E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

What would be a truly inspired genius political masterstroke (and therefore won't happen) is if the day after the election was called, Corbyn resigned his leadership and put Keir Starmer in place. Boom! Plot twist!

 

Momentum and the unions would probably [metaphorically] riot at the side-stepping of party democracy.

It'll also never happen whilst Shameless Milne and Len McLuskey are around...


Anyway, sit back... relax... bask in the UK's 3rd general election in 4 years... we make Italy look politically stable.

 

What do you know, it seems parliament didn't like our answer from 2 years ago so they're asking us to vote again, when are they going to get the message, no overall majority means no overall majority.

 

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I hadn't realised Mark Steel was so perceptive but, he's spot-on there.

 

Doesn't matter how you wrap it up. If you want shut of Bozo and the lying entitled tw@ts he runs with, you have vote for... Jeremy Corbyn.

D'ya see our problem? Bozo is gunna get back in because JC is unelectable.

 

I always get a laugh out of that Daily Mail grade reasoning. He's unelectable because nobody will vote for him, and nobody will vote for him because he's unelectable! It seems to be the best smear they've managed to desperately come up with after attempting the normal muckraking and coming up with "damn this guy is really boring".

 

Someone described it as the Tinkerbell theory...

Candidates only stand a chance of winning if the electorate believe they can win...

For example people tend not to vote Lib-Dem or green because no-one thinks they can win, and because no-one things they can win... they don't win.

The two major parties haemorrhaging support puts the the minor parties [LDs in particular] in the window where enough people think the LDs *could* win, and so people might start voting for them... so they might win...


Conversely if people don;t think Corbyn/Labour can win, they won't vote for him/them... and they won't win... which will reinforce people's opinion that he/they can't win...

 

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Oh no! Dick Braine has lost his job... who will be UKIP's leader this week?

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No, he's unelectable because he's too far to the left - when was the last time Britain elected a hard left prime minister?

I agree with some his policies, but I don't trust him - I grew up in a northern mining community - I was a coal miner. The whole region was dipped red come election day, but I don't know a single person from my old community who trusts Corbyn. I can hardly claim a representative polling sample, but just about every core Labour supporter I grew up with wouldn't vote for him.

If he has indeed lost core supporters, where does his support come from? Middle england? He will never gain enough support from the middle to get into office unless we have some kind of electoral reform. Hence, unelectable.

BTW, sniffy attempts to sideline opinions that differ from yours is Daily Mail grade reasoning.

 

The 'the Blair [and Brown] wasn't proper Labour' argument implies 'proper labour', or their idea of it, hasn't been in govt for in 40 years... and hasn't won an election in 43.

According to many of them last 'proper Labour' PM was Callaghan and his term was such a resounding force for good that well... Thatcher is what followed.


Also, as much as those currently at the top of Labour may loathe Blair/Brown, by slagging the Blair govt and any who served in it off, they're also implicitly saying 'Remember the last time the govt said "Labour" above the door... it was **** wasn't it?'... which is basically doing the Tories' job for them.

 

On the other hand, declaring the 'new Labour' years as a resounding success and desirable to emulate would hardly be a wise move.

 

My response to this is: why? Why is Jeremy Corbyn, and the current incarnation of the Labour party, any less trustworthy than any other leader or party out there right now? Tories? Yeah the less said about that the better. LibDem? They blew the first taste they had of real executive power they had in a long time with blunders like supporting austerity and uncapping tuition fees - many people are not going to forgive that for a long time. Greens? They're in favour of homeopathy and are staunchly against nuclear power, which right now is the only realistic way we're going to be able to stop burning fossil fuels for power. UKIP/BP? Again, less said about that the better.

Like you, I'm from a pretty working-class area, and I don't know a single life-long Labour supporter who would vote Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. But the reasons they usually give are just Daily Heil/Torygraph soundbites being regurgitated: he doesn't support the troops (what does that even mean?), he didn't do up his tie at a remembrance service (ok guilty), he's scruffy looking (so is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson IMO), he met with IRA terrorists (so did government ministers at the time - in fact they met with terrorists on both sides), he's antisemitic (FWIW I don't think JC personally is antisemitic, but this has been a problem for Labour and it hasn't been handled well at all)... and so many other pithy soundbites that I can't even remember right now.

In general we're very easily swayed by demagogues in this country (to be clear, I'm not accusing anyone specific of this, it's just more of a general observation). You only have to look at the rise of people like Nigel Farage or Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to see that: even a cursory examination of their past behaviour, promises, policies, achievements (or lack thereof), etc to see what utterly lying shysters they are. Yet for many these charlatans are saviours.

I'm willing to bet money that if you replaced Jeremy Corbyn with a 30/40-something, well spoken, well dressed, and effortlessly charming person as party leader then we'd have a Labour majority in a heartbeat; even if you changed literally nothing else about Labour policies or manifestos.

If you ignore the neoliberal economics for a moment, the Blair/Brown years were pretty left-wing and did a lot of good. There was a lot of left-wing/socialist policy made during those years.

And even if you don't ignore the economics, you can hardly hold Blair/Brown or their spending at fault for the economic crash. It was a direct result of the neoliberal policies enacted by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the late 70s/early 80s. New Labour's adoption of those policies didn't exactly help, but it sure has hell wasn't a result of government spending. In fact that was Gordon Brown's biggest downfall: he was a great economist, but he wasn't the best prime minister. He did a lot of work behind the scenes, both before and after becoming PM, to rescue the country from utter economic devastation. He never gets that credit though because it's far easier for opponents to bellow "This happened on your watch so it's your fault!" than it is to treat the electorate with just the tiniest amount of dignity and actually try to explain why it happened and what they'll do to make it better. Far easier to score points by bellowing across the despatch boxes or jeering loudly from the benches.

 

'But Iraq/Afghanistan' and 'but 2008' [and possibly 'but Lisbon Treaty'] might make a robust defence of the Blair/Brown years tricky. But by not even attempting to defend other parts of their time in office gives their opponents free reign to sling mud unchallenged.

I don't have as much faith the Labour membership as you, imo if you did that the pitchforks would be out calling for the ritual burning of 'Blair mk2'.

IIRC Labour's 2017 manifesto was pretty much a copypasta of Milliband's from 2 years earlier. Some minor tinkering around the edges, but the bulk of it was the same.

 

I don't just mean the Labour membership, I mean the country in general. I honestly think we'd lap it up if all this left-wing socialism was coming from someone more photogenic and TV-/media-friendly than Jeremy Corbyn.

 

But the membership pick the leader, for good or ill. And currently, that membership looks unlikely to pick such a candidate, even if one presented themselves.

 

Is it just because I'm a cynical old git who thinks politicians always have ulterior motives or does anyone else thing Boris is going to try losing this GE because he doesn't want Brexit.

From not bothering to start negotiations with the EU for a month after becoming PM, negotiating a deal that May turned down because it would split NI from the rest of the UK even after he said no one would do that, taking the whip away from his own MPs, stopping his own Brexit bill from proceeding, etc, etc, and now with Conservative MPs saying how this GE will be a struggle, it will be hard, and so on.

Is it just me who thinks Boris wants a Labour government so they can carry the can for either leaving the EU and/or holding a 2nd referendum, both of which would probably destroy any future electoral chances.

 

Same was said of May.

 

Well I know who I will be voting for and it certainly is not Corbyn or Swinson.

The whole general election is going to be fought on Brexit.

Libs Dems and Labour want to revoke Article 50.

Conservatives will just say "we will deliver brexit" and that is all they will come out with.


Personally I agree with some of Labours policies, but I will never vote for a party that has Corbyn in it, and I will not vote for lib dems when all they do is spout on about how the general public should not be listend to or trusted, even though I do again agree with some of the policies.

The Conservatives whilst I agree with some of the policies I do not agree with them all, but to me in my mind and in my opinion they are the only party I can vote for, think of that what you will, call me what you will but that is my choice and no one is going to change it.

Either way for me personally roll on the day we actually do leave the EU because then maybe just maybe this country can start moving forward and we can stop hearing about it on a daily basis although I do know it will be probably 2 or 3 years after that day before people start talking about something else, that is going to cause the sky to fall, the oceans, rivers and the rest of the worlds water to boil, the food to vanish and everyone to starve to death or finally the whole world to just implode on itself.

The way some people talk about brexit you would think that an asteroid was 2 days away from wiping out the planet, it's sad and funny at the same time.

 

Same is being said of Farage.