UK Politics

Ronald Regan managed it.   (Mind you he wasn't in The Good Life series was he)

Sit back and enjoy watching J.C give D.C 5 years of incongruous torture .hahahahahahaha......

I just hope JC can actually get some of the Tories policies we don't hear about due to the right wing press and get them discussed out in the open, maybe a PMQT.

That's because most of them were Tory policies in the first place.

Oh, and the Blairites lost two elections in a row.

Ok, dust starting to settle, and what I have yet to find is Corbyn's view of Scotland remaining in Great Britain. I understand he believes the UK should be dissolved with Northern Ireland being joined with the RoI to form a new single United Ireland. But what about Scotland and GB.. I would have thought Labour needs Scottish seats if Labour is realistically going to achieve a British victory. Perhaps Kevin can advise, you appear enlightened on many things Corbyn?

Labour under Corbyn is all set to self destruct & it looks like some of this mornings labour discontents are making sure of that.   . 

First he doesn't intend to get involved with PMQ - great !!! petulant schoolboy won't play because he knows he will probably get shown up for what he is.  Like PMQ or hate it,  as team captain he needs to be seen at this weekly ritual,  its a fiasco in some respects but its a party rallying point where the leaders credentials are laid bare: & I thought socialists loved rallies, oh well what do I know. 

He has no policies that we know of for Scotland.  He has a massive problem to overcome for numbers of reasons - Scotland has abandoned labour & its previous electorates have yet to see SNP fail so are not considering moving back, labour has no chance whatsoever to win back government without those lost Scottish seats. Truth be told Sturgeon is riding higher & higher at the moment & probably will continue for longer than Corbyn has available to turn labour around. Then watch out for SNP, the writing's on the wall for further moves into another independence referendum & next time they will get it, so beannachd leat Scotland & all hope for labour is floating down the Clyde.   

Meanwhile whilst he & SNP agree the nuclear deterrent must go, that plays into a very powerful boost for the Tories, as said yesterday, Corbyn is a very serious threat to UK security,  and not only because of the neuks, he has plans to reduce everything.  Then his various nationalisation policies & the plans to print money, then what about UK & EU .........  but enough, what do I know.

Ha! I know as much as you Simon, but my guess is that Corbyn is in favour of the Union (partly out of sentiment and partly for practical reasons, because Labour needs Scotland in order to win the GE)  but his instinct is for self-determination - so would allow the Scots to go their own way if they so chose.

But I actually think that the number of Scots who want complete independence are a minority. I think the rise of the SNP is about being anti-Tory, not pro-independence. I hear that Nicola Sturgeon is very worried this  (as are the Greens) as an overtly Left-wing Labour party, with an anti-austerity, anti-Tory agenda will be very popular in Scotland, and re-energise its popularity in its old heartlands.

As for NI, Corbyn is indeed a Republican, but that doesn't change anything: Ireland won't be united anytime soon, barring utterly unforseen circumstances. He wants to give the Falklands back to Argentina, but that's not gonna happen either. He also wants to abolish the Monarchy but has already said that's one battle he won't be bothering to fight, given the overwhelming popularity of the Royal Family.

He is not an all-powerful dictator, he is just a party leader (and perhaps a future PM), and cannot create policy without the support of the PLP and MPs of other parties. Even if he were elected, most of his dafter policies would get nowhere near the statute books.

What's interesting is the intellectual gulf between Corbyn and Dugdale.  

There's the real divide.

G

Chaps

The simple truth is that Labour are in a mess of their own making.

Tony Blair was the consummate politician who won three elections with a sizeable majority. Never the less, the left wing forced him to resign and installed the dour Gordon Brown as his successor. Brown lost the election or rather handed it over on a plate.

Cameron inherited a financial mess and in order to cure that mess, had to make some unpopular decisions. Nearly every Tory thought that the chances of being re elected five years later was nil as it was in effect, a poisoned chalice.

Thanks to Ed Miliband the Tories won England and the SNP won Scotland and then the once great labour party went through a tortuous 3 month campaign only to elect a 67 year old has been who still looks back to the 1970s as a golden era.

There are thousands of old lefties and £3.00 eccentrics who helped vote him in but his fellow MPs are already conspiring to boot him out. You can bet you bottom dollar that even Tom Watson will be publically supporting him but will be sinking the knife in behind his back. Even Watson is more electable that Corbyn.

The simple truth is that Labour have screwed up big time and the Tories just need to sit back, say nothing and let Labour rip itself apart as it soon will do.

What's not to like.

Regards

Mick

Oh, and as for another independence vote for Scotland, that has to be endorsed by Westminster to be recognised. This time round, Cameron simply has to to say "No !"

This way Scotland will continue to vote SNP and Labour will never be able to win a UK election again.

I simply don't get this whole "Corbyn is far left" stuff.

Let's go back to 1985, when Thatch was PM, in the middle of her 11-year reign, fresh from crusing the miners.

We had:

• A 60% top rate of tax
• State-owned railways and utilities
• Free University education for all, and grants for many
• A tightly-regulated banking industry and stock exchange

All of this has now gone of course, but much of what Corbyn proposes only takes us back to Thatcher. A good deal of the neo-liberal madness we have had to suffer these past 30 years only occurred under latterday Thatch, and then Major, Blair, Brown and ol' Gammon Face.

Chukka's chucked it in...

He should have stood for the leadership but ducked out. Ducking out of the shadow cabinet too seems to suggest he doesn't have the stomach for a political fight.  Perhaps he hasn't got the potential for future leadership that some have suggested after all.

I'd say the odds of a Greek style financial collapse here before 2020 are pretty high and in that scenario all bets are off who could get in to power.

Interesting, why do you think you say that? Do you think the UK will default on its debt repayment?

The "Overton Window" defines what voters think is acceptable public policy. Thatcher pushed this to the right and Blair followed her there. The policies you list were inside the window so were considered mainstream, but are now seen as dangerous lefty nonsense, whereas draconian anti-Union legislation proposed by the Tories can be represented as acceptable and normal. Some Tories are worried that Corbyn will pull the Overton Window away from the right so they will not be able to pass themselves off as occupying the centre ground.

Keith

Outright default is unlikely but something has to give - our debt (and of many developed nations) is out of control and already way in excess of the 2007/8 crisis levels. By 2019 or whenever they say the defecit will be eliminated (in itself a fantasy) total debt will be stratospheric. In the uk we can in theory print our way out but with that comes massive loss of confidence in the £, inflation / interest rate hikes and a similar result I.e. plumetting living standards for the uk. I don't think this is a particularly radical view, just a logical outcome when you crunch the numbers on a broken financial system in a country living beyond it's means for so long. What no one knows is the exact trigger and timing.

Very true Keith. Oddly enough I wonder whether Gammon Face, as an old-fashioned "Toff Tory" would feel more comfortable pushing the Overton Window back to the centre, so we might see some of his government's more dotty policies tempered a bit. Things are getting more interesting by the day.

Only if Corbyn becomes PM

I think the time is right for The Labour Party to try an alternative to the Tory-Lite candidates. When the Chilcot Report eventually comes out it will certainly help not having a Blairite in charge.

A victory in the first round with 59% of the vote is very emphatic - and I can't believe that is all just Tory voter paying £3 to pretend to be supporters. I think it will be intereting to have nationalisation, nuclear deterrents and wealth distribution back on the agenda

I've been surprised by how many young people felt disenfranchised but are energised by Mr Corbyn's message. If his supporters can make their enthusiasm contagious then who knows what can be achieved. It would be interesting too if the SNP change their stance and become involved in purley English issues. 

Personally I doubt that it will be successful from an election perspective  - particularly with the influence of the English press - but it's not impossible. The issues in 5 years time could be completely different and there have been movements to the left across Europe and in America Bernie Saunders is doing surprising well in his challenge for the democratic nomination.

The other scenarios include his leadership being a complete disaster and his removal from leadership before the next election - or (but hopefully not) health issues intervening. As with most things we will have to wait and see.

It does worry me though that he is an Arsenal supporter.

Fueller, I agree the UK's debt is stratospheric, hence the need to remove the deficit, to stop this debt mountain  crippling the country further. It will take decades to materially reduce this debt, and of course the interest payments on our debt and even more so by 2019, is equivalent of a sizeable chunk of what we pay to fund our NHS .. and of course a trigger that created uncertainty in the UK would increase our  external interest rates, and that would mean real or hugely greater (depending on view point) austerity imposed on us Greek style. I do wonder how many people actually realize what a tightrope this country walks.. However with the current government, and the previous government the UKs funder's appeared/appear to have reasonable  confidence on the whole and so I think a melt down currently unlikely. I think future declassified records will possibly reveal how close to collapse we were in 2008.

I wonder if he is a fake. A Charlatan? Someone who doesn't have the balls, the confidence or simply the know how to stand behind and develop his stated convictions.

The domino effect of many of his ideals will surely be made apparent. If they aren't already. Then what?

Is he someone who just knows how to say 'No' to others? After all, rather than provide credible solutions that have more than a snowball's chance of surviving the heat of the world we live in, it is just easier to say 'No, I want it to be different' and leave it at that. It's a lot harder to realise it's no longer a pipe dream, it is reality, you're out of your depth, you can't back down now but you're going to have to at least compromise on a lot of what you've been saying before now and perhaps even start playing an altogether different tune.

Can he come up with answers? And show his workings?

Or is it easier to run away and hide?

Mick

I am sure you are old enough to remember that, in 1975, the Conservatives elected a leader hated by Tory grandees and regarded by the party establishment and most commentators as an unelectable, dangerous extremist. Her name was Mrs Thatcher and she was in power from 1979 to 1990.

She was elected because she offered a solution to the country's perceived ills at that time, and there is a decent possibility that Corbyn (or, I suspect, his successor) leading a Left-leaning Labour party could be in a similar position as Mrs T come 2020.

Don't forget that in 2020, Labour will be up against a Tory party led, in all likelihood, by the smirking Osborne who lacks even Cameron's dubious charms. He is a far less appealing figure, even to small "c" conservatives.

Also, the party in power needs to at least maintain the status quo, or preferably improve upon it. If Gideon's proposed cuts to the welfare budget hit the middle classes, as they are likely to do, then things may change. And how will the middle classes feel about paying £10 to visit the doctor because of the semi-privatisation of the NHS? Not happy I'd imagine. A Labour party committed to the NHS and dismantling the PFI inititiatives set in motion by Brown and Osborne could be very appealing to Middle England.

Corbyn is very appealing to young voters - one of the most disengaged constituencies - who see him as fresh, honest, sincere and different from the Tories, LibDems (all eight of them) and the Blairites. Also, they have no memories of the 1970s and the Winter of Discontent, or of the internicine Labour wars of the early 1980s, so scare stories won't work with them. If he gets them, the Scots, and former Labour voters who defected to Greens and UKIP, then he is - given the Tories' slim majority and the fact that their austerity measures might hit the middle classes - in with a pretty good chance. Corbyn's policy on immigration is his Achilles' heel, and will quite obviously alienate vast swathes of the British populace, but I suspect expediency will see it watered down over time.

Although partly responsible for the financial mess, Brown and Co were not solely so - any economically literate person knows that three decades of untrammelled neo-liberalism (Brown and Blair were both wedded to neo-liberal orthodoxy), rather than any notion of "socialism" were to blame.

So I wouldn't get the champagne out or start feeling too smug just yet...

 I notice that today, David Davies, the most thoughtful and acute of Tory MPs, has criticised tranches of Cameron's union reform bill, which is being debated in the Commons tomorrow. That will be interesting...

Chris, the effect of the press is vastly overstated (and I speak as a journalist). Circulations have been in freefall for 20 years and there are now vast swathes of the population who have never read a newspaper.

Much as the press barons would like us all to think otherwise, the influence of newspapers will be further diminished by 2019/20.

In any case, one thing that's particularly interesting about Corbyn so far is that the more he is attacked, the more popular he seems to become (at least with Labour voters - it will be fascinating to see if this "plucky underdog" position appeals to the wider public). Relentless ad hominem attacks from the Press may also serve to unite the Labour party and the wider labour movement.