To still like Jeremy Corbyn?

[malificent7]

I think it's right that he stepped down as the public clearly didn't get him...hated him even but i think he stands for the good in society. I actually think he is correctvto call out Israel for being bastards to Palestine and whilst ge apparently supports terroism ( ira), i think he is a negotiator ...the UK shafted Ireland hugely and the IRA is a consequence of that. We need people to negotiate with them.
I slso think remaining neutral on Brexit was the right thing to do but respecting the will of the people.

I don't hate Boris but he has got away with a lot. He has said many racist slurs, he hates women, he has multiple illegitimate children yet blames women, he switched sides re Brexit, oh and he's happy to trade with people like Saudi Arabia who have awful human rights. But apparently Jeremy is the bad one.

Any way it has been... I bid you adieu

I have just read the last few pages of this thread (which largely turned into an argument between churchandstate and MarshaBradyo, and I confess it sums up all the problems of the last few years to me. So much about labels - centre left, left, right of centre....but church, you don't support inheritance tax? You've suggested that the various things Marsha says show her to be "right of centre", but your position on inheritance tax would surely have many labelling you the same? The labels will get us nowhere. We need to work out what people actually want - and as an example, I (as a really quite well off person) think there should be more tax on inheritance; in the country as a whole, even people very far from meeting the (old, lower) threshold strongly felt the threshold should be higher. "Left of centre", "hard left", it's a movable feast. What is very obvious is that Corbyn, our Brexit position and also the policies as expressed in the last manifesto did not appeal to the electorate and we need to work out what will appeal, without selling people who rely on a progressive Labour party down the river.

Agree marsha I've stopped engaging.

No, it was ambiguous. Make yourself clearer and misunderstandings are less likely to occur.

Welshwabbit

I have made myself very clear: I don’t believe in matching my politics to the preferences of the electorate. I believe I standing up for a set of principles that work for me and that I can live with, and people can either agree or disagree with these.

For all sorts of reasons I know an awful lot about broadband which church states is a good policy.

Giving free broadband and starting with people who don’t have it at all is a complete waste of money. Putting a bb in a rural house in the middle of nowhere wouldn’t cost £100 (it would cost thousands). Ploughing up fields, closing roads just to get one connection in is nonsense. That person won’t even want it but might well take it because it’s ‘free’. They clearly have no need for it either.

I laughed like a drain when I heard this policy and then they offered 58 billion to the Waspi women. That is when I knew they had completely lost the plot.

So my right wing view of Labours defeat is

• mad, pie in the sky policies drip fed which looked like bribes to the public

• Corbyn was a metropolitan twit who didn’t resonate with the voters

• McDonnell was a dangerous Marxist who hated the rich/wealth creators

• momentum didn’t want to win. That wasn’t their end game

• labour had no view on Brexit. They couldn’t even state who would go back to Brussels. Their heart would not be in it. Starmer is a Remainer so it couldn’t be him

• Labour scaremongered the NHS and said Trump was about it buy it. All scare tactics.

Fair enough, church, but you can't win power without appealing to the electorate, and without power the policies you personally support will do precisely nothing to benefit you or anyone else.

I have made myself very clear: Idon’tbelieve in matching my politics to the preferences of the electorate. I believe I standing up for a set of principles that work for me and that I can live with, and people can either agree or disagree with these

That's fine. But dont try and become leader of the labour party. JC is welcome to this k he wants. But he also wanted to be elected.

So currently, because he wouldnt appeal to the electorate, we have the Tories.

If he wants a party that has those ideals. Him and momentum can start their own actual party. Rather than try and take over the labour party. Which is what they have done. They counted on labour voters not switching and accepting what they wanted, to keep the Tories out. It didnt work.

If you want to be PM, you need to appeal to the electorate.

What he did was mor appeal to the electorate and that meant the tories won.

So what's worse. The tories in power, or a more centralised left party?

If anyone believes Johnson wasn’t lying out of his arse when he said the “NHS is not for sale” then Tory voters are far stupider than I thought.

He’s lied about EVERYTHING. The NHS is fucked and it’s not scaremongering.

So Church what is your view on inheritance tax? I voted Tory and my view is that no one is entitled to inherit money they have not earned. I posted on another thread that my MIL has dementia and will need at some point to go into a care home and since PILs are relatively rich they will have to pay for it. And I think that's how it should be. Why should younger poorer people pay to protect my DH's inheritance? Do you agree with my view?

Marleyisme
I think I might be wrong. Are you saying Corbyn has nothing to do with policy change? So these arent his principles that he is standing by or his beliefs?

Of course he would have influenced the manifesto, which I would expect to broadly reflect his views, but I don't see him as being its principal architect. The Labour Party Brexit policy, for example, wasn't a policy he seemed comfortable with.

I do think the reasons for the election outcome and Labour Party's fortunes are down to numerous factors, some of them rather complex, and that a disproportionate amount of blame is being laid at the door of the party's figurehead.

If you voted just to stop inheritance tax then that’s ridiculous. You’ve given disabled and vulnerable people a life sentence. It’s nothing to be smug about.

I believe in standing up for a set of principles that work for me and that I can live with ...

... in the wilderness, huddled together with likeminded disciples, waiting for Jeremy’s kingdom on earth to establish itself.

In the meantime (in this case forever) not a single hungry person will be fed by you or a single homeless person given shelter by you.

Mustard if that was aimed at me, I didn't vote to stop inheritance tax, I'm ok with the current situation. My view is that people should save for their old age to support themselves when they can no longer work, not save to provide their children with an inheritance. If they have disabled dependant children they should put money in a trust for them whilst they are alive (but even then not at the expense of paying for their own care in my opinion).

I’m ok with the inheritance tax as it stands too.

AuntSpiker
I actually laughed when I heard about the four day week. It makes absolutely no sense at all.

AuntSpiker
How would it work in construction? Would a bricklayer lay 20% more bricks each week?

I don't understand why people think a 4 day week is necessarily a bad idea. It does not require a business to only operate for 4 days a week.The 5 day working week we have now is pretty arbitrary and a relatively modern concept. From my experience and observations, in many full time positions, employees experience fluctuations in productivity. Benefits of a shorter working week include the opportunity for a better work/life balance and better health for individuals (which could have a beneficial effect on demand for/cost of public services).

As for your construction example - plenty of bricklayers are sub-contractors and may well be self-employed, meaning their work patterns are already likely to be flexible.

@Waspnest what if people have disabled children and can’t work because they need to care for them, live in a council house and have no money spare at the end of the month?

Do you live in an alternate reality where everyone is rich or something?

sunglasses123
So my right wing view of Labours defeat is...

Your opinions and list would have been influenced by a phenomenally astute Tory media campaign, which you don't mention, and would have been a primary factor in the scale of the Tory win/Labour loss.

If they have no money at the end of the month they're not going to have anything to leave to their children when they die are they so inheritance tax is irrelevant. And my comment was about inheritance tax.

That's fine. But dont try and become leader of the labour party. JC is welcome to this k he wants. But he also wanted to be elected.

It’s not currently my plan to lead the Labour Party. If I did want to do so, I would have to convince a large group of its members that I was the right person to do so. So I can say whatever I want and do whatever I want; the responsibility for who becomes leader is collective, not individual.

Waspnest

It’s my belief that inheritance tax is an unnecessary state incursion into private giving between individuals. The money has been taxed already at the point of earning. I don’t believe wanting security for your dependents and people who come after you is wrong.

Where I would compromise would be on the amounts: large inheritances, I would be happy to make these subject to tax because they do help to drive generational inequality. Ordinary inheritances (a home, a cash sum but not an excessive one) I would be inclined to leave alone.

As for your construction example - plenty of bricklayers are sub-contractors and may well be self-employed, meaning their work patterns are already likely to be flexible.

And they are either hourly paid or they quote for specific jobs. The company I work for (almost everyone is employed not a subbie) could accommodate a 4 day working week by taking on extra staff but certainly not at the same pay. Margins are very tight as it is and companies are going under due to the extra costs to employers.

But the Labour position was that better access to broadband would be beneficial for the economy.

Indeed. But broadband installation is really expensive. Is free access to broadband that much better for the economy that it is worth the amount Labour would need to spend providing it? They’d have to buy the stuff off Openreach, compensate current providers etc.

And people in the above £80k bracket who are supposed to be paying for this stuff are now getting their broadband for free. So if their extra tax is now paying for their broadband, who is paying for the extra teachers?

And everybody knows what a total fuck up large scale government IT projects are. Who thinks free Labour broadband would be anything but glitchy and shit?

I'd suggest that another factor in Labour's post-2017 decline is that the extreme left, convinced their time was coming, allowed the mask to slip rather too soon. I've worked alongside such as Chris Williamson, seen the way they operate and understand that to most reasonable people their behaviour is anathema

Nor do I accept that Brexit was a major factor, given the closeness of the referendum. To me it simply doesn't compute that such a narrow margin can translate into a major swing against one party's position on the subject

What worries me most, though, is the lack of any real signs that Labour have even begun to address their failure. I appreciate it's painful, but the utter denial we're seeing doesn't bode well for future electability, far less for them being an effective opposition in the meantime

Most of the money accumulated by elderly people alive today is due to the ridiculous rise in house prices so actually no tax has been paid on it. You must be aware of that surely?