Boris quits as MP with immediate effect

[BigH]

Fair point.

We knew at the time that it'd be one or the other didn't we.

Corbyn would have been a disaster. Johnson has proved to be a disaster.

Surely, the only way is up from here.

[tyke1962]

As an alternative to Corbyn, what did you expect?

It always fascinates me when the Corbyn v Johnson conversation comes up .

It fascinates me even further when you consider that the 2019 Brexit GE was actually contested with only one true Leaver in the race and it wasn't Johnson .

Just exactly what was it about Corbyn that allowed Johnson to win so handsomely ? .

It wasn't policies was it given Johnson didn't have any and when he was pressed pre election he either hid in a fridge or simply refused to be interviewed by Andrew Neil .

Perhaps it was a solid ministerial record in government ?

Then again he'd been sacked several times from roles in the cabinet .

Yet his opponent had a near fourty year record as an elected MP , someone who won two Labour leadership contests by huge margins .

He also had two election manifestos that errr contained policies that the electorate actually liked , they still do but Keith apparently knows better .

And yet the UK electorate still preferred to elect someone who was on the record championing the merits of the Single Market as the greatest thing since sliced bread .

Didn't have a single policy to his name and didn't want to even discuss that kind of thing .

A solid record of incompetence in government .

And pretty much everyone with at least half a brain knew if he spoke five words four of them would probably be lies .

So when people do the " what did you expect with Corbyn " thing perhaps they should actually see things for what they actually were in 2019 and refrain from using it as some kind of justification for electing Boris Johnson .

[tommy toes]

Tyke
I was a keen Corbyn supporter at first and the 2019 manifesto was great, despite what Starmer says about it now, although Covid would probably have scuppered his plans.
But I shudder to think how he would have handled the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That would have been something to behold.
Not that Johnson's cosying up to the Russian oligarchs had anything to do with it either.

[Branton Red]

Tyke

You know as well as I do that Corbyn was grossly undermined by his colleagues in the Labour party who engineered a pro-Remain agenda onto the manifesto.

That's why they lost my (and many people I know) vote for the first time ever. That's why they lost the Red Wall seats. That's why they lost the Election.

Simple.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Tyke
I was a keen Corbyn supporter at first and the 2019 manifesto was great, despite what Starmer says about it now, although Covid would probably have scuppered his plans.
But I shudder to think how he would have handled the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That would have been something to behold.
Not that Johnson's cosying up to the Russian oligarchs had anything to do with it either.

TT.

If Corbyn had won in 2019, he wouldn't have survived the Ukraine issue. He would not and could not have supported Ukraine militarily, as it goes against everything he had ever believed. He's spent his entire life committed to the idea that the West is the great evil in the world, and so anyone who stands up to the West (such as Putin here) is not to be faced down.

I was astonished that the Labour party members didn't wake up to this when he gave his response to the Salisbury attack. But they would have seen him for what he is when the Russians took great swathes of Ukraine and he mumbled something about "condemning aggression but we mustn't fight back."

He's have faced a huge rebellion from Labour MPs and members in such a scenario, and would have been forced out.


But this isn't about a badly flawed PM that we never had. It's about the absolute car crash of the one that we did have.

[tyke1962]

Tyke
I was a keen Corbyn supporter at first and the 2019 manifesto was great, despite what Starmer says about it now, although Covid would probably have scuppered his plans.
But I shudder to think how he would have handled the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That would have been something to behold.
Not that Johnson's cosying up to the Russian oligarchs had anything to do with it either.

I'm not sure how Corbyn would have handled the Ukraine invasion either but my point to BB is not what could have occurred if he was elected PM of this country but rather what everyone knew going in to the 2019 election .

[tommy toes]

Tyke
I was a keen Corbyn supporter at first and the 2019 manifesto was great, despite what Starmer says about it now, although Covid would probably have scuppered his plans.
But I shudder to think how he would have handled the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That would have been something to behold.
Not that Johnson's cosying up to the Russian oligarchs had anything to do with it either.

TT.

If Corbyn had won in 2019, he wouldn't have survived the Ukraine issue. He would not and could not have supported Ukraine militarily, as it goes against everything he had ever believed. He's spent his entire life committed to the idea that the West is the great evil in the world, and so anyone who stands up to the West (such as Putin here) is not to be faced down.

I was astonished that the Labour party members didn't wake up to this when he gave his response to the Salisbury attack. But they would have seen him for what he is when the Russians took great swathes of Ukraine and he mumbled something about "condemning aggression but we mustn't fight back."

He's have faced a huge rebellion from Labour MPs and members in such a scenario, and would have been forced out.


But this isn't about a badly flawed PM that we never had. It's about the absolute car crash of the one that we did have.

Absolutely BST. His astonishing reaction to Salisbury showed everyone where his sympathies lay.
The country would have been in uproar if he gave the same response to the invasion.

[tyke1962]

Tyke

You know as well as I do that Corbyn was grossly undermined by his colleagues in the Labour party who engineered a pro-Remain agenda onto the manifesto.

That's why they lost my (and many people I know) vote for the first time ever. That's why they lost the Red Wall seats. That's why they lost the Election.

Simple.

The biggest crime Corbyn committed was getting elected leader of the Labour Party by those outside of the Westminster bubble .

However a stronger man would have dealt with it instead of believing he could make it work .

A stronger man in the Tory ranks would have taken part in the Andrew Neil interview and wouldn't have hid in a fridge from the media either .

A stronger man would also have behaved in a manner befitting of PM of this country during a pandemic .

My assessment of Corbyn and Johnson when it comes to strength is that Corbyn preferred dialogue , hated confrontation which allowed his enemies to undermine him .

Johnson was simply a coward .

[tyke1962]

Tyke
I was a keen Corbyn supporter at first and the 2019 manifesto was great, despite what Starmer says about it now, although Covid would probably have scuppered his plans.
But I shudder to think how he would have handled the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That would have been something to behold.
Not that Johnson's cosying up to the Russian oligarchs had anything to do with it either.

TT.

If Corbyn had won in 2019, he wouldn't have survived the Ukraine issue. He would not and could not have supported Ukraine militarily, as it goes against everything he had ever believed. He's spent his entire life committed to the idea that the West is the great evil in the world, and so anyone who stands up to the West (such as Putin here) is not to be faced down.

I was astonished that the Labour party members didn't wake up to this when he gave his response to the Salisbury attack. But they would have seen him for what he is when the Russians took great swathes of Ukraine and he mumbled something about "condemning aggression but we mustn't fight back."

He's have faced a huge rebellion from Labour MPs and members in such a scenario, and would have been forced out.


But this isn't about a badly flawed PM that we never had. It's about the absolute car crash of the one that we did have.

Absolutely BST. His astonishing reaction to Salisbury showed everyone where his sympathies lay.
The country would have been in uproar if he gave the same response to the invasion.

And yet the Tories association with the Russian Oligarchs doesn't receive the same uproar .

[BillyStubbsTears]

Tyke
I was a keen Corbyn supporter at first and the 2019 manifesto was great, despite what Starmer says about it now, although Covid would probably have scuppered his plans.
But I shudder to think how he would have handled the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That would have been something to behold.
Not that Johnson's cosying up to the Russian oligarchs had anything to do with it either.

TT.

If Corbyn had won in 2019, he wouldn't have survived the Ukraine issue. He would not and could not have supported Ukraine militarily, as it goes against everything he had ever believed. He's spent his entire life committed to the idea that the West is the great evil in the world, and so anyone who stands up to the West (such as Putin here) is not to be faced down.

I was astonished that the Labour party members didn't wake up to this when he gave his response to the Salisbury attack. But they would have seen him for what he is when the Russians took great swathes of Ukraine and he mumbled something about "condemning aggression but we mustn't fight back."

He's have faced a huge rebellion from Labour MPs and members in such a scenario, and would have been forced out.


But this isn't about a badly flawed PM that we never had. It's about the absolute car crash of the one that we did have.

Absolutely BST. His astonishing reaction to Salisbury showed everyone where his sympathies lay.
The country would have been in uproar if he gave the same response to the invasion.

And yet the Tories association with the Russian Oligarchs doesn't receive the same uproar .

Make your own mind up about the morals of each party.

Corbyn was elected by enthusiastic, naive people who rushed to join the Labour party to vote for him without really understanding him.

They wanted the mild socialism of his economics (which in 2017, were broadly similar to what Miliband and Balls had offered 2 years before ... and been condemned for as Red Tories by some).

But the Labour party members were also broadly supportive of EU membership and were very much against Putin.

Corbyn did a brilliant job of downplaying those aspects of his beliefs. As you say, he was always a militant believer in us leaving the EU. But he had to pretend he wasn't during the referendum.

In 2017 he fudged the issue brilliantly...by promising in the manifesto 2 totally contradictory policies - that we could end FoM and keep all the benefits. That never got explored because the 2017 election was dominated by the inability of May to get her brain to communicate with her mouth.

By 2019, Corbyn had come out as a full on Leave supporter. And despite the re-writing if history by some, the result was an implosion in Labour support well before the adoption of Ref2 in Sept 2019. The Corbynistas will always insist Starmer manoeuvred to undermine Corbyn on this. The fact is that without it, the 2019 election wouldn't have been bad for Labour - it could have been terminal.

And here's the thing which the Left and the Brexit supporters will never accept. The adoption of Ref2 was supported by the overwhelming majority of the Labour party. Including the very members who had voted for Corbyn as leader, and by Corbyn's closest political associate, McDonnell. Because they knew that Labour couldn't have a Brexit policy that kept both the Red Wall AND the younger, internationalist side of the party on side. And they knew that the latter outnumbered the former by 3-4 to 1.

That's why I've said ever since that 2019 was the worst choice of PM that we've ever had. On one side a pathological liar who believed in nothing other than his own ego. And on the other, a man who held committed views that damn near destroyed his party, because most of his devoted followers were blissfully unaware of them.

My take was always that Corbyn was the least bad choice in 2019 because a) at least he had the economics right and b) his party would, when push came to shove, control him on foreign affairs.

But Christ Alive it was an awful choice.

[albie]

Some quite demented rewriting of history from the usual suspects in this thread.

Rather than replying to the tedious imagined drivel point by point, here is a more considered piece from ex-Torygraph journo Peter Oborne on Corbyn and Russia;
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-jeremy-corbyn-right-putin-oligarchs

The truth will offend some zealots who prefer their unevidenced conspiracy theories.
So be it!

[Colin C No.3]

That piece shows how shamefully blinkered & blinded so many of the electorate became by the increasingly loud rhetoric of the right whilst they filled their coffers with blood money from Russia without a care or a thought for the country they & their like governed.

As a ‘close up magician’ needs distraction to con his audience the Tories & Tory press found their perfect distraction in Corbyn.

And we fell for it hook, line & sinker.

[tommy toes]

Despite the above two posts, the fact remains that Corbyn was pro Brexit, anti NATO and very slow (if at all, I can't remember) to attribute blame to Putin Re Salisbury.
I agree that Corbyn was crucified by the Right wing press but he made it easy for them.
Maybe if he'd told a few lies about his beliefs he'd have done better, but he wouldn't do that, quite rightly.

[albie]

Tommy,

The basic problem people are struggling with is an assumption that a PM will drive his own personal agenda when in power.

Now Johnson and Starmer are both guilty of this top down model, disregarding other views unless they have the numbers to disrupt the agenda of the leader.

But in a democratic model, the views of the leader are tempered by other interests.
So the input from the membership, international partners and others are included to arrive at a decision.

Despite his faults, I don't see any evidence that Corbyn would ever have tried to impose his personal views over and above the democratic consensus. The biggest problem we have in UK politics at the moment is the "emperor syndrome" which regards difference of opinion as a barrier to be overcome, not a pause for reflection.

Perhaps we need to escape from top down autocrats to a more plural decision making tree.
Nothing in the current system supports this process.

[tommy toes]

Albie
If you read John Bews biography of Clement Attle,  you will see that your post above describes exactly how he operated and how he managed to keep the warring parties within the Labour Party in check for 20 years.
Whether Corbyn could have done that we'll never know, but given how unpopular he was with the centre and right of the parliamentary party, no chance.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Albie.

Corbyn headed a Labour party that was avowedly pro-EU, both in the membership and in the vast majority of the voters.

Corbyn could easily have tipped the balance in 2016 if he had campaigned passionately for Remain, as his party wanted him to.

Instead, he went AWOL, culminating in that infamous webcast on an obscure American Chomskyist website the night before the vote, where he squirmed as he was quizzed by far left fellow travellers about what he really thought about the EU. And he responded by saying that he respected the left wing argument against the EU model but  (and I shit you not) plastic bags dropped in the Pacific off Colombia ended up on beaches in Japan, therefore he was (clenched teeth) suppoeting remain. Then when asked if he would be campaigning on the last night, he said no, he was going to his local mosque for a meal.

Don't give me this b*llocks about Corbyn respecting the democratic views of his party.

[BillyStubbsTears]

And.

Do you honestly believe that PM Corbyn, founder member of the Stop the War movement, would have given the thumbs up to the UK sending Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine?

He's spent the last 18 months saying we should just ask Russia to withdraw.

[Ldr]

Albie.

Corbyn headed a Labour party that was avowedly pro-EU, both in the membership and in the vast majority of the voters.

Corbyn could easily have tipped the balance in 2016 if he had campaigned passionately for Remain, as his party wanted him to.

Instead, he went AWOL, culminating in that infamous webcast on an obscure American Chomskyist website the night before the vote, where he squirmed as he was quizzed by far left fellow travellers about what he really thought about the EU. And he responded by saying that he respected the left wing argument against the EU model but  (and I shit you not) plastic bags dropped in the Pacific off Colombia ended up on beaches in Japan, therefore he was (clenched teeth) suppoeting remain. Then when asked if he would be campaigning on the last night, he said no, he was going to his local mosque for a meal.

Don't give me this b*llocks about Corbyn respecting the democratic views of his party.

Interested on your thoughts on reconciling the red wall losses with your statement saying the vast majority of labour voters were pro-eu. Members I get

[Bentley Bullet]

Corbyn is in the past, as is Johnson. Now it's Sunak and Starmer who we should be judging.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Albie.

Corbyn headed a Labour party that was avowedly pro-EU, both in the membership and in the vast majority of the voters.

Corbyn could easily have tipped the balance in 2016 if he had campaigned passionately for Remain, as his party wanted him to.

Instead, he went AWOL, culminating in that infamous webcast on an obscure American Chomskyist website the night before the vote, where he squirmed as he was quizzed by far left fellow travellers about what he really thought about the EU. And he responded by saying that he respected the left wing argument against the EU model but  (and I shit you not) plastic bags dropped in the Pacific off Colombia ended up on beaches in Japan, therefore he was (clenched teeth) suppoeting remain. Then when asked if he would be campaigning on the last night, he said no, he was going to his local mosque for a meal.

Don't give me this b*llocks about Corbyn respecting the democratic views of his party.

Interested on your thoughts on reconciling the red wall losses with your statement saying the vast majority of labour voters were pro-eu. Members I get

Loads of polling data. Very rarely after the 2017 election did more than 25% of those polled who supported Labour sat they had voted Leave in 2016.

The thing is - yes Labour lost Leave supporters in 2019. But those who support Corbyn and Leave never ever ask the counterfactual. What would have happened to Labour in 2019 if they'd not had a Ref2 policy. All the evidence is that they'd have polled in the very low 20s in Dec 2019. That's the sort of tipping point where parties get decimated.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Back on theme.

Has Sunak said a word in public yet about the Johnson Report?

[Colin C No.3]

Nope.

He’s in the ‘counting house’ counting all his money.

[idler]

Apparently Kwarteng received £27,000 for a 30 minute speech in Switzerland the other day. You would think that his financial credibility had gone for ever.
I suppose it will help him pay his mortgage if he has one.

[BillyStubbsTears]

He has a very important message to the world.

"Do not ever listen to Liz Truss or Patrick Minford."

£54,000/hour is a giveaway if the world learns that lesson.

[Bentley Bullet]

Vote Starmer - He's skint.

[Iberian Red]

Corbyn is in the past, as is Johnson. Now it's Sunak and Starmer who we should be judging.

Hypocrisy alert.

This thread is about your favourite BJ.

How many times have you brought up JC over the last few years,when he hasn't been the Labour leader?

Did you ever judge BJ when he was PM? No, you were more like the Bullingdon Club pig's head,sucking up and swallowing and old guff that the Etonian old boy chucked out.

[Filo]

It never fails to surprise does it, when supporters can’t defend the indefensible they resort to whataboutery

[Bentley Bullet]

It never fails to surprise does it, when supporters can’t defend the indefensible they resort to whataboutery

No one can defend the indefensible, otherwise, they'd be defensible, but if whataboutery means that one is applying similar indictments to all parties in the name of balance, then to think otherwise is plain one-sided bias, surely? 

[BillyStubbsTears]

But no other party has been led by someone with a 30 year track record of lying through his teeth about anything an everything from the shape of bananas to where he put his cock.

No other party has been led by a liar who broke his own law then lied about it repeatedly.

No other party has ever had an ex-PM found by his peers to have deliberately and knowingly lied to the House.

What in earth are you trying to balance up here?

[Iberian Red]

It never fails to surprise does it, when supporters can’t defend the indefensible they resort to whataboutery

No one can defend the indefensible, otherwise, they'd be defensible, but if whataboutery means that one is applying similar indictments to all parties in the name of balance, then to think otherwise is plain one-sided bias, surely?

Pure waffle