That Corbyn speech September 30, 2015
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
I thought his speech, fluffs and missteps and all, was really pretty good. It was curious in the extreme to see someone in this age present such an unpolished performance, but one which worked because it was so heartfelt. Remember Ed Miliband jumping through hoops like a performing political dog, having to memorise vast chunks of text and for what? Only to forget some and leave a great gaping hole for his opponents. Madness on so many levels. Whereas Corbyn, a man who is benefiting from the absurdly low expectations of a media displaying an almost parodic antagonism to him, cruises through at a steady rate of knots. Spectacular? No. Adequate? More than adequate.
Corbyn is less radical than you or me (most likely) by quite some distance – at least in this incarnation. Nationalisation? Surely, the no-brainer of taking British Rail back into public ownership. But the Royal Mail? Perhaps his instincts are for that, but there’s little to indicate an appetite at this point. It may come.
And look at Trident and NATO. Already there’s a push-back inside the LP. Simply put too many inside the LP support the former and the latter is in some respects regarded as inviolable. It seems all too likely that he may find himself outnumbered on Trident throughout his leadership.
That sentiment more broadly and within the BLP cannot be wished away. To be honest I think NATO withdrawal is unwinnable on any realistic timeframe, whatever about Trident. And the attachment to Trident is bizarre given its actual utility – or indeed the curiosity of it being an US weapons delivery system with all that that implies. One has to wonder whether the US would permit its use independent of their
imprimatur. If I was the US I’d be keen to ensure that even a trusted proxy such as the UK wasn’t given too much autonomy in regard to them.
There’s the irony in all this. In some respects Corbyn, in relation to US interests is arguably, given his disinclination to use the weapons, much more congenial to them, not that they’d ever admit it – the problem is, though, he is all too willing to say so to others.
But all of that is for another day, what’s still remarkable is the dog in a manger tone of the reporting – the Guardian in particular is notable for it. But I’m wondering if that’s actually working to his advantage. One thing seems reasonably certain, if it were a Burnham or a Cooper up there this week there’d have been nothing like this level of interest.
This is the kind of crap he has to put up with:
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Jesus, puke.
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Maybe, but for once the questions were softball and with fewer interruptions and that must count at least as one of the most friendly media interviews since becoming leader. He’s being given generally the kind of interviews that Adams got for a couple of years after Section 31 got lifted.
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It’s more that the tone is of a piece with the overall coverage which is dismissive, overly critical etc. You’re right it’s softball but it’s not particularly good.
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It’s amazing how transfixed by presentation and the quantification of same over content many aspects of British life can be.
I know he gets a slagging and all, but can you imagine for even a second, a Mick Wallace in UK politics?
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It is bizarre. A sort of petit-bourgeois thing?
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We can hadly point fingers, with the succession of Prone-bots through our major national political parties in the past decade or two.
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Never quite as robotic as their equivalents here though: it’s not just politics – the withdrawal of affect is near mandatory in any kind of ‘customer* facing’ role.
* for which read student, constituent, claimant, patient…..
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There’s another vile term, ‘customer’. It’s such a whitewash of the reality of the dynamics at work in all the situations you point to.
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Isn’t Corbyn’s strength his substance and not his style?His ‘ordinariness’ and absence of bling? His sincerity and absence of superficiality?
It’s early days yet this kind of approach will resonate with the person in the street…..then it gets interesting.
Interesting that McDonnell is going to have Stiglitz and Piketty working as advisors- makes a change from the usual City thug economic advisors….
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The media will run out of rope to try to hang him with. I think they are already doing so. You’re right: all Corbyn has to do is keep on being Corbyn and he will start to really start to resonate and push the debate well to the Left. I think his lack of smoothness will stand to him.
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I get the impression from the increasing desperation of the attacks on him that the right-wing press (but I repeat myself) has overplayed its hand for years and it’s finally caught up with them. The `anti-Semite’ smear isn’t working, the `soft on terror’ smear isn’t working, the `turning the place into North Korea’ smear isn’t working. Nothing works for them.
Something has definitely shifted in the culture here and the media and the major political parties completely missed it, which is why they got a nasty shock in Scotland last year, and why the size and nature of Corbyn’s support is such a surprise.
Corbyn has long been part of the movements which have been the only real opposition to neo-liberalism for decades, since the `official’ Labour party capitulated intellectually to Thatcher, and Labour are now very fortunate to have him as leader because he is the only credible leader who can engage with those movements. There is now an opposition again, and the leader of the Labour party is its figurehead.
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Another sign of the media including BBC being in a bubble is how it mis-reported the Liberal Democrats during the election as having a good campaign and forcast to win around 30 seats with their status as a major third party assured. This despite all opinion polls for years beforehand saying their vote is going down by two thirds since the coalition. When things were going well under Charles Kennedy they were getting quite a bit of negative coverage or else being ignored but when the shift to the right occoured after the coup against him the media seemed much more accepting. Didn’t do much for their popularity of course.
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WBS – you refer to the hostile attitude of Guardian commentary on Corbyn. Tony Benn in his last diaries summed up the Guardian perfectly:
“The Guardian represents a whole batch of journalists, from moderate right to moderate left – who, broadly speaking, like the status quo. They like the two-party system, with no real change. They’re quite happy to live under the aegis of the Americans and NATO; they are very keen on the European Union because the Commissioners control everything. They are very critical of the left, but would also be critical of a wild right wing movement. They just are the Establishment. It is a society that suits them well. I should think that probably most of them send their kids to private schools. I should think a lot of them don’t use the National Health Service, but they tolerate it as the price you have to pay in order to keep the populace content.”
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Thanks for that, i dont recall tge quote but I think that it sums it up perfectly and never was it more obvious.
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A good summary.
” I should think that probably most of them send their kids to private schools.”
I haven’t seen one in a while, but they used to do a great line in hand-wringing “why it’s ok to send your kids to private school” comment pieces. Usually along the lines of, “it’s ok, you’ve still got your liberal credentials, you just want what’s best for your kids” etc.
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Although the more cynical approach now is to send children to public schools, but be very selective about which ones.
Among the reasons I can’t wholly dislike Alastair Campbell is that he actively campaigns for comprehensive education and means it.
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Have to agree there MC.
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Headline in today’s Lunnin En’nin’ Stannah:
‘You’re Fired! Sugar’s Verdict on Corbyn’
Can youse hear the barrel being scraped from over there?
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And none of it is working. That’s almost more of a story than Corbyn being leader.
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(And does the pair of us occasionally sound like the leftie version of a couple of Dagenham Yanks?)
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I had to google that 🙂
Mind you, some of them were probably leftie enough when they got back
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Someone somewhere is going to cop on to the fact they’re giving him loads of publicity and it’s not working against him. Or are they just too stupid to realise that?
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I have just googled it myself. Which link gave you some kind of definition you’d be happy with?
And while you’re there, could I pass your details on to a PhD student my way, or v.v., who gave up the gigging musician thing to do a doctorate on “work and work-time in the cultural and creative industries” (straight ahead Frankfurt school I-Ching). I think ye might have fruitful exchanges.
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Sure thing – Wbs has my contact details.
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I think I’d worked those already. Email to you first to make sure I’m right.
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It wouldn’t be a job for MI5 tbh…
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It wouldn’t: they’re an awful inept shower. Certain government agencies have asked me to write the more, em, extended kind of reference for former students.
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Hey, I’ve never been asked to do that! As, apparently, an MI5 stooge – accusation on another thread, I’m disappointed.
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Well you would say that….
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😉
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I have to say I find it a bit offensive that my name appears not to be on a list somewhere. One more reason for not asking for my Special Branch file: imagine the shame of discovering there isn’t one.
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Is it a badge of honour to have one or not to have one?
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Would you rather be thought a danger to polite society or not?
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‘what are you looking for?’
Says once prominent Irish musician to Branch man at Holyhead searching his bag of post-tour underwear.
‘Anything that might subvert the crown, sir’
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You;d be a while looking for subversion of the Crown in a muso’s kecks.
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Scary, I’d have thought.
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“Here Sarge, do you reckon these are Fenian Y-fronts?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t like to say.”
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Wasn’t me in that story, but getting searched by the man was an occupational hazard if you had an Irish passport and a bunch of guitars in the back of the van during in the war years. Or probably even if you didn’t. But they enjoyed taking the backs of amps and the skins off drums and generally making a mess ….
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“technological revolutions have historically required patient, committed public financing.” Corbyn economic advisor Mariana Mazzucato.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/a-responsibility-to-change-discussion-on-economic-policy-357005.html
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Corbyn’s economic advisors. Some interesting men and women.
-Mariana Mazzucato, Professor, University of Sussex
Joseph Stiglitz, Professor, Columbia University, recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics.
Thomas Piketty, Professor, Paris School of Economics
Anastasia Nesvetailova, Professor, City University London
Danny Blanchflower, Bruce V, Rauner Professor of Economics Dartmouth and Stirling, Ex-member of the MPC
Ann Pettiffor, Director of Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME), and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Political Economy Research Centre of City University
Simon Wren-Lewis, Professor of Economic Policy, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.-
http://press.labour.org.uk/post/129975218774/labour-announces-new-economic-advisory-committee
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I’m probably revealing my age when I goggle at the name of Danny Blanchflower in there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Blanchflower
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He’s okay he is, Corbyn has a good crew IMO.
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What gets me about Trident for Labour Party members – who you would hope would analyse things more than other mainstream party members – is the sheer pointlessness of the huge expenditure on Trident aside from jobs (and maybe salvaging something for Scottish Labour).
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Just say my first poppy of the year and can now confidently predict a ‘Corbyn Poppy Row’ headline if he steps out without one even once.
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‘first poppy of the year’..you should write a letter to The Times (of London)
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Corbyn can always wear don that old Women’s Co-operative Guild creation, the white poppy. A bonus is that the white poppy
so loathed by Margaret Thatcher and the British National Party.
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More than 150,000 people have joined the Labour Party since May’s defeat, a figure which exceeds the total membership of any other political party in the UK. Over 60,000 have joined since Jeremy Corbyn became leader, more than either the Liberal Democrats or Ukip can boast among their ranks.
Labour membership now stands at 350k
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