Skip to main content

Why I want Jeremy Corbyn to become Labour leader

I will never know now if the Labour party would have weeded me out as a potential agitator if I had completed my application to be a supporter, because my political posts here have rarely been in support of Labour. Having said that I could say, hand on heart, I have voted Labour at three general elections (not all for Tony Blair), so it would have been highly unfair to have done so.

I also am rather saddened by the way they appear pleased to have weeded out hundreds, if not thousands of 'Green Party supporters'. My suspicion is that a fair proportion of Green voters are actually Labour supporters who weren't happy with the way the party had gone and wanted to return to the fold. My suspicion is the majority of voters are not 100% committed to a single party, even if they don't float as much as I do.

Despite the fact that I may well have been excluded, as someone who is more often a right-leaning Lib Dem (cousin Nick insists, even now), I would be delighted if Jeremy Corbyn wins the election to become Labour leader. This is not, like a dyed-in-the-wool Tory because I want Labour to become unelectable. Instead it's for the same reason that I wanted Scotland to vote Yes in the independence referendum.

As far as I can see, British politics has become far too cosy. This is why detestable parties like UKIP have done so well. Because, despite the idiocy of a public school educated, ex-city trader claiming to be anti-establishment, the fact is that pretty well all of British politics has become too staid and establishment-like in nature. It needs a shakeup. I believe that an independent Scotland would have done that - and I believe that Jeremy Corbyn leading Labour is our next best hope of doing so. It might not be good for the Labour party, but it would be good for the country long term. (Short term it would probably mean another Conservative win in 2020, but short-termism is the bane of politics.)

Finally we would see real challenges to the government. Real alternatives. Many of them, I admit, would not be widely palatable. I gather the only Corbyn policy that has wide public support is re-nationalising the railways. And some of Corbyn's views are positively nutty (like women-only railway carriages), while others appear to verge on anti-semitism. But that's not the point. He will certainly shake things up. And we really, really need that in politics. Bring it on, Jeremy!

Comments

  1. If I had a vote in this election, which I don't, I'd also have voted for Jeremy Corbyn. Like you, I would not have done so to make Labour unelectable, even though, as I guess you have suspected, my political views veer somewhat to the right of yours. Although some of Mr Corbyn's policies are good ones, I expect that's by accident, as most of the rest are (in my opinion) … well, les good. As a Jew, I do not think Mr Corbyn is antisemitic, though I do worry about some of the company he keeps. No, the reason I would have voted for Mr Corbyn is that he is the only candidate who appears to speak his mind, as opposed to sanitised soundbites fed to him by focus groups. He thus has the same rugged-individualist appeal as, say, Boris Johnson, or Ken Livingstone.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like the idea of disrupting the current cosy system, not at any cost like UKIP as you say. Useful thoughtful post.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope