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

[chrisp65]

 

As much as I would like Jeremy Corbyn to win as it MIGHT just move Labour from being a right wing party to something meaningful I imagine that he will put most voters off as he is a 'bit scruffy' which means most of the vacuous shallow self centred simpletons will make their minds up without having to actually listen to any of his 'ideas'

 

As the voters in question will be Labour Party and Trade Union members, that seems a bit harsh.

 

 

Although the Daily Telegraph is urging its readership to take up the offer of a £3 association fee to get a vote in the Labour leadership - and vote Corbyn in.

[Awol]

As much as I would like Jeremy Corbyn to win as it MIGHT just move Labour from being a right wing party to something meaningful I imagine that he will put most voters off as he is a 'bit scruffy' which means most of the vacuous shallow self centred simpletons will make their minds up without having to actually listen to any of his 'ideas'

As the voters in question will be Labour Party and Trade Union members, that seems a bit harsh.

Although the Daily Telegraph is urging its readership to take up the offer of a £3 association fee to get a vote in the Labour leadership - and vote Corbyn in.

I heard/read that since that campaign began 17,000 people had joined the Labour Party. Even assuming they are all reactionary Tories I don't think they'll sway the result.

[Nicho]

I think Blairs comments are showing up his ruthless side (one of his positive traits), labour is too soft. Whether it is the area I live in or the demographics that I am apart of a lot of people I know voted conservative but now complain every day about the conservatives.

Labour IMO of course are the ones that the people want but havnt been tuned intot the people for a while so are unable to vocalise their policies in a coherent and precise way. Politics is a merry go round in which labour come in free up the funds, create some positive reforms and then get carried away and the consevervatives have to come in to rein it all back in.

I will vote labour regardless of who is in charge of them but they need some one with a charisma and appeal that milliband just didn't have to win the next election.

[tonyh29]

I think Blairs comments are showing up his ruthless side (one of his positive traits), labour is too soft. Whether it is the area I live in or the demographics that I am apart of a lot of people I know voted conservative but now complain every day about the conservatives.

Labour IMO of course are the ones that the people want but havnt been tuned intot the people for a while so are unable to vocalise their policies in a coherent and precise way. Politics is a merry go round in which labour come in free up the funds, create some positive reforms and then get carried away and the consevervatives have to come in to rein it all back in.

I will vote labour regardless of who is in charge of them but they need some one with a charisma and appeal that milliband just didn't have to win the next election.

That rules out all the current batch then

[MakemineVanilla]

If only Labour had someone like Mhairi Black; her tales might be specious but she sounds like a natural.

 

Edited July 27, 2015 by MakemineVanilla

[Xann]

The former deputy speaker seems like an interesting chap

[chrisp65]

previously in charge of 'standards' apparently

[Xann]

Sex and drugs - Standard

[PongRiddims]

When I see this kind of story it amazes me... In my group of peers, I know the one sniffing gear off a tarts ring piece, even though he's never admitted it. I know more than that, how do these people get in?

[snowychap]

The former deputy speaker seems like an interesting chap

Coke and prostitutes - who did he think he was, a future chancellor?

[Jon]

Surely the last few posts are not entirely 'On Topic' (unless this chap is running for the labour leadership, which I don't think he is).

 

Anyway, Jez really does seem to have a groundswell of membership support behind him, which doesn't surprise me in the slightest, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he won on the first ballot, without the need for transferrable votes to come into play. 

 

The 'grass roots' of the labour party have not had a genuine 'socialist' candidate (decent one anyway) to vote for for a long time, and I think they're finding his ideas and rhetoric both appealing and accessible. Times have chnaged, and I think the majority of the labour party (members, not the MPs) are wanting a change from the Tory Lite party of the past 25 years.

[chrisp65]

He (Jeremy) was asked on the weekend whether he thought re nationalisation of the railways was a possibility if he got in to power.

 

His simple and easy to understand answer was yes. Followed by an idea we could also re nationalise the power utility companies too.

[Xann]

Surely the last few posts are not entirely 'On Topic' (unless this chap is running for the labour leadership, which I don't think he is).

 

Not entirely on topic, no.

 

Though it is quite funny that just after Blair stuck his hooter into the leadership discussion, one of his former favourites turns out to be a wrong un

[Jon]

Lovely stuff from NewsThump:

 

http://newsthump.com/2015/07/27/experts-baffled-by-popularity-of-politician-with-principles/

 

Experts baffled by popularity of politician with ‘principles’

Politicians and commentators have admitted to being utterly baffled as to the appeal of principled politician, Jeremy Corbyn.

“No one can quite fathom Jeremy’s appeal,” said a Labour insider.

“For some reason people are enjoying hear someone speak with conviction on their own beliefs rather than toss off the usual centrist, benefit-hating, corporate-loving, vote-for-me-and-you’ll-get-a-bigger-bag-of-crisps rhetoric that they’ve been force-fed since the height of Thatcher-ism.”

Andrew Rawsley from the Observer concurred.

“Look, everyone knows that they only way Labour can win elections in this country is by being Tories with different coloured ties, so what’s the point of actually putting together an alternative?”

“Bring back Tony Blair, Oasis, and bombing Iraq,” he concluded.

Other candidates for the Labour leadership, rocked by the notion that they might actually have to put together a more coherent argument than ‘Mr Cameron is a nasty man,’ are scrabbling to find a way to defeat Mr Corbyn.

“We’re focus-grouping like mad,” said one of Yvette Cooper’s team.

“Trying to find the most popular principles that Yvette should have, then she’ll adopt them and speak from the heart. Easy.”

Liz Kendall’s team were taking a different approach.

“Blind optimism and hating poor people, it’s a solid foundation for the Labour leadership.”

Whereas Andy Burnham was taking a more pragmatic approach.

“He’s got a beard as he’s been around since the eighties,” said a Burnham insider

“We’ll just claim he’s a paedophile.”

It is expected the fad for a principled politician will end once people realise that it will involve people paying slightly more tax.

[chrisp65]

and unfortunately, that last line is a killer

[coda]

[Seat68]

After the abstaintion regarding the welfare bill I washed my hands with the Labour party, they clearly no longer represent an alternative. Is Corbyn being pilloried for being left wing then? Like the SNP, but now everyone wants the SNP?

[Jon]

Not everyone in the labour party abstained.

[Seat68]

Not everyone in the labour party abstained.

ok, lets be picky, a lot of them abstained.

[mockingbird_franklin]

Been out of the country working for a few days, been catching up on things and came across this piece in the independent which sums things up nicely

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/every-club-should-be-like-labour--you-cant-join-as-a-new-member-unless-youre-already-a-member-10428421.html

 

MARK STEEL

 

Friday 31 July 2015

Every club should be like Labour – you can’t join as a new member unless you’re already a member

 

Instead of allowing their leadership vote to be infiltrated by outsiders, it would all be much easier if they just let Rupert Murdoch decide.

 

It’s outsiders that have caused it. The only explanation for the madness that’s taken over the Labour Party, according to MPs such as John Mann, is people from outside are joining Labour, so the leadership election should be cancelled.

Presumably John Mann would change the rules, so no one was allowed to join the Labour Party unless they were already a member. That should stop these scheming non-members from trying to infiltrate the party through the trick of becoming members.

Then Mann should be put in charge of other organisations to keep out troublemakers. If you apply to join a snooker club, he could be there to ask “are you already a member of this snooker club?” If you said you weren’t – which is why you’d like to join – he’d say, “Get out. I know your game pal, you want to turn us into a canoeing club.” That way it would stay pure and wholesome.

A section of the Labour Party, along with much of the press, has worked out the only way Jeremy Corbyn can have attracted the support he has is by groups such as Militant infiltrating the party, as they did in the 1980s. This shows how conniving Militant can be, because the most common age of people joining Labour at the moment is 18. So the last time they tried to take over the Labour Party they must have been minus 12.

This shows the lengths Militant are prepared to go to, radicalising people decades before they’re born, just so they can carry out their malicious plan to commit Labour to a policy of nationalising the gas companies.

You might wonder why Militant left a 30-year gap between infiltrations, but maybe they’ve been infiltrating other groups apart from political parties, such as groups of gardeners. Now there’s an allotment society in Hemel Hempstead committed to placing their courgettes under a workers and peasants revolutionary collective.

One Labour MP, John Cryer, warned of the influence of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) over the leadership vote. This group achieved an average of less than 0.1 per cent of the vote at the general election, so the 400,000 people eligible to vote in Labour’s election could easily be swayed by this persuasive faction.

Then the TUSC could use this influence to undermine other areas of the democratic process. Once they’ve taken over the Labour Party, they could swing the result of X Factor, so the winner is a trade union official at Darlington bus depot, singing “No to rearranged shift patterns on the 5A to Bishop Auckland” to the tune of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”.

There are other theories as to why Corbyn is doing so much better than commentators predicted. One supporter of Tony Blair explained at the start of the election why Liz Kendall would win, then explained the first poll showing Corbyn ahead was “a ploy by the Liz Kendall campaign”.

There have been three more polls since then, all showing Corbyn ahead and Kendall last, all of which are clearly ploys by the Kendall campaign. Some people have criticised her for giving answers such as “I think the economy is really important” in TV interviews. But when you’re spending all day making up polls showing you coming last as a special ploy, it doesn’t leave much time for working out answers to questions. We should be a bit more patient.

Everyone sensible agrees it would be madness to make Corbyn leader, because no one could ever win an election with his policies. For example, he argues the railways should be renationalised, and you’ll never win votes with ideas like that. The last Labour leader to fight an election promising to renationalise the railways was Blair in 1997, promising “there will be a publicly owned and publicly accountable railway system under a Labour government”. Presumably he followed this up by saying, “That’s why anyone whose heart says you should vote for me needs a heart transplant.”

Because the most important job for any political leader, as we’re told every day, is to “stay in the centre ground”. You could argue a true leader tries to change the centre ground, but that’s romantic nonsense. So a sensible Labour leader in the year 1500 would have said: “It’s all very well Jeremy Corbyn promising to stop burning witches, but that will lose us the election by abandoning the centre ground.”

Another reason it would be ridiculous to make Corbyn leader, say his opponents, is the Tory press would be brutal towards him. This is a fair point, as The Sun and Telegraph and Mail would be scrupulously fair to any other Labour leader. They’ll never stoop to publishing photographs of Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper chewing food.

It’s only fair to choose the leader Rupert Murdoch suggests, as this is far more sensible than allowing the vote to be infiltrated by outsiders.

There is one other possible reason for Corbyn’s popularity, which is that it’s inspired by the same sense of outrage that swept Scotland for the SNP, and makes Caroline Lucas the most popular MP, and means the speech by the SNP’s Mhairi Black has been seen by over 10 million people online. That still can’t compete with the globally acclaimed phenomena that is Kendall’s speech called “I think the economy is really important” obviously, and there’s a rumour that Liz’s speech is to be sung by Rihanna as the theme for next year’s Olympic Games.

But there are millions of people in Britain who feel the current centre ground is in an atrocious place, and they see in Corbyn someone who agrees with them. The sensible response to this is to tell them if you go through life supporting ideals you believe in rather than something that might, but probably won’t, win over accountants in Nuneaton, you’re a romantic idiot. Either that, or it’s outsiders; or Castro; or aliens; or a ploy by Liz Kendall. 

Edited August 1, 2015 by mockingbird_franklin