Labour Leadership Contest

[Section_31]

I think it's bullshit this idea that the tories really want corbyn to win. I think they are playing devil's advocate trying to convince people it's a madness they are thankful for. Really I think the idea Labour might lurch to the left and have a leader who evokes an emotional response from people who are just sick to death of it all worries them. I'm not saying Corbyn will do that but he is potentially a politician people admire and have respect for and think he may be a voice they have been seeking. Most usual Labour supporters I know where generally looking elsewhere last election because they no longer felt the party represented them, many who don't usually bother voting at all have paid 3 quid to vote for corbyn.

 

Who knows how it will all turn out, it may be a disaster and strengthen the Tory's but it may not, at least with Corbyn we may see something different it may even stoke the voter apathy, for or against and shift the political spectrum. Corbyn not giving a fuck about how the media perceive him will give Labour more bollocks than they have had in years.

 

What he says in that Owen Jones video is great, the notion of getting away from the elites and making Labour a grassroots movement. There's real potential there and nobody in any party in Westminster will like the sound of that. 

 

Caesar: "I wish the Senate to be composed of the finest men in all of Italy, not just the richest men in Rome."

Cissero: "A novel idea I'm sure." 

[Mook]

two points to make here

1) We don't live in a capitalist society. Once we propped the banks up capitalism was dead.

2) People do think they are voting to protect their interests, but they're believing a lie. This government is fucking everyone who is anything less than a millionaire.

 

The tories won the last election at a canter, capitalism is alive & well in this country.

 

In fact, I would suggest that it's fucking thriving at the moment.

[Jairzinho]

They got 24% of the electorate to vote for them after a full scale attack on Labour (whose campaign was fucking dreadful anyway) from 90% of the media for several months.

 

People aren't cunts, they're just ignorant.

[Mook]

They got 24% of the electorate to vote for them after a full scale attack on Labour (whose campaign was fucking dreadful anyway) from 90% of the media for several months.

 

People aren't cunts, they're just ignorant.

 

You've got more faith in them than I have then.

 

I go along to a lot of AGMs with my work & I actually feel sick listening to the cunts talking about money, like it's a God.

[ElishaScottBC]

[Jairzinho]

You've got more faith in them than I have then.

 

I go along to a lot of AGMs with my work & I actually feel sick listening to the cunts talking about money, like it's a God.

 

Where do you work?

[Mook]

Where do you work?

 

i work for a share registrar.

[Jairzinho]

i work for a share registrar.

 

It may not be entirely reflective of a country's bellend/non bellend ratio.

[Section_31]

i work for a share registrar.

 

I don't even know what that is. 

 

[Mook]

It may not be entirely reflective of a country's bellend/non bellend ratio.

 

That's very true, it was merely an example in response to Spy Bee's claim that capitalism was dead.

 

I see it as the prevailant political ideology in this country, it's something that needs sorting out & pretending it's not there is not a good start.

[Jairzinho]

That's very true, but for Spy Bee to say capitalism was dead was a bit mental.

 

I see it as the prevailant political ideology in this country, it's something that needs sorting out & pretending it's not there is not a good start.

 

I think he meant more than the government can no longer claim we have capitalism when banks and major corporations receive/received huge state funding. Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.

 

It's dog eat dog for the most vulnerable, but there is a nice safety net for those playing blackjack with everyone's mortgages.

[Champ]

I dont hear anyone complaining about the lack of correspondence from the different candidates now!

[dennis tooth]

The Labour Party establishment was resorting to desperate measures in a bid to block Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign as ballot papers went out for the leadership election this week.

Over 600,000 people are eligible to vote after a surge of registrations brought down the Labour website before the deadline on Wednesday of last week. 

Under new rules, which allowed supporters to sign up for £3 to vote, as many as 70,000 registered. Another 92,000 registered through affiliated trade unions and around 82,000 people have fully joined the Labour Party since the May election. 

This compares to 180,000 ballot papers distributed under the old electoral system in the 2010 leadership election. 

The right of the party is terrified of losing control if the majority of the new supporters have signed up to vote for Corbyn.

They claim Labour will only have a chance of re-election if it sticks to its austerity-lite and migrant bashing policies. 

Tony Blair’s right hand man Peter Mandelson reportedly tried to get the other three candidates to stand down and declare the election void before ballot papers went out.

The Labour right may look to sabotage Corbyn’s leadership or split from the party if he wins.

Weighed 

Ex Labour prime minister Gordon Brown weighed in to the debate on the eve of voting. Brown, who never won an election as Labour leader, lectured on the importance of winning elections (see below).

But far from being unpopular Corbyn’s anti-austerity message has a powerful resonance for many people suffering under the cuts who want to see some resistance.

More than 1,000 came to hear him speak last week in the biggest public meeting Cardiff in South Wales has seen since the 

1984-85 Miners’ Strike. They burst into spontaneous applause when Corbyn spoke in support of migrants and nationalisation. 

Kris Hedges told Socialist Worker, “There was a real sense of optimism. People came out saying, ‘This is what Labour is supposed to be about’.”

One poll last week showed that more of the public thought Corbyn would be the best candidate to hold the Tory government to account.

The right has resorted to smears about Corbyn’s international policies as his views on domestic issues prove hard to undermine.

These include the accusation that he is anti-Semitic because he supports organisations that oppose the state of Israel. 

As Corbyn comes to define the election, Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham are competing to present themselves as the candidate who can beat him. 

Burnham said he wants to “capture” the energy of Corbyn’s campaign. But that energy will be lost if it becomes merely a vehicle for a Labour machine seeking to win the next election at all costs.

 ‘Power’ before principles?

Gordon Brown argued that Labour’s history shows that principles matter less than getting elected.  

He said, “We cannot deliver in government without power, we can deliver principles only when we have power.”

Yet Labour lost the last two general elections on an unprincipled platform, including one when led by Brown himself.

Brown’s own political trajectory shows what happens if you dump your principles and focus only on winning votes. 

He originally came from the Labour left, was a student activist and a member of the Tribune group. He ended up promoting neoliberalism and imperialist wars.

Crowds rally to hear a left alternative

Jeremy Corbyn travelled through Scotland and Wales last week speaking to packed meetings. 

Over 700 people heard him speak in Glasgow. Despite Scottish Labour’s collapse since last year’s referendum, people said it was its biggest Labour rally there for over 30 years.

The original venue, the Oran Mor, was half the size and sold out in less than an hour. 

An enthusiastic crowd cheered and clapped Corbyn throughout his speech as he made clear his opposition to the renewal of Trident nuclear weapons and to the war in Iraq. 

His campaign has given Labour supporters a chance to attack the dominant Scottish National Party (SNP) from the left—something the Blairites are incapable of.

In Dundee more than 400 came to Corbyn’s meeting. A few SNP supporters were interested in Corbyn’s views on some of its policies. He fudged slightly on Scottish independence, but was positive about working with the SNP to get rid of Trident.

Corbyn spoke to 500 people in Llandudno, a town of just 20,000 people in North Wales.

At the Cardiff rally, one Labour activist from the Rhondda Valley said people were furious with their MP Chris Bryant for backing Yvette Cooper.

It’s not just Blairites who’ve attacked Corbyn. Welsh Labour  has joined in, with first minister Carwyn Jones claiming his campaign was “divisive”.

Former first minister Rhodri Morgan has backed Cooper, along with some left Welsh assembly members (AMs). 

Morgan was the successful left wing challenger to Tony Blair’s stooge Alun Michael in 2000. 

In Cardiff Corbyn asked people to help the Labour Party get back into office—and alluded to people who registered as supporters becoming members. 

But the movement we need to build can’t be inside Labour.

Thanks to Kris Hedges, Jeff Hurford, Jackie Shellard, Duncan Brown and Arthur Nicoll

[xerxes]

I think people vote on propaganda and fear.

I disagree with the propaganda proposition, the more Corbyn is smeared the more the smearers seem smeared. The public are smarter than some think.

 

I agree with you about fear. The Scots voted to stay in the Union because they feared the unknown. Labour failed at the last election because the electorate feared what the PLP and membership already knew- Ed was not up to the job.

 

The unintended consequence of Corbyn standing is not that a Messiah has been uncovered, but that he has highlighted how little the Cooper/Burnham/Kendall camp have to offer. The proposition that this trio, so closely associated with the politics of failure, represent a better chance of success than Corbyn remains unanswered.

 

Corbyn in himself may not be the answer, but he may well be the catalyst for what is. I simply do not believe that the progressive renationalisation of the railways, costing nothing as franchises expire, is unpopular. I also do not believe that the country is not mature enough to have a debate about the wisdom of spending over £100bn on Trident when we face a whopping deficit.

[Anubis]

Corbyn addressing people who couldn't get into his Newcastle gig tonight. Blimey.

 

[Anubis]

George Monibot in The Guardian.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/18/jeremy-corbyn-rivals-chase-impossible-dream

 

 

On one point I agree with his opponents: Jeremy Corbyn has little chance of winning the 2020 general election. But the same applies to the other three candidates. Either Labour must win back the seats it once held in Scotland (surely impossible without veering to the left) or it must beat the Conservatives by 12 points in England and Wales to form an overall majority. The impending boundary changes could mean that it has to win back 106 seats. If you think that is likely, I respectfully suggest that you are living in a dreamworld.

 

 

In fact, in this contest of improbabilities, Corbyn might stand the better chance. Only a disruptive political movement, that can ignite, mesmerise and mobilise, that can raise an army of volunteers – as the SNP did in Scotland – could smash the political concrete.

 

 

To imagine that Labour could overcome such odds by becoming bland, blurred and craven is to succumb to thinking that is simultaneously magical and despairing. Such dreamers argue that Labour has to recapture the middle ground. But there is no such place; no fixed political geography. The middle ground is a magic mountain that retreats as you approach. The more you chase it from the left, the further to the right it moves.

 

 

As the social philosopher Karl Polanyi pointed out towards the end of the second world war, when politics offers little choice and little prospect of solving their problems, people seek extreme solutions. Labour’s inability to provide a loud and proud alternative to Conservative policies explains why so much of its base switched to Ukip at the last election. Corbyn’s political clarity explains why the same people are flocking back to him.

 

 

Are they returning because he has tailored his policies to appeal to the hard right? Certainly not. They are returning because he stands for something, something that could help them, something that was not devised by a row of spadbot mannikins in suits, consulting their clipboards on Douglas Alexander’s sofa.

 

 

Nothing was more politically inept than Labour’s attempt before the election to win back Ukip supporters by hardening its stance on immigration. Why vote for the echo when you can vote for the shout? What is attractive about a party prepared to abandon its core values for the prospect of electoral gain? What is inspiring about a party that grovels, offering itself as a political doormat for any powerful interest or passing fad to wipe its feet on?

 

 

In an openDemocracy article, Ian Sinclair compares Labour’s attempts to stop Corbyn with those by the Tories in 1974-75 to stop Margaret Thatcher. Divisive, hated by the press, seen by her own party as an extremist, she was widely dismissed as unelectable. The Tory establishment, convinced that the party could win only from the centre, did everything it could to stop her.

 

 

Across three decades New Labour strategists have overlooked a crucial reality: politicians reinforce the values they espouse. The harder you try to win by adopting your opponents’ values, the more you legitimise and promote them, making your task – and that of your successors – more difficult. Tony Blair won three elections, but in doing so he made future Labour victories less likely. By adopting conservative values, conservative framing and conservative language, he shifted the nation to the right, even when he pursued leftwing policies such as the minimum wage, tax credits and freedom of information. You can sustain policies without values for a while but then, like plants without soil, the movement wilts and dies.

 

 

The Labour mainstream likes to pretend that Blair’s only breach of faith was the Iraq war. The marketisation of the NHS, the private finance initiative, the criminalisation of peaceful protest, collusion in the kidnap and torture of dissidents from other nations, the collapse of social housing – I could fill this page with a list of such capitulations to greed and tyranny. Blair’s purges, stripping all but courtiers from the lists of potential candidates, explain why the party now struggles to find anyone under 50 who looks like a leader.

 

 

The capitulations continued under Ed Miliband, who allowed the Conservative obsession with the deficit and austerity to frame Labour politics. As Paul Krugman explains, austerity is a con that does nothing but harm to the wealth of this nation. It has been discredited everywhere else: only in Britain do we cling to the myth. Yet Miliband walked willingly into the trap. His manifesto promised to “cut the deficit every year” and to adopt such cruel Tory policies as the household benefits cap.

 

 

You can choose, if you wish, to believe that this clapped-out, alienating politics – compounded by such gobsmacking acts of cowardice as the failure to oppose the welfare bill – can capture the mood of the nation, reverse Labour’s decline and secure an extra hundred seats. But please stop calling yourself a realist.

 

 

Rebuilding a political movement means espousing what is desirable, then finding ways to make it feasible. The hopeless realists propose the opposite. They assemble a threadbare list of policies they consider feasible, then seek to persuade us that this package is desirable. If they retain core values, they’ve become so muddled by tacking and triangulation as to be almost indecipherable.

 

 

So great has the damage been to a party lost for 21 years in Blair’s Bermuda triangulation that it might take many years until it becomes electable again. That is a frightening prospect, but the longer Labour keeps repeating the same mistakes – reinforcing the values it should be contesting – the further to the right it will push the nation, and the more remote its chances of election will become. The task is to rebuild the party’s values, reclaim the democratic debate, pull the centre back towards the left and change – as Clement Attlee and Thatcher did in different ways – the soul of the nation.

 

 

Because Labour’s immediate prospects are so remote, regardless of who wins this contest, the successful candidate is likely to be a caretaker, a curator of the future. His or her task must be to breathe life back into politics, to recharge democracy with choice, to ignite the hope that will make Labour electable again. Only one candidate proposes to do that.

[Lucky Pierre]

Ballot packs came out today. 

 

If I was Kendall and I saw the amount of Constituency Labour Parties backing me I'd step aside now. 

[Jairzinho]

Trashing Corbyn, promoting Brown - Guardian's version of morality politics

 

Another week, another frontline assault on Jeremy Corbyn from the Guardian. It's a measure of the media establishment's panic that the 'Corbyn crisis' has now overtaken even the 'migrant crisis' (never, of course, a 'crisis for migrants') as the most pressing 'Operation Halt'.

Following Blair, Straw, Campbell and Johnson, David Miliband has now been rolled-in to deliver his stark warning over Corbyn. The Blairite rescue convoy now seems like an M20-type stack waiting in turn to denounce the menacing swarm of illegal entryists and system-threatening Corbynistas.

Alongside runs a relentless line of skewed 'copy' from Rowena Mason and other 'political correspondents'. Just how many smears, one wonders, can be crammed into a piece under that cover role? Mason is, of course, well attuned to such chicanery, having plied her trade for many years at the Telegraph.

Following a shameless piece 'covering' the Jewish Chronicle's attack on Corbyn, Mason continued with another deeply-loaded piece 'reporting' Channel 4 News anchor Cathy Smith's own shabby ambushing of Corbyn over the same scurrilous anti-Semitism claims. 

If the Guardian, Channel 4 and the rest of our 'enquiring' media had the remotest integrity they would be headlining and exposing such fabrications. Instead, the slurs are 'reported', repeated and allowed to rest as part of a massively-weighted body of 'news' and opinion, supposedly 'balanced' by Corbyn's denials.

The much-hyped 'intervention' of Gordon Brown is a glaring case in point.

 

The Guardian wasted no time in getting him front-paged, with those all-important smear lines written-up, alongside, by Mason and her associates.

As with the Scottish independence vote, Brown has been wheeled-out as some kind of 'reluctant sage', intended as a more 'respectable' and persuasive figure than Blair or Campbell. 

But, as with the Indy vote, and despite such favoured presentation, there's been a notable backlash against Brown's posturing, his fellow Labour 'saviours', and, increasingly, the Guardian itself for its complicit hosting of them. 

In response, Guardian regular Suzanne Moore is now crying foul over 'hostile' Corbynites who are 'abusing' those 'daring' to speak out against Corbyn. Keeping up? 

As Moore bewails: 

You should be able to express doubt about Corbyn without risking vitriol.

Note the coy use of words here: while an entire media effort to bombard Corbyn with abusive distortion can be reduced to "doubt", responses to it are to be condemned as "vitriol".

Moore goes on:

I am sure Corbyn genuinely does not want to sink to the level of yelling at his opponents, but the specialist subject of some of his supporters is vile abuse. This may just be the modus operandi of social media now, but it is unedifying to see that the mood music of those who would enact the socialist dream involves, at times, screaming at anyone who harbours any doubt about Corbyn. Express the slightest qualm about his potential leadership and you’re apparently a war-mongering moron who feasts on homeless people. Or, if you are Liz Kendall, basically to the right of Iain Duncan Smith.

At the risk of being labelled part of Moore's 'vitriolic pack', this is the most crass hyperbole, a facile sweep of the issues and debate, implying that alleged abuse from "some" on social media is somehow representative of, or particular to, Corbyn supporters. 

More specifically, Moore laments that she: 

was disturbed by the vitriol poured out against Gordon Brown this weekend, even while I’m aware of his flaws.

Again, note the passive use of "flaws", few of which are actually probed.  Instead, Moore uses her piece to talk-up Brown's 'respectable intervention', stoutly defending his record in office. Yet, amongst these "flaws", she conveniently fails to mention his central part as Treasurer in funding and supporting the war in Iraq. 

Perhaps the passage of time has given Brown space for honest, moral reconsideration? Not so,as made abundantly clear in his own evidence to Chilcot, where he reaffirmed his support for Blair's motivations and conduct. This was nowhere to be seen in Moore's gushing account, not deemed one of his "flaws". A safe Guardian oversight, no doubt.

Moore's version of 'morality politics' here reflects the kind of 'bad apple' line the Guardian's executive editor Jonathan Freedland often adopts when seeking to mitigate Israel's criminality, as in denouncing Netanyahu, but staying soft on co-criminals like Livni.

Likewise, Moore assures us, criticism of people like Blair and Campbell is "entirely understandable", but not applicable to Brown, who, we must assume from Moore's apologetic screed, was one of the 'silent waverers', a 'deep-down dove'. 

Yet, as noted in his own unambiguous declaration, that was never the case. And if he ever did have 'quieter misgivings', why didn't he declare them before the slaughter and resign in good conscience?

The Guardian's coverage of Brown tells us much about the pernicious cycle of smear and containment. Firstly, there's the eagerly-hosted attacks from people like Blair and Brown, followed by glowing coverage from 'correspondents' like Mason, leading to Moore's kind of rearguard demonisation of those challenging those smears and the 'reporting' of them.

It's more mounting evidence of how the establishment line is crafted and peddled in 'crisis' situations, and the pressing need, in ever-civil manner, to expose, boycott and exit the Guardian.  

[Anubis]

Blunkett has apparently weighed-in now. Is there anyone left?

 

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-vote-for-jeremy-corbyn-if-you-want-to-stay-in-opposition-david-blunkett-tells-party-10461770.html

[Stickman]

Blunkett has apparently weighed-in now. Is there anyone left?

 

 

Is saying the blind leading the blind a bit crass.....fuck it I'll say it anyway.

 

Have Blair , Brown and co attacked the Tories over the last 5 years with this much gusto?....I don't think I've heard a peep from any of them

[Section_31]

Blunkett has apparently weighed-in now. Is there anyone left?

 

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-vote-for-jeremy-corbyn-if-you-want-to-stay-in-opposition-david-blunkett-tells-party-10461770.html

 

He doesn't see the big picture. 

[Jairzinho]

He doesn't see the big picture. 

 

You should be banned from this websight.

[Section_31]

Daily Record has backed Corybyn for leader on its front page today. 

 

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/record-view-jeremy-corbyn-offers-6276844

[Babb'sBurstNad]

May as well ask the dog at this point, everyone else has chipped in. 

[Dr Nowt]

May as well ask the guide dog at this point, everyone else has chipped in.

Agreed.