Jeremy Corbyn.

[DavidinSouthampton]

think someone needed to remind those on the right in the Labour party(watered down tories) that the Labour party is still a socialist party or at least WAS
JC is just tapping into the people who did not bother to vote or moved away from the labour party, yes maybe a rocky few years for the Labour party, but also a rocky few years for the tories as well.
a vote for any of the other three you might just as well vote for the tories and be done with.
and as for the right wing papers"I think the lady doe'st(s) protest to much"

I am not a Labour Party member, but a "to the right of the left" type voter, who might equate to someone on the right of the Labour Party.

And I utterly resent and refute the "watered down Tories" bit. I could no more vote Tory than I could cut off my left leg with a blunt and rusty penknife. And this government has done more to perpetuate that than any other in my 44 years of being of voting age.

I have a vote in the leadership election as a TU member. My Union leadership (unison) is exhorting me to vote for Jeremy Corbyn. I will most certainly not be doing so.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

yes amusing, it also shows a party in disarray. they dont need to check on applicants backgrounds, but they have chosen to do so just in case some people might join up to elect one of the candidates... basically they fear the "wrong" candidate winning. given the entire old front bench have come out against him, and with insufficient amongst MPs to form a full shadow government, its looking like a very rocky few years ahead for Labour, more focused on internal battles than opposition.

Staggering incompetance on an interstellar scale. The first rule of democracy is you cannot change the rules half way through an election. The second is you should not nominate a candidate you would never vote for. The third is that if you are a member society, you should not let anyone join the society and become part of the electrorate without vetting them first (that's what we do in my profession).

I have voted labour all my life. I am in my late 50s. Yes, I absolutely dispair at this. If they don't act pronto, labour deserve to be anihilated in 2020. They are even more accident prone right now than the Major government was when their lot were dipping in the till and shagging anything that moved. At least the tories had the excuse then of mental flabbiness due to being too long in power. What's labour's excuse?

It is not even as if this is an idiological issue. It is a completely unprovoked attack of lunacy, worse than shooting one's self in the foot, this has been a machine gunning to the head, followed by 8 pints of cyanide while soaked in petrol and sitting on a bonfire.

A party, unfit to govern themselves is hardly a party fit to govern us.

Still . . . a week is a long time in politics. Probably it will be only folk like me who care about all this guff, and those that would never vote labour ever but who like to be repeatedly reminded of their 'insight', who will take any notice. Yes . . . I'm feeling better already

 

[sydney]

i do despair honestly.....the country is collapsing into a vortex of absolute beuracratic bollox.....you won't be able to flush the bog without ringing the bog police in a few years , i am fast approaching 50 and unfortunately i am battling the reluctant realisation that the land of my birth is being slowly but surely suffocated by university educated , tweed cladd buffoons with clip boards and hi-lite markers.....ffs

 

[Vegas Seagull]

surely this belongs in other stuff .....it is divisive , inflammatory and tends towards argumentative and juxtopositional posting....if the bursaspor stadium thread get moved surely this bollox does too...

Maybe you should stick to shorter words you can actually spell?

 

[Vegas Seagull]

Corbyn might not be home and dry yet. Not if the Great Purge of 2015 continues in this style:

April: Genuine Labour supporter donates to party ahead of GE

Yesterday: Genuine Labour supporter announces on Twitter he's supporting Corbyn

Today: Genuine Labour supporter is barred from voting in the leadership election

If Twitter is anything to go by then this is widespread and loads of people have been arbitrarily barred from the elections. Very amusing if you're not a Labour supporter. I can only imagine the embarrassment and anger if you do support the party.


And the appeal process....you have to pay £25 to join as a full member and then appeal the decision. Are they going to be able to process applications, hear appeals, make decisions and re-instate people's voting rights between now and the close of the elections?

Don't fret, he jumped from 43% to 53% in the two independent opinion polls during the campaign & the 2nd was using data extracted at least 5 days before the deadline to register. In those final 5 days 10's of thousands with a 75%+ bias towards Jez also added their names to the list. He raised £100k in 20 days to fund the 7 rooms of Phonebank activists to pull in the votes last night alone. A few knocked back will be irrelevant
He is going to win comfortably maybe getting 55 or even 60% in the first round. An unbelievable outcome

 

[BLOCK F]

As a young(ish) person I wholeheartedly support JC becoming Labour Leader. What he says chimes with I think is wrong with our country. I like what he says about privatising the railways and the energy sector. I like what he says about house building and rent controls. I like the idea of 'People's Quantitative Easing'. I like that he believes that discourse is the way to solve conflicts. I even like that he is willing to share stages with those that others may find distasteful. That he is willing to mix with people other than happy clapping party apparatchiks.

It just doesn't make sense to me senior figures coming out saying that Labour will be unelectable at the next election if Corbyn wins. Why? None of the rest of the candidates have anywhere near enough about them to win back the Labour votes lost in Scotland or indeed the votes across England lost to UKIP and the Tories. Corbyn might do. He offers something different. Labour got thumped at the last election, a proper kicking. They need a bit of change and I reckon that Corbyn could be that change.

You might not like it so much IF your 'saviour' ever became PM( to be honest, I don't think Corbyn would like it either) and the country was completely and utterly bankrupted.
I just don't know where the Corbyn supporters think all the money is coming from to support his ideas.

 

[BLOCK F]

Don't fret, he jumped from 43% to 53% in the two independent opinion polls during the campaign & the 2nd was using data extracted at least 5 days before the deadline to register. In those final 5 days 10's of thousands with a 75%+ bias towards Jez also added their names to the list. He raised £100k in 20 days to fund the 7 rooms of Phonebank activists to pull in the votes last night alone. A few knocked back will be irrelevant
He is going to win comfortably maybe getting 55 or even 60% in the first round. An unbelievable outcome

What excitement for the deluded left.
Oh well, let them enjoy a massive 'leftie communal orgasm' and worry about clearing up the awful mess later, when reality hits.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

He is going to win comfortably maybe getting 55 or even 60% in the first round. An unbelievable outcome

Think I will start a thread when he has a clear 7 point lead.

 

[glasfryn]

You might not like it so much IF your 'saviour' ever became PM( to be honest, I don't think Corbyn would like it either) and the country was completely and utterly bankrupted.
I just don't know where the Corbyn supporters think all the money is coming from to support his ideas.

38b+ saved by not building the toy railway for a start

 

[glasfryn]

Think I will start a thread when he has a clear 7 point lead.

it won't be long HT

 

[Steve Foster]

I am not a Labour Party member, but a "to the right of the left" type voter, who might equate to someone on the right of the Labour Party.

And I utterly resent and refute the "watered down Tories" bit. I could no more vote Tory than I could cut off my left leg with a blunt and rusty penknife. And this government has done more to perpetuate that than any other in my 44 years of being of voting age.

I have a vote in the leadership election as a TU member. My Union leadership (unison) is exhorting me to vote for Jeremy Corbyn. I will most certainly not be doing so.

Interesting - whilst we differ on much, our conclusions are the same. I am a conservative member and have never voted or ever will vote for Labour. Whatever our political persuasions, I am a strong advocate of strong opposition to keep the government of the day in account. If Corbyn was the next Labour leader, it would put the party back a decade or more - and that is not healthy for the UK political system, with the Lib Dems & UKIP not being able to fill up a minibus with their MPs

 

[BLOCK F]

Interesting - whilst we differ on much, our conclusions are the same. I am a conservative member and have never voted or ever will vote for Labour. Whatever our political persuasions, I am a strong advocate of strong opposition to keep the government of the day in account. If Corbyn was the next Labour leader, it would put the party back a decade or more - and that is not healthy for the UK political system, with the Lib Dems & UKIP not being able to fill up a minibus with their MPs

Agreed.

 

[Gwylan]

I am a strong advocate of strong opposition to keep the government of the day in account. If Corbyn was the next Labour leader, it would put the party back a decade or more - and that is not healthy for the UK political system, with the Lib Dems & UKIP not being able to fill up a minibus with their MPs

The Labour Party has about 600,000 paid members and supporters, the Conservative Party has about 140,000 and you think the Labour Party is the weaker of the two? [shakes head, totally bemused]

 

[BLOCK F]

The Labour Party has about 600,000 paid members and supporters, the Conservative Party has about 140,000 and you think the Labour Party is the weaker of the two? [shakes head, totally bemused]

You can shake your head all you like, Gwylan; the Labour Party is a shambles.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Interesting - whilst we differ on much, our conclusions are the same. I am a conservative member and have never voted or ever will vote for Labour. Whatever our political persuasions, I am a strong advocate of strong opposition to keep the government of the day in account. If Corbyn was the next Labour leader, it would put the party back a decade or more - and that is not healthy for the UK political system, with the Lib Dems & UKIP not being able to fill up a minibus with their MPs

Interesting theoretical discussion. It's a daft system that renders a general election pointless if one party elects a leader who is unsuitable.

PR would go some way to sorting this out IMHO.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

Interesting theoretical discussion. It's a daft system that renders a general election pointless if one party elects a leader who is unsuitable.

PR would go some way to sorting this out IMHO.

I agree with the strong opposition bit, but I would count myself as a life-long supporter of PR - way before it was fashionable. I would also go along with the almost inevitable coalition governments that it would throw up. Germany has not done too badly on such a system.

 

[Gwylan]

You can shake your head all you like, Gwylan; the Labour Party is a shambles.

I'd agree that the election hasn't been handled well - the purge of Corbyn supporters is a bit unsubtle - but if he wins and he enacts his pledge to have greater accountability, he'd be sitting atop an organisation that is larger than all the other parties put together and a more democratic one than any other (apart from the Greens), that strikes me as a position of amazing strength.

And if Corbyn wins with more than 50% of the vote on first ballot, he'd have more moral authority than other leader. That really doesn't seem very weak to me

 

[Biscuit]

Right, rant time.

I'm getting a bit pissed off with all these Labour front runners and commentators criticising Corbyn. If the party members want Corbyn to lead them into a general election then that's their prerogative. They do not need to be told what's good for them and certainly not by the likes of Blair, Brown and Burnham.

Personally I like the cut of Corbyn's jib. He was revealed as claiming one of the lowest amount of expenses of any Member of Parliament and in 2010 he claimed the smallest amount of all 650 MPs. He was recently seen taking a night bus home after a late night at the office. He's also, unlike every other candidate, stuck to his principals throughout his political career. He has a lot more in common with the electorate than Cooper, Kendall and Burnham.

Burnham seems to be moulded from the Blair/Clegg mould of sappy-eyed Mr. Reasonable 'great question Geoff' rent-a-politican CLOWNS that I've come to detest. No doubt the housewives latest pin-up would do very well in an election, but I want real change.

Staggeringly Corbyn is the only left winger in the debate. No wonder the Labour Party is in such a state FFS.

/end rant

 

[BLOCK F]

I'd agree that the election hasn't been handled well - the purge of Corbyn supporters is a bit unsubtle - but if he wins and he enacts his pledge to have greater accountability, he'd be sitting atop an organisation that is larger than all the other parties put together and a more democratic one than any other (apart from the Greens), that strikes me as a position of amazing strength.

And if Corbyn wins with more than 50% of the vote on first ballot, he'd have more moral authority than other leader. That really doesn't seem very weak to me

He may well sit atop an organisation that cannot even muster sufficient MP's to fill his front bench, let alone appeal to the electorate. There will be so much unrest and infighting in the party that it may well be rent assunder. That, or Corbyn will be toppled pretty damn' quickly.

 

[Gwylan]

He may well sit atop an organisation that cannot even muster sufficient MP's to fill his front bench, let alone appeal to the electorate. There will be so much unrest and infighting in the party that it may well be rent assunder. That, or Corbyn will be toppled pretty damn' quickly.

The whole point is that there will be more power to constituency parties and to members. Yes, there will be some resistance - some MPs may move to other parties or stand as independents - but in the long run, the party, by the time of the next election, the party will be on stronger footing.

I've said earlier on in this thread, I can't see Labour winning the next election, but if Corbyn wins and he enacts the changes he wants, in the long run, the party will be based on a formidable mass membership