The Disappointing Jeremy Corbyn - Page 4 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14912282
layman wrote:You cannot make radical change with only a slim majority....

Well, unless it’s brexit of course...

It works with Brexit because a referendum was called, which Corbyn could do as well, of course. If he has to wait until 2022 indeed, the situation might become "revolutionary" by then and he can become more well-established too, so even more people can imagine him as the country's leader and vote for him. It's quite possible that post-Brexit Britain will look pretty different from the one that was imagined by the architects of Brexit, and the EU can come out of it pretty different too.
#14912284
Yes things might change and if they change then things will change :)

What is strange though is that he still has his base in the middle classes, inner city, university towns.

If he could break back into the traditional support base - the poor working class - then he would win easily surely.
#14912287
layman wrote:Yes things might change and if they change then things will change :)

What is strange though is that he still has his base in the middle classes, inner city, university towns.

If he could break back into the traditional support base - the poor working class - then he would win easily surely.


Not stange at all. Traditionally, all over the world, thse classes are more prone to be influenced by the media and established academic paradigm. For dacades we all know what was the established narrative.
#14912288
Atlantis wrote:Elect Corbyn to put Britain at the forefront of that change. :)


If Corbyn fails then the only chance is to keep trying. I don't think the Corbyn movement is a long term shift to left wing politics. Already he has changed some of his stances and moderated them to a more centrist position. We cannot expect major changes, it is afterall the UK we are talking about.
#14912293
Albert wrote:@Potemkin You wont denounce me as a 'Tsarists white counter-revolutionary' would you Potemkin? I'm just taking advantage of rightfully what is mine as a proletariat, right, right?


I doubt that he would. For all their other flaws, Tsarist white counter revolutionaries tended to have jobs.
#14912294
layman wrote:Yes things might change and if they change then things will change :)

Exactly, and the more time it takes for Corbyn to become PM the more radical changes he can make, because time works for him. It works for him because there is more change in a longer period of time and those changes prefer him. Demographic changes definitely prefer him, as well as changes generated by Brexit do. The longer the Tories remain in power the bigger they will fall, I wonder if they can ever realise that. Now they seem to believe this whole misery will go away if they remain in power long enough, but it's the opposite actually.
#14912333
I can't see Corbyn as worse than the status quo, since it's the status quo that means name-calling:

Squatter
Deserter
Strike
Traitor
Mentally retarded
Immigrant
Unemployed
Middle class
Working class
Servant
Master
Student
Teacher
Racist
Sexist
Liberal
Conservative
#14912341
layman wrote:What is strange though is that he still has his base in the middle classes, inner city, university towns.

If he could break back into the traditional support base - the poor working class - then he would win easily surely.

People keep parroting this "only middle class people and students like Corbyn" line, but it's largely an invention of Alastair Campbell. At the last election, Corbyn's Labour party won more votes from the "C2" and "DE" social classes than Miliband or Brown, and a similar percentage to Blair in 2005. In 1997 and 2001, the Tories had collapsed so utterly that it's hardly surprising they got destroyed. Similarly, the Tories won the AB and C1 vote in every one of those elections.

People really do like to pretend that all of the last five elections were fought on the same playing field, and forget that Blair (thanks again to Campbell, who was a brilliant spin doctor) had huge media support and, in any case, was fighting an utterly useless and demoralised Conservative party that would have lost to a stray dog with mange if you stuck a red rosette on it.

By 2010, the Tories had a well-oiled machine with most of the papers on their side and still couldn't win a majority. Then, they won a razor-thin majority using borderline-illegal campaigning methods, and held it for all of two years. But as ever, somehow this is all used as proof that Corbyn is useless and only has the support of a tiny part of the population.
#14912356
The tories are useless now. Labour should be doing better.

because time works for him.


This is only true up to the next election. If he loses that too then he needs to resign. Question then becomes whether his successor will moderate or double down. I believe moves are being made to ensure the later.
#14912388
Corbyn has proved time and time again that he's not going anywhere, but it seems the tedious relics of New Labour are still in denial
The local election results, which are notoriously unhelpful for predicting national trends, are being used as another excuse to bash Corbyn by those unable to admit they were wrong about him

So that’s that, is it? One set of inconclusive local election results, and the undertakers at New Labour Bereavement Services are polishing the brass handles of Jeremy Corbyn’s political coffin once again.

They have done it so often and fervently these last two and a half years that a class action for repetitive strain injury could be imminent. They had the Brasso out when he didn’t wear a tie or sing God Save The Queen, when Hilary Benn resigned, and with every coup that crashed on take-off. They summoned the priest to read the last rites when Theresa May called the snap election that would bury the entire party. Now they’re digging a hole in the ground because Labour didn’t win Barnet. (Of course it didn’t. The party is so riven by antisemitism that it is barely three years since it had a Jewish leader.)

If history teaches that the Corbyn obituary tends to be premature, New Labour’s laureates of entitlement are pitifully slow learners. At the back of the remedial class, passing the snide notes to Alastair Campbell, sits a man who once, and for decades, believed a great deal of what Corbyn believes today.

In the 1980s, David Blunkett led Sheffield’s council when it backed the miners and styled the “Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire” a nuclear-free zone. Later, as with the other reformed Marxists and reprogrammed Trots among his cabinet buddies, he had a eureka moment. No one ever rumbled the catalyst for an epiphany that came when he found himself close to a red box. Whatever it was, this erstwhile red-blooded radical embraced the anaemic amalgam of Thatcherism and social democracy known as Blairism with impressive fervour.

A decade later, he was so over his disgust at what the Murdoch press did to Neil Kinnock that he was dining and drinking with Rebekah Brooks and accepting a handsome stipend to write for The Sun, the paper that claimed it personally defeated Labour in 1992.

Suppleness fades with time, of course, and the elasticity of mind that enabled that remarkable journey has been replaced by arthritic rigidity. To this unlikely child of Thatcher, as to mummy herself, there is no alternative.

The New Labour way is the only way, to which end he pops up from time to time as chief mourner at a funeral infuriatingly robbed of its corpse. “Now there can be no doubt,” runs the headline on today’s Mail On Sunday tour de force. “Corbyn hasn’t a prayer.”

It may be Blunkett’s finest column on the subject since September 2016, when he celebrated Corbyn’s reflection over the mighty Owen Smith in the same journal. “The Labour Party under Corbyn is not electable,” he wrote. “I am at a loss to understand what the 313,000 members who voted for him believe … the eventual outcome will be, other than annihilation at a general election in 2020.”

If something seismic had occurred since to question that analysis – something unimaginable like, I dunno, like Corbyn winning a far higher share of the general election vote than Blair in 2005 – one of Blunkett’s humility would acknowledge he got it wrong before and might be wrong again.

In the absence of any such event, he can’t be blamed for sticking to the old script. But how much weight should he or anyone put on these council results?

Traditionally, due to the low turnout and predominance of local issues, they have been poor indicators of national voting intentions. But even if these ones defy the trend, they seem to show that we are roughly where we were last June, with the two main parties deadlocked.

Those who think hard cash a good guide, or at least a less bad one than the outraged squealings of third rate generals fighting old wars, will note that on Betfair barely a slither splits the Tories and Labour so far as winning most seats at the next election. Another hung parliament is the favourite outcome.

The punters evidently disagree with Blunkett and Campbell, possibly because they recognise that they have ceased to be political pundits, and become politics’ answer to the football phone-in ranter. The one who didn’t fancy the manager when he was hired, resents him more now for having made him look daft, and greets every apparent reverse – a scoreless draw in a minor cup match, racist chanting from a vocal minority of the crowd – as vindication of their initial misjudgment.

“And now on Six-O-Six, it’s David from Sheffield, who wants Corbyn out.”
“Hi Kelly, Hi Wrighty. Look, I’ve been saying this since before he got the job, but we’ll get nowhere till he’s sacked.”
“David, it’s Ian. I remember you calling several times last season to say he’d get you relegated – and he took you to within a few points of winning the league!”
“You’re a legend, Wrighty, but that’s cobblers. We all know last season was a fluke ’cause the other lot were crap.”
“And now they’re not?”
“My point exactly. They are, and the other night he still only got us a draw. He hasn’t got a prayer, mate. He has to go…”

Like those of every football coach other than Alex Ferguson, all political careers end in failure. But that day isn’t a nanosecond closer for Corbyn now than it was on Thursday morning, however desperate his undertakers are to break open the embalming fluid and dance on his grave.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/je ... 38961.html
#14912393
layman wrote:The tories are useless now. Labour should be doing better.

Agreed. And they probably would be if they didn't have an effective fifth column in parliament doing everything in its power to stop them getting any momentum (no pun intended!).

Of course, if you can name a single potential leader among the rabble who would do better, I'd genuinely be interested to know who it is. To put it mildly, Owen Smith wasn't exactly a political titan, and half of the other supposed "heavyweights" have buggered off to work for museums, or take up meaningless mayoral positions, rather than fight for their alleged principles.

I've said before on the forum that I don't see Corbyn as a particularly great leader, but that he is at least recognisable as a Labour politician who "knows what he fights for and loves what he knows". I defend him because he is relentlessly attacked by people who (a) think that the unique situation in 1997 - largely independent of Blair, when considered in its proper context - is somehow the baseline by which all Labour leaders should be judged and (b) do not apply the same standard of criticism to any other political figure in Britain today.
#14912400
layman wrote:This is only true up to the next election. If he loses that too then he needs to resign. Question then becomes whether his successor will moderate or double down. I believe moves are being made to ensure the later.

The British should elect Corbyn once at least to ensure their social benefits, which all could be jeopardised post-Brexit. Maybe he should call a referendum on a bill of social rights or a social constitution as PM. It would be a bit populist perhaps, but it's the trend in Britain recently, isn't it? ;)
#14912428
@Heisenberg

I am not sure how much these blairites affect his popularity with the public? I certainly think it’s a better reason than the media which most of his supporters like to blame.

It seems self evident now that mainstream media hate can be a real advantage. It is the traditional underdog effect, combined with social media, combined with distrust in traditional sources and probably other factors.

I think it’s more rational reasons to be honest. He just doesn’t seem like the leadership type. Remember his personal ratings are much worse than the party ratings. The good news for you lot is that this suggests it’s not the left wing direction people dislike as much as the persona and perceived competence of the dear leader.
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