Should Corbyn remain as Labour leader?

[Arniepie]

6 minutes ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

I think Brexit was the biggest factor in those two years. Labour clearly didn’t have a handle on those whole thing, and like always with Labour it was pulling in two directions. He tried to sit on the fence regarding the second referendum and the way forward and it backfired with the electorate in a big way. I’d say that was even bigger than the headlines. Those headlines would have hurt but they hurt before too. 

Without a doubt brexit was a huge factor, but I genuinely think they were in a no win situation. 

Get fully behind leave and they would have lost the red wall anyway.

I think the big difference was leave voters would have still voted tory,whereas the red wall were ready to get behind johnson (that worked out well)

I just think there is no way 2 years of almost non stop headlines would not have had an impact.

There are people out there who genuinely think he is some sort of nazi.

A pacifist one obviously. 

It's all history now anyway but that 2017 was definitely one of those sliding doors moments.

[Numero Veinticinco]

14 minutes ago, Arniepie said:

Without a doubt brexit was a huge factor, but I genuinely think they were in a no win situation. 

Get fully behind leave and they would have lost the red wall anyway.

I think the big difference was leave voters would have still voted tory,whereas the red wall were ready to get behind johnson (that worked out well)

I just think there is no way 2 years of almost non stop headlines would not have had an impact.

There are people out there who genuinely think he is some sort of nazi.

A pacifist one obviously. 

It's all history now anyway but that 2017 was definitely one of those sliding doors moments.

I think, with hindsight being 20/20, coming out as 'referendum is over, nation decided to leave, trust us to get the best deal' was the best approach, but I think he was just done and dusted and should have stepped down in 2017. There was no way he was winning this last election. No doubt there was an orchestrated campaign against him. Starmer will face some of that closer to the election. I think the truth is that, if people want to win an election, they have to be prepared for a Labour leader to cosy up to powerful media types and business types to get it done. Even then, it's not all that likely. That said, I hope Starmer can get a coalition going, we need these Tories gone.

[Arniepie]

11 minutes ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

I think, with hindsight being 20/20, coming out as 'referendum is over, nation decided to leave, trust us to get the best deal' was the best approach, but I think he was just done and dusted and should have stepped down in 2017. There was no way he was winning this last election. No doubt there was an orchestrated campaign against him. Starmer will face some of that closer to the election. I think the truth is that, if people want to win an election, they have to be prepared for a Labour leader to cosy up to powerful media types and business types to get it done. Even then, it's not all that likely. That said, I hope Starmer can get a coalition going, we need these Tories gone.

I think  part of his appeal in 2017 was that he wasn't the type of politician to go kiss arsing the likes of murdoch tbh

 

[Strontium]

4 minutes ago, Arniepie said:

I think  part of his appeal in 2017 was that he wasn't the type of politician to go kiss arsing the likes of murdoch tbh

 

 

When did Starmer kiss Murdoch's arse? Or Miliband?

[Numero Veinticinco]

6 minutes ago, Arniepie said:

I think  part of his appeal in 2017 was that he wasn't the type of politician to go kiss arsing the likes of murdoch tbh

 

Yet still lost, and wasn't even close to getting a majority. May was closer to getting a majority than Corbyn was to getting a chance at making a coalition. 

[Arniepie]

10 minutes ago, Strontium said:

 

When did Starmer kiss Murdoch's arse? Or Miliband?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/03/merseyside-mps-outraged-at-keir-starmer-writing-article-for-the-sun

[Arniepie]

9 minutes ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

Yet still lost, and wasn't even close to getting a majority. May was closer to getting a majority than Corbyn was to getting a chance at making a coalition. 

I thought it would have gone either way?

[Strontium]

22 minutes ago, Arniepie said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/03/merseyside-mps-outraged-at-keir-starmer-writing-article-for-the-sun

 

The bar for kissing arse is obviously set very low these days.

[Captain Willard]

3 hours ago, Rico1304 said:

I find it weird that a lot of people I know on the left, and it’s evidenced on here, think that voting Labour makes them a better person than someone voting any other way.  That and the constant desire to ‘out Lefty’ one another.   It’s very funny to watch as evidence by the last couple of pages.  

I think its fair to say that people on the left think they occupy the moral high ground in politics despite the 75 million people who died in the 20th century as a direct result of 'socialist/communist' policies. Although the common retort would be to say these deaths were not the result of 'authentic' socialist/communist policies, scratch the surface and it is not hard to find current prominent left wing UK politicians who don't see any problem at all with this historical legacy of genocide. Diane Abbot saying openly and without shame on TV that Mao did "more good than harm" (despite the 50m deaths), McDonnell bringing a copy of Mao's red book into the Commons as a joke, Seamus Milne (chief aide to Corbyn) defending Stalinism and saying the deaths under the Terror were exaggerated. Substitute Hitler for Mao/Stalin in any of those 3 episodes and you get a sense of how this looks to the other side. 

 

This unearned moral superiority in turn gives the hard left the license to dehumanize the opposition as vermin, Tory Scum,  etc, openly fantasise about committing violence against prominent Uk politicians and generally behave as if they were dealing with a sub human species not just normal every day people who just happen to have a different view about politics. All under the banner of being morally superior to the Tories.

[Numero Veinticinco]

6 minutes ago, Captain Willard said:

I think its fair to say that people on the left think they occupy the moral high ground in politics despite the 75 million people who died in the 20th century as a direct result of 'socialist/communist' policies.

I had to stop reading there. I'm not sure my ticker can take being blamed for 75m deaths just because I want a social safety net, to be honest. I'm sure you agree that anybody on the right is responsible for gassing Jews though, right? Yeah? Kurtz?

[Arniepie]

57 minutes ago, Strontium said:

 

The bar for kissing arse is obviously set very low these days.

I don't think it's controversial to say that corbyn was never particularly inclining to get into bed with the likes of Murdoch,rightly or wrongly.

[Arniepie]

21 minutes ago, Captain Willard said:

I think its fair to say that people on the left think they occupy the moral high ground in politics despite the 75 million people who died in the 20th century as a direct result of 'socialist/communist' policies. Although the common retort would be to say these deaths were not the result of 'authentic' socialist/communist policies, scratch the surface and it is not hard to find current prominent left wing UK politicians who don't see any problem at all with this historical legacy of genocide. Diane Abbot saying openly and without shame on TV that Mao did "more good than harm" (despite the 50m deaths), McDonnell bringing a copy of Mao's red book into the Commons as a joke, Seamus Milne (chief aide to Corbyn) defending Stalinism and saying the deaths under the Terror were exaggerated. Substitute Hitler for Mao/Stalin in any of those 3 episodes and you get a sense of how this looks to the other side. 

 

This unearned moral superiority in turn gives the hard left the license to dehumanize the opposition as vermin, Tory Scum,  etc, openly fantasise about committing violence against prominent Uk politicians and generally behave as if they were dealing with a sub human species not just normal every day people who just happen to have a different view about politics. All under the banner of being morally superior to the Tories.

Strewth.

[Captain Willard]

6 minutes ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

I had to stop reading there. I'm not sure my ticker can take being blamed for 75m deaths just because I want a social safety net, to be honest. I'm sure you agree that anybody on the right is responsible for gassing Jews though, right? Yeah? Kurtz?

Well its a very debatable point to say that National Socialism was in any form a recognizable right wing regime (I think the clue is in the name) but putting that to one side, in the examples, I quoted, prominent UK left wing politicians are on record as defending or denying the deaths of millions of people under communist regimes. If somebody on the right said similar things about the Holocaust they would be quite rightly ostracized and expelled from mainstream politics. If you can find me an example of a member of a current Conservative cabinet defending Hitler as doing  "more good than harm" I will concede you have a  point. 

[Kepler-186]

I guess the millions of young European men who killed each other for reactionary, imperial powers prior to the emergence of any “left wing” regime should just be glossed over. 
 

And those same Western powers failing to support a legitimate government in Spain that allowed the fascists to win, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths of political prisoners. Prior to the Holocaust and the ethnic cleansing on the Eastern Front.
 

And leading UK and US banks and industrialists fuelling German rearmament because it was good for business. And helping Stalin industrialise. 
 

You make these sweeping statements as if it’s coming direct from Tory HQ. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Numero Veinticinco]

5 minutes ago, Captain Willard said:

Well its a very debatable point to say that National Socialism was in any form a recognizable right wing regime (I think the clue is in the name) but putting that to one side, in the examples, I quoted, prominent UK left wing politicians are on record as defending or denying the deaths of millions of people under communist regimes. If somebody on the right said similar things about the Holocaust they would be quite rightly ostracized and expelled from mainstream politics. If you can find me an example of a member of a current Conservative cabinet defending Hitler as doing  "more good than harm" I will concede you have a  point. 

So if I do something to back up a point I didn't make, you'll concede it. Yeah, I'll get right on that. As for the Nazis not being right wing, well... okay. 

[Kepler-186]

Here’s that hotbed of lefty do gooders The Washington Post on spurious claims. 
 

Rees Mogg defended the Boer War concentration camps in South Africa on the grounds that they weren’t Hitler’s extermination camps, and had a similar death rate as Glasgow. Ironically Glasgow was a hotbed of left wing activism precisely because Britain’s glorious Empire was keeping its working class living in squalor, and in poor health. But like Liverpool there’s some magnificent public buildings! 
 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/05/right-needs-stop-falsely-claiming-that-nazis-were-socialists/

[Numero Veinticinco]

Claiming they were socialists is one thing, claiming they weren't right wing - that Fascists, the far-right ideology - isn't right wing, is absolutely fucking ridiculous. I mean that literally, it deserves to be ridiculed. It's so fucking ignorant that there's no point in refuting it. 

[Captain Willard]

25 minutes ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

So if I do something to back up a point I didn't make, you'll concede it. Yeah, I'll get right on that. As for the Nazis not being right wing, well... okay. 

Lets be clear the Nazis were nationalistic fascists not natioanal socialists. My reading is that fascism originated in the early 1930s marriage of nationalism and a form of socialism although by the time Hitler came to power the socialist bit had been dropped in everything but name and they became very anti socialist/anti union. My badly worded point was I don't think fascism has anything in common with recognizable mainstream conservative UK politics today but to be fair, neither does the Labour manifesto bear much resemblance to Maoism. That said, you still get Labour politicians willing to defend Mao and joke about violence against their opponents and hence my point about moral superiority. 

[Numero Veinticinco]

4 minutes ago, Captain Willard said:

Lets be clear the Nazis were nationalistic fascists not natioanal socialists. My reading is that fascism originated in the early 1930s marriage of nationalism and a form of socialism although by the time Hitler came to power the socialist bit had been dropped in everything but name and they became very anti socialist/anti union. My badly worded point was I don't think fascism has anything in common with recognizable mainstream conservative UK politics today but to be fair, neither does the Labour manifesto bear much resemblance to Maoism. That said, you still get Labour politicians willing to defend Mao and joke about violence against their opponents and hence my point about moral superiority. 

It wasn't so much badly worded, as the complete and utter opposite of this post, which is far more reasonable. You may well have missed it, but my levels of dislike for Abbot are all over the GF. 

[Strontium]

At the extremes, right and left look pretty similar. I hate the whole left-right axis as a concept though, as if certain things are exclusive to one or the other. We have a right-wing government that recently temporary nationalised most of the private sector. And where would a party like Hamas be placed on a left-right axis?

[Captain Willard]

1 minute ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

It wasn't so much badly worded, as the complete and utter opposite of this post, which is far more reasonable. You may well have missed it, but my levels of dislike for Abbot are all over the GF. 

Yes on rereading, it does look a bit stupid. I was wrong. The nazi's were a right wing regime, I am not denying that at all. I am saying that they don't have anything common with 21st century english conservatism but to be fair, that's not what i wrote originally and I retract it. Apologies. 

[Captain Willard]

5 minutes ago, Strontium said:

At the extremes, right and left look pretty similar. I hate the whole left-right axis as a concept though, as if certain things are exclusive to one or the other. We have a right-wing government that recently temporary nationalised most of the private sector. And where would a party like Hamas be placed on a left-right axis?

I met an MP recently who joked that the Government were acting like a Corbyn/UKIP coalition and I think he has a good point.

[Kepler-186]

The Conservatives worship Hayek and free markets don’t they? But they’re not adverse to sticking their hands in the till for some lovely public money, while using their right wing tabloids to demonise large sections of the population to further their political and economic agenda. 
 

 

[Arniepie]

I'm genuinely struggling to think of many social democratic policies this lot have forced through.

[Strontium]

26 minutes ago, Kepler-186 said:

The Conservatives worship Hayek and free markets don’t they?

 

I wish they did. They just took us out of the biggest free market in history.