When you don’t actually live in a place, you can’t really gauge what’s actually going on.
Here in NZ, Corbyn is being reported as a little-known, far left nutter who is gathering up momentum via rent-a-crowd to take the leadership of the Labour Party.
Corbyn has had some great publicity here due to Blair formally trashing him – his profile has been raised immeasurably by that. In his piece, Blair insults Michael Foot but changes the language to make it also appear that he is paying him respect. He is actually saying “this bloke is worse than Michael Foot!”.
I’m not sure what happened to Blair. He may have some history with Corbyn, who knows.
As Billy Bragg points out, Corbyn is as establishment as it gets. He’s been a North London MP for more than 30 years. It’s weird that he is being portrayed as a left wing chancer from nowhere who is trying to smash thie state. He knows the system, he is part of the system.
But is he genuinely coming across well where it counts – in the UK? Can you see him leaning over the despatch box and tying Cameron up in knots? I honestly can’t see that in Corbyn but maybe that’s a good thing. Kinnock was a brilliant debater in the House but not electable. Not everyone values that quality.
So is he really going to win?
Judging by the hysteria in the Daily Mail (where the simple fact of having a beard marks you out as an out-of-control Stalinist and quite possibly a terrorist as well), yes, he’s going to win the leadership vote. Unless some particularly cynical behind-the-scenes finagling (such as not allowing Mark Steel to vote) scuppers him.
I somehow doubt he’ll win a general election, but then I’m not sure any of the other three candidates would either. I think that like Bernie Sanders he answers a deep need in people, particularly young people, for a politician who gives every appearance of saying what he means and meaning what he says. That’s what causing the right-wing panic, although weirdly enough some UKIP supporters seem to see a possibility of making common cause against Cameron, whom they hate with a deep passion.
Of course this is the view from Australia, so should be treated with caution.
If nothing else, at least there’s a bit of interest re: the Labour Party.
Frankly, when it came to entering the polling station (7 a.m., first in the queue, Labour supporter) at the General Election, it was all I could do to remember the name of the party.
I think he’s unstoppable. The parliamentary party who nominated him to give a range of views seem to have forgotten that the membership is well to the left of them, and might like a leader for whom they can vote without holding their noses. He won’t win any elections of course, but nor would any of the others.
I don’t see any ‘right wing panic’ at all, Mike. If Corbyn wins, Labour will take at least a decade to recover. The Conservatives must be delighted at this unexpected turn of events.
Should have said right-wing media panic, by which I suppose I mean the Daily Mail. Their reaction is way out of proportion for a supposed political non-starter by which the Tories should be delighted.
You’re quite the avid reader of the Daily Mail, Mike. I’d give it a rest at your age – can’t be doing your blood pressure any good.
Of course they’re delighted at the thought of Corbyn being elected.
I know, but my country needs me. In fairness to myself, I don’t actually read the Daily Mail, I read @dmreporter on Twitter, which gives me a good idea of what’s going on in that dank, slimy echo-chamber.
Tony Blair clearly doesn’t share a single atom of Michael Foot’s ideology, but here’s what he actually said about him this week:
“Michael was a towering figure who had been a major cabinet member in the previous Labour government.”
For someone he would clearly have disagreed with, I think he showed him a remarkable degree of respect.
Tony Blair said :
“This is not the 1980s. This is by many dimensions worse and more life threatening. Michael Foot was never going to win a general election in the UK. But Michael was a towering figure who had been a major cabinet member in the previous Labour government.”
i.e. ” Corbyn’s even worse than the unelectable Michael Foot. Imagine that!”
I’m really not sure how calling Foot a “towering figure” and effecting saying “Corbyn is no Michael Foot” is an insult to Michael Foot.
If I say “Limp Bizkit are worse than Pink Floyd” is that an insult to Pink Floyd? I mean, unless I add “imagine that!” to the end of the quote?
He is painting a picture of how awful the Labour Party would be under the leadership of Corbyn. How awful? Even worse than when Michael Foot was leader. That bad!
The respectful words are a little hollow when taken in that context.
I am presuming that Corbyn never made it into Blair’s cabinets.
If that’s what Blair is aiming to do – establishing Foot as a low bar and noting that Cornyn is EVEN WORSE, then does it strike you as at all odd that in the same breath he’s describing Foot as a “towering figure”?
As insults go, I’ve had worse compliments.
He might win an election.
Poll tax.
War (actually, that normally guarantees success).
Europe.
Pretty much any Government entering a third term in office going nuts.
Cameron standing down before the next election…….
…….much more difficult to call than the Premier League over the next 5 years.
I really like Jeremy Corbyn. ‘Speakjng’ as a pacifist Quaker with green tendencies, I guess that’s kind of inevitable, but I just find him SO refreshing. It’s like WOW! – here is a politician who treats questions seriously and answers them with a thoughtfulness I haven’t seen since John Smith died; who is so reticent about and antipathetic to personality politics that his whole campaign is about addressing the catastrophe of austerity economics and its dire effect on most British people as ‘we’, not ‘I’, (evidenced by meetings where yes he give his speech, but then wants to hear from the audience their views), coupled with an apparent disinterest in winning the leadership vote, but in contributing to the building of a reinvigorated, re energised Labour Party that means something to and takes its inspiration and drive from its members.
The lazy painting of him as a hard left Marxist by the right wing press is totally gainsaid by his openness to a broad church shadow cabinet. Yes, he has principles and a clear position on many issues, both domestic and international, but he refuses to engage in slashing off other people, and seems to genuinely seek to find the best in those he engaged with. When LBC asked the 4 candidates if they would have Ed Miliband in their cabinet, the other candidates all prevaricated and gave the typical non answer that makes politicians despised when they use it in Question Time, etc. Corbyn said he thought Miliband had made a decent job as Environment Secretary and would slot him in there (or sounding like that – I’m not quoting verbatim, here).
There are so many important political issues that need addressing with a serious adult mentally, that doesn’t disintegrate to game playing and the mind-numbing psephological caution of capturing the fractional number of vote in the swing seats that depend on bland focus grouped nonsense to capture a perceived middle ground as enforced by the fucking awful abomination of a voting system the UK suffers under. I was sorely tempted to register as a Labour supporter just to have some chance of helping to break the stalemate of the current system. Good luck to all those who took that step and vote well. The philosophy of social justice and moderate cooperation could be what the country needs to defuse people’s passivity in the face of the boot stamp of neo liberalism .
I am watching from afar as well. I’m not a registered Labour member, but my time in the States has pushed me to the left.
What amuses me – but not in a “ha hah” way is this: Many many Labour MPs are decrying the future under Corbyn, casting themselves as Nostradamus (or Nostradama).
Here’s my question: If you-all are so fucking smart, what happened in the General Election then? Ever think the membership may have a better grip on things than you do?
Who gives a fuck about Owen Jones (apart from his mum and dad obvs.)? If you don’t like him don’t read him.
Oops. Who gives a fuck about where this post goes? Not me obvs. Sorry Sithere2049, this was a response to RobC of Atlantic Pond.
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 Cornyn wasn’t left wing enough and was the victim of a right wing media conspiracy.
Can’t wait. Roll on the next five years.
Died that mean you think Corbyn would impose an unpalatable left wing agenda on Labour, rather than engaging with the different views in the party to construct a rational alternative to the flog everything off to the rich, screw the poor and scapegoat the immigrants approach I am lazily attributing to the current Conservative government?
I think this analysis/forecast is, sadly, spot-on, Bingo.
A resurgent Left will de-construct the Party back down into increasingly exquisite ideological groupuscles, and Conference will be held in a handful of smokers’ shelters on Blackpool front. The electorate will stay away from this museum-piece Party in droves.
(PS – go Cornyn! )
Owen Jones. The epitome of smug, more right on than thou careerist mentally off street parking permit marxist prat.
Does, not died.
Corbyn strikes me as quite pragmatic. I am wondering if he might actually take Blair’s advice and agree that he may be, personally, may be unelectable as PM. Having a younger, more electable Deputy Leader might be a good move.
From my distant perspective:
In every picture of him, Cameron looks like a man who can’t forget, for a second, how handsome and strong and popular he is. Concerned Politician, Capable Leader, Just Plain Dave, Global Statesman … he’s always minutely focussed on himself. And evidently pleased with the effect.
In every picture of him, Corbyn looks like a man who hasn’t given himself a moment’s thought.
I think, on current evidence, that Corbyn is indeed going to win.
If so, the UK Labour Party are going to tear themselves to pieces over the next 5 years and hopefully rebuild themselves as the real alternative to the Conservatives that Britain needs.
Electing Jeremy Corbyn as leader will ensure that this happens in a timely manner. Ditto if by some reverse miracle the ghastly Liz Kendall were to win, but she won’t. She’ll bomb out in the first stage, gripe about it mightily and then possibly defect to the LibDems or the Tories in a huff.
Those party hacks (old lags) Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper are just as unelectable as Corbyn and either one winning will result in the party bumping along on the same useless Tory-lite path in ineffective opposition, possibly for decades.
He might well win. What happens thereafter will be extremely interesting. Reconciling the opposing factions within the party will be an enormous challenge. It will require exceptional leadership skills and the ability to compromise, find consensus and stop your own supporters crying foul when you inevitably have to make concessions. Corbyn remains decidedly untested on all of these counts.
Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad, and if that doesn’t work, they get Charlotte Church to support them.
Is that a quote from Nietzsche?
Charlotte Church’s recent series of EPs were extraordinary, off kilter pop brilliance. she’s bloody great she is
See: Gavin Henson.
I have to agree with Blair and Harman’s take on this. If Labour want to win an election, Corbyn is the equivalent of harakiri. He is however, a wonderful placebo, a moral high ground champion of the disaffected Left, but when it comes down to hard reality, the majority of the British electorate don’t really do what they see as hard left socialism. They prefer anything that chimes with the idea of Britain/Monarchy, national pride and independence, even as if it comes as a yoke, because they identify Socialism as something alien, not to be trusted, repressive. Blair understood this, and this understanding was his political genius. The Corbyn phenomena isn’t really growing at all. He’s garnering the support of people already on his page, and perhaps many of the young too, but it’s not enough. If you’re a full on Socialist, it’s a lovely dream while it lasts. If you a realist as well, you’ll need to swallow some of your ethics and get real.
He might win, yes. And yes, Labour will probably cease to exist in its current form shortly thereafter. (Maybe that’s not the worst thing. We might get a decent, centre left, Blairite social democratic party out of it, and the Corbynites can be left to their ideologically pure grumblings.)
Oh look, we seem to say, most of the country voted for right of centre parties. What they must really want is someone broadly of Foot’s politics but with a tenth of his intellect.
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.) He’s been a professional politician for 40 years and has been serially disloyal for most of those. He has no leadership experience, no experience of compromise or negotiation. He’s an ideologue, for whom correctness is more important than anything else. He’s of that section of the party that would infinitely rather be a righteous opposition than ever have to govern. All of this is well known to party people in and around Islington.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice and personable man, and principled in his way, but he’s about as electable as Idi Amin. Yes, Islington has returned him X number of times, but it’s ISLINGTON. Hardly a bellwether.
As many wiser heads than me have said, we’ve had one winning leader in the last 40 years. What do we do? Ostracise him. Until we find some way to leave Iraq behind and recognise the genuine achievements of 1994-2007, we’re fucked. No organisation in the world is as gleefully self destructive as the party I belong to.
Spot on, Bob.
Whether an election is “winnable” is impossible to say, five years out. It’s at least as much about how the current government performs as anything else. Not bothering to place yourself in a position to capitalise if they slip up is a terrible dereliction of duty which I doubt the electorate will forget in a hurry.
Just imagine if a few years back the Tories had collectively concluded that the next election was unwinnable, so they may as well forget Cameron, have a bit of fun and elect John Redwood as leader instead. That’s basically the equivalent of what’s happening here.
Incidentally, Jo Lean, formerly of this parish – who’s much more clued into the London party than I am – tells me that ol’ Jez is simply furious about the excellent @corbynjokes Twitter account, because he genuinely has no sense of humour at all. I think this is great.
It’s worse than that. At least Redwood actually had some cabinet experience. This is like the Tories deciding to make Douglas Carswell leader.
Of all the ways for Labour to end, ending as a farce is the cruelest. Cameron must be wanking himself into a coma.
“Cameron must be wanking himself into a coma”.
Lando, I salute you. This is perhaps the single greatest sentence ever posted on the afterword.
Disagree. If you want people to come back to the movement – or maybe even the party – the other three blank canvasses will not do that.
I can’t see me ever voting Labour again but I’ll be voting for JC on my Union ticket.
Bob quotes Zappa
Shall I alert the media sir?
It didn’t go unnoticed, don’t worry.
Yep. What @disappointmentbob said.
I’ve just blogged about this (I agree with much of what has been said above).
“The impulse to elect Mr. Corbyn looks -from the outside- like some kind of death wish, oddly reminiscent of when the Conservatives put Ian Duncan-Smith at the helm in 2001. IDS might have appealed to a large proportion of their grass roots supporters, but he had absolutely no chance of becoming Prime-Minister. Anyone who wasn’t a ‘grass roots’ Tory back then could see that, just as anyone who is not a grass roots ‘principled’ leftist now can see that the electorate will never hand Jeremy Corbyn the keys to 10 Downing Street.”
The full thing, for anyone who is interested, is here:
http://raymondweir.blogspot.co.uk/
The comparison with IDS is spot on. The Tories, having been decisively rejected by the electorate, decided in their wisdom that the answer was to become more right-wing than before. There is always a tendency amongst the true believers to reduce themselves to a sect. Look at Labour; look at the Republicans in the US.
It appears to my uneducated view that the problem is this obsession with Labour V Tory. Corbyn IS Labour, he’s the sort of man my Dad would have voted for as a working class northerner 50 – 60 years ago, unfortunately as my Dad discovered when he moved South and worked for BA that vision of Labour is so old fashioned that it is un-electable. Blair wasn’t Labour, not really but he continued under that name, but it wasn’t Labour. The Labour party that sticks to it’s traditions and values is morally the right way and Corbyn is the right man for the Labour Party. Someone somewhere needs to understand that some of us want a middle ground, it might take years but Clegg was almost there until he sold out. Who knows what ,momentum would have been gathered by the Liberal Democrats as a sensible middle ground opposition, we’ll never know. I don’t want the rich elite creaming everything off, I don’t want “Power To The People”, like most us I have to decide which I want less and vote for the other. Corbyn winning or losing is largely irrelevant outside of The Labour Party, its who takes the middle ground and what they do with it that more interests me.
It’s interesting to note your description of Blair as ‘not really Labour’ – of course, this point of view comes up ever more hysterically in the various comments sections and forums I frequent, usually with the ever-witty epithet ‘Bliar’ – but an argument I’ve put to friends espousing this view is ‘If he is such a Tory, why did he not join them forty years ago rather than Labour? There was nothing to stop him if he was genuinely so right wing. If he is what you believe he is, why did Michael Foot nurture Blair as his protege? Why did he become an MP in 1983 under the most Left-wing Labour manifesto, when it is assumed that he would have been more ideologically at home in the then high-profile SDP ?’ Many people seem to have difficulty with the notion that you can share the supposed core Labour values without being tied to a narrow, insular set of ‘pure’ political doctrines.
@black-type I guess in simple terms Blair was no Harold Wilson or Anthony Wedgwood-Benn. He even called it New Labour which by definition means it wasn’t old Labour which was what I was trying to say. The labour Party my Dad supported back in Bury in the late 40’s and 50’s was not the Party Blair wanted, just in the way he gave the banks free reign alone is enough evidence. It seems to be the one Corbyn wants it to return to although I’ll accept I could be wrong. Nothing wrong in my view with traditional Labour Party, probably a good thing but it’s a party for traditionalists with a conscience not career politicians who ultimately want power. If Corbyn loses he should take the Farage route and start his own far left party and all illusion that the Labour Party is left wing should be forgotten.
As an ironic twist to your premise, all the evidence suggests that Hilary Benn, scion of the torch carrier of those traditional Labour values, is an arch Blairite/moderniser. 😉
@dave-amitri
’50 to 60 years ago’
Precisely. If a week is a long time in politics, then half a century ago is when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. I am broadly in sympathy with Corbyn’s leftism, but I have to force myself to recognise that these ideals belong to another time. If he wins, the big electoral killers with be the perception that he’ll raise taxes, and the scrapping of a nuclear deterrant. Sound familiar?
I think he is great and is/will be/darn well should be a huge arsekick for labour. There isn’t an election for 4 and a half. He doesn’t, yet, have to worry about being unelectable. Labour has the opportunity to be drawn back together or to annihilate itself, the latter, I feel, more in the hand of the 3 other candidates and their cronies throwing out their toys, and not giving him a chance. Similar to Scotland, where the scottish labour party have their phoenix opportunity, as you can’t have a phoenix without an earlier inferno.
So, the plan is he’s just unelectable for a couple of years then? Good thing voters have short memories.
In five years time JC could be up against fucking Osborne. Now that I want to see. Why should the Labour Movement shuffle to the right to try and win some swing Tory voters? Any anyway, who swings between Tory and Labour? Really, what kind of person does that?
The kinds of evil bastards who will probably fail the ideological purity test required to vote Labour at the next election.
Time to change the electoral system maybe?
Plenty of former Labour seats went Tory in this year’s election, Ed Balls’s seat being the most high-profile.
In England, a fair number of voters seem to have left Labour for UKIP. I suspect that ( rightly or wrongly) Corbyn’s views and track record on a number of issues is unlikely to tempt them back.
If he wins it will be a brief and exciting tenure. 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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS91knuzoOA
Amongst the many shades of fuckery in all this, is the notion that Corbyn represents ‘traditional Labour’ in some way. He’s the archetypal London Labour Briefing rentaquote that traditional Labour members elsewhere in the country have despised.
Essentially, people have siezed this as another opportunity to give “Westminster” a kicking. If the end result is Corbyn being elected, then it will mean the end of Labour as a party of government, probably for the rest of my life. I’m a bit sad about that. It’s made worse by the fact that it is a self-inflicted wound. The notion of extending the franchise was hopelessly naive in the current climate. Scads of people with only a tenuous interest in Labour as a party of government (like, bo-ring!) have paid their £3 to turn the party into an unelectable but right-on opposition.
Apart from anything else, Corbyn would be attempting to lead a parliamentary party where the majority of members loathe him and where his serial “rebellions” have laid no foundation for loyalty.
And just to put the tin lid on it, he’s a believer in homeopathy. someone who believes in magic water just isn’t fit to hold a position of responsibility.
He seems like a nice enough chap, however he can look forward to reenacting Nicky Hutchinson’s post-election scene from Our Friends in the North come 2020.
All that said, the ballots have not yet been distributed. Not a vote has been cast. Sanity may yet break out.
Oh god. Nicky Hutchinson. That is spot on.
Well there was traditional Labour by the ton at Glasgow last night. They obviously are missing whatever you are seeing.
I saw the spirit of UCS and the wider Trade Union cause there. I saw Mary Barbour’s Army. I saw the Poll Tax demos. I saw the Bedroom Tax demos. I saw friends of mine singing songs that I identify with. And I saw a lot of the Yes movement too.
“The Yes movement”? People in sparkly capes singing nonsense in very high voices? Oh, Lordy…
Mmm. The short memories thing is not entirely reliable. Fairly or unfairly, many older heads are highly suspicious that a Corbyn victory would see the re-emergence of many of the old GLC and NUM gang. Now that really would sink Labour.
@lando-cakes
Homeopathy? Oh, FFS. It just gets worse and worse. 🙁
Mind you, it could solve the NHS funding crisis.
Yes, I’d much rather have a leader with a messiah complex about the Middle East than one who embraces homeopathy.
Don’t worry, Corbyn won’t need to worry about the Middle East at all: he’s a guarantee that the Labour Party will never do something so tawdry and morally compromising as actually forming a government. In fact, that’s his main selling point.
Just like his predecessors Brown and Miliband then?
Brown did form a government. He didn’t win an election. The only person in the party who’s showed any aptitude in that department over the last three decades is the one you’re slagging off above.
Yes, Brown was handed the baton by St Tony. Still doesn’t change the fact that the last two New Labour leaders were stamped no thanks by the electorate.
Impossible to have a serious discussion on the basis that Brown and Miliband were “New Labour Leaders”.
You’re about to get your man. Enjoy the moment, and I’ll see you back here in four and a half years so you can tell me that his pulverisation at the polls was also all Blair’s fault.
Can’t see where I’ve declared my support for Corbyn. But yeah, you’re right. I mean like hope is so last century.
The idea that Corbyn represents hope for anyone but the Tories is a tough one to defend. Taking an flyer on someone just because he doesn’t wear a suit and sounds a bit like the socialism rejected by the electorate time after time after time isn’t hope. It’s irresponsible – assuming the objective is to win. And I don’t think that is the Corbynites’ objective.
And pragmatism isn’t cyncism. Political parties exist to fight and win elections. You can “influence the debate” as much as you like but that doesn’t get bills through parliament.
Can I ask a practical question at this point?
Westminster! Where the Blairites dwell! Where the Red Tories live, and they do live well!
Ha ha whatever happened to Kid A?
Oi! I think you’ll find that’s mine.
Pfft
I’d much rather have neither, and – as far as I know – TB isn’t standing, is he? Mind you, I wouldn’t put it past him. When Yvette’s ‘people’ phoned me earlier to ask who I’d be voting for I did check, and she hasn’t got a messiah complex about the Middle East as far as they are aware. Just to be clear.
‘Fraid so:
http://hurryupharry.org/2015/07/18/jeremy-corbyn-on-homeopathy/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-signed-parliamentary-motion-in-support-of-homeopathy-in-2010-10393413.html
Burn the witch! Homeopathy: about as scientific as economics.
Another interpretation, if you read EDM 908, is that he failed to dismiss homeopathy out of hand – he joined 69 other MPs in suggesting the STC report into it could have been more thorough. I guess that is close enough to supporting it for most people. The new Lib Dem leader signed it too, incidentally.
Homeopathy is already available in the NHS.
…and that EDM points out that doctors who use it in a primary care setting weren’t consulted about its effectiveness for that particular report. Unfortunately five years on it’s unearthed as evidence that Corbyn believes in homeopathy. Failure to condemn = wholehearted support.
In his own words:
“I believe that homeo-meds works for some ppl and that it compliments ‘convential’ meds. they both come from organic matter…”
Seriously, WTF?
They works for some people (those who don’t have anything serious wrong with them in the first place) it is used alongside proper medication, and as for organic… I don’t know. Is water organic?
I frequently, well, not true, occasionally see folk with a belief in homeopathy. I don’t but given the inadequacies of the many existing orthodox remedies out there, sometimes, just sometimes, that belief, an uber placebo effect, will be enough to sway their immune system. The more I know the less I understand, but peoples beliefs are only ever rubbished at your peril in my world.
Where were we? O, yes, Corbyn? Well a lot of folk believe the lack of evidence.
It would be truer to say that it’s harmless for people who don’t have anything wrong with them. There’s no evidence that it has any effect at all beyond placebo.
No, water is not organic.
The British electorate, those that bother to vote, those that are not locked in to a particular set of party affiliations tend to vote against rather than for.
The Tories will be in power wreaking their particular brand of twatishness for a while then the public will get sick of the omnishambles they create and kick them out of power to give someone else the chance to foist their particular brand of twatishness upon us.
Some folk will profit. Most will just keep stumbling forwards as best they can and the poor will suffer the most regardless of which bunch of chancers and spivs are in supposed command.
I forgot to mention. I think Corbyn will win. It might make a refreshing change to have someone stood across the chamber from ‘Call me Dave’ who actually may take issue with some of Her Majesty’s Government’s more damaging and inane ideas.
If nothing else it should provide for a more entertaining five years than otherwise might be the case.
I think that, for all her current timidity and lacklustre campaign, Yvette Cooper has enough experience and substance to present serious problems to Cameron, particularly at the despatch box. He doesn’t cope well with uppity women, our Dave…
I would suggest that the main reason for Corbyn’s success is that he possesses the attribute that is currently highly prized, that of ‘authenticity’. He stands out from the others as being someone who will give a genuine answer to a question, rather than one that’s been tested in focus groups as being the least damaging.
He’s also helped by the sheer inadequacy of the other candidates.
@ianess is right about this. The other three are such empty vessels, promising such a slow miserable downward trudge into focus-grouped obscurity, that Corbyn’s campaign is lifted because it at least seems to promise something. Admittedly the something is a spectacular electoral implosion, but beggars can’t be choosers.
I disagree. Kendall, Burnham and Cooper are all pretty good. Cooper and Burnham potentially very good.
That was what I thought before the campaign started, but now all the candidates are sending me emails, sticking guff through my letterbox, even texting me, and it is some of the most uninspiring meaningless rubbish I have ever read. I had the highest hopes of Burnham, but his campaigning has been the most lacklustre of the lot. Cooper has probably been the strongest, but even then it’s hardly rallying stuff
Pollyanna.
It seems to me that we have become a bit jaded and cynical. When a third of the people don’t vote at all and the FPP system delivers a screwy outcome, it’s no wonder that politicians focus on the very minimum they need to do to get the seats. This makes the politician a tightrope walker, they keep going slowly, slowly, with no margin for error.
We have a House of Commons full of such people now, indistinguishable between Conservative and Labour.
I like the way Corbyn is basically saying bollocks to that. Naive though it may be, an approach based on principles will be a thing to see. He also hasn’t played along with the media – even if they catch Osborne and Cameron dogging on Wandsworth Common, I can imagine Corbyn using the air time to talk about the issues.
To say that there’s no difference between Labour and Tory MPs is just lazy nonsense.
Observe this graph illustrating the effects of the recent budget:
http://i1022.photobucket.com/albums/af344/embraman/budget%202015b.png
The Tories have made the 3 million poorest families in the UK worse off to the tune of £1K, by removing tax credits.
Labour created those credits, in an admirable redistribution of wealth.
I’d say that’s a significant difference.
I said MPs -what they look like, what they say, how they say it. To the public, there is no difference. New Labour made a virtue of that, so that voting Labour wasn’t so scary.
The actual policies, controlled by a small group of people, deliver the results you see in the graph. If the MPs were more readily identifiable then maybe the country would make the connection.
It’s what they *do* that matters. And as seen above, Labour (on that single measure alone – there are many others) made a huge difference. as I say, “They’re all the same” is just lazy nonsense.
If that was so very obvious, wouldn’t Milliband be in Number 10 right now?
As much as we would like it to be otherwise, politicians come across as politicians. Labour politicians have learned to come across like Tory politicians to make themselves electable. And it worked for quite a while.
Corbyn is likely to win because the others standing against him are so weak. They are also tainted with what Labour has stood for in recent years. I like the argument that Corbyn has gained ground and is listened to by Labour supporters because he seems closest to what traditional Labour stood for (a Socialist movement funded by the workers and their unions). Corbyn is possibly seen as a return to that. But that approach misses the point of British politics – gaining power by winning a general election. Corbyn’s not a leader and, like Ed Miliband, will lead lead Labour to Downing Street.
If Corbyn wins, the Labour grandees have already said they will work to remove him. That raises a number of questions, including the credibility of the way Labour chooses its leaders. It also begs the question about why they didn’t do that when Ed was leader – it was clear that he was not the man to win a general election for Labour.
All this is the consequence of the unions interfering the last time Labour picked a leader where Ed won, despite the fact that most Labour supporters wanted his brother David. Currently, David Miliband is the only person who could lead the Labour party to a general election victory. I really can’t think of anyone else, not have I seen anyone of his calibre. David Miliband returning to the UK political arena would almost certainly lead to his leading the Labour party and that is the likeliest outcome of the current Labour leadership struggle. The current leadership election is meaningless. They are wasting time and ensuring the the Tories remain in power for the next 10 years.
“Corbyn is close to traditional Labour” There is no measure by which this makes sense. Close to Denis Healy, Roy Hattersley, Ernest Bevin? The truth is that Corbyn represents a stand that has always been a small minority within Labour, from the Social Democratic Federation onwards. The confusion of this with ‘traditional Labour’ is just spin doctoring; nothing more, nothing less.
“Most Labour supporters wanted his brother, David” No, Ed got the most individual votes. There were no union block votes.
I don’t agree that David Miliband is a saviour in the wings.
David Miliband is just as much a never had a proper job, out of touch with ordinary people, career politician as his brother. He is not the answer, then again neither are any of the current leadership candidates.
Writing as someone who has never been affiliated with a political party – even in the days when I was in a trade union I used to opt out of the political levy – I think Labour has got this badly wrong.
It should have taken a step back, analysed the election defeat, worked out what it wanted to stand for, then begun the leadership selection process in the autumn. As it is I suspect it’s consigned itself to certain defeat until at least 2025 and denied us an effective opposition into the bargain.
Just seen a headline: ‘Gordon Brown warns Labour not be a party of protest by electing Corbyn’.
I don’t know, I quite like the idea of Labour being a party of protest.
If nothing else, the last month or so has been more interesting than the previous five years.
I also don’t buy the idea of the Tories laughing into their lager-tops over all this…..the very last thing the Conservatives want is an energetic, questioning opposition that has finally grown a pair.
What he actually said was “Labour should not become a party of permanent protest, rather than a party of government.”
Which pretty much sums up the choice.
It’s true it wouldn’t take much to improve on the current shadow cabinet, but I am not sure who Corbyn would be looking to for energetic questioning support. Diane Abbott ?
Nope, I’m not too sure either!
A comedian on Talk Sport (hmmm) a few years ago said ‘I like County Cricket for all the reasons people criticise it.’
I’d like Labour to adopt the same attitude.
Rejoice in what you can be, not what you think might appeal to people you probably don’t like anyway.
Eno joins the debate.
Mind you, Eno is also presumably an admirer of Bono. Make of that what you will.
Diane Abbott MP helps out a Big Issue seller, today
http://i627.photobucket.com/albums/tt351/mojoworking01/corbyn_zpst7rr9ygh.png
In brighter news, Diane could soon be shadow at either Health or Education. Comedy or what.
At least Diane has a completely unbiased and non-loopy view of the world. Oh yes.