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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Why Corbyn might not win the Labour leadership
The Labour leadership contest seems to share a lot of the characteristics of the 2015 general election. We have the overwhelming enthusiastic social media support for a flawed candidate (that might not end up actually casting their vote), shy Tories*, the polls showing only outcome and betting sentiment heavily in favour of the polling outcome.
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Furthermore, the top five teams [which is why fifth spot in the Constructors' actually matters] get decision-making powers. The bottom five teams don't. That's clearly absurd and indefensible.
Financial matters are stupid for circuits too. Tedious Monaco, the worst circuit (possibly excepting Singapore) on the calendar, pays no fee. Monza and Spa, two of the best tracks on the calendar, might go under because the race fee is too high.
When Ecclestone goes, there may be change. Financially, the situation is unsustainable. Perhaps half the grid are struggling to make ends meet. That's no way to run a sport.
On the other hand, Labour also voted for Ed Miliband.
FPT: Mr. G, Corbyn is not. He's a deluded socialist who has somehow escaped the Cold War unbesmirched by the stain of reality.
The co-lateral damage of this move is of course, the public see we took 120k people which a lot of them won't approve of. The public will then find that substantially more than half these people are not really refugees at all, and will be even more incensed. Hands will continue to be wrung and UKIP will score 50-100 seats in the next election.
Oh, and since there is now a higher incentive to cross the Med, more people cross it, and more children die. Congratulations we have increased the death rate of people crossing the Med and invited several tens of thousands of ne'er do wells into our country which we cant remove.
The key to all this problem is modifying or abrogating Article 8. If we have the ability to remove people who turn out to be here on a false prospectus, and if we are able to give people a temporary place of safety without the associated obligation of letting them live forever in our country, the public would be much more sympathetic. As a side bonus we get to throw out the Abu Hamza type people which give the whole immigration process a bad name.
Problem is, there are two issues here
1) The real humanitarian issue of people needing immediate help, and needing assistance now, wether in the EU or on the borders of the EU.
2) The medium/longer term issue of what is causing this.
Now, issue 1 needs dealing with, without a doubt, if people need help, and need saving then that should be provided without a question, and if that means increased immigration in the short term, so be it.
But without solving issue 2, issue 1 is unsolvable, it's a bottomless pit, Cameron is right that it will just create more and more pull factors to Europe and make the crisis worse and worse.
It needs something bigger and more permanent than just 'helping', otherwise this issue is going to grow and grow.
But we must have nothing but sympathy for these people
Are there any numbers for those purged?
And how does someone find out they've been purged, do they just have to wait for the 3AM knock on the door or something?
Hoping he will prove transformative in a good way, or sticking two fingers up at Blair and co and the media, is no doubt tempting, but this campaign is looooooong, people have a lot of time to think and the fervour seems to have dialled back a notch imo. Maybe it's nothing, but I can see the reasoning that it is not as over as things seemed.
Taking more is not right for Britain AND will exacerbate the pull factors.
When there are more deaths in the Med as the rates of migration grow, I hope this ridiculous Merkel policy is exposed for what it is - misguided and dangerous.
A quite disgraceful state of affairs, and I hope they're shot dealt with appropriately once Corbyn claims his rightful victory.
Bettingwise I've been backing Andy Burnham recently to have a nice green position all round, except Liz - she is out the race. Hattie and co are trying to bend this contest more than South Yorkshire police.
That said, I do agree with the general sentiment of the post and it is no doubt odd how many sections of the media have seemingly dismissed the possibility of anybody but Corbyn sneeking in.
I still think it is too late to stop him, as the bulk of those who are going to vote will have voted. They others are just such limp alternatives. Not a novel thought between them. And the explosion of rage if Corbyn is "robbed" and "cheated" out of the top prize will make it impossible for Burnham or Cooper to be seen as an effective leader of a united Party.
But he was always a wretched candidate with decades of baggage that make him impossible to sell to the politically uncommitted. Labour should hope it is not too late to prevent his getting the top job. But...then who does? Urgh.....
It's a hoot.
‘Corbynmania might join the ranks of Cleggmania and the Milifandom’
The common denominator with each of the above is youthful exuberance, - lots of noise and twitter spats in the run up to the election, followed by a day in bed come voting day. The only way to stop future nonesense like this is to raise the voting age to 25.
Or not. It might simply be that a lot of potential voters won't vote. Who? The most obvious ones are the union affiliates, who had a low turnout last time and who didn't do much to sign up, unlike the 'supporters' or members. The supporters, by contrast, I would expect to have a high turnout given that they were engaged specifically for this election.
And then there's the numbers. YouGov had Corbyn on 54% and then 57% at the time the ballots went out. Even if that was wrong and even if there's been a swing against him since then, it would have to have been wrong by an unprecedented margin to let Burnham or Cooper slip through.
The magic number for Corbyn is 42%. That or above in the first round and he should be favourite to win on transfers, with about 30% of the Cooper/Burnham share, between 5-10% of LK/YC/AB votes non-transferable and maybe a 5% LK-JC direct switch. It's one thing for a poll to be out but to be out by at least 12% just on one candidate (i.e. to have the lead out by getting on for 20%) would be reputation-breaking.
And it's not just the polls, there's the constituency nominations too. Granted that these are not necessarily representative of the part as a whole, and also that the JC nominations did not outweigh the rest combined, they did still give him first place.
I take the point that TSE is saying that Corbyn *might* not win. I'd agree with that. But the chances are still longer than the current odds suggest.
Speaking of TV, I saw a snippet of Horizon last night. .... It seemed staggeringly dumbed down.
Consider the 'children' of 16 who fled to Syria and contrast that to the desire of some to lower the voting age to 16.
OK, let's say we go with the let 'em in brigade. We could probably house a million people in tent cities in London's royal parks. How would that do these people any good long term? There would be so many of them, they would stand very little chance of getting any work. They would be entirely dependent on hand outs. And a pound to a penny, it wouldn't take long for them to complain about the inadequacy of those hand outs. Which would further antagonise a reluctant British population, who were against this crazy bloody idea in the first place.
Sanitation wouldn't cope. We would potentially be importing a whole raft of health issues. Not to mention those who come from tropical or desert climates, whose health struggles to cope with our cold, wet winter weather. You would have a mass of cultural clashes, unless you had strictly enforced barriers (Hyde Park for Shia, Green Park for Sunni, Azidis in Kensington Gardens..). Begging would be rife across the whole of the city. It would be materially less attractive as a tourist destination, especially after the first mugging of a tourist by a migrant got international news coverage. So tourism suffers, existing jobs get lost, resentment grows...
The hand-wringers may be very well intentioned Christian folk. But there seems to be no practicality to their position.
Edited extra bit: Mr. G (2), I saw that as well. Thought it was Corbyn Vs Cooper.
What mistakes and excesses were these? Labour was out of power in the 1980s. Without the Falklands War they could well have won the 1983 election or at least been in a position to form a coalition with the SDP/Liberals. Having lost in 1983, and with FPTP having scuppered the Alliance, Labour under Neil Kinnock started a major process of reform. This included gradually adopting the centrist positions of the SDP. By end of the decade Labour was a sensible Party and the SDP was no more. It was not a period of mistakes at all but the opposite.
As for the voting system 'scuppering' the Alliance: nonsense. They knew the rules of the game before the election, as UKIP do now. A midfielder picking up the football can't complain if he's shown a card.
If Kinnock hadn't won that battle then Labour might not exist today.
Why do you think Derek Hatton wanted to vote for Corbyn?
The reason there are no decent candidates is more likely due to the last five years of saying nothing, which meant no shadow ministers could make their reputation as did Blair, Brown, Robin Cook and so on.
At least Everett was mentioned.
On the plus side, it seems my decision to only watch a few minutes was vindicated.
For you younger folk I'd set the minimum voting age at 80 if the suitability exam is passed.
Key problem to me was that it was all so anthropocentric. So if there are an infinite number of parallel universes then the most important thing we could say about them is... somewhere in one I am president of the USA, or winning the world cup.
I think it's natural to consider human variance, although the impact on the laws of physics or properties of time would be interesting to think about.
Personally I'm not too sure about the 'infinite' part. The decision tree of every single quark in the universe is an unthinkably large number, 10^10^(Insert mind blowingly large number here), and there may well be universes where the paths are exactly the same. But if a seperate universe is created every single time a different decision is made, that number is NOT infinity.
Well the evidence is that its MPs left a vote losers such as Brown and Miliband in place ignoring reams of evidence of the voters real views. Why expect any logic being applied about Corbyn?
To infinity and beyond.
I know this Labour leadership's been going on a while, but it still can't be considered evidence for an infinite amount of time.
People using the term 'lucky' are just looking for silly excuses why their side lost. After all, it cannot have been their sides fault: the other side were just lucky ....
"Can I have my ballot paper back please?"
Of course, they could claim they were really a Tory - and ask for their (Corbyn) vote to be discarded....
The most astonishing thing about Osborne's age.
Osborne was born a year after Ken Clarke first became an MP.
The fact is that Labour will have elected a possible PM who if in power will not want to have Trident (and would never press the button anyway) and would not want to be in NATO and would never do anything to defend ourselves or help our allies (well we would not have any allies by definition).
Its pretty clear he would be anti Israel and pro muslim aggression and terrorist sympathetic. The effect that this might have on migration to us and emigration of youths to terrorist camps can only be imagined.
Back burner? Don't make me laugh.
" ... although the impact on the laws of physics or properties of time would be interesting to think about."
It was both superficial and selective. There's one about events before the Big Bang next week but it will probably be the same. The speculation was silly - as you say, retiring the universe to a very big flat in Eastbourne or somewhere was just childish.
They could have discussed the implications of some of the Multiverses. If everything that could happen has already happened (time wasn't mentioned), then somewhere, a race has arisen and in the infinite time available, advanced to God-like status, and constructed an infinite number of artificial universes. Are we holograms?
No, they concentrated on three alternative universes with the three most telly-friendly physicists and told them to be playful.
I'll stick to reading books written by physicists who explore the possibilities and write well enough to make it both understandable and interesting. But also point out that it's pure speculation.
My gut feeling is that Corbyn will poll somewhere in the low 40s, perhaps even the high 30s on the first round. However, plenty of people on here, whoever their first choice was, have, knowing fully his deficiencies, placed Corbyn 2nd. This is either for reasons of feartiness ("if X picks up more second round votes and squeezes Corbyn out there will be trouble") or as a kick back against the insipidness of the candidates, or to bring forward the moment of collapse and rebirth.
I think a good deal of those people who put Corbyn second, when they realise they had it in their power to defeat him and well, may well be the ones who regret the most over the next years.
It does seem to me that Corbyn might end up crossing two electoral hurdles with sympathy votes.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/adulthood-begins-at-25-says-new-research-10046934.html
Anyone up at that time is probably quite into politics. That's a safe assumption. So why waste time and money on stupid gimmicks that nobody wants?
Mr. Borough, what was the reasoning behind that large but definitely finite estimate?
I mean, there's improbable, and then there's impossible ...
Ten exam papers of four hours duration each majoring on Jacobitism in Rutland and notable Scottish peers of the 21st Century.
500 guineas per applicant.
There is no doubt policies such as a consultation on women-only train carriages have consolidated his lead with women voters.
The mass media's Project Fear tactics may have helped win the indyref but it did not stop the movement for Scotland's independence.Project Fear will fail again against the similar energy and dynamic of the Corbyn campaign-1,000s still flocking to his rallies yesterday in the Marxist hotbed of Essex.
This has become painfully and increasingly clear over the last couple of weeks as stories of the Bin Laden "tragedy" and other idiotic comments have gained greater traction but the failure of the other competitors to actually take this fool on, no doubt believing that being nice would help the chances of second choices from his supporters, has been a complete dereliction of duty and leadership. This is not what Kinnock did to save the party in the 80s, it is not what new Labour, for all its faults, did after 1994 and it is not what Labour needs to do to fulfil their role.
The key question is whether too many voted before these second thoughts surfaced. The evidence on that is somewhat mixed, partly because Labour seem to have been incompetent in getting voting options out to people. But the real risk is that a significant proportion of those who have not voted don't. Labour needs its members and supporters to save it from itself without leadership from the top. It's possible but a big ask. I would certainly urge those who have a vote and have not used it to try and save their party.
And the Jeremy Corbyn bandwagon keeps rolling along the campaign trail as he heads for Kent this weekend to attend a rally in Margate’s Winter Gardens. - Local rag reports several hundred tickets have already been booked.
As the leadership race enters its final week, the Islington MP’s whirlwind has not let up for a second, while the ABCs appear to doing the barest minimum, other than TV studio hustings which someone else has organised for them.
'Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.' Nicholas Taleb
Apparently 10^120 is only enough for a game of chess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number
However, if Corbyn does lose 52-48 or thereabouts having polled high-30s in the first round, it'll mean that Cooper or Burnham will probably have won having started with the active support of less than a quarter of the voters, which is hardly a strong base.
"From 1918 to 1928 the voting age for women was 30, IIRC. Also I have an idea that it's 25 or 30 for the Irish Senate: if we ever elect our Upper Chamber it's a point to be borne in mind altho' I'd expect the Tories to go for a household franchise of owner-occupiers only."
Interestingly I discovered yesterday that French women only got the vote in 1944 by decree of Gen De Gaulle's government in exile.
But we see the desperate lies the nasty side of Labour are prepared to utter when it comes to smears.
The government are not responsible for the migrant crisis. And they are not responsible for the deaths of these sad people on route. As far as I can see it is only self appointed representatives of the WWC who are saying these people deserve all they get.
The govt are helping these migrants/refugees locally and have ships in the med as part of a force trying to save lives.
Plus the refugee crisis would still be happening if there was no EU.
People like Danny565 will decide if Labour is a pro Austerity party or not.
Can anyone explain to me how by taking in more Syrian refugees , we are going to prevent drownings in the Med?
I would have thought taking in lots of refugees from Syria into Europe would encourage more to cross the Med.
SO I assume those in favour of more refugees to be taken in by the UK are planning the Royal Navy to run a shuttle service across the Med thus avoiding deaths by drowning.
Perhaps a lot of them will not vote at all, just as over 40% of the Lib Dem membership did not in their recent leadership election.
If the YouGov poll from last month is as wrong as the final GE2015 polls (which was described as the biggest polling disaster in recent history) then Corbyn would still win in the first round. Corbyn could, yes, still lose, but polling disasters on this scale are pretty rare; it is only really being talked about to this extent due to what happened in the recent GE.
I would answer your second question in a different way. If Labour cannot provide that pressure towards the centre, moderation and fairness that are the quintessential British attributes they will need to be replaced by something that can. Under our electoral system that is difficult but not impossible as Scotland has shown. Labour either chooses to remain a player in our politics or they go off on one with Corbyn to deserved irrelevance. I really think it is that simple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_probability_bound
EDIT: or is related to this. It seems the guy who proposed this is an 'intelligent design' proponent. So might all be dodgy IMHO.
"Go on Roger, tell us how many we should take ? and for how long, and where we house them, educate them and heal them ? And how many more will get killed trying to cross the med when we give people the expectation of getting a new first world life ? And what we do with the thousands that turn out not to be refugees at all. I thought you didn't want the kippers to win the next election."
6,000,000 Jews perished in Europe. Many could have been saved if enough civilized countries had given them sanctuary. I'm sorry but your questions are irrelevant to a humanitarian crisis
That's a good point. Also worth noting lots may vote for just one or two people, which will help Corbyn.
Mr. Fish, quite. Germany saying it'll take anyone will just act as a vacuum. More migration, social tension, drownings, people smuggling.
Edited extra bit: Mr. Roger, if you want to make that comparison then surely you must also be in favour of an Allies-style coalition to destroy ISIS?