Next Leader of the Opposition

[Molly]

Would love it Corybn got it just to see what would happen.

Whats the point of having an opposition leader who is basically a watered down version of the PM?

 

Exactly. Opposition should have opposing views.

 

Why is it mostly Tory voters who want the labour leader to be a "soft" tory? Surely they should prefer a real leftie. 

 

A new Michael Foot or Tony Benn.

[Molly]

Come on buce the left wing press spread as much bullshit as the right, thick gullible people will always be thick and gullible whoever they are following.

 

That's true too.

 

As I said earlier most of the population don't understand politics or the consequences of actions (even their own). 

[MPH]

I

Perhaps he used the word press instead of media.

 

 

It would be a pretty desperate aregument to claim a news channel was right ( or left) leaning.... At least in the UK anyway.

[Molly]

It would be a pretty desperate aregument to claim a news channel was right ( or left) leaning.... At least in the UK anyway.

 

You wouldn't say that Sky is right wing and aimed at morons?

[MPH]

You wouldn't say that Sky is right wing and aimed at morons?

 

 

Possibly fiscally conservative but no way is it socially...

 

 

 

You should try watching fox news sometime if you want a right wing news channel...

[Webbo]

I suggested that killing people would be the only way to remove all the unemployed. I didn't see you offer any other alternative.

 

So following your reasoning, people born with physical and mental problems (and there are a lot of them) should get over it and just accept that they shouldn't get benefits and live badly until they die. Or do you accept that these may be exceptions to your must be employed people and that there may be other exceptions too?

 

 

Would not getting over it make their disabilities go away? I never said nobody should get benefits either.

[Buce]

Would not getting over it make their disabilities go away? I never said nobody should get benefits either.

I suspect she meant 'get over it' in the sense of accepting their lot without complaint.

Or are you being deliberately obtuse?

[Danno]

Andy Burnham pledging to abolish tuition fees when he voted to increase them 11 years ago. Looks like he's copying Corbyn to me.

[The Horse's Mouth]

Burnham is a scab

[Guest]

Betting looks wide open again between Burnham, Corbyn and Cooper 6/4 15/8 and 11/4 respective best prices. 

[Danno]

Burnham is a scab

Looking forward to 5 years of him as 'the opposition' where he'll probably abstain on voting against just about everything.

[Guest Bilo]

Andy the Abstainer is the laziest smear in politics.

[Rincewind]

Would not getting over it make their disabilities go away? I never said nobody should get benefits either.

How to you get over having a disability. Not all disabilities are visible.

I read a story about a woman who was  in a wheelar and was approachedby a man and was verbably abused with  him saying I bet you arnt really diosabledand just a scrounger. She was upset and angry as she has a condition that prevents her walking far. Another disabled person was insulted as she got  out her car and told she should not park in a disabled bay. Yhe abuser was silenced when the driver revealed that she was a  carer and fetched a wheelchair out the back.

This sort of thing is occurring more and more partly due to some sections of the media hyping the 'get over it' and'they are not really disabled' angle. There are several illnesses where a person can be fine for a few days then suddenly change putting themselves and others at risk. You cannot detect this by asking them to lift an empty cardboard box.

Another woman said she was told she was irrateble and irrational in her behavior when at an ATOS test yet the accessor wrote down able to communicate well. The form was seen at an appeal that was won. So who was lying?

[Webbo]

I suspect she meant 'get over it' in the sense of accepting their lot without complaint.

Or are you being deliberately obtuse?

Complaint to who? It's nobody's fault. Repeatedly saying not fair won't change anything. I really don't think this is a hard concept to grasp.

[Molly]

Would not getting over it make their disabilities go away? I never said nobody should get benefits either.

 

Morning, Sorry I thought I remembered you saying that we should force everyone to work and I took that as meaning their salary replaced benefits.

I suspect she meant 'get over it' in the sense of accepting their lot without complaint.

Or are you being deliberately obtuse?

 

I did but I don't want to seem worse than I am.

[Guest MattP]

Why is it mostly Tory voters who want the labour leader to be a "soft" tory? Surely they should prefer a real leftie. 

 

A new Michael Foot or Tony Benn.

 

Do they? Tories are paying £3 in their droves to vote for Corbyn, the most pro Tory paper the Telegraph has openly called on people to support him, which Tories don't want him? The last thing any Tory I know wants is a Blair style leader at the helm of the Labour party, you really think we'll be cheering on Jarvis or Umanna when they eventually put their names forward?

 

Back on topic an open letter was penned yesterday by David Aaronovich begging people not to vote for him. Fairly interesting read.

 

 

Dear young Corbynista,

 

I know you won’t be reading this online since you don’t want to give any money to Rupert Murdoch. But there’s just a chance of you seeing The Times in your local library (if the Tory cuts have left any standing) or of reading a copy left on the bus. And if so this column is addressed to you.

 

I don’t think you’re stupid (or, at any rate, no stupider than anyone else). And I understand that you care about things — certainly more than some of your hedonistic selfie-stick contemporaries who you may find frustratingly and almost deliberately ignorant. I am also beginning to grasp — hard though it is for me — that my waving the past before your eyes is not persuasive. The 1983 Labour electoral disaster? The Militant Tendency? Neil Kinnock’s battles against a far left that included Jeremy Corbyn? Ancient history. So if I tell you that some of those old Trotskyists, unrepentant and unlearning, have shaken off the attic dust and joined the JC movement, that will mean nothing. And perhaps it shouldn’t. They aren’t the people fuelling this candidacy. You are.

 

And I don’t think you’re going to be impressed either by my reminding you that Mr Corbyn has, by the age of 66, never actually run anything in his life, never had to defend a decision or a policy. Look at all the middle-class, middle-aged white men who have been in charge of things, you may retort. At least he’s not one of them.

 

But what is he one of? A volunteer, helping to run his packed-out meeting in Camden on Monday night, said of Mr Corbyn: “It is not what he says, it is what he stands for.” And that distinction, of course, means that Corbynism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So what he’s likely to stand for is fairness, a commitment to peace and no cuts to anything except Trident.

 

Up to now you’ve mostly been told by Mr Corbyn’s opponents that the biggest problem with him is that he is not electable. To which your response, like the musician Brian Eno’s on Monday night, might be that electability is overrated. What’s the point of being in politics if fear of the ballot box terrifies you out of saying what you believe? How can you ever change things that way?

 

So I want to tell you instead why I wouldn’t support Jeremy Corbyn even if he was electable and why you might not either. It’s an argument that does have something to do with what he says and supports — and has said and supported for years — rather than what you imagine he stands for.

I read an interview with JC recently in which the admiring questioner said that “the thing about Corbyn is that he is nearly always proved right — after the event”. The example given was his support for talking to Sinn Fein long before the Good Friday Agreement brought peace to Northern Ireland. So, for example, Corbyn’s observation of a minute’s silence in 1987 for an IRA squad ambushed by the army at Loughgall had to be seen as a sort of premature peace gesture.

 

This is almost comically wrong. The significance of Loughgall was that it was one of the events that convinced the Provisional IRA that it could not force Britain out of Northern Ireland by military means. Corbyn was utterly mistaken about it. But then, in his view, all would have been well if only Britain had withdrawn and allowed a united Ireland, over the heads of the Protestant majority in Ulster. He argued for that. But eventually peace was achieved without a united Ireland.

 

Corbyn’s support for militant Republicanism did not come from nowhere. It came from a Cold War analysis that identified “imperialism” as the chief enemy of peoples everywhere. In 1991 he opposed the military operation against Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. In 1999 he opposed military action against Milosevic’s potentially genocidal campaign in Kosovo and argued for Nato to be disbanded. He opposed sanctions against Saddam’s Iraq. In November 2001 he opposed military action against the Taliban who had sheltered bin Laden’s bases in Afghanistan. He opposes military support for the Kurds against Islamic State now. Whenever there is a conflict, as in Ukraine, it is — in Corbyn’s view — the imperialist West’s fault. Last year, as Russian armour entered the sovereign republic of Ukraine, Mr Corbyn wrote an article in the Morning Star subtitled “It is the US drive to expand eastwards which lies at the root of the crisis in the former Soviet republic.”

 

It is always, always, always the West’s fault, partly because the West’s social economic system, even when modified or reformed, is inferior and drives it to conquest. And Mr Corbyn, in his many statements and speeches and motions in favour of the Chavistas in Venezuela or the Castros in Cuba, supports — believes in — a better system.

 

That system is state socialism: I use the term here analytically, not pejoratively. Mr Corbyn still argues that Labour should re-adopt its old Clause IV, requiring “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service”.

 

Taken at its word (and Mr Corbyn is famously sincere) such a provision would require the corner shop to be run by a workers and residents committee. In practice in Cuba and Venezuela (the Chinese have long abandoned it) it means a deadening, bureaucratic nightmare, held together only by an antipathy towards America.

 

It entails economies that go bust even when there is oil, cities where the fabled people’s doctors can’t get paid and have to supplement their income selling drugs on the black market. It means a shackled press and the intimidation of opponents.

In practice those who seem to espouse such statism abroad don’t follow it at home. As mayor of London Ken Livingstone was as boringly pragmatic as Boris. More, even. In Scotland the SNP government talks left yet does nothing to frighten the middle-class horses. So, if you don’t mind purely rhetorical and foreign-policy leftism, that’s reassuring.

 

But you said Mr Corbyn is different. He’s not like all those compromising, frightened, etiolated Labourites of recent years. He’s the genuine article. He means it. In which case he is absolutely the last person you should want to see lead the Labour party. Because the “it” he means is even worse — far worse, in fact — than the state we’re in now.

 

So please don’t do it.

 

Yours, David

[Molly]

too long to read sorry Matt, 

 

So do you WANT Corbyn or Burnham as the next leader and why do you care?

 

Why do the Telegraph care? Don't they want the best opposition possible? Do they want a lack of political competition - seems anti capitalist to me? Do they just want whatever the conservatives put out to be automaticaly in power without being pushed to be the best for Tory voters and the nation?

 

Explain Tory motivation in the Labour leadership contest to me please.

 

But more condensed than the last post.

[Guest MattP]

too long to read sorry Matt, 

 

So do you WANT Corbyn or Burnham as the next leader and why do you care?

 

Why do the Telegraph care? Don't they want the best opposition possible? Do they want a lack of political competition - seems anti capitalist to me? Do they just want whatever the conservatives put out to be automaticaly in power without being pushed to be the best for Tory voters and the nation?

 

Explain Tory motivation in the Labour leadership contest to me please.

 

But more condensed than the last post.

 

From the perspective of wanting a Conservative victory in 2020 I want Corbyn, from the perspective of wanting a decent opposition party to hold the government to account (something every democracy needs) I want Burnham.

 

The Daily Telegraph is pure Tory so they will want whoever is best for the Conservatives, they even backed the Tories in 97' when no other newspaper would have dared too.

[Rincewind]

One of your better posts Matt. Corbyn has certainly stirred things up. Some of the Labour MP's dont know which way to go. Support Corbyn they will upset the  middle ground voters, support Burnham and it allows the Tories to run amok.

[Guest MattP]

One of your better posts Matt. Corbyn has certainly stirred things up. Some of the Labour MP's dont know which way to go. Support Corbyn they will upset the  middle ground voters, support Burnham and it allows the Tories to run amok.

 

Barely any Labour MP's are supporting Corbyn, he needed to beg at 11.55am on the morning nominations closed to get the 35 MP's he needed to enter, a handful of them said they only did it so they could have all sides represented, since then one has publicy said they are an idiot for allowing this to happen and numerous others have said they can't imagine him as leader.

 

I think supporting Corbyn will be allowing the Tories to run amok, they will be able to be as extreme as they want with their policies knowing victory in 2020 is all but certain, also means George Osborne would be guaranteed the top job IMO, no need for Boris , you don't pick a clown to fight another clown, you pick stability.

[Molly]

Barely any Labour MP's are supporting Corbyn, he needed to beg at 11.55am on the morning nominations closed to get the 35 MP's he needed to enter, a handful of them said they only did it so they could have all sides represented, since then one has publicy said they are an idiot for allowing this to happen and numerous others have said they can't imagine him as leader.

 

I think supporting Corbyn will be allowing the Tories to run amok, they will be able to be as extreme as they want with their policies knowing victory in 2020 is all but certain, also means George Osborne would be guaranteed the top job IMO, no need for Boris , you don't pick a clown to fight another clown, you pick stability.

 

Maybe the present Labour MPs have proven that they are too right wing and they need to join the Lib Dems. 

 

If that makes the Lib Dems the party to challenge at the next election then so be it.

 

A new centre -left/Left labour party who believe in Labour ethics would be good for the UK and western politics.

[davieG]

How to you get over having a disability. Not all disabilities are visible.

I read a story about a woman who was  in a wheelar and was approachedby a man and was verbably abused with  him saying I bet you arnt really diosabledand just a scrounger. She was upset and angry as she has a condition that prevents her walking far. Another disabled person was insulted as she got  out her car and told she should not park in a disabled bay. Yhe abuser was silenced when the driver revealed that she was a  carer and fetched a wheelchair out the back.

This sort of thing is occurring more and more partly due to some sections of the media hyping the 'get over it' and'they are not really disabled' angle. There are several illnesses where a person can be fine for a few days then suddenly change putting themselves and others at risk. You cannot detect this by asking them to lift an empty cardboard box.

Another woman said she was told she was irrateble and irrational in her behavior when at an ATOS test yet the accessor wrote down able to communicate well. The form was seen at an appeal that was won. So who was lying?

I think people reactions to apparently healthy people using disabled spots is more down to the fact that healthy people do use them. Lot's of people both rich and poor, Tory, labour, libs and what have yous are fundamentally lazy and selfish and this is very apparent amongst car drivers.

[Claridge]

Because, contrary to leftwing myth,the children of the poor do not always stay poor. Those with the drive and determination to change their circumstances will advance in life, those who prefer to sit back and blame their parents, the govt, society in general will never rise above their background.That's all down to their personality type and no govt can do anything to change that.

Exactly,there are masses of opportunities for people to better themselves.the left and labour need people to be poor or they would have only public sector workers and benefit scroungers voting for them.oh wait a minute...

[Guest MattP]

Maybe the present Labour MPs have proven that they are too right wing and they need to join the Lib Dems. 

 

If that makes the Lib Dems the party to challenge at the next election then so be it.

 

A new centre -left/Left labour party who believe in Labour ethics would be good for the UK and western politics.

 

Which Labour MP's do you really think are too "right wing"? Frank Field and John Mann maybe and both of those would still be classed as centre at most in terms of politics, the Lib Dems and Labour are miles apart, even more so now with a socially conservative leader in Tim Farron.

 

I think the Labour party went far enough to the left last year, when you have parties like the Greens and the SNP saying they want to go into coalition with you you can't be far off. We had talk of mansion taxes, wealth taxes, 50p top rates, freezing private companies assets, it was as left as they have been since the 80's and it was totally rejected by the English (and even Welsh by their standards) public.

 

In reality Jeremy Corbyn is nothing more than a professional protestor, if that's the route Labour go down it won't be good for anybody except Conservative MP's.

[Rincewind]

too long to read sorry Matt, 

 

So do you WANT Corbyn or Burnham as the next leader and why do you care?

 

Why do the Telegraph care? Don't they want the best opposition possible? Do they want a lack of political competition - seems anti capitalist to me? Do they just want whatever the conservatives put out to be automaticaly in power without being pushed to be the best for Tory voters and the nation?

 

Explain Tory motivation in the Labour leadership contest to me please.

 

But more condensed than the last post.

The  'Torygraph' want an easy ride as possible to allow Tory rule forever. They back the Tories 100%and their readership who some make huge donations to the party. Corbyn is speaking out for the poor and vulnerable now which will put those with self interest and believe all the 'shirkers' stories off. IMaybe it would be better to have someone like Burnham or Cooper who are playing it safe but will fight the causes when leader. Corbyn will never get the majority of Labour MP's to toe the line in debates and votes as they do not want to lose their seats. As the letter says his lack of experience in leading is a factor too.

I like him as a person. He speaks his mind, has good values and sticks up for the poorest and most vulnerable. The ones the majority of us do not know about or read about in the Torygraph.

If Corbyn is chosen I cannot see the right wing press urging people to vote for him. They will highlight his faults as they did with the SNP to put people off. Poltics is a dirty nasty buisness and the media plays a huge part in it.