Could somebody explain why Corbyn shouldn't be voted for as Labour party leader?

[Myturnnow4]

I've listened to people argue this, but haven't heard a reasoned argument yet. The main criticism appears to be, "he's on the left" but don't go on to explain why that in itself is a bad thing.

She does have more female speech style traits compared to Jeremy, who is very confident in what he believes - so she sounds more cautious, less self-assured: 'I can't bear to see that happen,' 'I am really worried', 'I don't think people want that'. Unlike Andy Burnham or Jeremy she feels uncomfortable trumpeting 'and I am the person to lead the country', even if she is, because it sounds vain and pompous. She qualifies it with 'I think I have the best chance of holding party together'. And she is damned right.

Given another global financial meltdown, with politicians working through the night before the stock markets are due to open, I can only imagine Yvette Cooper at that desk, with the grit and determination to sort out a crisis. And she is principled: she said clearly that she can't stand up in the shadow cabinet or country and argue for policies she doesn't believe in.

She also made statements on values, strategy and policies I think are true:

• Britain has become so divided, power is held by the Tory elite, half the world wealth is in the hands of the top 1% now more than ever
• there is a serious risk the party will split or polarise under Jeremy
• the electorate isn't demanding energy privatisation when there are immediate priorities such as welfare support, children's services, the NHS, etc. (And I'd add: if she had to answer Louise Mensch regarding Labour supported universal Child Benefit, how is Jeremy going to justify abolishing university tuition fees for the very rich?)
• the Chilcott report has been delayed for far too long - we were wrong over Iraq - not just about WMD but the wider strategy
• Jeremy is right on the importance of many issues, e.g. homelessness and human rights, but not all of his solutions
• a feminist approach to economics - not just putting money into transport but supporting parents and especially women to build up their careers as engineers (and many other new industries)
• the implication of losing elections and leaving the Tories in power is that current five-year-olds will be spending all their childhood and possibly whole school life under a Tory government. (With all that entails - the cuts, inequality of admissions, lack of qualified teachers, and lower standards for building, food, support services, etc.)
• in a different interview she spoke about strong international cooperation and influence over climate change, and being part of NATO and the EU. This is the biggest worry I have about Jeremy - I am really not confident whether his foreign policy is stuck in the 1980s because the world really has changed.

I don't want to have to listen to smarmy Tories like Matthew Hancock on the Today programme for 10 more years, dodging questions about cuts to education, especially sixth forms and careers services, demoralised teachers and overcrowded classrooms. Labour under Blair spent years trying to repair schools in a shocking state, reducing class sizes and attracting teachers back into education. That's all going into reverse now, but will it be for 5 years or 10/15 years?

Haha Yvette Cooper. Do me a favour. You're avin a laugh.

JC for leader Tom Watson for deputy. and I'm a feminist.

Pull the other one

Or perhaps you could debate policies and strategy. Tell me:

1. What's good about pulling out of NATO?
2. Are you committed to the EU?
3. is it better to keep your principles and stay out of government while the Tories slash the state, pull us out of the EU/the Human Rights Act, privatise our schools and hospitals, sell off our court buildings/forests/BBC?
4. How will quantitative easing work in practice for state investment?

JC sounds consistent because he has the same views now that he espoused in the 1970s , he hasn't moved on at all . Now some would say that's good because he has stuck to his beliefs , others would say that it's bad because the world has moved on and he hadn't adapted.

To be honest I doubt his critical thinking skills , rabidly sticking to your cause is fine in a protest vote way but a leader of a party , a leader of the opposition , needs to be able to crucially evaluate situations and apply a political philosophy to them. I am simply not convinced that he had the intellectual wherewithal to do this.For example he is anti American , he may have a point about this , I certainly have concerns about the way America conducts itself however that needs to be seen I a wider context , you can't oppose everything America does simply because it's American .

Strags, personally,
1 i think we should stay in NATO but willing to overlook JCs position on that one, as it's unlikely we will actually pull out with such pressures/good reason to stay.

Posted too soon phone!

I agree - Reagan is not in charge any more. Obama has restored diplomatic links with Cuba, would never have gone to war in Iraq, legalised gay marriage, revolutionised health care for millions of low paid Americans, and is talking peace with Iran. If it wasn't for the diplomatic coordination of the U.S., Blair and the EU we may never have had the Good Friday Agreement.

squidzin and the EU? I am probably more scared about how that referendum goes than anything at the moment.

The EU lean IN personally, JC is IN With negotiable terms so same as me basically.

1. Who's staying out of government?

1. Q.E. takes the pressure off the most vulnerable in society and with regards to investment that will never be a problem as we are one of the wealthiest nations with an overflowing population of people who want to work can work and can and will generate wealth for not just shareholders and corrupt crook bankers but for themselves too.

Corrupt crook corporates that should be.

Society generates wealth. Centrists seem convinced that shareholders and corporates generate it which they don't they just move it into their own pocket.

JC recognises the overarching problems in a world with such accelerating wealth divide. His solutions are credible.

Labour is staying out of government, I'm afraid, if this opinion poll is true.

How ironic that David Milliband is the person best placed to win the election and Corbyn the least. My DH is excited about Corbyn and hasn't voted Labour for the last two elections - think it was Green last time. Yet he despised Ed Milliband and really thought the wrong brother won - that David was strong, clear, a statesman, and Ed was full of cliches and weak. It sounds inconsistent and ironic, but I just know that if Corbyn is elected but his shadow cabinet is full of people who sound less persuasive, bright or convincing - people like Michael Meacher, Diane Abbott, Jon Trickett - he will quickly lose interest and probably not bother to vote again.

If you do have time, please watch that speech by Yvette. She talks of populist movements in Europe that have sprung up to challenge existing social democratic parties, mostly right wing - but still populist bandwagons which are largely insular and nationalist. Whether right or left they are being exploited by Russia who has given funding to the National Front in France and was talking behind the scenes to Syriza during the bailout crisis. Why? So they could make more countries dependent on their oil and weaken the EU, for trade and security reasons. We really need a strong united Europe to counter that. But as I've said before, Corbyn's reforms (and those of Len McCluskey) are the polar opposite of Tory reforms in the EU and they are playing a dangerous game of double or quits. Reform of EU is desired long term but cannot be achieved short term (in 9 months!): it requires agreement by negotiations all 28 countries, and should not complicate issues as a bargaining chip by right or left pitted against each other - too dangerous and confusing.

So if Corbyn wins the best I can hope for is strong, unequivocal, unqualified support for a Yes vote in the referendum. And I probably won't want to talk politics much again because it will be too depressing.

So all this Uk 'growf' and work will be provided by the UK State right - as we can't trust any capitalist business/corporations?

So as "one of the wealthiest nations" with £1.6 tril national debt, we will pay a small army of someones, an annual salary of say £30,0000 out of taxpayers money, and get back say £12,000 of taxes from each, which will pay for the annual private sector/pensions/welfare/benefits etc. Marvellous.

Clearly you don't see the problem with that economic model, which needs global investors currently financing our national Debt to believe in the same economic feckwittery, and have the same faith in our economic ability to pay them back.

Are you aware Quantitative Easing (QE) was designed as an emergency measure and done via the Bank of England to indeed 'create' money by BUYING BACK already issued UK government bonds, with the view of unwinding it at some point in the future - in which case they sell back to the market the UK government/Gilt bonds they bought, getting money back in, to cancel that QE policy.

Are you or JC aware that unwinding the QE, takes money out of the banking/money supply system possibly at the wrong time, and if trying to flog government bonds previously bought via QE into a bond market already crashing due to newly perceived economic incompetence - it will make matter far worse, driving up UK interest rates even further?

Market/investors understand the reasons for QE as a relatively short term measure to add money into the Money Supply when banks weren't functioning, if ANY country tried new 'smoke and mirrors' QE to finance its economy during the good times rather than issue government bonds to borrow - they would not HAVE any global investors, having first become a global laughing stock for even trying it on.

God give me strength.

The QE idea would also mean overriding the independence of the Bank of England, which as Isitmebut says, only consented to QE as an extraordinary measure and in view of the globalised consequences of the banking crisis. It means vulnerability to large-scale currency and interest rate fluctuations (e.g. interest rate was 20% in 1979).

The National Investment bank idea - to oversee this mass nationalisation - is lifted straight out of the 1983 manifesto when Labour won its worst share of the vote and needed 14 years to recover. So it's not a new or credible idea, unfortunately.

Everyone feels like they have the finger on the pulse but if I'm not convinced and feel an impending sense of doom - after proudly voting Labour at the election for the first time after flouncing off to the LibDems with my protest vote after Iraq - what about the 10 million who voted Tory?

Corbyn in Scotland. Panic among the SNP?

"Strange things have been happening in Scottish politics of late, and Jeremy Corbyn’s speech in Glasgow on Friday was one of them. I’m a Labour supporter, and can safely say it was the most electrifying and energetic rally I have ever attended. Labour’s problem in England may well be a failure to win in the market towns, but its problem in Scotland was losing 40 of its 41 seats to a party that outflanked it on the left. I suspect that even before Jeremy Corbyn’s visit, he was the Labour candidate who worried Nicola Sturgeon most of all. Had she been in the audience, she’d have been more worried still.

Within two hours of tickets going on sale for Corbyn’s Glasgow event, they sold out. A frantic search for a larger venue began and the rally was moved to the Old Fruitmarket in the centre of Glasgow; capacity 1,500. Again, it sold out within a few hours. Corbyn could have filled a hall four times the size.
...
I witnessed this paradox when campaigning for Better Together. Most interventions that came from the high and mighty did us no favours – and instead created an immovable and growing mentality of resistance. All we need is oil bosses and banks warning against Corbyn. And if this does happen, all those Tories who have been smirking for the past month may be up against an invigorated grassroots Labour machine that could grow its membership above anything they have faced in modern politics.

CoffeeHousers may laugh at the very suggestion, but it’s an arithmetical fact that the surge in Labour Party membership follows the surge in SNP members. Over 600,000 have registered to vote and an unrivalled figure of 164,000 joined the party in one day. You read that right: in one day.

Nigel Farage has been trying to do to England what Nicola Sturgeon did to Scotland – trying to pose as an insurgent, gather voters, urging them to join his resistance. But he failed. He’s too much of a dictator, and it’s hard to rally around such a relentlessly negative agenda. But Corbyn is giving people what Nicola Sturgeon gave so many in Scotland: a reason to believe in politics again.

So let the Westminster classes laugh and sneer. They laughed at the SNP, before realising the momentum was real and then asking: when will it stop? They may soon be asking the same about Jeremy Corbyn. I suspect that Nicola Sturgeon will have recognised the threat that he poses from the very start. And remember, she has an election to fight next May: Corbyn has arrived at a deeply inconvenient time for her."

blogs.spectator.co.uk/robertmcgregor/2015/08/jeremy-corbyn-can-fill-a-glasgow-hall-quicker-than-nicola-sturgeon-its-time-for-her-to-worry/

Panic among the SNP, panic among the Tories, panic among the Blairites, panic among the Tory lites and sheer panic among the metropolitan elite. A sense of calm among UKIP and the Corbynites who have set politics alight.

The Tories are absolutely delighted about Corybn. He is my best news since the election. If he wins that means 10 years of Tory rule - I am behind him all the way.

There is no panic in the SNP, and I doubt whether there's much panic in the other groups you listed either. Labour is far too dead in the water in Scotland to recover any time soon, though Kezia is doing a bit of twisting in the wind, to mix my metaphors.

It's fascinating watching the man engage with the electorate in a manner Labour never did - during the indyref in particular Labour were noted for not participating in hustings (or withdrawing speakers at the last minute, hoping to close the hustings as "unbalanced") and any "public meetings" were with carefully selected audiences. Jim Murphy's much-feted Irn Bru box campaign never attracted big audiences, and he mainly used them as opportunities to shout down little old ladies. Photos and video were very carefully shot close up etc, pure propaganda.

Corbyn certainly seems a lot more open, and he's said he's willing to work with the SNP, which are both positive. We shall see.

Hirples I am devastated at the prospect of 10-15 more years of Tory rule in the UK. I also think it's unlikely Corbyn will win back SNP voters solely as a result of his promises on Trident, pulling out of NATO, or Emglish tax policies to a devolved Scotland which may include putting NI up by 7% on higher earners to fund tuition fees for children schooled at Eton. I think Nicola Sturgon is much too clever to outgamed, and Scottish identity and the independence issue too much a part of the SNP's appeal for him to win those voters back in the short term. And by 2020 he will already have left the English scene in any case.

The LibDems will make a comeback though.

Yeah, I can't say the thought of many more years of Tories in WM fills me with glee either. :( I expect some former Labour voters would return to the fold, but not in the numbers needed any time soon. Labour have ignored and ill-treated their voters for too long; many comment that they haven't left Labour, Labour left them.

As for LibDems coming back, I suspect the outcome of the Carmichael court case next month may have some bearing on that, in Scotland at least.

Corbyn is so similar to the leftie SNP (and just as 1970's only with a pretend pro business icing on top) I agree Labour would not make inroads in Scotland.

But the current left vs right socialist bun fight in the Labour Party PROVES the pre 2015 General Election warning that a Labour-SNP coalition would have been an ego/policy nightmare for the UK, was SPOT ON.

Paddy Power is already paying out on Corbyn. They say it is a done deal - the biggest upset in British political history.

"Describing the MP for Islington North’s success in the campaign as the “biggest upset in political betting history”, Paddy Power is so certain that Corbyn will win that it is paying out £100,000, even though polling closes on 10 September."

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-race-corbyn-win-is-done-deal-predicts-paddy-power-as-it-pays-out-on-bets-10461114.html

Apparently, Corbyn has signed up 10,000 volunteers, more than the number of "volunteers" for the Establishment candidates combined. Although who would want to "volunteer" for the others beats me. Are there really that many Oxbridge interns on less than minimum wage expecting to climb the greasy career pole in Labour?

10,000 volunteers - I doubt the others have 10,000 votes between them.

The Establishment candidates are attacking each other and hurling more abuse than Donald Trump on his day off, and Corbyn just calmly repeats "we do not do personal abuse" which winds the Establishment candidates up even more as their teams of spinners go hammer and tongs at each others throats.

Some of the metropolitan elite may have possibly put large sums on their favourites to win - probably taxpayer funded salaries, expenses, the usual - and are now looking at losses that would make City traders like "the London Whale" blush. Of course, the public will be expected to bail them out, so no one should feel too sorry for them.

Historic times, historic stuff. The people are back.

Hi Claig, nice to hear from you again. Always interesting and individual- that's why I like your style. I was also someone who liked what Nigel Farage did to the establishment- although I could never vote for him. Jeremy Corbyn, on the other hand appeals to me more. Time for polished, bland politicians to wise up.

mrsruffalo, you are right. I like Farage still, but Corbyn is even more radical and will solve many more important problems. I disagree with some of Corbyn's views, but the ones I agree with are more important. Corbyn will do good for the country and the people overall.