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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Introducing the new Confident Corbyn
Something has happened to Jeremy Corbyn; something which few would have thought possible, never mind expected a year ago: he has become comfortable doing the job expected of a party leader. Indeed, more than that: he has become confident in the role.
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In 30 years' time, someone will make a science fiction film which will explain all about what happened, but it will all be true.
That was true in 2017 too.....so it is to be hoped they've learned that lesson....
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5713733/theresa-may-wants-to-cut-ties-with-elections-guru-sir-lynton-crosby-after-poll-disaster/
How Beto O’Rourke Explains America
https://www.theringer.com/2018/2/28/16898726/beto-orourke-ted-cruz-texas-senate-race-2018-midterm-elections
Now, will it be enough to put Beto over the line? Probably not. But I do wonder if there are some ridiculous 50-1 odds out there that might be worth a punt.
The real blame for the people dying in Syria should be placed at the door of one person: Assad.
Remember the sound attack on the US Embassy in Cuba? Well, it might all have been an accident; possibly:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/finally-a-likely-explanation-for-the-sonic-weapon-used-at-the-us-embassy-in-cuba
However, Germany was in a very different situation to us given the geography, and the problem for them was much more immediate. Even if the had instituted something akin to Cameron's plan, they would still have had a major issue to deal with in the form of the people already arriving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqsa0c8lHv0
This is a district where Trump got 80% of the vote, but where Ojeda is leading in the polling.
The other side of it is that Jezza is politically maturing, about 30 years later than usual. Most MPs get the feel of how things work in Westminster within a couple of years of first being elected, Jezza has been a little slower than most. He does need to be careful though. His political USP is being a voice of the people, representing the average Labour activist, and later the average Labour voter. In Populist times he is a sort of "Mr Smith goes to Washington" voice of common sense amongst venal or machine politicians. He never sought power for himself, he did it for the movement. It will be increasingly hard for him to keep his fanbase happy in party and country if he starts to look like just another machine politician.
If he gets it right he will be PM. In the past, being an incompetent, lazy and disorganised administrator has been a substantial bar to high office. The current PM and trio of Fox, Johnson and Davis have shown however that being useless at the job in hand is no bar at all, indeed it frees up more time for playing to the gallery.
That said, he chose the one issue that the polling suggests people want the politicians to be adults about, rather than go out of their way to score partisan points, so maybe it was Watson behind it - before his own little local difficulties last week.
Corbyn’s reaction to the PM’s speech yesterday made it quite obvious that neither he nor any of his 15 staff actually watched it in detail. A point that wasn’t actually raised yesterday but has been noted in the past, is that it would be much better to see these set piece speeches by senior ministers made in Parliament.
Still, diverting the topic onto Merkel avoids the main point of my original post: the cause of all of this is Assad, and everyone's reaction to his evil.
"In a nod to the Internet meme “rickrolling,” Yan was even able to embed an ultrasonic version of the Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up,” which became audible at the point where the two signals crossed."
The biggest issue with her actions was that it actively encouraged others after that first wave - including both genuine refugees and economic migrants - to make the perilous journey.
But I find it difficult to see a 'good' way Germany and the EU could have coped with the immediate problem that faced them - there was no good solution, only bad ones. Having said that, Merkel chose a terrible one, but for understandable reasons.
However the blame for all of this lies not with Merkel, not with the EU, and not with the west in general, but with Assad and the people who supported him.
It's a mess, but the fault fundamentally lies with Assad, who lost control of his own country because of his tyrannical ways.
Yep, evil.
The Seventies.
Corbyn himself has undoubtably grown into the role. He has developed gravitas to put alongside his unique appeal to left wing voters. He is confident, even witty these days - with clearly some decent brains behind him.
Given his track record in defeating opponents and his achievement in inspiring a movement, people ought to stop underestimating him. Yet one of his strengths is that they continue to do so.
They attack him in silliest, ineffectual terms. Reminds me of the way Labour used to attack Cameron as posh.
It's quite likely that May will have to agree a substantial compromise or walk away. By saying he wants to be in a Customs Union, Corbyn has made it fair game to be asked about what he would do. I think his previous strategy of not saying very much at all on the specifics of Brexit was the right approach.
Cameron's instincts over Syria were the correct ones. For that at least, history will think his responses were sound.
Ed Miliband's lasting contribution to history may well be blocking our part in the punishment beatings of that Assad regime for the inexcusable use of chemical weapons on his own citizens.
Maybe Corbyn’s messing around this week was inspired by Ed Miliband, who tried to play politics with things that were too important for partisanship.
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/eight-held-after-gang-attack-dublin-lidl-with-digger-during-storm-emma-11273783?__twitter_impression=true
Yes, and you'll have seen posts in the past lamenting (say) the way we did not castigate Sadaam when he used chemical weapons on his own people - a hideous decision that has helped lead to where we are today.
But that does not mean we should continue making the same mistakes. (*)
And the people do not vote for the tyrants, at least not in a free and fair way. Hence why they're tyrants.
(*) Sadly this may mean we'll new, totally original mistakes.
"He regrets his vote for Trump.
“Sure do,” he said.
Because?
“Because he hasn’t done shit,” he said. “It’s been a friggin’ circus for a solid year.” Nothing’s changed. So many people in southern West Virginia are still poor and need jobs. The opioid epidemic rages unabated. “All he’s done,” Ojeda said, “is shown that he’s taking care of the daggone people he’s supposed to be getting rid of.”
One to watch, when the same penny drops with other Blue Collar Trump voters, change is gona come. I am not sure who his UK equivalent is.
We must hope the far left devours itself before it can sink its fangs into the nation.
We have seen this time and time again in our foreign interventions in developing countries over the last half century. It is the old colonial mentality of some peoples being treated as unsuitable to democracy and self government.
Interesting rumour doing the rounds in Scotland.
They voted to proceed with a "Brexit bill" despite not having the legal competence to do so. The suggestion is that this is just a kite to test whether they can then launch another Indyref without approval from Westminster.
Yet there is no way the problem is going away. A solution needs to be found. A political solution was very nearly found with the Solution Process before that broke down - perhaps another casualty of the Syrian civil war. It was a great missed opportunity.
However self-determination also has massive downsides. It would lead to more mass migrations, in a country that had similar movements a century ago with the Greek population exchanges. But worse is the fact that the Kurds from the different countries: Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Iran - have some rather significant differences. They may be Kurds, but their cultural and political differences are large. A unified Kurdish state might rapidly fall into civil war itself.
The problems are intractable, and it needs reasonable people on all sides : or at least people who can be made to see things reasonably. This is what we eventually got in Northern Ireland, and it led to the peace we have there now. Erdogan is not of that mould, and neither are the current Kurdish leadership.
So what do we, in the west, do? The Kurdish situation is an aberration that threatens regional peace and cannot be sustained in the long term. Ignoring the suffering of the Kurds and others in the region is not a moral thing for the west to be doing, but neither is being seen to support their terrorists.
About all we can do is try to relieve suffering, and prod both sides (in fact, all sides) towards a renewed Solution Process or similar. But we cannot do that without leverage and influence.
The chances are whatever we do will be seen with hindsight as being wrong.
And a personality.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3546062/theresa-mays-name-plastered-across-tory-election-battle-bus-while-labour-dont-use-jeremy-corbyns-name-once/
As far as 'the rebels' are concerned, there are many groups, and it is a complicated mess. Given that the rebels included ISIS, it goes without saying that there's a fair share of evil on the rebel side.
One could with some justification argue that our failure to intervene exacerbated the chaos. The early imposition of a no fly zone in the north (which was considered) might just have saved Aleppo, andy prevented a million or so refugees. In any event, i's hard to see how we could have made anything much worse in this particular case.
I imagine most here have read The Prince (if not, you really should give it a look). Discourses is pretty similar, the major shift being the preference for a republic over a principality. Worth a read, although not as slim as the other book.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/28/front-bench-exclusive-day-tom-watson-almost-convinced-jeremy/
Corbyn’s office failed to submit the list to Downing Street (who needed to submit it to the appointments commission) in time. This prompted the then PM David Cameron to phone up Corbyn and demand to hear his nominations. As Harris has it: “The only name Corbyn could remember off the top of his head was that of Chakrabarti...
It was that decision which directly led to much of the subsequent chaos in the region.
Who knows what the counterfactual might have been ? It's hard to remember now, but there was substantial goodwill towards the US after the 9/11 bombing.
Someone mentioned Trump's trade tweet and '1930s redux' the other day. This caught my eye:
https://twitter.com/nickmacpherson2/status/969689187359354883
Enough Brexit for me today. Other areas of politics are mattering more, and I have a very cold Football match to get to. Today is a longjohns day.
https://twitter.com/georgetrefgarne/status/969848460970258432
"“I may not be the right candidate for you, to be honest,” O’Rourke said. “You may prefer someone else, and that’s the way our democracy should work.”
I'm a sucker for civilised politics and anyone who talks like that is halfway to winning me over.
The Syrian regime represents maybe a quarter if the Syrian population, and the war is not about national survival. Assad has destroyed much of his country to perpetuate his rule.
Traditional European social democracy with British characteristics has not only saved the Labour party but has energised it too.
It led to where we are today, as there was no trust between Saddam's regime and the west - TimT's book details well the obstructions by the regime. He had had chemical weapons, had used them many times in the past, and was obstructing the inspectors.
If the west and the UN had slapped Hussein down in 1986 for using chemical weapons, then much of the mess that has happened since could have been prevented. In 1986 the Security Council condemned Iraq for the chemical attacks, but the attacks continued, and we continued backing Saddam as he was 'better' than the Iranians. At that early stage, making it clear we would not support him if he continued their use would probably have been enough.
It was an absolute disaster, and let the genie out of the chemical and biological weapons bottle. Our craven attitude towards Assad's use of them has done the same thing, and it's made the world much less secure for all of us.
https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/969325448122552322?s=20
But in situations like the Kurdish one, we have painful experience to share, and that might be useful. No-one is going to win if the conflict continues: it'll just see more deaths and pain.
Yet we've managed to turn Northern Ireland around. There are useful lessons there that the Turks and Kurds could learn from - and they probably were during the Solution Process. We cannot make them start talking about peace, but we can encourage them. That's where we can play a role.
There was a great book, can’t remember its name, wherein a journalist lived as a Walmart worker and showed how the poor managed, or rather didn't manage, and just slipped into further poverty, and couldn't just "live within their means".
A bit like Adam Holloway's homeless programme over here some years ago.
Very good.
The last major politician with a significant military record was Bush Snr. Are there any others?
Essentially, the problem is that from the nineties onwards Democrats stopped concentrating on economic issues, in order to curry favour with big business, in part because they needed corporate money for campaigns. That just left them talking about social issues alien to small town America.
The parallels with New Labour are obvious, and it also explains why Corbynism appeals to places that voted Leave. Finally someone was taking the run down post industrial towns seriously. Interestingly the regional breakdown of the Yougov yesterday showed it was in the South outside London that Labours Brexit strategy was not appealing. It was doing relatively well in Wales, Midlands and North. I suspect Corbyn is right by instinct on these matters, rather than by cynical calculation.
However its what happened every year since that was the result of protectionism. Protectionism aggravated and prolonged the effects of the Wall Street Crash.
The leader of a country doesn’t: they need to focus on outcomes. That’s why we hire them.
I forget the exact quote but it is something like “the prime minister is the [man] appointed to do the things we don’t want to do, but know that we must”
Its worth noting that not only do the Tories have a majority in England seats, they actually have a majority in Great Britain too including Scotland and Wales.
What we have now is a government led by the party that got the majority in Great Britain backed by the party that got the majority in Northern Ireland.
And we pretend a tosser like Corbyn cares?
Whether putting down a concrete marker on Brecit was indeed the right thing to do tactically is interesting too (I agree with it in substance, but I'm looking at it tactically here). The polling isn't great, nor were the vox pops - Brexiteers are annoyed, and Remainers are meh. But I'm not sure that being indefinitely vague was an option for much longer, and given that the Brexit outcome is likely to be an uncomfortable fudge, it's necessary to have an answer to "But what would you do?" We're all clear that a customs union would mean "membership minus" rather than Canada plus, but if Canada plus isn't on offer (and I don't think it is) then the alternatives may be significantly worse.