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

Marching said:
He did indeed finally sit down after 45 minutes BUT that was after he had already walked past all the same empty seats on his way to make his fake little film.
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In the last few years ive never managed to get a seat on uk trains, in fact, I'd say the transport system in the uk is the worst i have come across in europe. Over crowded, over priced and always late.
 
Stanley Road said:
In the last few years ive never managed to get a seat on uk trains, in fact, I'd say the transport system in the uk is the worst i have come across in europe. Over crowded, over priced and always late.
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That's your experience Stan...mine is that I don't use trains very often but I tend to book a seat ahead of the journey and get a good price. Where I've not booked I have never had to stand although on the London underground I've rarely sat down.

With rail passenger journeys reaching record highs in 14/15 (1.654 billion...up 67m on 13/14!) I'm sure there a few happy customers.
 
The fact that commuter trains are horrendously overcrowded is pretty much undisputed. Somehow, Jeremy and his press team couldn't (or didn't want to) find one of these over-crowded trains to make their point on. It probably would have been difficult to make their little documentary video on an actual over-crowded train.
 
lynchie said:
The fact that commuter trains are horrendously overcrowded is pretty much undisputed. Somehow, Jeremy and his press team couldn't (or didn't want to) find one of these over-crowded trains to make their point on. It probably would have been difficult to make their little documentary video on an actual over-crowded train.
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I don't know - this whole episode has made me think more highly of Corbyn though. I actually want him to be more like another politician, to cut deals, to spin, to deal with the media effectively (or try to) - he will have to do these things to win an election and run a government.

EDIT: This piece by Rafael Behr sums up my thoughts on what I want from a government well: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/24/labour-complains-tories-govern
 
Frosty said:
I don't know - this whole episode has made me think more highly of Corbyn though. I actually want him to be more like another politician, to cut deals, to spin, to deal with the media effectively (or try to) - he will have to do these things to win an election and run a government.
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Only quoting this post because I'm pretty sure it's you who recommended the four part series on Labour's long path from defeat back to victory in 97 and I can't be arsed to go back through the thread to find the specific post. Was a good watch. Potentially a bit flattering of Kinnock. I'm too young to remember it all, so don't have strong opinions, but he seemed to come out of it a bit too well.
 
Owen has really stepped up on the non-apology apologies today. This 'Somebody else said it earlier' "lunatic" one is an absolute beauty, even better than the one regarding smashing May back on her heels.
 
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DiseaseOfTheAge said:
Only quoting this post because I'm pretty sure it's you who recommended the four part series on Labour's long path from defeat back to victory in 97 and I can't be arsed to go back through the thread to find the specific post. Was a good watch. Potentially a bit flattering of Kinnock. I'm too young to remember it all, so don't have strong opinions, but he seemed to come out of it a bit too well.
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I think part of that was due to when it was made (1996 I think), so pre-government. Blair/Brown were (I am sure) trying to present a unified front and gloss over the internal fractures, so they were not able to be too harsh on Kinnock. Kinnock did a lot of good to the Labour Party, and fought a lot of necessary battles.

What I found most interesting is the parallels between then and now - especially in terms of the tropes of authenticity and principle. We are seeing them play out again.
 
Also:

The latest twist in the increasingly bitter leadership race came when Smith used an event in Hammersmith to answer questions about Corbyn’s strategy for winning Labour votes from supporters of other parties.

“At a hustings a few weeks ago, Jeremy Corbyn said, ‘Yes we’ve got to get some of the people who contemplated voting Tory in the past to vote Labour.’ Rubbish! We’ve got to get two million people who actually voted Tory, 12 months ago, to vote Labour, in 106 seats,” The Independent reported.

“And what you won’t get from me, is some, you know, lunatic at the top of the Labour Party, you’ll have someone who tries to form a coherent narrative about what’s wrong with Britain,” it is claimed Smith said.

A spokesperson for the Jeremy for Labour campaign, today said: “Owen Smith has degraded this contest by descending into personal abuse. He should apologise to people suffering with mental illness, many of whom would have been dismayed and upset to to hear such offensive language used in public by a Labour politician.

“He should also withdraw his remark, and spend time with people suffering from mental health problems to develop some sensitivity in his use of language. This is simply not the language that someone standing to lead our party should use, and it injects an ugly tone into this contest that no Labour member wants to see.”

Smith’s intervention also prompted dismay from the Labour Campaign for Mental Health. In a statement posted on Facebook today the group said: “While we tend not to comment on the leadership contest, we were saddened to see that the term ‘lunatic’, a term with a long history of abuse toward those with mental illness, has been used in this contest as a term of derision against a colleague. We, as a party, should be fighting to end the stigma and support those in our community with mental health issues, and not use these cruel, oppressive names to insult opponents.”

Today Smith denied his words had been aimed at Corbyn, who has fought for better treatment of people with mental health problems.

When asked about the comments on the BBC, Smith said: “I didn’t say that… I was saying that I wasn’t a lunatic. Having been accused earlier in the evening of running around like a lunatic I was saying I wasn’t a lunatic – but if anybody is offended by the use of that word then I do apologise, I have done that already this morning and I will do it again, but I wasn’t talking about Jeremy, I was talking about me…

“It is an unreserved apology to anyone who was offended by the use of the word lunatic because I wasn’t calling Jeremy a lunatic.”

Smith was also forced to defend his own approach amid suggestions he was “loose” with his language following his earlier claim he wanted to “smash” Theresa May “back on her heels”.

“You have got to learn, I think, in this job that you need to weigh every word very, very carefully as they are all weighed for me – and I have not done that judiciously enough on occasion,” Smith said.

“It suggests I am occasionally a bit colourful with my language. I need to be a slightly less colourful perhaps in future.”
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http://labourlist.org/2016/08/smith-issues-apology-over-reference-to-lunatic-jeremy-corbyn/
 
Yesterday, Corbyn also wrote a letter to all Labour staff regarding job security and comments in the media about 'changes' and 'removals' at HQ:

This is the full text of the email Jeremy Corbyn sent out to Labour Party staff today.

Dear All,

I wanted to thank you all for your hard work and the commitment you show to the Labour Party and labour movement.

There is no doubt that recent events have not been easy for our party. From the shock of losing the European Union referendum to the recent internal divisions, and most of all, the tragic loss of our wonderful colleague, Jo Cox.

Despite this, what has constantly shone through is the dedication and professionalism of our party staff. I meet many of you in my work, not just in London, but also as I travel around the country meeting voters. I am always impressed by the hard work which you all do, and which is so essential if we are to win the next election.

I am not telling you anything new when I say that working in politics can be stressful at times. However, this has been sometimes exacerbated by attacks on individuals or groups of staff in the national media. In my own view, that is totally unacceptable. It is only right that elected politicians recognise that as party staff, you do not have the right of reply in the media and often have to operate in a political landscape over which you have limited control.

You therefore must not be used as a political football by anybody within the party. I hope you all feel that if you are put in difficult or unacceptable circumstances, you can raise the issue with your line manager, other senior member of staff, or your trade union representatives.

I hope that you are all managing to get a well-deserved break during the holiday period and thank you again for all you do to strengthen our party and in working for the election of the next Labour government.

Best wishes

Jeremy Corbyn MP
Leader of the Labour Party
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http://labourlist.org/2016/08/you-m...ical-football-corbyns-letter-to-labour-staff/

Good to see.
 
DiseaseOfTheAge said:
Only quoting this post because I'm pretty sure it's you who recommended the four part series on Labour's long path from defeat back to victory in 97 and I can't be arsed to go back through the thread to find the specific post. Was a good watch. Potentially a bit flattering of Kinnock. I'm too young to remember it all, so don't have strong opinions, but he seemed to come out of it a bit too well.
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Link?

@Frosty
 
Owen Smith is such a bloody moron.

What happens if he wins the vote? I'm hoping there's a plan in place to get him to step down in a year or two, with a new leader coming in, but that sounds ridiculous. Not sure his ego would allow it either.
 
Frosty said:
I think part of that was due to when it was made (1996 I think), so pre-government. Blair/Brown were (I am sure) trying to present a unified front and gloss over the internal fractures, so they were not able to be too harsh on Kinnock. Kinnock did a lot of good to the Labour Party, and fought a lot of necessary battles.

What I found most interesting is the parallels between then and now - especially in terms of the tropes of authenticity and principle. We are seeing them play out again.
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We are. I think what I found most sad is that so many people I know who really supported Kinnock, Smith and then Blair's changes, and as such thought Blair's victory was an amazing change for good, were left so disillusioned as to leave the party a few years later, in the aftermath of invading Iraq. Understandably so.
 
ThierryHenry said:
Owen Smith is such a bloody moron.

What happens if he wins the vote? I'm hoping there's a plan in place to get him to step down in a year or two, with a new leader coming in, but that sounds ridiculous. Not sure his ego would allow it either.
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He won't win. It will be interesting to see the winning margin though.
 
Why did Corbyn and co pick pretty much the one train service in the entire country that isn't overcrowded every single morning, to shoot a video demonstrating how overcrowded the trains are?

Politicians just can't help themselves. Even when something they want to say is true they go out of their way to invent it into a lie.
 
How odd that the Guardian doesnt have anything on this Owen Smith lunatic story yet they have a live stream on "Traingate". A paper that has in recent years put a lot of focus on covering mental health issues.
 
There's more chance of me being appointed best poster of the year than Jeremy cobryn becoming pm. This guy is the david moyes of politics
 
Smores said:
How odd that the Guardian doesnt have anything on this Owen Smith lunatic story yet they have a live stream on "Traingate". A paper that has in recent years put a lot of focus on covering mental health issues.
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I think Owen Smith's supporters are on some sort of a news delay as the PLP have an awful lot of abuse, that they're absolutely 100% passionate on condemning, to catch up on. I mean Ubik alone is 7 weeks behind on that issue and the back catalogue is continuing to pile up.
 
devilish said:
There's more chance of me being appointed best poster of the year than Jeremy cobryn becoming pm. This guy is the david moyes of politics
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There really isn't.
 
Dobba said:
I think Owen Smith's supporters are on some sort of a news delay as the PLP have an awful lot of abuse, that they're absolutely 100% passionate on condemning, to catch up on. I mean Ubik alone is 7 weeks behind on that issue and the back catalogue is continuing to pile up.
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This is getting boring.
 
Dobba said:
I think Owen Smith's supporters are on some sort of a news delay as the PLP have an awful lot of abuse, that they're absolutely 100% passionate on condemning, to catch up on. I mean Ubik alone is 7 weeks behind on that issue and the back catalogue is continuing to pile up.
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They're even live blogging a train journey now and reading it the intention seems to be to dispute trains are busy to foil Corbyn.

I do worry that people in fighting against Corbyn are seemingly abandoning any shared ground as they won't agree with anything he might portray. The Guardian is an odd beast considering a few years ago it was behind the Lib Dem leadership.
 
Smores said:
They're even live blogging a train journey now and reading it the intention seems to be to dispute trains are busy to foil Corbyn.

I do worry that people in fighting against Corbyn are seemingly abandoning any shared ground as they won't agree with anything he might portray. The Guardian is an odd beast considering a few years ago it was behind the Lib Dem leadership.
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They, and every other journalist, it seems.

In any event, you are absolutely right that the Party needs to (must) come back together, and the only way that is going to happen is through mutual compromise. On the Guardian and the Lib Dems - from what I know Rusbridger overruled his staff and wrote that editorial (Private Eye reported it in some detail). It was one of the reasons why he didn't write many more editorials after that.
 
Smores said:
How odd that the Guardian doesnt have anything on this Owen Smith lunatic story yet they have a live stream on "Traingate". A paper that has in recent years put a lot of focus on covering mental health issues.
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I don't suppose Labour can get their knickers in too much of a knot when Corbyn thought so little of the post of Shadow Cabinet-level Mental Health Minister he scrapped it.
 
Marching said:
That's your experience Stan...mine is that I don't use trains very often but I tend to book a seat ahead of the journey and get a good price. Where I've not booked I have never had to stand although on the London underground I've rarely sat down.

With rail passenger journeys reaching record highs in 14/15 (1.654 billion...up 67m on 13/14!) I'm sure there a few happy customers.
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Probably more out of necessity than pleasure

Booking seats is the worst invention ever imo
 
Well, I've somehow voted with even less enthusiasm than I managed for my third preference for Andy Burnham last year.
 








Party clearly needs to split. Plenty of Labour MPs happy to take a private rail company's PR department's version of events at face value rather than stand up for rail nationalisation.
 
It's sad that we are at a point where this, from The Telegraph, doesn't seem completely unbelievable:

 
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