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Jeremy Corbyn.
- Thread starter Diablo
- Start date
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You underestimate public opinion, politics is crying out for change.
So true. We really need to engage the currently disengaged. At the very least Corbyn is a genuine alternative which is surely a good thing.
As a Tory voter, I am fascinated by the rise and rise of Jeremy Corbyn and I can quite understand why the prospect of him becoming leader of the Labour Party excites those on the left of the party. However,if he does become leader, I just cannot see him gaining sufficient ground in the country to get a sniff of power, as his views and policies will not be attractive to the majority of people in this country. Milliband was seen as too left, so why should Corbyn succeed when he is even more to the left?
I can understand that many Labour supporters feel frustrated and disappointed with the election result, but if they really think that Britain will ever become that socialist utopia,many on the left desire,then they are truly deluded.
Socialism hasn't proved too successful and utopia doesn't exist.
I can understand that many Labour supporters feel frustrated and disappointed with the election result, but if they really think that Britain will ever become that socialist utopia,many on the left desire,then they are truly deluded.
Socialism hasn't proved too successful and utopia doesn't exist.
I've seen a couple of people compare a Corbyn leadership with Foot's. It's a ridiculous comparison: there's not the remotest connection.
... but that's going a bit far. He's attracted the attention of several new voters but it's far too early to tell what will happen.
I stand by my prediction that Burnham will win the leadership election and lose 2020 but I'm not quite so sure of the former now
jakarta
Well-known member
Hmm. It's now July and you believe 'public opinion' has changed radically since May?
Seasidesage
New member
No but their cabinets were full of them...
Boring old Burnham. What do they call him? A northern Ed Milliband isn't it?
Why thank you Mr Tubthumper.
In fairness this isnt a one way process. This is how democratic change is effected through a debate around ideas making people examine their beliefs thoughts and hopes and adjusting accordingly. This is what has been happening over the last couple of years with people, particularly young people ignoring the old ideas pumped out by the mainstream and looking into new ( to them) alternatives.
The fact that this discussion has gone on for so long on here and is in every news broadcast shows something is happening. It's hard not to want to be part of that even for a cynical old lefty like me.
Not changed radically but the recent Tory victory and subsequent budget and further cuts has been a wake-up call to some. The Labour Party alone has had a huge surge in membership since the election.
I was frustrated and disappointed with the election result for one night. In part this was because I didn't want nor expect a labour win. I wanted and expected a hung parliament.
The reason for this is a hung parliament forces coalition government. By its nature it makes the government weaker and more open to pressure from the electorate. This in turn ensures democracy and political power is shifted away from change happening every five years, towards it being an ongoing process. By its very nature this would mean a more open honest debate about where this country is going involving not only the middle classes, but the disenfranchised working classes and young people. Surely that would be a healthier more coherent society.
I still want that end. Which is why I was down for one night. When I looked at the final figures, it is true it didnt deliver a hung parliament. Yet. But it did deliver a weak governmnt. The very fact that they have had to back off changes to the human rights act and fox hunting shows this. Indeed if 184 labour MP's had the the political courage to be an opposition rather than a gutless rabble the welfare bill would have been defeated.
However like some on here the tories and the labour grandees have misread what happened in May. As I have demonstrated already the numbers show a very divided population. in the past these numbers would have led to a hung parliament. Nationalism intervened. This alone is something new in the UK. People have accepted that the result in scotland means that there was a shift to the left in scotland. Why on earth would scotland be any different in its approach than whole swathes of the north of england. Partly this is because of last years referendum raising hopes in scotland. But the reality is they arent that different, the parties were different. whereas the scots voted for the scottish nationalists, the english moved to the english nationalists UKIP.
The reality is people havent shifted to the left or to the right, theyve shifted away from the mainstream. They are looking for new ideas. the SNP delivered them, Ukip delivered them. I may not like the message that Ukip deliver, but that can be dealt with through political debate. Both main parties refused to have the debate over immigration and europe. The tories shifted and promised a referendum ( which will come back and bite them big) the labour party paid the price now.
People may choose to read the election result as a good result for the tories, and the tories did better than the labour party. But the tories are going to find out that things are not what they think they are. Hopefully they will keep their heads buried up their own asses.
However I do believe this is a good result for real democracy and for a real debate about the future. The left may well lose that debate, but at least we will be able to have it. That hasn't happened since the 80's.
When the leadership was announced Corbyn was the outsider, what a difference a month makes. There was an appetite for change 5 years ago, but the Lib Dems messed that up and paid the price. Both labour and the Lib Dems paid the price for backing the Tories. Labour over Scottish independence ( as well as trust issues over the economy)and LD for going back on their promise over tuition fees. I believe people see Corbyn as a principled politician and that is why he is picking up momentum.
beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 36,015
i like what you said about the hung parliament, its based on observation. so why then wander off into conclusions not based on observation here? the numbers show only that theres a rump of apathetic, but was less than the previous few elections and about 10% more of the population than post war historic turnout. whats missing from the above is completely ignoring the collapse of the Liberal vote. this is what delivered the Tory majority, not shifts to nationalist parties. thats not sign of a shift away from mainstream, or looking for new ideas. it is as a response of the election that the left seem looking for a new direction in their leadership, though its hardly base on any new ideas.
happypig
Staring at the rude boys
We've constantly ben told Miliband was "too left" but he hardly had any policies that could be described as Left Wing. My view (and I might be misreading it) is that the electorate didn't think he provided enough of an alternative with his post-Blair, Tory-lite campaign. The Scots rejected Labour for two reasons, firstly because they went in with the Tories on the indy referendum and secondly because they were too like the Tories. The SNP exploited this and their message resonated with the electorate; there wasn't a mainstream party in England that gave voters that choice (The Greens are still, in the main, a fringe party).
A Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn will provide a true left-of-centre alternative so he gets my vote; whether he will appeal to enough people to persuade them to vote him in as PM is debatable, but to compare him to Michael Foot is ridiculous.
FWIW, I don't expect ever to live in a "socialist utopia" but a swing back towards the left, with policies based more on people than "the markets" can only be a good think IMHO.
Hmm. I'd say the collapse of the liberal vote is that over the last 5 years they took a monumental shift to the centre so they were barely distinguishable from the tories. About 2/3 of their votes went to Labour/Greens/SNP. You are right that this helped win the election though, as many of the former Lib Dem constituencies were Lib Dem/Tory dominated and so were never going to swing to Labour. I'm not sure any of this disagrees with a shift away from mainstream politics, as the Lib Dems had become pretty mainstream themselves.
I don't think it can be denied that there was a huge shift to national parties. This is obvious in the case of the SNP, who gained all those MPs, but perhaps less so for UKIP - who actually gained far far many more voters than the SNP, from all three 'centre' parties.
With the demise of the Lib Dems, and apathy towards Labour, the Left parties have split. Meanwhile, as the only real right-wing party, the Tories benefitted. While I'd describe UKIP policies as right wing, it can't be denied that they gained many votes from the left as well.
So perhaps what Labour needs is, as somebody suggested earlier, is to unite the left parties - either by coalition, or by drawing more votes from the other left parties.
Regardless of voter turnout over the last few decades, there are still a significant number of people who don't vote. This is pure speculation, but my feeling would be that more of those people are likely to vote Labour than Tory. Either way, if there were more polarised opinions and options available, perhaps more would be drawn to vote. Who knows.
EDIT: To put this another way, the three main stream parties (Tories, Labour, Lib Dems) total votes:
2010:
26,172,965
88.1%
2015
23,097,742
75.2%
That's quite a large shift away from the mainstream to me. It just isn't represented by our FPTP system.
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Right firstly bearing in mind no one knows for a fact who switched vote and where to, it is based upon logical deduction, here is the election result in percentages and who gained and lost:
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2015
Conservative: 36.9% share of those who cast a counted vote. a gain of 0.8% ( minor gain)
Labour: 30.4% a gain of 1.5% (minor gain)
Ukip 12,6% a gain of 9.5% (ukip quadrupled their share of the vote 3.1% before 12.6% after)
Liberal 7.9% a loss of 15.1% ( a loss of two thirds of their vote)
SNP 4.7% a gain of 3.1% (this is as a share of the total uk vote. In actual fact they trebled their vote. 1.6% before 4.7% after)
Green 3.8% a gain of 2.8% ( th e greens nearly trebled their vote 1% before 3.8% after)
now from these figures we can see that the main gainers were the two nationalist parties and the greens. Where did their votes come from. The liberals made big losses and it would be reasonable to assume that a proportion went to the tories , who then lost votes elsewhere ( presumably to UKIP and a few to Labour in London). They will have lost probably the majority to labour, some to Greens and some to SNP ( a nationalist party).
The tories made a small gain presumably from the liberals. If they solely gained from the liberals they either gained .8% or less from the liberals or gained more and lost votes to ukip and the Labour party somewhere between the two i imagine.
The labour party gained 1.5%. We know they lost a lot in scotland a million votes. We can also see from the results in the north that they gained from the liberals and lost back to UKIP. They will also have lost votes to the greens
Ukip seem to have gained most votes from labour and lesser amounts from the tories. Its unlikely to have got many votes from liberals.
Now this will show me that the nationalist parties ( and the greens) have done very well from this election. Presumably from the labour party. The tories did well all things considered by getting a majority on a 37% share. This was more about the electoral system and tory strategy than any real growth in their vote.
The labour party actually did better in england than is perceived. They got slaughtered in scotland and damaged by Ukip in the north, but the still managed to get an overall gain (presumably from the liberals) in england. This is what the mainstream labour party is basing their next strategy on ...getting more votes from the centre. But wake up the libs only have 8% left to give up and its unlikely the tories will give up many. The votes they lost are tucked away in the hands of the nationalist parties and the greens.
I believe this is what I said before. The labour party paid the price for ignoring the issues that the nationalists campaigned on. I appreciate nationalism isnt in itself a new idea. However for it to have such an impact on an election is unknown. To many people hearing these ideas expressed by a party other than the BNP etc and the SWP etc is brand new.
I have yet to hear a more credible explanation than the one I have advanced. Indeed much of this is accepted. You can analyse the results any way you like. but to refute my explanation you really will have to come up with a more detailed explanation than the one you did. I fully accept I can be wrong, but some concrete supporting evidence please.
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killer stat. I knew in theory what it says ... I never thought to present it like that.
Vegas Seagull
New member
- Jul 10, 2009
- 7,782
Comms workers union puts its 200,000 strong weight behind Jeremy
Ladbrokes shorten to 11/10
Make sure you stump up the £3 and vote!
Ladbrokes shorten to 11/10
Make sure you stump up the £3 and vote!
Castello, I can only but admire your political studiousness, regardless of the fact that our politics differ. Whilst I do not pretend to be, in any way,a student of politics, I have to say, that rather than Labour paying the price for ignoring the issues the nationalists campaigned on, they came unstuck because a.) Ed Milliband was not seen as PM material b.) Labour were deemed incapable of running the economy c.) the anti business and leftie rhetoric scared, not only industry bosses,
but, many ordinary people as well. d.) lacklustre shadow cabinet bods.etc.etc.I could go on.
By all means,let the country have the debate and let politicos mull over what they wish, but the fact remains that the Labour party remains at risk of renting itself assunder and therefore being incapable of acting as an effective opposition in Parliament.......that is the danger for the majority of Labour supporters and the country.
can I also point out that if you are a member of an affiliated trade union such as Unite, GMB or CWU and others you get to register as a supporter for free. Unison members get to register free if they are pay the affiliated political levy ( or whatever they call it now). Look on your unions website for a form.