Only if
Current Affairs The Labour Party
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NilSatisOptimum
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It's from that salt of the earth Socialist rag the Daily mail, maybe manifesto envoking Express, bastions of social democracy, apparently...
I would agree.
The difficulty (as I see it) for the left is that we have been used to being on the fringes for so long, a certain set of behaviour creep in.You lose site of the bigger picture, that actually millions of people outside of your ranks are very open to a great deal of what you have to offer, if it's presented in a reasonable and coherent way while being watered down a little bit. (Which is essentially what Mcdonnell did).
If you have become used to being an outsider (or existing in a political ghetto I'd call it) you begin to quite enjoy it, and quite like it, and not want to adapt or change that.
I don't think a lot of people have really got their heads around that idea. That for Corbyn's project to be successful, it really has to move beyond the likes of myself, to being a movement that engages whole swathes of people who may not have had any political involvement before today, and who will find much of the structures existing in those groups very off putting.
You either allow that process to occur and take a back seat, or you taint it and doom it to likely failure.
That we have so many people, from a range of backgrounds who are as open (and at times supportive) as they are of a strongly distributive agenda is a great positive for those on the left. A minority will try to spoil it. I sense this probably underpins the Momentum Labour critique (but do let me know if I'm barking up the wrong alley!)
Anyway I'm glad you feel positively about the last manifesto, I hope this one will be good too, it makes knocking on doors much easier when it is!
...I think their problem is a lack of political savvy and strategy. Corbyn is unpopular, he’s got too many skeletons in the cupboard of liaising with tin pot dictators and voting against his Party. He is what he is but like it or not, politics is lots to do with image and opinion. He should’ve been shifted a long time ago, or he should’ve gone for the good of the Party.
gonetomorrow
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A lot of folk think he'd have us all in boiler suits and corduroy caps. Labour needs a younger image pronto. Too late now actually.
tsubaki
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This post is an indicator of how successful the campaign against Corbyn has been, that so many things become fact when they really aren't.
For a start, he doesn't have any skeletons in the cupboard of liaising with tin pot dictators; most of the criticism there has been over this "links" (which often means "meeting and talking to") to people from Irish Republican and pro-Palestinian groups, and they were held in the open or at least meetings to which the public were invited. Even his support of Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro couldn't really be described as "liaising".
As for his voting record, even at his absolute most rebellious (in the 2005-2010 Parliament) he voted with the Labour whip 70% of the time. It is also really notable how rarely the people who raise that particular point bother to explain what he was actually rebelling on (probably because being told that Corbyn voted to make sure there was a proper inquiry into Iraq, or to stop the imposition of ID cards, or to make sure the state couldn't detain you for up to a month without charge would tend to make people think he had a point).
orly
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To be fair, 30% rebellion is extremely high
No doubt at all though he's been the victim of a monumental hatchet-job in the press
tsubaki
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It is a high number, though there were a lot of votes in those pieces of legislation and I think people have got the impression that he was doing what Mann / Hodge / Woodcock have been doing to him, when the reality is that his criticism of Blair (or Brown) was done for honest reasons based on his own beliefs which had been amply demonstrated up to that point.
If he had done to Blair what Hodge did to him, he'd have been thrown out of the party within a week.
orly
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Not sure I agree there - Blair had such a sizeable majority (certainly first time round) that he could carry the conscience votes that opposed him. It was also fed the idea that New Labour was a "broad church".
tsubaki
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He did, but I meant go up to him in the lobby of the Commons and call him a f**king racist.
...that only convinces the already convinced. Labour needs to appeal to the many not the few. Labour needs to convert Tory voters, it has a much better chance with a dynamic diplomat with a big brain.
A Shadow Cabinet Labour MP was on BBC last week condemning Momentum Party members for harassing and bullying Louise Ellman out of the Party. That’s not a media slant, this was a Labour MP saying the Party will be a much better place when the likes of a Ellman wants to come back.
orly
Please check with me for Blammo criteria
lol yes, now that I agree you are right about.
The problem they have though is that there are very few others who share Corbyn's politics who are MP's. This is the crux of the dilemma for Labour really, the top of the party looks nothing like the bottom of the party.
It would be great to have a Tsipras or or Pablo Iglesias character, but we play the hand we are dealt.
tsubaki
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Therein lies the problem; people feel happier continuing to believe what they are told rather than examining whether it is true or not.
Take your Louise Ellman point for another example, in which the claim that she was harrassed and bullied out of the party by Momentum Party members (!) is presented as a fact, even though she had not even got to the stage of a trigger ballot (unlike Hodge) and the CLP's views on what had happened were never really given anything like the same coverage:
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