Today’s award for clueless anti-Corbyn journalism goes to…
It goes to Evan Bartlett of iNews.
His article seems promising, being headlined Jeremy Corbyn: The media has failed to give Labour a voice.
But it soon degenerates into nonsense, quoting the semi-coherent Jess “I would knife Jeremy Corbin in the front” Phillips and making an absurd reference to the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
It seems the entire article is intended, not to discuss Mr Corbyn’s (accurate) claim that the news media are failing the public by failing to report on the Labour Party beyond calling for its leader’s resignation, but to ridicule him for daring to criticise the right-wing, in-the-pockets-of-the-Tories press.
It begins:
Jeremy Corbyn has accused the media of being “utterly obsessed” about questioning his leadership while failing to properly report on his party’s policies.
The Labour leader reacted angrily when asked if he would continue in his role despite poor opinion poll ratings during an interview with ITV on Tuesday.
So far, so good – and if it had continued in this manner, the piece might have had something to say.
The media must stop treating politics like a game & do its job of informing people about what the Govt is doing & what we'll do differently. pic.twitter.com/YivBCiSht0
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) April 4, 2017
Instead it went on to prove the accuracy of Mr Corbyn’s statement (above):
His dogged perseverance in the face of criticism led to one of his own MPs, Jess Phillips, comparing him to the Black Knight from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a character who battles on despite it being clear to the viewer he is dying.
The Birmingham Yardley MP also said for Mr Corbyn to stay on as leader would be “the ultimate selfish act”.
See what I mean? Instead of addressing Mr Corbyn’s assertion – that the media are failing to report on Labour’s policies – Mr Bartlett fell straight back into questioning his leadership.
He even quoted Ms Phillips in depth – a dangerous act as her comments were hardly what anybody could call coherent:
“It’s like – what’s it called? – Monty Python where he’s like ‘it’s only a flesh wound!’, it is getting a bit like that.”
She’s, like, pathetic.
Oh, but there is a bit tacked onto the end of the article, sub-headed
So what are Labour’s policies?
in which Mr Bartlett manages not to discuss any of them. Instead, he stated, “Mr Corbyn promised to lay out the policies he says the media are not reporting.”
Why not do a bit of research?
It isn’t hard – look, I’ll demonstrate with a handy little infographic:
That wasn’t difficult, was it? It’s all out on the social media – if some reporters only bothered to look.
Source: Jeremy Corbyn: The media has failed to give Labour a voice
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The Black Knight was weakened with every stroke but Jeremy Corbyn is more like Obi Wan Kenobi, who instead became far, far, stronger!
Jeremy was originally elected Leader with 251,000 votes and, after he was challenged, his leadership was confirmed by over 300,000 votes, (many of which cost the voters £25). Plus an enormous increase in Labour Party membership which, at over 500,000 is now the largest party in Europe!
During the first leadership campaign many people had never heard of Jeremy until Tony Blair decided to attack him. This resulted in a great surge of support for Jeremy and his subsequent landslide victory. (He had 80,000 more votes than those for all the other three candidates added together).
They can’t win – but HE CAN!!
They’re too busy criticising the visual representation of policies
http://www.newstatesman.com/labour-bus-jeremy-corbyn-memes
“It looks s**t”
“I don’t understand what it means so it must be rubbish”
They may as well have said “he used big words. Kick his head in”
Pathetic
No sound no sound that they cull free speech yet we have it on the internet free speech yet the peasants are still buying the daily rags hmmm
The “policies” are so general they mean next to nothing, or can mean anything, Mike. A bit like Miliband’s pledges on the “Edstone” like: “An NHS with time to care”. Meaningless. It tell people nothing about investment in the NHS and whether the service will improve or decline. As far as progressive taxation goes what does Labour mean? Will direct tax go up and indirect tax go down? Will a tax on land and capital be introduced? Will corporate business have to pay more? And does a foreign policy based on peace not war and nuclear power mean abandoning nuclear weapons, reducing the armed forces, spending more on overseas development or what?
Basically the “policies” are vague and fuzzy aspirations which do not allow anybody reading them to have any concrete idea in respect to how they or the country would be affected. Saying there will be “new council houses” isn’t what I would call a “policy” because there have always been “new council houses” under every government since the war; without being explicit such a statement of intent is worthless – there could be four council houses built or a million and the “pledge” would have been honoured. Saying “there will be 150,000 new council house build every year during the next parliament targeting areas of especial need” IS a policy.
This is the problem: people don’t know what Labour would mean to them in power.
Those are Jeremy Corbyn’s pledges, and they’re as plain as any made by any political party in recent years.
As this year’s elections are local, it is up to constituency parties to produce a manifesto. My own is launched on Saturday morning, in Brecon.
It features many policies that it describes in detail.
They’re no more or less vague than “we’ll cut the deficit not the NHS”
How will you “cut the deficit Dave?”
*Tumbleweed*
Then post election we find out he means by offloading it onto the poor through sweeping cuts.
He also immediately sliced £20bn from the NHS. So yeah this is no worse than anything the current monsters pull and they keep getting votes.
Well yeah, but social media is, like, Fake News, innit?
I thought the BBC must have taken note of Corbyn’s comments the other day about the media reporting the opposition as well as the government policies. I caught a glimpse of the BBC News this morning, while channel-hopping to find something else, and was gob-smacked to hear the reader talking about Labour offering free school meals. I was probably wrong though. They more likely think their affluent voters won’t like it and meant it as another stick to beat Corbyn with.
This is becoming wearisome.
What is worrying is that people will believe it.
I read a suggestion this week, a decent one: Unions should start and distribute a freesheet along the lines of Metro and such but left wing. Obviously trades unionists like Gerard Coyne wouldn’t be interested but decent people might be. I’d pay subs to support it and it could have a massive reach if done properly.
It would need to free from Progress vermin and other such interlopers, mind.
There’s always the Morning Star and also The Word
Complacency like this will lead Labour to defeat…
… again…
…and again….
….and again.
It’s like the band bravely playing on as the ship beneath us sinks.