To ask - Jeremy Corbyn - PM

[MommaGee]

There's stuff about how he thinks he'll be PM in 6 months. How the GLASTO coverage is a BBC plot to "see a MARXIST in power" etc etc but how?
TM is hardly going to call another election and Labor are likely to keep her long enough to get through the crap that is Brexit.

Apologies for all those thinking in thick but I don't see how JC has any even inkling of getting it, let alone a discussion on how much swing he'd need

"Animals good
Humans bad"

Make our future.

Own it.

and meanwhile, both with Trump's and Corbyn's supporters, there is still no decent investigation into the mechanisms needed to get the losers of economic liberalism to retrain to fill the available jobs. The hard, worthwhile questions are not fixable at the level of chant.

Do you mind, I'm not a self styled prole; I'm benefit scrounging scum.
Still voting Labour...

Sorry Dawn!
I too am benefit scrounging scum - although I didn't vote labour this time.

I can't warm to the man at all. He leaves me cold. I don't believe he is a man of principle, he seems more like a cynical politician (without any particular qualities or gifts). If he ever got into power, that would be a truer test of his principles. All he has ever done has snipe from the sidelines, he's never actually led. He turns up at protests and protests against the Establishment, but I don't believe he'd know what to do if he became the Establishment (ie got into power).

As someone from Northern Ireland, I detest what he did with regard to IRA leaders, it was grossly offensive to victims, totally one-sided and at best incredibly naive. He did nothing to bring about the peace process. He simply liked hanging out with anti-government rebels, who happened to be mass murderers,but that didn't bother him.

as it happens, NI has some of the best schools in the entire country.

Best in terms of results, yes. But schools in NI have had their budgets slashed for the past decade and many are on their knees. The entire education system is struggling.

I cant imagine many people 100% agree with the party they vote for. I have concerns about the labour manifesto, the £10 minimum wage probably being the biggest one. Not least because it would have a massive impact on childcare costs - I know some nurseries pay their staff under 21 their minimum wage & I dont know any that pay £10. It would make the 30 free hours untenable. That will hit some of the more vulnerable, low paid, single parents.

It would be nice if the specifics like that could be challenged rather than the ridiculous 'you can't spend money you haven't got' 'there's no magic money tree' 'he'll bankrupt us' stuff which ignores the economic impact of investment & the fact that austerity is not working. Our economy is recovering slower than those with significantly more labour like policies.

None of that will stop me voting labour though. And I might be 'middle class' now but I grew up well under the poverty line in the 1980s and so my vote isnt 'for' you Faith but for my 10 year old self, my 18 year old self staying at home for uni because I was terrified to get a student loan (the year they were introduced), my mother in law in 'sheltered' housing with severe lung disease waiting 6 months and counting for her stair lift to be fixed. And because I dont want to live in a country where cutting fire safety corners and putting lives at risk is legal - or where something like 90% of all children living above the 12th floor are not white.

I get this makes me more left wing than any government in my life time, so even if I dont agree with JC on everything Im excited I have something new to vote for.

@pottered yes you're free to criticise policies you don't like - but there is no conservative high ground. Austerity has failed (reminiscent of the failure of monetarism) cameron/may have been 'tested' and found wanting. It really is time for an alternative and the labour manifesto doesn't merit the trashing it gets on these threads in lieu of reasoned critique.

i wouldn't claim a tory high ground frankie. I'm a twatty blairite - I've been told I've no place in the labour party these days so I don't describe myself as labour anymore. I am a fan of economic liberalism though - it makes people, on average, better off. We need to figure out how to fix things for the losers of this system.

Whilst I've more sympathy for the informing principles of the labour manifesto, as well as the questions being asked, I was happy with the election result as neither party's policies as they stood deserved a clear mandate imo.

Well said, whenyou.

We need to figure out how to fix things for the losers of this system

Not in any hurry are we....

it was hardly a situation that arose overnight, why would you think the answers were simple and obvious?

pottered do you remember the days when Blair was talked of in similar terms to Corbyn as the new messiah? To hear the way Corbyn supporters talk it's like nothing like that has happened before. But, you know, Blair actually won an election or two. By quite a few seats if I remember rightly. And he didn't think it beneath him to try to appeal to Tories, libdems and all wings of the Labour Party. Not just appealing to a mass of unformed voters. And not just lumping the rest as Tory. And aggressively insulting them.

the man is a little mad and unhinged isn't he? Funny to watch him though - comedy gold! He would made an absolute awful PM and I'm pretty sure in reality when push comes shoves that the corbyn supporters won't actually vote for him - they know he's a joke.

I do wish TM would step aside and let someone else form the Tory party run the government though, she's too stoic and robotic for my liking - i loved Cameron!

ah tobee I try not to think of the great days of 1997, the implementation of the minimum wage in the hands of the LPC, Brown keeping us out of the euro (hooray), the increases in NHS and education spending. That was my youth! Labour's current lurch back to the 70s is some sort of dystopian nightmare we can't wake from.

I'm beginning to see though that what Corbyn has tapped into is a certain set of problems: housing, tuition, wages, disability benefits - but he doesn't have good, sensible solutions. Blair would have!

I didn't love Cameron!

It's a pity William Hague slunk off. He was intelligent and seemed a decent sort of chap.

the key difference to my mind is that Blair had better policies - yeah he had some glitz, but more importantly, the policies were so carefully tested because he had to get over the 'labour has no reputation for economic competence' argument - that resulted in some great policies.

i see no similar improvement from Corbyn. In fact, defining 'rich' as some arbitrary set limit was foolish - Blair's rhetoric about hard working people was far better.

I'll stop wittering on about Blair for a bit... :)

The thing is I think that Momentum despises New Labour (or do we now call it Old Labour and is Old Labour now New Labour?!?) more than it does any Tories. Moderate Labour people are in a way more dangerous because they might take back the party.

I'd like to be a fly on the wall at meetings of some of the more moderate Labour MPs. I wonder what they think/are planning? But perhaps they've all being brainwashed by subliminal social media messages so they toe the Corbyn/McDonnell line.

It's a pity William Hague slunk off. He was intelligent and seemed a decent sort of chap.

Yes!
I like William Hague a lot 😄

Pottered & tobee - I was 22 when Blair got in - heady days of optimism!
I cannot stand the man now (I wasn't overly enamoured with the man himself at any point really tbh), but the Blairite New Labour/Tory-lite was a pretty good mix of economic liberalism & political socialism.

I also get the feeling that most Corbyn/Momentum supporters were about ten when Blair was elected and only think of him in terms of the Iraq War. He's just a baddie from fairy stories to them.

ah tobee I try not to think of the great days of 1997, the implementation of the minimum wage in the hands of the LPC, Brown keeping us out of the euro (hooray), the increases in NHS and education spending. That was my youth! Labour's current lurch back to the 70s is some sort of dystopian nightmare we can't wake from.

The dropping of bombs on innocent iraqis, the glory days huh

Just see my previous post. For the record I left the Labour Party at the outset of the Iraq War.

I find the constant angst about Jc odd when t may is fucking the country over here and now.

I guess it's ok when the tories screw us though.

Histiny but I don't expect any better from May and the Tories. It is possible to be critical of both.

yeah I said nothing about Iraq Just...for the record, i didn't know he was lying, I didn't predict the Iraq disaster, (me or many others), at the time I thought there was a case for moral intervention.

I realize we were foolish, but we didn't know that Hussein was no active threat, and we didn't forsee Isis happening.

Actually, as a lesson in unintended consequences of grand, poorly thought out actions, it's not a bad study, and cheap shots about people not caring about dead Iraqis are low.