You keep posting this after I have posted, are these aimed at me? Or is that coincidental?
I’m not aware at having mentioned his principles, and wouldn’t exactly call myself a Cobynite. I’m not a Labour supporter, and never have been. I like him more than the other candidates, who I mostly have contempt for. I’m mostly just interested in the jostling, in the same way I find what’s currently going on with the GOP Presidential Candidacy race fascinating (and often a combination of disgusting and disturbing).
I feel a bit voyueristic watching you lot on the left arguing with yourselves, I think it could go on for a good few years.
I’m not so sure that it will. I’d expect some fallout from a Corbyn victory as all the Blairites take their ball home, but frankly, fuckers like Mandelson should have been washed out of the party years ago.
A few difficult months of squabbling will ensue, but the public won’t thank any wreckers if Corbyn is returned by a big enough majority. The Labour Party is changing. It’s no surprise that those with most to lose are making the biggest noises.
It may all die down after the leadership election but will all kick off again when Labour lose in 2020.
Anyway, enough of this nonsense, what flavour Pringles do the candidates prefer?
I like you Furball. You refuse to concede a very simple point, yet feel qualified to demand more answers Excellent skills, sir! You must need a wheelbarrow to transport those cojones around.
Purely out of respect for those planet-sized bollocks (we’re gonna need a bigga barra), I’m going to respond.
Here’s what Corbyn actually said about coal mines.
“The last deep coal mines in South Wales have gone but it’s quite possible that in future years coal prices will start to go up again around the world. And maybe there will be a case for what is actually very high quality coal, particularly in South Wales, being mined again.
“But if there’s to be substantial coal fire generation it’s got to be clean burn technology, it’s got to have carbon filters on it, it’s got to be carbon neutral. I’ve looked at it, I’ve discussed it. It’s complicated. At one level it looks very expensive. But the advantages also look quite attractive.”
Doesn’t actually seem that unreasonable to me. In case anyone was floating the notion that they’d all be reopening, I trust the context provided explains things. A lot of maybes, and if it turns out that all our boxes are ticked regarding clean burn and high quality, what’s the issue?
Cooper attacked the quantitative easing angle too. She was part of a government that used QE to refinance banks, in the vain hope that they’d stimulate small businesses. Never happened. Yet she’s against QE when it’s to be used in direct investment for infrastructure, which will of course, benefit all kinds of private sector firms and the people that will have found new jobs, become employees and paid into the tax system. That’s leaving aside the lasting and incalculable benefits of the infrastructure that gets created, be it new social housing that gives people security and reduces the burden on the inflated property market, or much needed transport links.
So what’s your position on QE? Never use it at all (then what’s the use of having your own bank) or only use it when the casino banking sector have gotten us all in the fucking mire and we have to cover their mistakes?
I’m pretty sure I proffered a reasonable response on both the policy and the principle issue.
I don’t have all the answers - to your questions or mine. In fact, most of my views come from the gut, but they are my views and they feel important to me.
So I know you’re interested in long lists of things that you might be able to contradict to back your stance re Corbyn, but I only need one datapoint to feel that he’s different.
I repeat it here because it failed your coherence test last time.
When the party leadership unfathomably told MPs to fuck off and not vote against the welfare bill, Corbyn told the party leadership to fuck off.
All the other leadership candidates watched 40+ of their Labour colleagues join with the SNP in voting against the bill, whilst they, and the rest of the party’s MPs unbelievably abstained.
That’s wrong for any party that claims to be on the left, and for the Labour party, that’s totally fucked up.
To my mind, and I’m sure you’ll correct me if my reading is wrong, Corbyn stood by his principles whilst others compromised theirs.
Personally, I don’t need any more than that to know the guy is different and that this test of his principles lead him to a coherent and consistent view that correlates with mine.
How’s that ball fur *?
* Couldn’t resist the low-hanging, open-goal any longer.
Pap, leaving aside all the ad hominem bullshit that’s your trademark:
The idea that a soft-Left Labour leader would send people back down the mines beggars belief. He’s also badly ill-informed (how surprising). The technology to produce ‘clean coal’ does not exist in production, and were it to exist it would be phenomonally expensive. It also draws a veil over the fact that there’s no such thing as clean coal. The environmental damage of both the mining process and the coal-burning process are so severe that they would do untold damage, blighting people’s lives and their health. The data on this is easy to find and is plain. A few years ago I was shown around the coal power plants in Montana by the state governor who was then advocating clean coal. Since then, he’s tried to persuade Canada to accept all the CO2 capture, through a pipeline - and has been told to sling his hook. This stuff doesn’t magically disappear, you know! Nor do the awful health effects like bronchitis, mesothelioma and blackened lungs.
On QE, again, get the facts right. QE was NOT used to “refinance banks”. It was used - by the BoE not the politicans - as a general economic stimulus. And it was a policy that worked, by general consensus. It was also a policy of last resort - where the BoE couldn’t cut interest rates effectively because they had nowhere to go. Using QE as a means to start paying for public sector projects will sounds wonderful - free money! Actually it’s not. QE is done by buying government bonds. That means that any new money has at some point in the future actually to be repaid. The last QE left us with a £375 billion added debt. But there’s a rather practical problem to be overcome before we even get into any of that. Corbyn doesn’t have the power, as a politician, to order the BoE to embark on QE for public spending. He simply can’t do it - and if he tried, there’d be a colossal run on the currency - because it’s currency dealers who call the shots on the value of the currency not your almighty Jeremy.
So in short, both policies are just hopeless bollocks sold to dupe people into thinking how rosy the world would be if only…
I reckon we should probably deal with the ad hominem bullshit first. I was simply, and quite gently drawing attention to the fact that one of your key concerns, untested policy, is part and parcel of every government coming into power. I can see how you might see that as an attack, but you’d already been given a couple of chances to debate the point, but decided to move the goal posts when your striker came up short.
You’re doing the same here. Once that it was established that Jeremy Corbyn is not planning on opening up every coal mine in the country and that his plans were in fact, quite specific and conditional, we’re now talking about all the other problems that JEREMY MUST NOT HAVE CONSIDERED, largely because it suits the new location of the goal.
The money from QE was given to banks to give to small business because the banks apparently didn’t have enough liquidity to lend without the stimulus. Finance. Re-finance. We’re splitting hairs, and we’re also pretending like things can’t be changed. The Bank of England has not been “independently” controlled forever. It can be returned to democratic control again.
Frankly, I’m not happy with the tone this exchange has taken, although I didn’t lead it here. It isn’t the Sotonians way and I really cannot be endorsing tearing chunks out of each other, because it isn’t what we want.
So far, I’ve accused you of having a large set of balls and you’ve accused me of bullshit. Let’s end the hostilties now before we denigrate ourselves further.
Why waste Corbin against Boris, he’ll never win. Leave him until 2025 election and then he’ll take it…
Is Boris a foregone conclusion? It was my understanding that he doesn’t have many political friends and despite his well-publicised successes, wasn’t seen as a particularly effective Mayor of London.
Excellent piece by Georges Monbiot over at the Guardian.
On one point I agree with his opponents: Jeremy Corbyn has little chance of winning the 2020 general election. But the same applies to the other three candidates. Either Labour must win back the seats it once held in Scotland (surely impossible without veering to the left) or it must beat the Conservatives by 12 points in England and Wales to form an overall majority. The impending boundary changes could mean that it has to win back 106 seats. If you think that is likely, I respectfully suggest that you are living in a dreamworld.
In fact, in this contest of improbabilities, Corbyn might stand the better chance. Only a disruptive political movement, that can ignite, mesmerise and mobilise, that can raise an army of volunteers – as the SNP did in Scotland – could smash the political concrete.
To imagine that Labour could overcome such odds by becoming bland, blurred and craven is to succumb to thinking that is simultaneously magical and despairing. Such dreamers argue that Labour has to recapture the middle ground. But there is no such place; no fixed political geography. The middle ground is a magic mountain that retreats as you approach. The more you chase it from the left, the further to the right it moves.
Corbyn preaching to the choir does not consitute a disruptive movement in any sense than to the party within.
Part of me (I’m not sure which part) wants to see him elected now so that we can get this phase over and done with, hopefully before 2018 when things gear up for an election.
On one point I agree with his opponents: Jeremy Corbyn has little chance of winning the 2020 general election. But the same applies to the other three candidates. Either Labour must win back the seats it once held in Scotland (surely impossible without veering to the left) or it must beat the Conservatives by 12 points in England and Wales to form an overall majority. The impending boundary changes could mean that it has to win back 106 seats. If you think that is likely, I respectfully suggest that you are living in a dreamworld.
In fact, in this contest of improbabilities, Corbyn might stand the better chance. Only a disruptive political movement, that can ignite, mesmerise and mobilise, that can raise an army of volunteers – as the SNP did in Scotland – could smash the political concrete.
To imagine that Labour could overcome such odds by becoming bland, blurred and craven is to succumb to thinking that is simultaneously magical and despairing. Such dreamers argue that Labour has to recapture the middle ground. But there is no such place; no fixed political geography. The middle ground is a magic mountain that retreats as you approach. The more you chase it from the left, the further to the right it moves.
It’s disruptive in the sense that it disrupts the traditional * positioning of the party.
I do believe that such a disruptive approach - in the shape of a swinging to the left, will be positive in the longer term. I can’t see it having swung back enough to the right to be elected by 2020 though.
* Traditional here is being used ironically to describe the tradition since the Blair years.
But it won’t be disruptive if all it does is confirm how disastrous the emote to the left actually turns out to be.
You could equally argue (as I have) that the failure of Labour at the last election and beyond requires new ideas, not recycled guff suited to 1962, and any real discussion of new ideas and new alliances has been crowded out by the collective swoon that we’re now witnessing.
I honestly believe that right now, you could lay the most inspirational plan for invigorating the nation in front of the electorate and they would either apathetically ignore it, or cynically destroy it.
I truly believe there has to be a rebalancing before normal politics can resume, and we have to find a way of getting the masses to exercise their right of suffrage.
I think that starts with millions of people pulled into welfare poverty, it continues by having a stark alternative to the Tories, it would be accelerated by the vote being given to 16 year olds, and it would be dragged over the line by our youth, en mass, getting energised in grass-roots politics.
I think Corbyn, unwittingly perhaps, could be the catalyst for that, but he’s not the man to front your plan of fresh ideas.
Excellent skills, sir! You must need a wheelbarrow to transport those cojones around.