bren2k wrote:Comparing these minnows to the SDP seems incongruous, but you're right - and Tony Benn dealt with them better than I ever could. Tony Benn was always a good listen and it will be interesting to see if Hilary Benn joins the "breakaway". It does look like there will be more to follow. Labours membership may well have risen substantially under Corbyn but, he fails to lead on the major issues. Fundamentally he is a Eurosceptic and his lack of leadership over the EU membership is cringeworthy. Yes, he's been quick to try and play the workers rights card and he is right to do so but, I've yet to hear him talk about membership of the EU as a positive and dont actually think this is his position and sadly, much like so many of the Tory rebels, he is manly concerned with sitting in the big char, behind the desk at No 10, rather than saying what he really thinks. Despite the Labour membership seemingly being in favour of a "peoples vote" he hasn't got the balls to play this card, due to it potentially being toxic and had HE really thrown his political weight behind "Remain", maybe we would never have ended up in the current mess.

bren2k wrote:Comparing these minnows to the SDP seems incongruous, but you're right - and Tony Benn dealt with them better than I ever could. Tony Benn was always a good listen and it will be interesting to see if Hilary Benn joins the "breakaway". It does look like there will be more to follow. Labours membership may well have risen substantially under Corbyn but, he fails to lead on the major issues. Fundamentally he is a Eurosceptic and his lack of leadership over the EU membership is cringeworthy. Yes, he's been quick to try and play the workers rights card and he is right to do so but, I've yet to hear him talk about membership of the EU as a positive and dont actually think this is his position and sadly, much like so many of the Tory rebels, he is manly concerned with sitting in the big char, behind the desk at No 10, rather than saying what he really thinks. Despite the Labour membership seemingly being in favour of a "peoples vote" he hasn't got the balls to play this card, due to it potentially being toxic and had HE really thrown his political weight behind "Remain", maybe we would never have ended up in the current mess.

Labour could have a million members but if it can’t get elected what’s the point? It needs to actually be in government if it wants to improve people’s lives. In order to do that it needs to appeal to more than just the left of the party. With the Tories heading ever more rightwards there is an opportunity to gather support from the middle but this looks to have been lost.

Although I have plenty of empathy with Corbyn's natural position I am aghast that the Tories are still, according to some research, ahead in the polls. they should have been confined to the history books. My earlier post was a comment against those splitters using the democracy argument. I think Corbyn is a thoroughly decent person who has done more for equality & anti-racism in his dinner break than most of the Tory party have in their lifetimes. But if he can't destroy the Tories in the current climate I am not sure when he ever will.

It’s easy to think that Corbyn and Labour should be storming ahead given the state of the country and the mess the Tories are in but I think outside our circle of pinkos he and Labour just aren’t liked or trusted by enough people to get them elected. There are probably loads of reasons for that. Some of it deserved some definitely not. He could win the Nobel Peace Prize and still not get elected. Like you I think he’s a decent man but I’m less sure about some of the people who are his advisors or those anti semites who troll it up on social media. He could’ve got a grip on that debacle ages ago if he’d been a bit tougher.

Both parties have some pretty awful people in their grassroots and it appears they’re having more influence now.

I think the current climate is more likely to produce a hung parliament for some time. Both main parties are divided. First past the post means that a 3rd “centre-ist” party is only likely to have a say as junior partner to one of the big two.

On Brexit Labour is hamstrung by the MPs that are wanting to do right by their leave voting constituents. They’re smaller in number than the Conservative head bangers. I still believe that if he or Cooper comes up with a Norway style option at the eleventh hour it could command a majority as that has to be preferable to no deal.

Corbyn just doesn't have a fraction of the smarm of Blair which most floating voters go for. Most people snort in disgust when Corbyn's name is mentioned. When you challenge that you find there is little substance to it, just repeated slaughtering in the press. I don't think antisemitism is a big thing, or a thing at all, in the parliamentary LP. Not a fraction of the generic racism of the Tory party. Plenty of people 'like' T May. When you challenge that there is little depth. She's just middle England who stands for nothing but the status quo, gets photo'd outside church every Sunday.

Corbyn also has a problem with older voters who can remember the 98% top rate of income tax etc.
This was tried and yet spectacularly failed.
It makes great headlines telling the masses that we're going to Nationalise the utilities and rail etc and although some of the companies make hefty profits, which line the pockets of the top brass these conglomerates . The reality of those same companies in the public sector wasn't efficiently run, profitable companies, pumping back huge profits to update their infrastructure, many were inefficient lumbering outfits that were barely fit for purpose.
On the flip side, the so called competition between suppliers, never quite materialised and some of them seem to work as huge cartels, with little benefit to their long suffering customers.

An 8th MP has quit Labour to join the revolution.
They've been whinging for over 3 years, and decide to now do what everyone knew they were going to do, on the eve of the most pivotal moment in 50 years.

Looking at the voting history of some of these people, they hardly seem the most progressive, and transparent people in parliament.

Excellent news Derek Hatton re-joining the Labour Party. All they need now is Galloway and Scargill to return. Obviously these people would contribute massively to a modern forward thinking Labour Party.

Brilliant, insightful comment as ever Backwardsman. What the country really needs is a progressive, forward thinking politician from the Middle-ages, like Jacob Rees-Mogg, to hold it to ransom.
You are like a privatised bus service, nothing turns up for weeks, then a knackered, out of date old banger crawls out.

Not just great headlines - when policies like that are actually given oxygen, they're hugely popular amongst voters; and the water issue in particular has been tested by serious financial journalists, and proven to be affordable.

My issue with Corbyn and genuine Labour MP's more broadly, is that the MSM is so stacked against them, that we rarely see grown up discussions about their ideas and policies - so lots of people form a view based on personal smears or lies; the antisemitism circus is the most mendacious example - with facts proving that a vanishingly small number of Labour members have been guilty of antisemitism, that incidents are dramatically lower than they were under Tony Blair, and that there is a bigger problem on the right - not to mention the institutional Islamophobia that exists in the Tory party - but never seems to get any attention in the media.

To suggest that Corbyn himself is anti-Semitic is beyond ridiculous - but so long as criticism of the apartheid government of Israel is spun as antisemitism - even to the point that Jews who oppose the brutality against the Palestinians are labelled as self-hating, or the wrong kind of Jew, then we're going to be stuck in a situation where anyone who wants to score cheap points against JC or Labour, can trot out that line and it goes unchallenged by most of the media.

Wouldn't it be interesting to see an election campaign run based on policies and facts, rather than personalities, spin and whomever has the most effective command of a Facebook algorithm?