Pages

Sunday 2 August 2015

Corbyn - the losers' choice?

source

It is never easy to stir up much interest in the Labour party leadership contest, but Jeremy Corbyn has certainly managed to confound the expectations of the chattering classes. Perhaps they ought to raise their game or mute the chattering.

A short but interesting piece in politicalbetting.com by Keiran Pedley has this to say about the Corbyn phenomenon.

This week, a Labour supporting colleague that had seen my clip cornered me at work and said something that I thought was interesting:

“The thing you have to understand Keiran is that none of them can win anyway, so we might as well vote for Jeremy Corbyn”.


The Labour party has always seemed torn between the need to win elections and the sheer pleasure of letting its middle class malice and totalitarian silliness out of the bag. The days are long gone when it saw its role as promoting the interests of ordinary people. It never liked us much anyway.

Corbyn may not become leader of course, but the current situation is interesting and worth watching. Pedley goes on to make the point anyone with a modicum of foresight might make.

Labour cannot assume that because it got 30% of the vote in 2015 that the only way is up. Labour can lose votes too and the leader it chooses will be vital to whether things get better or worse.

Along with Pedley's colleague and no doubt quite a few others, I suspect the Labour leadership choice really is so dire that the party is past caring. Not so very different from the general election then.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can only add that governments lose elections, oppositions never win them. I reckon the Tories will win 2020 but by 2025 their usual defects will leave open an opportunity for any opposition that is still warm and still breathing.

Sackerson said...

Would choosing any of them, on either side, make us winners?

graham wood said...

But if Corbyn was unexpectedly in favour of a policy of leaving the EU and is prepared to speak out for such a policy then the political scenery would become quite complicated and would throw up all sorts of new permutations - not least the bizarre possibility of Tory eurosceptics supporting his stance and bid for leadership !

Demetrius said...

The Conservatives are already on course to lose the next general election. But who and what mix and match may succeed them is guess work. On the other hand if some people are correct it may not matter much because bad things will happen.

A K Haart said...

Roger - that may be what the Labour party is banking on. Meanwhile they intend to enjoy themselves.

Sackers - no, we are the losers either way.

Graham - he seems to have an ambivalent voting record on EU matters, often being absent.

Demetrius - if both Labour and Conservatives manage to lose, what then? Disenchantment seems rife but voters are reluctant to make something of it.