The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

If he helps change the conversation, then he's done his job. I fear the right-wing press has gone too far with its 'bloody immigrant' narrative & have no idea what they've unleashed among the general population. The amount of people I hear seemingly equate immigration with criminality is worrying. A real opposition would at least challenge that perception. That's a hell of a lot of work to do, no thanks to the irresponsible Tories playing on ignorance for electoral advantage. Although they weren't alone, with Labour buying into it and the Kippers usual nonsense.

Edited August 18, 2015 by CarewsEyebrowDesigner

[Awol]

The amount of people I hear seemingly equate immigration with criminality is worrying.

Are you hearing people conflating immigration or illegal immigration with criminality? One plainly isn't, the other plainly is.

[HanoiVillan]

^

 Just go on Twitter and type in "Liz Kendall bitch/word removed/witch" etc

 

Oh, on Twitter? Is there anything except personal abuse on Twitter? If I type in Andy Burnham/Yvette Cooper/Jeremy Corbyn + word removed am I going to get zero hits? I thought you meant comments from actual political commentators or people who matter. 

[MakemineVanilla]

Pretty strong article on Corbyn over on Spiked - a bit long but many a home truth expounded.

 

The link: http://tinyurl.com/nejyrq3

 

The quote:

 

 

Jeremy Corbyn has been a Labour member of parliament for a remarkable 32 years without ever leading anything or leaving any visible mark on British political life. How could such a veteran non-entity emerge overnight as favourite to be the new, left-wing, game-changing leader of the Labour Party?

Only because the Labour Party as a mass movement has not just declined, but effectively collapsed. The apparent rise of Corbyn is made possible by the disintegration of his party. The key factor in all of this is not any resurgence of radicalism, but the demise of Labourism.

[meregreen]

 

 

The hysteria surrounding the possibility that Corbyn might be leader of Labour is absolutely astounding. The real Tories are actually worried that he gets elected precisely because he will drag the debate in this country back leftwards instead of all the parties continually pursuing the same rightist economic agenda in just different shades separated by mere cigarette papers. When they are all continually pounding the austerity drum, the Tories have the confidence to pursue a more and more extreme right thinking philosophy.

 

I'm a real Tory,  and this bit of your post is ,  from my perspective,  utter drivel.  I cant wait for Corbyn to be elected.

 

Well I'm a real Socialist, and do not regard Bicksters opinion as drivel. Be careful what you wish for. I remember when Labour held a 170 seat majority, the political wisdom of the time was that the Tories might find themselves excluded from power for a generation. I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now as regards a Corbyn led Labour party. Politics is by it's nature a volatile thing, peoples perceptions of permanent stability in it have a tendency to come crashing down. One of the reasons so many people have been turned off by the political narrative in recent elections, is the belief, that there is simply little or no difference between the major Parties. A Corbyn victory wiil shift the alternative to the Neo Liberal option to the Left. A real alternative, whether it is to your taste or not, will be on offer, and the political discourse will change accordingly. Given the propensity of the Tories to keep their mantra of cutting and slashing public services regardless of the pain being inflicted on people, this alternative may well begin to strike a chord with the British people. In Britain today, we are begining to see the full horrors of an unfettered Tory Party unleashed . Public services starved, political opposition gerrymandered from seats, organized workers undermined, young people demonized, innocents punished for the wrong doings of a financial sector already gorging itself in the financial trough again.  If Corbyn  can galvanize the opposition to this, rather than meekly stand by, then I too "can't wait" for him to be elected.

Edited August 18, 2015 by meregreen

[snowychap]

Yes and they still borrowed in spite of that. Of course they didn't cause the financial crisis but the economy would've been in a better state when they left office had they not insisted on borrowing so much.

From the election night thread:

George Osborne promised to match labour spending in 2007. So the conservatives would have 'overspent' as well. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6975536.stm

Labour governed from 1997, so we're talking about 13 years of over-spending not just the one year prior to the recession.

There are several points to make (even ignoring how much control a government directly has over whether or not it runs a surplus/deficit):

There was a surplus between 1998 and 2001;

UK governments rarely run a budget surplus (only seven years out of the last 50, I think);

Between 2002 and 2007 (i.e. before the financial crisis) the UK government's deficit was between 2% and 3% (historically relatively low) and whilst there may have been some criticism of this (that policy was perhaps a little loose) from outside the political sphere, I don't remember much, if any, from the Tories (there were even commitments to match it all as per Pompey's post);

Lastly, a quote in the article I quoted a few pages back (and ignoring questions about the merits of an idea like the structural deficit for a mo), The elimination of the UK's structural deficit [under Labour before the recession] would not have been even a sticking plaster in the face of the haemorrhaging of the finance sector's jugular.

And the article referenced is from Simon Wren-Lewis:

As I noted in my previous post, the very big government budget deficit in 2010 was largely the result of the recession. That fact is difficult to square with the myth that the coalition government rescued the economy from an impending financial crisis, so it is important to push another explanation for the large deficit: that it reflected the profligacy of the previous government.

Economic journalists know full well this is a myth. Yet it is a myth repeated on countless occasions by the coalition parties, and by journalists working for the partisan press. On one occasion one of these journalists tried to rubbish a post where I wrote it was a myth, and I hope learnt to regret the experience.

Just inspecting the chart in my last post shows this myth is nonsense. But the political commentators that are central to mediamacro seldom look at economic data. What they do remember of the pre-recession budgets of Gordon Brown was some criticism that he was not being as prudent as he might be. That memory is both correct (both the IFS and NIESR made that criticism) and the criticism is valid, as I set out in my study of this period. (To read the study free before the election, go here.) This is the half-truth that sustains the myth.

But mild imprudence is not profligacy. We can see that by looking at another chart, for the debt to GDP ratio. Profligacy would imply a rapidly rising ratio, but this ratio before the recession (37% in 2008) was below the level Labour inherited (42% in 1997), and below its fiscal rule figure of 40%. No profligacy there.

So the Labour profligacy argument on its own would fall apart, if it was not itself buttressed by another myth: the argument that the government should have been running large surpluses in 2007, because we were in the midst of a major boom. That myth is important and widespread enough to deserve a post of its own tomorrow.

One final point. There was no impending financial crisis in 2010, but there was a very real financial collapse in 2008. Even though Labour was not profligate, if it had been more prudent wouldn't that have given it more ammunition to fight the recession caused by the financial collapse? To the extent that Labour's countercyclical fiscal policy in 2009 was moderated by a worry about debt (which I suspect it was), this is a half-truth. But as Vicky Pryce, Andy Ross and Peter Unwin state in their book 'Its the Economy Stupid: Economics for Voters' (which I happily recommend, and which in its initial chapters covers much of the ground of this series):

"The elimination of the UK's structural deficit [under Labour before the recession] would not have been even a sticking plaster in the face of the haemorrhaging of the finance sector's jugular"

I would also add that the Conservatives not only argued for even less financial regulation before the financial collapse, but opposed Labour's measures to moderate the recession in 2009.

[meregreen]

 

Pretty strong article on Corbyn over on Spiked - a bit long but many a home truth expounded.

 

The link: http://tinyurl.com/nejyrq3

 

The quote:

 

 

Jeremy Corbyn has been a Labour member of parliament for a remarkable 32 years without ever leading anything or leaving any visible mark on British political life. How could such a veteran non-entity emerge overnight as favourite to be the new, left-wing, game-changing leader of the Labour Party?

Only because the Labour Party as a mass movement has not just declined, but effectively collapsed. The apparent rise of Corbyn is made possible by the disintegration of his party. The key factor in all of this is not any resurgence of radicalism, but the demise of Labourism.

 

A non-entity with no visible marks called David Cameron is currently PM. Did anybody know of him before he became leader of the Tory Party, no, me neither.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

 

The amount of people I hear seemingly equate immigration with criminality is worrying.

Are you hearing people conflating immigration or illegal immigration with criminality? One plainly isn't, the other plainly is.

 

 

No, I'm hearing people talk about bog standard immigrants as if being an immigrant is itself criminal (I'm not using the word in a strictly legal sense btw). The shite peddled by the right has had a rather alarming cumulative effect i.e. it now seems perfectly acceptable to slight people who come here to make better lives for themselves for no other reason that they aren't from here. It's dangerous.

[OutByEaster?]

Immigration is the topic of choice for our press, personally speaking I don't think it affects my life very much, I've read both sides of the argument of how it affects our finances, our societies and our public services and it's not that big an issue compared to others - but it's on the front pages of the paper every day because it allows for a 'them' and an 'other' that lets Mr Cameron paint an 'us' that he includes us in while he robs us blind. Like the US obsession with race, it's the great misdirection, a trick of distraction.

 

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”

[StefanAVFC]

 

The amount of people I hear seemingly equate immigration with criminality is worrying.

Are you hearing people conflating immigration or illegal immigration with criminality? One plainly isn't, the other plainly is.

 

 

People treat immigrants with the same disdain as criminals. That's what I think CED was getting at.

[HanoiVillan]

 

 

 

The role of politicians was largely inconsequential to the crash. Banks caused the crash, politicians don't run the economy - it's too important to those people that run it to allow it to be too heavily affected by public interest.

Come on. Brown took regulation of the banks away from the BoE and the result is history. Labour didn't cause the crash, they facilitated the framework that enabled greedy capitalists to be greedy capitalists. It was the equivalent of putting Rotherham Council in charge of child protection.

And of course, if I think back, I'll definitely recall sage, wise old Conservatives shaking their heads at the imprudence of financial deregulation, right?

Oh, no, as I'm sure you're very well aware, what I will find is that the Tory party opposed those Labour plans as not involving enough deregulation of the financial sector. To say Labour 'facilitated the framework' without even acknowledging that the Tories wanted, and argued for, an even more lenient framework themselves, is very intellectually dishonest.

No dishonesty. Labour were in power, Brown created the new framework for financial deregulation which allowed the banks to act like drunks in a betting shop. The financial sector duly blew up taking the real economy with it.

They may be inconvenient facts but they are still the facts. What the Tories may or may not have done in Labour's place is academic, they were not in power - and I have no brief or desire to defend them either. Labour = bad doesn't equate to Tory = good.

 

 

You say you have no 'brief or desire' to defend the Tories, but by totally ignoring the inconvenient historical fact that they were pressing Labour for more deregulation, not less, you are de facto letting them off the hook. The historical context in which a situation happened is hardly irrelevant, and you show every sign of understanding this in eg. your posts on military history, so I don't get why it's so hard to acknowledge in this case. 

 

Further, there are, I think, some useful questions about whether the 'facts' are as simple as you make them sound. Labour didn't force Fred the Shred to buy ABN-AMRO, Labour didn't create the concept of a CDO, and Labour didn't cause the American sub-prime house price collapse in 2006. Labour didn't create the Asian savings glut, and didn't set the low interest rates that fed off it. Deregulation is an important part of the story of the Financial Crisis, one in which bad decisions were made by Gordon Brown during his time as chancellor, but it's not the only, or even major, part of the story. 

[snowychap]

Pretty strong article on Corbyn over on Spiked - a bit long but many a home truth expounded.

It's not really a surprising one from someone over there, though, is it?

Spiked, though often a good read, appears to be just as staid, reactionary and lacking in radical suggestions as those (mainly on the 'left') on whom its criticisms are concentrated.

[HanoiVillan]

 

 

Pretty strong article on Corbyn over on Spiked - a bit long but many a home truth expounded.

 

The link: http://tinyurl.com/nejyrq3

 

The quote:

 

 

Jeremy Corbyn has been a Labour member of parliament for a remarkable 32 years without ever leading anything or leaving any visible mark on British political life. How could such a veteran non-entity emerge overnight as favourite to be the new, left-wing, game-changing leader of the Labour Party?

Only because the Labour Party as a mass movement has not just declined, but effectively collapsed. The apparent rise of Corbyn is made possible by the disintegration of his party. The key factor in all of this is not any resurgence of radicalism, but the demise of Labourism.

 

A non-entity with no visible marks called David Cameron is currently PM. Did anybody know of him before he became leader of the Tory Party, no, me neither.

 

 

The article is a mix of fair points - 'this seems more like a moment than a movement' is a particularly well-made one - boring, lost-cause Spiked contrarianism ('environmentalism is a form of eco-austerity') and badly argued points like the one MakemineVanilla chose to illustrate the piece. As you note, it's not uncommon for people to be elected party leader without significant media interest, or significant legislative accomplishments, prior to their attempt on the party leadership. It's a dumb point that seems to be based around the widespread British confusion of British politics (where all policy is driven by the government and its ministers) with American politics (where individual senators and congresspeople do have the ability to drive legislation). The only Labour figures who could possibly have 'left a mark' are ex-ministers, but their numbers are thin on the ground as a result of lost seats (Ed Balls etc.), retirements (Alistair Darling etc.) or forced retirement in the wake of the expenses scandal (Jacqui Smith etc.)

[Seat68]

 

 

Pretty strong article on Corbyn over on Spiked - a bit long but many a home truth expounded.

 

The link: http://tinyurl.com/nejyrq3

 

The quote:

 

 

Jeremy Corbyn has been a Labour member of parliament for a remarkable 32 years without ever leading anything or leaving any visible mark on British political life. How could such a veteran non-entity emerge overnight as favourite to be the new, left-wing, game-changing leader of the Labour Party?

Only because the Labour Party as a mass movement has not just declined, but effectively collapsed. The apparent rise of Corbyn is made possible by the disintegration of his party. The key factor in all of this is not any resurgence of radicalism, but the demise of Labourism.

 

A non-entity with no visible marks called David Cameron is currently PM. Did anybody know of him before he became leader of the Tory Party, no, me neither.

 

I did unfortunately as the shitehawk tried to get elected in my home town. He didnt.

[Awol]

The amount of people I hear seemingly equate immigration with criminality is worrying.

Are you hearing people conflating immigration or illegal immigration with criminality? One plainly isn't, the other plainly is.

No, I'm hearing people talk about bog standard immigrants as if being an immigrant is itself criminal (I'm not using the word in a strictly legal sense btw). The shite peddled by the right has had a rather alarming cumulative effect i.e. it now seems perfectly acceptable to slight people who come here to make better lives for themselves for no other reason that they aren't from here. It's dangerous.

Fair enough. It's quite remarkable how the UK has gone from a country that prided itself on being a haven for asylum seekers (certainly how I remember things being described to me as a young kid in the 80's) to a country that is far less self assured and confident in it's identity.

I would agree that the media had a role to play in that but I think the broader change in attitudes is down to two bigger factors: 1) the sheer weight of numbers of immigrants since the mid-90's, and 2) the awareness that we still have no effective border control and are powerless as a country to alter that without radical political change - i.e. Leaving the EU.

On the first point it is undeniable that the demographics in certain parts of England have changed beyond all recognition in a very short space of time. I'm thinking about areas in cities like London or Brum, or even whole towns like Luton where it can feel like you are in a foreign country surrounded by a foreign culture.

I think it was easier for people who felt more comfortable and secure with the homogeneity of their communities to welcome refugees. When those same people have watched the entire character of their home towns changed beyond recognition in 20 years then perhaps what once seemed exotic now appears more like an invasion, particularly if the incomers self segregate, have a totally different culture and often seem to live parallel lives in a shared space - multiculturalism.

I don't think it's racism, but more the removal of the continuity of their home towns and surroundings that is causing unease. Undoubtedly that perception is fed to an extent by the media but then you also have real world examples like the seemingly endless child sex rings abusing vulnerable girls on an industrial scale, while being covered up by the authorities in the name of community cohesion. It makes people angry and fearful, generating a knock on effect of further polarization.

Meanwhile on the six o'clock news more migrants are threatening lorry drivers in Calais to board their vehicles or storming the fences. Yes there are undoubtedly some poor little kids mixed in but the majority are young, fit fighting age males, dressed in the same clothes that are appearing more and more often on the local high street...

I don't think people got meaner per se, I think they got increasingly sick of being told to celebrate a diversity they neither asked for nor wanted. The UK has seen a scale of demographic change since 1994 that has no historical parallel. Some people genuinely welcome it and that's fine, but it would be sensible to recognize that many quite legitimately take a different view and simply calling them nasty names* isn't going to help anything.

*I'm not suggesting that you, CED, are guilty of that.

[Richard]

 

 

 

The hysteria surrounding the possibility that Corbyn might be leader of Labour is absolutely astounding. The real Tories are actually worried that he gets elected precisely because he will drag the debate in this country back leftwards instead of all the parties continually pursuing the same rightist economic agenda in just different shades separated by mere cigarette papers. When they are all continually pounding the austerity drum, the Tories have the confidence to pursue a more and more extreme right thinking philosophy.

 

I'm a real Tory,  and this bit of your post is ,  from my perspective,  utter drivel.  I cant wait for Corbyn to be elected.

 

Well I'm a real Socialist, and do not regard Bicksters opinion as drivel. Be careful what you wish for. I remember when Labour held a 170 seat majority, the political wisdom of the time was that the Tories might find themselves excluded from power for a generation. I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now as regards a Corbyn led Labour party. Politics is by it's nature a volatile thing, peoples perceptions of permanent stability in it have a tendency to come crashing down. One of the reasons so many people have been turned off by the political narrative in recent elections, is the belief, that there is simply little or no difference between the major Parties. A Corbyn victory wiil shift the alternative to the Neo Liberal option to the Left. A real alternative, whether it is to your taste or not, will be on offer, and the political discourse will change accordingly. Given the propensity of the Tories to keep their mantra of cutting and slashing public services regardless of the pain being inflicted on people, this alternative may well begin to strike a chord with the British people. In Britain today, we are begining to see the full horrors of an unfettered Tory Party unleashed . Public services starved, political opposition gerrymandered from seats, organized workers undermined, young people demonized, innocents punished for the wrong doings of a financial sector already gorging itself in the financial trough again.  If Corbyn  can galvanize the opposition to this, rather than meekly stand by, then I too "can't wait" for him to be elected.

 

Good for you,  but as he was suggesting what real Tories would be thinking right now,  something I would respectfully suggest neither he  and,  patently, you are I responding to his suggestion that real Tories are worried.

 

Whatever "real socialists" are feeling was not something I was commenting on.  But it is evident that they are hankering for an approach of the 1970s (or 1790s as Boris has suggested) some rose coloured vision of how left wing politics was or should be,  a state of party in perpetual opposition to "give the other side of the debate" in the hope that there will be a groundswell supporting that approach that will eventually sweep them to govern this country,  when in actual fact nothing could be further from the reality of what would happen.  The party would disintegrate,  and more than when the SDP was formed by a few rebels .  This would seriously impact Labour for a generation and expose them for what they are to the public,  or certainly what left wing politics is about.

 

For those that say they want the party of opposition they want that alternate approach,  I ask for what purpose? If your policies are never going to have a chance of  being put into law for what purpose do you want that?  Putting them into law only comes from winning an election and this is something you will be removing from being a possibility by electing Corbyn.  I merely sit back in happy anticipation of that wonderful event and that comes from eagerness,  not worry.

[Condimentalist]

 

 

 

The amount of people I hear seemingly equate immigration with criminality is worrying.

Are you hearing people conflating immigration or illegal immigration with criminality? One plainly isn't, the other plainly is.

No, I'm hearing people talk about bog standard immigrants as if being an immigrant is itself criminal (I'm not using the word in a strictly legal sense btw). The shite peddled by the right has had a rather alarming cumulative effect i.e. it now seems perfectly acceptable to slight people who come here to make better lives for themselves for no other reason that they aren't from here. It's dangerous.

Fair enough. It's quite remarkable how the UK has gone from a country that prided itself on being a haven for asylum seekers (certainly how I remember things being described to me as a young kid in the 80's) to a country that is far less self assured and confident in it's identity.

I would agree that the media had a role to play in that but I think the broader change in attitudes is down to two bigger factors: 1) the sheer weight of numbers of immigrants since the mid-90's, and 2) the awareness that we still have no effective border control and are powerless as a country to alter that without radical political change - i.e. Leaving the EU.

On the first point it is undeniable that the demographics in certain parts of England have changed beyond all recognition in a very short space of time. I'm thinking about areas in cities like London or Brum, or even whole towns like Luton where it can feel like you are in a foreign country surrounded by a foreign culture.

I think it was easier for people who felt more comfortable and secure with the homogeneity of their communities to welcome refugees. When those same people have watched the entire character of their home towns changed beyond recognition in 20 years then perhaps what once seemed exotic now appears more like an invasion, particularly if the incomers self segregate, have a totally different culture and often seem to live parallel lives in a shared space - multiculturalism.

I don't think it's racism, but more the removal of the continuity of their home towns and surroundings that is causing unease. Undoubtedly that perception is fed to an extent by the media but then you also have real world examples like the seemingly endless child sex rings abusing vulnerable girls on an industrial scale, while being covered up by the authorities in the name of community cohesion. It makes people angry and fearful, generating a knock on effect of further polarization.

Meanwhile on the six o'clock news more migrants are threatening lorry drivers in Calais to board their vehicles or storming the fences. Yes there are undoubtedly some poor little kids mixed in but the majority are young, fit fighting age males, dressed in the same clothes that are appearing more and more often on the local high street...

I don't think people got meaner per se, I think they got increasingly sick of being told to celebrate a diversity they neither asked for nor wanted. The UK has seen a scale of demographic change since 1994 that has no historical parallel. Some people genuinely welcome it and that's fine, but it would be sensible to recognize that many quite legitimately take a different view and simply calling them nasty names* isn't going to help anything.

*I'm not suggesting that you, CED, are guilty of that.

 

 

Unfortunately though, Awol, this is the modern world. The reason so many immigrants want to come here is because we have a good way of life, and have benefited enormously from firstly colonialism, and secondly a global economic order which is massively skewed in our favour. The price of that for us is a 'pull' factor from the rest of the world. The price of it for them is far worse, it actually pushes them away from their homes and friends and families, sometimes in circumstances of all out civil war.

 

I understand peoples concerns about immigration and yes, they may not have asked for it, but they've certainly benefited from the factors that drive it. A little bit more appreciation of that in the discussion might make people a little bit less angry.  

[Seat68]

 

 

 

 

The hysteria surrounding the possibility that Corbyn might be leader of Labour is absolutely astounding. The real Tories are actually worried that he gets elected precisely because he will drag the debate in this country back leftwards instead of all the parties continually pursuing the same rightist economic agenda in just different shades separated by mere cigarette papers. When they are all continually pounding the austerity drum, the Tories have the confidence to pursue a more and more extreme right thinking philosophy.

 

I'm a real Tory,  and this bit of your post is ,  from my perspective,  utter drivel.  I cant wait for Corbyn to be elected.

 

Well I'm a real Socialist, and do not regard Bicksters opinion as drivel. Be careful what you wish for. I remember when Labour held a 170 seat majority, the political wisdom of the time was that the Tories might find themselves excluded from power for a generation. I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now as regards a Corbyn led Labour party. Politics is by it's nature a volatile thing, peoples perceptions of permanent stability in it have a tendency to come crashing down. One of the reasons so many people have been turned off by the political narrative in recent elections, is the belief, that there is simply little or no difference between the major Parties. A Corbyn victory wiil shift the alternative to the Neo Liberal option to the Left. A real alternative, whether it is to your taste or not, will be on offer, and the political discourse will change accordingly. Given the propensity of the Tories to keep their mantra of cutting and slashing public services regardless of the pain being inflicted on people, this alternative may well begin to strike a chord with the British people. In Britain today, we are begining to see the full horrors of an unfettered Tory Party unleashed . Public services starved, political opposition gerrymandered from seats, organized workers undermined, young people demonized, innocents punished for the wrong doings of a financial sector already gorging itself in the financial trough again.  If Corbyn  can galvanize the opposition to this, rather than meekly stand by, then I too "can't wait" for him to be elected.

 

Good for you,  but as he was suggesting what real Tories would be thinking right now,  something I would respectfully suggest neither he  and,  patently, you are I responding to his suggestion that real Tories are worried.

 

Whatever "real socialists" are feeling was not something I was commenting on.  But it is evident that they are hankering for an approach of the 1970s (or 1790s as Boris has suggested) some rose coloured vision of how left wing politics was or should be,  a state of party in perpetual opposition to "give the other side of the debate" in the hope that there will be a groundswell supporting that approach that will eventually sweep them to govern this country,  when in actual fact nothing could be further from the reality of what would happen.  The party would disintegrate,  and more than when the SDP was formed by a few rebels .  This would seriously impact Labour for a generation and expose them for what they are to the public,  or certainly what left wing politics is about.

 

For those that say they want the party of opposition they want that alternate approach,  I ask for what purpose? If your policies are never going to have a chance of  being put into law for what purpose do you want that?  Putting them into law only comes from winning an election and this is something you will be removing from being a possibility by electing Corbyn.  I merely sit back in happy anticipation of that wonderful event and that comes from eagerness,  not worry.

 

 

Just out of interest, lets say Corbyn gets elected as party leader, and lets say he somehow gets elected Prime Minister in 2020, will you and tories like Toby Young think, oops, or will you have the same eagerness to governed over? I am pretty eager for it to happen. Just interested to see if a scenario that feasibly could happen, how it would make you feel.

[Richard]

I have more faith in the general public of this country to be honest

[Seat68]

I have more faith in the general public of this country to be honest

 

Thats not really an answer, it is entirely feasible as people want change now, as time draws on the need for change may increase and the right wing press's bullying tactics may work in favour of someone like Corbyn, so I ask, would you be so eager then?