Jeremy Corbyn vs Angela Eagle

I've got nothing personal against anybody's privilege, it's the claim that your circumstances are "normal" and that therefore your fierce resistance to disrupting the status quo is normative rather than class antagonism that grates on me

xp

haha my specialist subjects are revolutionary splits on the left and what went wrong with the UK music papers (which is a kind of subset of the first)

anyway i will try and stop yapping digressively on this thread, apologies

Those aren't digressions, they're observations!

i can't work out why owen smith would endorse the prevent strategy other than...not knowing what it is, how it was received or anything about counter-terrorism? it's not well-known enough that it functions as a dog whistle surely?

Just looked this up and his parents are both nuclear scientists!

"Her husband works in Jodrell Bank,
He's home late in the morning,
Had he been a lawyer,
He wouldn't work for pennies"

... I know that has nothing to do with nuclear scientists but that was literally the first thing that came into my head on seeing that post.

XP trying to sound tough on "crime" whether yo've got a clue or not is standard nu labourism, just like nuke fetishism

Also: BONUS looking tough on brown people, while knowing Corbyn is not a fan of PREVENT, can be spun by Smith as 'Jeremy is naive about a security issue'.

^^^ Is the real reason.

reading JH's wiki page and can't decide if the following was written sarcastically by a non-fan:

He believes Britpop was a shining moment for the UK's music industry, and possibly the end of an era, with (manufactured) music now deliberately catering for the lowest common denominator. He presented a BBC Four documentary on the musical movement, The Britpop Story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harris_(critic)

it's a startling indictment of our society that after john harris decided he was a political commentator now we just kind of accepted it

Marcello was right all along then.

Blame that damned Britpop book for easing his transition. If you think that book topic was JH's big idea, stop it immediately. The publisher had been trying to fit a writer to the topic for AGES (they asked me at least 18 months before him to have a go, but none of the popstars were ready to speak/off Class A's at that point in 1996) and let's just say I'm the only non-Oxbridge person who was encouraged to mull it over.

Labour wins its appeal to prevent new members from voting: I'm not sure that this is a good thing anti-Corbyn forces, most likely result is surely that Corbyn still wins and the impression that the Labour right are double-dealing fixers with contempt for rank and file is further entrenched?

Pricks.

xp "a good thing *for* anti-Corbyn forces", rather

if Smith does win somehow, all this will do nothing to help him function as the (lol) "unity candidate", will set up an ideal betrayal narrative that will be repeated for years to come etc

Ugh, these people.

No permission to appeal either.

I'm not even sure where the basis of "Corbynistas are flooding in" gets traction from tbh. They claimed it last time, and none of those people are excluded, so is the whining and expensive court action to stop it being a complete humiliation for the Blairites and only a massive humiliation?

I also struggle with Trot entryism and 'form your own party rather than change this'. Surely Blair should have had the courage of his convictions like David Owen in that case rather than fundamentally change the Labour Party and formed a new SDP?

In theory, they probably haven't won too much - lots of the new members will have signed up as £25 registered supporters and the optics are terrible. As Soref says, if Smith wins, his victory will be seen as compromised. That may be the point though - alienate enough of the supporters and they might leave the party.

Apparently 50k people who signed up through the Saving Labour portal are also in the 130k so possibly an Owen goal.

LOL Labour are pursuing members for 30K costs

LOL as in fkn tragic

Truly they are the people's politicians

this seems relevant wrt to the Labour right's gift for alienating the exact people it needs to win over if it is going to remove Corbyn:

http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/reluctant-corbynism.html

BBC News just said something about the appeal getting through on an obscure clause taht allows the NEC to make things up as they go along. I was thinking it was something in the small print.

& that there will have to be closer looking into things since it does disenfranchise a lot of people that they should be wanting to include.
But then again at least 60 of those are trots, innit?

I think even without the new members he will still be likely to get about 60%+ of the vote, I can't imagine many of those that voted for him last time will have since changed their mind - even with Smith's dazzling sermons. And he might have even won a small percentage of Burnham/Cooper voters since.

I think there's probably a substantial proportion of people who voted for Corbyn in good faith but will vote the other way due to his general lack of competence, but there aren't THAT many of them and there's a hardening pro-Corbyn faction. The Burnham-Cooper-Kendall vote would be expected to mostly swing behind Smith but it probably won't be enough - especially as a lot of those voters may have let their membership lapse in the past year.

The recent signups would indeed have probably included a lot of Save Labour types as well, but Corbyn should still win this pretty comfortably.

I've seen quite a few media-ish people (for want of a better term) completely give up on Corbyn to the point where they're fighting eggs on Twitter and calling those who haven't repudiated him 'cult members'. Since I haven't seen one example of the coup people/Eagle/Smith being any better than the current leader, plus *really shit* at coups, I am not one of those people.

In a lot of those cases they tend to be people in their 40s who had their best years under New Labour (and/or just before it). It's very difficult not to read their attitude as middle-aged journalists circling the wagons because the younger generation has rejected their entire approach.

stay classy, john mcternan

https://twitter.com/johnmcternan/status/764116983998808066?lang=en

Polly Toynbee makes a good point:

'But there are reasons why Corbyn supporters should also be pleased with this judgment. In the recent party election for constituency places on the NEC, the Corbyn slate swept the board – so the new NEC that takes over in September has just tilted in Corbyn’s favour. In future, those who went to the courts to protest at an NEC decision will be glad the court has decreed that the NEC is the “guardian of the constitution”. And so it should be.'

people keep saying corbyn's preferred nec candidates swept the board etc but weren't four of the six re-elected so there are perhaps two more supporters and two fewer let's call them attackers out of the 30 or so members? maybe that does represent a decisive tilt

I've seen quite a few media-ish people (for want of a better term) completely give up on Corbyn to the point where they're fighting eggs on Twitter and calling those who haven't repudiated him 'cult members'. Since I haven't seen one example of the coup people/Eagle/Smith being any better than the current leader, plus *really shit* at coups, I am not one of those people.

― corbyn-based life form (suzy), Friday, August 12, 2016 4:07 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In a lot of those cases they tend to be people in their 40s who had their best years under New Labour (and/or just before it). It's very difficult not to read their attitude as middle-aged journalists circling the wagons because the younger generation has rejected their entire approach.

― Matt DC, Friday, August 12, 2016 4:11 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

most of the hysterical obsession I've seen around this situation has been from these people, not corbyn supporters. their refusal to engage with why people still support JC is wilful but i guess if you scream "cult!" or "trots!" or "misogynists!" at every turn you don't have to do any self-reflection

xp
Rhea Wolfson was the Momentum candidate that the PLP tried to prevent from standing so I just voted for her. In my ignorance I didn't know anything about the other 5 tbh

Some young-ish people have given up on Corbyn after being positive about him last year because of his media handling or the useless MPs he tried to work with turning his back on him and spreading bullcrap about his incompetence - not saying there aren't issues, but its more likely these are spread on both sides. Plus his perf at the ref campaign has stuck. There is a vague 'he should've done more' without actually saying what that is. Maybe if he had stood with Cameron, acted the subordinate enough times. Idiots.

Some of them voted for Yvette and Burnham in the first place anyway - they'll vote Owen now. JC's line of respecting people's decision as compared with Owen's promise of a 2nd referendum might be their major difference - and I'd say many of JC's supporters are pro-Europe.

"Why do people prefer this obvious no-hoper over your guys?" is the more pertinent question.

Like it shouldn't be beyond the realms of anyone's imagination to understand why people of 18-25 or so don't believe that the last Labour government created a wonderful Britain that enhanced everyone's life chances.

What kind of numbers joined Labour before the cut-off date - I can recall reading that there were significant numbers that joined after the last leadership election and before late december.

I do think Corbyn's performance re: Brexit was weak but the whole "he's a closet Brexiter I can TELL by looking at his EYES" thing is deeply sinister, and seeing people castigate him more for the debacle than the actual Tories who got us into it really is telling about their prejudices. You'd think Corbyn single-handedly ushered us out of the EU - while the same people will hail May as a sensible pair of hands and also a victory for feminism bc she's a woman.

I will say that Corbyn was tremendously unlucky, in the context of his long-term goal of a grassroots movement, that the most gigantic short-term issue turned out to be Europe of all things

Corbyn's referendum numbers were fine and just the same as Sturgeon's who didn't take any flak. More a case of giving an untruth currency by repeating it than a poor performance. Listening to Chuka high-fiving IDS on R4 a day before the vote was a poor performance though.

comparison with jc's performance and sturgeon's are not that appropriate because a) there is a small but not insignificant portion of snp members/voters who are p much fundamentalist nationalists and have always opposed the eu and b) the party also has an old labouresque, left-wing, bennite opposition to the eu (aka corbyn's position until a couple of years ago)

snp probably as eurosceptic as the tories tbh

A big part of the problem with Corbyn is his apparent tendency to just say whatever happens to be on his mind at any given time without thinking through the consequences and that 70% thing in the run up to the Brexit vote really fucked him.

Problem is that a lot of the traditional Labour vote was also implacably opposed to the EU (and not really prepared to listen to Corbyn in the first place) - he could have performed like Martin Luther King and it wouldn't have made much difference to the result. Especially as the very large Southern shire Tory Brexit vote is consistently underplayed and ignored in these discussions. But looking like you give a shit does actually help.

Owen Smith could have chosen to make the EU the central focus of his campaign and it would have offered him his best chance of winning, but he hasn't. Possibly because he knows that post-victory it isn't an approach that's going to galvanise Northern seats flirting with UKIP.

Yeah but this assumption that Labour voters outside of London should have a natural predisposition towards Remain or just needed their arms twisting is completely wrong. There was a lot of populist bigotry in the air during the campaign, it is always easier for the demagogues to get votes when people are looking for scapegoats for why their communities are crime ridden, poor and dysfunctional.

was a good piece
https://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/entryism-and-corbyn-supporters.html

people keep saying corbyn's preferred nec candidates swept the board etc but weren't four of the six re-elected so there are perhaps two more supporters and two fewer let's call them attackers out of the 30 or so members? maybe that does represent a decisive tilt

― conrad, Friday, August 12, 2016 5:41 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dennis Skinner is standing down from the NEC in October and is being replaced by an anti-Corbyn rep, so I think NEC election has only given Corbyn a net increase of one supporter. my understanding is that Corbyn has a narrow majority on the NEC but some of that support is "soft" (from union reps mostly, I think) and can't necessarily be relied on

A student at the University of Bristol has faced disciplinary procedures after telling Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire to “get in the sea” on Twitter.

Ms Debbonaire responded to the tweet sent by student Verity Phillips on 15 July, saying: “This person has just told me to drown - I believe that is a threat to kill.”

“I expect @BristolUni to deal with this,” she added in another tweet.

“Get in the sea” is a phrase popularised by the comedy writer Andy Dawson via the @getinthesea Twitter account, recently spun off into a book of the same title. It’s used as a splenetic insult, intended to humorously highlight perceived idiocies with deliberately over-the-top vitriol - “highlighting people and things that need to get in the f*****g sea,” as its Twitter profile says.

to be fair it stopped being funny about 18 months ago

Once Dave Miliband tried to shoot a paparazzi with a banana, very funny lot these Blairites.