Corbyn’s Labour and the path to power

nicky wrote:

You are absolutely right Aristotle. It is unfair to blame all of Corbyn’s monumental unpopularity on his mishandling of the Brexit file.

there are plenty of other reasons why 72% of the British public disapprove of his leadership.

Even the hapless Theresa May polls better.

It's almost all because of the false accusations:
1) The false accusation that Corbyn tolerates anti-Semitism, which is really just code for "he won't automatically expel all non-Zionists"

2) The false accusation that he "supported the IRA"-he simply supported a united Ireland in the 1980's, at a time when there was no hope that the perpetual discrimination and repression visted on the pro-Irish minority in Northern Ireland would ever end while British rule continued, when massive Loyalist violence against that community continued unabated and neither the British Army nor the Royal Ulster Constabulary nor anyone in the Unionist leadership was doing anything to stop that-and in many cases were clearly abetting such violence and repression-and when the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the non-violent pro-Irish party in N.I., ALSO supported Irish reunification.  It was an era with the pro-Irish minority was utterly powerless within electoral politics and also only a decade or so past the time when the Parachute Regiment of the British forces had made nonviolent protest impossible by firing into a nonviolent protest march on Bloody Sunday and when the SDLP had been shortly thereafter humiliated and sent on a long, irreversible path to electoral oblivion by the violent Unionist/Loyalist uprising which destroyed the peaceful power-sharing arrangement that was set up by the Sunningdale Agreement-an agreement which would have created a power-sharing cross-community government for the North that did not include the IRA.  To take any other position but "Troops Out!" on the Northern Ireland question in the Eighties was to support keeping the misery of the status quo in place for the rest of eternity.  None of those, in either the Conservative Party nor the Labour far right or the SDP, who wanted British troops kept in Northern Ireland even cared about changing the conditions of the pro-Irish minority.  In the Eighties, you could either be "Troops Out!" or go coat-trailing with the hateful fascists of the Orange Order.   "Troops Out!" was never a pro-IRA position; it was simply an anti-oppression position.  

3) The lies that Corbyn was a "communist"-none of his positions were ever close to that-or an agent of the Czechoslovakian Stalinist regime-they'd only have recruited a Tory for that; there'd have been no point in turning an opposition back-bencher.

4) All the shit from the Murdoch press and the BBC-including that backdrop on the BBC show where they altered his hat to make the guy look vaguely like Lenin.

He hasn't taken any positions on any issues outside of Brext that have been unpopular.  And he proved during the 2017 election that he is a brilliant campaigner who can connect brilliantly with the electorate when given the chance to do so directly.

The country is with him on opposing UK military intervention against the Arab/Muslim world.  They support his economic policies.  They are clearly anti-austerity.

It's all down to the unjustified vilification.

BTW, why did you bring up the meaningless 2016 "no-confidence" motion from the MPs(and almost entirely from Blair's handpicked cabal)when he put that to rest by running for re-election to the leadership and winning by a larger margin?  You can't still be arguing that that motion obligated him to immediately stand down and just hand the party back to the Blairite MPs for deity's sakes.  Why on Earth should he have done that, when doing so would have caused hundreds of thousands of Labour members of supporters to instantly resign and brought no one in from the right to replace them?

The despicable part of the "he supported the IRA" lie was that it implied that Corbyn was disrespecting the suffering of the relatives of British soldiers killed there, when he was clearly doing nothing of the kind. He simply felt, as did virtually everyone to the left of the SDP in the Eighties, that British rule in Northern Ireland, and especially the enforcement of that rule by the British Army, was wrong.  Given that nothing positive ever came of the presence of British troops in the North and that, in that era, nobody in the Unionist side was willing to do anything at all to ease the oppression experienced by people in the minority community, why on earth shouldn't he have felt that way?  There was no such thing as a Left case for continued British rule at that time.

The smears are failing.  The lies are failing.  And the 8% support received by the "LDM"-is that meant to be the LibDems ?-means that the anti-Corbyn MPs, as they used to disdainfully say of people on the Labour left "have nowhere else to go".

Pursued For 'Exposing Evidence of US Atrocities': Corbyn Opposes Extradition of Assange

https://on.rt.com/9s2m

"Leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has publicly opposed UK's possible extradition of WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange to the US, saying he exposed evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan..."

Let us see what the reactionary Canadian faux left and NoDifferenceParty has to say...

Nancy Pelosi Meets Labour Sellouts

https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1117395599685558273

"Important discussion with former Labour Party MPs to hear their perspectives on Brexit, Why they left the Labour Party, and the importance of standing unequivocally against anti-Semitism wherever it is found."

The Justice Democrats should primary Pelosi. Replace her with someone like AOC.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

The Justice Democrats should primary Pelosi. Replace her with someone like AOC.

AOC endorsed Pelosi for Speaker. She's not the anti-establishment hero that she paints herself to be.

Right-wing British press: Corbyn's polling lead is a national emergency

cco wrote:

Right-wing British press: Corbyn's polling lead is a national emergency

I didn’t know Nicky wrote for The Telegraph.

Can we change the title on this thread to “Corbyn’Labour and the path to betrayal and irrelevancy”?

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/04/30/so-team-corbyn-decide-to-take-a-massive-gamble-and-ignore-lab-voters/

nicky wrote:

Can we change the title on this thread to “Corbyn’Labour and the path to betrayal and irrelevancy”?

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/04/30/so-team-corbyn-decide-to-take-a-massive-gamble-and-ignore-lab-voters/

Because the massive explosion in support for the Brexit Party coinciding with collapsing public support for the top 2 parties proves that Corbyn is hated simply because he's not doing enough to stop Brexit?

There are local elections tomorrow which will shed some light on Corbyn’s leadership.

the European elections are also scheduled for late May. They will also be revealing, unless they are cancelled. Corbyn now has an interest in striking a deal with May over aBrexit deal before then. That will enable the cancelation of the EU electionandavoid humiliationfor bothparties.

Corbyn has now manoeuvred hisparty into accepting such a deal without a confirmatoryreferendum. He may also avoid giving the public a say through the EU election.

His anti-democratic stand looks to be very damaging for Labour.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6979785/Labour-members-slice-cards-Corbyns-second-referendum-fudge.html

nicky wrote:

There are local elections tomorrow which will shed some light on Corbyn’s leadership.

the European elections are also scheduled for late May. They will also be revealing, unless they are cancelled. Corbyn now has an interest in striking a deal with May over aBrexit deal before then. That will enable the cancelation of the EU electionandavoid humiliationfor bothparties.

Corbyn has now manoeuvred hisparty into accepting such a deal without a confirmatoryreferendum. He may also avoid giving the public a say through the EU election.

His anti-democratic stand looks to be very damaging for Labour.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6979785/Labour-members-slice-cards-Corbyns-second-referendum-fudge.html

The Daily Mail?  LOL.

Labour Party Strife

https://youtu.be/lCjkIOF1Qb4

"It would be tantamount to telling Brexit voters to vote again until they get it right,' says George Galloway, after the Labour Party met to decide their stance on a second EU referendum."

Also, Corbyn isn't "hated".   He represents the views of the vast majority of Labour voters who WANT the party to make a total break with the essentially Tory policies of Blair.  His popularity ratings are down because the Brexit question has been manipulated against Jeremy-even though he couldn't center the unwinnable fight to overturn the last referendum without fatally splitting the party-and because the Labour Right won't let the antisemitism slur die, even though Corbyn has done everything that could be done to address the issue and everyone knows he's a passionate opponent of antisemitism.

You personally hate Corbyn because you wanted Labour to stay Blairite-i.e., Tory-for the rest of eternity.  

BTW...if you're going to play the "if you knew who I was" card again, you pretty much have an obligation to TELL US who the hell you are.

You clearly can't be a person who cares about working people and the poor, because it's only people on the left wing of "center-left" politics or those to THEIR left, only those who are anti-capitalist, anti-austerity and as antiwar as possible who have any right to make that claim.  Nobody who obsesses about balanced budgets, nobody who wants social spending kept low and benefits subjected to sanctimonious judgmental means-testing, nobody who wants unions kept weak, nobody who wants privatized enterprises kept privatized and nobody who still thinks the Western invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya or the U.S. bombing of Yemen are justified has any moral right to even pretend they are fighting for the working and kept-from-working-by-capitalism poor.

You're absolutely right, nicky. How dare Corbyn commit the horrible sin of saying that Palestinians are humans and their human rights should be respected. He should just go along with the MSM consensus in the English-speaking world by agreeing that Palestinians are horrible people and that the Israeli government is justified in levelling all kinds of brutality against him. Then people would love him!

I am unaware A24, that I have criticized Corbyn for his positions on climate change or Palestine. 

But then I may lack your peculiar powers of Aristotlean logic.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

nicky wrote:

I am unaware A24, that I have criticized Corbyn for his positions on climate change or Palestine. 

But then I may lack your peculiar powers of Aristotlean logic.

As you are no doubt aware, the accusation of anti-semitism against Corbyn, which you have personally referred to many times with approval, is based solely on his support for Palestinian human rights. There is no evidence whatsoever of actual anti-semitism.

Or even, in any possible sense, of toleration of anti-semitism.

Corbyn, if anything, is the most committed opponent of anti-semitism ever to lead a major British political party.

It is never necessary to restrict criticism of the Israeli government or of Zionism as an ideology to fight against antisemitism.

The big takeaway is likely to be that the only party which will make significant gains is the Brexit Party.  There is no way Labour could have gained in this situation from doing what you wanted and giving the fight to undo Brexit a higher priority than the fight to defeat the Tory government.  There is no possible way anything progressive can ever happen in the UK if the Tories are re-elected at the next general election-we can assume another Tory majority will be the death of the NHS-and once the NHS is dead, no progressive possibilities can ever exist in the UK, and it will no longer matter who wins any elections after that.

The anti-Corbynites don't care about that-all they care about is dumping Corbyn, expelling all his supporters, and making the party a Blairite dead zone again.  There is no concern for the poor and the working class among those people-if there was, they would have accepted that 2017 settled the leadership question and given up sabotaging the only credible leader Labour could possibly have.  Any of the alternatives you've suggested are sharply to Corbyn's right and virtually all still defend the Iraq War.  

This matters-because if they succeed in expelling the Left again, there will no longer be any reason for Labour to exist.  It will go back to the slow death it was sliding towards from 2010 to 2015-years when there was never any hope for a Labour victory at all, years when the membership levels of the party kept plummeting.  A party without a growing membership base cannot be politically successful.  

Why couldn't you just stop after 2017?  Why couldn't the anti-Corbynites just stop then?  Hadn't all of you done enough?

You keep saying that if we knew what you'd done for the progressive cause, we'd see you differently.  Can you name any progressives, any left people anywhere in Canada, who think that, for example, it's better for the NDP to have a less-progressive leader than a more-progressive one?

Also, what does "progressive" even mean to you?  Does it mean what it means to the Liberals-tiny, trivial increments that no one notices?

And why should we take your assertions that you are some sort of legendary hero of the Left when the rest of us have no idea what you've done or said?  You do realize that anybody can say they are "all that", right?  You keep acting as if your views should get greater deference than those of the rest of us, but you can't just expect people to take that on "spec".

nicky wrote:

So far the results show massive losses for the Cons and large losses for both Labour and UKIP (Brexit Party, contrary to your prediction Ken is not even running in these elections). Huge gains for LibDems and Greens.

I think someone said in one of these threads that most of the areas that are voting were pro-Brexit areas. The fact that the Greens gained proves that a left-wing message resonates with voters.

That’s such nonsense Ken. 

In your universe everyone who opposes Brexit or fails to worship the hapless Corbyn is part of some right wing conspiracy.

you seem incapable of learning any lessons from these elections.

if Labour is similarly blinkered it will have an unhappy future

The two parties that registered large gains were the Lib Dems and the Greens, both unambiguously anti-Brexit. The two most pro-Brexit parties, the Cons and UKIP lost massively.

Labour should hav3 cleaned up in this climate but instead was drowned in Corbynite hypocrisy an$ incoherence.

sure there were some regional variations but this does not obscure the overall verdict which was pro-remain