Click HERE to see this thread with all of the graphics, features, and links.

Amidst all the many threads about US politics, I think it's reasonable to look at a potentially significant UK development as well. I didn't really want to put 'left-winger' in the title, btw, as that makes it sound like an attack. but that's actually a faintly shameless way of trying to attract attention.

So, some points here about a. what is going on and b. why it matters. Hopefully you have the patience to read it through.

1. As I am sure many of you know, we recently had a general election in the UK (that's the big election where who is in government is determined) and, catching pretty much everyone by surprise, the relatively right-wing Conservative party not only won but won strongly enough to stand alone, not needing anyone else to partner up with. They had been in coalition with the centrist Liberal Democrats after failing to win outright last time, and getting another coalition had been assumed to be the best they would hope for this time- but they outperformed even their own best projections.

On an international stage this is important as the Conservative party broadly supports US foreign policy. It's no longer absolute (the UK parliament shot down Syrian intervention even in theory) but it's definitely there, and noticeably Obama's rhetoric towards the UK changed from rather distant in his first term to suddenly gushing in his second as the US became increasingly keen on keeping the UK on-side, particularly as US relations with Europe are not great right now (the Snowden scandal has hit German relations hard, and the Ukraine situation is causing trouble as well). So, the Conservative victory was welcome in the US.

2. The Labour party- left-wing (supposedly) opponents to the Conservatives and less well inclined towards the US (Blair was Labour but it was different in his day) was led by Ed Miliband, who had shifted his party somewhat leftwards in an attempt to distance from Blair and the Conservatives. his tactic clearly failed as he got trashed (in a separate development, they got destroyed in Scotland by nationalists- but they pretty much failed in England as well). Miliband hence resigned and the hunt was on for a new Labour leader that could meet the newly reinvigorated Conservatives.

3. The Labour party has a strong association with unions in the UK, and Ed Miliband only ever became leader (beating his own brother) because of the slightly unfair power of the Union block vote. The public is often suspicious of union power. Ed himself changed the rules whilst leader to make all registered Labour party members get a vote on candidates nominated by the parliamentary party so the unions could no longer have such influence.

4. With this system in place, the parliamentary Labour party produced several new candidates for leader. A bunch of them were very boring types ranging from dull Blairite copies to even duller Miliband-a-likes. But almost as an afterthought, they also nominated Jeremy Corbyn, one of the last remaining truly left-wing Labour MPs, a relic of the old days when Labour was a very left-wing socialist party that lost elections a lot, only becoming electable again in the 90s when they got rid of that power block. Corbyn was nominated almost as a joke- many of those who nominated him didn't want him, but they thought it would be 'fair' to include all views in the leadership contest. He was a fringe candidate just there to add a voice.

5. The problem is, where all the other candidates were dull and uninspiring, Corbyn is a great public speaker with a soft-spoken personality. He has the man-of-the-people look, wearing vests under his shirt and constantly using public transport. He spoke about ending austerity, re-nationalising public services, nuclear disarmament, general pacifism (he says he can imagine no possibility in which he would send troops abroad)- in short, stuff very, very different from the standard political spectrum right now. Before long, he was commanding (relatively) large rallies of people where all the mainstream candidates were being totally ignored.

6. Because of the new system for electing leaders, as I say, all party members get a vote- and suddenly, tens of thousands of new people suddenly joined the Labour party to vote for Corbyn. Rumour has it even Conservative party members were joining to get him elected on the idea that he will kill the Labour party. When it suddenly became clear that Corbyn might win, the parliamentary party entered total panic- one of those who nominated him for appearances only admitted she had been a total moron. Corbyn has virtually no support at all amongst the elected party- but because of the election rules, he was in a position to win leadership of it.

7. As of today, the party nightmare has become true. Totally unknown three months ago, Corbyn has stormed to victory with 60% of the vote and now leads the Labour party. Which means, if Labour win a general election, Corbyn would become the Prime Minister.

This is an inverted Donald Trump- the joke candidate who suddenly has a very real shot at power, devastating the centre ground of the party- except where Trump is over on the right, Corbyn comes all the way in on the left.

Corbyn is a true, hardcore socialist who has faced questions over, for example, his links to anti-Israeli organisations, paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland and former communist leaders in Eastern Europe. He openly admits the significance of Karl Marx's political work, and that's almost unheard of in political leaders these days.

In short, for all you socialist haters out there, Corbyn represents everything you hate- the antithesis of your political views, but wrapped up in an agreeable personality (so he's not THAT much like Trump...). As such, the possibility he might become PM scares the shit out the US administration because he would destroy the US' current best link into Europe.

Now, the political reality almost certainly is that Corbyn is unelectable and the Labour party has just shot itself. Nonetheless, for the first time in decades, we now have a major voice in UK politics advocating far left policies. WIth US sentiment in Europe at a a delicate point, this is very significant for international politics.

He's also not a big fan of the EU because he feels they betrayed the workers in Greece. Right now he's backing Euyrope but that could change; if anti-EU sentiment takes hold in BOTH UK mainstream parties (the Conservatives are generally sceptical), than the UK is almost certainly going to leave the EU.

In any case, rather like Trump, the big point is that he's actually made politics a bit interesting, hence all the people signing up to vote for him.

Big times ahead; US presidential candidates will be keeping a close tab in this one, if they have any sense.

Word also has it that Europe is shifting to the left in general- is this the experience from other Europeans here?

Don't worry, we'll "take care" of this uppity fellow. Does Mr. Corbyn like milkshakes?

Originally posted by Tzeentch
Don't worry, we'll "take care" of this uppity fellow. Does Mr. Corbyn like milkshakes?

Only when they have Polonium in them.

Lol, this milk shitter was elected with an open primary. The opposition party voted him in trying to sabotage his party.

Interesting developments. This will probably just end up being a wakeup call for Labour to get their act together.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
Interesting developments. This will probably just end up being a wakeup call for Labour to get their act together.
Pretty much this.

Originally posted by Ushgarak

Word also has it that Europe is shifting to the left in general- is this the experience from other Europeans here?

So, I don't follow German politics as closely, because they are dreadfully boring (did you know that our parliament doesn't yell and boo regularly? Where's the entertainment value?). But Merkel has been moving our conservative party more to the center, adopting a lot of the talking points of the more left leaning party, which some say is part of her success, she's really not very controversial (something like 60+ percent of people usually approve of her). Now, while that is a move to the left for the conservative party, I'm not sure it is a move to the left in the way you meant, I don't know if the more extreme left movements really have a much bigger draw in German politics. To be honest it seems more like they have gotten less so, and partisan politics have gotten less severe (of course they still disagree, but I guess with a "great coalition, i.e. Germany's two biggest parties together in power, that makes a lot of sense).

I guess 'they' mean 'except Germany' then.

Mind you, with the Conservatives having just won an election in the UK, it is pretty odd to say it's going left-wing; the vote this year was MORE right-wing than the last election. Corbyn just got a quarter of a million people to vote him in as Labour leader but he has an electorate of closer to 50 million to try and convince if he wants to be PM.

I don't think anyone seriously thinks Corbyn can do it (he has, incidentally, never held any sort of official position in his party and he has no administrative experience- for that matter, he had to be persuaded to run for leader; he had no particular ambitions in that way) but it is the extent to which he will now give voice to certain opinions, like the unions and general disarmament (he's praised Costa Rica for having no army).

So, the next election is only in 5 years. Are there any methods in the Labour party to change their leadership until then? Additionally, does the leader of the party necessarily have to be the candidate for the Prime Minister spot?

Yes he does- the leader of the party has to go to the Queen to ask permission to form a government, and hence becomes her Prime Minister (before anyone goes crazy nuts there, that's just ceremonial).

There are several mechanisms to remove him. It only takes 20% of Labour MPs (46 right now) to force a leadership challenge, and seeing as when the original nominations from MPs came, Corbyn had fewer than 20 backing him out of 232 (before others were asked to lend him a nomination to 'broaden the debate'), getting that number will be extremely easy. Virtually no-one in the parliamentary party wants Corbyn and nearly all the front bench spokesmen for the party (the people who would become Ministers and what-not if Labour won) resigned when he won.

The thing is, if there is anything worse than having Corbyn as leader as far as publicity goes, it would be immediately knifing your own leader when he just got a huge democratic mandate under rules your own party had introduced very recently. It's the kind of thing you have to take on the chin, really. For sure, after Corbyn goes, they'll change the rules again so it something like this can never re-occur.

They will wait for some practical moment to strike- we have Scottish and Local elections next year to test how Labour polls. A rebel group known as 'Labour for the Common Good' has already been started and Labour's biggest individual financial backer has already switched his funding to them rather than the main party.

Of course, Corbyn can fight back. He likely has the local party mechanisms on his side- and what the local party groups do is nominate who stands for MP. In theory, he could force current MPs to be de-selected so they would not be able to stand as Labour MPs at the next election.

Don't see what all the fuss is about Jeremy Corbyn.

Gareth Bale is a far more dangerous left winger.

Ow, my soul...

Originally posted by walshy
Don't see what all the fuss is about Jeremy Corbyn.

Gareth Bale is a far more dangerous left winger.

Ha.

I find the Tory reaction interesting, as if he was the worst thing ever.




These'd be good.

What happened with the British railroad was a joke. It was working, they privatized it, got more big accidents, and then started pouring in more money than it ever got when it was nationalized in order to pretend that privatization worked.

*I work in a railroad related area.

Corbyn will hopefully redress the balance of four decades of right centre politics in the U.K. but it is early days and yes, New Labour were right centre. Thatcher even stated her greatest achievement was New Labour, the shifting of the Labour Party to the centre right. An opposition which does not oppose as with the recent vote "Welfare vote" is no opposition and has no point. Austerity does not work and Brown was not to blame for the Banking Crash, the global banking crash.

Corbyn is not that radical.

By any rational or useful definition of the term, he is.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
By any rational or useful definition of the term, he is.

By the modern political spectrum of the U.K. he is, from a postwar Socialist perspective, where all the great things like the NHS and Welfare state were created, he really isn't. It's just the powers that be have homogenised the spectrum so Kendall is interchangeable with a Tory wet who is interchangeable with Nick Clegg etc.

He's considerably to the left of Attlee. who took an aggressive stance on international relations. Corbyn is a pacifist and pro-Russian (once pro-Soviet). Attlee, an anti-communist, was big on re-interpreting socialist principles in a British flavour, whilst Corbyn openly sings Marx's praises.

Corbyn's brand of left-wing politics is of a strength that there has never been a point in British politics where he would not have been seen as radical. Outside of Sinn Fein (also radical), he is about as left wing an MP as there has ever been. His is precisely the sort of politics that doomed the Labour party in the 70s and 80s- not because of some right-shifting conspiracy by your vague 'powers that be', but because the public always hated it.

Basically, if Corbyn is not radical, the term no longer has any meaning.

Double post

Originally posted by Ushgarak
He's considerably to the left of Attlee. who took an aggressive stance on international relations. Corbyn is a pacifist and pro-Russian (once pro-Soviet). Attlee, an anti-communist, was big on re-interpreting socialist principles in a British flavour, whilst Corbyn openly sings Marx's praises.

Corbyn's brand of left-wing politics is of a strength that there has never been a point in British politics where he would not have been seen as radical. Outside of Sinn Fein (also radical), he is about as left wing an MP as there has ever been. His is precisely the sort of politics that doomed the Labour party in the 70s and 80s- not because of some right-shifting conspiracy by your vague 'powers that be', but because the public always hated it.

Basically, if Corbyn is not radical, the term no longer has any meaning.

Everyone should sing Marx praises, that said Marxism in it's true form has never been tried it's always been subverted by someone in the system e.g. Lenin and Stalin.

No, he is no more left than Skinner, Benn or a million others. CND was pervasive in the 70's and 80's and who's to say it was wrong, in those days many M.P.'s would visit Greenham Common. As for my vague shifting theories, Owen Jones book "The Establishment", explains it all far more clearly than I could. IDS would never have got away with his radical, murdering policies in the 70's, 80's or even 90's and to be fair they are far more radical than anything Corbyn propagates. Those policies didn't doom the Labour party, Thatchers greed first ideology doomed the Labour party.

That and the power of the Sun, eventually the poll tax doomed the Tories for a generation but they won one more election and none of it mattered as the heartless policies of Thatcher had become pervasive and poisoned Labour.

If you want to sing Marx's praises, fine- but don't pretend that's not radical.

He's significantly more left than Benn and Skinner (who you will note will not serve with Corbyn). The left-wing of the Labour party pretty much had him last on the list of candidates they wanted to stand as leader (then just for demonstrative purposes rather than thinking they could win) because Corbyn was considered too extreme.

Thatcher only got in because Labour destroyed itself in the 70s via its struggle with is far left- you have a hefty historical ignorance there if you don't think that is true (just look up winter of discontent). That's why Kinnock- hardly a moderate- had to spend the 80s destroying that wing of his party to make Labour an even vaguely practical party. You can't blame Thatcher for what Labour did to itself- nor can you blame her for the public rejecting that Labour policy. She didn't have mind control.

That part Kinnock destroyed is the part Corbyn represents (and is one of the last few remnants of)- the genuinely radical part.

So do you like him?

Double post again.

Yeah, you're pretty much just paraphrasing your hero there aren't you? And, again, you;re rather missing the point that it was the people that rejected left-wing Labour policy; it was no tactic by Thatcher that made that magically happen.

Regardless, this leaves Corbyn as a hefty radical and you're wasting your breath trying to say otherwise.

TI- seems a nice enough guy (plenty of allegations about his personal life, but that likely applies to everyone) but his policies would be a disaster.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Yeah, you're pretty much just paraphrasing your hero there aren't you? And, again, you;re rather missing the point that it was the people that rejected left-wing Labour policy; it was no tactic by Thatcher that made that magically happen.

Regardless, this leaves Corbyn as a hefty radical and you're wasting your breath trying to say otherwise.

TI- seems a nice enough guy (plenty of allegations about his personal life, but that likely applies to everyone) but is policies would be a disaster.

In simplest terms the Falklands saved Thatcher and allowed her to push her agenda on.

Originally posted by Knife
In simplest terms the Falklands saved Thatcher and allowed her to push her agenda on.

As for Corbyn being radical, he has to my knowledge never given a speech like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VRRWuryb4k

or hung out with Pinochet, knighted a paedophile (Savile). Been pals with Pinochet etc.

On a scale from 1to a lesbian muslim feminist, how progressive is this milk shitter?

Why not read Ushgarak's posts and find out? He's basically explained it all here.

Originally posted by Knife
As for Corbyn being radical, he has to my knowledge never given a speech like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VRRWuryb4k

or hung out with Pinochet, knighted a paedophile (Savile). Been pals with Pinochet etc.

Horrible though this is, I think you have to understand here that being anti-gay in the 1980s was not radical. By the late 80s, gay rights had got a pretty good grip and being anti-gay enough to legislate against it in this way was certainly not centre politics (it was certainly one of the worse things Thatcher did) but it was well supported publicly. It was not extreme policy. Radical on the right in the 80s was the BNP.

Basically, any policy that actually became law since WWII in the UK has not been radical- radical politics keeps losing in the UK because the system draws everything towards (though not necessarily within) the centre. Even before the war, the UK was noticeably free of the communist vs fascist splits that tore Europe apart

Corbyn as leader is the first break from that in decades- though if, as predicted, he fails, then it's business as usual.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Horrible though this is, I think you have to understand here that being anti-gay in the 1980s was not radical. By the late 80s, gay rights had got a pretty good grip and being anti-gay enough to legislate against it in this way was certainly not centre politics (it was certainly one of the worse things Thatcher did) but it was well supported publicly. It was not extreme policy. Radical on the right in the 80s was the BNP.

Basically, any policy that actually became law since WWII in the UK has not been radical- radical politics keeps losing in the UK because the system draws everything towards (though not necessarily within) the centre. Even before the war, the UK was noticeably free of the communist vs fascist splits that tore Europe apart

Corbyn as leader is the first break from that in decades- though if, as predicted, he fails, then it's business as usual. The anti guy agenda in the eighties was incredibly radical it's why people marched against it and stopped the many policies like the section. THE truth is in large parts of the u.k. the right have always been unelectable and socialist values never died. Hence the north south divide and the Scotland issue. To believe Corbyn's policies are more radical than a atos assessments etc. Is pretty strange we have a government killing the most vulnerable. What could be worse for the UK than that. With a mandate from under 30% of those eligible to vote. The truth is all Corbyn has to do is tap into those that don't vote now in actually quite small numbers.

No, people protesting does not make something radical- not even vaguely. If anything, it was the gay rights movement that was rooted in radicalism, and gay rights were in no way particularly popular in left wing voting areas (it was never a working class cause). Anti-gay rights in the 80s was close to the mainstream. Even into the 90s, opposing gay rights wasn't radical (it had a lot of support), it was just losing the argument. Incidentally, do check your facts- Section 28 was not stopped. It wasn't repealed until the 21st century. The fact that it was passed as law fairly much demonstrates it was within the mainstream. It had the support of all major religions and many mainstream newspapers. It was not even remotely radical. Don't confuse 'radical' with 'things I do not like'.

The mandate of the current government is actually pretty solid as far as governments go- there's no particular issue there. That tapping you imagine will never happen. Corbyn is never going to command any significant voting strength- everyone knows it.