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Labour leadership

Louis MacNeice said:
He's on ignore - one of two currently and only four in total all the time I've been here - so my bothering days are over for the time being.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice
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I find the histrionics and total lack of self-awareness quite amusing, and therefore not especially irritating, so I generally don't keep him on ignore. I try not to reply to his posts too often, though, as all the passive-aggressive whining does begin to grate after a while.

Anyway, Labour leadership.
 
Pickman's model said:
yeh. these 400 on their way to the margate rally, where do you get this number?
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I've already made a similar point on the Jez-mania thread, but I'm not convinced that these reports of turn-outs at JC's appearances are as significant as some ( ;) ) are portraying them, and I think it would be a shame if we descended to squabbling over the details.

That said, I think it's possible that there could be 400 at the Margate gig, but I suggest that most of them will either be established Labour voters/supporters or identifiers-in-some-way with the wider left. Very few of them, I suggest, will be those who feel generally alienated from parliamentary politics, including those who support or might support UKIP (interested if there's any evidence which contradicts this though).

A more significant longer term question is whether a Labour party with JC as leader could begin the process of winning over those who are alienated in significant numbers, though whether or not they're turning up to see him now is not the test of that.

And perhaps an even more significant question is whether the triumphant tour and subsequent election of JC as leader leads to any more general change in the significance of "the left". ATM though, it's too soon to know...
 
andysays said:
I've already made a similar point on the Jez-mania thread, but I'm not convinced that these reports of turn-outs at JC's appearances are as significant as some ( ;) ) are portraying them, and I think it would be a shame if we descended to squabbling over the details.

That said, I think it's possible that there could be 400 at the Margate gig, but I suggest that most of them will either be established Labour voters/supporters or identifiers-in-some-way with the wider left. Very few of them, I suggest, will be those who feel generally alienated from parliamentary politics, including those who support or might support UKIP (interested if there's any evidence which contradicts this though).

A more significant longer term question is whether a Labour party with JC as leader could begin the process of winning over those who are alienated in significant numbers, though whether or not they're turning up to see him now is not the test of that.

And perhaps an even more significant question is whether the triumphant tour and subsequent election of JC as leader leads to any more general change in the significance of "the left". ATM though, it's too soon to know...
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tbh what i think is that treelover's very easily excited by people saying they're going to a facebook event.
 
Hocus Eye. said:
I do wish people would stop calling Corbyn "Jezza" - that just sounds like a name that the Sun has created for a footballer or popular entertainer. He is Jeremy and I doubt if anyone who knows him has ever called him that.

As for Cameron and his stance on refugees that will not only damage his own reputation but that of the whole country. Corbyn was very right to attack him on that issue.
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How about "the Jezster"? :p
 
Perhaps by using Jezza, they are trying to make him sound cool or perhaps a little more left wing. Perhaps people think Jeremy is a little bit of a right wing name!
 
andysays said:
Guess who earlier
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I'm not posting this for you PM, hundreds read these boards, I'm very aware it could be a false dawn, I'm just showing that the numbers attending JC's rallies are significant, but so was the number who attended the later Benn/Public Assemblies, they then disappeared not seen on any significant political activities, this may be different, who can say?
 
treelover said:
I'm not posting this for you PM, hundreds read these boards, I'm very aware it could be a false dawn, I'm just showing that the numbers attending JC's rallies are significant, but so was the number who attended the later Benn/Public Assemblies, they then disappeared not seen on any significant political activities, this may be different, who can say?
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Your earlier post definitely seemed to me to be saying that 400 attending a JC rally in Margate, an area where UKIP have been popular, was of some special significance, otherwise why mention that particular detail?

But the simple numbers attending don't really tell us very much about the wider significance (electoral and otherwise), because we don't know who these people are. They may be (and I suspect they are, admittedly without any evidence for my suspicion) simply the same old same old rather than people newly enthused from a previous position of alienation, apathy or whatever.

Without at least an attempt to examine what might be behind the figures attending, your posts do make it look as if you're simply getting exiting over mere attendance, which in itself means very little.
 
andysays said:
I've already made a similar point on the Jez-mania thread, but I'm not convinced that these reports of turn-outs at JC's appearances are as significant as some ( ;) ) are portraying them, and I think it would be a shame if we descended to squabbling over the details.

That said, I think it's possible that there could be 400 at the Margate gig, but I suggest that most of them will either be established Labour voters/supporters or identifiers-in-some-way with the wider left. Very few of them, I suggest, will be those who feel generally alienated from parliamentary politics, including those who support or might support UKIP (interested if there's any evidence which contradicts this though).

A more significant longer term question is whether a Labour party with JC as leader could begin the process of winning over those who are alienated in significant numbers, though whether or not they're turning up to see him now is not the test of that.

And perhaps an even more significant question is whether the triumphant tour and subsequent election of JC as leader leads to any more general change in the significance of "the left". ATM though, it's too soon to know...
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The people turning up at the meetings are essentially the same people who have been turning up to the various tuc demos over the last few years.
 
emanymton said:
The people turning up at the meetings are essentially the same people who have been turning up to the various tuc demos over the last few years.
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At the Leeds event I went to I think this was true of the majority of the attendees but certainly not all. I went with two people who hadn't been to any political events since the Iraq war march, and in front of us was a gang of fidgety teenagers, who had clearly never been to this kind of thing ever before and had come of their own volition. At the very least this process has 'reactivated' a whole load of dormant lefties.
 
All the ingredients for Corbyn to lose are there

The Labour leadership contest seems to share a lot of the characteristics of the 2015 general election. We have the overwhelming enthusiastic social media support for a flawed candidate (that might not end up actually casting their vote), shy Tories*, the polls showing only outcome and betting sentiment heavily in favour of the polling outcome.

We’ve only had two public polls on this leadership election and the potential sampling and weighting issues with this particular electorate caused by the large surge in new members/£3 members and the purge means we should be very cautious on accepting this polling as being infallible even before we take into account the industry wide polling failure that happened in May.

Everyone in the Labour party seems to preparing for Corbyn to win based on the canvass returns so far but then again a large chunk of the Labour party thought Ed Miliband was going to become Prime Minister on May the 7th based on their canvass returns up until the exit poll came out.

The betting markets aren’t infallible either in the last week of the general election campaign and after the exit poll came out the odds on a hung parliament were shorter than the odds on Corbyn becoming the next Labour leader are now.

Last night The Sun reported that ‘less than half of the 553,954 eligible to vote in the contest have returned their ballot forms, so far, and members are swinging away from the Corbyn bandwagon after a barrage of damaging revelations about the frontrunner.’ Whilst one candidate told Krisnan Guru-Murthy around 65% had already voted. So of these 35% to 50% of voters who haven’t voted I expect these voters might not break in favour of Corbyn because of the negative stories around Corbyn that we’ve seen in recent days and weeks.

One of Ronald Reagan’s maxims was “If you’re explaining, you’re losing” and it seems to be that every day Corbyn has to explain a past comment or explain why he was meeting such a controversial friend and you have to believe that this will impact negatively on Corbyn’s chances. Also we’ve not had an opinion poll since voting began so we can’t gauge the impact of these stories.

Sometimes you have to trust your instincts. Back in April and May I thought the public especially the English public would never go for Ed Miliband as Prime Minister over David Cameron and I have a similar feeling on this. Look at how poorly Corbyn polls on the supplementaries, ComRes found ‘Corbyn and Kendall have the highest levels of people saying they would not vote for the Labour Party if they were leader (both 58%).’ This feels a lot like the barrage of polls that showed Labour ahead or tied with the Tories in the run up to the general election but the supplementary questions showed the public overwhelmingly preferred David Cameron to Ed Miliband.

Surely the Labour party aren’t going to be this stupid and self indulgent and elect someone who is a throwback to the worst mistakes and excesses of the Labour party in the 1980s? Labour supporters want to win general elections and they cannot be prepared to elect the man who they know deep down is the candidate who the Tories are praying Labour elect as leader?

So that’s why I have the nagging feeling that like some of the others “manias” we’ve had in British politics that have fizzled out by the time the votes have been cast Corbynmania might join the ranks of Cleggmania and the Milifandom, in nine days time we’re going to find out.
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While I'm prepared to believe that waning enthusiasm, smear tactics and people not bothering to follow up on filling in their ballots could damage Corbyn's chances,

J Ed said:
Last night The Sun reported that
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Is like saying "last night a paid schill vomited onto his keyboard." I'd trust the average Swappie over that dismal shitrag where honest reporting on political trends is concerned. I mean don't get me wrong, all papers, including my own, are sometimes guilty of silliness, but the Sun doesn't just dip into gutters, it lives in them.
 
J Ed said:
All the ingredients for Corbyn to lose are there
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"We have the overwhelming enthusiastic social media support for a flawed candidate"... Do they mean Ed Miliband? I don't recall much enthusiasm for him, perhaps beyond a slightly odd core. Also did anyone genuinely hope (from a PLP perspective) for more than a labour lead centrist coalition? again beyond the overly optimistic few. I'll grant the result was far 'worse' than expected, I'm not sure that's meaningfully analogous with the Corbyn situation though. The rest of that article sounds like fairly standard anti-Corbyn stuff... Also spins the comres poll (a poll commissioned by the Mail incidentally, although don't know how that might/could affect it).
 
andysays said:
That's pretty much what I would expect - do we have anything to back it up?
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No evidence really, just my own feeling, but there were a few hundred thousand from the labour /union left prepared to actively oppose the tories. These are exactly the sort of people who will rally around Corbyn. The numbers even seem to pretty much stack up.
lazythursday said:
At the Leeds event I went to I think this was true of the majority of the attendees but certainly not all. I went with two people who hadn't been to any political events since the Iraq war march, and in front of us was a gang of fidgety teenagers, who had clearly never been to this kind of thing ever before and had come of their own volition. At the very least this process has 'reactivated' a whole load of dormant lefties.
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There will obviously be some new people. And even though they may be in a minority considering the overall numbers it will still be a decent number in absolute terms. The key question is the one Andy posed and this is what if anything will come from this. What impact will this have on the new people. And for that matter the old guard, let's not write them off as unimportant. They are pretty much the core of anything that passes for miltant trade unionism in this country. I am cynical about the whole thing. But one of the reasons I want him to win is that it will feel like a victory for a lot of people, and let's face it by Christ do we need some kind of victory. If he wins hundreds of thousands of trade unionists will go back to work with the heads held a little higher. For all my cynicism and caution this is something new I am very interested to see where it goes.
 
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