canterbury as in 2017 and 2019.
Nandy seems the most likely to appeal in the ‘Red Wall’ areas that have been atrophying for some years now, purely because she’s the most skilful candidate and the most willing to pander to the views of Labour’s increasingly lost demographic e.g. has spoken of ‘legitimate concerns’ about immigration.
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I agree with the first part, but not the second. I like Nandy but don't think she's (yet) the figure to win back the 'Red Wall' either. A couple of key errors in the contest - signing the trans pledge, and saying she would support freedom of movement, which seems at odds with her wish to pander to this lost demographic (of older white voters). She's an excellent speaker though, very good at empathising with people, and I'm sure will be much more of an asset to Starmer than dross like Burgon and Abbott were to Corbyn.
nickm said:
I like Nandy but I think there are important steps that come before that. in Starmer you have someone with the perfect background to hold the government to account and perhaps rebuild labour's reputation for competence and being on the detail. For now, Labour need to get good at opposition.
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Agreed, and I think this is the best we can hope for at this point.
 
Nice to see him loosing another election

https://www.express.co.uk/news/poli...rty-keir-starmer-latest-council-of-Europe/amp

Impressively this time there was 8 places and ten candidates and he still lost

JERMEY CORBYN has lost out on a ballot to represent the Labour Party on its delegation to the Council of Europe.

The former Labour Party leader failed to be selected as one of the eight Parliamentary Labour Party members to represent the party on its delegation to the Council of Europe. There were 10 applicants and eight places.
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Personally I'm glad he's not representing labour in Europe
 
esmufc07 said:
Getting his excuses in

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Asked by MEE whether he believed that the lack of independence he described would shape the EHRC’s upcoming report on Labour antisemitism, Corbyn reportedly replied: “Let’s see what happens.”

Commenting on the remarks, a Labour spokesperson said: “We fully respect the independence of the EHRC. Keir Starmer has made clear he will cooperate fully with the Commission’s inquiry. We will implement, in full, any recommendations made by the EHRC.”


In response, the party-affiliated Jewish Labour Movement said: “Claiming that the EHRC is part of the government ‘machine’ is a conspiracy theory. Questioning the rights of Jews to call out antisemitism is victimisation.

“We have always maintained that a fully independent organisation such as the EHRC, with statutory powers to compel witness testimony and obtain documents, was the only way to reach the truth of the scale of Labour’s antisemitism problems.

“With the EHRC’s final judgement imminent, it’s unsurprising that the Leader who oversaw the Labour Party’s moral descent into a culture of causal anti-Jewish racism is scared about what it might find.”

Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who called Corbyn a racist when he was leader, tweeted: “What a ridiculous [and] dangerous conspiracy theory for a Member of Parliament to start spreading.”
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Basically corbyns argument is its independent if it does not show be to be an antisemite... otherwise its a government conspiracy

At least he's not blamed the Jews directly (yet)
 
sun_tzu said:
Did you watch the whole thing...
You know the bit where she tweeted about corbyns labour and antisemitism
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I sure did. Odd that some people citing concerns is a conspiracy theory and others passed by months ago without you batting an eyelid.

I also read the bit in the article you posted where Corbyn didn't talk about the investigation. You know, the thing you managed to turn into him claiming a government conspiracy. Once again, you pretending to be concerned about something you've just done yourself - I can see why you usually just post about Burgon.
 
Dobba said:


Bloody conspiracy theorists.
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Good thread here too. The government appoints figures to the EHRC - on what planet are we going go pretend for the sake of bashing Corbyn that is compatible with claims of its independence?
And nor is it a mutually exclusive belief to think that Corbyn’s leadership made failings on anti-Semitism AND the EHRC is not the independent and unbiased body that people want to champion it as.
And there is the notable example that its former chairman Trevor Phillips has a very problematic history of Islamophobia himself, so let’s not pretend this is a body impervious to malign influences, especially given its ongoing refusal to investigate the Tory party for such well-documented prejudices.
 
Dobba said:
I sure did. Odd that some people citing concerns is a conspiracy theory and others passed by months ago without you batting an eyelid.

I also read the bit in the article you posted where Corbyn didn't talk about the investigation. You know, the thing you managed to turn into him claiming a government conspiracy. Once again, you pretending to be concerned about something you've just done yourself - I can see why you usually just post about Burgon.
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In fairness, he obsessively posts about Corbyn in a Tourette's style manner too.
 
Corbyn slams the elite offensive that snatched change away from Britain, in a powerful new interview

 
Lots of rumours on Twitter that he’s going to have the whip removed following the recommendations in the EHRC report.

Obviously needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
 
esmufc07 said:
Lots of rumours on Twitter that he’s going to have the whip removed following the recommendations in the EHRC report.

Obviously needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
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Would be a disaster for Labour and would split the party. But it would be great to watch it all blow up...
 
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