Lord Kinnock warns against Jeremy Corbyn re-election (again – at length)
![Neil Kinnock: When he was Labour leader, he made a concerted effort to take the party away from its roots and select ‘more and more middle-class candidates’ [Image: John Curtis/Rex Shutterstock].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/160903-Neil-Kinnock.png)
Neil Kinnock: When he was Labour leader, he made a concerted effort to take the party away from its roots and select ‘more and more middle-class candidates’ [Image: John Curtis/Rex Shutterstock].
What, the possibility of having an actual socialist in charge of the UK’s socialist party?
The chance of seeing some real democracy within British politics?
Methinks he doth protest too much.
If you really want to hear him, he’ll be on the BBC’s Panorama, on Monday.
Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has given a stark warning about the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn.
Speaking to the BBC’s Panorama programme, Lord Kinnock said: “Unless things change radically, and rapidly, it’s very doubtful I’ll see another Labour government in my lifetime.”
Labour announces whether Mr Corbyn or Owen Smith have won the leadership contest in less than a week.
Mr Corbyn insists he is “delighted” with the state of the party.
Lord Kinnock, who led the fight against left-wing extremism in the 1980s, when Labour was paralysed by faction fighting, said: “Not just in my lifetime but stretching back to the 1930s, by any examination this is the greatest crisis that the Labour Party has faced.”
Source: Lord Kinnock warns against Jeremy Corbyn re-election – BBC News
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The crisis in the Labour party is “Lord”
You may not agree or like it but Kinnock is right.
You do not have any argument with which to support your wild assertion. Kinnock is wrong – for that reason.
Corbyn IS going to re-elected party leader, Mike. Everybody knows that this is a foregone conclusion. Subsequently, unless something or some things utterly disastrous happen, e.g., the economy nosedives seriously after Brexit eventually happens, and the Tories get blamed for it Labour won’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of advancing its position much let alone win a general election, especially after the constituency boundary changes, any time in the foreseeable future.
Corbyn’s legacy will be a Jeremiad for the party.
You offer no evidence to support your view because none exists. All the evidence shows Corbyn’s success at the polls and with the public.
Polls? Corbyn is doing well in the polls you reckon, Mike? Have a word with yourself. Every poll shows that Corbyn is doing worse in public opinion than any new leader of the Labour party since polls began; that Corbyn is much less popular than Theresa Mat with MORE than 60 points separating them, and that Labour has NEVER been ahead of the Conservatives in pretty much every poll since Corbyn became leader.
(Look here to see: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/ )
As far as polls amongst the general public are concerned things are historically bad as they have ever been – worse actually!
No, the polls really do show Labour starting to take the lead, despite the huge drag factor of right-wing Labour, up until the end of June. You can see that for yourself. Then the selfish element of the PLP went into overdrive and meltdown at the same time and dragged the whole party through the mud.
After Saturday, Mr Corbyn will have a lot of work to do, if he’s to reverse the damage done by his opponents.
if he had me by his side he would be doing a hell of a lot better but that’s never going to happen and as i don’t know of him personally he has a big mountain to climb
his main problem is his baggage and there’s nothing you can do about that sad to say
it’s not been bad but it falls well short of my level as do most mp’s ‘but it’s not me that needs convincing’ it’s the wider conservative electorate
Mike. For goodness sake! Corbyn has the very worst personal poll rating of any new leader in his/her first year: Michael Foot stood at -24, Ed Miliband and Neil Kinnock both at -7, while Jeremy Corbyn is on -36. (Tony Blair polled +27.)
Poor Tim. Still clinging to the polls like flotsam after a shipwreck.
Kinnock is a loser him self what right does he have to shoot his mouth off about anyone he couldn’t deliver a win so best he gets back in his box .
You may not agree or like it, but Kinnock is wrong.
The problem is simple. you have 2 camps in each political party one on the left and one on the right ?
for the conservative it’s the main in the EU party and the minority brexit party under the banner the conservatives
with labour the same the left under corbyn and the Blair conservative mp’s
what is there to not understand ?
Neil Kinnock was a failure and that’s because he was not putting the labour left first he had not got an affordable housing policy in place or any other socialist policy on the table and on that basis he lost the general election
the Brighton labour mp tonight on panorama was still in the Blair mode and that at the end of the day is labours main problem
labour needs to be labour and not liberal / conservative
the majority of conservatives will only follow a leader who has got a solid idea and looks credible ‘failing that it’s the end of the labour party for sure as we know it
Kinnock, you are just as entitled to your view as anyone else. Fortunately it seems the majority don’t share them. You may be very comfortably off (financially speaking) and the rest of society would like to be as well.
It is time to share not grab and that is not extremism; that is fairness for all!
He is an as been thats all Kinnock is, he never did anything for the country or its people he sold the miners down the drain, I would class him as a mobile mouth with only filling his pockets on his mind
What Corbyn proposes isn’t democracy but anarchy.
Rubbish. Anarchism suggests that the government that governs best, governs least. In contrast, this is government according to the will of the people. Our word for that is “democracy”.
We’ll have to find a better term for the modified despotism we have at the moment.
” In contrast, this is government according to the will of the people.”
Don’t you mean: Government according to the will of Labour party members who are fiercely pro Corbyn? And as there will never be enough of such people to vote Labour back into power single-handedly it is almost certain that Labour will never be able to form a government under these circumstances.
It’s all going to play out now anyway.
Labour has painted itself into a corner.
No, I don’t mean that because it isn’t true. Your assumptions are false and offensive.
Kinnock is just one of the worried politicians that fear real democracy. The act of change unsettling the status quo will come and wipe the cesspit of today’s politics clean. British people have a reputation of understatement, but will not be treated like mushrooms any longer. The populace is sick of the lie’s & misdirection practiced by these politicians, and sadly, this has evidently extended beyond the Tory empire. It may have suited people to ignore once, but the results of time have shown it’s consequences. These failures must be quantified and published en-block in due course to remind us just what has taken place in British establishments and organisations. Corbyn will hopefully succeed in his bid to make this difference, and put democracy back on course. Another thing the British love, is to support the underdog, for every attack made on him, it’s a shot in their own foot. For those that would wish him to flounder, they deserve to see their career’s disintegrate and their gravy train dry up as they are replaced with honest people without over-riding self interest.
Kinnock took the Labour Party into two elections and lost them both: the second one due in part to his own loudmouthed ineptitude. He hasn’t learned a thing, and he hasn’t changed one bit.
What does LORD Kinnock remember about Socialism? Too many years on the Gravy Train with his Missus has warped his sense of equality.
The pantomimic Mr. Kinnock was always a joke and where the rot set in. He did not like mushy peas either.
A Prerequisite on any Labour MP / Leader should be they sign a binding Document stating they will not under any circumstances accept any form of outdated award ie: Peerage,Knighthood, or any other form of award relating to feathering their own nest for their future. If they do accept any such award they are to be removed immediately from whichever position they may hold within the Labour Party, No Labour Person a True Socialist would accept such an award ever. Remember another Lying Deputy Leader Commented that when He meaning of course New Labour got into Power He would with His Bare Hands Tear Down That Den of Eniquity The House of Lords. And of course He did nothing of the Kind He is now like so many other Bastions of Right Wing Ideological Infiltrators of the Labour Party This Person has a Seat in that Den of Eniquity his words not mine. This Charleton shall remain nameless because he is like the Present Labour Deputy Leader Watson a Fat Obnoxious Bully and I’m scared s***less he would find me. That’ll be the Day the Fat Lying BULLY New Labour Deputy Leader of whom I write is none other than The Egg Man Punch a Protesters Lights OOT LORD JOHN PRESCOT.
And this is from the man who couldnt even walk on a beach.
Kinnock used to be known as the ‘Welsh Windbag’ and here he is farting out a load or pungent hot air again.
In 1976 he said, “The House of Lords must go – not be reformed, not be replaced, not be reborn in some nominated life-after-death patronage paradise, just closed down, abolished, finished.” – Tribune, (November 19, 1976).
But that didn’t stop him becoming a ‘Lord, and his wife a ‘Lady’. Both of them, and now his son too, on the tax-payer funded gravy-train for life if they can manage it.
These people and their ilk are deeply repugnant, self-serving hypocrites who want the very opposite of socialism to remain the political satus quo for as long as possible, and they’re fighting against Corbyn because he, and the social movement which is gathering in support of his ideas, are threatening that. They’re Champagne Socialists to the very core who have climbed the ladder and now want to pull it up behind them.
Kinnock is wrong on just about every level. He is a self-serving careerist, in it for the fame and the glory, as well as the money. How can he be a socialist when he lives the life he leads? His son lives abroad and sends his kids to private school, and yet he is a SOCIALIST MP? Am I missing something here, or did they just give a new meaning to the word ‘socialist’?
Did you see the photo of him being made a ‘Lord’? The look of pure ecstasy on his face as the ermine was folded around his neck – eyes closed and no doubt dreaming on the riches he could glean from this latest charade? Cringeworthy. But it says everything about the man.
And Corbyn just arranged a leg up to the Lords for Baroness Chakrabarti. So Lords not so bad after all
How ignorant of you.
The rest of us know that Ms Chakrabarti, who opposes the Upper House, was nominated for a peerage in order to campaign against it from the inside.
Did you not see that memo?
Kinnock is a North American Democrat. He’s not a Tory.
John McDonnell is no Derek Hatton. McDonnell has financial nous as he showed when he was in charge of London’s finances under Ken Livingstone. Hatton was a financial disaster, exacerbated by the Thatcher government. Probably Kinnock was right to get rid of Militant at the time, BUT this is not the ’80s and Momentum is not Militant.
It’s about time Neil Kinnock enjoyed walks with his dog, came home to his pipe and slippers and stopped embarrassing himself.
If he thinks this is Labour’s “greatest crisis,” he need only look back to the gang of four and their disruptive escapade dumping Labour and launching the ill fated SDP in ’81. I’m surprised he has such a short memory. I remember it well and I’m 5 years younger than him!
Kinnock must know that Corbyn is certain to be re-elected, whatever he himself says on Panorama. He must therefore also know that his view on the electability of Labour under Corbyn will operate against Labour reunification following Corbyn’s election. Along with the others who are unreconciled to Labour’s return to the centre left he should stop assisting the Tories by fomenting disunity and leave the party.
Well you have to admit Kinnock does know what an unelectable labour leader looks like, every time he looks in the mirror he sees one, and as an ex commission president of course he wants us in the eu because they pay him a huge pension and out of it he could lose his unearned income
Sometimes in life the message is right but the messenger is wrong. corbyns message is right and he’s a decent man but if his followers are no good then he will fail’ and in reality it’s as simple as that
for my part he needs a chance to put this argument to bed once and for all ‘ but at the end of the day he will need to win over areas like where i live in Sussex to become prime minister
Even i myself find conservatives voters very narrow minded’ they always have been where change is concerned and for the life of me i can’t see that changing
my true belief is they will only vote if the face fits like tony Blair’s for example. could they vote for corbyn at a general election ? they could if trump wins the USA presidency as that will mean the west is up for a change of direction
the problems are still the same from the sixties like housing and teaching / NHS and we need to get whoever can deliver that hopefully in y lifetime. Although very basic to undertake it eludes those that are in power. and that must mean deliberate intent to fail the people as i say it’s a very basic undertaking and even i could have achieved that no problem
The problems are the same, because people are, essentially, the same; the same as they were 2,000 years since and beyond. That’s why I say that life is cyclical. Anybody like Mr. Corbyn is the wrong messenger and history has shown us that those persons are eliminated, one way, or another.
I mistrusted Kinnock so much and thought him a two faced liar and voted Maggie Thatcher in so he is not perhaps the best person to be opening his fork tongued gob right now. I wasn’t wrong about him then and I’m still not wrong about him now. He is an untrustworthy elitist gobby betrayer of the working class, the miners in particular and he likes wealth and power as much as he likes the sound of his own voice. He would sell his granny for a photo op.
Who is he? What qualifies him to make such assertions and publicise them in such a fashion? Remind me, how many elections did he win? Yet he deigns to lecture US about electability(!) As my mother says, he (and Tony Blair) should be happy in his grave.
Please go away Lordy ???
The Independent Headline today: ‘Left Wing Activists control Labour’ (or similar)…the crisis, Kinnock, is in the possibility of the right-wing media being able to throw enough s**t to make this old chestnut stick. As before, when you ‘saw off’ the left wing, the party…which is once again facing the possibility of true emancipation,may simply be emasculated again by the turncoats and champagne socialists like you whose career prospects are threatened by the need for moral fortitude.
Corbyn is a paper tiger who hasn’t come out against the new benefit cap that comes in in seven weeks, doubling the number of homeless children at a stroke. Non of his 10 pledges recently announced mentioned welfare or social security. He’s obviously not going to be elected but even if he was would the poor and the desperate even notice.
The man is full of wind and water.
Corbyn came out against the Benefit Cap in 2015.
Unfortunately the shadow Work and Pensions secretary at the time was Owen Smith, who is averse to any measure that the right-wing media can use to claim Labour is “weak on welfare”.
Some have seen this as evidence that Mr Smith was sabotaging Mr Corbyn’s policies from very early in his leadership.
Do you have any evidence to suggest that the person responsible for challenging the government on the Benefit Cap didn’t let his leader down – perhaps even in the hope that people like you would draw the wrong conclusion?
had Owen had the thousands of names and address of all the sick and disabled that have so far died in going through welfare reform the press would have been on his side
Well done Mr Kinnock, you have become a recruiting Sgt to Jeremy.
You failed in two general elections, once against the second worst prime minister in history.
Do yourself a favour, get out of the unelected sesspit and get with the new direction of the party.
I was a delegate at Labour Conference in 1985 when he made his infamous speech attacking the Miners and Liverpool City Council. His. tone was venomous. Had it been directed towards Thatcher and her cohorts as it should have been then he might have stood a chance in the 1987 GE.
He was pouring water on the fire of injustice that was around at the time. Instead he started what the establishment wanted, the Party turning in on itself and the witch hunts that lead to PURGES and silencing any discussions about Socialism for a. decade or more.
He’s doing the same now but his windbag ways are viewed from his financial Elitist position
Yaaawwn…how much more of his verbal incontinence do we have to suffer…..