Labour had, perhaps, their worst week in history last week with, amongst other things, Corbyn seeming to suggest he wouldn’t authorise a shoot-to-kill response to ongoing terrorist atrocities, a la the Bataclan siege, on the streets of Britain, and seemingly implying the French brought the attack on themselves.
ComRes now have Labour polling on 27% and the Tories on 42%, plumbing electoral depths not seen since the mid-1980s. Now, there’s rumours that Labour insiders see the Oldham West and Royton election too close to call. This was previously the safest of safe Labour seats, with Labour having a 14,000+ majority in the seat. Rumours have it that Corbyn is seen as a liability and is despised by the white working classes in the seat, Labour’s traditional voting base, and has been told to stay away as the working class vote is haemorrhaging to UKIP. Indeed, today he has cancelled his planned trip to the seat and the bookies are slashing the odds of a UKIP win. Unbelievable.
So: will Labour split? Will Corbyn make it to Christmas? Are we seeing the total annihilation of Labour as a political force in the UK? They’ve already lost Scotland, and the North of England is slowly slipping away from them, by the looks of it.
I wouldn’t place too much emphasis on opinion polls as yet. It’s a long time to the next GE. We’ll have to wait and see how the Oldham by election goes. Im going to take the too close to call source with a pinch of salt for now.
MacDonnell really did shoot himself in the foot with his Mao quote. I can understand he was trying to be turn the quote on Osborne, but it was a silly thing to do for a hard Left politician to do. If in doubt about how silly(and dangerous) for Corbyn’s Labour Party it was just watch the clip below of Diane Abbott this week on national TV defending Chairman Mao. I believe the upcoming Syria vote is dangerous for Corbyn and Labour.
And now for the “I told you so” part of my post. This below is something I posted on the other Corbyn thread soon after he was elected leader:
*“Before the partition of Ireland the army almost rebelled against the UK Government. I am not predicting an army rebellion if Corbyn is fighting a General Election campaign, or is elected PM, but I can almost guarantee the British military and security forces will be leaking against him to the media. And probably with some justification.” *
The recent public disagreement between the military and Corbyn over Trident has confirmed my prediction. We shall witness more of it soon.
As a point of information, that Comres poll is a monthly poll published on the 21st November. It is not a snap poll and doesn’t take into account any of the events of this week.
I’m not for a minute suggesting that, in the fullness of time, the events of this week won’t result in a decline in support for Labour, incidentally. Nevertheless, it’s sometimes worth knowing what we’re dealing with here.
Addendum. I think a more worrying poll for Corbyn is the recent Yougov poll on Syria (which is elsewhere on my above link). 68% of people don’t trust him to make the right decisions on Syria and amongst Labour voters in 2015, he is 40% trust/46% don’t trust, which seems to suggest a pretty major split in support coming up, being as this issue is likely to overtake the economy in the short to medium term, and it’s the type of issue that will have lasting impact on perception (both of Corbyn and his leadership, and of the opinion of the Labour Party, in general - i.e. badly handled, the perception becomes “this is a rabble that can’t organise themselves, nevermind the country”).
Corbyn was the man who would reconnect with the membership and with Labour’s lost core voters. That was his big selling point. All the cronyism, the historical baggage, the unpopular take on foreign policy, the association with STWC, the disloyalty, the total lack of experience - that had to be stacked against the fact that he was going to take Labour back to its roots and win back the alienated white working class vote.
If he can’t deliver that - and it looks like Oldham is going to show that he won’t - then he is a pure liability. All costs and no benefits. When a sufficient number of his backers realise that, his number will be up. But it’s an open question as to how long it will take the very committed people who believe in him to honestly assess his chances of delivering what they want.* And of course, the longer Labour spends as an abject posturing shambles, the longer it’s going to take to win basic trust back.
The other side of this is that the moderate/centrist/RedToryScum faction who are willing to compromise got thumped in the leadership election, and the criticism that they are so worried about a handful of floating voters that they forgot their base has merit. Until they can actually produce a candidate who isn’t a bland technocrat, challenging for the leadership is pointless.
*I’m generously assuming people who selected Corbyn want Labour to win elections.
More likely not a chip off the old block. Still, Corbyn being unable to keep the shadow Foreign Sec. in line will be a major setback for his leadership.
Corbyn will put the Tories in power for the next 20 years. Osborne will be the next prime minister of the United Kingdom. Corbyn is an anti military person. He wants to see the British Royal Forces defeated. Corbyn doesn’t respect the military. He believes in weakness, playing nice with the enemy.
Corbyn is the silliest choice for Labour leader since Michael Foot and it will all end in tears before bedtime. The only real question is whether Labour will come to its senses before or after a General Election.
This was all so incredibly predictable by anyone who had a lick of sense.
Seriously, how is it that so many of the best-educated voters are so naive when it comes to politics? My own mother and several of my friends here in the U.S. are the same way. (They voted for Nader and thought it would actually make sense to nominate Dennis Kucinich.)
It’s a clown-car clusterfuck really, but also a bit of nostalgia for people who remember the 1980s. Proper entryism, with Momentum being the 21st century Militant, except this time around the leadership approves.
The cry is “deselect the Blairite traitors to the cause, comrades!”.
The PLP is going to fracture, and soon, like what happened before. Who knows how that will pan out this time? Another SDP?
One thing that will happen, same as last time, is that the Tories will push on relentlessly with their agenda. It’s unlikely to be as smooth sailing as in the Thatcher years - the Tories don’t, for the first time ever, have a majority in the Lords - but given that they’ve probably got ten years in government to go…