Dirty tricks against Corbyn not working

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If the YouGov poll is accurate Jeremy Corbyn will easily be re-elected as British Labour leader. He polls 62% to his opponent Owen Smith’s 38% and leads in every region and age group.

Corbyn’s opponents have tried every trick in the book to dent the Labour leader’s support.

The party’s national executive, then with an anti-Corbyn majority, voted to exclude 130,000 new members from voting. That only seems to have riled those longer-term members who could vote.

Then Labour deputy leader Tom Watson tried red-baiting, claiming the party was being taken over by hard-left “Troskyist entryists”. Jeremy Corbyn responded by asking Watson to “do the maths – 300,000 people have joined the Labour Party. At no stage in anyone’s most vivid imagination are there 300,000 sectarian extremists at large in the country who have suddenly descended on the Labour Party.”

Corbyn’s supporters have also been accused of nastiness towards Owen Smith, yet Smith himself has called Corbyn a lunatic.

The almost daily mass media scandal-mongering about Corbyn has fallen flat. They thought they’d finally nailed the Labour leader when Richard Branson released a video appearing to disprove Corbyn’s claim that he couldn’t get a seat on one of Branson’s over-crowded trains. Corbyn had been photographed sitting on the floor. It transpired that Corbyn had witnesses to testify the seats were taken or reserved. The net result was more publicity for Corbyn’s campaign to re-nationalise Britain’s broken rail system.

At bottom it’s Corbyn’s policies that so frighten the Labour Right. MPs like Owen Smith have more in common with the Conservatives on such policies as spending 200 billion pounds renewing Britain’s Trident nuclear strike capacity.

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So much tripe has been written about Corbyn being “unelectable”. Interestingly, the YouGov poll shows that Corbyn’s supporters are mostly confident (56%) that he could lead Labour to victory, whereas Owen Smith’s supporters are less confident (33%) that their candidate could do it.

Corbyn’s “principled” and “honest” politics, recognised in the YouGov poll, will carry him a long way. Thousands have turned up to his leadership rallies across the country because, whatever Corbyn’s weaknesses, they identify with what he stands for. One supporter explained that “the reason so many have coalesced round him anyway is because they view his leadership as the only opportunity they have had on at least 30 years to see their views finally represented in public life.”

A crucial ingredient for winning an election today is to have an enthusiastic mass movement behind you. Jeremy Corbyn has that. Owen Smith doesn’t.

21 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks Keith 🙂

    Yes it does seem likely, assuming a relative lack of voter fraud.

    Interesting times are about to get much more interesting.

  2. Corbyn has ignited Labour’s base.
    Little does the opposite.
    Are any Labour members in NZ going to put their time and energy into the next election?

    • Little has certainly ignited interest in Labour membership and policy. He gives a calm, capable impression as the next Prime Minister.

    • I don’t think Little is that bad. Kiwis are conservative and if you want a change of government then you need a party that can take the Natz votes. If all the left parties start going for the 30% poo who are most feeling the National reforms then Natz might come in again.

      The problem (one of) last election with Labour is that they are still too Nat Lite with austerity for middle NZ. Last time labour’s austerity with extra taxes did not ignite the support of the people it needed to. 1 million people did not vote. That is the 1 million people Labour need to target.

      I’m not saying that Labour need to be really conservative and certainly need to abandon it’s Nat Lite approaches, but the UBI and Greens MoU is defiantly showing where Labour is heading and I think that is a positive direction.

      Greens and Mana need to pick up the 30%. Labour need to win the hearts of the rest of the Nation 70% up for grabs, with a mix of integrity, appropriate foreign policy, change away from global neoliberalism and the trickle up under the Natz, ban the TPP and strategy.

      • I generally agree. Little is an improvement on Cunliffe who proved to be a wet-blanket and shifted to the right.
        I hope Little keeps moving to the Left – I think that’s his best chance for next year.

    • I think this puts the cart before the horse. Corbyn would be “gone by lunchtime”, not to mention never being elected leader in the first place, if it wasn’t for the massive and ongoing efforts by working class UK Labour supporters to take their party back from the middle class neoliberals. To think of Corbyn as being in control of this process is delusional, and besides, when you stop and think about it, one person controlling everything is not even what we want.

      Think of Corbyn and Little as the rope in a game of tug’o’war between the working class and the neoliberal rump of sitting Labour MPs and apparatchiks, or perhaps more accurately, the swinging needle on the face of an influence-o-metre. What Little’s public statements indicate is how successful the membership has been so far in influencing NZ Labour and how much more work they still have to do to beat back the remaining neoliberalism.

      • True, I’m not saying Corbyn is in cotrol. I’m saying NZ Labour needs a Corbyn – and they don’t have one.
        I agree that Corbyn’s power comes from the people behind him, but I think that is possible in NZ too.
        Cunliffe was talking in not too dissimilar tones before he swept to win the leadership of the Labour Party, but then Cunliffe pivoted to the right and lost support from the base. Corbyn didn’t move right and his supporters were empowered, and they’ve become more powerful.

        • We would never know who Cunliffe was from the media smears, the nz dirty tricks worked a treat on Cunliffe, as they had on Goff prior to that. Character assassination of good men. Now we are warier – and faced with a smear from the slimy “Guyon E-spinner”, Mr Little pauses, thinks, then says “no I didn’t say that.” and keeps on message. This straight talking, non- soundbite approach is also part of Corbyn’s appeal.

          • +1 Bushie

            Cunliffe could have been great, but his own party worked against him, the strategy was wrong like some Nat Lite poser was doing some sampling and feeding garbage in. Who knows what went wrong. Labour’s last election campaign was like some sort of National led Chch rebuild effort clusterfuck.

            Cunliffe is still one of the best in Labour. And a good leader know how to use their team effectively and not fear competition. Little should be using Cunliffes exceptional debating skills and popularity to keep the left of centre Labour on side. He’s already doing that by using Cunliffe on Waatea for example.

            Yep there are Labour wobbles, supporting the security spying bill for example and being weak on NO TPPA but also the good, tie up with Greens, Northland.

            Labour are still polling low because of the wobbles, but theres plenty of time to improve and they are on the right track.

            • Bushie and Save NZ – I judge every leader of every party by the policies they put forward. Cunliffe didn’t even have a policy to build more state houses, and we all knew the housing crisis was there.

              Corbyn has had more push back from his MPs than what Cunliffe had. And Corbyn is facing a more critical press. I just think Cunliffe didn’t walk his talk. His strategy was to pivot to the right.

              The press and party MPs were a problem for Cunliffe, but he showed no desire to shift Labour left

  3. There must be some in the British Labour caucus that support him.
    For those that don’t why don’t they put their money where their mouths are and either join another party, or form their own party. They won’t do either because it is too much like hard work and too politically risky. They would rather remain on the opposition benches than be in a Corbyn-led government.
    We saw some of this in the last elections here too. There were a sizeable number of Labour MPs who did not want to win the 2014 election and were content simply to campaign in their own electorates, bugger the party vote, and increase their own majorities.

    • People are tired of being rail ROADED into neo-conservative privatisation modelling while they are deliberately removing government from the responsibility of managing the “Environmental/social contract” with “we the people” that has stood the test of time that is now under threat with the rise of cronyism and right wing privateers.

      Long live socialism again as Capitalism is collapsing without socialism intertwined.

  4. The ‘tricks’ are getting dirtier. An article by Michael Foster in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz starts “Jeremy Corbyn Is a Bully, Bad for Democracy, for Britain and for British Jews. The Labour leader wears a kind face in public while using authoritarian means and his Momentum bullyboys to complete the far left’s hold on Labour. And Corbynistas’ real enemy target? British Jews like me.”

    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.739891

    • Categorising on grounds of race or religion usually has a motive. Often not stated or without rational and balanced examination.

      What has Israel got to do with UK elections.

      • The answer is – a great deal! Zionist ideologues have taken the lead in promoting irrational hate propaganda against Jeremy Corbyn and their influence is a menacingly disproportionate threat to democracy. Israel is at the epicentre of Middle East instability and the impunity it enjoys is thanks to this massive power elite. Corbyn and the people who support him see an opportunity for the truth to be widely aired. Democracy is strengthened by a well-informed public – and that is what terrifies Corbyn’s opponents.

  5. Just on renationalisation of the trains… having recently spent the last 3 weeks in the UK, there is huge support for this even amongst people who are anti-Corbyn. The traffic on the roads is insane and the state of the rail network so dire, many English I spoke to are under no illusion nationalisation of the rail network is a reasonable suggestion and even subsiding it from taxes. They only have to look across the Channel to France to see how well a nationalised rail network can run. The trains are good, the infrastructure well maintained and it runs on time. Getting the French to run Eurostar was a ‘no-brainer’.

  6. If labour does get in here, let’s hope they look at what ‘has worked’ in other countries, as opposed to the National government which tends to choose the ‘has not worked’ ideas. There should be no reason for any NZ government to stuff up SO BADLY, if they do their homework.

    • I think the disgraced advisors from other countries come and peddle their daftness here having been seen off by democracies that don’t allow list MPs back in if they are voted out.

  7. It’s pleasing to see Corbyn’s popularity within the party.

    At the same time he has a minus 33% popularity among the general voting population.

    These two factors indicate he will stay on and lead the UK Labour Party into oblivion.

    Bets on who will get there first – Corbyn or Little? 😉

  8. If all the anti Corbyn people are convinced he cant lead the party to victory at the general election why dont they just let him prove them right.
    Let him put his case to britons at the campaign and if he gets rejected along with his ploicy direction then they have won the argument and he will become a footnote in UK Labour history.
    Or they can walk now and form another party because clearly they dont support why the party was formed in the first place to further socialism and representing working people and their aspirations
    The left faction of the Conservative party would be a natural home for these neo liberals who dont believe in real labour values.
    What are these people so frightened of.

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