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).

I would also like to see an answer to twofingers question much further up the thread.

What is your plan to hold the government to account over Brexit?
What are your feelings about the new hard Brexit campaign Leave means Leave?
Do you support leaving the single market? If so, how do you plan to protect our economy going to hell or don't you care? (How do you expect to pay for all this lovely stuff you are promising otherwise?)

Your silence and/or vagueness on this the most major issue facing the current government has not gone unnoticed. It's almost as if it's a bit of a difficult question so you're avoiding it.

I'd like some direct answers please, not just "Oh I don't like aspects of the single market"

Another one here who would like some clarity regarding your position on Brexit, and in particular our membership of Single Market.

The government is under increasing pressure from the right to go for a Hard Brexit option. There is near-consensus amongst experts that this would be catastrophic for the UK economy and even the one notable economist who supports a hard Brexit said that it would "mostly eliminate manufacturing".

What are you doing to counter this pressure from the right? And what arrangement would you see as the optimum outcome of negotiations with with the EU?

sadly I will be at a hospital appt at 2pm so I will ask my question now...
Mr Corbyn,
I have been a Labour voter all my life (I have been voting since 1992)
I am baffled and faintly horrified by what has happened to Labour since 2010
In my opinion the 2015 GE was very like 1992 EXCEPT that after the Tory rout in 92 Labour realised it had to change and modernise.
I also grew up under Thatcher and well remember the likes of Foot and Kinnock - both decent principled men - But both unable to mount a credible resistance to the Tories.
Sadly I see that same happening under your leadership.
We have seen in recent days how the numbers at your rallys do not equate to numbers at the polling booth (sheffield)
The lib dems seem to be the only party stating they will not force through brexit.
This has won Them my vote.

Now that the EU ref vote is decided and the Majority have deicded to leave, what will you do to ensure that we follow through?

What is a woman?

That's not a trick question. It's serious.

We've been told this weekend, that the army now has its first female front line soldier. When I looked to see why the first female front line soldier is being allowed to go on the front line earlier than the date the first female recruits are finishing their training, I discovered that the first female soldier, has a penis, a male body, male socialisation and psychology and male privilege. It occurred to me that if half the men in the house of commons could just put on lipstick and a dress and declare that they are women, half of all company directors could do the same and half of all rapists also did that, we as a society could proudly declare that the glass ceiling has been smashed and sexism no longer exists.

Jeremy, do you believe that a man can become a woman simply by saying that he is one? Maria Miller is in favour of self-identification being adopted as a legal principle. If she gets her way, the word "woman" will have been re-defined to mean anyone who says s/he is a woman. It will bear no relationship to biological reality.

So my question is, how do you define the word WOMAN?

Oh and please answer the question about why brocialists suddenly start cheerleading for the free market when it comes to the use and abuse of women's bodies.

Women's rights are under threat like never before, primarily from powerful financed lobby groups from the trans community and the sex trade. What can the Labour party do to stop women's rights sliding backwards?

I would like Jeremy to answer the questions about why he supports a free market approach to prostittuion rather than the Nordic model which does not criminalise women. Also the questions about the harm caused to women by allowing men to self-identify as women.

Shortly after the Brighton bomb - an attack on our democracy (however much anyone disliked Thatcher) - you invite Gerry Adams to Parliament. Wasn't that just inflammatory teenage posing rather than serious politics? Please explain why you can shake hands with apologists for violence but can't work with people in your own party to build a consensus that attracts a broader range of people.

Hi Jeremy,

Can you say why you think we have kinder fairer politics in an atmosphere where male members of Momentum are able to attack, abuse, vilify and harm female MPs?

As an example of Momentum members being assholes, the local leader of Momentum physically assaulted a woman a few days after she had dared to suggest that we maybe needed to start being a cogent opposition. Nothing has been done.

Alternatively, can you say when you're looking to start presenting some kind of opposition to a Tory party that thinks Labour are a running joke?

What is more important to you; to win the next General Election or to 'build a movement'?
A simple, polar question, and I'd like a simple answer. One or the other, no fudging or circumlocution.

I would like to know your strategy for dealing with the Nuclear deterrent we currently have and by the next GE would be well on the way to being renewed.
Would you press the button if elected PM?

I don't have an original question either but would like to add my support for the questions on prostitution and gender identity to be answered. Or rather, I would like to see a commitment from Jeremy to revisit these issues and consider the evidence from the viewpoint of the women and girls in this country.

What is your current stance on HS2?

For completeness, would it be possible to share some published studies that compare numbers between countries that decriminilaize and those that don't?

Would be very helpful and informative to this discussion.

Thanks.

Can you tell us three pieces of legislation that you personally have had passed in parliament in the 33 years that you have been an MP - these are bits of legislation that you have devised, drawn up and persuaded people to vote for or persuaded the government to adopt.

Do you regret warmly welcoming Raed Salah to the House of Commons in 2012 given his views, publicly known since 2001, that homosexuality is "a crime. A great crime. Such phenomena signal the start of the collapse of every society", that Jews escaped 9/11 because they were forewarned, and that "the role of the woman in Islam is the supplementary role to that of the man"?

What are you going to do to halt the attack on sex-segregated spaces?
We have these for a reason, to ensure women's safety and dignity. I know you are aware of the importance of single sex spaces to ensure women can move freely in public because of your earlier support for single sex rail carriages.
But this becomes meaningless if self-identification is allowed and anyone can enter a women's toilet or changing room by claiming to be trans, whether they are or not. I know of recent cases where women have been forced to share intimate spaces in mental hospitals and accommodation during work trips with biological men who identify as women, despite this making them feel understandably unsafe.
Please assure us you are going to consider the rights of EVERYONE involved, the women as well as the transwomen, rather than basing policy entirely around the needs of the people who were born male and ignoring women altogether.

I would also very much like to see the previous posters' questioned on decriminalisation of the sex industry answered. There is an obvious inconsistency in how supposed socialists suddenly become all free market and libertarian when it comes to their right to buy women's bodies. Please look again at the Nordic model - it makes far more sense.

I attended my local CLP meeting a couple of months ago. You were a topic of discussion. I stated my reservations about you (sorry.) I then got verbally attacked by the Momentum members of the party, very aggressively. I haven't attended a meeting since.

What do you propose to do about Momentum and the way many of their members conduct themselves?

(Please don't claim to be ignorant about this matter.)

is there room for improvement within your advisory and communications team?

The "abuse list", while I entirley agree there is abuse towards Jeremy, should not have even been assembled let alone published, and surely Jeremy's team could put measures in place to stop high profile figures like Len Mcklusky going "off piste" and saying those who resigned should be held to account, which flies in the face of Jeremy's olive branch to those very same MPs? John McDonnell getting bitter with Campbell on Question Time....... it does not help.

TL;DR

I am very impressed with Jeremy, but are his advisory and communications team competant enough?

Recent Yougov poll shows 7/10 LP members who joined before May last year do not support your leadership. It's great the membership has grown over the last year but lots of new members appear to have joined only to click a vote for you. When contacted in local elections this year many new members seemed to think that being asked if they could deliver a few leaflets locally was a bizarre request!!

Do you agree that there is a risk of local campaigning stalling while committed members used to engaging with voters feel taken for granted by your leadership while the new 'loyal' members are being praised for attending your rallies and clicking their support for you - and if re-elected how can you now build bridges with ALL members?

Dear Jeremy, up here in Scotland most of us are all devastated by the prospect of losing our European citizenship... We want the right to work travel study across the other 27 member states...and likewise accept the need for young workers from other parts of the EU. How can this be aligned with the stance of the U.K. Government? Thanks for your consideration.

I saw over the weekend that you talked about allowing elements of a future Labour cabinet to be elected by members.

This suggests that you see the role of the party as to represent MEMBERS, and not to represent VOTERS or constituents (where surely the election would be amongst MPs, since wider voting for cabinet positions would be untenable).

I find this concerning. Do you see the role of the Labour party as representing its members, or the voters and country as a whole?

Hello Jeremy

Has the EU referendum result and its fallout made you and/or your party colleagues reconsider any of your views about how the Labour Party should communicate with, listen to and represent working class people?

Do you see any possible positive effects on politics in this country of the political turmoil the referendum result has caused? (I'm thinking less about internal Tory party issues etc and more about the representation of the views of people who have not done well out of government policies over the last few years and whose views are often ignored.)