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

Cheesy said:
People don't automatically owe Labour their vote. You have to convince them. This is an arrogance that's existed in both wings of the party and especially in Scotland - as if by virtue of simply being the Labour Party left-wing people are obliged to vote for them, irrespective of the leadership in question or the policies being promoted. Being annoyed with people because they decide they won't automatically accept whatever Corbyn says or does won't work.

To some people Brexit is something that's inherently going to damage the working people of Britain by inflicting misery and pain on them if we opt for a No Deal. Until now Corbyn has been largely silent on this process. Until now we were told that was due to pragmatism and opportunism but now Labour still aren't winning anything it's clear that strategy was a bit of a dud. And yes, there are significant portions of Labour heartlands that support Brexit, but ultimately the majority of the party's voters support remaining in the EU and they have viable alternatives to opt for if Labour don't represent them. Again there's an arrogance here wherein Labour expect the majority of their voters to just suck it up and vote for them no matter what even if their most significant issues aren't addressed. And the reason some of those Labour heartlands are arguably supporting Brexit is because as leader Corbyn hasn't attempted to change or shift the narrative in the same way he (quite successfully) did with austerity. A leader who was brought in to argue for radical change has basically pretended the countries most important issue doesn't exist and has done nothing to impose his own viewpoint on it. A capable political leader should be trying to shape arguments in that regard.

Just as you're saying we won't see a left-wing government without people voting Labour, a substantial number of people just don't regard it as possible to achieve one when Corbyn is in charge. He's lost any goodwill he ever had over Brexit, he's historically unpopular for an opposition leader to the point where even now May often still outranks him, and he's remarkably prone to PR gaffes. He's spent the vast majority of his tenure behind in the polls and the strategy that was supposed to help him in the long-term (being silent on Brexit) is being exposed as a sham. What route to power does he have now other than being able to luck out on the system with 30% of the vote (being optimistic) in a GE if the Tories/Brexit Party both finish on a similar tally?
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Are you even reading my posts ?

The reason I said just suck it up and vote labour is because todays Labour Party offers a actual left program. One of the reasons Scottish Labour was during the New Labour years it never put forward a left wing platform, right ? Plus you lot are still messing around with the silly nationalism shtick.(I'm making a joke)

As for the rest, Corbyn right now literally supports a people vote, so just take the win. If people are going to get all pissy and like children because Corbyn didn't attend their god awful marches, he didn't paint the EU flag on his face or because Alastair Campbell has gotten kicked out of the party, then I'm going to say they are acting a bit silly.




Cheesy said:
What route to power does he have now other than being able to luck out on the system with 30% of the vote (being optimistic) in a GE if the Tories/Brexit Party both finish on a similar tally?
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Any predictions right now are just pointless. The Brexit Party hasn't even got a manifest for feck sake.
 
esmufc07 said:
Remarkable the speed at which Labour can expel a member when they want to.
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There was an interesting report about the bottlenecks in previous expulsions - the process sped up after the appointment of someone in 2018, who replaced someone who had been in charge from 2011 (clearly the previous one wasn't a Corbyn appointee)
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/leaked-emails-reveal-labours-compliance-unit-took-months-to

A third case reveals for the first time how Labour’s compliance unit failed to launch a formal investigation into former London mayor Ken Livingstone over comments he made while on suspension, despite attempts by Corbyn’s office to step up disciplinary action.
...
A Labour Party source told BuzzFeed News that since becoming general secretary Jennie Formby has sped up the process for dealing with anti-Semitism complaints. Between April 2018, when Formby joined, and January 2019, 96 members were handed suspensions and 12 were expelled.
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Sweet Square said:
Are you even reading my posts ?

The reason I said just suck it up and vote labour is because todays Labour Party offers a actual left program. One of the reasons Scottish Labour was during the New Labour years it never put forward a left wing platform, right ? Plus you lot are still messing around with the silly nationalism shtick.(I'm making a joke)

As for the rest, Corbyn right now literally supports a people vote, so just take the win. If people are going to get all pissy and like children because Corbyn didn't attend their god awful marches, he didn't paint the EU flag on his face or because Alastair Campbell has gotten kicked out of the party, then I'm going to say they are acting a bit silly.
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Even yesterday he was incredibly reluctant to back one outright - his rhetoric still very much indicated it was if we don't get a deal, or if we don't get a GE. Even though both of those things look almost impossible at this point. Naturally people aren't going to trust him as a champion of the Remain cause.
 
Mark Pawelek said:
Good point. I meant breathe in water. They breathe gases dissolved in water; which don't have the same composition as air because carbon dioxide is more soluble in water than oxygen.

Corals actually get oxygen from zooxanthellae symbiotic algae growing inside of them which use CO2 dissolved in oceans for food and excrete oxygen, which the coral 'breathe'.
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Take it to another thread.
 
Good riddance to Campbell. For ever sniping on the sidelines with his partner in crime Blair. Maybe he can help "Change UK" with their image ,because he is totally irrelevant to the Labour Party.
 
Drifter said:
Good riddance to Campbell. For ever sniping on the sidelines with his partner in crime Blair. Maybe he can help "Change UK" with their image ,because he is totally irrelevant to the Labour Party.
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Yes, let’s all be right on and demonise those Blairites.

I’d have thought the centre is the only sensible place to be?

Honestly, to hear people wax lyrical on here about the lurch to the left under Corbyn, I can only imagine people on here cannot remember (or are too young to remember) “the good old days” of the late 1970s?

There is a reason Thatcher mopped up for a decade with her lurch to the right you know?

I’d even question the need for Labour to exist at all these days.

May as well go back to the Liberals as it was before Labour effectively split the centre left vote for the last century. Union power & the great working class collective? Hahaha. Yeah. Good one. We tried that. Worked out great that did. Still does work out if you are a Tube Train driver.
 
Strachans Cigar said:
Yes, let’s all be right on and demonise those Blairites.

I’d have thought the centre is the only sensible place to be?

Honestly, to hear people wax lyrical on here about the lurch to the left under Corbyn, I can only imagine people on here cannot remember (or are too young to remember) “the good old days” of the late 1970s?

There is a reason Thatcher mopped up for a decade with her lurch to the right you know?

I’d even question the need for Labour to exist at all these days.

May as well go back to the Liberals as it was before Labour effectively split the centre left vote for the last century. Union power & the great working class collective? Hahaha. Yeah. Good one. We tried that. Worked out great that did. Still does work out if you are a Tube Train driver.
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Because there are two end to a continuum it does not mean the centre is best. Many will not remember the late 70s, but I think it's fair to assume that civil and worker's rights have improved since the, let's say, 1870s and that is surely due to the movements of the left. Of course, unfettered and unchecked dogmatic ideology on side of the spectrum spells disaster, but that's not what people mean by moving to the left under Corbyn.
 
Fingeredmouse said:
Because there are two end to a continuum it does not mean the centre is best. Many will not remember the late 70s, but I think it's fair to assume that civil and worker's rights have improved since the, let's say, 1870s and that is surely due to the movements of the left. Of course, unfettered and unchecked dogmatic ideology on side of the spectrum spells disaster, but that's not what people mean by moving to the left under Corbyn.
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The “centre” may offer lukewarm & safe solutions to things, but (Brexit aside?) it’s generally where the votes are won. Unless that is, one side fecks up royally & gives the other side an open goal to move toward the extremes (Thatcher, after the Winter of Discontent).

Like I said, a lot of that isn’t fresh in the mind to a lot on here. The only reason Corbyn polled like he did last time out (GE) was because of his promises to the Student vote. Students, who back in the day, certainly didn’t live the Old Labour dream.

I’d ditch the Labour party & just have the Liberals. I’m struggling to see the relevance in them these days & the Brexit saga has shone another spotlight on that.
 
Strachans Cigar said:
The “centre” may offer lukewarm & safe solutions to things, but (Brexit aside?) it’s generally where the votes are won. Unless that is, one side fecks up royally & gives the other side an open goal to move toward the extremes (Thatcher, after the Winter of Discontent).

Like I said, a lot of that isn’t fresh in the mind to a lot on here. The only reason Corbyn polled like he did last time out (GE) was because of his promises to the Student vote. Students, who back in the day, certainly didn’t live the Old Labour dream.

I’d ditch the Labour party & just have the Liberals. I’m struggling to see the relevance in them these days & the Brexit saga has shone another spotlight on that.
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That's heavily overstated, you can't get to 40% of the vote on the back of students. It certainly helped up the enthusiasm and win some seats in uni towns, but the bigger reasons for the result were that people under 60 generally were tired of spending cuts, and didn't want to give the Tories the big majority they had been widely expected to get to push through their version of Brexit (and the Tories having the worst campaign in living memory also helped).
 
Strachans Cigar said:
Like I said, a lot of that isn’t fresh in the mind to a lot on here. The only reason Corbyn polled like he did last time out (GE) was because of his promises to the Student vote. Students, who back in the day, certainly didn’t live the Old Labour dream.
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Labour won students. They also won part-time workers. They also won full-time workers. They also won the unemployed. They lost only one group - retired people.
Employment-01.png
 
esmufc07 said:
Remarkable the speed at which Labour can expel a member when they want to.
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It's leaving a really bad taste here with Labour, they can find a way to kick a member out quickly when it comes down to declaring vote but when it's anything anti-semitic then it seems like they're happy to drag their feet or defend those members. Unbelievable.

Corbyn's silence and sitting on the fence mantra is getting old quickly and it's clear that if they're going to change any downturn, then removing him as leader is the first step in a very long recovery process.
 
Strachans Cigar said:
The “centre” may offer lukewarm & safe solutions to things, but (Brexit aside?) it’s generally where the votes are won. Unless that is, one side fecks up royally & gives the other side an open goal to move toward the extremes (Thatcher, after the Winter of Discontent).

Like I said, a lot of that isn’t fresh in the mind to a lot on here. The only reason Corbyn polled like he did last time out (GE) was because of his promises to the Student vote. Students, who back in the day, certainly didn’t live the Old Labour dream.

I’d ditch the Labour party & just have the Liberals. I’m struggling to see the relevance in them these days & the Brexit saga has shone another spotlight on that.
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The Liberals are not a party of the left really though are they? And Labour's voting share suggests they are relevant. I'm sure that you don't like them, which is fine.
Personally, from my political perspective, the votes are won nationally seemingly by being on the right of the spectrum.
This resulted in a Labour party going to the right to win in England, resulting in the eventual collapse of the Labour vote in Scotland, followed by a succession of harrowing increasingly right wing governments resulting in a Britain that is riven with inequality and rancour and where the extreme right is once again beginning to get a foothold.
 
Fingeredmouse said:
The Liberals are not a party of the left really though are they? And Labour's voting share suggests they are relevant. I'm sure that you don't like them, which is fine.
Personally, from my political perspective, the votes are won nationally seemingly by being on the right of the spectrum.
This resulted in a Labour party going to the right to win in England, resulting in the eventual collapse of the Labour vote in Scotland, followed by a succession of harrowing increasingly right wing governments resulting in a Britain that is riven with inequality and rancour and where the extreme right is once again beginning to get a foothold.
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Britain has always had inequality. Under both Labour & Tory governments.

If Socialist governments were so great, how come they & the downtrodden masses don’t clean up in every GE? After all, there are plenty of them & the Socialists should be cleaning up?
 
berbatrick said:
Labour won students. They also won part-time workers. They also won full-time workers. They also won the unemployed. They lost only one group - retired people.
Employment-01.png
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So how come an Old Labour Party still can’t win an election then. Must be all those stupid gammons who know & have lived through jack shit?
 
Fingeredmouse said:
The Liberals are not a party of the left really though are they? And Labour's voting share suggests they are relevant. I'm sure that you don't like them, which is fine.
Personally, from my political perspective, the votes are won nationally seemingly by being on the right of the spectrum.
This resulted in a Labour party going to the right to win in England, resulting in the eventual collapse of the Labour vote in Scotland, followed by a succession of harrowing increasingly right wing governments resulting in a Britain that is riven with inequality and rancour and where the extreme right is once again beginning to get a foothold.
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Make Britain great Again.


If we think there will be turmoil with a 2nd Referendum, wait till Brexit comes in whatever form.

Whats happening now will be like riding the gravy train.
 
Dobba said:
How long do you think watching him saying he voted Lib Dem on BBC takes? Or listening to him say it on LBC?
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Judging by the election results Campbell wasn’t the only one. Going to purge them all.
 
Strachans Cigar said:
Britain has always had inequality. Under both Labour & Tory governments.

If Socialist governments were so great, how come they & the downtrodden masses don’t clean up in every GE? After all, there are plenty of them & the Socialists should be cleaning up?
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I'm not sure I get what you mean? There are many motivations for voting and I would argue that the socialist and left wing movements have increased the rights of people in Britain which is why we have the NHS, and funded schools, and pensions, and holidays, etc and that is, generally opposed and reversed by the right.

I vote for parties of the left and always will (and although I have voted Labour, it is not my current voting pattern) but the Lib Dems don't appeal to me on many matters. I may come from a very working class background, but I can't even pretend to be so now and parties of the left are to my financial disadvantage, but, I believe, to my social advantage.
As I vote left, conversely those who would obviously personally benefit the most from left wing policies may choose to vote otherwise. Brexit was voted for in large swathes of the working classes, despite it being an elitist driven movement likely to result in serious disadvantage to many of these voters.

I'd argue an effectively argued case for a broadly capitalist economic model controlled by socialist principles of taxation, investment and re-distribution is a good basis for a decent Government. I think Labour represent elements of that and whilst I have great dis-satisfaction regarding many things Corbyn has done (Brexit, his spectacular disregard for PR & Spin resulting in a man under attack for being too of the left wearing a Lenin hat, his bad handling of the anti-semitism situation, his dogmatic stubborness) I certainly prefer him to Blair who carried some policies that were, to my mind, deeply objectionable.
 
berbatrick said:
It literally can't be any clearer from that graph. It is because retired people don't like them at all, and vote in large numbers.
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Exactly. That’s because they were around the last time an Old Labour government was around. Which is precisely my point.

How many of you lot were? What sounds great on paper and in theory ain’t necessarily so.
 
Strachans Cigar said:
Exactly. That’s because they were around the last time an Old Labour government was around. Which is precisely my point.

How many of you lot were? What sounds great on paper and in theory ain’t necessarily so.
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Or maybe the others, younger people who are facing the job market, have more of a stake in an economy that works for them, now and in the future ;)
 
Strachans Cigar said:
Exactly. That’s because they were around the last time an Old Labour government was around. Which is precisely my point.

How many of you lot were? What sounds great on paper and in theory ain’t necessarily so.
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I bet they have lived through the succession of not particularly left wing Labour and right wing Tory governments however.
 
berbatrick said:
Labour won students. They also won part-time workers. They also won full-time workers. They also won the unemployed. They lost only one group - retired people.
Employment-01.png
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Not surprised those retired voted conservative . They are now out of touch with the world of work, where as those in work are feeling the austerity measures ,part time work ,zero contracts and slow wage growth.
 
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Fingeredmouse said:
I bet they have lived through the succession of not particularly left wing Labour and right wing Tory governments however.
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Well, let’s be fair here, I’m no right wing apologist, as said, I generally skirt around the centre ground.

If we are talking about the economic competence of the right, 1992 & the ERM was indeed a hiccup. Significant though that the Tories got the economy righted before handing over to Blair in ‘97 though. Unlike Denis Healey after he went begging to the IMF in the seventies. What were those tax rates again?

As for 2008, as most Labour voters said at the time in their own parties “defence”: that was global.

In answer to your general point, to paraphrase, running the economy like a capitalist & taxing like a socialist. Only works imo in the corporate world if those tax rates are uniform throughout, ie no significant differences over borders between countries which, isn’t the case currently. Otherwise those multinationals won’t be staying here to tax will they? Which may kinda kybosh things a tad?
 
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nickm said:
Judging by the election results Campbell wasn’t the only one. Going to purge them all.
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As I've said before in this thread, it was more than good enough for plenty of people a few years ago and was met with absolute silence by the Comical Ali and the other moderates. I tell a lie, it was met with a cascade of praise when the guy in charge of compliance during those days left the post.
 
I'm sure Campbell is well aware he's earned being expelled here. I also doubt he cares to be honest or he wouldn't have publically stated it in the first place.
 
Strachans Cigar said:
Yes, let’s all be right on and demonise those Blairites.
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As someone who remembers vividly the dossier, David Kelly and the mounting figures of dead Iraqi women and children, I can think of few things as superfluous as trying to portray Campbell and Blair in a negative way.

Criticise the expulsion, defend voting for a different party than that which appears on your membership badge, but don't tell me Hell's negative image is the result of poor lighting brother.
 
Kaos said:
As clever as that sounds, the current Lib Dem surge is more a massed protest vote by remainers than it is a rebirthed mass movement.

If Labour fully adopt the remain stance then the Lib Dems will go back to being irrelevant.
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Yeah, true. Just thought it was a clever tweet. And it is technically true that Corbyn’s relentless fudging of Brexit has been a shot in the arm for the Lib Dems (and a problem for Labour).

On a side note, here’s an interesting article on Labour voters switching to the Brexit party. Corbyn’s tried to be all things to all men and ended up losing votes from Remainers and Leavers alike. It’s hugely ironic the way Corbynites use “centrist” as a term of abuse while their leader’s fence-sitting on Brexit is losing them voters, hand over fist.

 
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dumbo said:
As someone who remembers vividly the dossier, David Kelly and the mounting figures of dead Iraqi women and children, I can think of few things as superfluous as trying to portray Campbell and Blair in a negative way.

Criticise the expulsion, defend voting for a different party than that which appears on your membership badge, but don't tell me Hell's negative image is the result of poor lighting brother.
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Yes we know all Blair’s shortcomings & the clandestine accusations. However, if you’ve noticed, I’ve been focusing on the Labour approach to actually getting elected as a government in the first place & trust me, old school Socialism and it’s stronger unions and lurching to the left do not work. We’ve been there & done it and we’ve got the evidence to prove it.

That is not to say it didn’t achieve anything whatsoever in its pomp however.

On Campbell, I agree with Watson. The problem with the Labour left is it is occupied by ideologues. Was 40 years ago & it still is now.
 
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Pogue Mahone said:
Yeah, true. Just thought it was a clever tweet. And it is technically true that Corbyn’s relentless fudging of Brexit has been a shot in the arm for the Lib Dems (and a problem for Labour).

On a side note, here’s an interesting article on Labour voters switching to the Brexit party. Corbyn’s tried to be all things to all men and ended up losing votes from Remainers and Leavers alike. It’s hugely ironic the way Corbynites use “centrist” as a term of abuse while their leader’s fence-sitting on Brexit is losing them voters, hand over fist.

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Yep. I’m a Corbyn supporter but I find it unfortunately ironic that the only thing he’s spared from Labours ‘broad-church’ ethos was a stance on Brexit - the one policy you simply cannot fence sit on. Best chance he has now is to double down on a belated firm remain stance and hope the Brexit party’s surge is more to the detriment of the Tories than it is to Labour, while claiming back those who’d flocked to the Lib Dem’s, SNP and Greens out of protest.
 
Strachans Cigar said:
I’ve been focusing on the Labour approach to actually getting elected as a government in the first place & trust me, old school Socialism and it’s stronger unions and lurching to the left do not work. We’ve been there & done it and we’ve got the evidence to prove it.
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The thing is, Labour's current approach and policy base is a world away from the Labour left of the early 80s and doesn't at all resemble Labour gov'ts in the 60s and 70s. Citing the 1983 election as proof that any left-wing Labour party is doomed is revisionism in itself, Labour were on course to smash Thatcher until the SDP defections and even after that they were looking likely to be the largest party at the next election until the Falklands War turned it round for Thatcher. Labour's performance in 1983 had less to do with economic policy than it did to do with internal party politics and foreign policy (I'd argue that foreign policy is Labour's biggest weakness under Corbyn with regards electability). All the evidence suggests that the electorate has few particular qualms about left-wing economic policy; the raft of centre-left policies Corbyn's Labour advocate polls very well. It's not Labour's actual policy platform which turns people off, it's a combination of Labour's perennial image problem of economic incompetence and a very successful campaign from both the Labour right, the Conservatives and right-leaning media to characterise Corbyn's centre-left economic platform as a quasi-Communist one.

Since Corbyn's election there's been a big push by the right-leaning establishment to lay the failures of big-state union-friendly centre-left Labour in the 1970s and mixed-economy business-friendly centre-right Labour in the 2000s at the door of a modern Labour left which had nothing to do with either. The Labour centre/right has to shoulder much of the blame for this; by embracing austerity they allowed the right wing line that the failure of Labour economic policy was due to the loony left spending too much to become accepted fact. In reality the failure of Labour economic policy in the 2000s was that it's sustainability was by design overly reliant on the continued success of a financial sector it had no intention of regulating. New Labour's economic policy was always doomed to failure, firstly because it made us more reliant of the financial sector whilst allowing other industries to fall into decline and secondly because it entirely failed to put in place regulation to prevent the financial industry making self-interested short term decisions which would leave it at the mercy of global market forces. The lesson from the 2000s should have been to encourage a plurality of industries to mitigate the impact of any one industry failing and to regulate industries in order to reduce the chances of them failing. Instead, the lesson mainstream political parties took from it was that investing in public services and the economy is a bad thing; policies based on that reading of events have led us down a pretty ruinous path over the last decade.
 
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