Next Leader of the Opposition

[Nick]

To be fair I don't see a problem with this - you get paid for what you do and use the resources available to get the best results.

I'm not sure that Ken has to be Homeless to represent the plight of homeless people if you get my drift..... Corbyn has a decent track record of expense spending and use of the public purse.

I don't know enough about this fella yet to judge - whilst in principal I perhaps am swayed by the principles of about 70% of his agenda, I find the other 30% to be a little dangerous and on first glance perhaps a bit socialist-Marxist?

If I'm honest his life and work experience is impressive but his lack of educational attainment (for a decision maker who's talking about the possibility of printing money) concerns me as I'd quite like somebody who's in that job to have a convincing CV in terms of historical socio-economic and political knowledge....

Whatever happens he's going to need some polishing - someone to perhaps dress him would be a start.

[Captain...]

Can't blame him accepting a state funded car, he can't cycle to all of his appointments around the nation, but it would have been a huge gesture to turn down the pay rise, unless he is going to spend it all on respectful clothes for state occasions.

 

As for PMQs, it has been crap since Blair went, probably because it has been a complete mismatch, Brown was appalling, Miliband was just predictable and uninspiring, Cameron has outclassed them both and with that he gets the boorish support from his cabinet. I have stopped watching it because I didn't learn anything from it, I just came away thinking politicians are a bunch of cocks and the format really stifled any debate. Miliband asks a question, Cameron doesn't answer it, he asks it again, Cameron doesn't answer it in a different away, he asks it again.... Then some sycophantic back bencher asks some PM praising guff that gives Cameron a chance to bleat on about how great they are.

 

We also have to appreciate that modern media has changed a lot as well and PMQs is becoming less relevant as everything has already been picked over on the internet and in the multiple 24 hour news outlets. We don't really need Cameron to repeat that all again on PMQs we know what he is going to say about every issue and he has already said it. 

[Captain...]

I'm just watching Yesterday's now on catch up, why do MPs stand up in between the opposition leaders questions and even between the PMs response? they know the leader gets 6 questions, and the speaker is not going to interrupt that. It just looks ridiculous.

 

Conclusion from the opening exchanges is that it does let Cameron off, he gets a chance to make his party political broadcast about an issue and doesn't really get called out on any of it.

 

Maybe limit it to 3 questions from the public giving Corbyn a chance to respond to each answer from Cameron and put him on the spot a bit more.

[Bettsj2]

After watching it again I thought it made Cameron look incredibly ministerial and Corbyn look like a bloke who'd won a competition on Radio 5 to ask the Prime Minister a question at PMQ's.

Dont understand how anyone can say that was good for Corbyn.

[Guest]

I think we need to wait a while before making all these judgements on Corbyn as oppo leader.

 

It's like seeing Riyad lose the ball and calling him shit because you're basing it on 1 part of the whole.

[The Horse's Mouth]

It was weird to see Cameron acting mature and less desperate to get his little quips in

[johnny the fox]

I think we need to wait a while before making all these judgements on Corbyn as oppo leader.

 

It's like seeing Riyad lose the ball and calling him shit because you're basing it on 1 part of the whole.

A really great analogy .....ha ha ...  your funny.

[Wymsey]

Why do certain critics feel to have the need to criticize newly-appointed people over comments they made under 10 years ago?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34285308

 

I've rarely seen any positivity regarding Corbyn's approach and decisions via the media recently.

[cambridgefox]

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy

[Guest MattP]

Why do certain critics feel to have the need to criticize newly-appointed people over comments they made under 10 years ago?

 

Because it was a pretty obscene thing to say, to want to reward people who engage in the murder of innocents and tried to blow up democratically elected governments.

 

His apology was very welcome though and I hope it was sincere.

 

Interesting to hear him spill the beans on Corbyn as well, sorry to upset you Buce but he said he always actually does sing God Save the Queen despite his beliefs, he didn't on this occasion as he thought he event was a solemn occasion, a weird explanation that's barely believable but it does make it pretty clear he will be singing it in future.

 

Was happy that Alec Salmond pretty much word for word repeated what I said about it, you are representing your party not yourself so behave like a statesman.

[johnny the fox]

Because it was a pretty obscene thing to say, to want to reward people who engage in the murder of innocents and tried to blow up democratically elected governments.

 

His apology was very welcome though and I hope it was sincere.

 

Interesting to hear him spill the beans on Corbyn as well, sorry to upset you Buce but he said he always actually does sing God Save the Queen despite his beliefs, he didn't on this occasion as he thought he event was a solemn occasion, a weird explanation that's barely believable but it does make it pretty clear he will be singing it in future.

 

Was happy that Alec Salmond pretty much word for word repeated what I said about it, you are representing your party not yourself so behave like a statesman.

The fact is ...it goes to the judgement of the person who said it... when ever it was said. sometimes its better to engage the brain before opening the mouth...not easy most politicians who love the sound of their own voices..

[Buce]

Because it was a pretty obscene thing to say, to want to reward people who engage in the murder of innocents and tried to blow up democratically elected governments.

His apology was very welcome though and I hope it was sincere.

Interesting to hear him spill the beans on Corbyn as well, sorry to upset you Buce but he said he always actually does sing God Save the Queen despite his beliefs, he didn't on this occasion as he thought he event was a solemn occasion, a weird explanation that's barely believable but it does make it pretty clear he will be singing it in future.

Was happy that Alec Salmond pretty much word for word repeated what I said about it, you are representing your party not yourself so behave like a statesman.

Meh, it doesn't upset me, Matt, it was a non-story in the first place. And as JC says, there are more important battles to fight.

Thanks for your concern, though.

[ozleicester]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=177&v=Dm_omxZTp7o

[Guest]

A really great analogy .....ha ha ...  your funny.

 

you're

[Guest]

Because it was a pretty obscene thing to say, to want to reward people who engage in the murder of innocents and tried to blow up democratically elected governments.

 

His apology was very welcome though and I hope it was sincere.

 

 

 

I'm not disagreeing with you MattP but I'm sure you said something 10 years ago which was pretty obscene.

 

I think we should accept responsibility for all our choices but that doesn't mean it's too big a deal. 

 

Every young person thinks differently to when they are old - you'll see!

[Bettsj2]

McDonnell was excellent on QT.

Didn't get rattled, apologised and explained the IRA remarks in a way that to be quite frank, was completely acceptable to me.

Regards the national anthem explanation, Salmon and the others made good points about responsibility as a leader etc but that was a little pointless as McDonnell said that Corbyn didn't consciously not sing it. I dont think Corbyn is a good choice and think he'll ultimately fail but why the rest of the panel seemed reluctant to accept the explanation of him not singing the anthem, seemed a good excuse to bash the guy rather than show a bit of understanding.

The guy said he had an emotional moment thinking of his parents. Fair enough.

[Rincewind]

The Captain has it about right.

[Buce]

The fact is ...it goes to the judgement of the person who said it... when ever it was said. sometimes its better to engage the brain before opening the mouth...not easy most politicians who love the sound of their own voices..

For once, I am speechless.

[Rincewind]

McDonnell was excellent on QT.

Didn't get rattled, apologised and explained the IRA remarks in a way that to be quite frank, was completely acceptable to me.

Regards the national anthem explanation, Salmon and the others made good points about responsibility as a leader etc but that was a little pointless as McDonnell said that Corbyn didn't consciously not sing it. I dont think Corbyn is a good choice and think he'll ultimately fail but why the rest of the panel seemed reluctant to accept the explanation of him not singing the anthem, seemed a good excuse to bash the guy rather than show a bit of understanding.

The guy said he had an emotional moment thinking of his parents. Fair enough.

He said the same thing to John Snow on Channel Four about his parents and sounded sincere. Had to smile when Snow tactfully mentioned his clothes and Corbyn turned it round and complimented Snow on his coat. He was also asked if he was frustrated Corbyn said no I am relaxed How can relaxed be nervous?

Despite his faults and we all have them I think he comes across as  genuine. You could have a conversation  and a pint with him and he'd even buy a round out of his own money. He'd probably have a game of pool or darts with you maybe boules.

I could not see some of the other senior politicians doing this. They may pose with a half pint for the press but cameras out the way they'll be back on the sherry or port and lemon.

As I said time will tell and maybe being a nice block is not enough for his position or even run the country but it makes a refreshing change to how it has been in recent years.

[Guest MattP]

Meh, it doesn't upset me, Matt, it was a non-story in the first place. And as JC says, there are more important battles to fight.

Thanks for your concern, though.

 

No problem, the defence you launched of him was very passionate and you claimed he didn't sing because of his views but good to hear you'll cool the fact he actually does.

 

I'm not disagreeing with you MattP but I'm sure you said something 10 years ago which was pretty obscene.

 

I think we should accept responsibility for all our choices but that doesn't mean it's too big a deal. 

 

Every young person thinks differently to when they are old - you'll see!

 

Young? Donnell made these comments when he was 54 years old FIF, 22 years older than I am now. Had he made these comments when he was under 30 I would understand but the guy was well into his 50's so I think the "we all say silly things when we are young" is really going to wash here.

[johnny the fox]

For once, I am speechless.

I can understand that..its a new concept for you.. being stuck dumb does not exclude you from the thread.

[Guest MattP]

Quite a thought provoking article from Nick Cohen on why he's given up on the British left.

 

Left-wing thought has shifted towards movements it would once have denounced as racist, imperialist and fascistic. It is insupportable.

 

‘Tory, Tory, Tory. You’re a Tory.’ The level of hatred directed by the Corbyn left at Labour people who have fought Tories all their lives is as menacing as it is ridiculous. If you are a woman, you face misogyny. Kate Godfrey, the centrist Labour candidate in Stafford, told the Times she had received death threats and pornographic hate mail after challenging her local left. If you are a man, you are condemned in language not heard since the fall of Marxist Leninism. ‘This pathetic small-minded jealousy of the anti-democratic bourgeois shows them up for the reactionary neocons they really are,’ a Guardian commenter told its columnist Rafael Behr after he had criticised Corbyn.

 

Not that they are careful about anything, or that they will take advice from me, but the left should be careful of what it wishes for. Its accusations won’t seem ridiculous soon. The one prophesy I can make with certainty amid today’s chaos is that many on the left will head for the right. When they arrive, they will be greeted with bogus explanations for their ‘betrayal’.

 

Conservatives will talk as if there is a right-wing gene which, like male-pattern baldness, manifests itself with age. The US leftist-turned-neocon Irving Kristol set the pattern for the pattern-baldness theory of politics when he opined that a conservative is a liberal who has been ‘mugged by reality’. He did not understand that the effects of reality’s many muggings are never predictable, or that facts of life are not always, as Margaret Thatcher claimed, conservative. If they were, we would still have feudalism.

The standard explanation from left-wingers is equally self-serving. Turncoats are like prostitutes, they say, who sell their virtue for money. They are pure; those who disagree with them are corrupt; and that is all there is to it.

 

Owen Jones, who seems to have abandoned journalism to become Jeremy Corbyn’s PR man, offers an equally thoughtless argument. ‘Swimming against a strong tide is exhausting,’ he sighed recently. Leftists who stray from virtue are defeated dissidents, who bend under the pressure to conform.

 

It won’t wash, particularly as Jones cannot break with the pressures that enforce conformity in his left-wing world and accept the real reason why many leave the left. It ought to be obvious. The left is why they leave the left. Never more so than today.

In the past, people would head to the exits saying, ‘Better the centre right than the far left.’ Now they can say ‘better the centre right than the far right’. The shift of left-wing thought towards movements it would once have denounced as racist, imperialist and fascistic has been building for years. I come from a left-wing family, marched against Margaret Thatcher and was one of the first journalists to denounce New Labour’s embrace of corporate capitalism — and I don’t regret any of it. But slowly, too slowly I am ashamed to say, I began to notice that left-wing politics had turned rancid.

 

In 2007 I tried to make amends, and published What’s Left. If they were true to their professed principles, my book argued, modern leftists would search out secular forces in the Muslim world — Iranian and Arab feminists, say, Kurdish socialists or Muslim liberals struggling against reactionary clerics here in Britain — and embrace them as comrades. Instead, they preferred to excuse half the anti-western theocrats and dictators on the planet. As, in their quiet way, did many in the liberal mainstream. Throughout that period, I never heard the BBC demanding of ‘progressives’ how they could call themselves left-wing when they had not a word of comfort for the Iraqi and Afghan liberals al-Qaeda was slaughtering.

 

The triumph of Jeremy Corbyn has led to What’s Left sales picking up, and readers acclaiming my alleged prescience. Grateful though I am, I cannot accept the compliment. I never imagined that left-wing politics would get as bad as they have become. I assumed that when the criminally irresponsible Blair flew off in his Learjet, the better angels of the left’s nature would re-assert themselves.

 

What a fool I was.

 

Jeremy Corbyn did not become Labour leader because his friends in the Socialist Workers party organised a Leninist coup. Nor did the £3 click-activist day-trippers hand him victory. He won with the hearty and freely given support of ‘decent’ Labour members.

And yes, thank you, I know all about the feebleness of Corbyn’s opponents. But the fact remains that the Labour party has just endorsed an apologist for Putin’s imperial aggression; a man who did not just appear on the propaganda channel of Russia, which invades its neighbours and persecutes gays, but also of Iran, whose hangmen actually execute gays. Labour’s new leader sees a moral equivalence between 9/11 and the assassination of bin Laden, and associates with every variety of women-hating, queer-bashing, Jew-baiting jihadi, holocaust denier and 9/11 truther. His supporters know it, but they don’t care.

 

They don’t put it like that, naturally. Their first response is to cry ‘smear’. When I show that it is nothing of the sort, they say that he was ‘engaging in dialogue’, even though Corbyn only ever has a ‘dialogue’ with one side and his ‘engagement’ never involves anything so principled as robust criticism.

 

A few on the British left are beginning to realise what they have done. Feminists were the first to stir from their slumber. They were outraged this week when Corbyn gave all his top jobs to men. I have every sympathy. But really, what did they expect from a man who never challenged the oppression of women in Iran when he was a guest on the state propaganda channel? You cannot promote equality at home while defending subjugation abroad and it was naive to imagine that Corbyn would try.

The women’s issue nicely illustrates the damage he can do, even if he never becomes prime minister. When Labour shows by its actions that it doesn’t believe in women’s equality, the pressure on other institutions diminishes. Secularists and liberal Muslims will feel a different kind of prejudice. They will no longer get a hearing for their campaigns against forced marriage and sharia law from a Labour party that counts the Muslim Brotherhood among his allies.

 

The position of the Jews is grimmer still. To be blunt, the new leader of the opposition is ‘friends’ with men who want them dead. One Jewish Labour supporter told me, ‘I feel like a gay man in the Tory party just after they’ve passed Section 28.’ Another described his position as ‘incredibly exposed’. He had ‘come to understand in the last few weeks, quite how shallow the attachment of the left is to principles which I thought defined it.’

 

And yes, thank you again, I know at this point I am meant to say that Corbyn isn’t an anti-Semite. Maybe he isn’t, but some of his best friends are, and the record shows that out of cynicism or conviction he will engage in the left’s version of ‘dog-whistle’ race politics.

 

I am middle-class and won’t suffer under the coming decade of majority Tory rule. Millions need a centre-left alternative, but I cannot see them being attracted by the revival of lumpen leftism either. Unlike their Scottish and French counterparts, the English intelligentsia has always had a problem with patriotism. Whenever this trend has manifested itself, voters have turned away, reasoning that politicians who appear to hate England are likely to have little time for the English.

 

By electing Corbyn, Labour has chosen a man who fits every cliché the right has used to mobilise working-class conservatism. In the 1790s, George Canning described the typical English supporter of the French Revolution ‘as a friend of every country but his own’. Today’s Tories can, with justice, say the same about Corbyn. George Orwell wrote of the ‘English intellectual [who] would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “God Save the King” than of stealing from a poor box’. That came to mind on Tuesday when Corbyn declined to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ at the Battle of Britain remembrance service.

 

I opened What’s Left with a quote by Norman Cohn, from Warrant for Genocide, his history of how the conspiracy theories that ended in fascism began in the dark, neglected corners of 19th-century Europe:

In the years since What’s Left was published, I have argued that the likes of Corbyn do not represent the true left; that there are other worthier traditions opposed to oppression whether the oppressors are pro-western or anti-western. I can’t be bothered any more. Cries of ‘I’m the real left!’, ‘No I’m the real left!’ are always silly. And in any case, there is no doubt which ‘real left’ has won.

 

The half-educated fanatics are in control now. I do not see how in conscience I can stay with their movement or vote for their party. I am not going to pretend the next time I meet Owen Jones or those Labour politicians who serve in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet that we are still members of the same happy family. There are differences that cannot and should not be smoothed over.

I realise now what I should have known years ago. The causes I most care about — secularism, freedom of speech, universal human rights — are not their causes. Whatever they pretend, when the crunch comes, they will always put sectarian unity first, and find reasons to be elsewhere.

 

So, for what it is worth, this is my resignation letter from the left. I have no idea who I should send it to or if there are forms to fill in. But I do know this: like so many before me, I can claim constructive dismissal.

[Guest]

Young? Donnell made these comments when he was 54 years old FIF, 22 years older than I am now. Had he made these comments when he was under 30 I would understand but the guy was well into his 50's so I think the "we all say silly things when we are young" is really going to wash here.

 

Fair enough.

 

Older people are not allowed to say silly things.

 

I'm sure you never will.

Quite a thought provoking article from Nick Cohen on why he's given up on the British left.

 

Left-wing thought has shifted towards movements it would once have denounced as racist, imperialist and fascistic. It is insupportable.

 

‘Tory, Tory, Tory. You’re a Tory.’ The level of hatred directed by the Corbyn left at Labour people who have fought Tories all their lives is as menacing as it is ridiculous. If you are a woman, you face misogyny. Kate Godfrey, the centrist Labour candidate in Stafford, told the Times she had received death threats and pornographic hate mail after challenging her local left. If you are a man, you are condemned in language not heard since the fall of Marxist Leninism. ‘This pathetic small-minded jealousy of the anti-democratic bourgeois shows them up for the reactionary neocons they really are,’ a Guardian commenter told its columnist Rafael Behr after he had criticised Corbyn.

 

Not that they are careful about anything, or that they will take advice from me, but the left should be careful of what it wishes for. Its accusations won’t seem ridiculous soon. The one prophesy I can make with certainty amid today’s chaos is that many on the left will head for the right. When they arrive, they will be greeted with bogus explanations for their ‘betrayal’.

 

Conservatives will talk as if there is a right-wing gene which, like male-pattern baldness, manifests itself with age. The US leftist-turned-neocon Irving Kristol set the pattern for the pattern-baldness theory of politics when he opined that a conservative is a liberal who has been ‘mugged by reality’. He did not understand that the effects of reality’s many muggings are never predictable, or that facts of life are not always, as Margaret Thatcher claimed, conservative. If they were, we would still have feudalism.

The standard explanation from left-wingers is equally self-serving. Turncoats are like prostitutes, they say, who sell their virtue for money. They are pure; those who disagree with them are corrupt; and that is all there is to it.

 

Owen Jones, who seems to have abandoned journalism to become Jeremy Corbyn’s PR man, offers an equally thoughtless argument. ‘Swimming against a strong tide is exhausting,’ he sighed recently. Leftists who stray from virtue are defeated dissidents, who bend under the pressure to conform.

 

It won’t wash, particularly as Jones cannot break with the pressures that enforce conformity in his left-wing world and accept the real reason why many leave the left. It ought to be obvious. The left is why they leave the left. Never more so than today.

In the past, people would head to the exits saying, ‘Better the centre right than the far left.’ Now they can say ‘better the centre right than the far right’. The shift of left-wing thought towards movements it would once have denounced as racist, imperialist and fascistic has been building for years. I come from a left-wing family, marched against Margaret Thatcher and was one of the first journalists to denounce New Labour’s embrace of corporate capitalism — and I don’t regret any of it. But slowly, too slowly I am ashamed to say, I began to notice that left-wing politics had turned rancid.

 

In 2007 I tried to make amends, and published What’s Left. If they were true to their professed principles, my book argued, modern leftists would search out secular forces in the Muslim world — Iranian and Arab feminists, say, Kurdish socialists or Muslim liberals struggling against reactionary clerics here in Britain — and embrace them as comrades. Instead, they preferred to excuse half the anti-western theocrats and dictators on the planet. As, in their quiet way, did many in the liberal mainstream. Throughout that period, I never heard the BBC demanding of ‘progressives’ how they could call themselves left-wing when they had not a word of comfort for the Iraqi and Afghan liberals al-Qaeda was slaughtering.

 

The triumph of Jeremy Corbyn has led to What’s Left sales picking up, and readers acclaiming my alleged prescience. Grateful though I am, I cannot accept the compliment. I never imagined that left-wing politics would get as bad as they have become. I assumed that when the criminally irresponsible Blair flew off in his Learjet, the better angels of the left’s nature would re-assert themselves.

 

What a fool I was.

 

Jeremy Corbyn did not become Labour leader because his friends in the Socialist Workers party organised a Leninist coup. Nor did the £3 click-activist day-trippers hand him victory. He won with the hearty and freely given support of ‘decent’ Labour members.

And yes, thank you, I know all about the feebleness of Corbyn’s opponents. But the fact remains that the Labour party has just endorsed an apologist for Putin’s imperial aggression; a man who did not just appear on the propaganda channel of Russia, which invades its neighbours and persecutes gays, but also of Iran, whose hangmen actually execute gays. Labour’s new leader sees a moral equivalence between 9/11 and the assassination of bin Laden, and associates with every variety of women-hating, queer-bashing, Jew-baiting jihadi, holocaust denier and 9/11 truther. His supporters know it, but they don’t care.

 

They don’t put it like that, naturally. Their first response is to cry ‘smear’. When I show that it is nothing of the sort, they say that he was ‘engaging in dialogue’, even though Corbyn only ever has a ‘dialogue’ with one side and his ‘engagement’ never involves anything so principled as robust criticism.

 

A few on the British left are beginning to realise what they have done. Feminists were the first to stir from their slumber. They were outraged this week when Corbyn gave all his top jobs to men. I have every sympathy. But really, what did they expect from a man who never challenged the oppression of women in Iran when he was a guest on the state propaganda channel? You cannot promote equality at home while defending subjugation abroad and it was naive to imagine that Corbyn would try.

The women’s issue nicely illustrates the damage he can do, even if he never becomes prime minister. When Labour shows by its actions that it doesn’t believe in women’s equality, the pressure on other institutions diminishes. Secularists and liberal Muslims will feel a different kind of prejudice. They will no longer get a hearing for their campaigns against forced marriage and sharia law from a Labour party that counts the Muslim Brotherhood among his allies.

 

The position of the Jews is grimmer still. To be blunt, the new leader of the opposition is ‘friends’ with men who want them dead. One Jewish Labour supporter told me, ‘I feel like a gay man in the Tory party just after they’ve passed Section 28.’ Another described his position as ‘incredibly exposed’. He had ‘come to understand in the last few weeks, quite how shallow the attachment of the left is to principles which I thought defined it.’

 

And yes, thank you again, I know at this point I am meant to say that Corbyn isn’t an anti-Semite. Maybe he isn’t, but some of his best friends are, and the record shows that out of cynicism or conviction he will engage in the left’s version of ‘dog-whistle’ race politics.

 

I am middle-class and won’t suffer under the coming decade of majority Tory rule. Millions need a centre-left alternative, but I cannot see them being attracted by the revival of lumpen leftism either. Unlike their Scottish and French counterparts, the English intelligentsia has always had a problem with patriotism. Whenever this trend has manifested itself, voters have turned away, reasoning that politicians who appear to hate England are likely to have little time for the English.

 

By electing Corbyn, Labour has chosen a man who fits every cliché the right has used to mobilise working-class conservatism. In the 1790s, George Canning described the typical English supporter of the French Revolution ‘as a friend of every country but his own’. Today’s Tories can, with justice, say the same about Corbyn. George Orwell wrote of the ‘English intellectual [who] would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “God Save the King” than of stealing from a poor box’. That came to mind on Tuesday when Corbyn declined to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ at the Battle of Britain remembrance service.

 

I opened What’s Left with a quote by Norman Cohn, from Warrant for Genocide, his history of how the conspiracy theories that ended in fascism began in the dark, neglected corners of 19th-century Europe:

In the years since What’s Left was published, I have argued that the likes of Corbyn do not represent the true left; that there are other worthier traditions opposed to oppression whether the oppressors are pro-western or anti-western. I can’t be bothered any more. Cries of ‘I’m the real left!’, ‘No I’m the real left!’ are always silly. And in any case, there is no doubt which ‘real left’ has won.

 

The half-educated fanatics are in control now. I do not see how in conscience I can stay with their movement or vote for their party. I am not going to pretend the next time I meet Owen Jones or those Labour politicians who serve in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet that we are still members of the same happy family. There are differences that cannot and should not be smoothed over.

I realise now what I should have known years ago. The causes I most care about — secularism, freedom of speech, universal human rights — are not their causes. Whatever they pretend, when the crunch comes, they will always put sectarian unity first, and find reasons to be elsewhere.

 

So, for what it is worth, this is my resignation letter from the left. I have no idea who I should send it to or if there are forms to fill in. But I do know this: like so many before me, I can claim constructive dismissal.

 

Too long to read and don't really care. it's his perogative for whatever reason.

[Guest MattP]

Fair enough.

 

Older people are not allowed to say silly things.

 

I'm sure you never will.

Too long to read and don't really care. it's his perogative for whatever reason.

 

Do you have to resort to this ridiculous hyperbole everytime someone pulls you up on a point?

 

You tried to explain his comments away by saying young people think differently, I said he was 55 when he made them, that doesn't mean I think older people are not allowed to say silly things.

[Buce]

No problem, the defence you launched of him was very passionate and you claimed he didn't sing because of his views but good to hear you'll cool the fact he actually .

I don't think I did claim that, Matt: I defended his right not to because of his republican beliefs, and against the accusation that not to sing it was 'unpatriotic'. I stand by those comments.

I'm equally cool with him singing it. Like I said, it's a non-story.