politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The internal squabbles in Mr. Corbyn’s Labour – part 105
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The internal squabbles in Mr. Corbyn’s Labour – part 105
The tweet that LAB whip Graham Morris has now deleted. pic.twitter.com/BQ4b09Bn68
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The reason we are seeing it now in Labour is because the changes to how the leader is elected have shown up the huge chasm between:-
1. The membership and MPs;
2. MPs and the leader, voted for by the members but not the leaders; and
3. All of them and voters.
God knows who is going to come out on top or indeed whether there will be anything to be on top of.
On topic, I think we're going to find out what the moderate Labour MPs are made of. If they allow Corbyn to get away with sacking his Shadow Foreign Sec then they are a done for.
When ‘Momentum Wirral’ are in a position to call the shots, then Labour really are in trouble.
They will be seen as rebelling on an issue on which they are in a minority amongst MPs let alone among the wider party and on an issue about which plenty of people in the country have reservations, some of them legitimate (i.e. not the STW bollocks).
If they were to rebel they need to lay the groundwork to make this an issue about something else. They need to fight the battle on their own ground. They haven't even begun to do this. So it will either fizzle out - or it will look as if moderate MPs are just Blairite warmongers - or it will make it difficult for others (either in the wider party or in the unions) to join them.
Benn made some good points about IS and about fighting fascists rather than befriending them. But how many Labour MPs - moderate or otherwise - have challenged their party's unfathomable indulgence of Islamists over the years, even before Corbyn came along? If they had it might be easier to make this an issue of principle - about Corbyn's associations and views, of which his refusal to do anything serious about IS is just the latest example. But they haven't and so it will be all too easy to paint them as Blairites. And being scared of that, of losing their jobs, of being isolated, of being called Tories etc, it will be all too easy to find lots of reasons for doing nothing.
This demented old fool is going to kill Labour. They don't really deserve any better for being so stupid but I am an old softy and feel sorry for mental incompetents.
We are both stupid and backward...
and 95%? Here are the countries that use FPTP, far more than 5% of number of countries, and population by far:
Antigua and Barbuda
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Barbados
Bangladesh
Belize
Bermuda
Botswana
Canada
Cayman Islands
Cote d'Ivoire
Cook Islands
Dominica
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gabon
Grenada
Ghana
Gambia
India
Jamaica
Kenya
Kuwait
Lebanon
Lao People's Democratic Republic
Saint Lucia
Liberia
Marshall Islands
Burma (Myanmar)
Maldives
Malawi
Malaysia
Micronesia
Nigeria
Niue
Oman
Palau
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Samoa
Seychelles
Singapore
Sierra Leone
Solomon Islands
Swaziland
Tanzania
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tuvalu
Uganda
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
United States of America
Virgin Islands
Yemen
Zambia
(thanks wiki)
But you are stupid and backward, as you said.
If they had either they'd be fighting for their party. We had 3 "moderate" MPs challenge Corbyn for the leadership this summer and, really, can anyone remember a single memorable thing any of them said or any policy they proposed (beyond the inevitable child care and being polite on the internet - which is less a political manifesto than the role description of a junior HR employee)?
That's the problem: 2 senior and experienced ex-Cabinet Ministers and one great hope and they said nothing of any interest. No wonder a bearded Leftie serving up 1950's Marxism mixed in with a bit of fashionable 3rd world anti-Americanism and anti-colonialism and quasi-pacifism was able to wow them in the aisles.
FPTP was supposed to make Labour in Scotland strong but the beauty of FPTP is that there is a devastatingly brutal and bloody tipping point at some stage. If Corbyn's Labour scored in the teens with an SDP party in the high 20s then Corbyn's Labour would be all but wiped out.
It is in essence a VERY undemocratic system.
But obviously every Tom, Dick and Harry micronation in Europe is all that matters rather than billions of people elsewhere.
On topic, Corbynmania is like an STD. It might have been fun getting it, but it will be bloody painful to get rid of, and if you don't get rid of it...
The force was initially not expected to be involved in any significant combat by the Indian High Command.[2] However, within a few months, the IPKF became embroiled in battle with the LTTE to enforce peace. The differences started with LTTE trying to dominate the Interim Administrative Council, and also refusing to disarm, which was a pre-condition to enforce peace in the island. Soon, these differences led to the LTTE attacking the IPKF, at which point the IPKF decided to disarm the LTTE militants, by force if required. In the two years it was in northern Sri Lanka, the IPKF launched a number of combat operations aimed at destroying the LTTE-led insurgency. Given LTTE's tactics in guerrilla warfare and using women and child soldiers to fight battles, it soon escalated into repeated skirmishes between the IPKF and LTTE.
BTW are you still posting from your mum's basement in Madras?
(hat-tip GeoffM)
FPTP really forces successful parties to be broad churches and coalitions are formed within parties not between them. That can be opaque but if parties work with the grain of the system not against it (as Labour is now looking to do, by breaking up its internal coalition) it can work.
Do you think Corbyn should purge that deeply unsavoury and rebellious character? Or would it prove a little difficult for him to sack himself?
Although if his use of numbers in any way approximates to those of Wirral Momentum, he probably thinks it was the Labour leadership voted 500 times against him!
Perhaps it would be better to say that we have a system which has served us well over a very long period of time, and which broadly reflects the will of the people. And, even though it certainly has flaws, the vast majority of Brits prefer it to all the other systems.
To my mind the tipping point is a glitch, not a benefit of the system. Parties with significant support suddenly find themselves bereft of representation. I don't think it's good that the half of Scots who voted for Unionist parties got 5% of MP's.
EDIT - Phew, I've checked and this does actually appear to be a spoof account! Not quite all hope is lost!
lol, false consciousness
PS - aren't you the one who lives with your Mum? The rest of us have grown up, married, started a family etc...
That is perfectly democratic - just because you don't like the outcome it doesn't make it inherently undemocratic.
There is no need to break the constituency link when improving the system, for example STV in multi member constituencies keeps the link and negates the 'vote for a party rather than an individual representative' argument.
After 11 years, our old LG 27" TV (purchased to watch Battlestar Gallactica!) has waved bye-bye and gone to the great recycler in the sky. It has served us well, but it was starting to show its age: parts of the picture were fading for the last year before it finally went mute.
So we're after a new TV. We could fit a 48" into the space, but Mrs J has put her foot down with a firm hand and limited me to a maximum 32". Apparently our wedding pictures are more important: a rather odd set of priorities to my mind!
Does anyone have any advice what to look for wrt features? We're thinking of up to £400. I suppose WiFi, Freeview HD, 1080p, at least two HDMI inputs and Smart.
Is there anything else I should look for? Amazon Prime compatibility perhaps?
No other leader would have tolerated the sort of open dissent that's been going on within cabinet. No one aspiring to really be leader can - fundamentally at the general election Corbyn is supposed to be Labour's candidate for Prime Minister, and that's not viable if Cabinet ministers feel that they are entitled to ignore him.
If Team Corbyn are intent on fighting LAB dissenters, LAB dissenters have given them absolutely no choice.
Zac Goldsmith’s mayoral campaign team is investigating a claim that one of their canvassers made an Islamophobic remark about the Labour candidate, Sadiq Khan.
The unidentified man was said to have been distributing leaflets for the Conservative candidate when he allegedly referred to Khan as “the Muslim” in a doorstep exchange with Perry Pontac, of Streatham, south London.
Goldsmith’s team said they were investigating the allegation, which they were made aware of in writing last week. They said any such remark would be unacceptable.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/29/zac-goldsmith-sadiq-khan-london-mayoral-campaign-islamophobic-canvasser?CMP=twt_gu
Joe Bloggs down the road voted Labour not for Mr. A.N.Other - he may have ticked the box for A.N.Other but it's the party he's voted for! It's the party he relates with not the individual!
This week is an example of how Cameron and the Tories should be on the ropes, over the floods, and their cutting of flood prevention measures.
But what are Labour discussing this week? Sacking the shadow cabinet members who Jez doesn't like for not voting the same way as him on a free vote.
But despite that she still kept on all of them except Mark Carlisle, who remains in a field of stiff competition the second worst Education Secretary* this country has ever had, and Norman St John Stevas, who kept insulting her, in a very personal way, in public. She even promoted Francis Pym at one stage, and made Willie Whitelaw her deputy. Admittedly Jim Prior ended up in Northern Ireland, but he was still in the Cabinet. This appeased their supporters in the country and made the ministers look weak in the eyes of their fellow MPs, enhancing Thatcher's power and prestige. Gradually, as they grew older, she eased them out one at a time and replaced them with men (usually) who were more in step with her. That transformed the Conservative party, shifting it dramatically rightwards, but at the same time still left it more than capable of winning general elections by large margins.
For disagreeing on a point of policy where Corbyn had agreed to a free vote, the penalty appears to be rapid dismissal. There are no prizes for guessing what the effect will be on his many enemies. Moreover, Benn could be a lot more dangerous as an articulate, high profile and respected figure on the backbenches, while Corbyn will, if he confines himself to the hard left, have pretty much nobody of any talent or experience left at all to support him and will have alienated Labour's voter base.
That's bad strategy and bad politics, and it will end badly for him.
*Kenneth Baker and the dreadful first National Curriculum is a difficult one to beat.
Oh, and for those who can even get off their arses to participate in such a bankrupt system, for the past three elections the majority came away from the polling stations empty-handed, electing no-one...
Corbyn is just like any other leftist dictator thin skinned and drunk with power given to him by a few motivated activists.
In one way I agree with you. Benn should refuse to serve on the terms Corbyn is offering, because he changes them on a whim, apparently according to how full of hate he is for those people who dare to point out when he is completely wrong (which is of course most of the time). That is neither helpful nor democratic. Moreover, since Corbyn has no actual policy positions, merely a list of things he is against (some of which he drops the moment it is expedient, e.g. he is opposed to violence on principle but makes an exception when it is being meted out to the Tories or Americans) Labour's policy platform is incoherent and at times ridiculous - last month there was absurd spectacle of Labour MPs defying a three-line-whip to vote for party policy, agreed by conference (which Corbyn also appears to be in favour of in principle, but only when it makes the right decision).
Benn should therefore resign and say it is because Corbyn is too stupid and indecisive to lead the Labour party. It would be richly entertaining and have the advantage (from all the evidence we have) of being true.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/ontv/devices
At the time of the leadership election total membership stood at 292,505 (that's full members (not the £3 registered supporters, or Trade union Affiliated supporters)
Of theses:
121,751 Voted Corbyn
123,769 Voted for one of the other 3
and approximately 45,000 did not vote, (for what must be a range of reasons)
Since then there are reports that:
1) Labour Party membership has increased to 380,000, suggesting that 90,000 new members have joined and presumably they approve of Coybyn,
2) that 30,000 members have left the party. Presumably because they disapprove of Coybn.
So if the leadership election was refought today, amongst full members the results could look like this
Corbyn - 210,000
Others - 95,000
(All of these numbers are approximant and gleaned from random news repots so I would be grateful of any more accurate numbers from any place)
This to my mind puts Corbyn is an almost unassailable position, and more to the point it means that when he does go his replacements is likely to be form the same mold e.g. John McDonnall.
The only way I see this changing are 3 very unlikely cinereous:
1) A huge numbers of new moderate members join/rejoin.
2) A large proportion of the Coybenits have a 'Road to Demascse' conversion and start supporting a moderate.
3) A large number of the Coybenits get board and leave the party they have just taken over.
I'm not righting the obituary just yet, but this is why I feel that the labour party has started a walk to the political fringe, and is unlikely to tern back.
One indication of this is that everyone takes the question "how did you/will you vote" to refer to party not candidate. If you ask me how I voted in May, you would probably think I was being deliberately obtuse if I said that I voted for Ms Rowley and left it at that.
For all his faults, Miliband got 800,000 more votes than that chump Brown !
However what goes through an individuals mind when faced with the paper is more difficult to determine. Trying not to be too pedantic, I suspect that most would vote for their preferred party rather than an individual
https://twitter.com/DailyMailUK/status/681931010775318532