Well, it looks like I’m going to have rivulets of egg yolk running down my face in a couple of hours. I have pretty consistently said through the Labour leadership contest that there’s no way Jeremy Corbyn is going to win. Labour members would flirt a bit with him but when it came to it, would plump for a safer option. They might get their ballot paper out with every intention of voting for him, but when it comes to actually putting that number 1 on the paper, some invisible force would make them bottle out of it at the last minute. It’s a bit like what a friend of mine calls “Ouija board voting.”
Yesterday’s London mayoral selection results show a pretty clear victory for a Sadiq Khan, a candidate backed by Ken Livingstone, so the logical conclusion is that Corbyn benefitted from their votes.
So how should Liberal Democrats react to a Corbyn victory? Well, seriously, we have our own house to put in order so we should get on with doing that. It doesn’t matter who leads the other parties if we can’t explain to the voters what we bring to the political smorgasbord.
Secondly, let’s not be another voice at the back of a long and powerful queue castigating Corbyn and making him out to be the Grim Reaper for all civilisation. It was bad enough when the tabloid press turned on Ed Miliband, the bacon sandwich incident being the finest example of the paucity of political debate in this country. Sure, Corbyn has hung out with some very dodgy people and has made some fairly questionable comments. It’s not like our government has dealings with dodgy dictators or anything, is it? I find it difficult to stomach lowering a flag on the passing of a Saudi king whose country’s record on human rights is appalling. Why are we so cosy with Bahrain?
One of the things that we as liberals should be very wary of is where power lies and we should seek to limit excessive use of power. A powerful media owned by a few rich corporations holds tremendous and disproportionate sway. We need to be pointing that out as a major flaw in the way things work in our country – and on that we actually agree with Corbyn. When the media and the government go too far in having a go at Corbyn, we should call them out for it.
When we oppose Corbyn’s policies, which will be a lot of the time, we should do so in a thoughtful manner that plays the ball not the man. The way we dealt with Labour during the coalition years was ineffective and frustrating, demanding apologies for their economic failures and other such gimmicks. We need to have conversations that interest and stimulate the voters rather than resort to lazy brickbats. We need to articulate our positive liberal vision and show why it rather socialism, laissez-faire, nationalism and isolationism is what this country and the world, in fact, needs. Freedoms face massive challenges from authoritarianism whether from right or left, more so than at any time I can remember, and we need to be there fighting for our values.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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No, Leave didn't win the Brexit referendum because of Northern working class voters
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68 Comments
I agree with every word of this.
Well said Caron.
Wow. Don’t castigate Corbyn? Don’t play the man? You couldnt be more wrong.
We absolutely should. This man wants to be prime minister. His personal character matters massively. Who he is willing to associate with, praise and deal with, his history and his legacy all matter, not because he’s an MP, but because he will be candidate to be prime minister.
His list of friends and associates is actually pretty disgusting, it’s full of virulent anti semites, and homophobes. To give him a free pass on these things, is to give the bigotry a free pass too. I dont for one second believe that is your intention, but when anti semitic attacks in the capital rose 98% last year, we must have credible people who can lead and guide, not a man who donated to holocaust deniers and fought for blood libellers
Goodness, how wrong can you be – would you suggest taking the same attitude to UKIP or the Tories?
Corbyn has consistently been supportive of the vilest terrorist groups ( his ‘friends’). He thinks the war in the Ukraine is a US plot, he thinks Poland should not be allowed to be a member of NATO, he continues to support the regime in Venezuala, he is happy to stand in front of a banner celebrating Stalin and Mao ( think what would happen if Cameron stood in front of one celebrating Hitler) and his economic policy would be utterly ruinous to our economy.
“When the media and the government go too far in having a go at Corbyn, we should call them out for it.” Are you seriously suggesting we should defend him ?
I also agree with this article – yet I can’t help thinking I’ll have good reason to quote bits of it back at Caron at various times over the next five years…
I can’t agree with this idea that we shouldn’t attack Corbyn, but this idea that we should get our own house in order first I agree with. Sadly members made a pretty dreadful mistake which makes that difficult.
Andrew and Simon, if the British people were going to be subject to no scrutiny at all of Corbyn’s record, then I might agree with you. What is going to happen is that everything he has ever said is going to be jumped on and twisted. Even in your comments, I don’t think you have been entirely fair to him. Where has he personally said anything homophobic or bigoted? if we’re going to have a go at people for the company they keep, then our own Government meets some pretty dodgy characters – and in fact has kept some pretty dodgy regimes in power.
When the media uses its disproportionate power to portray a false image of someone, we should call hem out for it. That’s not the same as defending Corbyn, and we should try not to get too embroiled in that, but commenting on the power of the media and how they use it is legitimate.
But the most important thing we should be doing is articulating our own vision and ideas and not getting dragged down a feeding frenzy on Corbyn. That will do us no good as a party whatsoever.
I agree.
If we are seen to be gloating over Labour’s misfortunes, we will come over as selfish people who care nothing for the weak and vulnerable in society.
Also, from an ethical point of view, those who care about the weak and vulnerable, but follow policies we disagree with, are often driven by the noblest of motives. It would be wrong to pretend this were not the case.
However, we also need to be robust in producing a serious intellectual case as to why we do not follow Jeremy Corbyn. Sometimes that will involve saying things that supporters of Corbyn strongly dislike. But if we take great care in avoid attacks on the person, rather than that person’s position, then it will be right thing to do.
We also need to produce a similar robust critique of the Conservatives. Some of us may have been inhibited from doing this by the Coalition, unsure how we could do this, without potentially undermining those of our party who were serving in government. Maybe that’s a muscle we haven’t exercised enough in the last five years, and we now need to exercise it a lot more.
And then we have to do the hardest thing of all, which is to critique our own ideas. Discard those that are mistaken, reshape those that are out-of-date. That’s probably going to be harder than anything, because it will involve conflict with other members of our party. But it is a process we need to go through, if we are to reinvigorate the proposals we put before this country.
Andrew, campaigning politics is offensive (as in going on the attack) so of course we will be doing that as part of normal campaigns. I just don’t want to see us get involved in the media feeding frenzy. We won’t be heard at the bottom of a long queue for a start. Corbyn’s words have often been distorted during this and it’s not fair when that happens.
During my time in Parliament I was fortunate to have participated in a number of debates along with Jeremy Corbyn and we were often on the same side on key votes. His commitment to a fair deal for the Palestinian people was one area where we shared very similar views, as well as the need to get rid of nuclear weapons.
The most important vote where we went through the same lobby was opposing the war in Iraq. His statements on the war, the civilian deaths and the deception by the Blair government are to his credit.
If the predictions are correct and Jeremy Corbyn does win this morning, people will know what he stands for and while he may have trouble with the Labour Parliamentary Party, he will also have the backing of tens of thousands of new and enthusiastic supporters.
Some of his policies will also be supported by members of the Liberal Democrats, like me, and I will be glad to see the leader of the Labour Party urging caution before future military action abroad, scrapping Trident and opposing the Bedroom Tax. With any luck he will also develop a better policy relating to Student Tuition Fees than we now have.
I have been really surprised with some of the disparaging comments on Lib Dem Voice relating to a Corbyn led Labour Party.
We should concentrate on trying to deal with our own problems. One of which will be getting any media coverage in the weeks and months ahead.
Whatever the result today, we can be assured that the Labour Party will not suffer from lack of coverage on the TV, in the papers and in the rest of the media.
The claim by many that he will be unelectable and could never be in government is something that was for many years thrown at the Liberal Democrats.
If he wins, the one thing that will be true is that once again politics will be much more interesting again.
John, after what’s happened in Scotland the last few years, how much more interesting do you want things to get?:-).
Just out of interest, what would be your advice to the Labour Party in Scotland? Do you think Kez should just embrace her inner lefty and try to outflank the SNP that way?
I think you’re right Caron; ….. there are plenty of former Libdem voters out there who have hopped on the Corbyn train via the SNP or Green party; nurturing them back to liberalism will be more difficult if we go over the top with the anti-Corbyn hype. Nobody likes being told they are stupid.
Caron, I suspect that a Corbyn win will make life in Scotland slightly more difficult for the SNP and the new Labour leader in Scotland, but if voters in England do not take to him and this results in another Conservative Government in 5 years time and then another SNP Government in Scotland, we might then be in for a second referendum not too long after that.
On that I agree, John.
I am doing a fund raising event with Tory and Labour councillors this morning. Interesting that Lib Dem and Tory councillors are cheering on Corbyn, Labour councillors are very unhappy at the prospect of a Corbyn victory. Indeed one says he expects to leave the Labour Party.
In regard to Caron’s musings. I agree we need to focus on our own message, which needs defining. JC probably won’t need our help to fall flat on his face.
Caron, I agree, especially with the need to get the lib Dem’ Party on its feet again.
The media will throw mud at Corbyn and it won’t stick. He has Tony Blair’s presentation of earnestness, and people like that.
What we mustn’t forget is how to win the argument again against socialism. Kendall, Cooper and Burnham chose not to take on socialism and they lost. Blair and Mandelson understood that socialism was wrong – they were a bit unclear what to do instead, and ended up shovelling large piles of cash out the door in gold plated PFI contracts – but all they persuaded their party was that socialism would lose them elections. No wonder Corbyn is seen as principled.
Principled? Dogmatic? Dangerous extremist? We tell them apart by considering the merits of the principles and dogmas.
Socialism is the idea that if we prevent people creating, innovating, investing and prospering with their own talents and efforts, that the benefits to us all in progress, opportunities, jobs and tax revenues wouldn’t be lost or diminished as you might expect but would in fact be redistributed according to the power of organised labour, or perhaps even more equally.
Lots of people desperately want this to be true, and cynical populist politicians can play on this. But even they are not as dangerous as the true believers. Burnham. Corbyn.
It depends on how you ‘attack’ him and those behind him. We should not forget that Derek Hatton was only ever DEPUTY Leader of Liverpool City Council and we should also remember what Ken Livingston did to GLC Leader, Andrew McIntosh, straight after the latter’s election victory back in the 1980s. We need to see what the Hunts and Kendall’s of this world decide to do. The Liberal wing of the Social and Liberal Democrats may need to listen a bit more to the Social Democrat wing for a while. We could find common ground with a large section of the broad church that is today’s Labour Party. Supporting them in their struggle with the forces that lie behind Mr Corbyn may be to our mutual advantage in the long term.
Today might well be a paradigm shift in British politics. How it will ultimately play out will be determined by how all of the parties respond.
I think there is an underlying theme in both the rise of the SNP and Corbyn’s likely rise to the Labour leadership. It is undeveloped in what it is for, but it’s clear what it is against.
Joining in any anti-Corbyn rants is likely to make us part of the problem rather than part of the solution. I’d suggest the way we’ve dealt with the SNP has demonstrated the likely impact.
Let’s focus on rebuilding our party. And let’s not do this by getting cheap headlines attacking Corbyn. Let’s make it about what we stand for, and not allowing that to be submerged.
There will be enough people attacking Corbyn later today (win or lose!). Why should any Lib Dem who has anything serious to say about anything want to be among the ‘little Sir Echoes’?
The people of this country have had a lot more than quite enough of politicians who just attack and smear each other. It sticks in their gullet. They don’t mind serious criticism of an opponent if it is directly related to something contemporary about which they care.
Andrew “we should get our house in order first” What does that mean. What are you suggesting?
@George Kendall “If we are seen to be gloating over Labour’s misfortunes, we will come over as selfish people who care nothing for the weak and vulnerable in society.”
This only holds if you believe Labour actually do anything for the weak and vulnerable in society.
Time to love bomb Kendallites
So it’s Jeremy Corbyn. There will be a rallying round so let’s allow the dust to settle before we do anything. My feeling is that the honeymoon period may not last long.
We live in interesting times.
Tim Farron not a man in a suit
Jeremy Corbyn not a man in a suit
Nicola Sturgeon not a man in a suit
Natalie Bennett not a man in a suit
Nigel Farage the man in the pub
David Cameron the man in a penguin suit
Oh I just spotted fliers at the QEH saying “I voted for a new kind of politics”
Where did we hear that slogan before….?
Hi Caron,
Corbyn has won a stunning victory – it’s less the headline 60/40 split, but rather that he got 100k more votes than Burnham and Cooper combined: it’s a remarkable achievement.
It’s also our best hope, as the policies Corbyn has advocated if adopted by the Labour party will be utterly disastrous, and will open the market up for sensible liberal economic policy. Let’s do this!
His acceptance speech was quite impressive.
I see that his first action this afternoon will be to join the march in support for a better deal for refugees.
If the Labour Party at Westminster does not follow his lead on further military action in Syria, the media will make much of the split, but many members of the public will admire his honesty and track record. Predictions of his early demise may not be at all accurate.
The honeymoon might well last much longer than many suspect.
Yes, John, I think we underestimate Corbyn at our peril. If he engages the non voters in the same way as the SNP did, then it could be interesting. Mind you, the SNP talk a good fight, but they don’t actually offer the socialist agenda likely to come from Corbyn.
The SNP has got to deliver one day. I’m still waiting. There is a great deal of cynicism out there, that will be swayed by the Murdoch press and the Daily Mail. OK, so nearly 60% of ‘supporters’ voted for Jeremy Corbyn. What that as a percentage of the electorate as a whole? It’s far too early to panic. Let’s wait and see.
@Joe Otten
“What we mustn’t forget is how to win the argument again against socialism.”
Are you by any chance one of those people who lives in a house full of vintage nick-nacks bought from ebay while pretending it is still the 1950s?
The capitalism vs socialism argument belongs to another century. Each system long since learned to acknowledge and assimilate the benefits of the other. That’s as true of Corbyn as it is of David Cameron.
@Caron Lindsay
“I think we underestimate Corbyn at our peril”
Well, to an extent. That’s probably a true thing for a Lib Dem to say. The Tories are the ones who can afford to be complacent.
Lots of Lib Dems are cock-a-hoop this afternoon thinking they’ll have an easy next four years mopping up disillusioned Labour voters. The last election result does not offer much support for this theory. When voters were running scared of “Red Ed” and the SNP, they didn’t turn to the Lib Dems – quite the opposite. The Lib Dems were doing much better when Labour was moderate and strong.
It’s not so much Corbyn who Lib Dems are underestimating as the Labour Party. The party is still strong in many ways and will survive its brief flirtation with Corbyn, who will likely lose a lot more votes than he gains, but he will gain a lot of votes, especially among the young. Just to put things in to perspective: Liz Kendall, who came last with a dismal 4.5% of the vote, was only 280 votes shy of Tim Farron’s total in the Lib Dem election. Even more worrying, turnout in the Lib Dem election was barely more than half, meaning that Farron could only inspire less than 32% of Lib Dem members to bother voting for him. If Lib Dems think he’s going to have an easy time persuading Labour voters to back him, they are in for a nasty shock.
Labour Members didnt vote for Corbyn , to be precise just under half did, just over half voted for one of the others; his victory was based on the £3 sign-ups & the small number of Union affiliates.
We do need to be very careful about attacking Corbyn, he seems to be a genuinely nice bloke & he is going for the Soft Cop strategy while his followers do all the nasty stuff in closed Party meetings.
As to the possible success of a Far Left Labour in a General Election, my best guess would be somewhere around 15-25%. However, thats 5 years away, I can see Labour winning in London & doing well in Hip Urban areas in Local Elections. How quickly our vote will recover we dont know, its too soon to say.
Does Farron inspire the LibDem members as much as Corbyn Labour Party members? The reason he is being attacked so vehemently in my view is because he invokes fear in his opponents. He is eloquent and will not be a Milliband, PM questions will be interesting as all Cameron will do is attack him. People are sick of that sort of politics which is one reason why Corbyn was elected. I doubt he will do a Clegg either.
paul barker 12th Sep ’15 – 1:37pm
“Labour Members didnt vote for Corbyn , to be precise just under half did, ”
Jeremy Corbyn got 59.5% of the votes cast.
He got 251,417 votes. He got more first preference votes than all three of his rivals put together.
I would like to wholeheartedly back Caron and John Barrett on this. Jeremy Corbyn is not a demon and we should not join in demonising him… There needs to be some party discipline on this in my opinion and Willie Rennie has already gone too far as a Party spokesman in my opinion.
The Tories are the government now, and we are a small part of the opposition. We need to carve out a distinctive set of opposition policies that are different from Labour’s, but when we agree with them, we should support them. Same with the SNP – they are the government in Scotland and we should be opposing them on their Scottish policies and absolutely not on their desire for independence – that is a battle for another day, not Holyrood 2016. This week’s by-elections show that we are still far from being trusted in Edinburgh (In 2008 we got 2170 votes in Leith Walk; on Thursday we got 255) and Midlothian, while in Maidstone we failed to mobilise the anti-Tory vote, letting them in with just 27% of the votes! I strongly suspect that many people in Britain will like the sound of Corbyn’s policies, but will not really believe he can deliver. Over the top criticism will not win any of those voters. We need them to win back some of those Tory seats in the SW, and like Edinburgh West which will be close to John’s heart
I have no desire to “castigate” Corbyn. He has won an overwhelming mandate from his party’s members and it is now for him to prove that their confidence was not misplaced. However the mass resignations from the shadow cabinet speak volumes about how his erstwhile colleagues feel about him.
The Tories couldn’t believe their luck when the SNP bogeyman threat worked so well. They must be cock-a-hoop at the thought of a campaign about life under “Prime Minister Corbyn”. That is potentially as disastrous for the Lib Dems as it is for Labour.
Stuart,
Actually if you plot a graph of Labour % vs Liberal Democrat % for all the postwar years when we got > 10%, there is a good negative correlation – when the Labour vote goes down, ours goes up (the exception is 2015, obviously!). There is no correlation between our vote and the Tory vote
On the other hand we generally get more SEATS when Labour are strong, because we gain seats mainly from the Tories and if they are on 30% we win more of them – provided people who would vote Labour in other places back us… We only get those votes because we are seen as similar enough to Labour to be better than the Tories, and currently that is what we have lost.
Right now there is no General Election and we need % vote more than seats. I suspect there will be a surge in Labour support for a while which will hamper our recovery, but time will tell…
Would it be possible as a service to LDV readers to reproduce the table from BBC News which gives the actual breakdown of voting for Corbyn —
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34221155
Corbyn got a landslide.
49.6% of the votes of longtime members
83.8% of the votes of registered supporters
57.6% of the votes of affiliated supporters
People trying to “spin” this result as anything other than a stunning victory for Corbyn is simply wrong.
I don’t want to personally castigate Corbyn. I felt bad for him when he said how hard these past few weeks have been on his family. However, I do get the sense that if he is so worried about what attacks are coming then he isn’t ready for the job. It’s not about being tough, it’s about being confident in his own positions. He will want time to think and consider and the country’s right is just going to be jumping up and down going bananas for five years.
However if he starts attacking small businesses or fails to change his position on defence then I will be quite tough. It’s prejudiced to think small business owners are all well off and can cope with lots more taxes and regulations. It is also a threat to us and our allies when he wants to be weak on defence.
I’m still more worried about his defence policies than his economic ones. But that might change in time.
@John Tilley ““Labour Members didnt vote for Corbyn , to be precise just under half did, ”
Jeremy Corbyn got 59.5% of the votes cast.”
He didn’t get 59.5% of the Labour Members vote. You’re including £3 Affiliates and Trades Unionists in that figure.
We need to be getting our act together & talking about & to Labour.Its not an either/or choice. That will involve some criticism of Corbyn but we need to keep it polite. Any purging of Blairite Traitors will be going on mostly at Local level & in closed meetings – Corbyn himself will be all smiles & moderation. The Labour Left are really lucky in that the next prominent set of Election is in London where they are strongest & we are weakest.
The Referendum on Europe is a different matter, Corbyn hasnt even decided what line to take yet & ther will be elements of The Left on both sides.
@TCO
“This [seen to be gloating over Labour’s misfortunes] only holds if you believe Labour actually do anything for the weak and vulnerable in society.”
“Time to love bomb Kendallites”
The two are incompatible. Gloating, when they are feeling pain and shock, is going to anger them.
(I can see it’s going to cause confusion that my surname is also Kendall)
@ Paul Barker,
Sorry, Paul, but I’m with John Tilley on this one. Take out the £3 members, and Corbyn still wins… easily. And, if the £3 members convert their enthusiasm into full membership and activity, then on the face of it, that’s good for Labour. However, as my rather more politically attuned wife notes, if all that means is huge majorities in already safe urban Labour seats, it doesn’t help Labour to take seats from the Tories, which is the key requirement for a Labour win in 2020.
Let’s see what a Corbyn/Watson shadow cabinet looks like before we rush to conclusions,
Good article Caron. Thought provoking as ever and I totally agree about playing the ball not he man. I do not agree with many of his policies. He will try to take the Labour Party in a direction that will leave lots of space for us in the middle. As many have already said, we need to work on what our offering is in this ground. I am very much looking forward to conference so we can start that process. He will also likely be unafraid to be an effective opposition to Cameron which again is good for for democracy and us. But, while I see an opportunity, I am also worried. If you look over time at the strength of the Lib Dems, it needs not just a weak Conservative Party but also a credible Labour one to win over the middle england voters of constituencies like Oxford West and Abingdon. Thinking back to those I met I think many will find some of his ideas interesting, but I can’t see them wanting him as PM. So let’s get on with trying to be the only proponent of the rational middle ground and leave the others to fight it out. But if we are to regroup in time for 2020, we better get to it!
@Stuart
“Are you by any chance one of those people who lives in a house full of vintage nick-nacks bought from ebay while pretending it is still the 1950s?
The capitalism vs socialism argument belongs to another century. Each system long since learned to acknowledge and assimilate the benefits of the other. That’s as true of Corbyn as it is of David Cameron.”
Lol. Nothing like.
Yes I thought so too. Until now.
@Joe Otten
Well I’ll make a prediction – and unlike the average Lib Dem, I have a pretty good record for political soothsaying, having predicted within weeks of the 2010 election what would happen to the Lib Dems in 2015 with a high degree of accuracy.
Labour’s next manifesto will bear about as much resemblance to “socialism” as the Tory or Lib Dems ones will to pure capitalism. Most of the public understand this and these labels don’t matter much any more, except to the tribally obsessed.
Joe Otten.
innovation is not driven by individuals in potting sheds. Everything about mobile and computers is by huge teams and vast amounts of public money. This conversation we are having now is ultimately the result of the space program. the GPS in your car ditto etc, that’s before you even take into account the education involved or the roads that took them to school so ever. That’s not to say everything is therefor socialist, but simply that idea of big polerising differences that lead to creativity are a bit of a myth. As far as I can tell Socialism even in the Corbyn sense goes no further than wanting to take a bit more money in tax and instead of giving hundreds of billion in QE to people who think “innovation” is new and exciting ways of creating money through debt bubbles, and who were so bad at their jobs they very nearly ended capitalism with more vigour than any Marxist, maybe spend it on infra structure. In other words pretty much what was known as mainstream economics until the mid 1970s or so. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the well known commie George Bush SNR described what lead to the current thinking as voodoo economics! I still think it’s a better definition than neoliberal or as some would have it the only definition of capitalisms or as increasingly some commentators insist “centrist”. I also seem to have read that personal debt in the UK is now running at £1, 466 trillion which I gather is quite a lot and a bit worrisome. .
@Anne?
“Does Farron inspire the LibDem members as much as Corbyn Labour Party members?”
Fact: 68% of Lib Dem members did not vote for Tim Farron as leader. Should a Lib Dem ever come knocking on my door (and up to now, none ever has), I’ll be sure to ask if they were one of the 32%.
@AndrewMcC
“Actually if you plot a graph of Labour % vs Liberal Democrat % for all the postwar years when we got > 10%, there is a good negative correlation – when the Labour vote goes down, ours goes up (the exception is 2015, obviously!). There is no correlation between our vote and the Tory vote”
I didn’t go as far as plotting graphs – though it would be very interesting to see – but what I did do is deliberately exclude the Alliance years, since the Alliance was not the same as the Lib Dems. One of the components of the Alliance had broken away from Labour so it would have been strange indeed if they had not taken at least some Labour voters with them.
Incidentally, 2015 was not as much of an exception as you’d think – contrary to popular belief, Labour actually increased their vote share slightly in 2015, and that’s despite bombing in Scotland.
I actually find it quite amusing that some Lib Dems are openly hoping for a big influx of disgruntled Labourites. If that happens, the turncoats in question will all be from the Blairite wing of the party. If reading LDV for five years has taught me one thing, it’s that most of the Lib Dems who write here would not welcome being a part of New Labour MKII. Looking at the voting figures for the last Lib Dem leader election, it would only take a few hundred more than the number who voted for Liz Kendall to completely take over your party. Be careful what you wish for!
Stuart, you are right, Lib Dems generally do not have much affection for nuLab (now very much past-it Labour!) It always amused me that Paddy Ashdown must have fondly imagined his famous plotting with Tony Blair some kind of coalition would have gone down much better than the actual coalition in 2010! Poor old TCO and his / her “love bombing Liz Kendallites!! Perhaps we should be told whether Liz and George Kendall are related – politically, if not in any other way?
@Tim13 “Perhaps we should be told whether Liz and George Kendall are related”
A fair question, which I fear I’ll have to answer many times.
As far as I know, our families aren’t related at all. As to whether we are related politically, to be honest, I’ve never met her and I haven’t watched that much of her on television, nor read much that she has written, so I don’t really know. Maybe you’d know better than me.
What I will say is that I agreed with Jeremy Corbyn’s tribute to her. She seems to be someone who fights for what she believes, rather than just pandering to the voters. That’s a quality I admire.
‘Play the man’ @he only just got half of the votes’…. dear oh dear. What has become of what’s left of a once radical and principled party. I thought the article was very fair. But some of the comments suggesting you should effectively pitch in with the ‘reds under the beds stuff’ is pretty dismal and makes depressing reading.
The attempt to pick away at the huge success that Corbyn has achieved despite overwhelming and disgusting media bias simply beggars belief. As Stuart points out, where does this leave Tim Farron? All credit to John Barrett who seems best placed to comment on Corbyn ‘the man and his values’. Based on this is sounds like Corbyn is a fairly decent guy. As Caron was honest to point out she read the tealeaves wrong when it came to the result. Corbyn and the movement from the grass roots has wrong-footed all of Corbyn’s rivals. Those Tories and LibDems who claim to be gloating in a rather childish schoolyard manner may find themselves coming unstuck. In the 1960’s MacMillan was perceived as ‘yesterday’s man’. A symbol of a by-gone era and Wilson seized the moment as the modern ‘in tune with the times’ alternative. I think the Tories and some of the reactions on here significantly underestimate Corbyn and completely fail to appreciate what has happened. To continue to do so would be unwise? To childishly and I would say dishonourably seek to ‘play the man’ when in fact you have common ground with many of his polices is not only disreputable but I think, politically, suicidal.
“Sure, Corbyn has hung out with some very dodgy people ”
I draw the Honourable Lady’s attention to the Lib Dem participation in the Coalition. The wrong thing for the right reason, but no worse than what Corbyn has done.
Jeremy Corbyn has had more media coverage in the last 24 hours since becoming leader of the Labour Party than Tim Farron has had since becoming leader of our Party several weeks ago. Why is this?
I wonder how the Labour Party will cope with a real socialist leading it rather than Blair clones. In some ways it might help us be a real alternative to Labour. He will be an interesting leader and hopefully keep Cameron (which means crooked mouth in Scotland0 on his toes.
We must get back to real Liberal values again sing the Land Song again push workplace democracy placed on the back burner by some career lib dems.
@Ron ‘career politicians’ in all parties have done much harm I believe to most parties. I think the Labour Leadership vote is a wake-up call. Enough is enough. Blair stripped out any vestige of democracy within the party and it became a totally ‘top-down’ party. I cannot deny that he did some good things and such an approach made things easier for him not least having to deal with his perception of the awkward squad at conference insisting on wanting to have a say in policy. But such a control approach was doomed to fail in the long run. It became a form of dictatorship.
Frankly, I see a lot of this in the LibDems have drifted over the years. Shoot me down if you wish, but the Coalition was painful for many of us who voted LibDems in 2010. What we got was not what was on offer in the run up to the election and the decisive decimalisation of MP’s was the public’s verdict on this – not just mine. Behind Ron’s comments and others posted over the last couple of days, I see a similar soul search going on. Perhaps it’s time for the members to take back the LibDem Party and make it what it once was – in terms of a party rooted in values rather than spin and petty point scoring.
Joe Otten – you think Burnham’s a socialist ‘true believer’. Words fail me.
@David Lowrence:
To compare sharing a platform with, and receiving funding from self-confessed anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers with entering into a coalition with the Conservatives is utterly preposterous. Not only that, but the very suggestion is deeply offensive as it downplays the revolting nature of the opinions expressed by the individuals with whom Corbyn habitually chooses to consort. Regrettably, this seems to be a growing tendency among those on the liberal left.
The whole point missed by Caron and others is that one doesn’t need to demonise Corbyn at all. In fact, that’s why, among other things, the Tories are so cock-a-hoop over his victory. All they and their friends in the media need to do for the next five years is present his lunatic opinions entirely unvarnished without in any way twisting or distorting them.
What’s more, I am personally sick to death of people describing him as “decent” or “principled.” There’s nothing remotely decent or principled in acting as an apologist for a slew of dictatorships and assorted unsavoury regimes simply because they’re anti-American and keep sticking it to The Man. If it is morally unacceptable for Cameron to fawn over the vile Wahhabi theocracy of Saudi Arabia (which it most certainly is) then it is equally wrong for Corbyn to go into bat for the likes of Assad, Gaddafi, Putin, Chavez, et al.
Of course, the main focus for Lib Dems should be on opposing this dreadful Tory government. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t hesitate to expose Corbyn’s worldview for the dangerous, extremist, illiberal nonsense that it is.
Labour has effectively ceased to exist as a political party for the foreseeable future. Now that it has turned itself into the political equivalent of the Jonestown cult, it has created an opportunity for the Lib Dems to become the standard-bearers for progressive politics in this country. It must grasp this opportunity with both hands; it cannot simply rely upon The People’s Temple Cult to implode. Though implode it most certainly shall.
Good post Caron.
On this occasion I agree 100% with Caron. I also agree with Mark V when he says:
“Let’s see what a Corbyn/Watson shadow cabinet looks like before we rush to conclusions”
I said this earlier on another thread but only George Kendall picked up on it:
I think (I could be wrong) that Corbyn is a heck of a lot more serious than many thought about Labour unity, he is going to make a serious attempt to bring together his disparate tribe around a common policy offer and if we attack him on the assumption he is the new Michael Foot all we will do is make the same noises the Tories are making and make ourselves a) irrelevant and b) ridiculous.
We need to critique Corbyn, not attack him. We need to keep the right of the party turned on the Tories and the left of the party turned largely on Labour. I do not want to see Clegg or Laws attacking Corbyn in the language Cameron would use and I do not want to see Farron or anyone else vaguely on the left of the party attacking Cameron in identikit terms to Corbyn. Please someone at Party HQ, make my wish come true. And by the way, this would not involve using the phrase ‘equidistance’. We don’t know where the parties will be in 2020 so drop it.
Oh, drat, he’s just appointed John McDonnel as Shadow Chancellor – my hypothesis may just have gone ‘bang’.
So much for the claims of certain people that Labour were about to appoint women to 50% of the key Cabinet posts…
He may have wanted to and been turned down by the women. He can only appoint women if they want to serve. So many women have resigned from the Shadow Cabinet and many others won’t want to serve. It’s very disappointing.
When he supports Liberal causes, co-operate with him. When he’s illiberal or deliberately or accidentally in fantasy land, criticise him. Simples.
Matt, I am rather more concerned that McDonnell thinks the IRA were brave and that he would have assassinated Thatcher. But if we must reduce this to gender politics, he would have killed more women than are in the Shadow Great Offices of State.
Add to that his similar comments about McVey, complete with abusive female-specific terms. These weren’t when he was a callow youth (although it would be appalling enough to hear from a teenager) but a late middle-aged man and MP just five years ago.
The Tories got rid of the Hang Mandela crowd 1/4 century ago – that Cameron and Osborne may have met some at uni isn’t enough – with David Hoile whom, when last I checked, was touting for business in Khartoum. Not necessarily racists (although some definitely were) they suspended principles when associating with Renamo/Apartheid because of their belief in the importance of the wider anti-Communist movement.
Similar here with antisemitism and murderous sectarians in Ireland.
Normal people get their fixes for widespread urban violence by playing ‘Grand Theft Auto’. These people gets theirs from supporting appalling terrorist groups. Most people are kind and decent, and don’t want to be associated with such groups.
As well as the Hang Mandela crowd, the backwood Tories also are a spent force. For good or bad, Thatcher created a Liberal fold in the Party.
Spot on Caron. I also agree wholeheartedly with you.
@Matt (Bristol)
“I do not want to see Clegg or Laws attacking Corbyn in the language Cameron would use and I do not want to see Farron or anyone else vaguely on the left of the party attacking Cameron in identikit terms to Corbyn”
Maybe part of your hypothesis has gone bang (and my jaw is still coming off the floor that he appointed John MacDonnell to the number two job). But I really like your idea of who attacks who.
Maybe the party are already doing it. After all, Clegg’s just launched a blistering attack on the Tory welfare cuts.
@SIMON BANKS
“When he supports Liberal causes, co-operate with him. When he’s illiberal or deliberately or accidentally in fantasy land, criticise him”
Be careful. When Labour choose to support liberal policies which we’ve been championing for years, let them support us. But we should, as far as we can, make clear we are not supporting Corbyn. Not because we want to demonise him, but because we don’t want to give gifts to the ruthless and dishonest Tory attack machine.
Ed Miliband has spoken, but not apologised to Lbaour members. The Labour Party has an incomplete reform. JC wants to recruit the £3 voters into full membership, but has not set a price to create a classless party.