Friday 11 September 2015

Jeremy Who?

Polarising - In A Good Way: As the British Labour Party's leadership contest drew to a close this week, Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign team estimated he had taken his message, face-to-face, to more than 50,000 people. Literally hundreds-of-thousands more have paid Labour £3 for the right to participate in the leadership vote. The polls predict a Corbyn win on the first ballot.
 
IN LESS THAN 48 HOURS the world will know whether Jeremy Corbyn has won or lost. There will be many, still, who scratch their heads and ask: “Jeremy Who?” And why not? Until the unexpectedly savage defeat of Ed Miliband’s Labour Party in the recent British General Election, the identity of the MP for the London seat of Islington North was known to very few people outside of … well … Islington North. And even among those who have regularly returned him to Westminster since 1983, only a handful would have picked their MP – a bewhiskered, 66-year-old, self-proclaimed socialist, by the name of Jeremy Corbyn – as Ed Miliband’s most likely successor.
 
That his name appears on the ballot-paper at all is, like so many other aspects of his candidacy, a virtual accident. Other, better known, left-wing flagbearers had already been approached, and declined, before Corbyn said “Yes”. He accepted the nomination in a spirit of honourable self-sacrifice: the left-wing of the Labour Party had to have someone to vote for. (And it wasn’t as if there was any chance of him winning!)
 
Hah!
 
The Germans would blame it on the Zeitgeist – the Spirit of the Times. Others would say that Corbyn’s candidacy only took off when Labour’s Interim Leader, Harriet Harman, urged her colleagues to join the Tories in putting the boot into Britain’s already bruised and battered beneficiaries. His hard-line left-wing comrades would merrily opine that there has always been a massive constituency for Jeremy Corbyn’s simple socialist message, but until he came along no one had quite mastered the knack of communicating it effectively. Whatever the explanation, the brute fact of the contest for Miliband’s replacement was indisputable: the moment Labour audiences saw and heard Jeremy Corbyn, they fell head-over-heels in love with him.
 
And no one in the British punditocracy could work out why. It wasn’t as if Corbyn was especially telegenic. (Dear Lord – that beard!) Nor was he an especially gifted speaker. And the nonsensical things he was saying: who could possibly take such antiquated socialist sloganeering seriously? Certainly not his rivals for the leadership: lynx-eyed Yvette Cooper; bluff and blokey Andy Burnham; the ambitiously lissom Liz Kendall. Those three all looked completely at home in the Labour Party Tony Blair had made. The Party that no longer believed in “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”. The Party that had allowed Blair to lead it into the crime that was Iraq.
 
But that was just it! Corbyn had never swallowed a drop of the Blairite Kool-Aid. He still believed in common ownership. He’d voted against going into Iraq. He was, 32 years after being elected to the House of Commons, the same unashamed socialist he’d always been. And when the TV interviewers asked him questions about where he’d like to take Britain, he answered them. Without the benefit of pollsters, or spin-doctors, he talked about renationalising the railways, reanimating the trade unions, restoring the NHS. Cooper, Kendall and Burnham were dumfounded. The pundits were non-plussed. The Blairite Faction was, very publicly, appalled. But Labour’s members and supporters just couldn’t get enough.
 
The people who now find themselves vilified as the opponents of “Jez we can!” Corbymania should have seen it coming. But, not only did they fail to grasp the meaning of the emergence of left-wing populist parties across Europe; they also (and quite wilfully) refused to comprehend the meaning of the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) near clean-sweep of Labour seats north of the border.
 
The SNP ran on an anti-austerity platform, positioning itself well to the left of Labour. But their crushing victory was about a lot more than that. By optimistically orienting themselves towards the future, and promising the Scots that it would be a future they determined, the SNP unleashed that most potent of all political forces: Hope.
 
Corbyn’s authenticity and simplicity have encouraged similar hopefulness among the English. As the leadership contest drew to a close this week, Corbyn’s campaign team estimated he had taken his message, face-to-face, to more than 50,000 people. Literally hundreds-of-thousands more have paid Labour £3 for the right to participate in the leadership vote. The polls predict a Corbyn win on the first ballot.
 
If that happens, it will no longer be a case of “Jeremy Who?” But of “Jeremy – What Now?”
 
This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 11 September 2015.

35 comments:

  1. The fear of the establishment is palpable. Hoskings in the Herald yesterday had a prod at Corbyn demonstrating an irrationality that reeked of fear.

    I have had the pleasure of watching Tariq Ali on Youtube, his deconstruction of the recent UK election is compulsive viewing. His recent book The Extreme Centre is reviewed thus "What is the point of elections? The result is always the same: a victory for the Extreme Centre. Since 1989, politics has become a contest to see who can best serve the needs of the market, a competition now fringed by unstable populist movements. The same catastrophe has taken place in the US, Britain, Continental Europe and Australia."

    Tariq mentioned in conversation with Arundhati Roy (another on Youtube must see)that he had conversed with activist youth in Spain who stated that because elections always got the same result regardless of winners then the electoral system did not serve them. Their answer was to build a popular movement like Podemos and "seize power" from within democratic elections. Revolution from within. A good example is the Scottish Nationalists who took Labour out of the equation by running a policy platform well to the left of Labour.

    As I said, when the bile is spewed by the media then their paymasters are running scared. Picking the zeitgeist and tipping point is not easy, who among us saw the neolib revolution coming in 1984? Change may be in the wind.

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  2. Corby will almost undoubtedly win the position as leader, but there is no way he can win the next election.
    What the left leaning parties are failing to understand is that the further left they position themselves, the more they alienate their traditional support base.

    It used to be only middle income earners that looked on in frustration as Governments handed out lollies to the beneficiaries.
    But now, even ouples who both earn near the minimum wage and are struggling to support their families are becoming less and less the focus of left wing parties as they try to re-position themselves even more left than ever before.

    They look at beneficiaries who are gifted $600+ to raise their families in heavily susidised accomodation and they wonder what they must pay tax to provide this sort of lifestyle to those who habitually do nothing to help themselves.

    So, good luck to Labour NZ in 2 years and Labout UK in 4 & 1/2 years.
    They will need it!

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  3. All very well but our top celebrity broadcaster who shuns the journalist tag has condemned "Jeremy Who" as the "UK's biggest political fool"

    "Jeremy will never be Prime Minister; he will never win an election"

    "Good, prosperous, forward-looking western democracies operate best when people are happy, in work, with good schools and low taxes and a sense of overall satisfaction"

    "David Cameron delivered that in the same way that Key is delivering it here"

    How can one argue with all that logic.

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  4. A Corbyn win and even more a Corbyn Labour win at the next UK election will send shockwaves through Labor in Aus and Labour in NZ both dull LNP/National lite parties floundering as more and more disenfranchised supporters just dont bother turning up to vote anymore. Where are the Corbyns in Aus and NZ? At last - alternative economic visions are able to be discussed.

    A reformed Labor/Labour will be formidable as they reconnect and present a united front with the Greens in both countries as Corbyn seeks to do with the SNP in Scotland.

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  5. Jeremy is getting overflow crowds at all his meetings, he his absolutely winning all the debates with all the other contenders by a country mile, it is now not if he wins, it is by how much he wins!. Bye the bye Donald Trump is doing much the same in the GOP elections in America. The above scene could lead to Republican Trump being President Trump and Labour Corbyn being Prime Minister Corbyn. WOW and WOW again.

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  6. Is this a sea change?
    My goodness, we live in interesting times!

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  7. whether Corbyn can win the next UK election (assuming he wins and retains Labour leadership) will depend entirely on the timing of economic collapse....many of those who currently fear a change of system will be among the first to demand change when they see their comforts disappearing.

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  8. According to the Daily Mail half of Briton's want to take fewer asylum seekers. Corbyn supporter will be whom?
    Corbyn has a simplistic redistributive answer to everything. He is so last century (as far as I can see).

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  9. @Kat quoting Hosking: "Good, prosperous, forward-looking western democracies operate best when people are happy, in work, with good schools and low taxes and a sense of overall satisfaction"

    Um - happy, in work, and good schools are impossible with low taxes.

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  10. ""He is so last century (as far as I can see)."

    As opposed to 2 centuries before? When free-market neoliberalism was invented? :-) You can't see very far can you? :)

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  11. @Anon 13.34: I agree with your comment. Those who describe Helen Clark's Labour as "Left" would not know what the word really means. Is Andy Little any different? As I have stated in the past -- time will tell (but I'm not holding my breath!) We will see.

    Jayson @ 11.55: Beneficiary bashing again? Some simply can't help themselves. A Beneficiary in Auckland with a family would possibly attain that figure but NZ doesn't stop at the Bombay Hills. And it's always easy to cherry-pick the data.

    A single benefit payment here is about $220.00/week. A married/de Facto one is not quite double that. They would qualify to Accom. Allowance and some heating allowance too. Your working family stiff on $600.00 a week would qualify for that assistance too.

    Please do your proper research before you go sounding off about beneficiaries.

    This describes the problem we have: a new hotel in Dunedin advertised 40 jobs offered, they got 700 enquries. 700 after 40 jobs! Extrapolate that across the country and there is the problem. There is an acute shortage of jobs here so there will always be people un-employed until that anomaly is corrected.

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  12. @AB
    Nah! your kidding, right?

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  13. 250,000 people joined Labour UK for jeremy Corbyn, but these are the die -hard leftists.
    It has all been tried before and we saw wealthy unions on strike adnauseum but the tea ladies (somehow) never caught up. If you want wages to rise across the whole economy you get a balance between the supply of labour and productive capital (less labour = higher wages) and you help people train to the best of their abilities.
    Quoting Michael Reddell

    Norway was only a middling advanced economy until they got the oil, and no one really doubts that Australia’s mining industry has made a material difference to Aus fortunes over the last 25 years. For us, the comparable shock was refrigerated shipping and falling transport costs in the late 19th C that made frozen meat, and dairy, viable large scale export industries. We’ve had nothing comparable since, but just keep bringing in people, even though we have the huge disadvantage of distance. My argument is that we’d prob have been better to have not had any material immigration since World War 2. which would leave us with an agric/pastoral sector much the size it is now, “supporting” perhaps 3m people rather than 4.5m. I argue that incomes per capita would be higher now if we’d done that – can’t prove it of course.

    http://croakingcassandra.com/2015/09/10/some-thoughts-on-the-monetary-policy-statement/#comments

    This is a very radical thinker who compares NZ's fortunes to a family just getting on it's feet when another baby arrives (unlike the magical thinking culture cultists).
    http://www.treasury.govt.nz/downloads/pdfs/mi-jarrett-comm.pdf

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  14. The Standard:
    miravox 5
    12 September 2015 at 11:03 pm

    An old un-PR-polished leftie unionist. Who would have thought it 3 months ago.

    We live in changing times. Congratulations Jeremy.
    ....

    but he isn't "An old un-PR-polished leftie unionist" because this is the age of globalisation and Corbyn is more the open borders type? The unionists of old were exclusionists in terms of "cheap foreign labour".

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  15. @Jayson on Labour:
    the further left they position themselves, the more they alienate their traditional support base.
    It used to be only middle income earners that looked on in frustration as Governments handed out lollies to the beneficiaries.
    But now, even couples who both earn near the minimum wage and are struggling to support their families are becoming less and less the focus....
    They look at beneficiaries who are gifted $600+ to raise their families in heavily susidised accomodation and they wonder what they must pay tax to provide this sort of lifestyle to those who habitually do nothing to help themselves.

    If you can't apply your mind to produce better analysis than this, why bother? You are just repeating the common moans heard on the street and over the suds in bars. You learn nothing of value in bars; alcohol and drugs have been the basis of the blues.

    Your idea of beneficiaries is that they have "this sort of lifestyle" as if it was enjoyable, instead of corrosive and depressing, especially made so by current WINZ. And "Governments handed out lollies to the beneficiaries". Your idea of two working parents on just over minimum wage is that they are not of the Left, just because they are working. The Left was formed to help those workers who were being drained of life for say a half-penny a day.

    The working poor need the Left today as they always did. "Labour shifting to the Left" is actually just a matter of them changing places in the bus, opening up the front seats once all taken up with middle class bottoms, to those prevented for decades from travelling at all. It isn't shifting to the Left, it is acknowledging that the debt-burdened under-employed graduates, working poor and the unemployed, and the sole child rearers, need to be treated as respected citizens. For them the bus should stop every 100 metres to ensure that no-one is left out, all can climb aboard, and ALL get to a better place.


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  16. At least he did it without a union backed block vote, I think, though I am not sure.

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  17. "250,000 people joined Labour UK for jeremy Corbyn, but these are the die -hard leftists." Unknown at 08.12

    nobody knows who they are or their politics, it wouldnt surprise if many were mischief making Tories

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  18. Further to Jayson: I have a client here who is one of those un-employed, He does have a literacy problem (not serious) but it does hold him back a bit. He simply can't fully read and write but he keeps on trying.

    WINZ in their wisdom, keep shuffling him off to Temp Agencies who get him a week or twos work here and there. I have been assisting him for the last 6 months to wade his way through the crazy system that is the WINZ. Over the last 6 months he has been sent to do short term labouring work on a temp basis and when we totalled up all the income he got over that period he was only $26.00 better off than if he stayed on the Dole!!! Remember there is a stand-down when a job finishes (anything from a week to several weeks before his benefit starts up again). No-one can get ahead in those circumstances.

    Now before you start raving on about improving his literacy, he can't. He has an Autism type of condition that precludes that.

    Think before you sound off again. Also remember that the un-employed are the collateral damage of you being in a job.

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  19. Well expressed, Greywarbler, though I fear you're casting your pearls before swine :)

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  20. Greywarbler. He's right though. After all those years of social engineering there's a mean spirit about.

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  21. Very erudite and eloquent Greywarbler. So true too.

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  22. GS
    There always is a mean spirit lurking. In the British depression days they used to dob each other in if someone from the 'getting-by' managed to organise a bit extra to relieve the direness. Now vilification of beneficiaries is an instant step to self-righteous entry to a higher class in many minds. Farmers who have taken this prejudicial view get a real shock when hit by bad times, and learn what it is like to be an ordinary person with few options needing social welfare.

    Is it social engineering to assist all with basic living plus extras when needed, or enable people to earn extra and lift their aspirations?

    What was social engineering was when business principles were ignored by unions which began regular annual pressuring for higher wages, reinforced with strategic stoppages as blackmail, but no commitment to higher service levels or productivity. A mean spirit developed then from the unions towards the general public they were willing to inconvenience and disadvantage. The general public developed a mean spirit towards unions who seemed set on their own selfish advantage, even though paid well by NZ comparatives. And businesses had to pay up or put up with stoppages and unprofitability because of lost business, and they developed a really mean spirit to workers who now are often not able to unionise.

    Now real social engineering would have resulted in making all sit down and hammer out an agreement of co-operation, similar to what carried Australia forward for so many years. But no, NZ capitulated to neo-lib economics, going from one extreme to the other, with as much finesse as a wrecking ball.

    With social engineering, the other blocs of vulnerable people, the retired and parents would have to think about and discuss the best ways to help their own group and what contribution they could make to the community. Parents aren't worthy of much help in many mean-spirited people's minds, they are regarded as a debit to society with help mostly as a reaction to obvious problems. The retired now breathe a sigh of relief to be free from the WINZ gulag, but they can live for 30 years on the pension (superannuation) and not be asked to contribute some part-time hours in return, either using or passing on their skills, or learning new ones for a needed project.

    Some social engineering required here, it is unfair and unsustainable! Even under governmental morality, which is always partial to one side, more than the other, this will break one day and I fear the wrecking ball approach. Jeremy Corbyn may find a way. I think it will involve large numbers of meetings with the public presenting the facts and giving each meeting a task of devising systems of managing public assistance cost down, and useful and enjoyable end-of-life living experience up. Then working on the agreed method in their own area, monitoring and reporting and replicating the agreed best ones. The public must understand and own the problem, be involved in the planning and foreseeing or noting the problems. There must be meetings, back and forward, trying, reporting and working with the intelligent, forward-looking, responsible, active and practical people forming a core of outward looking citizens.

    We are living in colour tv land at present, gazing at space ships going to the stars, and walking in ignored decay. Embrace fact, and limit fiction. If Jeremy and his cohorts can bring this in, we will see a new, vital and effective social engineering for the 21st century!

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  23. Oh dear... it's been reported that the factory workers in Nicaragua sweatshops who made Corbyn fundraiser T-shirts were paid 49p an hour... even less than the workers in the Mauritius sweatshops who were paid 62p an hour to produce the feminist T-shirts as worn by Edward Miliband when he was Labour boss. Jobs for British workers, living wage, equality, blah blah

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  24. The level of blindness here is frightening!
    Corbyn stands a snowballs chance in hell of becoming the next PM of UK for much the same reason that David Seymour will never be PM of NZ.
    Political battles are won (and lost) around the centre and neither of these men represent centrist views, with Corbyn's view in particular being an anathema to those who inhanbit central UK society.

    Both NZ and UK Labour have positioned themselves Left of working class and squarely on the non-working class (albeit Corbyn is markedly to the left of Little).
    The result is of course that they have been abandoned by a significant portion of their traditional supporter base, with NZ Labour trying to close the gap by pandering to special interest groups ("I'm sorry for being a man", etc).

    Labour NZ has caught the same disease as the Greens, who fail to understand that in order to make a significant difference, you need to be in power.
    In order to achieve this, you need to have 50% or more of the voting public wanting to buy what you are selling.

    Despite what Labour and Greens think, there are very few people tolerant of having more and more of their hard earned money stripped off them to pave the way for unemployed, no matter how genuine they are.

    But everyone else here will decry this assertion because it conflicts too greatly with their world view.

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  25. By social engineering I mean the constant refrain both overt and covert of beneficiary bashing that seems to have persuaded ordinary people that they are bludgers who are poor because of some character defect and therefore not worthy of our tax money. That added to the meanness that seems to lurk in the subconscious of many Kiwis...... horrific.

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  26. Actually the report about the T-shirts was found to be completely false :-). The usual right-wing spin bullshit. No doubt there are some people who will believe it no matter what.

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  27. @Jayson
    There is nothing more to say then. Why bother with Labour at all and fret whether it wins or loses? Or are you trying to finish its connection with its original constituents and take it on as a shell political vehicle for the benefit now of the middle class at the centre? This division into those that are working or not, is arbitrary and indicates you are lost to the realities of today.

    In a world moving to diminish jobs, downgrade them, relocate them to cheaper climes, disassemble them to be picked up by robot workers, which in turn will be disassembled... You are arguing about a basis of employment that already has crumbled. Smart alecs who think that becoming contractors, or self-employed means that they are small business people rather than workers are deluding themselves. If that applies to you then you are fooling yourself -full of phony self-aggrandisement. Good luck with any business you go into, but do not go to family for major start-up money. It would not be fair to strip them of the little they have put by if events turn against you and it fails.

    People in the centre can't define their position left or right because they have no convictions! The political centre are really milling around in a circle like the blind, eye-damaged people, in the hospital foyer in Wyndham's Day of the Triffids. And in that the protagonist had to make a triage decision to leave them, so that he could save himself.

    And you have made that decision yourself already about the unemployed who do not rate any respect or concern because of their unfortunate status.

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  28. @GS (15:39) Can you point to a reference re the debunking of the sweatshop story? Minimum wage in Nicaragua for manufacturing workers is USD156 (GBP101) a month, less than $1 (63p) per hour, so the story is feasible at least.

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  29. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3232177/49p-hour-s-poverty-stricken-workers-earned-making-T-shirts-boosted-Corbyn-s-campaign-coffers-100-000.html

    This one Richard McGrath.

    Bearing in mind that the Daily Mail is one of Rupert the Shocker Ocker's nasty little rightwing rags! Frankly I wouldn't use it for toilet paper as I have more respect for my nether regions!

    I learned a long time ago that there is no Statute of Limitations on Rightwing Stupidity.

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  30. @Greywarbler
    Like Corbyn and Little, you are too focussed on your own ideologies rather than the realities of the electorate.
    In order to make a blind bit of difference, a party must first seize power.
    In order to do this, it (along with its allies) must gain a minimum of 50% of the vote.
    When the majority of voters have no appetite for giving more to beneficiaries, it is irrelevant what your idelogy is because you will either:

    1) Abandon your ideology and (possibly) win power, or
    2) Maintain your ideology and lose.

    Either way, your ideology is pointless.

    National swept Labour from office by abandoning many of its ideologies in order to gain the popular vote. Furthermore, ever since it gained power it has borrowed many of Labours and Greens middle ground policies.

    This has left the opposition with very little middle ground to stand on, with the result being that in order to differentiate themselves they have had to step further left, hence making them less palatable to the majority.

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  31. @ Jayson: Again you are mistaken. The Nats did not "Sweep Labour from power" have you not noticed that it is extremely rare for a party to last more than 3 terms in NZ? At the end of that people want a change but the proviso still holds: 'Be careful what you wish for!' The fact that they have "borrowed many of Labours and Greens middle ground policies" shows that they have a dearth of policies of their own.

    How do you know if Labour is less palatable to the majority? Is that just your opinion or is it because you have a profound connection to the Big Fella? Perhaps you're clairvoyant? Like most Kiwis, I don't know what the future is and I would like you to tell us all how you come to that conclusion.

    The palpable fear of the Rightwing is tangible and so the bullshit about accurately foretelling the future is nothing short of amazing! Please share your secret of how you know. I hope that it is much more accurate than your attack on beneficiaries earlier.

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  32. @Bushbaptist.
    They facts don't support your case at all, but rather support my own rather nicely.
    Between 2005 & 2008, National gained 10 seats which most would consider sweeping Labour from power with 45% of the electoral vote.
    Since then, National has been re-elected in 2011 with 59 seats (47.3% of vote) and again in 2014 with 60 seats (47% of vote).

    By rejecting Helen Clark in 2008, the electorate rejected a relatively centrist left win politician.
    When offered the choice of a further left choice in 2011 & 2014, the electorate voted even more resoundingly to reject it.

    What about all this is hard for you to understand?
    By your own admission, it typically gets harder and harder for a Government to stay in power as time passes due to what I call "electorate fatigue".

    Yet, National trounced the left in 2014 coming within a whisker of an outright majority.
    If THAT doesn't tell you that the majority of NZers have no interest in what Labour is selling, NOTHING ever will (hint: Nothing will, because your eyes are closed).

    In order for Labour to get back into power (and hence have ANY real influence over NZ), it will need to either:

    1) Wait for electorate fatigue to become so devastaingly bad that even a ripe grapefruit could run successfully against National (at current rate, this could take another two elections), or
    2) Change what it is selling to appeal to the masses.

    Labour can tinker a little bit to the left and still be successful provided it, for the most part, re-positions itself near the centre.

    But any extreme policies such as those proposed by Corbyn will appeal ONLY to the very left wing supporters, of which there are nowhere near enough to secure the levers of power.

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  33. Again you're expressing an opinion Jayson. That's fine but it's just an opinion not a fact.

    Simply put, Govts. are voted out (generally after three terms, people want a change - not always for the better). As for the Clark Govt. being "centre left", I'm not sure which planet you are on but her Govt. was never "Centre Left" it was centrist with often quick flips to the Right. The last 'Centre Left" Govt. NZ had was the Norm Kirk Labour Govt. back in the 70's. We need to get right away from the Tweedledee/Tweedledum politics that we have currently where the two main parties are joined at the hip. We need a genuine choice not what we now have with the endless swapparoo of the same old shit.

    Don't ever underestimate the number of people who would or could vote for Corbyn, again you are just guessing. All the pundits were saying that he would never make it to the top job and look at what has happened. Many Poms are getting pissed off with the endless "Austerity and Privatisation" of the Cameron Govt.

    If Corbyn can pull back the protest votes that went to the SNP and UKIP you could well be in for a real surprise. There is a ever-growing ground-swell of people right across Europe who have had enough of the rightwing policies in place there.

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  34. @Jayson
    By rejecting Helen Clark in 2008, the electorate rejected a relatively centrist left win politician.
    When offered the choice of a further left choice in 2011 & 2014, the electorate voted even more resoundingly to reject it....

    [Labour...will need to either]:
    1) Wait for electorate fatigue to become so devastaingly bad that even a ripe grapefruit could run successfully against National (at current rate, this could take another two elections), or
    2) Change what it is selling to appeal to the masses.
    Labour can tinker a little bit to the left and still be successful provided it, for the most part, re-positions itself near the centre.
    But any extreme policies such as those proposed by Corbyn will appeal ONLY to the very left wing supporters, of which there are nowhere near enough to secure the levers of power.


    I feel you thoroughly miss the point Jayson. When Helen Clark was rejected, the voters weren't persuaded that she headed a really Labour-dedicated group, which hadn't shown enough interest in the working conditions and business and job opportunities to help beneficiaries and the low-waged. So many of them didn't vote. She had firmed and held Labour together, and Michael Cullen had done the responsible left thing of paying off national debt. That made the country stronger but did not help people's pockets so the waverers didn't vote Labour.

    In general people don't understand the overseas debt situation which is why they aren't frightened sh..less about it considering our over-exposure to the dairy industry.

    Labour had already repositioned itself near the centre then. You are talking deja vu all over again!

    Helen Clark was representing Labour Lite and couldn't stay in power with their policies at that time. People are agitating now for a Labour Party to represent those who are perched precariously on the ladder, doing all the real work, but on the bottom of the comfortable earnings ladder. And getting another Labour Lite into power is pointless as a vehicle for achieving change for the better. And any other aims make them as irrelevant as any other fringe party with a drum to beat about some favourite issue.

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  35. There is a post on The Standard - All the Left wants is a clean contest of Ideas - where commenters are putting their thoughts into why Corbyn and Labour in general need to stick to their ideas, principles and lefty, lofty, aims.

    Mainly because having ideas and principles gives people who need and want them a place to go, a Party turn to, to adopt and embrace.
    http://thestandard.org.nz/all-the-left-wants-is-a-clean-contest-of-ideas/#comment-1071295

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