Corbyns Inertia

DJ, agreed 'Aren't flying saucers a bit old hat now, jura?
I thought it was flying cigars.'

just does not fit FFS

annie I feel very uncomfortable with your post 22/12 4.08. I’m sure you don’t mean to sound rascist and homophobic, but that is how it sounds to me.
Anniebach'ss post doesn't come across like that to me

It comes over to me rather that the eighties were more progressive than we thought with a woman PM, black and gay MPs and some attitudes may have gone backwards since then, not forwards unfortunately.

Jens link boasted how successful labour was in the eighties , the first black woman MP, the first openly gay MP, all I did was repeat this and said the tories won the elections,

Oh, missed djen's post

The Tories won the elections and Labour have never had a woman leader.
I wonder why?
Surely they are not misogynists?

jalima
That's exactly what Annie meant but it was lost on some people.
I was listening to Harriet Harman on the radio some time back and she had very strong opinions on the subject of the Labour Party and misogyny.

Labour have had two temporary leaders, Margaret Beckett after John Smith died until the leadership contest and Harriet Harmon after Ed Milliband stood down untill the leadership contest

theconversation.com/labour-in-the-1980s-not-the-disaster-we-once-thought-89250

The whole link for you, Jalima, rather than just the few words that Annie seems to have picked up on.

Few would deny that Margaret Thatcher dominated the decade but Neil Kinnock, Tony Benn, Michael Foot and Ken Livingstone were also key figures who defined the age. Labour, while diminished by defections to the SDP, ended the decade as the main opposition party, a position that had seemed in doubt after the 1983 election. This, in itself, was a considerable achievement. Much of this was down to the street-fighting leadership of Kinnock.

This paragraph should have pleased Annie, but no, she prefers to denigrate rather than look for the good, which is why I put the link on anyway.
She is doing just what is warned against.

Some of the ideas that Corbyn has come straight from Kinnock.

This is where the words "loony left" came from in the link, but again that's all she picked up on.

"The 1980s were, in fact, a creative period for the left. Consider this: Labour managed to get the first black MPs elected to parliament (one of them was Diane Abbott). Chris Smith, Labour MP for Islington, became the first openly gay MP in 1984. Despite frequently equivocating on the issue, fearful of the way it would be viewed by some working-class supporters, Labour became committed to gay rights at a time when that was a deeply unpopular stance.

Ideas ridiculed at the time as “loony left” are now common sense. Miners’ support groups created networks of solidarity (as dramatised recently by the 2014 film Pride). The Greater London Council (GLC) became a popular cause when faced with abolition and promoted new kinds of politics which shaped the wider social agenda. Feminists and anti-racism campaigners fashioned a new common sense about personal identities. There was an assault on the idea that it was acceptable to pay women less than men while issues around sexual harassment became more prominent later in the decade."

Shame she couldn't be bothered to read the rest of the paragraph.

Jura, I realised that.

FFCS could be even ruder than FFS. Put your own meaning in there.

But Jen, something doesn't add up, if Corbyn got some of his ideas from Kinnock why did he go to all that effort to run a campaign to have his militant friends who were thrown out of the party by the kinnock led Labour Party brought back in

One of Corbyn's friends Derek Hatton

youtu.be/bWLN7rIby9s

"In the 80s, 'cardboard box cities' were a familiar sight. Over the years, things improved. Homelessness still existed of course, but it was visibly reduced. That is no longer the case. Visit just about any town or city in the country and you will see people sleeping in doorways. Behind shops, on small patches of grass and even on roundabouts people are pitching up tents and sleeping in them. Cardboard box cities have been replaced with tent villages.

This has happened on the Conservatives' watch and it's up to them to deal with it. It's not good enough for the prime minister to shrug off questions by disputing the meaning of homelessness. Whether it's children living in bedsits or vulnerable adults living in tents, homelessness is real and happening all around us."

80s again.

Yes it improved under a centre left labour government didn't it?

"Linked to this process was the idea of a national investment bank – which has now become central to Labour’s economic plans. This idea flourished in Labour circles in the 1980s as an answer to under-capitalisation: the failure of British banks to provide long run capital to small businesses. What made it controversial was the experience of British industry in the 1960s and 1970s. Formerly seen as part of a corporatist attempt to enable government to back winners, it came to be seen as propping up losers. The idea was dropped by New Labour which accepted a market approach while upholding the case for selective state intervention."

Could have been so much better if there had been a proper Labour government instead of Blair pretending to be one.

I would welcome a centre left party, we won three elections with one . In the eighties it was the far left that voters feared , it took Kinnock ten years to increase labour seats after the damage of the far left brought about in 1983 .

As shown in my link and that was 1985, I was at that conference , the applause was for Kinnock criticising the far left Hatton

A centre left party would win a landslide victory at the next GE.
People are sick of the Tories but were too frightened of Corbyn, McDonnell and Momentum to vote them into power.

It would Jalima, and I do speak as a grassroots activist who campaigned through the eighties and nineties and following two decades , the truth comes from the voters .

Absolutely jalima people are crying out for one, but I won't hold my breath.

So many people feel totally left out in the cold at the moment- I am not afraid of JC's policies- I am very unhappy at his long-term anti EU stance, and the fact that his 'base' voted for Brexit biggly.

jura2
So which way do you think he voted in that private ballot booth.

Aren’t the LibDems sort of centre left? Yet, almost no one wants to vote for them.

The Libs had a good membership , lost it when Clegg fought an election garning votes from the young on university fees, he then became deputy PM and many felt let down.

I take that point, but they’ve never been in the running to form a government in almost a century.

Not sure petra- but probably for leave ?

Annieb. - surely, in the current circumstances- it is time to realise Clegg was in an impossible situation. And to go onwards and forwards - they are the only ones to oppose Brexit, and a hard Brexit at that.

I know, it is a dream - but if remainers on both left and right crossed to Lim Dems, and an alliance was forged with Greens- they will at least be able to reign back the extremists on both sides. The FPP system makes it sooo hard.

I presume you have all signed the Christmas Card to Corbyn asking him to go for PR?