Jeremy Corbyn’s peace deal is a political masterstroke
Offering the olive branch: Jeremy Corbyn’s gesture may win him even more support among the party, and the country as a whole.
The Labour Party is big – very nearly the biggest socialist party in Europe – but not as big as its leader, it seems.
After a week of backstabbing, psychological warfare, calumny and threats, Jeremy Corbyn has offered rebel Labour MPs a chance to come back into the fold and help forge a new relationship with the European Union after the vote for Brexit on June 23.
It is a huge, symbolic gesture – an offer of amnesty for all, despite the bitterness of the past seven days. Anyone capable of that deserves huge respect, even from those who don’t agree.
Mr Corbyn said the party must work with respect for the British people’s democratic decision – and added that MPs must also respect the democratic decision of the Labour membership to make him the party’s leader.
I am ready to reach out to Labour MPs who didn’t accept my election and oppose my leadership – and work with the whole party to provide the alternative the country needs.
But they also need to respect the democracy of our party and the views of Labour’s membership, which has increased by more than 60,000 in the past week alone.
Our priority must be to mobilise this incredible force to oppose the Tories, and ensure people in Britain have a real political alternative.
Those who want to challenge my leadership are free to do so in a democratic contest, in which I will be a candidate.
But the responsibility of our whole party is to stand up in united opposition to the Tory Government – and in support of decent jobs and pay, affordable housing, rights at work and an economy that works for all.
The whole country needs Labour to heal the divisions of the referendum campaign and offer a winning alternative to the Tories at the next election – whenever it comes.
It is a masterstroke – forcing the rebel MPs to face the fact that they are threatening democracy on two levels and offering them a chance to reconsider, before it is too late.
It is also an ultimatum: Co-operate or challenge.
In the background, the ever-growing ranks of the Labour membership are watching.
And they won’t be as magnanimous as Mr Corbyn if the backstabbers don’t back down.
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Wow you gotta love this guy!!!
At last, I just hope that all the members are listening and agree! I really hope he becomes PM
Thank you Mike!
Always felt he was as wily as a good politician ought to be and as generous to afford even his enemies, one last chance. A rare thing today, yet much demonstrated in one other place vilified as an enemy – Russia!
It is not Corbyn’s policies that are the problem. It is Corbyn himself that the Parliamentary Party do not want. It is not possible to make peace under those circumstances.
Don’t kid yourself!
It is definitely his policies!
As for Corbyn himself, this guys non confrontational manner disarms his opponents, he shows the patience of a saint, but does suffer for it at the hands of the commons schoolboys. The current polarization spreading throughout the political spectrum can serve only to route the troublemakers from either side. This can only be for the good of real democracy, not the brand offered by the Tories or detractors. I have to agree, Corbyn has let it run, a masterstroke.
Emily Thornberry said it wasn’t his policies, however he’s bringing the party further to the left (which is what members elected him to do). The Blairites think that Labour needs to go further to the right to win elections by attracting Tory voters, but they lost the last two General Elections because there wasn’t enough difference between them and the Tories, so they lost their core voters who either didn’t vote at all or voted for UKIP or the Greens, as a protest.
Those in my local CLP who are against him fear that he won’t win the next General Election, whereas his supporters believe that he has a better chance than any other Labour MP.
Wrong – Labour voters are shifting to UKIP for the same reason as Tory voters, i.e. because both parties are still too far to the left. The centre isn’t where professional politicians think it is.
Oh my word.
Please tell me you aren’t serious.
I’m sure some of it is him personally, but I suspect the policy that really scares them is his intention to make the Labour party more democratic: they know that that will result in their ejection for ever and they lack the imagination to see how it could save the party, possibly even the country.
And I don’t think for one minute any of them expect or even want Angela Eagle to win the leadership contest, except poor Angela herself, who is probably completely blind to how she is being played. This isn’t about winning, it’s about forcing the party to split, but to split in such a way that the PLP get to keep the assets. For that reason, they will do everything they can to keep Jeremy off the ballot. They know that doing so will enrage the membership, but they don’t care: if Jeremy is kept off the ballot, he’ll go and he’ll take at least half the membership with him, but the existing PLP will still be the official opposition, and they will still have the name, the branding, the funding and the infrastructure. The battle will destroy Angela Eagle and the new leader will come striding through the carnage to rescue the party with their prime ministerial stature.
I’ll give you one guess who I think the puppet master is. Here’s a clue, it’s someone who has previously been lauded for his rhetorical flourish, who was implicated in the mass resignations but managed to keep his hands clean and who has since been mysteriously quiet. In the past, I’ve always defended him from people who’ve suggested his father would have been disappointed in his actions, because who are we to comment on the relationship between a man and his dead father. But if I’m right, I suspect tearing the party his father loved apart for ever would probably have been enough to, at the very least, disappoint him.
Jeremy Corbyn’s resilience and resolve is truly inspirational. He makes me want to be a better person.
Good psychology because he’s telling them he isn’t going to resign, so they either put up or shut up. And they’re on a hiding to nothing as they know. If this splits the party in two maybe that’s not all bad on the long term, because at least the part I belong to will keep the name. The Blair team at one point wanted to change it, because it was a bit working class and wouldn’t appeal to the “achieving middle class”.
Someone suggested they should call themselves “Blue Labour”!
Someone else (me!) suggested “Antisocial Undemocratic Party”.
It’s just amazing that he can do this after all they have put him through. He has made statements earlier today, asking that the rebels in the PLP not be called traitors or any other term of disrespect or any form of abusive language. This is the master stroke, occupying the moral high ground, while making it clear that it a choice to rebel or to now heal the party.
I hope the Labour Exiteers will be given some job training. They seem very immature as politicians, seriously lacking in communication skills, strategic intelligence and professional priorities.
hmmm il forget but they wont they have to much greed but jc held out that olive branch only to find they not care two hoots but if only a few come back in then is it worth it has this lot of greedie mps will just cause further hostility further down the line deselect them
Jeremy represents our best chance for a fair society and a peaceful world. Support his optimism, please
I do!
Hi Mike, I get your blogs delivered directly to my mail box but whenever I click on the link it comes up with an ERROR message. This has happened for the last 8 blogs and I’m having to rely on it turning up on my fb feed. I’m not sure if it’s a glitch on my computer or a deliberate hack in order to block your content.
By my reckoning I’ve had at least three attacks in the last week, when people were trying to overload the server. Last night I think it was genuinely overloaded with people wanting to read this article. I’m sorry you’ve been having trouble seeing the articles. It is something I’m trying to address, as I think an increasing number of successful social media sites will need to get past it in the future.
I have been getting the same Claire! Only when I do get the page up it is in basic format, Thank you I thought I was the only one it happened to.
I’ve had that too Joanna
Frankly, I am not very excited about the idea of allowing back-stabbers to have another go. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me! Corbyn does not need them as he has the full backing of his electorate which has already shown its distaste for back-stabbers!
It would be very bad for their careers if they pulled the same stunt again, especially as things are so uncertain at the moment, with the threat of an early elections, the electorate will not put up with it and because it is so recent, memories are fresh.
That is my fear too. These backstabbing selfish shortsighted folks don’t know the meaning of integrity. The party should be cleansed of these people so that he can get on with the work.
The thing is, it allows the backstabbers to show themselves up for what they are. And they can’t help themselves… truth will out, and then the electorate will be made just that little bit wiser.
Jeremy doesn’t really need to attack – he just gives them enough rope… and they do it to themselves. It’s a martial arts technique… you use their own poisonous energy against themselves. He’s a lot smarter than people give him credit for. A bit like a master-chessman.
Corbyn is just so much bigger than those seeking to bring him down. Great bloke and I hope, our next PM. The country needs him.
In many ways Jeremy reminds me of what I have heard from my Grandfather and read about Clement Attlee. An unassuming man with a terrific mind and a very clever way of dealing with people.The right-wing hated Attlee for his introduction of the NHS etc.
Jeremy’s politics are very close to Clement Attlee’s. This is why I get annoyed with people who say he’s hard-left. He really isn’t. Wanting everybody housed and with decent working conditions, and a functional NHS isn’t hard-left. It’s just common decency really. Jeremy is not Lenin or Trotsky, even though the media paint him as such.
Good for Jeremy but I think he’s got this part wrong! Why forgive the traitors knowing that they’re truly Tory sympathisers? I was hoping for a real purge of the people WE’VE known were disloyal,not only to Corbyn but to the British public who NEED a Labour opposition now more than ever!The traitorous MP’s obviously don’t give a toss about the party or the people who elected them so I, for one,would like to see them deselected.To be honest,I’m surprised the likes of Hilary Benn haven’t crossed the floor!
Maybe his generosity of spirit motivates the olive branch gesture, at the same time knowing that everything has gone too far for many of those recalcitrant MPs to come back into the fold. A clever way of forcing them to follow correct procedure, toe the line or resign/risk deselection for lack of integrity/trust. Calling their bluff.
Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer!
Mr. Corbyn is quite right, and it’s what I’ve been saying over the past week or so. If the PLP feel so strongly, then they should be able to field a candidate that will depose him democratically. The fact that they clearly believe they can’t do this speaks volumes for the support Jeremy still has in the party at large. It shouldn’t need to be pointed out that the success of a leader is decided by the people who follow and support him/her as much as anything else. The PLP clearly think that by refusing to co-operate they can end Corbyn’s leadership, and they seem willfully determined to the point of destroying the party, which to me shows they have no particular care for those of us who need a Labour government. I’ve been utterly disgusted in their behaviour, but as Jeremy says, it is not too late to unite and do the job they should be doing.
I thought Len McCluskey made a valid point this morning about election results, and if Jeremy had failed any one of those tests, this would have happened sooner. The referendum result is only the excuse they have been waiting for, nothing more.
Further up someone said that they think the MP’s are opposed to Corbyn rather than his policies. It is the policies and the intention behind those policies they object to. Mr Corbyn represents a Labour party whose ideas are based on community and co-operation, where everyone in society helps each other, and everyone benefits as a result. It’s a commonsense approach which recognises that we still have a class system in Britain. Where and when you are born does affect your life chances in a way that no amount of “aspiration” will erase. Those who say different are kidding themselves (and you). The point of democratic socialism, as opposed to other forms of socialism, is the belief that all of us can still have satisfying lives despite that, with a few minor adjustments. We can have social justice. We can have decent homes for everyone. We can have the best health care. We can have well-paid jobs that enable us not just to survive, but leave us with disposable income. These are not unrealistic goals. We can all expect to give what we can and get back what we need to be happy and fulfilled.
Renationalising the railways was in Labour’s 1997 manifesto. Tony Blair did not honour that pledge. If Labour MPs are reading, then this is where you fail for me as a Labour Party member. I don’t want another Tony Blair (even ignoring the disaster of Iraq) who wins elections but doesn’t follow through on any of the policies I helped elect him for. I want someone I can trust first, and that man is Jeremy Corbyn. I know he will do what he says he will do. I’d like the MPs to do their jobs and support him properly.
Well said! Couldn’t of said it better myself.
I totally agree. A leader who delivers! We also need to recapture democracy. Currently, the leaders act like big businesses and while forcing austerity, they signed themselves a salary raise. They have a huge salary and perks. These should be revisited and simplified so that they don’t collect large chunks of cash using claim forms. They must be tied to the same pension fund that the civilians are tied to, so that they don’t gamble away the future of the vulnerable retirement age folks
“If the PLP feel so strongly, then they should be able to field a candidate that will depose him democratically. The fact that they clearly believe they can’t do this speaks volumes for the support Jeremy still has in the party at large.”
Or it could speak to the dearth of talent and the extent of spinelessness in the PLP. Remember how brave they were when Gordon Brown spent 3 years driving very slowly over a cliff?
Dr. Toboggan – thank you for bringing some much needed sanity to this debate.
Am I the only one who finds this comment amusing?
It is now irrefutable that a majority of new labour mp’s made a coup attempt against their leader and totally failed. It is now up to them to accept his generous offer of unity and actually mean it or mount a formal leadership challenge and put their case to a vote of the membership or to move on.
Come to think of it it might be better if they simply move on anyway as they are the ones who are doing the best job of all of making labour unelectable.
The labour membership is large, very large and it will not be difficult to find people who are passionate, intelligent, articulate and dynamic to replace them. In fact in the present climate and circumstances it would probably be a massive advantage to have a brand new generation of labour candidates who are not part of an utterly discredited and rightly distrusted political establishment and more closely resemble ordinary british people, going into an election united behind a popular leader with real socialist and environmental values and policies.
Just get the denyers deselected from their constituencies and have done.
He truly is the shinning light in all this darkness!!
I’m really finding it difficult to understand what is going on here. This man is destroying what was once a great movement and taking it to oblivion and people here are making out that he is some kind of saint. When you’ve lost a couple of general elections and come to your senses I’ll rejoin the debate.
Having already seen comments Mr Hunter made later, I have to report that he was not accurate in that final statement.
not clear which statement you refer to is inaccurate. btw there appear to be 2 Ian Hunters commenting on this article.
Split personality, is it?
It’s quite a popular name (I know of 2 others not counting the pop star, rugby player, actor and politician).
You haven’t answered my point re inaccuracy.
The Blairites have already lost two General Elections. It’s our chance next.
Ed Miliband was no Blairite and come to think of it neither was Brown (they were both Brownites). Only saying.
250,000 members electing Corbyn sounds impressive but it represents less than 0.5% of the electorate. Now I’m confident that he can count on their support at a general election. It’s the other 99.5% I’d be worried about. The man does not have the skills to be a leader. He’s tried and failed, there’s no shame in that. He should walk away now and give the job to someone to can do the job.
The big problem with your argument – the really glaring one – is the fact that the Labour Party has been adding members by the thousands ever since Jeremy Corbyn announced his candidacy to be leader. It is now far more than 400,000 and I read that it was on course to become the biggest socialist political party in Europe by the end of today (Sunday, July 3). I’m willing to stand corrected by it seems party membership is at its highest since the early 1980s – including the 13 years of Labour government between 1997-2010.
Membership of the other parties, by contrast, is stagnating. The Liberal Democrats have added thousands since the EU referendum, but nothing like as many as they have lost since the start of the Coalition Government.
Corbyn’s Labour has won at every major election since he took over – Labour is now the largest party in local government, for example. And he is winning back the disaffected people who stopped voting or went over to other parties when Labour started being too similar to the Tories for comfort.
He’s doing fine.
Ok so it’s now 400,000. Two things: it’s still less than 1% of the electorate and it’s a huge assumpion to make that they are all Corbyn supporters. The man is well meaning but incompetent. I’m nearly 60 and have voted Labour all my life and I wouldn’t vote for him.
Why do you say he is incompetent? What do you think he has bungled?
watch the Vice News doc “Corbyn – The Outsider” then tell me that he is competent.
You highlight a big difference between us.
You have to watch Mr Corbyn through the prism of someone else’s interpretation to say he is incompetent.
I just look at what he does to know he isn’t.
Hi Joanna
I regret if I gave the impression that I’m some kind of sociopath however I can assure you that I have more than 5 friends.
I don’t doubt your sincerity and what you suggest is admirable but it is also extremely naïve (please do not take this as an insult it’s not intended to be). I firmly believe that Jeremy Corbyn will never be prime minister of this country because he will prove to be unelectable at a general election (despite what Mike says by elections are not a useful guide in these situations, if you doubt me on this look up the history books). I’m a lifelong Labour voter who is old enough to have seen this all happen before. There are strong parallels with what happened to Michael Foot in 1980 -1983.
History has a habit of repeating itself. You do not need a crystal ball to see what’s likely to happen. I want a Labour government every bit as much as you and in case you suspect that I might be a closet Tory then I should perhaps tell you that one of my favourite quotes is ‘that as far as I’m concerned the Tories are lower than vermin’ and that I use it at every available opportunity.
I think that a difference between you and I is that I understand that history is against Corbyn winning and there is a wealth of evidence that demonstrates that to win a general election Labour will have to compromise their ideals and in this case their leader. I consider that it would be a price worth paying to get rid of this odious government.
A useful indicator of how well a leader is progressing in the job is how well he or she is performing in opposition. I have seen nothing to suggest that JC would have the necessary skills to be a competent prime minister. His presentational and communication skills are dreadful and he has botched opportunities to hold the government to account (if in doubt watch the Vice News documentary which incidentally was a sympathetic piece made by a Corbyn supporter). Idealist young Corbynistas tell me that this doesn’t matter because he has the full support of the party members who backed him last September. The problem with this is that the people he needs to attract at a general election have to be convinced that he is a prime minister in waiting before they’ll vote for him. This is what did for Ed Miliband; the electorate simply decided that he wasn’t prime minister material. Of course the Corbynista deniers will spin that it was because the manifesto wasn’t left wing enough but the fact is that Miliband just didn’t look like a prime minister (and neither does Corbyn).
Anyway who knows, you might be right and I could be wrong. So good luck, I just hope that there won’t be another 18 years (or more) wasted in opposition.
Your continued reference to history is quaint. The times have changed.
As for being a closet Tory, maybe you aren’t but consider this: What good is having a Labour government if the policies it follows are Conservative? That’s what neoliberal New Labour was, and what the Labour mutineers want to reinstate.
If any more time is wasted in Opposition than Labour deserves, it will be the fault of the mutineers – for plotting against Corbyn, for trying to sabotage the party while in important posts, and for launching a lengthy and boneheadedly badly-organised attempted coup against him.
To Peter John Bailey
I do not believe that using language like sycophants and toadies is being over emotive (btw the term troll is itself pretty offensive). You may not like it but these terms are an accurate description of what I see is happening in the Labour party right now. It’s funny how people on the left of the party can use colourful language when criticising the moderates but the left wing are real cry babies when it’s used against them. It’s time to toughen up, if you think I’m being nasty believe me you’ll get much worse from your real enemies (i.e. the Tories). I’m not your enemy, I’m your friend because I’m telling the truth and I feel that using expressive language is fully justified to describe what I see the slow (but quickening) demise of a once great political movement.
I’m saying these things because I believe passionately about this and because it’s real peoples lives and futures (including mine and my family’s) that are at stake. You say that you might listen if only I wasn’t so immature. I think that it’s you that needs to grow up and fast. You need to be aware of what is likely to happen. Labour cannot win a general election with JC as leader, if you think that they can then it’s time you read your history books.
Not all but many well-meaning but naïve people who joined the party since the last election see something in Jeremy Corbyn that I frankly can’t see and I’ve known about him for more than 30 years. But more insidiously the extreme left wing including SWP, Marxists, Trotskyists and former militant Tendancy supporters and others have seen their chance to hijack the party following Ed Miliband’s ludicrous decision to allow anyone to have a vote for £3 within days of joining the party. Yes Labour needed to change following two successive election defeats but this is not the answer.
Anyway I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again; I might be wrong and you might be right but at least you need to consider the possibility that JC is not the messiah who’s going to lead you to the promised land.
Good luck, you’re going to need it.
Ian Hunter
Sorry to interrupt your private conversation. This is just to remind you – both – that we have a rule on this site that personal insults are not allowed. Play the ball, not the other player.
In that spirit: Didn’t the neoliberals hijack the Labour Party in the 1990s, with the blessing of Tony Blair?
Over half a million now, and many are “footsoldiers” who will go out and persuade others to vote at elections. Very powerful.
To win he’ll need about 12,000,000 to vote for him. So if you’re right, Mike, he only needs to recruit another 11,600,000 people to support him and he should be home and dry. Of course that’s AFTER the boundary changes come in. Piece of cake, eh? Who would have though that a man with two E-grade A levels and no degrees or any higher education to speak of could have climbed so high.
No – Labour’s share of the popular vote in 2015 was about 9,350,000, so Mr Corbyn would need an increase of another 2,650,000.
Looking more achievable now, isn’t it? Especially when you realise that he’s attracting many of the 30 per cent or so of voters who have been abstaining because they didn’t like any of the choices available.
And don’t knock people with lower-grade ‘A’ levels – I had two Ds and and E, and I’m doing quite all right, thank you very much.
Who do you recommend? Isn’t honestly and integrity and courage in the face of such blatantly rude and crude opposition something to be applauded? Or is someone who takes the country to war on false alarms and whose highest goal is power and who speaks glibly, the kind of leader that the country needs? What is it that is not right about JC? What qualifications do you recommend for a successful leader?
The kind of leader who is electable.
How many thousands of Labour representatives have been elected under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership?
He’s electable enough.
We don’t need a leader it’s not a poxy rugby team. We want some policies not someone waving a flag telling us how wonderful he is. (rollseyes)
Labour has plenty of policies. The trouble is, it also has plenty of mutinous MPs who are determined to obstruct them, rather than do their jobs.
Yes, you fool, Ian Hunter! He doesn’t merely represent 0.39% of the electorate – he represents 0.62% of the electorate!
So only 99.38% to worry about then. Indeed how foolish of me.
Not nearly as much as that. You are indeed being very foolish, trying to manipulate figures to present a false impression.
Still, you’re amusing.
For Labour to win an election under the current FPTP rules they need to capture seats from the Tories and others (hopefully we can at least agree on this). The problem they have is that analysis of the data from the last election showed that if they were to increase their share of the vote in the 100 seats with the lowest turnout it would make very little difference to the outcome because Labour already holds 92 of these seats. Electoral reform would help but that is currently light years away.
Therefore in order to win an election Labour needs to appeal to people who currently vote for these other parties and cannot rely on its core support alone to deliver an election victory. Shifting the party to the left means that the very people that Labour needs to appeal to will not consider voting for the party. This is what happened in the 1980’s under Foot then Kinnock both of whom were considered too left wing by the electorate.
It pains me to see what’s happening because most people in this country need a Labour government to protect them now more than any time in my lifetime. I’ve vote Labour all my life (I’m nearly 60) and cannot bring myself vote for a Labour party led by him. If you cannot persuade people like me then you really do have a problem. I can see that we are never going to agree on this and I’m afraid that it’s only going to take electoral wipe out as it did in 1983 (longest suicide note in history election) for a lot of people in the party to come to their senses. There is no point in behaving like a sect because without power you can never carry out your policies. Moreover there is no point in blaming the electorate for not voting for you when the inevitable happens. You have to win over the hearts and minds of people who do not currently share your view of the world.
Incidentally I’ve recently considered joining the Labour party but would be doing so to help try and remove Jeremy Corbyn and replace him with someone more credible (not Angela Eagle). Leadership demands a very specific set of skills. Jeremy Corbyn does not possess them (neither did Ed Miliband). There is no shame in this because not many people do.
Anyway I do not intend to continue this dialogue indefinitely so good luck for the future and who knows maybe I’ve been completely wrong about all of this and Jeremy Corbyn will be prime minister this time next year.
You make a fundamental error in your analysis – which is to assume that only the 70 per cent of the electorate who voted in the last election will vote in the next.
Why do you think this?
If you stop to analyse the Corbyn phenomenon, you may discover that he is energising people who had stopped voting because they thought there was no political party for them anymore. Those people are coming to Labour in their tens of thousands. That is why Mr Corbyn has won election after election, without something which was previously believed to be vital for success – the help of the mass media.
Shifting the party to the left was the only way to galvanise these lost voters into returning – and to bring back the four million who walked away from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Times have changed since the 1980s. We have had nearly 40 years of unrelenting neoliberalism and corruption, and it has made the public in general sick to the back teeth.
It’s true that Labour must win over the hearts and minds of people who do not currently share the party’s view of the world. That doesn’t happen by capitulating to the view that they have; it happens by explaining your reasoning and demonstrating how your plans will work. In your case, I would suggest this approach may not work because you are determinedly refusing to hear what Labour is saying.
I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn will be PM this time next year, as the cowardly Conservatives are now saying they won’t give the public the opportunity to vote on whether Brexit was a good idea or whether their new PM (whoever he or she may be) is a good choice. If they did offer us that choice, and if the current mutiny in the PLP can be resolved, I think we’d see Mr Corbyn installed in Number 10 before Christmas.
The fact that Jeremy Corbyn is getting such a roasting in the media and from NuLabor MPs suggests that he’s getting something right. After the referendum debacle, the country needs a real Labour government more than ever, not just a warmed up imitation of Blair.
Personally I’d be a little heavier handed. The rules are that the party selects the leader. So, as the PLP doesn’t have a say, it’s a case of fit in or get out. If it means deselecting all of the detractors then so be it, even at the expense of a further five years in the wilderness. The whole of British politics would be better for the exercise, making MPs of all parties realise that everyone is dispensable.
calumny – had to look that one up!
It’s a useful word!
Ah Mr Sivier I can now see you for what you are.
I posted two comments this afternoon which you’ve plainly decided not to publish because I dared to disagree with your website’s point of view. How typically small minded of a Jeremy Corbyn supporter to refuse to engage with an alternative viewpoint for fear that it might expose you to any kind of balance. This is exactly the kind of petty behaviour I’ve come to expect from delusional supporters of the man like yourself.
You may be familiar with an old saying that goes…..a man who has never changed his mind will never change anyone’s mind.
I can see now that your website is clearly only designed for sycophants and toadies who hopelessly share your misguided belief that the saintly Mr Corbyn is going to deliver you a socialist utopia. You are doomed to failure because you will never win power if you do not start acting in a grown up way and even consider that there may be another side to the argument.
As I have stated previously I am a lifelong Labour voter. I had serious doubts about Corbyn but I kept an open mind and was prepared to give him a chance. Now I can see that I was right to have doubts. Corbyn has been a disaster and the sooner he is removed the quicker Labour can start to recover. Until then they have lost my vote and no doubt tens of thousands of others like me. You may be attracting many new supporters but I’ll wager that you will be losing many old ones in the process.
I will be informing all my friends and colleagues about this experience which has pretty much confirmed what I expected. That is that Jeremy Corbyn supporters are woefully idealistic puppets who cannot think for themselves and are so in awe of the man that they fail to see his many obvious flaws, a man so spectacularly ill equipped to lead one of Britain’s great political parties that he risks destroying it.
Thanks for confirming this for me. Naturally I do not expect you to publish this.
Good luck and good night.
I think I’ll respond as I’m reading this; it might be good for a laugh.
First up: I haven’t published your two comments because I haven’t read them yet. This afternoon I spent a pleasant hour or so in the gym, had a cuppa with a friend in a local café, came home for tea and enjoyed the consecutive company of two friends. That took me to 10.30, when I returned to my office to do a bit of blogging. I have just turned to the comment column and am working my way backwards through them.
Your interpretation of my actions (or inaction) is, therefore, not right. That should teach you not to go misattributing behaviour to anybody, but experience of others suggests it won’t.
How typically small-minded of you to refuse to accept the logical explanation – that I had been away for a while – and jump to a conclusion that, to be honest, has the whiff of conspiracy-theory lunacy about it.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s have a look at what else you have to say – see if there’s anything worthy of a response.
And…
We’re done!
If you do tell any friends about this experience of yours, do make sure you give them the web address, so they can see my appalling behaviour for themselves!
Why are some people like Ian Hunter so nasty and unpleasant ? Is he a troll? It does not endear us to him or his point of view. It would benefit him more if he did not use such emotive words as sycophants and toadies; we might listen, but this immature behaviour just sours the debate. As for qualifications, I failed my eleven plus but subsequently won a scholarship to the countries then most prestigious grammar school Haberdasher Askes that used an IQ test for qualification to the scholarship. I scored 151, but yes, I would still be considered an academic failure with my two E grade A levels, Truth is I hated school and never studied at all. I just wanted to play music, like Mike I have done very well. Never judge a book by it’s cover Jeremy is not smooth like Tony, the second-hand car salesperson, Jeremy has depth, but most of all he is honest. Keep up the good work Mike
Ian, I am sure the whole world is holding it’s breath until you tell your Five friends about your experience of this website.
I’m still learning about all of this and even I can see that I would rather have someone who has qualities like integrity and honesty running this country, rather than the idiots running the nation into the ground, and all for their own self interest. I have read some of Jeremy’s policies, and agree with most of them because they are to help the many rather than the few!
Hi Mike
Ha ha ha! I see what you did there. It’s funny how my earlier posts had mysteriously vanished from your site only for it to magically re-appear following my latest post pointing out your barefaced censorship. Very clever, I must certainly look the fool. However it’s all good news as far as I’m concerned because I think that it kind of shamed you into posting my comments.
Incidentally I’d be interested to know if you are prepared to admit that you do censor comments which you do not agree with on your site.
Anyway I always enjoy a good argument and it’s been fun. When the dust settles I’d like to re-visit your site to discuss who was right regarding all of this. As you know I think that the Corbyn project will ultimately fail and will result in keeping Labour out of office for years. You clearly think otherwise. It’ll be interesting to see who came closest to predicting the future.
For now all the best.
You appear unduly paranoid.
I acted exactly as I said I did.
I respect and admire Jeremy for his integrity and bravery. I voted for him and see no reason to change my mind.
Will not be voting Labour even if he manages to bring MPS on side they still have no confidence in him now will have no confidence in him in the future sooner he is challenged the better he will win but he will split the party up
You do realise that the party as a whole does have confidence in Mr Corbyn and his policies, and will continue to support his policies after he retires?
The MPs you mention are refusing to accept that the Blairite neoliberalism they support has lost them two elections and will continue to lose for them, because Labour’s core constituency has realised that it represents an abandonment of them. Without a core vote, it’s pointless reaching out for swing voters, as I saw somebody else point out earlier today.