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.
Saudi cables- story in need of attribution. The cable cites ‘foreign newspapers’ for the airspace story. The latest manifestation, by Israel’s Channel 2 News, cites an unnamed European diplomat as the source of the now brand-new (Feb 2015) story. Perhaps he’d read the cable: there are no details, and it’s essentially the same story, unless the Saudis felt the need to give permission twice. But the cable dates from 2010. Looks like someone picked up on a (true? Or Debkafile?) report, included it in his weekly summary, and the panic started there. The rest of the cable mention’s Saudi’s expressed, though probably calculated, hostility to Israel at the time.
“Tonights bed time story for you is….Once upon a time,there was a Village idiot.”
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As I said earlier/elsewhere, Postman, sharpen up your faculties some. You really betray the limitations of your intellect and sense of humour, the more you post.
Carry on chump.
Villager, are you a teacher?
“Something personal had come up”, said the man.
It reminds me a little of all those govt. front-benchers resigning “to spend more time with my family” LOL
Listen you sad prickish and nosy bore, I would have attended if I could have, you will never know, whilst you, ‘Greek specialist’, now we know, would have had to break your faggots prick up your arse first before you’d have any chance of moving. You are one sad arse licking gobshite.
and do enjoy your weekend,
“Are you meeting up with us tomorrow? I’m buying the first round if you do.”
So, there is a meeting tomorrow to solve Humanity’s/the Worlds problems and the conversation will be dissolved in alcohol?!
There ain’t no backdoor to Heaven guys, sorry.
Phil, as you would say, hilarious!
Clark 19 Jun, 2015 – 10:26 pm
lol.
Yea, I think our problem is actually the opposite, too much in-breeding. look in areas where it happens, like almost totally white dominated ones. They vote ukip. And they don’t look the healthiest/most attractive human beings at a general glance. Maybe natures way of saying something.
This line is a hoot!!
“The immigrant with a settler mentality” rants the white hope whose ancestors were probably kicked out of yea olde Enggeeerrrland and ended up in that Canada, or perhaps sold to slavery? However this specimen then tries to garner legitimacy through adding “globalist” does it know who these “globalists” are?
I bet this one exhibits a very protruded and short brow, otherwise the unconscious driveling of the time lines of; “Human, and Europe” etc random rants to prove a point! What point?
Why all these supremacists feel the compunction to invoke history and seek precedence?
“John Goss
Are you meeting up with us tomorrow? I’m buying the first round if you do.”
So they’ll be a double first round? In that case, I’ll be there.
“Everyone the same, I tell you, like communism! Quick, quick! Panic, panic!” Clark.
!Beware Reds under the beds!
!Beware Reds IN the beds!
Lovely post, Nevermind (irony). Unfortunately, much as I disagree with Habbakuk (see above) it makes me want to defend him against this kind of repulsive, crazy attack. Was this what you meant to encourage with your viciousness?
But hey, we’re all just amusing by-play.
“So, there is a meeting tomorrow to solve Humanity’s/the Worlds problems and the conversation will be dissolved in alcohol?!
There ain’t no backdoor to Heaven guys, sorry.”
_____________________
A bit rich coming from the Village idiot,who proclaimed he hasn’t read other posters comments,mind you,your Habb-esque style comments are suspect to say the least.
Village idiots end up in the stocks you’d best be careful.
The Postman always knocks twelve times! :
“A bit rich coming from the Village idiot’
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Even your village idiot chime shows your lack of intellectual imagination and ingenuity! Can you really do no better? Come on Dover, move your blooming’ arse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tc9BWUw_4o
Clark
19 Jun, 2015 – 10:37 pm
Villager, are you a teacher?
__________
Hello Clark, good to see you back after some time. Hope you’re well, and it did seem that way when i had a quick look through squonks.
Why do you ask?
Anyway, the answer is while we all learn from each other, I think I’m more of a student (of Life), than a teacher.
I’m fascinated about the width and breadth of the amount of shallow thinking that goes on in this world and why?
Hotlegs (10cc pre-Gouldman): A bunch of Ashkenazi Jewish guys (and Eric Stewart) from Manchester pretending to be Neantherdals-in-love, playing African-American/Country-and-Western post-British Beat hybridised music. Music is a good metaphor for the human condition. Which is why music, is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiWu7Csn2HY
“Of course unlike Westminster,Holyrood isn’t driving around in vans with signage telling immigrants to go home.”
As has been established on numerous occasions, the so-called “racist vans” were telling illegal immigrants to leave. Not that these signs had any impact, or that any illegal immigrant actually read any of them, because it was just a stunt.
Last year, under the Tories, legal immigration was up to 640,000. That is the real issue here. Unsustainable in jobs, services, housing, resources and community cohesion.
Enter Suhayl to accuse me of hating his brown skin (he loves that sort of overly dramatic self-stereotyping), but I object also to CanSpeccy’s racially-based arguments. I welcome immigration, but the Murrayites are absolutely onside with the establishment in demonising anyone who opposes the insanity of unlimited mass-immigration. It’s a shame CanSpeccy offers them the kind of opposition that they hope for.
Anon1 at 11;22pm today: I didn’t accuse you of anything. Forgive me, but I didn’t really see your posts at all (not because they are not important but simply because it’s a long thread!). I was responding to Alfred’s (Can Speccy’s) posts.
What is the difference between a Snowman and a Snowwoman?
Answer: Snowballs.
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Now take inspiration from that one, and tell me what is the difference between CuntSpeccy and SpeccyCunt?
10 quid for the most popular-rated, witty answer.
Well it’s got quite hostile, or feisty this thread. Can’t say I mind it. Maybe it’s that anarchist protest vibe kicking in.
Mmm, a fitting tune after 10bc …..Erm…, I Want To Break Free? The Bad Touch?
Naa not my thing, aside from lennon, this was one of my first awakening songs. Some things you just know are true before scientific conformation. Pinnacle of American creativity, progressive society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW1fXL3s7bk
See you all at the rally People’s Parliament against austerity. Apart from thos abroad. Sorry, it will be big without you guys.
Just to Say…
i’ll be there in Spirit in George Square tomorrow, where we have our Anti-Austerity Rally. Good Luck all in London.
Nevermind, as Phil said on Squonk.. i too hope all is ok.
and it is nasty of Habb to take your Quote from Squonk…no thoughts whatsoever as to why you can’t make it… But as i say Hope all is ok… Best wishes to the Missus too
“See you all at the rally”
Another hypocritical, unthinking, vacuous duffer of the first kind.
@Villager
20 Jun, 2015 – 12:00 am
You seem delighted in being snowballs.
And never forget that you lot are going to be put on trial sometime soon.
“i’ll be there in Spirit in George Square tomorrow, where we have our Anti-Austerity Rally. Good Luck all in London.”
One more and counting. This one is a martial arts warrior, keeping his powder (and perhaps brain) dry.
Yes, very good luck!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/19/police-crack-down-on-activists-on-eve-of-london-austerity-march
The first actions against the March by the Met Police before it’s even started .
Good luck and congratulations to all who’ll be able to attend .
Remember for every one person attending there a is larger group supporting the demo who can’t attend for a variety of reasons , jobs , distance , ill health or family responsibilities etc .
Overnight one troll performs his classroom sneak act within the total of his 17 comments and another makes 9 pointless comments, some mucky. All that’s missing is Jemand wirh one of his racist Pat Condell videos.
Good diversions and distractions as per usual.
Back to the ‘unelectable left’ and politics. More stuffing of the red benches and Harperson hopes to be able to add ‘her favourites’ to the list. What a rotten system of preferment and patronage.
Labour grandee Jack Straw is denied a peerage over lobbying sting which saw him ‘boast about political connections’
Jack Straw will not be given a seat in the Lords alongside Labour grandees
David Blunkett and Alistair Darling will get peerages, party sources reveal
Former PM Gordon Brown thought to have declined the offer of a peerage
Labour honours list was written by Ed Miliband before his election defeat
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3132180/Labour-grandee-Jack-Straw-denied-peerage-lobbying-sting-saw-boast-political-connections.html
Titles for Blunkett and Darling?
Best wishes to all those going on the protest march. I wish I was able to come but I will be with you in spirit. Watch out for Theresa’s army.
Thousands To Join Anti-Austerity Protests
The People’s Assembly, which is organising the demonstrations, say it is the start of a campaign of strikes and direct action.
http://news.sky.com/story/1505401/thousands-to-join-anti-austerity-protests
Our police are cracking down on protestors before the rally starts so we can guess whose side they are on. However we are not as bad (yet) as the western-backed coup government which stole power in Kiev. As well as dozens of opposition figures having been murdered many more have been suicided. In this new democracy watching Russian TV is not allowed. In this new deomcracy it is illegal to be a ember of the Communist Party. And the latest is this: the building of concentration camps to hold inhabitants of the Donbas region. Resident Dissident, Uzbek in the UK and Evgueni are all welcome to these nasty fascists.
http://en.hunternews.ru/?p=1517
See you on the march.
Totally agree. It’s the corporate media trying to shut down the political debate and install a stooge for their masters. They don’t want anyone independently minded because then they wouldn’t do what they are told. So they ‘denounce’ anyone who doesn’t toe the line as ‘weird’, ‘extreme’ or ‘left-wing’. I’m not a Labour supporter of of the Left but I’d much sooner vote for a party led by Corbyn than Burnham or any of the others. That’s probably partly what our toady media fear – someone who might represent the British people.