Jeremy Corbyn's time is up

[butchersapron]

AAAAAND I was beaten to it, by several other posters.

I agree it could play well with some - the line that he's not a team leader or team player - but it might have been better if they had run with that one.

And it's hard to be a team leader or a team player, if you spent your life arguing for a different game than the one Lillian G. wants to play.

...and there's just so much missing from that letter that no ones knows what's going on. Maybe she had been cold shouldering corbyn's team and effectively put herself out of the loop in protest, maybe she was the incompetent one and missed something. Maybe she had been up to something else that clashed and so was avoiding anything that might put her own plans in jeopardy. When we're presented with what, at first glance, appears to be an information filled genuine account but that, on further scrutiny, appears to be almost skeletal in substantive detail, then i think we have to ask what's going on her with this person - esp if it's a person from a group of people we spend day after day, year after year, arguing are almost wholly untrustworthy and devious self-interested manipulators.

 

[killer b]

I note she didn't resign at that point - and was indeed kept on. She waited 6 months to do it until the point when it might do the most damage. Corbyn surely cannot base reshuffles around a date one shadow cabinet members feels is very important or how hard their team has worked on what she feels is important. Maybe she should have brought her concerns forward and maybe they could have been addressed. Maybe they were and she's decided to keep tactically quiet about that - i don't know. I do know i don't trust the oxbrdridge MP though - esp as she's the 2nd one out the traps with this new angle.

I remember at the time of the reshuffle there being a facepalm from all sides that he was spiking his own party's public transport policy launch.

I don't doubt that this is a partial account released now to do the most damage, but it's still very convincing, and the many of the facts presented are known and indisputable.

 

[red & green]

BFF of Heidi Alexander ....

 

[butchersapron]

Talking of the reshuffle:

The shadow transport secretary, Lilian Greenwood, told Sky News’s Murnaghan that the party should “get on with holding the government to account rather than talking about internal Labour party matters”.

 

[Idris2002]

...and there's just so much missing from that letter that no ones knows what's going on. Maybe she had been cold shouldering corbyn's team and effectively put herself out of the loop in protest, maybe she was the incompetent one and missed something. Maybe she had been up to something else that clashed and so was avoiding anything that might put her own plans in jeopardy. When we're presented with what, at first glance, appears to be an information filled genuine account but that, on further scrutiny, appears to be almost skeletal in substantive detail, then i think we have to ask what's going on her with this person - esp if it's a person from a group of people we spend day after day, year after year, arguing are almost wholly untrustworthy and devious self-interested manipulators.

Given that I was already defriended by one facebook contact, I have had to resist jerking my knee and posting that on the page of the facebooker I referred to in my previous post. Maybe I should just lawyer up, hit the gym and delete facebook.

Your point about the 'first glance' is well made. Instead of leading with 'Jeremy Corbyn is an avatar of the Horned Deceiver, sent here to destroy the planet Earth', this one is cool, calm and collected. But still waters run deep.

 

[Hocus Eye.]

Oh dear! I would like to hear Corbyn's response to this.

 

[butchersapron]

I remember at the time of the reshuffle there being a facepalm from all sides that he was spiking his own party's public transport policy launch.

I don't doubt that this is a partial account released now to do the most damage, but it's still very convincing, and the many of the facts presented are known and indisputable.

Not saying this isn't the case, but i'm having difficulties finding any public criticism of the timing.

 

[eoin_k]

It seems a bit ironic that Lilian Greenwood's main criticism of Corbyn's leadership relates to poor timing, what with the leadership challenge letting the Tories off the hook for what could have been a once-in-a-generation political crisis.

 

[butchersapron]

If you check google news, the media had been speculating about a reshuffle for ages, weeks before the monday announcement - that was the news at that point. A public transport policy announcement was never going to knock that off the headlines. No matter how strongly Greenwood felt that it should.

 

[butchersapron]

Also, if the work had all been done, as she says it had been, why not ask to do the launch either on the actual day - the sat 2nd, or postpone it for a week or 4 days. She says the fuss had died down in three days. The reshuffle was finished weds night.

 

[scifisam]

I really don't care about competence in comparison to sound policies, following through on promises, a tendency towards not being a total bastard, etc. Competence can be learned.

 

[J Ed]

I am starting to think that Corbyn actually stands a chance of losing the leadership election.

 

[two sheds]

And two of Lilian's criticisms are (although fair enough that he seemed to be briefing against his staff) that he doesn't like HS2 and seemed to prefer a Leave vote. Both quite tenable positions really - the latter being compatible with his 70/30 pro/anti the EU.

 

[billy_bob]

I really don't care about competence in comparison to sound policies, following through on promises, a tendency towards not being a total bastard, etc. Competence can be learned.

Well, you kind of need both, I guess. But this 'it's about competence not ideology' is bullshit anyway. The people who say it will not go on to promote a candidate whom they believe is like Corbyn ideologically but more competent, will they? They'll line up behind another post-Blairite careerist shell of a politician, occasionally mumbling along to social-democratic lyrics without any idea what key the song's in.

 

[Wilf]

I really don't care about competence in comparison to sound policies, following through on promises, a tendency towards not being a total bastard, etc. Competence can be learned.

In some kind of thought experiment, I could just about see Corbyn as PM, something like a chairman/president figure, leading a cabinet of all the talents. For that to happen, all the stars would have to be lined up in his favour. At the moment, they aren't - Labour is behind in the polls and he isn't surrounded by a bunch of inventive potential ministers. Most of all, as was mentioned a few pages back about economic policy, he/they are not doing the vision thing - and as a variant on that he hasn't re-engaged with the working class. Yes, I know I'm playing the logic of Westminster politics and saying the things BBC commentators would say, but that's the game Corbyn has chosen play and, for the moment, is the ground on which the labour left still seeks to fight.

 

[scifisam]

And two of Lilian's criticisms are (although fair enough that he seemed to be briefing against his staff) that he doesn't like HS2 and seemed to prefer a Leave vote. Both quite tenable positions really - the latter being compatible with his 70/30 pro/anti the EU.

I found the lukewarm pro-remain positions more persuasive because they admitted that there are problems but leaving is not a good idea, at least not right now. Much more believable than yay, everything in the EU is great and anyone who doesn't think so is a racist!

 

[DotCommunist]

I am starting to think that Corbyn actually stands a chance of losing the leadership election.

if he does then it really is the end for the labour left.

 

[DotCommunist]

chairman

steady on...

 

[Wilf]

steady on...

I'm from one of those earlier centuries.

 

[billy_bob]

I found the lukewarm pro-remain positions more persuasive because they admitted that there are problems but leaving is not a good idea, at least not right now. Much more believable than yay, everything in the EU is great and anyone who doesn't think so is a racist!

I don't know anyone who voted remain who doesn't feel lukewarm and sceptical about the EU. On the surface of it, Corbyn's (apparent) attitude to it would seem to be in tune with that of most remainers.

 

[Idris2002]

BFF of Heidi Alexander ....

Didn't they both share a flat with Pippi Longstocking?

 

[Cakes]

It seems a bit ironic that Lilian Greenwood's main criticism of Corbyn's leadership relates to poor timing, what with the leadership challenge letting the Tories off the hook for what could have been a once-in-a-generation political crisis.

It does seem a bit thin if this is supposed to be helping us understand what a terrible leader he is. Bad enough to deserve even an individual resignation

Interesting to be reading these more specific critiques of his failures though. From Greenwood and Debbonair. Wonder if we'll be seeing a run of these.

 

[Wilf]

I found the lukewarm pro-remain positions more persuasive because they admitted that there are problems but leaving is not a good idea, at least not right now. Much more believable than yay, everything in the EU is great and anyone who doesn't think so is a racist!

I agree actually, it was - cliché alert - 'grown up politics', even if I disagreed with it. Somehow though it all got added to the narrative of 'isn't he shit'. The referendum was a lost opportunity for Labour, a reasonable message, badly executed, that failed to get any purchase.

 

[killer b]

Wonder if we'll be seeing a run of these.

without a doubt.

 

[billy_bob]

if he does then it really is the end for the labour left.

I guess the Labour right don't feel they've got as much to lose on this front. If they beat him, you're right. If they lose, they may get some ridicule on sites like this, where no-one likes them anyway, but their overwhelmingly superior access to money and media outlets will enable them to continue the business of undermining JC by any means necessary as if there had never been a second leadership election. Party members who voted for him twice might be outraged, but I'm not sure how significant a proportion of the wider electorate will be...

 

[Cakes]

without a doubt.

Good to see them leading with these heavy hitters then!

The next one needs to leave out the "imagine if your boss did something like that" line though, because it just makes me think, well actually he does do that and I have a bit of a bitch behind his back and then get on with it.

 

[billy_bob]

Wonder if we'll be seeing a run of these.

without a doubt.

Probably hardly needs saying, but McDonnell was at pains to stress this at a Momentum thing the other day. It's all been very obviously timed in successive waves, just haphazard enough to look spontaneous to someone not really paying attention but always conveniently aligning so that as soon as the fuss around one thing dies down, something else pops up to replace it.

 

[J Ed]

without a doubt.

Yes I think that the PLP or whoever is advising them have realised that this whole hysterical 'Berniebro' victimhood narrative isn't going to work with many people beyond those who already dislike Corbyn anyway. Good propaganda has at least a basis in truth, and you can mix in some lies with that truth which seems now to be what is happening.

 

[J Ed]

Probably hardly needs saying, but McDonnell was at pains to stress this at a Momentum thing the other day. It's all been very obviously timed in successive waves, just haphazard enough to look spontaneous to someone not really paying attention but always conveniently aligning so that as soon as the fuss around one thing dies down, something else pops up to replace it.

Yes, it is worth remembering that political obsessives aren't the targets of this PR offensive.

At the very least I suppose we all now know what the entire media and political class going in on a socialist leader looks like in Britain.

 

[J Ed]

if he does then it really is the end for the labour left.

Perhaps I just have my pessimist hat on today but to be completely honest I think that you are right and that it will be another step along the road we are on towards the eventual replacement of Labour as the main pole of opposition with UKIP. Not entirely unlike the situation in France, Hungary and other European countries.