angrysoba
Philosophile
Actually, what's funny about that is that Lord Falconer - who is in the cabinet - has been in the cabinet as far back as Tony Blair's government and he was never elected to anything as far as I can see.
Corbyn did win, what's next?
- Thread starter Darat
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Actually, what's funny about that is that Lord Falconer - who is in the cabinet - has been in the cabinet as far back as Tony Blair's government and he was never elected to anything as far as I can see.
angrysoba
Philosophile
Don't worry. I have it on good authority that only centrism wins elections which means that a right-wing party will lose.
angrysoba
Philosophile
Assuming sarcasm, but I'll answer straight .Apart from having no belief that he's any of those things, although an actual dinosaur would be bloody cool as PM, I voted for him because I am a socialist and agree with the majority of his views that I know of. Even aside from this he seems a decent and honest man which is a great rarity in politics these days.
Even if he doesn't win the next election (or gets assassinated before then by his own party) I think he will move political discourse in this country to the left and make some valid points that no one in my voting life time has felt like making.
I agree pretty much with all of that. I probably would never vote for someone like Corbyn, but I am glad that politicians like him are around.
The tories can now move a bit to the right and still be closer to the center than Corbyn.
ComfySlippers
Banned
There's been a few not-an-MPs who've been in the Cabinet in c20 and c21. Their names escape me but Mandelson was one.
commandlinegamer
Philosopher
Corbyn is now a Privy Councillor, member of an august establishment founded to inspect the royal garderobes in 1172.
It's better than being Lord Privy Seal, who is neither a lord, nor a privy, nor a seal.
Imagine being Lord Privy Seal of the Holy Roman Empire. Then you'd be neither a lord, nor a privy, nor a seal, of a place that was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
All modern cabinets have members of the Lords within them. It's pretty difficult to see how it could be any other way, under the current system.
I think I know my new '20 questions' entry - "Lord Privy Seal of the Holy Roman Empire":
Are you holy: No
Are you Roman: No
etc etc
Ambrosia
Good of the Fods
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I've read a lot of statements in the past few days which amount to this.
I'm not at all sure that any of them are correct. What exactly makes Corbyn 'unelectable' - he just won an election.
His election win is shaking up politics more than anything I can remember in my 40 year lifetime.
Blair got Labour elected by out Torying the Tories. Back when he took office the Conservatives were about as unelectable as it's possible for a main party to get. Lo and behold some years later they won an election again.
Corbyn winning the leadership election has got a lot of people interested in politics again, and a bunch of new people signing up to be Labour Party members. What's not to like?
I'm not a Labour supporter, but isn't getting more people involved with politics a good thing?
The more of the population that vote, the better the government we get.
This may or may not be true, but he might well inspire some other politicians into being more like him and less like Blair. The fewer media pandering, image obsessed, career politicians we get who talk much and do little, the better.
He won a party election, not a general election.
Hyperbole. We could say the same about Trump in the US. Is that necessarily a good thing?
Rubbish. The money invested in the NHS and Education was in stark contrast to the Tories.
Blair appealed to those with aspirations, but who were sick of extremes of Tory rule.
He moved the Labour party in to the 21st Century by acknowledging that it was no longer flat caps and whippets which made up the core of their support, but a growing aspirational middle class that still had a social conscience and didn't want to see state run health care and education run down in favour of privatisation
We'll have to see how it pans out. I suspect there will be people who will leave the labour party, including some of it's MPs
ComfySlippers
Banned
I don't pretend to be a Corbyn expert, in fact I found out he'd won on this forum first. A good example, perhaps, of how jaded some of us are with the British political system.
The surge of people joining up is, though, quite interesting imho.
Ambrosia pointed out, quite correctly, that Labour got elected in '97 because the people were tired of the complacency of the Conservatives who thought they were an unbeatable force that could do whatever they wanted.
(I remember seeing the look on Portillo's face when his constituency results were given and he realised that Democracy had won)
My unimportant guess is that what we are seeing here is similar.
People are very tired of same old same old.
Would he ever be P.M.? I doubt it, unfortunately.
But as leader of The Opposition he will, at least, prompt discussion and debate in The House. And that is the purpose of that place and is the job of The Opposition.
I'll keep an eye on BBC Parliament.
ETA: There are lots of UK members here and, believe it or not, even some of The Americans are interested in this stuff. There really should be a UK Politics sub forum rather than a general "everywhere else" one.
The surge of people joining up is, though, quite interesting imho.
Ambrosia pointed out, quite correctly, that Labour got elected in '97 because the people were tired of the complacency of the Conservatives who thought they were an unbeatable force that could do whatever they wanted.
(I remember seeing the look on Portillo's face when his constituency results were given
and he realised that Democracy had won)My unimportant guess is that what we are seeing here is similar.
People are very tired of same old same old.
Would he ever be P.M.? I doubt it, unfortunately.
But as leader of The Opposition he will, at least, prompt discussion and debate in The House. And that is the purpose of that place and is the job of The Opposition.
I'll keep an eye on BBC Parliament.
ETA: There are lots of UK members here and, believe it or not, even some of The Americans are interested in this stuff. There really should be a UK Politics sub forum rather than a general "everywhere else" one.
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Ambrosia
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Which amounts to outTorying the Tories. He gave people conservative policies but did them better than the Conservative Party.
This genuinely is the most seismic thing I can remember in UK politics though. We'll find out in a few weeks time how much of it is froth and how much of it is substance.
........(I remember seeing the look on Portillo's face when his constituency results were given
Much the same this time around with Ed Balls. Both were signature moments of their respective elections, and both gave remarkably gracious speeches in defeat.
I simply don't understand how people think like this. Amongst a multitude of differences, the Blair government oversaw a surge in public spending that I doubt any Tory government would have done outside of emergencies. As for seismic things in British politics.......Blair was it. He made the Labour party electable, after nearly 2 decades of being a rabble with in fighting and no direction. That people have forgotten those lessons so quickly is the truly astonishing thing about the left wing taking charge.
ComfySlippers
Banned
I can't remember Portillo's speech, the image burned into my brain is that of his facial expression when the numbers were announced.
I'll have to pop into The University of YouTube to remind myself.
Ambrosia was right to describe that day as "seismic".
It was a massive shock(?)
I need my Swingometer to describe that
You are correct though to comment on gracious defeat speeches.
Admitting defeat in a gentlemanly way is a quality.
I'm sounding too British, carry on folks.
Christian Klippel
Master Poster
caveman1917
Philosopher
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