-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
UK Labour Leadership Crisis: Corbyn retained as leader by strong margin
- Thread starter Hazzuh
- Start date
- Status
Democrats compromise in their party all the time though. The whole party is a compromise party comprised of various interests and differing views and ideologies.
Compromising with Republicans certainly didn't work, but while the US's system requires compromise to function, Britain's does not necessarily need to compromise to get shit done.
However, you need to compromise within a party to have a chance of getting elected. No matter how some people like to pretend that Corbyn's views are not on the far left and are more representative of the people, well, I hate to break it to you, but they really aren't. He is a part of a small minority faction of the labour party, and a minority faction of a party that only represents a small portion of the electorate can't dictate its values and ideology if it hopes to succeed.
I'm going to tell you something shocking, politicians and especially the new generation of neoliberal scumbags that we have in the West nowadays sometimes don't represent the will of the people. Call me crazy but I consider an election more important than the opinion of 172 assholes in a corrupt party.
I literally don't understand where the narrative of 'no compromise' is coming from. All of his oppponents refused to join his cabinet. He gave a free vote on Syria. He voted Remain. It is the PLP that has refused to compromise, not Corbyn.
Especially when the person running for leader against Corbyn completely ignored and went against her own constituency on this issue.
I'd hardly call the support of the activist left the will of the people. And frankly, words like corrupt, establishment, neoliberal, etc etc are all just meaningless buzzwords used by people to denigrate opinions that they don't like. How do you know that the people who voted for these politicians don't agree more with them than Corbyn's ideas? Because you think so? Because the 'people' should have these ideas? That if they don't they are voting against their best interests, and it is better for a person like Corbyn to be in power to protest to protect their 'actual' interests?
1/3rd of labour voters saying that they are less likely to vote for Labour because of Corbyn seems like a stronger will of the people than the 250k activist left that voted Corbyn into leadership
Still a major factor in what is ostensibly a housing crisis we have in the UK. You made the defense that Blair was good on housing.
"Wasn't as bad as the Tories" as a defense leads to the "Tory-lite" perception which has factored into mass disillusion with the party and to the current PLP vs. membership collision.
This I think is the biggest area of contention that Corbyn supporters have with the party. They want an alternative. He appears to be the only one offering one.
If you're going to have Tory-lite vs Tory, why not go with the full-fat version rather than the wannabe party? Was May 2015 not a big enough indicator of this?
I keep hearing the "Blair won elections" defense. He also alienated the electorate in ever-increasing numbers as the goodwill from 1997 petered away and his brand is now incredibly toxic.
Bernie didn't put down its sword. He got beaten and is now being ignored while he runs around ranting with it.
Lack of new construction is the real reason behind issues w/ gentrification and price-out. NIMBYism is a destructive force.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
New Labour isn't a socialist democractic party it never was, that's why it's New Labour. They added the new bit as they went further right. Honestly if you want to see that in the Uk you should start a party on that platform
SaviourMK2
Member
Can someone explain to me what this means
Billy_Pilgrim
Member
The idiots have set fire to the asylum
One guy doesn't get to have the entire PLP party compromise with him.
Corbyn represents and leads the party. He has to compromise because his views are well outside the mainstream of labour opinion if that party is going to be successful. Just because he got elected by 250k people on the activist left does not mean he can demand anything from the party.
It should be obvious that the outliers in a party are not the people who get others to conform any of their views, and Corbyn is an outlier. If you want a Labour party that is more on the left then you are going to need to drastically change the labour party as a whole, and not just elect a dude at the top, because that dude is supposed to lead the party, meaning that he is going to express the compromised and middle ground view and attitude of the labour party - and that certainly is not Corbyn's views. And that is the whole problem with Corbyn's leadership of the Labour party right there.
And his stance on Remain was pathetic, and there is evidence that his inner circle actively sabotaged labour's remain campaign
They're not meaningless buzzwords. The so-called "left" in the West has consistently been enforcing neoliberal policies in continuation of the conservative buddies governments. The choice nowadays isn't who is going to represent you best, it's who's going to screw you less, the rightwingers or the rightwingers lite. Fuck this false dilemma.
As for the rest of your post, call me crazy but I consider representatives of representatives highly shady and undemocratic. The people decided and the rightwing party that only pretends to be left (which is pretty much the definition of Western liberals nowadays) didn't like it so they're trying their best to oust him. The characterization leftist activists to dismiss and downplay his elction is just a fallacy you use because you didn't like the result.
He didn't get 250k people 'on the activist left'. He got 250k members of the labour party and also support from the major unions. He had broad support from the entire political party and their allies. The PLP should absolutely have been willing to compromise and should have not set about stabbing him in the back even before he got to power.
Norwegian_Imposter
Member
My mum thinks he has early onset Alzheimer's
The party compromised!
The runner up served in cabinet. The party got behind him and his policy reviews. They even sat quiet when fucking Seamus Milnes was appointed communications director, a guy who apologises for STALIN.
The fact a few of the old Blairite crowd does not mean the party wasn't compromising. The vast majority of MPs, from both left and right, were willing to give it a shot. They have. It has not failed to work.
Honestly, do people even follow politics these days or is everything just done via twitter? Because the notion that the PLP didn't compromise under Jeremy's "leadership" is simply not based in fact or reality.
(also, again that niggling stat - almost one third of labour voters won't vote for him if he is leader. That means less than 100 seats).
Principate
Saint Titanfall
Didn't Corbyn win after a massive influx of new labour members that he courted. So he's not exactly wrong, it's just both, activist left that became labour voters because of Corbyn
Jezbollah
Member
The joke (or maybe not?) is that a lot of those new members were Conservative voters who wanted to see Corbyn win that leadership contest.
That's bollocks and you know it. Where was this spirit of compromise and unity when people were leaking information in the very first PLP meeting about how little everyone liked Corbyn? Or when before he was even elected the people who put him on the ballot were saying what a huge mistake they'd made?
"Neoliberal":a hollow invective that describes more about the person using it than the actual thing it's attempting to describe: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/venugopr/venugopal2014augneoliberalism.pdf
It isn't a fallacy. He was elected by a small minority of highly dedicated labour voters (also newly registered labour voters) who are at the mid to far left of the political spectrum. That is simply a fact. 1/3rd of labour voters are less likely to vote for the labour party because of Corbyn. That is also a polling fact.
The purpose of pointing that out is to show that his ideals and values do not represent the labour party as a whole, and certainly do not represent the average center to left British voter. Pretending otherwise is just foolish.
And just because the parties don't represent your values does not mean that they do not represent others. And just because you think you get screwed by their policies does not mean that others think so.
And those are meaningless buzzwords. denoting labour and tory as neoliberal obscures the big and important differences between them. If you want to bitch about Britain moving to the right, then bitch at the British people, not its parties. Parties follow the people because that is how they get elected.
And before you say something about the political parties and the media fooling and distorting everything, people consume media to have their biases confirmed. They want to feel smart. They do not want to have their views challenged. Media's message and the like, then, is determined by the demand of the people, not the ideological corrupt and evil media corporations and politicians.
Most people don't conduct political philosophy in their spare time. They form their political opinions based on the information they learn in the world, not from stark first principles formed a priori. To suggest that the fact that the media is largely controlled by a group of right-wing idealogues has nothing to do with the state of political discourse in this country is frankly absurd.
Why can't members of the activist left also be members of the labour party?
If he has such broad support, why are 1/3rd of labour voters less likely to vote for labour because of him? Why are labour's prospects of winning an election abysmal with him at the helm?
And if you say that he would have had a good chance to win if his party didn't turn against him then I think we can in this conversation right here. Views well outside the mainstream simply aren't going to win a general election, no matter how badly people who hold those views want that to happen.
Billy_Pilgrim
Member
Their purpose is not to win an election. It is to turn Labour into a trotskyite pressure group.
Have you got a source on this 1/3rd nonsense?
Could it possibly be because he's been sabotaged every step of the way by his own party?
Billy_Pilgrim
Member
If members of the PLP have the courage to stand up and stop the party becoming a fringe movement for bourgeois marxists then we can only applaud them.
So you literally don't know anything about Corbyn? Maybe you should have read his economic manifesto. If you could point out the Marxist elements it would be greatly appreciated.
People hold values and beliefs and read media to have those values and beliefs confirmed. Those values and beliefs are mostly formed at a young age and can also change over time through parents and friends.
Studies by social scientists have shown that media is driven by demand rather than supply. People rarely change their opinion, this has also amply demonstrated in the literature. To change an opinion, the only way to do it is to have a person who you have a personal connection with and who also holds the same ideals and values as you do it, and even then it is unlikely. People also are driven by confirmation bias. We want to be right to stroke our ego. This has also been amply demonstrated.
The study on media being driven by demand as well as the other numerous studies about our psychology pretty much confirms to me that media is driven by demand. I think it is absurd to think otherwise. And to think otherwise says more about a person's wishful thinking, that these poor fools are just deluded by the big bad media, and if we could change that then everything would be better. That is complete bullshit. It is going to be a lot harder to move Britain left than that.
You ought to phone major marketing companies and tell them that trying to influence peoples' opinions through advertising campaigns is a waste of money then.
Billy_Pilgrim
Member
This is the Socialist Workers Party. They are a trotskyite Marxist party. Former members include Andrew Fischer, Corbyn's head of policy. The leadership of Momentum is also strewn with SWP members. John McDonnell has long been associated with the SWP as a sympathiser. The SWP are notorious for attaching themselves to any left wing protest in britain and causing trouble. They have had many insidious incidents attached to them involving rape.
This is a video featuring Corbyn's campaign outside of Parliament. Can you tell me what the banners say? The Socialist Worker is the newspaper of the SWP.
Seamus Milne is a stalinite. He is Corbyn's director of communications and the right hand man of the Leader.
Corbyn's social media is run from a Marxist bookshop in Durham, the operator is also a senior member of Momentum.
If that's your argument then half of the PLP is implicated since they were probably all members of Marxist groups in university.
Look at what Corbyn and McDonnel have actually said. For example:
Does this read as Marxist to you?
Since we're on a new page now and I still haven't been given a concrete idea of what the alternative is:
Isn't the argument here that we need someone electable? And yet nobody seems to know what electability looks like. Maybe this is why the PLP fielded two losing candidates at the last two GEs.
Isn't the argument here that we need someone electable? And yet nobody seems to know what electability looks like. Maybe this is why the PLP fielded two losing candidates at the last two GEs.
Billy_Pilgrim
Member
John McDonnell produced Mao's Little Red Book at the despatch box ffs
He quoted from it as a joke, yes.
The key to a successful marketing campaign is to associate a product or an opinion with the target audience's values and beliefs. Values and beliefs are basically hard-wired, and politics is nakedly about values and beliefs, making it rather absurd that people could be deluded by the evil elites. Moreover, these topics and these values and beliefs are not new. They are things that we grew up with, were formed by our interaction with our parents and later our friends. Huge change can certainly change values and beliefs though.
I also like how you are demeaning what I've said when I am using psychology and referencing studies when all you got is your 'feelings' and 'common sense'
To mock George Osborne. There are enough legitimate criticisms of Corbyn and co, you don't need to make them up.John McDonnell produced Mao's Little Red Book at the despatch box ffs
You didn't reference any studies, you gestured at them.
And no, I don't have 'feelings' and 'common sense', I have a bunch of stuff that I've read about the influence of the media (presumably now to be dismissed as 'unscientific'); most recently Owen Jones' The Establishment.
For clarity, I don't believe that the relationship between the media and political views is deterministic in either direction. I think that 'the media tells everyone exactly what to believe' is just as absurd as 'the media has no influence'. The relationship is, and can only be, reciprocal.
Billy_Pilgrim
Member
He has also in the past 12 months named Lenin and Trotsky as his biggest influences, claimed Karl Marx was 'back in fashion'.
He also once said this:
It's a consumer-based medium. They don't get eyeballs, they don't survive.
A survey of 2000 people? OK. To post a political poll as a source in the current climate is madness. Polls are wrong. They were wrong in the general election last year. They were wrong last week.
Billy_Pilgrim
Member
An even better way to gauge sentiment is to actually campaign and talk to voters. Even in Durham they do not want a Corbyn government and consider him a joke. This is why the PLP are being so direct with all of this. In the remain campaign they went and talked to their constituents, and what they heard terrified them.
Literally none of this reads as 'I am a big fat Marxist and I am going to turn England in to 1920s Russia'. If that's what you get out of it, I don't know what to say.
...which is why I said it's a reciprocal relationship.
I don't fully understand this comment. Talking to voters is an awful way of gauging sentiment. That's the main reason Ed Balls lost his seat last year. He gave up campaigning a few days before because he was confident he was going to win based on what he had seen and heard.
Billy_Pilgrim
Member
The Tories were briefing the day before the election that they might take the seat, because the soon to be MP and her team had been campaigning hard in that constituency while Balls was all over the place auditioning for Chancellor. They talked to the voters and they knew.
I cannot quite believe that people think that talking to voters is a bad way of finding out which way voters may vote.
In fact I can, it's entirely symptomatic of the corridor of delusion we're trying to fight our way out of.
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
- Locked
- Locked