Jeremy Corbyn's time is up

[two sheds]

But he did it routinely, and moreover came across as irritated by it. Also, it didn't work. He just ended up with a press that turned on him.

I think the press turned on him quite a way before that.

 

[Idris2002]

Yes, it's interesting really. Corbyn is a nice guy with genuine empathy. However that didn't really cut through and his personal ratings as potential PM were consistently awful from what I remember. Okay, there were some obvious things in play there - the media, the right wing shits in his own party not least. But still a disconnect. Maybe his (reasonably) honest way of answering questions wasn't a good fit for the shitty world of politics. A disconnected world where johnson's outright lies and bluster became the 'answer'.

Anyone who gets smeared the way he did needs to come out swinging in response, or else it's all over. Otherwise you'll be a nice guy who finishes last.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

I'm pretty sure almost everyone in North Islington knows who Jeremy Corbyn is, far more so than any Labour candidate. And it is the name that is the most prominent thing, not the party.

Martin Bell, George Galloway and Caroline Lucas spring to mind.

I know the seat very well, having lived there for 7 years, he was my MP. I also grew up down the road and went to school nearby too.

Doesn't work that way in a GE. By elections are naturally better for independent candidates. And all this assumes Corbyn can organise a piss up in a brewery in terms of campaign infrastructure and crucially funding.

My bet: he will lose his seat at the next GE.

 

[belboid]

I know the seat very well, having lived there for 7 years, he was my MP. I also grew up down the road and went to school nearby too.

Doesn't work that way in a GE. By elections are naturally better for independent candidates. And all this assumes Corbyn can organise a piss up in a brewery in terms of campaign infrastructure and crucially funding.

My bet: he will lose his seat at the next GE.

I just gave you three examples of it working in a General Election. He's not an unknown parachuting in, he is the MP of 40 odds years standing. He might not win, but he will have thousands of people out campaigning for him and he'll make sure it is at least bloody close. I expect he'll win easily.

 

[The39thStep]

It's not really about being 'funny' it's more about having a modicum of relatability which brings the electorate along with you. It's not entirely his fault, not everyone is born with charisma (see Brown, Miliband etc) but he seemed at times to be doing his utmost to turn off everyone outside of the cult of Corbyn, from voting Labour.

You described him as humourless, lacking charisma. What I find interesting about your 'cult of Corbyn' is that won the leadership on the first round with over 60%of the vote. Not 60% of the vote in the cult of Corbyn club but the Labour membership. His second challenger was the charismatic, non-cultish and highly relatable Owen Smith. Smith was despatched with Corbyn winning just under 60% despite a determined effort by the party machine and media. Labour Party membership massively increased, he addressed large rallies precisely because he had an 'authentic, informal style' and directly addressed the issues that many thought were important. In the 2017 elections, under his non-charismatic leadership, Labour increased their vote and got 30 extra seats. We all know the issues about the 2019 election.

Now there's a lot I was critical about with Corbyn however it doesn't seem to me that your analysis of him as not having a modicum of relatability is accurate nor could one describe his performance and reach as being confined to only the 'cult of Corbyn'.

edit: replaced reliability with relatability

 

[Larry O'Hara]

Okay, serious answer: back in the day I would, roughly, have classed myself as a 'Bennite', though that was about being part of the Labour left and democratisation of the party. I always had reservations about his politics, at the level of coherence/theory, whilst thinking he was on the side of angels on the issues of the day. At the heart of it was the mantra he used to trot out verbatim in interviews about the diggers, the levellers, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Suffragettes and the rest. Then, the other bit of his brain had a Parliamentary cretinism to it (not an ideal word, I must admit, but hey, Marx and all that). It was an almost religious fervour about Parliamentary deomcracy and it's possibilities for socialism, which even when combined with 'pressure from below' was naive to say the least. Or more to the point, entirely at odds with some of the extra Parliamentary movements he lauded and he didn't seem to see or work through that contradiction. The other thing, probably to be expected with his background, was an at best 2 dimensional view of the working class. Some of the worst bits of Labourism, expecting workers to join unions and support Labour and having no real answers when that ceased to do the trick. I'd level that at others on the Labour left tbh. He was though quite sophisticated when it came to inheritance tax.

((long paragraph))

Fair enough: I have reservations about him too and am aware of his deft manipulation of inheritance law. And of course not an idiot…

 

[Larry O'Hara]

But he did it routinely, and moreover came across as irritated by it. Also, it didn't work. He just ended up with a press that turned on him.

They turned on him from the start

 

[scalyboy]

I just gave you three examples of it working in a General Election. He's not an unknown parachuting in, he is the MP of 40 odds years standing. He might not win, but he will have thousands of people out campaigning for him and he'll make sure it is at least bloody close. I expect he'll win easily.

From what I’ve heard from one or two people who live in his constituency, he’s well thought of as a constituency MP there, and having been MP for 40 years will be v well known.

I recall seeing him at a Hornsey arts or literary fair some time back (when my mate engaged him in conversation about conspiracy theories Corbyn looked pained and said he didn’t give much time to that sort of thing; my mate began to talk about the RFK assassination as a credible example… his missus turned to me and said with some exasperation: oh FFS he always does this )

Anyway the point was he was there among local people without minders etc. I think this was after he was elected Labour leader, but can’t say for sure, it was some time ago and my memory is like a colander

 

[skyscraper101]

the charismatic, non-cultish and highly relatable Owen Smith.

LOL what. I don't think so

In the 2017 elections, under his non-charismatic leadership, Labour increased their vote and got 30 extra seats. We all know the issues about the 2019 election.

Spin it how you like. He still lost two general elections.

Talking about his winning 60% of the Labour membership vote or seeing off Owen Smith is about as relevant as saying he made the best homemade jam in parliament. The bottom line is he failed to cut through to the people that actually matter get back to power, largely because he was seen as stiff, unrelatable, humorless, hid from TV cameras, failed to shut down antisemitism accusations, and seemed untrustworthy on Brexit. He also thought Dianne Abbot would make a great Home Secretary.

To be clear, I don't think he was a bad person, nor do I buy any of the antisemitism accusations, and I was right up there with him on so much stuff, like nuclear weapons. I even voted for Labour during his tenure, but I never ever believed he was the right person for that job.

 

[Sue]

I just gave you three examples of it working in a General Election. He's not an unknown parachuting in, he is the MP of 40 odds years standing. He might not win, but he will have thousands of people out campaigning for him and he'll make sure it is at least bloody close. I expect he'll win easily.

I'm not sure about easily but I'll be surprised if he stands and doesn't win. I live in the next-ish door constituency and everyone I've ever met from his constituency seems to have met him at some point. At an event or a charity thing or a local school fete or whatever. And while not necessarily agreeing with him politically, the consensus seems to be he's a decent bloke, works hard for the area etc.

 

[Pickman's model]

They turned on him from the start

They didn't really turn on him, he got the same press he'd always had

 

[Sue]

You described him as humourless, lacking charisma. What I find interesting about your 'cult of Corbyn' is that won the leadership on the first round with over 60%of the vote. Not 60% of the vote in the cult of Corbyn club but the Labour membership. His second challenger was the charismatic, non-cultish and highly relatable Owen Smith. Smith was despatched with Corbyn winning just under 60% despite a determined effort by the party machine and media. Labour Party membership massively increased, he addressed large rallies precisely because he had an 'authentic, informal style' and directly addressed the issues that many thought were important. In the 2017 elections, under his non-charismatic leadership, Labour increased their vote and got 30 extra seats. We all know the issues about the 2019 election.

I won't hear a word against Frothy Owen Smith.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm also sceptical of the idea of Owen Smith as charismatic. However, Corbyn became popular because of what he said, not so much how he said it. That is like hen's teeth in today's mainstream politics in the UK. No he isn't an orator like, eg, Melenchon in France. And that is a pity - being a good orator does help. But that's only ever any good if what you're speaking about is the right thing.

I would argue that the mess Labour got themselves into over Brexit cost them in 2019. The antisemitism nonsense didn't help, but it wasn't the primary problem. The dismal performance was more down to Starmer's involvement than anything Corbyn did.

 

[scalyboy]

I'm also sceptical of the idea of Owen Smith as charismatic. However, Corbyn became popular because of what he said, not so much how he said it. That is like hen's teeth in today's mainstream politics in the UK. No he isn't an orator like, eg, Melenchon in France. And that is a pity - being a good orator does help. But that's only ever any good if what you're speaking about is the right thing.

I would argue that the mess Labour got themselves into over Brexit cost them in 2019. The antisemitism nonsense didn't help, but it wasn't the primary problem. The dismal performance was more down to Starmer's involvement than anything Corbyn did.

I’d agree with this assessment; in my opinion allegations of antisemitism would have meant little to voters in e.g. Hartlepool. But when faced with the choice of Corbyn who seemed to half-heartedly endorse Brexit and Johnson’s/ Cummings’ Get Brexit Done, no contest in those already Eurosceptic constituencies.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that the collapse of Labour’s so-called ‘Red wall’ was due less to those voters thinking the EU was the source of all the UK’s problems and more an attitude of fuck it, how can it make things worse, combined with irritation that Cameron and ‘the Westminster elite’ were saying, we know best you plebs, vote Remain.

(That said, I do regard Brexit as a f***ing disaster; “the only time a people have voted for economic sanctions against their own country”)

 

[Larry O'Hara]

They didn't really turn on him, he got the same press he'd always had

Yes: from the start of being an MP

 

[The39thStep]

LOL what. I don't think so



Spin it how you like. He still lost two general elections.

Talking about his winning 60% of the Labour membership vote or seeing off Owen Smith is about as relevant as saying he made the best homemade jam in parliament. The bottom line is he failed to cut through to the people that actually matter get back to power, largely because he was seen as stiff, unrelatable, humorless, hid from TV cameras, failed to shut down antisemitism accusations, and seemed untrustworthy on Brexit. He also thought Dianne Abbot would make a great Home Secretary.

To be clear, I don't think he was a bad person, nor do I buy any of the antisemitism accusations, and I was right up there with him on so much stuff, like nuclear weapons. I even voted for Labour during his tenure, but I never ever believed he was the right person for that job.

Im not spinning for Corbyn tbh and if you go back to my posting about him youll find out that I was critical of him.
What I am contesting is your extremely flimsy assertion that he was humourless,lacking in charisma and that he only appealed to a cult.

You've now extended your 'critique' of him to hiding from TV cameras, failing to shut down anti semtism allegations (even though you don't buy the antisemitism allegations that you think he should have shut down), being untrustworthy on Brexit, and having Dianne Abott as shadow Home Secretary.

Will you be voting for Starmer a leader who can only do heavily scripted interviews, only attends stage managed select invite gatherings , has the depth and personality of a muddy puddle,has expelled more Jewish members than any other leader ,who has u-turned on remaining in the EU,a second referendum on the EU and now rules out rejoining the EU and who thinks Rachel Reeves will make a good Chancellor?

 

[Elpenor]

Is relatability necessary for electoral success? Thatcher had precious little. I'm not sure Cameron was relatable, was he? Major? Not really. Heath? If you like yachts, I guess.

Seems it's quite possible to win elections without being particularly relatable.

What is relatability? Someone you could imagine buying you a pint if you bought them one? You’d get on fine with them if you met them at a wedding or a stag / hen do?

Cameron was a PR guy so he probably understood how to appear relatable from a photo op or a sound bite even if he wasn’t actually so in person which Corbyn seems to be from numerous testimonies

 

[Elpenor]

I'm not sure about easily but I'll be surprised if he stands and doesn't win. I live in the next-ish door constituency and everyone I've ever met from his constituency seems to have met him at some point. At an event or a charity thing or a local school fete or whatever. And while not necessarily agreeing with him politically, the consensus seems to be he's a decent bloke, works hard for the area etc.

Yes one of my exes lives quite near to Corbyn and she says he’s always been like that, will say hello in the street etc. not all MPs are like that, in fact very few I reckon

 

[Pickman's model]

Im not spinning for Corbyn tbh and if you go back to my posting about him youll find out that I was critical of him.
What I am contesting is your extremely flimsy assertion that he was humourless,lacking in charisma and that he only appealed to a cult.

You've now extended your 'critique' of him to hiding from TV cameras, failing to shut down anti semtism allegations (even though you don't buy the antisemitism allegations that you think he should have shut down), being untrustworthy on Brexit, and having Dianne Abott as shadow Home Secretary.

Will you be voting for Starmer a leader who can only do heavily scripted interviews, only attends stage managed select invite gatherings , has the depth and personality of a muddy puddle,has expelled more Jewish members than any other leader ,who has u-turned on remaining in the EU,a second referendum on the EU and now rules out rejoining the EU and who thinks Rachel Reeves will make a good Chancellor?

many puddles have a greater depth of personality and are more appealing then the nefandous shammer

 

[Puddy_Tat]

His second challenger was the charismatic, non-cultish and highly relatable Owen Smith.

I think he's a right cult

or something like that...

 

[Pickman's model]

I know the seat very well, having lived there for 7 years, he was my MP. I also grew up down the road and went to school nearby too.

Doesn't work that way in a GE. By elections are naturally better for independent candidates. And all this assumes Corbyn can organise a piss up in a brewery in terms of campaign infrastructure and crucially funding.

My bet: he will lose his seat at the next GE.

So you never actually lived there as an adult. Anyone who takes betting tips off you won't have more money than sense for long

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I’d agree with this assessment; in my opinion allegations of antisemitism would have meant little to voters in e.g. Hartlepool. But when faced with the choice of Corbyn who seemed to half-heartedly endorse Brexit and Johnson’s/ Cummings’ Get Brexit Done, no contest in those already Eurosceptic constituencies.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that the collapse of Labour’s so-called ‘Red wall’ was due less to those voters thinking the EU was the source of all the UK’s problems and more an attitude of fuck it, how can it make things worse, combined with irritation that Cameron and ‘the Westminster elite’ were saying, we know best you plebs, vote Remain.

(That said, I do regard Brexit as a f***ing disaster; “the only time a people have voted for economic sanctions against their own country”)

I also regard Brexit as a disaster. A gratuious act of collective self-harm. A mean-spirited one at that.

However, as it turned out, the harm politically between 2016 and 2019 was done to Labour, not the Tories. How it could possibly have turned out that way is something for historians to ponder. The Tories' internal divisions and fuck-ups led to a referendum with no plan for what to do if the answer was 'leave'. They proceeded to totally fuck up the process of leaving. Then it was Labour who ended up being penalised for it at the ballot box.

 

[hitmouse]

I'm still waiting for the list of Starmer's finest sidesplitting quips.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

I'm still waiting for the list of Starmer's finest sidesplitting quips.

 

[hitmouse]

Yeah, absolutely on the antisemitism, the role of the right in the party, they way all of that has prepared the way for the horrors of a coming starmer government. It's just on Corbyn's actual politics, I went to one of the early rallies in his campaign and it was 'welfare state, public sector, mild redistribution, better treatment of migrants and common decency'. All streets ahead of previous Labour leaders and a shining light amid decades of neoliberalism. However there was nothing there about the Labour's disengagement from the working class, the feeling that politicians have abandoned communities, no strategy to actually get out into real life and real communities. The stuff that was heavily in the mix on Brexit, which itself was a Labour omnishambles (starmer of course, but also Corbyn who didn't ... lead). Add in the Grand Old Duke of York thing with the hundreds of thousands of new members who, seemingly, just became members and weren't really used to organise or expand the party. Corbyn was faced with treachery all round from his MPs and, as you say, the Labour HQ. It's just I don't think he or Momentum had a real sense of how to build something in a world where the organic links of the working class and labour movement had broken down and politicians were widely distrusted.

I think this is good on the actual politics of it, can also refer back to this article from Momentum's former head of communications:

Now the Dust has Settled: Corbynism in retrospect

by Callum Cant // A reflection on the experience of the left within the Labour Party from 2015, describing the dominant strategies, the actors that pursued them, and how they developed over the course of the Corbyn leadership

notesfrombelow.org

From the start, it was obvious that Corbynism had been achieved through a decentralised regroupment of thousands of people around a new political centre that had genuine mass appeal. But this breadth couldn’t be mistaken for depth. The popular coalition that Corbynism rested upon was dangerously unorganised and inexperienced. The fluke nature of the 2015 leadership election meant that we were faced by an unusual strategic challenge: an advanced party of the left was isolated at the top of a major electoral party, surrounded by working class quiescence in the rest of society. And rather than a leftist opposition providing a catalyst for extra parliamentary opposition, the situation only seemed to be getting worse. Strike numbers continued to decline, and the anti-austerity movement vanished into the wind. With their demands increasingly being integrated into the program of a party that seemed like it could be in government before long, activists switched their mobilising energies from the streets to constituency Labour parties. Rather than the party catalysing autonomous class forces, it seemed to swallow them.

For a while, however, it seemed that communicating new ideas alone was enough to break the centre ground into little pieces. Corbyn’s control of the party increased following an even bigger leadership election win in 2016, then in 2017 Labour came from a massive polling deficit to deprive the Tories of a parliamentary majority. The project had faced two existential crises in two years, and it had not just survived them; improbably, it had emerged from them even stronger. There was now a palpable sense that the next election could see Labour in government. This catalysed a series of discussions amongst the struggle-orientated part of the new Labour left. Our slogan became ‘Corbynism from Below,’ and we attempted to build a base that could support our counter attacking ambitions.4 This took the form of a kind of absurd reverse Jenga: we had a left wing leader of the Labour party, now we need to reinvigorate the rank and file of the trade union movement; to organise tenants; to build fundamental community infrastructure.5

This was an uphill task for multiple reasons: not only did we have to undo years of decay in the working class movement, but we had to do it whilst fundamentally unsupported by the dominant factions within our own project. Post-2017, the left Labourites and the class struggle social democrats in the leadership and the movement elite increasingly began to reach a strategic agreement about how the membership should be mobilised. They would be asked to join a union, vote for the left slate in internal elections, support left candidates locally, and work for a Labour election victory, but not to democratically shape the direction of travel or build antagonistic working class forces beyond the party...

The leadership and institutions created by the Corbyn period have failed to cohere anything resembling a working class political response to a series of profound crises. Strikes have been catalysed by falling real wages, but they have not been complimented by the emergence of new strategic paradigms. The only glimmers of light in the social movement arena - from BLM and feminist mobilisations to Kill the Bill, XR and Don’t Pay – have been singularly disconnected from the old institutions. The anomic disarray induced by the end of Corbynism is perhaps best summed up by Enough is Enough – which gathered 400,000 email addresses and mobilised thousands to attend mass meetings where they listened to speeches from the great and the good, then just… stopped.

I think an explanation based around that sort of failure is a bit more convincing than just "old Corbzy lacked Starmer's warmth, charm and good humour".

 

[Wilf]

I think this is good on the actual politics of it, can also refer back to this article from Momentum's former head of communications:

Now the Dust has Settled: Corbynism in retrospect

by Callum Cant // A reflection on the experience of the left within the Labour Party from 2015, describing the dominant strategies, the actors that pursued them, and how they developed over the course of the Corbyn leadership

notesfrombelow.org

I think an explanation based around that sort of failure is a bit more convincing than just "old Corbzy lacked Starmer's warmth, charm and good humour".

I like that from Callum Cant, in my rather pissed reading of it. I've posted stuff before about the masses of people who joined Labour in this period, not so much to do the wrong thing but to actually end up doing not much at all. And in doing so drawing the energy out of the anti cuts movement. In fact here was one of my bad tempered musings at the time:

I was pretty astonished by the numbers corbyn got out for his tour at the time of the leadership election, seeing around 900 at Middlesbrough town hall was amazing. At the time I had a nagging little voice thinking, 'so where have you fuckers been for the last 5 years, in terms of the fight against austerity etc.'

Now he seems to be pulling the same numbers in for his defence campaign, but the same voice is nagging away: 'so, what have you fuckers been doing for the last 9 months?'

Edit: a slightly more generous way of asking that question is 'what did you think project corbyn was going to be and what did you think it would require you to do?'

 

[RevolutionSound]

Williamson is not a creep: he was victimised on spurious grounds

Chris Williamson is an anti semite and fascist sympathiser

 

[Wilf]

Still in self quoting mode, I was just looking for something I wrote at the time of Corbyn's election, about the need to go beyond the parameters of left Labourism, to re-engage with the class and to morph the party into something like party + social movement. Not in the expectation that Labour/Corbyn would do that, they weren't ever going to do that, they couldn't even imagine any of that. It was more the point that they wouldn't/couldn't win if they didn't change, well, actually create a relationship between the party and the class. What I wrote was... verbose, but I did find this from Butchersapron which said it better:

That's the point though isn't it? The activists are the ones he's meeting and class interests are articulated to him through them - through the remnants of the labour movement rather than directly from the class. Of course, how to do the latter is the key. Corbyn sold out a very large hall here last night at extremely short notice (and plenty of over-spill) , but i can guess the types who were there and who weren't. And when he did two walks around here he was meeting the long-term labour members and the younger uni types + seemingly every shopkeeper in the east of the city.


(and that's not to knock these activists and the things they are trying to do, it's to suggest that this alone is not enough)

 

[redsquirrel]

...

good one

The bottom line is he failed to cut through to the people that actually matter get back to power, largely because he was seen as stiff, unrelatable, humorless, hid from TV cameras,

Who are they then?
To say the Corbyn didn't cut through with voters is a bit bizarre, surely he connected with voters more strongly than most politicians - whether positively or negatively. The 'oh Jeremy Corbyn' thing was more than a little queasy but it happened, people reacted to him.. And even those the detested him were reacting to him because he wasn't the standard party leader.

 

[Lord Camomile]

I think the press turned on him quite a way before that.

"turned on him" would suggest they ever felt any differently.

Genuine Q: was there ever any real press coverage that was broadly favourable? Once he became Labour leader, at least?