Corbyn’s Labour and the path to power

Only a conservative would repeat the slur about Corbyn and antisemitism.  You know perfectly well he has never been an anti-Semite, and you know perfectly well that he has never been lax about fighting that.  The ONLY people who keep that smear alive are Tories and Blairites.  No actual socialists or social democrats ever spread it.  That is why I called you a conservative.  If you're not, you have an obligation not to spread THEIR talking points.

And you can't keep doing the "if you knew who I am or what I do" thing without actually saying who you are or who you do.  Anybody can SAY their name or their job proves their bonafides as a person who is clearly left-of-center.

nicky wrote:

Ken, you must know ( although maybe you are too blinkered to know) that the discomfort with Corbyn over anti-semetism is not that he is personally anti-Semitic but that he tolerates anti-Semitic attacks by many of his followers on Jews and in particular Jewish Labour MPs.

your sweeping statements that “only a Conservative would etc., etc.” Say this or that are frankly silly.

The fact is, he has never tolerated anti-Semitic attacks on anyone, let alone Jewish Labour MPs.  And when Ruth Smeeth stood up in the House and quoted offensive emails which were sent to her, she offered no evidence, and no evidence has been found by anyone, that those emails were sent by Labour supporters at all, let alone Corbyn supporters.  It's not possible for a party leader to monitor or restrict messages sent to MPs by anybody.  The reason Corbyn has been endlessly attacked on this issue is simply the fact that he is the first leader Labour or any other British political party has ever had who has stood up for ordinary Palestinians-not Hamas, not Fatah, not anybody using any methods remotely similar to "terrorism"-and acknowledged that they have been persecuted by the Israeli government and the IDF for decades now.  The only other reason is that Corbyn has challenged the Likudnik narrative that antisemitism is a singularly prevalent form of bigotry in the UK or Europe at all, let alone on the left-and virtually any survey you can find regarding antisemitism in the UK clearly shows that it is the far right, including the most reactionary sectors of the Conservative Party, where antisemitism mostly lives.  It's absurd for Corbyn's opponents to act as though antisemitism is more prevalent and more virulent than Islamophobia, homophobia, prejudice against BAME(Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic peoples).  The Left has always fought passionately against antisemitism, Corbyn has always spoken out against it and fought against it.  But what Corbyn's opponents want to do is to twist the antisemitism issue in such a way as to equate virtually all public criticism of what the Israeli government does to Palestinians with hatred of Jews, and to equate anti-Zionism or non-Zionism with the secret desire to finish the Holocaust.

People like Margaret Hodge and Ruth Smeeth have never raised this issue out of any motive other than to smear the Labour Left and drive them out of the party.  They don't care that Labour can't win any future elections if the Left and especially Corbyn's supporters are silenced or driven away.  They are obsessed with making Labour a party of the arrogant, elitist, anti-democratic "centre ground", even though there's no centre ground at all in UK politics anymore and even though the prohibitive majority of Labour supporters and Labour supporters want a clear and permanent break with the Third Way.

Ken, you maintain that anyone who undermines Corbyn is by definition a "Conservative."

Would this definition extend to anyone who fundamentally undermines the Labour Party in general?

If so, the one thing most clearly standing betweenLabour and winning back power is Corbyn's pathetic leadership. Indeed there  were many Conservative entryists who joined Labour to vote for Corbyn and thereby hobble its chances.

So to be consistent with your own somewhat elastic definition, you Ken are a Conservative. 

That explains a lot.

nicky wrote:

 

If so, the one thing most clearly standing betweenLabour and winning back power is Corbyn's pathetic leadership. Indeed there  were many Conservative entryists who joined Labour to vote for Corbyn and thereby hobble its chances.

 

You sound like a broken record with this bogus point.  As for winning without Corbyn, the clearest refutation of that is the results of the 2010 and 2015 elections.  Now perhaps another left leader, like McDonnell, would have a better chance than Corbyn.  But there is no evidence that the party would stand a better chance of winning if it abandoned Cobynism.

And it has never been a question of Corbyn "undermining Labour".  It has been a question of the 160 anti-Corbyn MPs-a group of passionless, cynical hacks who only continue to hold their seats-they are universally without personal popularity in their constituencies-because Tony Blair imposed them as Labour candidates against the will of their constituency parties between 1994 and 1997 and then made it essentially impossible for their constituency parties to deselect them.   These people see themselves as being ABOVE the party, as owing those who do the hard work of keeping them in their seats by campaigning for them nothing, as being free of accountability to anyone but those to Labour's right.

Had these people accepted that the 2016 leadership re-vote settled the leadership issue and accepted that Corbyn was going to lead them into the next election, rather than continually attacked him and tried to force him out, rather than slander Corbyn and his supporters on the antisemitism, had they not gone so far as to try to force him out DURING the 2017 election-when they knew a leadership change was impossible-and had they not then gone so far as to openly campaign against Labour in the next local elections-in which Labour made massive gains despite their efforts-Corbyn would have no issues with personal popularity among the wider electorate at all.  There was no good reason, after 2016, for the anti-Corbynites to treat Corbyn with any less respect than they showed Blair.  

The man's made no actual major mistakes, and with the split in Labour on Brexit, it has to be conceded that the party would have difficulties on that no matter what any possible leader did on that issue.  

None of the policies he supports are actually unpopular.  He does well in question period-and uses that time to raise issues that matter, as oppose to Mulcair's pointless obsession with Duffy.  And Corbyn is, unlike anybody on the Labour Right, universally regarded as a decent, principled person.  His issues as leader are exclusively because the anti-Labour Labour MPs and the Tory media(even the BBC) have endlessly viciously vilified him.  They've called the most anti-bigotry leader any UK political party ever had an abetter of bigotry.  

There aren't any damn Conservative entryists, and the only people PUSHING for Corbyn to go(you can't assume the pro-Brexit wing of the party want a leadership change)are those who want the Blairites restored to dominance.

And it's amazing that you refuse to acknowledge any connection between the relentless and unjustified vilification campaign the right wing of the PLP have run against Corbyn and his popularity ratings.  The man hasn't actually made any significant mistakes as leader and the party has done better under his leadership than generally did under Kinnock-a leader who also never had Labour in a consistent strong lead in the polls.

It could only do harm to do what you want and replace Corbyn with someone to his right(McDonnell might be better, but you'd never accept him or anyone else who actually support socialism).

If you really just wanted Labour to do better, you'd call on the anti-Corbynites to stop trying to push the party back to 1997-style policies and stop trying to drive the left out again.

Someone with integrity.

nicky wrote:

Ken, are you serious in Suggesting that Labour as a “ consistent lead in the polls” under Corbyn? Do you stand by that as strongly as you stand by some of your other howlers?

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/03/15/since-tig-was-formed-the-tories-have-enjoyed-leads-of-between-4-and-11-in-the-standard-voting-intention-polls/

 

What I said was that he is comparable in that regard to Neil Kinnock, who usually didn't have Labour in a strong lead in the polls when he was leader.  By 1992, Kinnock had abandoned every socialist or even left-of-center view he had ever held, had driven all the actual socialists out of the party, and hardly improved Labour's poll fortunes at all in doing so.  And unlike Corbyn, Kinnock had no excuse, since the PLP was fully behind him, rather than operating as a group of saboteurs in the way they've done to Corbyn the whole time.

It can't improve Labour's fortunes in the polls to replace Corbyn with anyone to his right.  Nobody in the PLP to Corbyn's right can ever win the support of the activist, radical young, and Labour can't ever win another election if those people are crushed and expelled.  There's no centre ground to appeal to, and there's no longer any such thing as "Middle England"-if there ever really was.

nicky wrote:

Ken, are you serious in Suggesting that Labour as a “ consistent lead in the polls” under Corbyn? Do you stand by that as strongly as you stand by some of your other howlers?

Labour was consistently doing well in the polls until those backstabbing MPs (whom nobody had heard of before) decided to bolt on him.

NDPP wrote:

...and he did everything he could to appease them.

He should just change party rules to allow deselection of MPs at any time, and require all MPs to submit to re-selection before a general election.  If the issue was that it would be unfair to just have the constituency parties do re-selection, create a "party primary" process which would put reselection in the hands of every paid-up Labour member and supporter in every constituency, via secret ballot.  Nobody would have any valid reason to object to that.

These last two polls prove it's time for the anti-Corbynites to stop what they've been doing.

These polls prove only that those who agreed to answer them prefered Labour over Conservative. By this I mean the present Labour over the present Conservatives. It does not say anything about how previous Labour would stack up against present Conservatives or how Present Labour would stack up against previous Conservatives.

They show the party somehow, divisions and all slightly above the Conservatives who are also damaged.

After that the numbers say nothing as there is no control group.

British split on whether there shd be new referendum but wd vote remain if there was one

Corbyn’s approval down to 16%. Of course that has nothing to do with him and everything to do with the evil Blairites.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/16/britain-split-over-prospect-of-second-brexit-referendum

NDPP wrote:

Jess Phillips Emerges as Establishment Pick to Replace Corbyn

https://twitter.com/WarmongerHodges/status/1107052435363762176

"Enter Jess Phillips. She backs Trident, austerity and Israel. She hates Williamson and Leftists in general...but she does talk about gender all the time and says 'fuck' a lot..."

Yeah...she's exactly the sort nicky would prefer...even though there's no way she would get Labour more votes, and even though Labour would cease to have any reason to exist if it chose a leader like her.

I suspect that her approval would be about level with Labour's as a whole - about 34%, as opposed to Corbyn's which is currently at 16%.

nicky wrote:

I suspect that her approval would be about level with Labour's as a whole - about 34%, as opposed to Corbyn's which is currently at 16%.

The actual voters aren't demanding that Labour put in a leader who would treat the left like Kinnock did, and would strip Labour of all of its core values like Kinnock did.  Clearly, if Kinnock had been elected, he wouldn't have been to the left of Blair on anything that mattered to actual human beings and would barely have been to the left of Major at all.

The only reason for Labour to exist is to offer a radically different future than the Tories.  For Labour to stand for anythihng short of transformation would be to agree to make the party useless.

She has no reason to demonize the left, anyway.   And it's absurd to fight for a party to talks about identity politics but is right-wing on economics and foreign policy  You can't really be anti-oppression if you're "extremely casual" about the rich stealing more money and you treat socialists as the enemy, as Phillips does.

So, it would seem that the evil Blairites have been aBle to persuade over half of Labour’s voters that they don’t want Corbyn.?

Corbyn is completely blameless in the fact that his approval ratings are far worse than any LABOUR LEADER’s have ever been?

Really? Who woulda thunk it?

nicky wrote:

So, it would seem that the evil Blairites have been aBle to persuade over half of Labour’s voters that they don’t want Corbyn.?

Corbyn is completely blameless in the fact that his approval ratings are far worse than any LABOUR LEADER’s have ever been?

Really? Who woulda thunk it?

If 160 MPs, virtually all of whom are ONLY MPs because Tony Blair imposed them as candidates in seats where Labour would have won with anybody, spend four straight years treating their party's twice-elected leader as though he has no right to hold the job and is deserving of no respect; when those same anti-Labour, anti-worker MPs passed a "no-confidence" motion that everyone knew was non-binding, when they tried to block him even from standing for re-election TO the leadership-their intention was to have a contest in which only conservatives, i.e., "Labour moderates" could have stood to replace him in the job; when they recruited a Pfizer lobbyist-and thus, by definition, an opponent of the continued existence of the NHS in any meaningful form-to stand against him in the leadership contest; when they still refused to stop trying to oust him even though he won the second leadership contest in a landslide; when they tried to force him to resign DURING THE 2017 election campaign, a time when it is impossible for a party to make a leadership change, or at least to make one and still have any chance to make a respectable showing-when some of them all-but-campaigned against Labour during the local elections just to hold down the number of Labor gains;  when they, and YOU spend four years blaming him for a referendum result he clearly did everything he could to prevent-even you have not been able to offer a single example of anything he could ever have said or done in that campaign that would have turned a Leave victory into a Remain victory- when they endlessly slander him as, at best, an abetter of anti-Semitism, despite the fact that he has clearly always opposed anti-Semitism-opposition to Zionism has never had any connection to what anybody's views about anti-Semitism is, as you'd have to concede-and despite the fact that there has never been any reason to imply that his supporters have a greater incidence of anti-Semitism than anybody else, when they falsely accuse him of supporting terrorism when he's never done a damn thing to justify that accusation-it's not support for terrorism simply to have supported a Irish reunification, as many people on the British left did in the Seventies and Eighties-and when the man is demonized for not centering an unwinnable fight to try and force the Tories to hold a second "Remain or Leave" referendum-everyone knows that the Tories could never have been made to hold THAT referendum-and they demand that he lead an allout fight to stop Brexit despite the fact that no Labour leader could do that without splitting and destroying the party-and when all of that is repeated, day in and day out, by the Murdoch press Sky TV and the BBC-it's inevitably going to have an effect.

And it wouldn't be so bad that you are obsessed with dumping Corbyn if you weren't adamant that he be replaced by someone to his right, from the ranks of that sick, dying portion of Labour who hate workers and unions, who hate the poor, who feel entitled to morally judge and morally condemn the poor, including those on disabilities-and this goes back to Blair's pointless fixation on slashing incapacity payments, a point on which he sounded identical to Margaret Thatcher if not further to the right than her-who think the UK should keep replace Trident at massive cost even though the day when nuclear weapons could possibly have any justification has forever passed-who think Labour should be run as a private club of themselves and their fellow right-wing snobs, rather than as a democratic organization being run by the grassroots.  You wouldn't tolerate anybody who actually works for peace as a successor to Corbyn...anybody who actually opposes austerity...anybody who thinks the young and the activists should have a say.  You're just anti-Corbyn because you wanted Labour to stay exactly like it was under Blair, or go to the right of Blair as it would have under David Miliband(and essentially did under his brother Ralph).  You've wasted years fighting to make Labour go back to standing for nothing, because that's being a "Labour moderate" means-having no core values, not caring about the poor-you can't care about the poor AND still be willing to abstain on Tory cuts-not wanting Thatcher's anti-worker laws repealed, not wanting any of the privatizations undone, never supporting measures to make it easy to set up cooperative, not regarind the NHS as sacrosanct, not being anti-nuclear or in any wan antiwar at all, not seeing that the Israel/Palestine conflict is almost entirely the fault of the Israeli government, not supporting the idea that politics should be bottom-up  rather than top-down.  When you're in the "not" column on all those things-as all "Labour moderates" are, there isn't anything you could still be even slightly to the left of the Tories about, and there certainly isn't any issue you could still be radical, humane, or even decent about that actually makes any difference in anyone's life.

dp

Ken is right that I think the NDP would be in better shape today if Tom Mulcair were still it’s leader. I suspect most people also think that.

but when he fulmininates about me that:

“That poster would have been happy to see an NDP prime minister keeping Canadian troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for four, eight, or twelve years, even though doing so would have made it impossible for an NDP government to implement any policies that are recognizably different than what a Conservative or Liberal government would bring in”...

....he is a LIAR.

"What kind of Party has FIVE members of LFI [Labour Fiends of Israel] on the Front Bench NOW!"

https://twitter.com/RJ_Phoenix16/status/1108312659974385664

It's clear, nicky, if you support Mulcair and want Corbyn out as Labour leader, you support the status quo in Anglo-Canadian-American foreign policy.  No peace activists or supporters of a just, humane future for the people of Palestine wanted Mulcair, whose views on the Israel/Palestine issue are identical to Netanyahu's-his removal of NDP candidates who show any empathy towards Palestinians proves this-and nobody who opposed British participation in the Iraq/Afghanistan war wants Corbyn replaced by anyone to his right.   

It's simply not possible.

Nobody, at this stage of the game, still buys into the argument that either Canada or the UK is an intrinsically militarist country, that the peoples of those countries are insistent that they join whatever war the US wants them to join.  There isn't even any real support in the UK for the pointless act of renewing Trident.

Again, if you're going to keep playing the "if you knew what I do card"...you kind of have to tell us what you do.  Anybody can say, anonymously, that they "walk the walk" of working for economic and social justice.   Online, anybody can say anything.

Ken lies about me again:

It's clear, nicky, if you support Mulcair and want Corbyn out as Labour leader, you support the status quo in Anglo-Canadian-American foreign policy

ken, is your real identity DONALD Trump? You have an equal disregard for truth.