I can’t get into it; 30 years ago Mandela was on a life sentence for terrorism, and condemned for it by the UK government.
I don’t know where the late 60s Civil Rights movement tipped into the 70/80s armed struggle, but it is interesting that Northern Ireland, save for a few nutters, has put that in the past.
Maybe the Truth and Reconciliation stage in all of that should have been broadened out.
I disagree on a couple of points. Firstly, people do not need to read the Telegraph to be influenced by it. The piece has so far had little traction, but that doesn’t mean it will get little coverage in future. Secondly, as I stated earlier this is only the beginning. I can guarantee there will be many, many more pieces such as this in future. We have found only the tip of the iceberg so far, and you can be fairly confident some of the juiciest will be held back until closer to the GE.
You are correct UKIP will hate him for it. But that is kinda my point. It’s UKIP that is squeezing the Labour vote in England. The Labour Party making UKIP angry has not worked out too well for Labour recently. If it makes UKIP unhappy you can assume it makes those leaning towards UKIP, or as yet undecided on UKIP unhappy to.
Sorry coming to this late but I disagree with the OP.
While the Telegraph article is damning, it falls far short of “screwing” Corbyn. Guilt by association just isn’t that juicy even if we accept everything the article says and also assume it did not leave out any important details.
Corbyn supporters have been braced for a concerted attack from the media. If this is the worst of it, they will breathe a sigh of relief.
Nah, the public has learned to balance a media agenda with reality. On the same curve - albeit potentially less serious - wss not singing the national anthem (horrah!) not kneeling for some privy council bollocks (horrah!!) and being a ‘risk to national security’ (horrah!!!).
It might develop into somethign but, atm, the public is seriously unimpressed by a faux hysterical largely Telegraph agenda.
Nice to see whose playbook Cameron is using these days.
As for the Telegraph piece, well…the Telegraph has not exactly been the most reliable reporter of Corbyn’s views and statements, to say the least, so I’ll take their reporting with a large grain of salt. Which is not to say I’m denying Corbyn’s former sympathies for the IRA (although McDonnell has thoroughly explained - and apologized for - his own previous remarks), but merely that any secondhand reporting these days on Corbyn is pretty damn unreliable.
It’s worth pointing out this piece was by Andrew Gilligan. It was not written by the Telegraph editorial board. Andrew Gilligan is as serious a writer on these affairs as is possible to employ; just as he comes with his own baggage on these sorts of affairs. It’s a baggage which the Left usually applaud him for.
Not on your life mate 
Anyway, the Privy Council thing is overblown from both sides. The screaming of ‘traitor’ is disgusting, because it’s a free country and he’s allowed to advocate abolition of the monarchy. He’ll get nowhere as the monarchy is popular, but it’s his right to nevertheless. Furthermore, shock about him not going to the first PC meeting since his election as Leader is nonsense, as Opposition appearance at such meetings is vanishingly rare anyway - on a working basis it is a Government institution, not a parliamentary one. Cameron didn’t attend his first PC meeting as Leader of the Opposition until 3 months after becoming Leader.
On the other hand, criticism of the Privy Council over this storm in a teacup. The PC is a quiet but necessary part of the system, even if it usually only meets to affirm charters renewing university grants. But it is a forum in which information can be shared on ‘Privy Council terms’, such a proposals for military action, allowing the Government and Opposition to converse on sensitive matters. Plenty of republics have very similar arrangements.
The republicanism issue is overblown, too, because Corbyn has already shown fealty to the Queen and promised to bear true allegiance through the Parliamentary Oath, which he swears every time he is re-elected as an MP. Also, the Privy Council oath is not taken by Corbyn, but administered to him: he listens quietly and then gets on with things.
Kissing hands no longer happens, and in fact I am unsure kneeling even takes place any more, to my knowledge. I can’t get that bit confirmed. But even there, there’s been plenty of republicans who have become PC members and have made excuses and saved face.
It is just a drip-drip of negativity for him though. Given his anti-establishment past I can well imagine there is a negative story to pull out for any given political situation he finds himself in.
The polls seem to be showing that he isn’t even getting a hint of a honeymoon period. His numbers seem no better that Miliband in the run-up to the election or Harman in her interim period.
His comments on willingness to use the nuclear deterrent was honest…and idiotic. In order not to be a hypocrite he has to almost encourage dissension in his ranks and so have his leadership called into question over every single last matter of policy. That is going to get rather old rather quickly and the moment he employs brutal whipping he’ll have a full scale revolt on his hands.
I think he is a disaster for Labour and a gift for the Tories but perhaps this is something that Labour need to get out of their system before reverting to someone more electable. The system doesn’t work without a credible opposition.
Well, I’ve never seen a telegraph in a factory canteen. The favoured dead-kids-phone-hacking paper of choice is always the Sun. I doubt he has real secrets, all he has is history nobody under 40 remembers.
The real barometer so far has been his record breaking membership flood. That shows there is a massive appetite for something new. People know they’ve been shafted and haven’t until now had full acknowledgement of that from the politicians. The student loans debacle wiped out the Lib Dems, I can’t think of any other reason why they were pounded so bad - just one area here labour can make loads of hay. I agree though that UKIP must have moved in on a lot of the vote.
Have you ever seen anyone stir things up so much ? I’m enjoying the change.
Does that translate into votes though? As I say, those that are potential and previous labour voters are generally not seeing him as a positive. I think he is definitely attracting the hard line left but at the same time loosing a lot of voters who occupy the middle ground.
And as for thoughts of the general public…well, there was a expectation in the run up to general election that the tories would get a kicking due to their paln of austerity.
Didn’t happen and I don’t have any real confidence that your expected backlash will be reflected in the current polls.
it looks like the pollsters have been a bit off lately.
BTW Facebook - £4,327 tax. Do you think they rounded up or down ?
I think the “surge” came mainly from the fact that Corbyn seems to be the only mainstream anti-austerity politician out there at the moment. The Tories are full steam ahead on it, the Lib Dems were useless and are now useless AND virtually non-existent, and the other three Labour leadership candidates didn’t oppose austerity. Hence: Corbyn. Austerity is actively hurting a lot of working and middle-class Brits, who are getting no promise of relief from any other quarter. It’s a pity Corbyn doesn’t appear to be able to implement, well, anything at all.
That was a big part of it but it was just a symptom of the wider point that the Lib Dems failed to achieve any of their agenda in coalition apart from a half-arsed referendum on PR while at the same time enabling the Conservatives to push through vast amounts of their own agenda. Why vote for a party that has openly demonstrated a willingness to throw every promise and principle out the window at the first sniff of getting a seat at the big table?
I thought the Greens would have picked up more disaffected LibDems at the last election had they not run such a poor campaign themselves.
I don’t know what their agenda was. All I noticed was the student fees bastardy.
The new green leader doesn’t do as well as Lucas. They grew pretty well though. Anti austerity again, but not entirely.
Yes. There’s clearly some level of demand for an anti-austerity position coming from the grassroots (although I doubt it’s got huge traction in the mainstream electorate as yet) but Corbyn is absolutely the wrong man for it. Last night’s PLP meeting was by all accounts a shambles.
The background: two weeks ago, Corbyn’s chancellor and long-time ally John McDonnell announced at the Labour party conference that the party would back Osborne’s charter for fiscal responsibility, which is essentially a commitment to rapid spending cuts. This was something of a surprise given the whole “anti-austerity” positioning but it might have worked in a “only Nixon can go to China” kind of way. However, McDonnell announced yesterday that they would be opposing the charter after all. Apparently the world economic situation has changed markedly in the last two weeks, necessitating a reappraisal of an otherwise well-founded policy. MPs, who have to defend the party line, were a little ticked off that a) such a major policy change had happened so quickly, b) that it happened for no defensible reason and c) that they weren’t warned, still less consulted, before it happened.
So Corbyn had to go into a meeting of the parliamentary party and show some leadership. Instead, this:
Labour have the right policy now (IMO, but also in terms of something that fits with the principles Corbyn was elected on): a commitment to work towards a surplus in terms of day to day spending, while borrowing to invest in infrastructure programmes for long-term growth. But the way they’ve arrived there deprives them of any credit, or credibility, they might get from it. It’s been woolly, badly managed, and badly communicated.
Corbyn never expected or wanted to be Leader when he ran. He only wanted to take part in the debate and shift the eventual Leader somewhat leftwards. When he realised he was in danger of winning he should have taken a long, honest look at himself and admitted that he was incapable of actually leading a political party. As it is, the person who is going to do most damage to the cause of leftwing politics in the UK over the next 5 years is Jeremy Corbyn because while his heart is in the right place, he is constitutionally unable - because of who he is as much as who he has met - to turn his principles into the policies of an electable party.
I still maintain that it will be better for Labour to have elected Corbyn, go through a period of massive upheaval and come out the other side with a leaner and more focused party (under someone else) than to have elected one of the other three empty suits who would have done nothing, opposed nothing, and lost badly at the next election.
Or they could put so much energy into infighting that they completely bork the party and lose the next election anyway. But at least now there’s a chance for change, however small.
So Jeremy Corbyn = Jane Fonda, minus an exercise video or starring in On Thames Pond?
“Mainstream” Labour have certainly got a lot of soul-searching to do: why are they so uninspiring? Is it just their presentation or is it their actual message that leaves people cold? To what extent should they oppose austerity and to what extent accept that changes in public spending are necessary? Where do they draw the lines and what, in the final analysis, matters to them?
But the downside to your hopes for Labour is that they entail at least another general election victory for the Tories. I’d like to think Labour could be coming out of a cataclysmic re-ordering at least two years before the next election so that they have some opportunity to draw a line under the infighting and present their new principles and policies to the electorate in a coherent fashion. But Labour have never been good at getting their internal fighing done quickly, so I expect they’ll be at peak disorganised upheaval around April 2020.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell is going to have to shape up very very soon: currently about as Ministerial as David Icke.