In reply to BarrySW19:
All,
Essay coming up. Interested in people's thoughts (although I doubt it'll change my mind.)
I have always voted Labour and even modestly donated to the party at the last election. But I could not vote for the party now with Corbyn as leader, and so I am strongly of the view he should be replaced. Here's why.
1) Policies. For many people these will be the main, or even only reason on which to determine their choice in a forthcoming Labour leadership election. In fact for me there are other more important reasons in this particular case - see below. On the pure policy front, I am personally strongly opposed to unilateral nuclear disarmament, but otherwise I think most of his individual policies are good ideas. A problem for me here is that I just think he wants to do too much at once for the general public to 'bite', especially once the right wing Press get their teeth into it. A National Investment Bank, National Education Service, nationalisation of the railways (and energy companies?), much higher minimum wage and a complete turnaround of many aspects of foreign policy - some of these I think are great individual ideas, but people will be nervous about voting for so much change all at once at a General Election (and will be scared off by the 'papers). It needs to be done more gradually, focusing on a much smaller number of these major changes, with lots of detail behind them.
2) Inability to compromise and put the country before himself. Any leader needs to be able to show pragmatism and to compromise on an issue for the good of the country if it becomes clear they can't just have their way. Corbyn can't do this because his principles are too strong - they appear more important to him than the actual results of his actions. Examples include stating outright that he would never use the nuclear deterrent (note: the whole point in it is that a potential aggressor never knows for sure; there was simply no need for him to answer this question, and there is nothing to be gained by doing so.) Another example is his unwillingness to share a platform with the main 'Remain' campaign in the EU referendum. Many other politicians bit the bullet and talked together with their usual opposition to try to achieve the outcome they all felt was right for the country. But the main Labour party under Corbyn couldn't. On occasions he seemed more interested in highlighting how different he was from Cameron. At best, what he did was inadvertently dilute the 'Remain' message by confusing the electorate with a different set of reasons to stay, and then not standing firmly enough behind them. (I'm going to assume positive intent here and believe that he did in fact want to stay in the EU, and wasn't deliberately doing a half-job.)
I strongly believe that whatever your position on Trident or on the EU, the above examples demonstrate an inability to understand the true consequence of his actions, or to direct them towards the best end outcome. He is too driven to follow the principles he has held for many years without compromise.
3) Communication (in)competence. He has said too many things in public that could be interpreted the wrong way, and communicated too weakly at important times, for it to be bad luck - he clearly lacks the ability to think on the spot and get things reliably right. The most recent example of this was comparing the Israeli Government to 'those various self-styled islamic states or organisations', widely interpreted to mean IS. Whether he meant it or not, his team were left to pick up the pieces, with Jewish leaders publicly condemning him. And this was all at an event supposed to address accusations (hopefully unfounded) of anti-semitism. The country simply cannot afford to have a Prime Minister prone to this sort of gaffe. It would be a disaster waiting happen (in the modern world of social media on top of the traditional TV and Papers, maybe even more so.) So if you want to have a Labour Government, he can't be the Labour leader either.
4) Practicalities of MP support. The simple fact is that even if party members vote to keep him now, he has too little support amongst his MPs to actually lead a credible opposition. After the last set of resignations, I understand he had too few people left to even form a full shadow cabinet. That implies that Labour are no longer a realistic prospective party of Government, and that we are moving towards a one-party state, which we must avoid. Notwithstanding that, he will also be unable to command his party well enough to form a strong opposition block to the Tories when voting in Parliament on any remotely controversial or difficult issues (even with SNP support, which Labour must avoid relying on). Therefore, now that so many of his own MPs have declared other allegiances, he simply can't lead the party, and in my view has to go, even if you discount my other points above. And when people talk about his democratic mandate from the last Labour leadership election, remember that those MPs have all been voted for, despite an overall weak Labour performance, by their local voters of all types in the last General Election. That is the mandate that is really most important.
Overall I think Corbyn should be commended for his strong principles, most of which are genuinely about creating a more equal world, his willingness to be 'different' and his ability to raise passionate support amongst his admirers. But ultimately for the reasons above I think he is only suited to being a vocal back-bench MP or to leading a protest group, not a party of Government. For the sake of the UK, Labour must make itself a realistic party of Government again.