Labour Leadership - split from the problem with social media thread

[GeenDienst]

Such comments build on years of the likes of Milne blaming the west for everything.

[tom p]

Such comments build on years of the likes of Milne blaming the west for everything.

And build on years of the likes of the Mail blaming the left for everything.

Your preferred nobodies lost in 2015 because they were even shitter candidates than Corbyn. Get over it.

[GeenDienst]

Breathtakingly clueless.

[JQH]

Not at all. The Mail and Express have constantly pushed the idea that Corbyn supports terrorism, with the result that the numpty referred to above can knowingly share a fake because he "reckons" that "it's the kind of thing he would say"

And the further result that Centrists line up against Corbyn because they don't want to be tarred with the "soft on terrorism" brush.

Want to know why we're going to get Johnson back in Number 10? Look in the mirror.

[GeenDienst]

Johnson is getting back into number 10 because Labour have chosen (twice) a leader who is the worst rated opposition leaver ever. Nobody wants him as PM except The Faithful. Labour candidates were reassuring voters in 2017 that it was OK to vote Labour because they wouldn't win the election. Polling not long back after Johnson became PM indicated that a change of leader would have catapulted Labour from behind the Tories into the lead.

Do Labour members have mirrors? They chose him, they get to own what happens.

[tom p]

Johnson is getting back into number 10 because Labour have chosen (twice) a leader who is the worst rated opposition leaver ever. Nobody wants him as PM except The Faithful. Labour candidates were reassuring voters in 2017 that it was OK to vote Labour because they wouldn't win the election. Polling not long back after Johnson became PM indicated that a change of leader would have catapulted Labour from behind the Tories into the lead.

Do Labour members have mirrors? They chose him, they get to own what happens.

Why was he chosen? Because the alternatives had been tried and failed. Remember 2015? It was only 4 years ago. Corbyn was the only candidate not saying 'let's just have a little less austerity'. He was the only one talking about taking the fight to the tories and challenging Osborne & Cameron's murderous lies.

The subsequent election followed non-stop bitching and bitterness from the self-styled centrists, moderates and competent types.

It's ironic how these folks from the centre left were so obsessed with purifying the party and ridding labour of the wrong type of socialist, more obsessed with that than beating the tories, something that the far left is (rightly) usually accused of doing.
You're as much the Popular Front of Judea as Momentum is.

[JQH]

It's ironic how these folks from the centre left were so obsessed with purifying the party and ridding labour of the wrong type of socialist, more obsessed with that than beating the tories, something that the far left is (rightly) usually accused of doing.
You're as much the Popular Front of Judea as Momentum is.

This, in spades.

I might borrow this if I feel a change in sig coming on. It bears repeating.

[GeenDienst]

b.llsh.t. You've hamstrung your party with a nailed-on loser, and like your average lefty idiot all you can do is label me as the dreaded centrist Blairite whatever, when you know f.ck all about my politics.

more obsessed with that than beating the tories

How exactly is that working for you? Don't you see how delusional that statement is, given what you've done to your chances?

Corbyn is the reason you're not strolling this election. It really is as simple as that.

[Bird on a Fire]

If the Labour leader were someone other than Cor bin Laden the right-wing press would still lie their arses off about them.

The difference would be that Labour MPs wouldn't join in the sh.t-flinging.

I think there is plenty of blame to be apportioned all-round, to be honest.

Electability is largely a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Well, the Labour leader before Corbyn lost their election chance, as did the one before that.

So, it's not specifically a Corbyn problem.

I watched Pointless last week whilst at the gym doing my cross-trainer 45 minutes. One of the questions asked 100 people to name 15 former Tory and Labour post-war leaders. Cameron got around 78, Thatcher 73, Major 50 ish.

Guess how much Miliband got. Go on.

Anyway, the point is, what Labour need is a leader with some personality. Someone who can actually charm people, rather than a man who looks perilously close to winged armchairs and pissing himself.

[Bird on a Fire]

I also think a bit of unity on the left would be helpful.

For all the bitching over centrism Vs Corbynism etc it seems to get lost that a literal dogshit in a red rosette would actually be better for the country than any of the last three incumbents.

By all means the left should be analysing and debating robustly - leading with thought over emotion is one of the left's strengths, at least in theory - but without losing site of the important message: that austerity, disaster capitalism and the deliberate destruction of social fabric are not inevitabilities but rather deliberate policy choices, and as such can be undone.

Flinging blame at each other is great fun and all, but it's also f.cking stupid as f.ck.

[GeenDienst]

So, it's not specifically a Corbyn problem.

Yes, it is very much a Corbyn problem. It was in 2017 and it is again now.

Johnson and Corbyn locked in unpopularity contest, polls suggest

He's the worst rated opposition leader since this type of polling started, at a time when loads of people distrust Johnson. This should be easy for Labour, just like it should have been in 2017 when they were facing the worst Tory campaign anyone alive had ever seen.

Grauniad, recently:

arse.jpg (33.31 KiB) Viewed 6023 times

People rate Johnson as a more capable PM than Corbyn, even though Johnson's ratings are shite. 54% of Labour voters from 2017 believed they should change their leader before the next election. More than half of their own f.cking voters.

YouGov, dated Nov 8th: People can see through Johnson's fakeness, out of touchity, untrustworthiness and dishonesty, to an extent. It should be an open door, but look at those huge majorities that think Corbyn is indecisive, untrustworthy, weak and incompetent. It adds up to the disastrous head to head comparisons below that.







And this is all so unnecessary. If Corbyn had had the sense and integrity to see that he was standing in the way of his party's victory, and stepped down, then Labour would be in a much better position to help all those people they say they care about.

[tom p]

b.llsh.t. You've hamstrung your party with a nailed-on loser, and like your average lefty idiot all you can do is label me as the dreaded centrist Blairite whatever, when you know f.ck all about my politics.

more obsessed with that than beating the tories

How exactly is that working for you? Don't you see how delusional that statement is, given what you've done to your chances?

Corbyn is the reason you're not strolling this election. It really is as simple as that.

At what point have I said that Corbyn is good? At least I'm drawing accurate inferences about your politics from what you've written, when you're just spouting idiotic nonsense like you've forgotten how to read or something.
Corbyn is part of the problem. Everyone except for the deluded (none of whom are here, by the way) can see that. But another, big, part of the problem is the right of the party. The problem is that some of them, like you, are deluded enough not to see that. It's everyone else's fault but yours.

[GeenDienst]

I'm nothing to do with your party. I'm not one of your voters, I'm not one of your supporters.

Deluded, eh? Check your mirrors again.

And I know you are someone who likes things spelled out for them very carefully. You see, when an election comes along, political parties set out their little political stalls and try to encourage people to vote for them. If people don't like what's on offer, and don't vote for it in enough numbers, it is that party's fault. Not mine, not any f.cker else's. Yours, among others. Grow the f.ck up and own it.

[TopBadger]

Labour leaders lose because the playing field is massively tilted to the right by the media... just one example...



In September a £10/hour wage proposed by Labour was reported as something that would bankrupt the country vs, approx. six weeks later, that a £10.50/hour wage proposed by the Tories would be awesome.

It stinks, but that's what happens when almost all the media is owned by right wing billionaires. I expect the Tories to get into power, and I expect the £10.50 wage idea to die a quiet death.

I don't like Corbyn, but when he say's he'll raise taxes to fund the NHS, and raise minimum wages, I believe him. Anyone who believes similar announcements from the Tories are about to get mugged off.

[Bird on a Fire]

I don't like Corbyn, but when he say's he'll raise taxes to fund the NHS, and raise minimum wages, I believe him. Anyone who believes similar announcements from the Tories are about to get mugged off.

What amazes me, though, is that a lot of Tory voters have been getting mugged off for decade, and yet it looks like in this election they're going to gain low-income voters with their "Brexit First" stuff.

Like, what about the last decade has been so good that anybody in their right mind would want more of it?!

Labour Leadership has been weak on the biggest issues of the day, like Brexit. In some cases, biased reporting isn't 100% to blame as there has been nothing to report, and the modern news cycle requires a continuous barrage of provocative statements (unfortunately).

[GeenDienst]

Labour leaders lose because the playing field is massively tilted to the right by the media... just one example...

...

I don't like Corbyn, but when he say's he'll raise taxes to fund the NHS, and raise minimum wages, I believe him. Anyone who believes similar announcements from the Tories are about to get mugged off.

Yes, it's biased, although it's not only commentators from the right that think he's unfit for his position, and point to his long history of egregious baggage (I hope we're not doing the b.llsh.t here that if you oppose Corbyn you are a priori a fervent Tory).

But Corbyn is the worst rated opposition leader ever. And that over half of Labour's voters in 2017 simply don't want him to be PM. You can't just blame the press for this one. And I've shown you the polling that another Labour leader would have had them from well behind to well in front, even at the time of Johnson's honeymoon period.

And if you trust Corbyn, and think he's fit to be PM, fine, we all get to make that call individually. But note that equal numbers of people, almost exactly three quarters, disagreed with the notion of either Johnson and Corbn being untrustworthy. Nobody much trusts Johnson either. It was such an open goal.

I can see no other conclusion that Corbyn is particularly toxic to the kinds of less committed voters Labour need, and we read that this is coming right back from the doorstep. If Momentum had realised, once they had the party processes sewn up tight, that they could pursue a version of their dream with somebody (anybody) else, then it could all look very different now. Corbyn should have realised that the party was firmly in control of his allies, and stepped aside to great applause from them. But their instinct was always to circle the wagons around Corbyn, the Great Leader.

And here we are. For those of us who don't Believe, this is a terrible time.

[tom p]

I'm nothing to do with your party. I'm not one of your voters, I'm not one of your supporters.

Deluded, eh? Check your mirrors again.

And I know you are someone who likes things spelled out for them very carefully. You see, when an election comes along, political parties set out their little political stalls and try to encourage people to vote for them. If people don't like what's on offer, and don't vote for it in enough numbers, it is that party's fault. Not mine, not any f.cker else's. Yours, among others. Grow the f.ck up and own it.

I didn't say you're a member of the labour party. I said that people like you*, which includes those on the right of labour (that's why i wrote "some of them, like you, are deluded..." - I can see that that was ambiguous & that if you wanted to you could interpret it as me calling you a member of the labour party, but I wasn't - you should read it as "some of them are deluded, and so are you"), are part of the problem. The ceaseless one-eyed whining about Corbyn made his natural supporters double-down and his wavering supporters firm-up. In the 2017 labour leadership election he increased his margin of victory because the right of the party and people outside the party had been ceaselessly throwing sh.t at him from the minute he was voted in. It's like if your daughter had a boyfriend you didn't like. If you constantly say he's awful, then she'll be even more into him as a reflex and the relationship will last way longer than it otherwise would have.

You seem to have lost the ability to communicate why you are so very angry. It's like tying to reason with a howling toddler.


*for the avoidance of doubt "people like you" in this sense means "people who are similar to you", rather than "people enjoy your company" or "people have affection for you"

Removed a sentence. Don't try to out people here, please. Some people registering with new names have made it clear who they are. Some haven't, but it's worth just addressing them with whichever name they've chosen here

[GeenDienst]

Boyfriend? f.cking boyfriend? This is the level we're on now? That is really, really funny. And it's all somebody who isn't me's fault, cos they said nasty wasty things about poor Jewemy so we loved him even MOAR and it's all your fault. f.cking jeebus.

Whine all you like, but down here on planet Earth, Corbyn was your choice. You did this.

if he pulls out a big surprise win, you can feel very pleased with yourself.

When, as is likely, he doesn't, it's down to you and the others who have so effectively torpedoed your party as an electoral force. Your ceaseless moaning about how a big boy made you do it and ran away doesn't change that one iota.

It's your party, and you helped to mould it in this form. Grow the f.ck up and own the consequences. Then you can move on to getting tired of losing, and change it for the better. You remember, like in the 1980s and 1990s.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Er, let's just calm things down a wee bit, eh?

[GeenDienst]

Spoilsport.

[El Pollo Diablo]

For me, I dislike Corbyn and would rather someone else was in charge of the Labour party. He's been near-enough hopeless since day one, the only good thing really being that I actually like a big load of the labour manifesto quite a lot. But Christ alive, there will be books, probably plays, written about this period of Britain's history and the fact that just when the country needed a statesman, we ended up with Shagger and Grandad.

But it's no good people on the labour side standing there screaming in each other's faces about it. Especially seeing as, unless Boris Johnson's ditch has a wider invitation list, he's going nowhere for now.

I think personally that there is a very valid point about the haste of trying to out Corbyn back in 2016 (not 2017), and even at the time I felt it was far too quick. If they'd left it until more recent times, and played ball with a sense of giving him a fair crack, Labour might not be fighting this election with one arm tied behind their backs and their nipples stuck to a lamppost. But then, Corbyn really does incense the centre of the party, just as they incense the left of the party.

But the centre hasn't exactly been a doyen of policy brilliance, has it? They've not especially won over the soul of the Labour party with brilliantly thought-through reasoning. They just expect the party to be theirs.

[secret squirrel]

Blairism was sh.t though. No real attempt to avert the unfolding disaster that is 21st century capitalism. Getting involved in horrific wars for the benefit of American arms manufacturers despite them being massively unpopular. Somewhat better social programs then the alternatives, but no significant change in course for the country. It's one thing to be a centrist because you don't think the voters will go for anything better, but it's another thing to be one of the voters dragging things to the right. Britain is economically unusually right wing. Not because of something deep in the national character, but because of decisions people made in the 80s and later. Anyone who doesn't want to unwind those changes is not on the left, and should, quite frankly, just join the Lib Dems or the Tories. If leftist ideas are unelectable in the UK then so be it, but it would be nice if Corbyn could run on the left without other self-proclaimed leftists complaining he's unelectable for believing in left wing ideas. It would be nice if the Labour party were able to offer an alternative to the essentially neoliberal economic narrative that has, despite being shown to be b.llsh.t over and over again, dominated the last 40 or so years.

[El Pollo Diablo]

It is more than possible for Labour to offer those ideas. It just can't have the trilogy of offering them, with Corbyn in charge, and being in government. If they find someone with charisma, then brilliant.

[secret squirrel]

It is more than possible for Labour to offer those ideas. It just can't have the trilogy of offering them, with Corbyn in charge, and being in government. If they find someone with charisma, then brilliant.

Why are there so few charismatic leftists in the Labour party then? Maybe it has something to do with New Labour not being a left wing party.