Of the six policies Corbyn would be sure to have on his 'Edstone' five are likely to be popular and potential vote changers. Only one is a certain vote loser. (This contrasts with the original 'Edstone' where Ed's 6 'pledges' were meaningless)
1. Free University fees 2. Cancellation of Trident 3. Recognition of Palestine 4. Nationalization of BR 5. Exit the EU 6. Increase union power
That policy platform could save the taxpayer £bns.
Of the six policies Corbyn would be sure to have on his 'Edstone' five are likely to be popular and potential vote changers. Only one is a certain vote loser. (This contrasts with the original 'Edstone' where Ed's 6 'pledges' were meaningless)
1. Free University fees 2. Cancellation of Trident 3. Recognition of Palestine 4. Nationalization of BR 5. Exit the EU 6. Increase union power
That policy platform could save the taxpayer £bns.
Jezza would be a disaster. I can't see any real plusses.
Kendall, with time, could give the Tories a run for their money in 2020 but she's unelectable in the present Labour party.
The Mogadon Pixie has ovary ownership issues, so that leaves Burnham as the safest choice to go to a manageable defeat.
The Left must be humiliated and totally discredited before Kendal is given a chance ..Corbyn and his rag bag nutters must be hounded out of the party
The LP are like a recovering alcoholic always in danger of a relapse back to its bad old days ; Corbyn is 100% pure meth .the electorate will never trust Labour with the levers of power until they become clean and sober
Last nights's locals confirmed some trends,LDs showing signs of green shoots,ukip in decline,Con up a bit,Lab down a bit.Also,Green party vote looks vulnerable-Corbyn will hope to hoover these up.
Of the six policies Corbyn would be sure to have on his 'Edstone' five are likely to be popular and potential vote changers. Only one is a certain vote loser. (This contrasts with the original 'Edstone' where Ed's 6 'pledges' were meaningless)
1. Free University fees 2. Cancellation of Trident 3. Recognition of Palestine 4. Nationalization of BR 5. Exit the EU 6. Increase union power
That policy platform could save the taxpayer £bns.
Who is going to pay for students' tuition and to buy out the rail companies if not the taxpayer?
'Jeremy Corbyn 'to issue public apology over Iraq war' if he becomes Labour leader.'
Another day of headlines across the board for Corbyn, silence from the ABCs. Not bad for a 1970’s throwback, he certainly has this modern-day media coverage malarkey wrapped up.
Labour are a bunch of pacifists not fit for government.
Of the six policies Corbyn would be sure to have on his 'Edstone' five are likely to be popular and potential vote changers. Only one is a certain vote loser. (This contrasts with the original 'Edstone' where Ed's 6 'pledges' were meaningless)
1. Free University fees 2. Cancellation of Trident 3. Recognition of Palestine 4. Nationalization of BR 5. Exit the EU 6. Increase union power
That policy platform could save the taxpayer £bns.
Who is going to pay for students' tuition and to buy out the rail companies if not the taxpayer?
Well what he probably would do is cut the fees (ie the universities would get less money) and only pay that from taxation. This would ruin the universities lower standards and send talent abroad. This is why fees went up in the first place to be paid by students because the govt could not afford it. But since Corbyn would slash defence spending - if indeed have any at all - this might not matter.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
If Corbyn is elected, could Cameron go for an early general election either in May '16 or immediately after the Euro vote (whenever that is)?
He has the money for an election and if Labour are in mess, there could be utility in going for it really early.
This would require amending the FTPA - can't see that getting past the Lords.
Cameron isn't crazy enough to manufacture a fake no confidence vote, as that would be swiftly punished by the voters.
Really, who would oppose it? Corbyn would probably go for it, as would his opponents behind him.
The LDs are in no fit state - financially or psychologically - to fight an election any time soon. Most Labour peers aren't Corbynite. And I would expect crossbenchers to mostly oppose political game-playing.
On topic, as we know Corbyn is an anti-American class warrior. He has no affection for or loyalty to the UK, his economic views are illiterate and unworkable, and his choice of friends in foreign policy is repugnant. Nick Palmer and the Useful Idiots may choose to overlook these inconvenient truths because Corbyn is unspun and has nice manners, but voters will not. That means that at the ballot box they are likely to pass the harshest of judgements on the party Corbyn leads - which, of course, is why the Tories are rooting for him.
Corbyn's mooted first act - the apology for Iraq - is likely to lead to an immediate split with his pro-Iraq deputy Tom Watson. Labour is in the process of disintegrating. Long term that may be no bad thing. Short and medium term, though, it will ensure Nick and his mates get precisely what it is they claim to want to prevent: Tory hegemony on 40% or so of the popular vote.
If Corbyn is elected, could Cameron go for an early general election either in May '16 or immediately after the Euro vote (whenever that is)?
He has the money for an election and if Labour are in mess, there could be utility in going for it really early.
This would require amending the FTPA - can't see that getting past the Lords.
Cameron isn't crazy enough to manufacture a fake no confidence vote, as that would be swiftly punished by the voters.
It would be a good move to repeal the FTPA, IMO. The Lords could delay this move, but not block it as the Parliament Act giving the Commons supremacy would eventually come into play.
What if Jezza ignites the passion, brings out the UK's inner lefty, in so doing striking a chord with one and all who want equality and owls?
I don't think so.
A Corbyn leadership will be an unmitigated disaster for Lab. To think otherwise, that there will be a phoenix risen from the ashes is wishful thinking. It will be a huge mess.
Jezza will become LotO and realise that in the real political world you can't just come in, nationalise the railways and abolish the monarchy. Oxbridge type drones get all the criticism but they also realise that politics, when in actual power, is a matter of tiny, incremental changes. They have the patience for that and understand the process.
Jezza transparently doesn't, and why should he never having had a position of responsibility? But this is why it will be incredibly ugly once he is LotO.
Greek media reports say 25 rebel Syriza MPs will join the new party, called Leiki Anotita (Popular Unity).
The party will be led by former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, who was strongly opposed to the bailout deal, reports say.
A list of MPs joining the party published by the Ta Nea newspaper showed that the parliamentary speaker Zoe Konstantopulou and former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis were not among its members.
Both had opposed a new bailout deal, with Ms Konstantopulou highly critical of her former ally Mr Tsipras.
Likening Corbyn to Foot is well wide of the mark. Corbyn has none of the virtues and most of the vices of Foot. Foot had loyally backed Callaghan in the dying days of the Labour government. Indeed, his spirited speeches at the time of the votes of confidence in 1978 and 1979 won widespread admiration and sustained the morale of the party at a difficult time. Foot was almost seen as a unifying figure between the Bennites, the powerful TU bloc of MPs and the social democratic wing. Corbyn is and always will be a rebel. Confronted by the messy compromises inevitable when leading a party of diverse interests and ambitious egos he’ll be all at sea. Foot had wide interests in literature and the world outside politics. He had admirers in all parts of the political spectrum. Corbyn is a narrow-mined bore in comparison. Foot may well have been seen as a left-wing firebrand but no-one doubted his patriotism. Early on he had seen the threat from Nazi Germany and spoken out. I’m struggling to think of any occasion when Corbyn hasn’t sided with people seen as our enemies. As a Tory I’d be overjoyed to see Corbyn as a weak Labour leader. But in sixty years watching and being active in politics it seems almost unbelievable that so light-weight, so naïve, so inexperienced, so small-minded a man could ever be thought a fit leader for one of great parties of British politics.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
I doubt it ; they will not be able to resist such an easy target , it's the sensational nature of news ...they will blast this old fool to kingdom come
Furthermore , he is just a two dimensional quasi Marxists who simply cannot resist saying outrageous comments such as Tony Blair could be put on trial for war crimes ..he is a 1970s student union leader with no sense of subtle diplomacy...Corbyn will hang himself with his own words
After the Iraq apology I wonder whether he'd consider reparations? The Saddam family alone lost their breadwinner his two sons and then there's the oil wells....
Disagree here, this is a good spot by OGH. It is a back.
Why not just invest in WmHill bonds. IIRC they yield about 6%, compounded over 5 years, so better the PfP's assumption with the same credit risk and better liquidity. I'd imagine the lot size is higher though.
Alec Salmond (and Nicola Sturgeon) has changed the political horizons of Scotland by removing the the identikit plastic politicians from Westminster and Holyrood. That they have been replaced with party hacks who are "obliged" to follow the lines as laid down by the hierarchy is another question for another time.
The two some have changed the public perception of what politicians could be. I believe that the MP's of all parties should be afraid, very afraid.
As to premature hair loss, hasn't Cameron's hair line been receding from the front and centre? And as for Osborne's, er, well, I do suppose it could be referred to as interesting.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
I doubt it ; they will not be able to resist such an easy target , it's the sensational nature of news ...they will blast this old fool to kingdom come
Furthermore , he is just a two dimensional quasi Marxists who simply cannot resist saying outrageous comments such as Tony Blair could be put on trial for war crimes ..he is a 1970s student union leader with no sense of subtle diplomacy...Corbyn will hang himself with his own words
They'll do enough not to get caught with the knife.
But yeah, from what I've seen, Corbyn has said enough and had enough of that recorded that he'll hang himself with his own words.
Last nights's locals confirmed some trends,LDs showing signs of green shoots,ukip in decline,Con up a bit,Lab down a bit.Also,Green party vote looks vulnerable-Corbyn will hope to hoover these up.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
I doubt it ; they will not be able to resist such an easy target , it's the sensational nature of news ...they will blast this old fool to kingdom come
Furthermore , he is just a two dimensional quasi Marxists who simply cannot resist saying outrageous comments such as Tony Blair could be put on trial for war crimes ..he is a 1970s student union leader with no sense of subtle diplomacy...Corbyn will hang himself with his own words
They'll do enough not to get caught with the knife.
But yeah, from what I've seen, Corbyn has said enough and had enough of that recorded that he'll hang himself with his own words.
He's already had to "clarify" his remarks about IS this morning. Under a Corbyn led Labour Party we will see "whataboutery" elevated to the leading - probably the only - Labour value.
A Corbyn leadership might be a beneficial disaster (probably?). Particularly if he insisted on on his left wing mates being in the shadow cabinet
A narrow victory by Burnham or Cooper, leaving an empowered Corbyn / Diane Abbott et al crowing from the sidelines would be really bad for Labour
Which all stems from Lab not really knowing what it is for.
As for Burnham & Cooper (and the rest), their challenge would be to explain, first to Lab, and then to the electorate, what changed between five to and five past ten on May 7th this year.
Corbyn is Worzal Gummidge , a scarecrow from the 1970s ...he should be in his allotment tending his tomato plants dressed in a sweat stained white vest and sandals , while eating baked beans from a can and quoting Marx from a well thumbed copy of Das Kapital
He's having his crowded hour , convinced he is the anointed one , determined to lead the faithful to the promised land; unfortunately , he is going to lead them all in a death leap
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
The longer they leave the attacks the more chance there is of Labour not tearing itself to pieces and actually managing to engage the public. It's a slight chance, but it exists. They'll, quite rightly, go hard at JC from Day One. Another leadership election before 2020 means another sustained period of Labour looking ineards rather than outwards. In any case, it can't all be about party - the Tories have a moral dury to let voters know just what a scumbag Corbyn is.
Has there ever been an easier target to hit than poor corbyn ? and yet the other candidates just couldn't motivate themselves into attack dog mode and chew him up ; they should of humiliated him weeks ago and made him a laughing stock ; it's too late now , the gormless corbynites are marching in lock step behind this fool right over the cliff edge
'Of the six policies Corbyn would be sure to have on his 'Edstone' five are likely to be popular and potential vote changers.'
3. Recognition of Palestine
You need to get out of that bubble, Roger. Your average man on the street really couldn't be bothered.
4. Nationalization of BR
Oh, for the glory days of uniformed porters, kippers on the Brighton Belle and steam.
Back in reality BR were terrible. One only has to look at the ongoing disaster that is Network Rail to realise what would happen under public ownership.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
I doubt it ; they will not be able to resist such an easy target , it's the sensational nature of news ...they will blast this old fool to kingdom come
Furthermore , he is just a two dimensional quasi Marxists who simply cannot resist saying outrageous comments such as Tony Blair could be put on trial for war crimes ..he is a 1970s student union leader with no sense of subtle diplomacy...Corbyn will hang himself with his own words
Cons will and should come out all guns blazing.
Jezza can give the impression that he is an extremely plausible, reasonable, more in sorrow than anger, decent kind of guy.
He is not.
Cons don't want that impression taking hold. He is, after all, not going to come in on day 1 and cancel Trooping the Colour.
Attack immediately and attack hard. Create the narrative (they are good at that) while abso-bloody-lutely delighting both existing supporters and waverers alike. It may be like shooting fish in a barrel but hey, we didn't vote for him..
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
The longer they leave the attacks the more chance there is of Labour not tearing itself to pieces and actually managing to engage the public. It's a slight chance, but it exists. They'll, quite rightly, go hard at JC from Day One. Another leadership election before 2020 means another sustained period of Labour looking ineards rather than outwards. In any case, it can't all be about party - the Tories have a moral dury to let voters know just what a scumbag Corbyn is.
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
If Corbyn is elected, could Cameron go for an early general election either in May '16 or immediately after the Euro vote (whenever that is)?
He has the money for an election and if Labour are in mess, there could be utility in going for it really early.
This would require amending the FTPA - can't see that getting past the Lords.
Cameron isn't crazy enough to manufacture a fake no confidence vote, as that would be swiftly punished by the voters.
It would be a good move to repeal the FTPA, IMO. The Lords could delay this move, but not block it as the Parliament Act giving the Commons supremacy would eventually come into play.
True, but they'd have to start the process very soon for an early election to be at all feasible - I'm assuming it'll take two years to repeal, and that assumes that the slim majority holds on a matter totally unimportant to the public.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
I doubt it ; they will not be able to resist such an easy target , it's the sensational nature of news ...they will blast this old fool to kingdom come
Furthermore , he is just a two dimensional quasi Marxists who simply cannot resist saying outrageous comments such as Tony Blair could be put on trial for war crimes ..he is a 1970s student union leader with no sense of subtle diplomacy...Corbyn will hang himself with his own words
Cons will and should come out all guns blazing.
Jezza can give the impression that he is an extremely plausible, reasonable, more in sorrow than anger, decent kind of guy.
He is not.
Cons don't want that impression taking hold. He is, after all, not going to come in on day 1 and cancel Trooping the Colour.
Attack immediately and attack hard. Create the narrative (they are good at that) while abso-bloody-lutely delighting both existing supporters and waverers alike. It may be like shooting fish in a barrel but hey, we didn't vote for him..
I agree. Corbyn is not some harmless old Leftie. He's dangerous. Someone who can say that " some" of what IS do is bad - only "some"? What do they do which is good? - is not just a fool but malign.
If Labour choose him then they have to live with the consequences and one of those should be that all the putrid views and associations of the man they've chosen need to be aired for all of us to see.
Disagree here, this is a good spot by OGH. It is a back.
Why not just invest in WmHill bonds. IIRC they yield about 6%, compounded over 5 years, so better the PfP's assumption with the same credit risk and better liquidity. I'd imagine the lot size is higher though.
The only BOND (Not minibond) that has yielded over 6.5% in recent (afaic) times is the Wasps Bond. http://tinyurl.com/Waspsbond - unfortunately for me it launched just before the General Election.
Trouble with this article is that most over 50s can remember the 1970s and 1980s and don't want no return to those days.
And they vote. In large numbers.
Just wait till immigration is raised as an issue. Corbyn will lose lots of Labour support with unlimited immigration...
The 70's were great.
I was born in 1974. Just about my only recollection of the 1970s beyond family and friends is of power cuts; of having candles stuck in old wine bottles to be ready for when the lights went off again.
Without wishing to cast aspersions on the state of your memory, I thought that power cuts were essentially 72-74? Didn't the unions bite their lip under the Social Contract, it only going to rat-shit in the winter of 78-79?
Sure it wasn't your folks refusing to feed the meter?
It's probably 1978-9 that I remember. But it is a potent memory and it did happen pretty frequently. The candles-in-bottled stayed on a high shelf in the house for years afterwards, mostly gathering dust.
All this talk of shiny new activists reminds me of a warning issued at a long-ago Liberal conference about their enthusiastic young supporters on the doorstep "frightening old ladies with talk of anarcho-syndicalism and euthanasia".
Last nights's locals confirmed some trends,LDs showing signs of green shoots,ukip in decline,Con up a bit,Lab down a bit.Also,Green party vote looks vulnerable-Corbyn will hope to hoover these up.
What were they?
Labour held Durham seat comfortably; Tories gained Camborne Pendarves in Cornwall from UKIP (whose vote fell to 8.3%) but with a margin over the LibDems of 14 votes (from nowhere) and retained the West Oxfordshire ward with a reduced majority: again, the Libdems polled well.
The LP are just a gang of shrill eunuchs and Andy U-Turnham is the worst ; no amount of Viagra could help this pathetic , limp weather cock ; at least Kendal and Cooper have the excuse of being women , thereby lacking aggressive male hormones , and in Cooper's case being without balls , but let's face it , they are all losers who deserve to be out of power for a very long time to come And after all , there is something sweet and fitting , even poetic , about the anachronistic LP being led over the cliff edge by Pied Piper from the calamitous 1970s ...a ghost from the past has came back to haunt them and lead them into final political suicide
'Of the six policies Corbyn would be sure to have on his 'Edstone' five are likely to be popular and potential vote changers.'
(snip)
4. Nationalization of BR
Oh, for the glory days of uniformed porters, kippers on the Brighton Belle and steam.
Back in reality BR were terrible. One only has to look at the ongoing disaster that is Network Rail to realise what would happen under public ownership.
Point of order: towards the end, after sectorisation, BR was very efficient (I think the most efficient railway network in Europe). It was doing well with its money, even if that meant poor services for its customers.
That's on the surface. Digging deeper, they were managing a declining network. It does not necessarily need stellar management to manage a shrinking business.
That is not the situation we are in now. Passenger numbers have doubled since privatisation, and freight is also up, despite a massive decline in bulk coal traffic. As the failing and incompetent nationalised Network Rail shows (and the ORR also deserves some blame), managing an increasingly busy and growing network is a very different matter.
As an aside I think I'm right in saying that we now have the safest railway network in europe. I'd need to check that, though ...
O/T Solid borrowing figures for last month, albeit not unexpected.
Public sector net borrowing excluding public sector banks decreased by £1.4bn to a surplus of £1.3bn in July compared with July 2014. This is the first reported July surplus since 2012. Borrowing decreased by £7.3bn to £24bn in the current financial year to date compared with the same period in 2014.
I'm still getting a lot of feedback from Broxtowe, including a flood of comments after I endorsed Corbyn. An interesting thing is that the people with most doubts - in some cases real hostility like Southam (who is with respect getting quite nasty about it) - are the veteran members, who have stayed loyal through decades of shifting policies because they think Labour governments are nearly always better than the Tories, and they fear for the party. Most of those will stay on, but anxiously; some will quit.
By contrast, the most enthusiasm is from people who have voted Labour in the past but stopped doing so around 2001, and who have voted LibDems, Green or UKIP. A lot of them say with some bemusement that they'll actually join if he wins the leadership. It misreads them to think they're nutty Trots - these are disaffected mostly middle-class people who felt the major parties didn't represent them. Not many are all that political in the terms of PB (e.g. I doubt if many care much about rail nationalisation or Hamas), certainly not party political.
My view is that the well of triangulation and centralist manouevres has run dry and we need to try Corbyn. I wouldn't say I'm optimistic, but there's a reasonable shot of success, and certainly of an interesting challenge to the crushing orthodox consensus.
Yesterday's thread IMO misreads Corbyn, by the way. The fact that he doesn't trumpet a desire to be PM doesn't mean that he doesn't give a toss. It means that he is opposed to giving himself undue prominence. It's an austere and unfashionable attitude, but not a bad thing.
John Herd (The Conservative Party Candidate) 325 Nathan Billings (Liberal Democrat) 311 Val Dalley (Labour Party) 220 Michael Pascoe (UK Independence Party (UKIP)) 89 Zoe Fox (Mebyon Kernow - The Party for Cornwall) 85 Jacqueline Merrick (Green Party) 31 Peter Channon (Independent) 13
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
The longer they leave the attacks the more chance there is of Labour not tearing itself to pieces and actually managing to engage the public. It's a slight chance, but it exists. They'll, quite rightly, go hard at JC from Day One. Another leadership election before 2020 means another sustained period of Labour looking ineards rather than outwards. In any case, it can't all be about party - the Tories have a moral dury to let voters know just what a scumbag Corbyn is.
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
EdM was a naive fool with no self knowledge and zero leadership ability, and he was a glorious gift to the Tories; but he never actively wished the UK harm and in his own way is rather fond of the place. Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing and demonstrably has no loyalty to or affection for the country he says he wants to lead - that's because, as a good Marxist, he sees absolutely everything through the prism of class and anti-capitalism. He is a genuine danger - not just to Labour, but to the UK. As LOTO he will be privy to information that would be very useful to the kinds of people and entities he has spent his entire political career hanging out with. I'd expect the Tories to point that out relentlessly.
'Of the six policies Corbyn would be sure to have on his 'Edstone' five are likely to be popular and potential vote changers.'
(snip)
4. Nationalization of BR
Oh, for the glory days of uniformed porters, kippers on the Brighton Belle and steam.
Back in reality BR were terrible. One only has to look at the ongoing disaster that is Network Rail to realise what would happen under public ownership.
Point of order: towards the end, after sectorisation, BR was very efficient (I think the most efficient railway network in Europe). It was doing well with its money, even if that meant poor services for its customers.
That's on the surface. Digging deeper, they were managing a declining network. It does not necessarily need stellar management to manage a shrinking business.
That is not the situation we are in now. Passenger numbers have doubled since privatisation, and freight is also up, despite a massive decline in bulk coal traffic. As the failing and incompetent nationalised Network Rail shows (and the ORR also deserves some blame), managing an increasingly busy and growing network is a very different matter.
As an aside I think I'm right in saying that we now have the safest railway network in europe. I'd need to check that, though ...
What are your thoughts on the disaster that was 'Railtrack' ?
John Herd (The Conservative Party Candidate) 325 Nathan Billings (Liberal Democrat) 311 Val Dalley (Labour Party) 220 Michael Pascoe (UK Independence Party (UKIP)) 89 Zoe Fox (Mebyon Kernow - The Party for Cornwall) 85 Jacqueline Merrick (Green Party) 31 Peter Channon (Independent) 13
Con gain from UKIP - whose vote has collapsed!
Looks like a lot of the "plague on all your houses voters" - who decamped en masse from LD to UKIP in May - starting to drift back?
I listened to his whole speech in Nottingham last night and he's full of missionary zeal. The crowd were adoring, obediently clapping every soundbite and cliche with gusto. It felt like a quasi-religious revival. And a big one. I honestly think Comrade Corbyn is falling for his own PR and understandably becoming very prideful with it.
On 3) Again yes, also the point @david_herdson made about the silent leavers vs angry vocal Trots and SWP sellers fits into your thinking.
A few days ago - I said that the biggest issue for me re Comrade Corbyn's mission is that it doesn't feel *safe* - infact it feels really rather dangerous. Sensible voters simply don't find that radicalism attractive, whilst those with dogs on ropes lap it up and thrust Socialist Worker in your face.
2) No. Corbyn, as we have seen, is a man who does not make mistakes or deal in things like logic. He seems to have become more arrogant as his campaign progresses and he laps up attention from the adoring crowds he pulls. As long as they keep coming, he'll want to keep going.
3) No. That is, it will be a disaster. No question of it. But as we saw with Miliband, the mere fact that in the real world everyone thinks you are completely mad and wouldn't trust you with a packet of polo mints counts for little as long as a vocal, easily led and totally unrepresentative minority continue to support you, which the Labour left surely would with Corbyn no matter what happens (look at how every legitimate question about him becomes 'an establishment stitch-up'). As long as he has Owen Jones, Charlotte Church, Russell Brand and their intellectual fellow travellers behind him, he and they will continue to think they can win - even if they are bouncing at sub-20% in the polls, which as @Andy_JS pointed out is implausible - indeed, they might even lead in the polls for a time. Remember @SouthamObserver's vivid if rather gross simile. Labour's leadership are quite capable of pulling away happily, thinking they are showing their passion, while everyone else is pointing out that they look like a bunch of weirdos.
So if Corbyn is elected, the only reason I can see why he might leave early is (a) a major scandal, and it's hard to think what could come out that's more serious than the allegations made against him already or (b) health. And the latter is more than a 5-2 shot even at his age.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
The longer they leave the attacks the more chance there is of Labour not tearing itself to pieces and actually managing to engage the public. It's a slight chance, but it exists. They'll, quite rightly, go hard at JC from Day One. Another leadership election before 2020 means another sustained period of Labour looking ineards rather than outwards. In any case, it can't all be about party - the Tories have a moral dury to let voters know just what a scumbag Corbyn is.
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
EdM was a naive fool with no self knowledge and zero leadership ability, and he was a glorious gift to the Tories; but he never actively wished the UK harm and in his own way is rather fond of the place. Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing and demonstrably has no loyalty to or affection for the country he says he wants to lead - that's because, as a good Marxist, he sees absolutely everything through the prism of class and anti-capitalism. He is a genuine danger - not just to Labour, but to the UK. As LOTO he will be privy to information that would be very useful to the kinds of people and entities he has spent his entire political career hanging out with. I'd expect the Tories to point that out relentlessly.
Would the government be obliged to admit Jeremy Corbyn to the Privy Council if he became Labour leader? Genuine question.
OGH "I’ve been particularly struck by the way that LAB people I know well have suddenly become enthusiastic for the member for Islington. Notable on PB has been the former Broxtowe MP Nick Palmer and one or two other regulars."
This is the most puzzling aspect. We all watch as Labour have this slow car crash to an extinction level event. Yet some of the Labour PB people here think that it is a good idea. That said BJowls and NickP thought EdM was a good idea to.
Last nights's locals confirmed some trends,LDs showing signs of green shoots,ukip in decline,Con up a bit,Lab down a bit.Also,Green party vote looks vulnerable-Corbyn will hope to hoover these up.
What were they?
Labour held Durham seat comfortably; Tories gained Camborne Pendarves in Cornwall from UKIP (whose vote fell to 8.3%) but with a margin over the LibDems of 14 votes (from nowhere) and retained the West Oxfordshire ward with a reduced majority: again, the Libdems polled well.
ASs Volcanoperte said, definite signs of green shoots for the LD’s. Almost a sensation in Cornwall! UKIP shot? Or is it just the Silly Season?
The idea that Jeremy Corbyn could be even remotely successful as Leader of the Labour Party is doubleplusridiculous bordering megasillythink.
Unlike (for example) Michael Foot, he has no experience of being on the front bench, either in government or in opposition.
Unlike Michael Foot, he would have been elected leader with the support of only a small number of his MPs.
He has little interaction with other Labour MPs (two of whom tweeted the other day that they had not spoken with him or met him properly in 10 years of being MPs). He has been grumpy, irritable and evasive in TV interviews. He would be completely out of his depth in terms of writing and formulating the details of workable policies (regardless of whether they are far-left-wing or not). He would be very awkward having his regular meetings with the Prime Minister on confidential matters ("Sometimes tea, sometimes not tea"). He has little sense of party discipline or loyalty, having voted against his own party's whip hundreds of times.
That's all before we get to scrutinising or analysing any of his actual policies.
If he became LOTO (and, when it comes to the crunch, I don't think he will) his leadership and authority would fall apart within months. He's a lame duck already, albeit that he has two functioning legs and he's a hippopotamus rather than a duck.
-----
When he was in Croydon two weeks ago, one of the questions was "How will you ensure that Labour MPs won't derail your leadership, when most of them are pro-austerity [and didn't vote for him]?" It is not enough for him to point to the mass membership of the party as his source of authority. The job of the Leader of the Labour Party is to lead a group of MPs and get them disciplined enough to win a general election. Being frenziedly backed by a proletarian mass is not enough.
I am not saying I disagree with your point, but haven't you provided evidence against it? If all Michael Foot's experience and rhetorical gifts didn't work, then surely it isn't logical to fault Corbyn for not possessing them. And having the support of his MPs did Ed Miliband precious little good in the general election. Strong support from the grassroots might have been a lot more effective. I am not sure that 600,000 paid up supporters some of whom have only had to part with the price of a pint of lager counts as a frenzied proletarian mass. But there is one, and only one, prediction we can make about the next general election. The Tories will have a hugely bigger budget. More people knocking on doors might be the only card in Labour's hands. If Corbyn is the man who can stimulate more of that activity, that might make him the best choice.
(Honesty disclosure - I am not going to place any actual money on him winning.)
[Snipped] An interesting thing is that the people with most doubts - in some cases real hostility like Southam (who is with respect getting quite nasty about it) - are the veteran members, who have stayed loyal through decades of shifting policies because they think Labour governments are nearly always better than the Tories, and they fear for the party. Most of those will stay on, but anxiously; some will quit.
By contrast, the most enthusiasm is from people who have voted Labour in the past but stopped doing so around 2001, and who have voted LibDems, Green or UKIP. A lot of them say with some bemusement that they'll actually join if he wins the leadership. It misreads them to think they're nutty Trots - these are disaffected mostly middle-class people who felt the major parties didn't represent them. Not many are all that political in the terms of PB (e.g. I doubt if many care much about rail nationalisation or Hamas), certainly not party political.
My view is that the well of triangulation and centralist manouevres has run dry and we need to try Corbyn. I wouldn't say I'm optimistic, but there's a reasonable shot of success, and certainly of an interesting challenge to the crushing orthodox consensus.
Yesterday's thread IMO misreads Corbyn, by the way. The fact that he doesn't trumpet a desire to be PM doesn't mean that he doesn't give a toss. It means that he is opposed to giving himself undue prominence. It's an austere and unfashionable attitude, but not a bad thing.
SO is a fundamentally decent person who is, rightly IMO, appalled at what deluded fools in the Labour Party appear to be about to do. A party which ignores such people or calls them "nasty" is one which has lost its moral compass.
You may console yourself with the mistaken view that Corbyn just happened to sit in the same room with some nasty people and it's a lot of fuss about nothing ( as you've said on here and elsewhere). But the facts don't go away just because people choose to ignore them. Corbyn did not happen to shake people's hands by chance. He actively and regularly promoted and sought out and campaigned for and alongside people who are totalitarian, fascists, anti-Semitic, anti-British, illiberal and keen on violence. He thinks - today - that IS are repugnant and should be stopped but is Chair of a campaign whose explicit policy is not to take action against IS because the U.S. is involved.
You are entitled to ignore such facts but others - such as SO - are entitled to express their view on the judgment displayed by you and other Corbyn supporters and the harm they think this will do to a once great party and to the very idea of a decent truly progressive left of centre party.
There is nothing "nasty" about it. It is the sadness and disappointment of the idealist, perhaps. It is miles better than being deluded.
I'm still getting a lot of feedback from Broxtowe, including a flood of comments after I endorsed Corbyn. An interesting thing is that the people with most doubts - in some cases real hostility like Southam (who is with respect getting quite nasty about it) - are the veteran members, who have stayed loyal through decades of shifting policies because they think Labour governments are nearly always better than the Tories, and they fear for the party. Most of those will stay on, but anxiously; some will quit.
By contrast, the most enthusiasm is from people who have voted Labour in the past but stopped doing so around 2001, and who have voted LibDems, Green or UKIP. A lot of them say with some bemusement that they'll actually join if he wins the leadership. It misreads them to think they're nutty Trots - these are disaffected mostly middle-class people who felt the major parties didn't represent them. Not many are all that political in the terms of PB (e.g. I doubt if many care much about rail nationalisation or Hamas), certainly not party political.
My view is that the well of triangulation and centralist manouevres has run dry and we need to try Corbyn. I wouldn't say I'm optimistic, but there's a reasonable shot of success, and certainly of an interesting challenge to the crushing orthodox consensus.
Yesterday's thread IMO misreads Corbyn, by the way. The fact that he doesn't trumpet a desire to be PM doesn't mean that he doesn't give a toss. It means that he is opposed to giving himself undue prominence. It's an austere and unfashionable attitude, but not a bad thing.
I don't want to be personally nasty but, for the life of me, I cannot understand how someone who was a pretty consistent in Blairite in social, economic and foreign policy right through to 2007 can with any conviction now support Jeremy Corbyn who has retreated not an iota from the social, economic and foreign policy far-leftism of the early 1980s (which as a youthful Euro-communist then, you presumably would have also despised).
I'm still getting a lot of feedback from Broxtowe, including a flood of comments after I endorsed Corbyn. An interesting thing is that the people with most doubts - in some cases real hostility like Southam (who is with respect getting quite nasty about it) - are the veteran members, who have stayed loyal through decades of shifting policies because they think Labour governments are nearly always better than the Tories, and they fear for the party. Most of those will stay on, but anxiously; some will quit.
By contrast, the most enthusiasm is from people who have voted Labour in the past but stopped doing so around 2001, and who have voted LibDems, Green or UKIP. A lot of them say with some bemusement that they'll actually join if he wins the leadership. It misreads them to think they're nutty Trots - these are disaffected mostly middle-class people who felt the major parties didn't represent them. Not many are all that political in the terms of PB (e.g. I doubt if many care much about rail nationalisation or Hamas), certainly not party political.
My view is that the well of triangulation and centralist manouevres has run dry and we need to try Corbyn. I wouldn't say I'm optimistic, but there's a reasonable shot of success, and certainly of an interesting challenge to the crushing orthodox consensus.
Yesterday's thread IMO misreads Corbyn, by the way. The fact that he doesn't trumpet a desire to be PM doesn't mean that he doesn't give a toss. It means that he is opposed to giving himself undue prominence. It's an austere and unfashionable attitude, but not a bad thing.
I don't want to be personally nasty but, for the life of me, I cannot understand how someone who was a pretty consistent in Blairite in social, economic and foreign policy right through to 2007 can with any conviction now support Jeremy Corbyn who has retreated not an iota from the social, economic and foreign policy far-leftism of the early 1980s (which as a youthful Euro-communist then, you presumably would have also despised).
Or has the Vicar of Bray decamped to Broxtowe?
Opportunism?
It does look as if the good people of Broxtowe dodged another bullet when they re-elected Soubry with an increased majority.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
The longer they leave the attacks the more chance there is of Labour not tearing itself to pieces and actually managing to engage the public. It's a slight chance, but it exists. They'll, quite rightly, go hard at JC from Day One. Another leadership election before 2020 means another sustained period of Labour looking ineards rather than outwards. In any case, it can't all be about party - the Tories have a moral dury to let voters know just what a scumbag Corbyn is.
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
EdM was a naive fool with no self knowledge and zero leadership ability, and he was a glorious gift to the Tories; but he never actively wished the UK harm and in his own way is rather fond of the place. Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing and demonstrably has no loyalty to or affection for the country he says he wants to lead - that's because, as a good Marxist, he sees absolutely everything through the prism of class and anti-capitalism. He is a genuine danger - not just to Labour, but to the UK. As LOTO he will be privy to information that would be very useful to the kinds of people and entities he has spent his entire political career hanging out with. I'd expect the Tories to point that out relentlessly.
Would the government be obliged to admit Jeremy Corbyn to the Privy Council if he became Labour leader? Genuine question.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
Would the government be obliged to admit Jeremy Corbyn to the Privy Council if he became Labour leader? Genuine question.
'The bulk of Privy Counsellors are politicians. The Prime Minister, Cabinet ministers and the Leader of the Opposition are always sworn of the Privy Council on appointment.[22] Leaders of major parties in the House of Commons,[31] First Ministers of the devolved assemblies,[32] some senior ministers outside the Cabinet,[33] and on occasion senior Parliamentarians[34] are appointed Privy Counsellors. As Privy Counsellors are bound by their oath to keep matters discussed at Council meetings secret, the appointment of the leaders of Opposition parties as Privy Counsellors allows the Government to share confidential information with them "on Privy Council terms".[22] This usually only happens in special circumstances, such as in matters of national security. For example, Tony Blair met Leader of HM Opposition Iain Duncan Smith and the Leader of the Liberal Democrats the late Charles Kennedy on Privy Council terms to discuss the evidence for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.[35]'
From Wikipedia...so i guess yes, but then there would be plenty of problems I would guess, given his politics.
The second is to go the managerial route: not to spend more (or at least much more) but to spend it smarter and on the priorities. Even writing that makes it sound boring and neither Cooper or Burnham are close enough to being interesting in their own right to make it any better.
I do think the managerial route does apply to many public services in the current debt reduction climate, but there are big reformist challenges out there too. The most obvious one is the merger of health and social care where everyone acknowledges it is a 'big challenge' but specifics seem rather thin on the ground. It is absolutely key to the Labour centre and right and could, if played correctly, be the defining cause of their come back.
The fact is that Osborne, the government having found care reform difficult, will give Manchester (amongst others) great freedom to define what this merger looks like at local level. Of course, there is a trap in all this, there could barely be more if it came in a box labelled 'Acme' - the work is to be done against year on year budget reductions of circa 6% on the non-NHS elements of devo Manc. You only have to see the fruits of Scottish devolution or the Welsh NHS's problems to appreciate the downside risk. But the opportunity - the morsel of food in that trap - is very tasty indeed.
If the Labour centre spend the next couple of years keeping fairly quiet elsewhere and focussing heavily on how to make this work and could it be that this routed Labour band have the opportunity to start delivering the single most important piece of public service reform to be delivered anywhere in the UK in this parliament?
First, of course, is how to get into a position where they can take a lead on this. A look at the GM mayoral odds, shows very much that people with a local political background - many of the front runners: Leese, Stringer, Lloyd &c are City council leaders and chief execs, city central MPs, PCCs. But it is not like when Ken used the GLC name-recognition to become Mayor of London, city council leadership has little relevance to those 2 million or so people who pay their rates to the other 9 councils, so the name recognition is less and the city central bias may be a turn off. The only front runner outside this, joint favourite Jonathan Reynolds, is a Kendall backing MP representing towns on the edge of Greater Manchester and is obviously doing OK, whilst further back Oldham-leader Jim McMahon speaks the language of reform very well. The question is who deserves the big push from Labour centrists in terms of policy making heft and even back office support post 2017 or could a big local name come in. Nationally it may seem that way, but locally the cupboard does not seem bare. Could Manchester replace Islington as the hotbed that revives the centre left Phoenix?
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
I doubt it ; they will not be able to resist such an easy target , it's the sensational nature of news ...they will blast this old fool to kingdom come
Furthermore , he is just a two dimensional quasi Marxists who simply cannot resist saying outrageous comments such as Tony Blair could be put on trial for war crimes ..he is a 1970s student union leader with no sense of subtle diplomacy...Corbyn will hang himself with his own words
Cons will and should come out all guns blazing.
Jezza can give the impression that he is an extremely plausible, reasonable, more in sorrow than anger, decent kind of guy.
He is not.
Cons don't want that impression taking hold. He is, after all, not going to come in on day 1 and cancel Trooping the Colour.
Attack immediately and attack hard. Create the narrative (they are good at that) while abso-bloody-lutely delighting both existing supporters and waverers alike. It may be like shooting fish in a barrel but hey, we didn't vote for him..
That's about right , he does promote that ''mild mannered , reasonable gentleman ''even though there is nothing reasonable about his politics ...he does remind me of one of those 'mild mannered Jewish intelectuals in the Bolshevik party '' or worse , the mild mannered , theoretician Pol Pot ...killers in the abstract
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
The longer they leave the attacks the more chance there is of Labour not tearing itself to pieces and actually managing to engage the public. It's a slight chance, but it exists. They'll, quite rightly, go hard at JC from Day One. Another leadership election before 2020 means another sustained period of Labour looking ineards rather than outwards. In any case, it can't all be about party - the Tories have a moral dury to let voters know just what a scumbag Corbyn is.
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
EdM was a naive fool with no self knowledge and zero leadership ability, and he was a glorious gift to the Tories; but he never actively wished the UK harm and in his own way is rather fond of the place. Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing and demonstrably has no loyalty to or affection for the country he says he wants to lead - that's because, as a good Marxist, he sees absolutely everything through the prism of class and anti-capitalism. He is a genuine danger - not just to Labour, but to the UK. As LOTO he will be privy to information that would be very useful to the kinds of people and entities he has spent his entire political career hanging out with. I'd expect the Tories to point that out relentlessly.
Would the government be obliged to admit Jeremy Corbyn to the Privy Council if he became Labour leader? Genuine question.
Great (or should that be grate) minds ponder alike. I can't recall any LoTo who hasn't been, but in this case, I believe an exception could and probably should be made. Why should he see any sensitive security information?
Trouble with this article is that most over 50s can remember the 1970s and 1980s and don't want no return to those days.
And they vote. In large numbers.
Just wait till immigration is raised as an issue. Corbyn will lose lots of Labour support with unlimited immigration...
The 70's were great.
I was born in 1974. Just about my only recollection of the 1970s beyond family and friends is of power cuts; of having candles stuck in old wine bottles to be ready for when the lights went off again.
Without wishing to cast aspersions on the state of your memory, I thought that power cuts were essentially 72-74? Didn't the unions bite their lip under the Social Contract, it only going to rat-shit in the winter of 78-79?
Sure it wasn't your folks refusing to feed the meter?
It's probably 1978-9 that I remember. But it is a potent memory and it did happen pretty frequently. The candles-in-bottled stayed on a high shelf in the house for years afterwards, mostly gathering dust.
There were power cuts in 78/9 though not as bad as under Heath. Here is a BBC R4 Today prog quote for 1978. "The winter of discontent began in private industry before spreading to the public sector. The strikes seriously disrupted everyday life, causing problems including food shortages and widespread and frequent power cuts." http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/politics/1978vs2008_20080425.shtml
I'm still getting a lot of feedback from Broxtowe, including a flood of comments after I endorsed Corbyn. An interesting thing is that the people with most doubts - in some cases real hostility like Southam (who is with respect getting quite nasty about it) - are the veteran members, who have stayed loyal through decades of shifting policies because they think Labour governments are nearly always better than the Tories, and they fear for the party. Most of those will stay on, but anxiously; some will quit.
By contrast, the most enthusiasm is from people who have voted Labour in the past but stopped doing so around 2001, and who have voted LibDems, Green or UKIP. A lot of them say with some bemusement that they'll actually join if he wins the leadership. It misreads them to think they're nutty Trots - these are disaffected mostly middle-class people who felt the major parties didn't represent them. Not many are all that political in the terms of PB (e.g. I doubt if many care much about rail nationalisation or Hamas), certainly not party political.
My view is that the well of triangulation and centralist manouevres has run dry and we need to try Corbyn. I wouldn't say I'm optimistic, but there's a reasonable shot of success, and certainly of an interesting challenge to the crushing orthodox consensus.
Yesterday's thread IMO misreads Corbyn, by the way. The fact that he doesn't trumpet a desire to be PM doesn't mean that he doesn't give a toss. It means that he is opposed to giving himself undue prominence. It's an austere and unfashionable attitude, but not a bad thing.
Sorry Nick, but you have decided someone who is happy to share platforms with people who revel in the killing of British soldiers should be the leader of the Labour party. That does genuinely make me angry because not only should such a person never be anywhere near any position of authority or responsibility per se, let alone a political party aiming to govern, but also because it will help deliver years more Tory rule. If Corbyn was just another economically illierate left-winger that would be bad enough, but it would be recoverable. But he is not, it is far worse. In the circumstances describing you as a useful idiot seems pretty controlled to me. I could be a whole lot nastier, believe me!!!
The LP are just a gang of shrill eunuchs and Andy U-Turnham is the worst ; no amount of Viagra could help this pathetic , limp weather cock ; at least Kendal and Cooper have the excuse of being women , thereby lacking aggressive male hormones , and in Cooper's case being without balls , but let's face it , they are all losers who deserve to be out of power for a very long time to come And after all , there is something sweet and fitting , even poetic , about the anachronistic LP being led over the cliff edge by Pied Piper from the calamitous 1970s ...a ghost from the past has came back to haunt them and lead them into final political suicide
Having some knowledge of Germany, I prefer to see it in terms of some kind of Faustian bargain that Blair made - new Labour to carry all before it in exchange for loss of soul 24 years later (well ok 22 years but go with me). Mephistopheles in the shape of Corbyn has come to take the soul back. At that point I think the Pied Piper analogy is very apt as he leads them away to destruction. As long as he doesn't take the rest of us with him.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
The longer they leave the attacks the more chance there is of Labour not tearing itself to pieces and actually managing to engage the public. It's a slight chance, but it exists. They'll, quite rightly, go hard at JC from Day One. Another leadership election before 2020 means another sustained period of Labour looking ineards rather than outwards. In any case, it can't all be about party - the Tories have a moral dury to let voters know just what a scumbag Corbyn is.
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
EdM was a naive fool with no self knowledge and zero leadership ability, and he was a glorious gift to the Tories; but he never actively wished the UK harm and in his own way is rather fond of the place. Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing and demonstrably has no loyalty to or affection for the country he says he wants to lead - that's because, as a good Marxist, he sees absolutely everything through the prism of class and anti-capitalism. He is a genuine danger - not just to Labour, but to the UK. As LOTO he will be privy to information that would be very useful to the kinds of people and entities he has spent his entire political career hanging out with. I'd expect the Tories to point that out relentlessly.
Would the government be obliged to admit Jeremy Corbyn to the Privy Council if he became Labour leader? Genuine question.
Great (or should that be grate) minds ponder alike. I can't recall any LoTo who hasn't been, but in this case, I believe an exception could and probably should be made. Why should he see any sensitive security information?
We are of course just as much frog-in-the-well-ish as rabid Corbynites but to take a step back: wondering whether the potential LotO might or might not be loyal to the UK is a mark of how bonkers this whole thing is.
Trouble with this article is that most over 50s can remember the 1970s and 1980s and don't want no return to those days.
And they vote. In large numbers.
Just wait till immigration is raised as an issue. Corbyn will lose lots of Labour support with unlimited immigration...
The 70's were great.
I was born in 1974. Just about my only recollection of the 1970s beyond family and friends is of power cuts; of having candles stuck in old wine bottles to be ready for when the lights went off again.
Without wishing to cast aspersions on the state of your memory, I thought that power cuts were essentially 72-74? Didn't the unions bite their lip under the Social Contract, it only going to rat-shit in the winter of 78-79?
Sure it wasn't your folks refusing to feed the meter?
It's probably 1978-9 that I remember. But it is a potent memory and it did happen pretty frequently. The candles-in-bottled stayed on a high shelf in the house for years afterwards, mostly gathering dust.
There were power cuts in 78/9 though not as bad as under Heath. Here is a BBC R4 Today prog quote for 1978. "The winter of discontent began in private industry before spreading to the public sector. The strikes seriously disrupted everyday life, causing problems including food shortages and widespread and frequent power cuts." http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/politics/1978vs2008_20080425.shtml
I can remember power cuts in the late 70's. Candles, hissing gas lamps and boxes of blue Calor cylinders. As a child, the unexpected plunge into darkness was exciting. The loss of the Muppet Show however was boring, though that may have been due to TV disputes, rather than power workers pulling the plug.
I'm still getting a lot of feedback from Broxtowe, including a flood of comments after I endorsed Corbyn. An interesting thing is that the people with most doubts - in some cases real hostility like Southam (who is with respect getting quite nasty about it) - are the veteran members, who have stayed loyal through decades of shifting policies because they think Labour governments are nearly always better than the Tories, and they fear for the party. Most of those will stay on, but anxiously; some will quit.
By contrast, the most enthusiasm is from people who have voted Labour in the past but stopped doing so around 2001, and who have voted LibDems, Green or UKIP. A lot of them say with some bemusement that they'll actually join if he wins the leadership. It misreads them to think they're nutty Trots - these are disaffected mostly middle-class people who felt the major parties didn't represent them. Not many are all that political in the terms of PB (e.g. I doubt if many care much about rail nationalisation or Hamas), certainly not party political.
My view is that the well of triangulation and centralist manouevres has run dry and we need to try Corbyn. I wouldn't say I'm optimistic, but there's a reasonable shot of success, and certainly of an interesting challenge to the crushing orthodox consensus.
Yesterday's thread IMO misreads Corbyn, by the way. The fact that he doesn't trumpet a desire to be PM doesn't mean that he doesn't give a toss. It means that he is opposed to giving himself undue prominence. It's an austere and unfashionable attitude, but not a bad thing.
I don't want to be personally nasty but, for the life of me, I cannot understand how someone who was a pretty consistent in Blairite in social, economic and foreign policy right through to 2007 can with any conviction now support Jeremy Corbyn who has retreated not an iota from the social, economic and foreign policy far-leftism of the early 1980s (which as a youthful Euro-communist then, you presumably would have also despised).
Or has the Vicar of Bray decamped to Broxtowe?
I've met Nick, I like Nick but like you I can't get my head around his backing for Corbyn
It would be like you or I backing some Monday Clubber to replace Dave
Is security clearance automatically granted to a Privy Councillor? Or could he get the PC nod, and then have zero security clearance?
Whatever the de jure position, the security services will not share information with anyone if they think there is a risk of operations, intelligence, agents etc being compromised.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
The longer they leave the attacks the more chance there is of Labour not tearing itself to pieces and actually managing to engage the public. It's a slight chance, but it exists. They'll, quite rightly, go hard at JC from Day One. Another leadership election before 2020 means another sustained period of Labour looking ineards rather than outwards. In any case, it can't all be about party - the Tories have a moral dury to let voters know just what a scumbag Corbyn is.
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
EdM was a naive fool with no self knowledge and zero leadership ability, and he was a glorious gift to the Tories; but he never actively wished the UK harm and in his own way is rather fond of the place. Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing and demonstrably has no loyalty to or affection for the country he says he wants to lead - that's because, as a good Marxist, he sees absolutely everything through the prism of class and anti-capitalism. He is a genuine danger - not just to Labour, but to the UK. As LOTO he will be privy to information that would be very useful to the kinds of people and entities he has spent his entire political career hanging out with. I'd expect the Tories to point that out relentlessly.
Would the government be obliged to admit Jeremy Corbyn to the Privy Council if he became Labour leader? Genuine question.
Great (or should that be grate) minds ponder alike. I can't recall any LoTo who hasn't been, but in this case, I believe an exception could and probably should be made. Why should he see any sensitive security information?
This could be one of the tactics that the Tories use to define him; even a failed attempt to prevent him seeing sensitive information for security reasons will put it in people's minds that he's a danger to the British state (or British soldiers).
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
The longer they leave the attacks the more chance there is of Labour not tearing itself to pieces and actually managing to engage the public. It's a slight chance, but it exists. They'll, quite rightly, go hard at JC from Day One. Another leadership election before 2020 means another sustained period of Labour looking ineards rather than outwards. In any case, it can't all be about party - the Tories have a moral dury to let voters know just what a scumbag Corbyn is.
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
EdM was a naive fool with no self knowledge and zero leadership ability, and he was a glorious gift to the Tories; but he never actively wished the UK harm ........Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing and demonstrably has no loyalty to or affection for the country he says he wants to lead - that's because, as a good Marxist, he sees absolutely everything through the prism of class and anti-capitalism. He is a genuine danger - not just to Labour, but to the UK. As LOTO he will be privy to information ..........
Corbyn is the wrong choice on so many issues. But there are only a few weeks to save the Labour party and that probably has to happen before the votes are in. The mainstream senior folk inside Labour need to act soon and force Corbyn out and get a peace maker such as Alan Johnson in. But as one ex MP used to say. Tick Tock. (posted by a person very happy to watch the car crash and near death event of Labour)
'Of the six policies Corbyn would be sure to have on his 'Edstone' five are likely to be popular and potential vote changers.'
(snip)
4. Nationalization of BR
Oh, for the glory days of uniformed porters, kippers on the Brighton Belle and steam.
Back in reality BR were terrible. One only has to look at the ongoing disaster that is Network Rail to realise what would happen under public ownership.
Point of order: towards the end, after sectorisation, BR was very efficient (I think the most efficient railway network in Europe). It was doing well with its money, even if that meant poor services for its customers.
That's on the surface. Digging deeper, they were managing a declining network. It does not necessarily need stellar management to manage a shrinking business.
That is not the situation we are in now. Passenger numbers have doubled since privatisation, and freight is also up, despite a massive decline in bulk coal traffic. As the failing and incompetent nationalised Network Rail shows (and the ORR also deserves some blame), managing an increasingly busy and growing network is a very different matter.
As an aside I think I'm right in saying that we now have the safest railway network in europe. I'd need to check that, though ...
What are your thoughts on the disaster that was 'Railtrack' ?
I have two main things to say:
1) the Hatfield accident appears more complex than the headlines say. It was a political football, and it was not as if BR had been immune to accidents due to poor and mishandled maintenance. It can easily be argued that Hatfield (let alone the other accidents such as Ladbroke Grove) would have occurred under BR.
2) Railtrack was continuing a trend that BR had started in the mid-1980s: trying to maximise revenues from its massive property portfolio. The Liverpool Street renovation had been a massive success for BR, and it was an obvious way forward for a cash-strapped network. In the long run this has been to passengers' benefit, as, many stations have improved since privatisation, instead of the continued neglect they had through the 70's and 80's (*).
Railtrack, with proper political support, could have managed the network as it was well enough. I doubt it would have coped with the massively increased usage, and would have had to develop a closer link to government, and got massive investment from them, to cope. Then again, BR certainly would not have coped with the increased usage either. It was institutionally wed to managing a shrinking network.
(*) Although they need to do something about many stations, e.g. Gainsborough's two poorly-served stations.
I've been saying this for ages. Labour need to elect Corbyn, not because he's a political titan, but because they're unelectable in their current form. Labour needs to be destroyed, so that it can then rebuild itself into something that actually functions as a political party for the masses. Corbyn is the man to destroy the current Labour party.
Labour needs less of the Owen Jones and Polly Toynbee types and more of the Southam Observer type, in my book. I could vote for the Labour party then.
I think there's a lot to be said for this. However, under FPTP it is nigh-on impossible. Either we try to reform the Labour Party from within fighting the far left again as in the 1980s to regain control of the party or we split like the SDP in the 1980s. Divided parties are punished by the electorate so that would result in several more general election defeats. Ask UKIP and the Greens about how well smaller parties do under FPTP in the case of a split. It's worse now because of 5 year fixed parliaments too.
Great (or should that be grate) minds ponder alike. I can't recall any LoTo who hasn't been, but in this case, I believe an exception could and probably should be made. Why should he see any sensitive security information?
I'm sure that, as LOTO, Corbyn would become a Privy Couincillor, but I doubt if in practice that means very much in terms of access to sensitive information. The government and security services will simply not include him in the customary briefings. They'll obviously also need to reassure the US that Corbyn is not going to have access to US-originated intelligence.
Edit: I see Ms Cyclefree has already made this point.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
The longer they leave the attacks the more chance there is of Labour not tearing itself to pieces and actually managing to engage the public. It's a slight chance, but it exists. They'll, quite rightly, go hard at JC from Day One. Another leadership election before 2020 means another sustained period of Labour looking ineards rather than outwards. In any case, it can't all be about party - the Tories have a moral dury to let voters know just what a scumbag Corbyn is.
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
EdM was a naive fool with no self knowledge and zero leadership ability, and he was a glorious gift to the Tories; but he never actively wished the UK harm and in his own way is rather fond of the place. Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing and demonstrably has no loyalty to or affection for the country he says he wants to lead - that's because, as a good Marxist, he sees absolutely everything through the prism of class and anti-capitalism. He is a genuine danger - not just to Labour, but to the UK. As LOTO he will be privy to information that would be very useful to the kinds of people and entities he has spent his entire political career hanging out with. I'd expect the Tories to point that out relentlessly.
The Tories' dilemmas are but as naught compared with Labour's. I'm not a Labour voter but I do try to be fair. On this one I can't see what the sane PLP can do for the best. They are completely shafted.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
Theters know just what a scumbag Corbyn is.
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
EdM was a naive fool with no self knowledge and zero leadership ability, and he was a glorious gift to the Tories; but he never actively wished the UK harm and in his own way is rather fond of the place. Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing and demonstrably has no loyalty to or affection for the country he says he wants to lead - that's because, as a good Marxist, he sees absolutely everything through the prism of class and anti-capitalism. He is a genuine danger - not just to Labour, but to the UK. As LOTO he will be privy to information that would be very useful to the kinds of people and entities he has spent his entire political career hanging out with. I'd expect the Tories to point that out relentlessly.
Would the government be obliged to admit Jeremy Corbyn to the Privy Council if he became Labour leader? Genuine question.
Great (or should that be grate) minds ponder alike. I can't recall any LoTo who hasn't been, but in this case, I believe an exception could and probably should be made. Why should he see any sensitive security information?
This could be one of the tactics that the Tories use to define him; even a failed attempt to prevent him seeing sensitive information for security reasons will put it in people's minds that he's a danger to the British state (or British soldiers).
I reckon the Tories just have to wait till the 24th of April 2016, that's when Corbyn will make a major faux pas on this topic
I think it's telling that his radio and TV performances have become worse as the campaign has gone on. When he stuck it to Guru-Murthy over his tabloid journalism I was with him, but he seems increasingly snippy and the anger is only just below the surface. He's never experienced anything like the scrutiny he'll face.
Nor has he ever experienced anything like the hard work he'll have to do; the late nights, the reading, coping with Party management. He'll be exhausted (and this is where his age could matter) - and exhausted and under pressure could lead to him saying or doing something extraordinarily stupid.
'Of the six policies Corbyn would be sure to have on his 'Edstone' five are likely to be popular and potential vote changers.'
(snip)
4. Nationalization of BR
Oh, for the glory days of uniformed porters, kippers on the Brighton Belle and steam.
Back in reality BR were terrible. One only has to look at the ongoing disaster that is Network Rail to realise what would happen under public ownership.
Point of order: towards the end, after sectorisation, BR was very efficient (I think the most efficient railway network in Europe). It was doing well with its money, even if that meant poor services for its customers.
That's on the surface. Digging deeper, they were managing a declining network. It does not necessarily need stellar management to manage a shrinking business.
That is not the situation we are in now. Passenger numbers have doubled since privatisation, and freight is also up, despite a massive decline in bulk coal traffic. As the failing and incompetent nationalised Network Rail shows (and the ORR also deserves some blame), managing an increasingly busy and growing network is a very different matter.
As an aside I think I'm right in saying that we now have the safest railway network in europe. I'd need to check that, though ...
It's easy to fire shots at NR but, actually, a huge part of the problem is that they've been given a ridiculously large amount of new work to do over the next 5-10 years, on top of maintaining the existing day-to-day rail network, and there simply aren't the PM skills and technical resources in the whole rail industry to do it all.
That, and it suffers from what all large public sector bodies do: perform very averagely and keep your head down, and you have a job for as long as you like. You'll never be sacked. Do a very good job, and stick your head above the parapet - trying to do the right thing - and you simply attract more work, the most difficult problems, and then have to navigate complex organisational politics.
Some burn out and leave. Some get fed up with others taking credit for their work and leave. Some get blamed for failures, despite their best endeavours, and told to leave.
Corbyn leader in 5 years ...surely you jest ...it's much more likely that the dodgy past and grisly friends of this quasi Marxist catches up to him within 6 months ...the tory print media are just waiting to hammer him after he is elected ...this poor fool is going to be humiliated and then yanked out of there I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
I'm not sure. The Tories I expect will give Corbyn a fairly easy ride to begin with. Remember, they want to make sure he survives.
Theters know just what a scumbag Corbyn is.
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
EdM was a naive fool with no self knowledge and zero leadership ability, and he was a glorious gift to the Tories; but he never actively wished the UK harm and in his own way is rather fond of the place. Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing and demonstrably has no loyalty to or affection for the country he says he wants to lead - that's because, as a good Marxist, he sees absolutely everything through the prism of class and anti-capitalism. He is a genuine danger - not just to Labour, but to the UK. As LOTO he will be privy to information that would be very useful to the kinds of people and entities he has spent his entire political career hanging out with. I'd expect the Tories to point that out relentlessly.
Would the government be obliged to admit Jeremy Corbyn to the Privy Council if he became Labour leader? Genuine question.
Great (or should that be grate) minds ponder alike. I can't recall any LoTo who hasn't been, but in this case, I believe an exception could and probably should be made. Why should he see any sensitive security information?
This could be one of the tactics that the Tories use to define him; even a failed attempt to prevent him seeing sensitive information for security reasons will put it in people's minds that he's a danger to the British state (or British soldiers).
I reckon the Tories just have to wait till the 24th of April 2016, that's when Corbyn will make a major faux pas on this topic
Comments
The Left must be humiliated and totally discredited before Kendal is given a chance ..Corbyn and his rag bag nutters must be hounded out of the party
The LP are like a recovering alcoholic always in danger of a relapse back to its bad old days ; Corbyn is 100% pure meth .the electorate will never trust Labour with the levers of power until they become clean and sober
Cameron isn't crazy enough to manufacture a fake no confidence vote, as that would be swiftly punished by the voters.
"That policy platform could save the taxpayer £bns."
Interesting. I hadn't thought of it like that but you could be right. It just gets better.....
Corbyn's mooted first act - the apology for Iraq - is likely to lead to an immediate split with his pro-Iraq deputy Tom Watson. Labour is in the process of disintegrating. Long term that may be no bad thing. Short and medium term, though, it will ensure Nick and his mates get precisely what it is they claim to want to prevent: Tory hegemony on 40% or so of the popular vote.
I don't think so.
A Corbyn leadership will be an unmitigated disaster for Lab. To think otherwise, that there will be a phoenix risen from the ashes is wishful thinking. It will be a huge mess.
Jezza will become LotO and realise that in the real political world you can't just come in, nationalise the railways and abolish the monarchy. Oxbridge type drones get all the criticism but they also realise that politics, when in actual power, is a matter of tiny, incremental changes. They have the patience for that and understand the process.
Jezza transparently doesn't, and why should he never having had a position of responsibility? But this is why it will be incredibly ugly once he is LotO.
The party will be led by former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, who was strongly opposed to the bailout deal, reports say.
A list of MPs joining the party published by the Ta Nea newspaper showed that the parliamentary speaker Zoe Konstantopulou and former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis were not among its members.
Both had opposed a new bailout deal, with Ms Konstantopulou highly critical of her former ally Mr Tsipras.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34014083
Foot had loyally backed Callaghan in the dying days of the Labour government. Indeed, his spirited speeches at the time of the votes of confidence in 1978 and 1979 won widespread admiration and sustained the morale of the party at a difficult time. Foot was almost seen as a unifying figure between the Bennites, the powerful TU bloc of MPs and the social democratic wing. Corbyn is and always will be a rebel. Confronted by the messy compromises inevitable when leading a party of diverse interests and ambitious egos he’ll be all at sea.
Foot had wide interests in literature and the world outside politics. He had admirers in all parts of the political spectrum. Corbyn is a narrow-mined bore in comparison.
Foot may well have been seen as a left-wing firebrand but no-one doubted his patriotism. Early on he had seen the threat from Nazi Germany and spoken out. I’m struggling to think of any occasion when Corbyn hasn’t sided with people seen as our enemies.
As a Tory I’d be overjoyed to see Corbyn as a weak Labour leader. But in sixty years watching and being active in politics it seems almost unbelievable that so light-weight, so naïve, so inexperienced, so small-minded a man could ever be thought a fit leader for one of great parties of British politics.
Furthermore , he is just a two dimensional quasi Marxists who simply cannot resist saying outrageous comments such as Tony Blair could be put on trial for war crimes ..he is a 1970s student union leader with no sense of subtle diplomacy...Corbyn will hang himself with his own words
The two some have changed the public perception of what politicians could be. I believe that the MP's of all parties should be afraid, very afraid.
As to premature hair loss, hasn't Cameron's hair line been receding from the front and centre? And as for Osborne's, er, well, I do suppose it could be referred to as interesting.
But yeah, from what I've seen, Corbyn has said enough and had enough of that recorded that he'll hang himself with his own words.
A narrow victory by Burnham or Cooper, leaving an empowered Corbyn / Diane Abbott et al crowing from the sidelines would be really bad for Labour
As for Burnham & Cooper (and the rest), their challenge would be to explain, first to Lab, and then to the electorate, what changed between five to and five past ten on May 7th this year.
He's having his crowded hour , convinced he is the anointed one , determined to lead the faithful to the promised land; unfortunately , he is going to lead them all in a death leap
3. Recognition of Palestine
You need to get out of that bubble, Roger. Your average man on the street really couldn't be bothered.
4. Nationalization of BR
Oh, for the glory days of uniformed porters, kippers on the Brighton Belle and steam.
Back in reality BR were terrible. One only has to look at the ongoing disaster that is Network Rail to realise what would happen under public ownership.
https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/634325625378086913/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
Jezza can give the impression that he is an extremely plausible, reasonable, more in sorrow than anger, decent kind of guy.
He is not.
Cons don't want that impression taking hold. He is, after all, not going to come in on day 1 and cancel Trooping the Colour.
Attack immediately and attack hard. Create the narrative (they are good at that) while abso-bloody-lutely delighting both existing supporters and waverers alike. It may be like shooting fish in a barrel but hey, we didn't vote for him..
As with EdM, the Tories will want to knock Corbyn hard enough so that he does not gain any credibility by default, but not so hard as to knock him out
If Labour choose him then they have to live with the consequences and one of those should be that all the putrid views and associations of the man they've chosen need to be aired for all of us to see.
The only BOND (Not minibond) that has yielded over 6.5% in recent (afaic) times is the Wasps Bond. http://tinyurl.com/Waspsbond - unfortunately for me it launched just before the General Election.
And after all , there is something sweet and fitting , even poetic , about the anachronistic LP being led over the cliff edge by Pied Piper from the calamitous 1970s ...a ghost from the past has came back to haunt them and lead them into final political suicide
That's on the surface. Digging deeper, they were managing a declining network. It does not necessarily need stellar management to manage a shrinking business.
That is not the situation we are in now. Passenger numbers have doubled since privatisation, and freight is also up, despite a massive decline in bulk coal traffic. As the failing and incompetent nationalised Network Rail shows (and the ORR also deserves some blame), managing an increasingly busy and growing network is a very different matter.
As an aside I think I'm right in saying that we now have the safest railway network in europe. I'd need to check that, though ...
Public sector net borrowing excluding public sector banks decreased by £1.4bn to a surplus of £1.3bn in July compared with July 2014. This is the first reported July surplus since 2012. Borrowing decreased by £7.3bn to £24bn in the current financial year to date compared with the same period in 2014.
By contrast, the most enthusiasm is from people who have voted Labour in the past but stopped doing so around 2001, and who have voted LibDems, Green or UKIP. A lot of them say with some bemusement that they'll actually join if he wins the leadership. It misreads them to think they're nutty Trots - these are disaffected mostly middle-class people who felt the major parties didn't represent them. Not many are all that political in the terms of PB (e.g. I doubt if many care much about rail nationalisation or Hamas), certainly not party political.
My view is that the well of triangulation and centralist manouevres has run dry and we need to try Corbyn. I wouldn't say I'm optimistic, but there's a reasonable shot of success, and certainly of an interesting challenge to the crushing orthodox consensus.
Yesterday's thread IMO misreads Corbyn, by the way. The fact that he doesn't trumpet a desire to be PM doesn't mean that he doesn't give a toss. It means that he is opposed to giving himself undue prominence. It's an austere and unfashionable attitude, but not a bad thing.
John Herd (The Conservative Party Candidate) 325
Nathan Billings (Liberal Democrat) 311
Val Dalley (Labour Party) 220
Michael Pascoe (UK Independence Party (UKIP)) 89
Zoe Fox (Mebyon Kernow - The Party for Cornwall) 85
Jacqueline Merrick (Green Party) 31
Peter Channon (Independent) 13
Con gain from UKIP - whose vote has collapsed!
Mr. Observer, blimey, that's pretty excoriating. Are you going to shun Labour if and for as long as Corbyn is leader?
I listened to his whole speech in Nottingham last night and he's full of missionary zeal. The crowd were adoring, obediently clapping every soundbite and cliche with gusto. It felt like a quasi-religious revival. And a big one. I honestly think Comrade Corbyn is falling for his own PR and understandably becoming very prideful with it.
On 3) Again yes, also the point @david_herdson made about the silent leavers vs angry vocal Trots and SWP sellers fits into your thinking.
A few days ago - I said that the biggest issue for me re Comrade Corbyn's mission is that it doesn't feel *safe* - infact it feels really rather dangerous. Sensible voters simply don't find that radicalism attractive, whilst those with dogs on ropes lap it up and thrust Socialist Worker in your face.
This is the most puzzling aspect. We all watch as Labour have this slow car crash to an extinction level event. Yet some of the Labour PB people here think that it is a good idea. That said BJowls and NickP thought EdM was a good idea to.
UKIP shot? Or is it just the Silly Season?
(Honesty disclosure - I am not going to place any actual money on him winning.)
You may console yourself with the mistaken view that Corbyn just happened to sit in the same room with some nasty people and it's a lot of fuss about nothing ( as you've said on here and elsewhere). But the facts don't go away just because people choose to ignore them. Corbyn did not happen to shake people's hands by chance. He actively and regularly promoted and sought out and campaigned for and alongside people who are totalitarian, fascists, anti-Semitic, anti-British, illiberal and keen on violence. He thinks - today - that IS are repugnant and should be stopped but is Chair of a campaign whose explicit policy is not to take action against IS because the U.S. is involved.
You are entitled to ignore such facts but others - such as SO - are entitled to express their view on the judgment displayed by you and other Corbyn supporters and the harm they think this will do to a once great party and to the very idea of a decent truly progressive left of centre party.
There is nothing "nasty" about it. It is the sadness and disappointment of the idealist, perhaps. It is miles better than being deluded.
Or has the Vicar of Bray decamped to Broxtowe?
It does look as if the good people of Broxtowe dodged another bullet when they re-elected Soubry with an increased majority.
From Wikipedia...so i guess yes, but then there would be plenty of problems I would guess, given his politics.
The fact is that Osborne, the government having found care reform difficult, will give Manchester (amongst others) great freedom to define what this merger looks like at local level. Of course, there is a trap in all this, there could barely be more if it came in a box labelled 'Acme' - the work is to be done against year on year budget reductions of circa 6% on the non-NHS elements of devo Manc. You only have to see the fruits of Scottish devolution or the Welsh NHS's problems to appreciate the downside risk. But the opportunity - the morsel of food in that trap - is very tasty indeed.
If the Labour centre spend the next couple of years keeping fairly quiet elsewhere and focussing heavily on how to make this work and could it be that this routed Labour band have the opportunity to start delivering the single most important piece of public service reform to be delivered anywhere in the UK in this parliament?
First, of course, is how to get into a position where they can take a lead on this. A look at the GM mayoral odds, shows very much that people with a local political background - many of the front runners: Leese, Stringer, Lloyd &c are City council leaders and chief execs, city central MPs, PCCs. But it is not like when Ken used the GLC name-recognition to become Mayor of London, city council leadership has little relevance to those 2 million or so people who pay their rates to the other 9 councils, so the name recognition is less and the city central bias may be a turn off. The only front runner outside this, joint favourite Jonathan Reynolds, is a Kendall backing MP representing towns on the edge of Greater Manchester and is obviously doing OK, whilst further back Oldham-leader Jim McMahon speaks the language of reform very well. The question is who deserves the big push from Labour centrists in terms of policy making heft and even back office support post 2017 or could a big local name come in. Nationally it may seem that way, but locally the cupboard does not seem bare. Could Manchester replace Islington as the hotbed that revives the centre left Phoenix?
''The kulaks must be liquidated as a class '' !
"The winter of discontent began in private industry before spreading to the public sector. The strikes seriously disrupted everyday life, causing problems including food shortages and widespread and frequent power cuts."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/politics/1978vs2008_20080425.shtml
It would be like you or I backing some Monday Clubber to replace Dave
On Sunday I shall be publishing a piece entitled "Corbyn's route to number 10"
It could happen
(posted by a person very happy to watch the car crash and near death event of Labour)
1) the Hatfield accident appears more complex than the headlines say. It was a political football, and it was not as if BR had been immune to accidents due to poor and mishandled maintenance. It can easily be argued that Hatfield (let alone the other accidents such as Ladbroke Grove) would have occurred under BR.
2) Railtrack was continuing a trend that BR had started in the mid-1980s: trying to maximise revenues from its massive property portfolio. The Liverpool Street renovation had been a massive success for BR, and it was an obvious way forward for a cash-strapped network. In the long run this has been to passengers' benefit, as, many stations have improved since privatisation, instead of the continued neglect they had through the 70's and 80's (*).
Railtrack, with proper political support, could have managed the network as it was well enough. I doubt it would have coped with the massively increased usage, and would have had to develop a closer link to government, and got massive investment from them, to cope. Then again, BR certainly would not have coped with the increased usage either. It was institutionally wed to managing a shrinking network.
(*) Although they need to do something about many stations, e.g. Gainsborough's two poorly-served stations.
However, under FPTP it is nigh-on impossible. Either we try to reform the Labour Party from within fighting the far left again as in the 1980s to regain control of the party or we split like the SDP in the 1980s.
Divided parties are punished by the electorate so that would result in several more general election defeats. Ask UKIP and the Greens about how well smaller parties do under FPTP in the case of a split.
It's worse now because of 5 year fixed parliaments too.
Edit: I see Ms Cyclefree has already made this point.
The Tories' dilemmas are but as naught compared with Labour's. I'm not a Labour voter but I do try to be fair. On this one I can't see what the sane PLP can do for the best. They are completely shafted.
Nor has he ever experienced anything like the hard work he'll have to do; the late nights, the reading, coping with Party management. He'll be exhausted (and this is where his age could matter) - and exhausted and under pressure could lead to him saying or doing something extraordinarily stupid.
That, and it suffers from what all large public sector bodies do: perform very averagely and keep your head down, and you have a job for as long as you like. You'll never be sacked. Do a very good job, and stick your head above the parapet - trying to do the right thing - and you simply attract more work, the most difficult problems, and then have to navigate complex organisational politics.
Some burn out and leave. Some get fed up with others taking credit for their work and leave. Some get blamed for failures, despite their best endeavours, and told to leave.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-34013141
Has anyone sought Jeremy Corbyn's views on these events yet?