I am sorry I am going back a bit but Jen how well Paul Krugman sums up the Uriah Heeps of the previous Labour front bench.
He comments on the fact that all three of the other candidates "essentially supported the Conservative government's austerity policies."
His way of explaining exactly what they did, to his US readers, also makes grim reading as it explains just how much they allowed lies to be heaped on "their" party.
"Worse, they all implicitly accepted the bogus justification for those policies, in effect pleading guilty to policy crimes that Labour did not, in fact, commit. If you want a U.S. analogy, it's as if all the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2004 had gone around declaring, "We were weak on national security, and 9/11 was our fault." Would we have been surprised if Democratic primary voters had turned to a candidate who rejected that canard, whatever other views he or she held?"
These people, many now the challengers of Corbyn and already planning his downfall, let the Labour Party down and should not have any thoughts that they will get automatic forgiveness and the party handed back to them on a plate. I understand that they were up against a press that is 80% right-wing and that the Conservatives were assisted by a Liberal Party, sincerely believing it was helping while allowing the Conservatives to get back to pure capitalism as soon as the brakes were off. The problem with this capitalist conservatism - and not all conservative governments have been this extreme - is that the people who benefit the most are those with the most capital, those who benefit the least are those with none and the likelyhood of being someone with enough capital to really protect you is very low indeed.
Paul Krugman goes on to say the "false accusations against Labour involve fiscal policy, specifically claims that the Labour governments that ruled Britain from 1997 to 2010 spent far beyond their means, creating a deficit and debt crisis that caused the broader economic crisis." This view, he says is what lead to the supposition that there was no alternative to "severe cuts in spending, especially spending that helps the poor."
He also talks about the paucity of any counter argument in the media and their failure "to subject Conservative claims to hard scrutiny, they have reported them as facts." This has left many who have very little interest in politics on a day to day basis believing that the Conservatives, who are clothed in these lies, are telling an irrefutable truth. What Corbyn has done is point to the Conservatives and say "they have made you believe in the lies they have clothed themselves in - but look - they have no clothes". If this is picked up and repeated, people who have been lulled and frightened into believing it will suddenly see the naked ambition of the Conservatives for the capitalists and not for the country or the majority of the people in it. Should this happen their party could be consigned to the dustbin of history. Once found out in this lie many would never forgive the party that did this, painting our country as on a par with Greece and talking us down around the world, any more than they will forgive Blair for the lies about WMD.
So what was the truth? This is what Krugman says:
"Was the last Labour government fiscally irresponsible? Britain had a modest budget deficit on the eve of the economic crisis of 2008, but as a share of G.D.P. it wasn't very high - about the same, as it turns out, as the U.S. budget deficit at the same time. British government debt was lower, as a share of G.D.P., than it had been when Labour took office a decade earlier, and was lower than in any other major advanced economy except Canada."
These are facts - so why are we punishing the poor and disabled to the extent that some are starving and some are dying?
He would take back the railways. I'll bet that took a lot of thinking about. Anymore old chestnuts coming soon, or at all, Jeremy? 
