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’m part of “bewildered herd” of “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders” who should be maintained as “interested spectators of action,” and distinct from the actors themselves, the powerful.”
Glad you recognise you’re bewildered, anyway. But unbewilder yourself and obtain lasting fame by devising a means for dismantling the power structures and redistributing their wealth without murdering thousands of innocents. Failing that, moderate progress within the bounds of the law* is all you can hope for.
We KNOW it’s all fucking wrong as it is. You don’t have to tell us.
*The Party For Moderate Progress within the Bounds of the Law actually existed in Czechoslovakia, as was. It was founded by Jaroslav Hasek, the author of “The Good Soldier Schweik” – a treatise on how to beat the system in a small but satisfying way. Read it.
“My religious clique”?? I’m an atheist. And I am unaware of any clique to which I belong. Do expand.
Habbabkuk,
I don’t think publicly opposing the Iraq war and siding with the Palestinian’s could in anyway be regarded as somebody lacking in conscience.
Ros
Many folk don’t want any monarchy after Lizzies gone,I for one agree
You are missing the point its the Crown Estates in Scotland not the monarchs private property that undermine rural development in community enterprise in Scotland. The profits from the Crown Estates enterprises are shared between the monarch and the public purse but the problem is that how this is shared is secret information. The other problem is that CE are coercive and heavy handed in their dealings with local communities. There are other issues in terms of the way the monarch manages her own private estates but I will not go into that just now
Habbabkuk, the man about town (except doesn’t he live on the Continent?)and frequenter of Savile Row, obviously did not read the link.
‘Later the same day Mr Cameron announced he had given up bread and snacks as part of ‘a great patriotic struggle’ to lose weight, prompting speculation that Mr Golding had been called in to alter the waistline of the Prime Minister’s suits. The tailor, the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants who settled in the East End of London, opened his first shop in St Albans, Hertfordshire, at the age of 19 in 1963.
His workshop was awarded the Queen’s Royal Warrant for services to the Royal Household in 2001. Prince Andrew has been a customer for two decades and Mr Golding has fitted diplomats, military officers and business leaders.
His presence at No10 also sheds new light on Mr Cameron’s preferred outfitters. It was previously known that he wears suits from the Savile Row tailor Richard James, which can cost up to £3,500.’
And it was dated January 2015.
PS Perhaps Savile Row should have a change of name.
Your really quite stupid also arne’t you.
It was Lippmann btw, And it’s a perception by the ruling classes who have often been less educated than the critically thinking autodidacts historically.
Again not much has changed, and no doubt your the people to bring us it. NOT…
Pan
Yes, I did mean to put Nicola Corbyn in the title.
Your really quite stupid also arne’t you.
It was Lippmann btw, And it’s a perception by the ruling classes who have often been less educated than the critically thinking autodidacts historically.
Again not much has changed, and no doubt your the people to bring us it. NOT…
I’ll leave that, as it bears no apparent relevance to anything I’ve posted. Habbabkuk, perhaps? But, Lippman? Who Lippman?
Mary – Perhaps I should tell ‘Mr Golding’ to tailor a ‘straight jacket’ for agent Cameron in a bid to prevent harm to others 😉
Walter Lippman
How strange that, the Thatcher constructed war with Argies, in aid of helping her to stay in power instead of an ignominious exit form No. 10. Planned and executed in conjunction with the brain dead actor Ronnie Regan set up the current bums rush for all thing not socialist.
As ever socialism is good for the banksters, because with the aid of the state the poor, poor, disadvantaged banksters who had been gambling other people’s monies would have lost their banks.
We buy the banks because we only sell anything that is profitable to the private owners whom happen to be in the same circle as the media oligarch, and are after easy money to rip off we the people. They said railways once privatized would be efficient, they were right, now one needs a small mortgage to buy a train ticket, and the numbers of the tariffs are the same as the numbers of the Gas and electricity bills, each have about a thousand permutation, all of which screws the punter and earns a tidy sum for the oligarchs who own the once public owned that is you and I owned it, and now we don’t! Thus pay for that privilege dearly too.
Water, electricity, Gas, railways, post office, the privateers have only Thatcher to praise for without here little war the whole game would have come to a crashing halt. I wonder what an England with Thatcher booted out of No 10 in an alternative reality would look like?
The oligarch owned media are only interested in perpetuating the gravy train ride for the few whilst promoting abject poverty and misery for the rest of us. At one point self employed meant an entrepreneur, now it is a means of employing people without any national insurance, pension contribution, and getting hampered by the employment legislations; included the minimum wage pay. In the brave new world underpayed and without a safety net, the new self employed are not allowed to have any help pay, other than the sick pay that will be put on watch soon as any of the self employed are claiming sick, for a prompt Atos interview bang on 13 weeks deadline!
This is the shit that despicable cretin of a shemale left behind, and still from beyond the grave she is screwing we the people, her papers have been handed over to the archives in a negotiation for settlement of one million pounds tax bill!
If it’s Friday, it must be Bratislava! Cameron’s MO is becoming so like BLiar’s.
1 hr ago
‘Cameron warns of ‘quietly condoning’ IS ideology
Media caption
David Cameron: “There are people who… buy into some of these prejudices, giving the extreme Islamism narrative weight and telling fellow Muslims, ‘you are part of this'”
Prime Minister David Cameron has warned of the dangers posed by those who “quietly condone” Islamic State militants’ extremist ideology.
Speaking at a security conference in Slovakia, he also stressed the importance of tackling radicalisation at its source.
Mr Cameron highlighted the role families and communities can play in countering such radicalisation.’
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33192306
But it’s OK to support Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian Muslims of course.
~~~
This is the gathering he is attending. Yet another venue for the gangsters-in-charge.
http://www.globsec.org/globsec2015/2015-forum
and a photo of him
https://twitter.com/GLOBSEC/statuses/611854101681451012
Three days of it.
http://www.globsec.org/globsec2015/programme
Johnstone.
Yes l agree with your comment,the CE,does indeed profit from the land and coastline in Scotland.
This is why land reform is a important issue in Scotland is so important.
The Duke of Bucccleuch is the largest private owner of land in Scotland unsurprisingly he to is against land reform.
It will however be far more difficult to reform the CE in Scotland,it may be different under independence.
*quick Google* – thanks, Phil. Still no relevance, but direction of thought noted. Also noted: to fail to recognise a quotation from the man on the 6c Great Americans stamp is an indication of stupidity, not of having altogether other specialist interests than phlosophical takes on the general public. He should still read Schweik, though..
That’s that sorted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5sHIfq92vA
I have come back to my own previously held ideas after my brief scurry with parliament electoral politics “power” gabbing. And I feel a dame sight better and more honest. They happen to chime with Chomsky’s but I’m sure many other’s got this feeling well before hearing about it through him or others.
Myself, I will support the Greens as a group of people that can (and have) done stuff outside of that. Or to an extent those policies within that protects people vs private power. But they have very little legitimacy or power Vs the people. And it dived’s people to such an extent, though I don’t think its something that can easily measured in a balancing way.
We would not have nothing going on like this I can tell you that.
BTW, Try voting in your family, see how it works out, if you can bring yourself to act in such a manner.
TGIF. Here’s a laugh. What a silly woman.
Watch: Leading Labour candidate for London Mayor Tessa Jowell ‘lies’ over her love for Tony Blair http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/watch-leading-labour-candidate-for-london-mayor-lies-over-love-for-tony-blair-10329736.html
Missing table code, fixed for you.
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%
though I don’t think it’s something that can be* easily measured in a balancing way.
Try again in markdown, shame we can’t delete our own comments!
|:–|:–|:–|
|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%|
Excellent post overall- Jeremy Corbyn self evidently is an MP who actually practices what he believes, even (as in the case of comprehensive schooling) if this entails personal costs(in this case apparently contributing to the break up of his marriage).
Claims about Blair’s ‘popularity’ are comprehensively skewered in paras 9&10, but I have some doubts about this bit –
‘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.’
Re Thatchers popularity, it is undoubtedly true that between autumn ’79 and spring ’82 the Tories lagged behind Labour in the polls, but from recollection the biggest gap between the 2 parties was in spring/summer 1980, when Callaghan was still in charge. Foot’s election as leader in autumn 1980, followed by the SDP/Labour split in Jan 1981, led to a fracturing of the anti-Tory vote, and indeed at one stage in late 1981 the SDP eclipsed Foot’s Labour party in the polls.
As for the ‘intensive wave of popular war jingoism and militarism’ over the Falklands, Craig forgets that the SNP MP, and future party leader, Donald Stewart, strongly supported the dispatch of the ‘task force’ to recover the islands. I heard him myself during the commons debate on the Saturday after the Argentine invasion- and he was as gung ho about recovering the islands as any of the braying Tories were.
It’s not me who needs to be legitimizing the system. But your not doing a very good job of it. And why are you trying to? Seems self evidently un-just.
And your telling me it’s just getting the right people. WE ALREADY DID THAT. Look what we have GOT.
” the SNP MP, and future party leader, Donald Stewart, strongly supported the dispatch of the ‘task force’ to recover the islands. ”
As indeed did Michael Foot.
Well I pretty much agree with much of what Ishmael has been saying lately. Personally of course I would never be so confrontational…
As if. I feel your frustration Ishmael.
Iain/anyone
Did anything come of the arrangements for tomorrow. I can’t meet earlier but after may be worth a go. Or has this fallen by.
‘How strange that, the Thatcher constructed war with Argies, in aid of helping her to stay in power instead of an ignominious exit form No. 10. Planned and executed in conjunction with the brain dead actor Ronnie Regan.’
The usual bollocks from Fedup- yes, the septics eventually gave logistical support to the task force, but there were quite a few supporters of Galtieri on the right wing fringes of the Reagan administration, for example-
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Jeane_Kirkpatrick
For the likes of Kirkpatrick, keeping Operation Condor on the road was of greater importance than the much vaunted ‘special relationship’.
http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKcondor.htm
I spent the run-up to the election listening to people telling me they support the Green Party but are voting Labour because ‘people won’t vote Green’. I am now clocking up the number of people telling me that they like Jeremy Corbyn but ‘people won’t vote for him’. I have now realised that the only possible answer is “so who are ‘people’? Aren’t you one of them?” – it’s then necessary to keep on picking away at it until they realise that when they say ‘people’, they mean ‘newspaper columnists and BBC reporters’. How long is it going to take to separate those ideas in everyone’s minds? The only reason I can see it now is that I stopped relying on corporate media for news years ago.
Why thank you, coming from an expert in bollocksology that ought to be a compliment!
Thatcher set up the Falkland war!
The facts are there for anyone to discern the chaf from the truth. that is anyone other than the bollocks speaking experts the likes of yourself.
Kirkpatrick had her own agenda and no amounts of whitewash can redact those from the history.
PS Clearly that’s an English view. People is Scotland knew ‘people’ would not vote Labour.
Republicofscotland
You need to take a lesson or two in close reading and comprehension
When I write “Galloway’s film will not even be a tenth as good as Michael Moore’s”, this does not imply (a&s you seem to think):
“It’s nice to know Habb, that at least we agree Michael Moore’s films are substantial.”
It could just as well mean – Moore’s films are bad and Galloway’s will be abysmal.
Capeesh now?
+++++++++++++++++
But just for the record, I happen to like Moore’s films. So you can feel re-assured now. 🙂
Mary
“His presence at No10 also sheds new light on Mr Cameron’s preferred outfitters. It was previously known that he wears suits from the Savile Row tailor Richard James, which can cost up to £3,500.’”
________________
Thanks for that – which rather confirms what I said about £2000 for a bespoke two piece being cheap.
Also interested to hear that Cameron’s tailor is Jewish. Didn’t you once bring to our attention the fact that one of Cameron’s ancestors (a grandfather, perhaps?) was Jewish?