Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn exclusively reveals why he's offering Labour MPs a peace deal - in his own words

Great statement by Corbyn.

I see Corbynista Canucks have been busy over Canada Day. Let me now share a few contributions from the "On the other hand"  perspective... 

More than half of Labour members think Jeremy Corbyn should step down before the next election.

And four out of ten think he should quit now, according to a YouGov poll.

The figures will come as a blow to the Labour leader, who has based much of his argument for staying in place on the 60% mandate he gained from Labour members and supporters in September's leadership election.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/majority-labour-members-want-jeremy...

 

And the best of the bunch, IMHO - 

A new, well-led Labour party could make a difference

One inadequate man has come to personify all the perennially unresolved contradictions in left politics that cripples it politically. Is the Labour party a social movement or a political party? Is its job to transform capitalism or reform it so it works better for ordinary people? What constitution should shape its own democracy or that of the country more widely? How is it to allay the fears and apprehensions of working-class Britain in era of mass immigration?

Corbyn has very particular answers. The Labour party’s role is to be the political expression of popular left social movements – like the ones that provoked his own 500 acts of rebellion against the Labour whip. Democracy is simply the expression of mass majorities built by social protest. Constitutions are bourgeois obstacles to such popular social movements. Indeed the notion of a public interest, created by a constitutional architecture of checks and balances to permit democratic representatives to develop and articulate such an interest, is anathema. In a capitalist society there can only be class interests. The object of a left party is not the creation of a capitalism that better serves the public interest and ordinary people: rather its aim must be the overthrow of capitalism.

Thus Corbyn could not campaign wholeheartedly for the EU as a noble idea that represents the best effort the world has seen to build international co-operation. Too many in the boss class were in favour for him to throw his weight unambiguously behind the EU. Nor could he share a platform with the class enemy, the leader of the Tory party, even in an existential fight for Britain’s place in the world. He focused more narrowly on the EU’s role in helping class gains – workers’ rights and freedom of movement of labour, even if the latter is actively hated by many working people.

When the result came, he interpreted it as the voice of a social movement to which a politician had to respond “immediately”. He could not say what needed to be said: that this was a devastating vote to which the whole of Europe had to respond if it was to hold together. 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/02/labour-party-leade...

And Corbyn and his supporters are just soooo working class, compared to the elitists of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Well, trust the right wing rag The Daily Mail to poke a few holes in that illusion: 

Corbyn himself has never really had a job outside of politics, and he grew up in a seven-bedroom manor house on the Duke of Sutherland’s estate.

His closest aide, the Marxist millionaire Seumas Milne, was privately educated at Winchester College along with Tory politicians such as John Whittingdale.

The main spokesman of Corbyn’s Momentum campaigning group, James Schneider, was also privately educated and grew up in a £7 million mansion in trendy Primrose Hill, North London....

Yup, working class heroes, all. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3367482/Are-Corbyn-s-rich-kid-...

Up in Manchester, the utopian socialist Robert Owen and the marxist socialist Friedrich Engels were hardly proles either.

There are plenty of sound responses to that Blairite column below the line. War criminal Tony Blair and his main publicist sparked off the "spontaneous" anti-Corbyn movement. Blair shouldn't even show his face in public, except in the dock.

The EU did grant rights to working people, students etc that are glaringly absent from NAFTA, but it would be ridiculous to deny its economic underpinnings.

The left in Britain may have to consider Plan B. If Corbyn loses his battle to remain as leader, who would be the most likely candidate to prevent the Blairites from regaining control of the party? Any thoughts?

NorthReport wrote:

I thought Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party It appears that the Blairites are freaking out because they haven't been able to dislodge him and the Blairites are probably screwed when that report on the Iraq war is released this week

Certainly hope you're right.

But kudos to sherpa-finn for reporting all that McCarthyite well-oiled anti-Corbyn propaganda (he's an anti-semite, he's a rich bourgeois, etc. etc.). Didn't realize they were freaking out quite so badly. The reaction of Ruth Smeeth in that video is particularly revolting. With champions like her, the Jewish people really do not need any enemies.

Corbyn must be doing something right - or at least, he represents a broad trend of real mass discontent with the warmongers and imperialists that Blair channeled. Let's hope that movement survives, even if they manage to politically assassinate him.

Senior Labour Insider Reveals Blairite Plan To Oust Corbyn Was In Play 10 Months Ago

https://t.co/YQ4iUK2ETi

 

Alex Salmond: The Coup Against Corbyn Was Planned to Stop Him Calling For Blair's Head After Chilcot

https://t.co/shjyevgwjb

 

wither the ndp?

The anti-Corbyn coup is the Westminster bubble vs the ordinary men and women of Labour

quote:

Instead, Labour MPs have spent time in huddles with their fellow inhabitants of the Westminster bubble — lobby correspondents.

These journalists, supposed political experts, did not see the Jeremy Corbyn phenomenon coming last summer and have never supported him.

Accordingly they are now using their columns to tell him to walk away.

Colleagues have contrived a “vote of no confidence” that has absolutely no basis in the Labour rule book. There was no notice. It was tabled on Monday and the vote held the following day. No institution would run an important ballot in this way. And it was a secret ballot.

If MPs didn’t like Corbyn then they always had the option of a leadership challenge under the rule book.

It could have been conducted in an orderly, perhaps low-key fashion, at least until Parliament went into recess in just three weeks’ time.

All this was necessary because some Labour MPs expressly did not want any time to consult with ordinary party members. On the contrary, they were terrified that their members might actually find out how they voted. Hence the haste and the secrecy.

This attempt to hound Corbyn out of the leadership has been planned for months and was entirely outside the rules.

epaulo13 wrote:

Momentum

quote:

WHAT DOES MOMENTUM WANT TO DO?

● Organise in every town, city and village to secure the election of a progressive left Labour Party at every level, and to create a mass movement for real transformative change to:

o Redistribute wealth and power from the few to the many;

o Put people and planet before profit and narrow corporate interests;

o End discrimination, advantage and privilege based on class;

o Target growth not austerity, invest to create tomorrow’s jobs and reverse privatisation of railways, the energy sector and public services.

o Provide protection at work and strong collective bargaining to stamp out workplace injustice.

o Ensure decent homes for all in public and private sectors through a big house­building programme and rent controls.

o Support workers and their trade unions defending the interests of their members, families and communities.

o End discrimination based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or age.

● Transform Labour into a more open, member-­led party, with socialist policies and the collective will to implement them in government.

 

This is the Labour Party. We can't have any of that.

If a party leader can only gets 25% support from his own caucus, the writing is on the wall: 

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership is over. The only question now is when – and how

It is foolish to make predictions about politics, so let’s make some more. I think Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership is over. The only question is how it ends. There are two possibilities. Either he will stand down, probably after he has replied to the Prime Minister’s statement on the Chilcot report on Wednesday, or he will fight on and be defeated in a leadership election, whenever that is held. 

Confirmation that the end is nigh came in a YouGov poll for The Times yesterday, which found that 54 per cent of Labour Party members say that Corbyn should stand down, either now (44 per cent) or before the next election (10 per cent). I would translate “before the next election” as “of course he should go but I’m not going to answer an opinion poll in the way the right-wing media want me to”. 

The poll asked how members would vote in a leadership contest between Corbyn and Angela Eagle, and found that Corbyn led by only 50 per cent to 40 per cent. That is not nearly enough to get him through a leadership campaign – not the way opinions about him are going. It may be that most of the 60,000 members who have joined in the past week want to defend him against a coup, but many of them may be disappointed Labour supporters who want a new leader. 

Even Labour Party members don’t say he is competent or likely to win the next election, according to a poll biased by the pressures of party loyalty. Not that they think anybody else is likely to win the next election, but the one thing it is safe to say is that the belief that simply electing Corbyn leader would be enough to usher in the new Jerusalem has ebbed away. 

Corbyn would not be human if he were not torn between a stubborn refusal to bow to what he sees as bullying by Labour MPs, and a feeling that it would be too miserable to carry on. To the extent that there is a plan to get rid of him, it consists of trying to make his life as difficult as possible in the hope that he would simply give up and go. 

The revolt against him was provoked by the feeling among MPs – and shared by half of party members, according to YouGov – that he did badly in the referendum campaign. This was not really fair, because even Tony Blair in his pomp could not have made up the 1.3m-vote gap, but it crystallised the structural problem, which is that most Labour MPs have no confidence in their leader.

There is always a risk that they will not succeed, and that Corbyn manages to win a contested election, which would keep him in post for another year. But all that would do is postpone the end: he is not going to become more competent, or more inspiring to more people than the dwindling band of true believers that he has now.  

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-is-o...

sherpa-finn wrote:

If there isn't a law of physics governing armchair socialists there should be. It would go something along the lines of "The further I sit from the real challenges of building a viable left-wing political party, the more loudly and shrilly I will call for the prevailing progressive party to adopt suicidal policies and self-immolating radical leaders, just because it makes me feel holier than thou. And fuck the electoral consequences, cause I never really believed in any of that stuff anyhow. Bring on another 20 years of Tory rule - the revolution is sure to follow."

Yes, your exalted savviness, now I see the error of my ways. What a fool I've been to think that things might some day change, and not always remain the same.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell writes: Jeremy Corbyn is not standing down – 172 Labour MPs cannot drown out democracy

http://www.newstatesman.com/print/node/303041

And I am NOT an armchair socialist, and I suspect several others posting here aren't either.

FWIW, that report is 6 weeks old, epaulo. Stuff has happened since. The most recent poll suggests: 

Though a new YouGov survey shows increasing concern amongst Labour members about Mr Corbyn’s leadership, there is little support for any of the alternative candidates vying to topple him. While a slim majority of Labour members would like to see Mr Corbyn step down before the next general election, a similar majority is also supportive of him staying on for now.  

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-labour-leade...

And enough of Corbyn's heroic refusal to stand down in the face of a massive vote of non-confidence of his caucus, - get over it.

Its no great principled stand in support of party democracy. Its a simple self-serving tactical calculation.

If Corbyn stands down (as any honourable leader would do in similar circumstances), he would need his nomination papers for a new race to be signed by 50 MPs, which he probably would not be able to get.  

Even last year, for his original run, he had to rely on 'charity' signatures from various MPs who thought his name should be on the ballot, even if they had no intention of voting for him. I presume his team feels that such charitable sentiments are a little less likely this time round.

That all said, the leadership race will play itself out however it will. No doubt the real nastiness (as it is in all civil wars) will play out closer to home - in this case in the ensuing round of candidate selection battles for the next election.

lagatta wrote:

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell writes: Jeremy Corbyn is not standing down – 172 Labour MPs cannot drown out democracy

http://www.newstatesman.com/print/node/303041

And I am NOT an armchair socialist, and I suspect several others posting here aren't either.

I'd like to know what is wrong about being an armchair socialist versus being an armchair conservative or an armchair liberal. Most people are not politically active outside of election periods. We elect politicians to represent us politically.

What's interesting about the Corbyn situation is the party is illustrating that it does not exist to represent the will of members. Neoliberals have infiltrated all the major parties so that underneath all the political battles neoliberalism remains the basic economic model. It is forced to become somewhat more responsive to the people's desires at times but not enough to overthrow the system. Even Brexit is only a blip magnified to appear to be a huge disruption to the power of oligarchs.

 

sherpa-finn wrote:

If Corbyn stands down (as any honourable leader would do in similar circumstances), he would need his nomination papers for a new race to be signed by 50 MPs, which he probably would not be able to get.  

Even last year, for his original run, he had to rely on 'charity' signatures from various MPs who thought his name should be on the ballot, even if they had no intention of voting for him. I presume his team feels that such charitable sentiments are a little less likely this time round.

I think the "50 MP/MEP signatures" requirement is a little ridiculous. The Labour Party should make a decision whether it is a cadre party, in which case only MPs should vote for the leader, or a mass party, in which case not only should the members vote for the leader, but any member in good standing should be allowed to run. Of course, the problem is that the Labour Party has been in transition from one form to another and the Corbyn phenomenon caught them in the middle. But it's a crazy idea to have a memberhsip vote where the preferred candidate of almost 60% is left off the ballot based on a technicality. If they go ahead with it, the coup plotters will pay dearly, as you also note:

sherpa-finn wrote:

That all said, the leadership race will play itself out however it will. No doubt the real nastiness (as it is in all civil wars) will play out closer to home - in this case in the ensuing round of candidate selection battles for the next election.

The Labour Party has badly failed the test of responsible opposition during an existential political crisis. Any chance Nicola Sturgeon could simply take over? She and the SNP seem to be the only adults left?

So I noticed a spate of Canadian media today which put Corbyn in the hashmarks in light of the failing Blairite coup to uproot him.

Therefor I thought it might be a good time for a quick study of contrasts.

The Blairites in the Canadian NDP have their Leader Mulcair, whose punishing loss in the last election did not result in his immediate resignation. Instead, they went on to shore him up under the auspices of due process. He then carried forth under those conditions to convention where he was unceremoniously tossed in an unprecedented fashion, the Blairites once again rallied around him and restored his failed leadership for another two years.

Corbyn, a mere 9 months ago won the Leadership with an unprecedented show of support on the first ballot. Since, Labour has won four by elections and we took London with a left wing muslim defeating Boris. The party itself has more members than anytime in history with record breaking sign ups continuing to this day. The Blairites response? To attack the leader, with no due process, and at the very time the governing conservatives slit their own throat opening up a huge opportunity for labour to take power.

But no, the Blairites insist on risking electability at a crucial time as clearly an election is in the offing and the governing party is fatally wounded by working to spin endless bullshit justifying a baseless coup, rooted in the simple fact that they alone don't own and operate the party.

However here in Canada they clearly do own and operate the party as they have managed to prop up their failed and useless leader who has a proven track record of disaster and has set back the party a generation, yet he still leads while they tut-tut Corbyn's leadership in the UK all the while ignoring the glaring hypocrisy of their actions and the bold brutality of their tactics.

And the left wonders why its wandering the wilderness in Canada.

 

 

sherpa-finn wrote:

- faced with a 48% vote of confidence amongst a subset of those members who had originally elected him, Mulcair (the anti-democratic "Blairite") steps down. Faced with a 20% vote of support amongst his parliamentary colleagues, the principled progressive Corbyn refuses to budge and vows to fight on even at the very real risk of destroying the Labour Party for a generation.

The fact that there seems to be a gulf between the elected MPs and the membership on the question of Corbyn's leadership at the very least suggests structural issues within the Labour Party.

In any case, support among Cacus members is not necessarily an indicator of anything, because sometimes when you've been an elected official for so long you tend to enter into a bubble and have no clue about what's happening in the real world. Jack Layton was not initially supported by the NDP Caucus. Thomas Mulcair was. And in Manitoba, the Caucus rallied very strongly around leader Greg Selinger. Tell me how that worked out?

So no. There are too many elected officials in parties that are supposed to represent the people who are career politicians and would not be able to survive in the real world without their lucrative public pensions off the backs of the people they are supposed to represent. To heck with them. Let's get people who are serious about doing good for the majority.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

sherpa-finn wrote:

I understand that there are issues of personal pride and political vision at hand. And Corbyn probably feels that what has happened to him is all so very unfair. But most probably what rankles most is that his arch-foe Tony Blair actually did succeed in transforming the Labour Party, for better or worse. A task at which Jeremy has spectacularly and singularly failed. 

Well said Blair was the saviour and Corbyn is the anti-Christ.  The Labour party needs to get back to being the neo-con party that Blair transformed it into and the left should just shut the fuck up and get over themselves and their selfish desire to change the world.

Not to mention that Corbyn hasn't even been leader for a year. Yet he's supposed to have transformed a PLP that is hostile to him. The answer is for the members of the PLP who can't support Corbyn to resign, and give their constituencies a chance to elect members supportive of Corbyn.

I don't see any parallel with the NDP on how Mulcair was chosen and how Mulcair will leave.  I think it was a rash decision by the delegates that was unfortunate, but regardless, it was proper on the part of both the party, its members, its caucus, and Mulcair.  What's going on with Labour and Corbyn is just odd.  Reminds me a bit of how Dion was treated by the Liberals after their loss under him.  Very unceremoniously dumped with Iggy shuffled in.  The difference is Dion did not resist whereas Corbyn is.