Fantastic!!!! What a joy to see a Benn-ite candidate doing so well in the polls & all the Trotsky militant tendency making such a come back. Increased Labour membership in an effort to "pack" the votes for the left. It reminds me of the Labour party's self destructing in the early 1980's This can only be good news for Conservatives. Now we only need to get rid of that Liberal sap David Cameron & get some real right winger in charge of the only party that can rule Britain for the next generation. Lets hope we can finally destroy he public to 5% of what it currently is & privatise education & the health sector & finally rid Britain of the last scourges of socialism. The only problem I see is the ludicrous love affair the British have with the massively inefficient NHS & the public sector, & how to change their stupid brain-washed minds....
Gosh, what fools those so-called "experts" must be! Of course an anti-austerity Candidate will be popular in these times. I remember in the early 1980's as all the anti-Thatcher, pro-Tony Benn sentiment, it feels a bit like a re-run.... And we remember who won & how long the left spent in the wilderness. It doesn't matter if a group of unemployed people & public sector workers want to see a return to a Socialist Britain & their preferred candidate is an old-school Benn-ite politician. It simply won't happen & they will never be elected. Here are a couple of links that feature Corbyn Cast into the wilderness : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIgiV8yn3xU And Comrades at War : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ITCj38dLgk Please, please let Corbyn win the Labour leader election. Then we can ensure he will never be elected, the press ensure that!
and yet they all are baffled. That headline just said it as it is. I don't even think you can say it is only about austerity. Labour went on less austerity than the Tories but did not win - though it did increase it's vote. I think it is a lot more. I was there too. This is different. Thatcher manipulated people using a definite authoritarianism that was at the time within the Labour party as her focus about freedom of choice. The left would have done better to argue about rationality and freedom than equality and justice. By not doing so Labour allowed Thatcherism or rather neo liberalism to claim they were on the side of freedom when in the main this has been more about freedom to corrupt. She also bought them of course by selling good council houses at a pittance but most importantly she followed by Blair sold our democracy to Global Corporate Capitalism. Certainly in Thatcher's case this was no mistake. The neo liberals she followed had realised that democracy was going to result in the people running the countries. With Blair, probably him anyway but also connected to New Labour's choice to become a Tory Lite to get back into Government. The Left never recovered. Obviously something is just threatening to bubble into birth at the moment but I would say rather than it being possibly the end of Labour it may well be it's last chance and I think democracy is one of the main feeders. It could end up with them in opposition from some time - linking with other parties. That certainly would be far better than what they did last time which was to join Thatcher, give up their base and most disgracefully particularly after the intentions of John Smith, give up Britain's democracy. However there are plenty of groups in England who have been working on things and the Tories were elected by only 24% of the English electorate with 33% not voting. It is not impossible that a new vision which included bringing back democracy - making Government's jobs to serve the people rather than Global Capitalism could well find itself returned quickly to Parliament with a good majority. Depends on the use they make of the time. It won't be the same as before. We are different and have different issues to face. Mind you just think how much better the whole of the UK would have been if Benn's intention to Nationalise oil and create a fund like has been done in Norway had been put in place. - What a waste of money spending it instead on unemployement benefit rather than revitalising our industries and manufacturing. Good point but they have failed up to now. His lead keeps increasing and now there is a genuine possibility he may be elected. There are other sources of news for instance Open Democracy and other alternative English groups working on this plus social media etc. Different world now. Time will tell. Could be interesting times ahead.
As a labour and a union member who pays the political levy I have 2 votes and none of them will be given to Corbyn. Corbyn is doing well but so did David Milliband. My guess is Andy Burnham is elected Labour leader.
Yup, and this is quite a good article about it: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/02/labour-split-corbyn-blairites Before Tory celebrations get to carried away, though, remember that they have their own internal civil war coming over Europe, and that could be every bit as destructive to them as this leadership election is to Labour. The UK electoral system has always strongly favoured the existence of 2 large parties, but it seems to me that people really don't want that any more, and those different groups within those 2 big parties are starting to feel the same. The major factions within Labour and the Tories will never be able to permanently wipe each other out, so the obvious development is splitting, and having an electoral system that better reflects multi-party politics in a world of increasingly diverse and specific opinions.
"Good point but they have failed up to now." Oh come on, if you claim to have been "there too" in the 1980's then by your comment & can only assume you failed to learn your lesson. The right-wing press don't wish to prevent Corbyn becoming the leader of the Labour party... They actively wish it to happen! Because once he has then they can swing into action. If the idea of a Socialist collective society failed in the early 80's when we had some form of a defined working class vote, it certainly won't succeed to-day. The only basis for the type of Coryn's labour votes to-day are the middle-class public sector workers & the unemployed. And given the media champagne that will ensue if he is leader of labour in a run up to an election I would bet every penny I own that he will not win that election.
No, I feel vomit, when I read posts or comments such as yours that the British people are now willing to accept a European style multi-party coalition flim-flam politics. The first past the post election system is the best form of governance & the one that the British people overwhelming voted for in 2011. So balls to your idea that people are starting to feel any difference. As for the Tory in-fighting over Europe.... What is new there??? It was Europe & not the poll-tax that led to the Tories getting rid of Maggie Thatcher. The Tories have & are now a pro-European party as the EU is a pro-business organisation dedicated to driving down the wages of the working class. the idea of an in/out vote on Europe is a laughable as it was in 1975, big business will pay as much as It takes to keep Britain in the EU so they can benefit from those EU policies. It is for no reason that the 1983 Labour manifesto (the last real socialist manifesto offered to the British public) that they advocated leaving the EEC.
For Islington North. Which is no way representative of the UK. It may be hard for me to be kind about the voters of Islington North, as I have only visited there just the once, but an intellectual middle-class with champagne-socialist tendencies was my impressions. Of course as a son of a long line of Lancashire coal miners that was the first to attend university in the early 1980's when I met this kind of Labour voter I was full of contempt for them as I still am to-day. Corbyn is the best hope for the stale Conservative party, that in my mind needs a complete shake up. There is no logic for a socialist party in Britain to-day. If you can provide any good reason why socialism should make a come back in Britain t-day, please state it as I can not see one.
Right. You know this in such depth that you are only responding to what I said re the right wing press we have. If you mean that Labour destroyed itself in the 80's and the right wing press are stirring that up in connection with Cobryn then you are correct. If you are meaning that the right wing press will be able to stop him being able to win and not impossibly even form a government which was what I assumed you were saying by saying then my response along with the rest of what I wrote was more correct. I have responded to most of what you say in my previous post. Here is an article which elaborates on that somewhat but I see no point in writing anything new when you haven't answered what I wrote before. https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourki...labour-and-left-election-80s-and-‘aspiration’ Don't count your chickens so quick. Neo Liberalism has failed and been seen to have failed. We are living with the consequences. The UK now has masses of people surviving on Foodbanks. The Labour party did not go against the Tory's bill to make the poorest workers in Britain suffer the most. The Labour Party is currently unelectable in Scotland. Unlike the 80's this is not coming from within the Labour Parliamentary Party. From there he was elected to stand as a token at odds of 100-1 against and from there he has gone from strength to strength despite continuous bad publicity from our right wing press........ enjoy your dream while you have it
You forget or you havn't realised the labour leadership election is not first past the post it is AV so I'm expecting those who vote for evette cooper and Liz Kendall will give their second votes to Andy Burnham It will be tight but I believe Andy Burnham will be the next labour leader
Interesting article on Corbyn's Foreign Policy http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jeremy-corbyn-1991831019
Now that Jeremy Corbyn has become Leader of Labour, the Establishment media will do their best to destroy him.
The day the papers were frothing and handwringing about Corbyn not singing the national anthem, (What republican atheist would sing "God save the Queen"?) The Conservative government took £1000 in tax credits from the each of the poorest working families. Barely a mention.
A YouGov poll: Do you have faith in Corbyn? From what you have seen or heard about Jeremy Corbyn, do you think he will do well or badly as leader of the Labour Party? Well: 30% Badly: 50% Don't know: 20% If Corbyn remains leader of the Labour Party, how likely or unlikely do you think it is that they will win the next general election? Likely: 17% Unlikely: 61% Don't know: 22% Do you trust Corbyn to manage the economy? Yes: 23% No: 50% Don't know: 27%
One who is Leader of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition and who has aspirations of becoming Prime Minister. I'm fed up of the modern labour Party and their cringiness at anything British and patriotic.
Still waiting for colonel K to tell us how been electable in Islington North home of the infamous Finsbury Park Mosque. A constituency with a very high ethnic minority electorate in inner city London makes him the slightest bit electable to Ordinary English people.
New Labour Hawks to defy Corbyn over Syria It was reported in theguardian yesterday that at least 50 New Labour MPs will support the Tory's plan to enforce a no-fly zone in Syria. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/10/labour-mps-defy-jeremy-corbyn-on-syria It looks like the RAF will be in dogfights with the Russians with the English if the Tories and New Labour hawks get together and turn a deaf ear to Jeremy Corbyn. [video=youtube;sVoAX2V7Ea8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVoAX2V7Ea8[/video]
