I wonder if he would have opened up the question to the floor if it was something he was for and knew the plebs were against (or vice-versa)?
And going by your earlier examples, I’m basing this on 500k emails sent which I think I read somewhere, only 20% responded, of that 75% are against air strikes so that makes 15% against air strikes 
Think the week may get a little rougher yet for Corbyn and pals. The Oldham by election is on Thursday, and Labour are presently predicted to lose quite a bit of their margin to UKIP. There is some interesting background on that here:-
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2015/10/27/are-ukip-a-threat-in-oldham-west/
A UKIP win could end Corbyn’s tenure.
This is the interesting one - whilst he got 60% of the vote in the leadership election that is still only 360k against 9m or so labour voters in the general election. What remains to be seen is how reflective is this 60% in proportion to the Labour electorate at large.
I agree though, if they lose Oldham, he will have to go. In fact the pressure will be almost unbearable if they retain at a greatly reduced margin as this is supposed to be a safe seat.
Great piece in the Spectator, by Brendan O Neill, no fan of Corbyn - on how Blairites are the real problem within Labour.
One of the most unseemly sights in British politics this year has been the lip-licking glee with which Corbynphobes within Labour have seized the Syria moment over the past week to try to do in their boss.
What should be a serious moral debate about whether or not to bomb Raqqa has been reduced by the likes of Chuka Umunna to an opportunity to elbow aside the Corbynites.
Yes, such is the Corbynphobes’ cynicism that they’ll even use an unspeakably horrendous war to try to settle petty internal party scores. They clamber up the rubble of other people’s tragedies in order to cast down scathing one-liners at the leader they hate.
Well, we just had the first glimpse of Labours future. If Hiliary Benn was the leader of the opposition, the tories would be shitting bricks.
I’ve been keeping an eye out on the fallout of the Syria vote. As it turns out, the government would have carried their majority with or without the 66 Labour rebels. There seems to be quite the hubbub in the media about deselection. Ken Livingstone said that he would support efforts to deselect MPs if that’s what the local party wanted, which has caused uproar.
There is a thoughtful piece about the problems of the free vote here from Jess Phillips.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/jess-phillips/syria-vote-save-your-sanctimony_b_8705908.html
My own MP, Stephen Twigg, voted against the strikes and wrote me a nice letter explaining why. Many of the other Merseyside MPs voted for war, which I don’t think is going to go down too well in what is arguably England’s most left wing city outside of the capital. Luciana Berger, who used to be my MP, voted for the strikes. She would be a prime example of one of those parachuted candidates that are going to be massively at odds with her constituents. Having been to a couple of the CLP meetings, it’s fair to say that people humoured her anyway, and people will not have forgotten how local scouse politicians were passed over for the role.
My own view is that deselection is being used by some as a threat, and I don’t really think that is on. However, the free vote was not a free pass, and if someone is massively at odds with the people they are supposed to represent, I don’t think it is an unreasonable mechanism to consider at some point in the future.
Reports are suggesting that Labour has avoided the big banana skin in Oldham West and Royton. Low turnout, which is already being used to justify what will be a lower numerical majority. Don’t know how it shakes out by percentage yet.
Well, it appears that many of the pundits, ourselves included, will be surprised with the Oldham West by election.
Labour not only win, but increase their share of the vote by 7%, taking 62.7% in total. The Tories lost 10 points while UKIP, giving it all the bollocks about actually winning the seat, pulled a mere 23% of the vote. Jim McMahon was a strong, local candidate and deserves credit for all the votes his past work for Oldham attracted.
That said, sections of the media were all too keen to bill this as Corbyn’s first electoral test, so it’s not unfair to say that he passed it. Farage is on Twitter banging on about a Labour fix, while Paul Nuttall was making some circumspect insinuations about both the Asian and postal votes. Classy. Fair play to Andrew Neil tonight. Did alright and gave his Tory faves a bit of shite for their poor performance.
Jeremy Corbyn is here to stay, people*.
* until the next media-engineered storm in the teacup 
Fair play. They have done much better than expected.
Good victory for Corbyn and the Labour Party. Will keep the wolves from the door for a few weeks at least.
So, due to the media-engineered shit storm, all the Labour voters came out to vote whilst the others stayed in doors.
The most important thing it’ll do is silence some of the howls from within the Labour Party. Depending on what you read and when you read it, Corbyn has always suffered from some incurable malady. Too broken to secure a ticket, too left wing to secure a leadership, too divisive to lead a party and up until last night, a total fucking liability with the electorate, who hate him, apparently.
My usual cynicism about the wailing of the media appears to be justified on this occasion, and I’ve asked this question to most people I’ve talked to in Southampton this week.
“Who have you met in person that actually hates Corbyn?”
Now I know that we’ve had a couple of critics wage words here, but I’m yet to hear of one. Treat it for what it is; the unscientific anecdotal findings of a hairy man on his travels,. but I’m going to keep asking it. It’s encouraging that even though much was made of the big gaffes, I’ve only had one or two people mention predictable terrorist sympathiser vote.
The Tories ought to be worried. Corbyn is always going to be vulnerable on issues of defence, given the perception of him as a pacifist. This week was an easy line of attack and an open goal, and yet, the Conservatives managed to put the ball in their own net at the other end of the pitch. The difficult thing for them to work out is going to be why they lost.
Personally, I think they’ve overplayed their hand, particularly Cameron and his hugely divisive “terrorist sympathiser” comments. Sorta reminds me of parents that spend their entire lives screaming at their kids in preference of actually talking to them. After a while, the kids aren’t really bothered by screaming. They know that volume and frequency don’t necessarily equate with anything important. They no longer take the parent seriously. That’s where Cameron is right now, and he’s going to find it difficult to adopt a different tone.
Good piece by Liam Young in the New Statesman.
As the Oldham by-election announcement was made this morning, if you listened close enough you could hear the anti-Corbyn brigade deleting their anti-Corbyn tweets saved up for what was apparently going to be a great night for Ukip. How wrong they were. The Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn and in the face of a vile campaign by Ukip that smeared his opinions at every opportunity, increased its share of the vote by some margin.
Labelled ‘toxic’ in the seat, Jeremy was even used as the face of the Ukip campaign. The suggestion has also been made that Jeremy’s office signed off on hiding his presence for the campaign and that this supports the claim that it was nothing to do with him. Even if this is taken to be true, Ukip and the national press did it for them – be under no doubt, Jeremy was front and centre in this campaign whether Labour intended him to be or not. The media, and those opposed to Jeremy inside the Labour party, described this by-election as a referendum on Jeremy’s position. This morning, the voters of Oldham West and Royton delivered an unequivocal vindication of his leadership.
Leaving the Corbyn issue to one side, one of the lessons all parties should take from last night’s result is the growing importance of fielding good local candidates who have an obvious and genuine affinity and love for their constituency. A good thing, I reckon.
Originally posted by @Halo-Stickman
Leaving the Corbyn issue to one side, one of the lessons all parties should take from last night’s result is the growing importance of fielding good local candidates who have an obvious and genuine affinity and love for their constituency. A good thing, I reckon.
Completely agree, Halo. I’d go as far to say that a failure to do that in the past is partially responsible for some of the division in the party. Blair preferred to select right wing candidates, lobbying organisations spent tens of millions on candidate selection and that’s before you consider the ostensible nepotism of the Red Princes (or princesses). An oft-heard criticism of the Labour Party is that its politicians are nothing like the people it purports to represent. Good to see the pendulum swing the other way a little, even if it is by one seat. McMahon seemed genuinely humbled and privileged at the prospect of public service for his people. We need more like him.
I know, I know - I’m such a hypocrite. I moan about ceaseless referencing of the other place, but I’m making another exception for their Labour thread. It’s a right riveting read, and gives an indication of the changing dynamics over at that place. Chapel End Charlie has got to be regretting the thread title with the benefit of hindsight. Verbal is hawking the same brand of anti-Corbyn stuff there as here, with similar results.
buctootim has been impressive on that and other threads recently. We’ll hopefully see him over here if the House of Registered Users continues its expansion.
Going to downvote you for the Buctootim love…
Yeah, well upvoted for the billionaire lunch tale.
Downvoting you for the Buctootim hate. He’s hung Verbal out to dry a couple of times over there which have been deserved. Fuck knows why Bictootim persists though…
How long before Verbs strops off SWF and comes back for another go over here? Someone has to piss on pap’s Corbyn shrine 