The BBC and corporate media coalesce around an extremely narrow consensus of political thought, and ensure that anybody who steps outside that consensus is ridiculed and marginalised. That consensus has got narrower and narrower. I was delighted during the general election to be able to listen to Nicola Sturgeon during the leaders’ debate argue for anti-austerity policies and for the scrapping of Trident. I had not heard anyone on broadcast media argue for the scrapping of Trident for a decade – it is one of those views which though widely held the establishment gatekeepers do not view as respectable.
The media are working overtime to marginalise Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour leadership candidate on the grounds that he is left wing and therefore weird and unelectable. But they face the undeniable fact that, Scottish independence aside, there are very few political differences between Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon. On issues including austerity, nuclear weapons, welfare and Palestine both Sturgeon and Corbyn are really very similar. They have huge areas of agreement that stand equally outside the establishment consensus. Indeed Nicola is more radical than Jeremy, who wants to keep the United Kingdom.
The establishment’s great difficulty is this. Given that the SNP had just slaughtered the Labour Party – and the Tories and Lib Dems – by being a genuine left wing alternative, how can the media consensus continue to insist that the left are unelectable? The answer is of course that they claim Scotland is different. Yet precisely the same establishment consensus denies that Scotland has a separate political culture when it comes to the independence debate. So which is it? They cannot have it both ways.
If Scotland is an integral part of the UK, Jeremy Corbyn’s policies cannot be unelectable.
Nicola Sturgeon won the UK wide leaders debate in the whole of the United Kingdom, despite the disadvantage of representing a party not standing in 90% of it by population. She won not just because she is clever and genuine, but because people all across the UK liked the left wing policies she articulated.
A Daily Mirror opinion poll following a BBC televised Labour leadership candidates’ debate this week had Jeremy Corbyn as the clear winner, with twice the support of anyone else. The media ridicule level has picked up since. This policy of marginalisation works. I was saddened by readers’ comments under a Guardian report of that debate, in which Labour supporter after Labour supporter posted comment to the effect “I would like to vote for Jeremy Corbyn because he believes in the same things I do, but we need a more right wing leader to have a chance of winning.”
There are two answers to that. The first is no, you don’t need to be right wing to win. Look at the SNP. The second is what the bloody hell are you in politics for anyway? Do you just want your team to win like it was football? Is there any point at all in being elected just so you can carry out the same policies as your opponents? The problem is, of course, that for so many in the Labour Party, especially but not just the MPs, they want to win for personal career advantage not actually to promote particular policies.
The media message of the need to be right wing to be elected is based on reinforced by a mythologizing of Tony Blair and Michael Foot as the ultimate example of the Good and Bad leader. These figures are constantly used to reinforce the consensus. Let us examine their myths.
Tony Blair is mythologised as an electoral superstar, a celebrity politician who achieved unprecedented personal popularity with the public, and that he achieved this by adopting right wing policies. Let us examine the truth of this myth. First that public popularity. The best measure of public enthusiasm is the percentage of those entitled to vote, who cast their ballot for that party at the general election. This table may surprise you.
Percentage of Eligible Voters
1992 John Major 32.5%
1997 Tony Blair 30.8%
2001 Tony Blair 24.1%
2005 Tony Blair 21.6%
2010 David Cameron 23.5%
2015 David Cameron 24.4%
There was only any public enthusiasm for Blair in 97 – and to put that in perspective, it was less than the public enthusiasm for John Major in 1992.
More importantly, this public enthusiasm was not based on the policies now known as Blairite. The 1997 Labour Manifesto was not full of right wing policies and did not indicate what Blair was going to do.
The Labour Party manifesto of 1997 did not mention Academy schools, Private Finance Initiative, Tuition Fees, NHS privatisation, financial sector deregulation or any of the right wing policies Blair was to usher in. Labour actually presented quite a left wing image, and figures like Robin Cook and Clare Short were prominent in the campaign. There was certainly no mention of military invasions.
It was only once Labour were in power that Blair shaped his cabinet and his policies on an ineluctably right wing course and Mandelson started to become dominant. As people discovered that New Labour were “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”, to quote Mandelson, their popular support plummeted. “The great communicator” Blair for 90% of his Prime Ministership was no more popular than David Cameron is now. 79% of the electorate did not vote for him by his third election
Michael Foot consistently led Margaret Thatcher in opinion polls – by a wide margin – until the Falklands War. He was defeated in a victory election by the most appalling and intensive wave of popular war jingoism and militarism, the nostalgia of a fast declining power for its imperial past, an emotional outburst of popular relief that Britain could still notch up a military victory over foreigners in its colonies. It was the most unedifying political climate imaginable. The tabloid demonization of Foot as the antithesis of the military and imperial theme was the first real exhibition of the power of Rupert Murdoch. Few serious commentators at the time doubted that Thatcher might have been defeated were it not for the Falklands War – which in part explains her lack of interest in a peaceful solution. Michael Foot’s position in the demonology ignores these facts.
The facts about Blair and about Foot are very different from the media mythology.
The stupid stunt by Tories of signing up to the Labour Party to vote for Corbyn to ridicule him, is exactly the kind of device the establishment consensus uses to marginalise those whose views they fear. Sturgeon is living proof left wing views are electable. The “left unelectable” meme will intensify. I expect Jeremy Corbyn’s biggest problem will be quiet exclusion. I wish him well.
“I am sorry to hear about your money getting stolen, but when there is too little money and everyone is living week to week these sort of incidents are more and more prevalent.”
No excuse for being a thief, though, is there.
Anon: “Austerity in Britain means not being able to afford a Sky package.”
This is a tragic and utterly discredited meme, and a quite despicable one. If, Anon1, you watched this documentary about poor children living in the UK, and this was in 2011, and it has got worse, one hopes you would be apologising profusely. I rather think you won’t watch it, but until you do, enough of this nonsense, please.
Part 1 here, rest also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BN7ml6b-e4
I am so pleased to see you back Robert (Crawford). You have obviously been through the mill. I trust that your medical team have a plan for further therapy if needed.
And sorry about the theft. At the district general hospital where I worked a team had to go round drilling holes in desks and counters so that the computer screens could be secured with a steel wire as so many were being stolen. On another occasion, someone got into our department and went through the staff lockers. Hospitals are wide open to all and sundry of course.
Fedup. I can’t reply to your kind inquiry lest I am accused of ‘having supporters’! 🙂
Node.
Thank you.
Positive is the only worth while way to be.
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Fedup.
Thank you.
The caring profession in Intensive Care stealing from a patient?
The cops have an office in the hospital. I have also learned that the cops are resident in the High School along the road from me.
It is obvious the country is poorly managed when cops have offices in hospitals and schools.
The hospital WPC told me there was little or no chance of getting my money back or anyone admitting to this crime. The cops in town interviewed me at home first. For a moment I thought I had found a good cop with a caring attitude when she offered me money. That stopped me in my tracks for a minute. It turned out the police have a facility to help people who are left in “dire straights” after their money is stolen. I was not, thankfully.
A good nurse offered me £10.00 for the taxi home (“you don’t need to pay it back Robert”), she said. I was beginning to wonder if I looked like a pauper. I still had my cards, all I needed was to get to a cash machine, and the taxi driver would have made sure of that.
It is the circumstances and place of this theft that bothers me.
And when you’ve done that, try this for size. It’s about the US but since we’re plunging over the same cliff it applies equally to the UK. One thing it doesn’t make specific: renting a television (as many of the poorest do) or getting one on HP, while at usurious rates, is still instantly cheaper, and therefore more affordable (poor people do not have the chance to accumulate savings) than the unaffordable luxury of theatre or cinema tickets for a family: people in housing blocks rarely get the chance to play in a garden.
“The Flat Screen TV:
Pretty much all new TV’s today are “flat screen.” The price of a 32-inch screen TV can be as low as $150, assuming you wants a new one. 150 dollars is the same price Paul Ryan and his wife will pay at a decent Washington D.C. restaurant for a meal with appetizers and a bottle of wine. It’s also about the going rate for a good new tire on Paul Ryan’s Congressional staff car. The cost is also equivalent to about 25 hours of work, at the current minimum wage, before taxes, of the person who washes Paul Ryan’s Congressional staff car.
So the argument, as I understand it, is that by owning this 150 dollar, mostly plastic device made in China, that costs the same as one meal Paul Ryan had last week, poor families have elevated themselves into such an echelon of luxury and comfort that they can no longer consider themselves truly “poor.” Am I getting that right?
But then again, maybe the argument is really that the luxury of watching television itself is such a hallmark of the bourgeoisie that anyone caught watching television cannot possibly claim to be poor. “
Mary: “Fedup. I can’t reply to your kind inquiry lest I am accused of ‘having supporters’! :)”
What do you not understand about objecting to vicious attacks on other posters done in your name, Mary?
Anon 1.
Thank you.
I am okay and my energy is coming back to be able to write this. At the beginning, making a cup of coffee exhausted me, as they said it would.
I spent 2 hours in bed and 2 hours out of bed for 2-3 weeks. I was so exhausted.
I am up for the battles that lie ahead, so bring it on!
Respect Technicolour, you are an enduring gift on this long and onerous journey.
Wonderful how anything can be blamed on austerity isn’t it? Some thieving bastard nicks your wallet while you’re having an operation? Austeritee. Some family can’t afford to feed its kids because the parents drink and smoke and have never done a day’s work in their lives? Austeritee. Why do you think people are falling out of planes to get here? Because its a fucking goldmine. Labour pissed away so much public money on creating a benefits class that the Tories are right to try and put some tough love back into society by encouraging the feckless wastrels to go out and do some work.
You don’t “need” a TV ffs. If you can’t afford one then it’s a pretty stupid decision to go and prostitute yourself by buying one on HP.
Shaul Mofaz escapes arrest in London.
Surprise, surprise.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/197006#.VYazApvbJLM
@Robert Crawford, glad you are here, & feel well enough to start posting again.
@Villager, You mean the top drawer full of such sharp intellects like Technicolour, who actually believes you & I are the same person ! 😀
@Technicolour, as well as an irony bypass, you are obviously too stupid to know when to stop digging. What is about Mary that makes both you & control freak Clark want to control her so desperately ? Very worrying tendency indeed !
Dear Mary.
Thank you.
I am doing great, really.
Everyone tells me that including the surgeon, whom I saw last week.
He said he would have to keep a close eye on me and has booked another CAT scan for three months time.
There is a white spot on each of my lungs that is worrying them because the adrenal gland had signs of kidney cancer in it. Not a problem as such because they took it out at the same time as a matter of procedure. It appears to be going up the way. The bits that were taken from below the kidney were clear, and yet had white spots on them.
The next few months will be interesting, to say the least.
Another bit that bothers me is.
I made a complaint to Forth Valley Royal Hospital complaints department. The first person who took my complaint, DID NOT LOG IT.
A week later I phoned looking for some sort of feed-back, to find no one knew anything about me, and the person I spoke to was away on holiday. Kind of summed it all up for me.
Then I was told I would receive a letter in three days time registering all of my complaints.
The person who wrote the letter left half of my complaints out.
It has been a stressful, exhausting time trying to get justice.
The SNP Government don’t want to know, the town cops sent my name and address to Victim Support who wrote to me offering any help I thought might be of use.
What use to us is people who do not do the job they are paid to do?
Macky.
Thank you.
Posting is hard work because of the lack of energy. Hey, I will survive and live to fight another day.
Well done Robert, that’s the spirit.
Gee you guys and doll, I feel better already.
You are wonderful.
Keep up your great posts.
I love them, they help to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. (there are many gaps).
“It has been a stressful, exhausting time trying to get justice.”
Glad you’re well and on the road to recovery.
One question: Has at no point your intelligence kicked in, and given you a signal, that perhaps you should write off the few quid you lost, simply let go, and move on?
Major illnesses are a sign to look at one’s self, one’s conditioning, go into it and make some fundamental change.
Just to be clear, Robert, i did not mean analysis-paralysis. That is where you might just be stuck now.
“Irony has no bounds as Cherie Blair is given a column in the Guardian today to write about ‘ International Widow’s Day ‘ !!”
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Monteverdi.
Thanks for that link.
Satire is alive and well,reading that article,I’m reminded that her husband took us to wars in Yugoslavia,Sierra Leone,Iraq and Afghanistan.
The likes of Cherie Blair,must think we have all forgotten this,or is she still relying on Carole Caplin’s crystal balls for guidance.
Maybe Peter Foster’s back on the scene who knows.
Welcome back, Robert, and I hope you get back to ‘fighting fit’ very soon.
Re my last comment Monteverdi check this out.
Cherie Blair’s clinics have gone bust owing millions of pounds,the clinic’s were situated inside Sainsburys store.
I see a old pattern reforming.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11688937/Cherie-Blairs-health-business-goes-spectacularly-wrong-as-company-goes-bust.html
I’m no fan of the Telegraph,it’s a Westminster mouthpiece,but now and again,it actually does some reporting,though I’m sure Peter Oborne would disagree with that assumption.
Villager.
Thanks, and don’t be cheeky.
I practice Transcendental Meditation.
My intelligence is in place and going well.
It is never a good thing to let the perpetrator “get away with it”, or the administration get away with it.
“That which goes unchecked only multiplies”. Hence, cops having offices in hospitals and schools. Which only act as “scarecrows” soon you see the crows sitting on top of the supposed “scarecrow”, as we see in fields.
Maybe you have never heard of “the principle” of the matter.
I have been making changes most of my life, to cope with all that has come my way, as I am doing now.
What you do not know about me is my sense of what is right, and what is wrong.
If it is wrong I will have a go. If it is right I will praise.
However, If you have a “positive gem” you think may be of help to me, now is your chance to do some good.
It would not be good policy for me to tell you or others what £55.00 means to me. Except to say I have written off more many a time, and will no doubt do so again. However, I like my money to go to a worthy cause to be beneficial to another.
Whoever stole the £55.00 will not profit by it. He, she, they will be big time losers. maybe not to-day or to-morrow. What you put out is what you get back with compound interest. As you sow, so shall you reap.
Think about that before you next Post.
“You don’t “need” a TV ffs. If you can’t afford one then it’s a pretty stupid decision to go and prostitute yourself by buying one on HP.”
Again, crazy howls. You’re in a tower block. There is no safe place for your young children to play. You can’t afford to take them out. You can’t afford the theatre or the cinema. A television, affordable instantly, links you to the outside world.
“Prostitute yourself”? What do you call people with mortgages?
Sad stuff – I do sympathise with people who are so scared that they try and avoid the awful reality, to some extent, but not when they attack its victims.
Did you hear the nonsense this morning about some re-enactment (this country specializes in commemorating war) of how the news from Waterloo was landed at Broadstairs. The message was then to be taken to no less a person that P Anne?
This will give you a laugh. Mark Steel on the subject.
18 June 2015
The Battle of Waterloo: It was lucky the British won, as they had no plans to build an annoying empire
At least that’s the story according to all the posh, right-wing historians
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-battle-of-waterloo-it-was-lucky-the-british-won-as-they-had-no-plans-to-build-an-annoying-empire-10329997.html
‘In Britain, the radical Thomas Paine wrote The Rights of Man, calling for an end to the power of the monarchy and aristocracy, and suggesting plans for the vote and a welfare state, including hostels for the homeless, and for the poor to have their funerals paid for by the government.
A Daily Mail front page of the time probably declared, “We uncover the cheats deliberately dying to get their free coffins.” Then Liz Kendall insisted, “the books must be balanced before we start clearing up corpses”. Paine’s book was made illegal, and you could be jailed for owning a copy.’
Dreoilin.
Thank you, for your good wishes before and now.
I am in great nick!, honest. everything that was known about has been removed, if they are telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have challenged the surgeon on this very subject and he says he is always truthful.
It is the two white spots on my lungs that are dubious, cause for concern.
I just want to know what treatment will be employed to eradicate the cancer if that is what it is.
The surgeon says it might be the scars of a previous chest infection. I don’t recall any such chest infection.
Anyway, I trust the guy, and have confidence in his ability.
I will be fine. I have a lot of tin cans to kick yet. Plus…
there is a nurse who appeals, big time. I just she does not think she is too young.
Better to be an older man’s darling, than a young man’s slave!.
Republicofscotland
21 Jun, 2015 – 2:40 pm
“Cherie Blair’s clinics have gone bust owing millions of pounds,the clinic’s were situated inside Sainsburys store.”
……………………………………………………
From your Telegraph link RoS:
“The company was financed through an investment fund set up by the women called the Allele Fund, which is based in the Cayman Islands, an offshore tax haven, and had planned to open 100 clinics in five years.”
All sounds a bit dodgy.
Presumably Mrs Blair will have set this company up in a way that protects her from bankruptcy proceedings otherwise she will not be able to continue to practice as a barrister.
Craig has gone to Ghana Robert so while the cat’s away, the mice (on here) will play, if you get my drift!
I like cats and this one, Tara, is inspirational.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw9AwaJaVGU
Falconer is 12 years and millions of lives too late.
Iraq was a mistake says Falconer
…Lord Falconer, one of Tony Blair’s closest allies during the build-up to the Iraq war, has said it is now perceived as a mistake and “we weren’t right to go in”. BBC Scotland Investigates…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-33213012
He was the one who set up the Hutton Inquiry to replace the lawful inquest before Dr Kelly’s body was cold.
July 17, 2003
David Kelly, Date of death
Revealed: How a Blair fixer picked the judge for the David Kelly Inquiry just three hours after the weapons inspector’s suicide
Letter from Lord Hutton shows he was asked three hours after the death
He had not been identified and no cause of death had been established
Hutton was contacted by Blair’s friend and former flatmate Lord Falconer
Is evidence of the extraordinary haste with which the Blair Government set up an inquiry to replace the usual coroner’s inquest
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2362659/Revealed-How-Blair-fixer-picked-judge-David-Kelly-Inquiry-just-hours-weapons-inspectors-suicide.html
The longest ever recipients of state benefits, (all their lives and then some) won’t suffer during the austerity cuts,the Royals spongers,will not feel the pinch.
The Queen will not face any cuts to royal finances for at least another two years despite an 11 per cent increase in her income, The Telegraph has learnt.
In the two years since the Civil List was replaced by the Sovereign Grant, the Queen’s taxpayer-funded income has shot up from £36.1 million to more than £40 million.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/queen-elizabeth-II/11689154/Queens-finances-are-safe-from-cuts-for-two-years.html
“Presumably Mrs Blair will have set this company up in a way that protects her from bankruptcy proceedings otherwise she will not be able to continue to practice as a barrister.”
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Doug Scrogie.
Yes you can bet your house on that,but cherie won’t need to fret over cash,her hubby Tony has been offered a job as a adviser,from Poroshenko.
Funny how Blair seems to turn up whenever blood has been spilt.
No doubt the Ukraine will be his new pet project.
http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine-abroad/foreign-policy-ukraines-poroshenko-offers-ex-british-pm-tony-blair-a-job-391467.html