It’s incredibly depressing. I have to agree with the concensus. Corbyn is personally a decent man, but he’s hopless as a leader. May really ought to be hanging on by the skin of her teeth, but her position is more like Thatcher post her 83 land slide.
More like John Major between 1990 and the crashing out from the ERM in 1992 (and the battles over ratification of the Maastricht Treaty that followed). We have yet to see whose teeth have skin…
And yet, he leads the largest paid-up political party membership in Europe. I do sometimes wonder about the role of a hateful media in the general perception and resulting polling data.
I, too, don’t think he will acquire the desired leadership skills and has too much baggage, but there is time for him and for a new leader and so perhaps now isn’t the time to waste valuable powder on a still Teflon-coated new PM.
A bit like London and the Blitz, maybe the NHS has to take the hit for now …
As a matter of political reality, of course it will, until enough Tory MPs get frightened for their seats. All the more important then, for an opposition to keep hamering away at the topic - provided it’s got something more to offer as well, wrapped up in a comprehensible and imagination-gripping narrative and theme (which is where the Labour leadership is completely failing to make any headway).
Is there any possibility of Labour splitting up and one part merging with the Lib-Dems to form a centre-left Blairite party? If that happens and they find a credible, appealing leader I think they will have a serious shot of winning the next election because May isn’t a natural campaigner and the interminable Brexit obstacle course will inevitably weaken her position over the next few years.
Shades of the SDP?
Interesting poll carried out by YouGovreleased today. The ten key things we learn from it stretch from the 11:00 AM update in this feed.
In a nutshell, Corbyn is not well thought of by the very same group of people (paid up labour members) that elected him (twice). Those that approve of him have gone down from 72% to 54% in the last year. Those disapproving have gone up from 17% to 37%…ouch.
I dread to think what a similar poll would be of labour voters who are not labour members.
Or, indeed, people who were Labour voters in 2010 but not 2015.
Corbyn still holds a narrow majority, but the trend is clear and I don’t see what he’s going to do to reverse it.
Stephen Hawking calls Corbyn a disaster and should stand down.
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Adds exactly nothing to the existing narrative.
Shades of Trump in the US?
More Bernie Sanders.
When Corbyn took over, the print media engaged in a spectacular smear campaign against Corbyn, frequently and deliberately misquoting him and misrepresenting his positions. The Telegraph and Mail were probably the worst offenders but even the Independent and Guardian engaged in it. I mean, there was plenty to criticise him for then (and much more now) but the blatant lying was deeply disturbing. When the Morning Star is the only newspaper accurately reporting a story, you know things are pretty fucked up.
This is nothing like the Trump reporting, where even the most hateful and ignorant things he actually said and did were normalised for the sake of sales and ratings.
I don’t think anyone thinks he is shit because of misquotes or misrepresentations. (and I’m not sure what those may be but feel free to cite the “blatant lying”) but more that he seems ineffective, withdrawn and weak. By your own admission there was plenty of real things to criticise him for. If there are 50 critical stories about him and 10 are utter bullshit I don’t see that makes life that much better for him. That’s still a lot of valid negative press.
The killer for me is that he can’t even command respect and loyalty from his parliamentary colleagues and I’m pretty sure they aren’t basing their opinion on second hand news seeing as they get to experience him one-to-one. They’ve worked with him, seen the cut of his jib and found him wanting. That is a cold hard fact.
Just watched him waffle on at PMQ’s and waste multiple opportunities to put the boot into May, on budget day, after a Lords defeat, and fail miserably. She’s no expert at the dispatch box and yet Corbyn makes her seem like Slick Tony himself.
He inspires no confidence in me, nor in his MP’s, nor in the country at large. He is hemorrhaging support among labour party members and the best you can say about him is that those who wanted to vote for him as leader, support him as leader.
Whoop-de-doo. No point gaining 300,000 members in support if you lose millions of voters as a result.
He didn’t help himself by giving them open goals when they asked him trick questions.
I was listening to his response to the Budget yesterday and it was so bad I turned it off.
Well, miracles do still happen. Barcelona 6-1 PSG: 'Crazy and unbelievable' - how the world reacted - BBC Sport
A week is a long time in politics, etc … we will start to run out of them though …
Corbyn might just need divine intervention, at that…
Corbyn won’t oppose a second Scottish referendum.
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A second Scottish referendum fails, leaving the SNP as a joke and Labour can retake all those SNP seats lost in 2015.
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A second Scottish referendum succeeds, and the UK is thrown into ever more chaos, dealing with the EU withdrawal as well as an independent Scotland.
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There is no second Scottish referendum as Scotland comes to their senses, but this still keeps the SNP strong in Scotland. Without Scottish seats, there is no way Labour can form a government without a coalition with the SNP.
I think the third option is most likely, but I don’t see a Labour/SNP coalition, unless Brexit starts to be such a disaster that maybe there’s some anti-Tory coalition of the SNP/Labour/Lib Dems that can form a coalition to oppose the disaster that I think Brexit will be.
A second Scottish referendum depends upon approval from Westminster which will not be forthcoming given that the Tories have a majority in the Commons.