‘As a man he suffers from a fatal incoherence of the intellectual pretensions. He has wonderful dramatic ideas, but doesn’t have the drive or grasp to make a team of them. His politics seems to me to be founded in a real imagination, sinister and very odd…too much smiling insinuation….and a continuous impersonation of reality out of illusion and fantasy combines with dark sideswipes at the ‘evil’ Press in a pseudo display of critical integrity. What a dim muddy glow there is lighting this goldfish bowl of the English intelligentsia…they are a damply steaming compost of bile, saliva, & disntegrated copies of the Communist Manifesto…the pustulence of their own canker, the fungi that sits & swells & sweats & stinks wherever Socialism is gathered together.’ Ted Hughes on Jeremy Corbyn and his grandiose mewlings. Or that’s what I believe Ted Hughes would say if he were still with us.
Corbyn and McDonnell. What to make of them? We are assured, and they work hard to present themselves as such, that they are hail fellows well met…and yet, that’s not true is it? Even as you watch or listen to the faux bonhomie, the reassuring tones and little quips intended to prove they are human you get an uncomfortable feeling that all is not just so, that something else lurks beneath. Both Corbyn and McDonnell come across to me as rather sinister, their attempts at grooming us with their pleasant spiel reminds me of the German soldier in Saving Private Ryan as he spoke quietly and reassuringly to the American soldier he was killing by slowly pushing a bayonet into his chest…
Listen to the BBC and you’d have an entirely wrong perspective on these two. The BBC downplays or ignores their radicalism and their unpopularity. Listen to the BBC and you’d think they really were the face of a ‘new politics’ with a groundswell of popular support from around the country. And yet, that’s not true. Corbyn has nothing new to offer in the content of his politics nor in the way that he serves that politics up. His support comes from a very vocal, very active group of militant supporters who hijacked the leadership election…even the Labour supporting New Statesman acknowledges Corbyn and his policies are not popular amongst the majority of Labour voters and even less so amongst potential Labour voters…so much for Corbyn himself claiming he has the support of the majority of people in the UK….
Corbyn claims his is a new politics, a line that the BBC seems all to happy to echo rather uncritically despite curiously also acknowledging the new politics seemed to have little substance….
In an era of growing disillusion towards politics, voters might like Mr Corbyn’s attempt at straight-talking, honest politics. But voters also like to know what politicians and parties believe in. At some point, the Labour leader’s policy blossom will have to bear fruit. And that is when the reckoning will be had.
‘Straight-talking, honest politics’? You have to be kidding. It’s all spin, it’s all theatrics..starting with PMQs last week. The BBC just doesn’t seem to have noticed….in fact the BBC goes along with Corbyn that his image problems are all a result of the nasty right wing press…
For example, many voters – if they have read anything about Mr Corbyn’s economic policy from his opponents in the press – might think that all he wants to do is raise taxes and print money. Unless the Labour leader acts to challenge that impression soon, it might prove harder to dispel in later months.
Why for instance has the BBC completely ignored the fact that a good proportion of Corbyn’s speech was lifted from something written in the 80’s and rejected by Labour leaders for decades as the Spectator, amongst many others (not the BBC), spells out?
Revealed: ‘unspun’ Jeremy Corbyn used a four-year old reject speech for Miliband
An off-the-peg speech then, regurgitated from the reject pile of history. New politics? Same old same old and the same old politics of spin.
What was the one factor that made Corbyn so attractive in this era of jaded voters according to the BBC? It was that he had remained unchanged for decades, his ideology and politics and the causes he championed stayed the same for 30 years. This was the man of conviction who spoke the unvarnished truth as he saw it and the voters had been crying out for such a man who would break the mould and bring in a new age of principled, straight-talking, honest politics.
Except that’s not true is it? Immediately upon taking office all that conviction and honesty went out the window in an attempt to ‘fool’ the voters that he was not the Marxist ogre he had always proclaimed he was. He dumped his ‘straight-talking honest politics’ and presented us with a ‘moderate’ face designed to reassure us that the 30 years of championing Communism can be brushed aside, he didn’t really mean it, or rather he did but he doesn’t want you to know he did….honest. He now gets upset when reminded of his past utterances and blames the dark forces of the right-wing press for any mis-apprenhensions the Public might have about him and his ideas…never mind that they are his ideas. The New Statesman recognises the deceit…..
In the short term, Corbyn will doubtless compromise on his policy agenda, in order to prevent an immediate revolt by more moderate Labour MPs. We should not be fooled. He is a principled socialist. His long-term aims remain. He is a leopard whose spots have never changed, and never will. In a way, that is to Corbyn’s credit….However, that is not remotely what most of Labour’s other leading MPs want. They believe in capitalism.
How exactly is such a dishonest stance to Corbyn’s credit if he intends later to implement his extreme policies to the full along with presumably having ‘dealt’ with recalcitrant MPs who oppose him?
The BBC takes a similar stance…it’s clever politics……
Now on one level this is smart politics. If this week is designed to reassure voters frightened by what they read in the papers, why should Mr Corbyn rush his fences? Why establish positions in the early flush of electoral success that he might come to regret?
So Corbyn should not mention his long held politics of conviction in case he comes to regret it later….and yet he was voted in on the basis of that politics…like Syriza….is he now selling out…like Syriza? Note once again the BBC is spinning its own anti-Press line, the same one that Corbyn uses….’voters frightened by what they read in the papers.’ So we shouldn’t believe 30 years of Corbyn ‘honest’ rhetoric then? It was all an act?
Here is an issue that the BBC has conveniently decided not to explore which reflects upon Corbyn’s honesty…the issue of the asteroid…..Corbyn started his speech by dismissing this as the rabid anti-Corbyn Press making stuff up about him,…and yet it was true……both Corbyn and McDonnell signed up to a Parliamentary motion that welcomed the destruction of the earth and mankind by an asteroid….
PIGEON BOMBS
- Session: 2003-04
- Date tabled: 21.05.2004
- Primary sponsor: Banks, Tony
- Sponsors:That this House is appalled, but barely surprised, at the revelations in M15 files regarding the bizarre and inhumane proposals to use pigeons as flying bombs; recognises the important and live-saving role of carrier pigeons in two world wars and wonders at the lack of gratitude towards these gentle creatures; and believes that humans represent the most obscene, perverted, cruel, uncivilised and lethal species ever to inhabit the planet and looks forward to the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the earth and wipes them out thus giving nature the opportunity to start again.
- Total number of signatures: 3 Showing 3 out of 3
Name Party Constituency Date Signed Banks, Tony Labour Party West Ham 21.05.2004 Corbyn, Jeremy Labour Party Islington North 25.05.2004 McDonnell, John Labour Party Hayes and Harlington 16.09.2004
Why would Corbyn be suddenly so embarrassed about his past, a past that he has kept alive right up until he had to put it into action in the real world?
“No, sorry commentariat: this is grown up, real politics where real people debate real issues.”
Not so much. Why would he be embarrassed about such as this?….
“Our job is not to reform capitalism; it’s to overthrow it.” No wonder he has appointed a shadow chancellor whose Who’s Who entry declares his ambition as “fermenting the overthrow of capitalism”.
Corbyn continually attacks the right wing press and blames them for his image problems and yet, as the Spectator shows, the Press is waning and it is the left wing BBC that has enormous dominance of the news narrative….and that last quote came from the lefty New Statesman.
The BBC has been all too ready to accept the narrative that Corbyn is the face of a new politics, a man with integrity, compassion and conscience who has tapped into a widespread feeling across the country and who is attracting voters of all persuasions.
On Monday it was pretty much a Labour love-in on the BBC with hardly a critic in sight….Polly Toynbee and someone from the left wing Demos in one interview and then a whole programme devoted to what Labour thinks of itself..naturally there wasn’t much dissent on open display…..the only bit of reality came when a vox pop showed that the vast majority of voters questioned thought Corbyn was hopeless….the BBC news then picked out the pro-comments and an equal number of anti to give the impression that there was some kind of balance in Corbyn’s support. Is this Miliband all over again with the Public hating him but the BBC insisting they all love him really? The Telegraph notes….
One Labour MP ruefully told me that her party “failed to win the last election because we had a joke of a leader, and now we’ve elected an even bigger joke.”
Sure the BBC asks Labour: Straight talking or old politics? but they suggest, as mentioned, Corbyn is the victim of the right-wing press and not his own failings, his own extreme positioning, or his own compromising of that position.
The BBC is somewhat comfused as to who the speech was aimed at…his core support or the country…Jeremy Corbyn: Speaking to the hall not the nation and yet he talked more of values than politics clearly aiming at the whole country not just the activists or Labour MPs….
“It’s because I am driven by these British majority values, because I love this country, that I want to rid it of injustice, to make it fairer, more decent, more equal.
“And I want all of our citizens to benefit from prosperity and success.”
Shadow education secretary Lucy Powell told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme Mr Corbyn wanted to show that “people have nothing to fear from him” as he shares their values, which he will set out in his speech.
“I know that is a bit boring for people because we always want to see the rabbit out of the hat on the new policies, but that is exactly the kind of new approach to politics that I welcome,” she said.
After all why talk to those clearly already convinced about your radical brand of politics? He was out to reassure us that he wasn’t so radical really.
And why has the BBC failed to challenge this claim?…..
And he attacked the “commentariat” for reporting “splits” in his top team, saying “this is grown-up, real politics where real people debate real issues”.
To a standing ovation, he added: “Cut out the personal abuse, cut out the cyber bullying, and especially cut out the misogynistic abuse.
“Let’s get on with bringing real values back into politics.”
It’s all about the values…..so why did he hug this speaker immediately after she abused the Tories as Nazis?..
And what of Unite leader, Len McCluskey’s comments in a similar vein, Unite being a big backer of Corbyn?…
Union chief Len McCluskey compares Tory strike laws to ‘wearing red triangles at Dachau’ under the NAZIS in furious rant at Cameron’s ‘fascist dictatorship’
Mr McCluskey said: ‘Whatever the law says, I’ll be on the picket line when Unite members are on strike and I will not be wearing the armbands with the red triangle, like the trade union prisoners.
‘Remember that’s what the Nazis did to trade unionists in the concentration camps at Dachau.’
A new, more respectful, value-led politics?
The BBC is not getting its hands dirty, it is standing back and offering up warmed-over pap that presumably is intended not to raise any hackles at Labour HQ. The analysis is pretty anodyne and dodges the real dirt that would show Corbyn to be a complete fraud who has abandoned his principles for short term gain and who far from being straight and honest is spinning the politics in a way that Alastair Campbell would be proud of.
As far as I can remember, Jeremy Corbyn was not a Labour party maverick on the radar in intellectual circles. The only Labour party mavericks with intelligence are Frank Field and Graham Stringer. Jeremy Corbyn was only known as the less academic bother of Piers Corbyn. So at the moment I am wondering what is happening with Field and Stringer. Are Piers Corbyn and Graham Stringer going to succeed in persuading the Labour Party to have a more sane Climate Change policy than that of the Tory Party under that other moron, Cameron?
It’s a peculiar situation at the moment where UKIP has the sanest Climate Change policy, but not as sane as it would if it followed the advice of the communist, Piers Corbyn.
The problem for the Lefties is that the right wing press has less censorship than the BBC.
Level of Media Censorship in the UK:
(1) Internet = 10%
(2) Daily Express = 30%
(3) Other Right Wing Press = 40%
(4) Left Wing Press = 80%
(5) RT UK = 85%
(6) Other Radio and TV =90%
(7) BBC = 95%
As for a new type of politics: I have six hours of the UKIP conference on DVD to watch. I am told that its full of experts talking about Direct Democracy, the undemocratic EU and the Democratic reform of Parliament, such as an English Parliament as part of a Federal Democratic United Kingdom, and also reform of that Elephant in the room, the only completely undemocratic legislature in the Western World, the House of Lords.
” …the only completely undemocratic legislature in the Western World, the House of Lords.”
And you want to replace it with?
Full details of how it is to be elected, how many people, their salaries and expenses, the dates for their elections, the powers relative to the House of Commons etc. would oblige.
There is rarely anything so broken that well intentioned reform cannot make worse.
Until Labour started to use it as a tool to attempt to defeat government policy in principle it has worked well.
I am not aware that it ever set out to defeat Labour government policy from Wilson onwards.
I think all we need to know about the last round of ‘reforms’ to the Lords was that it involved Billy Bragg! The last time I looked he wasn’t even a politician, let alone an elected one, he’s a singer, and can’t even sing without going flat!
He’s a singer? You could have fooled me.
Until it was abused the HoL was one of the finest parts of UK legislature. Its composition (well educated), independence (many apolitical members) and the fact that it could advise but not block legislature provided an ideal plank to offset the foibles of the HoC.
In America you either have Senate and Congress controlled by the same party (in which case why have the Senate as it just rubber-stamps Congress) or they are controlled by different parties and you get gridlock. – Two extremes.
Tony Blair of course tried to (and in some measure succeeded) castrate the HoL and from now on both Prime Ministers fill the house with their own political stooges – we have an arms race (almost literally) as each PM adds more supporters to counteract the supporters added by the previous PM.
The BBC seems to be doing a pretty good job of making the Labour shambles look anything other than credible, simply by the dominant national broadcaster doing nothing but passing on their pearls and nodding critically.
If it is a set up, it is an odd one. But this is the corporation that has redefined ‘unique’.
So, are the public being set up for Tom to save Labour, or David to save us from the Tories?
And when will the next phase kick in?
Corbyn is an insurgent and an agent for change who found himself in a position of leadership by accident. Now he is there, he has little idea of how to lead or how to implement the change that he seeks.
Moreover, at 67 years of age he is unlikely to have time or inclination to learn how to do either, so arguably the only thing he can do is to outsource as much of the policy making as he possibly can. Pass the buck in other words.
McDonnell is 66 years of age and is not much different.
The question is who is likely to come along behind him to take the initiative forward? The membership rules for leadership election are only likely to become more favourable to those who elected him and the BBC are still trying to work it all out how they fit in and how they should instruct us all.
The impression I get of Corbyn is that he is a left-wing reactionary. He’s the equivalent of a Tory leader talking about warm beer, long shadows on county cricket grounds and old maids bicycling to HC through the early morning mist – as John Major did, but only more so. It’s a feelgood exercise for a party that senses it is dying. If someone on the right tried that, as Major did, he would be ridiculed.
Does anyone else think Sarah Montague on BBC R4 Today prog. is ‘protected’ either because she is female or that she has friends in high places?
After various car crash interviews, this morning she interviewed Jezza and it was pathetic. Constantly stumbling over words, incoherent rambling questions, accepting the answers like a rabbit stuck in the headlights and no concept of investigation.
Will she be the same when interviewing Osborne or Cameron – or will they have to face Naughtie or Humphries perchance?
Meanwhile Mishel Hussein was little better, fawning all over the ?Greek? EU immigration official. She worked out that the EU plan covers only 120000 out of 500000 immigrants but forgot to ask him about what to do with the other 380000. Then when he talked about the difference between asylum seekers and economic migrants she forgot to challenge him on how he would tell the difference. Lightweight, superficial, in my view subservient.
You can be sure neither the Tories nor Farage will get this kid glove treatment.
The short answer to your question is ‘YES’.
Montague this morning managed to get a scoop, in extracting from Corbyn his avowed refusal to ever press THE button. She was too stupid, however to understand the real significance of this…preferring to get all processy, trying to trip him up about how this fitted in with Labour’s defence review (Socialists love process).
The real significance of that declaration by Corbyn was either to make his position as leader of a party which supports a nuclear deterrent untenable from the outset…or to make it impossible for many of his ministers to remain in post.
In writing this, I wonder if Montague and the BBC (clearly on a mission to sanitise Corbyn and portray him as a mainstream politician) didn’t want to go there…or if, indeed, she was too thick to understand the full implications of what was staring her in the face.
Your guess is as good as mine.
Evan Davies assessed the impact of Corbyn’s speech on Newsnight with the balanced opinions of three experts. One was a polster who looked remarkably like Shimon Perez – possibly in an attempt to imply balance – but Guardian columnist O’Hagen and Guardian Executive Editor Freedland rather upset the good intentions.
I placed this in the Start the Week contributions but seems equally relevant here ..
BBC’s Newsnight is a complete waste of time.
Its program last night was centred on the doleful speech by Jeremy Corbyn.
The producers Ian Katz and his assistant are ex Guardian editors. They have Evan Davies interviewing Ellie Mae O’Hagen and Johnathan Freedland, both from the Guardian. For some balance they add the Guardian and New Statesman contributor Peter Kellner.
I have nothing against any of the contributors who are all worth listening to but the Guardian is the second least read newspaper in the country, thus its views are shared by just few people. These interviews followed one with Len McClusky, the gangster from Unite who has bullied and paid for Corbyn’s rise from obscurity to being slightly less obscure. Surely the audience is not benefiting from a rounded analysis.
There are areas of the left, from centre to far left, which strongly disagree with McClusky, the Guardian and the BBC’s political viewpoints. Examples would be subjects such as immigration, Trident and the EU. So where are they?
If the left are not represented it has to be asked where are where are the journalists from centre and right wing news outlets?
If I wanted to read the Guardian then I would either buy it from local newsagent else seek help from a therapist. What I want from the BBC is analysis in which I can have some element of confidence.
Wonder why the audiences for Newsnight are on par with a documentary on twelfth century coral fishing from Alba TV.
Five Live had someone along from the mass circulation Morning Star yesterday morning to offer his observations on Comrade Corbyn’s speech.
While I’ve been abroad there must have been a coup or something.
Down my burrow in Corbynland I am reminded of Orwell’s 1984. “Napoleon” Corbyn and “Squealer” McDonnell seem to be following the plot to the very letter. To quote from Orwell, “how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries”. Watching all the nodding sheep (including those Napoleon Corbyn has already booked for a trip to the “veterinary surgeon”) smiling and cheering him on they all seemed so enthusiastically prepared to accept “The Seven Commandments of Animalism”. The BBC is of course running true to form and again to quote Orwell “The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary…. Things are kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervenes but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact.”
Well George it ain’t just literary self-censorship anymore at Al Beeb.
Animal Farm.
Ahead of Corbyn’s speech yesterday one of Five Live’s finest, breathlessly and excitedly described the scene in the hall and called Corbyn, ‘a great leader’.
‘Project Jeremy’ is in full swing at the BBC
A great leader is one thing he most definitely isn’t. Leadership doesn’t involve running things by committee. Committees are not places where typically dynamic decision making takes place.
There is a live example currently building.
Should we as a country become more involved in Air strikes in Syria? Can you imagine Corbyn’s committees opining on such an issue were he to be PM? It would be a nightmare, with no decision ever being made.
N88
The BBC would prefer Satan to a Conservative.
The BBC love Corbyn, their reservations are solely about whether he can get elected.
If Corbyn does get elected that will be the final election.
It could have been even worse, though. The Marxist wing of the loonies take it in turns to put up a joke candidate for the leadership. Last time it was Diane Abbott. Imagine what it would be like if they had her as ‘leader’. The bBBC would have been in heaven, though, with several boxes ticked: a fat racist leftie woman.
The BBC’s coverage of Corbyn can only be understood in the context of the pickle our favourite left-wing propaganda machine finds itself in. Everybody knows that Corbyn is unelectable. The big question is, how far down will he drag the Labour Party before this little flirtation with hard-left politics explodes in Labour’s, and the BBC’s, face?
Notice how the BBC is allowing criticism of Corbyn but always tempers it with praise for his personal qualities, particularly his openness and honesty (sic). They are paving the way for their coverage of his inevitable fall from grace which will be due to the fact that, despite being a nice bloke, his style is no longer suited to the cut and thrust of modern politics.
However, the BBC does not want to be seen to adopt a hard line either for or against Corbyn, just in case he starts to gain momentum (God forbid). The BBC is playing the long game: don’t overdo the criticism of Corbyn because it casts doubt on the sanity of the wider Labour Party that elected him but prepare to welcome his successor.