Labour Leadership Contest

[RoboRiise]

Labour win Oldham despite Corbyn leadership. Imagine how much more they would have won by with Liz Kendall as leader. 

 

UKIP basically being racist but not getting pulled on it. No formal complaint has yet to be made but the mud has been well and truly slung. Despicable party.

 

I will just say on this that historically there have been serious problems with postal voting in Oldham; that's not wild speculation it's known fact and was the subject of a report by the Electoral Commission not too long ago.  I can also tell you anecdotally that there have definitely been some irregular activities around postal votes in particular here in the past. 

 

Obviously any specific allegations about conduct in this election would have to be investigated and there's no way that Farage or anybody else could possibly be aware of any specific irregularities that would account for the 10k+ gulf between Labour and the Kippers.  I'm not disputing at all that he is merely quacking away because he's had his arse handed to him and I'm taking great pleasure in laughing at him.

 

Farage's comments about the 'Asian block vote' though are insinuating that something more organised has gone on.  It's true to say that Labour do have a very well-organised local machinery operating within the Asian communities but that's not a crime; Labour have traditionally been the party of choice for immigrants and their decendants in this area, most of the areas with a high Asian population have Asian Labour councillors and the party is generally well-organised.  By contrast the last time we heard from UKIP here until about 3 weeks before the election was, unsurprisingly, the last election.

 

It's also true to say that many Asian families vote together.  That's also not a crime; if anything I think it's actually an interesting cultural difference that these people Farage is, in his mind, holding up for some kind of criticism are sufficiently engaged with politics that they will discuss the issues both local and national and decide what will be best for them, whereas UKIP's supporters will spend five hours in a pub with that chortling fucking shitstain Farage, then get their Asian-driven taxi home, calling in the takeaway for a kebab on the way because it's the only place still open at 1.30am, before getting up the next day to vote for a party who will do something about 'bloody immigrants'.

 

I would have thought Farage would have learned from Nick Griffin's trip up here a few years back.  Oldhamers in general might not be the richest or the brightest voters but most of them are pretty shewd and we can spot a bullshitter a mile off.  The Labour movement has a strong history here, the seat has been held by Labour since before I was born, the Labour candidate is a local lad who has been a councilllor for over 10 years and was the council leader prior to the election.  I have no idea what Farage was expecting but if he genuinely thought they might win here, he;s even crazier than I thought.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Labour win Oldham despite Corbyn leadership. Imagine how much more they would have won by with Liz Kendall as leader.

 

UKIP basically being racist but not getting pulled on it. No formal complaint has yet to be made but the mud has been well and truly slung. Despicable party.

Corbyn is the anti-Moyes.

 

You don't need to lose elections to be unelectable - but he is unelectable.

[Gnasher]

http://eveningharold.com/2015/12/04/jeremy-corbyn-now-abandoned-by-everyone-apart-from-voters/

[AngryOfTuebrook]

BBC by election special finished 40 minutes earlier than scheduled and Laura Kuennsberg's Twitter page in which she can't stop singing like a canary about Corbyn is surprisingly very quiet....I guess something didn't quite go to plan for the Beeb

BBC News trawling Oldham market to get locals to bad-mouth Corbyn.

 

Quality, impartial reporting.

[Scooby Dudek]

I will just say on this that historically there have been serious problems with postal voting in Oldham; that's not wild speculation it's known fact and was the subject of a report by the Electoral Commission not too long ago.  I can also tell you anecdotally that there have definitely been some irregular activities around postal votes in particular here in the past. 

 

Obviously any specific allegations about conduct in this election would have to be investigated and there's no way that Farage or anybody else could possibly be aware of any specific irregularities that would account for the 10k+ gulf between Labour and the Kippers.  I'm not disputing at all that he is merely quacking away because he's had his arse handed to him and I'm taking great pleasure in laughing at him.

 

Farage's comments about the 'Asian block vote' though are insinuating that something more organised has gone on.  It's true to say that Labour do have a very well-organised local machinery operating within the Asian communities but that's not a crime; Labour have traditionally been the party of choice for immigrants and their decendants in this area, most of the areas with a high Asian population have Asian Labour councillors and the party is generally well-organised.  By contrast the last time we heard from UKIP here until about 3 weeks before the election was, unsurprisingly, the last election.

 

It's also true to say that many Asian families vote together.  That's also not a crime; if anything I think it's actually an interesting cultural difference that these people Farage is, in his mind, holding up for some kind of criticism are sufficiently engaged with politics that they will discuss the issues both local and national and decide what will be best for them, whereas UKIP's supporters will spend five hours in a pub with that chortling fucking shitstain Farage, then get their Asian-driven taxi home, calling in the takeaway for a kebab on the way because it's the only place still open at 1.30am, before getting up the next day to vote for a party who will do something about 'bloody immigrants'.

 

I would have thought Farage would have learned from Nick Griffin's trip up here a few years back.  Oldhamers in general might not be the richest or the brightest voters but most of them are pretty shewd and we can spot a bullshitter a mile off.  The Labour movement has a strong history here, the seat has been held by Labour since before I was born, the Labour candidate is a local lad who has been a councilllor for over 10 years and was the council leader prior to the election.  I have no idea what Farage was expecting but if he genuinely thought they might win here, he;s even crazier than I thought.

A great post.

I was just making the point about UKIP being a horrible party. This morning it was;

 

 Shortly after the result was announced early Friday morning, UK Independence Party (UKIP) boss Farage claimed he had evidence of electoral fraud relating to postal votes.

 

Nigel Farage on twitter:

Evidence from an impeccable source that today's postal voting was bent.

 

“We will file a formal complaint about the abuses that our people saw yesterday.

 

Later it was;

 

UKIP is "reviewing the evidence" before deciding whether to make a formal complaint about what it suggests may have been electoral fraud in the Oldham West and Royton by-election.

 

 

Still no formal complaint. However the result has been tarnished. No one is talking about the very poor result by UKIP, let us not forget a week ago these people did genuinely believe they would win the vote. Everyone should be pointing and laughing, but instead they are linking Labour and voter fraud.

 

[Denny Crane]

One, a Shadow Cabinet member, said:

He’s not just making us a target for Momentum and Stop The War, he’s making us a target for home-grown jihadists

While the other, a former frontbencher, said:

He has crossed the line from totally stupid to completely irresponsible. He’s deliberately making us a target.

[Russ Atmosphere]

If these MPs had only coordinated this well at the last election.

[sir roger]

Flabbergasted by the BBC News tonight, which seemed basically of just showing anybody who was prepared to slag Corbyn off. I understand they are shit scared of what the Tories might do to the license fee etc. but surely there must be some journalists left with a modicum of self-respect who are fighting this rubbish in the background.

 

I just wonder whether Jeremy needs to be a bit more combative about all of this rubbish. I understand that he is a well-mannered, unaggressive type of guy, but when the opposition to you from within & without is so poisonous , I feel there is a point where you have to start punching back a bit.

[Stickman]

Kuenssberg who during the Syria debate was tweeting away gleefully about Labour being a party split has suddenly gone very very quiet on her Twitter page since the Oldham by election result......

[Gnasher]

I see that Corbyn commie cunt has attended a start the war meeting, the media going nuts about it and rightly so.

 

Oi Corbyn, we got enough of dem war things appening without you wanting more fucking wars you bolshi bastard. Fucking unbelievable Jeff.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Mark Steel tweeted that he should be dining with arms dealers and tax dodgers, like a proper MP.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

You get used to spite-filled right-wingers spewing lies and bullshit all over the Mail on Sunday.  It's a little disappointing when the author masquerades as a Labour MP.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3357873/An-anti-Corbynite-s-stark-appraisal-hard-Left-s-power-grab-Simon-Danczuk.html#ixzz3uClXATCm

 

Imagine for a second hordes of BNP, EDL and National Front members mounting a hostile takeover of the Conservative Party. Consider how they’d set about transforming the organisation from top to bottom.

Crazed fanatics would be swiftly installed in the leader’s office. Formerly genteel constituency party meetings would see polite and elderly blue-rinse Tories shouted down by shaven-headed thugs. 

And Conservative frontbenchers would boast openly of consulting with racist organisations to decide foreign policy.

It couldn’t happen, surely? It seems highly unlikely, as the Conservatives are too interested in being a party of government to allow it.

But the same chilling scenario is unfolding in the Labour Party right now. The only difference is that the fanatical ideologues who have seized power are at the other end of the political spectrum.

History tells us that extremist ideologies are dangerous whether they’re hard Left or hard Right. At some point the swivel-eyed lunacy on both sides meets with the same result.

Whether it’s communism or fascism, it always ends in deadly purges, misery and dictatorial madness.

That’s why Labour moderates are finally waking up to a nightmare that’s been slowly unfolding since the day Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader.

Tom Watson’s warning last week that entryists are trying to infiltrate Labour shows Corbyn’s not-so-secret plan has finally been rumbled.

Anyone who still sees the hard Left through a romantic prism of heroic struggles like those of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Chartists and Jarrow marchers can no longer ignore the ugly reality. 

Layer upon layer of warm, comforting sentiment is being peeled away to reveal spiteful thuggery and a repugnant philosophy.

There’s nothing edifying to see here. Whether it’s Corbyn supporters celebrating the hospitalisation of Labour MP Mike Gapes, the lynch mob mentality on social media, or threats and intimidation from pitch-fork-wielding revolutionaries in Momentum, the ‘new politics’ has long abandoned any pretence of decency.

And now that the tone of the ‘new politics’ has hardened, Jeremy Corbyn’s backing band, the Stop the War Coalition, are busy setting the mood music to a sickening new doctrine.

When they’re not playing down the crimes of fascist butchers IS and unbelievably comparing jihadis to the International Brigades that fought against fascists in the Spanish civil war, they’re blaming the French for terrorist atrocities in Paris and preventing Syrians from speaking at their rallies because they support a no-fly zone.

But their hate-the-West, blame-Britain-for-everything, apologia-for-fascism doesn’t stop there. Oh no. 

‘Support for Bashar al-Assad’ flags flutter in the breeze at their demonstrations and they refuse to protest against Assad’s barrel-bombing of his own people. 

They’ve compared Assad to Churchill, say they stand with Saddam Hussein, and find themselves in the company of the BNP in their support for Putin.

Boil down their confused philosophy and it amounts to little more than viewing Britain as a bigger threat than IS, Saddam and Putin combined.

Little wonder that even leftier-than- thou types such as Peter Tatchell and Caroline Lucas are walking away from this muddled and treacherous outfit.

But there’s one person who will never walk away and that’s their cheerleader-in-chief, Jeremy Corbyn.

As we saw last week, he’ll continue to robustly defend them at every turn. Because their values are his values – and he mistakenly thinks they are Labour values.

It’s not just that he’s tragically wrong that’s so exasperating to many. It’s that the Left has such a rich history that Corbyn could draw from.

But instead of deriving inspiration from Robin Cook’s principled decency in his opposition to the Iraq War, or Clement Attlee’s instinctive grasp that patriotism ‘was the emotion of every free-thinking Briton’, Corbyn persists in dropping his bucket into a dry extremist well.

As the leader of a mass-membership political party that aspires to govern one of the greatest countries on earth, such behaviour is totally unacceptable. 

You only had to listen to the resounding cheers that greeted Angela Eagle’s performance at Prime Minister’s Questions last week to know Labour MPs desperately want to beat a path out of the wilderness.

Jeremy is stretching the Labour Party to breaking point. And sooner or later something must give.

Labour’s always been a broad church but differences of opinion are now so great that unless Corbyn begins to build bridges with the vast majority of Labour MPs, it’s going to become obvious to the public that we’re two separate parties.

And once this becomes accepted public wisdom a split will be inevitable. Jeremy needs to realise what’s at stake here. More than 100 years of Labour history hangs in the balance.

If the Labour movement is to have a future, he needs to wake up before it’s too late.

[Jairzinho]

What a top bloke.

[cloggypop]

[Anubis]

Just from your opening line I knew it would be Danczuk. He's a fucking knob.

 

I'm enjoying being described as a fanatical ideologue.

[Stickman]

You get used to spite-filled right-wingers spewing lies and bullshit all over the Mail on Sunday.  It's a little disappointing when the author masquerades as a Labour MP.

 

[url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article.

 

Hopefully the likes of Danczuk and co read this excellent article by Tess Finch Lees

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dont-think-jeremy-corbyn-is-a-worthy-leader-maybe-its-time-to-leave-the-labour-party-a6773741.html

[Strontium]

Hopefully the likes of Danczuk and co read this excellent article by Tess Finch Lees

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dont-think-jeremy-corbyn-is-a-worthy-leader-maybe-its-time-to-leave-the-labour-party-a6773741.html

 

Looks like folk are following her advice:

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/12051510/Jeremy-Corbyn-has-become-the-Lefts-Enoch-Powell.html

 

I’m done. Yesterday I cancelled my direct debit to the Labour Party. “Why don’t you just sod off and join the Tories“, Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters regularly ask anyone who dares to challenge their rancid world view.

 

I won’t be joining the Tories. But I am sodding off.

 

Like many Labour Party members, I’d been weighing up what to do about my membership for a couple of months now. I’d resolved in my own mind to “stay and fight”. Indeed, when I filled in the online form to rejoin the party back in June and was asked for my “Reasons for rejoining”, I typed “to fight Jeremy Corbyn”.

 

But then two things changed my mind. The first was the report that Labour MPs were again deferring a direct challenge to their leader, this time to 2017. And I realised that actually there is no real internal “resistance” to Corbynism. All the bullying. All the threats. They have worked.

 

The second thing – and for me this was the real tipping point – was a report in that Isil was now ordering the murder of children with Down’s syndrome.

 

According to the Mirror’s report, Isil has issued a fatwa “to its members authorising them to 'kill newborn babies with Down's syndrome and congenital deformities and disabled children'". It went on to claim: “activists recorded more than 38 confirmed cases of killing babies with congenital deformities and Down's syndrome, aged between one week to three months. They were killed by either lethal injection or suffocation.”

 

Two weeks ago the Labour Party – my party – was asked if it would support taking military action against the group of savages who are implementing this barbaric policy. The request was bolstered by a United Nations’ resolution, and a specific plea for assistance from Francoise Hollande, the socialist prime minister of France, following the massacre of hundreds of innocent people on the streets of his capital.

 

A majority of Labour Party members of parliament – members of my party – rejected that plea. Those that did not have been subjected to a sustained campaign of abuse and intimidation. The abuse originated in many instances from members of the Labour Party – my party.

 

Prior to the debate, Jeremy Corbyn had told his MPs they were free to follow their consciences in that vote. He lied to them. The campaign of intimidation against them that followed was prosecuted with his knowledge, and on his behalf. Some of it was directed from within his own office. The office of the leader of the Labour Party – my party.

 

The intimidation reached such a level that some MPs began to fear for their physical safety. One former minister, Jamie Reed, made a formal complaint to Rosie Winterton, Labour’s chief whip, warning that the Labour leader’s actions would eventually result in “personal violence against Labour MPs, their staff or even family members”. That’s families and staff of members of the Labour Party – my party.

 

On Friday Jeremy Corbyn went to a Christmas party. It was a party held in his honour by the Stop The War coalition. Stop The War had been responsible for much of the harassment of those Labour MPs who had voted for military action. Indeed, Stop The War had specifically asked its supporters to prioritise the targeting of Labour MPs, over the targeting of their Conservative opponents. In the days running up to Jeremy Corbyn’s attendance at their party, Stop The War published several articles. One claimed it was wrong to compare Isil with the Nazis, whilst a second compared Isil to the International Brigades who had fought Hitler and Franco’s fascists in Spain.

 

Jeremy Corbyn knew all of this. And despite that, he arrived at the party and told the assembled gathering: “I’ve been proud to be the chair of the Stop the War coalition, proud to be associated with the Stop The War coalition. We are very strong, there are very many more of us than there are of those people that want to take us in the other direction.” That was the leader of the Labour party who said that. My leader.

 

There are lots of sound political reasons for people staying in the Labour Party to fight Corbynism. But for me, the decision is no longer a political one, but a moral one.

 

Jeremy Corbyn is the Left’s Enoch Powell. His views and stances are equally repugnant. It’s just that because he is leader the of “my party” that I have refused to acknowledge it.

 

Powell was always at pains to paint himself as someone who did not personally entertain prejudice. He was merely an interlocutor between the body politic and those that did. He did not endorse racism. But he thought it important to engage with those who held such views, to understand them, and provide an outlet for their opinions.

 

Jeremy Corbyn is the same. Terrorists. Anti-semites. Isil apologists. He doesn’t share their views. But he offers himself as a conduit for them. So we can better understand them. Or so he says. And then off he goes, partying with those who chide us not to compare Isil with the Nazis, just as Isil are slipping lethal injections into the arms of disabled children.

 

If Jeremy Corbyn held these views in isolation, that would be one thing. Those who argue – as I have tried to argue – that Corbynism is an aberration, rather than a reflection of the Labour Party as whole, would have a legitimate point.

 

But Jeremy Corbyn does not stand alone. When he articulates his views he has the majority of Labour Party activists standing behind him. He has the majority of ordinary Labour Party members standing behind him. He has the majority of trade union activists standing behind him. He has the majority of their general secretaries standing behind him. He has the majority of the Labour party’s ruling NEC standing behind him. And – via their mute acquiescence – he has the bulk of his parliamentary party standing behind him.

 

There is no point maintaining the pretence Jeremy Corbyn is a voice in the wilderness. Jeremy Corbyn speaks for the Labour Party now. He stands for the Labour Party’s values now. He is the Labour Party now.

 

It will not always be the case. One day Corbynism will end. The idea being floated by his apparatchiks that we are on the brink of a decade of Corbyn rule is a fantasy. Sooner or later electoral gravity will reassert itself. Eventually Labour MPs will feel the hot breath of the electorate on their necks, rather than the hot breath of the Momentum activists. At that point self-interest and self-preservation will force them to act.

 

But it will be too late. By then that same electoral gravity will have ground their party to dust.

 

Their party, but not mine. By remaining a Labour Party member, and by continuing to fund Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, I am complicit. Both morally, and practically. I am paying for his propaganda. I am funding his henchman. I am financing his own campaign of terror.

 

And there comes a moment where you have to say “enough. Not in my name”. For me, that moment has finally arrived.

[Jairzinho]

Excellent. Glad the cunt has fucked off.

 

Cool story though.

[Dr Nowt]

Clearly taken the same Advanced Diploma in Flouncing as LFD.

 

To think Hodges had always been so even-handed and open-minded about Corbyn.

[Jairzinho]

YEAH BUT HEEZ LIKE ENOCH POWELL.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Looks like folk are following her advice:

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/12051510/Jeremy-Corbyn-has-become-the-Lefts-Enoch-Powell.html

 

Byee-eee!

 

Don't let the door hit you on the arse.  (In fact, be a dear and hold the door for that treacherous nob Danczuk, please.)

[Stu Monty]

It's good that the Blairites are so fervently anti bullying now.

 

I'm sure Alastair Campbell is pleased it took them so long to come to that position.

 

No stories about members being mentally ill being leaked to the papers recently, are there?

[Gnasher]

2015 Britain under Corbyn, rivers of flood.

[Em City]

Looks like folk are following her advice:

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/12051510/Jeremy-Corbyn-has-become-the-Lefts-Enoch-Powell.html

 

Daniel Pearce Jackson "Dan" Hodges (born 7 March 1969) is a British journalist, blogger and columnist. He regularly writes a column for The Daily Telegraph^[1] and in 2013 was described by James Forsyth in The Spectator as David Cameron's "new favourite columnist"

 

Hodges describes himself as a 'tribal neo-Blairite'^{[citation needed]} and was a vocal critic of the former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, as well as the current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. He quit the Labour Party of which he was a member for 27 years, but subsequently re-joined. In May 2012, although he was then a long-standing member of the Labour Party, Hodges voted for the Conservative Boris Johnson in the London Mayoral elections, lauding him as a "unifying figure" over Ken Livingstone whom he saw as "divisive" and "a disgrace", adding that "London needs someone who can speak for all of London, not just the balkanized segments whose votes he craves". However, he still voted for LabourLondon Assembly candidates.^[5]

 

'My Party' indeed. Ta-ra, cunt.

[Hooch]

I actually think Dan Hodges is mentally ill to be honest.

 

I've had quite a few disagreements with him on Twitter and his obsession with Corbyn the last few months has been scary.

 

He creates these skewed statements of opinion that imply the very worst of Corbyn or his "corbynites", but he is always light on substance and always completely ignores the counter argument.

Case in point anyone against the bombing of Syria is directly allowing disabled kids to be killed at birth!! Completely ignoring the counter argument that thousands of civilians will be killed and the increased potential for more victims of another terrorist attack here.

 

Good riddance the bad prick.