:labour: New Old Labour in trouble

Reasonably serious discussion
3002

I agree that he is a man of principle, stubbornly so. Maybe because he has held these principles so tightly and so for long, he finds it almost impossible to flex, maybe through stubbornness, maybe through principle, maybe through wrestling with his conscious. It still comes across as dithering (at least to me).

Part on the problem is that as an effective leader you have to carry the support of a lot of people with varying beliefs and standpoints. That requires compromise and consensus. Take these guidelines - he doesn’t want to implement them in full - there are a lot of people in the Labour ranks saying get it done including two of the biggest Unions - so is he putting personal politics above those of the party?

Yes he has had a lot of attention from the media, the shoeing he got when he first got in went overboard, however, ironically, probably did him more favours in terms of entrenching his core support. However he can be his own worst enemy. You yourself admitted he looked flustered and shifty. From that, and other snippets, people make their decision as to whether he is trustworthy or not (or at least capable of running the country).

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3003

I disagree. If Israel acted like a real state, and did things like observe international law, then this isn’t an issue whatsoever. As it is, the Israeli government recently officially declared the country an apartheid state, routinely murder civilians and have conducted a continuous campaign to destroy the one potential Western leader that will be critical of its policies.

If it’s a Corbyn issue, he has been in Parliament for over three decades. Margaret Hodge has known him for forty years.

And yet, it’s only the last few years when a celebrated anti-racism campaigner is accused of a form of racism by people that openly practice much deadlier forms of it themselves.

And it’s only this year that Margaret Hodge felt strongly enough to make a complaint.

This whole thing is whattabouttery, led by the Israeli government, designed to hide the atrocities that Corbyn has spent a lifetime of highlighting.

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3004

Corbyn has spent the majority of his tenure in parliament as a political nobody, an irrelevance. His actions were dismissed generally as the actions of a loony left winger.

Why is all this coming up now? Well, he is now frontline. He is a political somebody and people are going to be asked to vote for him as Prime Minister, so his past is now completely relevant. If he had stayed on the back bench, then I and everyone else would have most likely been ignorant about his very existence, much less cared.

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3005

It’s nothing to do with isreal?
As proven by Bibi the butcher not getting involved :joy:
Again for those that missed it.

Labour MP Margaret Hodge said the only way Mr Corbyn can “put this issue to bed” was to adopt the internationally agreed definition in full.

It’s about isreal and nothing else and the real talking point is, how have we let a foreign Apartheid state control our media and parliament to the detriment of the people of this country.
These agents for a foreign state need to be locked up for their treason.

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3006

I just don’t think as many people care about it as you do.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that every single person that self identifies as Jewish believes this nonsense. They don’t, as we continually see from the staunch messages of support for Corbyn from those quarters. Even if we included all of those people, you’ve got 500K people, country-wide, in an electorate of thirty million - and most of those folk are concentrated in one or two urban areas.

Then you’ve got the people that just hate Corbyn, and won’t be moved from this position. These are the folk that are capable of seeing Corbyn standing next to Adams or McGuinness, but are seemingly incapable of recognising pictures of the pair with HRH.

Beyond that, how much is it going to stick? Sure, you’ve got people that are genuinely concerned about racism, but they know that what is being described is not it. Many of those are going to be pissed off about having their intelligence insulted in such a fashion.

I’ve said from the start that this entire line of attack is counterproductive, that this diminishes the concern that people are going to have about real antisemitism, and amplifies the chances of it happening. That political lobby have thrown what they call their own people under the metaphorical bus just to escape international scrutiny.

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3007

So are you saying that only Jewish people can be offended by anti-semitism?

I would suggest the electorate is far thicker than you’re giving them credit for.

cough bus cough

3008

Nope, I’m saying I don’t believe that the examples given constitute AS. Furthermore, there are a large number of Jewish people that would agree with that viewpoint.

I think your layman with no particular dog in this fight knows that criticism of Israel is something quite different than hating someone for how they self-identify.

Would you disagree? Are you offended? Is this AS, and if so, why?

3009

See, I don’t think they do realise that. We’ve discussed in the past how you think the electorate is wiser than given credit for, and I think they’re less informed.

I think the majority will see the headlines and think it’s true. People believe propaganda - that’s the issue.

3010

Well there’s not much I can do about that, @WorzelScummage.

I don’t know what is in the minds of folk. All I can go on is the numbers we see from real polls, whenever they’re held. The evidence would suggest that despite the torrent of shite he’s received from pretty much day one, the electorate isn’t buying what his opponents are selling.

He simply wouldn’t be Labour leader today if that were not the case.

3011

Labour up 2 points in polls today.

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3012

I think you are wrong there. The majority will see the headlines and some of them will think it’s true. The majority, those with a functioning brain, will not. Netanyahu’s intervention in this ongoing and relentless ‘Corbyn is an anti-semite’ bollocks is a massive own goal for the Zionists and their supporters. Netanyahu is rightly despised by decent people everywhere, by any definition he is a terrorist. Any attack by him on Corbyn will be seen as proof that Corbyn must be doing something right. No amount of open bias by the MSM and especially the BBC can change that. Last night’s News at Ten is a classic example. They broadcast the full statement from their boss Netanyahu, but only the first line of the rebuttal from Jeremy Corbyn and excluded his remarks about the slaughter of unarmed civilians in Gaza, and about his support for thousands of Jewish and Arab Israelis protesting in Tel Aviv at the weekend about the new apartheid law Netanyahu’s government has introduced in Israel. The BBC are destroying what reputation they once had for fairness and impartiality with their open bias.

In 2006 Netanyahu attended a ceremony to celebrate the Zionist terrorists who blew up the King David hotel, killing 91 people, including 41 Arabs, 28 British and 17 Jews. A plaque unveiled at the ceremony blamed the British for not evacuating the hotel in time and calls the terrorists ‘resistance fighters’. The King David hotel, in addition to housing the British HQ, was also a fully working hotel, which Irgun knew in advance, hence the civilian casualties. And what happened to Irgun? After they disbanded, it’s leader, the terrorist Menachem Begin founded Herat, which is now called Likud.
From the N Y Times, October 2015.
‘Israeli historians and opposition politicians on Wednesday joined Palestinians in denouncing Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for saying it was a Palestinian, The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem , who gave Hitler the idea of annihilating European Jews during World War II’. Netanyahu claimed that Hitler didn’t want to exterminate Jews until the Palestinians gave him the idea for the Holocaust, a statement roundly condemned by just about every Holocaust scholar on the planet. According to the IHRA definition, denying the facts of the Holocaust is anti-semitic. Why does Netanyahu hate Jews? The man is a lying, hypocritical, murdering scumbag, lower than a snake’s fucking belly. Judge a man by the enemies he makes i say, Jeremy Corbyn should not give one inch to these bastards. One of only three MP’s to vote in favour of EVERY motion in Parliament denouncing Anti-Semitism over more than three decades as an MP. He also is unafraid to speak up in favour of a two state solution and is a vocal supporter of Palestinian human rights. That is what this whole furore is really about, nothing to do with Anti-Semitism. The idea of such a man as PM fills the Zionists and their supporters with genuine terror, anyone with a functioning brain can surely see this. The cynic in me really believes that they are attempting to create Anti-Semitism
with this campaign against Corbyn, for their own ends.
Ariel Sharon was found by his own Government to have been responsible for organizing the massacre of over 1,000 defenceless men, women and children in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon in 1982.When Tony Blair, complete with Yarmulke on his head, laid a wreath at his funeral, the lack of criticism from the BBC, New Labour and the establishment as a whole was deafening! Sickening hypocrisy and double standards.

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3013

Great post, @Nottarf-Krap. You are one of my faves.

I’d expand on that though. While we both agree that Corbyn has been given unholy pelters, quite unjustified too, I feel there is a wider sense of public distrust in pretty much everything they’ve been told.

They’ve been told that the country is doing well, because we’ve more people in jobs than we’ve ever had before. This is in direct conflict with much of what people experience. Low wage growth, weakened trade unions and being one pay check away from bankruptcy. The working poor are not sharing in this prosperity, and they know it.

They were told that the result of the EU referendum would be respected. They were warned that leaving meant leaving EU institutions, most notably the Single Market. They may well get that by accident, but on May’s plan, they’re not getting that at all.

They were told that there was no magic money tree, against a backdrop of us being involved in multiple military arenas, directly or indirectly, and after witnessing the Tories bung a billion and a half bribe to the DUP.

They were told, quite amazingly, that the Russian state was responsible for the attempted murder of some Russian nationals, one of whom had been involved in a spy swap. They were given precisely no evidence for this, but we got to see the spectacle of our foreign secretary lying for fuck knows what gain.

We have the lowest trust in our mainstream press of any country across the continent, sitting at just 23%.

That is probably because they’ve tried to tell us so much shit. Trump may be deflecting when he cries “fake news”, but he’s also reflecting. That’s why it works so well.

When you swear an oath in court, you swear to tell the whole truth, because omission is as bad as outright lying. We’re in a state of play where our media does both, repeatedly, and it all amounts to the same thing.

They’re lying their fucking arses off, and as stupid as I know we can all be in this country, most are capable of sniffing out bullshit. You fucking have to be in this day and age.

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3014
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3015

I read through quite a few responses to Netanyahu’s tweet. Not many supported his statement.
This whole thing is getting very tedious. Don’t people have other things to focus on. Obviously not.

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3016

You would think the media would have other stories to cover wouldn’t you? This isn’t even news. It’s reheated 4 year old bullshit.

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3017

Good to see him holding firm and not being bullied into allowing words to be put into his mouth. I do admire his strength, other political leaders would surely have crumbled by now after nearly three years of relentless smearing and lies, not just by the MSM, but also a small, but powerful group of MPs in his own party. All handled with dignity and courtesy, refusing to engage them, play their game. It really must infuriate them.
He surely knows that nothing he can say or do, short of renouncing his support of Palestinian human rights and pledging not to criticise the State of Israel, will appease these people. You cannot appease a pack of wolves.

Netanyahu’s lies are unravelling quickly, it didn’t take long. Corbyn has consistently said that he was at the cemetery, along with other delegates at the peace conference he was attending - in memory of a large number of people killed in Tunis by an Israeli airstrike. The Daily Mail, the rest of the MSM, the LFI and the rest of the Anti-Corbyn MPs are claiming Corbyn laid a wreath at the graves of “Munich terrorists in the same cemetery”. There were eight Munich terrorists, NONE of them are buried in this cemetery. Aren’t facts a bastard.

Leader of an apartheid state, responsible for the cold blooded murder of countless unarmed men, women and children, criticizes man for laying a wreath of flowers in memory of the dead. Even Lewis Carroll would shake his head at that one!

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3018

People got bored of cooing over Boris and a tray of Tea, and Rod Liddle calling for more Islamaphobia in the Tory party Spectator didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

So, I guess back to attacking Jez? Never mind that the terrorists he’s accused of honouring aren’t even in that cemetery, eh?

Edit: Sorry @Nottarf-Krap missed your post!

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3019

Steve Bell again.

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3020

I don’t get involved in Politics and certainly don’t get involved in debates on the politics of the Eastern Med these days.

But there have been some posts of late that I can respond to.

I’ve been in the Middle East 25 years. Before then I was a pretty devout anti-socialist and held a view that Israel was deserving of our support.
Now the anti-socialist view was not anti-Labour but more anti the utter corruption of the upper levels of Communist systems. Those views have hardened over time and expanded to include the “Davos Set” and more.
The really big change was when I stopped being brain washed by the MSM and started to watch and read actual News Stories. I’ve made points time and again how outside the West, we get to read stories written by Journalists who actually have NO political view (in the Western Sense of Left or Right)

I’ve seen the camps in Lebanon and Syria, and my view has changed. I now am far more balanced in my views. I have a Jewish Son In Law, I respect and admire their culture in the same way I respect and admire Arab (hell, even French Culture)

BUT, and here is the kicker. I was well educated, I KNEW the MSM were biased politically, yet I still believed the Israelis were “the Good Guys” and everyone else in the region were “bad”

And I read in many of the posts above how you all believe the British Public will “see through” the bias and the attacks.

They won’t. Because at the end of the day a huge swathe of them don’t give a shit and they only have time to worry about Spanish people staying in Spanish Hotels, Love Island or Cooking Competitons.

The Brainwashing propaganda is and has always been relentless.

And, I do have to say the unsaid. At a time when the UK is in such a goddamn mess of it’s own making, and it really needs a Leader Opposing what the Tories are doing. For me I simply am not seeing Corbyn doing the job that needs to be done and the internal party crap and anti-semitism are simply distracting.

Anyway, as you were.

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3021

Not sure if there’s any surprise in this, but it says that Corbyn’s core support is still strong.