Out of interest @Ubik who is your ideal candidate.
Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
TBH it would be. I first started following politics outside India around that time and Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld, Cheney are in my most hated list. Scum.
Tony Blair deserves to face charges for war crimes.
I see Blair as the Richard Hammond of the Iraq Invasion Top Gear special. With Cheney as Clarkson, and Bush as May.
No-one's ideal, that's the main problem with the party at the moment. Jarvis or Umunna have the most chance of winning a GE but would never get elected by the membership. And even then, Jarvis has no real shadow cabinet experience or even really been tested in frontline politics so would still be a big risk, and Umunna ballsed it all up last year.
So here I am, arguing for Angela Eagle to be the next Labour leader, having selected her a distant 4th on my deputy leadership ballot only last year. I can't pretend I'm delighted with how things are going.
If a party needs to stand together to cover up for criminals, is the party worth having?
It is the ordinary members who voted for Corbyn, that the polls never predicted btw, that will hold the party together.
It is people who matter.
I think a future government will be a coalition between Labour/SNP.
Yes they did, months in advance.
Would love to see that happen.
Do you believe Eagle has a better chance of winning a snap GE than Corbyn?
It would be better for all. Their voices would be heard. Everyone will be truly represented. A true United Kingdom.
I just wonder about the extent of Chilcot. Always have to be wary of an establishment inquiry into establishment wrongdoing.
Just have a look at the people presiding over this inquiry -- it isn't overly heartening.
Yeah, I agree.
Complications arise, though. How much do the SNP want to be a part of a United Kingdom? Their party name alone tends to dampen hope.
This is true. But who else can we rely on to do what is just and right other than the people we elect.
This is why what Cameron did was the ultimate betrayal of ordinary people. For political gain he has put so many lives at risk.
We still do not know if this is going to be good or bad in the long run.
But I do know that if Britain is to come back strong then people need to believe in each other and move past this vote.
I think economically whether they like it or not, they do depend on England. They want to be respected and not be taken for granted, just the sentiments of the Leavers with respect to the EU/Germany.
I think an actual eagle has a better chance of winning a snap GE than Corbyn, because it would at least display competence at being an eagle.
But realistically, a GE isn't just a binary win/lose, it also dictates how strong an opposition you can be following it, and how good a chance you'll stand in the next election. I see Corbyn losing a lot of seats. Eagle can at least improve on Miliband. It's properly painful to be typing this out, but a split is going to be disastrous in all likelihood so I'm not sure what else there is to hope for.
Cheers. A view that seems to be held by a fair few at least according to this recent poll
Also
Really is a shit show at the moment for everyone involved.
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Blair is the worst. Bush and Cheney are oilmen from Texas and neocons. Once they were elected they were going to feck things up.
Blair was the leader of the Labour party ffs. Before that the only place I had seen Labour was in Indian history textbooks - paraphrasing: Attlee was the PM and unlike that racist Churchill, agreed to negotiate independence.
How many people voted Jeremy Corbyn into his position? About .7% of the people who voted last week (251k out of 33.5m). Labour has a lot more to worry about for national relevance than the tiny faction of dedicated Corbynistas. If Labour wants to keep going left, much like the Tea Party in the US keeps going right, just to appease their core supporters, they're welcome to but will lose their ability to compete nationally. Corbyn might be able to stick to the original platform he came in on in 1983 in his safe seat, but as that election demonstrated, the Labour party can't be relevant if it does.
This isn't to do with 1983. This is to do with 1997 (94, really, but a lot of people had hopes Blair would suddenly turn in to 'real Labour' after he won - it wasn't until after he did in 97 that many felt betrayed). When Labour left its members behind and never looked back.
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The Tea Party has achieved as much a victory as is possible for an organisation whose policies are decisively unpopular individually. They are to be commended and used as a model in manipulation of voters, keeping the base loyal, pushing the party to the right, and using every trick to make sure their unrepresentative reign lasts. Corbyn has none of their guile.
Edit: https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-a...reen-Shot-2015-03-04-at-2.07.19-PM.png&w=1484
See, this is exactly why I can't get on board with the coup. You're basically saying that it was the right decision to mutiny in the middle of a National crisis, hasten the split of the party, disillusion scores of new, fiercely loyal voters and abdicate any and all responsibility to hold the Tories to account for a chaos they've single handedly engineered, because....we could do with the experience of losing a GE?...What the actual feck man!
Corbyn may be a shambolic leader, but if this was the best strategy his enemies could come up with to oppose him, then the entire party deserves to have all it's handbags shat in.
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Ball's actually misread the poll a little, 64% was the figure when the poll was last done, it's now at 50%. Although even at 9% it's strangely high.
One striking thing about the poll (in full here if you want a peruse - https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.n...ogs4gmc/TimesResults_160630_LabourMembers.pdf ) is the difference between members pre- and post- the 2015 election. From just those that were members beforehand, 61-36 would vote against him. Those after, 69-30 would vote for him. And the latter now make up almost half the membership. And I also wouldn't bet against those signing up now being of a similar type.
Cheers will give it a look. Yep was thinking the same and even though it's twitter and there fore it could be total shite, I've seen a fair few people say they are joining now with the intention of getting rid of Corbyn, although I've also seen the same number going in the opposite direction as well.
Yes, Labour, to win nationally, had to appeal to new people so it moved to the center while assuming they could count on their loyal voters. Without the new voters, Labour can't be relevant nationally. My point about 1983 is that Corbyn himself has been in a safe seat where he could do virtually anything he wanted and still win so he's maintained his views without changing them even though they're from one of Labour's least successful periods. For other MPs, they have to deal with competitive elections and need to appeal to people outside of Labour's historic base and can't win elections running on Corbyn's platform.
For the Tea Party comparison, the GOP's shift right has alienated moderate voters and prevented them from taking the White House in 2012, despite Obama's unpopularity. Corbyn's politics aren't exactly going to win him Number 10 anytime soon. You are right though about the guile. They know how to press the levers of government at all levels to accomplish their goals.
But that is only one post out of so many, and arguably having a figurehead to hate at the top keeps the movement galvanised. My only news source about NC is terribly biased (Indy) but look at the amount of stuff they have managed to get done in a single state - education cuts, no progress on mental health or medicare, big letoffs for polluters, promoting fracking - and now have a pretty permanent majority too.
It's easier to influence lots of local elections with money than it is national elections. It's what the Kochs, nationally, and Pope locally have figured out. A few thousand dollars can go a long way in a state legislature race.
I don't know where you've got that from as my goal, I think Corbyn would get a Foot-level result in the GE and that's what I want to avoid. And I don't see how a leader that has the stated support of 40/229 Labour MPs, and less than half a front bench, can carry on in the circumstances you describe. Fecking hell, Australia toppled a Prime Minister last year on the back of Abbott losing a confidence vote among his parliamentary party by 10 votes. But Corbyn doesn't seem to think of it as a parliamentary democracy, rather as a social protest movement, for which he's the directly elected head. He doesn't care if he's not leader of the parliamentary party, he's leader of the membership. Making good on Tony Benn's dream. Who cares if the membership are highly unrepresentative of the Labour vote at large, let alone the general electorate.
They remain the views of the majority of the Labour party membership. That's why he won.
This gap between the leadership and the membership only survived when they were in power. It was always doomed to fall apart when the natural cycle of two party democracy happened and then it was only a matter of time before the membership thought 'our turn' and elected someone left-wing.
This is two parties trying to be one. It can't be fixed.
If they want to be in power anytime soon, they need to figure out how to fix it. Even if the Conservatives screwed up monumentally (read: Brexit), Labour is in no position to challenge them effectively. If they don't make any effort to connect with a range of voters, they might as well give up. If they want to stay staunchly to the left, the best they can hope for is working in a coalition with a more centrist party that will require concessions.
I was looking at old GE results. Part of the reason Labour's performance under Foot (and again in 1987) was so disastrous was simply the centrists forming the SDP. Together they had more vote share than Thatcher; even assuming the votes weren't totally additive, Labour would have done much better if half the party didn't walk off.
A split like that looks pretty inevitable, from either side judging by the posts here, and will cost Labour.
My parents canvassed for Labour in a marginal constituency that election, and if the reactions they got on the doorstep were any guide, it really wasn't the SDP causing the bulk of the damage.
This. He is the smarter one and should have had the guts and the wisdom to stand up to them and say no.
That's not really true. Labour was completely unelectable back then.
'Looking Fierce Shook'. Who changed the thread title? We really do have a fine turn of phrase over here don't we? Brilliant.
Mods have taken over naming the thread, but I was changing it week to week when there was nothing actually happening
I felt pretty sorry for him when I saw him like that on the news.I was watching Shirley Williams on TV last night (she wasn't talking about all this, she was on the Somme commemorations programme), and I thought exactly the same, remembering the SDP.
I thought it was a bit of silly idea to say it publicly but the Greens have asked other left wing party's(Labour,Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru) to think about forming a left wing coalition. And yes I fully expect a People front of Liberal Green Labour within a year of a coalition.
As for the idea of electability and Corbyn. this was said in the last leadership race and while it's a valid argument, one of many reason it didn't stick was the Welfare Bill in which 184 Labour MP's didn't vote against(Corbyn did). Now while some will have their reasons(Although I struggle to think of any good ones)it was pretty clear as to why the 3 other candidates going against Corbyn did. The answer - they were worried Labour would look soft on the welfare state, there fore it was best for the Labour Party to screw over member of the public who are on welfare.
So you can see why electabillity takes a bit of a back seat when talking about Corbyn as the opposition to him seem quite willing to feck over the members of the public purely because of the perceived ''image'' of the party. At least with the Tories they believe what they are doing.
I can see that - possibly 100/150 MP's leaving labour and joining and an agreement in elections not to put candidates up against each other
therefor in most constituencies the options would be
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would be interesting to see if they could do better than Corbyns Labour in an election - I suspect they would as there would be an existing party machine and potentially significantly more sitting MP's than a Corbyn labour party had
Those going on about him being too left wing and centrist. What changes in policy are you expecting if Eagle was elected?
Considering they were elected under Milliband mandate it'd be interesting to see as they're surely then saying not only do they not represent the members but also that they disagree with their constituency.
Considering they were elected under Milliband mandate it'd be interesting to see as they're surely then saying not only do they not represent the members but also that they disagree with their constituency.