4444244 said:

So, let me get this right.

Corbyn was voted in via the lefter leaning trade unions, whereas the bulk of the party members are Tory-Lites.

The Tory-Lites want to do everything possible to get rid of Corbyn, like using a constitional crisis to make a power play (fuck the citizens, lets use an opportunity!), and Corbyn's like 'I was elected into membership fair and square, so suck it'.

It seems glaringly obvious that the Labour Party as it stands is a mis-match, they have been for an age, they either need to re-invent the Labour party without union / hard left backing, or just all bugger off to a new labour / libs. Remember the Libs splitting up in the 80's?

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Hazzuh said:

Owen Jones (more or less) condemns Corbyn's leadership.

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Billy_Pilgrim said:

That's not accurate. The union leaders back him but the unions themselves do not entirely. GMB in particular are balloting their members, and polling of unite members shows they believe he's doing a poor job. Corbyn's main support came from outside of the Labour party, just under half of members didn't vote for him.

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4444244 said:

So, let me get this right.

Corbyn was voted in via the lefter leaning trade unions, whereas the bulk of the party members are Tory-Lites.

The Tory-Lites want to do everything possible to get rid of Corbyn, like using a constitional crisis to make a power play (fuck the citizens, lets use an opportunity!), and Corbyn's like 'I was elected into membership fair and square, so suck it'.

It seems glaringly obvious that the Labour Party as it stands is a mis-match, they have been for an age, they either need to re-invent the Labour party without union / hard left backing, or just all bugger off to a new labour / libs. Remember the Libs splitting up in the 80's?

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Mr Corbyn appointed me and press released this without my knowledge or consent whilst I was in the middle of cancer treatment. He then sacked me the next day when he realized he had given away part of someone else's role. But didn't bother to tell me that either. By then my office had been besieged by press and the story was out that I was Shadow Minister. I decided to make the best of it and to serve. I worked on his Arts policy whilst I was still having treatment but in Bristol..

When I went back to Westminster, I discovered that he had sacked me but hadn't told me and did not have any ideas for how I was supposed to explain it to Bristol West members or constituents.

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Incredibly, Jeremy launched a Shadow Cabinet reshuffle on the same day. This was the reshuffle that had been talked about since the Syria vote a month earlier. A vote where I supported Jeremy’s position. The reshuffle that meant all our staff spent Christmas not knowing whether they'd have a job by the New Year. By mid-afternoon the press were camped outside the Leader's office. They were there for the next 3 days.

It knocked all the coverage of the rail fare rise and our public ownership policy off every news channel and every front page. I respect completely Jeremy’s right to reshuffle his top team. But why then? It was unnecessary and it was incompetent.
Despite our agreed policy, despite Jeremy's Director of Policy and I agreeing our position, without saying anything to me, Jeremy gave a press interview in which he suggested he could drop Labour’s support for HS2 altogether. He told a journalist on a local Camden newspaper that perhaps the HS2 line shouldn’t go to Euston at all but stop at Old Oak Common in West London – but he never discussed any of this with the Shadow Cabinet, or me, beforehand. I felt totally undermined on a really difficult issue.

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This is something I have experienced personally in my capacity as a Shadow Minister for Children. My office and I spent months preparing for a Labour Party review into special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) to feed into Labour’s manifesto for the 2020 General Election. I identified the issues we needed to address; I raised questions in the chamber; I met stakeholders to discuss the review, and my staff put together a briefing for the wider PLP and the Leadership Office, and worked to get media coverage. Three days after the launch, I found out that my review had been completely undermined by our Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell.

Without consulting me, John had announced his support for a Shadow Neurodiversity Minister and an autism manifesto. My office picked up John’s announcement on Twitter, and subsequently raised the issue with him, requesting an opportunity to meet to discuss the matter further. After receiving no response, my team made several more attempts to reach out to John’s office, which were all met with no answer.

The combination of silence from John’s office and the large number of inquiries from external bodies and the media, left me with no option but to contact Jeremy’s office directly. Instead of support and an offer to resolve the problem, we were simply acknowledged with the sentence, “I appreciate the point”, and then told to expect an apology and clarification later, which never arrived. Indeed, nobody ever reached out to discuss the matter with me.

In all my time in Parliament, I have never experienced such lack of communication or respect for a shadow minister’s work from a Leader. To form a credible and effective opposition, a Leader must work with the PLP and respect the opinions of their shadow ministers. Jeremy needs to lead his MPs as well as the membership. Sadly, Jeremy has failed to fulfil the parliamentary aspect of his role from day one.

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Heidi Alexander, who quit as shadow health secretary last weekend, has criticised John McDonnell’s “totally unacceptable” conduct in setting up a team of NHS policy advisers without telling her.

The Guardian reported earlier on Thursday that McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, had secretly created a group of advisers, bypassing Labour’s usual policymaking processes, and that two of the advisers were or until recently had been members of other political parties. McDonnell’s involvement with the group was first disclosed by Health Policy Insight, an influential source of NHS analysis.

In a series of tweets on Thursday, Alexander said: “John McDonnell invited NHS campaigners to a meeting in the Commons but didn’t invite me. I challenged him about it. I was then invited and I was shouted at by some of the attendees.”

After that meeting on 13 April, she said, “John McDonnell then invited them to form an advisory group (again not telling me). I found out about this, said it was totally unacceptable and it must not be an advisory group.”

The advisory group had been due to hold its first meeting with her, McDonnell and the party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, but that never took place because she stepped down on Sunday after Corbyn sacked Hilary Benn as shadow foreign secretary.

In her last tweet explaining the row over Labour NHS policymaking, Alexander said: “One other thing: that was not the first time I was undermined but will save that for another day.”

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Heidi Alexander staged physical sit-in outside Corbyn’s office to get a decision from him on Labour party policy on the NHS. @saving_labour

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I had the opportunity to see what was happening inside the PLP. The leadership wasn’t confusing as much as just silent. There was no policy direction, no messaging, no direction, no co-ordination, no nothing. Shadow ministers appeared to have been left with no direction as to what to do. It was shambolic. The leadership usually couldn’t even get a press release out on time to meet print media deadlines and then complained they got no coverage.

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People say Corbyn has economic policies please tell me what they are other than empty words like let's stop austerity & lower inequality

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Corbyn is playing idiotic games at a time when he should be trying to sort out a collapsing economy as the pound and the FTSE slide 1/2

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A campaign memo from Britain Stronger In Europe leaked to the Guardian shows that only about half of Labour voters have realised their party is in favour of staying in the EU, with the rest thinking it is split or believing it is a party of Brexit.
The analysis, sent to some Labour MPs, found that focus groups in London, Brighton and Ipswich over the past few weeks showed voters were “uniformly uncertain” about whether Labour was campaigning to stay in the EU. They did not know what Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn thought or believed he was for remain but “his heart isn’t in it”.

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The letter, written by both Mr Owadally, who is a Labour member, and Wales Stronger In Europe's head of press Alex Kalinik, said: "We were consistently given short shrift when we requested visits from Labour figures via the Labour Party in London.

"Our political champions from the Labour Party were often unable to get hold of research or rebuttal materials from Labour HQ to help make their case.

"In the end we often coordinated press for Labour figures because the Labour Party was not willing to do so - but these were less powerful because they were not from the official party infrastructure.

"Most strikingly felt of all was the complete disinterest from Jeremy Corbyn.

"As leader of our party, he should have thrown the full weight of his resources - as leader, as the leader's office, and as the steward of the party itself - into the Labour campaign for a Remain vote, but this did not happen.
I think there was another EU referendum one about how people were left hanging by the leadership and had to do everything themselves.

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In a letter to colleagues seen by PoliticsHome, the head of Labour's EU Remain campaign said people in Mr Corbyn's office were “actively undermining the party's efforts” with the leader "at best" unable to control them or "at worst" sympathetic to their views.

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And documents passed to the BBC suggest Jeremy Corbyn's office sought to delay and water down the Labour Remain campaign. Sources suggest that they are evidence of "deliberate sabotage".

One email from the leader's office suggests that Mr Corbyn's director of strategy and communications, Seumas Milne, was behind Mr Corbyn's reluctance to take a prominent role in Labour's campaign to keep the UK in the EU. One email, discussing one of the leader's speeches, said it was because of the "hand of Seumas. If he can't kill it, he will water it down so much to hope nobody notices it".

A series of messages dating back to December seen by the BBC shows correspondence between the party leader's office, the Labour Remain campaign and Labour HQ, discussing the European campaign. It shows how a sentence talking about immigration was removed on one occasion and how Mr Milne refused to sign off a letter signed by 200 MPs after it had already been approved.

The documents show concern in Labour HQ and the Labour Remain campaign about Mr Corbyn's commitment to the campaign - one email says: "What is going on here?" Another email from Labour Remain sources to the leader's office complains "there is no EU content here - we agreed to have Europe content in it". Sources say they show the leader's office was reluctant to give full support to the EU campaign and how difficult it was to get Mr Corbyn to take a prominent role.

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Last autumn, I complained when a Saturday speech by Corbyn was released far too late on a Friday to secure much space in the next day’s Independent. “It won’t happen again,” Corbyn’s office assured me. Seven days on, another Saturday speech arrived – an hour later than the previous one. I know this sounds like trivial gossip from the Westminster village but on each occasion, incompetence prevented Corbyn from getting positive media coverage.

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“I would never underestimate the ruthlessness and effectiveness of the PLP and media establishment linking hands to turn victory into an opportunity for organisational and ideological destruction of the left,” one Labour MP tells me. “The PLP will do whatever makes them look best and makes us look worse. And they may be happy to endure a split until Corbyn is deposed.” Hostile MPs will obsessively leak to the media; they will cite Corbyn’s rebellious record as justification to refuse to tow the line; their strategy will be to bleed a Corbyn leadership to death.

As Chris Mullin — the ex-Labour minister and writer of A Very British Coup, which explores the fate of a left-wing Labour Prime Minister at the hands of the Establishment — puts it: “The media will go bananas, of course. Every bit of his past life will be raked through and every position he has ever taken will be thrown back under him.” People Jeremy Corbyn has met, or has been close to, will be scrutinised in great deal. Quotes will be taken out of context and twisted. His political positions will be ruthlessly distorted. The media will seek to portray Labour as being in a state of chaos (a narrative fuelled by right-wing MPs); and Corbyn as dangerous or ridiculous or both.

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Jones’ attempts to hole-poke Corbyn in a youtube interview a couple of days ago didn’t manage to make much of an impression, so he’s now pressing more questions in a blog, free from the distraction of Corbyn being able to answer them.

Owen Jones pretends not to mind that his ‘advice’ to Corbyn is being ignored, but shouting out long and hard about his credentials and banging on about the areas where he sees Corbyn as sorely lacking (even if, like a prosecuting advocate he raises them as questions), indicates that he hopes at least some of his readers will mind on his behalf. He’s not the first person in the bubble to discover that the fact that Corbyn is ‘decent’ and ‘listens’ doesn’t mean he’s just a vessel waiting to be filled by those who insist they ‘know better’.

And Jones’ blog looks too like the work of man who ‘knows better’ and feels unfairly spurned. He is too readily using the excuse that he is being true to himself whilst clearly using his position to compromise that of a leader he ostensibly supports. He’s under no obligation to put right the proven media bias against Corbyn (which he brushes off as readily as Corbyn’s most fervent detractors) but I don’t see a genuine principle at play in deciding to do the opposite. And there is hypocrisy in his attempt to add weight to his criticisms by, on the one hand bigging up his credentials in supporting Corbyn, whilst on the other adopting the hackneyed ploys of every MSM detractor to undermine him.

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Hazzuh said:

On the day Corbyn says that he "doesn't surround himself with sycophants" Diane Abbott tweets an article attacking Owen Jones lol.

Some quotes:

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Owen Jones has been accused by a union leader of “back-stabbing” and waging a year long campaign behind closed doors against Jeremy Corbyn.

Writing for The Huffington Post UK on Tuesday, Manuel Cortes, the general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA), suggested the prominent Guardian columnist and campaigner was motivated by the “petulant resentment” of “a celeb no longer quite as centre-stage as he was accustomed to being”.

On Sunday, Jones, who campaigned for Corbyn during the 2015 Labour leadership election, wrote a lengthy blog warning that the party was on the “brink of disaster”.

He has also written a follow up post in an attempt to win over fans of Corbyn who criticised his initial piece.

But in a fierce attack, Cortes, who is backing Corbyn’s continued leadership of Labour, said Jones makes “Simon Cowell look like a paragon of understated modesty”.

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Dan27 said:

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...earn-fast--no-credible-plan-labour-leadership

Well. This is pretty damning.

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Dan27 said:

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...earn-fast--no-credible-plan-labour-leadership

Well. This is pretty damning.

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Crab said:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/08/02/who-gets-keep-voters/

Polling on what happens in event of a Labour Party split. Essentially, the current Labour Party vote can be split into three factions: "loyalists", about 8% of the Labour Party's 30% nationally, who will vote for whatever ends up with the Labour name and branding regardless of which wing of the party they are from, "Right splitters", about 8% of the Labour Party's 30% nationally, who will vote for the tearaway rightwing faction if they decide to split, and "Left splitters", about 14% of the Labour Party's 30% nationally, who will vote for the tearaway leftwing faction if the rightwing faction regains control of the official Labour Party.

Note that the rightwing splitters would pull about 5% from other parties (mostly the Lib Dems) if they did go, whereas leftwing splitters would more or less just be Labour party exiles, not drawing anyone in.

I think this demonstrates quite handily how a split would be stupid. Even in the absolute nuclear scenario of "rightist party splits away, fuses with Lib Dems" the resultant party only has 19%... to "leftist Labour"'s 21%. Compared to the Conservatives on 40% and you'd be looking at an absolutely devastating loss in seats for the two Labour factions compared to a unified Labour party,

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Crab said:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/08/02/who-gets-keep-voters/

Polling on what happens in event of a Labour Party split. Essentially, the current Labour Party vote can be split into three factions: "loyalists", about 8% of the Labour Party's 30% nationally, who will vote for whatever ends up with the Labour name and branding regardless of which wing of the party they are from, "Right splitters", about 8% of the Labour Party's 30% nationally, who will vote for the tearaway rightwing faction if they decide to split, and "Left splitters", about 14% of the Labour Party's 30% nationally, who will vote for the tearaway leftwing faction if the rightwing faction regains control of the official Labour Party.

Note that the rightwing splitters would pull about 5% from other parties (mostly the Lib Dems) if they did go, whereas leftwing splitters would more or less just be Labour party exiles, not drawing anyone in.

I think this demonstrates quite handily how a split would be stupid. Even in the absolute nuclear scenario of "rightist party splits away, fuses with Lib Dems" the resultant party only has 19%... to "leftist Labour"'s 21%. Compared to the Conservatives on 40% and you'd be looking at an absolutely devastating loss in seats for the two Labour factions compared to a unified Labour party,

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Peter Ian Staker said:

Even if Labour stays united the result will be the same.
The current arrangement cannot be an effective opposition.
Too many people pulling to completely different directions.

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Peter Ian Staker said:

Even if Labour stays united the result will be the same.
The current arrangement cannot be an effective opposition.
Too many people pulling to completely different directions.

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CyclopsRock said:

Indeedy. Thus, there's only one solution.

The Corbmeister-General needs to fucking go.

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Crab said:

Actually, Corbyn does very, very well with working class Labour voters - he's more a Sanders analogue (though more extreme) in that he captures young people and the non-xenophobic part of the working class, while failing to get lefty professionals. I don't think I've seen any polling on Corbyn and minorities.

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Riddick said:

Given that the actual Labour voters want Corbyn to stay it seems that the ones who need to go are the corrupt rightwing fucks that have infested the party.

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Crab said:

Actually, Corbyn does very, very well with working class Labour voters - he's more a Sanders analogue (though more extreme) in that he captures young people and the non-xenophobic part of the working class, while failing to get lefty professionals. I don't think I've seen any polling on Corbyn and minorities.

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Riddick said:

Given that the actual Labour voters want Corbyn to stay it seems that the ones who need to go are the corrupt rightwing fucks that have infested the party.

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Billy_Pilgrim said:

No he doesn't, the working class voters are his biggest problem. They're not going to UKIP because they love the tories, they're going because they feel that Labour is middle class hoofwankery under Corbyn.

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Crab said:

That's... really not true. If you look at Labour leadership polling, Corbyn performed by *far* the best amongst working class Labour voters. Took more than two-thirds of the working class vote, iirc. By contrast, if the Labour leadership vote had been restricted entirely to people in the ABC1 demographics, he'd have lost to Cooper in the final round.

Now, obviously working class Labour voters are not the same as working class voters, in general. But it is true that relative to other Labour leadership contenders, Corbyn performs well amongst the working class.

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Hazzuh said:

As far as I know Corbyn's support amongst Labour party members is more working class, Yougov did some polling which showed that. Is there any polling of the wider electorate?

What do you have to say about the fact that the majority of the electorate prefer Smith...?

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Billy_Pilgrim said:

That was then, and this is now.

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Crab said:

Now, obviously working class Labour voters are not the same as working class voters, in general. But it is true that relative to other Labour leadership contenders, Corbyn performs well amongst the working class.
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.n...4x8p1al7n/TimesResults150810LabourMembers.pdf

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Riddick said:

Given that the actual Labour voters want Corbyn to stay it seems that the ones who need to go are the corrupt rightwing fucks that have infested the party.

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Riddick said:

OK, this discussion is getting circular. I have already explained how Corbyn is being sabotaged from the neoliberal fucks within the party resulting to low poll numbers.

And how the hell is this relevant? Is a party supposed to represent an ideology or the general mood of the whole public? (which btw is being manipulated by mainstream media) Are socialist and communist parties supposed to become neoliberal too because the general public doesn't like them yet? This is a really screwed up argument, you know that, right?

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Hazzuh said:

I think it's totally wrong to extrapolate from Corbyn's supporters in the selectorate to those in the electorate. This seems like a bit of a red herring imo.

That said, it will be interesting to see what the makeup of Corbyn's support will be this time. My impression from looking at who CLPs support is he is doing worse in London but better throughout the country.

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CyclopsRock said:

But you don't mean "Labour voters", otherwise his poll ratings wouldn't be so shit.

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Crab said:

Present Labour voters *do* want Corbyn to stay - although admittedly by a narrower margin than the Labour selectorate. That's sort of the problem - Labour is trapped in a particular electoral niche demographic that is becoming more and more distant from the electorate as a whole.

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Crab said:

Present Labour voters *do* want Corbyn to stay - although admittedly by a narrower margin than the Labour selectorate. That's sort of the problem - Labour is trapped in a particular electoral niche demographic that is becoming more and more distant from the electorate as a whole.

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darkace said:

I'm fairly sure at this point you've redefined neo-liberal to mean 'anyone that doesn't support Corbyn'. Unfortunately for you, the vast majority of the electorate is neo-liberal.

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Riddick said:

Like I said, circular. I have already explained what me and most of the actual left means when we talk about neoliberalism. The electorate isn't neoliberal, most of the electorate has no idea what they are. And like I have already repeated a million times, Corbyn has a problem not because of the electorate's ideology but because of the constant sabotage and smearing from Labour Blairite and neoliberal dipshits.

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Quixzlizx said:

I guess it's easy to maintain your polling lead with Labour voters when everyone who thinks you're a wanker is jumping ship to other parties in the polls. A vicious or virtuous cycle, depending on your perspective.

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Crab said:

Agreed, but this is true of more general polling. If you look at BMG's polling (the recent one about Theresa May attracting a third of Labour voters) as an example, Corbyn does moderately better with working class voters than he does middle class ones. I mean, he does very badly with both compared to where he was at in August, but I think one can genuinely say that "Corbyn is relatively more appealing to working class voters, all other things held equal, than other potential Labour leaders" is a true statement.

The trouble with the Labour Party is not solely Corbyn, although he is a problem. Rather, there is a much wider malaise in the Labour Party that needs far more than a change of leadership. It's not the the working classes don't want Corbyn, it's that the working classes don't seem to want Labour of either stripe.

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godelsmetric said:

Of course the divide in the PLP is partly ideological, I don't see how it couldn't be.

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Billy_Pilgrim said:

That's not accurate. The union leaders back him but the unions themselves do not entirely. GMB in particular are balloting their members, and polling of unite members shows they believe he's doing a poor job. Corbyn's main support came from outside of the Labour party, just under half of members didn't vote for him.

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Hazzuh said:

Rather than being "Tory-lite" here are the reasons people think Corbyn is a disastrous leader:

Thangam Debbonaire, ex-Shadow Culture Minister
https://www.facebook.com/thangam.debbonaire/posts/10157204442320083?hc_location=ufi
Lilian Greenwood, ex-Shadow Transport Minister
http://www.newstatesman.com/politic...-corbyn-continually-undermined-me-job-i-loved


Sharon Hodgson, ex-shadow minister for children
http://www.sharonhodgson.org/sharon...resignation_and_her_support_for_owen_smith_mp

Heidi Alexander, ex-shadow Health secretary
http://www.theguardian.com/politics...nder-attacks-john-mcdonnell-labour-nhs-policy

https://twitter.com/CarolineFlintMP/status/754630940920516609?lang=en-gb
Richard Murphy, creator of Corbynomics
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2...yns-economics/



Danny Blanchflower, formerly an economic advisor to Corbyn
https://twitter.com/D_Blanchflower/status/754746293109612544

https://twitter.com/D_Blanchflower/status/747939921650843648?ref_src=twsrc^tfw


In regards to the EU referendum.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics...k-about-partys-stance-on-brexit-research-says
Stewart Owadally, Welsh Remain Campaign Director
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-36651135



Alan Johnson
https://www.politicshome.com/news/u...bour-grandee-alan-johnson-lays-jeremy-corbyns



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36633238


In regards to media management.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...media-but-he-s-the-one-to-blame-a7024186.html

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CyclopsRock said:

Indeedy. Thus, there's only one solution.

The Corbmeister-General needs to fucking go.

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CyclopsRock said:

Owen Jones' blog post made a good job of comparing Ed's manifesto and Corbyn's policies and how they're almost the same, his conclusion being that Ed went out of his way to try to make them seem more right wing than they were, Corbyn tries to make them seem more left wing. I dunno if this is ideological per se, and whether the PLP has a problem with this appearance or if it's largely an issue of competency.

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Peter Ian Staker said:

Getting rid of Corbyn won't solve anything. It will just keep the centrist of the party from pouting for a while until the next lost election.
No other party in the world that I know of has stretched themselves so thin. You can't possibly hope to satisfy everyone from the left wing people who voted Corbyn to the right wing people who voted New Labour. I guess they kind of have to to make up the numbers but still it's an unmanageable arrangement
Seriously the only way anyone will ever defeat the Tories at this point is if fuck up badly, like really bad. Then maybe someone can unite an everyone but the Tories coalition but of course that can only be a temporary thing. Tories got the British public by the balls it seems.

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Crab said:

honestly, Ed was my favourite Labour party leader in decades. Owen Jones post is absolutely on the money though.

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