Labour leadership

[ViolentPanda]

He's a career politician, of course he wants it. You can bet he's happy as larry to find the spotlight again in what he must have assumed to be the twilight of his career. He just doesn't have that gleam of unnatural lust the others have in their eyes

Or the sense of deservingness and ownership that they feel.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Which left wing politics would those be then?

That'll be the ones that don't exist in the mainstream of the Parliamentary Labour Party at the mo.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The Miliband problem is crucial really.

if it had been David, Labour could have trounced the coalition.

Have you followed Miliband. D's career? Perhaps perused the more neutral biographies of his time in government? He did the sum of nothing except toe the party line, to give any impression that he might have functioned as a better party leader than his younger brother, and his reaction to defeat indicated a degree of petulance that even Gordon Brown would have been ashamed to manifest.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'm not so sure. I think the media could have decided that the elder brother was a right weirdo, just as they did with Ed, and with the same bad press, the same problems in Scotland (or worse), the same attraction of UKIP, the same distrust of Labour on immigration, the same inability to get half-hearted supporters out to vote, the same half-plausible claims that the Tories had been vindicated on the economy etc... it could all have ended up just as it did in fact end up. What special talent or strategy did David have that would have led to a Labour victory?

There's nothing in his history to indicate a talent for command. The main "qualification" he appears to have held (according to his advocates) is an adherence to Blairist "third way" ideology as the credible way of doing politics.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

Beat me to it.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

Then again...

 

[Hocus Eye.]

I didn't think that Corbyn was wearing a vest under his shirt. I always thought it was a white T shirt. I often wear a T shirt with a shirt over it. It will be a black one or a coloured one. The chants about his shirt being scruffy don't ring true to me. In the photographs of him I have seen of his appearances with audiences, his shirts appeared to be quite expensive and freshly ironed.

One paper even tried to compare him with Michael Foot and his "donkey jacket", that is a case of the newspapers believing their own lies. Michael Foot was not wearing a donkey jacket at the Senotaph, it was an expensive coat from a Saville Row taylor. But if they can suggest a similarity with a previously demonised and notorious left winger (who once he was no longer in opposition but in the cabinet had ceased to be left wing) then they can create their news media monster character.

 

[magneze]

Then again...

In comparison Ed could really show a bacon sandwich who was boss.

 

[Mation]

18c dildo found in a puritan womans toilet, Boston.

I completely saw this as a person in a protective yellow suit and red headgear carrying a massive cock under their arm

 

[DotCommunist]

I completely saw this as a person in a protective yellow suit and red headgear carrying a massive cock under their arm

He'd have to be one large figure in a hazmat suit to carry a cock that size under one arm!

 

[J Ed]

So it looks like the Tories have decided to choose their battle with Corbyn and they're going with culture war/foreign policy

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/aug/31/faslane-naval-base-clyde-500m-jobs-george-osborne

In an article for the Sun to coincide with the announcement, Osborne said that a Labour party aligned with the SNP on Trident would threaten the country’s security. He said that Corbyn’s candidacy should not be treated as a joke.

“On the contrary, I think we should take it deadly seriously,” he wrote. “For the new unilateralists of British politics are a threat to our future national security and to our economic security. We’re going to take on their dangerous arguments and defeat them.”

...

“Now that consensus, which is so important for our security and reliability as an ally, risks being shattered again by an unholy alliance of Labour’s leftwing insurgents and the Scottish nationalists.”

Is the general public gullible enough to buy a reds under beds narrative in 2015?

 

[maomao]

Is the general public gullible enough to buy a reds under beds narrative in 2015?

It's not reds under the bed he's trying to invoke a fear of, it's sandal-wearing pacifists. Two-thirds of the population support a nuclear deterrent. He's probably correctly picked Corbyn's least popular policy for his attack.

 

[Pickman's model]

Do you think it is right and proper that the weight of a Labour £3 newcomer to be equivalent to that of an historic member?

do you think it right and proper the callowest solicitor is listened to in magistrstes courts with the same respect accorded qcs?

 

[Lo Siento.]

Anyway - all this is useless.

He will get the nomination and left wing politics - real politics, mind, not theoretical lamentations - will be sunk for a generation.

I've yet to see any rational explanation as to why this would be the case. If Corbyn wins and is unpopular, it's very unlikely he'll be the Labour candidate at the next election. So where does this expectation that having Corbyn as leader will salt the Earth for a Labour Government "for a generation" come from?

 

[Lo Siento.]

I'm not so sure. I think the media could have decided that the elder brother was a right weirdo, just as they did with Ed, and with the same bad press, the same problems in Scotland (or worse), the same attraction of UKIP, the same distrust of Labour on immigration, the same inability to get half-hearted supporters out to vote, the same half-plausible claims that the Tories had been vindicated on the economy etc... it could all have ended up just as it did in fact end up. What special talent or strategy did David have that would have led to a Labour victory?

Given the relatively stable economy in May 2015, it's hard to envisage a Labour leader who would've got support from any newspaper other than the usual Guardian/Mirror.

 

[Pickman's model]

Given the relatively stable economy in May 2015, it's hard to envisage a Labour leader who would've got support from any newspaper other than the usual Guardian/Mirror.

stable? comatose

 

[Artaxerxes]

stable? comatose

Dead is stable

 

[brogdale]

A union boss has come under-fire for calling Tony Blair a “neo-liberal, multi-millionaire, war-mongerer” with nothing useful to say about the Labour leadership race.

Deservedly so; Blair clearly has 'useful' things to say about the leadership contest.

 

[Pickman's model]

Deservedly so; Blair clearly has 'useful' things to say about the leadership contest.

"the sound of silence"

 

[treelover]

Attention is now inevitably focused on "Team Corbyn". Who will be in the inner circle in the Leader of the Opposition's suite of offices in Norman Shaw South if he wins on September 12? The answer, equally inevitably, is a ragbag of Trots, anti-war veterans, trade unionists and malcontent and rebel MPs.

In the early days of the leadership contest, the Corbyn campaign was chaotic. "You couldn't get them to reply to calls in the early days," one veteran who has covered many a leadership contest told me. "Now they do reply, but it's erratic. They seem better organised at the Corbyn rallies."

Three members of "Team Corbyn" are called Fletcher, though they're not related. Fletcher No. 1 is Simon, a geeky-looking ex-member of the Trotskyist group Socialist Action who was once described as "the bloke Ken Livingstone sends out for the pizzas" when Ken was London mayor.

Fletcher No. 2 is Kat, a former far-left president of the National Union of Students and now an Islington councillor and Corbyn's election agent. But her day job is working for Handmade Pubs, a small London pub chain, so she can't be all bad.

Fletcher No. 3 is Harry, a familiar face on Sky News and other news programmes over the years when he was the mouthpiece for the probation officers' Union, NAPO. I used to think he talked a lot of sense and had no idea he was such a leftie!

Not many MPs are fully paid up Corbynistas. Jon Trickett, a big, bluff and often discontented Yorkshireman, who used to be a plumber, will be delighted that the trickle of support for Corbyn in the early days has now splurged into a flood.


http://www.totalpolitics.com/opinio...ttention-turns-to-his-fellow-travellers.thtml

Sky Head Journo shows his colours

 

[brogdale]

Sky Head Journo shows his colours

Anyone so employed has already revealed enough colour.

 

[treelover]

Sisters for Corbyn, great photo

Faslane move is first in Tory plot to frame 'peacenik' Corbyn

George Osborne’s announcement of extra £500m for nuclear base is made with eye on 2020 general election

http://www.theguardian.com/politics...-frame-peacenik-jeremy-corbyn-nuclear-trident

btw new article on Osborne's plan of attack

 

[agricola]

It's not reds under the bed he's trying to invoke a fear of, it's sandal-wearing pacifists. Two-thirds of the population support a nuclear deterrent. He's probably correctly picked Corbyn's least popular policy for his attack.

That is no doubt what Gideon thinks - but there is quite a bit of difference between "supporting a nuclear deterrent", and "supporting the replacement of a weapons system that we will (hopefully) never use and which takes immense sums of money away from the conventional forces, leaving progressively fewer of them to ride around in ever-older equipment doing an ever longer list of things for not much money at all and at considerably increased risk".

 

[gimesumtruf]

A bulwark against Corbyn and a wedge for the SNP between their trident policy and the faslane workforce. The tories might be a-holes but they are better politicians than the labour lot at the mo.

 

[Artaxerxes]

A bulwark against Corbyn and a wedge for the SNP between their trident policy and the faslane workforce. The tories might be a-holes but they are better politicians than the labour lot at the mo.

Not hard, the Labour party has been a hollow shell since shortly after Blair got in. If not before.

The problem with big name politics is they don't allow other big names in, instead we have a party that since at least 2001 has been sitting around sniping and back stabbing rather than forging an identity or connecting with voters. Milliband only got in because he was fairly harmless and they spent the next 5 years stabbing him in the arse.

 

[8115]

The thing about Corbyn is I'd rather stake my hopes on a fraction of a percentage chance that we could end up with a decent government and social justice in the end than give up and support the neoliberals because it's the only realistic option. I'd rather go down dreaming.

When are the results in? My nerves are shot to bits already.

 

[8115]

Results are announced on 12th.

 

[DotCommunist]

I'd make the argument that being as we're basically on the UN SC in order to give the yanks a double vote on anything, ever, and we have loads of their air bases we can rely on uncle sam's vast stock of nukes to protect us from Evil Putin and resurgent mother russia

 

[DotCommunist]

Deservedly so; Blair clearly has 'useful' things to say about the leadership contest.

let him talk long and loud I say.

 

[8115]

Even if Corbyn doesn't win it'll still cheer me up as I watch Labour try and wriggle out of embarrassing blatant vote rigging