He shouldnât have a hope. ButâŚif the Tories split over the European referendum and after ten years of power. Who knows??? It will be entertaining anyway.
He hasnât shown he can bring people with him? He just got elected. Heâs left a few behind but heâs generated enormous support.
He hasnât shown he can bring his opponents within his own party along with him. A different thing to the support he had gathered. He also has a long way to go to convince people outside of his own supporters of the validity of his policies. Weâve have 30+ years of Washington consensus style economics and politics which has led to anyone proposing left of centre policies being easily dismissed. As a result Labour in the UK and Ireland for example have shifted right to the centre. If he can even convince more people that thereâs an alternative way of doing things that will be a big achievement.
Shit post rating.
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{sad and ashamed emoticon}
But the support he has gathered has included getting support from opponents within his party. He was a complete outsider to begin.
I agree, chill out. That was the easy (yes, I know it was an unlikely victory and never expected to be easy) part, he just has a very long way to go and a lot of people to convince.
Itâs mental how much the establishment and the media are terrified of him.
His thinking is so out of sync with the realpolitik of the modern era, theyâll be painting him as the English Hugo Chavez in jig time.
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Its a bit of a strange one. Ed Milliband lost the general election because he was too left wing and the Labour response is to replace him with Corbyn. Ultimately the British people vote for the best Tory candidate available as Prime Minister. It just so happened for several years that was Tony Blair. Floating vote will not touch Corbyn.
It had nothing to do with him being too left wing, it was because he was shite.
Youâre wrong Geoffrey. The inglish people rejected Ed Milibandâs labour because although he was more left that his brother, and blair/brown before him, he didnât offer a proper alternative. JC will.
This is not the end, this is just the beginning.
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JC is the Messiah
Labour would have walked the 1997 election no matter who was in charge for the simple reason that the Tories had been in for 18 years. Politics is like that.
Labour lost big in Scotland because they stood for nothing. Standing for nothing, according to the Corbyn-bashers, is apparently the way forward for Labour. Apparently three candidates, none of whom could muster 20% support in the this leadership election, are more electable than somebody who wins a landslide 60%.
Strange logic, innit?
Thatcher was considered unelectable in 1975 when she got the Tory leadership.
Whatâs also forgotten is that Labour were leading the polls in 1982 until Thatcher decided to have a war.
Can Corbyn win in 2020? Maybe, maybe not. But focus group politics sure isnât going to do anything for Labour.
If Corbyn can shift the centre ground towards the left, heâll have been a success.
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This has been a while in the making. Six of the last seven Labour leaders have failed to make it to Number 10, the party has been virtually extinct in the South East outside of London (bar a blip of sorts in the Blair era) since the Grantham native arrived on the scene and now theyâve been wiped out in Scotland as well.
I see theyâve also nominated Sadiq Kahn to run for London Mayor. Admittedly thereâs always been a whiff of sulphur around him but he was hardly a Marxist â except that now the media are portraying him as just that. Very early to call that one but even before the Corbyn fiasco the polls were indicating heâd lose to Goldsmith by about 8 points.
The one who comes out worst of all in this though is poor old Andy from Aintree. The genesis of his campaign was Jeremy would be a disaster but I agree with Jeremy on one thing âA complete laughing stock nowâ.
Decent article by Noel Whelan here:
It has been fascinating to watch the first days of Jeremy Corbynâs leadership of the British Labour Party.
His election says much about the anti-establishment and anti-austerity mood currently operating in British politics, which is similar to that reflected in the US presidential election and indeed to that apparent in opinion polls here in Ireland. The enthusiasm generated by the Corbyn leadership campaign, especially among the young, speaks volumes also of the hunger for authenticity in politics.
The relationship between Corbyn as Labour leader and the mainstream British media in these opening days has also been quite extraordinary and is worthy of study in its own right. Corbyn has not been willing or able to do political media relations in the highly-staffed and full access way most opposition political parties now do.
He is simply not prepared to engage in the long-established trade-off whereby, in order to avoid their media relations becoming the story, senior opposition politicians are required to engage with the media on the mediaâs terms. For his obstinacy the press has roundly punished him.
Typical self-regard
With typical self-regard the British media have made the change of opposition leadership about them. Large chunks of the news cycle have been given over to whether Corbynâs media style, or lack of it, has already fatally damaged his leadership.
It is no surprise that Corbyn has faced trenchant hostility from the Tory and Murdoch press since they oppose the politics he espouses. This week, however, even the coverage of him on the supposed fair or left of centre media has been over the top. Frankly, some of it has been disgraceful and undemocratic. It is as if the Oxbridge university elites, who dominate much of Britainâs political media, as they do much of Britainâs establishment politics, have determined that Labour is not entitled to elect a leader of his views.
Rather than adjusting to cover new politics of the type Corbyn has been mandated to practise, the media have turned Corbynâs refusal to do media relations the old way into a failing on his part.
The media have wilfully been contributing to the Conservative characterisation of Corbyn as a likeable but extremist incompetent. Even the coverage on the BBC has fed into to this in some subtle and some not so subtle ways. BBC reports for example have taken to regularly describing Corbyn as the âleft-wing leader of the Labour Partyâ leading to a series of entertaining online petitions for them to describe David Cameron as the âright-wing leader of the Conservativesâ. The second item on BBCâs Newsnight two nights this week focused on whether Corbynâs media style was undermining his efforts at new politics.
On Sunday evening, Corbyn, having chosen not to travel by chauffeur-driven car, was, when walking up the street, approached by a press posse and he dared to refuse to comply with the mediaâs presumed entitlement to a comment. When the cameras insisted on continuing to follow him Corbyn walked on in silence for as long as they continued to film him. The media then decided that this made him, rather than them, look rude.
At the Trade Union Congress on Tuesday, Corbyn delivered a speech which was very different in content from those delivered by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or Ed Miliband at previous such events. Much of the subsequent media focus was on Corbynâs style of delivery. It was wrong of him, the media pundits decided, not to use the autocue.
On Tuesday the media pounced on what they decided was the grave mortal sin of failing to sing along to the national anthem at a memorial service. This story dominated many of Wednesdayâs front pages. It even led a serious journalist like Jon Snow in an interview to ask Corbyn the absurd question of whether he loved his country.
Although he has no experience of the parliamentary frontline, Corbynâs approach of asking Cameron at Prime Ministerâs Question Time real questions from real people about the issues most affecting their lives meant that he controlled both the format and content of exchange.
Punch and Judy show
He put issues such as homelessness, cuts in tax benefits for low-income families and services for mental health front and centre. Unfortunately most of the media could only see the Corbyn-Cameron exchanges through their usual lens of politics as a Punch and Judy show. Some of the media assessments were farcical; one commentator suggested that Corbyn erred because âthe lack of intonation in his delivery during PMQs lacked the obvious full stops that act as a hint to the Labour benches to roar in approvalâ, missing entirely Corbynâs point at the outset that the public desired less theatrical and more substantial parliamentary debate.
Labour has certainly taken a risk in selecting Corbyn, but they have done so in a very democratic way. He is entitled to a fair hearing.
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They should send him to the Tower of London immediately.
Iâm fucking loving this guy. The headlines in The Express are priceless.
The Revolution WILL be televised. And itâs making for great viewing.
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A British General quoted in the Times today as saying there would be a mutiny in the army if Corbyn became Prime Minister.
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