so, Jeremy Corbyn...

[seremtan]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... p-election

most predictable election in history, but interesting all the same. thoughts? (something beyond the "labour are now unelectable" cliche would be nice...)

my own view is that both the Tories and Labour are - and have been for some time - zombie parties, existing for the purpose of winning power, and able to go on doing so for so long due to the absence of a strong enough challenger. both were seriously weakened at the last election by the SNP and UKIP, but neither of those parties had the geographical reach or organisation to be serious contenders. now it seems a lot of people in the Labour Party have decided that perhaps now is the time to bury 'machine politics', and that there is a public appetite for something more 'ideological'. it's a hell of a gamble of course, and the odds are stacked against it paying off given that the English electorate (if not the Scottish and Welsh) is more right-leaning than left-leaning, and the English electorate basically decides who governs the UK through sheer numbers

personally, i don't really care about Corbyn's win. Labour are going to have to do lot more than elect a beardy leftist to lead them to overcome my perception of them as freedom-hating warmongers

[Transient]

Corbyn isn't covered much here in the States, but what little I saw of him had me rooting for him.

[PhoeniX]

I've not been following it at all but he seems pretty likeable - more likeable than the majority of poncey Eton types .

Plus, left-wing is best wing .

[DRuM]

Actually, the truth is that Corbyn only really cares about Donald Trump.

http://www.itv.com/news/2015-09-12/trum ... -us-voter/

[phantasmagoria]

I'm glad, I might vote labour if he holds his muster.

[seremtan]

Corbyn isn't covered much here in the States, but what little I saw of him had me rooting for him.

he's basically our Bernie Sanders, only winning the nomination

[losCHUNK]

I voted for him, never expected him to get in though especially with a mandate like that - 60% !?. Hope he does well but I feel the electorate aren't gonna be too thrilled, the press are gonna paint him to be some kind of extremist n all.


Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper, Rachel Reeves, Chuka Umunna, Tristam Hunt, Emma Reynolds and Jamie Reed have already left the front bench, it'll be interesting to see how he positions the party now and what happens with the council and London mayor elections or what happens to him if they don't go well. I feel he's gonna have to move a bit more to the centre to gain the full support of the party which could end up blurring the lines between Tory and Labour all over again.

Still great to see though, the labour members have spoken loud and clear and after the election all I was hearing is that they need to look internally to determine their own direction. Can't think of a much clearer message.

I'm glad this time they stuck to principles, I think Semen is right where he says the party only exists to win power and I hated this because of the amount of stories that I had seen saying Burnham has a better chance of winning so people should vote for him.

Now c'mon Bernie !

[Doombrain]

I like some of the transport stuff, not sure about nuclear disarmament...

[Transient]

Corbyn isn't covered much here in the States, but what little I saw of him had me rooting for him.

he's basically our Bernie Sanders, only winning the nomination

Don't count out Sanders yet, he's gaining a lot of momentum and there's still more than a year to go.

[xer0s]

Yeah, I think once people see him in the debates, the tides will turn...

[Transient]

Yeah, I think once people see him in the debates, the tides will turn...

That's the uphill battle he has to fight, though. The right wing is so terrified of debates that they do everything in their power to avoid having a back-and-forth with the opposition. Look at the first GOP debate; nothing substantive was said, it was just a bunch of talking points and nonsense. The candidates tailor their talking points to appeal to people watching 5-minute segments in mainstream media where conversations barely get started before they're over. They never directly answer questions, they misrepresent facts (or outright lie) and nobody gets a chance to really push back and analyze republican claims and get a straight answer from the candidates. Bernie doesn't work that way and he's going to rub the media the wrong way from here until next November. He won't get nearly as much air time, plus he won't raise nearly as much money since he's not taking large donations from Super PACs, so there will be much less coverage of his platform. Stupid American voters are more likely to vote based on sound bites than on actual policy. Trump says we should build a wall across the Mexican border, Bernie says we should divest from coal, and which do you think gets more play on air by networks looking for ratings? Most idiots don't even know what the word "divest" means, so there's your answer.

All that being said, I still have hope. But just a little.

[Don Carlos]

I like some of the transport stuff, not sure about nuclear disarmament...

Very much this
Only I'm utterly opposed to nuclear disarmament

[seremtan]

the debate about nuclear weapons isn't really a security debate though; it's a national identity debate. it's about whether the UK is going to eke out the last dregs of its former imperial glory as a permanent member of the UN Security Council (which is what the nukes buys us) and all around sidekick to Murica - or whether it's going to re-invent itself as a different kind of country with different priorities

we only have about 100 nukes. the Russkis have over 20x that many. do the math

[seremtan]

text wall

i now regret mentioning Bernie

[Transient]

I live in Vermont, I can't help but like Bernie.

[Eraser]

Only I'm utterly opposed to nuclear disarmament

It's not the 60s anymore.

[syp0s]

This is going to fizzle out like every other socialist movement. Conservatives will in government for another decade.

[losCHUNK]

Kinda what I'm expecting tbh, Michael Foot was in the 80s ?, I was too young to remember but from what I've heard and seen of the electorate I'm kinda expecting it to go the same way.

He's gonna have to strike a strong chord with potential voters or re-position his views. It'll be interesting at the least, there seems to be strong support for leftist values and Scotland abandoned Labour for being too right, Labour support is taking a dent in Wales n all for being a bit too right. Fuck knows.

I think Labour were fucked anyway though, the other 3 candidates couldn't stand up to scrutiny anymore than Brown or Ed could imo.

[syp0s]

the debate about nuclear weapons isn't really a security debate though; it's a national identity debate. it's about whether the UK is going to eke out the last dregs of its former imperial glory as a permanent member of the UN Security Council (which is what the nukes buys us) and all around sidekick to Murica - or whether it's going to re-invent itself as a different kind of country with different priorities

we only have about 100 nukes. the Russkis have over 20x that many. do the math

I kind of like the idea of Trident. 100bil is a lot of money, but the UNSC seat is probably worth that much.

It's like a guy who keeps a sawn-off buried in the back garden. He doesn't need to dig it up to scare people, he just needs to show them the shovel.

[seremtan]

Kinda what I'm expecting tbh, Michael Foot was in the 80s ?, I was too young to remember but from what I've heard and seen of the electorate I'm kinda expecting it to go the same way.

i've heard these analogies with the 1980s a lot (in fact, it began with the election of the Tories back in 2010) - but it's not the same. there was a serious shift in the political ground at the last election (though this was heavily disguised by the FPTP-based seat allocation, which is all anyone seems to care about)

for example, it used to be standard that the winning part polled >40% of the vote, but since 2005 none of the winners have managed to even reach 40% (2005 Lab 35.2%, 2010 Con 36.1%, 2015 Con 36.9%). there are now multiple third parties making significant inroads: UKIP most of all, then SNP and Greens

back in the 1980s, a lot of Labour supporters defected to the Liberals/Alliance (in fact Lab and Lib Dem support since 1979 was a virtual mirror image until 2015: when Lab were up, LD were down, and vice versa). in 2015, the Lib Dems were destroyed, but this didn't lead to a bump for either Labour or the Tories.

tl;dr: it's a different political landscape today from what it was in 1983

[losCHUNK]

I dunno what the political landscape was like back in the 80s, I've heard more than a few people compare Corbyn to Foot. It appears the left is atleast supported just as much as the Tories in this country which brings the problems up with the FPTP system like you said but it also makes me wonder if potential Tory voters chose Labour for being more central. I think support for Labour will increase in their 'home' grounds but what happens to the middle men is anyones guess.

Hopefully it'll kind of unite the left, since apart from UKIP the Tories have a monopoly on the right.

[seremtan]

i think the last election expressed the growing realisation that the two 'main' parties exist purely for the sake of being elected, and for no other reason (whatever those asshats at the Guardian and Torygraph may think)

the SNP can't really climb any higher, but i actually hope both UKIP and the Greens gather more and more support just for the sake of lighting a fire under everyone else

[seremtan]

>not singing during national anthem
>reading out emails at PMQs

can't absorb the Corb