[davidjay]

It strikes me that Palestine is to the Left what Brexit is to Tories - it defines their very being and their response to everyone is dependent on which side they're on.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Quite.

I once sat through a Labour Party branch meeting (for over an hour) in which an older woman showed us slides of waste disposal in Israel being carried out by the same company that does our borough, and telling us we should strive (with might and main) to force the council to terminate the contract because Palestine...

[Tubby Isaacs]

Corbyn relic on great form here. I actually like this guy when he talks about what he knows- ie gambling regulation. This though, Jeez. He's actually schooled by Tom Harwood BTL. And when an economist (Tony Yates) tells him he's talking rubbish, Matt says that's "policing".

[The Weeping Angel]

I see the fact that Rachel Riley has inspired a totally normal reaction from the Corbynites

[Youngian]

Very much doubt Rachel Riley has accused Corbynbot trolls of Holocaust denial in Twitter spats. But they have to put themselves in the picture.

[Andy McDandy]

Harmless old man on an allotment, and simultaneously the greatest threat to the establishment there ever has been.

Things the Corbynites and the right wing media have in common, part 94.

[Crabcakes]

The irony is, they’re half right. He *was* a massive threat to the country. Only in the sense he was so poor, so arrogant and so unlikeable he handed Johnson an 80-seat majority and effectively freed him from oversight until his own party got sick of his depravity.

[Yug]

I see "Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush" is demonstrating just how Johnson managed to get elected with such a massive majority in 2019. Even those who were dumb enough to believe Johnson was a ledge (sic) and he would get Brexit done can recognise *real* stupid when they see it. Nobody thinks putting the utilities back into public ownership or nationalising the railways are particularly bad ideas. Everybody thought letting the likes of Corbyn and his army of Legendary Paintbrushes handle this would be a very stupid idea. And that was Corbyn's gift to the nation. Boris fucking Johnson and his 80+ seat majority.

[Crabcakes]

Similarly, the nationalised broadband thing. Every fucking time something happens it’s “maybe the free broadband guy wasn’t so bad eh?”, with zero awareness of what an absolutely shit idea this was *for Corbyn*. People on the whole already have reasonable broadband and lots of choice to suit their usage. What would have been great was massively subsidised broadband for those on low incomes (some sort of voucher or credit scheme), or even better still a free smartphone & data package.

Absolutely *no one* wanted nationalised broadband. The idea of having to deal with a monolithic non-profit org (thus with no real incentive to push for better setup) to get what for some people is an essential for work but others is just an occasionally used luxury, where all are treated and viewed equally, is a recipe for disaster. And that’s even before the terrifying cost of buying out so much infrastructure.

There may have been the grain of a good idea in there, but it was the wrong policy at the wrong time fronted by the wrong man who was approaching it like it was a wholly different product from a different age.

And that’s why Corbyn was such a fucking liability - he tried to shoehorn 2020 needs into 1970 policies and that’s as far as his limited ability took him, and it was left to slavish cheerleaders to try and tell us what a great idea it was, when they were probably equally aware it’d be an absolute car crash.

[Abernathy]

I have heard it said that the free broadband for all policy wasn’t that bad an idea because it was to be a sort of quid pro quo with the big ISP companies, as part of a deal to allocate 5G licences.

Of course, that part of it was never mentioned by Corbyn, who preferred to present it as just another part of the largesse from the brave new Corbyn world embodied in the 2019 manifesto. A manifesto which, and here is your annual reminder, none other than Len McCluskey described on the morning after polling day 2019, as “an incontinent mess”.

[Crabcakes]

It was pretty standard fair for Jez though - say something brief and generalised like “I want this to be better”, provide shit-all detail on how this will be done so everyone can interpret what you said to suit themselves, assume someone else will do the work should it come to pass that said thing does get better, then sit back and enjoy people saying you’re “on the right side of history” and a “visionary”.

Never in the field of human endeavour has so much been attributed by so many to so few (words). Which is wording some people probably thought Jez said about some workers somewhere, given his supporters’ remarkable ability to give him credit for things he was nothing to do with and his equally remarkable ability to never correct them for some reason…

[Spoonman]

I'm repeating here, but Corbyn's vision of Labour was as a party of protest. For his faults, Starmer has at least changed the party around into making Labour a party for governing.

The problem with the "free broadband" policy was that it was essentially the same as offering "free electricity" or any other free utility that isn't effectively a need compared to say healthcare. The variations of how such services are provided would have made this idea effectively impossible to implement, as no real detail was provided. The usual suspects claimed when this was announced that this would be a "gamechanger" when everyone else rolled their eyes.

Now, they could have went two ways elsewhere on this that might have been viable. One would have been to nationalise Openreach & KCOM's physical infrastructure (where the latter exists in Hull), which could have proved popular but would have saddled the government with heavy buyout costs not to mention issues with BT's pension hole which would have likely been an agreed part of any buyout - but there would have been significant opposition to this by other nets like Virgin Media as well as the alt-nets. As it is it looks like Openreach (now effectively run as much of an arms reach away from BT without being totally split off from BT) are technically progressing okay-ish at present into becoming an exclusive IP network in the future, there's little pressing need to bring them into public ownership at present other than to say "we now own it!"

A second idea would have been to have drafted a law to compel Openreach & any ISP above a certain percentage of a national market share, as well as the four main mobile operators, to offer a basic broadband package at a set fee that either was non-profit or had a capped profit margin made available to all. While some "social tariffs" exist, having a basic provision open to all would have been more favourable IMO especially to those whom could afford a broadband package but see it as something that's too expensive for the use they get out of it. In terms of detail, I'd suggest that the details would be subject to Ofcom regulation to be revisited as needed.

[Crabcakes]

That ‘party of protest’ thing reminds me of when I was at Uni, when a proper socialist worker type was elected as deputy union president for services. She campaigned fairly unremarkably, then in her victory speech went on about wanting to get back to ‘proper, campaigning action to improve things for everyone’, then did precisely fuck-all for students all year and just organised trip after trip to picket lines, protests, sit ins and so on across the country. If someone had a cause, she’d pitch up and back it. If someone had a grievance about their situation at Uni, well good luck getting to speak to her because she was probably out.

She thought she did a great job, but was widely regarded as utterly useless because she did nothing to help the people she could help, but did everything possible to be seen to help people she had no influence over or direct connection with whatsoever. All heat and no light.

I looked her up a while back. You’ll be unsurprised to hear which bearded politician she seems to have a soft spot for.

[The Weeping Angel]

That ‘party of protest’ thing reminds me of when I was at Uni, when a proper socialist worker type was elected as deputy union president for services. She campaigned fairly unremarkably, then in her victory speech went on about wanting to get back to ‘proper, campaigning action to improve things for everyone’, then did precisely fuck-all for students all year and just organised trip after trip to picket lines, protests, sit ins and so on across the country. If someone had a cause, she’d pitch up and back it. If someone had a grievance about their situation at Uni, well good luck getting to speak to her because she was probably out.

She thought she did a great job, but was widely regarded as utterly useless because she did nothing to help the people she could help, but did everything possible to be seen to help people she had no influence over or direct connection with whatsoever. All heat and no light.

I looked her up a while back. You’ll be unsurprised to hear which bearded politician she seems to have a soft spot for.

Gerry Adams?

[davidjay]

It's been said before, but it's not that hard to be on the 'right side of history'. Over the past forty-odd years it's meant being opposed to apartheid, opposing Milosevic & co, supporting a two-nation Israeli state, wanting closer ties with the post- Soviet eastern Europe and opposing the Iraq war. None of this is particularly difficult; the hard part is to come up with workable solutions.

[Crabcakes]

Funny how the right side of history types never seem to discuss Corbyn’s views on Syria or Putin. It’s almost like he’s cobbled together his list of “wins” based on the bleeding obvious (who could possibly have predicted that opposing an openly racist country would turn out to be the right call? Truly, he is a sage), but as soon as any nuance is needed he’s either picked the wrong side then shut up, or come out with some watery “all conflict is bad” platitude.

Or, worse still, his fanclub have engaged in some serious retcon action. Who delivered peace in NI? I dunno, but it couldn’t possibly have been New Labour. It must have been SuperCorbs, working so far behind the scenes not even he knew he was there.

[Andy McDandy]

They seem happy to lay all the plaudits on Mo Mowlam for that one - not that she didn't play a huge role, but she's conveniently dead so falls into that "too good for this sinful Earth/erased by the Blairites" category (see also, Robin Cook etc).

[Abernathy]

I can well believe that lots of the Trot fruitloops out there are still clinging to that ridiculous lie that Corbyn was actively involved in negotiating and agreeing the Good Friday agreement.

I actually checked the index of Mo Mowlam’s autobiography, and although NI, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Ian Paisley, David Trimble, and John Hume all receive multiple entries, Corbyn does not get a single mention. Funny, that.

[davidjay]

The whole fiction falls down on one further thing - the idea that St Jez would spent a minute talking to Paisley & co.

[Spoonman]

I was a coming-of-age teenager around the time of peace process talks & GFA. I cannot recall one occasion in any TV, radio or newspaper report from that time referring to Jeremy Corbyn in any capacity regarding such matters. Unless some extraordinary evidence can be shown that he did something behind the scenes with most/all parties involved that he has never been given credit for until fairly recently (and no, meting Gerry Adams & simply being quoted in the Morning Star telling all belligerents involved to "stop it" doesn't count), I'm pretty confident that the suggestion that Corbyn had any significant contribution to the peace process in the 90's in NI contains more bollocks than a box load of Tesco Value sausages.