Why shouldn’t Jeremy Corbyn take credit for victories won under his leadership?
![Jeremy Corbyn [Image: Rob Stothard / Getty Images].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/160722-Corbyn.jpg)
Jeremy Corbyn [Image: Rob Stothard / Getty Images].
In case she hasn’t noticed, Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party when the victories she mentions were won; he is perfectly entitled to claim them.
Does she have evidence that she was acting without or against his leadership while carrying out her duties in the Lords? If so, is she saying she can’t follow orders? Is this some bizarre attempt to signal a wish to retire? What, exactly, is the point of her claim?
And how can she claim any victories at all? The Lords can only revise Parliamentary bills and send them back to the Commons, where final decisions will be made.
This Lady seems to be trying to jump on the anti-Corbyn bandwagon – unsuccessfully.
Labour’s leader in the House of Lords has called on Jeremy Corbyn to stop taking the credit for government defeats that had nothing to do with him, amid fears the turmoil in the Labour party is undermining the British parliamentary system by allowing the government to pass laws unchecked.
Baroness Smith told BuzzFeed News it was her team of Labour peers who were doing much of the hard work of defeating the government in the absence of leadership from Corbyn.
“It is a bit galling when Jeremy stands up and says, ‘Under my leadership we won on tax credits and we won on trade unions and we won on the housing bill.’ I don’t think I had any conversations with Jeremy about those issues.”
Corbyn took out a full-page advert in The Guardian on Tuesday to launch his leadership campaign, claiming the changes as victories for his leadership and saying he wanted to be re-elected so he could continue “to lead a party providing such effective opposition”.
As he formally launched his campaign to hold onto the leadership on Thursday, Corbyn again cited the government defeats on welfare cuts as evidence of his success as opposition leader.
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When you act against established interests: whether political, media mogul or corporate, there appears to be no degree of scull-doggery that is deemed unacceptable.
It’s time Jeremy played hardball with these blairites,it couldn’t be any worse.show them up for the Jackals they are.
To add to my previous posting. All leaders of large organisations claim responsibility for actions carried out by the organisation (particularly, if they are successful) most of which they may not have had that much to do with. A leader who tries to ‘micro-manage’ a large party would be doomed to failure. The flip-side is that the leader is also responsible, to varying degrees, its errors.
“I don’t think I had any conversations with Jeremy about those issues.”
In other words, Mr Corbyn did not give any guidance or leadership to Labour’s Leader in the House of Lords. Does she have any evidence that this was the case? Is there any evidence to the contrary? If there is no evidence to disprove what she says, then we will just have to take her word for it. If conversations about these matters did not take place then no one can say she was not following orders as none were given.
So as far as Corbyn taking credit, I may just as well take credit for the government defeats myself.
If the comment that, “The Lords can only revise Parliamentary bills and send them back to the Commons, where final decisions will be made” is in fact true, then the Lords are completely pointless. Some may say that the Lords should be abolished anyway, and this may well be the fact, but they do exist and if their words were taken into account then they are right to take the credit.
This seems to be the whole problem with the Corbyn “Leadership”. He may be a great guy. He may have fantastic ideas. He may be beautifully opposed to the Tories. But he is not leading and no one is following.
Since you don’t seem to understand how Parliament works – the role of the Lords as a revising house showing this – I don’t think we need trouble ourselves over your opinion regarding the words of the Labour leader in the Lords. In any case, her comments are part of a wider strategy of tarring Mr Corbyn with stories that cannot be substantiated with documentary evidence – as we have seen in the stories of Thangam Debbonaire, Lilian Greenwood and others. Without corroboration of her claims – she’s the one making the assertion, so she needs to prove it – we can dismiss them.
Perhaps it would be better for accuracy if Baroness Smith stayed asleep longer and then she would not dream up these tales.
She is entirely correct. If the lords had not rejected those laws they would have gone through, without much voice from Corbyn. She forgot to mention the Lords throwing out the Academy schools bill as well.
The Lord’s is a revising house. It can’t reject anything, only amend. And if she was following Labour policy, then she was doing as the leader directed. And the leader was Jeremy Corbyn.
You really need to train yourself to see through these silly attacks.
A load of rubbish from Baroness Smith’ she doesn’t even know of how many sick and disabled people that have died in going through welfare if you ask her that question she says (what people )
These attacks on Corbyn are now a co-ordinated campaign off hate. Evidence should be demanded to support any claims these plotters suggest, and when it isn’t produced a public retraction should be demanded. I don’t know if such hate crime could be construed as being an offence, but it should be considered.
Oh dear, oh deary me. The Baroness seems to have organised her own agenda, made up policy and taken the Tories to task without any prompting from the Labour Party Leader – according to her rather weird claim.
““It is a bit galling when Jeremy stands up and says, ‘Under my leadership we won on tax credits and we won on trade unions and we won on the housing bill.’ I don’t think I had any conversations with Jeremy about those issues.””
Should she, as a Labour peer, have needed such discussion, or was she not aware that she was acting on Labour Party policy?
What does she think she is in her position to do for the money she gets paid as a peer in the House of Lords? Fall asleep? Sit there with her thumbs up her ass?
Perhaps she requires Corbyn to bow before her – for doing her flippin’ job!!!!
“Perhaps she requires Corbyn to bow before her – for doing her flippin’ job!!!!”
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. A lot of people think that is what Corbyn should be doing. The coup has failed because he has quite rightly refused to do so
I think that Jeremy Corbyn should be credited with EVERYTHING that is happening to and within the Labour party in full. As no doubt he will be when history finally judges him.
Compare this to the gushing over Blair, attributing anything good that happened on his watch to him and his glorious leadership.