Cracks me up every time.
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@sidney From your reaction it would seem that you’re comfortable enough with Corbyn’s Labour, and hence the consequences of disaster Brexit and most likely ongoing Tory rule. It seems like a clear example of unicorn type idealistic purity over actual incremental improvements. Why?
How on earth have you made out that I’m comfortable with Brexit and ongoing Tory rule?
I’d love to know where I’ve made a post that ever even implied anything such.
You haven’t. But you seem strongly supportive of Corbyn and by all his actions (and inaction) it would logically seem to be enabling this inept Tory gov and maybe future ones. No way he should have lost last election and a more moderate Labour leader would have cleaned up and would clean up.
I don’t think Corbyn has been very good on Brexit and I’ve said so previously.
But even if his position is not what I’d like it to be, it remains far more moderate than the craziness going on across the aisle.
Those who are doing most to enable the Tories, past, present and future, are those within Labour (and as of today, those without) who have seen it as their mission to fatally undermine Corbyn since before he was even elected leader.
The reality of the first past the post system is that Labour are the only chance for a genuinely progressive government.
Every MP has the right to leave a party. But those who have left cannot claim that by doing so they are doing anything other than damaging the prospects of i) avoiding Brexit, ii) mitigating the effects of Brexit and iii) a progressive Labour or Labour led government in the UK.
In doing so they’re only harming themselves and there’s more than a distinct whiff of the shambolic way Renua was set up about the formation of this breakway.
The media performances from the MPs in it have been hapless today.
Chuka Umunna will probabaly end up as CEO of some NGO a few years down the line.
Your entire argument is predicated on the assumption that Corbyn is a suitable leader and is capable of being a suitable PM. I’d argue he’s consistently shown himself incapable of leading the broad coalition required to achieve and wield power.
His views and weasel actions on Brexit are the most egregious example of his unsuitability.
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What weasel actions?
You can disagree with the result of the referendum, but still hold a view that not all attempts to implement the result of the referendum constitute “weasel actions”. That goes for somebody like Rory Stewart too.
Even Ken Clarke voted for May’s deal.
In the North you have a lot of people who were strongly pro-Remain hoping thaat May’s deal will pass because they see it as the least worst option. Are those weasel actions or thoughts?
It isn’t 1997, you know.
A Blairite “moderate” wont cut it as leader. Ed Miliband was as moderate as anybody and he was destroyed (in an extremely unfair manner, it must be said) by the media while failing to excite potential Labour voters that he was a genuine alternative. The reasons a third of Labour voters voted for Brexit are the same reasons a Blairite or a so called “moderate” won’t cut it - because they aren’t interested in genuine economic reform.
He’s clearly far more in favour of Brexit than he lets on. He most likely voted for Brexit but suggests he didn’t. He made minimal effort to oppose it in the referendum. He sets his own unicorn solutions which have no chance of success to appear like he opposes it. Etc etc etc. Weasel leadership.
It always needs a moderate to appeal to the centre. Labour probably picked the wrong Miliband but that doesn’t mean a centrist wouldn’t succeed and would be far better than the Tory headbangers.
The fact May beat him in an election and that Labour are in as much disarray as the stories is the ultimate bottom line on his “leadership”
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Ah sid. Leader of a political party has enemies!?! Shocker!! Corbyn(who i had great hopes for) has been utterly inept on by far the biggest issue of his political life. Mouth shut sitting on his hands hoping for the opposition to fuck up (which they have repeatedly) and he still cant do anything. He could have opened his mouth. Expressed a strong opinion as a leader. Even if folk didnt like it he would at least have a clear conscious and had peoples respect. He’s a left wing Enda Kenny for fucks sake.
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Maybe they are unicorns, maybe they aren’t. But it’s not that outlandish in principle to suggest that the EU might be willing to renegotiate the deal to a position where the UK is closer to the EU, as Corbyn wants. What they won’t do is renegotiate it to a harder Brexit as May wants.
But what’s “moderate”?
Moderate by any reasonable standards these days should be firmly left, rather than the same neo-liberal consensus.
Again, a lot of that was down to i) how he was portrayed in the media, the IRA and “communist” smears and opposition from day one within his own party.
Given that backdrop, it was a pretty good election result. Labour got nearly 13 million votes which was a massive increase and their best since 1997.
Corbyn’s first question after May’s Govt was censored by the House was some constituency matter. It’s gas.
They aren’t smears. He took an infantile view on the North and claimed it was nuanced years later.
Similarly when he went on Iran’s International propoganda TV and would chat with assorted crackpots.
Corbyn’s views on nearly all international matters are against the prevailing viewpoint in the U.K and have been since the 1980s. The only one where he was onside was Iraq. The Stop the War movement managed to successfully rehabilitate the left of the Labour Party after they had been dismissed by the electorate as unelectable cranks in the 1980s.
Exactly the news that Labour needs on a day like today.
Look - putting to one side your “my guys unicorn is more realistic than the other lots unicorns” and the “the media are all at fault” etc etc and leaving aside the “the moderates can’t be won over by moderates” schtick you must deep down be sorely disappointed. Labour finally elected a fairly hard-left leader and it turns out he’s about as inspirational as a postman seeing out his years. This was the opportunity to find a left leader to inspire a country and try and win over the middle ground and they elected that. Is that genuinely the most inspirational leader the hard left has in the UK? Is that all there is?
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Luciana Berger is really quite sexy.
He will post a “study” from a Corbyn supporting LSU academic soon to “prove” this.
UK Labour leaders have always had a tough time, the crying over Corbyn’s treatment internally and externally is pathetic. Corbyn had a cake walk of an election campaign with May torn into by the Press over her manifesto and Grenfell- not much mentioned about that though. Nor is it mentioned how Corbyn managed to skulk around Labour for years. The Blair leadership would discourage him being deselected despite him time and time again voting against the whip (428 times including over and over again on Europe, see here https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/23/the-astonishing-rise-of-jeremy-corbyn). It’s delicous that they call for Parliamentary unity and threaten deselection with all that going on.
The great man of Tony Benn spirit of the membership having a voice is ignoring their voice right now. The drip of MPs who will resign is because of this.
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I’m with Flatty.