Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)

If the MP's want him out then challenge him and let the party decide. The reason they wont is because there would only be one winner.
If they force him out without a vote then I wouldn't vote for any of them in general elections. If they can beat him in a fair election of party members then fair enough.
 
Corbyn is the only politician i can relate to, maybe cos he's human. what his party members are doing is fecking childish and they should all hang for this. Party before personal gain.
 
Whoever the leader is, Labour may never recover from this crisis | John Harris

The Labour party must currently be thinking collective thoughts akin to the old card player’s term: Who dealt this mess anyway? More than 80% of its MPs are now formally estranged from not just the leader, but from the 40 other MPs who support him. In a cruel twist of fate, the spectre of the sainted Tony Benn hangs over the whole grim drama: he was the guru of the leftwing anti-EU position we now call Lexit, but also the man who endlessly pushed the idea that activists should have the whip hand over parliamentarians.

For all his commendable policy positions Jeremy Corbyn has been a pretty awful leader. But in all its fundamentals, the state of his party is hardly his fault. To blame him is to fall for the same delusion whereby a supposed challenger – Angela Eagle, Tom Watson, Dan Jarvis – can put the party on the road to recovery. The truth, unpalatable to some but which is surely obvious, is that Labour is in the midst of a longstanding and possibly terminal malaise, and now finds itself facing two equally unviable options.

On one side is the current leader and a small band of leftist diehards, backed by an energetic, well-drilled movement but devoid of any coherent project and out of touch with the voters who have just defied the party in their droves. On the other is a counter-revolution led by MPs who mostly failed to see this crisis coming, have very few worthwhile ideas themselves, and are a big part of the reason the Brexit revolt happened in the first place. As the activist Neal Lawson says, the choice is essentially between different captains of the Titanic, and therefore is no choice at all.

As with the centre-left parties across Europe in the same predicament, Labour is a 20th-century party adrift in a new reality. Its social foundations – the unions, heavy industry, the nonconformist church, a deference to the big state that has long evaporated – are either in deep retreat or have vanished completely. Its name embodies an attachment to the supposed glories of work that no longer chimes with insecure employment and insurgent automation.

Its culture is still far too macho, and didactic; it has a lifelong aversion to analysis and ideas that has hobbled it throughout its existence, and now leaves it lacking any real sense of what is happening. I am a lifelong party member who was raised in a Labour family – my grandfather was a south Wales coal miner, my father a Labour activist – for whom the party was a kind of secular church. But if we do not confront the crisis now, then when? Look at any number of what we still laughably call “core” Labour areas, and you will find the same things: a vote share that has been steadily declining since 2001, an MP more often parachuted in from a different world, and voters who either vote for the party thanks to fading familial loyalties (“I vote Labour because my granddad did”) or have no idea what the party stands for.

In 2014, in the former pit village of Penygraig in the Rhondda valley, I met women who said they associated Labour with “older men”; middle-aged people who still supported the party but couldn’t explain why (“I just do, that’s all”), and young people who had never voted at all. In the middle of the village was a peeling Labour club that looked like the embodiment of the decline and defeat that had become manifest after the 1980s miners’ strike.

Two years on, 53% of people in the valleys local government area (Rhondda Cynon Taf) voted for Brexit. At the last Welsh assembly elections, the Labour incumbent lost the seat to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood – born and raised in the area, which meant a lot – who won with a majority of 3,500 votes.

The toxic side of Labour’s decline, of course, is the rise of Ukip in once solid areas from the north-east to south Wales. And here, there is much to fear. A general election may be looming. Those people on the left currently agitating for parliament to somehow nullify the referendum result ought to bear one thing in mind: that if support for Brexit was based on mistrust and downright loathing of Westminster, anything that can be presented as a parliamentary stitch-up could hugely boost Ukip’s support.

So too might the only viable way of minimising Brexit’s economic damage: joining the European Economic Area and staying in the single market (complete with the free movement of people), which would presumably allow Ukip to enrage thousands of the potential Labour switchers who fixated on immigration. There is, then, no obvious way out of this conundrum, which throws up a chilling question: do we want droves of Ukip MPs, or even Farage and his ilk serving in a coalition?

In that sense, Labour’s Westminster panic is understandable: the proximity of utter disaster and the fierce urgency of electoral politics might demand a new leader, even if that split the party. There again, with Corbynites organising a fight-back among members – and even threatening to bring more people into the party – and the prospect of big support for him from the unions, trying to topple him might also cause a fatal division. And even if the attempt to oust Corbyn succeeds, it might deliver a leader every bit as ineffective, only in a different way.

The key point is this: at the very least, the idea of Labour as a mighty, monopolistic political force is over. The party as we know it may be finished.

In either event, there are no quick answers. Any viable left politics is going to take 10 or 15 years to decisively materialise, and in the meantime the apparent atmosphere of disunity and ugliness in some places may well get worse. A new national economic crisis is surely on the way; having partly got us into this mess, George Osborne is already talking about fresh cuts.

A 21st-century progressivism will have to run deep and wide. For both the camps tearing Labour into pieces – one of whom effectively wishes it was 1945 while the other harks back to 1997 – it will require a huge shift of perspective. Otherwise they may well be left in the dust.

The left’s future will involve many Labour people, but also some in the Greens, Liberal Democrats – even one-nation Tories – and thousands of people with no affiliation at all. However it is organised, it will have to start with an understanding of the fact this is a crisis of democracy, and support a change to the electoral system and a move towards multi-party politics.

It will need to embrace the case for a federal UK (or, more realistically, a new partnership between England, Wales and Northern Ireland). Its biggest challenge will be once again uniting the people who value openness and the rich cultures of our cities, with those who now fear the same things – via, perhaps, some new deal on free movement, a programme of far-reaching economic intervention, a reinvention of our public services, and a programme of public housing to match anything accomplished in the 20th century.

God only knows what we will have to endure in the meantime. The task will be onerous, often grim, and frequently confounding. But which worthwhile endeavour was ever anything else?
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They are making Corbyn look positively competent by comparison.
 
Every time there's a perfect opportunity to make progress during tory chaos, they feck it up. They are worse than the tories imo
 
He's really put his foot down. Tom went to him to work out a deal and was told he was not moving. Could this really end up in a split in the party?
 
Drifter said:
He's really put his foot down. Tom went to him to work out a deal and was told he was not moving. Could this really end up in a split in the party?
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If he pushed through on ideas like mandatory selection, the nuclear option would be those against his leadership resigning the Labour whip and declaring as a separate party, thereby becoming the official opposition with all the benefits that brings (reply to the government, lead on PMQs, a fair amount of state funding), and relegating Corbyn's Labour to the fourth party. The danger from that would be the next PM calling a snap general election, resulting in the left's vote being more split than ever, and probably a resounding majority for the Tories. Or in other words, the 1980s again.
 
Ubik said:
If he pushed through on ideas like mandatory selection, the nuclear option would be those against his leadership resigning the Labour whip and declaring as a separate party, thereby becoming the official opposition with all the benefits that brings (reply to the government, lead on PMQs, a fair amount of state funding), and relegating Corbyn's Labour to the fourth party. The danger from that would be the next PM calling a snap general election, resulting in the left's vote being more split than ever, and probably a resounding majority for the Tories. Or in other words, the 1980s again.
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A snap general election is really in the Tories best interests then? Get a mandate before they fail in EU negotiations or renege on the very thing they sold Leave on - immigration.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
A snap general election is really in the Tories best interests then? Get a mandate before they fail in EU negotiations or renege on the very thing they sold Leave on - immigration.
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I'd say most definitely, I'd put as little faith in the reports Boris doesn't plan on a general election as everything else he's said over the past few months/years. They've just learned the lesson from Brown that allowing speculation that you'll be doing it, then bailing out if the situation changes, doesn't end well. But yeah, new leader optimism, probably bringing back a load of voters that previously went UKIP and Labour crisis means big Tory win and I'm not sure why they'd miss out on that opportunity.

And looks like Eagle will be running after all, announcement tomorrow at 3.
 
Sweet Square said:
Craig Murray with a great article on that https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/06/news-agenda-set/

Also looks like they where at it again at the protest a few days ago(Murray again) https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/06/another-media-setup/
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Wow.

And it's been obvious by reading the tweets @Ubik has been posting that there have been repeated leaks with absolutely no backing in fact being accepted at face value by the media - starting with Corbyn voted out, then the neat contradiction of his team or him digging their heels in (from the same course) and then the 180 on Angela Eagle.
Journalists need to either be a little less naive about their sources or say openly that their anti-Corbyn politics is driving them to post anything that makes him look bad.
 
Interesting twitter exchange
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I'm absolutely sickened by the actions of labour MPs over the past few days.At a time when we should be solid against a split Tory party we pull this crap.Hope Jeremy stays put .
 
Sweet Square said:
@Ubik

I don't want to be an arse but ''make him suffer''



For less than 24 hours ?
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It was my best available explanation for why the official challenge was being delayed. Unfortunately things are moving so quickly and info coming from so many places that a lot of it conflicts - Andy Burnham's been supposedly about to resign for about 2 days now, for instance, even after denying it on multiple occasions. But yes, looks like now that she's been agreed upon and will announce 3pm tomorrow (as I posted up thread).
 
I am hoping that he doesn't quit because he's the only politician that I like, as he doesn't seem like the type of person who's deceitful...in actual fact, his popularity comes from his consistency and his integrity over the years.
 
Ubik said:
It was my best available explanation for why the official challenge was being delayed. Unfortunately things are moving so quickly and info coming from so many places that a lot of it conflicts - Andy Burnham's been supposedly about to resign for about 2 days now, for instance, even after denying it on multiple occasions. But yes, looks like now that she's been agreed upon and will announce 3pm tomorrow (as I posted up thread).
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Oh right sorry didn't see it. Wouldn't have quoted you if I saw it earlier.
 
Red Defence said:
I'm quite worried about Labour. They were waiting for an opportunity to do this to Corbyn but they have no-one who can really win the confidence of the public, a lot of whom are going to be furious at all this.
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I'm think I'm going to vote for Corbyn again, assuming he stands. I don't like what is happening, it's opportunistic back-stabbing.
 
Considering the main reason being given for his ouster is unelectability, is Angela eagle any more electable?
 
FromTheBench said:
Considering the main reason being given for his ouster is unelectability, is Angela eagle any more electable?
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Depends on how the press treats her (and how good her PR team is). If she is given the "competent" label, yes.
 
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