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).

A quick read of the previous Corbyn threads on here would have shown what questions would be asked, and given his advisors plenty of time to prepare answers. It is what I would have done. But there is no evidence that there was any preparation at all.

It is simply not correct to characterise it like that, the two questions he failed to answer, which go to the heart of women's status in human society, were asked over and over again by numerous posters. And also as someone else pointed out, the one about anti-Semitism was also asked several times and he didn't touch it.

If JC had answered the 'what is a woman?' questions with anything other than 'transwomen are women', that would be the end of his career. He would have been vilified across the media. He'd probably have come under huge pressure to step down as an MP, let alone a leadership candidate.

So the fact he avoided the questions and didn't say 'transwomen are women', or waffle on about being inclusive, standing up to predjudice etc. gives me hope, sort of. I imagine his advisers sitting there going 'Shit, shit, shit! No! Don't answer that one Jeremy!'

Overall though, that was a fucking shower, wasn't it? I'm not a party member, just an ordinary voter. I usually vote Labour but not always. I was quite excited when Corbyn first got in but have been less sure lately. This webchat has made me think less of him.

God I'm slow! x-posted with EcclefechanTart and lots of others

I'm not sure PlentyofPubes. I'm sure you're right, along with every other sane person, JC doesn't really believe this crap. Beachcomber posted this on the "1st woman (sic) on the frontline" thread:

We are being mocked and having the piss taken out of our humanity*

I don't believe for a second that the press think this person is a woman and nor do the army. But this is being reported as though wider society believes that because it's fun to display utter contempt for women whilst pretending to be a right on tolerant progressive.

This is in our face women hating. It is contempt. It is misogyny of outrageous proportions.

There's nothing tolerant or progressive here - Chloe and all other prominent men who transition are being used. They are being used to say "fuck you" to girls and women.

Wake up liberals - you are being used too

That was another lightbulb moment for me. Of course these people don't believe that any man who says he's a woman, is a woman. But it suits their agenda to pretend they do. And given that JC isn't great on women's issues, the fact that he doesn't believe it, doesn't mean he won't go along with it.

MNHQ what are the odds of us having a two day session to ask questions, then MNHQ choose the ones that are asked repeatedly and put them in writing ahead of time to the person saying "these are the first questions that need to be answered and then we will pick and choose as we go.

A majority of the 'questions' asked weren't questions at all, they were statements of what the poster believes or wanted to lecture about. Who wants to read that??

People who want to see how he responds to the large number of people who don't currently support him, but whose support he needs to win an election, perhaps?

JC is very good at preaching to the converted - this was a chance to answer more difficult questions.

However, the gender and prostitution questions weren't 'soap boxy' - they were from people who want to know where he stands on questions that are relevant to mumsnetters.

It's not really a question of being cross with him - ultimately we all have the choice not to vote for him.

People's expectations of what could be answered adequately in a 60 minute webchat (when so many of the questioners have waffled on and interminably on) seem frankly absurd. Most of these questions aren't questions at all, they're speeches, with an agenda. Many, many people don't care about these issues that are so precious and dear to you - do you get that? Also - there was a lot of piss-taking and abuse going on during the webchat, such that MNHQ had to intervene - do you really think you're going to get the best out of a guest under these circumstances? The tone of most of this thread, never mind the opinions expressed, make me embarrassed to be a mumsnetter.

None of the political parties are going to grasp the transgender thorn though are they. They'll get pelters whatever they say. It's disappointing but I can't blame Corbyn for the current situation with trans v womens rights.

*Many, many people don't care about these issues that are so precious and dear to you - do you get that?+

Anti semitism? Prostitution and women's rights? The importance of winning elections?

Which of these issues is unimportant?

I also had a randomer pming me with reading suggestions to learn about how Labour is the victim of a conspiracy to smear it with accusations of anti-Semitism.

At least, I assume that's what they were saying - I mean, they did spell it 'anti-Semistism', so

Many, many people don't care about these issues that are so precious and dear to you - do you get that?

If people 'don't care' about Anti-semitism, Brexit, bullying towards female MPs then I give up.

What you mean is you (and JC it would seem) don't care about them.

Most of these questions aren't questions at all, they're speeches, with an agenda. Many, many people don't care about these issues that are so precious and dear to you - do you get that?

I asked, does JC think a penis can be female.

Hardly a speech.

And my whole family care about that, actually.

Hear, hear, merrymouse.

OyWithThePoodles of course I "have an agenda" - that's why I asked a question in this webchat to a politician seeking high office, because I want to know if his agenda aligns with mine. That's how politics works.

Absy says she had that PM, Vole.

Poodles: 'What is a woman' is not a long or difficult question nor does it require a long and complicated answer.

Liney Yep, I saw Absy's post.

I don't think women's rights or anti Semitism is important to Jeremy Corbyn, or many of his supporters. So I suppose no surprise that some on here are dismissing the questions as trivial.
I haven't a clue though who I will vote for.

I didn't expect him to answer the trans question either in any meaningful way. I did think he would actually answer the prostitution question. I would also have expected him to give a stock answer to the anti Semitism one.

I'm pretty sure lots of people do care about Brexit, the legalisation of prostitution, transgender issues, violence towards female MPs (not just female MPs, pretty much any woman who sticks her head above the parapet on social media) and the rise of anti-Semitism.

I can imagine that there are a lot of people who would prefer it if these issues were swept under the carpet.

I have just been reading about Jeremy Corbyn's interaction with Mumsnet. It has given me some food for thought.

In the arguments put forward in favour of abortion, (on Mumsnet and elsewhere) it is often said that women have a moral right to decide what to do with their own bodies.

Yet, unless I have misunderstood, or there has been poor reporting, it would seem that some people on Mumsnet hold the opposite view concerning prostitutes.

I would quote from the BBC online which says, “Mr Corbyn's support for the decriminalisation of prostitution attracted a number of questions, many of them hostile. "Decriminalisation would send a message for all of society that sex and women's bodies are something to be sold," wrote one Mumsnet poster, called Apulina.

Well, if women truly have a moral right to decide what to do with their own bodies, then surely if they choose to sell their bodies for sex then they are simply asserting that moral right.

I am not talking here about women who are forced in any way to sell their bodies but about those who make a choice to sell their bodies instead of doing other work to earn an income.

People who favour abortion and who say that women have a moral right to decide what to do with their own bodies, surely cannot object to women who choose to become prostitutes.

Or, have I missed something?

Tbh, the only politician who'd actually say what he really thinks about the trans issue is someone like Donald Trump.

I don't think JC is too worried about alienating radical feminists but I think he would be terrified of alienating the trans lobby. That suggests he hasn't drank the kool-aid but knows it would be political suicide to say so. This is why the erosion of women is happening with hardly any discussion.

I'm not surprised he didn't answer the prostitution question as that would expose the hypocrisy of the brocialist approach to decriminalisation.

jakepepper you need to read the thread.