Off Topic Political Debate

I always look forward to reading your views W_Y and possibly agree with more of them than many on here. The more you post the better the board is. I agree with a lot of what you say above. It seems that there are two rules - one for the right and one for the left. Any slur on Cameron and poster or snide comment alluding to pigs is viewed with mirth yet defending Corbyn is an article of faith. However in a way that is the nature of politics as we all dislike our side being attacked but tend to turn a blind eye the other way. For me one of the most interesting aspects is how the right accuse the BBC of left bias and vice versa. That probably shows they are really fairly balanced.
We can all get a bit personal at times but most of us try to avoid it. You mention Toby -and he and I once were severely "not friends" - yet he is passionate and genuine in his beliefs and can put forward a good argument for them quite often - I am sure he also avoids personal attacks for the main part - unlike one that is not his motivation for being here.
I was absent until after the referendum so did not read whatever arguments you had for being in the Leave camp so should you choose to do so I would be interested to read what led you to that side. The only pro Brexit arguments I have seen have been from H - where sovereignty and self determination seem to be her key drivers. Were those yours - or immigration or economy? You and SH are not on the same planet. It would be nice to beleive he has really absented himself but I am sure it is not true .

 

Seriously W_Y..... You are in a completely diff league to SH..... he is only the old div 4 and you are a true Horn....

You are willing to debate etc

I have enjoyed the banter... so totally diff to the other fella who just seeks to put others down etc.

 

I really scratched my head for a moment and thought Therese whoo??? <gets coat and leaves>

 

My blasted machine - the space bar does not work well - I have to press firmly or get no spaces - it is mildly annoying - I usually have to check what I have written and go back and edit it to put in spaces

 

I am no great fan of Jeremy Corbyn - as a leader and as someone who could get Labour into office- but is the Labour Party so devoid of talent that Owen Smith was the best alternative they could put up against him - he has all the charisma of a wet lettuce.

 

That's an insult to wet lettuces the world over - at least they're honest and dependable. And I say this as someone who is allergic to lettuce...

 

One of my favourites:

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Nobody really wants to be the leader of the Labour Party Leo. You have 90% of the press against you from the first day, all looking for some way of defaming your character - would you want the job ? In my opinion Jeremy Corbyn will come out of this stronger, and I would have no problem with the deselection of MPs (that is democracy - it is not a job for life), however, he will always have a problem with the media, which he needs to overcome if he wants to become PM.

 

Blair was popular with the media
They even backed his illegal war
How can Corbyn be stronger? He is the darling of the Momentum group and the hard left and that will not change - of course he will emerge again as leader - but how can his position have been enhanced?
If there is a mass deselection process it will simply split the Labour vote even further. 9 million people who did not vote for Jeremy Corbyn as leader voted Labour at the last election - that is real democracy - not cliques and pressure groups taking over a mass movement party for their own ends. We all know it will end in failure. Labour get detroyed when they present a hard left candidate - and that is when the leader actually has a few leadership qualities - unlike JC - who simply appeals to a few hundred thousand on the left who are more likely in the past to have been Socialist Workers Party than Labour. They can, through methods reminiscent of pre-war Italy, Germany and Mosely Brits, take control of the Labour Party but not as an electable party.

 

I know many people of my age who I guess have been products of the 60s generation who are very impressed with him.... so this groundswell of support he is getting now is I think not specifically hard left... but he comes across very well when he speaks at rallies..

 

I like him too - and agree with quite a lot of what he says - but I could not vote for someone I would not trust to organise a p*** up in a brewery. Being nice etc etc does not cut it as a political leader. What groundswell does he have? Organised Momentum based troops and those previously regarded by Labour leaders as more of a liability than an asset? How many of them are there - a few hundred thousand. To win you have to appeal to a broad spectrum - he does not. Do you really think 170 MPs dislike the "nice" man so much that they would ditch a winner - no- they are realists and know what their constituencies -as a whole - are telling them - he will cost them their jobs - so deselection is no threat if you expect to be hammered by the voting public rather than a cadre of JC supporters.

 

All of that makes sense if you favour the present parliamentary system etc. My sense of the support for Corbyn is that a lot of people who have felt disenfranchised by the current set up see him as a breath of fresh air, honest and down to earth. People I know and respect have been to see him talk and have been very impressed.

I myself haven't and am mighty suspicious by organised movements as you know. However he is an MP and as far as I can see his politics have only been vilified since the leadership election when the current leadership voting system 'failed' or 'exposed' the PLP.

Alongside this is the possibility of the UKIP funder talking about a new party for working people to combat the labour party..... so we live in interesting times.

And talk again of a 'split' in the labour party this morning again....

I think if I was a labour voter I would have much more activated by what is going on obviously.



Just thankful that all this is going on now far away from a general election date.......... If all this led to a future Tory govt with a big majority I would def move overseas.... no hang on.... I cant do that now unless I change citizenship

 

The grass is rarely greener these days anyway. We've been looking at returning to Oz but the conservative numpties in charge there are probably worse than the ones in charge here. A tough decision though - we still have three children within the education system here...

 

[QUOTE="Bolton's Boots, post: 9521059, member: 1000753 the conservative numpties in charge there are probably worse than the ones in charge here. ...[/QUOTE]

From what I see on the media... I tend to agree on that

 

JC's politics personally have only come under fire as he is now on the radar. However the area of politics he occupies has long been vilified by the popular press - think Foot and Benn and others.
This country is a safe stable democracy - however good or bad you believe our voting system to be. Most people support that and would not want to live in a more violent society. To achieve what he really wants JC and others with views like him would need to see a fundamental reform of our society. Taxing the bankers or putting a few percent on taxes for the highest earners will never achieve serious redistribution of wealth. Communists have long known this and is why they went for revolution. A society only has so much wealth unless it is geared to increase that dramatically - effectively what Tories want. Unless your economy grows all you can do is tinker around the edges. The amount of resources it would take to provide serious reforms to the NHS / Benefits / Welfare / Education will not come about without taking serios wealth from the top 1 or 2 % - not by ordinary taxes but confiscating their assets. I do not see politics in Britain moving towards that in my lifetime.

 

Leo, this contains a serious flaw - namely the idea of perpetual growth is unsustainable. There is a natural limit to everything, and so I cannot decide to 'go on growing', and neither can an economy, beyond a certain level. We need to be embracing the idea of the post growth society, the idea that we produce enough already but that what is now needed is a fairer distribution of wealth. I agree that the idea of redistributing wealth via higher taxes does not really go to the heart of the matter - partly because wealth has become mobile, and the richest 5% or so can always threaten to move their wealth somewhere else (needless to say I would rather go back to a time where such mobility was not possible). And so a place like the city of London lives from money which somehow disappeared from the Greek, Russian etc. economies. We need to be working together with other countries to destroy tax havens (including the city of London) - to make sure that the money made within a nation stays there. I think you should accept Corbyn at face value ie. he wants to raise taxes for the rich, bring in a financial transactions tax, nationalize railways and energy concerns - but in those areas he mostly has the people behind him, and they are also policies which are shared by most of the European soft left - there is nothing Trotskyist about any of this. I simply do not see Corbyn as belonging to the hard left, nore do I see that his leadership qualities should be called into question because of his lukewarm performance in the referendum, which, by his own admission, he was not totally committed to.

 

No flaw - only your idea of one. Growth will continue for the foreseeable future. Innovation will see to that. The only brake is population growth which should be controlled - especially if you believe in Green.
So no need for a post growth society. However fairer distribution of wealth is a good goal in itself. BUT you will not get the vast wealth held by the richest few percent from ordinary politics and economics - mobility is not the issue - land does not move and is owned by families who have held it for generations Inheritance tax does not begin to touch it.
London lives from financial services. Greece has only itself to blame for joining the Euro and also for having a retirement age of 55, too generous pensions and not paying their taxes properly in the past. Yep the Euro screwed them but they wanted it. Nothing to do with London.Do not try to understand Russian economics.
Corbyn belongs to the hard left - he is a nice guy but wears a friendly mask. Behind that mask is a steely determination to introduce hard left politics. That is why he uses his Momentum troops - vastly organised as have been the Socialist Workers Party and Tribune etc in the past. I am not fooled and nor are the majority of the population. If Corbyn's policies "mostly had the people behind him" he would not be trailing so disastrously in the polls nor having defections of Labour traditional voters. His leadership qualities simply do not exist - not just a case of his pathetic referendum performance. He has never led anything - he is by career a rebel - not a leader. He can rally people already believing in his cause - not win round others - lots of demagogues in the past perform well at their own rallies. Labour are a shining example of the wrongs of having strong party membership.

 

He is not trailing in the opinion polls Leo - the party is, largely due to the divisions it is showing at the moment. The few by elections and local elections which we had had prior to the referendum had gone reasonably well. Why does Corbyn belong to 'the hard left', can you give some policy examples of this ? Maybe the PLP should be looking at the disillusionment in the country which led to the rise of Corbyn - and his young (occasionally naive) supporters who are anything other than Trotskyists, but are simply people who feel abandoned by the direction which mainstream politics has taken. You talk about the desertion of traditional Labour voters Leo, but what is the traditional Labour voter ? And how many million traditional Labour voters did Blair manage to lose whilst in power (membership also halved under his guidance). These were people who had hoped that a Labour government, once elected, would be true to traditional Labour values - and how disappointed they were. We can only oppose the Tories with an agenda which is fundamentally different from their own - the alternative is to gain power but change nothing.

 

The last poll I saw had him on very poor personal ratings. How can you separate the divisions in the party from his leadership - he is responsible for leading a united party but has lost those MPs initially prepared to support him.The Opposition at the end of the first year usually win hundreds of seats in the May elections _ Labour did disastrously - winning a handful.
Owen Smith describes himself as hard left and has policies very similar to JC - except on Tirdent where JC is further left (as am I). What policies does Corbyn have that are not supported by those on the left edge of the party. He has many not supported by the recent more moderate leadership.
The rise of Corbyn as you put it was initially a joke candidature as there were no candidates standing for the left so MPs who did not support him put him on the ballot paper -that backfired on them due to his mobilisation of tens of thousands of troops marshalled by Momentum. Where do you see evidence of mass disillusionment except on immigration which has fuelled UKIP and the Brexit vote. There are no polls showing a desire of the real voting public for a leftward swing. The current vogue to call everything anti-establishment and anti Westminster bubble -are more examples of soundbite politics like "give us back control" - a meaningless phrase which nevertheless won the Brexiters the referendum - nobody could show the control that had been lost -do not start me on sovereignty.
I am a trational Labour voter. I vote Labour when the economy is not in a mess so that we can have decent welfare and NHS policies etc. There are millions like me not wedded to the idea of a big state owning the means of production etc - just who want a decent society where the rich pay more taxes than the poor and things are fair and we look after those who through no fault of their own cannot look after themselves. We vote for Blairite policies massively - but not for Brown or Miliband - and certainly not for JC. You say Blair lost millions of voters but he gained most in the first place and it was left to Brown to lose an election. Only you care about party membership - to me they are radicals seeking to take control of the party as Tribune tried - not members of a Labour Party that wants to defeat the Tories. It is typical hard left talk to say a Labour Party that is not radically left are Tories in drag. You cannot seriously beleive a Miliband Labour government would have acted as did the Tories etc from 2010

 

You say that there are no polls showing the desire for a leftward swing, yet Corbyn appears to have support in those that have been done on the 2 major definably left wing parts of his policy, namely higher taxes for the rich and nationalization of railways and energy. The parts of his agenda which are not popular are ones which do not fall into the traditional left vs. right spectrum, namely Trident - he was lambasted for his performance in the Trident vote in parliament - for what ? Because he allowed his party to vote freely - and also gave his own opinion, allowing others to give theirs. If the PLP cannot live with that then maybe they should be thinking about their futures and not that of Corbyn. Trident is not a left wing issue, neither is immigration or the EU. On those issues which are left wing, he scores well.