Jeremy Corbyn's first major broadcast post-resignation interview

[Serial_Apologist]

With David Hearst and Peter Oborne.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jeremy-corbyn-coronavirus-crisis-proves-i-was-right

Nice change to have uninterrupted answers - at the same time neither interviewer pulls their punches.

[Joseph K]

Couldn't get the video to work but I read the article.

I wish I could share his optimism. Some people seem to have a great capacity for cognitive dissonance - e.g. one person round the corner where I live has a Union Jack and St George flag flying in his garden, and somewhat angrily gave me back a Labour leaflet which I had posted in his door a few years back; this same person has two or three NHS rainbows displayed in his window!

So while it's true a lot of what has happened has proved austerity was complete twaddle all along, the state of the media in this country and the Stalinist mindset apparent in those in favour of Johnson, do not fill me with hope.

[Bryn]

With David Hearst and Peter Oborne.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jeremy-corbyn-coronavirus-crisis-proves-i-was-right

Nice change to have uninterrupted answers - at the same time neither interviewer pulls their punches.

Thank you for that. No trouble accessing the video here. What a despicable excuse for human being Margaret Hodge is. One wonders whether her bogus attacks on Jeremy Corbyn derive from their longstanding disagreements in Islington or whether she actually is a paid הַלִּיכּוּד stooge?

[Serial_Apologist]

Thank you for that. No trouble accessing the video here. What a despicable excuse for human being Margaret Hodge is. One wonders whether her bogus attacks on Jeremy Corbyn derive from their longstanding disagreements in Islington or whether she actually is a paid הַלִּיכּוּד stooge?

I once had quite a lot of admiration for Margaret Hodge - feisty no-bullshit accepting chairwoman of select committees and all that - having got my information largely from the ways in which mostly BBC presenters presented her - until coming on here, surprisedly encountering much hostility, and only then learning that her supposed single-handed "seeing off " of the BNP in the 2019 Election, had largely been the unstinting efforts of local activists.

I must have been barking!

[LMcD]

Jeremy who?

[Count Boso]

It was interesting. Though what came over to me as an explanation for his 'failure' was the hopeless divsions that were highligted: a divided PLP, divided membership (wrong sort of member?) and a divided voter base. The criticisms of his leadersip style were mentioned and he said that his style was his style, he didn't favour authoritarianism but favoured seeking consensus and David Hearst (I think it was) broke in and pointed out that there was no consensus.

Saying his leadership was 'undermined' is also a bit loaded: you either have to insist they all toe the leader's line (authoritarian) or let them disagree. The 'antisemitism' problem was just one more issue on which the party was divided. I'm not sure that people generally considered him racist or antisemitic (obvious exceptions there), but the message I got at the time was that he didn't have a grip on the problem within the party. And whether this was genuinely a major issue or not is unimportant: sections of the party felt that it was and that it wasn't being dealt with. Another local difficulty.

He named the three points which he felt were the main problems facing the world as the environment/climate change, inequality and the long-term consequence of war/military interventions <applause for those>. So I wonder how strongly they came over to the electorate and how far they corresponded with their own concerns.

[Joseph K]

Saying his leadership was 'undermined' is also a bit loaded: you either have to insist they all toe the leader's line (authoritarian) or let them disagree.

Another way of looking at it would be to say: they all must toe the democratically-elected leader's line because this person has been voted for by the membership - the grassroots, that is the opposite of authoritarian! Of course, the PLP only like democracy when it suits them, and it revealed how far to the right of the membership they are.

The 'antisemitism' problem was just one more issue on which the party was divided. I'm not sure that people generally considered him racist or antisemitic (obvious exceptions there), but the message I got at the time was that he didn't have a grip on the problem within the party. And whether this was genuinely a major issue or not is unimportant: sections of the party felt that it was and that it wasn't being dealt with. Another local difficulty.

As we know from Labour Leaks, senior people at Labour HQ deliberately didn't deal with cases of antisemitism, in order to make Corbyn look bad:

'What this report proves beyond any doubt is that the entire thrust of John Ware’s infamous Panorama episode, Is Labour Anti-Semitic, was simply wrong. Corbyn’s office was not responsible for lack of action over anti-semitism. The people responsible were the very people whom Ware chummed up with to make the allegations.'

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/04/that-leaked-labour-party-report/

[teamsaint]

I once had quite a lot of admiration for Margaret Hodge - feisty no-bullshit accepting chairwoman of select committees and all that - having got my information largely from the ways in which mostly BBC presenters presented her - until coming on here, surprisedly encountering much hostility, and only then learning that her supposed single-handed "seeing off " of the BNP in the 2019 Election, had largely been the unstinting efforts of local activists.

I must have been barking!

“Talking **** since 19** “ ..............and avoiding tax too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/2655127.stm

( Hodge, not you, S-A ).


Incidentally, I wish Bryn would let us know what he really thinks....

[johnb]

As we know from Labour Leaks, senior people at Labour HQ deliberately didn't deal with cases of antisemitism, in order to make Corbyn look bad:

'What this report proves beyond any doubt is that the entire thrust of John Ware’s infamous Panorama episode, Is Labour Anti-Semitic, was simply wrong. Corbyn’s office was not responsible for lack of action over anti-semitism. The people responsible were the very people whom Ware chummed up with to make the allegations.'

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archi...-party-report/

The questions to ask, as always, are "Who commissioned the report?" (Jenny Formby, Corbyn ally) and "Who carried out the investigation and wrote the report?" (Corbyn allies). It can hardly be thought of as objective.

The report and the leaking of it seems to have been the last hurrah of the Corbyn sect.

[eighthobstruction]

Using Hodge as a get out clause is....[choose your adj)....Oh Jeremy Jeremy Jeremy, how's yer curly kale....

....Sure Hodge got inbetween his sprouts and his carrots, but all in all what she was shoveling was....[choose yer noun]

....she was forking in the harvest of vendetta....

[Count Boso]

Another way of looking at it would be to say: they all must toe the democratically-elected leader's line because this person has been voted for by the membership - the grassroots, that is the opposite of authoritarian! Of course, the PLP only like democracy when it suits them, and it revealed how far to the right of the membership they are.

You could, but the question was about his personal leadership qualities, and he said he didn't want to be an authoritarian leader. He played the 'I was democratically elected by the members' when the PLP voted no confidence. I was merely citing this as indicating the weakness of his opposition party because of divisions where he had the unenviable task of going one way or the other, firmly.

As we know from Labour Leaks, senior people at Labour HQ deliberately didn't deal with cases of antisemitism, in order to make Corbyn look bad:

'What this report proves beyond any doubt is that the entire thrust of John Ware’s infamous Panorama episode, Is Labour Anti-Semitic, was simply wrong. Corbyn’s office was not responsible for lack of action over anti-semitism. The people responsible were the very people whom Ware chummed up with to make the allegations.'

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archi...-party-report/

I'm as biased as hell about Craig Murray after following his responses to the Skripal affair where he thought the television interview with the two sports nutritionists who went to Salisbury to see the cathedral tower (123m) was entirely plausible. Not sure what I make of him generally but he sounded a bit like a conspiracy theorist on that point.

[Joseph K]

The questions to ask, as always, are "Who commissioned the report?" (Jenny Formby, Corbyn ally) and "Who carried out the investigation and wrote the report?" (corbyn allies). It can hardly be thought of as objective.

The report and the leaking of it seems to have been the last hurrah of the Corbyn sect.

Are you suggesting the evidence was made up? Because the only other option is that it wasn't in which case, it is objective.

There was no Corbyn sect. Corbyn's Labour in 2017 managed to increase its vote-share the highest since WWII, increased the membership to the extent that it became the biggest left party in Western Europe and presided over more defeats on the government than Margaret Thatcher did. And all this despite the heavily biased media, the countless hatchet-jobs, the Blairites and the chicken coup!