For British Members: What Do You Think of Jeremy Corbyn?

[Rival]

Starmer is a right wing embarrassment to labour's tradition

He also seems entirely forgettable and standard.

Nothing really to recommend him.

 

[exchemist]

He also seems entirely forgettable and standard.

Nothing really to recommend him.

Which is exactly what the electorate want right now. Nobody wants yet another "character" like Bozo, or mad Singapore-on-Thames zealots that crash the economy in a fortnight like Truss and Mr into-the-lamppost KwarTENGGG!! What we need now is a bit of solid, unflashy competence.

 

[Yerda]

Starmer is going to win by a landslide. Corbyn failed miserably. No further questions, m'lud.

This doesn't address my post. m'lud

 

[Debater Slayer]

But he can win an election. At some point, people on the left have to decide between ideological purity, combined with permanent impotence as they will never be elected, or a messy and uncomfortable compromise with what the electrorate will vote for.

Sadly for the ideologues, we live in a democracy, you see.

To be fair, I think that once certain harmful ideas and policies become normalized and entrenched enough in a given country's politics, trying to change them might be seen as "extreme," "narrow-minded," etc. In this case, I'm talking generally, not necessarily about the UK or any specific ideas in British politics. For various reasons, sometimes what the (majority of the) electorate will vote for and what are actually reasonable or ethical policies don't overlap nearly enough, as I suspect we'll agree.

Trump is, or at least was, more electable than many, many other politicians, but I would say that reflected negatively less on most of his less electable opponents than on the American political landscape and its severe polarization as a whole. If a party had to compromise to the point where its platform endorsed significantly harmful or unethical policies just so it could get elected, I would start questioning how healthy the whole political scene was and what had led it to that point.

 

[exchemist]

This doesn't address my post. m'lud

If you really think an offer to the left of Corbyn can win a UK election, I will leave you to smoke your exotic cheroots.

 

[rocala]

I believe we, England, are the only country to reverse a revolution.

Considering that the Royal Surname was Stuart, I don't think we English were totally alone in this.

 

[Yerda]

If you really think an offer to the left of Corbyn can win a UK election, I will leave you to smoke your exotic cheroots.

Where did I say this?

 

[RestlessSoul]

While what you say is undoubtedly true, it does not negate what I said about what she achieved. Those achievements were substantial.

She had a couple of really valuable ideas, and the character to implement them. But she missed the other half of the equation, the social half, though there were people in her government like Heseltine who understood that part (e.g. the Liverpool and London Docklands regeneration projects).

That's why we need to change governments periodically: one sorts out something that needs attention, but then you need to change to another team for the next problem. The Thatcherites had a good spanner, but no screwdriver, and they went on trying to fix everything with the same spanner. That's how we ended up with crap railways and water companies, and post-industrial dereliction in large areas of the country.

Margaret Thatcher was a conviction politician, and she had the courage of those convictions, I’ll give her that. But I don’t see her legacy in a very positive light I’m afraid; it feels like we’re a harsher, more selfish country now than we were in the days of my youth, and I lay a lot of that at her door. She tore up the post war social consensus which Macmillan and Heath and even Churchill had bought into (Macmillan is one Tory leader I genuinely respect; old school officer class, cared about the other ranks)

 

[exchemist]

Margaret Thatcher was a conviction politician, and she had the courage of those convictions, I’ll give her that. But I don’t see her legacy in a very positive light I’m afraid; it feels like we’re a harsher, more selfish country now than we were in the days of my youth, and I lay a lot of that at her door. She tore up the post war social consensus which Macmillan and Heath and even Churchill had bought into (Macmillan is one Tory leader I genuinely respect; old school officer class, cared about the other ranks)

As someone starting out on a career in industry I saw it differently. When I started, in 1978, management was lazy, complacent and class-ridden* and the unions were bolshie and trying to bring the company down (Remember Red Robbo?). The problem was the government being seen as a bank to bail out loss-making companies, using taxpayers' money. I left for Dubai in 1983 and came back in 1987. The change was palpable. The rush hour started an hour earlier and finished an hour later, the old managers who used to get ****ed every lunchtime on expenses were gone and the unions were starting to see they sank or swam with the fortunes of their employer and were far more constructive to work with. She did it by refusing to bale out failure.

* We had 3 different dining rooms for lunch, according to the rank you had reached and you got a carpet in your office when you got to a certain grade. Military thinking left over from wartime, probably.

 

[oldbadger]

Thatcher, who I voted for, got the country out of a mess caused by troublemaking far left trade unions and terminally loss-making state owned industries. So yes she pulled the economy back from a more socialist position in the spectrum.

I remember what you wrote about Margaret Thatcher on this forum, soon after her death.
You trashed her completely.

Consistency is best, I think.

 

[exchemist]

I remember what you wrote about Margaret Thatcher on this forum, soon after her death.
You trashed her completely.

Consistency is best, I think.

I must be Dr Who, then. Thatcher died in 2013. I joined this forum on 24th April 2018, so unless I jumped in my Tardis and went back a few years, it wasn't me. You are evidently confusing me with somebody else.

I have always thought - and said - that much of what Thatcher did in her first few years was invigorating and necessary for Britain. After all, I did vote for her in 1979 and then in the next couple of elections. Her blind spot, in retrospect, was about the role of government in mitigating the consequences of industrial change, influenced as she was by free market ideology and a belief in the small state. That was her "spanner" and she and her followers had no "screwdriver" in their toolkit.

 

[Mock Turtle]

I remember what you wrote about Margaret Thatcher on this forum, soon after her death.
You trashed her completely.

Consistency is best, I think.

Perhaps me, but I too joined in 2018, and I made the point that I was expelled from an American forum for quoting the 'Ding, dong, the witch is dead' theme common then, and where this expulsion wouldn't have happened on a British forum. And of course I would never have voted for her or her party.

 

[JIMMY12345]

I don't know much about the guy other than that he's a socialist and that he was involved in problems related to antisemitism within the Labour Party. Was he unpopular mainly due to his socialism, or was it a secondary issue compared to other problems he had? Would it have been conceivable for him to be PM if he had managed the other issues more competently?

Is he still alive?

 

[Debater Slayer]

Is he still alive?

Yes, he is.

(I confirmed this via a two-second Google search, which anyone could do before posting in a thread.)

 

[JIMMY12345]

I must be Dr Who, then. Thatcher died in 2013. I joined this forum on 24th April 2018, so unless I jumped in my Tardis and went back a few years, it wasn't me. You are evidently confusing me with somebody else.

I have always thought - and said - that much of what Thatcher did in her first few years was invigorating and necessary for Britain. After all, I did vote for her in 1979 and then in the next couple of elections. Her blind spot, in retrospect, was about the role of government in mitigating the consequences of industrial change, influenced as she was by free market ideology and a belief in the small state. That was her "spanner" and she and her followers had no "screwdriver" in their toolkit.

I must PROTEST Ex-chemist is biased""""
Margaret Thatcher was a Lawyer and a chemist.The scientific fraternity will always stick together.

 

[JIMMY12345]

Yes, he is.

(I confirmed this via a two-second Google search, which anyone could do before posting in a thread.)

Are you artificial intelligence? that literally took secs to reply to.Unless your a superfast ex marine.

 

[Debater Slayer]

Are you artificial intelligence? that literally took secs to reply to.Unless your a superfast ex marine.

It took seconds (actually, two minutes, if you include the time during which I hadn't seen the post) to reply to because the question only needed a trivial Google search to answer.

 

[exchemist]

I must PROTEST Ex-chemist is biased""""
Margaret Thatcher was a Lawyer and a chemist.The scientific fraternity will always stick together.

Yes, she was an Oxford chemist, at Somerville. I was (many years later) at Christ Church. My tutor claimed to know a few stories about Margaret Roberts.

Thatcher, by the way, being a chemist, understood climate change immediately. Many on the Right who consider themselves her followers seem still not to get it. Though in some cases it is deliberate obtuseness.

But I voted for her in 1979 because of the Winter of Discontent and the appalling industrial relations I was witnessing at work. Climate change only became a thing far later, in the late 80s and 90s, by which time I thought she was nuts.

I remember the night the Marchioness went down and we had a huge Sea King helicopter thrashing up and down the river with a searchlight, at an altitude of 20ft (as a rower, I had a house one street back from the Thames, at Putney) looking for bodies. I was woken by the racket and went down to the water to see what was going on. My first thought, when I woke up, was that Thatcher had gone mad and mounted a military coup!

 

[oldbadger]

I must be Dr Who, then. Thatcher died in 2013. I joined this forum on 24th April 2018, so unless I jumped in my Tardis and went back a few years, it wasn't me. You are evidently confusing me with somebody else.

I have always thought - and said - that much of what Thatcher did in her first few years was invigorating and necessary for Britain. After all, I did vote for her in 1979 and then in the next couple of elections. Her blind spot, in retrospect, was about the role of government in mitigating the consequences of industrial change, influenced as she was by free market ideology and a belief in the small state. That was her "spanner" and she and her followers had no "screwdriver" in their toolkit.

I am most sorry for my comment. I must have mixed you up with another member.
I must get some more of those dementia tablets.

 

[oldbadger]

Perhaps me, but I too joined in 2018, and I made the point that I was expelled from an American forum for quoting the 'Ding, dong, the witch is dead' theme common then, and where this expulsion wouldn't have happened on a British forum. And of course I would never have voted for her or her party.

No MT, I just got it badly wrong. I've apologised......blamed my senility.

I never voted for the Conservatives either, but soon after Thatcher's death a few Brit members on here really launched some very nasty comments and I just didn't think that any minister who had held leadership for a decade should be trashed after their deaths.

But I got that name wrong. I'm wearing sack cloths and in penance all day now.