Jeremy Corbyn vs Angela Eagle

@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

One for the Sadiq Khan fans:

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/business/khan-paves-way-for-scheme-with-96-affordable-housing/7016543.article

But that's alright because he'll whisper sweet liberal things, say the right stuff you know. So proud of the most powerful labour politician in office. Did you know his dad was a bus driver?

https://twitter.com/twlldun/status/768109600390443009

Tom Peck Verified account
‏@tompeck

Owen Smith tells audience: "with me, you won't have some lunatic in charge of the Labour Party."

We want someone normal already!

This is ludicrous:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/23/jeremy-hunt-weekend-nhs-death-claims-unhelpful-say-civil-servants

A briefing paper produced last month by his department’s team looking at a seven-day service and obtained by the Guardian and Channel 4 News says the health secretary’s repeated allegation of patient safety failings at weekends to justify the switch to fuller seven-day care “has not been helpful”.

Guardian and C4 obtain this and choose not to make it their top item, instead its #traingate.

"Support our journalism for just £49 per year"

I'd pay that much just to fucking make the Graun disappear.

If ever I click on the Graun, I always make sure my adblockers are all set to 11

I've hated the Guardian for quite a while, them urging us to vote for the Liberal Democrats was the last straw for me, compounded by the Scotophobia of much of their coverage of the indyref; but living in a country with no broadsheet to the left of Tory has given me some newfound appreciation of the centrist rag.

but then who will be the voice of oh forget it i'm done

it's good to see Owen trying to unify the party behind a kinder, gentler politics

this thread maybe is not the best place to get into this, but

I'm a Corbyn supporter (already voted for him yesterday, in fact)and I've had mental health problems since I was a teenager, but I don't really *get* ppl who are denouncing Owen Smith's "with me, you won't have some lunatic in charge" comment as being a mental health slur. am I wrong about this? enough ppl obviously feel differently that I'm fully ready to believe that I might be off base here, but colloquial use of words like "lunatic" like this seem fairly distinct from prejudice or stigma towards the mentally ill?

Neither of them think before they open their mouth but Smith's ability to undermine the view of him as the "competent" one is genuinely incredible.

idk, lunatic to me is a dated synonym of mentally ill, would it have been ok for him to say "with me you won't have some mentally ill person in charge"? i don't care much either way but i have problems with it.

Like if you're going to call someone a lunatic maybe don't spend the previous month pretending to agree with everything they say?

xp should say as well that I realise that "person who has had mental health problems" covers a whole spectrum of ppl who have had different experiences and may feel differently about these things

i think use of negative mental health insults are inevitable and not usually meant as a slur and should be overlooked and move on usually; but i feel bad nowadays if i use that language myself, and i would feel v bad and try v hard to avoid using it in a professional capacity

and because it's ingrained now doesn't mean we shouldn't work towards making it less acceptable, like other slurs that come from abuse of minorities

but the Twitter fit is dishonest because the issue people really have with Smith is not that choice of phrase

i think his "I am Normal" shtick is mildly offensive and pernicious tho

Neither of them think before they open their mouth but Smith's ability to undermine the view of him as the "competent" one is genuinely incredible.

Like if you're going to call someone a lunatic maybe don't spend the previous month pretending to agree with everything they say?

oh yeah, I totally agree that even aside from the metal health issue it's a stupid thing for Smith to say - especially as to win he needs to win over ppl who like Corbyn and voted him last time, and calling Corbyn a lunatic shows contempt for those ppl

(multiple x-posts)

Agree that its ridiculous that "traingate" is leading over the Jeremy Hunt/NHS story.

Saving Labour types are *really* invested in/excited by this traingate story, to a greater extent than any of the more substantial controversies that Corbyn has faced - these ppl seem to have a bee in their bonnet about Corbyn supporters apparently thinking that their man has a monopoly on virtue and principles in the Labour party, they are really determined to believe that Corbyn has been caught telling a straightforward untruth/behaving like a "typical politician"

Like to think JC staged it just so he can look the arty prankster we all just 'know' he really is.

Also - doesn't know who Ant & Dec are, has read Ulysses. Join the dots etc.

Feeling wearied about this all now ... because I just can't see a time when Labour, as a unified party, will start properly focusing on the current government.

The Labour party is effectively useless now as anything but a subject of observation for armchair social anthropologists and political scientists

It's 1981 all over again

Smith is such a grasping idiot that it is hard to take much he says seriously, but his mask has slipped a few times and revealed the thought processes of a pretty shitty human being imo. He doesn't seem to understand the game most of his type of slimeball do is try and project normalcy (or whatever the fuck that is, i.e. happy photo op with classic nuclear family) and not abrubtly blurt out "I am normal" apropos of nothing. There have been stories about him being a humourless bully and threatening an ill + disabled woman with legal action because she criticised his pro-austerity stance. Most of the evidence suggests he is not likely to be sensitive to mental health issues.

Seriously can you imagine if this is the thing that sinks Corbyn?

afaict the consensus among political journalists (however much faith you put in that) is that there is no appetite for a split if/after Corbyn is re-elected. some ppl suggesting that the rebels will just force another leadership election as early as the start of next year, but I can't see a way they could do that without *them* (rather than Corbyn) being seen as the wreckers, after he's won two leadership elections in 12 months, plus the fact that they would not be able to exclude the new members who have joined since Jan from voting the next time. something is going to have to give - I'd guess that the unity of the rebels will come apart, some will reluctantly/grudgingly attempt to work with Corbyn, some will remain irreconcilable and continue trying to undermine him. there are local and mayoral elections in May next year so I guess if results are bad that could be the rationale for another coup attempt.

Newsnight rn sinking it in. Hilarious.

Can this please not be fiction? http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyn-targets-deputy-tom-8685583

I suppose the nightmare scenario for Corbyn's opponents is that Lab do just well enough in local elections etc to prevent him being ousted as leader, but not well enough that they have any chance of forming a govt for foreseeable future, so it's in their interest to make sure Labour is in such a mess that it has disastrous results, but have to make sure that it's Corbyn rather than them who is responsible for the disaster. based on what we've seen so far this seems to be wholly beyond them.

"who is *seen as* responsible for the disaster" is what I meant to type

If Smith is trying to sell himself as a person who doesn't say or do stupid things, he's got a funny way of doing it.

I am generally against lazy insults derived from mental health terms we have known and loved, particularly by adults who aspire to any kind of leadership role. It is relatively simple to avoid them, in any case.

I bet the Tories would love Smith to run against them, completely gaffe prone and the Murdoch press will have his idiotic ISIS comment on file. Thats why they keep saying "We need credible opposition to hold us to account" somehow without smirking.

the isis comment was horrendous and perplexing but it's not like corbyn is short of a terrorist controversy or two in the vaults

No doubt good use would be made of Corbyn's "terrorist friends" as well, but at least there is an ideology at work there and fuck the electorate if they don't get it :p

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1691720087/4257520_400x400.jpg

I mean, say what you want about the tenets of physical force Irish Republicanism, Dude, at least it's an ethos

I was actually referring to the necessity of dialogue in seemingly insoluble conflicts. But you keep posting your tired memes if it makes you feel better.

radio 4 currently 5 minutes plus on whether Corbyn could've had a seat or not, 0 seconds on whether trains are frequently so full that there are no seats to be had

(clue - the week before last i made 2 cross country trips, both were delayed by an hour or so, both featured stages of the journey where people were spilling out of the doors at every stop)

Watched the Newsnight thing on traingate last night and wondered if the presenter felt he was being devil's advocate by arguing the Corbyn POV against the 2 guests who were vehemently against it. & nobody invited on who took the train so knew how bad it could get. The idea that it could be overfull regarded as ridiculous.
Sounds like something that will be echoed across several front pages this morning from seeing The Papers last night too.

I may be in an unusually receptive mood, as a result of the announcement the train i pay Southeastern 10% more than the GDP per capita of Serbia for won't be calling again at my station for two years, but i genuinely don't understand how anyone can defend the system as it is. Bringing rail fares in line with those in Germany wouldn't just add about £5k a year to my post-tax household income, it would relieve pressure on housing in major cities and help revitalise fading satellite towns. I don't know if part of the resistance is the idea that 'of course, nobody will actually work in an office in the future' but it's perverse that it has taken until Corbyn for this to be a major plank of the Labour platform.