Jeremy Corbyn vs Angela Eagle

See, I had no idea that Ed was left-wing until halfway through the last general election. up to then, it was that he looked weird eating things, and that he had a brother.

There is a feeling that firstly by selecting Ed over David, and now Jeremy over everyone else, that it's the tail wagging the dog. That is, if you count "tail" as the bit of the dog between the ears and the hind-quarters, and the "dog" as that waggy thing at the back.

i don't know if Dan Hodges has any genuine political beliefs - as opposed to cronies, a playground gang, whatever most career politicians think politics is - but if he does have any beliefs they are not even social democratic, never mind socialist. but who cares? he's thick as two short planks.

sheltered privileged posh kid telling working class people what the Labour Party's for, still so many of them around.

like you'd know

;)

At least he openly admits to being a Blairite, the slippery, covert Blairites that exist in greater numbers are the real menace imo

my dog in this race is still Green expansionism fwiw, does that make me a monster

Only if you eat the spinach / get very angry

At least he openly admits to being a Blairite, the slippery, covert Blairites that exist in greater numbers are the real menace imo

i don't know that there are so many Blairites as that those there are are still in positions of endless media access and are given coverage disproportionate to their numbers.

i do think there are a majority of left-liberal/soft-left types within the party, especially active within the party, and they get worn down by the relentless and seemingly obvious logic of "Labour must win power to do good"

i think that's a lie. 13 years of Blair/Brown government widened inequality, entrenched Neolib economics, moved along the privatisation of the NHS and the education system, increased government by crony and quango and most importantly of all made the Labour Party and the whole political system less democratic and marginalized all voices for leftist economic or political ideas.

that's why people are clinging to Corbyn now, because unless the party and specifically the "moderates" can offer some sense that those mistakes won't be repeated, that power will not be used in the furtherance of an agenda that doesn't give one fuck about the interests of working class people, or equality of life chances, or democratisation of our economy - unless they can offer something to say "yeah we get it we perhaps shouldn't accept the whole Thatcherite transformation of the UK as a great achievement" then nobody with an ounce of self-respect on the left will trust them.

and they've offered nothing. and that's the case we should be making to people who think of Corbyn as a cult, because it isn't, it feels much more like a last stand.

good post

So ballots have been sent today? When do online voters get theirs?

"i do think there are a majority of left-liberal/soft-left types within the party, especially active within the party, and they get worn down by the relentless and seemingly obvious logic of "Labour must win power to do good" "

I was listening to that nauseating N Irish chief whip guy on R4, debating with a Corbyn supporting MP last night. If only he was getting worn down, the fucker sounded like he was running on triple industrial strength duracell batteries and could have gone all night. I forgot the name of the female Corbyn supporting MP, but she sounded a bit more sad and jaded by it all.

the real fuckers - the media figures, the MPs so deep in corporate sponsorship and doublethink that they think it's how life is supposed to work - obv, they've got some lungs on them. they're often fighting for very well-paid livelihoods after all.

also she pointed out that she switched her allegiance in the mayoral election from Diane Abbott to Khan for the sake of the party and now regrets doing so.

Hodges has no real politics really, he was only really ever in the Labour Party through accident of birth and has nothing to say beyond repeating 'win elections!' again and again and again. Like I get that some degree of compromise is usually required for anyone to achieve power, but Hodges is just some dude who's realised that right-wing publications will continue to throw many at any 'insider' prepared to slag the Labour Party off on a weekly basis. That's all he is.

I like to imagine Glenda, pen hovering over her leadership ballot for .7587 seconds before ticking the Corbyn box.

The thing I noticed in the meeting I went to were that the smith voters tended to say things like 'this ideological squabbling is a distraction - we have to win an election'. I know that's not an original observation, but I was surprised to see it incarnated.

"Owen has the strongest Labour values - he led and won our fight against the Tory cuts to tax credits and disability allowances. The polls show he is the most likely Labour candidate to win the next election."

This is from my Khan email, to get a fuller picture it should also include "He was also one of the 184 Labour MPs who failed many of their constituents by absconding on The Welfare Reform Bill"

Not totally sure if me asking my union branch to switch my subs to the Labour affiliated fund last week was too little too late out here

― Dadjokke (Sgt. Biscuits), Tuesday, 12 July 2016 21:48 (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For anyone keeping score, no dice, you had to be fully affiliated before 15 Jan even if you were a union member before that

The day after they told me that I got a lovely e-mail from Harriet Harman telling me to vote for Owen Smith

I lose track of which bits of the Labour party/movement know who I am and whether or not I've said they can spam me so it's hard to know whether to kick off

So ballots have been sent today? When do online voters get theirs?

just received mine by email

It was interesting, BBC News was saying that a lot of the non-counted affiliated supporter applications came from people whop were already registered to vote in the election. Not sure what that means in terms of feedback and confirmation etc.

Also said that one applicant had tried to join 170 odd times which had me wondering if they were aware they had managed or not

Actually what data did you have to give to join?
& were people who hadn't previously joined able to sign up as affiliated members or not. It wasn't only people who had signed up between January and July that were able to sign up as affiliated was it.

Was the £25 not as much of a deterrent as whoever instituted it thought it would be. & i wonder if that was both sides trying to sign on again.

I did hear nasty things about trying to get through on a limited connection at the time and how long it took. Also how it seemed like the connection crashed prior to people completing the transaction.

Also assuming that the non-counted attempted join ups were over an interval between the deadline and the final count. So were there any ways of dismissing attempts in place for recognised duplicates to be stopped live.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/21/corbyns-support-for-my-nhs-reinstatement-bill-was-not-inept?CMP=share_btn_tw

Voted.

Oops.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/23/jeremy-corbyn-virgin-trains-disputes-claim-over-lack-of-seats

The guy who wrote that is on Twitter saying that several passengers have contacted him to back up Corbyn's story.

It is obvs pre-planned to some degree but not a bad tactic given how widely loathed Virgin Trains are and how frequently people are forced to stand or sit in the aisles.

The Virgin footage they showed was later in the journey and after several people had got off the train.

I mean no one needs to make a video to convince the British public that their trains are terrible. Everyone fucking knows that.

but that's the truth of the story - whether it happened to be jammed to the gills at the moment they filmed it is pretty much irrelevant

He should've brought his dadstool with him and knows it.

Sometimes I have to avoid trains because when you have a teenager with autism as a fellow passenger and loads of fucking sweaty angry commuters all bunched together. It is pretty much a recipe for me ending up having strong verbals with people - which I absolutely hate. Another issue is that the track maintenance went to shit after denationalisation and people lost their lives because of it. Anyone arguing that transport has improved under the private sector has either never travelled by train since the 80's or is insane.

do people bother arguing that transport has improved? or that it costs the government less?

Was going to say, even the pro-priv say things like "you have to reduce costs to make it economical and oh god can't it get taken back into public ownership please?"

turns out my £2.99 or whatever it was from last September was enough to buy me a vote after all, happy days!

Oh really? I paid £25 thinking I had to. Might have to spoil the ballot in revenge.

Voted too. The £25 thing was just if you'd joined in the last six months, no?

Yeah I did the same, it was in the spirit of paranoia that I lost £25 to these fuckers. I would have felt better if it was lost on Trap 2 in the 2.27 at Monmore or something.

Renationalising the railways is one of those things that's through-the-roof popular with the electorate and that no one other than Corbyn has seriously floated as a policy. Blair pledged to do it in 1997 and then continued to renew contracts throughout the New Labour years. It's been successful on the lines where it's taken place in London, and the East Coast Mainline was much better before it was re-privatised a few years ago.

He should have focused on Southern Rail, even the most rabid Home Counties anti-Corbynite wouldn't have argued.

@OwenSmith_MP
My campaign remains on track. Proud to be genuinely standing up for ordinary people.

Rrghghh. Why does everything this guy says sound so needlessly awful and smug?

(random Graun commenter) Second - if I was going on a 3 hour train journey and new well in advance what train I wanted I would have booked a seat. Clearly someone was not very competent

Great idea cz if you have a seat reservation there's always someone sitting in it anyway and there's no way "Jeremy Corbyn asks someone to get out of their seat" could be turned into a stupid news story about "so-called socialist thinks he's better than the common man" or something

But everyone already knows Southern are terrible. xp

Southern were a farce again today :)

He gave his reserved seat to a woman who was standing up, which just goes to show what a patronising brocialist...

@JananGanesh - Columnist for the Financial Times
You can do analysis of Corbyn and his "movement" (I have done it) but the essence of the whole thing is that they are just thick as pigshit.

lol. u ok hun?

he's just disappointed they're not articulating the case for full socialism effectively enough

he has done analysis tho, so

BBC are going with the "hang this lying bastard" storyline re: the train vid so clearly i was wrong

if Smith said Icke knows the score and Hitler was right it would be still buried under this.

This leadership contest is the best of silly seasons huh?

Adam Lloyd-Binding ‏@lloydbinding 12m12 minutes ago

@francesbarber13 And lo, He sat on the floor, and He washed the feet of the other travellers #traingate