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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The likely reaction from the blue team if they’re facing Opposition Leader Corbyn?
When the Conservatives had finished celebrating their unexpected overall majority and started gazing across at the potential Labour leadership candidates they no doubt started thinking about the challenges of their next possible Labour opponent. Newspapers and blogs speculated about which of the leadership candidates the Conservatives most feared, and then newspapers and blogs further speculated whether the Conservatives were laying false trails.
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Is this the sphere where PM Miliband is negotiating Independence with FM Salmond?
Not attacking Corbyn on policy will require iron discipline - given he is likely to present more than a few attractive targets - and this is the Tory Party - but I agree, declining to dignify it with comment is the best approach.
This could happen, without Corbyn actually trying to push the Blairites out, if the MPs leaving in 2020 happen to be mainly the ones first elected in 1997, simply because that cohort are reaching typical retirement age for MPs (though I don't know if they actually will be).
Someone referred to an article on Conservative Home, rebutting claims about Enoch Powell abusing children. I have found this link:
http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2015/03/enoch-powell-did-not-abuse-children.html
... but where is the article? It has a few short paragraphs, then stops suddenly. Is that it? Or is more of the article hidden somewhere?
It's surprising how relaxed Labour members seem to be about this.
Liz Kendall at PMQs? I think not.
Yvette Cooper against Cameron? Probably the best of the lot.
none of them are remotely credible and for PMQs I could see Corbyn being the best performer but probably with the oddest policies. Labour really has got itself into s pickle with this lot. I honestly don't think that it matters who wins
One noticeable effect of the contest has been that Corbyn's inclusion has dragged the debate far to the left of where it would otherwise have been, with Kendall and the 'Blairites' looking increasingly isolated on the right of the party.
A Corbyn win will leave them stranded in a party that obviously values ideology over pragmatic thinking, even when the latter is the way to win elections (See Blair, T and Cameron, D for recent examples).
The question is will we see another SDP breakaway, or will it be defections to LD or Con by the Labour centrists?
Where I'd disagree is in not taking on his policies and in soft-pedalling (to a degree).
There's no harm in taking on battles you can win, and engaging in a battle of ideas with Corbyn, when those ideas are more than a bit Loony Left, would simultaneously split any remaining centrist votes from Labour (some to the Tories, more to the Lib Dems, Farron or not), while causing Labour and especially the Corbynites to rally round and defend the faith. There's little the left likes like a good principle to defend. Or sometimes, a bad one. The more the debate becomes about ideas then the less it is about the man and the more it becomes the party which is tainted with them - and it will be the party because a Corbyn leadership would not merely reflect the changing nature of Labour's activist base but would reinforce that trend: more centrists would not renew membership, while those attracted to his style of politics would.
And going for his ideas means not going particularly for the man. For one thing, he's not that easy a target except for his policies (so why not then go for the policies?). The public doesn't like personal attacks and while they can be effective, and therefore justified politically, I'm not sure it's in the Tories interest to taint him in the public's eyes when there's the chance to taint the entire Labour party. Besides, while Corbyn shouldn't be allowed to become seen as PM material, nor should he be hounded out of office when he's the Tories' best card.
Besides, a Corbyn-led Labour party would allow the Tories to go deeper and faster into their manifesto. If that leads to a Labour bump in the polls, so be it. It's a lot harder to shift a leader who's leading.
The recent photo of the austere and jaded Corbyn on the way home from work on a city bus is very revealing ; he has the look of a very worried man , but who could blame him ?
After all , he's deep in thought , but not about his future policies as leader , or who to have in his shadow cabinet ; oh no , he's desperately looking for a way out of this nightmarish situation he's gotten himself into ...he's probably shaking his head in shear disbelief and muttering to himself ''But I never wanted to be leader ...I just wanted to stir up the pot !'' ...but from such little acorns do mighty oak trees grow
Poor Jeremy , not only is he a typical careerist politician of 33 years , he's a professional protester whose political M O was to cheerlead from the side lines ; never in his wildest dreams did he think he would actually have to make decisions and take the responsibility of leadership THE HORROR ! THE HORROR !
It's going to be simply hilarious to see how this all ends ; whether he gets piped at the post by Cooper and is able to retire back into relative obscurity , honour intact , or when faced with being handed the L P leadership , he allows himself to be talked into stepping down for the ''good of the Party '' !....either way , come October all this talk about Corbyn as the messiah will have evaporated like the summer heat
Corbynism is merely messianic secular politics , more of the dopey ''hope and change '' that the Obama campaign tapped into ; we witnessed something similar last summer up in Scotland with the fawning and adoration of Salmond/Sturgeon and the SNP by a crowd of political munchkins on the yellow brick road to independence
And it's hardly surprising that the gullible , uninformed and vacuous ''Facebook '' crowd would get behind the Gandhi-like Corbyn ...these type of folks vote in an election using the similar criteria they use when voting on the X Factor and Big Brother ...indeed , these are the so called inspired and idealistic voters that Corbyn can count upon ....in fact it is my contention that the folks who are inspired by Corbyn in England would be voting for Scottish independence if they happened to live north of the border ; after all , it is all about emotion and the abandonment of critical thinking skills similar to a religious revival
Corbyn is merely the cadaverous corpse of the failed 1970s Labour Party resurrected from the grave by messianic politics, desperation and wishful thinking ...merely the faithful searching for a leader to guide them to the promised land ; apparently , there is no youthful present day leader who fits the bill , so they have to find some austere 1970s Gandhi-like retread
Is Jeremy the messiah or is he just a very naught boy ?
I think Exams were a lot harder in Scotland to get top marks when I took them in 79 and 80. I am basing that on average marks attained and required to get into uni. I would add exams in England were also of a higher standard, when getting an A really meant something.
From memory Edinburgh Uni for the course I considered before going elsewhere was 3 B's and a C at Higher or a B and 2 C's at A level. No A was required. Changed days indeed.
There is pressure on all exam boards to perform. I distinctly remember my cousin in England going to a school where the results were perceived to be easier than some others and he did rather well as I recall.
Perhaps others can remember which boards were around in Eng, in Scot it was only one the SED, and the fact schools wanted their students having better results meant some options perhaps provided a better outcome for students. I am sure "people" claimed it was standardised and equalised out across boards but my memory albeit hazy of that conversation with my cousin was different. Was it a London board and an Oxford Board, I just cannot remember.......
Any teachers in Scot or Eng know?
Labour needs to get over its need to be liked. It needs to do things the voters want it to do.
As to the backlash from the media, just listened to a Radio Scotland piece where just a few years ago, readership of a daily paper was over 70% of adults, nowadays it is just over 40%. I would consider similar figures for England possible. There are now just too many other alternative sources of news and information available.
What the PB Tory's are failing to consider, is that they are the ones who are out of touch with the public mood. Should DC and GO try and attack Corbyn, it could backfire spectacularly on them.
As we've seen, Jerry has a short fuse when he's not surrounded by acolytes. Him spluttering with self-righteous rage would be great box office.
On @antifrank's suggested strategy of not engaging with the Corbynite Manifesto - I largely concur, it's a rabbithole of idealism and apple pie - personally I'd mention the horrors of Militant 70/80s at every opportunity. Especially the IMF and Denis coming back from the airport.
Tories Under The Bed is the other tactic - nothing like breeding suspicion amongst the ranks of the Judean Popular Front and the Popular Front of Judea. It really does offer so much entertainment.
I'd even invite Neil Kinnock to Downing St for tea
One thing that is a serious issue > the security vetting of Mr Corbyn considering his *friendships*. Whilst I'm not presuming he's a problem per se, his friends could be.
I doubt they'll refer to homeopathy. There are a surprising number of people who believe in that tosh.
Mr. Palmer, that's slightly misleading because you refer to the two major parties and a small election win for the blues (which is true) but that neglects that the small Conservative win was a huge Labour defeat.
After all, that's the demented approach to mathematics taken by those who have decided democracy stops people electing their leaders...
Cooper is the compromise candidate who is the least objectionable to the most voters and it's long overdue for the LP to have a history making first female leader
It's somewhat ironic that the sober minded and sensible JOHNSON could be leader if he so chose and so his endorsement will carry some weight behind it
In any case, I don't think that the public are fed up with professional politicians as such. Salmond, to quote your own case, is as much as a professional politician as any: the ultimate survivor - a man who was party leader back when Margaret Thatcher was PM.
What the public are fed up with are insiders who have risen way beyond their abilities seemingly solely on connections, most of whom are SpAds or similar. However, the problem the public has is their over-promotion, not their existence as such.
There are few occupations where customers would go out of the way to avoid someone because 'they've been doing their job since their early twenties' or 'it's what they trained for'. By contrast, just about everyone would avoid someone 'because they're not very good.'
If so, it would underestimate the influence of papers due to those who read articles online, which happens quite a lot.
And in other unsurprising news... do they ever learn?
"above is not particularly complicated and it is not particularly pretty"
Well said Antifrank, and many thanks for this exceedingly long contribution.
You only have to follow up Antifrank's links to see what Corbyn actually said on Ukraine.
"On Ukraine, I would not condone Russian behaviour or expansion. But it is not unprovoked, and the right of people to seek a federal structure or independence should not be denied.
And there are huge questions around the West's intentions in Ukraine." There are huge questions about how the US in particular intervened in Ukraine and then got blowback. Corbyn would have the opportunity to defend and develop his point. A lot will agree with him.
Similarly on Hamas. Follow the link and see the context. It is easy for Corbyn to defend.
The result of Antifrank's stategy would be for the Tories to reinforce their image of the nasty party who plays the man, avoids arguing about the ideas, and is careless with the truth.
I don't think it had much impact at all. It was a one-off and was quickly dropped.
Mr. Barnesian, people didn't back Labour because Miliband wasn't seen as a credible PM.
JC also is also promising milk and honey (anti-austerity) but unfortunately his promised land is not real (more like a Spanish castle) and so neither he nor his successors will get there.
@JackW of this parish used to pen some very interesting thread headers, under the theme of Against The Grain where he looked at the conventional wisdom and approached it from the other end. It was the logical extension of his screen persona since he wasn't 106yrs old or a LibDem in real life.
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/2015-mid-season-review.html
You only have to follow up Antifrank's links to see what Corbyn actually said on Ukraine.
"On Ukraine, I would not condone Russian behaviour or expansion. But it is not unprovoked, and the right of people to seek a federal structure or independence should not be denied.
And there are huge questions around the West's intentions in Ukraine." There are huge questions about how the US in particular intervened in Ukraine and then got blowback. Corbyn would have the opportunity to defend and develop his point. A lot will agree with him.
Similarly on Hamas. Follow the link and see the context. It is easy for Corbyn to defend.
The result of Antifrank's stategy would be for the Tories to reinforce their image of the nasty party who plays the man, avoids arguing about the ideas, and is careless with the truth.
Plato - In this case it is what I really think. It isn't confected. Just follow Antifrank's links and think about how it might play.
The key point is that there is really no upside for Labour in this. Even if Corbyn falls short (as I think he ultimately will) he will be a major problem for the next leader. His objective in entering the contest was to air his ideas and the leading "don't offend anyone" candidates have simply not engaged in that discussion. The farce we saw with the welfare cuts bill is only the start of the problem. Corbyn will have shown how far the centrists are out of step with grass roots Labour.
If Corbyn comes a respectable second his faction will want a say. Labour will steer leftwards at a time when Osborne is making a strong claim on the centre ground. It puts Labour in the reverse of a 2001/5 situation and at risk of losing very badly. Scotland is not coming back. Labour would be at serious risk of disappearing in the east and midlands as well (outside the cities). And the membership will continue to change in a direction that is unlikely to lead to electoral success as the moderates leave in despair.
I know - I've said it before. And I'll say it again. And this: England, apart rom its multicultural cities, is a one-party State. And in those cities the only serious opposition to Toryism is militant Islam.
Having a large and noisy cohort of Militant Mk II shouting We Woz Robbed, criticising the winning candidate as Not Real Labour etc will still pull their Party to the Left. Simply through the natural desire to shut them up, it'll undermine whatever policy ideas the more moderate voices want to pursue - and take up time/energy putting out internal fights/plots.
If JC wins, at least it's out in the open and can be lanced in public. Trying to hold the Party together will be JC's issue - so pull the plaster off quickly - or slowly?
However, will he be so happy if the momentum he has created sweeps him into the No1 slot and he has to get serious about ploughing that field and the next and the next. It is quite easy to ride the crest of a wave, but as surfers will know it can take a huge amount of effort to swim against the tide to reach the next wave.
Tim thought Section 28 and Apartheid holidays were going to trip DC up, but no one cares. Why should it be different for anyone else?
However, it will not be by making the left more credible.
He seems to have completely back tracked on his "let Corbyn win and see once and for all where that gets us" strategy and is now urging Kendall to withdraw.
I think the problem for Kendall is that there is too much risk in endorsing Cooper of Burnham when they are so close. To withdraw and back another loser would not be a great career move. But a Kendall endorsement of Cooper (along with Alan Johnson) might well determine who the anti-Corbyn candidate is.
Cooper is dull and colourless but she is extremely clever and a woman. It really is the obvious choice for a party that wants to at least remain competitive.
Polly comes out in support of Cooper.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/04/jeremy-corbyn-gamble-labour-future-yvette-cooper-best-chance
I'd rather she didn't as I think Liz has been much braver to actually Say The Unpopular. She's the only one who hasn't played to the Apple Pie Gallery.
I think Jezzas foreign and social policies will be quite popular, but the economic policy is his vulnerability. He will need a sound Shadow Chancellor to make a plausible case.
Also if JC does not win, will we see further disruptions at anger at the result - now that the left has got itself somewhat organised again - and will the Unions drop/reduce their financial support of Labour as it is not on the side of the workers in their view?
She was always the Dull But Safe candidate, and with Andy flip-flopping all over the place...
He's only gaining traction because Alan Johnson and others are absent, so someone with sincerity looks a novelty, especially after a robot-like Ed.
Things would change once he's questioned robustly. He has firm and entrenched views and will quickly turn nasty. Immigration? Bring 'em all in, IS included. State control? You ain't seen nuffin yet. He knows best and is swift to anger. Channel 4 found that out when he was asked about Hamas.
There's a reason that he's spent thirty years rattling around the back benches, and it's not a good reason.
Furthermore , when he comes under pressure in an interview he becomes increasing frustrated and angry and looks like he is about to burst out into tears and yet this is the person who hopes to be a PM ?...he reminds me of a quivering greyhound in constant need of reassurance ! He has that permanently constipated look about him , like a man desperately searching for a bathroom ...in the last leadership election he almost came last , even Ed Balls beat him , the voters are never going to give him the benefit of the doubt , NEVER !
Similarly, Corbyn isn't about logic. He's about raw anger, despair, confusion and a longing for there to be some solution for our problems that doesn't hurt people we want to be nice to. The fact that his policies are those of Syriza, which have failed so disastrously and made matters about a thousand times worse in Greece, doesn't matter. Logic is not what's propelling him, and logic won't stop him.
What the other candidates would be better off doing is appealing to emotion themselves - they're all very dry and uninspiring. If they actually came out and said that Corbyn is the likeliest candidate to cause massive harm to the poorest - either through perpetual rule by Osborne or by causing the national economy to collapse entirely - and had to be stopped for their sake, that might help. But if they've done it, I haven't heard them.
Also, introverts are perfectly capable of leadership.
Also 2: surely a constipated chap wouldn't be desperately looking for a bathroom?
Semantics – and to lose half your MPs at a GE when it counts most, is hardly a triumph.
OK - it was an effective campaign tactic to change the subject away from non-doms and upset the Labour strategists. But I don't think it changed the election. An airing on non-doms wouldn't have won it for Labour.
We were discussing - do nasty tactics of playing the man work in politics? This is one small tactical example of it working. Going for Corbyn the man (not his ideas) is a bit more than a small campaign tactic. It might work but it has serious dangers for the Tories, as I outlined above, and they shouldn't be so complacent in their chortlement.
That is, it ispossible the Tories will get carried away, but it is not assured that they will just because some of their number are getting over excited.
As you rightly note, logic and commonsense isn't registering here. It's all passion and no braincells.
Perhaps the other Labour leadership contenders could ask our resident cybernats for advice on what to do when logic/facts are trumped by identity and fervour?
In any case, since the SNP gave Labour the worst defeat in the age of universal suffrage on that basis*, it's hardly a comforting parallel for the other contenders.
*Labour now have fewer MPs in Scotland than at any time since they started contesting seats there in 1906.
The decision on the mandatory reselection of MPs under Foot in 80/81, was a key factor in pushing 28 Labour MPs to defect to a new party. Faced with reselection under CLPs taken over by the hard left, they had little to lose by jumping before they were pushed out.
I've read Jeremy Corbyn's policies and they are solid middle of the road social democracy that is practised elsewhere in Europe. That they are condemned as "far left" in some quarters just shows how far to the right the Westminster bubble has become. Corbyn will be pilloried by the conservative press but so was Miliband despite campaigning on a pro austerity ticket. Corbyn responds like a real person, answers questions and isn't another fast tracked apparatchik fixated on career development. Labour lost badly by having a cliche spouting non entity in charge. What makes Polly think that appointing another will lead to vi yin 2020?
free to dream. the reason people are turning to corbyn and a mass movement is emerging around him is precisely because people are not free to dream. people are facing penury. austerity is rapidly turning even the strivers into the barely survivors. corbyn is not some luxury for them he is an absolute necessity. austerity is killing them and not just metaphorically. you might dream of a better world but you dont actually want one. you have to much to defend in the capitalist system. you are one a an increasingly small elite not being squeezed like the politicians who are administering this unprecedented redistribution of wealth from poor to rich. this is no dream. austerity must be stopped.
In an interview with The Mirror, the alleged victim, now in his 60s, claimed he was sexually assaulted by Sir Edward in his Mayfair flat in 1961 after being picked up while hitchhiking.
In statements to his legal team reported in the newspaper he said: "I learned that he was MP for Bexley. This answered a lot of questions as to why no-one believed me about the London saga. I got called a liar and a fantasist."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/edward-heath-raped-12-yearold-boy-at-mayfair-flat-10436554.html
To coin a literary parallel that was drummed into me at A-level, Corbyn is Death of a Salesman fantasy rather than Great Gatsby style reinvention.
1) Farage's hokey-cokey resignation was ridiculous, and is known to be so.
2) Campaigning incompetence continues. Wide but shallow support is worth little in a General Election. Even with support as a share of the vote surging, this strategic idiocy (and obvious idiocy at that) cost them dear in 2015.
That these political friends aren't from 30yrs ago or some student aberration, makes it much harder to bat away. And given that he invited the IRA types to tea within weeks of their attempt to assassinate HMG, demonstrates that he has a long track record when it comes to making these sort of undesirable friends.
JC is *friends* with Hamas and Hezbolla now. OK - it was an effective campaign tactic to change the subject away from non-doms and upset the Labour strategists. But I don't think it changed the election. An airing on non-doms wouldn't have won it for Labour.
We were discussing - do nasty tactics of playing the man work in politics? This is one small tactical example of it working. Going for Corbyn the man (not his ideas) is a bit more than a small campaign tactic. It might work but it has serious dangers for the Tories, as I outlined above, and they shouldn't be so complacent in their chortlement.
I refer to the Hodges point below. Plans being made the same as 1980 to have mandatory reselections of sitting Labour MPs. Also a revised system for choosing and removing the Leader.