At 11.30am yesterday in the room where the Labour leadership result was to be announced there was an uninvited guest: a spectre who had hovered over every party gathering for almost twenty years. Then when the result was announced an older yet spritely man strode forward to do battle with the spectre. Wearing his priestly garb of not a tie (though he did have a dark sports jacket and had removed any Lenin style hats) he approached the lectern. Then …
So, normally I hate futuring. But leaving aside what the polls say, the betting markets are convinced Corbyn is home and hosed as the new Labour Party leader. He may even come in at anywhere between 60% and 70% of the party electorate. The party electorate as opposed to the party membership. As William Hague took rather too much delight in telling the Daily Telegraph’s readership, those aren’t the same: If there was an NVQ Level 1 in How To …
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
