You might think that the Blairite Labour MPs would stop anonymously briefing and leaking against Corbyn, at least for the duration of the general election campaign. You would, however, be very wrong. The Blairites are so consumed by hatred, and so incensed that anybody should offer a political alternative to neo-liberalism, that they simply cannot stop. As ever, the right wing propagandists at the BBC are only too delighted to provide a conduit for their rage-fuelled accusations.
This, however, is stunning. The BBC Newsnight “policy editor” has just been tipped off, by two of the usual anonymous Blairite MPs, that Corbyn has stooped so low as actually to ask people to vote Labour, as part of his vile plot to seize power. I am not making this up. Chris Cook of Newsnight has actually just published this:
Two Labour MPs suggested to me he is trying to maximise the popular Labour vote to help bolster his argument for staying on in the event of a defeat.
How very dare he? Corbyn is trying to maximise the popular Labour vote? Surely that must be illegal or something?
The fact that Blairites now brief against Corbyn that he has the temerity to increase the Labour vote, after they shrunk it for two decades, is stunning evidence of how pointless and embittered the Blairites now are.
Most recent opinion polls show that Labour are already regularly above the 30.4% Ed Miliband’s Labour obtained at the last election, and on an upward trend. Which does not mean they are going to win, by any means. But it is very likely Corbyn will indeed increase the Labour vote, which is a rather awkward fact for the BBC and other MSM narrative.
The Tories will probably get their Pyrrhic victory in England and Wales on June 8th, but the harsh reality of Brexit is going to send their popularity plummeting with extraordinary speed. I have no personal doubt that this will lead to Scottish Independence becoming a fact within the next three years. I also hope that Jeremy Corbyn stays on to complete the task of purging Blairite influence and giving the people of England and Wales the chance of a political alternative that respects human decency.
@ HabbabkukMay 15, 2017 at 12:55
I wonder who came up with that expression ‘Evil Empire? Oh yes, now I remember, that bastion of liberty, morality and freedom, Roland (‘The Rat’) Ray-gun.
Surely must be some kinda mistake –
‘The Washington Times, June 29, 1989 (Front page story)
Homosexual prostitution inquiry ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush
‘Call Boys’ took midnight tour of White House
http://educate-yourself.org/tg/franklincoverupexcerptwashtimesphoto.shtml
Wasn’t it ‘him’ (it) that presided over the creation, funding, training and arming the murderous terrorist thugs (sorry, ‘Freedom fighters’ according to Ray-gun), the Contras?
And wasn’t it ‘him’ (it) that demanded the ‘services’ of MK-ULTRA sex slave Cathy O’Brien?
Yep, he should know all about ‘Evil Empires’, being the personification of evil and titular ‘President’ of the ‘Great Satan’ Empire.
re raygun . not forgetting the genocide of the Guatamalan Mayans, Operation Condor etc
Well said. How about that wonderful specimen Tom Watson livening our lives by indicating that Labour is doing its level best to avoid a Thatcher-style landslide for the Tories. How simply positive and supportive of Tom!!!
The last paragraph is absolutely spot on.
What Cook is actually saying is this, insert in bracket mine:
“Two Labour MPs suggested to me he is trying to maximise the popular Labour vote (in already safe Labour seats in order) to help bolster his argument for staying on in the event of a defeat.
(Instead of also focusing in seats considered Tory, or UKIP, territory).
Just had Laura Kuenssberg on Radio 4’s Today programme… on the launch of the Labour manifesto. Underhands digs from beginning to end. Amongst other gems, apparently the Labour party have been debating whether to call floating voters names in order to get them on board…
“The Tories will probably get their Pyrrhic victory in England and Wales on June 8th,…”
I am a pensioner and this is my view.. https://www.facebook.com/novaramedia/videos/1540160629358432/
The show ain’t over, as the saying goes, so let’s keep fighting… whoever loses can admit defeat when the results are in!
I couldn’t agree more……
A wise and intuitive analysis, the rhetoric in times gone by was of promises of full employment, make society better is now replaced by fear. Vote for us, we will protect you from terrorism and immigrants but we will take your liberty and credulity in return. To paraphrase Orwell the Tory jackboot will continue to stamp on the faces of the weak for the foreseeable future
before we all heat up under the collar.
It is those same Blairites who thought to check with our courts whether election promises hold any value or require commitment to fulfil them.
By a suitably named Lawrence Dodd (not dud)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politics-blog/11541708/The-court-case-that-proves-you-cant-sue-politicians-for-breaking-their-election-promises.html
Craig, I have no idea of the veracity of the following, but think they are worth noting. Nicky Campbell recently told the Big Questions audience in York during the warm up session, that a few labour MPs had told him they were hoping for a labour defeat so they could be rid of Corbyn. When I mentioned this to a long-standing, local labour campaigner, while he didn’t believe MPs would be prepared to lose their own seats for this, he believed that win or lose the GE, Corbyn would be ‘got rid of’.
I have never been party political but generally voted Lib Dem, at least tactically to avoid a Tory win. Largely, I had felt disenfranchised until Jeremy Corbyn ignited hope for some integrity in politics and potentially in government, so I joined the labour party. I am aghast at the arrogance and blindness of the Blairites and Corbyn haters in the party. The idea that ‘either way’ he will be ‘got rid of’ may just be loose talk, but I wonder how someone with a mandate from a majority of party members (and especially a mandate from the nation) could be eliminated from office? How could that be achieved?
Do they not see the crowds turning out for Corbyn? How do they assess the manifesto which is so genuinely attractive to voters? And if he increases the vote, win or not, how can they contemplate ‘getting rid’? How do they justify that to themselves?
Perplexed of York.
If Jeremy is ousted then before he retires he should start a new party of the left and take his supporters and their subscriptions with him. The Blair traitors can attract funds but they’ll be left without enough members to electioneer for the following election, and a new left party could split the right-wing vote. If the Tories take the election [I fear the rig is in] there will be serious unrest before their five years is up. They’re just too nasty and greedy to not force it.
I think it highly unlikely that Corbyn would be ousted, and I am absolutely certain that he will go to his grave 100% Labour Party. If anyone should leave the Labour Party and form a new party, it should be the right wing, who have done absolutely everything they can to ensure the failure of the left and the Labour Party and are now gearing up to blame their own stupidity and nastiness on the left.
I think a new left wing party would follow the fate of the SDP and other breakaways such as Respect and Socialist Labour. The name and its historicity are very important.
I agree but let’s not assume wishful thinking will win over. We’re talking about undemocratic and unprincipled people who want to take over the Labour Party because it’s an established movement. While it’s right that if the Labour Party splits it’s the Blairites who break away, but that would be playing fair and these backstabbing traitors do nothing of the sort.
It’s likely there’s going to be a huge split and nobody knows how that will pan out. Not planning for every outcome would be shortsighted and that includes the right wing purging the left.
‘If the Tories take the election (I fear the rig is in) there will be serious unrest before their five years are up.’ Agreed. And Brexit may have a significant contribution, unless the Tory Haphazards can get any of it right.
The spotlight may well turn back to Crooked Hillary:
Report: Investigator Says Evidence Showing Deceased DNC Staffer Seth Rich Was Emailing With WikiLeaks
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/05/15/report-investigator-says-evidence-showing-deceased-dnc-staffer-seth-rich-emailing-wikileaks/
As also on the FBI front once a new Head is appointed.
Recommend H.A. Goodmans youtube videos on the DNC.
Here is the transcript of Jeremy Corbyn’s speech this morning when he formally launched the party’s manifesto.
http://labourlist.org/2017/05/opinion-is-moving-towards-labour-corbyn-speech-at-manifesto-lanch/
Bravo Jeremy. All power to your elbow.
Well he’s certainly trying to elbow Scottish democracy and self-determination.
reel guid.
Yes if I recall Corbyn opposes a second indyref. His branch manager in Scotland, offers nothing to the Scottish public other than, harping on about how Scots don’t want another indyref.
Alas for Corbyn, after he loses the GE, the knives will be out to replace him, and they most certainly will. Of course Scots will then have to contend with the next Labour leader, who will undoubtedly oppose Scottish independence, and we will.
It is becoming fairly obvious that the SNP shares with the Blairites the fear that Labour might do well. Spare us the crocodile tears though. It is understandable that you put the interests of the SNP above those of the Scottish people, just disappointing. And an indication that, once independence has been won, the working class will be sent to the back of the bus again.
Bevin.
You haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. In Scotland Labour has held back Scots for decades, by kowtowing to London.
In Scotland Labour stood with the Tories hand in hand to denounce Scottish independence. Now those Labour voters that haven’t already fled to the SNP, are now giving their votes to the Tories.
The SNP are now the only centre left party in Scotland.
In Scotland there’s nothing socialist about Labour.
Bevin, there’s more to the independence movement than the SNP – it’s all about taking over the wheel of that bus you mentioned, to stop the Scottish working class from being ignored and used as cannon fodder for illegal wars – and build a society and economy that suits everyone’s needs.
‘Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!’
The Masque of Anarchy – Percy Bysshe Shelleyn1819
La Kuenssberg.
‘Video. This content does not seem to be working. Try again later.’
Yes I will Laura to check which size boot you are kicking Jeremy Corbyn with today.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39930865
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg writes:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
This is not an election where voters can say, with justification, “they are all the same”.
The just-launched Labour manifesto shows, in black and white, why that is simply not the case.
The party is including £48.6bn of extra tax rises, and the same in extra spending commitments.
In the coming hours, the details will be pored over at length; they matter enormously.
But the big picture is clear.
Jeremy Corbyn is taking the Labour Party in this election to a very different place – away from the recent consensus that the UK should be moving to lower borrowing, and lower taxation.
The manifesto spells out a vision, for good or for ill, of more spending, more tax, and more borrowing.
And in a big way.
Labour said it would return the railways to public ownership as franchises expire, or in some cases using franchise reviews or break clauses.
The manifesto did not set out how its plans to nationalise the national grid and the water industry would be funded.
Shadow cabinet member Sarah Champion told the BBC the water proposal was “an intent” and that Labour would “need to look at the legislation”.
The shadow secretary of state for women and equalities said: “To be quite honest, we’ve had three weeks, so this is an intent. So what we need to do is look at the legislation and see exactly what it is that we would pay to shareholders.”
Children in nursery Image copyright Reuters
Image caption
The manifesto promises an increase in subsidised childcare
Labour has already made a series of tax pledges, including increasing corporation tax from 19% to 26% and a “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions, to fund multi-billion pound spending commitments on health, education and policing.
The manifesto also includes a pay levy designed to discourage companies from paying “excessive” salaries.
Companies paying staff more than £330,000 will pay a 2.5% surcharge while salaries above £500,000 will be charged at 5%. Labour has said the move, designed to reduce pay inequality by bearing down on “very high pay”, will only apply to firms with “high numbers of staff”.
Treasury Chief Secretary David Gauke dismissed the Labour manifesto as “nonsensical”, claiming much of it was comprised of “non-funded spending proposals.”
He said the tax rises Labour had promised were “very, very unlikely to be delivered” and would “damage investment and drive away wealth creators and make the UK a much less attractive place to put jobs and investment.”
“It will make the UK a weaker economy,” he said.
SNP deputy leader Angus Robertson claimed the manifesto was full of “headline-chasing policy announcements” – adding that many of the pledges were already being delivered in Scotland by the SNP administration.
Liberal Democrat former cabinet minister Alistair Carmichael condemned Labour’s approach to Brexit, accusing it of “failing to stand up for our membership of the single market and refusing to give you the final say over the Brexit deal.”
She writes as she speaks. One sentence per paragraph.
Do you have any questions about Labour’s manifesto? Send us your questions and a BBC journalist will investigate the most popular.
Use this form to ask your question:
PS Mike Leigh is making a film about Peterloo.
If you are male, clean shaven, aged over 60 and have a good head of white or silver hair and want to take ,part as an extra, contact Piece of Cake casting. Auditions May 29th Haslemere.
http://www.pieceofcakecasting.com/become-an-artiste 🙂
‘They must be available for a costume fitting that week, and filming from Sunday, May 28 until Tuesday, May 30 inclusive.
The Peterloo Massacre occurred at St Peter’s Field in Manchester, when cavalry charged into a crowd of around 80,000 demonstrators calling for parliamentary reform. The bloody clash, which left 15 dead and hundreds injured, earned its name through comparisons to the Battle of Waterloo four years earlier.
Alexandra Pickford, director of Piece of Cake Casting, said: “It was a massive to-do at the time but it’s not really in our history books any more. That’s why Mike Leigh wanted to take it on. “It’s a classic story of the working classes versus the rich and of social uprising, so it’s great that he’s highlighting it and bringing it to the big screen.”
Talk of wealth creators often means middlemen who we could manage okay without. Like Richard Branson. He is’t an industrialist who invented a new product or a new process, he takes other peoples ideas and sells them – records, phones, plane and train tickets, financial products and now health care. We already had them and would manage without him and many others like him.
If these wealth creators want to go then let them go. Other sellers will move into the market and might even pay their taxes.
“Talk of wealth creators often means middlemen who we could manage okay without”.
Indeed and that is a fine post. The constant babbling of so-called wealth creators that they’ll move abroad if they are regulated or taxed should have their bluff called.
Almost all prominent “wealth creators” handed fame, fortunes and gongs are in fact wealth diverters – to themselves. Another classic case is Peter Jones from Dragon’s Den. Most of his fortune was made by capturing niche parts of an already existing telecomms market. Alan Sugar has not really manufactured anything for many years of any note. Most of his fortune has been made from property speculation. Other assumed entrepreneurs typically buy up businesses, asset strip them, put employees on zero hours contracts and cut customer service to the bone.
Other fortunes have been made by taking over state or local council functions or services for a profit (Capita,Serco,G4s etc). Then there are military supply contracts, NHS supply contracts, utilities, airports, transport. None of these businesses created anything. They merely diverted already tax paid functions to themselves as a result of lazy government departments too supine to offer the tax payer value by their own efforts. Hardly any of these giant companies are wealth creators.
The result is a massive transfer of wealth to the fat cats in theprivate sector but without any accountability to the tax payers who directly finance them.
The grant of a huge proportion of NHS’s employment structure to private agencies has resulted in over £11 billion of NHS budgets being transfered to private agencies at typically between three and four times the cost of in-house employment (another Dragon, James Caan, is a beneficiary).
None of the above have ever created anything new.
Nutshell, excellent
This comes as no surprise. They have always claimed that, whatever you think about them, at least they can win elections. If that alibi is destroyed then they fail badly,
Last year, the Observer reported that a Labour MP was considering defection to the Conservatives. Just a few days ago, the Telegraph reported that some Labour MPs were saying that they would remove Corbyn if re-elected.
Philip Cowley recently told the ‘Daily Politics’ that a number of Conservative MPs had told him that they preferred ‘Mushroom Cloud’ May to Corbyn.
“I also hope that Jeremy Corbyn stays on to complete the task of purging Blairite influence and giving the people of England and Wales the chance of a political alternative that respects human decency.”
Well said!
Latest subamples suggests the SNP have a huge lead over the Tories.
http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/latest-subsample-average-suggests-snp.html
New Panelbase Scottish sub-sample has the SNP on 56% and the Tories on 20%. And that can’t be too far out since recent sub-samples from different pollsters were showing the SNP at nearly 50%.
The recent local elections have been good for Scotland since they have highlighted the far right beliefs of Scottish Tory candidates and shown the people where the Tories would take Scotland. It looks like the voters of Scotland aren’t in favour.
Speaking of Blairites….
If Corbyn loses and stays there will be a new party, says Blair mentor
The time might be right for a “third way” with a new party if Jeremy Corbyn won’t go, says Tony Blair’s long-time election agent.
16 May 2017
Tony Blair’s mentor says that if Jeremy Corbyn loses the General Election and refuses to step down, the Labour right and centre will form their own party. And, says the former Prime Minister’s long-time election agent, John Burton, he would join it. It was Mr Burton who chose the fresh-faced young Mr Blair as the candidate for Sedgefield, the collection of pit mining villages in County Durham, the last Labour safe seat to choose a candidate for the 1983 election.
Blair went on to credit Burton with providing him with the anchor in working class opinion and thought that he, the Fettes educated Hackney lawyer, struggled to access. They became so close that as Burton told me in a spin around Sedgefield in my lorry, the young MP shared a home with Burton and his wife Lily.
“Lily became a sort of surrogate mother figure to him, as he’d lost his mother very young.” So close did they become, that when Lily died of cancer five years ago, Burton told me, Blair rushed back to County Durham from a summit in Jerusalem. He said: “This has not been broadcast…but I told him on the Monday she wouldn’t be here in a few days time. So he chartered a flight back from Jerusalem to Newcastle, taxi from there, and she was in his arms by 9am on the Tuesday. Says something about the man doesn’t it?”
Burton believes the current situation with the party is much worse than in the 1980s, the last time the right of the party faced down the far left. “New Labour was something which could have been built on. But it could now go backwards – it could go backwards to oblivion if Corbyn doesn’t go after the election.”
If that happens, he says there would have to be a new party, which he would support: “I would have to because this isn’t the party I’ve known, the party I’ve believed in.” On the question of whether Blair – with whom he is still in frequent contact – agrees with his analysis, Burton chuckles, refusing to be drawn: “Oh I don’t know, we haven’t discussed it. “But he was always talking about the Third Way wasn’t he? Neither left nor right. It would fit with his philosophy.”
Whatever their detractors, it’s always worth remembering that before Tony Blair and New Labour no Labour government had run to two full consecutive terms before New Labour.
Few would have thought, least of all Burton, that only twenty years later, many are openly speculating whether it can ever win again. If the polls are right and the party is reduced to a rump after this election, then whoever takes the reins might well look to this quiet corner of England for at least some of the answers for how a party on the brink might restore itself.
Burton might not be done yet.
http://news.sky.com/story/vote-2017-if-corbyn-loses-and-stays-there-will-be-a-new-party-says-blair-mentor-10880155
Sickening stuff esp the rush back from Jerusalem to Lily’s death bed by the great humanitarian/war criminal.
Only a cell on a cold island is good enough for him. Plus a loop playing of Iraqi children screaming as their dressings were removed and the lights on 24/7.
I do hope Jeremy stays on as Leader if Labour loses and though I think he can win I’m wary of a fix. It’s only proper it’s the Blairites who break away but their real intentions may be different. They might have eased back on the attack in case his supporters might not canvass for them locally, and also they may see he has a chance of winning so they’re waiting to steal his Premiership.
Blair won three elections because his principles were whatever’s popular but his values are Tory and his party could have been called New Tory. He said “Education. Education. Education.” without mentioning education fees, education fees, education fees.
“Only a cell on a cold island is good enough for him. Plus a loop playing of Iraqi children screaming as their dressings were removed and the lights on 24/7.”
Showing your true colours there – makes it easy to understand why you are so happy to support human rights abuses by whoever is the perpetrator.
Only for the supreme war criminals dear R2D2.
and I do NOT support human rights abuses. Stop slandering me.
A dock in the ICC at the Hague should be the place for BLiar but that is never going to happen.
Sadly the damage is already done. By the repeated demonisation of labour, the combination of the Tories , the press including the BPC* and of course the Blairites, the ordinary voter may live the policy but can’t bring themselves to vote Corbyn because everyone tells them not to. Even the squeaky Farron is attacking Corbyn and pretending to be the credible opposition, his party having assisted Cameron in the past.
There is a total disconnect here, people say they believe in a society that cares for the sick and disabled and poor but vote for the party that implements ultra neoliberal policy. There is little hope.
*BPC= British propaganda corporation especially in the context of foreign policy.
This might be one to lose with the consolation and confidence of a better performance than expected.
@ Hieroglyph May 16, 2017 at 00:19
‘Honest question. How seriously should we take allegations of Lucifarianism\Satanism at the highest, elite levels?…’
This is a good, well-documented video (if you go to the newspaper or other articles shown in the video):
‘Forget #PizzaGate this is #PedoGate… The “Farm” is now Mainstream’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnrkVweh-4c
I keep wondering about different possible scenarios. Part of it is the desperate hope that the polls are wrong and May will in some way be beaten, when we all know that is a remote possibility.
But I can’t help wondering about this. Labour lost the last election by 7 points. With the polls moving in his direction, and bearing in mind the Tory vote of only 38% in the local elections, getting close to that is not impossible. Add in the Lib Dems winning back 10-20 seats, and you could see May losing her overall majority, while still being by a clear margin the largest party.
So what happens then? Any bets on the Blairites breaking ranks and forming a “Government of National Unity” with May?
The one argument against that is that opposing Brexit seems to be such a core belief for the Blairites that I am not sure how they would reconcile it. But as a way of hanging on to power for another five years, lining up their directorships and (in their minds) further damaging Corbyn, part of me suspects they would go for it.
There are two ‘Election Questions’ meetings in London that I’m aware of:
MAY18
Election Question Time
Public · Hosted by Stop the War Coalition and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Thursday, May 18 at 6.30 PM – 8:30 PM
Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
235 Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2H 8EP London, United Kingdom
Find Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/election-question-time-tickets-34471620545
and:
MAY25
What if we win? What if we lose? The election and the movement
Public · Hosted by London Counterfire and Counterfire
Thursday, May 25 at 7 PM – 9 PM
Indian YMCA
Find Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/what-if-we-win-what-if-we-lose-the-election-and-the-movement-tickets-34318549706
http://www.eventbrite.co.uk
@Paul Barbara 16th May 01:22. According to Chomsky, post WW2 Nazi legacy lived on in the West. We see the results of this in the resurgence of Fascist movements which were associated with the Nazis in Croatia during the Balkan wars and more recently in the Ukraine.
“Several Labour MPs in those seats have made it clear that they think his presence will not help them persuade swing voters.”
From the article by Cook. And this is the crucial point about this election. There are some in the Labour Party working against the Labour Party.
One of the unreported effects of May’s call for a snap election was that Labour had no time to select its candidates through any sort of mechanism other than by central appointment and in consequence leading to the same old dissidents remaining and undermining Corbyn.
Also the campaigns underscore the fact that Corbyn’ Labour Party is truly democratic whereas Mays authoritarian campaign means that all the MPs are just subservient stooges.
Say that again. All of Surrey’s 11 MPs are Tories.
Hammond
Hunt
Gove
Raab
Milton
Blunt
Grayling
Gyimah
Kwarteng
Lord
and eight are/were secretaries of state or ministers.
Ballet dancer Mc Cluskey, so proudly re-elected with labours support last month, today thought to support Labour by saying that he does not believe they would win, already positioning himself for a possible centre right Labour party founded by a war criminal that has put parliament into disrepute, lied to voters and the public, a religiously haunted self server who has no respect for Labour members working their socks off,
Would this vain and self serving, political pariah, aspiring to cause another GE ( costs 300 million) by forming a new party with MP’s who sat in parliament with knife’s pointed at Corbyn and who’d expect to stay in their positions dare to set himself up as leader again?
Such a move would destroy labour forever and replace it with establishment rule as you go, no change here, and voters would have got nothing but chaos and grief from it.
Those who think that Wrecksit was a good idea, making a decision on the basis of utter drivel and innuendo, will find that it has destroyed the union and that it has destroyed UK politics forever. The one calling itself the greatest and oldest democracy in the world, hallo Greece, will be turning to fascist means to keep its people in check, as they could not fathom offering voters a truly democratic system and vote, they resulted to enacting HG wells most famous book.
get your Irish and Scottish passports in NOW.
“I have no personal doubt that this will lead to Scottish Independence becoming a fact within the next three years”.
Hmm, don’t think so.
After the close-run nature of the recent referendum on continued membership of the EU, in which – to the chagrin of the remoaner camp – a simple majority voted for #Brexit, it is likely that future referenda will require a super-majority of 60% to 75% of the votes cast (or 50%+ of the actual electorate).
On that basis, IndyRef and NindyRef (referendum for united Ireland in NI) will completely fail to reach their target outcome.
You deliberately misread “Corbyn is trying to maximise the popular Labour vote?”. It means that Corbyn is not trying to win the election (his backer in Unite says that won’t happen) but maximise his own following, so as to keep control post-election. He simply does not understand the concept of building a consensus. This condemns us hapless English to years of Tory domination.