Well, there we have it: Jeremy Corbyn has just been announced the next Labour Leader

[InTheBox]

With 59% of the vote (first round).

I've just been following the live BBC broadcast and just wanted them to get on with it.

No doubt people on both sides of the political spectrum will be overjoyed with the result.

That's goodbye to Labour then!

BrandNew

Your trying to extrapolate that non voters are all left wing which cannot be substantiated and, with the law of averages is a false dichotomy. You are also misrepresenting the think tanks, the higher educated are more likely to vote so your uni friends are still a minority and not representative of those that didn't vote.

Would you abandon Trident ...?

You know, through 42 years (!) of voting Labour, I've always been in favour of a nuclear 'deterrent'. I've rethunk. Possibly because I have so much more time now to find out about things - and because the nature of the global war/peace dichotomy has changed - I now think Trident makes us more vulnerable to assault, not less.

A bit like the way we suffer few armed crimes because our police aren't armed. Obviously a bit more complicated, but I now believe the principle holds.

^Big ish factor according to her, she says an important role her sons education was her no 1 priorty if he was like this on this issue goodness knows what like in general

'My children's education is my absolute priority, and this situation left me with no alternative but to accept a place at Queen Elizabeth boys' school. The decision was made by myself alone and without the consent of my husband,' she said.^

There are very, very few of us who wouldn't count our children's education as our top priority. And when you are prepared to deny children who (unlike you) can't afford to move into an area with grammars because you principles only apply to other people's and not yours then you're a downright fucking hypocrite. Why should other people's children's education be dictated by your principles when you refuse to apply the same principles to your own? Good on him.

How the hell can you tell voters that standards at comprehensives will improve for all children if you send your own bright children there when politicians use their wealth and location to circumvent than themselves?

Garrick I've been ambivalent about the nuclear deterrent for over 30 years. I thought when Maggie had her nose up Ronnie's arse that it was pointless. Then when the USSR collapsed I was more worried. The chaos was unpredictable.
But it's become an almost moot point now. If we don't have the newest model we are still armed. We may need to be a nuclear nation but is there any reason to be at the cutting edge? Israel has a nuclear capability. That hasn't subdued the region, it's made Iran more desperate to be a nuclear power. If we don't upgrade then so what?

I will now vote labour again after 18 years of refusing to since Blair (who I voted for in 1997) destroyed my faith in the party.

I genuinely believe in nationalisation. When America had the great depression they built a railway to get out of it.

I say reopen the factorys, sort the mines out and unfuck all what thatcher did. If we make more UK products that equals wages, profits and the economy going up.

Stop people buying their council house, change the way back to how we used to view council houses. Build more of them. Or even instead of the government getting the money that the house cost have a law where the council have to build a new one with it.

More money going around equals a better economy, shops will reopen and the highstreet will come back. When we're skint we're not spending like we used to and this has a knock on effect.

I firmly believe in a open door policy for immigration, other rich countries have this and they're not over run and crippled with no resources.

I don't believe nuclear weapons have any place in today's world as a deterrent. If we has a nuclear attack and struck back we'd probably be causing the end of this world. If nuclear power stations that leak can't be cleaned up how will a nuclear warmer work.

I don't believe in war and I believe we brought isis onto ourselves. We started an illegal war because of kissing the Americans arses and now we're paying the price for it.

I find it ironic how it's never mentioned how much money we have spent on war since the Iraq war. The whole ironic joke of this is that we are fighting them with the same weapons we fucking sold them. We created this mess. Tony Blair should stand trial for war crimes.

There is plenty of money in the pot if big business's actually paid their tax instead of finding loopholes. Why should a fire engine go and put out a fire in Starbucks when the amount of tax they have paid probably adds up to one fireman's salary.

And I have friends from all walks of life. Friends that sell drugs and friends that go to uni. I can only give anecdotal evidence of people that haven't voted being left wing but I know what I see. I hate the fact I have school friends who now support ukip as they don't have anyone else they feel they matter to. Claig isn't the only ukipper who's swapped to jez.

Trident makes us more prone to attack? Really, Garrick?

If multilateral disarmament were an option I'd support it immediately, obviously but unilateral? No. That cannot make us more secure. The absence of any "hot war" between the Warsaw Pact and NATO until the collapse of the latter in the late '80's is surely testament to that?

What might happen however is that unilateral nuclear disarmament would make us even more dependent on a US nuclear umbrella to protect its strategic interests in Western Europe,

Wouldn't it be a tad ironic for the Left if such a policy had the unintended consequence of reinforcing US hegemony?!

Latter?

Former!

Brand iirc the way the mines were shut makes it incredibly expensive and risky to reopen :(

Never really identified with any kind of political party, although my mother would probably label me as "more socialist than I hoped for, Lemon." I just think it's quite nice that a left-wing party has a left-wing leader for a change.

(As an 80s baby I don't ever recall that being the situation before!)

Is there still coal and stuff under the ground there?

I find it ridiculous we basically rely on bankers to keep our country in the first world.

I was emailed this from the 'Conservative Campaign HQ' asking for donations!

Yes there is coal. The best coal in the world. If we had given coal the same subsidies that nuclear fuel had then we could have mined it, sent it to Australia and paid them to take it in 1983. The miners were subject to a vendetta from Thatcher, not helped by the narcissistic Scargill. And so they were shut on the cheap. The coal down there could be mined profitability if they hadn't been closed as cheaply as possible. You'd have to start from scratch now.

I have to say, I've been quite impressed by the Labour figures who've stood down too. It will be interesting to see how thing move forwards for the Labour Party. I suspect that it could potentially be the beginning of a renaissance for them, but lead by those who come after Jeremy, rather than Jeremy himself.

Isn't coal power massively environmentally unfriendly?

Well yes it is obviously (unless you don't believe in climate change) and it is finite. Much like oil and gas. But hey! we're championing the drilling for North Sea Gas in a new field, supporting fracking and continuing to drive petrol cars. Coal is a lefty fuel though so boo hiss.

Activists of left and right don't mix much with those holding other views. Hence they are often surprised when the electorate thinks differently.
Labour are going through the same process as the Tories did after their 1997 defeat: choosing a leader and policies which the activists love.
You can change the leader, but you are stuck with the same British electorate.

JC may get a honeymoon poll bounce for a few months, but unless there is another international economic crash, I expect the next election will be a rerun of Michael Foot's humiliation in 1983.

I remember similar euphoria when Foot was elected Labour leader, then the 1983 rout, followed by years of unfettered Thatcherism and a very reduced, impotent Labour Opposition.

The available evidence doesn't suggest labour's recent defeats were due to being too rightwing:
Labour's detailled investigation of their 2015 defeat is in their "Listening to Labour's Lost Voters," Report which showed immigration was cited most often by voters who stopped voting Labour.

UKIP represents the racist xenophobic voters of Britain, the total opposite of internationalist JC and his welcome to refugees. Most of their voters will return to Farage.

JC is fantastically popular to a small part of the electorate, but probably won't attract the necessary voters in the political centre or in the marginals.
We have no way of knowing how non-voters would have voted, because um, they didn't vote and there is no evidence of their political beliefs, if any.
Scotland will probably stay with the popular SNP, because of nationalism.
Labour only got 28.3% in 1983, when they still won most of the Scottish seats.

Yes cheeky damn those peace talkers. Best be like Cameron and spend your gap year working for a company your dad's mate runs in apartheid South Africa.

When America had the great depression they built a railway to get out of it

That's called Keynesian economics, BrandNew. The US was not mired with huge public sector debt in the 1930's when the "New Deal" was announced. We however have huge - albeit reducing - public debt.

reopen the factorys, sort the mines out and unfuck all what thatcher did

The mines are closed and cannot realistically ever be re-opened for technical reasons. Even if they were, we are closing coal-fired power stations because they produce too much CO2 which allegedly will cause a potentially catastrophic increase in global warming. So that doesn't work.

As far as Margaret Thatcher is concerned amongst the many unpleasant but necessary things she did was reform trade union and liberalise employment laws to enable the economy to function properly in a way that was impossible in the 1970's. I'm old enough to remember the trade unions holding society to ransom over ridiculous wage demands resulting in power cuts; uncollected rubbish and unburied bodies. If you're aged under 45 you've probably never experienced any of those things.

When we're skint we're not spending like we used to and this has a knock on effect

See above. You can't spend what you haven't got. Credit is a temporary fix but capital and interest have to be repaid or eventually you become bankrupt (a bit like some Tin-pot republics and 1980's left-wing councils have done).

I don't believe nuclear weapons have any place in today's world as a deterrent. If we has a nuclear attack and struck back we'd probably be causing the end of this world

But if the other guy knows we've got the means to retaliate he's less likely to do so? That's why the Cold War never turned into a hot war and why unilaterally disarming in the face of hostility isn't very sensible.

The whole ironic joke of this is that we are fighting them with the same weapons we fucking sold them. We created this mess

Which weapons are those, BrandNew? Ak47's? No, they aren't made in the UK? IED's? Er, no. DSK anti-aircraft artillery? No - Russian again. We have not armed ISIS or indeed any militants in Iraq.

Why should a fire engine go and put out a fire in Starbucks when the amount of tax they have paid probably adds up to one fireman's salary

I think you'll find Starbucks owe somewhat more in corporation tax than the £30k or so a year a fireman earns.

Like I said, it's easy to bitch and whinge but you need to articulate a credible alternative - not these vague, woolly notions. Government's don't function like that and credible, electable parties can't either.

BigChoc how much of that was down to the Murdock designated 'donkey jacket' and the entirely unnecessary Falklands War euphoria?
The media has gone on and on about Michael Foot. Thatcher had terrible poll ratings right up until her inability to handle international affairs led to plucky WC boys being expended on holding on to remote islands. She won the 83 election on that. Nothing else.

A great deal of objective common sense in your post BigChoc.

Wherever did you read that our debt is reducing?!?

Thatcher and now this govt went too far in their fight against the unions. She was dogmatic not pragmatic. Had Barbara Castle been allowed to conclude her agreement we would have ended up with something like the very successful German union model.

Well that's a moot point Giddy but presumably you acknowledge that at least a substantial part of those reforms were necessary?