Jeremy Corbyn

sherpa-finn wrote:

Heather Mallick weighs in on "Why Jeremy Corbyn is destroying British Labour". 

"I don’t like Corbynistas or Ukippers, because I’m centre-left and object to extremism whether left or right. Post-war Labour history is a hobby of mine and I do very much like the Labour Party, which was always big-tent left. Now, as members prepare for a leadership vote in September, they are fighting each other in court on several fronts. In politics, once you’re in front of a judge, you’ve already lost. Omnishambles, here we come."

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/08/12/why-jeremy-corbyn-is-destr...

SAP is again wrong in claiming that 135,000 new members flocked to the Labour party in 10 days to support Corbyn. You need only read Labourlist, the New Statesman or the Guardian to understand that many of these new members signed up to save the party from Corbyn.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

nicky wrote:

SAP is again wrong in claiming that 135,000 new members flocked to the Labour party in 10 days to support Corbyn. You need only read Labourlist, the New Statesman or the Guardian to understand that many of these new members signed up to save the party from Corbyn.

But the party apparatchiks must fear that a majority of those new members will vote for Corbyn, or they wouldn't be going to the Court of Appeal to prevent them from voting.

Don't confuse the issue with logic. Of course the new members are anti-Corbyn that is why the back room dealers want them to not vote. The operatives support the leader after all. LOL

Quote:

Labour Appeal: Fury as Appeal Court Judge Philip Sales’ intimate links to Tony Blair revealed

By Matt Turner -  12th August 2016

In what is a consolation victory for the Labour Party’s establishment in the Court of Appeal, it has been revealed by WikiLeaks that there may be more to the decision than meets the eye.....

The literature cited by WikiLeaks confirms that immediately after Labour’s victory in the 1997 general election, Sales was recruited by Tony Blair. 

Interestingly, it also reveals that Sales used to be a practising barrister at law chambers 11KBW, of which Tony Blair was a founder member.

At the time of the appointment, there was uproar over Sales’ appointment and plunged Blair into a cronyism row.
According to The Guardian’s coverage:

http://evolvepolitics.com/labour-appeal-fury-as-high-court-judge-philip-...

nicky wrote:

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2016/08/13/new-comre...

By your Betting-Shop-Yardstick-of-Worth, Blair was a wonderful thing to happen to the Labour party. 

Too bad for you the Labour Party membership now appears to see it differently.  Damn democracy, eh?

Perhaps when the anti-Corbyn coup factions give up their attacks (or quit to continue them from another party) the party might pick up in the  polls.

Quote:

Monday 15 August 2016 15.51 BST    Jessica Elgot

Jeremy Corbyn wins backing of 84% of local Labour partiesLabour leader secures support of 285 constituency parties compared with 53 nominations for rival Owen Smith....

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/15/jeremy-corbyn-wins-backi...

Quote:

7:40 AM MON AUG 15, 2016

Court of Appeal reverses Labour disenfranchisement ruling, but Corbyn still likely to win

UK Labour General Secretary Iain McNichol has succeeded in disenfranchising 150,000 party members in the upcoming leadership election, having spent the party's money on an appeal of a High Court ruling saying that the dirty trick that yanked the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of new members, presumed to support Jeremy Corbyn, the besieged, left-wing leader of the party.

But the New Statesman's Stephen Bush doesn't think it matters: the old-line party rank-and-file, including many trade-union members, have become Corbyn supporters (possibly out of respect for his platform, possibly out of disgust with the party grandees' long-knifed attacks on a leader who was elected by a wider margin than any other leader in party history)....

https://boingboing.net/2016/08/15/court-of-appeal-reverses-labou.html

You could be right.

One should never underestimate the power of money, the ruling class, bent court rulings, and media smears to subvert democracy.

Quote:

Jeremy Corbyn and supporters branded ‘Nazis’ by millionaire Labour donor, in the paper that backed Hitler [EDITORIAL]AUGUST 15TH, 2016

http://www.thecanary.co/2016/08/15/jeremy-corbyn-and-supporters-branded-...

Mr. Magoo wrote:

Just in the interest of clarity, did they back Hitler recently?

Mr. Magoo wrote:

Backing either of them posthumously is still good for energizing the troops, though.

Perhaps:

Quote:

Who'll be the new Maggie? 26 years after Thatcher left Downing Street, how the two women battling to fill her shoes have VERY different CVs

Theresa May is the favourite to fill Margaret Thatcher’s shoes as PM,...

But, nah, the Mail's right-wing positions are now seen as respectably normalized, and "Nazi" (or "Trotskyist") are useful only for "fair comment" vilification.

Though, you could be forgiven for immagining a certain sentimental continuity in the charming "rats" theme of two refugee cartoons from the 1930's and 2015:
https://twitter.com/pandorasinbox/status/670204176824160257/photo/1?ref_...

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2016/08/16/the-polli...

And here Contrariana is the next page  of your betting sheet which shows that the odds against your God becoming the next British PM as 11 to 2 against.

http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/next-prime-minister

nicky wrote:

And here Contrariana is the next page  of your betting sheet which shows that the odds against your God becoming the next British PM as 11 to 2 against.

http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/next-prime-minister

Nobody sees Corbyn as God.  It's just that some people don't think he deserves to be plotted against by his own party's MPs.  It might be different if any of the MPs who wanted him out actually cared about the workers and the poor.

Not a surprise. He didn't support Corbyn last year.

nicky wrote:

In fact very few actual MPs supported Corbyn last year - about 17 as I recall. He got on the ballot only because a number of MPs who did not support him signed his nomination papers as a courtesy. 

He never has had much support from those who work with him daily and know him best.

Elected politicians who have been in office for a long time tend to be isolated into their own little world and have no clue as to what's going on around them, or how to relate to lesser people who have to struggle to survive on low wages. You want to look at more examples of evaluations of leaders by "the people who knew them best?" In 2003, Jack Layton had practically no support among Caucus members. Look how he did in the elections he did. Mulcair had the support of the vast majority of Caucus members in his bid. Look how that election turned out. In Manitoba, Greg Selinger had the support of the NDP Caucus. Look how that turned out.

What Corbyn's MPs have to say about him is completely irrelevant. They have no clue what hey are talking about and no clue how hard it is to survive without the MP salaries, pensions, and public benefits they continue to rely on, salaires, pensions, and benefits which are paid for by people how have very little economic security themselves.

Quote:

In 2003, Jack Layton had practically no support among Caucus members. Look how he did in the elections he did. Mulcair had the support of the vast majority of Caucus members in his bid. Look how that election turned out. In Manitoba, Greg Selinger had the support of the NDP Caucus. Look how that turned out.

Actually, Layton had the second most supporters, trailing only Bill Blaikie.  Layton had 2 MPs, those being Svend Robinson and Libby Davies, along with the very high profile endorsements of Ed Broadbent and Stephen Lewis.  Blaikie had six MPs, along with Doer and Hampton.  The other leadership candidates, those being Nystrom, Ducasse, Comartin (who was my choice), and Meslo had significantly less endorsements (if any) than Layton did.

So if Corbyn had the present support of zero MPs rather than the 28 or so he does have then that would be an even greater guarantee of his leadership abilities?

contrarianna wrote:

Democracy sucks,eh.

I think Dick Tuck said it best: "The people have spoken, the bastards."

nicky wrote:

A long analysis of Labour's electoral prospects with Corbyn. It contains this nugget: "Corbyn’s favourability rating in ComRes last week was minus 28, worse than everyone else they asked about but Trump." http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/08/how-jeremy-corbyn-...

And no one at all thinks Owen Smith would actually win any more votes.

The anti-Corbynites have never cared about beating the Tories.  If they had, they would never launched an unprovoked attack on Labour's chances of winning the election by sabotaging their leader and dividing their party.

The worst thing is, if they did force Corbyn to resign and imposed a leader of their choosing(such as a militarist and quasi-Tory like Hilary Benn)they would forfeit any right at all to ask the pro-Corbyn majority of rank-and-file Labourites(outside the PLP, Blairism is extinct)to vote Labour under such a leader-a leader we can assume would follow Tony Blair's lead and agree with the Tories on everything but a handful of trivial, nonthreatening side issues.

Khan also scored the most significant Labour electoral victory of recent years. I guess the London electorate which voted for him by a wide margin must not have known he was a militaristic Blairite.

I think I'd have voted for Khan if I lived in London, not because of any illusions in him, but the Tory guy did seem significantly worse.

I care about politicians being secularist, and there are some important battles to be waged in the UK against "faith schools", but whether they are personally secular is none of my business.

Khan signed Corbyn's nomination papers in order to allow him to contest the leadership even though he did not vote for him as leader, as very few MPs did.

Yes, but that doesn't mean he wanted Corbyn to become leader.  Few people expected Corbyn to be win the leadership contest(including Corbyn himself, by some accounts).  Nonetheless, once he won, he was owed the full support of the PLP and the PLP, arrogantly and anti-democratically, chose to work for Corbyn's ouster from the start.

The anti-Corbynites finally managed to use the Brexit vote as a pretext to try and depose Corbyn, despite the fact that Corbyn made more speeches in support of the Remain side than any other Labour politician and despite the fact that Corbyn's own constituency voted 76% for Remain.

There was nothing more Corbyn could possibly have done to keep Britain in the EU.  The Leave victory was caused by the arrogant, elitist dismissiveness of the Tory-Blairite establishment in its pro-Remain effort-an effort that never promised to do anything to help heal the deep wounds the EU inflicted on the economy of the North of England.  If Corbyn had promised the level of state investment needed to revitalize the North, the Tories and the Labour Right would have called him a Trotskyist and vowed to join forces to prevent the investment from ever occurring.

The opposition to Corbyn from the PLP never had anything to do with his chances at a general election-if there had been polls released during the 2015 leadership campaign showing that Labour would have done significantly better with Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper or Andy Burnham as leader than it would under Corbyn, one of those people would have won the leadership-it has always been based on the fact that Corbyn supports the restoration of internal party democracy and an end to the demonization and proscription of actual socialists in the Labour Party.  Every other leadership candidate wanted to keep the Blairite structure of party organization-a structure in which no one other than the leader and a handful of cynical, arrogant socialism-hating "advisors" have any say in what the party stands for and in which constituency parties aren't even free to nominate the parliamentary candidate of the choice or to hold sitting MPs accountable to the constituency party by having the power to deselect the MPs when they become corrupt, conservative and contemptuous of the people who do the work of making sure the MPs are elected and re-elected.  This structure had made party membership pointless and meaningless and has allowed the vast majority of Labour MPs to thumn their noses at the party's core values and those who care about them, while at the same time allowing those MPs to set up inappropriate connections with corporations(a Labour MP is never supposed to be trying to get rich) and arrange cushy post-parliamentary jobs with those corporations.

This means that, If Labour had been twenty points ahead in the polls throughout Corbyn's tenure, the PLP would STILL have worked relentlessly to undermine and remove him as leader.  The PLP(like their foreparents, the people who founded the SDP during the Eighties) would rather guarantee a landslide Tory victory than allow Labour to prosper electorally on non-right wing, non-cynical, non-corrupt terms.

The putsch against Corbyn was never about electability(ANY leader will be electable if her or his party unites in support of his or her leadership), it was about keeping the peasants out in the cold, preventing any deviation from Tony Blair's right-wing "Market Stalinist" line and party structure, and keeping the gravy train on the tracks.

From 'A Very British Coup's author..@chrismullinexmp: Much as I respect Jeremy, I shall not be voting for him. To do so risks annihilation

nicky wrote:

From 'A Very British Coup's author..@chrismullinexmp: Much as I respect Jeremy, I shall not be voting for him. To do so risks annihilation

The campaign against Corbyn equally risks annihilation.  If Owen Smith did somehow win the leadership, there is nothing he could do or say to unify the party behind him as leader...or to do so behind any of the figures the PLP preferred to Corbyn(they actually think Liz Kendall supports Labour values).

Given polling numbers, seems some worry Corbyn will lose badly.  Also, the council elections did not go well for Labour.  And some feel his campaign for Remain was half-hearted and ineffective.

Jeremy Corbyn - Our 10 pledges to rebuild and transform Britain

We will create a million good quality jobs across our regions and nations and guarantee a decent job for all.   

We will build a million new homes in five years, with at least half a million council homes, through our public investment strategy.

We will give people stronger employment rights from day one in a job, end exploitative zero hours contracts and create new sectoral collective bargaining rights, including mandatory collective bargaining for companies with 250 or more employees.

We will end health service privatisation and bring services into a secure, publicly-provided NHS.

We will build a new National Education Service, open to all throughout their lives.

We will act to protect the future of our planet, with social justice at the heart of our environment policies, and take our fair share of action to meet the Paris climate agreement - starting by getting on track with our Climate Change Act goals.

We will rebuild public services and expand democratic participation, put the public back into our economy, give people a real say in their local communities, and increase local and regional democracy.

We will build a progressive tax system so that wealth and the highest earners are fairly taxed, act against executive pay excess and shrink the gap between the highest and lowest paid - FTSE 100 CEOs are now paid 183 times the wage of the average UK worker, and Britain’s wages are the most unequal in Europe.

We will ensure that the human rights of all citizens are respected and all are protected from discrimination and prejudice.

We will put conflict resolution and human rights at the heart of foreign policy, commit to working through the United Nations, end support for aggressive wars of intervention and back effective action to alleviate the refugee crisis.