Jeremy Corbyn

Blair refused to be ruled by the unions unlike previous labour leaders

Post war - Atlee . Wilson, Callaghan , Blair.

Blair was the only Labour leader to win three consecutive general elections,

Explains much

Yes, Annie, the last two have been McCluskey's choice of puppet.

Yes Bagatelle as was Callaghan and Wilson. After Callaghan who only served 4 years as PM we had the Thatcher years , 19 years before we had another Labour government. Now we have the unions back in control.

Yes, Blair was a wonderfull prime minister. He and his cohorts buttered up to the Bankers and that brought about the financial crisis of 2008 which many working people paid for with their jobs.

We also had Blair buttering up to George Bush which brought about the Iraq war, which even now many are still paying for with their lives.

Great Stuff

Blair was responsible for the financial crisis ? Too funny

Grandad43, couldn't agree more.. I think of what he did to those young lives lost, it breaks my heart, he is worth and sitting on millions. I hope he gets what he deserves in the end.
As for Corbyn, I won't waste my breathe.

Looking at leaders around the world.
Nuff said.

Seems if you begin with what look like essentially good attributes, I'm thinking Clinton, Obama, even Blair you end up somewhere between unpopular and disastrous.
Goes with the territory.
Then there are the ones who died such as John Smith or Robin Cook who may or may not have proved any better than the others.

"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Not many exceptions in politics.

And the thought of Corbyn being given power is frightening

I am baffled by granddad1943 claim - union members were on low paid during the Blair government .

Where were the strikes ?

I still will never understand why it is OK to have a party and a PM who are funded by rich men pursuing their own aims but wrong to have a party or a PM who are funded by working people and the Trade Unions who are working to benefit them. After much thought I've decided that it can only be the result of some remnant of feudal memory and the last vestige of serfdom.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists are still alive and well.

Funding by wealthy people and funding by unions isn’t the problem, it’s the unions having control over a government.

It's the funding that gives the power Annie the two are inseparable and if you imagine that rich people fund a political party without expecting something from them you are truly deluded. As I said why shouldn't working people have a party representing their interests?

Further to Trisher's point, the Tory party have had £600,000 from the wife of Putin's ex deputy finance minister. One can only speculate it was to secure favours of one kind or another.

Back to Jeremy Corbyn, it was significant that when he was elected leader of the LP I had to look him up. I discovered that he'd been sitting on the back benches for 40 years and no previous Labour PM had been sufficiently impressed to promote him to the front. I think in that time he had ample opportunity to show that he was perhaps best suited to constituency MP and not party leader.

Whenever I think of him I hear JEREMY CORBYN in Bercow's booming voice.

But Annie, if the unions have power over the Government, it surely follows that the wealthy donors have the same kind of power over the Government.

trisher the unions are the rich men of the Labour movement, in the way they wield power over the Labour party. The power of the £.

The Unions are the ones who created the Labour party over 100 years ago. Of course they have influence. Just like it was the landed gentry founded the Tories when they were the only ones to have votes.

That was over 100 years ago , and the landed gentry are not the only ones to have votes now.

I support unions, but not when they have more power than the government.

Much as I dislike Corbyn, there is a rot in the labour party that goes beyond him and would not be rooted out simply by removing him.

It wont be quickly or easily fixed. It will probably be years before they become moderate enough to win over the floating voters

Both Blair and Brown were in part responsible for the financial crisis.

From around 2000 and the dot com bust responsible voices in the financial world were saying that credit was being allowed to expand to fast and too far. Do you remember all those 'Self-certified mortgages' where people lied about their income and their figures were not checked, Brokers offering multiples of 6 x income? All those fianancial 'products' we were advised to invest in that nobody understood?

Credit control was in the hands of the government. If they had tightened financial controls, used the usual instruments for reining in bank lending, we would have been affected by the financial crisis but nowhere near as badly as we were. Much of the responsibility lay with Blair and Brown, but especially Brown, Mr 'Prudence' who in the end proved as incompetent as nearly every Labour Chancellor I can remember.

I have little time for the Conservative party, but my lifetime memories are of Labour getting the country into a financial mess, the Conservative's cutting and taxing to sort it out then handing it back to Labour to ruin again, in an infinite circle. Austerity would never have been so bad had Blair and Brown not spent so much time brown-nosing the Russian oligarchs and rich US bankers and politicians. - money, money, money

If the Labour party abhorred those two so, why didn't they chuck them out of leadership ad stop giving them standing ovations at party comferences.

M0nica I fully understand the power of the unions, but that power is democratically evolved from ordinary working people. What I don't understand is why that is unacceptable, but someone buying a party by donating or by offering nice little sinecures to retired MPs. is considered OK.

We continue to suffer from labours last legacy. I think it is a bit too convenient to just blame the leader at the time. The PARTY made a mess so bad it is proving hard to clean up

Yggadrisil'. as you say 100 years ago. Labour is still stuck there giving power to the unions who represent fewer and fewer workers. At least the Conservatives have moved on and now look to rich business men and they are the men with money now, not the landowners.

The Conservative have always had better PR than Labour, probably helped by the MSM. But this idea that somehow finances are safer in the Tories hands is a complete fallacy. Basically they cut everything to the bone so that people become really dissatisfied then they scuttle off into the shadows leaving Labour to clear up the mess, which can only be done by spending money. We had long NHS waiting lists and schools falling down when Blair came to power. When this government falls the situation will be much the same. They have already cut education spending so much even head teachers are protesting and the NHS is struggling. I anticipate they will step back soon and leave someone else to clear up the mess.