I agree with what you’re saying but your last line is why it’s so completely, utterly, politically inept.
This doesn’t just divert from what was an otherwise ok riposte at the dispatch box. It’s fucking buried it. What else did he say? Who will ever remember? If a Tory PR team had of sat down for a week to try and find a way to feed what’s already a rabid anti-corbyn press, they’d have struggled to come up with anything as good as that stunt. It’s literally created the stick they’ll happily trot out every time he stands up, and worse, smothered the first proper win Corbyn’s had. He’s not going to be able to claim fuck all about Tax Credits for ages now.
Jesus, even Osbourne pwnd him in two seconds flat.
Agree that the press will go to town on it, but honestly don’t know how much it matters, especially over the long run. If Labour members had listened to the press, Corbyn would not be leader. The slew of negative stories are nothing new, and while I agree this takes up today’s story, there will be plenty of time to remind the public of Labour’s opposition to the tax credits stuff in the future. McDonnell has already survived a far worse ordeal for stuff he’s said in the past.
We won’t really know what the effect of the press is until we get a set of elections in, but anecdotally, I’ve seen a lot of people publically lose their shit with the likes of the Guardian over the Corbyn coverage, and lose a bit of trust. I think Hitchens has the right of it when he claimed that people were just fed up with being told what to think.
I reckon most will see this as a joke falling flat, not the precursor to end of money it’s being made out to be. Without those elections though, we just don’t know.
The Tories have borrowed 708bn in 5 1/2 years compared to Labour’s 292bn over 13 years, and the majority are somehow worse off, either financially or through access to slashed services.
One well-observed jibe won’t overturn those numbers.
Paying more money for less shit is not good work. It’s economic incompetence.
One of Labour’s leadership candidates has endorsed a decision by the party’s interim leader not to oppose cuts to tax credits included in the Budget.
Liz Kendall said Harriet Harman’s position on the cuts was right and that Labour had to “change as a party” to win the trust of the electorate.
“I think Harriet was right to say that we have to provide a credible alternative. You said to us, we don’t trust you on the money, we don’t trust you on welfare reform,” Ms Kendall told BBC News.
“If we carry on making the same arguments as we have over the last five years we’ll get the same results.
Blimey. Cherts becomes cheerleader for the “you can’t say that” crowd.
26th November 2015. A sad day
Back in 2013…
Boris Johnson yesterday launched a bizarre attack on Ed Miliband, comparing him to Stalin and accusing him of “shafting his own brother”.
The London Mayor, who is on holiday in Australia, criticised “leftie” Mr Miliband after he beat older sibling David in a fiercely fought battle to become Labour leader in 2010.
He said: “That’s a very left-wing thing… only a socialist could do that to his brother, only a socialist could regard familial ties as being so trivial as to shaft his own brother.”
Tory Mr Johnson added that Mr Miliband saw people as “discrete agents devoid of ties to society or each other, and that’s how Stalin could murder 20 million people”.
Two men say stupid things? One in a far higher profile situation than another, and also trying to make a JOKE out of it…come on Pap, even you must see how these situations aren’t really that comparable…
And also, don’t worry, the left wing press went for him as well.
Really? I thought Boris was constantly being touted as a future PM, maybe even taking the party into the election in 2020. He’s been high profile for two decades.
High profile situation I said…McDonnell was responding to the Autumn Statement, in Parliament and on TV. Boris was doing an interview with an Aussie paper.
High profile situation I said…McDonnell was responding to the Autumn Statement, in Parliament and on TV. Boris was doing an interview with an Aussie paper.
Well, I’m sure the incident will be foremost in the electorate’s mind when they come to cast their votes. Just so we’re sure, what’s the actual charge again?
This Spectator article, In defence of Jeremy Corbyn, is quite interesting.
How easy it would have been for [Corbyn] to have added his voice to the general whooping at the death of Emwazi. Or to have said that any wannabe terrorist can expect to be obliterated by our security services wherever they are found. But he hasn’t. Despite intense pressure to echo the majority view, Corbyn has more or less stuck to the non–violent positions that he has always held. Even the most belligerent Tory must admit that takes courage, even if it is politically naive.
Compare Corbyn’s foreign policy with David Cameron’s and the Labour leader begins to look downright noble. Cameron, remember, used to present himself as an alternative to war-on-terror zealots. As leader of the opposition, he used to say that liberty ‘cannot be dropped from the air by an unmanned drone’. As Prime Minister, however, he has been banging away on the war drum, trying to persuade the public to sing along.
It was Cameron who, along with Sarkozy, led the charge to attack Libya and remove Gaddafi. That intervention ended the rule of a nasty dictator, but it also created a failed state, another dangerous ‘ungoverned space’ through which migrants now pour in their millions en route to Europe. Libya has become both a handy training ground for jihadis and a springboard for them to launch into the West. But the Cameroons have never admitted to their failure.
Oh aye. As Korruptor pointed out, it’s an own goal that didn’t need putting in the back of the net. The real news yesterday should have been about the tax credits u-turn and scrutiny of huge cuts elsewhere. Fuck knows how councils are supposed to survive with 56% less in government grants. I expect we’ll all soon see the consequences.
That all said, perspective. I’d wager that a significant fraction of the electorate don’t even know who Mao Zedong is, let alone be familiar with his works (one in six people apparently can’t find the UK on a map). It was a political joke, intended for a political audience, which backfired and is now causing noise among that audience.
