Forgot to respond to this, 40% may well have been at the bottom end of what was achievable for Labour in that election, Labour were, by pretty much all accounts, presented with an open goal and they still lost. Certainly even at that time he was a turn-off and unpopular with the public generally and I think a non-Corbyn front bench could have done much better.
Also, ANYONE can buy a Prescription Prepayment Certificate at just under £11/month if you get one for a year and pay by direct debit. It pays for ALL your prescriptions. Saved me a fortune over the years . I am constantly grateful that this has (so far) not been withdrawn
I voted Labour in 2017, and would have done so again this week if there had been any hope of unseating the Tory incumbent, and I can tell you that I absolutely despise Jeremy Corbyn, and that his leadership is far and away the main thing that has made me not want to vote Labour. The arrogance, vanity and selfishness with which he has treated the office of party leader is unforgivable in my eyes. That he and the people around him are still focusing on how blameless he is, and talking about how everyone else should stop being mean to him, is almost beyond belief.
Swinson, for all that she was a bloody disaster of a leader for the LDs, at least gets this: you fucked it up, so say sorry, or else you just conform that you never really cared about anything but your own sense of personal virtue in the first place.
confirm, not conform
I think it will be fascinating to see how the next labour leadership contest plays out. Abbot, McDonnell and Corbyn should be out on their arse but how far will the purge go? how far will it be allowed to go? Will Momentum decide that Corbyn just wasn’t Corbyn enough?
I’m looking forward to the revisionism of Long-Bailey et al. Prepare to be astonished how many of them clearly saw the divisiveness of Corbyn but stoicly supported him anyway.
I predict a concerted effort by Labour grandees to wrestle back some degree of control. The dust will settle but as soon as shadow cabinet members start to go, the fun will start.
Anyhow, another reportfrom the Labour front line on how Corbyn and Corbynism was seen as poisonous on the doorstep. Turns out Ashworth’s tape earlier this week was reportage rather than light-hearted joshing.
I wonder if a lot of centre-left Labour voters will switch to the Liberal Democrats, if a Corbynite wins the next Labour leadership.
Separating Corcyn from Brexit is also ridiculous. If Corbyn had gone to conference, banged his fist on the table, and given them a position to vote for that they could take to the public, it would have been passed and he could have gone into the election with a strong Brexit proposition that he could have led on and spoken about confidently. Instead he let the party lead him. That’s not leadership and it showed.
The PM calls for unity and healing: Boris Johnson, British prime minister, calls for national unity after landslide U.K. election victory - CBS News
By which he means ‘shut up and take your medicine’
McDonnell won’t be part of the next shadow cabinet.
I don’t even want to see the incompetent face of Diane Abbott on the back benches. No shadow cabinet should ever include her again.
Corbyn has been quite silent about when he’s announcing his resignation. I don’t care about Christmas, for the good of the developed world, he needs to stand down immediately and no transition period. Just go man, Go!!!
An opinion poll, and an ephemeral one at that (tell us your thoughts on why you didn’t do something) carries little weight relative to the facts in front of our faces. Red heartland seats like Blyth, Don Valley, Bishop Auckland, Bolsover going blue? Sorry, can’t be happening - they’ve returned labour candidates forever, they’d elect an inanimate object with a red rosette before voting conservative. You can’t seriously think they swung against their DNA because they didn’t really like Corbyn, weren’t sure of his policies (esp when they voted for him, and them, last time out)? Obviously it was brexit.
The evidence is overwhelming that Corbyn was the number one problem. That doesn’t exclude brexit - his shambolic handling of the issue was just further confirmation of what everyone but his cultists knew already.
To keep denying it makes his supporters look every bit as deluded - or disingenuous - as the climate deniers or anti-vaxxers.
Why can’t it be both?
how else would we get a better or more accurate answer? and what do you mean “ephemeral” Opinium are an accurate and well respected polling organisation.
Look, Labour MP’s say Corbyn is the biggest problem, so do the actual people who chose not to vote labour, leadership popularity polling backs this up, as do journalists, as do people who are from those actual areas. Bishop Auckland, Darlington, Sedgefield, Workington…these are all areas that I have close personal contact with. It is where I was born, it is where family and friends still live.
But somehow that answer, backed up with both anecdote and hard facts, is not credible? Certainly that seems to have been the denialist postition taken by the Corbyn faction and I can hardly blame them for wishing to ignore it, but how do you profit from not taking that lesson on board?
I ask you, in all honesty and clarity and I would appreciate a straight answer, If all the above does not convince you, what would? What evidence could be presented that would prompt you to say “Corbyn was the biggest issue”
Alot of those constituents who were in the marginals repeatedly said they wouldn’t vote for Corbyn due to his previous associations with sympathetic republican IRA groups. Now I know he didn’t do anything, but showing anything other than stalwart defence of the Union to these people is tantamount to betrayal, so because of that, and a whole host of other reasons, they abandoned the Labour party. The media only amplified that message.
No evidence could be presented. 3 years of festering Brexit and a completely fractured voter base was by far the biggest issue IMO. Nowhere in the multiverse do Labour win this election, doesn’t matter who is in charge.
Whether they could have forced a hung parliament and a minority government with a non-awful leader - I thought maybe before the election. Certainly Corbyn represents an absolute nadir of labour leadership so it’s reasonable to think that almost anyone else could have done better.
But like I posted above the sense of movement was epic, some of the swings were just staggering - it was a tidal wave and I don’t think any other Labour leader holds it back absent very speculative alternative realities (e.g. what if momentum didn’t exist? What if Miliband had played a longer game to build a legacy?)
But they voted for him in 2017 - Was he less of an IRA sympathising Islamist then?
Ironic given their voting for a government that has betrayed abandon Northern Ireland and will lose Scotland.
Well at least you are honest about it.
It does mean however that you have ceased to debate in a rational way and there’s clearly no point putting any further evidence to you.
He didn’t do anything?
He more-or-less openly supported the murder of British troops in Ireland for ideological reasons.
And he later repeated the trick with Iraq.
People remember that shit.