next labour leader

A nice little interchange between a younger Corbyn and Margaret Thatcher.



Can somebody please buy Corbs a tie?
 
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DiseaseOfTheAge said:
Can't see it. Making it so clear to the grassroots that the parliamentary party feels their views aren't to be taken seriously isn't wise.
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Labour would legitimately be over if the PLP chucked Corbyn out against the wishes of the party membership. There were enough people who left or were disgruntled by being ignored by Blair, this would be a nail in the coffin.
 
I doubt they'd all openly gang up and forcibly drag him from the despatch box, they'll just not serve in the shadow cabinet and refuse to take the party whip. Which isn't really answerable or condemnable when you're Jeremy Corbyn, or his supporters.
 
Nick 0208 Ldn said:
"As your Prime Minister, i will consider Argentina's claim of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands."
"As a tax haven we should be well rid of Gibraltar, i'd hand the territory over to Spain tomorrow"
"The UK shall cease all sanctions against Russia and its leadership. Putin was provoked by the West into invading Crimea and eastern Ukraine."
"The United Kingdom needs to step back from the ills and threats of the world; therefore, my government would enact a policy of cuts to all three services and unilateral nuclear disarmament."
"Military operations against IS are to be suspended in favour of diplomacy."
"Unmanaged, mass immigration should be embraced rather than controlled."
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You're making the (intentional) mistake of assuming that Corbyn as opposition leader will refuse to compromise on certain issues in order to gain the support of the party.

Although, two of those policies would have more support than you'd imagine (I'm referring to three and four). Of course it wouldn't be phrased in the stupidly, naive manner you imagine.
 
Mciahel Goodman said:
You're making the (intentional) mistake of assuming that Corbyn as opposition leader will refuse to compromise on certain issues in order to gain the support of the party.

Although, two of those policies would have more support than you'd imagine (I'm referring to three and four). Of course it wouldn't be phrased in the stupidly, naive manner you imagine.
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You think being friendlier to Russia and unilateral disarmament would be popular? To (sections) of the Labour membership or the country at large?
 
Mciahel Goodman said:
It depends entirely on how it's framed.
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Pretty sure both of those would go down like a lead balloon to a plurality of people regardless of how you dress it up. I'm open to suggestions though, what were you thinking?

I do wonder how the Tories are going to approach this when it happens, they must have collected up plenty of ammunition of late but I wouldn't think they'd want to go for the kill straight away, rather let the party suffer for a couple of years first.
 
Ubik said:
You think being friendlier to Russia and unilateral disarmament would be popular? To (sections) of the Labour membership or the country at large?
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That is possible.

However the people that it would appeal to already vote labour - and as the last election shows they need to attract voters outside their core to have any chance of power.

Its hard not to respect Corbyn for sticking to his views - its also hard to see how it could possibly end up in anything other than an electoral hammering for labour as the moderate labour and swing votes gravitate to more centralist proposals or protest / single issue votes in the form of UKIP / Greens and of course the Scottish vote seems as good as gone until what seems like inevitable independence.

I'll be voting in the leadership election - If the polls are right though it may be the last time I vote for any labour representation
 
Latest odds*:
Corbyn 3/10
Burnham 7/2
Cooper 7/1
Kendall 100/1
The bookies are rarely that wrong about things!

That said these are the odds* for the next PM:
Osbourne 5/2
Johnson 11/4
Burnham 7/1
May 7/1
Corbyn 9/1
I think the fact that Burnham is seen as more likely to be next PM even though Corbyn is odds on to be next labour leader shows how unelectable they feel Corbyn is to the general public.

*Odds taken from paddy power today
 
Oops! There's a £100 billion hole in Jeremy Corbyn's tax plans

Honest Jeremy already deceiving the faithful, tsk tsk.


Mciahel Goodman said:
You're making the (intentional) mistake of assuming that Corbyn as opposition leader will refuse to compromise on certain issues in order to gain the support of the party.

Although, two of those policies would have more support than you'd imagine (I'm referring to three and four). Of course it wouldn't be phrased in the stupidly, naive manner you imagine.
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Bearing in mind his record as an MP and the statements he has made throughout this campaign (and previously), which of that could you see him being prepared to compromise on?

How Corbyn might choose to present his manifesto will be of little concern to those who scrutinise its contents. At present he is riding a wave of support and preaching to the choir, yet if he wins he must be able to speak to the wary or cynical parishioner too.
 
bishblaize said:
But in terms of its political history, at what point would you say labour hit the right notes?
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Sorry for the delay in replying.

I don't think that Labour have ever hit the right note but until they became New Labour they did provide a good opposition to the Tories. Then Blair arrived and the "left" party became centre. So centre that he was quite popular amongst Tory voters. Mainly the reason that he stayed in power for so long.

Nowadays no-one really knows what the party stands for. Corbyn is a traditional left candidate and the other 3 are more along the lines of "I don't know what I stand for exactly because it may change as I try to become more popular and win more votes".

The opposite of why Corbyn is so popular. He knows exactly what he stands for and people love that. Voters come in all shapes and sizes but until now no candidate has been a good fit for many of them. For so long the "left" voters in the UK have had no-one to represent them and now they have with Corbyn.
 
Why is no one asking about Jeremy Corbyn’s worrying connections?

Corbyn may not have an anti-Semitic bone in his body, but he does share platforms with people who do

James Bloodworth
Thursday 13 August 2015

The 2008 financial crash has had two major consequences for British politics. The first is the destruction of the Labour party as a credible party of government. The second is a growing political parochialism on the part of politicians and the electorate.

Such is the public indifference to events beyond Britain’s borders that a politician can hold almost any madcap belief on foreign affairs and get away with it. How else are Nigel Farage and Alex Salmond still taken seriously after lavishing praise on Vladimir Putin?

None of this explains the mercurial rise of Jeremy Corbyn. But it does account for the non-stick nature of his leadership campaign. The rightwing press has thrown heaps of mud at Corbyn; however, because much of it focuses on his views on foreign policy very little has stuck.

Yet some of it ought to. Indeed, some of the things Corbyn is accused of are, to paraphrase George Orwell, still concerning even if the Daily Mail says so. For one thing, he is the chair of an organisation which a decade ago effectively supported attacks on British troops.

During the disastrous Iraq war, the misleadingly named Stop the War Coalition released a statement which “reaffirms its call for an end to the occupation, the return of all British troops in Iraq to this country and recognises once more the legitimacy of the struggle of Iraqis, by whatever means they find necessary, to secure such ends”.

For the Ba’athists and al-Qaida militants who largely made up the Iraqi “resistance”, “whatever means necessary” included suicide attacks on Iraqi and British soldiers. More recently Stop the War has ludicrously accused the US of launching a “proxy war against Russia” in Ukraine.

Then there is Corbyn’s apparent proximity to antisemitism. While I genuinely believe that Corbyn does not have an antisemitic bone in his body, he does have a proclivity for sharing platforms with individuals who do; and his excuses for doing so do not stand up.

Take the fact that Corbyn once described it as his “honour and pleasure” to host “our friends” from Hamas and Hezbollah in parliament. According to Corbyn, he extended his invitation to the aforementioned groups – and spoke of them glowingly – because all sides need to be involved in the peace process.

So far, so reasonable. Yet negotiation is not on Hamas’s agenda, as Corbyn ought to know. In its charter Hamas states: “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.”

It isn’t a peaceful negotiated solution that Hamas wants; it’s the destruction of the Jews. Here is a direct quote from Hamas’s charter: “The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: ‘The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!’” If this were not bad enough, Corbyn has also:

• Taken tea on the parliamentary terrace with Raed Salah, who he described as “a very honoured citizen” despite that fact that Salah was charged with inciting anti-Jewish racism and violence in January 2008 in Jerusalem and sentenced to eight months in prison. He was found by a British court judge to have used the “blood libel”, the medieval antisemitic canard that Jews use gentile blood for ritual purposes;

• Written a letter defending Stephen Sizer, the vicar disciplined by the Church of England for linking to an article on social media entitled 9/11: Israel Did It

• Presented a call-in programme on Press TV, a propaganda channel of the Iranian government which was banned by Ofcom and which regularly hosts Holocaust deniers;

• Been accused of donating money to self-proclaimed Holocaust denier Paul Eisen, whose Deir Yassin Remembered group has been shunned by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, in the name of refusing to “turn a blind eye to antisemitism”. Corbyn has addressed that claim via his spokesman, who said that “Jeremy Corbyn’s office” had had no contact with Eisen and that Corbyn disassociated himself from his extreme views – a denial that seems neither forceful nor convincing.

And there is more: on 22 August Corbyn is scheduled to share a platform with Carlos Latuff, a cartoonist who regularly uses antisemitic imagery in his cartoons but denies being antisemitic. Middle East Monitor, the group organising the event, has been accused by the Community Security Trust of promoting conspiracy theories and myths about Jews.

So why are Corbyn’s fellow leadership contenders so unwilling to challenge him on any of this? The fact Corbyn believes in Keynesian economics is apparently a bigger faux pas to the Labour hierarchy than his association with the characters mentioned above.

Much of this demonstrates, as I mentioned already, that a politician can at present take almost any position on foreign affairs and get away with it. As for the rest, I believe it shows that the Labour party – and the left more generally – no longer takes antisemitism seriously.

http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...labour-leadership-foreign-policy-antisemitism
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• Presented a call-in programme on Press TV, a propaganda channel of the Iranian government which was banned by Ofcom and which regularly hosts Holocaust deniers;
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That one feels a bit tenuous.
 
sun_tzu said:
Latest odds*:
Corbyn 3/10
Burnham 7/2
Cooper 7/1
Kendall 100/1
The bookies are rarely that wrong about things!

That said these are the odds* for the next PM:
Osbourne 5/2
Johnson 11/4
Burnham 7/1
May 7/1
Corbyn 9/1
I think the fact that Burnham is seen as more likely to be next PM even though Corbyn is odds on to be next labour leader shows how unelectable they feel Corbyn is to the general public.

*Odds taken from paddy power today
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They're wrong on Osbourne.....he might win the leadership of the Tory party (although I doubt it) but he will never become PM.
 
Nick 0208 Ldn said:
- another Guardian article -
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I suppose in contrast Al Nusra, the South African Praetorian government and Colonel Gadaffi are pretty swell connections to have.

That of course was a tongue in cheek comment, but it just goes to show how easy it is to make any politician look like they're in bed with skeletor when you really start scraping the bottom of the barrell. That article (along with the dozens or so others you've posted in the space of a few days) is just part of the constant smearing and hatchet job by the media desperately trying to discredit Corbyn for the most tenuous of reasons.
 
Ubik said:
Firstly, anyone outside the party can't join. You have to declare support for it. In other words, he's encouraging people to do what Corbyn's camp have been doing successfully in getting people that are Labour voters to become members/supporters. This is not an affront to the democratic process as you want it to be, it's trying to broaden the electorate. He doesn't want a particular candidate to win... how many Corbyn supporters want one of the other three to win, given they're all "Tory lite"? Smearing and sabotaging? Coming from the guy that called one of the candidates a vile wench... Following the contest from the start, there's one group of supporters that have been far worse than the others in terms of abusing other candidates.
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You're talking about the notorious spin doctor who helped duped the nation into an illegal and devastating war, so I'll choose not to interpret his words as a benevolent attempt to 'broaden the electorate' as you put it. Funny enough, Corbyn's participation is pretty much the sole factor that broadens this election, otherwise we would have been stuck with a debate involving no discussion of policy by a bunch drones who spout the usual nice catch phrases (Equality! Poverty! Productivity! Winning!) but not being able to conjure up any semblance of policy between the 3 of them.

And let's forget the supporters and assess the candidates for a minute. Corbyn's been the only one to discuss policy whereas the others have been to keen to discredit him and remind us all of the dystopian disaster we face if we opted for him. And they wonder why he's walking away with this election.
 
Kaos said:
You're talking about the notorious spin doctor who helped duped the nation into an illegal and devastating war, so I'll choose not to interpret his words as a benevolent attempt to 'broaden the electorate' as you put it. Funny enough, Corbyn's participation is pretty much the sole factor that broadens this election, otherwise we would have been stuck with a debate involving no discussion of policy by a bunch drones who spout the usual nice catch phrases (Equality! Poverty! Productivity! Winning!) but not being able to conjure up any semblance of policy between the 3 of them.

And let's forget the supporters and assess the candidates for a minute. Corbyn's been the only one to discuss policy whereas the others have been to keen to discredit him and remind us all of the dystopian disaster we face if we opted for him. And they wonder why he's walking away with this election.
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I completely agree with this. All the parties are trying to engage the young voters, but Corbyn seems to be the only politician who actually is managing to do it. He has recognised that if you weren't around in the 70s and early 80s, you won't have preconceived ideas about what it means to be on the left of the Labour Party.
 
Penna said:
I completely agree with this. All the parties are trying to engage the young voters, but Corbyn seems to be the only politician who actually is managing to do it. He has recognised that if you weren't around in the 70s and early 80s, you won't have preconceived ideas about what it means to be on the left of the Labour Party.
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That's the amusing irony behind Corbyn's opponents labelling him old fashioned and stuck in the past - most of his supporters are young and the large number of young voters joining the party recently are largely down to Corbyn's campaign.
 
Kaos said:
That's the amusing irony behind Corbyn's opponents labelling him old fashioned and stuck in the past - most of his supporters are young and the large number of young voters joining the party recently are largely down to Corbyn's campaign.
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Yes, these are interesting times. Even some of us oldies are voting Corbyn. :D
 
This division of the Labour party has been inevitable for a while. Personally, I support a return to the left and the creation of a viable left wing entity that would genuinely represent the working classes on the front line of UK politics - one that could hopefully actually be elected to government in the foreseeable future.
 
Kaos said:
You're talking about the notorious spin doctor who helped duped the nation into an illegal and devastating war, so I'll choose not to interpret his words as a benevolent attempt to 'broaden the electorate' as you put it. Funny enough, Corbyn's participation is pretty much the sole factor that broadens this election, otherwise we would have been stuck with a debate involving no discussion of policy by a bunch drones who spout the usual nice catch phrases (Equality! Poverty! Productivity! Winning!) but not being able to conjure up any semblance of policy between the 3 of them.

And let's forget the supporters and assess the candidates for a minute. Corbyn's been the only one to discuss policy whereas the others have been to keen to discredit him and remind us all of the dystopian disaster we face if we opted for him. And they wonder why he's walking away with this election.
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And you're spinning his words to suit the image of him as borderline evil. The point was that people were getting annoyed at the fact that he said anything at all, not at what he actually said, which was basically obvious and what anyone who's keen for Corbyn not to win would encourage (get more non-Corbyn voters in the electorate, fairly basic). What did you think he was suggesting, get Tory voters to sign up? They are already, and they're voting for Corbyn for some reason.
 
Ubik said:
And you're spinning his words to suit the image of him as borderline evil. The point was that people were getting annoyed at the fact that he said anything at all, not at what he actually said, which was basically obvious and what anyone who's keen for Corbyn not to win would encourage (get more non-Corbyn voters in the electorate, fairly basic). What did you think he was suggesting, get Tory voters to sign up? They are already, and they're voting for Corbyn for some reason.
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I'm not 'spinning' anything, I'll leave that particular forte to Campbell ;)

Ultimately, the point I'm trying to make is that the likes of Blair and Campbell could have taken a leaf out of Prescott's book - approach this election with dinignity and actually respect the democratic consensus even if they don't align themselves with the front runner. What we get instead however is condescending rhetoric reminding us how we need heart transplants and how the democractic consensus as it stands dooms to the party to oblivion, or whatever hyperbolic nonsense they take in turns to spout every day.

Fortunately its playing straight into Corbyn's hands.
 
Kaos said:
I'm not 'spinning' anything, I'll leave that particular forte to Campbell ;)

Ultimately, the point I'm trying to make is that the likes of Blair and Campbell could have taken a leaf out of Prescott's book - approach this election with dinignity and actually respect the democratic consensus even if they don't align themselves with the front runner. What we get instead however is condescending rhetoric reminding us how we need heart transplants and how the democractic consensus as it stands dooms to the party to oblivion, or whatever hyperbolic nonsense they take in turns to spout every day.

Fortunately its playing straight into Corbyn's hands.
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Because they don't want to see the party wither away for the next couple of decades, they're the people that spearheaded the most electorally successful period in Labour's century of existence. You and many others don't believe the party will have such a fate under Corbyn, you're more than entitled not to, but they really do and they don't want to stand idly by as it unfolds. They aren't destroying the democratic process by saying so. The 80s wasn't invented by Blair and Campbell to scare people into centrism.

As I said earlier in the thread, if there's an outright coup d'etat from day on the basis that Corbyn won fair and square and the PLP don't want him, I'd agree it would be a travesty. Not following the party whip would be fair game though given Corbyn's history.
 
Ubik said:
Because they don't want to see the party wither away for the next couple of decades
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I'd question whether stoking the fires of a leftist versus centrist conflict is really a good way of avoiding that. If Corbyn loses, the left will be very bitter about these attacks. As they will if he wins and is unsupported by his MP's to the point his position is untenable. Labour without the left on side is far more doomed than Labour being run by the left, I'd say.
 
Ubik said:
Because they don't want to see the party wither away for the next couple of decades, they're the people that spearheaded the most electorally successful period in Labour's century of existence. You and many others don't believe the party will have such a fate under Corbyn, you're more than entitled not to, but they really do and they don't want to stand idly by as it unfolds. They aren't destroying the democratic process by saying so. The 80s wasn't invented by Blair and Campbell to scare people into centrism.

As I said earlier in the thread, if there's an outright coup d'etat from day on the basis that Corbyn won fair and square and the PLP don't want him, I'd agree it would be a travesty. Not following the party whip would be fair game though given Corbyn's history.
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Him losing would probably doom the party to an even more fragmented state. If any of the others get elected, I can see most of those who recently signed up leaving, many will flock to the fringe parties, the SNP will reinforce their support in Scotland and we'll instead have a Tory lite party that likely do worse in 2020 since the economy will have expected to further recover and Osborne will again dupe the masses into believing it was his doing.

You keep mentioning the 80s as if it were some warning for the party, ignoring the fact Michael Foot was at times more popular than Thatcher, and had it not been for the favourable outcome of the Falklands we very well may have seen him as prime minister. Nevertheless Corbyn is very different to Michael Foot.
 
DiseaseOfTheAge said:
I'd question whether stoking the fires of a leftist versus centrist conflict is really a good way of avoiding that. If Corbyn loses, the left will be very bitter about these attacks. As they will if he wins and is unsupported by his MP's to the point his position is untenable. Labour without the left on side is far more doomed than Labour being run by the left, I'd say.
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Absolutely.

All this talk of Labour needing to go further to the centre (or the frankly speaking - the right) ignores the very foundations of which the party were set up on. I'd rather peeve off a few swarmy MPs than what's essentially the most substantial voting bloc of the party.

Relevant article: http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/polit...eing-infiltrated-by-socialists-20150813101079 :D
 
Kaos said:
That's the amusing irony behind Corbyn's opponents labelling him old fashioned and stuck in the past - most of his supporters are young and the large number of young voters joining the party recently are largely down to Corbyn's campaign.
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Maybe, but only by a small margin. I think the fact that younger people are more active on social media paints a slightly misleading picture about the age of Corbyn's support. Look at the poll again - it's an absolute clean sweep. He gets an absolute majority in every age group except the 60+; where he gets 49%. He wins by huge leads in every region of the UK, male and female, every class, among Labour members, trade-unionists and one-off £3 supporters. Yet the Blairite f*ckwits keep going on about far-left entryists and naive young idealists. They haven't got a f*cking clue.


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Crono said:
Maybe, but only by a small margin. I think the fact that younger people are more active on social media paints a slightly misleading picture about the age of Corbyn's support. Look at the poll again - it's an absolute clean sweep. He gets an absolute majority in every age group except the 60+; where he gets 49%. He wins by huge leads in every region of the UK, male and female, every class, among Labour members, trade-unionists and one-off £3 supporters. Yet the Blairite f*ckwits keep going on about far-left entryists and naive young idealists.


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Yikes, its not even close.

Here's hoping the momentum keeps up and Blair continues inadvertently endorsing him with his daily Onion articles.
 
Kaos said:
Him losing would probably doom the party to an even more fragmented state. If any of the others get elected, I can see most of those who recently signed up leaving, many will flock to the fringe parties, the SNP will reinforce their support in Scotland and we'll instead have a Tory lite party that likely do worse in 2020 since the economy will have expected to further recover and Osborne will again dupe the masses into believing it was his doing.

You keep mentioning the 80s as if it were some warning for the party, ignoring the fact Michael Foot was at times more popular than Thatcher, and had it not been for the favourable outcome of the Falklands we very well may have seen him as prime minister. Nevertheless Corbyn is very different to Michael Foot.
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It's true that whatever happens now, the next five years are basically a write off. But under Corbyn the end result is still likely to be worse with the Tories greatly strengthening their majority. I can't imagine any of the other three doing worse than Ed did.

I wasn't around for most of the 80s, but from what my Dad tells me of having canvassed for Foot in a fairly middle of the road Hertfordshire constituency that had been Labour not 10 years before, most people were telling him it all sounded bonkers, without mentioning the Falklands. And I think I said this to someone else earlier in the thread - the SDP was not created because of the Falklands war. And yeah, Foot was a great man.
 
Ubik said:
You think being friendlier to Russia and unilateral disarmament would be popular? To (sections) of the Labour membership or the country at large?
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I don't think either would be particularly unpopular. Trident is quite divisive, scrapping it isn't really seen as a fringe position, and I could be wrong but I don't think many people in the UK are even slightly bothered by Russia.
 
soap said:
I don't think either would be particularly unpopular. Trident is quite divisive, scrapping it isn't really seen as a fringe position, and I could be wrong but I don't think many people in the UK are even slightly bothered by Russia.
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Trident's divisive because it's seen as expensive. When people advocate scrapping it, it's to get a "less capable, cheaper deterrent". They then set up studies to agree on said deterrent, which tend to say "yeah best go with Trident then". To be honest I'd be fine with scrapping it myself, but I'm a mental lefty (who's voting Kendall, lawl). I've seen polls that say the public "want the world free of nuclear weapons" in a wishy washy way, but not any that say it should be done unilaterally (open to being convinced otherwise if you have the evidence though).

Russia on the other hand is quite different, and I struggle to believe that anyone on the left could think we're being hard on such a state given their recent history.
 
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