VIDEO: Corbyn lays out Labour’s campaign message for the coming election
Corbyn promises to take on vested interests, break the rotten system and make a Labour victory a victory for the people. Does he mean it? Can he possibly pull it off even if he does? Time will tell. But his Q&A with the press is brave and quite impressive.
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As it stands, before the June 8th polls, the Labour Party has 229 MPs in the PLP – 172 of whom signed a vote of no confidence against Corbyn (and just 40 of whom backed him.) Of those 172, a significant number harken back to the ‘Glory Days’ of 1997-2007 as their finest. For those of you under thirty, and for those suffering from short term memory loss, let me do a quick recap of those years. Iraq Sanctions and ‘Desert Fox’ bombing: a ‘collective punishment’ Crime against Humanity (started in ’90), included the withholding of vital water purification equipment, despoiling vital medicines, food, etc. which led to 1.5m Iraqi deaths – of which 500,000 were children. In the currency of children’s lives for oil – was it really worth it? Overseen (from ’97) by Carne Ross for the Blair Witch Project. Sierra Leone: to open the ongoing Imperialist “Scramble… Read more »
Corbyn and Labour are committed to leaving the EU – so too are most of the rest of the British people. One of the reasons for leaving is to reverse the ratchet-effect of EU-required privatisations. Once an industry or part-industry is privatised, under EU rules it cannot be de-privatised. That is why so many in the Labour Party – and their supporters – support leaving the EU. An EU-free UK Government will then be able unilaterally to pass laws to nationalise any UK industries. Clearly, the mass media in the UK is unsupportive of any attempt by Corbyn and Labour to gain power. When was it ever really any different? With the mas media owned and controlled by tax-dodging billionaires, what else is to be expected. It should be noted – however – that Labour Governments have won power in the past. Labour today is the largest political party in… Read more »
Corbyn has been mush on Israel. As bad as Al Jazeera is, they did a good job exposing the Israel government’s meddling in British politics (which operation Craig Murray vowed to look into and write more about). See part 1 here: http://bit.ly/2jvKRVl. I hope I have this right. I believe that there’s a segment in one of their 4 shows on the subject that shows Corbyn just running scared, saying as many good things, without qualification, about Israel as he can and as many bad things about anti-semitisim as he can in order to appease agitators in his Party. I’m running out of time here in the coffee shop I’m in, where I have free data, so I can’t double check. At work, where I can play around on my laptop or read, I don’t have free data and I can’t afford my own.
”Corbyn and Labour are committed to leaving the EU … ” I wish that were true, Corbyn maybe, but the PLP is certainly not committed to leaving, in fact quite the reverse; the same is true of the soft left of the party and of the globalist left in general. Please see the remainers in Red Pepper and Sodium Haze in this respect. You know, those people who are aware what EU membership entails but will somehow contrive to ‘reform’ the EU from the inside. Yeah right! Don’t overthrow the Bourbons, reform them from the inside and make them see the light of day. The capitulation of Syriza and PODEMOS should be a salutary warning with regard to transforming the EU from the inside. Stated baldly, if a government takes for granted the institutional framework of the globalist elite and its insitutions – viz., the IMF, World Bank, WTO, NATO… Read more »
Yes, all very stirring stuff. But of course most, if not all, of Corbyn’s growth/redistributionist policies run completely counter to EU and possibly WTO rules. Rail nationalization, state aid to industry (industrial) policy, nationalization, exchange controls, capital controls, inflexible labour markets – nothing doing says the European Commission! You’ll have neoliberalism and like it! Thus Corbyn will need to be prepared for a fight to the finish with the EU bureaucracy and its 5th column remainers in the UK, and possibly even the US who have a geopolitical imperative for the EU to remain whole.
Will he be able to to this, or will he be Trumped by the EU deep state?
A big problem, in relation to elections, is that vast swathes of the once so numerous ‘working class and lower class’ no longer, (for various reasons – many of them structural) don’t vote anymore, which is just as the system likes it. It makes it so much easier to win elections in the UK if around half the people stay at home. Corbyn and his supporters are attempting to change this, but I fear it’s too late, at least for this election.
Corbyn is made to seem… weird, when he’s really a moderate, middle of the road, social democrat, surrounded as he is by a pack of snarling political
I hope Corbyn has more substance than Clegg. Clegg talked the talk, but once in coalition with the Tories, he folded and enabled the most reactionary Tory regime to go ahead effectively unchallenged.
I don’t think Corbyn will ever be given the chance to prove he has any substance. To a large degree fate as passed him by. What good it is to discuss what he could do if he’ll never get the chance to?
Corbyn: he can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk? One of the recurring topics here at OffG is the Syrian crisis: it may seem a disconnect to conflate the issue of Syria with GE2017 – but one of the main perpetraitors of the continuing suffering of the Syrian people is the British Deep State, (particularly for their sponsorship of the White Helmets.) I rejoined the Labour Party specifically to get Jeremy elected, but now I have deep misgivings. The red line for me was the Jo Cox Christmas Appeal for (among others) the murderous bastards known as the White Helmets. For me, a truly principled man would have spoken in condemnation of them – not supported and raised money for them. In recent months we can see where that money went: the war crime of cutting off the water supply to the civilian population of Damascus; the… Read more »
Wow! Corbyn has jumped on the White Helmets are heroes bandwagon?! I didn’t know that. Big fail there.
Yes, it was an internal Labour party circular “From Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson” dated 16/12/16. He stood with Treason May at PMQs to urge people to download the specially recorded ‘MP4’ single (which Hammond generously waived the VAT on.) Here is one of the few references I can find, so no real fail if you are not a member of the party.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/prime-minister-urges-nation-help-9456558
The content in that speech is exactly why everyone from the BBC to the Guardian want him to fail.
As organizations and individuals, everyone reporting on him in mainstream media benefit from the very systems he wants to tear down. The idea a man prepared to stand up in this world and say those things is not brave, or is somehow ‘weak’ is ridiculous. Weak is knowing those things and saying nothing.
what was the amateurish wobbling camera about? an attempt to make the viewer not to take this seriously? very dodgy from the BBC
Impressive speech from Corbyn. He articulated ideas and criticism that is taboo in most of the drainstream media.
Question is: Will it be heard and digested by the working class and underclass?
Only they have the numbers to bring about REAL change.