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.
That’s it, Daniel. That’s what I was trying to argue too. Your posts have been excellent on this thread re. this matter.
Fed Up, yes, I know, naturally. But of course wrt the USA, it’s much older than ‘9/11’ – goes back to Slavery days and Frontier days and right to the foundation of the USA and the colonies which preceded it.
Exactly, Technicolour at 9:42pm.
Late C19th (the worst of the lot) depression, 1930s depression, 1980s recession and 2008-onwards recession – none caused by immigration. Immigration in early 2000s – economy was booming (yes, fake boom, but immigration did not alter the boom). All these recessions/depression were caused by the financial sector’s irresponsibility and lack of regulation of the sector.
Goes back further than that. Back to the methods used against the “Wild Irish” in the centuries before English colonization of the New World started.
“I’d be careful about bragging too much about your involvement with the BDS – if you were serious about it, you probably wouldn’t be using a PC to post on here. And quite a few other things.”
Yes, Intel are one of the companies that need boycotting. AMD aren’t regarded as highly but with some hardware upgrades the difference is marginal. Without Tim Berners-Lee, you wouldn’t have the medium to be able claim computer invention reliance on your beloved Israel. Aren’t Israel amongst the world leaders in nuclear technology, albeit mostly stolen from their allies?
…The UN team haven’t even tried to appear even handed. I wonder how much this farce cost and what crime sites they were allowed to access. I’d like to know how these UN accomplices to such deliberate cruelty manage to sleep at night?
Bring the lot to book, without fear or favour. If Hamas has committed war crimes too, it has to be judged by the same standards, and justice has to be seen to be done. But if Israel is immune from legal action – and it seems to be, currently – then so is Hamas. The UN can’t do anything if it remains sidelined by the US, in any case.
“All these recessions/depression were caused by the financial sector’s irresponsibility and lack of regulation of the sector.”
But then, A, This is news? after they always use immigration, a capitalist meme since way back….
And B, (rather more significant) The problem is having the power to do that, it’s always un-done…
Back in the day their was one segment disgusted with black slavery, awful conditions, must be improved etc, then there was another segment disgusted with that, because they where slaves.
We tried this already. The capitalists are biggest winners than ever.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/
It is unlikely that the British GHCQ is the only secret service using these tactics. Other government as well as private interests can be assumed to use similar means.
To “deny, disrupt, degrade/denigrate, delay, deceive, discredit, dissuade or deter” is exactly what Internet trolls are doing in the comment sections of blogs and news sites. Usually though on a smaller scale than the GHCQ and alike. The more these services grow and their methods proliferate the less possible will it become to have reasonable online discussions.
“Err, I’m trying to find out what the rules are !”
On a previous post – not that I’d wish to repeat your frequent accusations of stupidity.
US had made great progress towards racial harmony and coexistence, at least on the surface, however 911 made sure that racism becomes the new normal; it started with “Muslims” then it was “illegals” and now it is “Negroes”. The promotion of racism is one way of getting the moronic hamburger munchers to beat the day light out of each other, whilst the oligarchs sit back and enjoy the proceeds of their hand-picked/selected vassals (gubimnet) enacting the laws in their (oligarchs) favour.
Here that shemale Thatcher may she spend the rest of eternity in a private suit all of her own in the depth of hell (at times like this I go religious wishing hell and damnation to be true). She “deregulated the City” ie stripped all the laws protecting the Jo public and let the “City gents” to decide their own standards. These did so; rigged the libor, and gambled away the punters money.
At the same time every law has been passed to stop we the people from earning a quid. These days a NVQ is required to be a waiter. Every HGV driver is now compelled to have an operators license and and a certificate of competency, for riding a motor bike there is a need for three licenses over two years, every walk of life has become regulated and there are oodles of laws to be observed and certificates to be paid for and exams passed.
This is the plight of the working public, who are then fed the horse shit about immigration! All in the best possible taste and the illiterate morons buy into it all, and the not so illiterate find the easiest way to comply with the Zeitgeist and keep their heads down!
This is the latest:
Schoolboys ‘plotted to bomb Parliament and Buckingham Palace but were thwarted by mother’
These two fifteen years old kids, who can barley find their way to their own home but were planning on “bombing” parliament! The same fortress that has bollards, concrete barriers, and heavily armed police searching and frisking and scanning every visitor. This was not a backlash against their treatment at the hands of their racists tormentors, but the very evil of them being “Muslims” being the underlying cause of their “plot”.
Jewish supremacists have subcontracted their war on all things Muslim to the rest of the world and the carpet baggers running the show in the rest of the world have taken up the baton of hatred with a gusto.
O come on Resident Dissident, the rules are totally arbitrary interpretations, but serve the blog owner and people seen as regular supporters primarily.
[Mod: Abusive, deleted.]
“If I advertise for a vet in my practice, and 17 UK qualified vets turn up, I can, if I’m utterly unscrupulous as an employer, find the one who’ll take the lowest salary.”
But even that particular scenario doesn’t in reality withstand any kind of scrutiny, Technicolour. In truth, you would advertise the role with one salary specified and would not adjust it on the basis of the nationality of each individual applicant.
Mods why have you removed my link about wildlife die-offs in the Pacific, and this amidst all the bile and bullshit that gets posted in these comment sections?
Meanwhile, in the U.S. a father informed on his son and an FBI provocateur got the son to go ahead with a plan to murder Americans for ISIS. Father Tips Off Police to Son’s Alleged ISIS Sympathies, Authorities Say. Just like the two teenagers in the UK planning to imitate Guy Fawkes.
Well, you would if you were scrupulous, Daniel. The reality is that this can and does also happen:
“I just accepted a job offer from a small company recently. Shockingly, they just called me to inform me that they reduced my offer by about 10%. Luckily for me, I did not give a leaving notice to my current employer. Is this a reflection on my value or is there another reason a company would reduce the salary after making the initial offer? Am I off base thinking this could be a red flag about their business practices?”
http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/31326/reducing-the-salary-after-job-offer
http://www.workcoachcafe.com/2007/04/30/help-my-salary-offer-is-less-than-we-discussed/
etc
RobG, I would hazard the guess that they removed your posting because it was just a link without enough comment of your own (comment that the new rules seem to require). Try posting the link again together with a few sentences of your own and see if that posting survives.
“and would not adjust it on the basis of the nationality of each individual applicant.”
The point I was making was that immigration would not be a factor.
Thank you, Lysias, for the explanation.
But I’m afraid I’ve now just about given up on trying to tell my fellow humans that the Pacific Ocean is on its last legs (as a result of Fukushima), and our days are now numbered.
That’s why I’m sitting in a deckchair in middle-of-nowhere France, glass of vin rouge in hand, watching the last days of the human race.
It is indeed both depressing and fascinating to behold.
Suhayl Saadi;”Anyone got any thoughts on this white supremacist terrorist atrocity in the USA? My view is, it’s nothing new. 500 years of Strange Fruit.”
Here you go SS; I think you & Jon Stewart are wrong, and so is Obama, because the cliches of ‘race’ and “too many guns” are just symptoms of a deeper sickness. I believe that a State sets an example & influences a mindset value to its people; the value of a human life is undermined & devalued in a State where a gung-ho culture is promoted as a national attribute, where the military & military might are highly venerated, where military action against overseas “enemies” kills scores of people every day, where messages from films like “American Sniper” portray murder as glamorous, under a system where the selfish “Me first” & “Greed is Good” message is paramount; where even the law even in some cases punishes the crime of murder a lot less severely in many cases than other types of crime, etc
And just when you were thinking there were no deeper depths to which the Ukrainian fascists could sink they brought in Saakashvili to rule over and give his personal touches to the Odessa region. Saakashvili, who was president of Georgia during the US-created Chechnyan War had a nice little sideline in body parts for which he appears to have got a taste, selling them to rich Europeans and supplementing the trade with body-parts from prisoners. No wonder Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk wanted him in Odessa with the Ukrainian economy on its knees.
http://ru.saqinform.ge/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22109%3A-l-r&catid=37%3Ainterviu1&Itemid=396#ixzz3dgIjzDBe
@Ishmael, deja vu as always on this blog;
https://squonk.tk/blog/2015/03/15/the-general-discussion-thread/comment-page-4/#comment-3846
“The point I was making was that immigration would not be a factor.”
Yes, that’s the point I was making.
lysias, it started in US where dumpster diving became an offense and the culprits were guilty of theft!
Now this nice/relevant/fantastic law has crossed the Atlantic, and it is here! Although this law was never searched, frisked, or asked pertinent and cutting questions; “Do you have nay fire arms and ammunition in your luggage?” Who the Dickens thinks of this crap? Why do they ask these silly questions? They have enough Xray machines to irradiate any traveler to the kingdom come, they can see inside the pants of the punters. Nonetheless they still ask;”Do you have nay fire arms and ammunition in your luggage?”
The fact remains that now rubbish has owners! Yeah discarded and cast out objects now have owners, and anyone coveting these is liable to be jailed. A man/woman raiding a “charity” clothes dumpster is a thief, and a scoundrel that needs to be jailed. Not the fact that this individual was cold and decided to get some warmth through more layers of clothing left for “charity”.
In the municipal rubbish dump there are notices reminding the punters that it is an offense to remove objects and items of other people’s rubbish and the offender will be prosecuted for theft.
This is the degree of regulation of the lives of millions of people, who are blissfully unaware that their guilty butt (they will be found guilty given the number of laws and regulations) is liable to be caught any second they are walking in the street or sitting on their settee at home.
The simple fact that people are forbidden from even picking up discarded rubbish of course is only to protect the rights of the rubbish dump owner, and perfectly with in the laws!
Talk about North Korea being repressive? Do they have the same Rubbish laws there?
@Habbabkuk, thank you for your (un)unproductive 9.06 Post, which also breaks the new “Fair Play” moderating rule, but then again your’re not me ! 😉
Macky/Suhayl Saad
What’s to be expected of a brutal empire. It’s founded on racism, and yes still promotes it for the business…
It goes on, regurgitating this stuff. Then act’s all sad (and it is sad) when the inevitable keep’s happening. The only chance that country has is the people, As if anywhere much is different in this….
John Goss you didn’t mention the rose revolution Saakashvili has banned any association of more than three people, and has the offenders thrown into jail. Also forgot to mention he has now the best internal secret police money can buy, and he is making full use of it. The same Saakashvili who was running around the place with his protection squad goons and the mobile armour to protect him from Putin’s shrapnel.
Porkyshenko has got the right guy with the right contacts (the zionistani internal secret services) to help them set up a truly “democratic” Ukraine, just like the truly “democratic” Georgia.
Since the Trinity test in July 1945, and everything that followed (arms race, Cold War, bomb tests, etc), cancer rates have gone through the roof (before 1945, cancer was a rare disease). Also, since 1945, fertility rates, worldwide, have dropped by 50%.
We have put a nuclear bullet into our own heads.
Dumb, dumb, dumb, that’s the human race.
The governments of countries like the USA, UK, France, Russia and China have butchered a huge number of their own citizens in pursuit of ‘the bomb’.
It’s so sick it’s beyond belief, yet the majority of people still buy into the childish propaganda.
Which is why I won’t waste my time anymore on this board trying to inform people about what’s going on in the Pacific.
As the old saying goes. so long and thanks for all the fish, you cretins…
@Ishmael, not a surprise we agree on this, a State founded on Genocide is always going to have problems, but the mass shooting problem seems to happening on a more & more regular basis, and I do think that it is a result of the increasing disrepect for human life as promoted by the US both domestically & aboard.
Macky at 11:09pm. Yes, actually I agree. That is what I was suggesting: Something is rotten at the heart of the US state and has been since before its beginning (500 years). It’s the Frontier, it’s Slavery, it’s Manifest Destiny, it’s the Shining Thing on a Hill. Supremacism.
Fergus Ewing in 2007:
http://www.strathspey-herald.co.uk/News/Anger-mounts-over-new-wind-farm-threat-917.htm
He’s changed his tune a bit hasn’t he?