Could somebody explain why Corbyn shouldn't be voted for as Labour party leader?

I think he's doomed in terms of electoral success. The press are overwhelmingly right wing, and they are able to turn people's attention away from the real problems onto bogus ones. Increasing inequality in society? Don't look at the rich - it's the immigrants that are to blame! Corbyn won't play to the hatred and bile of the kind of racist DM reader who needs to kick those who are most vulnerable and who constantly fears that they are going to lose out, and who behaves at the ballot box like a child guarding a plate of chips from his siblings.

However, I absolutely don't think politics should be all about gaining power. We've got far too many people on all sides of the political spectrum who only care about winning - and they will do or say just about anything to get there. It leads to horrible, compromised, essentially hypocritical politics that preserves the status quo very much as it is, instead of effecting real change. We need to make massive shifts in future away from the way we currently live to cope with climate change, and a left that starts to shift public discourse in that direction - even if it does so from the sidelines for a bit - is far more valuable than a centrist party that doesn't really change anything much.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11794595/Tom-Watson-Tony-Blairs-assassin-can-save-Labour-from-Jeremy-Corbyn.html

Here is that ch Blairite, John McTernan

"Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The hour is Labour’s crisis over Jeremy Corbyn. The man is deputy leadership candidate Tom Watson."

I think Tom Watson will end up as a future leader of Labour and he will be a very good one. Corbyn has weaknesses, such as a lack of humour, but Watson has humour. But unlike Blairite McTernan seems to think, I think Watson will be real left wing, in the Len McCluskey, Ken Livingstone, Jeremy Corbyn way, and I think the Blairites are now finished forever.

A Corbyn/Watson tickey would trounce Blair's successors, the Cameron modernisers.

Am enjoying Claig's posts very much. They're a tantalising mixture of lunacy and unexpected rightness

'Does he walk on water and perform other such miracles?'

No. There is no spin about him, unlike for the communicator with God, with his own Faith Foundation, called the "Tony Blair Faith Foundation", that much loved philanthropist, Blair.

He has the right initials, Fun

That politician has arrived - cometh the hour, cometh the man - Corbyn has left his allotment and is making his way to Number Ten in a landslide

Does he walk on water and perform other such miracles?

Farage lit the torch of the people's revolution, he was the flame-bearer, but it is Corbyn who will go all the way and the people will back him just as Labour party members are doing now.

What both Farage and Corbyn reveal is that the people are dissatisfied with the corrupt, crony class of "golden boy" politicians who fawn at the feet of bankers and say Labour members need a "heart transplant" if they want to vote for left wing values.

Funinthesun15 , I don't think it is overegging it. Look at what has happened with Labour Party members. None of the Chuka Umunnas, the Establishment's golden boys, and the Labour ruling elite imagined that this could possibly have happened. None of the political class imagined that 4 million people would vote for a party of "fruitcakes" and that that party would displace the LibDems as Britain's third largest party.

People are crying out for change. No one is happy apart from the metropolitan elite. All it will take is for one political leader to stand up and defy the metropolitan elite and say "enough is enough" and people will flood towards that politician. That politician has arrived - cometh the hour, cometh the man - Corbyn has left his allotment and is making his way to Number Ten in a landslide.

Before the election Claig used to say much the same about the people's hero, Farage

That is why Corbyn will smash the Tories with ease. It is not about people at foodbanks, it is about millions of people struggling to make ends meet. Up to now, they voted Tory simply because they felt that Miliband was just Tory lite (he was not for real, he was tinkering and was just the same and that nothing would change), but now with Corbyn, everything has changed. There will be a mass awakening and millions will switch to Corbyn in a tidal wave that the Tories, the BBC and the media will be powerless to stop

Nothing like a bit of exaggeration.

I think he will attract people but 'millions' talks of 'smashing' and 'wakenings' and 'tidal waves' is over egging it a bit.

My baby boomer parents like Corbyn. But they have always voted Labour, they are not the ones Labour need to win over.
Would Corbyn appeal to people who voted SNP in Scotland? I don't know.

TheOneWiththeNicestSmile, you are absolutely right. Real reports say that there are more older Corbyn supporters than young ones. It is only the BBC and the corporate media who pretend it is just a twitter phenomenon for young people.

'The 'everything for free' policy, may very well attract people, and it rightly so. However how would it be paid for in a realistic way?'

Corbyn will do it by stopping corporate tax evasion which Ken Livingstone estimates is something like 10% of GDP. He will reverse the corporation tax cuts, he will make the metropolitan elite pay, not ordinary people.

We are the fifth richest country in the world. Corbyn will put that wealth back in the people's hands and take it away from the charmed circle of billionaire party donors who prevent progress.

I am a baby boomer (slightly younger than Corbyn) who is delighted with the idea of a proper socialist leader proposing proper socialist ideas.

The audience at the Corbyn meeting I attended was very mixed but there were a lot of baby boomers there. It's actually quite offensive to keep hearing that over-60s are only interested in their own income & don't give a toss about the young or the disadvantaged

"8 million people one paycheque away from losing their home

One in three people could not pay their rent or mortgage for more than a month if they lost their job, new figures from Shelter show today."

england.shelter.org.uk/news/april_2013/8_million_people_one_paycheque_away_from_losing_their_home

That is why Corbyn will smash the Tories with ease. It is not about people at foodbanks, it is about millions of people struggling to make ends meet. Up to now, they voted Tory simply because they felt that Miliband was just Tory lite (he was not for real, he was tinkering and was just the same and that nothing would change), but now with Corbyn, everything has changed. There will be a mass awakening and millions will switch to Corbyn in a tidal wave that the Tories, the BBC and the media will be powerless to stop.

Better one day on government than 500 in opposition

The problem is that they need to persuade people that the other candidates are electable.

'Vote for anyone except Corbyn' doesn't really inspire confidence.

if I hear metropolitan elite anymore I may scream

I have just heard one of the best quotes on this.

Better one day on government than 500 in opposition or words to that effect

The 'everything for free' policy, may very well attract people, and it rightly so. However how would it be paid for in a realistic way?

Nellist was called out on this yesterday when he was talking about it, but avoided the question and changed the subject without answering the question to any degree

'Which do you think would serve vulnerable people better: a compromised, social democrat Labour party in office, or Militant (and its inheritors) in opposition to Tories with a massive majority?'

The Tories won't get a majorty. They will lose to a real socialist paty because the 'vulnerable' now includes many, many more people. The middle classes have been squeezed, living standards have fallen, jobs are insecure and low-paying, zero hour contracts are increasing, young people can't afford homes, parents are havng to help with deposits and tuition fees and living costs and people are graduating without finding high-paid emplyment. Everybody is being screwed by the charmed circle of the metropolitan elite who tell us things are geting better but no one believes it.

Things are going well for the metropolitan bubble, but not for the majority of working and middle class people. Their future is not bright. That is why there wll be a huge switch to Corbyn by the middle classes too, because Corbyn offers a better future - free universal childcare, free National Education Service, free unprivatised NHS, nationalised railways with lower prices, more cheaper homes, better care for the elderly, no tuition fees.

Nothng can stop Corbyn because he offers a better future for everyone apart from the metropolitan elite.

All Tory voters and UKIP voters know that Corbyn is a politically correct Labour idiot, but they won' care because his good points far outweigh his flaws.

Which do you think would serve vulnerable people better

Apparently the SNP, looking at the last election.

Neither a compromised social democratic Labour Party or a left wing socialist party can do much if both are out of office. However, in opposition, I think people believe that there is more chance that Corbyn might speak up.

One thing that the last election has shown is that people will vote for a party that they think has no chance of governing if it thinks it will give them a voice.

The Labour Party has been very, very quiet for the last 5 years.

Bubbles, there are two visions for the Labour Party:

One is a compromised, pragmatic social democrat party which pays attention to the vulnerable as much as is politically deliverable, while accepting that since 1989 communalist socialism is dead.

The other is an ideologically pure debating society which is able to get 100 seats in mostly northern, mostly urban constituencies but from that engages in principled, intellectually rigorous debate.

Which do you think would serve vulnerable people better: a compromised, social democrat Labour party in office, or Militant (and its inheritors) in opposition to Tories with a massive majority?

Article by former ambassdor, Craig Murray, arguing against the myth that the Left is unelectable. I don't agree with everything he says, but he does make sme good points.

"Nicola Corbyn and the Myth of the Unelectable Left

The BBC and corporate media coalesce around an extremely narrow consensus of political thought, and ensure that anybody who steps outside that consensus is ridiculed and marginalised. That consensus has got narrower and narrower. I was delighted during the general election to be able to listen to Nicola Sturgeon during the leaders’ debate argue for anti-austerity policies and for the scrapping of Trident. I had not heard anyone on broadcast media argue for the scrapping of Trident for a decade – it is one of those views which though widely held the establishment gatekeepers do not view as respectable.

The media are working overtime to marginalise Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour leadership candidate on the grounds that he is left wing and therefore weird and unelectable. But they face the undeniable fact that, Scottish independence aside, there are very few political differences between Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon. On issues including austerity, nuclear weapons, welfare and Palestine both Sturgeon and Corbyn are really very similar. They have huge areas of agreement that stand equally outside the establishment consensus. Indeed Nicola is more radical than Jeremy, who wants to keep the United Kingdom.
...
Tony Blair is mythologised as an electoral superstar, a celebrity politician who achieved unprecedented personal popularity with the public, and that he achieved this by adopting right wing policies. Let us examine the truth of this myth. First that public popularity. The best measure of public enthusiasm is the percentage of those entitled to vote, who cast their ballot for that party at the general election. This table may surprise you.

Percentage of Eligible Voters

1992 John Major 32.5%
1997 Tony Blair 30.8%
2001 Tony Blair 24.1%
2005 Tony Blair 21.6%
2010 David Cameron 23.5%
2015 David Cameron 24.4%

There was only any public enthusiasm for Blair in 97 – and to put that in perspective, it was less than the public enthusiasm for John Major in 1992."

www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/06/nicola-corbyn-and-the-myth-of-the-unelectable-left/

And the difference would be?

I guess that it would mean that more voters would be lost. If people allegedly 'couldn't trust' labour this time whatever that means how could we convince people to vote for a party that can't even agree amongst themselves, is seriously splitting before the winner is even announced and has a leader who can'take really command the loyalty of people to vote with him, when he is renowned for not doing it himself.

All while no one is actually opposing the government

And the difference would be?

Corbyn may split the Labour Party, but many people must be wondering why that would be a problem

Because it could lead to years and years of legal wrangling, in fighting, internal gazing. All while no one is actually opposing the government.