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St Jeremy The Failure.

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Well it looks like St. Jeremy is going to win his second election, he`d better savour the result because it will be most certainly be the last election he will ever win.

Don`t get me wrong, in the `70`s in the `74 election that Heath had called due to the 3 day week and no telly after 10pm, early kick off`s for the footy, well not all were the cause for him to spit out the dummy. It was us the Mine Workers, not yet The Enemy Within, who were part of the cause. Anyhow during our 2nd strike of the `70`s we went canvassing for the Labour Party (I was then a paid up member) in Chorley, we increased the Tory majority by over 2,000! That bit of rambling was to get out my Socialist leanings, so I take no joy in believing that Jeremy Corbyn will preside in the break up of the Labour Party. He is a nice man, a man I hold responsible for Brexit`s success, a man with an ego the size of Tump`s wallett and a failure.

Those were my thoughts, yours?

1

Comments

  1. He may be nice on a personal level, but politically he has associated with some dodgy characters & causes over the years, any one of which would be enough to torpedo his hopes of becoming PM once the UK press get going during a general election campaign. If you think the abuse heaped on Ed Milliband was bad, wait until the Sun et al get their teeth into his support for the IRA, Hamas, Argentina, unilateral disarmament, etc.

    • I don’t think he thinks that at all. I think he thinks (rightly or wrongly) that he can win. This is not Caligula’s horse we’re talking about here, he was elected twice with a hefty majority to lead the party into the next election. Yes, he seems naive and unworldly, but who’s to say what will happen, with all the weird stuff that’s gone on in the last 6 months?

  3. I think that the Labour Party is about to enter a long, dark teatime of the soul. Forthcoming boundary changes aren’t going to help their cause anytime soon, but I just wish that the PLP could spend half the energy it does on trying to oust their (democratically elected) leader in having a go at some of the Government’s more egregious works. Seems like a terrible waste of effort.

  4. I was trying to think of a politician who is/was a success. Erm…. John Major managed to achieve quite a bit in difficult circumstances? Maybe? Tony won elections as much as Maggie but did as much damage. Er… I’m really struggling here. Help!

    • The stock answer to that is Attlee, who presided over a government which did indeed make a positive transformative difference to the nation at the time. Of course, the Corbynistas hold this up as the example to which their man aspires. They fail to grasp – or don’t want to acknowledge – that the country and indeed the world has changed, changed utterly – economically, politically and socially. And it’s also the case that the Attlee government was essentially implementing a policy on the Welfare State that was instigated during the war, by a Liberal no less, that was essentially agreed across the spectrum and would have been introduced in much the same form by whoever came to power.

  5. Behind Corbyn’s ‘nice guy’ persona is a seething mass of passive aggression (I find it plain to see, as I have the same qualities). So he’s happy to continue to offer mealy-mouthed condemnation of the abuse and intimidation that is being done in his name, by trying to present it as an equal problem from all sides and therefore giving his tacit approval for it to continue by not sanctioning those responsible.

  6. The Lib Dems must be loving this. Dead and buried two years ago, now they have an opportunity to cream off the centre left support that has been alienated by Momentum and become the genuine second party while Labour wither into insignificance patting themselves on the back for getting five hundred people to a meeting in a constituency of seventy thousand.

            • Clegg was the main reason that the LD’s were wiped out at the 2015 election. Very few people on the left of centre were prepared to vote for a party led by a man who was so willing to bend over and be shafted by the Bullingdon Club faction leading the Tories. I was very surprised that he even retained his seat, considering that it includes the major areas of student accommodation in Sheffield, the group of people he pissed off more than most with his mendacious back-tracking on student fees.

              • He was probably surprised too, but I suspect he owes his seat to a lot of Tory voters voting LD tactically. Or as it turns out, sadistically. Voting for Clegg to retain his seat, sans party, sans power.

              • I don’t really agree with Twang – it was just too good of an opportunity to use that Cameron line to miss. As long as they don’t bring back Cyril Smith, Jeremy Thorpe or any other creepy old monsters.

              • Unfair. Clegg was left with the only viable decision in 2010; the people didn’t trust the Tories enough to give them a majority, had clearly rejected Labour and wouldn’t have tolerated a LibDem-Lab deal, so he made the only realistic choice available. In government, the LDs reined in a lot of the more extreme Tory excesses (as we’ve seen since they did achieve a majority). Yes, they were shafted and Clegg did have to make a U-turn on the tuition fees policy, but that’s realpolitik, and reflects their naivety and relative size in the coalition partnership, along with the Tories’ ruthlessness and voter fickleness rather than any fundamental ideological betrayal.

                • A and indeed, men BT. Couldn’t have put it better myself. I am weary of explaining this to people.Clegg also said that in the event of a hung parliament he’d give the party that got the most votes first dibs. And Labour couldn’t wait to go into opposition. Anyway, 5 minutes with Wikipedia will explain to you that liberals and lefties are not the same thing.

                • Coalition was not the only decision, it was a choice. One i’d probably have gone for myself but Clegg should not be allowed to say it was not his idea.
                  Labour would have been happy to try and cling on (though they lost their real chance when Brown bottled the early election), but Clegg was never serious about talking to them.
                  Clegg never realised that he was being set up

  7. I’ve been a Labour member for – crivvens – 36 years. At times it was like a second job but these days I’m pretty much an armchair activist, largely due to the nature of my work.

    I find the current self-inflicted wound heart-breaking and I fear it may be terminal. The process by which the slightly weird London Labour Briefing sect came to be re-branded as ‘traditional Labour’ still leaves me bewildered. at bottom there’s a huge failure of political education – too much time spent on winning and doing, not enough time on the ‘why’. But hindsights a great thing.

    Corbyn and his ilk don’t actually care much for the messy business of winning elections and the compromises of power. They’re much happier going to meetings, selling each other newspapers and being angry. Their politics of permanent grievance is, quite literally, infantile.

    Of course, they’ll do just fine under permanent Tory government. politics will continue to be a lovely hobby. The country as a whole will lose and those on the bottom of the heap will lose most of all. As I say, heartbreaking.

  8. Being a resident of NI, where we only get an opportunity to vote for tribalist, parochial showers of scumbags, the politics of the rest of Britain are a kind of spectator sport.

    I think Jeremy’s a tired old throwback and McDonnell a dangerous, mad-eyed sidekick – they’re both unelectable dinosaurs whose concentrated, fervent member-of-the-party fanbase has clearly created this fascinating problem. It’s a bit like all those old prog-rock or pop has-beens who traversed the 1980s/90s by saying to people back home, where they couldn’t get arrested, ‘Ah, but we’re big in Japan…’

    Jeremy and his unelectable cronies are ‘big in the Labour Party’ but are unlikely to get enough fans out for a bona fide tour of Britain any time soon.

    Tim Farron is just an annoying, rather self-righteous little man.

    No party lasts forever. The majority of the PLP should have the integrity to become a new party.

  9. I can’t believe all the revisionists who say nothing good happened under Tony Blair simply because they can’t forgive his cosying up to GWB and leading us into a war we had no right to wage. Aside from his faux pas and it was a big one the rest of his tenure oversaw a lot of positive change in this country. Corbyn on the other hand seems to have a bunch of thugs at his beck and call ready to employ dirty tactics if they don’t get their own way. What kind of socialism is that? Voted Labour all my life but I cannot support this clown even though he might have nice ideals. We need more than that from a leader.

      • In addition to a war, waged because of his beliefs, I can’t forgive Blair for what he allowed to happen to the NHS. The unbelievably high mortgage repayments on Private Finance Initiative contracts, agreed during his tenure, are a major cause for the squeeze on finances the NHS faces today. It was entirely predictable and out ways any progress he made on waiting times. Also, he introduced many senseless targets for political purposes. The 4 hour trolley wait target in A/E has led directly to a huge increase in expensive admissions lasting less than a day.

          • And a necessary one. It allowed massive investment in infrastructure. The alternative – public borrowing – just wasn’t an option then (Labour govt. borrows lots of money, pound falls, crisis, spending cuts etc.)

            • Maybe. What was criminal was allowing the private companies to run rings round the government when drawing up the contracts. Basically, they build you a house for £1 million. Your mortgage rate is astronomical and you pay £250k a year for thirty years. At the end of the thirty years, the private company still own the building. Also, if any work needs doing, such as changing a light bulb, only that company can provide the service at extortionate rates. This money all comes off the NHS before a single item of healthcare is bought.

              In principle, PFI is a good idea. In practice, it is a financial millstone round the public sectors neck because the Blair government were too lilly-liveried and inexperienced at the negotiating table. It is exactly the same as the Dept of Health and Pharma.

    • Mrs birdy is a Labour Party member, I no longer can belong to a party that is led by this man. The only answer is for those Labour MPs, as someone has already suggested, to form a breakaway party before those woeful Liberal Democrats wake up and become, oh fuck it. It breaks my heart to see the state of this nation with the tories doing whatever they want, that cunt Farage opening his ugly mouth spouting 14 year old politics, St Jeremy with his smug gob talking shite and the tories, oh I`ve commented on them. Is this a dream?

  11. Quite frankly depressing and not in the least bit surprising. The rebellion was beyond lame and Owen Smith was useless – we should talk with Isis (eh, what about exactly ? If you promise to leave us alone, we’ll let you keep your sex slaves perhaps).

    I despise Corbyn, his acolytes and the cult that has grown up alongside him. I look at him and the way his supporters react and I see a mad cult, no different to some crazed religious cult (ironic really given Corbyn’s constant need to appease Islamic theocracies). It’s all about him & loyalty to the great leader and this coming from one of the most disloyal backbenchers in Labour’s history who let’s not forget voted against the Irish peace process (those IRA people are much more reasonable), voted against military intervention in the Balkans (a belatedly honourable thing that Blair did to save the Kosovans for being slaughtered), finds no problem with Russian intervention in the Crimea and Ukraine (anti-imperialist you see – very honourable) and the very real stain of anti-semitism which has not gone away to despite Chakrabati’s whitewash. Listen to Corbyn, he will never refer to anti-semitism, he will reply with his standard “I am against all racism, including Islamophobia”. There has been too much wish fulfilment and bollocks spoken about this, everybody says Corbyn is too decent and principled to be anti semitic and yet he shares platforms with some truly loathsome characters and invites them to the houses of parliament. He is only sharing platforms, not sharing their views, they say. I believe this is a lie, it has not been challenged by the media and I would argue he has not challenged these speakers and their views at all. He refused to share a platform with Tory remainers during the referendum because they are presumably all Tory scum, but sharing platforms with anti-semites, holocaust deniers – no problem. He seems to think he can bring peace to the Middle East by inviting these nutters in for a cup of tea and yet campaign to deny an elected Israeli politician to enter this country. Strange sort of peace process.

    I despair; we have a not particularly efficient govt, we have a useless and morally stained opposition and a US presidential election on the horizon, just to cheer us all up. I’m off for a beer.

  13. The contest was over as soon as Corbyn was confirmed on the ballot so no surprise today, just more time lost before Labour can get back to the business of ousting the Tories. I thought Corbyn would be further down that path by now – it’s been a year, and still no sign of a manifesto that won’t utterly destroy Labour’s support across the country. But I have started to like him personally a little, and I have a lot of sympathy for those who think the media are biased against him (the recent Channel 4 ‘exposure’ of Momentum was desperate).

    It’s his fans I’m worried about. They remind me of me at 18 – thinking that any politician who doesn’t instantly deliver global equality and world peace is either inept or corrupt, and not realising that everyone, on the left at least, starts from the principles of creating equal opportunities, fighting greed and avoiding wars. But after a short period where it’s justifiable to wave placards and shout at elected representatives, you really ought to move on to the stage where you work towards these goals. They can’t be done without consensus and compromise, and it takes so long that pretty soon there’s another generation of 18 year olds standing in front of you, yelling at you for being part of the problem. The Corbynists are avoiding the terrible realisation that actually taking responsibility for changing things will make you unpopular with the ‘principled but pointless’ mob by clinging to that title themselves.

  14. Clearly there’s an enormous groundswell of antipathy towards Corbyn from Afterworders, which really made me think twice before posting my views.

    I think he has his faults, but like enough of what he is and is trying to do to hope for a way out of the mess the Labour Party is now in.

    On a one-to-one level, he seems to communicate well with people, listening to and valuing their opinion. A lot of his schtick seems to have been about bringing people’s voices into the party, which must have resonated with enough people to make the membership grow so much (all swivel-eyed teenage/twenty-something ideologues – hard to believe). Who knows what will result from his call, post-reelection, to activate that membership – maybe stir debate outside the margins set in the pages of the tabloids?

    I think he is a man of principle whose support for causes in the past may have been controversial, but which seems to have been internationalist and striving for global justice. I think the article here (http://crookedtimber.org/2016/05/01/antisemitism-in-the-labour-party-whats-going-on/) responds quite well to the criticisms of antisemitism directed his way.

    I’d accept that he lacks charisma and directive leadership, that he can come across as passive-aggressive and he’s got an ego (not surprising, given the rush to the head power must have given him). It’s probably been a steep learning curve since 2015. He also seems to have been hamstrung by an uncooperative Parliamentary Party and communications machine. This may not change, and the party could collapse. But neither wing of the party would benefit from that – an incentive, if any, to work hard and seek compromise.

    As for winning or losing the next election, I think Corbyn taps into a lot of frustration with the last years of coalition and then Conservative austerity, which could play better with the electorate than the evidently-biased media would like to think.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7lsRbDKOXg Although opposition parties traditionally seem to avoid giving too much away too soon in the parliamentary cycle, it would give much-needed substance to the anti-austerity rhetoric to see rigorous presentation of coherent economic policies.

    Psephologically, I think any resurgence in Lib Dem support could, paradoxically, be a good thing for the Labour Party. I suspect Farron’s party would eat into the Tory majority by reattracting voters in rural constituencies where they voted anyone but Tory or LibDem last time (thus splitting the vote against the, previously second-placed, Tory candidate). Labour might lose some seats to the Lib Dems where there is a flow of voters towards the centre from both ends of the spectrum, but a coalition of centre-left progressive Parties might be a reasonable outcome from that.

    • Well said sir, have an up. It’s very easy to ‘hate’/despise/jeer at Corbyn, but I don’t see any other politician in the current demented landscape who I feel so comfortable with.

    • Well-argued, Sal. I felt a bit like that after the first leadership election. I voted for Burnham that time, but when Corbyn won I listened to what he had to say about new kinds of politics and not being ruled by the media. I thought “you know what, that sounds pretty good”, and I was cautiously optimistic. But since then, as far as I can see, he’s accomplished nothing towards any of those goals. All he has done is go round the country and preach to the already converted, with no outreach. I don’t think I’ve heard one word of substance from him. As has been widely said, his referendum performance was disastrous and showed him to be at best incompetent and at worst a hypocrite supporting a cause he didn’t believe in. If he failed to connect with the wider public then, how is he going to do it come a general election?
      I would love nothing more than to be proved wrong, and for there to be a huge groundswell of support among the previously alienated and disenfranchised that puts a Labour government into power with a commanding mandate, but then I’d also like a big house in the country and a private jet. Neither are going to happen.

      • Thanks, @kid-dynamite. I’m not a Labour Party member (never have been), and only voted for them once (1997), but I would like a coherent alternative to the Conservatives, which under the rigged game that is FPTP means a functioning Labour Party. I watched Corbyn speaking last year and was impressed.

        Since then, he’s waded through treacle, which could be playing the long game, difficulties with the Party/media or incompetence. As a beacon for better values, he does (sorely) need a capable team around him to express those ideals in believable, workable policies.

        There was no good outcome from the referenDUMB – a yes/no straight majority response to a complicated question, which cut haphazardly across the political spectrum. Labour did itself no favours by associating so closely with the Conservatives over the Scottish question, a factor which may have been significant in deciding Corbyn’s actions. Rare was the Remainer able to give a clear reason to support their case without adding the qualifier that the institution(s) needed reform, even without the lies and lack of informed views blaring across the headlines. Give him a cause he feels more strongly about, and his speeches ring with passion – in the general election, the politicians choose the battlegrounds.

        I wouldn’t assume anything about the next 3-4 years, but, with the involvement of the wider Labour Party and a serious Keynesian alternative to austerity, he might at least strengthen the Labour vote. Enough votes for other non-Tory candidates and the tunnel ahead doesn’t look so black.

        So, not unqualified support for him – but hopefully more than just a clutching at straws as the last hay wagon of progressive politics trundles towards the sunset.

  15. I think the PLP can set up their own party and if enough of them do it, they can become Her Majesty’s Opposition, can’t they? This doesn’t force a By-election – my understanding is that they can just do it.

    • The Sunday Times has run this story a couple of er… times, although the lack of coverage anywhere else makes me wonder if there is anything to it. The 4th biggest party in the Commons – with 25 MPs – is the Co-Operative Party, who operate under an electoral pact with Labour. They are officially recognised by the Electoral Commission as a prty in their own right and so meet the criteria – assuming enough Labour MPs “switched” party – John Bercow would need to apply if he were asked to designate the Co-Op as the opposition instead of Labour. Stella Creasy and Stephen Twigg are part of the 2.

      In theory, if JC’s crew now push for the de-selection of anyone refusing to swear allegiance, trying to bring the Co-Op to the fore might be an option. There’s obviously a risk that getting the numbers wrong would open the door to the SNP. The other problem is the Co-Op brand is somewhat tainted even if the bank was sold off some years back.

      • Fascinating – who knew? I thought all these factions within the Labour Party (all these Momentums, Labour Forward, Lavbour Behind, Lefty Marxist Has-Beens, Socialist Militant Thuggery, etc etc) were just that – like daft little gangs and cliques run by sulkers and power-trippers. But one’s an actual Party within a Party. Wow… Problem solved, you’d have though – PLPers who think Jeremy’s poison, just jump ship to the Co-op and let Jezza captain his fantasy ship into oblivion.

  16. Well said, Salwarpe, for giving a considered other side of the coin. Just from an across-the-sea observer’s perspective, I see a rather steely nastiness in Jeremy and most definitely in McDonnell. I found Jeremy’s comments to Laura Keunnesberg tonight – in reply to her suggestions that he could easily do two things to match his words about ‘bringing the party together’ (rule out deselections of MPs who don’t agree with him and allow PLP voting for at least some shadow cabinet posts) – rather chilling. He said, ‘We’ll see some changes in the next few weeks’ and, in response to probing that that might sound worrying to some PLP people, ‘they’ve no need to be worried, we’re a democratic party’. It sounded like bloody Stalin or Mao rubbing his hands together and telling people not to worry about the gates of that compound, it was all for the good of the people, and the party had spoken…

    All this stuff of not liking austerity – who does? But sometimes you just have to grow up and get real and accept that you have to cut your cloth (and the country’s) according to what’s available.

    Momentum: a shower of 70s Dave Spart banner-waving, bully-boy, student-union fantasists.

    • Thanks, Colin-H. Like I said before, I’d say I’m more of a give-the-guy/Party more of a chance to prove himself/rope to hang himself/themselves kind of person than an out and out supporter, but I’ll take tails if heads has already been chosen.

      Even somebody as studiously unpolished a truth teller as Corbyn is arguably sophisticated enough a politician to choose his words carefully – which means the phrases used in the Kuenssberg interview (just watched for the first time) are open for interpretation. It doesn’t take an expert (phew, says Gove) to expect there to be turmoil (change) ahead in the Labour Party as they regroup and argue over elections to the shadow cabinet/prepare for constituency boundary changes/consider how best to work with their membership/support.

      You picked up on the steel, I picked up on his re-emphasis on not being a leader who imposes decisions on constituencies, who said MPs should not worry about deselection, and that he hoped local Parties would recognize and support their MPs.

      That’s not to say there’s not steel there – he and McDonnell have their convictions which they clearly defend against opposing views. Given the robust (putting it mildly) assessment Kuenssberg has dished out on his leadership since the outset, I thought he tried to keep their conversation civil and friendly.

      I don’t think it’s a question of not liking austerity, more a challenging of whether it has done anything positive for the economy while further impoverishing those least able to manage. Frankly, I’d rather the government had cut the cloth towards more investment in infrastructure and education than tax cuts and the extreme programme of privatization that Osbourne was supposed to be engaged in.

      Momentum is a conundrum for me. I don’t frequent Twitter, so I am spared the tweet storms as people spray 140 characters at each other. Are the hostile tweets all from Momentum supporters? Is it possible to tell? Are Labour constituency meetings overwhelmed by fervent newcomers shouting down any dissent from the Corbyn line? Funnily enough, there doesn’t seem to be a neutral assessment.

      Momentum has a membership of 17,000, so it’s clearly only a part of the new Labour membership. It’s open to non-Labour Party members – part of a broader progressive left movement, so I guess accusations of entryism/fears of the influence of non-Party members might be justified, and may explain the rejection of new members prior to this election.

      FPTP encourages rigid Party tribalism, confining Dennis Skinner and Chuka Umunna, John Redwood and Kenneth Clarke to the same parties. But as the Tory Party swimming in a sea of C of E, village fetes and summer sporting events, the Labour Party emerges from a wider left of unions, pressure groups and campaigning organisations. Whether they like it or not, the distinction between members and non-members must have always been somewhat grey, and the determination of what makes a typical member hard to call.

      With social media enabling an infinite range of groups to share, discuss and support different combinations of policies across the spectrum, as well as greater and more immediate access to information about Party policies, MPs’ voting records, is it any wonder Party boundaries, such as they are, are being tested through groups such as Momentum? Corbyn talks about ‘a new kind of(more inclusive) politics. How should the UK political system adapt to this reality?

  17. Watching all this from 12,000 miles away I’m baffled and saddened seeing the opposition party self destruct. Call me an old fashioned lefty but I quite liked the NHS, the BBC and government-funded schools and universities. I was one of the lucky generation that grew up when all this was free. I’ll even admit to missing British Rail. Their ham sandwiches may have been terrible but at least they could run a reliable and affordable train service between Leeds and Liverpool on which you could have a chance of getting a seat.
    I find it hard to fathom why Corbyn seems to inspire such loathing among so many otherwise progressive people, whereas Theresa May gets nary a mention. I don’t follow UK politics all that closely these days, but on the few times I’ve read about Corbyn he seems to be speaking in defence of things like the NHS. He does come across like the stereotype Polytechnic sociology lecturer lefty, but I’d prefer that to the likes of Blair and Mandelson. Besides, with Scotland now totally SNP, I presume England is likely to be Tory/UKIP for a generation or two anyway.

    • Scotland isn’t ‘totally SNP’, they had their Holyrood majority cut at the Scottish parliamentary elections in May. And three of their Westminster constituencies are filled by Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem MPs.

      • Three WM seats are held by unionists. Any other party would kill for that score. Holyrood was designed so that no party would ever have a majority. We’ve smashed that ceiling once and done well enough another time. I’m quite pleased the SNP don’t have a majority; having to work with the Scottish Greens is no bad thing.

  18. Maybe my view as a “floating” voter may count for something? I see a pleasing side of Corbyn in refusing to involve himself in the childish nonsense and rhetoric we saw in the lead up to Brexit. I suspect we’ll see some grown up debating in the house between him and Theresa May. I sense, like Brexit, that among voters there is a desire for something different, Corbyn is definitely that. Don’t forget, again like Brexit, here we discuss the finer details and drill down into every wart, that’s not the case around the watercoolers or in front of most TV’s where X Factor and strictly are far more important . The majority will have a decision ultimately based on him vs her or possibly them, no more than that. I don’t think a Labour victory is possible under Corbyn because May seems like a steady hand. I genuinely think he would have had a chance against Cameron.

  19. I live in a ward where people vote Labour. So do the neighbouring wards. But these are socially conservative Labour voters. They are very suspicious of Jeremy Corbyn’s views on defence, very hostile on immigration and many of them support ‘tougher’ approaches to benefits. Whilst he does not have to pander to these views, he does have to do something to win them over. Thus far I can’t see any evidence that he can do so. And God help any keen Momentum members who turn up for a bit of canvassing.

    Corbyn actually attended an activists conference here earlier in the year. The day before and the day after he came he went on inner city walkabouts in places that looked remarkably similar to North London. For whatever reason he didn’t venture out from the school where the activists were meeting. 2 minutes walk away is an estate in one of the poorest wards in the country. Wrong sort of Labour voters, perhaps.

    • Ernie, I travel for work. Last week I was in Taunton. I can tell you it has a railway station, a hotel and a hospital. And something that might have been a church or a school (couldn’t tell). There are lots of reasons to criticse Corbyn. Not doing things that aren’t on his (busy) schedule shouldnt be one of them. He went to a conference, not a fact finding tour.

      • Just pointing out that he appeared to find time for walkabouts in areas where, frankly, they would vote for anyone or anything with a Labour rosette. Perhaps it was just coincidence that he couldn’t find time to show his face in a more challenging environment. Who knows. My main point is that if he continues to simply play to his home crowd then he will achieve nothing.

        By the way, a poll today suggests that the only current Labour policy that is popular with voters is renationalising the railways. Despite what Owen Jones appears to believe, that really isn’t a big enough issue.

        • And that’s a better point (IMHO).
          50% of the voters voted hard right (Tory and UKIP). So, do I’m not surprised few Labour policies are popular. Mind you until recently I had a hard time remembering what they were apart from “not being quite as bad as the Tories”.
          We are in a time of extremes – is it surprising that a hard left is rising to oppose the hard right? The Centre cannot hold.
          Personally I am now far to the Right of the Labour Party whilst still so far left of the Tories that May probably wants me locked up.

          • In fairness, the poll seems to have ignored policies which might have got a favourable response such as abolition of tuition fees, free child care etc. Instead it focussed on Trident, cuts in defence spending, removing the benefits cap and Syrian refugees. As I inferred earlier, a fair number of the Labour voters where I live are somewhere to right of Nigel Farage on these issues.

  20. Blaming Corbyn for Brexit is ridiculous. The blame lies with Cameron. Any Labour voter should make that point. Labour has shot itself in the foot over this. If Brexit is a success May will claim credit. if it is a failure they will blame Labour, and use Labour MPs and supportrs statements as the “proof”.

    May did far less than Corbyn in the referendum and has a free ride from anti-corbynistas.

    • According to a reputable survey:

      63% of Labour voters who voted in the referendum voted Remain
      64% of SNP voters voted Remain.

      Corbyn failed to rally his troops to the cause, whereas the sainted Sturgeon showed every other politician how it’s done.

      There are a lot of mis-truths about the referendum. That’s politics, I suppose. Nicola comes across well on the tellybox, whereas Jeremy doesn’t. The truth is they both equally (statistically) failed to persuade more than a third of their voters to Remain. You could put it another way; they both equally succeeded in persuading nearly two thirds of their voters to Remain.

  21. In an era of growing self-employment, declining manufacturing, the collapse of trade unions, increasing use of technology and the knowledge economy, a shift to small and medium sized employers and the sense that many of the big idealogical battles have been settled, what exactly does the Labour party stand for? It doesn’t seem to have understood the changes that have happened to advanced Western economies since the mid 70s – when it last had a Chancellor who said “We used to think you could spend your way out of recession and increase employment by boosting government spending… That option no longer exists. And in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion… by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.”

    • Very goodpoint, Bart – for some reason I get really annoyed when someone comes on TV spouting about ‘the Labour movement’. What movement? Why? Grow up. All this stuff about ‘the workers’ is just a load of out of date claptrap as far as I can see. I’ve been a low-paid employee of a public sector organisation in my time but on the one occasion where I really needed a union to help me with something they proved useless – just another big organisation with crap employees who took the p***. And worse, when I tried to find another union to join – someone else to help me in a time of need – none would allow me in given the context: they wouldn’t ‘go against’ another union even when they were flagrantly letting me, a member, down. One day I even went down to the HQ and buttonholed the head of the union I was lumbered with and said, ‘Look, I’m really struggling here and this guy who’s meant to be helping me just never gets in touch, never responds to phone messages, his secretary can’t find him…’ All he gave me was folksy platitudes, ‘Ah, I’m sure [name deleted] will sort it all out…’ He didn’t. He was useless. The head of the union was useless. The monthly fee I’d been paying turned out to be useless. The one person who helped, actually, who really made a difference, was someone I met on the old Word forum.

      So all these po-faced old class-war dinosaurs can shove their ‘movement’ up their backsides. You come into the world on your own, you leave it on your own, and in between you do the best you can with the best friends you can find and help them like you hope they’ll help you, if need be. All large organisations – unions as much as large employers – are essentially bloated, amoral machines. Avoid both if you can, and don’t expect one to be better than the other.

      • Your experience and views mean you will be welcomed on the Tory party. The Labour Party is a collective fantasy that there is a better way than “each for their own”. OF course the strength and weakness of that view is people.

        I would argue though that what set homo sapiens apart from other animals is co-operation rather than looking ourselves and our own.

        • Ah, but I’m all for cooperation between people and active compassion, and people who know me will know that. My ‘experience’, in a nutshell, is that large organisations are inherently amoral and subject to greasy-pole climbing by careerists, box-tickers and power-trippers – that’s unions as much as banks and public sector bodies. I’m not for trampling over people for my own benefit – which is what a caricature Conservative Party member is, isn’t it? – I’m for getting through life by helping people I care about as much as I can and by avoiding organisations, and most certainly avoiding political parties of all types.

          • Oddly enough the Conservatives have the same attitude. Most of them are not frothing at the mouth “trample the poor” types. They just believe in self-reliance, looking after your own, and being looked after by your own. With a side dish of people who are down on their luck probably deserve to be. They tend to not like large organisations, and are keen on charity to the deserving poor.
            When they appoint “people like us” to the job/board/whatever they are doing so because the believe that “people like us” are better than the alternative. What you call the greasy pole they call ambition, hard work and wealth creation.

            The Labour Party believes there is power in a Union, and that only by organising collectively can we effectively counterbalance the power that comes from wealth. So it is inherently large organisation (Union) and probably large government.
            Seriously – talk to some Conservatives. You might find more in common than you expect. And their party could do with more compassionate people.

            • But Paul, as I said above – I live in NI and we don’t get a chance to vote for GB parties. Okay, in the past 5-6 years there has been something called Conservatives NI which I think is associted with the Con party GB in some way, but I’ve met one or two of them and they’re swivel-eyes loons who have no party machine/resources so voting for them would be a waste of time. In my constituency, for many years, we had an angry, sectarian man stuck firmly in the past and whose expenses, nepotism and ongoing whiff of dodgy property activities were a disgrace. Unfortunately he got voted in time after time. I either didn’t vote, voted for a genuine loony (monster raving etc) or voted Alliance – a non-sectarian NI party. (Actually, one year I was among the 12 constituents necessary to get 50s crooner Ronnie Carroll on the ballot.)

              Amazingly one year the constituency had had enough of the vile man and an Alliance candidate became an MP! The following election the vile man’s party struck a deal with another party of their sect so that the latter did not field a candidate in my area while the opposite happened in a different area. The bastards. The Alliance vote still went up, but not enough to keep the bigots out.

              This is what we deal with here. Corbyn and Cameron et al are just a daft sideshow were I live.

              • Colin, sorry hadn’t picked up you are in NI. Yeah, you guys get the shaft in terms of democracy. And the Conservatives you are going to get are more likely to be of the swivel eyed variety given that anyone more serious about politics will know they are on a hiding to nothing and cannot win. You get left with the zealots.

                • With you weed out the zealots, the nutters, the educationally challenged and the dodgy guys with shell suits and paramilitary moustaches you really are left with very, very few people to even consider voting for over here. Extremely dubious stuff about party funding, monies getting diverted to non-existent think-tanks, expenses, property deals, etc is tolerated, or brushed under the carpet, over here because – I, and everyone else, assume – keeping Stormont going in some form is bigger than clamping down on the crooks. It would end careers in GB, but seemingly not here. We have some long-running scandal about an agency called NAMA here at the moment. I have no idea what it’s about save that it’s been dragging on forever and someone somewhere – and probably high up -has been creaming money off public funds (or something). It’s too depressing to keep up with local news so I don’t bother.

    • in reply to @Bartleby – you raise a good point. I think the traditional link between Labour and trade unions may have had it’s day. The days of union dues paid by pay roll deduction are dead on their feet, and I think they’d struggle to prove their worth independently. The challenge is for both / either of them to find new ways to represent those seeking to earn a living with companies like Uber (fascinating write up in yesterday’s S-Times magazine) Deliveroo or the ubiquitous zero hours contracts so beloved by Mike Ashley and others like him, or champion the employment and taxation terms of global giants like Amazon. The obvious ground for Labour would be to take back the Living Wage and set out the alternative to austerity economics, which seems to come far more effectively from the SNP.

      Nice Jim Callaghan quote though – I’ve seen it before in monetarist tracts. I can’t resist a return of service; if only Osborne could show such contrition over the deficit removal he first announced would be gone by 2015, and kept getting moved out until he disappeared instead. No such promises from “Showtime” Hammond.

      • Big Jim was big enough to admit he’d learnt something. Mind you, after having to go cap in hand to the IMF for a bailout, he had little alternative. Osborne managed to avoid that ignominy. To be fair to GO, whilst the country understood that the belt needed to be tightened, I don’t think they were ready for the kind of axe-swinging that post-IMF Labour imposed (actual meaningful real cuts in “our” NHS – impossible to imagine now perhaps) and the Eurozone sclerosis put paid to the OBR and other forecasts on which GO based his hubristic defecit reduction plans. His aim was good, albeit the lesson for a politician is probably to stick to unmeasurable and meaningless goals, like the Ed Stone.

        I’m not convinced that “taking back” the Living Wage and setting out an ‘alternative’ to austerity (which can only mean continuing to live beyond our means) could form the bedrock of a renewed Labour party. And you’re right that the union link is problematic – harking back to an era of industrial strife, closed shops, collective bargaining, block votes that are about as relevant to the twenty first century as buggy whips, seed drills and scurvy.

        Until Labour has something to say to a twenty first century western democracy beyond po-faced, holier than thou, joyless political correctness, spending money we haven’t got, demonising their opponents and supporters, total incomprehension with private enterprise and tut-tutting at every attempt to improve outcomes on what will always be scarce resources, they are doomed to irrelevance.

        • Is Corbyn unrealistic and backward looking? Are unions old fashioned? Maybe, but…….

          The Uber/amazon/sportsdirect model of employment is becoming normalized and jobs that previously provided careers no longer provide any long term security. For example, many teachers are now on cannon fodder contracts; add to the mix, across the board erosion of pensions rights and huge polarizations of wealth.

          So what if JC and his acolytes do want to take us back to mid-twentieth century model of public ownership, increased workers power, and decreased levels of wage inequality. Well, I am fine with that because what is slowly happening before our eyes is something even more old fashioned: the revival of a serf culture.

          While we are at it, quite frankly, GO’s approach was completely silly. We certainly didn’t need “belt tightening” and, even if we did, his attempts at austerity were comically unsuccessful:

          http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/2016/09/20/what-if-the-national-economy-is-like-a-household-budget/

          If this was the common sense approach to solve the global problems created by the wealth creators of Wall Street and the City of London why were we just about the only country to take it?

          • JC’s Labour can promise renationalisation, state control of incomes, contract terms, rents, prices, increases in ‘workers’ power’, wealth taxes, punitive levels of income tax etc. They can set the minimum wage at £100 an hour if they like. These policies have been tested to destruction, both here in the pre-1979 era as well as across Europe, where the relationship between inflexible, wish list employment contracts and miserably high level of unemployment is still not understood. These policies always have the same effect – reduced employment, declining national income, increases in inflation, a lower tax take and ultimately, you end up running out of other people’s money.

            The point is, Labour isn’t going to appeal to a majority of voters offering these sorts of policies. The country has had a taste of bank runs, near financial meltdown and being told there’s no money left. My sense is that they don’t have much appetite to believe in a high spending nirvana any time soon.

                • Other people’s money is everything not appropriated by the taxman. It tends to sit in pensions, invested in businesses, I’m people’s savings, in land and property and other assets. And when the Chancellor of the Exchequer tries to take too much of it, it has a nasty habit of moving fast. Witness the collapse of final salary pension schemes and the destabilisation of the markets that followed Gordon Brown’s smash and grab raid on pensions early in his chancellorship.

                  • I don’t think it is that simple: ACT relief was first reduced by the conservatives. And don’t forget Nigel Lawson’s less than brilliant idea to tax pension fund surpluses, which positively encouraged companies not to financially plan for a rainy day.

                    • It seemed pretty straightforward at the time. The stock market stopped rising, funds started underperforming benchmarks and indices and fund managers left in droves to set up hedge funds, to make money from the falls in stocks and extra volatility.

                      Few complained when companies took pension contribution holidays at the time – with rising stock markets and no marking to market, it seemed a relatively sane thing to do. If only they’d known Gordon Brown was coming for them…

                    • Knowing the little I do about pensions (as my mate the Pensions lawyer tells me) I thought at the time it was a stupid idea to allow contribution holidays – it guarantees that there are no “good times” to overcome the “bad times”.

                      To some extent we make our own money – that is what Quantative Easing is. More or less. And we owe it to ourselves. At which point anyone saying “eh?” it both quite right and should stop commenting on national economics because they should realise they don’t understand it.

                      In terms of Zombie ideas ((c) Paul Krugman) the right has their own – in particular Trickle Down Economics, and Austerity. These have been tried many times, and never work, but they sound like they should and so politicians keep on recycling them.

                  • Defined benefit pension plans were dead ducks as soon as the markets became more volatile; GB’s role in this was small beer, and as was pointed out above followed Lawson’s lead. George has meddled plenty to with his lifetime allowance caps.

                    For the wider working population DB plans closed to new entrants pretty quickly as no CEO or CFO wanted that kind of risk on the balance sheet, and most were, of course, able to ring fence DB plans for themselves, a practice which continues to this day. I even worked somewhere where a closed plan was opened up just so that we could get a new CFO on board.

                    Contribution holidays were always welcome but I’m not sure who was expected to object? The liability for the plans rested with the management so as a plan member you had no say in the funding, communication would have been minimal to non existent (this was – tellingly – before the advent of independent and employee trustees) and in theory no exposure.

                    • Fabulous bit of history rewriting, but the figures speak for themselves:

                      https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/image_data/file/18269/DB_ActiveMembership.jpg

                      Trickledown economics? Who exactly is advocating them? Not something I’ve seen, other than as a bogeyman for those of a leftish persuasion.

                      Austerity not working? By what measure? Two million new jobs, stable prices, low inflation, banking system functioning, OECD dire warnings rewritten. Which country that’s not undertaken some degree of belt tightening its belt is doing better exactly?

                      To get back to the subject of the thread, the point is that the Tories managed to sketch out a narrative about fixing the economy that resonated with the electorate. And still does. I don’t see that with JC and/or Labour. Rather like the Trump/Hilary debate last night, I only see one grown up in the room.

                    • My last reply on this as I was only really interested in discussing JC and the Labour party being out of kilter with the UK electorate. Quoting Krugman as some kind of authority is hilarious. This is the guy who predicted fiscal retrenchment and weak private demand leading to chronically high unemployment and a reprise of the 30s. Let’s just say, the sky is yet to fall in. Both the UK and US have indeed tried to trim their deficits – the US slashed its deficit from 8.4% of GDP to 2.5% in 2015. And what have we seen? Unemployment has fallen in the US and UK, both of which have seen growth that other members of the G7, G8, even G20 would envy.

                      At the end of the day, you believe what you want to believe. But – again – to finish on the point of the thread, until JC and/or Labour can articulate a vision for Britain that chimes with the majority’s experiences of 21st Century Britain, he and his party are doomed to sit on the electoral sidelines.

  22. Brexit’s ‘success’ (oh, well done, quality win!) happened because of, Eton-Oxbridge educated/60s dodger, David Cameron.

    To blame it on Corbyn is like blaming the number 4 on the colour pink.

    • I don’t blame the Brexit vote on Jeremy Corbyn or Labour. I would, however, have expected the subject and tlmore importantly future strategy to be discussed as part of the main conference agenda. Apparently it is not included. Not of sufficient importance, one can only assume.

      • I Would expect it to be discussed too. However I suspect the real,reasons it is not being discussed is not because it is not important but that views will,differ leading to more media speculation about a split in the party. This is not really productive given that a)the tories are in charge of the negotiations and not going to listen to any one else and b)wont tell any one what they are going to do. So,there is no “win” for the Labour party in discussing it at conference.

          • Technically it is not one of the issues that the Unions or members selected for discussion. But I really can see why, even though it is the biggest issue in the country. Labour does not have a line, and there are plenty of Labour voters who voted Leave, and plenty who voted Remain. Lots of opportunity to lose votes, and none I can see to have a net gain. Discussing it at conference will achieve nothing good for the Party, if not the country. I would expect it to be a top issue next year.

  23. If I can introduce a note of levity, this made me laugh…someone on Twitter posted this:

    “In future years electing Jeremy Corbyn will become a folk festival, held annually in September to mark the start of autumn.”

  24. Probably the harshest comment I’ve heard about Corbyn was from my mum – mainly because it was so spontaneous and not to do with his views. We don’t discuss politics much, but I was visiting her and Corbyn was on the news. I said that he never seems to have achieved much for a 66 year old who’s been in politics his whole adult life.

    “He’s 66! I thought he was my age!” She’s 86.

    For all that people like me complain about his political views, his vanity and the appalling people he associates with, I think this is what is damaging him with the wider public– he comes across as an out of touch old duffer. A minor character in The Last of the Summer Wine – remember that episode when he forgot to book a train seat with hilarious consequences?

  25. I’m pretty sure we had a thread on biscuits. We were asked to name our favourite biscuit.

    This is what JC had to say when asked about his favourite biscuit by Mumsnet:

    “I’m totally anti-sugar on health grounds, so eat very few biscuits, but if forced to accept one it’s always a pleasure to have a shortbread.”

    That answer says everything you need to know about Jeremy.

      • Jezza: “I am in favour of all fruit and sugar based preserves and stand united with my party against any form of intolerance based on colour of product, flavour, presence or not of seeds, and place of origin. Err… and we must fight together to have golliwogs removed from all packaging. They are surely a figure of ridicule, a spectre from the past, with no place in modern Britain…’

        PR advisor: ‘Err, Jeremy…’

    • So would you vote for him if he binged on jaffa cakes?

      He doesn’t want to be smug about it, but these days being anti-sugar is much the same as being anti tobacco, isn’t it? A reasonable way of living longer?

      • It’s not that he’s being smug he’s being totally wishy washy. He doesn’t eat biscuits but if pressed he’ll have a shortbread. He’s totally against sugar yet he makes jam which is loaded with the stuff.

        It’s like him saying, “I’m totally anti-smoking but if you insist I’ll have a Capstan Full Strength.”

      • What it says abut him is that he is humourless while essaying a leaden footed levity.

        What it reveals about him is that he is apparently guileless but always opportunistic.

        What it makes him is a useful idiot for those on the left who do not seek power but simply a platform from which to proclaim their moral superiority.

        And a useful idiot for the right who would happily see him remain leader of the Labour party indefinitely as he makes them unelectable.

        • What it says abut him is that he is humourless while essaying a leaden footed levity.

          Wow pretty damning conclusions from trivial stuff. I mean is he any different from any present or recent party leaders in this?

          David Cameron couldn’t even remember if he supported West Ham or Aston Villa. According to a recent piece i read Ed Milliband said he was reading the same book in two questionnaires a year apart. The least said about Nick Clegg’s bed hopping confessions the better.

            • Jesus guys, this is Daily Mail stuff.

              Corbyn’s top biscuit is SCOTTISH
              We ask: can he be trusted with the economy?

              Fury at JAMMY DODGER
              Says he hates sugar but makes JAM
              Does he secretly like TERRORIST organisations?

                  • I know you weren’t. Neither was I. But Jezza’s hamfisted response to The Great Biscuit Question is precisely why the vast majority of British voting folk can’t warm to Old Beardy Po Face.

    • It is for me actually. As do most of the threads.
      But this thread and others in the political sphere do so particularly, especially in light of Brexit, the continued extraordinary performance of Her Majesty’s Opposition, and the daily poor showing of the Government.
      I’m interested in politics and just life issues really, more than music nowadays, and the quality of the writing above is superb. I find a lot of the posts interesting, informed, and the bullshit spouted by the politicians and sections of the press is skewered with pithiness and with humour.

      • and if you want to bring it back to music, I have to say this is a brilliant time for Billy Bragg to bring out a new album. Its almost like his management were saying “what you need Billy is a resurgence in left wing politics, harking back to the miner’s strike, a principled but unelectable leader of the Labour Party and a right wing Tory government lead by a woman – that should help shift the units”.

        Its an ill wind etc.

        Haven’t heard his new album yet though – any good?
        I’m playing a live album from his box set that I forgot was in there

        • Not yet, I haven’t. The one track I’ve heard was John Hartford’s ‘Gentle On My Mind’ where he sings an octave under Joe Henry, the way that Chris Difford used to do in Squeeze. I don’t think it works at all (he’s in Johnny Cash, bottom D, register).
          But I’ll be getting it.

  27. Replying to a comment by Barlteby further up in this thread.

    Now I fully admit to being one of the vast majority mentioned by the author of the article above who is untrained/unschooled in economic theory.

    I have to say that a particular bugbear of mine is that a lot of people I know/ have known think they are, & think that political/economic theory is very simple to explain & understand.

    Big generalisation here, but I find that people think that they can be amateur economists, political scientists &/or psychologists without the slightest hint of irony or years of education/training.

    Depression? – swinging the lead more like. Cant find a job? – Lazy fuckers sat in front of the TV/in the pub all day – get a fucking job, there are loads out there, you long term unemployed are all the same, lazy fuckers – I could find you a job in your town, & the list goes on. I have even read the old “3 generations of one family all on benefits” – BTW, when I asked this person how he KNEW this, (while suggesting that what he was saying was lazy cliched stereotyping last used by IDS when he was leader of the opposition), was told – “I just KNOW there are”.

    And my point? – Well I sort of agree with the author of the article, economics IS a difficult/complex subject, & I do understand how it being unrealistic to compare the nations finances to a household budget, however, I think that the Tories like to do that because they can mop up a lot of support by claiming Labour are profligate & wasteful. Labour I feel always come over as po faced when trying to give a different take (which is of course their job).

    I think the sainted Jeremys comment about biscuits (above) amply demonstrate how /why Labour always come over (well, they do to me) as mealy mouthed killjoys.

    I think the current Labour party are dreadful communicators.

    My last comment is just to pinch & copy from a post above as I think this sums up Labour to a tee.

    “Until JC and/or Labour can articulate a vision for Britain that chimes with the majority’s experiences of 21st Century Britain, he and his party are doomed to sit on the electoral sidelines”.

    • Poor communication is only a small part of the problem Labour faces. Blair apart, they have always had the media against them but moaning about media basis is skirting the issue, especially given Seamus Milne’s regular appearances on Russian state tv, likewise Corbyn and his Morning Star column and appearances on Iranian state TV. Neither of these are exemplars of a well balanced media and one might justifiably argue that appearing on their state media sanctions the actions of two very nasty regimes. This leads them to get very uppity, and shout slur, when our media raise justifiable concerns about misogynism, anti-semtism and friendships with terrorist organisations. We are being promised a principled leader, one who has not apologised for or explained past contacts other than in a very mealy mouthed way. It is entirely legitimate for our media to ask about this if he is serious about being the PM of this country when he has to protect us against people who would do us harm, not invite them in for a cuppa and apologise for our colonial/imperialist aggressor past.

      In short, biscuits and Corbyn’s sugar intake is not the issue at stake here.

    • In Dad’s Army – when Capt Mainwaring has an obvious flaw to his plan pointed out, there’s a pause and “yes… I was wondering which one of you would be the first to point that out…”

      So just following on from @jackthebiscuit above, the science of economics and the behaviour of markets is famously inexact and things can happen which defy logic. This is why I raise a hearty eyebrow when an Economist or a politician dismisses things with “It’s far more complicated than that but I’d be here all day if I had to explain to you how these things work…”.

      A good economist takes general ignorance on the chin and allows for it. Like a 7ft tall basketball player who is always, always asked “how tall are YOU?”. You can’t get annoyed and expect people not have something to say. They always will.

  28. If I lived in England I’d be campaigning for him. I don’t want more of the same. But Labour lost me years ago – Monklands was the start and West Dunbartonshire the end. When Scotland becomes a normal nation/state and the parties re-align, I’ll be voting for the most leftist party on the block.
    If this isn’t the time to be radically different then when is?

  30. Slightly odd choice – but not nearly as a barmy as May going on about being the party of the working people . Listening to bits of her recent speech on the news you could almost think she’s forgetten what party she’s leading.

    • The Labour Party’s own research after the 2015 election suggested that the party was seriously out of step with many of its traditional vote on three key issues. These were immigration, defence and what was perceived as being ‘soft’ on benefits. I think May ( or her advisors) is aware that these people are broadly supportive of Tory policies on Trident, support the benefit cap and tend to support the end of free movement.

      • Yeah possibly the 2 good points you made there – not sure on the freedom of movement / think eu will force us to have it to get any good eu trade deals . I guess we will have to wait and see

      • @bartleby – not meaning to be deliberately smartarse but if unemployment is always higher *after* a Labour government – doesn’t that then mean that unemployment is always highest *during* a Conservative government? Conservatives were in power for 18 years straight.

        • Not sure I understand the point BC, but
          It is an historic fact that Labour have always left office with more people out of work than when they were elected. The stock market and the national debt have also tended to suffer. These things tend to be connected.

          • OK I follow you now. Comparing the beginning of a Labour term in office to the end of the same term. I won’t argue with you, but I am not 100% convinced that the statistic is fair. This is purely based on memory, but pre 1979 unemployment at 1m was seen as disastrous. “Labour Isn’t Working” and all that. Mrs Thatcher’s Government came in and followed an economic model that tolerated and allowed for much, much higher levels of unemployment. They ratcheted up the levels of unemployed people on purpose and kept it there.

            The dot com bubble and the GFC collapsed stock markets twice during the last Labour government. This would have happened no matter who was in power. Perhaps the Conservatives might have handled it better but that’s by no means a sure thing. And the national debt is something that has just exploded into meaninglessness as western countries quantitively ease themselves towards oblivion. There is simply no comparison to current sovereign debt levels versus previous generations.

            • Yes there are always reasons, but it’s a simple fact. Labour governments always leave more people out of work. Which is inevitable really if you look at the things that Labour governments choose to focus their time, effort and our money on.

              • Tis true – Labour have left unemployment higher than when they entered office. Ted Heath also has the record for the lowest. But average rates – which speak more to the impact on the economy than the rate at a single point in time – after Heath’s reign have been lower under Labour. Average unemployment under Blair / Brown was lower than anything Thatcher and Major managed, and also below what Dave and Nick achieved.

                • Pretty meaningless to take an average – any average has to take into account the good (or bad) rate left by the last lot for one of its 2 data points. When Labour oversees an economy that creates 2 million jobs on its watch it might entertain the idea that it’s the workers’ party. Until such time, it seems happy to be the party of protest, failed ideology, political correctness and internal strife.

                  • Yebbut, part time, minimum wage, zero hours jobs which are subsidized by government benefits, not to mention the newly “self employed” who earn less than their previous job paid. The likes of Sports Direct are able to make profits by treating people like serfs. Life in the 21st Century should be better than that.

                    • Zero hours contracts, that totemic symptom of all that’s despicable about the Tories apparently, constitute 2.5% of people in employment. For all the manufactured outrage from Labour (who took 13 years to not outlaw them), it was the Tories who introduced limits on their use. 60% of those employed with zero hours contracts report that they’re happy with the hours they work and appreciate the flexibility.

                      Still, who wants to face up to Labour’s inability to encourage employment and not run out of money. Much easier to occupy the high moral ground and pick holes in the other lot’s results, eh?

                    • The 60% figure quoted by Bartleby is derived from one survey conducted by the CIPD. The number of people on ZHC contracts has grown significantly in the intervening years. It would be intereating to see if a similar number are still as enthusiastic now that the numbers have grown significantly beyond the core of students who once comprised the bulk of this workforce.

                    • It’s not clear from my post but I would say the same things regardless of which party was in power. The number of jobs “created” is meaningless if those jobs are badly paid and conditions are poor. Companies shouldn’t treat staff so badly. We live in one of the top global economies yet our workers pay and conditions seem to be regressing to Dickensian levels.

  31. Dont forget though zero hrs contracts are flexible and everyone wants them.
    Oh the opposite is true.
    To create lots of ‘ credible ‘ jobs investment would need to be made in broadband , transport and technology .
    So hopefully j c can deliver plans on those .

    • I’m sure he just needs to shake the magic money tree and employers and entrepreneurs will create those jobs in a jiffy. Maybe he’ll reopen the mines and hand out free unicorns too.

      • That “magic money tree” argument attached to Labour social policy is laughably out of date. Quantitive Easing is a magic money tree. That’s exactly what it is. Governments of blue and red are using it, even though it doesn’t really exist. There will be an eventual enforced need to stop but not just yet – let’s worry about it later. When? Don’t know! Let’s face it…we could be hit by a bus tomorrow.

        • I’m no fan of QE. But then I wasn’t a fan of Gordon Brown’s dismantling of the Bank of England’s City regulation role either. Nor of the dividend tax credit appropriation. No doubt the volatility and lack of proper scrutiny of the banks that followed was somehow not Labour’s fault either.

          Anyway, I quite agree there’s not much point in any of this. I would just love to get the Labour party to a place where they’re addressing the twenty first century’s problems in a way that resonates with the public, instead of just tut-tutting and trying to go back in time.

  32. This sort of debate is not that helpful though is it? Tories and Labour historically have calibrated their policies merely to be electable. It had become naive to think there are principles at stake. It’s about getting power and compromising your arse off until you do. JC clearly doesn’t play that game. If it pays off we may see a Labour government actually do what a Labour government is meant to do. You never know!

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