UKC

Predictions please as to how long he will last as leader of the Labour party?

I'm going for 2 years, maybe 21/2 before he is out, by fair means or foul. His other party MPs will try to see him off whilst still a chance to rebuild for the election.

In reply to Moley:

I recon he will outlast Cameron. The knives are already being sharpened for him.

In reply to Moley:

Guessing it's just me who this thread a thought Jesus Christ.

In reply to Hannah S:

Not that JC, this one: -

youtube.com/watch?v=asUyK6JWt9U&

In reply to Hannah S:


Now you mention it, there is something of the Graham Chapman about JC.

In reply to The Lemming:

Well since Cameron has stated he's not going for a third term I reckon that's a given isn't it!

In reply to Moley:

15mths max. Probably less than 12mths.

In reply to felt:

Sorry, should have given images:

Corbyn
http://www.intriguing.com/mp/images/chapman.gif

Chapman
http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/images/localworld/ugc-images/276268/Article/im...

In reply to Hannah S:


Apparently he died about 2000 years ago.

He's not had a mention since.

In reply to Moley:

I doubt he'll be fighting the next general election, but a few years hopefully.

Given how Labour and Conservatives and press alike seem so convinced he'll spectacularly implode within a few months, they're awfully desperate to bury the hatchet immediately.

In reply to Moley:


I think it is interesting that no political commentators will be pinned down own any form of predictions. It seems that with Corbyn, all bets are off. I think there is a slow and growing realisation that the bland politics of the last 20 years is not going down too well with the voters and that characters like Corbyn and Farage are starting to gain more traction. This is happening not just here but across Europe. There will be lots of muttering, but it is a brave person who will actually stand against people like Corbyn. If there is one thing that really turns off voters, it is party in-fighting.

In reply to ByEek:

I think you are correct about the "characters" (Boris Johnson being another obvious candidate) gaining more ground in the future, especially between elections. But when the general election comes around the reality of wages, jobs, lifestyle security kick in and I think many will still be unwilling to take chances with their lifestyle (presuming it is half decent ) and vote conservatively (not necessarily conservative) for a party of low risk.

Also the fact that many labour MPs will view JC as a potential disaster at the next election, they also want to keep their seats in parliament, so in self interest will be happy to see him off.

Only time will tell, I'm very possibly talking utter bollox.

In reply to Moley:

I'm rather hoping JC keeps going, if he is as left wing as everyone says he is (I haven't been paying attention really) then the return of the SDP as a left of center party would be a splendid outcome for the country.

In reply to Moley:


I think 4 million votes to UKIP and a Scottish whitewash would disagree with that statement. The problem is that the mainstream "dull" politicians talk about jobs, lifestyle and all that at election time and then go and do what suits them and their multimillionaire backers regardless of anything they pledged. I think the public is slowly getting fed up of this. The problem Boris has to overcome if he wants to succeed Cameron is can the public stomach two toff PMs in a row?

I don't know what to make of JC. I am yet to know if he actually exists. I certainly haven't heard any interviews with him despite listening to the 1pm news most days.

In reply to Moley:

12 months max. In three days he seems out of his depth.

In reply to Hannah S:


He's not the Messiah he's ...... well I'm sure you know where I was going with that one.

In reply to Moley:

As I understand it, the Parliamentary Labour Party doesn't have much of a say in the election. The only way and time to challenge is to nominate before the annual conference.. Thus he is guaranteed a year. So the Parliamentary Labour Party would have to break apart to do it any other way, like refusing to be shadow ministers, votes of no confidence. But he could then resign, stand again, and the rank and file vote him in again. It is going to be fun to watch this,

In reply to MikeTS:

It will be fun or not watching, depending on which side of the fence you sit.

Personally I feel it may be like chucking another slave into the amphitheatre and settling back with a beer and packet of popcorn to watch a slow death. TV is crap so it could be excruciatingly entertaining.

In reply to Moley:



All this controversy is a screen. He was the best option to reignite the party and regain all the bigots that left for UKIP, plus clear the decks of the professional politicians with a silver spoon and know idea of real work. He provides a break that allows a new new labour to restart in 2/3 years without any comparison to milliband and brown, a Tony Blair (C) Mk II - hopefully without the war mongoring.

I think they'll be no controversy - they'll give him an honourable out - some great staged reuinification of the unions and labour party - to which he'll decide to stand down in 2020.


If any of that is in doubt see Conservative party. Major->Hague->IDS (getting increasingly less popular). Bring in the old guy (Howard) and then on to Cameron. Their only mistake was leaving it until after 2005.

In reply to Moley:

He makes Millepede, (remember him?) seem 'Normal'

In reply to dek:


I dare say Corbyn understands the issues that affect 'normal' Britons far better than Cameron ever will.

In reply to MikeTS:


Strange that you think it's 'fun'. I think it's quite scary, because we've now got the weakest opposition we've had for decades (compounded by annihilation of the Liberals). It's very unhealthy, very bad for the country. We now have at least five years ahead of us when we might as well be living in a totalitarian state, for all our views matter (if we are not die-hard, right-wing Conservatives.) I don't recall such a bleak political scene ever, in my lifetime.

In reply to Trevers:


On the basis of his comfortable middle class background and sitting on the back benches surrounding himself with like minded full time middle class North London rebels all his life? He's got no more hands on experience of how other people live than Dave.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


I knew you enjoyed the Thatcher era really

But seriously , I think the whole thing is quite cathartic. I'm slightly worried that there are enough of the disaffected and idiotic that he could actually do quite well. But more likely he stirs up some important conversations and forces both the moderate left and the Tories to think harder, reassess and communicate better.

In reply to Postmanpat:

At least you admit that Dave has v little experience of real life too. So we now have this scary thing of too quite bright political people who each represent a relatively small band of fanatics, miles apart, and miles away from how most people live, think and work in 'middle England'.

In reply to Postmanpat:


I based my comment upon a comparison of their respective constituences, summed up succinctly and unemotionally in this article in the Mail of all places:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3232255/And-finally-best-thing-At...

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Attlee, Churchill, Macmillan, Blair? None of them had much experience of the lifestyle of middle England. Thatcher did of course

In reply to Postmanpat:


Nick, your comment about Mrs Thatcher there is just so stupid, I can't believe it. The opposition then was still much stronger than it is now. There was nothing much wrong then with the political scene. Mrs. T was voted in because she was just popular enough in our strange first-past-the-post political system.

I think we're in a much more serious position now with virtually no effective opposition. The first really huge hurdle of course comes tomorrow. We may be pleasantly surprised, but I'm bracing myself for a disaster.

The problem then is where does that leave us as a so-called 'democratic' country?

In reply to Trevers:


Sure, all those Hard Years, allocating the council allotments, were great training for running the Labour Party.

In reply to Postmanpat:


You seem to wish to keep on digging yourself into a deeper pit re Thatcher. She came from an awesomely narrow-minded background (and her upbringing is quite a sad story, as you surely know. Not a v nice family at all.)

In reply to Trevers:


Notting Hill and Islington are also full of bankers.

I don't doubt that Corbyn has spent more time dealing with the immediate issues of poverty in his constituency but actually that is not "normal" and that is part of his problem. It's great to stick up for the very poor but actually the vast mass of the people are somewhere in the "middle"and I don't see much evidence Corbyn has particular experience of this.

In reply to dek:


You could save your sneers until you know how all this is going to pan out?

In reply to Trevers:


Why waste time? Get it over with now!

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Socio economically she came from the bog standard lower middle class and had a State education.. Rather odd old fashioned methodists but far more in the "mainstream than Cameron or Corbyn.
PS> Spot the smiley!

In reply to Postmanpat:


That's a reasonable point of view. If he can get through the early weeks and months of sniping from within his party and without, I guess his biggest challenge will be winning over 'normal' middle England. I suspect that's as much a challenge of PR as policy.

In reply to Trevers:

Don't exaggerate PR as being able to have much sway over the electorate's fundamental common sense. A few points maybe (3 or 4?)

In reply to Moley:

He's quite old i believe, so maybe not that long.

In reply to Postmanpat:


Yes, I saw the smiley, but I really can't smile about that hideous phenomenon that wrecked British life for about two decades. It was just so unfunny, so horrible, seeing one's country being changed in such an unpleasant way. And it's never really recovered, quite. Much has, but much has been left as a kind of soulless vacuum.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


I don't know. I feel much of the Conservative's election success was due to their continual drumming in of the point that Labour couldn't be trusted with the economy*. Whether that was true or not seemed largely beside the point.

* that and Labour's leadership being woefully ineffective and unable to work out what it's position was.

In reply to Trevers:


What you say is very true of the situation post-Blair, but not at all about the Thatcher era. That wasn't her argument at all. She came in with a completely different, new (actually incredibly antiquarian) set of policies, mostly about lowering taxes (=bribing the electorate; and sadly we've been stuck with that appalling formula ever since.)


Yes, to all that. An appalling failing that's put them in this desperate state now.

In reply to Trevers:


What? Like where to get decent quality woad from?

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


Well we're not going to agree on Thatcher.

But actually through much of that period the Labour party was in utter disarray. It was the Unions that led the opposition and they were digging their own hole.

But I don't actually accept your point that Corbyn won't provide an opposition. It's perfectly possibly that he'll wrong foot the Conservatives, and even if he implodes, it will have been the catalyst for the opposition to rethink and regroup. Frankly, in the first year after such a bad defeat they were never going to offer much in the way of opposition.

In reply to Postmanpat:


Whatever the outcome, I feel we're going to learn a lot.

In reply to Postmanpat:


Good points, and wonderful to see you putting such a generous slant on Corbyn as a potential catalyst.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


Well I can't speak for Thatcher at all, she was before my time

In reply to Moley:


Between 2 and 5 years. The whole political game has changed, particularly since the SNP's recent gains, so Labour no longer looks like it has much chance of getting elected. However, there's still a place for Labour in a pluralist democracy to lobby on behalf of public sector workers and the unemployed. As long as the public sector is smaller than the private sector in a mixed economy, it's unlikely that Labour will get into power now that the traditional working classes that it also used to represent no longer exist in any significant numbers in this country because they're all in China now.

Labour can still be a credible party of opposition, but it can only do that if it does its job of representing public sector interests - it can't do that as an imitation Conservative party which is what New Labour seemed to be trying to be. However, after a few years of adjusting to this new game, there will no doubt start to be some sort of unrest amongst Labour MPs and a palace coup of some sort might then be on the cards.

In reply to Trevers:

She wasn't before my time. To counterbalance Gordon's perspective, I was a Labour voting child of the 70s. My mum was a Labour politician and I was raised a good socialist. But the country I was raised in was utterly broken by the mid 70s and I spent much of my youth and early adulthood plotting to leave for the USA, the land of opportunity. as I saw it. And then, in the mid 80s, the UK I lived in, working both in London and the majority of my career in Yorkshire, became utterly transformed and the mist cleared from my eyes. No one can agree with everything she did, not even her closest ministers after all, but by god the UK is a better place for a broad sweep of its inhabitants just as much as certain communities bear legitimate grudges against her.

In reply to BnB:


The traditional Left of UK politics seem to miss Thatcher enormously. She gave them an identity because during all those years when they weren't sure who they were or what they were about, they knew they could rely on Mrs Thatcher to solve that problem for them because whatever she stood for, they would oppose it so and while she was around, they knew where they were.

When she died, the old Left seemed to put far more energy and passion into talking about her life than her one-time supporters (who had probably outgrown-her by that time). Though her passing attracted what seemed like a barrage of hatred from the left side of the old order, to me it looked more like a disguised outpouring of grief as they realised that their own time was also finally and unmistakably over.

In reply to Trevers:



I'm starting to think that the Tories won the last election because Labour were not pro IRA enough...

In reply to Andy Morley:

As long as the public sector is smaller than the private sector in a mixed economy, it's unlikely that Labour will get into power now that the traditional working classes that it also used to represent no longer exist in any significant numbers in this country because they're all in China now.

There are approximately 46 million people eligible to vote in the UK. By your logic and for Labour to have a chance, you would have to increase the public sector by a fair bit...

We would have to become like Greece, or perhaps like France. Voting and elections are not a precise science and though I'm told that only around 40% of the working population in France work for the state, (having spent several weeks there over the Summer, I can believe that) if you add in all the unemployed and the generally disenfranchised and p*ssed off, then a socialist government looks much more possible. There comes a tipping point where, if such a government gets elected and if it's not a pragmatic flavour of Socialism then it might expand the public sector to the point that ensures its own future electoral support. However, there is one very big flaw with that kind of strategy....

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


Sorry, forgot that sarcasm does not compute on internet. Yes, it is scary that the opposition could destroy itself before the next election, and leave the field open to who knows what.

In reply to Moley:

How long did IDS last??