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.

Before the election Claig used to say much the same about the people's hero, Farage

Funinthesun15 , I don't think it is overegging it. Look at what has happened with Labour Party members. None of the Chuka Umunnas, the Establishment's golden boys, and the Labour ruling elite imagined that this could possibly have happened. None of the political class imagined that 4 million people would vote for a party of "fruitcakes" and that that party would displace the LibDems as Britain's third largest party.

People are crying out for change. No one is happy apart from the metropolitan elite. All it will take is for one political leader to stand up and defy the metropolitan elite and say "enough is enough" and people will flood towards that politician. That politician has arrived - cometh the hour, cometh the man - Corbyn has left his allotment and is making his way to Number Ten in a landslide.

Farage lit the torch of the people's revolution, he was the flame-bearer, but it is Corbyn who will go all the way and the people will back him just as Labour party members are doing now.

What both Farage and Corbyn reveal is that the people are dissatisfied with the corrupt, crony class of "golden boy" politicians who fawn at the feet of bankers and say Labour members need a "heart transplant" if they want to vote for left wing values.

That politician has arrived - cometh the hour, cometh the man - Corbyn has left his allotment and is making his way to Number Ten in a landslide

Does he walk on water and perform other such miracles?

He has the right initials, Fun

'Does he walk on water and perform other such miracles?'

No. There is no spin about him, unlike for the communicator with God, with his own Faith Foundation, called the "Tony Blair Faith Foundation", that much loved philanthropist, Blair.

Am enjoying Claig's posts very much. They're a tantalising mixture of lunacy and unexpected rightness

Here is that ch Blairite, John McTernan

"Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The hour is Labour’s crisis over Jeremy Corbyn. The man is deputy leadership candidate Tom Watson."

I think Tom Watson will end up as a future leader of Labour and he will be a very good one. Corbyn has weaknesses, such as a lack of humour, but Watson has humour. But unlike Blairite McTernan seems to think, I think Watson will be real left wing, in the Len McCluskey, Ken Livingstone, Jeremy Corbyn way, and I think the Blairites are now finished forever.

A Corbyn/Watson tickey would trounce Blair's successors, the Cameron modernisers.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11794595/Tom-Watson-Tony-Blairs-assassin-can-save-Labour-from-Jeremy-Corbyn.html

I think he's doomed in terms of electoral success. The press are overwhelmingly right wing, and they are able to turn people's attention away from the real problems onto bogus ones. Increasing inequality in society? Don't look at the rich - it's the immigrants that are to blame! Corbyn won't play to the hatred and bile of the kind of racist DM reader who needs to kick those who are most vulnerable and who constantly fears that they are going to lose out, and who behaves at the ballot box like a child guarding a plate of chips from his siblings.

However, I absolutely don't think politics should be all about gaining power. We've got far too many people on all sides of the political spectrum who only care about winning - and they will do or say just about anything to get there. It leads to horrible, compromised, essentially hypocritical politics that preserves the status quo very much as it is, instead of effecting real change. We need to make massive shifts in future away from the way we currently live to cope with climate change, and a left that starts to shift public discourse in that direction - even if it does so from the sidelines for a bit - is far more valuable than a centrist party that doesn't really change anything much.

The job of the opposition is quite clear - to serve the people who elected them as MP's.

"Because it could lead to years and years of legal wrangling, in fighting, internal gazing. All while no one is actually opposing the government." That has been happening within the Labour Party - and indeed within government when Blair and Brown occupied their lofty offices - since John Smith died, years ago. They lie about it, but countless Labour diarists have documented it all in livid detail.

Although I broadly agree with him on most issues, I do not want Corbyn at the helm in 2020.

This is why I want him to win this contest; I don't want any of the current leadership candidates at the helm in 2020.

I am almost certain that if Corbyn wins he will step down after a short period. This will allow another contest with better candidates to take place in time for the next general election.

I hope he wins. I don't agree with his policies, but I'm heartily sick of the current media/Westminster consensus on which policies and ideas are and aren't permitted to be discussed.

I've noticed with interest the way Corbyn is currently getting the same smear treatment from the media as Farage did last year. He's about as far to the left as Farage is to the right, ie not very far at all, but because both of them diverge from the centrist songsheet they are depicted as frothing loonies.

With Farage speaking for the right, and Corbyn for the left, and the Cameroon Tory Party for the centrists, we might actually have an interesting political discussion rather than this straitjacketed dog-whistling charade we've fallen into in the last decade or so. Not sure recasting Labour as the fringe leftist voice bodes well for it as a party of government, but IMO they'll bounce back eventually and this country is long overdue for a bit of variety in our political discussions.

As a footnote, while I lean centre-right and would probably look at emigrating if the UK elected a 70s style socialist government, I think if that's what the majority want in this country they should bloody well have it. Blair and his heirs have a deeply anti-democratic instinct; they seem to believe that if it looks like the people are going to make the wrong choice you shouldn't give them the opportunity to choose at all. That attitude revolts me and if there really, truly is a silent socialist majority which I doubt then it should have the opportunity to vote for the policies it wants.

YeOldeTrout you have listed all the problems I would have voting Labour under a Corbyn leadership.

The Labour Party certainly aren't going to bounce back with a quietly on message candidate without any clear convictions.

I wish David Milliband was in this leadership election.

I'm hardly following the media coverage either as I am old enough to remember Corbyn, Nellist and Hatton first time around.

The issue with letting the Labour Party go to the old left (please let me know if any new policies for the 21st century have emerged!) is that they won't get elected and Tories will do as they please.

How did TUSC do at the recent GE?

How did TUSC do at the recent GE?

About 100k votes I believe. Not exactly mind blowing

About 100k votes I believe

You have got to be joking.

36,327 and they lost their deposit in every one of the 128 seats they stood in, an average of less than 300 seats per constituency (and it's reasonable to assume they stood in constituencies they saw as more, rather than less, favourable).

300 votes per constituency

To repeat myself from earlier: the reason why people like Farage, Corbyn etc is because they have beliefs. They don't sell their soul to try and get power like Cleig did.

The 'career politicians' people hate are the ones who are in politics for the power not because they believe in their cause.

The Labour Party aren't going to regain any seats in Scotland with a candidate whose defining attribute is not being Jeremy Corbyn.

If any of the other candidates looked like a viable PM, they would be elected.

I think it will take a while for the Labour Party to sort themselves out and the person elected leader now will not be the next labour PM. What they can do is lead an opposition that actually opposes.

I was quite pro-Corbyn until I read of his friendship with Sheik Raed "the Jews are bacteria" Salah and various other holocaust deniers, racists and anti-Semites. I can't in good conscience vote for a racist MP for Labour leader and therefore I wouldn't vote for Corbyn anymore than I'd vote for Farage. Two peas in opposite sides of the same pod!