I think that’s best for the moment. It’s too soon for him and he’s right to put his family first. Remember that his youngest is only a year old. He will, however, be ideally placed to stand in 2019 (after the council elections) or 2020 (after the General Election).
No you didn’t but I did in post #12 above i.e.
Nor is he “languishing in obscurity” - he’s turned down two Shadow Cabinet positions under Corbyn’s leadership.
Daft.
Hyperbole, I think. Even given that the next Parliament is going to be structured more favourably to the Tories thanks to constituency boundary changes and fewer seats (600 from 650), I don’t see the Tories making that big a breakthrough in England. Nor do I see a significant resurgence in the Lib Dem support outside their core areas. There will be 501 constituencies in England and 29 in Wales, and I don’t see the Tories taking 350 or so of them.
Where the Tories may make a breakthrough is in Scotland. They at last have an effective leader in Ruth Davidson and are positioning themselves as the anti-SNP party, going back to their Unionist roots, as well as being centre-right.
However, the 2020 election is a long way off and all parties have plenty of time to completely screw things up.
As an irrelevant aside, am I the only one who keeps confusing Ruth Davidson and Susan Calman when they pop up on televison? Maybe I’m just bigoted, but all these famous short brunette laughing Scottish lesbians look alike to me.
ITYM irreverent 
Davidson has shorter, blacker, hair.
Just to elaborate on this: when the Tories were at their very peak, in 1983, just after the Falklands War, with Foot in charge of the Labour Party, with Labour having a manifesto described as ‘the longest suicide note in history’, and with the SDP split still fresh, Labour still won 209 (out of 650) seats. And since then there’s been the comprehensive loss of Scottish Tory seats and I don’t see Davidson clawing back that many in 2020; Davidson will be doing very well if she gets 10.
There’s too much left to play out to begin looking at election outcomes, not least the Labour leadership issue - attention-grabbing internet headlines notwithstanding.
Flipping the parties, when Labour were at their 1997 peak they won 329 out of 529 seats in England. 350 out of 501 is a shade better than that, but not outlandishly so. The Fabian predicition is pessimistic, but I can see it happening.
Latest YouGov poll has Tories beating Labour at next election 39% vs 24% - and holding that lead among men and women, working class as well as middle/upper class, and stonking 45/22 and 49/17 leads among 50-64 y.o. and 65+ y.o., a.k.a the ones who vote. Regionally, Labour lead only in the North (32/38) and are behind even in London. It’d be instructive to see what the 1997 polls were saying for comparison, but it does look like the kind of lead that produces overwhelming majorities.
On Corbyn vs May as best Prime Minister, May leads across all ages, all social groups, both genders and all regions.
While there is a lot left to play out, these figures show just how much has to play in Labour’s favour if they’re even going to make a 2020 election close.
Corby calls for a national wage cap
Can this guy be any more clueless? Does he only want to win the votes of left leaning academics?
It was supposed to be the first day of a mini re-launch, with him going round the main news programmes and actually being visible for a change. The main focus was supposed to be on Brexit and the immigration implications thereof. So well done Jeremy, well done. :smack:
Well, it’s certainly made us forget that he was widely rumoured to be pro-Brexit in the first place. Oh wait…
It’s not clear if he meant to say this or not. It seems quite plausible that any interviewer can derail his strategic message just by asking if he endorses some hallowed piece of left wingery, but it’s possible this was deliberate. Allow me some devil’s advocacy: there was much talk at the weekend that the new Corbyn relaunch was going to take a leaf out of Trump’s book. This could be that - salary caps for fat cats are actually quite popular: I can’t now find it but I saw this morning that 30% of Conservative voters - and 38% of UKIP voters - would support a £1 million salary cap for executives. These figures are higher among old people and Scots - two groups Labour need to win.
So - get attention and media coverage by saying something big and impractical that a large cross-section of voters agree with. I’m not saying it’s a good plan, but it might actually be a plan. Of course, Corbyn being Corbyn he’s linked it to football and now backs destroying the Premier League, but there’s a difference between having a plan and being able to execute it.
Found it:
But footballers aren’t employees, no? They are individually contracted.
If his plan is that easy to get round, then holy shit it’s a bad plan.
But the point is moot, because yesterday afternoon he finally gave the speech he’d been trailing in those interviews and his four ways of tackling excessive pay don’t include a wage cap. I can’t, off the top of my head, remember what they did include, but I’m sure that was part of the plan.
I don’t think a societal discussion about limiting executive pay is a bad thing and all voter demographics have shown a discomfort at the excesses reported, esp. when the people in question have done poor work.
Obv. the non-Labour media tore into him but that’s par for the course.
What is really troubling is his lack of authority; hugely difficult to have confidence in his leadership abilities and this after, what is it now, 15 months.
I liked the piece yesterday that spoke about Corbyn’s biggest problem being that the country has already voted for radical change.
I think he doesn’t want the job, probably never wanted it. He’s clearly uncomfortable outwith the very small cliques he’s been involved in all his political life, and I think he is genuinely overwhelmed with the demands of being Leader of the Opposition. It doesn’t help that his closest remaining political confidants are Seumas Milne (bonkers Stalinist) and Diane Abbott (thick as mince).
I’m sure that was quite deliberate on the part of the BBC. I think I heard mention that one of the ways was limiting salaries of government contractors, which, of course, includes the BBC.
BBC isn’t a government contractor, of course.