No, it’s that if Labour has chosen to elect as its leader someone who publicly approved of terrorist bombing campaigns in Britain, then that person is not going to be an effective advocate in debates on other forms of terrorism.
It’s too easy a diversionary target for his opponents.
Corbyn says something about why he doesn’t think bombing in Syria is good.
Tory : “Well, you would say that wouldn’t you, since you’re on record as supporting terrorist bombings in Britain. You don’t want to take measures that protect ordinary Britons.”
Corbyn says something else about why he opposes the air strikes
Tory: “Yes, that’s exactly what I would expect from someone who thinks it’s the French people’s own fault that over 140 of their citizens were killed just two weeks ago. The British people would be foolish to trust you.”
Ad hominem attacks are fair game in politics. When those ad hominem attacks are based on the other speakers’ own words, they’re particularly effective.
And that means that it becomes much easier for those in favour of the air strikes in Syria to win the battle for public opinion, because the Opposition party has put forward as its leader and chief spokesperson someone who is an easy target on debates on terrorism.
Labour MPs, like other MPs, were elected pre-Corbyn, so they can hardly claim a specific anti-Corbyn mandate from the electorate…who probably expected them to play by the rules and respect the election of a Labour leader by an established democratic procedure. Or quit the party and join the tories, since you can barely get a fag paper between them anyway. Democracy is a great idea - try respecting other people’s votes, rather than whining that they got it wrong. You don’t really like democracy, do you?
Not sure where you got the idea that you’re not sure where I got any of that. Did you pull it from a bag marked ‘things to say that allow me to dismiss something I’d rather not properly engage with’?
Not sure where you get the idea that MPs have a mandate given to them by their constituents - they represent a party (quite openly, it’s on the ballot paper), they routinely get whipped (or Corbyn’s ‘free vote’ wouldn’t be news), and they were selected by Labour party members - who elected Corbyn. I’m personally not disloyal, so I don’t really understand your desire to champion disloyalty.
Not sure where you got ‘tiny minority’ of the electorate from? Corbyn won a landslide victory, a vast majority of the electorate voted him in. Oh, you cunningly mixed his electorate up with ‘all voting age britons’. I wonder if anyone fell for it?
Not sure where you get the idea that some Labour party members are second-class citizens. The vast majority of them, in fact (see previous paragraph).
Not sure where you found your repeated polls, either, since you weren’t courteous enough to back up your claims with any kind of evidence. Not sure that a party leader has any wider obligation than to the vast majority of his party (and not just the tiny minority of members who think their status as MP makes them some kind of ruling class). You don’t like democracy either, do you?
So to sum up, accurately, your rambling rant (without pausing to pick apart its specific bobbins): if democracy leads to people getting it ‘wrong’ (in your eyes), it’s the duty of people whose duty it is to respect democracy to disrespect democracy. There’s really not a lot of love for democracy here, is there?
Strange that you didn’t take the opportunity in your earlier posts to take issue with Fuzzy Wuzzy, who introduced the bizarre hypothetical as one of his favourite subjects. I can’t say I know how Fuzzy Wuzzy feels about democracy (but I can hazard a guess how he feels about black people…)
I’ve been following this debate all day , listening and watching the coverage as well as reading the blog on the Guardian’s website. Lord Rooker just spoke in the Lords and declared the party needs to get rid of Corbyn. The last update on the votes indicates that about 65 Labour MPs will vote with the government.
Hilary Benn should be a strong contender for the next Labour leader and next Prime Minister. Excellent speech and he looks like an adult on the front bench , not like a rebellious teen who refuses to wear a suit to work.
Excuse me, but round my way ‘fuzzy wuzzy’ is akin to ‘nig-nog’ or ‘darkie’ or, well, ‘nip’, which I was once pulled up over, for typing it as an example of something racists might say. I find it odd (and inconsistent) that racial insults are acceptable as usernames, but remarking on such as an aside merits moderation.
He’s the Leader of the party, not the Dictator. He doesn’t get to set party policy all by himself, and then everyone falls in line in response to the word of the Dear Leader.
Their constituents elected those 65 MPs and gave them their mandate. If that conflicts with Corbyn’s position, that’s a matter to be resolved within the party, through debate.
Hilary Benn gave the outstanding speech during a day of parliamentary debate that ended with British MPs voting for taking military action against the so-called Islamic State in Syria. Although he has said in the past that he does not seek the leadership of the Labour Party, I think Benn is the preeminent candidate for the role and has the statesmanlike qualities and centrist outlook that Corbyn lacks, and which would make him electable by the British public.
In my opinion, elections in modern British politics are won from the centre-ground. Blair realised that and won three elections in a row. Cameron did too and won two (albeit with the help of a coalition first time round). I don’t think Labour will win again until they return to the centre, minus Corbyn.
Corbyn is failing because he is unable to moderate his views. Whilst people are pretty sick of politicians like Blair and Cameron whose positions tend to be amorphous and opportunistic, equally being a good leader is not about imposing your views, there’s times where you just have to realize that you’re not going to bring people around to your way of thinking and in democracy have to respect the wishes of the people you represent.
Corbyn has expended too much of his political capital and popularity already on on unwinnable vote-losers such as opposing Trident and at the moment looks dead in the water. There has to come a time when you think about whether it is better to never budge an inch and sit on the opposition bench or to be more flexible and be in government.
if everyone’s in the centre ground, then where’s the choice? I don’t simply want a government that is nominally Labour if the policies they are implementing are near as damn it what the Tories would be doing. I’d like some socialism in the mix. Not talking full blown here or anything, just some actual society. NHS, Education, Welfare etc. Main thing I would like to see is the end of Ultra rich / corporations paying next to no tax due to clever accountants. The practice of owing all your pre tax profits to head office in low tax base as a ‘royalty payment’ is BS and needs to stop. I know this is currently legal and corporations have a duty to shareholders etc etc. The law needs to change. Get the money in before having the ideological arguments about where its best spent.
Oh God, this has to be the saltiest reply I’ve ever seen to a post in all my time here. Jimmies well and truly rustled, eh?
But I think I recognise what is wrong: you’re reacting to the fact that the false consciousness meme that’s kept the British left going since Thatcher slapped Foot around like he owed her money has come well and truly crashing down. No longer can the left claim with any sort of sincerity that “if only Labour had a real lefty at the helm the hundreds of thousands of misguided voters who don’t vote Labour will start doing so!”. Corbyn is that leader that the left of Labour have been crying out for and he’s a trainwreck, an absolute out-and-out disaster.
How big a disaster? YouGov’s C2DE social group subsample (i.e. the working class) from their latest polls now has the Tories on a 7 point lead, with Labour only 5 points ahead of UKIP!
A Corbynista demanding Labour MPs obey the whip with Corbyn at the helm, you couldn’t make it up. Remind us all how many times Corbyn rebelled against the Labour whip? Isn’t it in the region of 500 times?
Further, Labour MPs are given a mandate by Labour voters in their constituency, whatever you claim to the contrary. Corbyn was elected by less than 2% of all Labour voters, if we’re going on the data from this year’s General Election. The PLP’s mandate is every bit as legitimate as Corbyn’s.
When people in a political discussion talk about the electorate, they mean “the electorate”, not the tiny self-selecting group of Labour members that vote in new Labour leaders. And I stand by my claim: he was voted in by a tiny minority who in now way represent the views of the wider base of Labour voters (as my cites below quite adequately demonstrate).
Corbyn: out of touch with his own voting base; out of touch with the rest of the country. A dinosaur.
Yes, I very much like the British form of democracy which is slowly but surely relegating the Labour party to the scrapheap of history. Wiped out in Scotland. Non-existent in Northern Ireland. Under pressure from UKIP in Northern England. Decimated in Southern England by the Tories. On track to lose their majority in Scotland to a combined Plaid Cymru/Tory surge. Labour: a solution without a problem.
No, you really are going to need to read if you want to understand, but I’ll break it down for you. If
The internal democratic processes of the Labour party lead to
The election of a leader who is incompetent to lead the party and unable to
win an election (not in my eyes, but the eyes of the electorate) then
Labour MPs who wish their party to achieve 3) need to
respect democracy by listening to the electorate.
I see from your reply to CRSP that you get confused when people use the word “electorate” to refer to “the people who vote in general elections and thereby decide which party is in power” but this is a problem you are going to have to overcome.
Corbyn was democratically elected by members of the Labour party to lead it into government. He is incapable of being democratically elected by the electorate into government. It is hardly anti-democratic to point this out, or to suggest that in deciding who should be in government it is the electorate whose voices should - nay must - be listened to. The alternative is to suggest that the Labour party shouldn’t be that concerned about being elected into government, but that would rather conflict with Clause 1.