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Should Corbyn remain as Labour leader?


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Should Corbyn remain as Labour leader?  

218 members have voted

  1. 1. Should Corbyn remain as Labour leader?



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1 hour ago, ZonkoVille77 said:

 

Only because of the FPTP system. Labour actually got more votes overall. 

There was a couple of hundred thousand in the popular vote true but Atlee went to the country to get a bigger majority and it backfired.  My point was Churchill was still highly regarded and that the 46 election was a vote for change not necessarily a rejection of Churchill the man .

 

I am no massive fan but judging him by the standards of today doesn't work for me . We didn't live through two world wars and have to make decisions that altered the lives of millions for better or worse.

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54 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Atlee was only 9 years younger than Churchill. He managed to not be a rabid white supremacist. 

 

Well, you say that, but... he did look into stopping the Windrush from setting sail for Britain, and then of diverting it to Africa instead. Ultimately his government was powerless to act, since those on board were British subjects with British passports.


Today we would have no problem calling an attempt to prevent black people from coming here a racist act. Which I think highlights the issue of judging people in the past by modern standards.

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2 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Starving millions of Indians?

Terrorising Irish Republicans?

Killing striking miners?

 

These were not "unpopular decisions".

 

Churchill did not kill any miners. The miners were bullying other miners to go on strike, and then set their sights on the non-union workers hired by the pit bosses to keep the mines open. They marched them out of town with placards on saying "take a warning" and then took over the mines and attacked the bosses and terrorised anyone that came near the mines. The police were called in, rightfully, and pushed them back to Tonypandy. 

 

The night afterwards the miners decided to destroy the town, smashing up local businesses and stealing things and taunting the police, so the police charged them and knocked the shit out of them. The next day Churchill called in the Hussars and that stopped the bullshit immediately. Some of the miners lied saying the troops opened fire on them trying to cause more riots, but nobody said boo to a goose once the army rolled in. So he was right to call the army in.  

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9 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Atlee was only 9 years younger than Churchill. He managed to not be a rabid white supremacist. 

 

Even by the standards of his day  Churchill was racist.

I would imagine most of the population at the time would be classed as racist today.

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1 hour ago, Hank Moody said:

Rejected in what way. Most elected governments are either central or centre left/right. 

Rejected in the sense that the appeal of a centrist party pretending to be a left wing party appears to be waning.

 

PSOE in Spain is a very good example of this. Currently "in charge", but with a tiny share of the vote/seats, distrusted by the majority, all while fascists like VOX gain traction across the country.

 

Labour, under our voting system, have fuck all chance of winning an election by being the party of 10/15 years ago.

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5 minutes ago, Content Providicus said:

Rejected in the sense that the appeal of a centrist party pretending to be a left wing party appears to be waning.

Oh. Yeah, I guess. But they're all still in power. They all still get way more votes than the others. Rejected might be a bit strong, like. It's probably a bit early to consider central parties dead, ya know?

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9 minutes ago, Content Providicus said:

Labour, under our voting system, have fuck all chance of winning an election by being the party of 10/15 years ago.

I dunno. I'm open to that being true, I just don't really see any evidence to think that. I'm not being deliberately argumentative, I just don't see that. My hunch tells me it might by the only way of winning an election. 

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10 minutes ago, Hank Moody said:

I dunno. I'm open to that being true, I just don't really see any evidence to think that. I'm not being deliberately argumentative, I just don't see that. My hunch tells me it might by the only way of winning an election. 

I don't think there is any conclusive evidence either way. I just think in the same way that Scotland has said "no ta" after generations of being ignored/shat on, the north will soon do the same. Blair's tactics had a time limit, and were only achievable due to Murdoch supporting the idea of having zero parties on the left, and the loyalty of generations of Labour supporters. That has gone, and it isn't coming back. The centre has shafted the majority of people. Look at the fucking Lib Dems. Ran as the party of the 48%, yet you could fit their MPs into a mini bus. 

 

Rightly or wrongly people don't want the thumb pointing, mannequin politics of the Blair years. It has gone. People want action. They don't believe everything is ace, because it isn't. They want change.

 

I think Corbyn is a pretty poor leader, but the direction of the politics and economics, for me,  is both right "morally" (or however you want to describe it) and practically. Maybe if we had a different voting system things would be different. Dunno. But in this system, at this time, a bit of Liz Kendallism would fail miserably.

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4 minutes ago, Content Providicus said:

I don't think there is any conclusive evidence either way. I just think in the same way that Scotland has said "no ta" after generations of being ignored/shat on, the north will soon do the same. Blair's tactics had a time limit, and were only achievable due to Murdoch supporting the idea of having zero parties on the left, and the loyalty of generations of Labour supporters. That has gone, and it isn't coming back. The centre has shafted the majority of people. Look at the fucking Lib Dems. Ran as the party of the 48%, yet you could fit their MPs into a mini bus. 

 

Rightly or wrongly people don't want the thumb pointing, mannequin politics of the Blair years. It has gone. People want action. They don't believe everything is ace, because it isn't. They want change.

 

I think Corbyn is a pretty poor leader, but the direction of the politics and economics, for me,  is both right "morally" (or however you want to describe it) and practically. Maybe if we had a different voting system things would be different. Dunno. But in this system, at this time, a bit of Liz Kendallism would fail miserably.

The more I think about it, the more I think we overthink it. If you have a good leader, who is presentable and slick, I think you could probably convince a large section of a lot of things. I think if you bring 97 Tony Blair back, he'd stride into office at a pace. I'm not entirely convinced he wouldn't win another election now. Even after everything. Life for most in the UK was pretty decent from 1997 to 2007. 

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2 hours ago, Hank Moody said:

Rejected in what way. Most elected governments are either central or centre left/right. 

Look at the state of the PvdA in the Netherlands and the equivalent in France. Rejected by the electorate for parties with actual left wing Socialist goals and parties with green issues. 

 

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2018/05/collapse-europe-s-mainstream-centre-left

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10 minutes ago, Hank Moody said:

The more I think about it, the more I think we overthink it. If you have a good leader, who is presentable and slick, I think you could probably convince a large section of a lot of things. I think if you bring 97 Tony Blair back, he'd stride into office at a pace.

You are probably still wearing bootcut jeans and watching Top Gear. 

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11 hours ago, Strontium Dog said:

 

Well, you say that, but... he did look into stopping the Windrush from setting sail for Britain, and then of diverting it to Africa instead. Ultimately his government was powerless to act, since those on board were British subjects with British passports.


Today we would have no problem calling an attempt to prevent black people from coming here a racist act. Which I think highlights the issue of judging people in the past by modern standards.

 

3 hours ago, magicrat said:

I would imagine most of the population at the time would be classed as racist today.

That's pretty much the point. Even by the standards of the time, which were more explicitly racist than our times, some people were worse than others; and Churchill was pretty fucking bad.

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What annoys me about this Churchill thing, is it's all so unnecessary. Why bring it out for debate? It's a ridiculous thing to be highlighting. It's inevitable massive parts of the nation will just think he's a twat regardless of the rights or wrongs of the discussion as they'll never see anything trumping leading the nation during WWII. We so desperately need to rid ourselves of this Tory government and the only chance we have is of labour taking more Tory votes than they did last time and this just isn't the way to do it. I think since the last general election, the labour front bench has mostly been completely shite and this is just another example of it. We have the worst prime minister of all time. The Tories in complete disarray and labour titting about trying to look a bit controversial . It's fucking stupid and getting to the point where it's clear these fellas have no idea what it will take to form a government, they've spent so many years to sitting on the sidelines sniping , they have nothing else to offer. 

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11 hours ago, Boss said:

 

Churchill did not kill any miners. The miners were bullying other miners to go on strike, and then set their sights on the non-union workers hired by the pit bosses to keep the mines open. They marched them out of town with placards on saying "take a warning" and then took over the mines and attacked the bosses and terrorised anyone that came near the mines. The police were called in, rightfully, and pushed them back to Tonypandy. 

 

The night afterwards the miners decided to destroy the town, smashing up local businesses and stealing things and taunting the police, so the police charged them and knocked the shit out of them. The next day Churchill called in the Hussars and that stopped the bullshit immediately. Some of the miners lied saying the troops opened fire on them trying to cause more riots, but nobody said boo to a goose once the army rolled in. So he was right to call the army in.  

You need to update Wikipedia, because their version doesn't read like that at all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonypandy_riots

 

What's your version of the Bengal Famine?

 

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Also can I just dispel a few more misnomers about Tonypandy? The miners like to say they fought back against the troops wielding rifles and bayonets. They did nothing of the sort. There's also this myth that permeates the Valleys that Churchill called in the army to open fire on the miners. There were no shots fired and the miners had more respect for the troops than they did the local constabulary.

 

And Churchill himself was conflicted about the whole thing, he said "You give the miners a message from me. Their best friends the government are greatly distressed at the trouble which has broken out, and will do their best to help them get fair treatment". Churchill saw himself as a friend of the miners and was always regretful about sending in the Hussar's, but the Hussar's did stop the violence. They did stop revenge clashes with the local police - which were inevitable without the Hussars involvement. 

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