Spot on

I would take David Cameron as Labour leader right now if it meant an effective opposition to what's coming. I would take one entire half of the Tory party as opposition to the wing that currently has a mandate if that's what it takes.

The most important thing right now is an opposition. We've got a two year process to turn everything upside down to come, and the only opposition to that that counts will happen in Parliament. "Fsck the PLP" is a concept as destructive to progressive values as voting out in the first place.

I voted for Corbyn as leader. I do not expect him to win an election at any time. My real interest in him was dragging the Overton window to the left a little. I genuinely think he's a decent man and it's not personal ambition. He did get a mandate from the membership, and I do feel he's fighting to protect that mandate in their name.

But I also think that he's fscking . He's not a leader. He's a representative. They have never needed leadership more than at this moment in time. Individually everyone's cool but, as is true for all parties, the combined view of the membership is crazy.

Say you fight and fight and fight and then lose. Consider how you will react to that. If it's to thank the party for their trust, and then go spend an afternoon on the allotment whilst barely thinking about it then you're a fscking wastrel nugget completely unsuited to the demands of the role. Particularly in this unique moment in history.

Pretty much summed up what I've done and what I think, right up to and including the use of the term Overton Window.

Oddly enough, field work that I party to last year revealed that many people like David Cameron, but just wish (or wished then) that he was leader of the Labour Party.

People do like someone to be what they recognise as A Leader, who appears authoritative in a very conventional manner.

Not to go off on too much of a Cameron derail, but I have to say this given what I said above.

I think he's a detestable man in just about every respect. What he could have done is follow Sturgeon's suggestion (or perhaps even have thought of it himself), whereby the result would require the consent of each part of the union. This would have been consistent with his Unionist beliefs, and consistent with the political climate. "This requires the consent of the nation and all its constituent parts", or some such, because for the integrity of that nation it clearly did. Anyone who opposed such a stipulation would have been clearly anti-union, and good look selling that to the core of what is officially titled Conservative and Unionist Party. It's almost as if he put as much effort as he could into being as shockingly and pig-fsckingly amateur as he could manage.

I would say he was the worst Prime Minister since Chamberlain, except that Chamberlain did not invent Hitler out of thin air.

However, he has had two moments that have impressed me. One was petulant, but correct and this week. He alluded a little to Leo Amery quoting Cromwell when he was trying to get Chamberlain to quit. "We need an opposition. For heaven's sake man, go" or something to that effect. Perhaps he held off [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway_Debate#Amery:_.22In_the_name_of_God.2C_go.21.22on the full Cromwell quote[/url because we're in the middle of fscking Ireland. Again.

The other moment though, THE positive Cameron moment as far as I'm concerned, genuinely stopped me in my tracks. No other Prime Minister has ever done that, and I mean it quite literally. I remember I was cooking and pottering around in the kitchen, and something got ruined because I had to stop and listen.

It was a complete and unequivocal apology for Bloody Sunday. Proud is the wrong word in the circumstances, but I felt something akin to it when I heard that apology. He will always have my personal gratitude for that.

And my undying enmity for this.

(Also, he both looks and sounds like someone who was my boss for most of the last decade. That was a very odd experience right from the off and then never ceased being odd.)

And all I can say about Corbyn is "You're not wrong, but..."

I personally want Corbyn to win the new party election.

The Red Torys can then leave the Labour party and allow it to return to its working class roots. They can then form a new party.

The harsh reality is that many Labour MPS would have naturally joined the Conservative party in the 1960's.

Corbyn for all the media rhetoric of being a left winger is actually pretty centrist when looked at in the historical context.

The referendum has placed a bomb under the political status quo within the UK. Both Labour and Conservative parties are tearing each other apart.

My personal view is that if the Blairites leave labour to form Red Tory, then if someone like Gove gets elected tory leader, some of the more traditional tory elements would lean towards joining the red torys. This then further splits the political vote, and makes a further case for the UK to modernise its political system.

The Establishment must truly hate Corbyn.

Latest smear attempt is he's an anti-semite apparently.

What I find amusing is that some of my friends who have been veering towards UKIP are warming to him because of the Establishments hatred of him. Now if he could be convinced to end the free movement of labour I think he could actually win an election for the Labour Party.

If they both join the Lib Dems , bingo !

Within weeks of a concerted smear campaign seeking to discredit the left's views on Israel, he starts making some lazy comparisons between ISIS and Israel.

And yes, I know what he really said. It wasn't as bad as is being portrayed, but I shook my head at it as soon as I saw it and think he's on very dodgy ground.

The real point though is that if in these moments he is doing incalculably stupid things like this then he has absolutely no hope at all of ever controlling the narrative. Ever.

Who wants a progressive always being forced to be a reactionary in the face of their own fsck ups? And as leader, too?

Hardly the first time that anti-Semitism has been flung around as an accusation – and vbfg is completely right in his analysis of this being overdone.

However, partly because he had never been a serious 'contender' for the leadership previously, once of the main problems with Corbyn is that he has no established team around him. The nature of today's UK political scene is Spads and Wonks etc. And because, from day one, people in the party (primarily, but not exculsively, the Parliamentary party) worked against him, this feels unreasonable.

Unfortunately – and from a personal perspective, I think that he has brough important issues to the fore (the need to build social housing being but one) he has few leadership skills and has appointed a 'team' on the basis of an understandablly defensive response to much from the rest of the PLP.

The possibility – and it is only that – that we might face a GE in the autumn does, however, urgently raise the issue of his electability beyond the activists and new members – and yes, there have been many new members since his leadership began.

The party's biggest problem is not an easy one to solve: a swathe of the mainstream media, having denigrated Ed Miliband for how he ate a sandwich, and then invented a Labour-SNP coalition, has now decided that truth is no longer a problem.

In the case of Corbyn, they now simply ignore his presence at, say, loads of Remain events – thus he is 'doing nothing'.

All sides flawed. The whole thing a mess. The People of the UK not actually being treated as the main concern.

The above shows he is doing something right and must be supported. The moment we get someone who the media support and publicise, is the time we should be really concerned, as that means they are owned by them.

The whole point about Corbyn is that people know he hasn't been bought. The very fact he has so far resisted resigning is another sign of his independence and strength of will. The Blairites and media are pushing him to resign because that lets them off the hook re the membership. The fact he hasn't gone "touch wood" is calling their bluff, as to stand against him is akin to political suicide.
For Labour to get rid of Corbyn in this way will destroy the labour party amongst the grass roots. The Party Conference would be an absolute war zone.

And in the opposite corner the sane one is Theresa May.

These are the stakes.

Absolutely. You could tell this from the vitriol and lies that have been poured at him continually from the media and the right ever since he was on the leadership ballot. Ranging from describing him as extreme left-wing to a national security risk, to he's dangerous to the nation, to now he's weak.

Corbyn is a puppet - he is a front for the like of McDonald - he will do what he is told.

As a leader he is unelectable - he lacks gravitas - intellectually and actions.

Put him up against May and she will destroy him and the Labour party in one fell swoop it would be carnage.

Waiting in the wings keeping her powder try is Yvette Cooper who would be significantly more electable than Corbyn

Last but not least - you cannot have a main man who will not press the button - end of.

The best outcome for Labour at this point is to split.

The leadership and the local party seem to be pretty much in step with each other. The people of the constituencies voted for the rebels. Each wants to protect their mandate.

This is my preferred outcome right now. I have considerably more faith in the prospect of a Lib-Lab pact than I do in the current leadership ever controlling the narrative. Without any ability to do that they are toast. And so are we.

Prior to the Eu referendum Labour had increased their share of the vote, performed better than expected in the local elections, won 4 major mayoral elections, as well as moving ahead of the conservatives in some of the polls. All this on top of increasing their membership massively. What more do they want a leader to do given the position they were in after the general elections. Can anyone really imagine anyone else in the leadership race doing any betterment Now, I don't agree with a lot of his opinions, but at least I know what they are. Corbyn has galvanized young voters more than anything other politian in my life time, and given the rise of more radical political rhetoric in the last couple of years it seems foolish to right Corbyn off. An "I can't believe it's not tories" Labour party is the last thing we need.
As for the accusations of antisemitism, it was a bit of a "face palm" moment. Although I don't think he said anything that wasn't true, and people need to realise that criticising the Isreali government is not the same thing as antisemitism, you just know the media would twist it in the way that they have.

Well then let's examine the logical constructions that he used:

"Muslim friends" and "Jewish friends".

Totally down with this. Here are two groups of people with an identity with whom we have no quarrel at all that is any way related to that identity. These groupings are real, and equatable. Anyone can easily accept these concepts of identity based groupings as things that are very much alike.

I have been led by the construction of the logic in this argument to consider that we are now equating things that are, as with the above, very much alike.

So where do we go now? Israel and the Islamic State. The democratically elected government of Israel, and the Islamic State. Before we had two things that were very much alike, and now we have Israel and the Islamic State.

If you are not personally offended by this then cool. Personally I have the same problem with that attitude that I do with those Leave voters who backed a coalition of racists pushing a nationalist agenda saying that they are not personally racist. Yes they are, they looked in the face of xenophobia and fscking shrugged. If the real lives of real people are just collateral damage in your analysis of what you want and how you get it then you're a 2@.

It's not much of a conspiracy to say that when the narrative at that moment in time is on the complete lack of leadership of those who got us to this position, to turn it on yourself because of your spectacular tone deafness on these issues then you're not just not a leader, you're actively damaging to the interests. If you do it in the shadow of a recent smear campaign deigned to discredit you on exactly this issue then you're beyond stupid. Incalculably stupid. Dangerously stupid. The kind of well meaning stupid that shows exactly how you will be derailed from every last item on your agenda.

But he doesn't actually stop there.



No, fsck you. There is no "at the same time". That first sentence is complete as it stands and needs no qualification at all. No one should be expected to do anything at all, at any time, to satisfy some artificial expectations placed on them because of their faith, race, nationality, gender identification or sexuality.

Do not condemn Jews, the most vilified group in human history, for the actions of a government. Excellent position to take. You do not follow this up with 'At the same time, don't be surprised if the Labour party membership start moaning about Jews and "Zionists" purely because of it'. This is an obscene false equivalence.

Seriously, how stupid is this person? The more I consider the actual words he used, and the constructions of logic that he used, the less charitable I am towards him.

edit: The word of the week is Verschlimmbesserung. Look it up.

VBFG, I recommend you listen to Shami Chakrabati who chaired the inquiry discussing the findings and Corbyns position. www.lbc.co.uk/chakrabati-defends ... ism-133112 To summarise she pointed out the media manipulation of the story and the way the media have attacked Corbyn who instigated this inquiry, while at the same time ignored the blatant racism displayed by the Conservative and UKIP parties in recent times.

VBFG, I recommend you listen to Shami Chakrabati who chaired the inquiry discussing the findings and Corbyns position. www.lbc.co.uk/chakrabati-defends ... ism-133112 To summarise she pointed out the media manipulation of the story and the way the media have attacked Corbyn who instigated this inquiry, while at the same time ignored the blatant racism displayed by the Conservative and UKIP parties in recent times.

It doesn't matter what her opinion is. I know damn well it's media manipulation. The point is that he's a rank amateur with no hope of ever controlling the narrative. He cannot lead. It was what, three weeks ago when to save face one of the most famous party members of all was being ejected. And he's making lazy comparisons like this. It's just stupid, and he's a liability.

If he wanted to not be a liability then the thing to do would have been to act with knowledge that the media does manipulate. I have yet to see much evidence that he's capable of it. Who, apart from Sideshow Bob, walks into exactly the self same trap over and over? Why would you even be going there at all when there are real, pragmatic and in everyone's faces issues of racial hatred going on right here and right now? You can't find an actual, relevant analogy from the practical issues of the surge of violence and intimidation following the vote? Then what's the point in you? Why are we abstract at all?

I'm very much not against a candidate from the left who can actually lead. Corbyn is not that person entirely on his own merits. This kind of crap is his leadership from now until the day it is over.

It really is fun watching and reading the rubbish about Mr Corbyn. It's years since a politician has scared so many that what they say and write is anything that they hope will bring him down.
The faux labour politicians have shown themselves to be the Tory lite that they are and the media have tried to convince everyone that the man is dangerous by their actions. The trouble is they forget one key factor.
We live in interesting times and perhaps a change is in the wind. People are afraid of change, especially those who benefit from the status quo and they will say and do anything to ensure it stays that way.
Let the fun begin.

Yes mate. It's us v them. That's the spirit.

It's not about his beliefs. It's him.

I am amazed by the love for Cameron on here! He has been the most incompetent and embarrassing PM during my lifetime.

Angela Eagle is ridiculous, my a@@e has more charisma. Surely she would only ever be a name to get a leadership contest going and for one if the awful brigade then to actually get elected?

Labour has nobody credible and likeable to the public that I can think of. Corbyn is probably their best bet as at least people are getting used to him and there will be some respect for his willingness to be different. As I said before, Labour lost a great opportunity in not backing Brexit. If the PLP had followed Corbyn's principles rather than pushing their's on him they would be in a very strong position right now and could have legitimately argued for a General Election that they may have won. But they missed that opportunity and have probably destroyed themselves by once again showing that they are unrepresentative.

As to the voter disconnect of parliament generally, now could be a great opportunity for British politics. One that will not be taken.... why not all agree to PR and then let Labour and Conservatives splits occur? We could then have several parties who would be more representative of a divided nation's views and the centre ground would be secured via coalition. Seems the way to go from here to me.

Yep. If Corbyn's had backed the leave campaign labour would probably be in pole position to win the next election. He could've also moved attention away from the immigration argument, and made it more about the undemocratic, megalomaniac nature of the Eu.
Now we're left with fascists May, and Gove, or Angela Eagle, who described a report from the liberal Democrats in 2008, warning of a dangerous bubble in the housing market as "nonsensical".

Labour are not a credible party of government for the simple reason they have not even been able to execute a simple coup to get rid of Corbyn. Michael Gove showed how to get rid of the Etonians!

If Labour's self-professed brightest and best (actually dull and useless) can't organise an internal coup how could they lead a divided country, with a strong opposition and deal with complex post-Brexit international affairs? Answer: they simply could not.