Labour leadership

[nino_savatte]

Unfortunately Corbyn's age will be an issue for many voters and you'd be deluding yourself to think otherwise.

Well, that myth has been debunked by the large numbers of young people flocking to his rallies. You've clearly invested heavily in the postmodern idea of politics in which appearances matter more than substance. I think the only one deluding themselves is you.

 

[redcogs]

The thing that matters most is the mobilisation of significant numbers of people who are committed to ending a social system that's based in privilege inequality and corruption. Some (maybe many?) in the Corbyn groundswell are winnable to such an understanding, and could be persuaded that a different system of society is worth struggling for - on the streets and picket lines when necessary.

Just getting the Tories out of parliament and replacing them with other red tories wastes the time of everybody (apart from the career oriented Chukka Burnham types).

 

[J Ed]

The thing that matters most is the mobilisation of significant numbers of people who are committed to ending a social system that's based in privilege inequality and corruption. Some (maybe many?) in the Corbyn groundswell are winnable to such an understanding, and could be persuaded that a different system of society is worth struggling for - on the streets and picket lines when necessary.

This is what we need to see out of all of this - a translation of this support into a wider social movement which can put boots on the streets for extraparliamentary politics. If this doesn't materialise then it will all have been for nothing imo.

 

[nino_savatte]

What makes you think that most of the Labour Party stand for what JC stands for, or more importantly that enough voters share what he stands for and put Labour into government?

Jesus H Christ. You're not actually paying that much attention to what's happening. Have you seen the numbers at Corbyn's rallies?

 

[Andrew Hertford]

Getting the Tories out isn't the most important thing. Let's break that myth right now. We did that in 1997 and it's just led to Britain becoming a very similar kind of place than it would have done under the Tories anyway. Labour privatised things, didn't invest in housing, started the process of private money being key in the NHS, and promoted greed and selfishness.

It's much more important to start to build an opposition that doesn't get us to the same place as the Tories slightly more slowly.
It's much more important to build an alternative that may bring real change. It's time for politics to have some meaning. The strings of empty sentences from career politicians who only half mean them need to go. Let's have conviction politics that motivates and emotionally connects with people.

Labour has ceased to be a socialist party. It's ceased to be a socially democratic party. It's time to do its job or get out of the way.

Yeah? How long do you want us to wait for this 'real alternative conviction socialism' to turn up and win an election? I know elderly people who are suffering now, I know teachers who can't wait to retire, young people who can't afford a home or who are going to be paying off their student loans for most of their adult lives.

 

[J Ed]

Yeah? How long do you want us to wait for this 'real alternative conviction socialism' to turn up and win an election? I know elderly people who are suffering now, I know teachers who can't wait to retire, young people who can't afford a home or who are going to be paying off their student loans for most of their adult lives.

So how is running a Tory manifesto which doesn't win an election anyway going to help all of them then?

 

[nino_savatte]

Yeah? How long do you want us to wait for this 'real alternative conviction socialism' to turn up and win an election? I know elderly people who are suffering now, I know teachers who can't wait to retire, young people who can't afford a home or who are going to be paying off their student loans for most of their adult lives.

Strangely enough, many elderly people are also flocking to Corbyn's rallies. Do you honestly think the Blairite postmodernists have anything to offer them or young people when they: 1. abstained on the Welfare Bill and 2. walked through the 'aye' lobby with the Tories on the vote for the benefit cap?

 

[maomao]

What makes you think that most of the Labour Party stand for what JC stands for, or more importantly that enough voters share what he stands for and put Labour into government?

I didn't say that. I said that the rest of the PLP stand for precisely fuck all and represent no-one except themselves and that won't get them elected.

 

[Favelado]

Yeah? How long do you want us to wait for this 'real alternative conviction socialism' to turn up and win an election? I know elderly people who are suffering now, I know teachers who can't wait to retire, young people who can't afford a home or who are going to be paying off their student loans for most of their adult lives.

That's because of the legacy of Labour governments. It's also what Labour would continue to do anyway. Your Labour lost the election anyway so shut up.

 

[andysays]

You've completely twisted my point. My politics are similar to JC's, but what matters most is getting the tories out of power and only Labour can do that and they can only do it by appealing to the wider electorate.

But you've equated "appealing to the wider electorate" with having Tory-lite Chuka Umunna as the leader, rather than building a vaguely principled alternative to the Tories, which now appears to be getting some support with the very wider electorate you're saying need to be appealed to.

Not only are you a Blairite, you're living in the past if you think that approach will work now or in the future.

ETA: and of course you claim your politics are "similar to JC's" but apparently the "wider electorate" aren't able to appreciate them, so they have be offered Tory-lite instead.

Not just a Blairite, but fucking patronising with it

 

[maomao]

An actively left wing opposition would drag the debate to the left and probably result in most people being marginally better off under a Tory government than they would be under a right wing labour government anyway.

 

[Favelado]

Not only are you a Blairite, you're living in the past if you think that approach will work now or in the future.

This is also important. The idea that Blairites are modernisers is bullshit. Thatcherite neo-liberalism and its variants are now in their 5th decade of British government. It's not consensus so much as dogma.

It's time for something else. We're crying out for a change

 

[YouSir]

Yeah? How long do you want us to wait for this 'real alternative conviction socialism' to turn up and win an election? I know elderly people who are suffering now, I know teachers who can't wait to retire, young people who can't afford a home or who are going to be paying off their student loans for most of their adult lives.

And what will Burnham, Chukka, Cooper, Kendall or Hunt do about any of those things? What did Labour do last time? I qualify as at least one of the things listed and as I recall they did fuck all. Nor do the acolytes of those Tory lite types do anything about it on a local level.

 

[DotCommunist]

I have to say the sight of anarchos and kabbes getting pissed and joining the £3 pound club has amused me no end. Not that I'm mocking, its just funny- you've had a drink, you've perhaps partaken of a hempen pipe. Fuck it, its only three quid lol

 

[redcogs]

There are probably worse ways of spending £3.00, but i confess that i couldn't bring myself to do it.

Its all a bit conflicting.

 

[Ole]

This Tory boy summarises the value of a Corbyn-led Labour Party rather well (presented by him as a warning to #ToriesforCorbyn).

“Corbyn would still have six questions at PMQs. His frontbench would still have a representative on Question Time and Newsnight. His party’s policy announcements and press releases would get just as much news coverage as a credible opposition.

“In short, Labour being Labour, they’ll still have the same platform … The only difference is Corbyn’s views will be more left-wing, so will shift the entire political debate to the left. Long-term, so long as Labour and the Conservatives remain the two major parties in the UK, the only way to make progress is to persuade Labour to accept our position. Our ideas don’t win just when our party does, but when the other party advocates our ideas, too.

“Instead, a Corbyn victory would lend credibility to the far-left … giving a megaphone to their [politics]. Inevitably, this would skew the discourse, letting Corbyn’s ideas become the default alternative to the Conservatives. Corbyn’s brand of socialism would poison the groundwater of British politics for a generation: influencing people, particularly young people, across the political spectrum.

“All of the above applies if he loses the general election. … [But that’s] not a foregone conclusion. Indeed, in 1975, Margaret Thatcher was widely portrayed as ‘unelectable’. Her election as party leader was cheered by Labour as playing to the Conservative base and guaranteeing yet another Conservative defeat. Three general election landslides later, nobody was left worrying about her electability.

“… as Harold Macmillan said, governments can always be undermined by “Events, dear boy, events.” And if he were leader, it would take just one event – from the collapse of the Eurozone to a domestic political scandal – to put Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10. For the sake of the country and for the innumerable Conservative achievements he’d unwind, it is important that that option be taken off the table.

“I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn would win the 2020 election – but then I don’t think Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, or Liz Kendall would either. … But there’s always that risk of the unexpected. So while Corbyn doesn’t reduce the risk of Labour winning, he does raise the stakes. And the danger of bringing socialism back to the UK under Jeremy Corbyn is all too real a threat for #ToriesAgainstCorbyn to risk.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...vote-for-Jeremy-Corbyn.-It-wont-end-well.html

 

[nino_savatte]

Instead, a Corbyn victory would lend credibility to the far-left …

And the Tory victory didn't lend credibility to the far-right? FFS.

 

[YouSir]

This Tory boy summarises the value of a Corbyn-led Labour Party rather well (presented by him as a warning to #ToriesforCorbyn).

“Corbyn would still have six questions at PMQs. His frontbench would still have a representative on Question Time and Newsnight. His party’s policy announcements and press releases would get just as much news coverage as a credible opposition.

“In short, Labour being Labour, they’ll still have the same platform … The only difference is Corbyn’s views will be more left-wing, so will shift the entire political debate to the left. Long-term, so long as Labour and the Conservatives remain the two major parties in the UK, the only way to make progress is to persuade Labour to accept our position. Our ideas don’t win just when our party does, but when the other party advocates our ideas, too.

“Instead, a Corbyn victory would lend credibility to the far-left … giving a megaphone to their [politics]. Inevitably, this would skew the discourse, letting Corbyn’s ideas become the default alternative to the Conservatives. Corbyn’s brand of socialism would poison the groundwater of British politics for a generation: influencing people, particularly young people, across the political spectrum.

“All of the above applies if he loses the general election. … [But that’s] not a foregone conclusion. Indeed, in 1975, Margaret Thatcher was widely portrayed as ‘unelectable’. Her election as party leader was cheered by Labour as playing to the Conservative base and guaranteeing yet another Conservative defeat. Three general election landslides later, nobody was left worrying about her electability.

“… as Harold Macmillan said, governments can always be undermined by “Events, dear boy, events.” And if he were leader, it would take just one event – from the collapse of the Eurozone to a domestic political scandal – to put Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10. For the sake of the country and for the innumerable Conservative achievements he’d unwind, it is important that that option be taken off the table.

“I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn would win the 2020 election – but then I don’t think Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, or Liz Kendall would either. … But there’s always that risk of the unexpected. So while Corbyn doesn’t reduce the risk of Labour winning, he does raise the stakes. And the danger of bringing socialism back to the UK under Jeremy Corbyn is all too real a threat for #ToriesAgainstCorbyn to risk.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...vote-for-Jeremy-Corbyn.-It-wont-end-well.html

Finally a positive article about Corbyn...

 

[killer b]

it's obviously only one survey, but the data in here (which is borne out by other surveys) shows wide support even within tory voters for much of Corbyn's platform. pages 15 onwards on this pdf.

 

[DotCommunist]

There are probably worse ways of spending £3.00, but i confess that i couldn't bring myself to do it.

Its all a bit conflicting.

Me niether. In the remarkable chance of a C-Byn in No.10 he'd still need harrying from the left. And anyway I swore I'd never vote labour again over a decade ago.

 

[J Ed]

Article in the FT, the ruling class is starting to take Corbyn seriously

 

[killer b]

can't read it, can you c&p?

 

[J Ed]

If Britain’s Labour party chooses Jeremy Corbyn as its leader, no historical comparison will do the event justice. Parties have been eccentrically led before — Labour by Michael Foot in the 1980s, the Conservatives by Iain Duncan Smith in the last decade — but this committed socialist, with his taste for nationalisation at home and pacifism abroad, represents another order of stridency altogether.

Nor does the continental boom in far-left politics offer a point of reference. Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece are scrappy young parties that define themselves against the mainstream. Labour, by contrast, is more than a century old. It has provided five prime ministers since the second world war. The sudden transformation of an established party is more shocking than the eruption of a new one.


It is easier to understand Corbynism as a process of venting than as a blueprint for power. Many of the young idealists and trade union members who support him know he cannot win a general election. Their goal is a full-throated protest movement against fiscal austerity and “neoliberalism”. They are redefining the purpose of politics.

This is legitimate, exciting and, for Labour, catastrophic. A Corbyn leadership would immediately pit moderates against hardliners, risking the kind of formal split that occurred in the 1980s.

Even if Mr Corbyn is quickly deposed, the radioactive half-life would last for years. The governing Conservatives would portray Labour as a party that is always vulnerable to an extremist lurch. Voters, who rejected Labour resoundingly in May, would have no trouble believing that. Even if Mr Corbyn narrowly loses out to Yvette Cooper, the leadership rival who finally spoke out against him on Thursday, the sheer scale of his following would drag her to the left.

In short, there is now no good outcome for Labour. But gleeful Tories should worry about the damage to the body politic, too. An absence of serious opposition cannot be healthy in a system that already concentrates power in the executive. It also raises questions of protocol: should the government share sensitive information about national security with the opposition leader, as is the convention? If Mr Corbyn’s economic policies are quaint, his outlook on foreign policy is more troubling, as is some of the company he keeps in the anti-war movement.

Then there is the potential for havoc in the Tory party itself. Rebellious MPs might write off the opposition and assume they can now cause trouble for David Cameron, the prime minister, without consequences. Fear of the enemy has glued the Tories together in the past but it would fade if Labour became plainly unelectable. Mr Cameron has a slim majority in parliament and a divisive referendum on EU membership to get through. If a Corbyn-led Labour party campaigns for Brexit, some Tories will not forgive Mr Cameron for doing the opposite.

It is customary to see the Corbyn sensation as part of a broader crisis of moderate social democracy in Europe. But there was nothing inevitable about it. Labour chose to move left in the last parliament, inadvertently preparing the ground for someone like Mr Corbyn. Labour chose to open up its leadership election to activists with no real commitment to the party. And Labour MPs with no intention of voting for Mr Corbyn chose to nominate him to widen the range of views in the contest.

Folly upon folly has brought a grand political party to this predicament, from which it is not certain to recover. That would be bad enough. The potential harm to the rest of British public life is just as worrying.

 

[scifisam]

An actively left wing opposition would drag the debate to the left and probably result in most people being marginally better off under a Tory government than they would be under a right wing labour government anyway.

Yup. He would never have ordered his members to abstain on the austerity vote, for example. It's not only the ruling party that determines which bills get passed.

 

[redcogs]

FT marxists know that "a part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeoise society", as they often say down the pub.

This article recognises the European dimension to the emerging left opposition to capitals excesses, and suggests they are rattled. Lets hope this time that their trepidation is well founded, and the side of sanity and social justice will begin the process of forcefully asserting itself.

 

[Andrew Hertford]

But you've equated "appealing to the wider electorate" with having Tory-lite Chuka Umunna as the leader, rather than building a vaguely principled alternative to the Tories, which now appears to be getting some support with the very wider electorate you're saying need to be appealed to.

Not only are you a Blairite, you're living in the past if you think that approach will work now or in the future.

ETA: and of course you claim your politics are "similar to JC's" but apparently the "wider electorate" aren't able to appreciate them, so they have be offered Tory-lite instead.

Not just a Blairite, but fucking patronising with it

Hilarious.

I've been on the Labour left for 35 years and yet here's some wally patronising me and telling me I'm a Blairite simply because I dare to suggest that for the sake of the elderly, the poor and the vulnerable, even a watered down Labour government is always better than a tory government.

Those who say the tory and Labour Parties are exactly the same are deluding themselves.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Christ, what ever made you think I was a Blairite!?? If I was ever an 'ite' then I was a Bennite, but I've known since the 80s that to get keep the tories out of government Labour needs to appeal across the political spectrum and JC just doesn't do that. He may be flavour of the month at the the moment, but unfortunately not enough British voters will vote for a Labour party led by a 71 year old committed to (among other things) dropping the nuclear 'deterrent'. That's the reality.

For the sick, the elderly, the poor and those of us who support free state funded public services, even a Blairite Labour government is always going to be better than a tory one.

Chuka Umunna would have stood the best chance of winning the next election for Labour but sadly that's no longer an option. None of the other candidates are exactly inspirational, but any one of them could be a potential PM.... although they may have to depend on other factors such the tories fucking up the economy or being in government at the start of another Global downturn, or of the electorate simply being sick of Cameron by then.

Chuka Umunna, through what some claim was opportunism (to give himself a better chance as leader in 2020), and others claim was cowardice (proximity of media to details about his private life that he didn't want revealed), shot himself in the foot by withdrawing. What he didn't think through was that his action has also marked his card "do not trust" with some of the party faithful.

 

[ViolentPanda]

What's the difference between a 'pragmatic' bennite and a blairite? Like, practically, not what's in your immortal souls?

A Blairite admits to wallowing in neoliberalism. A pragmatic Bennite still wallows, but refuses to admit to it.

 

[free spirit]

Hilarious.

I've been on the Labour left for 35 years and yet here's some wally patronising me and telling me I'm a Blairite simply because I dare to suggest that for the sake of the elderly, the poor and the vulnerable, even a watered down Labour government is always better than a tory government.

Those who say the tory and Labour Parties are exactly the same are deluding themselves.

Labour have got fuck all chance with any of the other 3 candidates though.

Corbyn's a wild card, and look at the momentum he's built up in the last couple of months while barely putting a foot wrong, and managing somehow to turn all the mud that's being thrown at him to his advantage. If he can repeat that feat for Labour with the leadership, then there's all to play for at the next election. He's even got supporters coming back to Labour from UKIP, which would be another way of winning seats from the tories rather than chasing tory votes by adopting tory-lite policies.

If you're Labour left, then please don't blow the only chance we'll probably get in this generation of actually getting a prime minister elected who stands for something worth fighting for, rather than just someone who's not quite as bad as the tories but accepts and implements much of their policies anyway.

 

[Knotted]

The poll said that 32% or respondents (the highest score of all the candidates) would be more likely to vote labour with corbyn in charge. Completely different to what Hertford suggested, and tbh totally meaningless when applied to a general election in 5 years time.

It's an incredibly high figure. People who voted labour last time and will vote labour again if Corbyn wins are not included in that 32%.