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.
“Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog expressed his concern about Israel’s deteriorating international relations Friday, warning of a growing boycott and a rift with the US administration.”
“Herzog, head of the Labour party and the Zionist Camp alliance, made the remarks in a lecture at the London School of Economics (LSE), as an invited guest of the university’s Institute of Global Affairs.”
“Herzog slammed as “totally unacceptable” moves to boycott and isolate Israel, urging the international community to “encourage negotiations, not punishments.” Declaring himself ready to “defend Israel’s good name” and be its “representative wherever it is needed”, Herzog declared: “I am here to combat it [BDS] – I am here exactly for that purpose.”
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/europe/19353-israeli-opposition-leader-in-london-im-here-to-fight-bds
………………………………………………………………..
So some success for the global BDS movement – ramp it up!
I didn’t lay into immigrants, Technicolour. I said they come here in their hundreds of thousands every year to do the supposedly non-existent jobs that the benefits seekers won’t do. I mean isn’t this the argument you make all the time when it is convenient to you, that mass-immigration is vital to the country’s economy? So the jobs do exist but some people just don’t want them.
Beacky
It’s not off topic(saw that on DN btw, awful) Even Kamikaze Cat’s can be useful.
If fact just some lolcats now and again would help imo…
http://pandawhale.com/post/26105/fuck-this-fuck-that-fuck-this-thing-in-particular-cat-gif-pandawhale
Anon: “They come here in their hundreds of thousands every year to do the supposedly non-existent jobs” etc
Once again, factually inaccurate. You need to subtract the number of students, who are counted as ‘immigrants’ (as indeed anyone coming over for a year is, for whatever purpose). This leaves you with around 100,000 people, who may be here for a year or longer.
Jobs for those temporary workers include those jobs which most UK people, paying UK rents, and supporting UK families, could not afford to do. Fruit picking being one of them. Otherwise, in your category of ‘benefit claimants’ include the disabled, the ill, the single parent families, and the elderly, who cannot work.
I have never, incidentally ‘argued’ that immigration is beneficial to the UK economy. It just is: to the tune of £20 billion over the last ten years. According to the Mail. You can look it up.
Have you watched the documentary yet?
By the way, if accusing poor people of ‘prostitution’ because they buy their only possible form of family entertainment on HP isn’t laying into them, what is?
Herbie
No I mean to say I have been as low as it is possible to be and you have a choice – either you give up and choose state dependency for the rest of your life, or you pick yourself up with what little you have got and earn some some self-respect. The left’s default position of defending welfare junkies disgusts me. They think they are earning themselves brownie points for ‘compassion’ but the damage they do is immeasurable. It is the worst possible thing for the health of families and communities to have people laying about on benefits when they are perfectly capable of working.
To prostitute oneself – it’s an expression dummy.
“Have you watched the documentary yet?”
No, do stop asking. I’m not interested in your video.
Who are these ‘welfare junkies’? I just quoted the Mail, so here’s the Guardian, for balance.
Facts:
“The Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a study in December testing whether there were three generations of the same family that had never worked. Despite dogged searching, researchers were unable to find such families. If they exist, they account for a minuscule fraction of workless people. Under 1% of workless households might have two generations who have never worked – about 15,000 households in the UK. Families with three such generations will therefore be even fewer.
The graphic shows this broken down. Importantly, families experiencing long-term worklessness remained committed to the value of work and preferred to be in jobs rather than on benefits. There was no evidence of “a culture of worklessness” – values, attitudes and behaviours discouraging employment and encouraging welfare dependence – in the families being passed down the generations. The long-term worklessness of parents in these families was a result of complex problems (particularly related to ill-health) associated with living in long-term and deep poverty. In an already tight labour market, multiple problems combined to place people at the back of a long queue for jobs.”
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/06/welfare-britain-facts-myths
“Not interested in your video” = not interested in seeing the reality documented. Perhaps it would be too painful, to break away those icy chunks of prejudice.
It’s not ‘my video’ by the way.
So out of 620,000 immigrants last year 520,000 of them were students who are going to leave once their studies are over? I don’t know, I’m pretty sure that the last time I went to London (for example, but any city will do) one of the most startling things is that virtually every job seems to be being performed by a person with a foreign accent. And yet there are no jobs!
“Resident Dissident There was no need and you had no right to include my name in your anti Putin comment.”
Why do I have no right to respond to your comments – what makes you unique. If you disagree with what I said you are perfectly free to do so and you can even express your views on my comment.
“Not interested in your video” = not interested in seeing the reality documented. Perhaps it would be too painful, to break away those icy chunks of prejudice.”
No I would just rather debate you than sit through something you are convinced is going to prove conclusively you are right because you can’t do it by yourself.
Perfectly capable of slavery. more degradation. on top of the massive comparative amount of work it is being poor, relative to those who enact a system that degrades self-respect even more with dead end meaningless jobs, same poverty working…
Your messed up in the head Anon1. You land is fantasy land.
Any the TINY few that do ‘make it’..Sell themselves for personal gain and incomparable consumption or recourses..Is that better?
But of course most wealth is concentrated inheritance of people who have been criminally exploiting it from people for ages… Who are your trying to convince, you or others? I wonder.
“No I would just rather debate”
like discussing the color of stone to a blind man.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/cherie-blairs-health-business-goes-193836257.html
O/T
Looks like since Tony’s affair with Wendi Deng [ Murdoch’s ex ] poor old Cherie hasn’t been taking his well known advice on success in business and making yourself a pile . Interesting set up with a partner an entrepreneurial US Republican with the Company set up in the offshore tax-haven of the Cayman Islands .
These thing perhaps best left to hubby .
“Break away those icy chunks of prejudice”
Love it. What motivates the likes of Technicolour is not what is best for the poor but fixing what she perceives as right-wing prejudice.
“Your messed up in the head Anon1. ”
Lol – cheers Ishmael.
Last net migration figures from the ONS in February:
298,000
Students: 192,000.
No, you really are.
So start addressing the facts, Anon.
Buzzwords:
Austerity (I prefer the Leanne Wood pronunciation, “Austeriteee”)
Food banks
Bedroom tax
Zero-hours contracts
All used mendaciously by the left.
He’d rather address the least subject orientated part of any post he doesn’t what to hear.
“debate” like “democracy”..
If you say, relying on gross migration figures: “they’re coming over here in their hundreds of thousands” for example, then you also have to add “and also leaving here in their hundreds of thousands”. Which makes it sound rather stupid, I suppose, which is why you won’t do it.
“All used mendaciously by the left” – really? How about “used factually by people”? Unless you’d like to explain why current government policies are lies, or something?
You’d honestly be better off watching children in poverty educate you about their lives.
Normally how pathological issues manifest. Religious type ideology. Crazed totalitarian imaginings..
Total lack of empathy for the suffering of others, laughing at it. Typical of the system.
Republicofscotland@2:29
“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.”
Carole Caplin had been programmed by the Mind control cult run by Robert D’Aubigny
who had done Erhard Seminars Training (est) he the went on to mix it up with eastern
mysticism which became Exegesis.I was around when it went through Bristol like a dose of salts about ninety percent of the participants became brainwashed robots.We managed to obtain the programming manual by devious means which was for use by their programmers.The
manual contained Key control words which we tested on the brainwashed members of the
cult.On inserting the control words in a conversation their eyes would glaze over and they
would obey our commands,we were amazed at the hold Robert D’Aubigny had over the members of his cult. We on to cause as much disruption as possible. Eventually Exegesis fell apart in Bristol but not without causing quite a bit of physiological damage and suicides
From your own source Technicolour:
In the year ending September 2014, a total of 271,000 immigrated for work-related reasons. This is a statistically significant increase from the previous year when 217,000 people immigrated for work-related reasons. Of those immigrating for work-related reasons in the year ending September 2014, 62% (167,000) came with a definite job to go to and 38% (104,000) came to look for work.
But there are no jobs.
Fact is there are pleanty of jobs which is why hundreds of thousands of people come here every year to work. It only underlines the fact that the feckless do not want to work rather than there being no work.
Concentration on the minutest detail of expense and profit. ^ degraded intellect ^…Totally blind.