[Nigredo]

I’m sure Magic Grandad’s reheated (for the umpteenth time) speech about peace and justice delivered down Conway Hall is really going to distract Starmer from holding phone calls with world leaders and directing cabinet meetings

[Oboogie]

Hang on, shouldn't they be going after Sunak now as, for the last nine months, they've been telling us that only HM LOTO has the power to stop the war in Gaza.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Going to be a long 5 years for this lot.

I don't expect enough social homes to be built, but there's no need to misreprent like this. The council houses near me don't have "British Government" on them. They have LDRC on them (Ledbury Rural District Council, I think).

[Yug]

A layman asks:

Is it really the job of central government to build council houses? I think there might be a clue in the name.

[Killer Whale]

Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn has laid out a political strategy for the Left in an article for the Guardian newspaper, external, saying he is "planting the seeds for a new way of doing politics" in Islington and beyond.

Mr Corbyn will hold monthly "people’s forums", which he described as "a shared, democratic space" for local campaigns, and trade, tenants’ and debtors’ unions.

These forums, Mr Corbyn believes, are the basis of a new grassroots organising model.

He wants it to be replicated across the country and called for people to "stand up for themselves and against those who have ignored their demands for peace and humanity".

Student Union politics. It's all he knows.

Guess what, Jeremy: The 'people', for the most part, don't give a toss about detail, they just want someone vaguely normal, and competent, and trustworthy in charge.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2j3g9zvznko

[Andy McDandy]

Most councils run these already. Usually attended by the local councillor, and a man with a dog, and poorly advertised, but there.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'll pass this suggestion on to Shabana and Rushanara, Jez. Only I think they're less than enthusiastic about meetings with the public at the moment.

[Youngian]

Good idea for local networking and a popular constituency MP like Corbyn probably makes a good fist of community forums but are they more representative than his surgery or a party political focus group?

[davidjay]

We've got a community forum. They're well-meaning but apart from regular litter picks they don't do much.

[Tubby Isaacs]

So if a bunch of Ukrainians show up and call him out, he'll start advocating for them properly?

Nah, he'll carry on with the same Tariq Ali stuff, won't he?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Most councils run these already. Usually attended by the local councillor, and a man with a dog, and poorly advertised, but there.

We've had them for years. And they have a budget - one even built a new war memorial.

[Crabcakes]

Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn has laid out a political strategy for the Left in an article for the Guardian newspaper, external, saying he is "planting the seeds for a new way of doing politics" in Islington and beyond.

Mr Corbyn will hold monthly "people’s forums", which he described as "a shared, democratic space" for local campaigns, and trade, tenants’ and debtors’ unions.

These forums, Mr Corbyn believes, are the basis of a new grassroots organising model.

Jeremy Corbyn has been an MP in the same constituency since I was 8 years old, and I am rapidly approaching half a century. If he couldn’t be arsed to do something before now - and it certainly wasn’t party machinery preventing him because he’s always done what he wanted and was in charge for a while - then I think his constituents really need to ask themselves quite why it’s taken over 40 years for him to think up an idea that, to put it generously, seems to be just a local MP listening to people.

[Tubby Isaacs]

He didn't do it before because he was in Labour, who are the targets for this stuff. Now he isn't he'll go for it.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Also because it's a duty usually undertaken by the local council, not the MP.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's basically political campaigning by another name. It's not surgery work- for obvious reasons, that has to be (in the first instance) confidential.

My reaction to it is "Haven't you got anything better to do?"

[Andy McDandy]

Strikes me as a rather narrow definition of community. Groups that like him and that he likes back. All having a good old whinge down the community centre before issuing a stern warning to Israel that the Islington Peace Forum will be holding them to account.

Meanwhile, actual shit done: zero.

[Nigredo]

His progeny have spoken their branez

[Youngian]

As Miliband, Brown, Kinnock or Foot endured just as many smears add negative stories that were true onto the tally. The other leaders would have had the same treatment if they held meetings to embrace ‘national liberation’ freedom fighters (terrorist organisations).

[Abernathy]

Well, of course it is a classic Corbynite trope, being re-treaded here yet again. That Jeremy Corbyn, uniquely among all Labour leaders, was subject to an unprecedented level of right-wing news media hostility that was somehow a primary factor in the two election defeats that he led the party to, because the “establishment” were quaking in their boots at the always remote prospect of him becoming Prime Minister.

It is of course, utter bollocks. Every Labour leader, without exception and including Keir Starmer, has had to deal with precisely the same levels of news media hostility. It’s part of the fucking job description. You may as well complain about the fucking weather.

Arguably, Corbyn’s obvious susceptibilty (friend to terrorists, advocating asking Putin if this bit of novachok that turned up in Salisbury was his, liking anti-semitic murals) to such media attacks was a huge part of Corbyn’s rank unsuitability for the job of Labour leader and/or Prime Minister in the first place. It was just never going to succeed.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Not that I'm a fan of Dan Hodges, but I think it was fairly clear that this was a metaphor that wouldn't have raised an eyebrow in the past? Easy to imagine somebody on the left saying it about Thatcher (or much worse). Who's going to read that and think "You know what, Corbyn actually is a vampire, I'm going to stab him through the heart!" The idea this like the stuff chucked out by the American Right, or ths shit Shabana had to put up with is absolute rubbish.

Whatever happens, it all comes back to Jez with this lot. I can't stand it.