Brits, what do you think of Corbyn?

[I_am_not_mafia]

I'm just interested really. People keep saying "re-invigorate politics" or "kick out the Tories", but none of those things are actual good reasons to vote for someone unless they have some substance to back it up. Here are some of things that apparently he wants to implement, some of which I agree with, most of which I don't:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34209478

Most of those I agree with, except joint ownership of the Falklands.

Not sure about opening deep coal mines compared to fracking. We should be moving away from coal, although the coal mines were closed down prematurely and not all of them can be opened due to flooding. New technology will allow them to mined more efficiently though.

High property prices leading to closure of pubs in London is just a symptom of a larger problem. The problem is high house prices. Why worry about pubs when it is more important to worry about essential workers such as nurses, teachers and shop keepers not being able to live in London? Although this ties with his point about introducing rent controls which will in turn help cap the rise in house prices.

HS2 is seen outside as London as being built purely for the sake of maintaining high house prices in London and keeping the MPs with their own property portfolios rich. Something we cannot afford if we're at the stage where we have to reduce benefits to disabled people to the extent where we are literally killing them off. HS2 would make sense if the whole of Britain was not clustered around London but that's an entirely different reality.

I am unsure about quantitative easing but his proposal is certainly better than what New Labour did. They basically bailed out the banks. None of that money touched the economy. We collectively took on the bank's debts from their dodgy practises and allowed them to continue and did not reduce the risk of deflation. This also maintained high house prices by stopping a crash. The banks should have been allowed to go under and the quantitative easing used to bail out the savers instead. Or QE could have been used to promote science and engineering which would have been an investment in our future. Paying off the credit cards of bankers so they can go out and live beyond their means again was absolutely not the right way to go.

Absolutely get rid of Trident.

More allotments are good. We live in a just-in-time society which is increasingly fragile to any form of disruption, and we can be absolutely sure that disruptions will happen sooner or later. Whether it's a flu pandemic, extreme weather from climate change, geopolitical crises cutting off our energy supplies etc. There should be more living space for everyone in fact, more parks etc. Every square inch is being built on in the south and quality of life is suffering as a result.


And it's good to see someone finally mention PFI. That's something hideous that New Labour brought in and saddled us with far more debt than we should have had. Although New Labour brought in PFI and QE solely to bail out the banks, the Tories are continuing with it.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Damn! I've just realised that I look similar to his second ex-wife.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

She's a looker too! Punching above his weight methinks. I will respond to your very well written and thought out post in due course Mafia, thanks for responding Most people just don't bother

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Hi Mafia,

I have been busy of late so haven't really had a chance to write out a reply to your post (moving house and all). However I came across this excellent article from Nick Cohen who I'm sure you may be familiar with. A splendid piece which reveals why many of us with centre left leaning political convictions are afraid and disinterested in the new wave of radical leftism that has usurped the Labour party:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9637...-the-left/

[Iroscato]

From what little reading I've done on him, I agree with some of his policies and attitudes, but he's quite a maverick. Unstable, even. I should really read up on him more seeing as he could become the next leader of my country...

[robvalue]

I dunno, but it's an anagram of Nobcry.

Anything which gets Cameron out is good by me. Except something worse like UKIP. I like labour, on the whole, so I hope he can get it together.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Thing is though Rob, just a discourse of 'get the Tories out' is not convincing. People vote for the Tories more in the England than all the other parties, so there's obviously a discourse which appeals more to them within Conservative rhetoric than there is in Labour rhetoric.

Centrism, regardless of what you might think of it, is the key to gaining power in the UK. People, on the whole, don't like the far right, but neither do they like the far left (like Corbs), which has been plagued by anti-semetism and instances of moral relativism so derpy that it lends credibility to, for example, the human rights abuses of the Russians, the Iranians and the Chinese (Corbs himself has appeared on Iranian and Russian state/propaganda news shows to give reverence to their governments and way of doing things). People of this nature always respond with "yeah but the west did this and they did that". Even if true, like the repeated referencing to Iraq as a reason why we shouldn't have gone into Syria (Syrians are paying the price for that now as we can all clearly see), it's still a tu quoque. The failings of the west do not lend any sort of legitimacy to the even worse failings of states like China where people can be arrested simply for disagreeing publicly with their government, yet these are the sort of government's held in high regard by Corbs if his past rhetoric is to be believed.

If the left want to mount an actual comeback, they need to do as Cohen suggests and actually stick up for those who are repressed by these states that Corbs and his facist allies (his shadow chancellor), namely homosexuals (Russia, Iran), liberal/reformist Muslims (Saudi), women (Iran) and so on, seem to implicitly support. Right now, again as elucidated in Cohen's article, Corbs and his allies are de facto mouth pieces for people that most would find entirely objectionable and would never share a platform with.

If they can't do that, then why would anyone expect them to do the same for people here? I've said it before, Corbyn and McDonnell are utter loons, illiterate in all discourses except those that they espouse. The Labour party under his leadership will adopt a stance of "with us or against us" mark my words. And I remind people I speak here not as someone inherently anti-Corbs or pro-Tory, I am the very sort of person that Corb's and his team should be looking to attract. Centrist floating voters who vote on policies and views. I find his and those of his allies sometimes to be reprehensible. I am frustrated that there is now no real alternative that I feel comfortable voting for except the Lib Dems, who don't have cat in hells chance of getting anything (unless they capitalise on the disenfranchised centre left labour supporters).

[Ben Davis]

Good or bad for labor? As an outsider I tend to the good side, since Tony Blair lobbied against him. But that might only be a personal reason.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-34231724

I agree with many of his domestic policies, many, many more than I do Cameron's. His history gives me concerns over his international politics and whether he has the ethical gumption to change his position when situations change. I think he'll do more *good than harm although his economic policies leave me wondering if the housing crisis will deepen after the short-term relief that he plans.

Overall, his election gives greater weight to my position that Party politics must be abandoned in the UK; a good enough % of electorate are ready for it, that worthwhile debate could be held.


*edit

[robvalue]

I don't know enough about politics to give much of an intelligent opinion, I'm sure you guys know what you're talking about.

Does anyone know if there's any progress on a voting reform? Surely they haven't forgotten the laughing stock that was the last election? Each Tory seat represented some 25k votes while each UKIP seat (one) was 3M. I hate UKIP but that's clearly a broken system.

(Apologies if my figures are off.)

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I don't know enough about politics to give much of an intelligent opinion, I'm sure you guys know what you're talking about.

Does anyone know if there's any progress on a voting reform? Surely they haven't forgotten the laughing stock that was the last election? Each Tory seat represented some 25k votes while each UKIP seat was 3M. (Apologies if my figures are off.)

Dead in the water. FPTP was favoured in the last referendum, there are no plans by either of the main parties to support a PR or AV top up regime. FPTP is here to stay for the forseeable future.

And rob, I'm not trying to 'blind you' with politics if you know what I mean. A question I'd like to ask is would you as a left leaning voter vote for someone who believes the Russians are doing a good job , or that the IRA should be praised for their 'determination'? From the article:

"the fact remains that the Labour party has just endorsed an apologist for Putin’s imperial aggression; a man who did not just appear on the propaganda channel of Russia, which invades its neighbours and persecutes gays, but also of Iran, whose hangmen actually execute gays. Labour’s new leader sees a moral equivalence between 9/11 and the assassination of bin Laden, and associates with every variety of women-hating, queer-bashing, Jew-baiting jihadi, holocaust denier and 9/11 truther. His supporters know it, but they don’t care."