He might start with Public Services, like failing private prisons; Probation; NHS contracts and other non-profit services. He might even oppose the plans to privatise some Social Services including Child Protection?! I find the 'what next' question quite a relief from the relentless march to selling everything off to the cheapest provider!
Have you seen the tripe they are spouting now?! "Labour is now a threat to our National security, our economy and our Families!" Just listened to a 3 minutes interview with Priti Patel and she managed to say that line 4 (FOUR) times in that 3 minutes! And just about every member of the party has said it. I wonder how long it took them to come up with that catch slogan?! I hope they aren't paying their PR for this bullshit! The saddest part is so many will accept that as fact because "The Tories are saying it so it must be true". Have you ever noticed that people, as a collective, distrust and honest person more than the dishonest?
****! I just had a thought that wouldn't be great. What if Corbyn winning has been engineered by the Tories so that people like me, who have never had a true left option in politics, will get their hopes up only to have them dashed after a searing media campaign that essentially drives Jeremy insane, thus making us, the new generation of socialists, as jaded as it seems many of the old heads on here are.
Steel yourself, comrade. Trust that The Revolution is now inevitable. Look deep into our Glorious Leader's eyes and your resolve shall be fully restored: please log in to view this image Do you not feel it? One cannot doubt Him. It is simply a matter of time. The bourgeois elite scum quake in the face of of our Leader's certain march to glory. They can do nothing but hurl their personal insults and brace themselves for the shattering of their 'free' market.
Bloody hell JK, one nearly spat ones caviar all over ones chaise longue! You peasants are revolting! Bah!
Enjoy it while you can 'General'. Upon The Revolution, your detestable bourgeois luxuries will be seized by The Party and redistributed accordingly.
I have never voted labour, I used to vote tory (Not for a couple of elections now). But to be honest what was the point in voting labour since Blair and his new labour got in? Blair signaled the end of an opposition as he mearly represented the same economic and educational elite as the tories. He was just more charismatic than his opponent of the time. Labour, Tories for a generation of voters, it has made no real difference. The has been no creditable opponent as to me they are the same. Now I may not vote for labour again at the next election, but at least I see a difference, a possible option. I will listen to what Corbyn has to say, might he actually represent the people? Or at least some people out side of party donors, bankers and corporations. Maybe Labour will split, maybe they will become just another party of protest. But 5 more years of either the Tories or the Labour right had it got in, could just push the disgruntle masses towards change. Look at the numbers who have moved away from torylite! Surely Labour are more creditable now than just continuing to be the bastardised son of Blair and Thatcher? Long live the revolution! Even if I don't end up voting for Comrade Corbyn! Bah!
Well said - and this is exactly how democtratic politics should work and voters should be thinking IMO. I don't object to people voting for one side or the other as long as they have honestly thought it through. It's the mindless tribalism that is so frustrating.
Yes, and writing people off as (insert expletive here) if they don't see things the same way as you. Very mature.
I did get it right with the one aimed at the Tories. I was demonstrating how both sides can sling muck. Point 1 RE: Bin Laden: If you take his words in context, Corbyn has the radical idea that people should be tried for their crimes rather than shot for them. Furthermore, his words were (in context) describing how the death of Bin Laden has created something of a 'shuffle of power' in the Middle East that potentially has caused more harm than good. Point 2 RE: Hezbollah/Hamas: Again, taking context into account and not just sensationalist soundbites, he also thinks that having discussions with people that you disagree with to solve long-term problems is a sensible course of action. Point 3 RE: Nuclear Defences: Once again, to contextualise his opinion: he appears to agree that Trident is a creaking drain on the British economy, not to mention a "disaster waiting to happen", according to those who work with it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-32771925 Clearly this madman must be stopped before he kills us all! All that said, it was mud-slinging that helped the Tories beat Ed Miliband. They'll do it all the time, every time. It will not surprise me if it works again.
Putting my jokes about 'The Revolution' aside, if there is one article that sums up how I feel about Corbyn as Labour leader, this is it: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsit...he-clueless-corbyn-bashing/17433#.Vfa53BFVhBd If there is one thing more pathetic than the Labour left’s attempt to depict new party leader Jeremy Corbyn as the socialist Messiah, it has been the attempt of his opponents to attack him as everything from a non-feminist to a threat to national security. Neither side shows any capacity for handling substantial political issues or facing up to the reality revealed by Corbyn’s election as Labour leader. Corbyn has spent 32 years as a Labour MP without ever leading anything or leaving any visible mark on UK public life. His victory clearly had little to do with the man or his personal beliefs. Instead, if we want to understand how Corbyn won, just look at the reaction to the leadership election results from his opponents inside and outside Labour. The overnight stardom of this 66-year-old political non-entity is entirely a by-product of the disintegration of the Labour Party and the reduction of British politics to a principle-free wilderness. That wilderness has been revealed once more by the emptiness of the post-election Corbyn-bashing. ... He was backed by all those new £3-a-vote Labour supporters as a consequence of the disaffection with moribund mainstream politics. Despite all the big talk, there is no mass radical ‘movement’ on the march in the UK. If there was, then everybody – including Corbyn himself – would hardly have been so shocked at his sudden elevation over recent weeks. So let us leave a detailed critique of Corbyn’s politics for when he actually does something (merely observing in passing that there was nothing in his victory speech that Ed Miliband could not have said, which is hardly surprising as Corbyn’s old ally and new ‘hard left’ shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, wrote much of Miliband’s doomed manifesto). For now, it is worth focusing on how the hostile reactions to his election have been so desperate and tired that they have succeeded in making this bearded relic appear almost dynamic by contrast. Corbyn’s opponents seem to have nothing of substance to say about the all-party crisis of political authority that has allowed him to rise so rapidly without trace. Instead they have, in sporting parlance, been reduced to playing the man rather than the ball. So Corbyn’s embittered critics inside the parliamentary Labour Party can only focus on appearances rather than politics, complaining that his new leadership team looks far too ‘male and pale’. (This is of course a criticism that Corbyn was asking for, given his long indulgence of identity politics.) Meanwhile, Corbyn-bashers among the Tories and in the media have been reduced to poring over his old speeches and dodgy allies, as if his election had anything to do with the fact that he has shared platforms with some Islamist nutters. (Quite frankly, given the three-forgettable-speeches-a-night routine that some of us recall Corbyn performing back in the 1980s, it would be a wonder if there were many figures he had not shared a platform with at some time.) You knew things were getting desperate when Conservative spokesmen were quickly reduced to branding Corbyn a ‘threat to national security’, as if we really were back in the Cold War era that they accuse him of hankering after. The sense of grinding through the motions was so palpable it was hard to believe that even they could believe they were saying it. Revealing, too, was the excited talk on the right, about how Corbyn’s election would guarantee another 10 years of Tory government. Seemingly unable to offer any positive case of their own, it appears that all the Conservatives have to hang on to is the collapse of the Labour Party. (And even then, we should surely we wary of accepting the electoral predictions of Tory experts who were as surprised as anybody by their own electoral victory in May.) The Tory attack on the ‘red loon’ Corbyn seems as empty as their renewed legislative assault on the shells of the trade unions – which is a case not so much of flogging a dead horse as unearthing a corpse in order to string it up again. The one indisputable point that Corbyn made in his acceptance speech on Saturday was that ‘Things can, and they will, change’. Things are indeed changing in politics across the Western world, as the chasm grows between the political elites and the disaffected people. But not in ways that either the new Labour leader or his opponents can predict or control. It should be a sobering thought for the overexcited British left that Corbyn’s election is as much a product of the disintegration of the old politics as is the rise of Republican maverick Donald Trump in the US. And it is also a sign of the times that the political mainstream appears to have little of substance to say in response to either of them.
I think the Tories have made a serious miscalculation if they think that a scare campaign will make disaffected Labour and Lib Dem voters lose interest in Corbyn. Much more likely to make us want to find out more; to see why he is so different to other politicians. I had 10 minutes to spare this afternoon, so sat reading some articles about Corbyn. For the first time in my memory I am interested in what a politician has to say. I disagree with a lot of what he has said, particularly in the past. It's quite pleasant to hear what a politician thinks, rather than to hear what he believes hard-working-families think though.
Quiver, bourgeois scum, at the FRONT BENCH OF THE REVOLUTION! please log in to view this image That's right! A tie! Our Glorious Leader looks MAGNIFICENT and resplendent in His front bench attire. Avert your greedy eyes, for you are not worthy.
The thing is for me, and I suspect quite a few others, I like the fact that Corbyn speaks his mind and comes across as actually buying into what he is saying rather than simply following either the party line or saying what he thinks the electorate want to hear. However despite the fact that he is a breath of fresh air his politics in my opinion are a throwback to Labour under Michael Foot and I genuinely don't see anything other than a similar outcome. I can see either a schism in the PLP or his tenure being remarkably short lived. Unless he can convince a decent proportion of English Tories to swap sides then I cannot see Labour winning an election in England and I don't see how moving further to the left will achieve this. I can see Labour making progress in Scotland and maybe Wales but to be blunt they are peripheral - taking seats off the SNP will not affect the balance in Westminster. Taking some back from Plaid likewise. I get that Corbyn supporters feel that he will galvanise huge swathes of the disaffected into voting Labour and this may happen but to rely on the votes of people who generally can't be bothered to vote does not seem to me to be a winning strategy. Regardless of the above Labour had to do something for as we stood they were never winning again - too right wing for Scotland and too left wing in England so maybe Corbyn will create a shift in Scotland and the young and the disadvantaged will flock to his banner in England and Labour will come good but maybe he will go the same way as Michael Foot. It is certainly a gamble but maybe its one Labour had to make. I am very much looking forward to PMQ's this week though.
He will perform well against Cameron in the house and I don't disagree with many of his policies apart from open door immigration. (Hasn't that gone well for Frau Merkel?) But ultimately the Tory media will bugger him comprehensively.
