Jermy Corbyn elected

Here we are - day one of the Corbyn Leadership with the shadow cabinet not even announced and the right wingers already believe they can tell us what will happen over the next four and half years. They had a women from the Times on the paper review and she had written off the whole tsunami of change already (and complained that JC hadn't been on Marr too) Silly woman.

Looking at that last line I use JC because it saves a bit of typing but it made me think that the media people would have been the same with the 2000 years ago. I can hear it now "It's all very well saying you are busy feeding 5000 people with a few loaves and fishes but you should have been in our studio explaining why you don't let the market deal with this. What does it matter if a few of them starve; that is the price we have to pay"

It seems to me that only certain people, even in their own party, count, to some gransnetters.

I wonder if he will steer the party in the direction he would like it to go, then want to hand over the mantle to someone younger before the next election?
He looks very fit and healthy, but being leader of the opposition with possible warring factions in his own party could take its toll; by the time of the next election he will be 71 (I think).

He seems to have plenty of energy and enthusiasm now, just wondering what the next 4-5 years will bring.

I call frontbenchers big names.

I will answer the other question later.

I am not a Labour party supporter, but would like to say that this man was elected by the majority of Labour party members so should be given a chance to prove his worth. I am uncomfortable with the blanket coverage saying he will ruin the party - why can't people just wait and see what he does? He may cause a split or he may not, he may cause people to leave the party or bring people back - let's wait and see.

Corbyn has voted against his own party 500 times.

Oh dear, have just finished a phone call with my sister who has declared that JC would "probably have declared Hitler to be an okay sort of bloke, put him on trial and sorted out legal aid for him". Summed up quite nicely I think!

No way will Corbyn dance to the tune of the media , the media love any discord in a party , they have to fill 24 hour rolling news and the front pages

Corbyn didn't keep voting against the leader , there has been nine leaders since he first entered parliment soon, so impossible to compare . I sm amused by the media claiming the big names have resigned , only one so far , Evette Cooper, the others are hardly household names after only five years in parliment .

Why would labour supporters think it a good thing to see the party broken up?

After watching The Marr Show, it seems that Tom Watson Has some quite different ideas to Corbyn on all sorts of things.
I thought that Gove ( and all the Conservatives) had hit on the right note not to make fun of Corbyn but to treat him seriously and as a threat. That is a very canny move.Yes ,this next four years is a very long time in Politics.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if at some time in the near future Tom Watson takes over as the Leader of the Opposition.

It sounds as if we have a leader who is not prepared to be led by the nose by the media - good on him! - he decided what was the most important job at the moment and got on with that instead of cravenly seeking more publicity.

We have all been brainwashed with the idea that there is only one way forward, as no-one has offered any alternative. He is saying that government does not have to prop up inequality and grovel to the rich, but can start from the premise that inequality is bad for society and that this is not an inevitability.

I found the affronted Polly Toynbee quite amusing on Marr this morning. She felt JC should have been on the programme instead of Tom Watson. How arrogant the press can be . Andrew Marr did point out that he had a shadow cabinet to form.

For me Hunt and Co are treating party members as children/fools - i know what you need you do not.

I should imagine that they are going to act as he did, and keep voting against the leader, and thus keep to their principles.

Yes Ruby, as I think IDS and Howard, I was trying to recall a labour leader who stayed on the front bench,

William Haigh went as party leader, I think, and has been a minister.

Many would say that the Labour Party was broken by Tony Blair soontobe. This is a chance to rebuild it from within. I think JC has a huge job on his hands, but if most MPs are sensible they will look at the support he has gained from ordinary members and work with him. The ones who thought they had a good job but didn't really know which party they had joined are no loss.

I think he'll make an effective leader of the opposition, and that's what he was elected for - to oppose. Whether or not that will translate into a future PM will depend on how the next 4+ years pan out.

I think history is going to show that he broke the Labour party. Some Labour supporters may see that as a good thing.

Out of interest, how many % of the country have not had an effective pay freeze or a pay cut would you say Gracesgran.

He is a leader...so long as the people around him agree with him.

An election for Labour leader is nothing like the same as a general election.

Eloethan, one of your usual considered posts. I agree that we need parties that stand for the beliefs of their members and we certainly need a party that stands up to the constant "this is the only way" message. The words at the end of his speech sum up why many people feel the Tories are wrong on the economy.

"We don't have to be unequal. It does not have to be unfair, poverty isn't inevitable."

This against the "we are all in this together" from the Conservatives when we are obviously not.

Some people are trying to say that that this man cannot win the next election. Yet he has just proven them wrong - by winning his election with three times the vote of his nearest rival.

All his rivals were experienced, intelligent, politicians who knew their way around politics and the Labour party. Yet Jeremy Corbyn beat them by miles.

So - this guy CAN win elections - even against the odds.

Or it may not Anya. As I replied to the last post questioning rather than suggesting this, personally I do not think we have anyone of the stature of David Owen, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rogers. Also they were extremely principled and left for a reason, i.e., they wanted to stay in Europe and they were multilateralists rather than unilateralists. Long standing Labour members may not hold them in the esteem that I do but I do not think they would see anyone who compares amongst those who might split the party. You may know of MPs of their stature within the party but I can't think of any. Of course, some may believe they are.

Also, if you were an MP who had had ambitions within Labour and you looked back at the SPD and where it is now would you do this? Add to that you have to get a lot of financial backing to start a new party. Obviously it could happen but I think there will be some waiting and weighing up what is happening before they would do that.

There could be some drift - rather like people leaving the Conservatives to join UKIP but again not for the ambitious I would think. There could also be some who give up on politics altogether but that might have happened under any new leader.