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).

Hi Catsbum,

Perhaps you could help Jeremy (and the rest of us) by presenting the evidence that building a member-driven party and winning elections are mutually exclusive options. I look forward to your help on this one! No fudging please!

Well, he didnt come across to me as a breath of fresh air.

The refusal of The Man Who Would Be PM to answer the many questions about what a woman is, on a massive website used mainly by women, is extraordinary.

Funny you'd think 'what is a woman' would be the easiest question to answer.

The fact he found it hard is proof that he thinks the answer includes some men.

Ed Balls' webchat response was 100% more informative than this. Ed Balls for fuck sake!!!!

I answered the survey with my real name ffs. Not with it today

I assume that the survey means you're looking at the way you do these webchats MNHQ. I think they are utterly pointless unless you act as an advocate for your members and ask them to address those questions which are asked by a large number of people.

Rowan - I have come back to ask this - it was not at all clear on the survey which name to use, and I have used my real name, not my MN nickname - will this be OK?

I can 100% see why the Labour Party is broken now if this is anything to go by. He doesn't want, or maybe doesn't have the capacity, to address issues that are important to the electorate.

I would hate to be a Labour MP having to go to meetings with him.

This really came across that Jeremy Corbyn does not think it is worth giving women decent answers to their questions. If he had read some threads on here, he should have realised that this site is full of intelligent and politically aware women.
The web chat today was so poor.

I can 100% see why the Labour Party is broken now if this is anything to go by. He doesn't want, or maybe doesn't have the capacity, to address issues that are important to the electorate.

I was thinking the same thing, if questions cabinet members of such ask him are avoided in the way they were on here, and never a straight answer given..I finally 'get it'. I thought they were throwing toys out of the pram at the thought of Labour really being 'left wing' again instead of Blairite...

*Hi Catsbum,

Perhaps you could help Jeremy (and the rest of us) by presenting the evidence that building a member-driven party and winning elections are mutually exclusive options. I look forward to your help on this one! No fudging please!*

In abstraction there is no reason why both are not possible. However, when that membership is out of touch with the electorate in general, handing further control to the members just exacerbates the problem.

There is also the issue of democracy. When you vote you vote for your MP and implicitly for the leader of the party to be PM and for the MPs in general to be in government. You do not vote for the membership implicitly or otherwise and so giving them control of the party is outside democracy.

if questions cabinet members and such*

Rowan - I have come back to ask this - it was not at all clear on the survey which name to use, and I have used my real name, not my MN nickname - will this be OK?

So did I!

Well none of that surprised me.

Not sure why anyone expected anything different.

Well either that or only get celebrities on who are not known for having any political views.
I am massively disappointed in this web chat, as I wrongly thought Corbyn would not behave like a politician on this web chat. I was wrong. His answers were just an insult to us all.

I honestly can't see how the divide in the Labour party will fix it's self now.
Because of a MN webchat? really? The divide in the Labour party has fault on both sides and both Smith and Corbyn's web-chats have been distractions/car crashes.

props to Kaija for your (less snarky than mine!) Brexit q - I really can't make much of Jezza's reponse though. Peering at it, I'm not sure it means anything at all.

I honestly don't understand why MN think it's great to give the BBC etc. the chance to portray us as a bunch of morons.

JC's webchat will get coverage anyway, without the biscuit question.

Other web chats I've read show that the subject gets the ball rolling by answering some of the big questions straight away having read a goodly portion of the thread in advance. The biscuit one might come at the end if the tone of the thread suits. Not Jezza, it would seem.

APlaceOnTheCouch
I recognise many of the posters on this thread and am a long-term MNetter (albeit under a namechange at the moment). I don't think it was infiltrated by people with an agenda. I think these were MNetters looking for answers to questions that concern them.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyn-gets-favourite-biscuit-8870065

As an aside, JC was on the Today programme this morning. Sounding blinkered.

I don't think he shied away from difficult questions at all, but I wish a few more had been answered.

However, I suspect that no matter what he said, some of the more active (I'm verging on saying aggressive) posters would not be happy. This is my first chat on here and I was quite surprised at how cutting people were. The main abuse I read was people being very disaparaging about Momentum /Corbyn supporters, but didn't see it the other way, which speaks volumes.

Just reading the previous chat with Jeremy now (I only discovered webchats today) and it seems he was more forthcoming then than now, actually seemed to engage instead of copy and pasting soundbites and ignoring anything difficult. Shame.

misspetoitpois I think you're making stuff up.

If the plan was to make this MN webchat so bad it deflects attention away from tonights Dispatches and Panorama programs in tomorrows press, job done I'd say.