Jeremy Corbyn

Still just downloaded Jezza on newsnight to watch on the commute home. See what the man says for himself!!!

Of course like all Keynesians……

Woah woah woah ……….. hang about …….. you are well ‘off message’ fella.

Corbyn a Keynesian ??? You’re having a laugh. Corbyn is a hard-left unreconstructed Trotskyite Marxist. Don’t you read the Daily Telegraph ffs ?

Or having hit the panic button and gone from “Corbyn stands absolutely zero chance of becoming PM, Tory supporters vote for him” to “Corbyn probably won’t become PM, but let’s vilify him just in case”, have they now changed the script again ?

Even by your standards that is a mighty swerve. A gold medal example…..brilliant

At least Newsnight is informative if less amusing

Even by your standards that is a mighty swerve.

So you’ve decided to resort to talking gibberish 🙂

And just to help you get on message because Tories like you appear to be getting in a panic and very confused with how to deal with Corbyn, let me nudge you towards the script. This Daily Telegraph article should help :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politics-blog/11677715/Jeremy-Corbyn-is-not-a-serious-politician.-I-should-know.html

Quote :

“Labour’s sentimental indulgence of the far left has enabled Jeremy Corbyn to crawl onto the ballot paper for the leadership contest”

“For Corbyn is not a serious politician. On the contrary, he is an unreconstructed Trotskyite”

So Corbyn according to the Daily Telegraph is a ‘far left unreconstructed Trotskyite’ then, presumably just like two Nobel Prize-winning economists, one a former chief economist to the World Bank, who strongly agree with his economic policies. These Trots get everywhere – it must be a conspiracy !

By the way did you notice that Corbyn ‘crawled’ onto the ballot paper ? I’m assuming that Liz Kendall didn’t – even though she got less nominations than any other candidate while Corbyn received far more nominations than any other candidate.

And just to help you get on message

He swerves here

because Tories like you

He swerves there

appear to be getting in a panic and very confused with how to deal with Corby

He swerves everywhere.

All three comments made up for effect. Cmon Ernie, try a little harder.

Oh yeah I forgot……..you’re not a Tory supporter ! 😆

So remind us again……..you’re a LibDem supporter, right? No wait, is it UKIP? Surely not Labour? Definitely not SNP or Green Party? Perhaps English Democrat? Help me, I’m running out parties!

Ah, hang on………I know……….you are “apolitical”! 😆

That’s why you never post on political threads or have a political opinion! I’m sure that you don’t even vote in elections!

BTW nice diversionary tactic. It surely beats having to explain the inconsistencies over what Corbyn allegedly represents. And you accused me of “swerving”?

😀 😀

ernie_lynch – Member
Oh yeah I forgot……..you’re not a Tory supporter !…

Ah, Ernie you’re not in the know.

THM is actually Alex Salmond…

🙂

And so the process of overturning a Corbyn victory begins.

It would appear that the labour party are not interested in attracting new members from other parties, and instead only want people who support the status quo and who have never supported or voted for another party. And they wonder why Corbyn is doing so well! 🙂

Another Tory and Daily Telegraph contributor breaks ranks and acknowledges that Corbyn should be taken more seriously.

Jeremy Corbyn ‘Not Wholly Wrong,’ Says Boris Johnson

Asked about the surge in support for the leftwing Labour MP, Boris said today: “I think the Corbomania is a very interesting political phenomenon and, actually, one-nation Tories should pay attention to it. Some of the things he’s talking about, some of the analysis, is not wholly wrong. Yes there’s a problem with inequality, yes there’s a problem with low pay.”

Boris told BuzzFeed that while he thought Corbyn’s solutions were “completely wrong” it would “very complacent and wrong to ignore the truth of some of the observations he is making about ways in which society should be better”.

He added: “We should be humble about that. Also I think he probably is getting points for saying what he thinks.”

They really need to get their act together and decide how to deal with Corbyn – dismiss him as an unreconstructed Trotskyite and guaranteed loser who can’t be taken seriously, or someone who “is getting points for saying what he thinks” and making valid observations but ultimately wrong?

Perhaps his own party should decide to handle how his “popularity” first – at this stage it has nothing really to do with the Tories and they have their own issues to deal with – or is the focus on someone else merely another diversion?

Plenty of/most people take the issues rasied seriously – why wouldnt you? It’s the solutions, that are in many cases highly questionable and frankly Jurassic, that are (often) the problem. We have done state planning, printing money, incomes policies and we have evidence of the results. Why go down failed routes again? What was it that Einstein said?

I would welcome a completely separate LW party (too much bllx and compromise within Labour) to investigate and challenge new ways of tackling problems that are both global and specific to the UK. At the moment, few politicians have the answers (it’s difficult frankly given that there is no easy answer to too much debt) but it is time for innovative not backward thinking.

Bagehot nails it in the Economist this week. There are innovative thinkers in the world who could challenge the mainstream consensus but Corbyn is not one of them sadly. So there is one message, this looks more and more like an opportunity for new thinking missed. And that is a waste, except for the newspaper inches that the surrounding panto helps to fill.

So how are Labour going to deal with this – its their issue first and foremost?

I would welcome a completely separate LW party (too much bllx and compromise within Labour) to investigate and challenge new ways of tackling problems that are both global and specific to the UK. At the moment, few politicians have the answers (it’s difficult frankly given that there is no easy answer to too much debt) but it is time for innovative not backward thinking.

^+1 But no hints at what kind of innovative forward thinking you would like to see?

Plenty – I would start with a focus on the supply-side of the economy first though rather than the endless and excess focus on the aggregate demand side. But this takes time and effort and politicians generally lack either…

From Bagehot..

This is radicalism, albeit of a myopic sort. But the wistful prospectus to which it is yoked is anything other. Mr Corbyn proposes to remove private providers from the National Health Service, return autonomous schools to local authority control, renationalise the railways, reinflate the welfare state and “reindustrialise” the economy. Parts of his speech could have been given at any time in the past half-century. “I was there in 1984 standing alongside the miners,” he recalled, “and judging by the appearance of some of you, you were there with me. Welcome back!” Corbynism, in short, is the choice not to create something new but to shore up an old status quo; of reinstatement over reinvention.

All of which gives his whole circus the air of a wasted opportunity. The MP for Islington North has the attention of many, including young voters otherwise disengaged from politics. These people, surely, deserve ideas responding to the convulsions—digitisation, automation, globalisation—through which they are living. Others on the left are thinking big about these. Roberto Unger, a Brazilian theorist, imagines a drastically less centralised and more experimental state. David Graeber, an anarchist, has interesting things to say about democracy and power in the age of the Occupy protests. Paul Mason, a British journalist, has just published a book on “postcapitalism”. Bagehot would not vote for the programme Mr Mason articulates, but admires him for grappling with trends like free information (think Wikipedia) and the “sharing economy” (think Airbnb), along with the explosion of data and networks that they symptomise.

[Mason does not deserve the same billing as Unger who IS interesting]

Yet Labour’s supposedly radical man of the moment offers no such analysis. The defensive nostalgia of the grizzled blokes in the pub has consumed a movement that could have been forward-looking and original.

teamhurtmore – Member

Perhaps his own party should decide to handle how his “popularity” first – at this stage it has nothing really to do with the Tories and they have their own issues to deal with – or is the focus on someone else merely another diversion?

What on earth are you talking about THM?

“Nothing really to do with the Tories”? The Tory press have gone into overdrive over the possibility of Corbyn becoming Labour leader, the Telegraph has even encouraged its Tory voting readers to get involved and vote. The confusion stems from the fact that they don’t know whether to treat him as a joke or as a serious threat, they seemed to be veering towards serious threat now.

As for “perhaps his own party should decide to handle how his “popularity” first”, it is universally accepted that the Parliamentary Labour Party has been completely clueless with how to deal with the Corbyn phenomena. It’s not “merely another diversion” as you bizarrely claim.

Just a few days ago on this very thread I said :

In fact this leadership contest has exposed just how utterly out of touch the Labour political elite is with their own party, never mind the British people.

Jeremy Corbyn’s huge support within the Labour Party comes as a complete shock to them, they had absolutely no idea. Why ffs ? How could they be so out of touch with a party which they are fully paid up members of ?

The fact that they are so surprised and shocked exposes the complete lack of inner-party democracy in the Labour Party. And how unconnected and divorced they are from the party they belong to. Is it any wonder that they are disconnected and divorced from traditional Labour voters, and for that matter much of the rest of the British electorate ?

I am perfectly prepared to criticise the ineptitude of Labour’s hard right. As a loyal Tory THM you appear to be more interested in scoring party political points.

teamhurtmore – Member
There are innovative thinkers in the world who could challenge the mainstream consensus but Corbyn is not one of them sadly. So there is one message, this looks more and more like an opportunity for new thinking missed.

Talk about giving the guy a chance, far as I can see the main thrust of what corbyn is saying is lets get the thinking, ideas and democracy back into politics. That takes time to get on people on board and for ideas to develop.

Can Corbyn create that environment as leader? Who knows? But it’s refreshing that someone is wanting to try and god forbid get away from slickback soundbyte politics and give power back to the grassroots..

Tbh, What I see from Corbyn is the nascent beginnings of a national conversation similar to what we had up here pre-ref. Personally I just hope that manifests itself better than it did up here. (ie. in support en massse for the SNP, I really thought something more diverse would develop, maybe this is part of that and it’s a conversation that need to be held UK wide… I watch developments with great interest, As I’ve said many times, i’m not a nationalist, never will be.)

Whatever you think of Corbyn’s policy, he does illustrate perfectly what is currently wrong with the Labour Party.

He is a candidate who appeals to the disaffected Labour voter and the non-voters, and could probably bring them back the missing millions, yet they are reacting to him like he is spreading Ebola.

IAs a loyal Tory THM you appear to be …..

He’s off.

That bit Joe is good – let’s have debate and new ideas, not flawed ones that have been unsuccessfully flogged to death before. Trouble is there are no easy answers….and certainly few short term ones.

I left out the final accusation from the Economist, they said it was boring. A tad unfair because at the very least it’s amusing, yes including (as I also have said many time Ernie) the Torygraph getting into a lather.

Corbyn needs some better advisors quickly though before he gets shredded. His recent comments on state ownership show a complete failure to understand how capital markets work. He currently uses a bloke whose website I have followed for an alternative (!!) take on tax for many years. Good PMs like good CEOs need good people around them, Cornbyn could do better….

Epic, go an check voting patterns in 2015 – labour did well in young, low income and D/Es although they need them to vote more. That is not the problem.

That’s pretty much what he’s said himself in the Grauniad this morning epicyclo. He’s the only one who is actually putting any policies out there. The rest are pointing at him and shouting ‘whatever you do, don’t vote for him!!!!!” While offering absolutely no reason as to why you should vote for them instead.

Andy Burnham seems to have suddenly discovered socialism (as that’s what re-nationalising the railways is classed as Nowadays) and the silence is deafening from the other two Blairite sock-puppets

TBC, the bloke he uses has made it clear that he is not an official advisor. Phew….some hope then.

the most hysterical, nonsensical gibberish i’ve heard spouted about Corbyn yet

And, yes…. you’re reading that in the Guardian, not the Daily Mail. A vote for Corbyn would see this country in the same state as Moscow at the collapse of communism, and endorse totalitarianism, apparently.

Blimey….. He really does seem to have Toynbee and co quaking in their £3 million North London townhouses, and Tuscan villas!

yet they are reacting to him like he is spreading Ebola.

You really have to laugh at the Labour Party. The SNP got a huge membership surge, they were welcomed in and a bunch even ended up as new SNP MPs. The Greens both sides of the border got a massive increase in members, who were also welcomed with open arms.

Labour gets a massive surge in members, they’re called Tories/Trots/Agitators, told they’re not the right kind of member, and their Twitter feeds are scanned for any signs of dissenting opinion that might bar them from membership.

It’s hilarious – the one Labour person for a couple of decades to really energise people, and the Labour Party tries to demonise him.

teamhurtmore – Member

Corbyn needs some better advisors

Yes because unlike the other 3 candidate he’s really cocking up his bid to be Labour leader 🙄

His recent comments on state ownership show a complete failure to understand how capital markets work.

And yet the City analysts at Jefferies stockbrokers who have analyzed Corbyn’s proposals don’t make any mention of that.

Epic, go an check voting patterns in 2015 – labour did well in young, low income and D/Es although they need them to vote more. That is not the problem.

It is a widely recognised fact that young people feel disconnected with politics and consequently are particularly reluctant to vote. More generally turnout has been falling for decades. It is a problem.

And btw epicyclo made no mention of “young, low income and D/Es”, just the 5 million votes that Labour lost during their 10 years in office, which is obviously a problem – unless you think Labour wouldn’t seriously benefit from an extra 5 million votes 😆

binners – Member

the most hysterical, nonsensical gibberish i’ve heard spouted about Corbyn yet

To be fair Jonathan Jones makes a living spouting gibberish.

Here he claims that “Wikipedia is a corrupting force” and that “it is eroding the world’s intellect”.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/feb/20/wikipedia-women-in-art-artandfeminism-editathons

In the last paragraph he compares the rise of Wikipedia with the fall of the Roman Empire. I’m not kidding you.

BTW have you read the comments to his article on Corbyn?

Just read them now Ernie. What a tool that bloke is. Ironically, I bet the beardy one is his MP. Well the article has led to me doing 2 things:

1. Cancelling my Guardian subscription. This was the final straw in their concerted ‘Corbyn will usher in the end of days’ bleating.
2. Registering as a labour supporter to vote for Corbyn

I’m probably not alone in either

Cancelling a Guardian subscription because of one comment is a bit of an over reaction imo. Lots of people, some with views which are completely at odds with the majority Guardian readers or leader writers, write articles for the Guardian. I suspect that the appeal of Jonathan Jones’s ridiculous gibberish is similar to that of shock jocks – it’s designed to be deliberately provocative and therefore the more ridiculous the better.

teamhurtmore – Member
…Epic, go an check voting patterns in 2015 – labour did well in young, low income and D/Es although they need them to vote more. That is not the problem.

I should probably have made it clearer that I was talking about the people who have up to now detached themselves from the voting process because it seems pointless, you just get a different brand of peasant crusher.

I may be wrong, but I think that’s where the SNP found a huge chunk of their vote (plus disillusioned Labour voters).

Possible epic, we shall see, but I do think that in the panic and because of this legacy of Blair v Left issue, labour are acually missing the point about why they lost. Scotland being a case in point – where Sturgeon has been quite brilliant at being able the SNP in a way that is so divorced from reality. Down here, Osbourne has done the same in a different direction. All quite amusing for the neutral

“Bagehot nails it in the Economist this week. There are innovative thinkers in the world who could challenge the mainstream consensus but Corbyn is not one of them sadly.”

Well, where are they and what are they doing? No one seems to have noticed this batch of people who can do better than Corbyn.

Re cancelling Guardian subscription – the comments pages on the Guardian site are plastered with members calling out the Guardian on biased coverage blatantly hostile to Corbyn – its got so bad they had a half baked justification piece running trying to explain why writing hostile articles is really neutral behaviour:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/03/analysing-the-balance-of-our-jeremy-corbyn-coverage

The Guardian Whitewashes Biased Coverage of Labour Leadership Candidate Jeremy Corbyn

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/07/27/diane-abbott-guardian-newspaper-jeremy-corbyn_n_7881492.html

Lots of people are leaving the Guardian because of the hostility being shown to left of centre candidate – mostly because the readership had previously believed the paper itself to be left or at least moderate centre.

Just one person cancelling a subscription or account WILL make a difference if its lots of ‘just one person’. The questioning readership has already forced one backtracking piece and a sudden show of a few more neutral ones.

Well, where are they and what are they doing?

Where indeed?

[excuse me mods, sensible edit 😉 ]

I wonder, are any of the other candidates filling halls with a 1,000 people?

Lots of people are leaving the Guardian because of the hostility being shown to left of centre candidate – mostly because the readership had previously believed the paper itself to be left or at least moderate centre.

I am amazed that some long term Guardian readers have apparently only just discovered that their paper isn’t quite as left-wing as it purports to be.

Whatever its fine rhetoric when push comes to shove the Guardian always lands on the wrong side fence, without exception.

I would expect its attitude to Corbyn to provide a classic example of that – when Corbyn was just a fairly insignificant and “harmless” MP on the left of the Labour Party he could expect the Guardian to provide him with some sort of platform for his views and fair and reasonable treatment, but once push comes to shove and Corbyn become a threat to the status quote and the political elite, and actually looks like he might achieve something, then he can expect a significant level of hostility from the Guardian.

The Guardian isn’t interested in changing society in a meaningful way – only talking about it. That’s always been the case.

The irony is that Jeremy Corbyn isn’t particularly left-wing he’s just a social democrat who hasn’t supported Labour’s relentless lurch to the right, he’s certainly not a socialist like Foot or Benn. However this is still too much for a newspaper as conservative as the Guardian.

Anyway I have always bought the Guardian for its news content, not political comment. But if political comment is important to you it still has a regular column by Seumas Milne who always hits the nail on the head.

Here he does it with regards to Corbyn :

Win or lose, Jeremy Corbyn has already changed the rules of the game

THM – your thoughts on the “Jurassic” concept of state ownership.

How does that notion reconcile with the fact that both myself and my wife are working for subsidiary companies running utilities and infrastructure in the UK (and several other nations) who’s parent companies are (you guessed it) state owned (and foreign)?

Is it not perhaps yourself who is stuck in the past? Our neighbours have more than demonstrated that it’s possible to run a profitable and successful state owned enterprise (even we managed it with East Coast) and then use that expertise to run businesses elsewhere.

That Jonathan Jones piece is terrible. There are key claims about his travel to Russia that I simply do not believe. I note that it is very vague about the date on which he travelled to Russia.

Hopefully not the one that the EU ruled enjoys unfair advantages that distort competition or which bids for projects below its cost of capital etc. But be careful about mentioning your employers round here, people are very uncomfortable with their profits going back overseas. How very dare they.

When is cast flow expected to be positive – 2018 is it?

The Telegrapgh and its readers woukd love to see Corbyn elected as leader of the Labour party as he cannot possibly win a general election. A few articles pointing out how dangerous he would be if he where in power is consistent with their message.

I see also he’s offended numerous victims of IRA violencs by refusing to condem their campaign of violence. Not surprisng from someone who took money from Hamas to pay for his visit to Gaza

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11792195/Labours-biggest-donors-pledge-to-stop-giving-cash-if-economically-illiterate-Jeremy-Corbyn-wins-race.html

It will be interesting to see if the people surging to support Corbyn will put their hands in their own pockets to cover the gap in financing that his gaining the leadership will create – are they socialist with their own money, or just other people’s ?

Glad to see the FT has been following this thread

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e81c7154-3bae-11e5-8613-07d16aad2152.html?siteedition=uk

The top and tail bits have it….

It’s going to be a wildly entertaining ride with loads of laughs. Unless, of course, you are one of those underprivileged types who actually needs there to be a viable alternative to the Conservatives, in which case it won’t be much fun at all — strictly speaking.

It will be interesting to see if the people surging to support Corbyn will put their hands in their own pockets to cover the gap in financing that his gaining the leadership will create – are they socialist with their own money, or just other people’s ?

it’s remarkably depressing that elections in the UK are such that a social democratic candidate won’t win – not because voters wouldn’t vote for him, but because his party can’t rely on funding from a small group of wealthy capitalists that’s needed to win the election