I take your point, but Foot had the support of the parliamentary Labour party and membership (or at least as much as was possible in the early 1980s) as a consensus candidate. He wasn't a fringe figure like Corbyn at all. Whether that's a positive for Corbyn or not is another matter.
I'm not sure why this is relevant? JC is not Foot. I don't know why you are so confident with your predictions, but as I say I don't see how we can have a debate if you consider your opinion as dogma.
My main interest is psephology.I have studied al the GE's since 1970 and the one constant is that Labour leaders need a large proportion of middle class votes to approach 40% of the share. The further left you go the more voters peel off, or rather are scared off by the Tory media. Incidentally JC has now shot himself in the foot on Trident. He is saying the party will have a free vote but as PM he would not use nuclear weapons. (Which BTW I agree with) It does however leave him with a dilemma, does it not?
His timing is really bad CT. If the world was largely at ease and the Russians and America were continuing their program of getting rid of their nukes then I could sort of see him getting some support. But right now we have the stuff going on with ISIS, Russia flexing it's muscles and virtually the whole of the Middle East in crisis. ISIS have already said if they managed to get hold of a nuclear weapon they would use it. He is really shoving the party over to the far left now and I can't see the Labour party getting in anytime soon if this carries on.
Is Corbyn really so 'hard left' ? Practically all of his policies are carried out by relatively 'centrist' states which we would not normally classify as far left. Nationalized railways - in Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Sweden. Nationalized power (ie. electricity, coal etc.) in Sweden and Japan. A real living wage - Scandinavia, Switzerland. Nuclear weapons - not thought necessary by about 180 countries in the World (is Germany in mortal danger through not having them ?). Rent controls - Germany, Switzerland, Paris & others. You can go on and on - not one policy of his is not already practised somewhere, successfully. His opposition to so called 'austerity' ie. monetarism ,is nothing other than a rebirth of the Keynesian economics which were successfull in the past. ie. the idea that you need to invest for the future, and that only a stable and healthy spending power can assure continued growth. So why has Corbyn been classified as 'hard left', surely the question should be, how has Britain lurched so far to the right ?
Why? Because the Tories need him to be perceived as hard left. They want their actually quite strongly right position to be viewed as middle ground. It's actually pretty impressive how they've managed to strangle the debate, even though it's also immensely depressing.
Helps that so many people just parrot what they hear and read on sky and in trashy newspapers respectively
Germany has no need of its own nuclear weapons as it enjoys the benefit of being under the NATO nuclear umbrella as are all NATO members with the exception of the US/UK and France all of whom hold nuclear weapons. Currently there seems no pressing need for a nuclear deterrent as no states appear to be in a position to launch a serious conventional assault on a NATO member that NATO troops could not defend against but roll the clock back to the 50's, 60's and 70's then we were definitely in a position where the USSR was a genuine and real threat to the West so whilst it is easy to say that 180+ countries currently have no need of nuclear weapons JC is conveniently forgetting their past value (which I know can never be definitively proven but it is an insurmountable fact that no NATO country has been attacked/invaded in the post war period). Whether we would need nuclear weapons in the future is again a matter of conjecture but whilst a nuclear weapon free world would be fantastic unfortunately the technology is there and the genie cannot be put back in the bottle. As for the other policies they have to a greater of lesser degree been subscribed to by other European countries with a greater or lesser success rate. The flip side of these policies is that for the most part they cost money and so involve the raising of taxes. For the post 79 period we have been a lower tax/smaller state style economy. We could definitely change but to do so an awful lot of people would have to accept paying considerably higher taxes than they currently do to fund it. I would also query the "success" of Keynesian economics - didn't they nearly bankrupt us in the 70's? Keynes works as a method of promoting growth but at the cost of inflationary pressure which can then lead to interest rises which then make the debt burden unbearable and everything comes crashing down. All economics is a gamble - we have had three decades of supply side economics as a rebellion against the economic disaster that unfettered public spending and a "large" state of the previous period. Maybe the time has come to go back the other way but I just cannot see how nationalisation will bring anything other than a huge financial burden on the nation. Of all his policies the one I think is most necessary is rent control. Once this happens it should put a cap on the ridiculous growth in house prices which in my opinion is one of the biggest hindrances to the well-being of the Nation as a whole. I also think that the Governments idea to cap housing benefit (opposed by JC) would have a similar effect as it would reduce the potential returns for speculators which again should depress prices in the market.
Really interesting graphic. I certainly had no idea that there had been so many tests undertaken. Good to see the old colonial powers not ****ting on their own doorsteps. Remarkable how many tests in the us and Russia given they knew how dangerous they were.
How has Britain lurched so far to the right? Because the people of the country chose it in the face of a frankly unelectable labour leader. Can't see Corbyn appealing to any of the middle class voters that labour have ostracised so I think it will continue as it is. Also, whilst labour were in power for many years they did not instigate any rent controls or encourage the disbanding of trident. These issues have been debated for years whilst both labour and the conservatives have been in power.
Me I can think of far, far better things to spend A HUNDRED BILLION QUID on right now than something as abhorrent as a nuclear bomb that we'll never, ever use - is that really so bizarre a concept? Complete no brainer if you ask me. How many here would like to see us use an atomic weapon on another nation and cause the devastation and destruction the yanks did on the Japanese? Do you think Churchill would still be heralded as the 'Greatest Ever Briton' if he'd won the war by nuking Nazi Germany? How would a nuclear deterrent stop somebody flying a plane into a building? This isn't the cold war any more, we have other phoney 'threats' to our society that keep the masses living in fear these days you know.
Thank god the Tories came in and fixed the economy... http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-u...m_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds?r=US&IR=T
Watched question time tonight as I always do and was quite frankly appalled that they spent more than half the programme discussing what really is a non-issue when you actually think about it. I can't believe this has suddenly become talking point #1, it's total distraction politics - why can't the media ever focus on and inform people of all the positive things Corbyn supports, rather than constantly discussing the things he may or may not like. And this is from the BBC, it's all bollocks.
Spot on. 100 billion could buy us a few Ronaldo's. Talk about sacred cows and all that - I don't think South Africa has been threatened since giving up its Nukes in the late 80s.
Nuclear weapons are a total waste, you either don't use them and they are a waste of money, or you do use them. Which is worse? Personally I don't believe Russia was ever a threat, it was all a game drummed up by the spooks for their own benefit. Similarly at least 50% of the defence budget is unnecessary. I would reduce the army by about 90% and maintain the Navy and RAF. We all know what the elephant in the room is, but if I mention it the racist card will get played.
But surely the fact that we would never use it, is the whole point of having it in the first place, that's why its a deterrent. The Yanks using an atomic weapon on Japan, probably saved as many lives as the bomb took and clearly shortened the war preventing the devastation & destruction that a continuation of a conventional war would have caused. Maybe if we had atomic weapons at the start of the 2nd world war then there may never been a second world war. Certainly if a couple of atomic weapons similar to those used on Japan had been used at the start of the second world war then there would have been a lot less devastation and destruction than the conventional weapons caused. Whether the money could be better spent elsewhere is a totally different arguement. I think there is a strong arguement for not renewing trident, but it needs to be a positive one.
Think you need to read up on your history a bit. The Yanks nuking Japan was only a symbolic end to the war, it was pretty much over by then, the Russians had entered Japan in great numbers and were on the brink of ending the war themselves as the Japs were about to surrender before the yanks flexed their muscles to claim glory and ride off into the sunset as the 'heroes'. Why are we (and I don't just mean us on here, why was QT dominated by it?) even talking about Trident? Why is it even an issue? Because it's an easy stick to beat Corbyn with, that's why. Why aren't we discussing the positive things he wants to talk about and introduce as policy? Why is it all; - he doesn't like Nuclear weapons (good, neither do I or any rational, sensible human being) - he doesn't like he queen (so what? she probably doesn't like him) - he doesn't sing the national anthem (who gives a ****? didn't we win a war to give people the right to choose?) - he doesn't like the unfair distribution of wealth in our country and wants big orporations to pay the tax they are legally obliged to (and the argument against that is?) Honestly, I read some of the things people say and write and just wonder if people actually believe the garbage they spew - and that's not a dig aimed solely at you CC
Do you really believe that?? Just sounds like twisted logic to me, I'm afraid I just don't get it. Americans have the right to bear arms under their constitution as they believe it keeps them safe and acts as a deterrent against others using arms against them - just remind me how that particular deterrent policy has been going?
