Jeremy Corbyn

Labour’s New Leadership…

Pete Baker on September 12, 2015, 12:44 pm | Readers 397

Tom Watson has been elected deputy leader [not worth a bucket of warm piss? – Ed] on the third count and, as expected, Jeremy Corbyn is now the new leader of the Labour Party having taken 59.4% of the vote in the first round. Phil Rogers has a breakdown of voting by category – full party members, affiliated (trade union members) and registered (those who paid £3 to vote). Labour leadership election result by category of voters pic.twitter.com/5lSWU3johL — Phil Rodgers …

Corbynomics inspiration Richard Murphy on the dogma behind demands to lower NI Corporation Tax

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on September 12, 2015, 1:13 am | Readers 926

Richard Murphy is the Quaker chartered accountant and blogger who is credited with inspiring Corbynomics. He spoke at Tax Haven Ulster: Faith, Justice & Corporation Tax in Northern Ireland, a Christians on the Left event held on Friday night in Belfast that examined the counter arguments to dropping our local rate of Corporation Tax. You can listen back to the full event using the playlist at the bottom of this post. With Irish roots, Richard Murphy first heard arguments being …

“Perhaps we will wake up on Saturday afternoon and find it has all been a bad dream.”

Pete Baker on September 6, 2015, 1:21 pm | Readers 1390

Ahead of the election of their new leader, in the Guardian Andrew Rawnsley samples the mood, of despair, among the moderates of the parliamentary Labour Party. Labour MPs, as a collective, are still getting their stunned heads round what is happening to their party. Because the hard left had been fought – and apparently crushed – so long ago, it simply did not occur to them that it might revive, least of all in the person of a 66-year-old colleague who …

Nationalisation is always a disaster: another truism in need of challenge?

Turgon on August 30, 2015, 7:18 pm | Readers 1735

Corbynmaina has gone a little quiet recently centrally due to repetition. Personally I am still unsure whether he will win or not. However, after having looked at some of the potentially questionable truisms regarding the unelectability of Labour in 1983 and the disaster which was the 1970s, I thought, to take our minds off the current excitement of UUP politics, a look at another truism would be reasonable. Another supposed suicidal policy of Corbyn’s is nationalisation: he has specifically mentioned …

The disaster of the 1970s: truisms in need of challenge?

Turgon on August 22, 2015, 5:59 pm | Readers 1025

As I noted previously in relation to the 1983 election campaign there is a tendency in political analysis to accept truisms which are historically inaccurate or at least highly incomplete. One of the recent manifestations of this tendency (also related to the current Labour leadership campaign) is that Corbyn is going to take the UK back to the 1970s: the implication being that this would be dreadful. Whilst I make no comment on whether or not Corbyn would do this, …

#Corbynmania and figuring what UK Labour needs to learn, unlearn and re-learn…

Mick Fealty on August 18, 2015, 12:33 pm | Readers 1154

UNLEARNING FROM THE PAST: The status quo ante no longer exists. There is no safe place to go back to. But figuring how to unlearn and relearn the lessons of the past (distant and recent) may provide the new Labour leader with the best possible platform for the future.

Andy Burnham pitches to Labour leadership voters in NI: comprehensive not selective education, gay blood, & candidates

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on August 18, 2015, 8:30 am | Readers 930

This morning’s Belfast Telegraph publishes a statement from UK Labour leadership contender Andy Burnham. He’s the bookies’ favourite to come second, and clearly the candidate the local Constituency Labour Party members are most comfortable with. 610,000 ballot papers have been issued to party members, registered supporters and affiliate supporters. There are around 500 1,000 members of the Labour Party in NI, but an unknown number of registered or affiliate supporters. Heavily tailored for the NI audience, Burnham’s statement remarks on …

Labour leadership: Corbyn, his opponents and The Vision Thing

Turgon on August 14, 2015, 3:55 pm | Readers 453

The Labour leadership contest has every appearance of a soap opera. I noted below that the historical precedents that Jeremy Corbyn would be unelectable as Prime Minister were strong but by no means overwhelming and were based on a post hoc deterministic analysis. One of the most fundamental problems for the non Corbyn candidates is that they have singularly failed to outline their vision in sufficiently persuasive terms to become newsworthy. They may indeed have a vision but have failed …

Reclaiming the Labour Party? Thoughts on the Corbyn Phenomenon

Chaminda Weerawardhana on August 11, 2015, 10:05 pm | Readers 1149

The entry of Jeremy Corbyn MP to the 2015 Labour leadership contest injected an unexpected bout of energy to an internal election within the Labour Party that would have otherwise been near-unnoticeable. Media attention to Mr Corbyn has intensified in the aftermath of recent surveys and poll findings that he could well be on the lead. A key factor that distinguishes the Corbyn candidacy is the Blairite political blandness of his contenders for Labour leadership. Liz Kendall, Andy Burnham and …

Does Labour need a functional means to lead rather than fight the Corbyn effect?

Mick Fealty on August 11, 2015, 1:47 pm | Readers 408

Apart from recommending Turgon’s corrective to the UK’s misremembered (and highly politicised) recent past, Matthew D’Ancona’s comparison between Trump and Corbyn throws another compelling perspective on history and time in the digital era: The structure of western politics is in radical transition. In May, the British general election was won in the most conventional manner imaginable. As Blair had warned in an interview with the Economist in January, it proved to be an election “in which a traditional leftwing party …

Thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s un-electability

Turgon on August 10, 2015, 3:30 pm | Readers 1601

I have been trying to write something on the Labour leadership election for a while now but keep getting put off. Rather than look at the election itself it might be interesting to look at two of the supposed truisms with surround the election and specifically Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign: that Corbyn as Labour leader would be unelectable and that only a Blairite Labour position can win a UK general election. The standard view is that Corbyn is unelectable. He is …

West Belfast Talks Back #feile15 – O Broin, Robinson, Corbyn & McKeever

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on August 5, 2015, 11:08 pm | Readers 1943

Long before the annual West Belfast Talks Back event had begun, spare chairs had been carried in and occupied, and the walls were lined with people keen to hear the debate. Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn raised an arm as he walked up to the stage to a roar of applause – perhaps his only Blairite gesture of the evening. The first questioner asked what hope the panel could bring to people in Palestine? East Belfast MP Gavin Robinson pointed …