And yet the Conservatives’ first act was to brand Corbyn’s Labour party a “threat to national and economic security”. The desperate scaremongering doesn’t suggest they believe their own rhetoric about his unelectability. Sounds like they’re the ones running scared.
It’s wider that that. Labour under Miliband was useless. They couldn’t even manage to muster up a lukewarm opposition, so why would you put them in charge of the country?
I see you’re a supporter.
Labour under Miliband was like the Tories under Willam Hague - floundering, purposeless, and basically just hoping that people would vote for them because they’re not the other guys. If Burnham, Kendall or Cooper had been elected we would have had the Labour version of the IDS years, with another empty suit acting as a placeholder until the next empty suit comes along.
Corbyn will not be PM. What he will do, however, is force the Labour Party out of its stupor and make them decide what the hell they stand for. There will be lots of infighting, resignations, reshuffles and backstabbing. Eventually the dust will settle and the party will end up somewhere to the right of Corbyn and to the left of where it currently is, with someone else in charge.
And remember - Labour has five years to get themselves sorted out. In the old days the Tories could have taken advantage of the turmoil in the Opposition to schedule a new election and kick the back further down the field. Now they’ve given themselves a short-term advantage but it may hurt them in the long run.
And in the meantime, PMQs will be a lot more interesting.
The Tories made Ed Milliband look like an effeminate weirdo with a single photograph of him eating a bacon sandwich. By the time they’ve finished with Corbyn, the country is going to be convinced he’s appointed the entire leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah to the Shadow Cabinet.
With Corbyn, they can ruin Labour for the next decade or more. They’ll paint the Labour party as the party that elected a lunatic as their leader in every debate going forward. They’re not running scared, they’re just laying the groundwork for 20 years of government — there’s a reason why groups like “Tories for Corbyn” exist.
I also think the assumption in the media that this is somehow an endorsement of the hard left by the party is missing the point. It’s a repudiation of the Blairites, as also seen in Tessa Jowell’s defeat in the mayoral election (mind you, I’m not a Sadiq Khan fan either).
Maybe. I certainly don’t disagree with your point about Miliband. And none of the other candidates were that impressive, or it would have been closer. But counterfactuals are tricky - if, say, Cooper had got in after a run-off vs Corbyn, that may well have triggered a re-appraisal of how to mobilise the party and return to grassroots appeal.
At some point, hopefully. But Labour is traditionally shit at knifing leaders who aren’t working out (neither Miliband nor Brown should have made it to their respective elections) and that dust settling process requires that a) things get worse before they get better, b) infighting creates deep personal and political rifts within the party and c) the Tories get years to frame the debate without effective opposition.
As we’ve seen from Miliband, an ineffective leader means five years of the Tories framing the debate - “Labour’s deficit”, “should have fixed the roof while the sun was shining”, “a Labour government destroys the economy and a Tory government fixes it” ad nauseam. Until Miliband gets laughed at on national TV for saying that Labour’s spending didn’t create the banking crisis.
I can’t imagine for a minute that Corbyn can succeed in getting his message out loud and clear in teeth of parliamentary disunity, a distinct unwillingness to engage with the media and the huge amount of chaff that his history of poor judgement has given the right wing.
To your first point, the Tories aren’t running scared when they pull that “national security” crap. They’re driving home their story. They will repeat, in simple terms, that Corbyn can’t be trusted with national security and can’t be trusted with the economy, and he can’t be trusted to keep your family safe. And come 2020 the vast majority of the electorate who today couldn’t even name the Leader of the Opposition will all know for a fact that he’s a risk.
Only when Corbyn’s letting other people ask the questions. Otherwise every Cameron response will be “Friends in Hamas, union paymasters, failed socialist economics”. It will be tedious, unfair and very effective.
Sorry, but this is bordering upon nonsense. It’s the job of every organised political party to attack opponents. A political party would not be doing it’s job if they did not highlight inconsistencies and dangers in electing the opposition. Sure, some of the attacks may be unfair, but some will squarely hit their mark.
Were the Conservatives running scared when they attacked Ed Miliband? Were New Labour running scared when attacking William Hague, Michael Howard or Ian Duncan Smith when they were Tory leaders? I think the answer to these questions is an obvious, no. All they were doing is what any half way competent political party does - attacking opponents. That’s the nature of the political beast.
I think most people will give Corbyn the benefit of the doubt on having a Lord in his shadow cabinet. He can always claim it is a sign of building bridges to New Labour etc. Even if the reason may just be Corbyn was struggling to find anyone to fill some posts.
Diane Abbot and John McDonnell however are likely to be a disaster for Labour. Abbot is thoroughly disliked outside her constituency/London. McDonnell will be an open goal for media and Tory attacks.
This sidebar in the Telegraph made me chuckle - this seems to be outrageous in Telegraph world, but then they are also overstating some of his positions:
I’m so glad he won. Labour might lose under him, who knows, but they’ve already lost twice with less left-wing leaders against a weak Tory party, so the odds are they would have lost with Burnham et al too. Corbyn gives them a better chance, IMO - might win a few seats back in Scotland, might win over former LibDems, might get non-voters to vote, and there are shitloads of them. The other leaders wouldn’t have done any of that, not even a “might” about it.
Those voting Tory in the last election - after a terrible few years under the Tories - would not be swayed by any Labour Party leader so there’s no point trying to win them over.
At least this way we have five years of an opposition that will actually bloody well oppose the government sometimes, like voting against a bill that is against all their own policies and will drive lots of working people into dire poverty. Five years is a long time, and it looked like the Tories were going to be able to push through whatever they wanted; now, maybe not.
When did you last check? The commander of all British military forces is the Queen, not the PM.
Distinction without a difference. A Prime Minister commanding a majority in the House of Commons thereby becomes the Queen’s minister, and the entirely implausible eventuality of an attempt at a military coup (why on earth is anyone envisaging such a thing? We aren’t Venezuela) would ipso facto be an attempt against HMQ. If there’s one thing that’s drummed in, it is that the Crown-in-Parliament is indivisible.
(Incidentally, not all the armed services are that keen on the idea of renewing Trident, and for all Corbyn’s attitudes about NATO, one of his main points has been that party policy-making needs to become more open, consultative and democratic, and not dictated from the top).
The obvious media tactic will be to drown out policy discussion with rantings drawing on 30 years ago - as per Capt. Ridley’s Shooting Party.
Reading the media today it’s as stark as 1985 vs. 2015. Utterly determined to not talk about present day issues like austerity, erosion of rights, etc.
This is the sort of quote that shows the Corbyn left for the hypocrites they really are. Im not suggesting you personify the whole Corbyn inspired Left but this type of quote is seen far too often in comment sections of online newspapers and forums. You just quoted Corbyn saying he doesn’t do personal politics:
“I don’t do personal, I don’t do reaction, I don’t do abuse. Life is too short and it devalues the political process. I think we should try and enhance the democratic life of this country, not reduce it to that level”
By quoting Corbyn here I assume you were tacitly agreeing with him. Yet, the very next post you make a cheap remark about the Tory Etonians. Either Corbyn AND his supporters are trying to “enhance” the democratic process by not engaging in personal attacks, or they are just the usual nasty political machine doing the usual hatchet jobs on their opponents. I suspect the majority are quite happy doing the latter when it suits them.
Taking the usual partisan potshots, sure. But the Conservatives are engaged in an active campaign of anti-Corbynism to an extent far beyond anything we saw under Miliband. The Telegraph and the Murdoch press have been positively incoherent lately in their frothing determination to portray Corbyn in the worst possibly light. The Tories didn’t take Miliband that seriously. They’re taking Corbyn seriously.
Corbyn stands for everything the Telegraph and Murdoch press hate and he’s made himself very, very vulnerable. I don’t think it’s so much that they take him seriously as that they regard tearing down ageing socialists as the Lord’s work.
As for the Tories, I’m sure they can see themselves getting a Blair '97 style majority if they put the boot in early and often. It doesn’t mean they think they’re going to lose to Corbyn if they don’t.
And if I can don my tartan bunnet for a second, it will be interesting to see how this plays in Scotland. In theory Corbyn offers precisely the kind of politics that many SNP supporters - and at least one SNP MP - says Labour betrayed them by abandoning. Now that it’s on offer under a red rosette, they’ll all come flooding back, right?
I doubt it. There are plenty of good reasons not to jump back to Labour right away, not counting either inertia or the SNP’s ability to keep the hearts and minds of its new supporters. More to the point, when Good Old Labour fails in England (either by resignation, coup or electoral defeat) then the SNP will be able to say: “See? See? The UK can’t offer us Scots the government we want. Independence is the only answer.” They’ll have a point.
