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).

No difference between the platitudes in Jeremy's last answer and the platitudes in Teresa May's first speech as leader.

Of course everyone says they're going to help ordinary working people.

But how are you going to actually do it?

Thanks Mumsnet for having me back, really enjoyed that - can I come again?

I'm glad someone did!

Bloody hell. An hour of my life I'll never get back.

Jeremy has given politicians answers. Ignoring hard questions, or giving meaningless vague answers such as his answer to the prostitution question.
Do you know Jeremy why Mo Mowlam was popular with the public? Because she actually answered questions, instead of being a politician.

Painful.

From the Labour Party Women's Manifesto
"In Britain today:
• Two women a week are killed by a
current or former male partner.
• One in six teenagers in relationships
say they have experienced sexual
violence.
• At least 750,000 children a year witness
domestic violence."

Do you not think that rubber stamping the sale of women in our society, and the prioritizing of brothel owners and sex buyers over women in prostitution, undermines the other ways you want to address the above problems?

And if you do push for full decriminilisation of the whole industry, will prostitutes and brotels then be subject to the full remit of health and safety and equalitites legislation? How will that work?

Another quote from the manifesto
"Sex and relationships
education will help give young people
the tools and resilience to negotiate the
stereotypes and images they are
bombarded with in the media, as well as
the pressures they face. It will include
teaching about consent, online safety,
respectful relationships and zero
tolerance of violence and abuse"

How does the above sit with our political leaders supporting the message that it is OK to buy a woman for sex? How does that teach respect and zero abuse? Do you do realise that prostitutes are subject to violence and abuse daily in their work?

What is your view on equality for women? I mean the likes of, equality in the workplace and even the use of women-only shortlists you mentioned?

What is your definition of 'woman'?

As if we follow the way things are going right now with the current 'acceptable view' woman is anyone who says they are a woman. As such, a workplace could employ only men and still be 'equal' as long as a few of the men will put up their hand and say their name is Shirley. Self-identification is wrong. Most people know it is wrong but noone dares say anything due to fears over being called 'transphobic'. It has to start somewhere. Genuine trans people should NOT be lumped in with 'self-identifiers'. It is insulting to trans people, and to women. Oddly enough it doesn't really affect men as noone expects them to roll over and take it in the same way.

Painful

Completely

Jeremy, I don't think this webchat was a good idea.

Very disappointing, very standard politician dodging really hard questions

'I do believe the majority of people in Britain are prepared to support that kind of programme'.

I would like to think so to, but if this is the case why did the Tories win the election, and why do they continue to beat you in the polls? Please don't resort to conspiracy theories about the media, disloyalty or false consciousness- I'm interested in how you plan to persuade people to vote for change who don't already think there is a problem with our current system.

If you are prepared to answer questions repeatedly asked. Answer them properly. Maybe.

I hear your supporters complain that you are misrepresented by the media all the time. Tbo from this performance, from where I'm sitting, the media is pretty accurate.

My vote will not be going your way. I say that as a left of centre voter who will never vote Tory.

I cannot believe that we have reached the stage that leading politicians are now unwilling to say on record that women are adult human females with the xx chromosome. How on earth did we get to this? Very disappointed.

Well that's an hour of my life I'll never get back. Straight talker? Fresh breath of air. Corbyn is just like all the rest of the politicians he's professes to be different from.

Not once did he sound like a normal person.

Is that it? Erm, if so, yes, very disappointed

TO ALL OUR ESTEEMED WEBCHAT READERS (THIS MEANS YOU)

Please take five minutes to answer a survey about your webchat experience today

Whether you’re a lurker, a regular or someone who’s wandered in off the wilder shores of t’internet - we want to know how Mumsnet webchats are working out for ya

There’s a PRIZE of vouchers for the store of your choice for one lucky respondent

(We’ll be posting this link on lots of upcoming webchat threads as we want to get a wide range of views)

Thank you
MNHQ

MoreCoffee asked how JC would persuade floating voters to vote for him, and that question deserved an answer, not a sociology professor's essay.

If JC and his supporters can't see that, then I truly do despair for the future of the party.

Wonders what this different type of politics is

No answers to the issue of women's spaces and voices being ignored or on antisemitism

But at least I know what his favourite biscuit is

Why wouldn't he answer that it's a site where most posters are women we obviously need to know that sort of stuff

Thanks Mumsnet for having me back, really enjoyed that - can I come again? Will you answer important questions or cherry pick sill ones? A huge number of questions have been about trans issues, womens rights, prostitution and brexit and have been largely ignored. I honestly thought of you as an 'honest' politician (probably the first of your kind) and I am very disappointed by this chat. I am starting to believe that people may be right in saying you do not commit enough to be a good leader. For now you are still my choice, however unless there are actual answers given at some stage, this may well change in the near future. Thanks for coming though, but please..if you do come back do not 'mug us off' like you have here

Well this floating voter won't be voting for someone who cannot communicate policies and how to pay for them so that I can analyse what the impact will be on me, which will help me decide whether I want to vote for it. Pop back to the echo chamber Jeremy.

Come back and actually discuss the trans issue, the prostitution issue at length. Do a one issues thread because that one made you look really bad and like you are full of guff about doing sincere politics. I had to pay £25 on top of my membership to vote for you but you really compromised my belief in your integrity today

I'll still vote for you because I believe strongly in your policies and principles but this was a real missed opportunity to engage with people.

The questions about trans, identity and what is a woman, were asked over and over by different posters.

And he didn't fucking answer it.
I am so pissed off.

He thinks the Today programme is too difficult to go on so he avoids it, but he thinks he can swagger in here and politician the answers to fucking biscuit questions and ignore the stuff it's so obvious is a concern to us.

I have no one to vote for.

Yes HyacinthFuckit but doesn't the fact that they all decide to answer the stooopid questions tell you something about them? And isn't that important? If I was trying to convince you I was fit to run the country, or even just my party, I'd read the biscuit question, probably chuckle, ignore it and then answer all the other questions about, Oooh I dunno, antisemitism.

RebeccaMN is this one of the webchats where MN had a moratorium on people joining just so they could post? Or is it one where lots of people with vested interests (and who don't usually come anywhere near MN) can join, pile in and try to subvert the chat for their own ends?
Because there are a lot of aggressive posters who don't seem to know how web-chats work and this is starting to seem like a wasted opportunity.