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How will Corbyn go down?

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With another party leader looking like getting the shove, one wonders how Corbyn might go down in history (compared to BJ, that is). This long interview might be one way. (If this is not suitable content, my apologies, but I do notice that political threads turn out to be quite popular here!)

https://declassifieduk.org/exclusive-jeremy-corbyn-on-the-establishment-campaign-to-stop-him-becoming-pm/

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Comments

  2. “The media assault on Corbyn during his tenure as Labour leader from 2015-20 will be recorded as perhaps the most intense political assassination in modern British history. ”

    Someone hasn’t read the papers today…

    • A pretty crass statement, given that we’re only a few years on from the deaths of Jo Cox and David Amess, but I guess no hyperbole should be spared when articulating the sheer horror of the grand leader being forced to face criticism.

      Good to see the nakedly Alt-Right establishment hacks at The Guardian, in particular, called out for their crimes. In many ways the most sinister wing of the entire media shadow junta, attempting to camouflage their visceral loathing of all things Corbyn by endorsing him to their readers for both the 2017 and 2019 general elections. Bastards.

      • For me the media thing is not what struck a chord (after all that was pretty obvious), but the claims about the security establishments of both US and UK. I find that part highly plausible, especially the bit about Saudi Arabia.

        Anyway, just putting it out there is all.

  3. From an emigrant’s point of view he seemed like a breath of fresh air at the start but the moment he didn’t get behind Remain wholeheartedly, no thank you. And from what I’ve read of that interview, he sounds paranoid, only slightly less mad than his brother, and would never have won an election. Bring back the boring centralists please.

  6. Corbyn was always, as good commies were, opposed to the EU as a capitalist stitch up by French and German steel and coal. He was unable to articulate this as leader of Labour as many Labour saw the EU as a good thing. (so did many Tories). He evaded saying what he thought, and the silence was telling. He was endlessly negative about the UK whereas socialists of other countries do not have to diss people who like where they come from, effortlessly failing to capture the common people whilst impressing the metro boho left. He was complicit with the pIRA and Hamas, both of whom are hardly progressive humanists. Then he lost against Boris – a weak opponent. If Corbyn thinks he was badly treated by the media, he might consider Mrs Thatcher, who relentlessly got it in the neck throughout her career, through her retirement, and continues to be the focus of five minutes hate years after her death.

    • “He was endlessly negative about the UK ” – this has been the disease of the English left forever, it’s there in Orwell in the 1930s and is the single biggest reason for the failure of left parties in the UK, England at least, compared with the rest of Europe.

      “Your country is worthless and you are a racist. Why don’t you support us?”

      • I always maintain that the divide between ordinary public and Labour first became evident when Gordon Brown called Gillian Duffy a bigot not knowing his microphone was on. The tabloids at the time wallowed in the revelation that Labour no longer represented ordinary working class people and it took off.

        • That brings back memories of a PM that stuffs up, but then immediately owns up and does his best to put it right:

          ***
          Brown’s statement after visiting Duffy to apologise in person

          Brown: I’ve just been talking to Gillian. I’m mortified by what’s happened. I’ve given her my sincere apologies. I misunderstood what she said, and she has accepted there was a misunderstanding and has accepted my apology.

          If you like, I’m a penitent sinner. Sometimes you say things you don’t mean to say, sometimes you say things by mistake and sometimes you say things you want to correct very quickly.

          So I wanted to come here and say that I made a mistake but to also to say I understood the concerns she was bringing to me and I simply misunderstood some of the words she used. I made my apology.

          I’ve come here – it’s been a chance to talk to Gillian about her family, her relatives and her own history and what she has done, but most of all it’s been a chance to apologise and say sorry, and to say sometimes you do make mistakes and you use the wrong words and once you’ve used the wrong word and made a mistake you should withdraw it and say profound apologies and that’s what I’ve done.

          ***

          The BoJo approach would have been :

          Gillian who?
          Oh! No…I didn’t say that at all
          OK I did say that but I wasn’t referring to her specifically
          OK, I was referring to her specifically but I really think we need to move on don’t you?
          (sigh…) I sincerely apologise to anyone who might have been offended. OK? Right.

  8. I suppose we should be glad Corbyn didn’t go French style communist, which was anti-immigrant. The places there which were pro-communist are now FN hotbeds, so showing how fickle ideology can be, and how easily one can become the other. Politicians are great on “these are my principles, and if you don’t like them I have others”.

  9. For 35 years Corbyn embodied the belief that it’s better to be pure in opposition than compromised in Government. His legacy is that a lot of people (who really ought to have grown out of this sort of thing by now) are having a lovely time standing on the sidelines, shouting and pointing, rather than engaging in the slow, slow process of dragging public opinion back to the centre, and then to the left.

  10. Who cares how he will go down? That he went down without a trace at the last election is the main thing, even though his legacy was foisting upon us the worst Prime Minister in living memory. Oblivious to anything but his own self-righteousness he would have been as poisonous for the country as Johnson has proven to be, and probably much worse. Good riddance to him. He deserved everything the establishment threw at him.

  11. Everyone here seems to have bought the media line on Corbyn. Make out he’s hopeless but also blame him for Johnson. Poor guy can’t win. At least he has some integrity. Instead we have a completely devalued political culture.

  12. These conversations around Corbyn and his legacy are probably pointless.

    His staunchest supporters are effectively conspiracy theorists at this stage. Any criticism is dismissed as a media fabrication. The electorate can hate him, but they’ve all been fooled. Anyone criticising him has simply had the wool pulled over their eyes.

    Brexit can happen on his watch. He can hand a massive parliamentary majority to the Tories. He can oversee an institutionally anti semitic Labour Party and be viewed as an anti semite by an enormous majority of the UK’s Jewish population. These are all just details: the electorate were tricked. The Jewish community is being used. He loved the EU and fought so hard to stay in it. Powerful, shadowy forces were at work to prevent the triumph of good over evil. It’s just that simple.

    This is an argument in which no evidence will suffice. It’s all very C21 – you get exactly the same from the Trump mob; it’s why politicians shouldn’t be allowed to become quasi-religious figures..

    Right before he won the leadership, back in 2015, we had a thread on how he’d do. See below. At the time, this was my guess: “Corbyn will win the leadership, get humped in the General Election and then we’re all going to have to listen to Owen fricking Jones explain how Corbyn wasn’t left wing enough and was the victim of a right wing media conspiracy.”

    Predictable even before he took the job.

    It remains horrifying that the electorate were asked to choose between Johnson, a man who does not care whether he’s wrong, and Corbyn, a man constitutionally incapable of ever understanding that he’s wrong.

    Is Corbyn going to win?

    • I’m pleased to see I have been consistent in my distain, at least

      “I’d love to see the hard left get their day in the sun, if only because it would force them to work within the system rather than standing outside it complaining. High principle rarely achieves anything other than a lovely smug feeling of superiority. The real value is in dragging the centre slightly your way – so collaboration, consensus and concession have to be in your toolbox. I don’t think Corbyn will go that way, given the purity of his supporters’ distain for progressive politics. Whether the party has to split, or whether the Left will blow their chance, as usual, with bickering and finger-pointing and grand gestures, I don’t know. We need to get though it quickly, though.”

      • Same, although I did describe him as a “nice and principled man”, a statement which has aged like milk. I said “Just because the field is a bit uninspiring doesn’t mean Jeremy bloody Corbyn is the right answer. It feels like UKIP all over again: just because he’s *different*. And he’s not even that different, he just wears sandals. (To paraphrase Zappa, he’s wearing a uniform too – don’t kid yourselves.)”

  13. Would Corbyn have won in 2019 if he’d had the press supporting him? I think so. Would he have been a good Prime Minister? Probably not. Would he have been as bad a choice as Johnson? I very much doubt that – I’m not sure anyone could be. Would Brexit have happened had he been elected PM? I doubt that too.
    I’ve no idea how he’ll go down in history. Dividing opinion as always, I imagine. I doubt anyone of his political outlook will get anywhere near the leadership again in our lifetimes, so that might be his chief legacy.

  14. I liked some of his policies and indeed him for a bit.

    But his sheer incompetence at running a party, his reluctance to condemn anti semitism (“I abhor ALL types of racism” cop out) and dreadful choice of shadow team meant after his honeymoon period he was always going to fail.

    But Labour was doomed the moment Ed Miliband got in so you can’t blame Corbyn for Brexit or Boris IMO

    • I’d go with that too.

      And the absolutely mental decision to accept the Tory lies about the global financial crisis rather than challenge them. Much like the decision not to challenge Tory lies about Brexit.
      When you aren’t willing to point out that the other side are both wrong and lying, it is pretty tough to win.

      (liked some of his policies and have nothing against him in principle. Reminded me of quite a few people I know/knew).

  18. In that embedded post by me in 2015, I was only talking about Corbyn leading the Labour Party but I suppose thoughts would naturally flow on to whether the public would vote for him.

    He came pretty close in 2017 and lost big time in 2019. Personally, I wanted him to do well but he did himself no favours at all. Almost totally silent on Brexit and an interested bystander when the Tories were tearing themselves apart. So many open goals…

  19. At the time, opinion seemed to be that the Tories would tear themselves apart over Brexit. I do think Labour stepped to one side at that time, assuming that the Tories would lose the election, rather than Labour win it.
    I fear Labour is still taking the same approach now.

  20. My opinion has not changed: Corbyn is a thin-skinned thicko with a hard-on for violent extremists and anti-British authoritarians abroad. His election as leader was a catastrophe, driven by sentiment – in a sense, Labour’s equivalent of John Paul I. The number of otherwise intelligent people who voted for him under the illusion that he was a return to ‘real Labour’ continues to bewilder me. Corbyn nearly destroyed the Labour Party, acting as a giant bam magnet, attracting an influx of fruit loops and/or anti-semites from the crank fringes . Thankfully all now fucking off.

    I’ll say one good thing for him though – he’s not John McDonnell.

  21. One thing I have noticed a lot is that people who are anti-Corbyn tend to insult his supporters too, as thickos or loonies or what have you. Whereas people who are anti-Johnson tend to limit their insults to Johnson and his government. I wonder why that is.

    • Ah yes, who can forget the constant stream of respect and magnanimity shown to Tory voters and “Gammon” by the kumbaya-singing bridge builders over at Momentum. Peace and harmony in all the world.

      Still, it could have been worse: they could have been Luciana Berger. Then they’d really have got a shoeing.

    • That’s nonsense. Both men come in for plenty of stick, but I suggest that it’s Johnson’s supporters more than Corbyn’s who get it in the neck – gammon, small-minded, xenophobic, Brexiter, little-Englanders, taken in by the lies of a blatant charlatan, unable to distinguish the front from the (lack of) substance and so on (not that I don’t recognise a lot of those descriptions of his base).

      • Not my experience at all. Yes, Brexiteers get a lot of childish insults -gammon, litte-Englanders, etc,- but not specifically Johnson supporters. (Mind you, it’s quite rare to come across someone who admits to voting for Johnson.)

        In fact, come to think of it, there’s no Johnson equivalent of the rather stupid “Corbynista” blanket term.

        • If Boris Johnson was at the head of a cult of personality that still saw people tediously attempting to whitewash his rep and claiming he’d been the victim of a “media assassination” nearly two years after he’d left office, I reckon those individuals would (rightly) be described as thickos and loonies too.

          • But “cult of personality”, “tediously” and “claiming” reflect your subjective opinions, not the objective truth. Basically you’re just saying that anyone who doesn’t share your opinions deserves to be insulted.
            Personally speaking, I generally find insults far more tedious than attempts to defend, regardless of who the subject is. I’d be far more interested to read someone defending Johnson, for example, than someone just calling him names. The point about insults is that anyone above the age of two can throw them; they literally have absolutely no value whatsoever (apart from perhaps allowing the insulter to smugly and self-deludingly wallow in his/her sense of superiority).

        • Well your comment about Tory supporters getting an easier ride than Corbyn’s is so gloriously, stunningly wrongheaded that it makes ‘thicko’ and ‘loonie’ seem less like insults when applied to people who genuinely believe that

            • Don’t t take it personally, I don’t for a minute think you really believe that the Left are kinder and gentler to people who disagree with them

              • You’re right, I don’t believe that at all, but I do get the impression that anti-Corbyners openly focus a lot more scorn on his supporters than the anti-Johnsoners do. Anti-Johnson rhetoric seems, to me anyway, to focus a lot more on the man himself and his immediate cronies. I get that impression here on the Afterword, among my real world friends and on social media. As said, I find the absence of any collective term equivalent to “Corbynistas” reflects this different focus. (But I’ve no doubt if any of the Afterword or my friends or people on social media were to openly defend Johnson now they’d be in for a whole heap of insult.)

                  • Very different, I’d say. “Gammon” isn’t Johnson-specific. Its equivalent in the school playground insult arena would be something like “loony left” or “tankie”. “Corbynista” isn’t an insult, just an over-simplistic tabloid-friendly tag that implies fervent and unwavering support when more often than not that would be an inaccurate assumption. Much like Blairite or Thatcherite. Johnson voters have never been associated with fervent and unwavering support. Perhaps because Brexit was all his voters wanted. Perhaps because Corbyn, like Thatcher and Blair, was strongly associated with such a specific agenda. I dunno the reason. I’m just wondering aloud.

                    • In my experience JC’s followers are different from Johnson’s, or any other major politician I can think of except for D*n*ld Tr*mp. Boris’s followers often cheerfully admit that he has faults, just that they are either insignificant or that he should be forgiven. JC’s do not, and when challenged go directly to Whataboutery.

                      On “tankies”: JC’s right-hand wonk Seumas Milne is absolutely a bloody tankie. Calling somebody a Stalinist is usually rhetorical, referring to a way of dealing with people – you could level it at Johnson, really – but in SM’s case he is actually literally ideologically a Stalinist.

                    • I don’t actually have any real experience of Corbyn’s passionate “followers”. The people I know who voted for him were more “seems a decent chap, different from the ‘same old’, I’m all for some wealth redistribution, rather him than Johnson, I want a second referendum” types than passionate messiah worshippers.

                      I wish you’d stick to “Corbyn” or “Jezza”. When you refer to “JC” I get all over-excited thinking of her.

    • Alexi Sayle is an animal rights nutter. No-one is just one thing of course, but I find it difficult to get past the fact that someone would rather stand and watch a child die from a disease like Duchenne muscular dystrophy than have mice used to develop a treatment.

    • He’s spot on of course, & far less guarded than JC, who wouldn’t be drawn on just how appalling the behaviour of others had been towards him.
      A consistent theme of his of course is the fact that the right wing of the LP are amongst the most repulsive people anybody could be unfortunate enough to meet. The left have many faults too, without doubt, but of a different stripe.
      Abject nonsense evidently, as only creeps would consort with child sex traffickers like Epstein or lead a nation into a clearly illegal war leading to over 1 million civilian dead.

      • You are talking about Tony Blair the serial election winner.

        I remember reading on Facebook just after the 2017 election & someone commented that the conservatives were shit scared of Labour now that they had just received the second largest amount of votes.

        Left wing delusion is alive & well in the party I have supported since before I was old enough to vote for them.

        • Please: Tony Bliar, War Criminal, as the self-styled “kindler, gentler” arm of politics would have it.

          Arthur Koestler once wrote of the invented “Mimophant”, a hybrid who combines the delicate frailness of the Mimosa, crumbling at a touch when his own feelings are hurt, with the thick-skinned robustness of the elephant trampling over the feelings of others. Seems applicable here.

          As an aside, it’s quite right to question/criticise Blair for some of his dubious contacts (and I genuinely do mean that). What’s not right is to then wave through Corbyn on the “present but not involved” defence. Consorting is consorting, after all.

          • So, no refutation of the fact that Blair rode on the coat tails of a clearly illegal invasion of a sovereign nation, based on ‘the dossier’ stating that WMD meant we were 45 minutes away from chemical attack?
            As to why he endorsed the action he knew to be without foundation, does it matter? The fact is he did it, allowing the genuinely monstrous project of Cheney & Rumsfeld (who let’s be clear, played Bush Jr. like a flute), to go full steam ahead. As a result, no WMD were found, over 1 million Iraqi civilians died, & the country was looted & irrevocably destabilised, leaving a vacuum & facilitating the growth of AQ & then ISIL, the carnage in Syria etc. etc.
            These consequences, which all of us have to live with – go far beyond a disdain for a smarmy & ambitious QC – they are evidence, if it were needed, that a person capable of making such a decision is capable of literally anything if it’s expedient. Such moments are the true measure of those who wish to lead & make history & it’s when you discover what they are made of.
            They can go one way or other, & those that go Blair’s way deserve to be cursed forever. Successfully delivering election victories does not count for much if when in power, that is how you act when statesmanship is called for.
            As for the delightful ‘Bobby’ Mandelson, very, very cosy with Epstein & G Maxwell.
            What are we taught as kids? Judge people by the company they keep, & there you have it in a nutshell.
            OOAA but you know where you can stick ‘em.
            Now, open that red!

            • Love the aggression, Jim. Let it all out.

              I don’t refute any of those things because to me Tony Blair is just a politician I voted for, and I think that all of the above were mistakes/bad things he did. I’m not his personal spokesperson.

              Watching him tour the world consulting for despots, and his wife failing to pay her taxes, makes me think far, far less of him.

              Can we all say the same of Corbyn’s antisemitism, I wonder.

                • I’ll listen to Michael Rosen & Alexei Sayle on the issue over say Margaret Hodge or John Mann any day of the week.
                  Mind you, I’d listen to their takes on any other aspect of existence over those those two in any case.

                  • Regrettably, it’s not a choice between Michael Rosen and Alexei Sayle and Margaret Hodge and John Mann.

                    It’s a choice between 87% of the British Jewish community, pretty much every sitting Jewish MP and the EHRC, and Michael Rosen and Alexei Sayle.

                    There is no other ethnic minority group who would have their concerns waved away in this manner. We don’t hear claims of systemic racism and dismiss them because Kemi Badenoch and Tony Sewell say it’s not an issue. What’s special about the Jewish community that gets them this treatment. And what evidence, from what authority, is necessary for acceptance that there was a serious problem in the party, and that it stemmed from the leader’s office. Can such evidence even conceptually exist?

                    I’ll quote here what you said above; “What are we taught as kids? Judge people by the company they keep, & there you have it in a nutshell.” A statement I was more than happy to agree with, at least when it comes to politicians.

                    Did Corbyn not frequently keep company with raging anti-semites. Or does this rule simply not apply to him.

                    The problem with believing in conspiracies perpetrated by “the establishment” is that – ultimately – it leads to the same place all conspiracy theorists eventually end up – a deep, dark valley into which no counter-evidence can ever reach.

                    • I think you are starting to use this thread as a soapbox. If you want a thread on anti-semitism, why don’t you start one? You obviously take the view that any anti-zionism and/or anti-capitalism equates to anti-semitism. If you do then you can take a hike as far as I’m concerned.

                    • I’m afraid that when you ask for thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn’s legacy, you may have to prepare yourself for the possibility that you will receive, in response, thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn’s legacy.

                      I can see why you’d want to get off this uncomfortable topic though, and I do appreciate the strawman.

            • There are three obvious howlers here. The first is the (oft repeated) assertion of an “illegal war”. Yet this has never been found to be the case – it’s just something that people like to repeat in the hope that it will become accepted as a fact. The second is the implication that because Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, Tony Blair must have known this all along. Now, I’m willing concede that he’s a bright guy, but he’s not that clever. The fact is that not only our intelligence service but that of other western countries thought that Saddam Hussein was indeed developing WMD. For the very good reasons that a) SH went to some lengths to give that impression and b) he had form, in the use of poison gas against the Kurds.

              The third is the notion that the UK’s involvement in the Iraq war, whether right or wrong, actually made any difference to the result. It certainly didn’t make matters worse. Blair’s view was that there was a danger in an isolationist USA. I think the Trump era vindicates that view.

              • I stand to be corrected Lando, but my recollection is that the intelligence, from the USA side anyway, was very bad, to the point of being credibly accused of having been, shall we say, massaged, to get to the desired outcome.

                • There is a superb 8 part podcast series presented by David Dimbleby called Bush, Blair and Iraq. Whatever your politics, even if you’re a Blair sycophant, Blair does not come out looking good.

      • Guys, a question: Should a leader not only ‘appeal’ to the electorate, but also lead them onward and upward, sometimes to more adventurous heights of thinking (er education)?

        • I think there’s a danger to viewing the electorate as children who don’t actually know what they want/need, and who have to be educated into the proper way of thinking. It puts you at risk of failing to actually listen, which is something Corbyn had an issue with, when at his worst.

          I wrote and deleted a long post earlier today trying to frame up Corbyn’s legacy in more even handed terms. I’ll try to summarise here, because I’ve been fairly forthright on this thread and your OP deserves an honest answer:

          * I think he was a short to medium term disaster, who was never in any real danger of winning and who was always going to hand long term power to the Tories. Through no fault of his own, he came into the role at a particularly important moment for the country, which has, in many ways, amplified his failure.

          * I think he and his followers aggravated huge numbers of people who traditionally vote Labour, to the point where large numbers still haven’t returned to the fold (and I count myself among that body).

          * I think the anti-semitism issue is a colossal stain on the party that will take a long time to disperse. The refusal to engage and take it seriously, even now, means that the damage is still being done.

          * What’s his positive legacy? It was nice to see someone at least attempt to deliver a politics based on personal integrity and basic manners, even though I believe Corbyn’s followers massively failed to follow his lead on the latter. I also think he demonstrated with the 2017 manifesto that the electorate do not necessarily recoil in horror from left-leaning policy. They just want someone competent to deliver it who they don’t suspect of being super ideological and incapable of course-correcting if it all goes wrong.

          * In terms of actual legacy, it’s too soon to say. He energised so many young people that it wouldn’t stun me if in (say) 10 years time a Labour leader comes along who cites him as a major influence, and who is capable of delivering at least some of his policy platform because – via Corbyn’s failure – they managed to identify and address the bits of his brand that made him legitimately toxic. But for such a person to exist, they’re going to need to engage honestly with Corbyn’s flaws, not just wave them away as a media creation/figment of the public’s imagination. They’re also going to need to treat power as a serious matter, and not an excuse for Che Guevara cosplay. All of which is why it’s super frustrating every time we have to read someone pretending that Corbyn’s flaws/missteps were simply imagined: it moves that wing of the party ever further away from reality, and from salvaging something decent from the whole tangled mess.

          It wouldn’t hurt to stop treating the electorate like they’re stupid/morally inferior, or as if they only hold the views they do because they’ve been brainwashed. These are comforting fairy tales, nothing more.

          Imagine someone coming on here this week and going “Wow – the papers really do hate Boris Johnson. Ergo, the public only hate Boris Johnson because the papers have told them to. If he had the media onside he’d be incredibly popular”. People are more than capable of despising politicians without the media helping them.

          There you go – that’s about as even handed as I can be on how Corbyn will be looked back on.

          • Thanks for taking the time. As a non-expert let me make one quibble, not about Corbyn’s faults, but rather about your claim that he was never in danger of winning. I offer one proof that this is wrong: Before 2017 he was routinely portrayed as a well-meaning old fuddy-duddy, out of touch with the real world. You know a real sandal-wearer and beard type. After that election he became the dangerous communist.

            I humbly submit that only one thing can explain that shift in portrayal. He had indeed shaken the political establishment. I’m so confident about this one point that I wiouldd say anyone who discounts it just wasn’t paying attention.

            • John McDonnell literally waved Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book around in the chamber of the House of Commons in 2015. Pretty stupid behaviour if you don’t want people to ask if you’re a communist.

              In May 2017 he was explaining how much could be learned from Das Kapital.

              He had previously announced his commitment to “fomenting the destruction of capitalism”.

              Part of the problem Corbyn’s camp always had was the belief they could send these little nudges and winks to their base (who – let’s be honest – ate them up) and then complain when pulled up on it by the public at large.

            • It is telling that he shifted from lifelong Islington irrelevance to a composite of Pol Pot, Stalin, Gerry Adams & Himmler in a matter of weeks as far as the detractors were concerned.
              The sheer vociferousness of the onslaught he was subjected to would indicate that in certain circles feathers were ruffled, with a temporary disquiet that ‘the bastard might actually pull off the impossible’ & therefore nothing less than complete character assassination would suffice.

              • The reason no one had looked closely at his past was, as you say, that he was an irrelevance. An equivalent would be fuss around Sunak’s wife’s family. Both only got examined when ‘the bastard might actually pull this off’

                • Interestingly, an Indian woman at work (in Auckland NZ) pricked up her ears at the mention of Sunak, saying that the family he married into are widely admired in India.

                  They came from nowhere and started up a tech company about 40 years ago. She said they make a point of not living in opulence and give away a lot of their money. She then told the story of a senior member of the family – who dresses in a traditional sari – being told at an airport to join the economy class queue because she had clearly made a mistake when she approached the business class check in desk.

                  I just found it interesting because from her perspective Sunak and his political career is a mere side note to this hugely admired family, it seems.

                  • There’s a lot of speculation about whether RS’s campaign video has actually been on the blocks for several months. It’s certainly pretty slick, like one of those adverts for wills and life insurance that you get on daytime TV and Talking Pictures. Same demographic….

                • False equivalence in my view – one was an activist with little previous political ambition but a clear stance on a number of issues, & the other was a multi millionaire, still holding a US Green Card at the time, married to a woman with non dom status, who hailed from a dynasty valued at over £4 Billion.
                  Which one of those could feasibly be deemed a threat to to the existing order if elected?

                  • That really is a false equivalence. How about this? One was a sulky ideologist who for 30 years undermined his party’s attempts to be elected, or to govern while in power, who hung out with terrorists, whose brother is a certified conspiracy nutter, and the other is (as you say).

                    • I’m not sure about the sibling thing, Boris has at least two siblings (Rachel and Jo) who seem quite sensible and well-adjusted. It’s like blaming Noel for Liam. I realise I have now completely undermined my argument there.

  24. For me he’ll go down as a man who when his big moment arrived he absolutely refused to answer the biggest question of the day. Seemingly the only person in the country who failed or refused to recognise that Brexit and his stance on it was what people wanted to hear. That speaks to me of arrogance, stupidity and a misplaced belief in his own importance. Things Johnson is equally guilty of but he committed to a position on Brexit and hammered it home. All the arguments above are fascinating and brilliantly put as always but ultimately Corbyn blew his big moment on that one big question.

    • Couldn’t agree more. I think he has always wanted to leave the EU but openly saying so would have had millions of voters moving off to the Lib Dems.

      He could have been more open about it i.e. “I have had my doubts about EU membership for many years (explains why) – so I voted to Leave. However, the way this government has handled Brexit has been a catastrophe. So I don’t support THIS Brexit because we will negotiate a far better deal.”

      He did say at one point that he would be open to a second referendum.
      If he absolutely promised a second referendum, that would have got me over the line.

      Instead, he avoided the question and voters didn’t know what he, personally, really thought on the issue. Boris came across as decisive and clear in comparison .

      • Ultimately, after much flip-flopping, he did promise before the election that “a Labour government would secure a sensible deal”, which would be “put to a public vote alongside remain.” He pledged “to carry out whatever the people decide, as a Labour Prime Minister.”
        His big fuck up as far as I’m concerned was in not insisting on that second referendum as a prerequisite condition to giving the go-ahead for a general election.

    • The main thing is your hamper is on the way.
      JC will obviously go down as a footnote seeing as he didn’t reach high office.
      I’ve said on here previously several times that I’m not particularly a fan of Corbyn, & consider him a lightweight intellectually, but still find it immensely disturbing that the ‘threat’ his policies presented – which lest we forget were not out of step with what Drakeford has done on a far smaller scale in Wales & are considered mainstream social democrat/centre left in most of Europe- was such that he was monstered in such a way that it was impossible for the average voter to have any idea what he was about – other than he planned the Brighton bomb alongside Osama Bin Laden & Martin Bormann.
      Do those who piled on really think he presented a bigger threat to ‘freedom’ than the damage Johnson has done, gleefully turning us into a banana republic?
      I seriously don’t think that had the very worst projections his critics alleged had come to pass, with all his ‘loony left’ policies implemented overnight it could possibly have held a candle to what we are still witnessing at the moment.
      Democracy, if you believe in it, must allow a broad array of voices to be heard & ideas to be examined.
      The treatment of Corbyn in the public arena should disturb all of us.

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