This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
The first big Tory mess to hit will probably be very entertaining to behold, I look forward to it. I also want the LDs to win a by-election somewhere, that would throw everyone into confusion.
kle4 , your wish that the perfidious LD's win anything is a step too far, unless it is a one way ticket to Mars.
This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
The first big Tory mess to hit will probably be very entertaining to behold, I look forward to it. I also want the LDs to win a by-election somewhere, that would throw everyone into confusion.
Council By-Elections are showing UKIP well down, yesterday they lost 2/3 of their vote:
Dearne North (Barnsley) result: LAB - 69.8% (+11.9) UKIP - 12.0% (-25.0) YORK - 9.8% (+9.8) TUSC - 4.7% (+4.7) CON - 3.7% (-1.4)
No LibDem there but they have been doing well in other council by-elections recently. The Tory and Labour votes have been reasonably steady so far, but what will happen when Corbyn is Labour leader and the Tories make unpopular decisions or show their splits over Europe? A HoC By Election could be interesting.
I've just read a counter-factual that ended with Ken Livingstone becoming Labour leader. Six months ago I would have considered that to be far-fetched, now it is close to reality.
"Unless his economic policy stacks up" is already a futile effort as he has already blown all credibility here by his desire to print money as a funding mechanism for government. His supporters that claim QE is already a funding mechanism for banks have clearly shown they do not understand the concept, so hope of being credible is already lost.
Its back to the Seventies with inflation, stagnation and brain drain. Lets hope for some decent music though:
This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
They should enjoy it while they can , the useless lot they worship will not last 5 minutes when any decent opposition appears.
"Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall have had their ups and downs but, in my view, all have grown during the protracted campaign."
Two are former cabinet ministers, never mind members of the shadow cabinet. They were the two that this election was supposed to have been between. How can they possibly have grown during the campaign when they have been overtaken by what was originally the token no-hope left-wing candidate?
Well put. After an initial impression many have been disappointed Kendall has not done well, but she can fall back on that she is not experienced, perhaps in time etc etc. but burnham and cooper are veterans - sorry Andy, but you are from deep in thewestminster bubble - there is no excuse on doing so badly.
I went into the campaign recalling thinking burnham was best in 2010 in my opinion and that cooper was solid and had always been more formidable than her husband and had more substance than the others, even if she is terrifyingly lacking in charisma. Now they are the amazing flip flopping liar and the woman who just seems incapable of making any sort of impression even after years at the top.
kle4, they never got to where they were based on talent , it was down to feting Brown. He liked empty suits in his team hoping it made him look better and those two were among the emptiest there were.
The real issue tearing Labour apart at present is whether they change the traditional red to a much deeper scarlet hue to reflect the blood letting, or go for a gentler rose colour to reflect the tinted glasses through which DB and his ilk view JC's potential for good, a nice friendly Soviet Union good.
The biggest gift Corbyn might give Labour is a positive message. The party under Brown and Miliband both descended to the comfort ground of "Ooh, aren't the Tories EEEEVVVILLL," which, whilst cheering the hardcore supporters, leaves a chill amongst the population in general, even if they sit in that comfort zone. "Yeah, we know, but so what?" they say, and stay at home.
Two factors played a large part in Blair's victory in 1997: the existing government was tired and self-destructing, and he had a series of positive messages to sell.
Corbyn will have to depend on the Conservatives for the former factor (especially now that Clifford is in jail); he will be able to produce a positive message that will appeal to many, even if, in reality, that message is deluded.
That's the danger. He's already doing it, which is why he has such momentum.
Cooper and Burnham have missed their chance. They will end their careers in deserved obscurity. Kendall will become a backbench thorn in the side of the Corbynites (turnabout is fair play). We will have to see if a new generation emerges, but with all the new members suffused in revolutionary zeal, it will be tough for them. Safe seats will go to Corbynites not SPADs. We are at the dawning of a new era.
Kendall's problem is that Blair's adventures in the middle east have really poisoned the moderate centre well amongst the Labour rank and file. Iraq has cast a very long shadow over the Labour party.
This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
They should enjoy it while they can , the useless lot they worship will not last 5 minutes when any decent opposition appears.
That's the whole problem MalcolmG though, isn't it? We need a decent opposition, especially given the current government is not a great government. But where and when will it emerge? The SNP are the nearest thing to an active opposition in Parliament, and that's just entrenching the already alarming divide between English and Scottish politics (that should be alarming even to pro-independence supporters - if the UK and Scotland do separate, we should all want to remain friendly to each other for very obvious reasons).
If Labour implode, how long before another party can emerge to challenge the government? Well, when the Liberals collapsed in 1916 between Lloyd George and Asquith's infighting, the Tories held power for all but three of the next 29 years, and came second in just one election in all that time (and then, only very narrowly). Very little has changed in our political system - indeed if anything the opposition vote is somewhat more fragmented. There is no reason why a similar timeframe should be considered unrealistic now.
The thought of Osborne being the de facto ruler of the country until 2040 is not a pleasant one. And it would be the fault of Labour for electing Corbyn. It is the most unbelievable unforced error.
"Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall have had their ups and downs but, in my view, all have grown during the protracted campaign."
Two are former cabinet ministers, never mind members of the shadow cabinet. They were the two that this election was supposed to have been between. How can they possibly have grown during the campaign when they have been overtaken by what was originally the token no-hope left-wing candidate?
Well put. After an initial impression many have been disappointed Kendall has not done well, but she can fall back on that she is not experienced, perhaps in time etc etc. but burnham and cooper are veterans - sorry Andy, but you are from deep in thewestminster bubble - there is no excuse on doing so badly.
I went into the campaign recalling thinking burnham was best in 2010 in my opinion and that cooper was solid and had always been more formidable than her husband and had more substance than the others, even if she is terrifyingly lacking in charisma. Now they are the amazing flip flopping liar and the woman who just seems incapable of making any sort of impression even after years at the top.
kle4, they never got to where they were based on talent , it was down to feting Brown. He liked empty suits in his team hoping it made him look better and those two were among the emptiest there were.
The campaign has indeed exposed the vacuity of the SPAD empty suits. Corbyn has opinions (bonkers ones largely) so has some credibility. I don't think it will last. Jabba the Watson will be the real power, Jezzbollah just the frontman. Watson will leave a slimy trail of poison everywhere, like a Mandelson without the political nous and talent.
Clearly the stunning overnight Barnsley by-election triumph is indicative of the stunning sweep that the Dear Leader will achieve in the years to come.
Comrade Corbyn's Brave New World Is Almost Upon Us.
Who will be Comrade Corbyn's Shadow Minister for Truth? I dare say he will keep the Goldstein's of this world as his bogeyman. And to continue the theme - I note we have already had the ritual two line hate from him against Fatcha. Back to work now everyone.
Whoever thought that Thatcher would become Labour's comfort blanket?
Cooper and Burnham have missed their chance. They will end their careers in deserved obscurity. Kendall will become a backbench thorn in the side of the Corbynites (turnabout is fair play). We will have to see if a new generation emerges, but with all the new members suffused in revolutionary zeal, it will be tough for them. Safe seats will go to Corbynites not SPADs. We are at the dawning of a new era.
Kendall's problem is that Blair's adventures in the middle east have really poisoned the moderate centre well amongst the Labour rank and file. Iraq has cast a very long shadow over the Labour party.
The problem is that Labour still look to the now discredited Blairism as being the alternative 'centre'. In reality, the right direction is Blue Labour, but the Blairites are as unwilling to change ideologically as the Jezlamists are.
"Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall have had their ups and downs but, in my view, all have grown during the protracted campaign."
Two are former cabinet ministers, never mind members of the shadow cabinet. They were the two that this election was supposed to have been between. How can they possibly have grown during the campaign when they have been overtaken by what was originally the token no-hope left-wing candidate?
Well put. After an initial impression many have been disappointed Kendall has not done well, but she can fall back on that she is not experienced, perhaps in time etc etc. but burnham and cooper are veterans - sorry Andy, but you are from deep in thewestminster bubble - there is no excuse on doing so badly.
I went into the campaign recalling thinking burnham was best in 2010 in my opinion and that cooper was solid and had always been more formidable than her husband and had more substance than the others, even if she is terrifyingly lacking in charisma. Now they are the amazing flip flopping liar and the woman who just seems incapable of making any sort of impression even after years at the top.
kle4, they never got to where they were based on talent , it was down to feting Brown. He liked empty suits in his team hoping it made him look better and those two were among the emptiest there were.
The campaign has indeed exposed the vacuity of the SPAD empty suits. Corbyn has opinions (bonkers ones largely) so has some credibility. I don't think it will last. Jabba the Watson will be the real power, Jezzbollah just the frontman. Watson will leave a slimy trail of poison everywhere, like a Mandelson without the political nous and talent.
Dr Foxinsox - are you sure that remark isn't a bit unfair to (a) empty suits and (b) Peter Mandelson?
When the Liberals collapsed in 1916 between Lloyd George and Asquith's infighting, the Tories held power for all but three of the next 29 years, and came second in just one election in all that time (and then, only very narrowly). Very little has changed in our political system - indeed if anything the opposition vote is somewhat more fragmented. There is no reason why a similar timeframe should be considered unrealistic now.
Indeed, a still more alarming thought from that point of view - the Tories held power for all but 10 of the 50 years between 1914 and 1964. OK, so there were some anomalies involved where they got a bit lucky (1950 and 51) but it's still an ominous record of dominance.
Indeed, between 1915 and 1997 (82 years) the Tories were in opposition for just 20 years: 1924, 1929-31, 1945-51, 1964-70, 1974-79. It wasn't until the 1990s that Labour finally worked out how to win elections and keep winning them.
This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
Just wait till conference. My crack about Tories and Traitors will seem like tame stuff.
This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
They should enjoy it while they can , the useless lot they worship will not last 5 minutes when any decent opposition appears.
That's the whole problem MalcolmG though, isn't it? We need a decent opposition, especially given the current government is not a great government. But where and when will it emerge? The SNP are the nearest thing to an active opposition in Parliament, and that's just entrenching the already alarming divide between English and Scottish politics (that should be alarming even to pro-independence supporters - if the UK and Scotland do separate, we should all want to remain friendly to each other for very obvious reasons).
If Labour implode, how long before another party can emerge to challenge the government? Well, when the Liberals collapsed in 1916 between Lloyd George and Asquith's infighting, the Tories held power for all but three of the next 29 years, and came second in just one election in all that time (and then, only very narrowly). Very little has changed in our political system - indeed if anything the opposition vote is somewhat more fragmented. There is no reason why a similar timeframe should be considered unrealistic now.
The thought of Osborne being the de facto ruler of the country until 2040 is not a pleasant one. And it would be the fault of Labour for electing Corbyn. It is the most unbelievable unforced error.
No - there's no reason to suppose that Labour (or anyone else) would be electable before 2040 no matter who Labour choose. The problem isn't so much JC as "the shadow of Iraq" and the influx of Trots.
This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
They should enjoy it while they can , the useless lot they worship will not last 5 minutes when any decent opposition appears.
That's the whole problem MalcolmG though, isn't it? We need a decent opposition, especially given the current government is not a great government. But where and when will it emerge? The SNP are the nearest thing to an active opposition in Parliament, and that's just entrenching the already alarming divide between English and Scottish politics (that should be alarming even to pro-independence supporters - if the UK and Scotland do separate, we should all want to remain friendly to each other for very obvious reasons).
If Labour implode, how long before another party can emerge to challenge the government? Well, when the Liberals collapsed in 1916 between Lloyd George and Asquith's infighting, the Tories held power for all but three of the next 29 years, and came second in just one election in all that time (and then, only very narrowly). Very little has changed in our political system - indeed if anything the opposition vote is somewhat more fragmented. There is no reason why a similar timeframe should be considered unrealistic now.
The thought of Osborne being the de facto ruler of the country until 2040 is not a pleasant one. And it would be the fault of Labour for electing Corbyn. It is the most unbelievable unforced error.
No - there's no reason to suppose that Labour (or anyone else) would be electable before 2040 no matter who Labour choose. The problem isn't so much JC as "the shadow of Iraq" and the influx of Trots.
Well, they certainly don't help. But it's hard to imagine Yvette Cooper's leadership, say, taking Labour a long way back, even if it doesn't take it forward. She could potentially build foundations for others to work with.
"Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall have had their ups and downs but, in my view, all have grown during the protracted campaign."
Two are former cabinet ministers, never mind members of the shadow cabinet. They were the two that this election was supposed to have been between. How can they possibly have grown during the campaign when they have been overtaken by what was originally the token no-hope left-wing candidate?
Well put. After an initial impression many have been disappointed Kendall has not done well, but she can fall back on that she is not experienced, perhaps in time etc etc. but burnham and cooper are veterans - sorry Andy, but you are from deep in thewestminster bubble - there is no excuse on doing so badly.
I went into the campaign recalling thinking burnham was best in 2010 in my opinion and that cooper was solid and had always been more formidable than her husband and had more substance than the others, even if she is terrifyingly lacking in charisma. Now they are the amazing flip flopping liar and the woman who just seems incapable of making any sort of impression even after years at the top.
kle4, they never got to where they were based on talent , it was down to feting Brown. He liked empty suits in his team hoping it made him look better and those two were among the emptiest there were.
The campaign has indeed exposed the vacuity of the SPAD empty suits. Corbyn has opinions (bonkers ones largely) so has some credibility. I don't think it will last. Jabba the Watson will be the real power, Jezzbollah just the frontman. Watson will leave a slimy trail of poison everywhere, like a Mandelson without the political nous and talent.
I do not see where just because someone has real but bonkers opinions it gives them credibility. Would you say that Mr Godwin's friend had credibility? I do not want to sully my mind with too much inspection of Labour's inner workings so I can only vaguely suggest that its a bit optimistic to think that Watson will be the real leader. Its possible he might be the conduit for unseating Corbyn, but that would go against Mr Blind's alleged knowledgeability.
This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
They should enjoy it while they can , the useless lot they worship will not last 5 minutes when any decent opposition appears.
That's the whole problem MalcolmG though, isn't it? We need a decent opposition, especially given the current government is not a great government. But where and when will it emerge? The SNP are the nearest thing to an active opposition in Parliament, and that's just entrenching the already alarming divide between English and Scottish politics (that should be alarming even to pro-independence supporters - if the UK and Scotland do separate, we should all want to remain friendly to each other for very obvious reasons).
If Labour implode, how long before another party can emerge to challenge the government? Well, when the Liberals collapsed in 1916 between Lloyd George and Asquith's infighting, the Tories held power for all but three of the next 29 years, and came second in just one election in all that time (and then, only very narrowly). Very little has changed in our political system - indeed if anything the opposition vote is somewhat more fragmented. There is no reason why a similar timeframe should be considered unrealistic now.
The thought of Osborne being the de facto ruler of the country until 2040 is not a pleasant one. And it would be the fault of Labour for electing Corbyn. It is the most unbelievable unforced error.
No - there's no reason to suppose that Labour (or anyone else) would be electable before 2040 no matter who Labour choose. The problem isn't so much JC as "the shadow of Iraq" and the influx of Trots.
The problem is who Labour MPs put on the ballot for the (in effect) open primary.
The derisive response by some here misses the point about Don's piece, which is essentially that non-Corbyn Labour people are thinking about how best to come to terms with his potential success. The early stuff about The Resistance etc. is being replaced by sober calculation. That's reflected among the candidates too, who by all accounts get along personally quite well after all the hours on the campaign trail together - Burnham is willing to be in Corbyn's shadow cabinet and Cooper hasn't ruled it out.
Most Labour people agree on the right response to two opposite outcomes: if Labour flourishes under Corbyn, almost nobody is going to try to get rid of him, and if Labour crashes and burns then there's a consensus deep into the left (including, I think, Corbyn himself) that we'll need to move on. There will be problems anyway with yesterday's old guard (Alan Milburn etc.), which I think we'll shrug off, but the main difficulty will be if we do middling well - winning this, losing that, roughly level in the polls, etc. An interesting question which Corbyn has raised himself is whether he can emulate the SNP's success in getting all the young enthusiasts to actually buckle down and register, knock on doors etc.
Incidentally JWiseman is right that some posters are going further than usual over the borders of civility. JEO, who is to the right of most here, is personally polite without compromising his views, and it makes him a lot more readable than some of the frothers.
Mandy watching the dethroes of the New Labour project burn before his eyes makes me very happy for some reason.
Mandelson is credited (in part) as the architect of New Labour, not surprising that he should feel a little perturbed at its posible demise, - but then I don’t think he appreciates his role in creating a hollowed out party which stood for very little apart from getting elected, has help bring this whole farrago about.
Cooper and Burnham have missed their chance. They will end their careers in deserved obscurity. Kendall will become a backbench thorn in the side of the Corbynites (turnabout is fair play). We will have to see if a new generation emerges, but with all the new members suffused in revolutionary zeal, it will be tough for them. Safe seats will go to Corbynites not SPADs. We are at the dawning of a new era.
Kendall's problem is that Blair's adventures in the middle east have really poisoned the moderate centre well amongst the Labour rank and file. Iraq has cast a very long shadow over the Labour party.
I agree, one reason Kendall is the best choice for sane Labour is that she is untainted by Iraq/Afghanistan. A new generation is needed, but not a Corbynite one. The Corbyn purge will either kill or cure the ills of New Labour, a party I left in large part over the Iraq warmongering, and also NHS privatisations.
"Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall have had their ups and downs but, in my view, all have grown during the protracted campaign."
Two are former cabinet ministers, never mind members of the shadow cabinet. They were the two that this election was supposed to have been between. How can they possibly have grown during the campaign when they have been overtaken by what was originally the token no-hope left-wing candidate?
Well put. After an initial impression many have been disappointed Kendall has not done well, but she can fall back on that she is not experienced, perhaps in time etc etc. but burnham and cooper are veterans - sorry Andy, but you are from deep in thewestminster bubble - there is no excuse on doing so badly.
I went into the campaign recalling thinking burnham was best in 2010 in my opinion and that cooper was solid and had always been more formidable than her husband and had more substance than the others, even if she is terrifyingly lacking in charisma. Now they are the amazing flip flopping liar and the woman who just seems incapable of making any sort of impression even after years at the top.
kle4, they never got to where they were based on talent , it was down to feting Brown. He liked empty suits in his team hoping it made him look better and those two were among the emptiest there were.
The campaign has indeed exposed the vacuity of the SPAD empty suits. Corbyn has opinions (bonkers ones largely) so has some credibility. I don't think it will last. Jabba the Watson will be the real power, Jezzbollah just the frontman. Watson will leave a slimy trail of poison everywhere, like a Mandelson without the political nous and talent.
This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
They should enjoy it while they can , the useless lot they worship will not last 5 minutes when any decent opposition appears.
....
The thought of Osborne being the de facto ruler of the country until 2040 is not a pleasant one. And it would be the fault of Labour for electing Corbyn. It is the most unbelievable unforced error.
Really? Well ask Labour's leader in Manchester. Never mind Burnham's faux northern cheerleading - it's Osborne who is taking positive steps to help the North. Osborne and the tories are trying - I hope it will work - to give meaningful devolution to the great Northern cities.
I think we can ignore Mr Wisemann's ignorant rantings. He should spend more time worrying about how useless and inept his candidates are. It was not right wing tories who wiped him and his party out in Scotland. Quite frankly I would rather look away but its labour who are committing their insane act and filming themselves doing it.
Incidentally JWiseman is right that some posters are going further than usual over the borders of civility. JEO, who is to the right of most here, is personally polite without compromising his views, and it makes him a lot more readable than some of the frothers.
There are two distinct groups of posters, those with forthright political views, and those who are party partisan and to all intents don't have a political view of their own in the same way as a caravan doesn't have a view on the direction of travel, it just follows along behind the leader. Mr JEO belongs to the former, the latter are not hard to identify as they amuse themselves not just in rubbishing the policies of their political opponents, but those notionally on the same side that dare to question the views put forward by their leader. The Dave is right posters seem to be rather perky at the moment, just as the EdM is right posters were before the election, although they seems rather quieter just now
Good morning all. My preferred obscure-historical-reference for Jeremy Corbyn is that he is Labour's Nongqawuse, and will lead them to electoral disaster.
As a right winger (to use an increasingly lazy and freight-laden term) I object to this. It's never great to feel you have no alternative to vote for.
This government is not doing well on some of the key measures that matter to me (finances, immigration, housing), yet no one is holding them to account (Cooper's completely incoherent criticism of the migration figures doesn't count, though it's representative of Labour's confused thinking on a range of topics "it's too high, yet too low").
This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
They should enjoy it while they can , the useless lot they worship will not last 5 minutes when any decent opposition appears.
....
The thought of Osborne being the de facto ruler of the country until 2040 is not a pleasant one. And it would be the fault of Labour for electing Corbyn. It is the most unbelievable unforced error.
Really? Well ask Labour's leader in Manchester. Never mind Burnham's faux northern cheerleading - it's Osborne who is taking positive steps to help the North. Osborne and the tories are trying - I hope it will work - to give meaningful devolution to the great Northern cities.
My point was, and is, that even if Osborne were Robert Walpole, the Pitts, Palmerston and Disraeli all rolled into one, holding power for three decades would be bound to make him arrogant and complacent, which leads to bad government. 15 years is usually the longest acceptable lifetime for a successful government in a democratic system (or indeed, any system) and very few make it that far. Those that do tend to end rather ingloriously: Kohl, Major, Bush Sr, Chirac/Sarkozy spring to mind (I'm sure people can think of others).
But Osborne has already proven he is arrogant, and can become complacent. The risk is, not that he won't have good ideas (northern powerhouse) but that he will also try to implement seriously bad ones (the transfer of student grants to loans, which will make matters worse in the medium term when they are not paid back). And if he can do that with impunity, it is very likely he will do it more often. If bad ideas are exposed as bad ideas by a half-decent opposition, they are often checked (forest sales, although I think most of the opposition then came from the Liberal Democrats). So a good opposition helps to deliver good government - and if we don't have one, we're much more likely to end up without the other.
A glimmer of hope to ABCers - my brother is a card-carrying Labourite and NEVER posts political stuff on FBook. He's just shared one of mine pointing out how many Corbynites believe that the world is controlled by lizards accompanied by eye-rolls.
He won't tell me who he's voted for - but I'm very relieved it's not Jezza.
This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
They should enjoy it while they can , the useless lot they worship will not last 5 minutes when any decent opposition appears.
....
The thought of Osborne being the de facto ruler of the country until 2040 is not a pleasant one. And it would be the fault of Labour for electing Corbyn. It is the most unbelievable unforced error.
Really? Well ask Labour's leader in Manchester. Never mind Burnham's faux northern cheerleading - it's Osborne who is taking positive steps to help the North. Osborne and the tories are trying - I hope it will work - to give meaningful devolution to the great Northern cities.
My point was, and is, that even if Osborne were Robert Walpole, the Pitts, Palmerston and Disraeli all rolled into one, holding power for three decades would be bound to make him arrogant and complacent, which leads to bad government. 15 years is usually the longest acceptable lifetime for a successful government in a democratic system (or indeed, any system) and very few make it that far. Those that do tend to end rather ingloriously: Kohl, Major, Bush Sr, Chirac/Sarkozy spring to mind (I'm sure people can think of others).
But Osborne has already proven he is arrogant, and can become complacent. The risk is, not that he won't have good ideas (northern powerhouse) but that he will also try to implement seriously bad ones (the transfer of student grants to loans, which will make matters worse in the medium term when they are not paid back). And if he can do that with impunity, it is very likely he will do it more often. If bad ideas are exposed as bad ideas by a half-decent opposition, they are often checked (forest sales, although I think most of the opposition then came from the Liberal Democrats). So a good opposition helps to deliver good government - and if we don't have one, we're much more likely to end up without the other.
I agree that all governments need a serious opposition. Not sure how converting grants to loans is bad, provided of course you realistically provide for likely defaults.
Good morning all. My preferred obscure-historical-reference for Jeremy Corbyn is that he is Labour's Nongqawuse, and will lead them to electoral disaster.
As a right winger (to use an increasingly lazy and freight-laden term) I object to this. It's never great to feel you have no alternative to vote for.
This government is not doing well on some of the key measures that matter to me (finances, immigration, housing), yet no one is holding them to account (Cooper's completely incoherent criticism of the migration figures doesn't count, though it's representative of Labour's confused thinking on a range of topics "it's too high, yet too low").
Nonqawuse is a good one. Alternatively we are seeing the ghost dance movement...
Good morning all. My preferred obscure-historical-reference for Jeremy Corbyn is that he is Labour's Nongqawuse, and will lead them to electoral disaster.
As a right winger (to use an increasingly lazy and freight-laden term) I object to this. It's never great to feel you have no alternative to vote for.
This government is not doing well on some of the key measures that matter to me (finances, immigration, housing), yet no one is holding them to account (Cooper's completely incoherent criticism of the migration figures doesn't count, though it's representative of Labour's confused thinking on a range of topics "it's too high, yet too low").
Labour should have held on for a year, and left Hattie H in charge whilst they sorted themselves out. Frankly, I'm baffled as to why they didn't.
Ignoring her flip-flap-floundering over the election process, Harman's proved to be a safe and able pair of hands and would have kept the good ship Opposition on a steady course.
Good morning all. My preferred obscure-historical-reference for Jeremy Corbyn is that he is Labour's Nongqawuse, and will lead them to electoral disaster.
As a right winger (to use an increasingly lazy and freight-laden term) I object to this. It's never great to feel you have no alternative to vote for.
This government is not doing well on some of the key measures that matter to me (finances, immigration, housing), yet no one is holding them to account (Cooper's completely incoherent criticism of the migration figures doesn't count, though it's representative of Labour's confused thinking on a range of topics "it's too high, yet too low").
Labour should have held on for a year, and left Hattie H in charge whilst they sorted themselves out. Frankly, I'm baffled as to why they didn't.
Ignoring her flip-flap-floundering over the election process, Harman's proved to be a safe and able pair of hands and would have kept the good ship Opposition on a steady course.
I keep being reminded of Eleanor Roosevelt's comment:
Great minds discuss ideas Average minds discuss events Small minds discuss people
I know some will argue that Labour are doing the third as a proxy for the first.....but I fear its become hopelessly muddled.....and for every potentially good idea Corbyn brings out, up pops a horror story event from the vaults.....
The derisive response by some here misses the point about Don's piece, which is essentially that non-Corbyn Labour people are thinking about how best to come to terms with his potential success. The early stuff about The Resistance etc. is being replaced by sober calculation. That's reflected among the candidates too, who by all accounts get along personally quite well after all the hours on the campaign trail together - Burnham is willing to be in Corbyn's shadow cabinet and Cooper hasn't ruled it out.
Most Labour people agree on the right response to two opposite outcomes: if Labour flourishes under Corbyn, almost nobody is going to try to get rid of him, and if Labour crashes and burns then there's a consensus deep into the left (including, I think, Corbyn himself) that we'll need to move on. There will be problems anyway with yesterday's old guard (Alan Milburn etc.), which I think we'll shrug off, but the main difficulty will be if we do middling well - winning this, losing that, roughly level in the polls, etc. An interesting question which Corbyn has raised himself is whether he can emulate the SNP's success in getting all the young enthusiasts to actually buckle down and register, knock on doors etc.
Incidentally JWiseman is right that some posters are going further than usual over the borders of civility. JEO, who is to the right of most here, is personally polite without compromising his views, and it makes him a lot more readable than some of the frothers.
Thank you for the kind words. You are also certainly in the polite group of posters and I've been meaning to apologise to you for accusing you of ignoring my argument when you just did not see my post. I was just a little bit frustrated as I'd responded to the same argument (about there being nothing wrong with Jeremy Corbyn simply meeting with extremists) to left-wingers about a dozen times to have my argument ignored.
I enjoy Don's columns and it must be sad to see the party you've devoted so much of your life self destruct but is it really true to say Burnham and Cooper have grown in stature during the leadership election. I think Burnham is a much diminished figure and the Tories will be relaxed if he succeeds Corbyn.
We've got another two weeks of this to go, I'm getting near Peak Corbyn in terms of amusement. What will he announce next to keep us entertained?
How can you be at peak so early, there is the merriment surrounding the announcement and the party conference to come. There there is either the outrage of losing riot, or the gloating of winning party from the hard left, and the sour grapes of losing or the smugness of winning from ABC. Then there will be a round of legal challenges from aggrieved members, disenfranchised three-quidders and Uncle Tom Cobly. Then we will have endless gloating unsavoury Corbynites on the various political chat shows, and the spectacle of the BBC trying to be balanced whilst simultaneously having a leftiegasm. Plenty of fun for all the family to come.
This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
They should enjoy it while they can , the useless lot they worship will not last 5 minutes when any decent opposition appears.
....
The thought of Osborne being the de facto ruler of the country until 2040 is not a pleasant one. And it would be the fault of Labour for electing Corbyn. It is the most unbelievable unforced error.
Really? Well ask Labour's leader in Manchester. Never mind Burnham's faux northern cheerleading - it's Osborne who is taking positive steps to help the North. Osborne and the tories are trying - I hope it will work - to give meaningful devolution to the great Northern cities.
My point was, and is, that even if Osborne were Robert Walpole, the Pitts, Palmerston and Disraeli all rolled into one, holding power for three decades would be bound to make him arrogant and complacent, which leads to bad government. 15 years is usually the longest acceptable lifetime for a successful government in a democratic system (or indeed, any system) and very few make it that far. Those that do tend to end rather ingloriously: Kohl, Major, Bush Sr, Chirac/Sarkozy spring to mind (I'm sure people can think of others).
But Osborne has already proven he is arrogant, and can become complacent. The risk is, not that he won't have good ideas (northern powerhouse) but that he will also try to implement seriously bad ones (the transfer of student grants to loans, which will make matters worse in the medium term when they are not paid back). And if he can do that with impunity, it is very likely he will do it more often. If bad ideas are exposed as bad ideas by a half-decent opposition, they are often checked (forest sales, although I think most of the opposition then came from the Liberal Democrats). So a good opposition helps to deliver good government - and if we don't have one, we're much more likely to end up without the other.
Ironically, I guess, the one thing that would do a lot to remove bad ideas - a backbench that holds the government to account - is seen as a sign of weakness in our modern world.
Richard N's loyalty to his friend is fine, as long as he extends the same view to JK Rowling when she gives Labour £1 million. I agree with him that both are selfless acts.
Yes of course I extend it to JK Rowling. She donated that chunky sum of her own money to Labour because she thought that to do so would help ordinary and especially less-privileged people. From a moral point of view, that is wholly admirable, even though I happen to disagree with her analysis as to the best means to achieve her admirable intentions
I think I'm suffering from Too Much Of A Good Thing. It's been going on so long and ANOTHER two weeks before it's all becomes hilariously true.
I want to FFW to Sept 11th as we await the result. I'm perusing the Labour conference website to see how much a pass costs - this is one of those up-the-road events that I can't miss if the price is right.
We've got another two weeks of this to go, I'm getting near Peak Corbyn in terms of amusement. What will he announce next to keep us entertained?
How can you be at peak so early, there is the merriment surrounding the announcement and the party conference to come. There there is either the outrage of losing riot, or the gloating of winning party from the hard left, and the sour grapes of losing or the smugness of winning from ABC. Then there will be a round of legal challenges from aggrieved members, disenfranchised three-quidders and Uncle Tom Cobly. Then we will have endless gloating unsavoury Corbynites on the various political chat shows, and the spectacle of the BBC trying to be balanced whilst simultaneously having a leftiegasm. Plenty of fun for all the family to come.
Richard N's loyalty to his friend is fine, as long as he extends the same view to JK Rowling when she gives Labour £1 million. I agree with him that both are selfless acts.
Yes of course I extend it to JK Rowling. She donated that chunky sum of her own money to Labour because she thought that to do so would help ordinary and especially less-privileged people. From a moral point of view, that is wholly admirable, even though I happen to disagree with her analysis as to the best means to achieve her admirable intentions
Raises the interesting question of who is going to be donating seven-figure sums to Jezbollah? As I understand it, Labour's finances have been propped up by "loans" not being called in. If those previously having a generous disposition towards Labour turn away, then the Party becomes the political wing of UNITE - no ifs, no buts.
The derisive response by some here misses the point about Don's piece, which is essentially that non-Corbyn Labour people are thinking about how best to come to terms with his potential success. The early stuff about The Resistance etc. is being replaced by sober calculation. That's reflected among the candidates too, who by all accounts get along personally quite well after all the hours on the campaign trail together - Burnham is willing to be in Corbyn's shadow cabinet and Cooper hasn't ruled it out.
Most Labour people agree on the right response to two opposite outcomes: if Labour flourishes under Corbyn, almost nobody is going to try to get rid of him, and if Labour crashes and burns then there's a consensus deep into the left (including, I think, Corbyn himself) that we'll need to move on. There will be problems anyway with yesterday's old guard (Alan Milburn etc.), which I think we'll shrug off, but the main difficulty will be if we do middling well - winning this, losing that, roughly level in the polls, etc. An interesting question which Corbyn has raised himself is whether he can emulate the SNP's success in getting all the young enthusiasts to actually buckle down and register, knock on doors etc.
Incidentally JWiseman is right that some posters are going further than usual over the borders of civility. JEO, who is to the right of most here, is personally polite without compromising his views, and it makes him a lot more readable than some of the frothers.
Give an inch and the Left will take a mile. That was the calculation behind the ''early stuff about The Resistance etc.''. You have zero credibility. 'derisive response'?? What sort of response would you have anyone give to guff like ''the brilliant Mary Riddell '' or ''gazing at a Crossrail train'' - a project on the go since 1941? or ''The Livingstone mayoralty was a business-friendly administration.'' (hah - his own personal company business to avoid tax maybe. Or his grants to Lee Jasper perhaps) or ''Corbyn should not be left to fend for himself, especially as his leadership is likely to be short-lived'' or ''laid the groundwork for the diversity and tolerance'' - forgotten the 2011 riots, permitted not least by police lack of interest? Forgotten the rotten boroughs where ethnic cronyism ruled? Some of us have not forgotten Ken's friends
You fool no one Mr Palmer except yourself with your sly dismissal of 'frothers'. You might be a useful idiot but I am not. I'll happily froth away at extremists from left or right. I'm not fooled by anybody's polite smiling assassin.
I enjoy Don's columns and it must be sad to see the party you've devoted so much of your life self destruct but is it really true to say Burnham and Cooper have grown in stature during the leadership election. I think Burnham is a much diminished figure and the Tories will be relaxed if he succeeds Corbyn.
Grown in stature’, No! - Of the four candidates, Andy Burnham’s standing is perhaps the most damaged and diminished of the lot. Both he and Cooper have been wounded politically by the LL contest, while Kendall stood little chance from the off, in the present climate Labour now finds itself.
I enjoy Don's columns and it must be sad to see the party you've devoted so much of your life self destruct but is it really true to say Burnham and Cooper have grown in stature during the leadership election. I think Burnham is a much diminished figure and the Tories will be relaxed if he succeeds Corbyn.
The Tories are looking on with bemusement more than anything else. When their main opponent for the past century loses the plot so spectacularly, yes it is funny. But we also wonder - is it a damning indictment of the shallowness of public connectivity to politics when such a small subset of the voters can wrest control of one of the major parties?
We do genuinely worry about these things. Briefly. But then we go back to pointing and laughing.
We have a right not to be offended, think these kids, but this has horrible implications, as Brendan O’Neill pointed out in his Spectator cover story ‘The Stepford students’ last year. Brendan arrived to speak in defence of abortion at Christchurch, Oxford, only to find his debate had been cancelled. Why? Because it was offensive and might damage the ‘mental safety’ of students to hear ‘a person without a uterus’ speak on abortion. What about free speech? Overrated, said the students. Just an excuse for bigots...
One of the allures of the new PC world must be the thought that you’re particularly ‘caring’. But this too is deluded. Is it selfless to pose as a hero on social media, to accuse some poor don of racism for teaching Huckleberry Finn? It’s an unpleasant irony that a gang which purports to be so sensitive feels no qualms about destroying the lives of the inadvertently offensive.
A glimmer of hope to ABCers - my brother is a card-carrying Labourite and NEVER posts political stuff on FBook. He's just shared one of mine pointing out how many Corbynites believe that the world is controlled by lizards accompanied by eye-rolls.
He won't tell me who he's voted for - but I'm very relieved it's not Jezza.
Yep, it's not over until the fat lady etc etc. I remain calm that sanity will prevail in the end.
Things must be getting better in Afghanistan. According to Cric info there are two domestic cricket matches going on, and, digging further, there’s quite a programme.
Miss Plato, quite. Freedom of speech is under threat from do-gooding puritans, the professionally over-sensitive, and religious zealots keen to impose their blasphemy rules on heathens as well as believers.
The derisive response by some here misses the point about Don's piece, which is essentially that non-Corbyn Labour people are thinking about how best to come to terms with his potential success. The early stuff about The Resistance etc. is being replaced by sober calculation. That's reflected among the candidates too, who by all accounts get along personally quite well after all the hours on the campaign trail together - Burnham is willing to be in Corbyn's shadow cabinet and Cooper hasn't ruled it out.
Most Labour people agree on the right response to two opposite outcomes: if Labour flourishes under Corbyn, almost nobody is going to try to get rid of him, and if Labour crashes and burns then there's a consensus deep into the left (including, I think, Corbyn himself) that we'll need to move on. There will be problems anyway with yesterday's old guard (Alan Milburn etc.), which I think we'll shrug off, but the main difficulty will be if we do middling well - winning this, losing that, roughly level in the polls, etc. An interesting question which Corbyn has raised himself is whether he can emulate the SNP's success in getting all the young enthusiasts to actually buckle down and register, knock on doors etc.
Incidentally JWiseman is right that some posters are going further than usual over the borders of civility. JEO, who is to the right of most here, is personally polite without compromising his views, and it makes him a lot more readable than some of the frothers.
Finally the ABC PB hysteria seems to be damping down, over the last few weeks a number of folks on this site caught a bout of Trollitis around anybody who wasn't ABC. I think Corbyn has weathered the establishment Tsunami pretty well, further evidence if any was required that political strategists and the MSM are losing the power over influencing political events.
In terms of Corbyn building the parties support among the young, I'd envisage that he will be encouraging all student Labour clubs to hit freshers week hard to keep the momentum going. The unions will no doubt continue to encourage their members to become affiliates.
We have a right not to be offended, think these kids, but this has horrible implications, as Brendan O’Neill pointed out in his Spectator cover story ‘The Stepford students’ last year. Brendan arrived to speak in defence of abortion at Christchurch, Oxford, only to find his debate had been cancelled. Why? Because it was offensive and might damage the ‘mental safety’ of students to hear ‘a person without a uterus’ speak on abortion. What about free speech? Overrated, said the students. Just an excuse for bigots...
One of the allures of the new PC world must be the thought that you’re particularly ‘caring’. But this too is deluded. Is it selfless to pose as a hero on social media, to accuse some poor don of racism for teaching Huckleberry Finn? It’s an unpleasant irony that a gang which purports to be so sensitive feels no qualms about destroying the lives of the inadvertently offensive.
Is this the Oxford where many of our leaders studied? And where, we are confidently told, many of our future leaders are presently sudying?
I enjoy Don's columns and it must be sad to see the party you've devoted so much of your life self destruct but is it really true to say Burnham and Cooper have grown in stature during the leadership election. I think Burnham is a much diminished figure and the Tories will be relaxed if he succeeds Corbyn.
The Tories are looking on with bemusement more than anything else. When their main opponent for the past century loses the plot so spectacularly, yes it is funny. But we also wonder - is it a damning indictment of the shallowness of public connectivity to politics when such a small subset of the voters can wrest control of one of the major parties?
We do genuinely worry about these things. Briefly. But then we go back to pointing and laughing.
Tories should stop laugh and a) wonder whether something similar could happen to them b) how to deal with a popular (at least initially) Jezza.
I would be very surprised if there isn't the usual post-election honeymoon - fresh face etc etc. for a few months. Maybe even into the new year before the house comes falling down.
I get where it comes from. I get why it is seen as a good thing. I get all of that.
But seriously, if you defend it, I want to know how you can read:
"Here’s how twisted it’s all become: in December, Jeannie Suk, a professor of law, wrote a desperate piece for the New Yorker about the situation at Harvard, a sort of SOS. Her students, she said, had complained to the authorities that rape law was too ‘triggering ‘ to be taught at all. One girl thought the word ‘violate’ — as in ‘does this violate the law?’ — too traumatic to use in class. Surely some sensible top dog told them all to belt up? Nope, said Suk. The hounding that would follow on social media was too alarming a prospect.
Nor, as far as I can see, did anyone remind these kids that there are real victims of real rape out there who will need lawyers."
and not think you've dropped a colossal bollock on this topic.
Plato.. I have the feeling that we are sliding slowly back into the dark ages...The closing down of human intellect...hopefully it will be a slow slide and I personally wont be affected by it..
Without diminishing Kippers - it was the best thing that happened to the Tories brand-wise. It created a distinction that hadn't been there before/caused huge internal strife.
Labour are being eaten alive by the Leftier, and invited them in. It's the exact opposite of what the Tories/Kippers did.
I enjoy Don's columns and it must be sad to see the party you've devoted so much of your life self destruct but is it really true to say Burnham and Cooper have grown in stature during the leadership election. I think Burnham is a much diminished figure and the Tories will be relaxed if he succeeds Corbyn.
The Tories are looking on with bemusement more than anything else. When their main opponent for the past century loses the plot so spectacularly, yes it is funny. But we also wonder - is it a damning indictment of the shallowness of public connectivity to politics when such a small subset of the voters can wrest control of one of the major parties?
We do genuinely worry about these things. Briefly. But then we go back to pointing and laughing.
This place really has tipped over from being a very right wing but bearable place for ribald discourse to a completely insufferable hard right circle jerk in the last few months. Shame.
I think you will find the tone of the site is being fuelled by Labour's terrible leadership contest. The rightwingers have not only won the General Election but can see the prospect of years without a real threat to them running the country. Hardly surprising they want to crow about it.
They should enjoy it while they can , the useless lot they worship will not last 5 minutes when any decent opposition appears.
That's the whole problem MalcolmG though, isn't it? We need a decent opposition, especially given the current government is not a great government. But where and when will it emerge? The SNP are the nearest thing to an active opposition in Parliament, and that's just entrenching the already alarming divide between English and Scottish politics (that should be alarming even to pro-independence supporters - if the UK and Scotland do separate, we should all want to remain friendly to each other for very obvious reasons).
If Labour implode, how long before another party can emerge to challenge the government? Well, when the Liberals collapsed in 1916 between Lloyd George and Asquith's infighting, the Tories held power for all but three of the next 29 years, and came second in just one election in all that time (and then, only very narrowly). Very little has changed in our political system - indeed if anything the opposition vote is somewhat more fragmented. There is no reason why a similar timeframe should be considered unrealistic now.
The thought of Osborne being the de facto ruler of the country until 2040 is not a pleasant one. And it would be the fault of Labour for electing Corbyn. It is the most unbelievable unforced error.
ydoethur, Whilst he has some dodgy ideas , at least he is invoking some thinking, if any of the other candidates are elected then Labour is guaranteed to wither and die, they are all Tories in sheep's clothing. Corbyn at least will upset the apple cart and will either get the same result as the 3 stooges would realise or it will transform Labour into a worthwhile opposition. To me if I was a Labour supporter he is the only option , even if a dangerous one.
Diversity and tolerance in London are thanks to Red Ken?
Riiiiiight
And forgive me if I don't pop the champagne corks as a non-Londoner about Crossrail. Not everyone thinks that truly vast and absurd amounts of public money being spent on Victorian technology to the benefit only of London and the SE is a great idea.
I enjoy Don's columns and it must be sad to see the party you've devoted so much of your life self destruct but is it really true to say Burnham and Cooper have grown in stature during the leadership election. I think Burnham is a much diminished figure and the Tories will be relaxed if he succeeds Corbyn.
The Tories are looking on with bemusement more than anything else. When their main opponent for the past century loses the plot so spectacularly, yes it is funny. But we also wonder - is it a damning indictment of the shallowness of public connectivity to politics when such a small subset of the voters can wrest control of one of the major parties?
We do genuinely worry about these things. Briefly. But then we go back to pointing and laughing.
Tories should stop laugh and a) wonder whether something similar could happen to them b) how to deal with a popular (at least initially) Jezza.
I would be very surprised if there isn't the usual post-election honeymoon - fresh face etc etc. for a few months. Maybe even into the new year before the house comes falling down.
Well, yes it COULD happen to the Tories too - which is why the sober moments of reflection. But we have had the safety valve of UKIP - some of those who would be the most likely to rally to the Bat-shit Crazy flag have already decamped to UKIP in recent years. And we came through the other side of that as a party with a majority in Parliament.
But in the same way as every bit of my political instinct told me the voters wouldn't go for Ed Miliband because essentially he stood for Nothing, that same instinct tells me that those same voters won't go for a Corbyn who stands for Something - because his Something is nothing the voters agree with.
Raises the interesting question of who is going to be donating seven-figure sums to Jezbollah? As I understand it, Labour's finances have been propped up by "loans" not being called in. If those previously having a generous disposition towards Labour turn away, then the Party becomes the political wing of UNITE - no ifs, no buts.
Yes, indeed so, and of course that is crucially important in relation to the question raised by Don's article. It seems to be a truth universally acknowledged amongst Labour figures, at least the senior ones, that Corbyn will be such a disaster that he will be defenestrated, or resign of his own accord, within a couple of years. Perhaps it's not so much a belief as a hope. Let's assume that they are right: then what? The thinking, evident in Don's article and implicit in Nick's posts, is that the party will be able to rapidly get over its drunken orgy of extreme-left self indulgence, shake off the hangover instantly, find a new, more solid but still charismatic leader, and unite around him or her.
That seems awfully optimistic me; the party is tearing itself apart, there don't actually seem to be any solid but charismatic alternative leaders to hand, and - as you rightly say - donors will have been driven out. Meanwhile the MP base has been shifted (by Unite's candidate-placement) to the left, and a whole bunch of far-left supporters have been given a huge say in the party's future. Corbyn intends to weaken still further MPs say in policy. That means control of the party's direction has already shifted out of what one might loosely call 'Blairites' - i.e. anyone with a vague grip of reality - into the hands of a combination of Len McCluskey, the far-left, and the naive. It is wishful thinking to imagine that this will suddenly all come good if Corbyn is selected and then disappears again.
The derisive response by some here misses the point about Don's piece, which is essentially that non-Corbyn Labour people are thinking about how best to come to terms with his potential success. The early stuff about The Resistance etc. is being replaced by sober calculation. That's reflected among the candidates too, who by all accounts get along personally quite well after all the hours on the campaign trail together - Burnham is willing to be in Corbyn's shadow cabinet and Cooper hasn't ruled it out.
Most Labour people agree on the right response to two opposite outcomes: if Labour flourishes under Corbyn, almost nobody is going to try to get rid of him, and if Labour crashes and burns then there's a consensus deep into the left (including, I think, Corbyn himself) that we'll need to move on. There will be problems anyway with yesterday's old guard (Alan Milburn etc.), which I think we'll shrug off, but the main difficulty will be if we do middling well - winning this, losing that, roughly level in the polls, etc. An interesting question which Corbyn has raised himself is whether he can emulate the SNP's success in getting all the young enthusiasts to actually buckle down and register, knock on doors etc.
Incidentally JWiseman is right that some posters are going further than usual over the borders of civility. JEO, who is to the right of most here, is personally polite without compromising his views, and it makes him a lot more readable than some of the frothers.
I do not dispute people are going beyonds the bounds of civiility than I would like, but that is not what he was saying - he was complaining about a (in my view temporary) sense of tory triumphalism pervading and describing it as a circle jerk, which is not exactly complaining about people going over the borders of civility and more participating in it.
When the SNP does act to make reforms in Scotland, two tendencies in its policy-making are striking. The SNP’s illiberalism should not, perhaps, surprise us, nationalism in Europe all too often having sacrificed individual freedoms on the altar of national self-determination. The party’s centralising tendencies, however, are remarkable given the SNP’s vocal opposition to rule from London.
Diversity and tolerance in London are thanks to Red Ken?
Riiiiiight
And forgive me if I don't pop the champagne corks as a non-Londoner about Crossrail. Not everyone thinks that truly vast and absurd amounts of public money being spent on Victorian technology to the benefit only of London and the SE is a great idea.
As a non-Londonwer, I’d rather change at Shenfield than have to trek between main lione and Underground to get across London.
Richard N's loyalty to his friend is fine, as long as he extends the same view to JK Rowling when she gives Labour £1 million. I agree with him that both are selfless acts.
Yes of course I extend it to JK Rowling. She donated that chunky sum of her own money to Labour because she thought that to do so would help ordinary and especially less-privileged people. From a moral point of view, that is wholly admirable, even though I happen to disagree with her analysis as to the best means to achieve her admirable intentions
Even if these cases did not have any malignant motivations on either side, the appearance of corruption is clearly dangerous when long-standing donors to political parties disproportionately receive appointments to the Lords. That is undermining of public trust in the system. Generally in other walks of public and corporate life, in situations where there is a 'quid' and a 'quo' there are systems in place to guarantee it was not a quid pro quo, and no such checks exist in this system.
We really should bring in some sort of system to prevent any single person contributing a disproportionate share of a party's finances, and also to bring some sort of independent committee to scrutinise party choices on new Lords. And, of course, make sure there is a firm formula for distributing them between parties. Where the three historic establishment parties get all of them, and the Greens and UKIP get none, it brings the system into disrepute. I certainly don't have any faith that the balance of the Lords is reflective of any sort of fair system.
Diversity and tolerance in London are thanks to Red Ken?
Riiiiiight
And forgive me if I don't pop the champagne corks as a non-Londoner about Crossrail. Not everyone thinks that truly vast and absurd amounts of public money being spent on Victorian technology to the benefit only of London and the SE is a great idea.
To be fair, a quarter (I think) of the Crossrail cost - in the order of £4 billion - is coming from an extra business rates tax on London businesses. somewhat controversially for London businesses located some distance away from the new line ...
Anecdote alert. I was speaking to a police officer this morning who specialised in firearms crimes. I asked him whether gun crime was getting better or worse in London. He grinned and said "do you want the politically correct answer or the politically incorrect answer?" I'm sure you know which one I asked for: "politically incorrect, of course".
"It's all Eastern Europeans. And it's just getting worse and worse. They operate differently, you see. The Eastern European gangs operate over a far broader area of London and are a lot more mobile across boroughs, making it harder for us to follow them. And the numbers just keep on increasing."
King Cole, I didn't take his class at the time, thankfully, but some university friends who did told me that, in response to the protests over the Danish cartoons a certain lecturer was entirely on the side of the protesters. Which is rather displeasing.
Diversity and tolerance in London are thanks to Red Ken?
Riiiiiight
And forgive me if I don't pop the champagne corks as a non-Londoner about Crossrail. Not everyone thinks that truly vast and absurd amounts of public money being spent on Victorian technology to the benefit only of London and the SE is a great idea.
To be fair, a quarter (I think) of the Crossrail cost - in the order of £4 billion - is coming from an extra business rates tax on London businesses. somewhat controversially for London businesses located some distance away from the new line ...
The derisive response by some here misses the point about Don's piece, which is essentially that non-Corbyn Labour people are thinking about how best to come to terms with his potential success. The early stuff about The Resistance etc. is being replaced by sober calculation. That's reflected among the candidates too, who by all accounts get along personally quite well after all the hours on the campaign trail together - Burnham is willing to be in Corbyn's shadow cabinet and Cooper hasn't ruled it out.
Most Labour people agree on the right response to two opposite outcomes: if Labour flourishes under Corbyn, almost nobody is going to try to get rid of him, and if Labour crashes and burns then there's a consensus deep into the left (including, I think, Corbyn himself) that we'll need to move on. There will be problems anyway with yesterday's old guard (Alan Milburn etc.), which I think we'll shrug off, but the main difficulty will be if we do middling well - winning this, losing that, roughly level in the polls, etc. An interesting question which Corbyn has raised himself is whether he can emulate the SNP's success in getting all the young enthusiasts to actually buckle down and register, knock on doors etc.
Incidentally JWiseman is right that some posters are going further than usual over the borders of civility. JEO, who is to the right of most here, is personally polite without compromising his views, and it makes him a lot more readable than some of the frothers.
I do not dispute people are going beyonds the bounds of civiility than I would like, some of it has been too quick off the bat and not therefore amusing, but that is not what he was saying - he was complaining about a (in my view temporary) sense of tory triumphalism pervading and describing it as a circle jerk, which is not exactly complaining about people going over the borders of civility and more participating in it. People cannot complain about the rudeness of others if they are themselves very rude (though this does not mean the other side get a pass for being rude too - those, I hope rare occasions, I have been rude to malcolmg, dair and seantT, I would defend myself that I felt provoked into that rudeness, it might be understandable but I am ultimately still responsible for my own reaction.)
And, rant over.
On this piece, yes it is good people are thinking about what to do about Corbyn's success, should he win, regardless of whether they wished him to win or not. The problem would be if that calculation is based on faulty premises and comfort blanket thinking as some believe - I don't know enough about this Ken Livingstone and GLC stuff people are talking about so I cannot judge that, but while it is good Labour are thinking how to deal with this, good or bad, if they go into it in a flawed way the thinking won't help.
Diversity and tolerance in London are thanks to Red Ken?
Riiiiiight
And forgive me if I don't pop the champagne corks as a non-Londoner about Crossrail. Not everyone thinks that truly vast and absurd amounts of public money being spent on Victorian technology to the benefit only of London and the SE is a great idea.
To be fair, a quarter (I think) of the Crossrail cost - in the order of £4 billion - is coming from an extra business rates tax on London businesses. somewhat controversially for London businesses located some distance away from the new line ...
Which still means that three-quarters isn't.
Given the amount London and the South-East subsidises the rest of the country, everyone benefits from London growth not being choked off. Working in the capital, but living outside, I have a love-hate relationship with the place. But the current infrastructure expansion isn't keeping up with current population growth, as it is, so it would be a big mistake to do even less spending. Other parts of the country may complain, but they are not expanding as quickly as London is so existing networks can better cope.
King Cole, I didn't take his class at the time, thankfully, but some university friends who did told me that, in response to the protests over the Danish cartoons a certain lecturer was entirely on the side of the protesters. Which is rather displeasing.
That said, I didn't go to Oxford.
To be fair, Mr Dancer, one world expect a younger lecturer to side with the students. It;’s when old farts like me side with such views (I didn’t on that) that people should worry.
Following on from the earlier discussion of less and fewer:
MANY people insist on a bright-line distinction between “fewer” and “less”, and get quite agitated by the subject. David Foster Wallace’s novel “Infinite Jest” featured the Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts, who boycott stores with signs reading “12 items or less”. A few vigilantes have defaced such signs in real life. What is the distinction, and why does it matter?
Labour Londoners are rightly proud of the legacy of the Livingstone-led GLC in fighting racism and homophobia.
You are really proud of minority-buying identity politics and inviting homophobia hate preachers to spread their filth?
Well said! Livingstone's embrace of Qaradawi: an anti-semitic, pro-women beaters, pro-suicide bombing, homophobic rabble rouser and his own offensive comments about and to Jews were an utter disgrace of which Labour should have been thoroughly ashamed. Instead Labour are embracing their inner Respect. So much the worse for them.
That would be consistent with an election of Corbyn - to reach the parts that other candidates can't. However, there is a reason why those people aren't voting not just for Labour, the Tories or Lib Dems, but are also not voting Green, UKIP or any of the minor protest parties.
Still slightly weird thinking though, writing off all the floating voters as first priority.
Instead of having conspiratorial pints of beer with rebels in Commons bars, the members of the new intake are more likely to be found in a departmental ‘support group’: a Westminster equivalent of cheerleaders who ask sympathetic questions in the chamber. Funnily enough, the most popular support group is the one around George Osborne (the Scotland Office has attracted less interest). Osborne has taken great care to woo new MPs with lunches and drinks in the No. 10 garden. His charm is effective: many of them seem quite besotted, either with the Chancellor or what he can do for their career.
'The largest amount of [LabourList readers] – 45% – said Labour should focus most of their efforts on appealing to non-voters."
Where else can they go for votes ?
With Corbyn as leader the chances of gaining any 2015 Tory voters must be close to zero. They can't outdo the SNP on the anti austerity platform,the Lib Dems are down to their core vote & Corbyn's pro immigration stance is the kiss of death for UKIP voters.
Diversity and tolerance in London are thanks to Red Ken?
Riiiiiight
And forgive me if I don't pop the champagne corks as a non-Londoner about Crossrail. Not everyone thinks that truly vast and absurd amounts of public money being spent on Victorian technology to the benefit only of London and the SE is a great idea.
To be fair, a quarter (I think) of the Crossrail cost - in the order of £4 billion - is coming from an extra business rates tax on London businesses. somewhat controversially for London businesses located some distance away from the new line ...
Crossrail seems a good idea and its right that London pays its fair share - £4bn tax on business is I'm sure ''business friendly'' in Socialist circles. (BTW I think you may well find the Mrs Duffys of this world are 'Labour' not 'Socialist'. Actually I quite like the Reading - Paddington direct services at the mo. I'm a bit worried that the service might be longer if the crossrail service stops at every station. But maybe there will be a more frequent service although the Reading Paddington mid morning frequency at the moment suits me fine. Fingers crossed that the point of crossrail is to increase capacity. Smiling friendly fraternal frothless greetings to all. http://grumpymansgripe.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/cresta-its-frothy-man.html (grumpy man is not me by the way - as if he could)
Diversity and tolerance in London are thanks to Red Ken?
Riiiiiight
And forgive me if I don't pop the champagne corks as a non-Londoner about Crossrail. Not everyone thinks that truly vast and absurd amounts of public money being spent on Victorian technology to the benefit only of London and the SE is a great idea.
To be fair, a quarter (I think) of the Crossrail cost - in the order of £4 billion - is coming from an extra business rates tax on London businesses. somewhat controversially for London businesses located some distance away from the new line ...
Which still means that three-quarters isn't.
Rail commuters in the south of England are paying almost a billion pounds in fares to help keep trains running in the north, Scotland and Wales.........ScotRail, Scotland's main operator, received the largest subsidy of all train companies at £261 million
The derisive response by some here misses the point about Don's piece, which is essentially that non-Corbyn Labour people are thinking about how best to come to terms with his potential success. The early stuff about The Resistance etc. is being replaced by sober calculation. That's reflected among the candidates too, who by all accounts get along personally quite well after all the hours on the campaign trail together - Burnham is willing to be in Corbyn's shadow cabinet and Cooper hasn't ruled it out.
Most Labour people agree on the right response to two opposite outcomes: if Labour flourishes under Corbyn, almost nobody is going to try to get rid of him, and if Labour crashes and burns then there's a consensus deep into the left (including, I think, Corbyn himself) that we'll need to move on. There will be problems anyway with yesterday's old guard (Alan Milburn etc.), which I think we'll shrug off, but the main difficulty will be if we do middling well - winning this, losing that, roughly level in the polls, etc. An interesting question which Corbyn has raised himself is whether he can emulate the SNP's success in getting all the young enthusiasts to actually buckle down and register, knock on doors etc.
Incidentally JWiseman is right that some posters are going further than usual over the borders of civility. JEO, who is to the right of most here, is personally polite without compromising his views, and it makes him a lot more readable than some of the frothers.
But what if Corbyn neither crashes and burns, nor flourishes? What if, instead, he bumbles along at level-pegging in the polls or even a few points ahead?
And who is the Michael Howard to unite around? Someone, like him, of the last generation - Johnson? Harman? - or someone of the next?
Richard N's loyalty to his friend is fine, as long as he extends the same view to JK Rowling when she gives Labour £1 million. I agree with him that both are selfless acts.
Yes of course I extend it to JK Rowling. She donated that chunky sum of her own money to Labour because she thought that to do so would help ordinary and especially less-privileged people. From a moral point of view, that is wholly admirable, even though I happen to disagree with her analysis as to the best means to achieve her admirable intentions
Raises the interesting question of who is going to be donating seven-figure sums to Jezbollah? As I understand it, Labour's finances have been propped up by "loans" not being called in. If those previously having a generous disposition towards Labour turn away, then the Party becomes the political wing of UNITE - no ifs, no buts.
No different from the Tories being a paid tool of large business owners, apart from their being more union members than rich billionaires
King Cole, but the students [both non-Muslim ladies, incidentally] were aghast at his view, they were entirely for freedom of speech.
Like you, my experience of Muslims is that while a small group take the fundamentalists viewpoint most do not.
There is, after all, always small segment of most religions who take things to extremes. Not quiote sure how dangerous a fundamentalist Taoist is, though. Maybe someone here can enlighten me.
I enjoy Don's columns and it must be sad to see the party you've devoted so much of your life self destruct but is it really true to say Burnham and Cooper have grown in stature during the leadership election. I think Burnham is a much diminished figure and the Tories will be relaxed if he succeeds Corbyn.
Kendall's the only one who can be said to have grown, not because she has been great or set the world on fire with her awesomeness but because she has taken a more distinctive stance than the other two ABCs, so if Corbyn does crash and burn, which is not guaranteed, she may not pick up the pieces but her status would improve as someone who argued against his views more forthrightly.
@Richard_Nabavi - It seems to be a truth universally acknowledged amongst Labour figures, at least the senior ones, that Corbyn will be such a disaster that he will be defenestrated, or resign of his own accord, within a couple of years. Perhaps it's not so much a belief as a hope.
It is not even hope, it is wishful thinking at best and delusion at worst. – It attempts to set the narrative on a more palatable course, rather than face up to the reality of a Corbyn lead party at GE2020 and seeing what remains of their Labour party.
Diversity and tolerance in London are thanks to Red Ken?
Riiiiiight
And forgive me if I don't pop the champagne corks as a non-Londoner about Crossrail. Not everyone thinks that truly vast and absurd amounts of public money being spent on Victorian technology to the benefit only of London and the SE is a great idea.
To be fair, a quarter (I think) of the Crossrail cost - in the order of £4 billion - is coming from an extra business rates tax on London businesses. somewhat controversially for London businesses located some distance away from the new line ...
Which still means that three-quarters isn't.
Rail commuters in the south of England are paying almost a billion pounds in fares to help keep trains running in the north, Scotland and Wales.........ScotRail, Scotland's main operator, received the largest subsidy of all train companies at £261 million
Richard N's loyalty to his friend is fine, as long as he extends the same view to JK Rowling when she gives Labour £1 million. I agree with him that both are selfless acts.
Yes of course I extend it to JK Rowling. She donated that chunky sum of her own money to Labour because she thought that to do so would help ordinary and especially less-privileged people. From a moral point of view, that is wholly admirable, even though I happen to disagree with her analysis as to the best means to achieve her admirable intentions
Even if these cases did not have any malignant motivations on either side, the appearance of corruption is clearly dangerous when long-standing donors to political parties disproportionately receive appointments to the Lords. That is undermining of public trust in the system. Generally in other walks of public and corporate life, in situations where there is a 'quid' and a 'quo' there are systems in place to guarantee it was not a quid pro quo, and no such checks exist in this system.
We really should bring in some sort of system to prevent any single person contributing a disproportionate share of a party's finances, and also to bring some sort of independent committee to scrutinise party choices on new Lords. And, of course, make sure there is a firm formula for distributing them between parties. Where the three historic establishment parties get all of them, and the Greens and UKIP get none, it brings the system into disrepute. I certainly don't have any faith that the balance of the Lords is reflective of any sort of fair system.
It isn't raising money and who the money is from that is the problem, it is the amount parties spend and want to spend.
There should be spending limits on parties (much fairer on small parties), not donating limits. If they can't spend the cash it is pointless for rich individuals or associations to give humongous wads of cash to arse licking politicians and the parties they belong to.
If the maximum a party can spend is say 5 (or 2, or 4) million pa and say 10 (or 6 or 8) million pa in an election year all the issues of dodgy donors are diminished.
If the money can't be spent there is no point in raising. It stops 'money buying an election', the richest winning.
Sure, there would be difficulties, but limiting the spending of political parties is better in every way to other forms of funding parties - big donors wanting a pound of flesh, government funding, etc.
Comments
Dearne North (Barnsley) result:
LAB - 69.8% (+11.9)
UKIP - 12.0% (-25.0)
YORK - 9.8% (+9.8)
TUSC - 4.7% (+4.7)
CON - 3.7% (-1.4)
No LibDem there but they have been doing well in other council by-elections recently. The Tory and Labour votes have been reasonably steady so far, but what will happen when Corbyn is Labour leader and the Tories make unpopular decisions or show their splits over Europe?
A HoC By Election could be interesting.
https://youtu.be/KdOCWUgwiWs
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/127715904536/trump-persuasion-alert-the-bush-slayer-comment
Two factors played a large part in Blair's victory in 1997: the existing government was tired and self-destructing, and he had a series of positive messages to sell.
Corbyn will have to depend on the Conservatives for the former factor (especially now that Clifford is in jail); he will be able to produce a positive message that will appeal to many, even if, in reality, that message is deluded.
That's the danger. He's already doing it, which is why he has such momentum.
If Labour implode, how long before another party can emerge to challenge the government? Well, when the Liberals collapsed in 1916 between Lloyd George and Asquith's infighting, the Tories held power for all but three of the next 29 years, and came second in just one election in all that time (and then, only very narrowly). Very little has changed in our political system - indeed if anything the opposition vote is somewhat more fragmented. There is no reason why a similar timeframe should be considered unrealistic now.
The thought of Osborne being the de facto ruler of the country until 2040 is not a pleasant one. And it would be the fault of Labour for electing Corbyn. It is the most unbelievable unforced error.
And to continue the theme - I note we have already had the ritual two line hate from him against Fatcha. Back to work now everyone.
Whoever thought that Thatcher would become Labour's comfort blanket?
Indeed, between 1915 and 1997 (82 years) the Tories were in opposition for just 20 years: 1924, 1929-31, 1945-51, 1964-70, 1974-79. It wasn't until the 1990s that Labour finally worked out how to win elections and keep winning them.
Corbyn, on the other hand...
Most Labour people agree on the right response to two opposite outcomes: if Labour flourishes under Corbyn, almost nobody is going to try to get rid of him, and if Labour crashes and burns then there's a consensus deep into the left (including, I think, Corbyn himself) that we'll need to move on. There will be problems anyway with yesterday's old guard (Alan Milburn etc.), which I think we'll shrug off, but the main difficulty will be if we do middling well - winning this, losing that, roughly level in the polls, etc. An interesting question which Corbyn has raised himself is whether he can emulate the SNP's success in getting all the young enthusiasts to actually buckle down and register, knock on doors etc.
Incidentally JWiseman is right that some posters are going further than usual over the borders of civility. JEO, who is to the right of most here, is personally polite without compromising his views, and it makes him a lot more readable than some of the frothers.
I think we can ignore Mr Wisemann's ignorant rantings. He should spend more time worrying about how useless and inept his candidates are. It was not right wing tories who wiped him and his party out in Scotland. Quite frankly I would rather look away but its labour who are committing their insane act and filming themselves doing it.
As a right winger (to use an increasingly lazy and freight-laden term) I object to this. It's never great to feel you have no alternative to vote for.
This government is not doing well on some of the key measures that matter to me (finances, immigration, housing), yet no one is holding them to account (Cooper's completely incoherent criticism of the migration figures doesn't count, though it's representative of Labour's confused thinking on a range of topics "it's too high, yet too low").
But Osborne has already proven he is arrogant, and can become complacent. The risk is, not that he won't have good ideas (northern powerhouse) but that he will also try to implement seriously bad ones (the transfer of student grants to loans, which will make matters worse in the medium term when they are not paid back). And if he can do that with impunity, it is very likely he will do it more often. If bad ideas are exposed as bad ideas by a half-decent opposition, they are often checked (forest sales, although I think most of the opposition then came from the Liberal Democrats). So a good opposition helps to deliver good government - and if we don't have one, we're much more likely to end up without the other.
He won't tell me who he's voted for - but I'm very relieved it's not Jezza.
"I am not being told who to vote for by a fecking Hobbit"
Ignoring her flip-flap-floundering over the election process, Harman's proved to be a safe and able pair of hands and would have kept the good ship Opposition on a steady course.
Great minds discuss ideas
Average minds discuss events
Small minds discuss people
I know some will argue that Labour are doing the third as a proxy for the first.....but I fear its become hopelessly muddled.....and for every potentially good idea Corbyn brings out, up pops a horror story event from the vaults.....
I want to FFW to Sept 11th as we await the result. I'm perusing the Labour conference website to see how much a pass costs - this is one of those up-the-road events that I can't miss if the price is right.
''the brilliant Mary Riddell ''
or
''gazing at a Crossrail train'' - a project on the go since 1941?
or
''The Livingstone mayoralty was a business-friendly administration.'' (hah - his own personal company business to avoid tax maybe. Or his grants to Lee Jasper perhaps)
or
''Corbyn should not be left to fend for himself, especially as his leadership is likely to be short-lived''
or
''laid the groundwork for the diversity and tolerance'' - forgotten the 2011 riots, permitted not least by police lack of interest? Forgotten the rotten boroughs where ethnic cronyism ruled? Some of us have not forgotten Ken's friends
You fool no one Mr Palmer except yourself with your sly dismissal of 'frothers'. You might be a useful idiot but I am not.
I'll happily froth away at extremists from left or right. I'm not fooled by anybody's polite smiling assassin.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/mary-wakefield/9619312/the-contagious-madness-of-the-new-pc/
We do genuinely worry about these things. Briefly. But then we go back to pointing and laughing.
Things must be getting better in Afghanistan. According to Cric info there are two domestic cricket matches going on, and, digging further, there’s quite a programme.
IIRC the Taliban rather approve of the game!
In terms of Corbyn building the parties support among the young, I'd envisage that he will be encouraging all student Labour clubs to hit freshers week hard to keep the momentum going. The unions will no doubt continue to encourage their members to become affiliates.
http://labourlist.org/2015/08/jeremy-corbyn-dismisses-hysteria-over-his-policies-and-says-hell-defeat-the-tories-in-2020-with-peoples-politics/
I would be very surprised if there isn't the usual post-election honeymoon - fresh face etc etc. for a few months. Maybe even into the new year before the house comes falling down.
I get where it comes from. I get why it is seen as a good thing. I get all of that.
But seriously, if you defend it, I want to know how you can read:
"Here’s how twisted it’s all become: in December, Jeannie Suk, a professor of law, wrote a desperate piece for the New Yorker about the situation at Harvard, a sort of SOS. Her students, she said, had complained to the authorities that rape law was too ‘triggering ‘ to be taught at all. One girl thought the word ‘violate’ — as in ‘does this violate the law?’ — too traumatic to use in class. Surely some sensible top dog told them all to belt up? Nope, said Suk. The hounding that would follow on social media was too alarming a prospect.
Nor, as far as I can see, did anyone remind these kids that there are real victims of real rape out there who will need lawyers."
and not think you've dropped a colossal bollock on this topic.
I just have a particular loathing for politicians who seek to rule by division rather than uniting the country.
It can be effective politics, but it's not why they are there
Labour are being eaten alive by the Leftier, and invited them in. It's the exact opposite of what the Tories/Kippers did.
Corbyn at least will upset the apple cart and will either get the same result as the 3 stooges would realise or it will transform Labour into a worthwhile opposition. To me if I was a Labour supporter he is the only option , even if a dangerous one.
Riiiiiight
And forgive me if I don't pop the champagne corks as a non-Londoner about Crossrail. Not everyone thinks that truly vast and absurd amounts of public money being spent on Victorian technology to the benefit only of London and the SE is a great idea.
But in the same way as every bit of my political instinct told me the voters wouldn't go for Ed Miliband because essentially he stood for Nothing, that same instinct tells me that those same voters won't go for a Corbyn who stands for Something - because his Something is nothing the voters agree with.
That seems awfully optimistic me; the party is tearing itself apart, there don't actually seem to be any solid but charismatic alternative leaders to hand, and - as you rightly say - donors will have been driven out. Meanwhile the MP base has been shifted (by Unite's candidate-placement) to the left, and a whole bunch of far-left supporters have been given a huge say in the party's future. Corbyn intends to weaken still further MPs say in policy. That means control of the party's direction has already shifted out of what one might loosely call 'Blairites' - i.e. anyone with a vague grip of reality - into the hands of a combination of Len McCluskey, the far-left, and the naive. It is wishful thinking to imagine that this will suddenly all come good if Corbyn is selected and then disappears again.
When the SNP does act to make reforms in Scotland, two tendencies in its policy-making are striking. The SNP’s illiberalism should not, perhaps, surprise us, nationalism in Europe all too often having sacrificed individual freedoms on the altar of national self-determination. The party’s centralising tendencies, however, are remarkable given the SNP’s vocal opposition to rule from London.
https://notesfromnorthbritain.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/i-am-seeking-election-to-the-scottish-parliament-heres-why/
We really should bring in some sort of system to prevent any single person contributing a disproportionate share of a party's finances, and also to bring some sort of independent committee to scrutinise party choices on new Lords. And, of course, make sure there is a firm formula for distributing them between parties. Where the three historic establishment parties get all of them, and the Greens and UKIP get none, it brings the system into disrepute. I certainly don't have any faith that the balance of the Lords is reflective of any sort of fair system.
http://labourlist.org/2015/08/attracting-people-who-didnt-vote-at-the-last-election-is-key-to-winning-in-2020-say-labourlist-readers/
"It's all Eastern Europeans. And it's just getting worse and worse. They operate differently, you see. The Eastern European gangs operate over a far broader area of London and are a lot more mobile across boroughs, making it harder for us to follow them. And the numbers just keep on increasing."
That said, I didn't go to Oxford.
And, rant over.
On this piece, yes it is good people are thinking about what to do about Corbyn's success, should he win, regardless of whether they wished him to win or not. The problem would be if that calculation is based on faulty premises and comfort blanket thinking as some believe - I don't know enough about this Ken Livingstone and GLC stuff people are talking about so I cannot judge that, but while it is good Labour are thinking how to deal with this, good or bad, if they go into it in a flawed way the thinking won't help.
CF Jezza!
MANY people insist on a bright-line distinction between “fewer” and “less”, and get quite agitated by the subject. David Foster Wallace’s novel “Infinite Jest” featured the Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts, who boycott stores with signs reading “12 items or less”. A few vigilantes have defaced such signs in real life. What is the distinction, and why does it matter?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/08/economist-explains-14
Still slightly weird thinking though, writing off all the floating voters as first priority.
'The largest amount of [LabourList readers] – 45% – said Labour should focus most of their efforts on appealing to non-voters."
Where else can they go for votes ?
With Corbyn as leader the chances of gaining any 2015 Tory voters must be close to zero.
They can't outdo the SNP on the anti austerity platform,the Lib Dems are down to their core vote & Corbyn's pro immigration stance is the kiss of death for UKIP voters.
Actually I quite like the Reading - Paddington direct services at the mo. I'm a bit worried that the service might be longer if the crossrail service stops at every station. But maybe there will be a more frequent service although the Reading Paddington mid morning frequency at the moment suits me fine. Fingers crossed that the point of crossrail is to increase capacity.
Smiling friendly fraternal frothless greetings to all.
http://grumpymansgripe.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/cresta-its-frothy-man.html
(grumpy man is not me by the way - as if he could)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/11829610/Northern-rail-services-cost-commuters-1-billion.html
And who is the Michael Howard to unite around? Someone, like him, of the last generation - Johnson? Harman? - or someone of the next?
There is, after all, always small segment of most religions who take things to extremes. Not quiote sure how dangerous a fundamentalist Taoist is, though. Maybe someone here can enlighten me.
It is not even hope, it is wishful thinking at best and delusion at worst. – It attempts to set the narrative on a more palatable course, rather than face up to the reality of a Corbyn lead party at GE2020 and seeing what remains of their Labour party.
There should be spending limits on parties (much fairer on small parties), not donating limits. If they can't spend the cash it is pointless for rich individuals or associations to give humongous wads of cash to arse licking politicians and the parties they belong to.
If the maximum a party can spend is say 5 (or 2, or 4) million pa and say 10 (or 6 or 8) million pa in an election year all the issues of dodgy donors are diminished.
If the money can't be spent there is no point in raising. It stops 'money buying an election', the richest winning.
Sure, there would be difficulties, but limiting the spending of political parties is better in every way to other forms of funding parties - big donors wanting a pound of flesh, government funding, etc.