Maybe they think an apology is an acceptance of guilt?
UK General Election - 12th December 2019 | Con 365, Lab 203, LD 11, SNP 48, Other 23 - Tory Majority of 80
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At least the Neil interview will save the BBC having to do any creative editing. They won't have to.
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Not to mention It’d been a relatively bad week for the #NeverCorbyn lot, who’d come across as cravenly opportunist of late... All he had to do was seem like he genuinely cared about the anxiety in the Jewish community and was sorry that things obviously hadn’t gone as he’d intended, and he might actually have seemed like the grown up in the room, and he just couldn’t... Presumably out of some form of misplaced pride? Or the prevailing feeling on a fair bit of the activist left that it just needs to go away now, which, obviously, isn’t going to make it go away any faster!
Lis had gone on the Beeb earlier today to talk about being Jewish and backing Corbyn, and probably feels a bit hung out to dry now. Frustrating.
Yeah they do but I don't know why? They are meant to be clever, educated people. Excellent at public speaking and debate. Why can't they just be normal? It would go a long way with voters. Boris was the same last week when asked about his letter box burka comment. Instead of simply saying "it was taken out of context but in hindsight the terminology I used was wrong and if I've cause offence I'm sorry". Corbyn tonight. Same again. Just apologise and accept it could have been dealt with better.
They are meant to be leaders!
It’s possible (quite likely I’d argue) that he still genuinely doesn’t understand the problem.
Should have just said what he said here:
I’ll have whatever Bastani is smoking.
Is Bastani the Bill Mitchell of Corbyn supporters?
its because cnuts like me were leaving uni and taking them mwahahaha. fecking millennials
Also any future apologies in the coming weeks won’t be seen as genuine and will just be seen as trying to recover from what was a torrid set of answers to some fairly serious questions.
Corbyn says he's sorry - it draws a line under the whole thing and as a bonus makes Johnson look like a proper twat for not doing the same
Seriously. Why can't he just apologise ffs.
I think @2cents hits the nail on the head above.
Thing is, he has actually apologised before... at least in a much better way than he did here.
This stance tonight was obviously advised, as they all knew it was going to come up. Bizarre and counterproductive playing to the one part of the base they don’t really need to.
Honesty and humility should be desirable characteristics in our politicians, but they just don’t seem to be as prevalent as you’d first think. Now that doesn’t surprise me with Johnson, who’s clearly a self-absorbed, entitled knob. It does surprise me with Corbyn though, as, whilst I don’t agree with his economic policies, I also don’t imagine him to be the soulless bastard that Boris is.
Really bizarre. Any points Corbyn gained from the QT showing have well and truly been lost now.
I think it's more to do with what @Mockney hinted at (I think); his advisors are fecking morons.
We’re all morons now.
Presumably he’s hoping people don’t watch the interview and just take his word for it.
Or he’s delusional.
Yeah he clearly has apologised and apologised well a number of times. He's badly advised, stubborn and probably frustrated that he is continually asked this. But it's not going to go away.
For many of the leaders @2cents seemed to be referring to, their campaigns are built around these tensions, usually in the form of immigration (Trump obviously, and also in Europe). Corbyn's campaign has nothing about any issue of anti-semitism, it is built around the NHS and public services. So it makes no sense at all to double down on something he would obviously prefer to be a side issue. I doubt that there is an anti-semitic vote bank in the UK which is:
1. large enough to swing the current Tory lead
2. winnable by Labour
3. Labour's target vote
4. Swayed by an interview.
So it makes more sense that Corbyn and his people, for whatever reason, imagined that the headlines would look better when he said "no apology."
Like I said earlier, he’s been pulled in both directions, due to the demands of leadership. However it’s not unlikely that this intransigent stance is more reflective of his personal instincts on the matter. It’s there in his pre-2015 responses to legitimate criticisms of his activism. And it’s probably been advised by Milne, who is the sort of company Corbyn has kept throughout his entire political career. Looking across that career, I think we’ll find that a reflexive defensiveness and dismissiveness has been the far more common response from Corbyn to criticism along these lines than has genuine reflection and reconsideration. And I’m skeptical that someone of his age (66 when he assumed leadership) has the capacity to change the habit of a lifetime.
He appointed them. They’re people he has considered political allies his entire career.
I know a few Labour councillors and have been to the pub with Labour activists. While I've never seen overt anti-Semitism subjects such as Netenyahu, Israel and "Zionists" come up a lot more than it does in conversation with anyone else I know.
Makes sense, Labour activists probably overindex more so with the pro-Palestinian cause than the average person who probably has no idea what's going on over there so topics like Netenyahu, Israel and "Zionists" are more likely to come up.
His campaign is also built around his image as a saintly anti-racist campaigner (the “greatest of our time” I’ve seen him described more than once), and a sizeable chunk of his support believe this entire controversy has been manufactured by a foreign state in alliance with its British supporters.
Many (most?) of the public believe he is racist, and that a third of Labour members are antisemitic. I've not heard him bring it up in the debate or on his own twitter. This contest has correctly been framed as get Brexit done vs restore public services. And I don't think he is losing anyone who thinks he is a saint or that the controversy has been manufactured, no atter his answer today*.
*If you are looking at niche votebanks, he seems to have lost some self-proclaimed anti-identity leftists because of this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-teach-schools-general-election-a9216891.html
Disgusting human being:
The two of you might have to share a King Size bed between the both of you VV. Best to ask @Penna - she takes all the bookings but I don't mind getting all the cameras set up yet again.
I'm in. @esmufc07 can have a lilo on the floor.
I didn't realise Andrew Neil twittered, he's gone down in my estimation as a human being. Not as an interviewer though, he'll do his job. Even though he's a Tory, he'll do it.
He may have felt that with two weeks to go the time had come to look strong and defiant on the issue, perhaps calculating that the general public are getting sick and tired of the antisemitism controversy. Certainly my impression of the general response to the rabbi’s letter yesterday was that it was an ill-judged intervention which focused attention exclusively on Jewish grievances rather than appealing on the basis of a broad anti-racism message (I haven’t read the letter but this seems to me to be a fair critique of much of the criticism aimed at Corbyn - see Yair Wallach’s thoughts on the letter and the Rachel Riley thing posted earlier in the thread). Hence Corbyn’s insistence on responding to Neil by constantly referring to “all faiths”, “everyone”, “anybody”, etc.
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But they aren't -
Millennials poorer than previous generations data show
https://www.ft.com/content/81343d9e-187b-11e8-9e9c-25c814761640
Inheritance will mostly come too late(Average inheritance age could be 61 years old) and be spent on care for elderly parents. As for parenthood
Priced out of parenthood: no wonder the birthrate is plummeting
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/20/parenthood-birthrate-child-uk-children
You will know better than me on this but I'm pretty sure Thatcher did have something of a right wing working class base. During the miners strike there was scabs in Nottingham, she of course had British nationalism and her version of a property owning democracy. The appeal of Thatcherism for me can be summed up in 30 seconds
(The Long Good Friday & The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her lover are the two greatest films on thatcherism)
Thatcherism was a counter revoultion, all the tories have at the moment is ''Getting Brexit Done!'' which could work for this election but it can't last.
My argument would be the Ken Clarke type of conservatism is undermining its own goals and destroying the social base it needs to have any future. A good example of this would be EU membership, Ken Clarke is quite clearly pro EU but at the same time polices like austerity which he supported, did in fact fuel anti EU views and ended up giving Leave the win in the 2016 referendum(https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/did-austerity-cause-brexit/).
But the same can be said of Thatchers idea of the family(Mentioned this in my other post) or even personal freedoms/aspirations(How can someone have personal freedom when they are forced to take massive debts for simply having the aspiration to go to university ?)
Similar to the disruptions of the late 1970's, where the model of social democracy was reaching its limits and breaking at the seams(The black outs, mass strikes etc..)right now we are living in the end point of Ken Clarke type of conservatism(Millions using food banks, the vote to leave the EU, Grenfell tower fire mass inequality etc..). The reality is there is only one party offering a different model - The Labour Party.
But its not in your interest to vote Labour, right ? Is there any argument that would get you to vote for them ? I mean you could just be like myself and too far down the rabbit hole(Although you seem to be a tad more open minded). Its in my material interest to support Labour but also...........the 20th century communism wasn't actually that bad.
I will disagree with you on the whole unrelenting vitriol against Tories. Firstly because I contribute massively towards it and secondly I've seen the effects of Tory cuts. I've mentioned this before but I knew someone who was being overworked, having to look after a parent at home and was terrified of going onto benefits because of the lazy welfare scrounger stereotype. All of this resulted in a mental health crisis and this person routinely cutting their face with a knife. One of my brothers has major disability issues and having seen the shite my mum had to go through just to get the very basics, is again another example of tory cuts. If we look around the country we can see this everywhere, from disabled people dying due their benefits being stopped, black british citizens being deported and the real end result of tory government policy - the fire at Genrefell tower. The last decade of tory government has been one of inhumanity and cruelty and the only appropriate respond should be one of pure hatred.
I'm sure your a very nice person(I'm really this bitter in person)but the politicians you vote for, I honestly view them as lower than vermin.
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Bloody hell. Just watched the whole interview. Corbyn was beyond awful. The Tories will be loving this.
Shazia Awan-Scully (former member of the Tory Party): "The Conservative Party has a huge problem with Xenophobia and Islamophobia"
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