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Oh no - another festival right after the election!


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2 minutes ago, RichardWaller said:

I didn't dismiss anything

you've called me a liar and more for refusing to be your personal slave.

Not because you had the evidence that I was lying. While demanding that i provided you with evidence.

Are you really so self-absorbed?

</thinks back to yesterday and reaches a conclusion>

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Just now, eFestivals said:

you've called me a liar and more for refusing to be your personal slave.

Not because you had the evidence that I was lying. While demanding that i provided you with evidence.

Are you really so self-absorbed?

</thinks back to yesterday and reaches a conclusion>

I've called you a liar for continuously telling me I've said things that I haven't. I'd know. You're so desperate to win an argument that you're inventing the opponent's position, over and over and over.

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7 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

didn't you agree above that if he won it would be because of external events and not anything to do with Jezza? I thought you had.

Jeremy himself, yes. Jeremy and Labour's wider campaign team, no. 

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because you're clever but everyone else is a sheep?

 

Sure. I'm smarter and more politically engaged than the average person yes. And statistics show people are less likely to vote in situations where it's believed the result is fairly certain in one direction or another. There's facts and evidence for this.

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Like Jezza always supported Labour unreservedly...? :lol:

Did he ever oppose them during an election campaign? Don't think so.

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6 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

Nope. jezza has to be front and centre at some point.

You and I know it'll be a disaster when he is, just as it was with his very-quickly-dropped january 'relaunch'.

Honestly - that was my expectation too. Yesterday surprised me. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing they've bought in a new team to run the election campaign not linked to Jeremy's regular PR team, who are indeed a shitshow (eg. the whole Virgin Trains thing).

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8 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Honestly - that was my expectation too. Yesterday surprised me. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing they've bought in a new team to run the election campaign not linked to Jeremy's regular PR team, who are indeed a shitshow (eg. the whole Virgin Trains thing).

No way. They wouldn't have a different, better team in the wings waiting for a surprise election and able to start this fast. And Seamus Milne wouldn't just step aside at the moment it all counts.

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12 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Jeremy himself, yes. Jeremy and Labour's wider campaign team, no. 

then I'd say you're utterly deluded.

Never in the history of the UK has what you say might happen has happened. nothing even remotely close.

There is absolutely nothing Labour can do to cause them to win.

There's things the tories could do which might cause labour to win. An example might be May announcing the NHS would become a full paid-for service from June 9th, that might win Labour the election - tho even then I have my doubts.

 

12 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Sure. I'm smarter and more politically engaged than the average person yes. And statistics show people are less likely to vote in situations where it's believed the result is fairly certain in one direction or another. There's facts and evidence for this.

yep, just as there's facts and evidence that backls up what i've  said - that they'll be well aware of already, without needing me to say.

 

12 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Did he ever oppose them during an election campaign? Don't think so.

he has opposed official party policy during every election campaign apart from in 1983.

(he might have in 1983 too, tho I'm not aware of it).

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16 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Honestly - that was my expectation too. Yesterday surprised me. 

Everyone is getting an easy ride from the press at the moment.
(and, I think, Jezza is still refusing all press questions, isn't he?)

The election was unexpected and has caught them all on the hop, so the press is giving them all time to get their shit fully formed (manifestos, etc).

(It's around an election campaign where the press are most likely to expose their standard big bias, so they know they keep to be careful at the mo, and won't go at Jezza too hard till they're able to go at all of them hard).

It's easy to stand up and say what you're against and promise wonderful things.

It's much much MUCH harder to deliver the policy detail that convinces people that what you can say you'll deliver is deliverable.

Have you seen Jezza's ten pledges? It promises full employment, while at the same time (as far as I'm aware, anyway) Jezza plans no restrictions on the current EU free movement.

Which means he's promised a job to everyone in the EU. 

I'm not thinking I'm the only one who's spotted that, and I don't believe Corbyn will manage to make that sound sensible or doable when he's grilled about it.

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This is where the Right/Tories generally do much better than the Left/Labour.   When they have an unpopular leader they are much more ruthless in getting rid of them, and to be fair a Tory leader doing as badly as Corbyn would probably have done the right thing for the party and quit.

Having said that, the Tories are also much better at silencing the squabbling and all uniting behind whoever is in charge the moment the election campaign begins.  No matter how distateful they find the leader, they understand winning elections.  Labour are busy knifing each other right up to polling day because they'd rather be right than be elected.

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27 minutes ago, uscore said:

This is where the Right/Tories generally do much better than the Left/Labour.   When they have an unpopular leader they are much more ruthless in getting rid of them, and to be fair a Tory leader doing as badly as Corbyn would probably have done the right thing for the party and quit.

Having said that, the Tories are also much better at silencing the squabbling and all uniting behind whoever is in charge the moment the election campaign begins.  No matter how distateful they find the leader, they understand winning elections.  Labour are busy knifing each other right up to polling day because they'd rather be right than be elected.

Nicely summed up.

Just FYI: IDS lost a vote of confidence from his MPs (tho not as badly as Corbyn did). He resigned, despite still having big support among members. And it's also worth noting, they didn't have anyone much better to replace him with, tho (from the point of view of tory electability) the replacement was still better.

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1 minute ago, 5co77ie said:

two of those three things were always going to be on her personal wishlist from brexit, even tho she's a remainer (and the third is an automatic consequence of the other two anyway). I don't think there's much of a surprise in those.

And locking the MPs and peers in is fairly standard politics too. Jezza & the NEC considered it for Labour MPs within the last few days, but decided not to do it (I suspect I know the reason why :P).

As for the tough talk, she's in a place where just about anyone would have to be talking tough, you can't really do anything different going into negotiations (tho that's not me excusing all of the ways she's talked tough) as well as to convince the brexiters she means it. It doesn't necessarily mean the deal she's after is anything like some of the suggestions from that tough talk.

And here's something worth considering: after the election, when she has her own mandate, does she still have to keep Boris, Davis and Fox - the brexit headbangers - in their current posts? I'd suggest not, and there might be suggestions of a much softer outcome via that change of personnel even if there's still all the same tough talk.

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3 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

And here's something worth considering: after the election, when she has her own mandate, does she still have to keep Boris, Davis and Fox - the brexit headbangers - in their current posts?

Don't forget his full title - Disgraced former defence secretary Liam Fox. 

Even my SwiftKey suggests it now. 

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1 hour ago, Sasperella said:

Oh dear...has he said he's going to stay on even if they lose to a landslide?? That's....mental. :-/

To be fair, you can't go into an election saying you will resign if you lose. His answer should have been "I won't lose" but, hey, Jeremy...

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1 hour ago, Sasperella said:

Oh dear...has he said he's going to stay on even if they lose to a landslide?? That's....mental. :-/

to be fair, I'm not entirely sure he's said it himself. But its certainly come from those around him that he'd stay until at least September to try to push thru the rule change he wan't for leadership contests - that 5% support from MPs gets a candidate on the ballot.

I'm not entirely sure conference would be amenable to that rule change after a crushing defeat, tho, so perhaps things will end up panning out differently to that.

 

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On 20 April 2017 at 4:49 PM, RichardWaller said:

Yeah, I know who'd get the job. I know that the way someone dresses and presents themselves is important, I accept it but I don't have to agree with it. Appearances can be very deceiving. I didn't say I thought they were irrelevant, I know they're not, I just think we're getting our priorities wrong. Reminds me of just after Cameron got the Tory leadership, reading a paper in the break room at work. Might've actually been The S*n but I didn't buy it so that's ok. It had a double page spread banging on about what Cameron rolling his shirt sleeves up means, and what him pointing with his thumb means. I just remember reading it and thinking fuck me, is this what people are voting for.. 

Yeah I mostly agree it's stupid but it's the way the world is. It's the way the world has been for centuries. Hell we're further away from a fifty years ago when only folk who went to the right schools and wore the best suits could get the prime positions (and I think we're agreed Prime Minister is a prime position) but it doesn't mean it's not massively relevant. There's no way we're going to change that, so surely Labour should be having a leader that is better placed to deal with those realities?

That said, it's also not totally irrelevant either. Some people who are sloppy with how they present themselves are also pretty sloppy with attention to detail in more important areas, arguably disproportionately so. That's why employers are wary of those folks at interview. Of course there's some that are so meticulous in the important stuff that they spend less time on the irrelevant stuff. But even the substance of Corbyn's leadership doesn't strike me one bit as someone who's meticulous with his attention to detail. 

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Unless you wanted a number or ratio out of him there and then, I wouldn't call that evasive. He said he'd like to see a cap put in place, he'd like to do something about the gap between the highest and lowest paid at work. Course, maybe he could've done a few sums and a bit of homework before this appearance. Interesting choice of words there though, saying about him falling into the trap of calling it a "maximum wage".  I agree with that, it was a trap. I don't know if calling it a wage cap or any other term you can think of would make it more paletable than a maximum wage. Suppose that ties into the whole media training thing, just got to avoid or emphasise certain words as they're bound to get seized up on.

Well no, he shouldn't have come out with a number. An actual maximum wage policy would be stupid. But the policy wasn't a maximum wage policy at all - in fact it was a policy worthy of debate and discussion and yet Corbyn seemed to know very little about it when asked about it. It touched on a common theme - plenty of his ideas aren't awful, but many of them are poorly thought through and the ones that aren't he seems unable to present in any kind of convincing manner. This is basic, basic stuff. This is entry level stuff, well below the minimum any major political party should expect of their leader. 

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That video is odd, no idea what was going on there or when or where it was. I wish he'd took it, stood there and said bring it on and spoke passionately about how confident he is about winning or summat, but people will find negatives no matter what he does. Remember the piss taking Ed Miliband had with his "hell yes, I'm tough enough" Course the alternative is looking like a coward.

The Virgin Trains thing is frustrating, it's a true and valid point that our trains are generally too busy and too expensive but now we're acting like they're fine? Lol imagine the backlash if he'd sat in a reserved seat?

 

Miliband's "tough enough" line was nowhere near as bad as this. But Miliband was famously poor with the media too, just not as bad as Corbyn was. The reporter asked a simple, simple question. I think any kind of an answer would have been better than running away. This isn't the media making Jeremy do this, this is Jeremy doing this. 

There is a very valid point to make about the trains in our country. So how come Corbyn managed to score a massive own goal on it? Now, whenever he talks about trains people will bring up this incident. He didn't need to make that self pitying video in the vestibule. He could have got himself on a Southern rail train and filmed that. The whole carriage was full of empty reserved seats and it was an East Coast train which had left London - next stop was York. The chances of someone getting on any time soon was minimal. Plus sitting in an unoccupied reserved seat is within the rules. This is just basic, amateur stuff. 

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The knives were out before he even started his leadership though. I'm not saying the Labour Party are solely responsible for his ratings, not by any stretch, but they've certainly helped. 

I mean, bloody hell, this was what, a month before he was elected? http://www.alastaircampbell.org/blog/2015/08/10/nice-guy-good-mp-making-the-weather-but-it-has-to-be-abc-anyone-but-corbyn-labour-is-finished-if-he-wins/ Course, now that looks very mild.

I think a lot of people will be influenced by what Labour MPs, past and present, have got to say, that's certainly the intention. Not the country, of course. The undecideds, the people who trust Blair and Campbell. Admittedly, the criticism of Corbyn from Labour MPs, councillors and members has been quieter since the last election but I don't suppose many have changed their minds. I'm glad you recognise that he could've picked up a few more percent without the criticism of his own party, I wonder if it could've been more. Course we'll never know. The damage has already been done, there are certainly enough people out there who believed he represents the end of the Labour Party before he was even elected. 

Opposition isn't purely up to the leader though. Like unity, opposition is a shared responsiblity and there's only so much he can do when people despise him. His ten pledges are much further reaching than the narrow section you say he appeals to. Course that doesn't go into the maths of it all, but I don't think the majority of voters do either. I don't even care if people think these ten pledges are cloud cuckoo land. Fuck it, if I was voting for what I expected to happen I probably wouldn't bother voting at all. I'm gonna vote for what I want to happen, what I think is best for the country. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. If it at least starts a debate and gets some ball rolling somewhere or other, it's better than where we are now cos right now, to me at least, any vote feels like a wasted vote

 

Alistair Campbell was hardly in the Parliamentary Labour Party at that point. And considering him and Blair are disliked all across the British political spectrum, I hardly thinks their interventions made a difference. The people who trust Blair and Campbell?! Do you honestly think people thought about what Alistair Campbell thought when making their first opinions on Corbyn? 

Corbyn is far more responsible for his own ratings than the rest of the Labour Party are. I agree it would have made a small percentage difference. But it wouldn't have come close to changing the outcome of this election. It wouldn't have even turned a Tory landslide into a close Tory win. Yougov did a good poll in September 2016 of lost Labour voters - 2015 Labour voters who were planning to ditch them (not even voters Labour would've hoped to attract). Three times as many said they weren't voting Labour due to Corbyn than said it was due to the infighting. Opposition might be a shared responsibility but the buck stops with the leader. That's why the leader of Labour/Tories almost always resigns after losing an election (exception being Kinnock in '87, but that's because he managed to gain ground on the '83 disaster). 

And there is a significant upside for the Labour Party of the MPs being lukewarm to Corbyn. When the Corbyn project fails apart, there will be a massive group of Labour MPs who can distance themselves from Corbyn, who can say they had little to do with the Labour Party that so much of the country will have rejected. This will arguably help them win back voters.

Most people don't despise him. Most people that matter (i.e. swing voters) think he's a nice enough guy but don't take him seriously enough to even contemplate voting for him. Hell I matter a lot less than the swing voters in an election (life long Labour voter in a solid Labour seat) and I dislike him far, far more than the swing voters that matter as I feel a lot more strongly against someone who had sealed the next election for the Tories the moment he won the leadership election. 

And vote for what you think is best for the country, absolutely. It makes far, far more sense to vote for Labour under Corbyn at this upcoming General Election than it ever did to vote for Corbyn in the Labour leadership election. It was grimly predictable from the moment he became a front runner in the Labour leadership race in 2015 how this was going to end. I'm partly relieved we're getting it out of the way three years early. 

 

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22 hours ago, DeanoL said:

All true but then: Trump. Fucking Trump

It's like how some of the tech companies don't hire the guy in the nice suit, because he probably won't be "blue sky" enough for them. There's a way of spinning Corbyn as the anti-establishment guy (even though that would be complete bollocks) and from today it looks like that's what they're going with. Still don't fancy his chances much but it's the only shot they have, and it give me some faith that his campaign team at least seem to know what they're doing.

There are so many massive differences with Trump though. Trump would have been nowhere if he wasn't also massively of the establishment too in other ways - he's ridiculously rich, his name is plastered on skyscrapers in major American cities, he's well connected, the Clintons and various other traditional establishment figures were at his wedding to Melania etc etc. A large section of the population voted him because they trusted him to make them richer - indeed contrary to the received wisdom Clinton actually did better amongst lower income groups, whereas Trump did better amongst higher income groups. Trump would have got nowhere if he was genuinely anti establishment. 

And of course you're right about tech companies but that's very much in the minority. And we're not a country that looks for blue sky thinkers. Maybe Corbyn would have stood a great chance in the Finnish General Election or something...

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1 hour ago, arcade fireman said:

There is a very valid point to make about the trains in our country. So how come Corbyn managed to score a massive own goal on it? Now, whenever he talks about trains people will bring up this incident. He didn't need to make that self pitying video in the vestibule. He could have got himself on a Southern rail train and filmed that. The whole carriage was full of empty reserved seats and it was an East Coast train which had left London - next stop was York. The chances of someone getting on any time soon was minimal. Plus sitting in an unoccupied reserved seat is within the rules. This is just basic, amateur stuff. 

There's two different things at play here though. How Corbyn responds when questioned by the press is a Corbyn problem. He's not confident enough with it, he doesn't know enough or he's just not smart enough to get some things. Who knows. But that's the issue he brings.

The Virgin Trains thing though... it was a publicity stunt, I don't for a minute think Corbyn dreamed it up himself. That would have come from his press team who I think are as much to blame for his image problems as he is. Yes, of course, he's also ultimately responsible for not getting rid of them. But while you can't replace Corbyn at this point, you can replace the campaign team. And at minimum every party is going to be bringing in people for the election campaign (as it's a different skill set to day-to-day PR) so we could (and I'd argue are) seeing some improvement on that.

1 hour ago, arcade fireman said:

There are so many massive differences with Trump though. Trump would have been nowhere if he wasn't also massively of the establishment too in other ways - he's ridiculously rich, his name is plastered on skyscrapers in major American cities, he's well connected, the Clintons and various other traditional establishment figures were at his wedding to Melania etc etc. A large section of the population voted him because they trusted him to make them richer - indeed contrary to the received wisdom Clinton actually did better amongst lower income groups, whereas Trump did better amongst higher income groups. Trump would have got nowhere if he was genuinely anti establishment. 

Corbyn has been a politican all his life and is by any measure rich. He's not genuinely anti-establishment either.

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5 hours ago, DeanoL said:

 

There's two different things at play here though. How Corbyn responds when questioned by the press is a Corbyn problem. He's not confident enough with it, he doesn't know enough or he's just not smart enough to get some things. Who knows. But that's the issue he brings.

The Virgin Trains thing though... it was a publicity stunt, I don't for a minute think Corbyn dreamed it up himself. That would have come from his press team who I think are as much to blame for his image problems as he is. Yes, of course, he's also ultimately responsible for not getting rid of them. But while you can't replace Corbyn at this point, you can replace the campaign team. And at minimum every party is going to be bringing in people for the election campaign (as it's a different skill set to day-to-day PR) so we could (and I'd argue are) seeing some improvement on that.

Corbyn is pretty poor in most interviews and that's a huge, huge problem. Part of the reason why he won the Labour leadership was his unpolished, unspun approach but it's also part of the reason why he's failing hugely as leader. 

And the trains stunt - of course it was a publicity stunt. But Corbyn appointed his press team. You can't say it's just the fault of his press team when Corbyn appointed them himself. Everyone saw the disaster coming when he appointed Seumas Milne for example. The guy might have been a fairly big name at the Guardian but he's also a massive apologist of the USSR. The guy is so far removed from the views of most people in this country and yet Corbyn appointed him to head his media operations. Also, Corbyn as leader would have the final say on everything he does. Including that train stunt.

Changing the campaign team now would be rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. Far too many people have made their minds up about him. Corbyn had next to no chance of changing that many minds in three years let alone six weeks. 

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Corbyn has been a politican all his life and is by any measure rich. He's not genuinely anti-establishment either.

I really don't think there's any way of comparing Trump and Corbyn when it comes to being anti establishment. You can't compare Trump's massive establishment connections to Corbyn's. Of course you can't compare in wealth either. Trump in power is doing the bidding of the establishment on a lot of things - he's appointed a whole load of oil executives and Wall Street people to his cabinet. Corbyn has no such connections (not a bad thing of course, but clearly hugely different). The main way Trump is anti establishment is on his more protectionist policies but then there more nationalist parts of the establishment that share those views too. 

You can draw parallels with Sanders and Corbyn when it comes to being anti establishment. That said Sanders was much better at a lot of the things Corbyn wasn't as good on. 

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On 4/21/2017 at 10:42 PM, arcade fireman said:

Yeah I mostly agree it's stupid but it's the way the world is. It's the way the world has been for centuries. Hell we're further away from a fifty years ago when only folk who went to the right schools and wore the best suits could get the prime positions (and I think we're agreed Prime Minister is a prime position) but it doesn't mean it's not massively relevant. There's no way we're going to change that, so surely Labour should be having a leader that is better placed to deal with those realities?

That said, it's also not totally irrelevant either. Some people who are sloppy with how they present themselves are also pretty sloppy with attention to detail in more important areas, arguably disproportionately so. That's why employers are wary of those folks at interview. Of course there's some that are so meticulous in the important stuff that they spend less time on the irrelevant stuff. But even the substance of Corbyn's leadership doesn't strike me one bit as someone who's meticulous with his attention to detail. 

Well no, he shouldn't have come out with a number. An actual maximum wage policy would be stupid. But the policy wasn't a maximum wage policy at all - in fact it was a policy worthy of debate and discussion and yet Corbyn seemed to know very little about it when asked about it. It touched on a common theme - plenty of his ideas aren't awful, but many of them are poorly thought through and the ones that aren't he seems unable to present in any kind of convincing manner. This is basic, basic stuff. This is entry level stuff, well below the minimum any major political party should expect of their leader. 

Miliband's "tough enough" line was nowhere near as bad as this. But Miliband was famously poor with the media too, just not as bad as Corbyn was. The reporter asked a simple, simple question. I think any kind of an answer would have been better than running away. This isn't the media making Jeremy do this, this is Jeremy doing this. 

There is a very valid point to make about the trains in our country. So how come Corbyn managed to score a massive own goal on it? Now, whenever he talks about trains people will bring up this incident. He didn't need to make that self pitying video in the vestibule. He could have got himself on a Southern rail train and filmed that. The whole carriage was full of empty reserved seats and it was an East Coast train which had left London - next stop was York. The chances of someone getting on any time soon was minimal. Plus sitting in an unoccupied reserved seat is within the rules. This is just basic, amateur stuff. 

Alistair Campbell was hardly in the Parliamentary Labour Party at that point. And considering him and Blair are disliked all across the British political spectrum, I hardly thinks their interventions made a difference. The people who trust Blair and Campbell?! Do you honestly think people thought about what Alistair Campbell thought when making their first opinions on Corbyn? 

Corbyn is far more responsible for his own ratings than the rest of the Labour Party are. I agree it would have made a small percentage difference. But it wouldn't have come close to changing the outcome of this election. It wouldn't have even turned a Tory landslide into a close Tory win. Yougov did a good poll in September 2016 of lost Labour voters - 2015 Labour voters who were planning to ditch them (not even voters Labour would've hoped to attract). Three times as many said they weren't voting Labour due to Corbyn than said it was due to the infighting. Opposition might be a shared responsibility but the buck stops with the leader. That's why the leader of Labour/Tories almost always resigns after losing an election (exception being Kinnock in '87, but that's because he managed to gain ground on the '83 disaster). 

And there is a significant upside for the Labour Party of the MPs being lukewarm to Corbyn. When the Corbyn project fails apart, there will be a massive group of Labour MPs who can distance themselves from Corbyn, who can say they had little to do with the Labour Party that so much of the country will have rejected. This will arguably help them win back voters.

Most people don't despise him. Most people that matter (i.e. swing voters) think he's a nice enough guy but don't take him seriously enough to even contemplate voting for him. Hell I matter a lot less than the swing voters in an election (life long Labour voter in a solid Labour seat) and I dislike him far, far more than the swing voters that matter as I feel a lot more strongly against someone who had sealed the next election for the Tories the moment he won the leadership election. 

And vote for what you think is best for the country, absolutely. It makes far, far more sense to vote for Labour under Corbyn at this upcoming General Election than it ever did to vote for Corbyn in the Labour leadership election. It was grimly predictable from the moment he became a front runner in the Labour leadership race in 2015 how this was going to end. I'm partly relieved we're getting it out of the way three years early. 

 

Sorry, been a busy couple of days and now I'm pissed, I'll reply properly when I'm sober cheers.

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