To be ashamed of the Labour Party leadership

[20nil]

Long term member, did not support Corbyn, but even I am surprised by quite how bad he's been.

Where is the opposition? I get that Brexit is difficult, but where is Labour on the collapse of the NHS, the explosion of homelessness, the decimation of local council funding and the ticking bomb that is school funding?

Why is it that we now look to the Lords, the Cof E and petitions to be the opposition?

Shocking state of affairs.

Sad to see so few women listed as options. Stella Creasy and Jess Phillips still quite junior but in time will be good in shadow cabinet I think. As leaders, not so sure. I suspect Jarvis is being lined up. He's so quiet at the moment. Yes, remarried and didn't want to stand last time because his kids needed him. Too right wing for me personally, but I would vote for him because I think he'd be a vote winner and he's a decent man. Pretty ordinary background, huge fan of the NHS which treated his first wife through her cancer, very popular, local MP, life experience. It's pretty appealing.

Labour HQ:are you reading this? Some of us are your members; all of us are voters.

The scary thing is that Rebecca Long Bailey and Angela Rayner have both been touted as future leaders by Momentum types. They are both awful, total union stooges and Rayner is plain stupid, Long Bailey is hardly a sparkling intellect but compared to Rayner she looks like a Nobel prize contender.

RLB is awful

RLB sounded as if she was reading off a script when she was on Question Time the other week

And how many times do we have to hear about RL not having a degree

Corbyn's report writing friend Baroness Chakrabarti is on Question Time tonight no doubt defending his uselessness

I'd vote for Dan Jarvis or Alan Johnson but none of the others appeal and especially not John McDonnell.

McDonnell has been an absolute disaster as SC at a time when we've never needed a sharp economic mind more.

I find it incredibly frustrating to listen to so-called Labour leaders pontificating about how things ought to be, but not offering any thoughts on how to deal with what's in front of us.

That train of thought was in no way inspired by John McD. Honest.

God no, he hasn't even got JC's common or garden vague cuppa tea niceness. My card is in the post if it is him.

I think Alan J has had enough and was disillusioned after the Remain campaign was so let down by Lab leadership.

He was the leader of the remain camp and couldnt even deliver it in his own constituency

I know. See what he had to say about the leadership.

The problem for Labour is that the burdens of the welfare state are only going to get greater- saying they can effectively address globalisation and the aging population crisis is like King Canute trying to hold back the tide (and no, everyone having more kids to rebalance the pyramid does not work) . Simply, we all live too long and arent productve for enough of it. When the welfare state and NHS were being developed, the average person worked from 15-65 and died at 70, so their productive life was 72% total life span. Now it's 20-65 and die at 85 having racked up a shopping list of medical problems and procedures and care bills- productive life 52%- quite a shift. There's no way to raise taxes from individuals to cover that- most people's taxes will never cover what they "get back"- other than the mega rich, most people will struggle to fund an extended retirement themselves. You need higher corporate taxes, but then you get into the cycle of needing companies to invest in your country so you actually need low taxes.

I honestly dont know what Labour can say they will do that would actually work.

Keyser, this is absolutely the situation we face, plus automation. And climate change.

It will require a fundamental change in the way we think and do things. My nutty post was not meant to describe a way forward, but to suggest that we will have to find some way to accept a different kind of life.

makeourfuture - why should equality be our goal?

This is the question.

Automation and AI is mind blowing in terms of what it could do to transform esociety as we know it

• I went to a conference on driverless transport- the consensus was that within 25 years, people probably won't be allowed to drive themselves anymore in most developed countries

• Someone in health tech said to me that of course, all the problems of public healthcare cost will be solved by an army of robo-surgeons and nurses. They already have robots that can identify signs of depression in students on campus.

I'm not sure whetehr to be excited that I'll hopefully still be here to witness all this or to buy a plot of land somewhere remote, dig a borehole and hide.

Equality for all - that's moving towards communism and has proved not to work

for everyone to have the same opportunities is what Labour have worked towards in a society where that doesn't happen

What Corbyn doesn't seem to get is that many working class desire all the trappings of what the middle class have (like he has had) all this talk about equality those with more have a little less and those with less have a bit more comes from a place where you are privileged, the majority of working class want all those trappings not just a little bit more so life is more comfortable and don't care that much that others have less

Equality for all - that's moving towards communism and has proved not to work

Even under communism some were more equal than others....

And its coming from an ex PM Labour (Blair) leader to stand up against the government

This is exactly what Corbyn should be doing not allowing to government to march ahead with their plans

He just has to go he really Delete repeated word does he is a disaster for the country not just the Labour party

exactly Piglet

because it is designed to suppresses human behaviour

He just has to go he really Delete repeated word does he is a disaster for the country not just the Labour party

That should read .... he really really has to go he is a disaster for the country not just the Labour Party

Equality of opportunity is what we should be after and what the Labour Party should be campaigning on.

Fakenewsday : "Blair-Brown did some great things domestically, especially on NHS funding and education and I find it distressing that this is all written off. "

I agree. The accusation that Labour spent all the money is never countered with what they spent it on.
They spent it on Early Years (didn't exist before Labour), Surestart, Children's Centres, education, improving the lives of ordinary people. They also spent it on making up for the years of financial neglect from the previous Conservative government.
They sure as hell didn't condemn the vulnerable to poverty while selling off public services and giving tax breaks to their business friends!

Successive elections have shown that people want hope. They want change and improvement to their lives. They want to feel positive about the future. Remember "Things can only get better"? It was so successful, it has inspired subsequent elections.

What is extremely offputting to voters is the faint whiff of depression and negativity surrounding the Labour party at the moment. They are the opposition! They should be absolutely slaughtering the Conservatives - so many wide open goals are being missed while they make sure their bootlaces are tied!
If they have no confidence in themselves and their policies, if they sit passively and watch while their achievements in government are dismantled and rubbished, how can they expect the general public to have the confidence to vote for them?

i remember, 1997, 18 years of the tories finally ended, halycon days indeed, the managerial competence of the Blair-Brown partnership (whatever happened behind closed doors between them)...the conversation about Iraq overshadows the fact that a labour government got into power and did some very good things domestically. So frustrating. I don't think JC can solve the problem with Isis by talking to them either. Re-nationalizing the railways or any other industry isn't a priority I care about right now - fix the NHS, fix the way disabled people and carers have been hounded by the tories and do that first...

Equality of opportunity is what we should be after and what the Labour Party should be campaigning on.

It is an old point, and strong one. The counter is, "Does this require level starting conditions?"