next labour leader

Rams said:
I'm not saying we should now start nationalising train operators or utility companies. But there is an argument to say they should have never been privatised in the first place. Having nationalised utility companies makes far more sense then, for example, having nationalised banks.

...errr... hang on.... the irony...
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When I think back to British Rail and when I remember BT as a monopoly as well I have to say that things are a lot better now though - though perhaps the worst fudge was the labour PFI in hospitals that seems a terrible idea
 
Adebesi said:
Well the case for nationalising the ISPs wasnt so much an economic one as a privacy / anti corporatocracy one. The idea that corporates are monitoring our online lives and selling that data or using it to control us. I dont know whether the argument was that governments wouldnt do this, couldnt do this (because of their ineptitude) or it would be less harmful if they did do it, but that was the real argument: the excessive concentration of power in the hands of unelected institutions.
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well when the uk government creates a search tool, map function and mobile operating system better than google im happy to switch - till then I'm not too worried if I get a few directed ads etc?
 
Adebesi said:
I have little doubt that Kendall would be much better at creating a search tool, map function and mobile operating system than Corbyn.
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probably - she would sell the rights to some professionals to do it
rather than buy some professionals - have no clue about how they work then hope in someway to be able to manage it efficiently.
 
The network went down the shitter in the 60s, to make it a viable "national public transport network" would require a sum of money no government or private company could bring to bare.

It's currently only viable of you live in a large town or city, and huge swathes of the country have no local access to rail travel at all.

I am sure however Jeremy will say he can find some more money from his magic tree to make this so however.
 
Crono said:
Why are you so certain Sanders would lose against a Republican? When would you say was the last time the Democrats ran for president on a left-wing platform?
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It'd be difficult to win the general election when he won't win the primary (of a party he's not a member of). If he made the general by some stroke of fortune, he would lose. He's far to the left of most Democrats and would pull virtually no independents. The last two GOP candidates who were pulled further right than the average American lost, despite the fact that they would likely have won if they had maintained their more moderate platforms. The Democrats have never nominated someone as liberal as Sanders.

Sanders is like Ron Paul, basically. Lots of fervent supporters with no electability. America isn't nearly liberal enough to elect Bernie Sanders anytime soon. Against Sanders, all the GOP would have to do to guarantee a win is tack to the center slightly. Despite the advantage Democrats hold nationally, they would lose by running a candidate far left of center. The GOP has a stronger voter base that always votes but has jeopardized their chances of winning by going further and further right. It would be the same with Sanders.

Just as it would be the same for Labour electing Corbyn after getting destroyed by the Conservatives. How does Labour hope to appeal to the majority when it roundly rejected their more mildly leftist policies for the Conservatives?
 
Ducklegs said:
The network went down the shitter in the 60s, to make it a viable "national public transport network" would require a sum of money no government or private company could bring to bare.

It's currently only viable of you live in a large town or city, and huge swathes of the country have no local access to rail travel at all.

I am sure however Jeremy will say he can find some more money from his magic tree to make this so however.
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yes - and when you look at hs2 it seems that the future of rail (certainly high speed) will be more of an alternative to internal flights
the whole economy - out of town shopping centres, industrial estates etc is now based on people having cars and travelling to work - even if you did build a local rail network i am not convinced it could service the economy in the way it is now (and as you say it would be cost prohibitive anyway)
 
Sir Matt said:
How does Labour hope to appeal to the majority when it roundly rejected their more mildly leftist policies for the Conservatives?
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I guess those who think Corbyn could win an election would reject the idea that Labour lost because they were too far left. They would say Labour lost because they werent sufficiently different, they were "austerity lite" when they should have been saying, hang on, we currently have the cheapest borrowing rates ever, and they are unlikely to go up any time soon, the markets do not seriously think we are anything like Greece, we can afford to borrow to invest in the economy, that will not affect our cost of borrowing significantly, and by borrowing more to invest we can dramatically boost growth.

Im not saying Labour would have won saying that. But you cant say they definitely wouldnt have. You cant say they definitely lost, exclusively because they were too far to the left - as likely as it may seem, given the history of British elections.

I do think that argument should have been better represented by somebody. It is quite odd that it was pretty much only the Greens (in England) saying we should reject austerity altogether and exploit low borrowing costs. Its hardly the most outlandish view in the world.
 
sun_tzu said:
Almost all the physical infrastructure belongs to BT I think (other than virgin who have their own optic network) - if anybody remembers the weeks it used to take to get a phone line in - let alone fix a problem and they still want that nationalised I'd be shocked.

Not sure what 5G connected speeds will be like but it would possibly make the fixed lines redundant anyway so would be daft to spend much nationalising it - or do we then nationalise all the mobile operators as well?
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Somewhere between 10Gbps and 1Tbps. Investing in fixed lines now is like pouring money into horse drawn carriages in 1910. Should have been done 20 years ago but in 10 years will be worthless. I feel the same way about nationalising fossil fuel energy companies.
 
Adebesi said:
I guess those who think Corbyn could win an election would reject the idea that Labour lost because they were too far left. They would say Labour lost because they werent sufficiently different, they were "austerity lite" when they should have been saying, hang on, we currently have the cheapest borrowing rates ever, and they are unlikely to go up any time soon, the markets do not seriously think we are anything like Greece, we can afford to borrow to invest in the economy, that will not affect our cost of borrowing significantly, and by borrowing more to invest we can dramatically boost growth.

Im not saying Labour would have won saying that. But you cant say they definitely wouldnt have. You cant say they definitely lost, exclusively because they were too far to the left - as likely as it may seem, given the history of British elections.

I do think that argument should have been better represented by somebody. It is quite odd that it was pretty much only the Greens (in England) saying we should reject austerity altogether and exploit low borrowing costs. Its hardly the most outlandish view in the world.
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Why would the voters support a harsher regime of austerity if they opposed it entirely? Choosing the greater of two evils? They won't understand the intricacies of macroeconomics or fiscal policy, but they get the idea of austerity to some degree. So it's not as though they didn't understand they were voting for continued austerity.

It's the same type of argument the GOP/Tea Party had after 2008. They thought they weren't conservative enough so they tried to see who could be the most conservative only for the GOP to finally realize that Romney was the only remotely electable candidate in their field (after the exit of Huntsman early on). They're now solidly to the right of the general population and spoiled the chance to beat a fairly weak incumbent because they had driven Romney further right. They only dominate Congress and state legislatures by virtue of gerrymandering post-2010.
 
Untied said:
Somewhere between 10Gbps and 1Tbps. Investing in fixed lines now is like pouring money into horse drawn carriages in 1910. Should have been done 20 years ago but in 10 years will be worthless. I feel the same way about nationalising fossil fuel energy companies.
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thanks - Thats pretty much what I expected.

How we would go about nationalising EDF (Electricite de France) I have no idea - but I imagine it is not straight forward...
Most energy companies are also big investors into renewable - particularly R&D though i imagine that would stop the second we did nationalise them
 
Sir Matt said:
Why would the voters support a harsher regime of austerity if they opposed it entirely? Choosing the greater of two evils? They won't understand the intricacies of macroeconomics or fiscal policy, but they get the idea of austerity to some degree. So it's not as though they didn't understand they were voting for continued austerity.
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Again, Im not saying I buy this line of argument, Im just saying it is A line of argument. But it is presumably more about getting your vote out. Maybe natural Labour supporters didnt bother to vote, who would have voted if there had been something more inspiring to vote for. This is certainly something Corbyn believes. Maybe Labour would have hemorrhaged less support to UKIP in the north if it had something optimistic to say, i.e. the above: dont worry, all is not lost, we will borrow to invest here, we wont just cut cut cut and leave people with no option but to move to London in search of work. Given nobody was saying that, maybe all people felt they had as an alternative was blaming immigrants.

As I said, I believe deep down that England is essentially quite a right wing country, and so I basically agree with what you originally said. That Ed was too far to the left. But it is possible that both positions are true. That Ed was too far to the left to be acceptable to the mainstream voting public, but not far left enough to energise a completely new, disaffected class of voters that could come in and tip things back his way (the way the Scottish referendum seems to have energised young voters and engaged people in politics.) I think there is something in that. Not that it would necessarily be enough to get him over the line - I suspect it wouldnt. But I think there are a lot of people who are turned off politics by a perceived lack of choice, who may become more engaged if there was a party that had a chance of winning saying something really different.
 
Adebesi said:
As I said, I believe deep down that England is essentially quite a right wing country, and so I basically agree with what you originally said. That Ed was too far to the left. But it is possible that both positions are true. That Ed was too far to the left to be acceptable to the mainstream voting public, but not far left enough to energise a completely new, disaffected class of voters that could come in and tip things back his way (the way the Scottish referendum seems to have energised young voters and engaged people in politics.) I think there is something in that. Not that it would necessarily be enough to get him over the line - I suspect it wouldnt. But I think there are a lot of people who are turned off politics by a perceived lack of choice, who may become more engaged if there was a party that had a chance of winning saying something really different.
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Completely agree.
 
Sir Matt said:
Why would the voters support a harsher regime of austerity if they opposed it entirely? Choosing the greater of two evils? They won't understand the intricacies of macroeconomics or fiscal policy, but they get the idea of austerity to some degree. So it's not as though they didn't understand they were voting for continued austerity.

It's the same type of argument the GOP/Tea Party had after 2008. They thought they weren't conservative enough so they tried to see who could be the most conservative only for the GOP to finally realize that Romney was the only remotely electable candidate in their field (after the exit of Huntsman early on). They're now solidly to the right of the general population and spoiled the chance to beat a fairly weak incumbent because they had driven Romney further right. They only dominate Congress and state legislatures by virtue of gerrymandering post-2010.
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From what I've seen, folk on the left over here don't take the comparisons with the GOP and the UK right wing, because they believe wholeheartedly that they are right and that the public can be educated to agree with them. Which happens to be exactly what those in the GOP and the right think too.

Alternatively, they know they can't win but don't care.
 
Adebesi said:
I was just wondering which aspects of social democracy specifically you felt New Labour had turned their back on, which Corbyn is now offering, and which are alive and well in those European countries you mentioned.

Id like to think people would be happy to pay higher taxes if they felt they were getting good value for money, as they evidently do in Scandinavia. I would. But then maybe they would not - and history suggests they wouldnt. Which, to go back to my original post, may be why the left, having gone through this process, will find its way back to the "centre ground", or a more Blairite model.
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In policy terms, I think their betrayal of social democracy was perhaps embodied most clearly in their embrace of the privatisation ethos. They refused to renationalise the railways despite pledging to do so in 1997, with a massive parliamentary majority and massive public support, they privatised air traffic control, privatised London Underground, introduced the market into the NHS, it went on and on. It became very apparent that Blair basically believed in the Thatcherite orthodoxy of private = good, public = bad. Their bonkers deregulation of the banking sector cannot now be defended by anyone. Their maniacal championing of PFI, the same.

It's also important to look at the departure from traditional Labour / social democracy they represented in terms of actual principles and values. I'm more of a socialist so it's probably more fitting here to reproduce the words of a classic right-wing Labour figure Roy Hattersley, an actual social democrat, who puts it better than I could.

It has been a difficult four years for the Labour Party's unrepentant social democrats. One by one, the policies which define our philosophy have been rejected by the Prime Minister. ... During the first four years, we all took refuge in the thought that we had always disagreed with some items of Labour policy. And we told ourselves that Tony Blair - openly contemptuous of ideology - would understand that 'pursuing social justice' is a vacuous platitude unless it is given practical meaning by the poor being given 'an equal start as well as an open road'.

But after casting round to find himself a philosophy - including announcing his support for The Third Way and then calling a conference to decide what it is - Tony Blair discovered a big idea. His destiny is to create a meritocracy. Unfortunately meritocracy is not the form of society which social democrats want to see. Now my party not only pursues policies with which I disagree; its whole programme is based on a principle that I reject. One thing is clear: I cannot retain both membership and self respect unless I make apparent that much of what the Labour Party now proposes is wrong.

Meritocracy removes the barriers to progress which block the path of the clever and industrious. But the notion of social mobility on which it is based is, to most of the children of the inner cities, a cruel joke. A Labour government should not be talking about escape routes from poverty and deprivation. By their nature they are only available to a highly-motivated minority. The Labour Party was created to change society in such a way that there is no poverty and deprivation from which to escape. Meritocracy only offers shifting patterns of inequality.

Labour still claims that it hopes to eliminate child poverty. Yet we know that without redistribution and the greater equality it provides, poverty will remain. So, not surprisingly, during the general election campaign Tony Blair was asked on television why he was not prepared to increase taxes on the rich in order to help the poor. He replied that increasing the top rates of income tax would drive entrepreneurs from the country - without explaining that they would be unlikely to go to those other European Union members where both direct taxes and gross domestic product are higher than in Britain.

The second part of his answer must have chilled thousands of Labour Party members to the bone. The object of his policy was, he said, a general expansion in wealth. If that happened the higher earners would drag the poor along behind them. The Labour Party now believes in the trickle-down effect.

Yet Labour Party luminaries - who once thought themselves far to the Left of the position I now hold and have always held - appear to accept this nonsense without question. For some, intellectual subservience is the price of preferment. That is at least a rational reason for their conduct. But what about the superannuated and tyro firebrands who have no hope of or wish for office? Why do they not stand up for what they believe?

I shared their tribal pleasure at the Conservative defeat. But opposing one political party is not sufficient reason for belonging to another. The certain knowledge that the Conservative Party would be a worse government than Labour is not enough to sustain what used to be a party of principles. At this moment Labour stands for very little that can be identified with social democracy. And the Prime Minister's adoption of what is essentially a free-for-all philosophy presents party members with a desperate choice.
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It's no longer my party

Roy Hattersley
 
Crono said:
In policy terms, I think their betrayal of social democracy was perhaps embodied most clearly in their embrace of the privatisation ethos. They refused to renationalise the railways despite pledging to do so in 1997, with a massive parliamentary majority and massive public support, they privatised air traffic control, privatised London Underground, introduced the market into the NHS, it went on and on. It became very apparent that Blair basically believed in the Thatcherite orthodoxy of private = good, public = bad. Their bonkers deregulation of the banking sector cannot now be defended by anyone. Their maniacal championing of PFI, the same.
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If I gave you an example of a private company running an NHS service that you agreed was much better in almost every conceivable way than the NHS running it themselves, would you accept that decisions on outsourcing or privatising NHS services should be considered on a pragmatic, and not a dogmatic basis?
 
Sir Matt said:
It'd be difficult to win the general election when he won't win the primary (of a party he's not a member of). If he made the general by some stroke of fortune, he would lose. He's far to the left of most Democrats and would pull virtually no independents. The last two GOP candidates who were pulled further right than the average American lost, despite the fact that they would likely have won if they had maintained their more moderate platforms. The Democrats have never nominated someone as liberal as Sanders.

Sanders is like Ron Paul, basically. Lots of fervent supporters with no electability. America isn't nearly liberal enough to elect Bernie Sanders anytime soon. Against Sanders, all the GOP would have to do to guarantee a win is tack to the center slightly. Despite the advantage Democrats hold nationally, they would lose by running a candidate far left of center. The GOP has a stronger voter base that always votes but has jeopardized their chances of winning by going further and further right. It would be the same with Sanders.

Just as it would be the same for Labour electing Corbyn after getting destroyed by the Conservatives. How does Labour hope to appeal to the majority when it roundly rejected their more mildly leftist policies for the Conservatives?
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Are you basing all this on evidence from polling or received wisdom? Sanders is certainly far to the left of nearly all Democrats, but he seems to have struck a chord not just in terms of attracting crowds but real polling data showing support from moderate Democrats as well as left-liberals. It also seems that his being unknown to huge chunks of the electorate is significantly underestimating the level of support he's likely to win over time. The progress he's making is pretty clear about that. Polling of American public opinion over the years has shown pretty significant support for a lot of the kinds of policies Sanders is advocating, so it's not particularly surprising they are now responding positively, especially with a politician as talented as he is. Time will tell of course, but it seems like you're massively under-estimating him.
 
bishblaize said:
If I gave you an example of a private company running an NHS service that you agreed was much better in almost every conceivable way than the NHS running it themselves, would you accept that decisions on outsourcing or privatising NHS services should be considered on a pragmatic, and not a dogmatic basis?
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I wouldn't simply ignore clear-cut evidence on principle. Are you referring to something in particular or purely asking hypothetically?
 
Crono said:
In policy terms, I think their betrayal of social democracy was perhaps embodied most clearly in their embrace of the privatisation ethos. They refused to renationalise the railways despite pledging to do so in 1997, with a massive parliamentary majority and massive public support, they privatised air traffic control, privatised London Underground, introduced the market into the NHS, it went on and on. It became very apparent that Blair basically believed in the Thatcherite orthodoxy of private = good, public = bad. Their bonkers deregulation of the banking sector cannot now be defended by anyone. Their maniacal championing of PFI, the same.

It's also important to look at the departure from traditional Labour / social democracy they represented in terms of actual principles and values. I'm more of a socialist so it's probably more fitting here to reproduce the words of a classic right-wing Labour figure Roy Hattersley, an actual social democrat, who puts it better than I could.



It's no longer my party

Roy Hattersley
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Good like fighting a general election by saying you don't believe in the principle of meritocracy, always goes down well.
 
Crono said:
I wouldn't simply ignore clear-cut evidence on principle. Are you referring to something in particular or purely asking hypothetically?
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No, I can offer a real world example (well, tomorrow I can, off to watch the game now)
 
Crono said:
:rolleyes:

Grow up.
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Says the person who yesterday called for a purge of "traitors" within the party so Corbyn can keep control. Guess my ilk's days are numbered.
 
Crono said:
Are you basing all this on evidence from polling or received wisdom? Sanders is certainly far to the left of nearly all Democrats, but he seems to have struck a chord not just in terms of attracting crowds but real polling data showing support from moderate Democrats as well as left-liberals. It also seems that his being unknown to huge chunks of the electorate is significantly underestimating the level of support he's likely to win over time. The progress he's making is pretty clear about that. Polling of American public opinion over the years has shown pretty significant support for a lot of the kinds of policies Sanders is advocating, so it's not particularly surprising they are now responding positively, especially with a politician as talented as he is. Time will tell of course, but it seems like you're massively under-estimating him.
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I'm basing it on the fact that extreme candidates never win general elections in the US. There's also the median voter theorem that supports the historical record. That's without addressing him specifically. As for him, he won't raise enough money to win the election, he'll be 75 next November, he has limited voter recognition, he's an old white man, and he's avowedly a socialist. While some portion of the American populace is supportive of parts of Sanders' platform, it is either a) not a majority or b) not the people who matter politically ($$$). Ex: The majority of people support decriminalizing marijuana, but those in Congress and those in the FDA don't. Most of the policies that the public likes are policies that Clinton also supports, or any other major candidate for the Democratic nomination.

As for polls, it's August. Sanders is the only person campaigning hard on the Democratic side right now and has the benefit of several things going on for Clinton that are dragging her numbers down. Biden and Webb either haven't announced or aren't campaigning seriously right now. Both are more moderate and likely to gain the votes of average Americans.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep..._democratic_presidential_nomination-3824.html
 
Ubik said:
Says the person who yesterday called for a purge of "traitors" within the party so Corbyn can keep control. Guess my ilk's days are numbered.
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Don't adopt any principle that won't come across well in 140 characters or less.

Nu-left politics by Ubik. Jesus f*cking wept.
 
sun_tzu said:
I hope Dennis skinner is in there
If your going to make us unelectable at least let us have a laugh about it
e393626c721104ddf31dbe9a7fcf4750.jpg
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:lol:
 
Sir Matt said:
It's the same type of argument the GOP/Tea Party had after 2008. They thought they weren't conservative enough so they tried to see who could be the most conservative only for the GOP to finally realize that Romney was the only remotely electable candidate in their field (after the exit of Huntsman early on). They're now solidly to the right of the general population and spoiled the chance to beat a fairly weak incumbent because they had driven Romney further right. They only dominate Congress and state legislatures by virtue of gerrymandering post-2010.
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Ubik said:
From what I've seen, folk on the left over here don't take the comparisons with the GOP and the UK right wing, because they believe wholeheartedly that they are right and that the public can be educated to agree with them. Which happens to be exactly what those in the GOP and the right think too.

Alternatively, they know they can't win but don't care.
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It's a ludicrous equivalence to compare Corbyn to the modern-day GOP. His policies aren't that radical, and are mostly (entirely?) proven elsewhere in Europe. The GOP have no successful counterpart in the developed world.
 
ThierryHenry said:
It's a ludicrous equivalence to compare Corbyn to the modern-day GOP. His policies aren't that radical, and are mostly (entirely?) proven elsewhere in Europe. The GOP have no successful counterpart in the developed world.
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Because both are way off your garden variety switching voter that wins you elections, the success of both are primarily driven by bases that think their moderate wings may as well join the other side, and tap into a widespread dissatisfaction with the political process. I mentioned earlier in the thread that the US RINO idea unfortunately seems to have taken full flight over here these days, only on the left (although in fairness it must've been going on for a while, Attlee got attacked for not being socialist enough as well). If you think the GOP is still going too far though, take Farage, whose brand of backwards-looking rightwing populism is seen throughout Europe these days and can win you a sizeable number of votes over here too. Put him as leader of the Tories through and Labour could walk it in.
 
Ubik said:
take Farage, whose brand of backwards-looking rightwing populism is seen throughout Europe these days and can win you a sizeable number of votes over here too. Put him as leader of the Tories through and Labour could walk it in.
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I actually thing a conservative party with farrage in charge would still smash a labour party with Corbyn as leader
 
Ubik said:
Because both are way off your garden variety switching voter that wins you elections, the success of both are primarily driven by bases that think their moderate wings may as well join the other side, and tap into a widespread dissatisfaction with the political process. I mentioned earlier in the thread that the US RINO idea unfortunately seems to have taken full flight over here these days, only on the left (although in fairness it must've been going on for a while, Attlee got attacked for not being socialist enough as well). If you think the GOP is still going too far though, take Farage, whose brand of backwards-looking rightwing populism is seen throughout Europe these days and can win you a sizeable number of votes over here too. Put him as leader of the Tories through and Labour could walk it in.
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You're massively overestimating the power of 'the left' (I personally find it bizarre the way you see yourself as separate from that side of the political spectrum, but that's another debate), it's like you've left all this talk of Trots and icepicks get to your head.

Corbyn's (possibly) about to win the leadership after 33 years as a backbencher, while no major political party has run on a Socialist platform in my lifetime. It's not feasible for him to now suddenly mould the entire Labour party into his own image, and "purge all the non-believers", as you keep panicking about. He's going to have to compromise from day one, and create a platform for 2020 that all of his MPs can get behind, which judging from his current campaign will be a form of populist, Central-European Democratic Socialism. It won't be the end of the world, so chill out and appreciate the fact that it's not that slimeball Burnham. :)
 
ThierryHenry said:
You're massively overestimating the power of 'the left' (I personally find it bizarre the way you see yourself as separate from that side of the political spectrum, but that's another debate), it's like you've left all this talk of Trots and icepicks get to your head.

Corbyn's (possibly) about to win the leadership after 33 years as a backbencher, while no major political party has run on a Socialist platform in my lifetime. It's not feasible for him to now suddenly mould the entire Labour party into his own image, and "purge all the non-believers", as you keep panicking about. He's going to have to compromise from day one, and create a platform for 2020 that all of his MPs can get behind, which judging from his current campaign will be a form of populist, Central-European Democratic Socialism. It won't be the end of the world, so chill out and appreciate the fact that it's not that slimeball Burnham. :)
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:lol: I don't think Corbyn's purging anyone, he seems a nice chap, it's more folks supporting him that seem to want that. I don't think even a majority of Labour MPs would get behind a democratic socialist platform either since I don't think the public would. Just mildly depressed that I'll probably be in my 40s the next time a Labour government is elected, is all.

As for now feeling separate from the left, I've begun to feel that way over the course of this campaign after having been called a Tory so often. Just a pragmatic social democrat now (boo, ageing).
 
ThierryHenry said:
He's going to have to compromise from day one, and create a platform for 2020 that all of his MPs can get behind, which judging from his current campaign will be a form of populist, Central-European Democratic Socialism. It won't be the end of the world, so chill out and appreciate the fact that it's not that slimeball Burnham. :)
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In which specific policy areas can you see Corbyn drawing back from his presently stated positions?
 
It's funny how these things work out sometime, for had the Lib Dems not been through such a damaging five years in coalition, the Orange Bookers at the head of 60+ MP party might have been a tempting new home for some of their Labour counterparts at present.
 
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Nick 0208 Ldn said:
It's funny how these things work out sometime, for had the Lib Dems not been through such a damaign five years in coalition, the Orange Bookers at the head of 60+ MP party might have been a tempting new home for some of their Labour counterparts at present.
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And conversely, there are/were potentially a lot of moderate Lib Dems that went Tory this time round that would've been soft targets for a centrist Labour platform in 2020, semi-undoing some of the damage of the SDP split whilst also getting votes straight from the Tories. But ho-hum.
 
Ubik said:
Just a pragmatic social democrat now (boo, ageing).
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NAZI SCUM
Nick 0208 Ldn said:
In which specific policy areas can you see Corbyn drawing back from his presently stated positions?
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I don't know enough about his positions and stated policies to say much at this point, but nationalising any industry is going to be beyond difficult. Would take years of planning, huge financial backing, and support from MPs and the public I'm not convinced he'll be able to find. But again, I haven't lived through a time where this was considered as a viable option for the country, so I've no idea how it would go. Most of all I'm fairly optimistic to see how a Corbyn-lead Labour Party shifts the political debate by 2020.
 
This looks like a done deal - JC is at 2/9 from Paddy Power! The words 'political earthquake' spring to mind.

I thought the intervention of Mr. Mandelson was gobsmacking - an out-and-out attempt to subvert a democratic process! Whatever one may think of Mr. Corbyn, if the majority of members support him, he's the rightful leader of the Labour Party.
 
Adebesi said:
"The Blairites" has become a pejorative term. But I wouldnt say no to a government along the lines of Blair's first one right now, it did a lot of very good things.
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A lot of people will shit all over everything Blair did simply because of the Iraq War. Forgetting that even after that he got re-elected. Something that the labour party hasn't managed to do since.
 
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