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The Media Against Jeremy Corbyn

I believe they're a mixed lot. He definitely appeals to Trots, Communist types, SWP and a lot of people who are pissed at the present shambles.
He does appeal to Trots, SWP are Trots btw, but they are a, as they've always been, a very small number. I think the entire membership of the SWP is no more than 3,000 and not all of them will have signed up to Labour. Other Trotskyite and non-Trotskyite Communist groups number even fewer. If there are 10,000 in total that is on the high side. That makes them around 1.4% of the total membership of the Labour Party.

I'd say that a majority of the newly-joined membership comprises non-aligned but seriously pissed off and alienated younger voters. They are pissed off not just because of the widespread disaffection with the political establishment, although that's endemic across British society, but also they are pissed off with the older, more comfortable, middle class voters who they see as having sold their futures to demagogues and xenophobes.

Still, as you know full well Andy to run a country you need broad appeal. Has he got that? Will he bring across people like IC? I very much doubt it. Thus, he'll not win an election.
He won't bring across Tories like IC, of course he won't, but he may well unite all those who share the disaffection that a vast number of British voters feel for the political class, and that doesn't just mean the Tories, it also means those anti-leadership Labour MPs. They offer no solutions to austerity, the lack of housing and real employment opportunities, the sucking of funds and resources towards the southeast, the inequitable burden of immigration and refugees placed on the poorest areas of the country and the massive democratic deficit that no one in Westminster seems to care about at all.

It might seem to you that the way in which the Labour Party is transforming itself into a nationwide mass movement rather than a fan club for Westminster élites makes it less electable. It may do, but I think there is a strong feeling that Westminster isn't the only way to apply pressure and achieve social change. I do think however, that when UKIP and Brexit voters realise that leaving the EU destroys their economic security and threatens their public services, contrary to what they were promised, they will look to vent their ire at that betrayal by voting for a party that doesn't mouth platitudes like 'Brexit means Brexit', and 'We're all in it together', and 'Let's take back our country'. Which other party offers them the prospect of change?

Corbyn is going to win the leadership contest by a country mile. The PLP may indeed trigger a split in the party and their neo-SDP breakaway may ensure another Tory GE victory, if May manages to call that election before the Brexit damage takes the country into major recession. She'd better be quick though, because the business and finance sector is already signalling a collapse in confidence in the economy.

How do you honestly think the electorate will react to May's failure to negotiate access to the single market and an end to free movement of labour, a new and deeper recession, and a failure to curb rising immigration rates? You might think that this would majorly benefit UKIP, but I'd argue that a Corbyn-led, real Labour Party will benefit more.
 
He does appeal to Trots, SWP are Trots btw, but they are a, as they've always been, a very small number. I think the entire membership of the SWP is no more than 3,000 and not all of them will have signed up to Labour. Other Trotskyite and non-Trotskyite Communist groups number even fewer. If there are 10,000 in total that is on the high side. That makes them around 1.4% of the total membership of the Labour Party.

I'd say that a majority of the newly-joined membership comprises non-aligned but seriously pissed off and alienated younger voters. They are pissed off not just because of the widespread disaffection with the political establishment, although that's endemic across British society, but also they are pissed off with the older, more comfortable, middle class voters who they see as having sold their futures to demagogues and xenophobes.

He won't bring across Tories like IC, of course he won't, but he may well unite all those who share the disaffection that a vast number of British voters feel for the political class, and that doesn't just mean the Tories, it also means those anti-leadership Labour MPs. They offer no solutions to austerity, the lack of housing and real employment opportunities, the sucking of funds and resources towards the southeast, the inequitable burden of immigration and refugees placed on the poorest areas of the country and the massive democratic deficit that no one in Westminster seems to care about at all.

It might seem to you that the way in which the Labour Party is transforming itself into a nationwide mass movement rather than a fan club for Westminster élites makes it less electable. It may do, but I think there is a strong feeling that Westminster isn't the only way to apply pressure and achieve social change. I do think however, that when UKIP and Brexit voters realise that leaving the EU destroys their economic security and threatens their public services, contrary to what they were promised, they will look to vent their ire at that betrayal by voting for a party that doesn't mouth platitudes like 'Brexit means Brexit', and 'We're all in it together', and 'Let's take back our country'. Which other party offers them the prospect of change?

Corbyn is going to win the leadership contest by a country mile. The PLP may indeed trigger a split in the party and their neo-SDP breakaway may ensure another Tory GE victory, if May manages to call that election before the Brexit damage takes the country into major recession. She'd better be quick though, because the business and finance sector is already signalling a collapse in confidence in the economy.

How do you honestly think the electorate will react to May's failure to negotiate access to the single market and an end to free movement of labour, a new and deeper recession, and a failure to curb rising immigration rates? You might think that this would majorly benefit UKIP, but I'd argue that a Corbyn-led, real Labour Party will benefit more.

I'm not getting into a long post Andy, i'm in the Dominican on holiday :) I can't really disagree with most of your post on disaffection with much of what is happening in the UK at present. I just dont see Corbyn as the answer. I am reading the 'global minatour' at the moment, so i may be converted! :lol:
 
Article that describe the Labour establishment and the opposition towards Corbyn.

But you have to feel for them because they’ve been trained, over 20 years or more, to believe opposition to the rule of wealth, the demands of big business and the engagement in unnecessary wars belongs only to a handful of outdated idiots. So if hundreds of thousands join Labour to challenge that idea, or if Labour loses almost every seat in Scotland to a party that disagrees, or millions of Americans support a radical socialist, they can’t adjust. It’s not their beliefs that need amending – reality must be wrong.

Jeremy Corbyn's supporters are so dangerous they took over the Labour Party before they were even born | Voices | The Independent

Also intersting if anyone know if Angela Eagle have been describe as an extremist in British media and/or Corbyn have been lauded for getting the Labour establishment to accept his policy changes. Because Eagle have in a inteview failed to describe the diffrence between hers and Corbyn policies.

Angela Eagle flounders as she makes her leadership bid to 'heal Labour' | Coffee House
 
I'm not getting into a long post Andy, i'm in the Dominican on holiday :) I can't really disagree with most of your post on disaffection with much of what is happening in the UK at present. I just dont see Corbyn as the answer. I am reading the 'global minatour' at the moment, so i may be converted! :lol:

TBH, I'm not sure he is either, but I don't think this battle in the LP is about him entirely. It's about the type of politics that the Labour members want the party to pursue. It's about ditching the too-cosy consensus between New Labour and the Conservatives. It's a reaction, an earthquake of a reaction, to the fact that social inequality spiralled under New Labour, continues to do under the Tories, and the faction of the Labour Party that has hoovered up the majority of parliamentary seats while losing two elections has absolutely no idea, or worse, no motivation to challenge the assumptions about the very fundamental structure of British society, economics and politics.

I'm hoping that there may emerge a different leader of the Labour Party, with Corbyn's analysis, instinct and politics, but also with a degree of charisma, organisational appeal and without the baggage of Corbyn's wilderness years.

One can hope.

Have a lovely holiday. What the hell are you doing even logging into DP when there's snorkelling, sunbathing and sight-seeing to be done and a good John LeCarré waiting to be read? :2razz:
 
TBH, I'm not sure he is either, but I don't think this battle in the LP is about him entirely. It's about the type of politics that the Labour members want the party to pursue. It's about ditching the too-cosy consensus between New Labour and the Conservatives. It's a reaction, an earthquake of a reaction, to the fact that social inequality spiralled under New Labour, continues to do under the Tories, and the faction of the Labour Party that has hoovered up the majority of parliamentary seats while losing two elections has absolutely no idea, or worse, no motivation to challenge the assumptions about the very fundamental structure of British society, economics and politics.

I'm hoping that there may emerge a different leader of the Labour Party, with Corbyn's analysis, instinct and politics, but also with a degree of charisma, organisational appeal and without the baggage of Corbyn's wilderness years.

One can hope.

Have a lovely holiday. What the hell are you doing even logging into DP when there's snorkelling, sunbathing and sight-seeing to be done and a good John LeCarré waiting to be read? :2razz:

im coming in for some air con, Andy :2razz:

The Global Minotaur was an excellent read. I dont do fiction im afraid....time for The Crusades!
 
Throw enough mud and some will stick.

I swear that many of these MPs are taking the whip from the Tories these days.

I feel it's open season in the Labour Party, at the moment. No discipline.
 
The solution to get rid of Corbyn is to present a candidate with stronger support amongst the members, but the anti Corbyn MPs seems to have hard time accomplish that. Jeremy Corbyn now has more than double the support of Owen Smith.

Jeremy Corbyn has more than double the support of Owen Smith, poll shows | Politics | The Guardian

One big reason is that the anti Corbyn MPs doesn’t seem to care about the members’ concerns. For example, that Owen Smith have this background.

After working for the US giant Pfizer, Smith moved to the controversial biotech firm Amgen in 2008. At the time, Amgen was battling an investigation into one of its most successful anaemia drugs, Aranesp.

Amgen was ultimately fined $762m for illegally promoting the drug to cancer patients in a way that increased the likelihood of their deaths. Amgen was hit with the fines after it emerged that the California company was “pursuing profits at the risk of patient safety” as it promoted a non-approved use of Aranesp.

Smith was in charge of corporate affairs, corporate and internal communications and public affairs at the British division of Amgen while the biotech company was being investigated.
¨
Owen Smith worked as PR chief for biotech firm hit by $762m fine | Politics | The Guardian
 
Discipline? Political parties are composed of warring tribes.

I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with Labour being a broad church but, the fact is that the party has ignored the left leaning membership for over 20 years and failed to make any impact apart from dragging us into a Middle Eastern factional war. For me the New Labour flirtation with middle ground politics has simply allowed the Conservatives to lurch to the right and appear reasonable and 'one nation' and let the SNP appear to be the radical ones with an alternative to grinding austerity. New Labour has defined Labour as a party of middling mediocrity for career politicians who see the Conservatives as to much work too progress through.

When the New Labour project came about, the left wing grudgingly supported it based upon the mantra that without power nothing can be achieved and guess what, with power, New Labour achieved nothing more than Conservative lite. When that happened, the left didn't tear the party apart in a tantrum like the Blairites are doing now so, I have no sympathy for them whatsoever, they either put up for the membership or **** off to the Liberal Democrats or start a new SDP.

Guess what, I believe that they have a reasonable case that Corbyn is not a born leader, I really do. His natural territory is as a rebel or an agitator but, he has taken a lot of crap, and at times it looks like many Labour MPs have practically taken the Tory whip and briefed along the Conservative party lines like a fifth column. For the crap that he has taken and the way he has handled it with dignity, he gets my respect. Peter Hitchens on Radio 4s Any Questions (Hitchens is a right leaning commentator by the way) got it exactly right when he said...

BBC Radio 4 - Any Questions?, Hazel Blears, Richard Burgon MP, Anna Soubry MP, Peter Hitchens

Listen at 34:30
 
Discipline? Political parties are composed of warring tribes.

You still have to maintain Party discipline. Otherwise, you get what we see with the Labour party, at the moment.
 
I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with Labour being a broad church but, the fact is that the party has ignored the left leaning membership for over 20 years and failed to make any impact apart from dragging us into a Middle Eastern factional war. For me the New Labour flirtation with middle ground politics has simply allowed the Conservatives to lurch to the right and appear reasonable and 'one nation' and let the SNP appear to be the radical ones with an alternative to grinding austerity. New Labour has defined Labour as a party of middling mediocrity for career politicians who see the Conservatives as to much work too progress through.

When the New Labour project came about, the left wing grudgingly supported it based upon the mantra that without power nothing can be achieved and guess what, with power, New Labour achieved nothing more than Conservative lite. When that happened, the left didn't tear the party apart in a tantrum like the Blairites are doing now so, I have no sympathy for them whatsoever, they either put up for the membership or **** off to the Liberal Democrats or start a new SDP.

Guess what, I believe that they have a reasonable case that Corbyn is not a born leader, I really do. His natural territory is as a rebel or an agitator but, he has taken a lot of crap, and at times it looks like many Labour MPs have practically taken the Tory whip and briefed along the Conservative party lines like a fifth column. For the crap that he has taken and the way he has handled it with dignity, he gets my respect. Peter Hitchens on Radio 4s Any Questions (Hitchens is a right leaning commentator by the way) got it exactly right when he said...

BBC Radio 4 - Any Questions?, Hazel Blears, Richard Burgon MP, Anna Soubry MP, Peter Hitchens

Listen at 34:30

The left of the party didnt make the cut (Foot et al) thats why they had to move to the centre. If Blair (Smith) never came along, Labour would have been in the wilderness for years! Moreover, judging Blair solely on his Iraq fiasco is so easy, in hindsight (by the way, I didnt support it at the time). So again, if Labour does not have an incumbent who appeals to the masses, then dont expect to gain power any time soon. Corbyn is a disaster.
 
I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with Labour being a broad church but, the fact is that the party has ignored the left leaning membership for over 20 years and failed to make any impact apart from dragging us into a Middle Eastern factional war. For me the New Labour flirtation with middle ground politics has simply allowed the Conservatives to lurch to the right and appear reasonable and 'one nation' and let the SNP appear to be the radical ones with an alternative to grinding austerity. New Labour has defined Labour as a party of middling mediocrity for career politicians who see the Conservatives as to much work too progress through.

When the New Labour project came about, the left wing grudgingly supported it based upon the mantra that without power nothing can be achieved and guess what, with power, New Labour achieved nothing more than Conservative lite. When that happened, the left didn't tear the party apart in a tantrum like the Blairites are doing now so, I have no sympathy for them whatsoever, they either put up for the membership or **** off to the Liberal Democrats or start a new SDP.

Guess what, I believe that they have a reasonable case that Corbyn is not a born leader, I really do. His natural territory is as a rebel or an agitator but, he has taken a lot of crap, and at times it looks like many Labour MPs have practically taken the Tory whip and briefed along the Conservative party lines like a fifth column. For the crap that he has taken and the way he has handled it with dignity, he gets my respect. Peter Hitchens on Radio 4s Any Questions (Hitchens is a right leaning commentator by the way) got it exactly right when he said...

BBC Radio 4 - Any Questions?, Hazel Blears, Richard Burgon MP, Anna Soubry MP, Peter Hitchens

Listen at 34:30

Yeah, I listened to that yesterday. I think Hitchens is going soft in his old age. On certain issues he seems to have tracked left, he certainly did so on Iraq, just as his brother, the sainted Christopher, track all the way over to the neo-cons.

We seem to agree on Corbyn. I kind of liked Owen Smith's idea that Corbyn become a kind of figure-head leader of the party, but leaving the organisation and policy driving to someone else. Of course, Smith isn't the one to do that, but I'm pretty sure he's just a stalking horse candidate to weaken the Corbyn leadership further. He's clearly not qualified to lead, and that tag of lobbyist for big pharma doesn't help either.
 
Not surprising.. most of the media are owned by hard core conservatives. They clearly set agendas that are anti-left wing and nationalist, why you think that people voted to leave the EU? common sense? Of course not.. they did it because the conservative media told lies after lies.

And in the UK the top-of-the-media-rot is the Australian-American Rupert Murdoch.

Btw, I also happen to think that the reason London voted solidly against Brexit, but the small-town or countryside folk voted for Brexit was because of the migrants flooding into Europe. Even though comparatively few are getting to the UK.
 
There is not going to be any peace process unless there is talks involving Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas and I think everyone knows that. The wider question is Hamas and Hezbollah are part of a wider peace process. Even the former head of Mossad says that there has to be talks involving Hamas. "

Quite right. The Palestinians have been living in Occupied Territory since Israel's creation in the late 1940s.

Israel has no right to the West Bank and should give it back. Of course, that restricts the "space" necessary for housing population growth. But, sooner or later, they will have to give the West Bank back to the Palestinians.

Besides, given the high salaries in Israel today, one might think that having the Palestinians peacefully ensconced on their West Bank would be a "good idea" for Israeli manufacturing businesses ...
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Quite right. The Palestinians have been living in Occupied Territory since Israel's creation in the late 1940s.

Israel has no right to the West Bank and should give it back. Of course, that restricts the "space" necessary for housing population growth. But, sooner or later, they will have to give the West Bank back to the Palestinians.

Besides, given the high salaries in Israel today, one might think that having the Palestinians peacefully ensconced on their West Bank would be a "good idea" for Israeli manufacturing businesses ...
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First of all there is a rule that disallows discussion of this subject outside of its subforum in the Mideast forum. Secondly claiming that Israel's very existence is 'an occupation' isn't just ignorant and false it is also an extreme, radical position held mainly by the Islamist radicals. Furthermore the state of Israel and its citizens clearly have rightful security concerns that as long as they will not be met it is absolutely insane to expect Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, it is also ignorant to refer to the act of withdrawing from the West Bank as "giving it back to the Palestinians" as the people defining themselves today as Palestinians have never held these territories. Finally you could do us all a favor and use the normal font, there is no legitimate excuse to use the font you're using.
 
First of all there is a rule that disallows discussion of this subject outside of its subforum in the Mideast forum.

So, why do you go on and discuss it? You above the rules?

And I'll use any damn font-size I want.

Anything else ... ?
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So, why do you go on and discuss it? You above the rules?

Yes. And it's good that you went back to a normal font people can actually read, appreciate it.
 
Yes. And it's good that you went back to a normal font people can actually read, appreciate it.

Any one else around here "above and beyond the "Forum Rules" (see link in page header above)?

Just wondering how many omnipotent gods this web-site has ...
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