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a) harassing moderate MP´s until they resign, are deselected or shut up. The "Red Tory" strategy ultimately failed in Scotland and the harassment endured by anyone who publicly disagreed is why the SNP are losing support. It is frankly a revolting form of behavior and the increased security details on female labour MPs says more about Corbyn than a million words could. He is nasty and using strategy straight out of the far left handbook.
b) Handing Teresa May the next election. If you don´t like Tories why on earth would you wish to give them a 100 seat majority. For at least two more terms. If you are deluded enough not to believe that, just watch PMs question time. She eviscerates him.
c) giving hope to idiots like Class War and the SWP. They are a tiny and vocal minority who need to be put back in their box.
I've never liked the FTPA, I wouldn't be upset to see it go.
Off into town now for the grand Corbyn speech.
The Labour Party are even more fucked in Scotland than they are in the rest of the country, and believe me the "Red Tory" strategy from the nationalists is a huge part of that. I don't vote SNP but the idea that they are "losing support" is hilarious. They have 56 MPs and a majority in the Scottish parliament. Again. Every single other party in the UK would kill for their polling figures.
One of the best things the Coalition did.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Veering a little off topic, a friend of mine is a leading light in the Brighton & Hove District Labour group, which got in the news recently due to a "Momentum takeover". She's a big Corbyn supporter, quite often shares a platform with him and/or McDonnell. I'm going to her 50th birthday party later this year, I'm kind of dreading who I might get to meet there....
The irony is that Kezia Dugdale got elected before Corbyn and now looks out of step with the UK Labour Party, where in fact a Corbyn faction leader might actually do better in Scotland.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Stick to worshipping Thatcherism, you're better at that.
Prior to Corbyn speaking, damning the Tories was taking a huge second place to tearing the arse off of the Labour PLP. Folk like Hillary Benn were torn to pieces by the local types and union folk. It was quite apparent though when both Abbott and Corbyn spoke that they leave the attacks to others. It might allow them to say that they aren't into divisive politics but that's an easy claim to make when you have others prepared to do it for you in order to give you some spurious moral high ground.
Attendance... claims of thousands would be too large. Just into four figures for my money.
Corbyn himself: he spoke well. Whereas his televised appearances have possessed an awful lot of reading from the script, this wasn't. It's not difficult to see why he hits a young crowd and it was the young element which dominated yesterday. The strange aspect was that it was the old trade unionists who seemed out of place at the event, and that comes down to this problem of how Corbyn marries up all these different strands of support into something coherent that satisfies all, from metropolitan young folk who voted Remain to older trade union types in forgotten industrial towns that went for Leave. I still can't see how the hell he can manage that.
Many Momentum types online have said that there's a Corbynite equivalent of the shy Tory. I dispute this. The shy Tory believed in their policies and in the party yet didn't trumpet them publicly. Most of the folk I know regarding Corbyn do believe in a fairer more socialist society but don't believe in Labour or Corbyn's ability to bring this about. It's more a case of there being a lot of 'Labour agnostics' who do agree with a great number of the points made by JC yesterday but who don't believe in him or the party.
One aspect did stick in the mind. After the event, I escorted my companion back to Temple Meads station. She's rushing for the train and manages to walk past the entourage heading back to Paddington. I watched them walk off and then over to platform 5. No security, no minders, just DA, JC, and Milne, patiently waiting on a seat for a train that won't be along for another twenty minutes. I'm used to political types through former work and volunteering roles, everything from city mayors to Cabinet secretaries. I can't recall one who had so few fellow party officials hanging off him after a major meeting or rally. When people talk about the divide between the politicians and the electorate, a simple act like wheeling your suitcase through a station and clumping it down the stairs like everyone else makes you look more approachable than any number of staged press ops eating bacon sandwiches or posing with workers to try to make you look normal.
However the overwhelming feeling post-rally was one of intense division and this is where the battle is. Bristol is a Labour city but it is not a fully balls out Corbyn city. Many felt he latched onto the mayoral victory last May and tried to claim some of the spoils. Yesterday speakers with a very strong London element came on stage and slagged off Bristol MPs. Universal applause did not ring out for this as it didn't for more local speakers who did the same.
The Labour Bristol webpage has been transformed to reflect this.
http://www.labourbristol.org/
The fighting will not cease whatever the result of the leadership contest. The only way this will end is with a split.
I suppose I'm one of your Labour agnostics - I've generally voted Labour because they most represented the chance to bring about what I think is a fairer society, something I squarely believe in. This despite the fact that me and mine would undoubtedly be better off under sustained Tory rule. I'm no tribalist though; I'm not predisposed to hate the Conservatives, I'm just idealogically opposed to a lot of what they stand for so I will not vote for them. For the same reason, I'm not going to vote for Corbyn's Labour solely because of the colour of his rosette.
The reason I'm so pissed off with the whole shebang is that I see the best chance for gaining power and doing all this 'fair-society progressive left' thing is slipping away into some hazy future of several minor unelectable parties bickering over microscopic differences in ideals. I can't help but be reminded of the "People's Front of Judea" scene in the Life of Brian.
I agree that the split is what will happen. Labour are screwed. They took the party too far to the right over many years, but attempting to shove it right back over to the left in one push can only end in failure.
I told a die-hard Corbynite friend of mine that Labour can't have any 'success' with JC, and his response is that there are different ways of measuring success!?! er .... well not if you want to run the country. I think that his supporters are happy to be merely a minority lefty voice.
Unfortunately he's proved to be incapable as a leader - and worse, when he's tried, he's become intransigent and dictatorial, which is the exact opposite of what he should be standing for. It's true that he may have no choice given the determined efforts to bring him down coming from the right of the party which I had not quite reckoned for - or at least not the extent of it - but he's not helping his own position.
So for me there are only two useful outcomes - either he has to be deposed and the party return to more of a New Labour position, where it does at least have a vague hope of regaining power in the short or more likely medium term... but which doesn't make me very hopeful about the actual policies and figures involved in this, since they're exactly the ones that got Labour into this mess in the first place; or he has to remain, the right wing has to leave or at worst be completely silenced, and the party return to being a proper socialist party, under Corbyn and then his successor, since I can't see it regaining power in even the medium term now. In the long term I would prefer the second option, but that guarantees Tory rule for at least another eight years, more likely thirteen.
The second option might also allow them to regain ground in Scotland.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
From my perspective they had a good prospectus and talked a good game, so we gave them a shot, then an extension, and then they actually started to get worse at delivering, rather than better. Independence or EU concerns aside, I need the Scottish Govt. to improve the education system, make the NHS work better, invest in and improve the infrastructure and do something about the sinkholes no-one has bothered to help in the past 40 years. I don't see any visible improvements in any of these areas - in fact I see a failure to arrest the decline. The political grandstanding and hypocritical positions they have taken *really* aren't helping. I was once a big fan of Nicola Sturgeon but the recent antics of the SNP have burst that bubble big time.
Also for stunning acts of political opportunism and hypocrisy in Westminster - in particular voting against reform of the English Sunday Trading laws, which they had no business interfering in at all… and especially when the proposal was to bring them more into line with Scotland. Done for no other reason than to kick Cameron.
I did not vote SNP at the last election.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein