Jeremy Corbyn

I promise you nothing will change under Starmer.

And I promise you things will change under Starmer. Minor and slow changes the people can accept, not massive changes/revolution that they cannot.

And as long as people like Starmer, Blair, Brown, Clegg, and every other centrist politicians tells us we have to be ‘realistic’ Boris et al will get away with their lies and obfuscation.

What utter bollocks.

As with Sir, it was easier to get elected to the Sistine choir if you were a eunuch.

the majority of people don’t care about it and unless you run a green dictatorship you will not bring major change.

Pretty much every poll puts climate change at the top of people’s priorities. For the younger half of the population it’s pretty much the universal number one issue. It’s not green dictatorship we need, its green democracy.

I have accepted the fact that the major countries of the world are going to do f all about sorting out climate change and will deal with it when it is too late in 30 years times.

In 30 years time global GDP will have doubled again, and most of that will be fossil fuel based. We won’t be able to deal with it in 30 years time.

And I promise you things will change under Starmer. Minor and slow changes the people can accept, not massive changes/revolution that they cannot.

The people have proven numerous times they can accept massive and rapid change. We’re living the proof of that right now. It’s not them who are holding it up.

Pretty much every poll puts climate change at the top of people’s priorities.

Until the shit hits the fan economically. Then ‘we’ will dig up every last hydrocarbon and burn it. If you honestly don’t think this is going to happen in the wake of covid, then….

For the younger half of the population it’s pretty much the universal number one issue.

It is. Until they join the rat race trying to keep a decent standard of living for themselves. With the likes of the tories actively eroding job security.

Danny if you’re right then it proves my point that the centrist approach is fatalistic and pessimistic. We give up on the problems that face us because the system we use can’t solve them. There’s a solution to that.

Minor and slow changes the people can accept, not massive changes/revolution that they cannot.

And then the massive changes/revolution will come anyway, and we will be woefully unprepared.

Pretty much every poll puts climate change at the top of people’s priorities

Yeah sure, and then when it comes to voting for a party that will actually do anything about climate change what happens?

Clue, they get about 2.7% of the vote – yes, 2.7% !

Daz. Your ideas are great, but they will only come after a real, not metaphorical, lamppost moment for the likes of Johnson, Cummings, Aaron Banks etc.

Much as I wouldn’t mind seeing that, it ain’t gonna happen whilst the populace is engaged in destroying the last vestiges of ‘society’ in a frantic, self centred race to the bottom.

Yeah sure, and then when it comes to voting for a party that will actually do anything about climate change what happens?

Clue, they get about 2.7% of the vote – yes, 2.7% !

This.

I’d love to see a green revolution too. But it won’t happen under the current system of electing our representatives. When the real difficulties of climate change start, idiots will vote for parties that yet again will shout out simple solutions for complicated problems.

Until we abandon this twee **** idea of “constituency MPs”, **** all is going to change.

The first “big” change we need is electoral reform. And people will need to get used to the idea of coalition government that can’t just railroad policy through parliament when it has a large majority. It’s tyranny disguised as democracy.

I agree re electoral reform but it will be a cold day in hell before that happens.

How do those who blame JC/the left of the Labour party for everything feel about the fact that KS’ deputy party leader has been accused of anti-semitism on more than one occasion?

https://antisemitism.org/politics/labour/angela-rayner/

Attention was drawn to a tweet she had posted in September 2018 (after the Labour Party had faced months of scrutiny over its resistance to adopting the full IHRA definition of antisemitism with examples), for which she had been criticised, and which she had reportedly defended, saying: “It was smears against Labour Party in general, no mention of antisemitism smears? Our membership continues to grow despite hostility from sections of the MSM.”

Looks like she also believes in JC’s wacky conspiracy theories that got him booted out of the party. Is she next to go then? Kind of calls into question KS’ judgement and real commitment to ridding the party of AS doesn’t it.

Rayner was very vocal this week… apologising, accepting the findings of the report unequivocally, saying that over the last few years they got it wrong, saying that she got things wrong, personally apologising for her own part in all this, apologising for the team running the party at the time, apologising for the current team, and then apologising again. It’s not difficult… this week should have been all about contrition in the wake of the report being published, and promises to act on it… not about how it’s all unfair and that the public have been misled and that the problem is far wider than the Party… that just weakens or nullifies any contrition and apology… save it for another time. It’s simple… report published… apologise… say we got things wrong… point out improvements have been made already… promise more will be done based on the report’s findings… apologise again. Rayner got it spot on this week. Others would do well to learn from her.

Andrew Rawnsley always had the measure of Jezza and he’s bang on today, again…

Mr Corbyn’s shameless self-pity betrays the victims of the antisemitism scandal

Mr Corbyn’s vanity simply will not allow him to accept responsibility. Many things have been said about his character over the years, but one thing has not been said enough: he is a narcissist. He cannot deal with criticism because it challenges his self-conceited estimation of his own purity. He can never be the transgressor, he must always be the sufferer.

Given that she had already apologised for posting the stuff people are calling anti semitic, before she tweeted about how the party were being smeared, that doesn’t make her new apology too convincing does it.

They’ve been absolutely backed into a corner now where they have to accept any kind of public whipping on this issue, despite how innacurate or unreasonable it is, for fear of being called anti semitic.

Re binners link – he didn’t reject the findings of the EHRC report so that article is complete bobbins

It also subtly implies that any intervention by JCs office was to try and get people off the hook for AS, when actually sometimes it was the opposite.

Poor Jeremy

It’s just, like, SOOOOOO not fair

Yes he’s the sulky child, and you’re a model of maturity binners.

JC turned out to be a crap leader but the amount of supposedly left leaning people who have swallowed Tory propaganda uncritically is frightening.

that doesn’t make her new apology too convincing does it

I found her apology this week very convincing… and she delivered it, many times, in what I found to be a very human, honest, and very unpolitical fashion. I find myself rating her more highly the more I see how see responds in highly pressured and difficult situation. Someone I’d love to see in government.

I quite like her too but there’s massive double standards at play here.

Again in dumb binary internet/tabloid world: everything to do with JC = crap anti semitic 70s socialism, anything to do with KS – fine.

What I see here is the same shit that allowed the Tories to make everyone think a global financial crisis was Labour’s fault. Rather than saying yes we made some mistakes but actually it wasn’t our fault they let the Tories set the agenda.

What’s wrong with saying, yes we didn’t handle this well and there is a real problem but it has also been unfairly exaggerated for political reasons? I honestly don’t get it.

We are now in a situation where it’s apparently not ok for people to say they are proud of the Labour party’s record on racism and anti semitism. The public now thinks it’s an exclusively Labour party problem. And no amount of genuflecting will ever be enough for some people.

I quite like her too but there’s massive double standards at play here.

No double standards from me. If Corbyn had responded the same way as Rayner did this week, I would have been very pleased… not least because it would have put him in a better position to push for his own policy platform (which I mostly agreed with) to be built upon… instead he’s ready to make himself a martyr over the AS issue, which is utterly depressing to some of us that moved to voting Labour because of his successful refreshing of the party’s policies.

I honestly don’t get it.

All the “blown out of all proportion by my enemies” stuff should not form part of the immediate response to this report. That makes the response a non-apology. You don’t have to ‘get it’, but he should.

Again in dumb binary internet/tabloid world: everything to do with JC = crap anti semitic 70s socialism, anything to do with KS – fine.

Proving once again that KS is doing something right that JC never could. You work the press to your advantage not sit back harping about how unfair everything is.

So a question for daz & others:
You are American. You have a choice between Joe & Bernie. If Bernie wins then he has no chance at all against Donald. If Joe wins there is a very good chance that Donald loses. (oh & if you don’t supprt Joe then Bernie gets to challenge Donald)
Who do you give your support to?

JC turned out to be a crap leader but the amount of supposedly left leaning people who have swallowed Tory propaganda uncritically is frightening.

Ah, yes… how utterly predictable. Everyone who doesn’t think Jeremy is wonderful is an unthinking drone, a lackey of the military-industrial complex, incapable of independent thought, and having their opinions spoon-fed to them by the Mail and Telegraph. Not like the warriors of the left who possess far more insight into everything due to their superior intellect and moral values

That’s not at all patronising, is it?

If Bernie wins then he has no chance at all against Donald. If Joe wins there is a very good chance that Donald loses.

There was plenty of polling evidence that Sanders would be in a better place to defeat Trump so to say ‘no chance at all’ is pretty stupid. Biden may beat Trump (I don’t think he will BTW, he’ll get screwed by the electoral college and supreme court), but even if he does his policy programme is so unambitious and watered down it doesn’t come close to addressing the problems in the US. So vote for a decent chance of doing f-all, or vote for slightly lower chance of doing a lot? That’s a no-brainer. There’s no point in defeating Trump if nothing is going to change, and very little will change under Biden for the average American.

I literally just said he was a crap leader. But carry on thinking following a right wing tabloid media agenda somehow makes you more ‘one of the people’ or something.

The ‘Overton window’ is lurching further and further right and you just shrug your shoulders and dance to their tune.

And yes, people who don’t employ basic critical thinking and speak in cartoonish diatribes deserve to be patronised.

It’s a total mystery why that attitude doesn’t lead to left-wing governments, isn’t it?

Calling people a bunch of gullible thicko’s normally has them rallying to your cause in other spheres of life

You work in marketing, I take it? 😂

So a question for daz & others:
You are American. You have a choice between Joe & Bernie. If Bernie wins then he has no chance at all against Donald. If Joe wins there is a very good chance that Donald loses. (oh & if you don’t supprt Joe then Bernie gets to challenge Donald)
Who do you give your support to?

Bernie. Every time.

So Donald gets elected

So Donald gets elected

You could vote for Bernie, if you don’t want Trump to get in.

And yes, people who don’t employ basic critical thinking and speak in cartoonish diatribes deserve to be patronised.

A despicable attack on one of the smartest guys on this forum.

This is a good article that mostly sums up how I feel better than I could

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-dial-down-the-hysteria-on-anti-semitism-in-corbyn-s-labour-1.6336942

Weirdly enough it doesn’t hysterically wail that JC is the devil nor build him up to be the messiah, and it accepts that Labour must do much better while recognising that AS was used as a stick to beat him with by people who didn’t really GAF.

A despicable attack on one of the smartest guys on this forum.

🤣

Many see electoral reform as part of the problem, at the moment the priority is to protect democracy rather than improve it. Donald and Boris are trying to ‘improve it’ by destroying it.

Given the current situation we would do well to recognise how fragile democracy is. As flawed as our system is we should cherish it. Oftentimes amendments to democratic systems only result in ‘duking’ the system and end up compromising democracy rather than improving it, look what minority effect measures like party members voting for party leaders (a fraction of a % of the electorate having a say) and Eoropean parliament elections (20% having a say) have done for our democracy.

Democracy needs to be protected not perfected.

Calling people a bunch of gullible thicko’s normally has them rallying to your cause in other spheres of life

Well it was certainly your modus operandi during the whole Brexit debate. I believe there was something about thick racists in flat roof pubs in there?

Once again your hypocrisy knows no bounds.

🤣

QFT

Kelvin, it’s a bit hypocritical of Angela Rayner to roll out the apologies for abuse within the party only a week after she called another MP “Scum” in the House of Commons and subsequently resulting in the other MP and his family immediately receiving all manner of threats from Labour activists.

On the wider points in this thread there’s a good article about Luciana Berger in The Sunday Times today. The abuse she received off Labour activists included threats of being killed, stabbed, raped and having acid thrown at her. This is the “gentler kinder politics” that Jeremy was promising us all. Even though she’s no longer a Labour MP she received further threats this week because apparently it’s her fault that Jeremy was suspended for his failure to see the blindingly obvious.

One further point of interest – even though it’s been years since Berger first became the victim of sustained abuse within the Labour Party, Kier Starmer only picked up the phone this week to apologise for it – having sat on the shadow cabinet for the interim and apparently having had nothing to say on the matter for the whole of that time.

And Labour’s Brexit policy under JC was a disaster, but the man in charge of it is now the solution to everything. 🤔

Personally I think calling what Rayner did anti semitism (tweeting a link to a book by a Jewish author was it?) is a bit of a stretch, but this is the bind Labour find themselves in now, everything is being picked apart for the tiniest hint of inappropriateness and everyone is afraid of being labelled an anti Semite.

If you don’t agree with every aspect of every criticism sometimes made by people with an agenda other than simply anti-racism, and repeatedly say how incredibly sorry you are for everything then you’re an anti Semite too.

Anyone abusing/threatening MPs is disgusting, but let’s remember that the person who gets the most abuse of any MP is Dianne Abbott, but less people seem to care about that. If some of those doing the abusing of Berger were Labour members of activists they should obviously be kicked out if not prosecuted also. Suggesting that if you think AS was weaponised against JC means you support that kind of abuse is just a total straw man. I imagine binners will be along shortly to do just that.

Democracy needs to be protected not perfected.

If you think what we have now is democracy then you’re deluded. What we have is a plutocracy and oligarchy which holds an opinion poll every few years to see what they can get away with, so that they can adjust their strategy to maintain power. The reason western democracy is under attack is because it doesn’t serve the people, and everyone knows it, and with no other alternative they turn to snake-oil demagogues. It doesn’t need to be protected, it needs to be replaced with something else which is truly democratic and accountable to the people.

Andrew Rawnsley always had the measure of Jezza and he’s bang on today, again…

Yep, pretty fair summary I thought.

Some are talking about a “civil war” in Labour, but one man’s obtuse refusal to take responsibility for what he did is a terrible reason for anyone to start one. What’s most interesting is not that some of the hard left are calling for a great fight, but that many of Mr Corbyn’s ideological companions do not appear to think him worth such a battle. Threats that Labour MPs in the Socialist Campaign Group would resign the whip have yet to come to anything. John McDonnell and other senior figures from the Corbynite project have protested the suspension while being very clear that they do not endorse what he said about the EHRC report. At least some of the hard left have the nous to grasp that trying to excuse the antisemitism scandal is a wretched hill to perish on.

Those who can’t see this now have the story of betrayal that they have been yearning for. Poor old St Jeremy, they cry, victim of the brutal Keir Starmer, martyred for the satisfaction of the anti-Corbyn media. Spare your tears. The victim of this hideous chapter in Labour’s history is not Jeremy Corbyn. The victims are those who were scared and scarred by the vile antisemitism that occurred when he was in charge. The victims are all those who needed an electable challenger to the Tories, not the toxic and sectarian party that Labour became under Mr Corbyn. The victims are the many millions of people who depend on having a Labour party capable of commanding the confidence of the public so that it can effectively represent those it exists to champion. Jeremy Corbyn is no martyr. He is a victim only of his own arrogantly self-pitying, self-denying delusions.

Corbyn is just yet another in a long line of ideological failures, he’s like the revolutionary who looks out the window one morning at a stream of people heading somewhere.

He turns to his aide and says ‘find out where those poor people are going so I can lead them’.

If you think what we have now is democracy then you’re deluded. What we have is a plutocracy and oligarchy which holds an opinion poll every few years to see what they can get away with, so that they can adjust their strategy to maintain power. The reason western democracy is under attack is because it doesn’t serve the people, and everyone knows it, and with no other alternative they turn to snake-oil demagogues. It doesn’t need to be protected, it needs to be replaced with something else which is truly democratic and accountable to the people.

What would you replace it with?

Which utopia are you going to model our new system on?

Which utopia are you going to model our new system on?

Are you seriously suggesting anything better than what we have now is unrealistically utopian? This is exactly what I’m talking about. The bar has been lowered so much we barely even remember what a basic functioning democracy looks like. How about this for a start, MPs to be properly accountable to their constituents, with established mechanisms to remove them if they’re not doing their jobs, complete transparency as to their activities, a ban on second jobs, a ban on lobbying, a cap on individual political donations and an end to corporate donations. That’s pretty much the same level of ethics most working people have to adhere to, and it would remove most of the corruption that goes on.

Once you deal with corruption and conflicts of interest, then you can start to change the democratic system itself. Bring in PR, dilute the power of party whips, have a written constitution, replace the lords with an elected body tasked with reviewing legislation, limit the power of the executive, add elements of participatory democracy which supplement the representative, people’s assemblies, citizens panels, properly empowered local government etc. Also democratise institutions which hold non-executive power. The bank of England, the CIty, the BBC, Government Agencies. Make them all accountable, and throw the book at anyone who uses the power granted to them by the public to enrich themselves.

That too utopian? It’s not asking too much, and its all do-able within a single parliamentary term.

Full Member

Corbyn is just yet another in a long line of ideological failures, he’s like the revolutionary who looks out the window one morning at a stream of people heading somewhere.

He turns to his aide and says ‘find out where those poor people are going so I can lead them’.

Sigh.

This thread is so depressing. dazh, I don’t know how you find the strength to carry on, but I appreciate your efforts.