I can understand why Labour Party members thought enough was enough and attempted to win back their version of the Party from Blairites. In the long term this was, and is, a reasonable goal. However, a number of Corbyn supporters did delude themselves into believing a Corbyn lead Labour Party could defeat the Tories. This was wishful thinking imo.
I believe there is substantial poli-sci research showing that the more voters know about the issues, the more ideologically extreme they become. It’s a rather worrisome finding for those of us who want to see democratic governance succeed.
That’s the galling thing - the Tories aren’t the most competent bunch either, and that’s being generous. A half-decent Labour leader could have made great hay over the last couple of weeks, but no.
It’s amazing. I have some friends who insist Corbyn deserves to win but blame every criticism of him upon ‘The Establishment’ having an agenda against him. Anecdotal, but a media-leftie Guardianista type of mine who genuinely hates the Tories and wants Labour to win but thinks Corbyn is poison for Labour, has been labelled ‘Establishment’ by some Corbynites on the tenuous basis that he is ‘Establishment’ because he got an article in the Independent once.
Every setback for Corbyn is ‘Establishment’. It’s a thought-terminating cliche.
This was the Blairistas’ first big chance to overthrow the party decision to choose the leader.
I should imagine Corbyn extracted a pretty big price from the tories in return for permitting a free vote, but none will know what it was. They are so desperate he could have demanded they dance like monkeys.
I don’t get that impression, seems to me it was his own backbenchers that were extracting concessions from him.
So, to sum up, democracy is a great idea, but if Labour members misuse democracy to elect a leader that their elected parliamentary representatives don’t care for, those elected representatives need to teach the electorate a lesson. And heaven forbid the British public use the gift of democracy to elect Corbyn as PM - we’ll have to get the army out to correct their mistaken notion.
Probably best just to abandon the failed experiment of democracy altogether. The plebs clearly can’t be trusted to vote in the best interests of oligarchs.
Those Labour parliamentary representatives were themselves democratically elected. In each individual MP we have a winner of a democratic process facing Corbyn. Democracy is a great idea but in the real world it’s consequences can be complicated.
Not sure where you got any of that from. Labour MPs have their own mandates given to them by their constituents. A tiny minority of the electorate who signed up to become Labour members to vote Corbyn in don’t automatically have the right to override the mandates of the PLP. Repeated polling has also shown that Corbyn’s policies are both completely out of touch with Labour voters, and with the wider electorate.
In other news: YouGov becomes the second polling company after ComRes to indicate a double-digit Tory lead. Corbyn’s personal approval rating is also a staggering -41%, equalling Thatcher’s approval rating immediately after the poll tax riots and ten years of government.
So, to sum up more accurately, democracy is a great idea but if Labour members use democracy to elect a leader whose lack of experience, history of disloyalty, history of support for terrorist organisations and utter inability to lead the PLP or communicate clearly with voters make the party utterly ineffective as Opposition and severely damage the standing of the Labour party in the eyes of the electorate, then elected Labour MPs who believe that their principles only matter a damn if they have a snowball’s chance in hell of actually affecting national policy need to show the electorate that the Labour party can be something other than an echo chamber for disaffected fantasists.
And we needn’t concern ourselves with bizarre hypotheticals about Corbyn being elected PM, because he will never even come close.
Here’s fun: Cameron is being reported as telling his MPs that they don’t want to go through the lobbies with terrorist sympathisers.
This is an outrageous thing to say. It’s grubby, reductionist, grossly traduces the many principled MPs who have legitimate doubts about extending airstrikes to Syria and smacks of the worst “you’re for us or against us” rhetoric that so poisoned debates about Iraq 2003. If it’s not beneath Cameron, it should be.
It is also, in essence, true. Corbyn and McDonnell are terrorist sympathisers*, and they have spent much of their career being very clear on this point. And they are at the very heart of Labour right now. This entirely accurate accusation can be used to render their opinion obnoxious on practically any issue, and it spells the death of any hopes the party might have entertained of election. And rightly, because people who are willing to call Hamas their friends, or share a platform with rabid anti-semites just because they also oppose “the West”, or who will announce their hope the that the IRA’s “bomb, bullet and ballotbox” strategy will work are not morally fit to govern a village chess club, still less the country.
*They are not ISIS sympathisers. And they are welcome to explain at length that the terrorists they *have *expressed sympathy for are very different from ISIS in important ways: as long as they recall that when you are explaining, you are losing.
Exactly right. There’s no massive army of moderates ready to step into the void left by ISIS should we help annihilate them. It’s a massive ball of tar that we’re better staying away from, a tug-of-war between Russia and its allies, Nato, and regional interests like Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. There is, in short, a good argument against bombing Syria. But the people leading that charge in the Labour Party are terrorist loving scumbags who reflexively oppose any action the West takes to defend itself whilst being the first to line up to “explain” how any atrocity levelled at the West is really our fault. The anti-war campaign has been completely undermined by lunatics and made any opposition ineffectual.
Cite.
So you’re saying that we shouldn’t go to war, but if people argue against going to war for the wrong reasons, that means we should go to war after all?
This appears to be the same level of logic that saw just about every front page yesterday blaming Corbyn for the impending war, despite him being its main opponent.
To be fair, Cameron’s opening statement is being disrupted by people asking him to apologise for the terrorist sympathisers remark, so it looks like he’s overcooked the rhetoric in this instance.
I’m describing what is happening, not how things should be.
…or not. The antiwar case is not being put - MPs are standing up to whine about apologies for rude remarks rather than challenge Cameron on civilian casualties, the absence of ground troops, the shifting web of alliances or any other good reasons not to go to war. Parliament at its dignified, serious best.
The intervention about the BBC style guide was Churchillian.
I wish they’d divorce goals from methods in this case. Everyone’s goal is the defeat of ISIS and a stable Syria. I’m just not clear on how bombing will achieve this. If they were all in some military camp in the desert then I doubt we’d be having the debate as it’d already be bombed to glass.
Apparently a Corbyn spokesperson has said that while they expect to lose the vote, they feel they will have won the argument.
Well, that’s the main thing, isn’t it?