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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The juvenile CON attacks on Corbyn have simply reinforced the

Can someone pls fetch a bodybag for Steve Baker we have a casualty here pic.twitter.com/mzp4p1IYGy
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That said, I suspect the legal action will be quietly dropped. There is unlikely to be any good side for Corbyn to come from airing his history from the 1980s even if he were to win.
It demeans and discredits those who propagate it.
Not so sure about this. Do we really want to see "party robots" repeating the same nonsense 24 hours a day. It worked for Labour for the first few years but by the time Blair had gone I think the population became heartily sick of it all.
It has to be remembered that Labour as your comment suggests left a greater impact in media management than perhaps any positive policy decisions such as the minimum wage for instance. I do think Labour had a mixed record between 1997 - 2010 but it was not all bad and I did not vote for them in that period.
I hope I never see a political party trying to control the media as it did for a few years after 1997. If they had spent as much time trying to make positive change they may of had more of a legacy. That said, I have always had the suspicion Labour wanted to be in government perpetually from 1997 onwards and introduced things like postal voting to attain this. They would not be the first political party to attempt this but a change of government is always a positive thing as it keeps the politicians on their toes!
I would also disagree with the point there is no logic to what the Tories are doing. 11 seats had less than a 100 majority, 97 seats were won with a majority of 5% or less. In quite a few seats, the vote analysis suggests a proportion of ex-UKIP supporters went back to Labour. Having JC branded as a spy might make them change their vote or, at least, not vote Labour.
I am not sure we have heard the last of this story.
As I've said passim, Tom Watson is firmly embedded within the Leveson mess, and he's not been too shy in propagating the nastiest smears about Conservative politicians. Hes exactly the sort of person we don't want influencing the shape of our future media.
https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2018/02/21/philip-allott-the-eu-legal-system-is-not-a-thing-you-can-leave/
I think that's a triumph of hope over(reasonable expectation, Kitchen. To most of the electorate this stuff is ancient, irrelevant history.
You're right, Ben. Anyone under 40 probably does not give a monkey's. As I said though, the fact you have so many marginals this time round means you don't need that many people to be convinced to have a disproportionate effect
With respect to the Stasi, The Guardian carried this story in January about the difficulty of scanning shredded files.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/03/stasi-files-east-germany-archivists-losing-hope-solving-worlds-biggest-puzzle
My personal view is leveson2 is necessary. That's not the same as thinking it's a good thing - I'm quite sad that it's necessary, actually.
I'm also not sure it'll achieve very much in the world of social media/twitter.
But yeah, I think it's now almost inevitable.
Personally, I'd push for a compulsory, legally underpinned code of conduct for all "people with influence" to punish those who engage in fact-free witchhunts and extreme distortions. Freedom of speech is not freedom to hate and lie.
You're right, Ben. Anyone under 40 probably does not give a monkey's. As I said though, the fact you have so many marginals this time round means you don't need that many people to be convinced to have a disproportionate effect
Dixiedean:
However, one needs to be careful of the opposite too. Over the top attacks on Corbyn meant when he appeared on the One Show and didn't punch the interviewer or relieve himself into a plant pot may have given the impression he had been unfairly maligned.
People have sympathy with an underdog and there is a danger of easily exceeding low expectations.
http://bit.ly/2CARJKe
I agree. All the ludicrous stories a year ago about Jezza just looked so false and added to his aura during the campaign.
Tories (and LDs) should concentrate on policy. They are not going to win on character or personality, astonishingly.
"The EU has the substance of traditional liberal democratic institutions, but it does not have the essence of liberal democracy, which rests on the relentless daily struggle of public opinion, causing and justifying law-making and government and administration."
The problem is that the EU is moving further away from rather than towards that objective. Indeed for the EU it is not an objective.
Corbyn starting from a far lower base - these blows are cumulative.
For what it is worth my feeling is that he's clean, if only because he wouldn't have had much of value in terms of intelligence to pass across.
The problem for him will come in the lead up to the next GE because if something else is found that would paint him in less than a patriotic light this particular episode will be resurrected in voters minds even though he's not guilty.
And if lying were to be made punishable Corbyn would be among the first to be punished since, however polite he is, he has on numerous occasions said things which are demonstrably wrong about himself and what he has said and done and not said and done.
The way to answer that is through debate not by trying to criminalise something you disagree with. Or dislike, however strongly you might dislike it.
The media often don't so subtlety so they can throw it about.
Would it really surprise anyone if Corbyn knowingly had contacts with Soviet Bloc intelligence officials on multiple occasions? The question is what he saw as the point and what did he provide.
The outside agency can make up its own mind as to his usefulness.
No.
I'm now on Team Theresa.
If Baker has no evidence for his allegations then he should apologise quickly and be done with it. Neither he nor Corbyn should overplay their hand, a risk that parties to litigation tend to fall into.
It is about as effective as Labour's attack on posho Cameron.
Or the Dave as Gene Hunt attacks.
Fact is TM is the only way Brexit will happen. Topple her and Brexit falls as the HOC will kill it
Tories do better electorally when voters are feeling financially squeezed, and loath to forkout more in spending.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Brexit transition strategy document is a 'perversion of democracy'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/02/21/jacob-rees-mogg-brexit-transition-strategy-document-perversion/
Still plenty of austerity booked to come.
Before the speeches we were asked to vote and 37% were against the motion, 31% undecided and 32% for.
After, it was 57% against, 6% undecided and 37% for.
The best speeches were by Monbiot and Scruton though all of them were good. The MPs, particularly Creasey, tended to do the sort of speech that we lawyers call "jury speeches", high on emotion but short on argument. Monbiot was fluent and passionate and convincing; Scruton quieter and a touch more hesitant and personal, like an academic throwing thoughts out, seemingly randomly. But he had a very nice way of puncturing Monbiot's flights of fancy in a droll way which got the audience on his side.
There was a surprising amount of consensus. I liked Kwarteng and Creasy too. Both her and Monbiot were quizzed by someone in the audience about intolerance and anti-semitism and gave very good sincere answers. Tuition fees were raised: if the Tories think a year long review is the answer they need to think again. A lot of concern from all sides about crony capitalism and corporatism and the power of the Googles/Facebooks/Amazons of this world.
I'm looking forward to the next one which is on the topic: "If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere."
I do hope Mr Meeks is in the audience.......
Glass houses etc.
Whether the voters will take the same view in relation to a Corbyn-led Labour is what is unclear. It depends on (a) his manifesto; (b) how far they believe him; and (c) their view of the Tories.
Conventional thinking now has it that the voters looked at Corbyn and were not scared by what they saw; indeed they saw much that was attractive. And that may be what happens next time.
Another way of looking at it is that they saw a Tory party threatening their assets and Labour which wasn't and a significant number moved to the party that wasn't attacking their finances. It is not a given that Labour will continue to be seen in that way.
https://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/if-you-believe-you-are-a-citizen-of-the-world-you-are-a-citizen-of-nowhere/
They also have one on a second Brexit referendum later in March on 22nd. Gina Miller vs Isabel Oakeshott - should be fun!
Many voters vote on non economic factors, but even those that do, do not seem to find Corbynism any more threatening than the Tory Brexiteers. Why should we listen to their scare predictions for Corbynism while also accepting them rubbishing the Brexit economic forecasts?
The truth is that the Tories are trashing their 2 strongest suits: economic credibility and administrative competence.
And another way is that many saw their vote as a cost-free protest because the Tories were so far ahead in the polls that a Corbyn victory was just not on the cards.
Not because Corbyn is a paragon of truth telling (far from it) - but because those who actually bring in a system of censorship are rarely its first victims.
I imagine some rather more indirect regulatory mechanism, which would curtail the speech of commercial organisations rather than that of individuals...
(And "people of influence" is a ridiculously imprecise concept to enshrine in law...)
While polls can be taken with a pinch of salt, the May local elections are looking to confirm the national picture.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/02/21/exclusive-cabinet-did-not-agree-theresa-mays-strategy-brexit/
Yes, they could have cut more in 2010. For example: abolish the entire health service. Or the entire armed forces as well as all education spending.
Even with these extremes, both options would still leave us borrowing 45bn a year.
She criticised PFI deals but might have acknowledged that a very significant number of them were brought about by a Labour government. Crony capitalism and corporatism are not just failings of the right.
There was a tendency with her and Monbiot to say that all the bad things which people brought up about the Left were not "really" the Left at all or not "their" Left. Understandable on a human level, maybe. But an intellectual sleight of hand, I'm afraid, nonetheless. And, bluntly, intellectually dishonest, though I don't doubt their honesty in condemning what they didn't like.
The weakness on the right was that they were not particularly specific about how they thought capitalism or conservatism could help people better than socialism. Nor did they really accept that one needs a strong left to keep capitalism honest, that many of the improvements which capitalism has brought about only happened because the left were there making the case for the poor and the dispossessed.
Oh - and Monbiot did not know that women were given the vote under a Tory government and that Mrs Pankhurst stood as a Tory MP. Tsk.....
Any decent interviewer trained to do some forensic questioning would demolish Corbyn easily and could do so quite politely. A shame we don't have such interviewers on TV.
Marr is fit only to ask a grocer how much the apples cost.
However, my aim isn't really to rubbish the Tories. Osborne was a surprisingly effective and re-distributive chancellor, albeit prone to Brownian tactical wheezes. However, the Tories are incredibly complacent about Corbyn's economic illiteracy. Their economic record is not as good as they think.
Agreed. The Tories are being utter morons.
Er...why?
I think you will find there is more to come out on all this....
The Representation of the People act given Royal Assent on Feb 6 1918 was under PM Lloyd George's Wartime Coalition government. This included Cabinet level representation of Liberals, Tories and Labour. It was not a Tory government.