Current Affairs The Labour Party

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catcherintherye said:
The position that Corbyn's electoral result was that impressive. On each point.

Yes in many ways I agree, I'd rather Labour won, You can only control what is within your control base though. The "right" vote had been building up over a 20 year period and he didn't have the luxury of winning an election with circa 35% of the vote. Those are not things within Corbyn's control. What was in his control was how many votes he received and what % he could attract which he did very well. You do have problems of legitimacy of winning with 35% of the vote too, it's good in the short term but rots away at a party over time.

I remember very few people proclaiming May to be useless during the election campaign and fewer still before it. Everyone predicted an enormous Conservative win. Most anti-cornyn thinkers thought she might win by 150+. I thought the opposite. It might sound churlish but I don't take those people's views very seriously anymore, especially when they employ the same methods of evaluation against Corbyn that led them to under estimate him at the last election.

I do pay attention to polls. I have gambled (and won) substantial values based off interpretation of Polls. The polls continue to be quite a bit out. There are numerical reasons why they are out and some cultural reasons. For me I will always take the concrete (and broad) data provided by an election over the biases of mathmatical geeks (most of who'm will only have a maths degree) in polling companies.

I am unsure why he would be miles ahead. The two parties are broadly similar in the polls, continually changing leads. There has been little movement. I suspect there won't be much movement until the exact details of Brexit are known. I have said this fairly consistently for 2 years. People will not move much.

Corbyn is by no means a Messiah. I have not made any contention that he is a messiah and nor would I. I try to be balanced and have written about experiences meeting him (for better and worse). Part of that balance has to be giving someone credit for outstanding electoral performance when it is shown. It surprised me how well he did and so you have to find some reason as to why that occurred. The May being useless one doesn't fit for me. The Tories are a ruthless outfit, if it was all her she'd be gone, They know there are more fundamental reasons than that.
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Are you serious with the point I underlined? She went into the campaign as representing "strong and stable", which the Tories had to discard because she made such an utter fool of herself, yelling out "Nothing has changed" while performing a U-turn on the so called "death tax". Her personal poll ratings were pretty high before the campaign but sank like a stone the more people saw of her. It's pretty much universally agreed that the Conservatives' campaign, and especially Mrs May's part in it, was a total disaster.
 
Aberblue said:
Are you serious with the point I underlined? She went into the campaign as representing "strong and stable", which the Tories had to discard because she made such an utter fool of herself, yelling out "Nothing has changed" while performing a U-turn on the so called "death tax". Her personal poll ratings were pretty high before the campaign but sank like a stone the more people saw of her. It's pretty much universally agreed that the Conservatives' campaign, and especially Mrs May's part in it, was a total disaster.
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Very few political commentators were saying that though. In retrospect yes, but at the same time no. They were all saying May would win substantially. Look at the predictions, all of them have May winning by 80+.
 
catcherintherye said:
Very few political commentators were saying that though. In retrospect yes, but at the same time no. They were all saying May would win substantially. Look at the predictions, all of them have May winning by 80+.
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I agree that few were saying it before the election. It was a near universal view during the campaign that she performed disastrously. Many commentators said so at the time, including not a few generally pro-Conservative ones.
 
Aberblue said:
I agree that few were saying it before the election. It was a near universal view during the campaign that she performed disastrously. Many commentators said so at the time, including not a few generally pro-Conservative ones.
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About the time when she announced the flag ship social care policy, people realised the true cost of old age, and suddenly became born again socialists. Odd that!?
 
davek said:
If only it were more than that..

It seems the shedding of the neo-cons came to a halt today.

Shame. There needs to be another 30-40 slung out before it becomes the real Labour Party again.

Hopefully the dregs have another press conference in mind to parade the rest of their ilk.
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If they do it they will probably do it on the drip to try to cause maximum damage.

Kin rats the lot of them.
 
Jib in lad said:
If they do it they will probably do it on the drip to try to cause maximum damage.

Kin rats the lot of them.
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Oh they defo will. That's their strategy though. My only concern is to see tens more of them out of the LP. I'd prefer it to be in one fell swoop, but as long as they go I'm happy.
 
catcherintherye said:
Yes I agree with most of this. Say what you want of his opponents but they grasp the nature of his political strength more astutely than him. As a slight aside I've been re-reading much of Trotsky, particularly from secondary sources and his conduct around 1917, and it's frankly laughable people put Corbyn in to his category.

The issue for Corbyn to me is very much the issue of the wider left of the LP. They are very tied in to the institution of the LP. I think Tony Benn always used to say there was an enormous important of the LP maintaining a right wing and a left wing in order to fly (or some equivalent logic). There are moments like this where it becomes clear the only way to advance a progressive leftists agenda is to risk jeopardising the LP and they are unwilling to contemplate it. That fear and inaction is sensed by their opponents and maximised.

The point you make about outside of Westminster is spot on too. The truth is he is terrible at the Westminster stuff. He would make an awful regularity SD leader (unlike say a Mcdonnell who is quite good at that stuff) but he is very good on the streets. That he continually keeps trying to reduce his role to being more like a conventional statesman shows a lack of understanding of how he would come to power.
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Do you know if McDonnell is deliberately keeping the brakes on a bit - given he's light years ahead of Corbyn in terms of ability? He had a heart attack a few years back and has spoken about how he saw his career winding down, so I wonder if he is being quite careful with his health.

Most surprising thing to me about JC is how tough he has been - for a man who's never had to make a decision in his working life. To go from relative back bench obscurity to the Daily Mail crawling up your ringpiece 24/7 would be an absolute meteor strike to your mental health. McDonnell is obv a busy frontline politician but that is orders of magnitude above.
 
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