angrysoba
Philosophile
The contest is over, and the supposedly electable ones got utterly trounced by an unelectable beardy Communist nutter in a landslide.
Jeremy Corbyn might actually win?
- Thread starter Giz
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The contest is over, and the supposedly electable ones got utterly trounced by an unelectable beardy Communist nutter in a landslide.
... of Labour and Union members and the self-selected voters who paid £3 for a vote.
Oh come off it. In a year's time there will be a whole lot of middle of the road candidates I reckon. If not, Labour is doomed forever.
It seems unlikely that any of them would win the next election. It is impossible to state - unless one is simply repeating Blairite propaganda - that Corbyn is unelectable, and that the others are electable.
Or unless one means that the run of the mill social democratic policies espoused by Corbyn are beyond the pale, and anyone who promotes them is a heretic and therfore not papabile. I think that is the issue.
But in the part of the UK where I live NuLab has been obliterated from every constituency except the most opulent suburban area of Edinburgh. And by a Left wing, not a Right wing party.
There is a struggle to be fought in the Labour Party throughout Britain, to determine its future character as a component of the UK political system, and what social interests it chooses to represent. This fight might as well take place now as at any other time; for happen it will, one way or another.
angrysoba
Philosophile
Maybe there will; maybe there will not. Will these middle of the road candidates have any policies or will they be the same empty suits and empty heads spouting their PR-approved focus-group-tested banalities that seem to have been a big turn-off for normal people?
Because if that's all they have then maybe they ought to be doomed.
The two candidates that could have run but mysteriously did not are Tristram Hunt - who I used to think was interesting when he produced history documentaries and who, I believed, had a bit of substance until he went on Question Time and did the usual refusal to answer straight questions that career politicians are trained to do - and Chuka Umunna whose mysterious withdrawal from the leadership campaign a few hours after joining has never been very adequately explained.
Now, are you going to surprise me by saying something interesting or are you just going to repeat the tired mantra of "unelectable nutter!"?
angrysoba
Philosophile
So what? He won according to the Labour Party rules by a huge margin and the others were literally pissed on from a great height.*
He could only win the election he was running in and the same would have been true of any of the other candidates.
If Labour and the unions were unhappy with their own rules - as some of the establishment bitched and moaned about constantly on TV and in the print media then they were complaining to the wrong people.
Who else should have won? Ed Balls, perhaps? Oh wait, he was slung out of office by his own constituents.
* I did that on purpose.
And of course now the man who rebelled against the party line 238 times is demanding the full backing of Labour MP for his agenda. Fortunately there's enough time for the party to wake up to the walking disaster this man is and replace him in good time for 2020.
My google search indictes that he "defied the party whip" at Westminster rather than "rebelled against the party line". I don't think the two things are identical.
I find it interesting that all of this discussion is about what will happen in 2020. There are key elections next year in the National Assemblies/parliaments where it can easily be argued that Corbyn is a positive move for labour not to mention any potential referendum on the EU. I think we should see how he performs as leader of the opposition before we write him off.
No he isn't. He made it quite clear during the election that he believes MPs should do the job they were elected to do.
Also since has been elected as the leader of the party by such a huge majority wouldn't it be rather churlish to claim he has to unify the party, the party seems to have made it clear it is unified in who it wants the leader to be.
WildCat
NWO Master Conspirator
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And why not? Those policies can work, you just have to change human nature.
Ukogbanians are different from all those other places where those policies have failed over the last century, there's no proof it won't work there!
Easy to work out you didn't even bother to read the list.
WildCat
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Good point, economies never fail in Socialist states! Just look at, er, ummm, help me out here... oh well it's only because of the Jews they failed elsewhere. Hugo Chavez said so right before he died of the cancer the Jews gave him.
WildCat
NWO Master Conspirator
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Oh but I did, raise taxes, print money, pretend market forces don't exist, Hamas are really reasonable folks, spend spend spend spend... such well thought out policies!
angrysoba
Philosophile
Ha ha! I definitely think a lot of those things are utopian, such as the idea of everyone tending alotments presumably to make themselves more self-sufficient like Barbara and Tom in the Good Life. Similarly, the idea of stopping everyone killing each other in the world by setting a good example is never going to fly.
Nevertheless, some of it makes perfect sense - if you are paying more for a "privatized" rail service than a nationalized one, then why not nationalize it and keep it running - the military and the police are nationalized after all.
angrysoba
Philosophile
WildCat
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Are you including just the fare you pay in a nationalized system or also including the subsidies to keep it running?
Because it is nearly certain that costs will rise when the government takes over. They will raise salaries, increase the number of jobs "needed" to run it, bloat the administration with political cronies, and all the other things government does when they try to run a business.
When were the military and police nationalized? And since when were those considered businesses anyway?
angrysoba
Philosophile
I'm talking about government infrastructure payments, and subsidies that count as "profits" which ultimately come from the tax-payer for a service that is supposedly "privatized". In reality it is not.
It also appears that privatization has resulted in the closure of manufacturers of rolling stock.
I will fully admit that I really do not know how much a nationalized rail service will cost (particularly the cost of re-nationalizing, which may be considerable), but it seems to me that privatization has not lived up to its promises and has not resulted in a more efficient service, has reduced accountability and meant that government is not in control to improve things.
I wonder what would happen if government subsidies were to suddenly halt. Would the rail services simply go bust? It seems like it.
Well, armies and navies used to often be made up of privateers, militias and pirates - standing armies are relatively modern, as I am sure you will know from your history lessons.
As for the police, I believe that nationalized police services began with the Bow Street Runners.
Of course there are still private security firms, mercenaries and bounty hunters that governments could turn to instead of national organizations, and there are some "libertarians" who favour such ideas. Not me, though.
At least that lets Hitler off the hook. It's Lefties that committed the Holocaust, Eh?
dudalb
Penultimate Amazing
Forgetting about the Gulag are we?