The excellent "Scrabb" on TLN analyses Corbyn's defeat (Dec. 13, 2019)

Off-the-cuff analysis Posted by scrabb on December 13, 2019, 5:54 pm These are the reasons (imo) in order of importance why Corbyn lost. [Note: the tories didn't actually win the hearts and minds of voters by reasoning and logic -- their vote only increased by one to two per cent.] The truth is, Labour LOST. 1. Labour lost the northern and midlands traditional vote by reneging on its pledge to honour the result of the referendum. Their fudge to hold a second referendum was doomed from the start. Labour voters either couldn't understand it or didn't buy it. They just felt betrayed.* 2. The Brexit vote split Labour's majority in many constituencies (see Heywood and Middleton near me) -- many Labour voters couldn't bring themselves to vote tory but did vote Brexit, denying Labour a win. 3. Four years of continual and unending Corbyn bashing and smear tactics by the corporate media (especially the fraudian and the BBC) was bound to have an effect, and it did. They tried every trick in the book to present him as a traitor, a doddering old fool, a dangerous Marxist who would ruin the country, an enabler of terrorism, a threat to national security etc etc etc. As someone has argued elsewhere, the advertising industry doesn't spend trillions of pounds a year because they think it's a waste of money. 4. A carefully planned and well-funded campaign by Israel and its Zionist fellow-travellers in the Labour party to divide the party and to paint Corbyn and his supporters as anti-semitic. It worked. 5. Corbyn's inability and ineptitude in dealing with the AS smear campaign. He and McDonnell made a total mess of it right from the start. What on earth was Seamus Milne doing all this time? Having a wank in the corner? *A qualification. Corbyn allowed the party exec to overrule him on whether to support Brexit. He was weak on this (as on combatting the AS smear campaign), thinking it was the decent and honourable thing to do -- listening to and allowing his colleagues to have their say. Doing the "decent and honourable" thing doesn't win elections. It lost this one. The USA is the No. 1 terrorist state in the world The BBC is in the business of propaganda

Sounds about right to me Posted by Ian M on December 13, 2019, 8:24 pm, in reply to "Off-the-cuff analysis" ...though I was expecting more people to look beyond Brexit at the choices on offer in the manifestoes. I'm finding it profoundly demoralising that the 2nd referendum fudge was apparently reason enough for so many to gift the result to a party that will shaft the NHS, pursue austerity to the ends of the earth, rig the economy in favour of the 0.1%, dump even more debt on the young, throw Palestinians under the bus, continue to ignore climate change and the extinction crisis etc etc. How the f* can 'getting brexit done'(TM) possibly be more important than these other issues? Combined! The generous interpretation might be the 'stockholm syndrome' that Margo suggested (https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/msg/1576229347.html ) or that they succumbed to the weight of propaganda in the mass media. But are voters really that blind & stupid? I can imagine people looking back at these results in, what, 50 years, 20 years, 5, 1? with absolute fury and incomprehension at the self-interest and delusion on display in this & the 2017 results, when some genuine change to the toxic status quo was on offer, against all the odds. What is it going to take for people in this country to stop voting f*ing tory?? cheers, I Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/

Re: Sounds about right to me Posted by Ian M on December 13, 2019, 8:59 pm, in reply to "Sounds about right to me" Answering my own question: the collapse of the housing bubble. I'm reminded of the concluding remarks in this episode of Renegade Inc a few months back (watch from 25:30): Brett Christophers: 'so many people and institutions in the UK are heavily invested in the current system as it currently is. [...] If people feel that their own personal investments are in any way likely to be threatened, then they're not going to vote for a party that is taking things in that direction.' Kate Swade: 'Which is partly because people feel that they can't trust that their state pension will be there or their private pension will be there, or that social care will step in when they need it. And it's not because we're a nation of greedy, avaricious accumulators (although maybe some people are!), it's because we have systematically dis-invested in the rest of the common fabric that we need to keep us all afloat. And so people are totally reliant on their houses as an investment to sort them out - to pay for their childrens' university fees, to think about their pensions [...] you can't blame capitalist entities for being capitalist in a capitalist system, you can't blame people for acting in that way in the system that we're in.' Another over-generous interpretation (arguing against my own tag line...)? I Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/

Re: Sounds about right to me Posted by dereklane on December 13, 2019, 9:07 pm, in reply to "Sounds about right to me" I'd say more of a loss of faith by the people that the Labour Party were going to stand by anything they said. With me people get one chance. If I find they've lied to me I stop trusting them. I suspect I'm not alone in that. It's very similar to the democrat loss after all the years of obamas promises. It's not that they thought trump would be better but that they were sick of lies and excuses, and people here I think could see the difference between one soft leader and all the Tory underlings in his party. Scrabb's analysis seems on the mark to me. And many may not remember, but things were going rapidly downhill for the poor under blairs regime too, and with a lot of those same members still calling the shots in the Labour Party people were just fed up.

Re: Sounds about right to me Posted by Ian M on December 13, 2019, 9:23 pm, in reply to "Re: Sounds about right to me" That's certainly understandable after the Blair/Brown years, but wasn't it worth showing support for Corbyn's leadership and for Momentum's efforts in rebuilding that trust? How come voters never get 'fed up' of supporting right wingers who routinely sell them down the river? (Not referring to the moneyed elites who clearly get some personal gain out of supporting the party.) Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/

Re: Sounds about right to me Posted by dereklane on December 13, 2019, 10:43 pm, in reply to "Re: Sounds about right to me" I don't know why. It takes all sorts I suppose!

What about the polling? Posted by Gerard on December 14, 2019, 2:08 am, in reply to "Off-the-cuff analysis" "They" (yeah and isn't about time we found out who "they" really are?), have clearly perfected "predictive poll manipulation"..I just believe that not engaging with "them" (as in not using WiFi), is a more basic, more powerful tool..think on the #politicisdying mantra....we'll have five more years to perfect our art...I've been a political animal since I entered a phil/gov course at Essex Uni. in '84 during the Miner's Strike and I have campaigned hard (for my "sins" #HisDarkMaterials), for 35 years "..and then comes this fascist who is too take her children away..;"madam do you think we are barbarians!""..to say to someone of my age....;"the govt. you deserve is 5 more years of Tory-ism!"..feels hugely insulting....went to drown my sorrows with a friend today (to a New Forest Pub...Tory of-course..he voted Green), and he said; "It's the baby boomers G..." and he's got a point.."they" still believe we are an imperial power! https://twitter.com/Williamtheb/status/1205664107308945408 (view thread)

Re: 'What on earth was Seamus Milne doing all this time?' Posted by Ian M on December 14, 2019, 12:47 pm, in reply to "What about the polling?" Good question, nothing in his graun column since 2015: https://www.dumptheguardian.com/profile/seumasmilne and his twitter feed only goes up to the election, apparently all RTs, mostly of Corbyn posts (maybe he wrote them?) https://twitter.com/SeumasMilne A rare public appearance: Wiki is full of horrendous smears: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seumas_Milne Used to read his columns and admire his courage in telling the truth on foreign policy issues. Seems like the price for access to power is to be silenced and just sit back and take all the abuse that's heaped on you. Haven't seen any indication of Corbyn coming to his defense. Owen Jones apparently did, to his credit: 'a deeply insightful and thoroughly decent man who has been wronged by his media portrayal as a soulless Stalinist apparatchik' So did Peter Wilby: 'Milne as Corbyn's spin doctor "has proved rather good at it. Most lobby journalists, initially hostile, now respect and even like him, finding his calm, courteous and expletive-free manner a refreshing change from many of his recent counterparts".' (both via wiki) Otherwise his role seems to have been as whipping boy for the rabid right-wing press, or occasional lightning rod to take the heat off Corbyn himself. Sad. Maybe he'll write a book about it now the pressure's off? (Now it doesn't matter any more...) I Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/

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