Corbyn may be even more grey than John Major but there's no doubting his sincerity. He's one of the very few MPs who entered parliament to effect change as opposed to simply wanting to become an MP and get to play games with other people's lives and living standards. He's also unique in the ranks of Labour MPs because since being elected, he has managed to increase his majority at each successive election. If nothing else, his constituents appear to believe in him.

Since Blair, Labour have all but abandoned those at the bottom of society, they need to re-engage and mobilise them to vote: that could be their path to a future victory.

What I do find disappointing about this leadership contest is that since the start, none of Corbyn's opponents have managed to offer a coherent argument against him. Instead they and their teams have continually briefed against the man and not his politics. That alone suggests that they don't have the intellect to lead a party

Heard Corbyn interviewed on the radio on Friday (Jeremy Vine I think) and was quite impressed with the man and his sentiments which were refreshingly honest and not obviously read from a spin doctors list of "This is what we think they should hear", in particular his ideas on affordable and social housing and how the current restrictions on local authorities prevent them from providing a solution were quite enlightening - they shouldn't have been because they are just common sense solutions and not the ravings of some communist madman and they leave you thinking "Why is no-one else saying this" and they are actually only the same sort of housing planning and budgeting that the country did 20 years ago and yet he stands out in the crowd for saying these things, I hope he becomes the next leader of the Labour Party if only for the fact that an opposition should be a genuine opposition and not a slightly paler colour of the party in power.

I agree Gary. Liz Kendall and the Thick Of It Labour types are still stuck mentioning wealth creation as one of the major issues. For me, it goes without saying that ANY government has in its interests wealth creation. There is NO elected government that has not had this as part of their manifesto. With Labour though they don't seem able to say that along with the progressive policies. It's like their stuck on a record of austerity. They have let the Tories dictate the discussions since they went into opposition.

Miliband got elected on the back of challenging that but as soon as he was suited and booted for the leadership all that talk disappeared, replaced by the kind of talk that comes from letting opinion polls decide what you do. Corbyn knows what the vision is. He's not talking about nationalising everything, thrusting up taxes to 80% etc. He's talking about stop wasting money on defence, sorting out tax evasion by multinationals, public services that provide more than a bare minimum and a country led by respect for the people that live in it. Whether he's got the intellectual clout to compete in debates I don't know. In addition, he's probably going to hampered by the Blairites, who think the way to win elections is to be caffeine free Tories who steer away from the difficult discussions because they have no conviction in changing anything.

The current Labour party is a joke and wholly unelectable and incapable of running anything, let alone the UK economy. They can't even organise a way of voting for their own leader! They have now decided the current one person one vote system is undemocratic because they don't like the way its going. Before that Ed got elected on the basis of union votes against the will of most. They are an utter, utter shambles.

As usual 100% out of your depth.

I appreciate your determination in the face of adversity.

WTFHIT?

He's correct. Most of what you wrote is total bollox.

When did the Labour party decide that the current leadership voting system was wrong?

They didn't?

Oh, OK then

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... are_btn_fb

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... are_btn_fb

The Labour Party is certainly in a mess. Having been routed in the general election any leader of stature would have resigned but remained in office long enough for the party to regroup and agree what went wrong and plan for how they should go forward before electing a new leader. Instead the humiliated Ded Ed just ran away abdicating all responsibility and still believing he was right and the public were wrong. To think he was standing to be our Prime Minister!

So Labour rushed into a leadership election with a rag bag mix of candidates made up of those tainted by Labour's former economic incompetence and others destined to remain as just others.

They now seem rudderless with no credible policies. Having been against an EU referendum they now vote for one having stated that they back the government in seeking changes to our membership but will back the vote to stay in at any cost.

The Labour party have deserved all they have got and I think they will take a long time to recover in the future be it with the over ambitious Burnham or the more genuine but off the wall Corbyn.

The problem with Labour as I have been saying for along time is they need to decide what they stand for, who they represent and what policies they will adopt. The fact that they cannot or will not say what they are for in simple, easily understood tells the electorate all they need know - ie the parliamentary Labour party are a self-serving rabble.

I'm beginning to think it might be necessary for Labour to elect someone like Corbyn and let him succeed or fail.

All any Labour Party member needs to do is look at the back of their membership card. The very first statement reads: "The Labour Party is a democratic, socialist party"

If the have any problem with democracy or socialism, then I'd suggest they chose the wrong party.

If Corbyn is elected leaqder (which I now sincerely hope he is), then I look forward to his first PMQs. I have a strong feeling that he won't be engaging in the usual Punch & Judy show that we have seen for decades. His naturally quiet demeanour will show Camoron and his baying mob up for the hooray Henrys that they truly are

Thats the bit that I am hoping too, the very first thing he says at the very first PMQ should be "I will not shout, I will not interrupt you when you are speaking but if you want to hear what I have to say as part of our democratic process then you need to sit down and STFU", then he sits down and waits for the reaction - there is no response to that which will NOT make the opposition look like the posh boys tag that Cameron so hates, other than to do what he suggests - and that style needs to be followed constantly, he is miked up anyway and anything he says is recorded in Hansard so if the baying mob are really interested in any for of democracy then they'll have to listen or read up on it later.

Who reads Hansard?

The baying mob is made up of both sides of the House. The Labour MPs expect their guy to put up a fight, give the Tory a kicking. Will Corbyn have the stomach to consistently adopt that style when week after week he sits down to stony silence from the MPs behind him?

I too hope Corbyn becomes leader of the Labour Party and also will look forward to PMQ's when the PM responds to Comrade Corbyn. It will be fascinating to learn if Comrade Corbyn has the backing of his party to pursue his policy to pull out of NATO and the EU and then there will be so much fun as we learn of how quickly the Comrade's economic policies plan to ruin the country.

Thats the whole point, there should be no baying mob.

Have you ever sat in a company board room where directors meet to discuss important issues that affect the well being of the company and all of its employees and customers ?

How long do you think your directorship would last if every time anyone else opened their mouths to speak, you tried to shout them down, I'd give you ten minutes before you're stood on the street outside with a box full of photographs from your desk and wondering how you're going to get home without the company car tonight.

I'm not disputing any of that. But the idea that Corbyn is going to change it is fanciful.

This document is well worth a read, it's a report authored by 7 Labour candidates who failed to win key marginals at the general election. It draws on their first hand experiences of canvassing and campaigning in those marginals and is quite an honest account of Labour's failings in their campaign. It makes some excellent points such as there are some issues which Labour wouldn't even acknowledge existed never mind have a conversation about....... www.fabians.org.uk/wp-content/up ... -seats.pdf

This document is well worth a read, it's a report authored by 7 Labour candidates who failed to win key marginals at the general election. It draws on their first hand experiences of canvassing and campaigning in those marginals and is quite an honest account of Labour's failings in their campaign. It makes some excellent points such as there are some issues which Labour wouldn't even acknowledge existed never mind have a conversation about....... www.fabians.org.uk/wp-content/up ... -seats.pdf

The Labour party's problem is a fundamental one. It was a party whose roots are in an different era that is failing to adapt to demographic change. The Blair years saw it adapt to the new demographic landscape but it was not Labour as traditional Labour voters knew it. They then lost the trust of their new found middle class friends over Iraq and then the economic crash (however unfair that particular criticism may be). Those two things will take a generation to recover from IMO. Just look how many people in the North still rant about the Thatcher era and blame their ills on her / her party to see how long-term these voter reactions can last.

In gaining its new, short-term friends, Labour has spent two generations distancing itself from the poor in our society who are just now turning away from it.

Labour therefore is at a crossroads and needs to decide who it appeals to. Rather like "our" M&S's clothing emporia it cannot provide an offering of all things to all people as it'll end up satisfying none of them. If it lurches "left" it will not be electable as there are insufficient punters who that will appeal to.

In short, it's hard to see a meaningful future for them any time soon.

Oh I agree but someone has to start somewhere, and it would need to be a leader too, sadly I don't expect it will ever happen as they don't consider that their behavior at times is simply unacceptable in any sort of establishment.

How many leaders did the tories get through after Major and before golden bollox Camoron turned up?

I've a feeling that once the middle classes see the real consequence of Osbornomics, a chimp in an M&S suit could probably stand a good chance of winning a majority

You're flattering Osborne by tagging his "policies" with a name, I have this vision of him on the phone most evenings to his University professors saying "Could you just run through that first year lecture on sleight of hand distraction techniques with particular regard to fiscal planning again please"

It's pure revisionism to pin the blame for Labour's abandonment of core socialist principles upon Blair because the truth is the party did that NEARLY FIFTY YEARS AGO when Harold Wilson was elected. All Blair did was arrange for a skip to be placed outside of Party HQ so the last scraps of tattered credibility remaining could be hawked before selling out fully.

You can't even consider Labour a socialist party. Even in its heydey (which was before the war) it was only ever a bulwark against [iactual socialism[/i breaking out in Britain. Once WWII ended and the electorate received its payoff for five years of war misery (the NHS) it didn't take long before they were falling back on all their commitments (something these "moral men" claimed only TORIES indulged in). This Labour party has spent more years reneging on its promises than it did MAKING those promises.