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Jeremy Corbyn's time is up

Wilf said:
I'm coming at this from a different direction than you, but have some of the same questions. If nothing else it just seems a bit late as an intervention.

Maybe it will have a slight impact on this idea that a lot of Corbyn friendly voters think he's still Labour?
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Yeah, those were pretty much my own immediate thoughts, too.

Can see an argument that, a week out, it creates this news story which a) as you say, might catch a few more who still think voting Labour is voting Corbyn, and/or b) generates a narrative that more long-standing, senior, and possibly respected Labour activists believe in him rather than <whoever the Labor candidate is, I've forgotten>.

Obviously it would have been planned to some extent, just in the process of drafting and signing the letter, at least.

Would be interested in how much campaigning they'd already done for <whoever it is>. Might give some indication as to when this plan started forming.

<edit: actually, having quickly scanned it again - "resigning and former members". Maybe more of the latter, who have now successfully convinced those resigning to do so (and to sign), and possibly did more of the drafting?>
 
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Wilf said:
Tbh, it surprised me that people wouldn't know he was no longer Labour, but that is what his team have been reporting on the doorstep. Maybe they are just saying this or exaggerating it simply to explain why he might be behind in the polls and/or as simply another way of getting the vote out. Having said all that, I do have a vague memory of the same phenomena happening in by elections when someone has been booted out or resigned from a party.
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I have experience of this.

Lambeth is run by right of the Labour party.

My local Cllr was a Blairite and I knew her before she was a Cllr from shared interest in local community issues.

She was a very good Cllr. And I dealt with her on local stuff.

Eventually she started to represent her constituents rather than the right wing ideologues of the Labour right.

So lost the whip.

As she did not repent of her sins enough she was not re selected as a Cllr.

She was a very popular Cllr with locals.

We tried to get her re elected as an independent.

For the first time ever the local Labour party machine went into overdrive. My ward is totally safe Labour win. And local party do not canvass in my ward at election time as assume everyone votes Labour whatever.

She got votes but did not get in.

Afterwards several people asked where she was. When it came to voting they tick the Labour box. And did not realise she was not on it.

This despite us locals leafleting every address.

It's not easy getting an independent elected.

Seeing what happened to my local Cllr I feel for Corbyn.

The right of the party are very very nasty. They will destroy people.

The parallels with Corbyn are similar. Apparently a lot of my Labour Cllrs liked my Cllr. However for some reason could not stick their heads above parapet to support her publicly.

I'm at a lose to understand how my local Cllr did not get reselected when a lot of the Cllrs apparently did not have a problem with her. Bit like Starmer saying its nothing to do with him. It's the procedures.

Its all such a load of bollocks. My experience taught me that anyone who sticks up for the people and not the establishment/ party is going to get shafted.

TBF after that experience I've nothing but contempt for the Labour party and those who revel in Corbyns likely losing his seat.
 
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hitmouse said:
Yeah, fwiw I don't love the framing that LCCW has chosen, I think that talking about the Israel lobby a) leaves you open to this kind of bad-faith attack, b) is open to framing that can potentially lead in an antisemitic/conspiracist direction, and c) is ultimately unnecessary - it is verifiably true that various Labour right/centre figures have received various bits of funding from this and that dodgy donor, but even if they'd never received a single penny from any Israel-related lobbyist, I still reckon that Starmer would have exactly the same line on Israel, because he has an ideological commitment to not doing anything that would distinguish him too sharply from the tories, supporting Israel is just a part of how Starmer views the world and Britain's place in it.
But there's a huge difference between "a framing I would not personally use myself because I think it can potentially be interpreted in an antisemitic direction, although they have clearly not actually said anything antisemitic in this particular instance" and "anti-Semitic libel", which is what Paul Mason - and, by extension, our resident Mason-tweet-poster on here - has said. Although the offer for Kid_Eternity to take the floor and explain why the image is antisemitic and libellous still stands?
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Yeah, quite frankly Kid_Eternity , drive by posting accusations of anti-semitism is not on.
 
tommers said:
That email looks dodgy as fuck. Who's sent it?

It's written like somebody trying to sound official who's never sent an official email in their life.
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It looks like something you'd see in the US. Some loon who prefaces their tweets with 'BREAKING!!', and 'OMG X just DESTROYED...'.

Someone very excitable, who stinks of Crazy from 90ft away.
 
tommers said:
That email looks dodgy as fuck. Who's sent it?

It's written like somebody trying to sound official who's never sent an official email in their life.
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I agree. The phrasing is laughable.

"I have attached a copy of the confirmation from the Met" - the Met would never issue such a confirmation for a named individual.

Also:

"abundance of evidence"
"assessed by numerous professionals"
"to prevent this matter from being potentially covered up"
"unable to continue any potentially unlawful activities"
"prevent him from attempting to conceal his apparent crimes of misconduct"

Even if this had any basis in fact (which I doubt), this email would get the case thrown out of court before it got off the ground.
 
hash tag said:
If only I lived in JC's constituency I would happily vote for him. I don't and don't know where I'll find an agreeable alternative
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What he says about Starmer is correct of course and between him and Starmer we have the tragedy of the Labour Party and, in turn, the labour movement. Just one bit:
he made “very few contributions” other than advocating a second Brexit referendum, which contributed to the party’s crushing 2019 election defeat
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Absolutely, Starmer was at the heart of the slow motion car crash that was Labour's post referendum Brexit policy. The thing that added to the idea they weren't engaged with working class communites, that showed they couldn't come up with a working policy to save their lives, that they lacked the instincts to go for a full on worker's Brexit and the rest. But Corbyn was as much responsible for that drift, either unaware that he was opening the way for 'Get Brexit Done' populism or unable to act. And broken record as I am, it goes back to the failure to do anything with the Labour Party when they won control and had all those hundreds of thousands of members.

And here we are. Corbyn is fucked, the left in the party has been purged and Labour is now, literally, a creature of big business in terms of where it gets its funding. I feel sorry for Corbyn at a personal level and hope he wins as the tiniest bloody nose for Starmer. Also, people like Faiza Shaheen, though it doesn't look like either of them will. Starmer is hideous and will be so for probably 2 terms in government. There were all sorts of reasons why this happened, the media, the traitorous Parliamentary party in particular, but Corbyn and Momentum's lack of political imagination were the first act in this tragedy. :(
 
Wilf said:
What he says about Starmer is correct of course and between him and Starmer we have the tragedy of the Labour Party and, in turn, the labour movement. Just one bit:

Absolutely, Starmer was at the heart of the slow motion car crash that was Labour's post referendum Brexit policy. The thing that added to the idea they weren't engaged with working class communites, that showed they couldn't come up with a working policy to save their lives, that they lacked the instincts to go for a full on worker's Brexit and the rest. But Corbyn was as much responsible for that drift, either unaware that he was opening the way for 'Get Brexit Done' populism or unable to act. And broken record as I am, it goes back to the failure to do anything with the Labour Party when they won control and had all those hundreds of thousands of members.

And here we are. Corbyn is fucked, the left in the party has been purged and Labour is now, literally, a creature of big business in terms of where it gets its funding. I feel sorry for Corbyn at a personal level and hope he wins as the tiniest bloody nose for Starmer. Also, people like Faiza Shaheen, though it doesn't look like either of them will. Starmer is hideous and will be so for probably 2 terms in government. There were all sorts of reasons why this happened, the media, the traitorous Parliamentary party in particular, but Corbyn and Momentum's lack of political imagination were the first act in this tragedy. :(
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P.S. hash tag , sorry, that rant wasn't aimed at you. I've actually donated money to Faiza's campaign and also feel the need to vote for 'somebody'. It will be Transform, who are standing in my seat. I suppose all of that is a measure of how far things have gone when you feel the only political statement you can make is voting for a lost cause. Having said that, I suspect Labour in power might tip me back into actual activism again.
 
Wilf said:
Corbyn was as much responsible for that drift, either unaware that he was opening the way for 'Get Brexit Done' populism or unable to act.
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Going for consensus again and outvoted/hijacked by labour right?
Wilf said:
And broken record as I am, it goes back to the failure to do anything with the Labour Party when they won control and had all those hundreds of thousands of members.
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although NEC made the policy decisions didn't it? Conference too but I thought of that (and Momentum?) as more involved with the manifesto? (may well be wrong I know bugger all about who did what)
 
two sheds said:
Going for consensus again and outvoted/hijacked by labour right?

although NEC made the policy decisions didn't it? Conference too but I thought of that (and Momentum?) as more involved with the manifesto? (may well be wrong I know bugger all about who did what)
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I suspect I'm shakier on the details than you, but I remember a long period where Labour thought it would be a wizard wheeze just to let May's government self destruct over Brexit. The main strategy then was to back or refuse to back just about anything that might/might not lead to a vote of no confidence. Just as public annoyance was growing around the failure to implement Brexit. Then there were a series of formulations from Corbyn along the lines of 'this is out policy now, but the NEC will be meeting in 2 months and then I can answer your question'. For me it was all a sense of not getting what had driven Brexit, to the point of being more associated with the failure to get a deal than the actual Tory Party in power. Yes, of course, Starmer was at the heart of this also and the right of the party were in play, just as a further strand of their permanent rebellion against Corbyn.

I think you are right about consensus decision making and he was also immersed in the Party's traditional decision making process (conference and NEC). It was just the sands were shifting and those structures and formulations had become irrelevant as the Farage/Johnson vision came into being.
 
Wilf said:
What he says about Starmer is correct of course and between him and Starmer we have the tragedy of the Labour Party and, in turn, the labour movement. Just one bit:

Absolutely, Starmer was at the heart of the slow motion car crash that was Labour's post referendum Brexit policy. The thing that added to the idea they weren't engaged with working class communites, that showed they couldn't come up with a working policy to save their lives, that they lacked the instincts to go for a full on worker's Brexit and the rest. But Corbyn was as much responsible for that drift, either unaware that he was opening the way for 'Get Brexit Done' populism or unable to act. And broken record as I am, it goes back to the failure to do anything with the Labour Party when they won control and had all those hundreds of thousands of members.

And here we are. Corbyn is fucked, the left in the party has been purged and Labour is now, literally, a creature of big business in terms of where it gets its funding. I feel sorry for Corbyn at a personal level and hope he wins as the tiniest bloody nose for Starmer. Also, people like Faiza Shaheen, though it doesn't look like either of them will. Starmer is hideous and will be so for probably 2 terms in government. There were all sorts of reasons why this happened, the media, the traitorous Parliamentary party in particular, but Corbyn and Momentum's lack of political imagination were the first act in this tragedy. :(
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Depends which part of working class one is talking about. No one where I work thinks Brexit was good idea. The opposite in fact.

Nor my neighbours. All are working class and live and work in central London.

And chatting to one few days back and he reckoned Brexit was a major mistake. In his view UK should have stayed in.

He did say to me he could not stomach Starmer and might vote Green. And he is working class Londoner.

For a lot of people I know the political arguments about EU being against the interests of working class didn't mean anything.

It not that there was a drift. Working class are not some kind of homogenous group who all think the same way.
 
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Gramsci said:
Depends which part of working class one is talking about. No one where I work thinks Brexit was good idea. The opposite in fact.

Nor my neighbours. All are working class and live and work in central London.

And chatting to one few days back and he reckoned Brexit was a major mistake. In his view UK should have stayed in.

He did say to me he could not stomach Starmer and might vote Green. And he is working class Londoner.

For a lot of people I know the political arguments about EU being against the interests of working class didn't mean anything.

It not that there was a drift. Working class are not some kind of homogenous group who all think the same way.
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Yeah I agree Brexit has been shit and I didn't vote for it, or at all for that matter. I just think that once the vote was done there was only one possible line, to respect it and maximise workers protection, the environment and the rest. What emerged from Corbyn/Starmer was a mix of failed opportunism and no coherent line at all. It was no wonder they were bulldozed in 2019.
 
Wilf said:
I just think that once the vote was done there was only one possible line, to respect it and maximise workers protection, the environment and the rest.
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to be honest, that's broadly what i remember the labour line being in 2017. it was starmer and the blairites that buggered it up in 2019.

corbyn's difficulty (apart from the parliamentary party and the right wing cabal on the NEC running the party machine) was that his style was to respect the decisions of party conference and so on, rather than making the rules and policy up as he went along.
 
I've been really surprised by the number of online leftists who've gone canvassing for JC and promoted him as hard as possible. I don't really understand what they think they'll get out of it. Possibly they want to 'prove' that there is appetite for left wing politicians, but JC is the worst person to try and do this with. If he wins, all the Labour right will say is that he was liked as a constituency MP and therefore him winning doesn't mean anything about broader political trends. Then that will be that. I honestly don't get where they think it leads.

Sadly what I think it shows is that much of the left doesn't have any political strategy still, years after the Corbyn defeat. They either think this is a good strategy (because they are hopeless and wouldn't know a good strategy if it bit them in the arse) or they just want revenge, or some sort of emotional catharsis.
 
Puddy_Tat said:
to be honest, that's broadly what i remember the labour line being in 2017. it was starmer and the blairites that buggered it up in 2019.

corbyn's difficulty (apart from the parliamentary party and the right wing cabal on the NEC running the party machine) was that his style was to respect the decisions of party conference and so on, rather than making the rules and policy up as he went along.
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Yeah, it was a time for loud voices and simplicity, which he didn't possess. That's a good thing and something to aspire to in a 'mature democracy'. But this wasn't that moment.

Hastily adds... fuck parliamentary democracy, anyway!
 
Brainaddict said:
I've been really surprised by the number of online leftists who've gone canvassing for JC and promoted him as hard as possible. I don't really understand what they think they'll get out of it. Possibly they want to 'prove' that there is appetite for left wing politicians, but JC is the worst person to try and do this with. If he wins, all the Labour right will say is that he was liked as a constituency MP and therefore him winning doesn't mean anything about broader political trends. Then that will be that. I honestly don't get where they think it leads.

Sadly what I think it shows is that much of the left doesn't have any political strategy still, years after the Corbyn defeat. They either think this is a good strategy (because they are hopeless and wouldn't know a good strategy if it bit them in the arse) or they just want revenge, or some sort of emotional catharsis.
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Or they just want Corbyn to win because it would be a good thing, even if it's only really a good thing for the people of north Islington.

And helping to bring about a good thing is a good thing.

Doesn't have to be part of some grand strategy.
 
Brainaddict said:
I've been really surprised by the number of online leftists who've gone canvassing for JC and promoted him as hard as possible. I don't really understand what they think they'll get out of it. Possibly they want to 'prove' that there is appetite for left wing politicians, but JC is the worst person to try and do this with. If he wins, all the Labour right will say is that he was liked as a constituency MP and therefore him winning doesn't mean anything about broader political trends. Then that will be that. I honestly don't get where they think it leads.

Sadly what I think it shows is that much of the left doesn't have any political strategy still, years after the Corbyn defeat. They either think this is a good strategy (because they are hopeless and wouldn't know a good strategy if it bit them in the arse) or they just want revenge, or some sort of emotional catharsis.
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Yes to all of that, but I do hope he wins. If nothing else because Labour winning Islington North would be the piece de resistance of Starmer's victory in the Labour Party. But yes, if there's to be any left progress, I don't think it starts with Corbyn.
 
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