Corbyn’s new party

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Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana have confirmed the launch of a new hard-Left party to fight Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour.

The former Labour leader and his fellow now-independent MP said it was “time for a new kind of political party” in a statement on Thursday.

The pair have invited voters to sign up to the Left-wing faction via the website yourparty.uk, although The Telegraph understands the new project will not be called Your Party and that its name is to be confirmed.

Will this split the Labour vote? What do we all think?

Yes, it will be. Don't you know anything about Corbyn and Sultana?

Do you?! Pray tell what exactly about Corbyn and Sultana is hard left...

I know about Corbyn and he’s socialist, left but not hard left.

Corbyn sympathisers keep challenging posters to say what ‘hard left’ is.

So, if you don’t think Corbyn is hard left, what is?

Yes, he is hard left. He is also a terrorist sympathiser.

Reposting as “quote” lost.

I’m not a “Corbyn sympathiser”. I don’t even vote labour. Interesting that you assume that. I’m more concerned about inaccurate reporting; what looks to be a blatant attempt by the right wing press to paint him as more extreme than he actually is.

Hard left is more communism, anarchism, authoritarian (hard right can also be very authoritarian). What do you think hard left means, and what policies of Corbyn’s do you think qualify as hard left and not just “left”.

We are so far right now that funding for education and the NHS is seen as extreme and far left.

Why do think he’s hard left? Which views/policies does he have that lead you to think that?

I personally am not of the view that he’s a terrorist sympathiser. I very much get the impression that he’s a diplomat and would like to try to fix all conflicts by listening to both sides and trying to facilitate peace that way. I don’t agree that this is going to be effective especially with extremist terrorist groups, but sympathising with a terrorist group’s aims and methods, and thinking that peaceful discussion solves everything are two very different things. I could obviously be wrong there but that’s my impression. He strikes me as someone that can see the good in everyone. More than a little naive in my opinion but I don’t think he supports violence in any form. Hence he thinks we should get rid of our nuclear deterrent (also a huge mistake imo). None of these things make him “hard left” though. If anything they make him more sound like a “bleeding heart liberal”. Liberals are generally centre or right or left of centre, depending on which flavour of liberal.

I think we should all wait to see what actual policies this new party has before jumping to the assumption it’s a hard left party on the basis of what the right wing media say without qualification.

... and remember that Corbyn is only one of many people involved in its formation. It's not the fucking Jeremy Corbyn fanclub and he won't be just declaring all his personal positions as party policy.

Taxing the rich sounds pretty lefty to me. Jezzbollah isn't for me. The country would sink so fast he might aswell get one of his mates to just bomb it

“Taxing the rich” or more accurately redistributing wealth is a more left wing policy, but not exclusively hard left. Depends how far you go with it. Tories have in their time in government supported a higher rate of tax for higher earners which could be seen as “taxing the rich”, so it’s not even an exclusively left wing idea.

taps tuning fork
clears throat

ooooohhhhh Jeremy Corbyyynn

to the tune of 7 nation army by the Whitestripes

😂😂😂

@Notmycircusnotmyotter , because those other conflicts don’t involve Jews and lots of people on the left are antisemites.

Let’s hope!!
Just a shame he didn’t do it a year ago before the disastrous election result.

This

£204.9 billion spent on the NHS (11% of the GDP) and £116 billion (4.1% of the GDP) spent on Education isn't far right. Neither is £313 billion (11% of GDP) on Welfare.

State spending is about 45% of our GDP. So almost half of everything produced in the UK - every hour worked - is used for the 'common good' and redistributed from rich to poor. The UK is very left wing.

It makes ne laugh when people say the Conservatives are far right. The Conservatives just try to limit the redistribution to stay below economic self-destruct levels. But they're still redistributing huge amounts. They're centrist at most, and many countries would consider the Conservatives left wing.

many countries would consider the Conservatives left wing

Such as which countries?

The only one I could think of would be the USA, where the Democrats are thought of as left wing despite being at most centrist by other countries' standards. I can't think of a single European country where this would be the case.

The EU is indeed very left wing.. Although interestingly, in some ways the UK is even more so.

In almost all of the EU, benefits are based on previous contributions. It's only the UK which has generous welfare for people who have never contributed, which caused us big problems with EU freedom of movement.

Outside the EU, it's much more stark.

As you identified, in the US the Democrats (considered left wing) are more right wing than our Conservatives.

Many Middle Eastern and Eastern countries - even wealthy ones - have a far more limited welfare state. Eg Singapore's state spending is 14% of GDP, compared to our 45% and they are far more socially conservative.

Nobody would consider the Conservatives left wing bar possibly Atila the Hun..

The EU is not in any way left wing, which is why socialists of a certain age (eg Corbyn) never supported it. It's why even the most ardent pro-European socialists such as myself hesitated before voting to remain. It has a neo liberal ethos - look at the EU''s treatment of Greece a few years ago for an example. It would still be better to be an EU member but there's no escaping its credo.

As to the op, if I weren't Jewish I'd consider voting for the new party. I certainly can't vote Labour again - I voted against John Major's Tory party in 92/97 and current Labour is remarkably similar to the Tories of that era.

Unfortunately Corbyn's anti semitism was categorically not disproved; there are myriad examples of him behaving in a racist way. I'm a socialist to my core but the socialist left doesn't want me. I'm not a "good Jew" so I'm unwelcome. I don't believe this party will get off the ground in any case - it's exceptionally hard to set up a sustainable new political party, let alone achieve any degree of success. In an ideal world, Corbyn's new venture would prompt Mr Starmer to do the sensible and moral thing and change our defunct FPTP voting system. We can dream...

I take your point about the fundamental economic basis of the EU. In the same way, some left-wing opinion was always suspicious of the Commission’s corporatist instincts - the drive to open markets and so on, that the left believed exploited workers and weakened trade union bargaining.

But there’s another angle on it at the European nation state level. There is much more far-left representation in national parliaments. European communist parties are much stronger than in the UK. Locally, there are quite a few communist mayors.

Tbf spending is one element and it wasn’t low due to Covid. Another is immigration and that wasn’t low either.

It’s also getting more mixed as some centre left countries have more border control or tighter immigration policies similar to the right here - eg Denmark and Australia

I disagree. Many EU countries have a sizeable far right presence in parliament, some have far right government. Can you name an EU country with a far left government? That would be communist rather than Corbyn's brand of socialist-tinged social democracy of course.