He looks exactly like a weary and cynical Barney Fife, whoâs spent too many years looking at the seedy underbelly of Mayberry.
I am delighted - I voted for both Corbyn and Watson. Corbyn is a gem, and Watson is a brute (but on the right side!), and both are just what we need!
Sorry to piss on everyoneâs chips, but how is Jeremy Corbin going to succeed where Michael Foot failed?
I donât think that is really the point. I voted for Corbyn because we havenât had a left wing party in the UK since Blair turned the Party of Workers in to the Continuity Thatcherite Party. Ever since then there hasnât been a voice espousing a Socialist agenda in Westminster. As a result, our politics had slid further and further to the right, as populist politicians chase Ukip in a race to the bottom. The idea that New Labour is a meaningful opposition to the Tories is a sad joke. I just want to hear someone who represents my views speaking in Parliament. Hopefully the trough snuffling politicians will decide that there is another audience to pursue and we will start to hear about alternatives to âAusterityâ. Thatâs my feelings any way.
Posting this for people who arenât aware of the significance of the right-hand picture:
Obama showed that differentiation can win an election where convergence (see the US 2000 election) failed. But you need the right message and I donât think UK Labor have that message yet.
Its the small target/big target thing which Australian political parties struggle with.
I think the problem Australian parties have is that anything they throw out there just comes back to hit them⌠or am I being woefully stereotypical? 
Good friend to jerry Adams in the early 80s, and links to hams.
Nice bloke.
I found it funny that quite a few people, Blair first and foremost, were saying how it would be better to elect someone who got votes rather than someone who stood for a principle. Rhetoric of a career politician if there ever was one.
âThese are my principles. If you donât like them, I have others.â
Over the years I have watched British politics and been wondering the disconnection of Labour supposedly being left-wing, but rarely doing anything to prove it.
Whilst I generally agreed with this piece, I would take issue with this:
(these were the same people, by and large, who backed the last two Labour leaders, both of whom lost elections so comprehensively that they endangered Labourâs standing as a mainstream party)
In the 2015 election, Labour increased its share of the vote more that the Conservatives did, and they only achieved a majority by eating their coalition partners alive (something that may come back to bite them sooner than they think.) Whilst it is certainly true that Labour did not win that election, to suggest that they lost it comprehensively is pushing it - the evidence suggests that even redrawing the boundaries may not actually help the Tories all that much - it may make it even harder for them to make headway in urban areas. After all, they have only now barely returned to their pre-1997 position, whereas Labour may yet have some unexpected opportunities.
And whilst it is true that Labour, having gone through their William Hague phase (the moderniser) - under Milliband - have clearly now entered their Iain Duncan Smith phase (the ideologue), this time Corbyn seems to have energised a new base which the equivalent period for the Tories largely failed to do. So itâs possible that Labour wonât actually need a Michael Howard phase (the loony) before they become âelectableâ again; and that also assumes that the Tories donât shoot themselves in the foot on the way.
For a while the joke was that the US had two political parties âThe Republicans, who are like the Tories, and the Democrats, who are also like the Tories.â Unfortunately, for the past while, you folks have had âLabour, who are like the Tories, and the LibDems, who are also like the Toriesâ, and while Iâd rather see some LibDems who were like LibDems, itâs refreshing to see Labour actually picking a leftist.
(Iâm one of Those Annoying Libertarians, and while I think Bill Clinton was probably the best Republican president the US had last century, Iâd have preferred someone a bit more socially liberal.)
And? Apart from your idiosyncratic spelling there isnât actually anything in your post. A bunch of people are elected that you donât like.
Woohoo! Go, Jezza!
Smash all those smarmy, traitorous fucks infesting Labour, and may you wipe the floor with the Tory filth come the election.
Hereâs hoping the American electorate shows half as much discernment to give the Democrats to Sanders, and that us poor slobs in Oz are someday soon given the fucking option to support a major contender who isnât a fucking sell-out sleazeball.
Itâs amazing that the political and media establishments still-- stillâ havenât grasped what the story is here: they continue to think itâs about Corbyn being left-wing, because thatâs where he fits in the ritualised script theyâve been mouthing for decades.
That analysis doesnât even qualify as moronic. Those 25-year-olds whoâve found so much enthusiasm for Corbyn are not energised by obscure squabbles that ended a decade before they were born. Theyâre energised by the idea of someone whoâs never been part of that Punch and Judy show, and whose career has been about questions like âwhat is the right thing to do?â
See, the thing is, we have the internet now. Instead of hearing the establishmentâs guesses about what people are thinking, weâre now hearing it from the horseâs mouth(s). As it turns out, what the establishment have been telling us is nothing like what most people have been thinking, and itâs disturbing in a way that takes a long time to fully take in. More and more we read about something online, and then watch the news talking about the same thing, and think âoh shit⌠has this been going on my whole life?â.
Whether or not Corbyn (or Bernie Sanders) is for you, I think thereâs a huge democratic correction coming, and weâd better hope that it can be channeled through figures like this, within existing political systems, because the alternatives are worrying.
Unless the Tories shoot themselves in the head, he wonât. Labour is doing the âwe didnât win because we werenât pure enough!â tantrum.
Reopening the coal mines and encouraging renewables is a bit contradictory.
I like a step leftwards, but youâve still got to pay the bills. Free education isnât free. Itâs really expensive.
No, itâs doing the âif we have to be watered down Tories to win weâd rather pick someone true to our principlesâ tantrum.
Besides which, there are plenty of votes to the left of where Labour was at the last election. They didnât get annihilated in Scotland for being insufficiently centrist.
Use the coal until you can replace it, then sell it to China. From an economic and social perspective, if not an environmental one, re-opening the coal mines while also encouraging renewables is a perfectly sensible and not at all contradictory position.
Your liberal media - âMarx admirer Corbynâ
