Labour leadership

[kabbes]

It is a question of authenticity/methodology - pretending that you are being democratic by executively selecting questions from a raft of your supporters doesn't logically work unless you can demonstrate the way you have gone about it.

I disagree

 

[J Ed]

It is a question of authenticity/methodology - pretending that you are being democratic by executively selecting questions from a raft of your supporters doesn't logically work unless you can demonstrate the way you have gone about it.

Yes it does, it just did you pretentious twat

 

[killer b]

Because the media will get yet another stick to beat him with, and because the broader (or more in-line with the theme of the week) the less valuable the exercise is.

The headline writes itself doesn't it: The sun gets Corbyn to ask a question about housing policy

err. Can't see much mileage there tbh.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Yep - it's an easy system to attack.

40,000 questions and you choose the 6 from the same political movement?

It's very hard to see how it is not a case of using a "Joe Bloggs" as a shield for the questions that you wanted to put anyway...

Do you have to be a mad leftist to be concerned about the erosion of mental health provision or the spiralling rental market?

You're falling into the classic trap that gets all long-game trolls sooner or later: you're forgetting to keep your bullshit in the realms of the vaguely plausible. Presumably even you have grown bored of yourself at this point so you're trying to up the ante a bit, and in so doing abandoning any pretence of being anything other than a garden variety troll.

 

[brogdale]

It is a question of authenticity/methodology - pretending that you are being democratic by executively selecting questions from a raft of your supporters doesn't logically work unless you can demonstrate the way you have gone about it.

If he is, as you say 'pretending' to be democratic, then it works perfectly well and logically. Do you read through what you write before hitting the "post reply" button.

 

[Diamond]

Do you have to be a mad leftist to be concerned about the erosion of mental health provision or the spiralling rental market?

You're falling into the classic trap that gets all long-game trolls sooner or later: you're forgetting to keep your bullshit in the realms of the vaguely plausible. Presumably even you have grown bored of yourself at this point so you're trying to up the ante a bit, and in so doing abandoning any pretence of being anything other than a garden variety troll.

No - they are valid questions and to be frank I have a vested interest in mental health provision as you might find elsewhere on these boards if you took your blinkers off.

They are all good questions but it's the vehicle of "authenticity" in which they are posed which is problematic on a political level.

Fair enough - it's a clever new tactic and stymies Cameron's ability to go on the attack directly against Corbyn but it is also completely unclear about how he chose these questions. 6 out of 40,000? That's a pretty broad church from which to select your readers and it is the leader, the executive, who is doing the selection.

It is easy to see how some might interpret that as being incredibly cynical.

This is a fine point - I don't think Corbyn's using it as a completely cynical political vehicle but it is manifestly easy to make the argument that he is cherry picking questions that accord to his views and hiding behind his supporters to avoid direct, confrontational argument as a result, which is really just another way of doing what leaders of the opposition at PMQ have always done but trying to dilute one's personal responsibility and some people might look at that and think it to be a bit cowardly.

 

[Artaxerxes]

It is a question of authenticity/methodology - pretending that you are being democratic by executively selecting questions from a raft of your supporters doesn't logically work unless you can demonstrate the way you have gone about it.

Perhaps the questions from the right involved things like "Are you a cunt?" "How about we shoot all the [insert minority here]?" "Lets shoot the poor and feast on their flesh, do you agree?"

No - they are valid questions and to be frank I have a vested interest in mental health provision

I'm glad you mentioned that...

 

[andysays]

It is a question of authenticity/methodology - pretending that you are being democratic by executively selecting questions from a raft of your supporters doesn't logically work unless you can demonstrate the way you have gone about it.

I think you're missing the point.

It's not about being "democratic" in the sense of giving absolutely anyone a voice, no matter who they are or what their question might be, just as the Leadership election wasn't about giving absolutely anyone a vote, no matter who they were or what their political stance might be.

It's explicitly about giving individual Labour supporters a voice, the sort of voice that has pretty much been denied them by Labour leaderships over the past couple of decades. It's a small thing, but potentially a very significant and clever as a sign of things to come.

 

[DotCommunist]

No - they are valid questions and to be frank I have a vested interest in mental health provision as you might find elsewhere on these boards if you took your blinkers off.

They are all good questions but it's the vehicle of "authenticity" in which they are posed which is problematic on a political level.

Fair enough - it's a clever new tactic and stymies Cameron's ability to go on the attack directly against Corbyn but it is also completely unclear about how he chose these questions. 6 out of 40,000? That's a pretty broad church from which to select your readers and it is the leader, the executive, who is doing the selection.

It is easy to see how some might interpret that as being incredibly cynical.

This is a fine point - I don't think Corbyn's using it as a completely cynical political vehicle but it is manifestly easy to make the argument that he is cherry picking questions that accord to his views and hiding behind his supporters to avoid direct, confrontational argument as a result, which is really just another way of doing what leaders of the opposition at PMQ have always done but trying to dilute one's personal responsibility and some people might look at that and think it to be a bit cowardly.

big man politics again, throwing it open to the floor is democracy basically. You seem to want a CEO rather than the leader of a party whose whole shtick has been about iincreasing other peoples voices within the party constructs

 

[Diamond]

I think it's clever and it's interesting but the idea that these are some sort of "people's PMQs" rather than "Corbyn's PMQs" is not very persuasive and open to attack as a result.

 

[brogdale]

and open to attack as a result.

From you, yes.

 

[killer b]

this is pretty weak, can we just not bother?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It is a question of authenticity/methodology - pretending that you are being democratic by executively selecting questions from a raft of your supporters doesn't logically work unless you can demonstrate the way you have gone about it.

You could easily demonstrate how you went about it, though. x thousand questions on this theme this week, so that's what I'm leading off with.

And the tories would meddle with the process at their peril. They would look like such wankers if they got caught sending false questions. They would be shown to be acting against the democratic process.

 

[agricola]

The headline writes itself doesn't it: The sun gets Corbyn to ask a question about housing policy

err. Can't see much mileage there tbh.

That's not what they will do, though. They'll use an example of someone suitably disgraceful and get him to ask a question on their behalf, probably after giving Dave the facts of who the person is beforehand.

 

[skyscraper101]

"I had an email from Jamie in Stevanage who asks "What's your favourite dinosaur"?"

 

[andysays]

I think it's clever and it's interesting but the idea that these are some sort of "people's PMQs" rather than "Corbyn's PMQs" is not very persuasive and open to attack as a result.

I'm not sure where you've got the idea that they are supposed to be "people's PMQs" from, tbh.

They are still explicitly the leader of the opposition's questions, it just so happens that the Labour leader of the opposition has emailed registered Labour supporters to invite them to submit questions for Cameron for him to ask on their behalf.

This also deals with the issue of rogue questions from other parties or media orgs etc - unless they are registered Labour supporters, they won't have been invited to submit questions. It's really not that hard to understand how it works...

 

[killer b]

That's not what they will do, though. They'll use an example of someone suitably disgraceful and get him to ask a question on their behalf, probably after giving Dave the facts of who the person is beforehand.

we pretended to be Fred West, and got Corbyn to ask a question about housing policy!

Still can't see it.

 

[Diamond]

You could easily demonstrate how you went about it, though. x thousand questions on this theme this week, so that's what I'm leading off with.

And the tories would meddle with the process at their peril. They would look like such wankers if they got caught sending false questions. They would be shown to be acting against the democratic process.

Yep, you would probably have to have a team of around 20-30 people working round the clock on document review and a good number of analysts and infrastructure to get through 40,000 emails in a matter of 4 working days to get you there though - an entirely possible but extremely challenging task.

Unless you went down a different route of simply having a poll - but then that runs up against the problem that you set the options in the first instance so they don't really emanate from the public.

 

[SpookyFrank]

No - they are valid questions and to be frank I have a vested interest in mental health provision as you might find elsewhere on these boards if you took your blinkers off.

Then maybe stop attacking Corbyn for mentioning the parlous state MH provision is currently in?

 

[Diamond]

I'm not sure where you've got the idea that they are supposed to be "people's PMQs" from, tbh.

They are still explicitly the leader of the opposition's questions, it just so happens that the Labour leader of the opposition has emailed registered Labour supporters to invite them to submit questions for Cameron for him to ask on their behalf.

This also deals with the issue of rogue questions from other parties or media orgs etc - unless they are registered Labour supporters, they won't have been invited to submit questions. It's really not that hard to understand how it works...

My impression, and I could be wrong on this, is that the "crowd-sourcing" element is supposed to demonstrate some kind of broader mandate than a leader of the opposition just choosing his own questions and that there is some greater legitimacy in that. But when you have 40,000 options to choose from then it's exactly the same thing.

 

[killer b]

the emails could be scanned and sorted automatically, then a few hundred reviewed manually. It's not a difficult job.

 

[SpookyFrank]

we pretended to be Fred West, and got Corbyn to ask a question about housing policy!

Still can't see it.

The risks of such a scheme backfiring, especially after the DWP's imaginary rentaquote people, surely outweigh the potential gain.

 

[Diamond]

Then maybe stop attacking Corbyn for mentioning the parlous state MH provision is currently in?

Do you want to demonstrate where I have done that?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yep, you would probably have to have a team of around 20-30 people working round the clock on document review and a good number of analysts and infrastructure to get through 40,000 emails in a matter of 4 working days to get you there though - an entirely possible but extremely challenging task.

Unless you went down a different route of simply having a poll - but then that runs up against the problem that you set the options in the first instance so they don't really emanate from the public.

Yo wouldn't have to ask everyone every time. You could have a union week, for instance, or other themes for which you invited responses.

There could be a prize for question of the week.

 

[nino_savatte]

Corbyns rebuttal team could use that one.

Maybe he should hire me. Just a thought.


I'm not joining the fucking Labour Party though.

 

[andysays]

My impression, and I could be wrong on this, is that the "crowd-sourcing" element is supposed to demonstrate some kind of broader mandate than a leader of the opposition just choosing his own questions and that there is some greater legitimacy in that. But when you have 40,000 options to choose from then it's exactly the same thing.

I don't know where you've got that impression from, but I think it's the wrong one.

They are explicitly questions from Labour party supporters, and the idea of doing it this way was announced a while ago and probably mentioned on this very thread.

 

[nino_savatte]

It is a question of authenticity/methodology - pretending that you are being democratic by executively selecting questions from a raft of your supporters doesn't logically work unless you can demonstrate the way you have gone about it.

What's the relationship between authenticity and methodology?

As for your perception of logicality. Do please explain.

 

[killer b]

Please dont.

 

[nino_savatte]

Please dont.

I suspect Diamond will just spout a load of mumbo-jumbo he's pulled from his arse.

 

[killer b]

yes. that's how it goes.