Heads up - webchat with Jeremy Corbyn Monday 19th Sept @ 2pm.

[JustineMumsnet]

Hello,

We’re pleased to announce a webchat with the leader of the Labour Party (and candidate in the current leadership election) Jeremy Corbyn MP on Monday 19 September at 2pm.

Jeremy has been MP for Islington North since 1983, and before 2015 was best known as a rebellious backbencher and chair of the Stop the War coalition. His leadership of Labour over the past year has inspired enthusiastic support as well as attracting sustained criticism. Among other things, he’s taken a new crowd-sourced approach to Prime Minister’s Questions, opposed military intervention in Syria and proposed the renationalisation of the railways.

His last webchat on Mumsnet (alongside fellow leadership candidate in 2015, Liz Kendall) featured lively discussions about socialism, electability and the provenance of Jeremy’s vests (Holloway Road market, since you ask).

Please do join the chat on Monday at 2, or if you can’t make it, leave a question here in advance. If you know people who you think would like to ask Jeremy a question, do please share the link around on social media too.

(If you’re interested in our webchat with the other Labour leadership candidate Owen Smith, take a look here .)

As always, please do keep in mind our webchat guidelines - one question each, follow-ups if there’s time and above all, keep it civil [taps nose like that geezer Shaw Taylor in Police 5] (Horribly showing my age there).

Floating voter here.

Medusa herself couldn't persuade me to vote for Labour at the moment.

Forgive me, but that's not an answer to drollandoriginalusername's question. Which is more important to you? Social movement OR winning election?

Palehorse, why do you think you speak on behalf of 'the traditional membership'?

I am a supporter and truly believe that most people int he country would be if they gave you a chance.

Please can you tell me how you expect to reach out to the "middle" of England who apparently believe that leaving the EU is a good idea to curb immigration and "take back our sovereignty" as I think this is the only way you stand a chance of improving your ratings.

I seem to spend my life surrounded by an older generation who read the daily mail/express and refuse to acknowledge that they could be wrong as "they are a newspaper and are not allowed to lie."

How are you going to combat this? You need to get SOME of the MSM onside, I can't see how you are going to do that without a working party.

It was the daily mail/express and sun/mirror readers that voted the last labour government in. How are you going to let the general population what you stand for without the MSM dictating the message?

What is the plan

There are lots of questions posted to you in advance of the web chat, Jeremy. Normal web chat protocol is that you answer at least some of them.

Hi Jeremy,

Question from my mum: How will you tackle corporate tax avoidance by international companies?

From me: You seem to appeal most to people who are politically engaged lefties (like me). How will you get your message across to people who aren't interested in politics?

Also are you worried about the electoral reform?

3 questions sorry

Give us policies - not PR guff - "campaigning for fair levels of investment"...."wanting to improve wages" - what are your IDEAS...what are your plans?

Hi Jeremy, I'm a Labour Party member and I support your stances on gender identity and parity of esteem for mental and physical healthcare. What do you think could be done for women like me who would like to have children but feel unable to because of managed but serious MH problems and the woeful lack of specialist mother&baby psychiatric facilities? How would you address this in policy terms?

There are lots of questions posted to you in advance of the web chat, Jeremy. Normal web chat protocol is that you answer at least some of them.

Or just you know more than 1 question in 15 minutes would be nice.

The posts so far seem very copy paste

Palehorse, if it weren't for the pesky LP membership voting in their thousands I expect he probably would just Go

I've seen rumours about certain views of yours (I don't know how many are true). But I'm interested to know if you really believe you believe in handing over the Falklands to Argentina & the reunification of Ireland? If so, do you really think that the people of the Falklands want their island passed over to Argentina, that Northern Irish protestants would want to made a part of Ireland, given the hostilities which formed the backdrop of these relationships. You seem to me, to be a wonderful advocate of the minority but to do so, you alienate the majority.

Yes, Jeremy. My question has been up here for days. (A bit of prep would've been nice)

Hi Jeremy
I have always been a labour voter like all of my family & my mother & grandmother. It's heartbreaking to see at the point when the country needed labour to come together the most some of your cabinet are hellbent in destroying the party.
How do you plan on reuniting the labour party?

@Felascloak

Jeremy what will you do to support and encourage more females into STEM jobs?

Thanks for your question - I feel very strongly about this and my late mother was a careers teacher who spent a lot of time encouraging girls to go into science and engineering. Recently I held a reception for engineers in my office, and one lady who came had been persuaded into engineering by my mother and wanted to thank her.

Increasingly colleges do manage to attract young women into technical and engineering apprenticeships, but it is very uneven. I have visited many apprentice training courses and always ask how many women go onto the engineering and technology courses, and they tend to be a minority. Indeed at one summer scheme I went to for young people to work on mobile phone technology, there were no females there at all, and the boys present told me without any sense of irony, that girls were not interested in technology - I stayed for some time to challenge them on this.

The women's manifesto that we have put forward as part of the leadership campaign wants to courage women into STEM jobs, so I will do all I can to encourage this, and to insist colleges do more to encourage females further. It goes back to further than this, to primary education, and encouraging female students into science and technology through games and construction at primary school.

Dear Mr Corbyn
Why have you never gone to work at Brewer's Green, the Labour Party Headquarters?

Why do you not consider this to be part of your job as Labour Leader?

Would you expect others to be allowed to stay in a job if they didn't ever go to work?

Why do you think there is such a gulf between the female MPs who say that if you were their employer they'd have taken you to an Employment Tribunal, and your attitude that you acted appropriately?
I ask these questions as a woman who has had way too many jobs where men have been promoted beyond their ability, and then all the junior staff - particularly the women - need to spend much of THEIR productive time "saving" the man who never should have been their boss.

Thank you in advance for your consideration and reply.

Do you agree that Jaffa cakes are not really biscuits?

I'm expecting some seriously thorough answers, based on the time taken!

Shall I post a picture of some paint drying while we wait for the next "answer"?

Are we allowed to comment on the answers? The first one was fudging and circumlocution.

Yes and please answer the questions not just copy and paste from your speeches

Keep to your stance of a different kind of politics

Thanks

Oh come on Jeremy, loads of us are really rooting for you ...

OK just incase this is being taken from when the chat started, as I posted my question beforehand, reposting.

---

Hi Jeremy. First off, you have my vote already should you still be leader come the general election. I am not a Labour party member however so I cannot help before then.

The main concern of mine right now is the erosion of hard fought for womens rights in favour of 'transwomen'. I would like to know where you stand on this matter? A bit more specifically, the likes of sex segregated areas. Also if you think it is acceptabler to allow 'self-identifying' transwomen into sex segregated areas, do you also believe there is no longer a need to separate based on sex? Meaning, do you think the time when men posed a genuine threat to women has now passed and we can do away with sex segregation completely? If not, how does the view that a transwoman (who is a man) should be able to use these sex segregated facilities make any sense?

Note. I am speaking of 'self-identifying' transwomen, NOT those who have transitioned and taken hormones and whatever necessary surgical procedures. The people I speak about are men , who are men in all aspects of their lives, have penises but simply say 'I am a woman'. It seems crazy to me that we are erasing the very meaning of the word woman, but this seems to be what is happening. See the first 'woman' on the army frontline, for example.

For the sake of the country and for future generations I hope with all my heart that Jeremy wins on Saturday.
I hope the Labour party will unite and begin to challenge the Tories, with a robust anti austerity agenda.
You have my support 100%.

Wow, it only took them 15 minutes to answer one question. This truly is the new politics.