was corbyn really against the remain?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

This is single-issue politics at its finest and most absurd.

[C0ckney]

I would expect that the enquiry will be used to discredit them by the old labour/others as a prime example of their failures, and their method of governance.

Also that referencing to Blairism will have such "positive" connotations after the report is released. (ie Jeremy is unelectable, and they apparently are)

edit: thus "shut up or put up" (exit) will be inevitable after Chilcot, at least this is what I would expect

yes, well said. beyond its use in bringing those responsible for the iraq war to justice (i would dearly love to see blair in the hague, but i doubt it will happen), there are still plenty of warmongering MPs in the labour party: those who voted for bombing syria for example, and this report will hopefully be useful in keeping them in check.

[kentonio]

This is single-issue politics at its finest and most absurd.

I get the sense that if Jeremy's house was on fire, he'd refuse to let the fire brigade put it out with their hoses because of a moral quandary about the ethics of the rubber production industry.

[C0ckney]

it seems that the rebels, realising that they can't win, have been forced into a climbdown. they are set to accept corbyn's olive branch.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell agreed that "mediation services" could help the situation, but stressed that Mr Corbyn is a man of "steel" and wasn't going anywhere

Lord Prescott himself seemed surprised at the idea of being the "honest broker" in Labour's battle. He said he didn't want to see a formal contest, but the choice was either that or for unhappy Labour MPs to drop their case - anything, he said, to avoid "civil war"

Chris Bryant, former shadow Commons leader and one of Mr Corbyn's most vocal critics, said he had to step down and there shouldn't need to be a leadership contest. The fear, he said, was that if there was one, Mr Corbyn would win again - despite not having the parliamentary support that Labour's constitution requires - and the impasse would simply be created all over again

And lastly, former Prime Minister Tony Blair said he wasn't calling for Mr Corbyn to go or stay, but warned that the Opposition needed "the minimum level of credibility to challenge the government and to hold it to account" and didn't have that right now

it is still astonishing to me that, after 10 months of scheming and plotting, the organisers of the #chickencoup’s whole plan hinged on corbyn stepping down quietly. they don’t appear have to considered the possibility that he would refuse, point to his massive mandate from the members, and say ‘if you want me to go, challenge me under the rules’. now corbyn has done exactly that, and knowing that they are likely to lose, and lose badly, any leadership election, the plotters don’t seem to know what to do next. it’s the worst organised coup that one could possibly imagine; and it’s brought to us by the people who complain endlessly about inept leadership!

let's hope that corbyn can be as ruthless as he is firm and presses on with some deselections.

[giblets]

Mr Corbyn is a man of "steel"

Jeremy Corbyn is secretly Superman

[Dauphin]

The right wing press would have called him a socialist Man of Steal.

[Myrddin]

Or Stalin...

[Dinner]

Probably both. Where as he is just a mildly bookish and not very effective politician who cannot even keep his own bench in line. Hardly the inspiring stuff of legend.

[C0ckney]

an interesting view on what corbyn and the momentum movement represent from the always excellent david graeber.

The elites hate Momentum and the Corbynites - and I’ll tell you why
David Graeber

The movement that backed the Labour leader challenges MPs and journalists alike – because it’s about grassroots democracy

As the rolling catastrophe of what’s already being called the “chicken coup” against the Labour leadership winds down, pretty much all the commentary has focused on the personal qualities, real or imagined, of the principal players.

Yet such an approach misses out on almost everything that’s really at stake here. The real battle is not over the personality of one man, or even a couple of hundred politicians. If the opposition to Jeremy Corbyn for the past nine months has been so fierce, and so bitter, it is because his existence as head of a major political party is an assault on the very notion that politics should be primarily about the personal qualities of politicians. It’s an attempt to change the rules of the game, and those who object most violently to the Labour leadership are precisely those who would lose the most personal power were it to be successful: sitting politicians and political commentators.

If you talk to Corbyn’s most ardent supporters, it’s not the man himself but the project of democratising the party that really sets their eyes alight. The Labour party, they emphasise, was founded not by politicians but by a social movement. Over the past century it has gradually become like all the other political parties – personality (and of course, money) based, but the Corbyn project is first and foremost to make the party a voice for social movements once again, dedicated to popular democracy (as trades unions themselves once were). This is the immediate aim. The ultimate aim is the democratisation not just of the party but of local government, workplaces, society itself.

I should emphasise that I am myself very much an outside observer here – but one uniquely positioned, perhaps, to understand what the Corbynistas are trying to do. I’ve spent much of the past two decades working in movements aimed at creating new forms of bottom-up democracy, from the Global Justice Movement to Occupy Wall Street. It was our strong conviction that real, direct democracy, could never be created inside the structures of government. One had to open up a space outside. The Corbynistas are trying to prove us wrong. Will they be successful? I have absolutely no idea. But I cannot help find it a fascinating historical experiment. The spearhead of the democratisation movement is Momentum, which now boasts 130 chapters across the UK. In the mainstream press it usually gets attention only when some local activist is accused of “bullying” or “abuse” against their MP – or worse, suggests the possibility that an MP who systematically defies the views of membership might face deselection.

The real concern is not any justified fear among the Labour establishment of bullying and intimidation – the idea that the weak would bully the strong is absurd. It is that they fear being made truly accountable to those they represent. They also say that while so far they have been forced to concentrate on internal party politics, the object is to move from a politics of accountability to one of participation: to create forms of popular education and decision-making that allow community groups and local assemblies made up of citizens of all political stripes to make key decisions affecting their lives.

There have already been local experiments: in Thanet, the council recently carried out an exercise in “participatory economic planning” – devolving budgetary and strategic decisions to the community at large – which shadow chancellor John McDonnell has hailed as a potential model for the nation. There is talk of giving consultative assemblies real decision-making powers, of “banks of radical ideas” to which anyone can propose policy initiatives and, especially in the wake of the coup, a major call to democratise the internal workings of the party itself. It may all seem mad. Perhaps it is. But more than 100,000 new Labour members are already, to one degree or another, committed to the project.

If nothing else, understanding this makes it much easier to understand the splits in the party after the recent rebellion within the shadow cabinet. Even the language used by each side reflects basically different conceptions of what politics is about. For Corbyn’s opponents, the key word is always “leadership” and the ability of an effective leader to “deliver” certain key constituencies. For Corbyn’s supporters “leadership” in this sense is a profoundly anti-democratic concept. It assumes that the role of a representative is not to represent, not to listen, but to tell people what to do.

For Corbynistas, in contrast, the fact that he is in no sense a rabble rouser, that he doesn’t seem to particularly want to be prime minister, but is nonetheless willing to pursue the goal for the sake of the movement, is precisely his highest qualification. While one side effectively accuses him of refusing to play the demagogue during the Brexit debate, for the other, his insistence on treating the public as responsible adults was the quintessence of the “new kind of politics” they wished to see.

What all this suggests is the possibility that the remarkable hostility to Corbyn displayed by even the left-of-centre media is not due to the fact they don’t understand what the movement that placed him in charge of the Labour party is ultimately about, but because, on some level, they actually do.

After all, insofar as politics is a game of personalities, of scandals, foibles and acts of “leadership”, political journalists are not just the referees – in a real sense they are the field on which the game is played. Democratisation would turn them into reporters once again, in much the same way as it would turn politicians into representatives. In either case, it would mark a dramatic decline in personal power and influence. It would mark an equally dramatic rise in power for unions, constituent councils, and local activists – the very people who have rallied to Corbyn’s support.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

The Truth

I wander how the chicken coup plotters feel right now? Are they proud that they have a leader who can face the truth, admit the failures, and is prepared to learn from the mistakes?

“Politicians and political parties can only grow stronger by acknowledging when they get it wrong and by facing up to their mistakes,” he said. “So I now apologise sincerely on behalf of my party for the disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq in March 2003.

“That apology is owed first of all to the people of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, and the country is still living with the devastating consequences of the war and the forces it unleashed.” He said it was those people who had paid the greatest price.

The Labour leader’s apology went further than he had earlier in parliament, when he responded to the Chilcot report after David Cameron. At that point, Corbyn called the war an “act of military aggression”, arguing that it was thought of as illegal “by the overwhelming weight of international legal opinion”.

“It led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the displacement of millions of refugees,” Corbyn said. “It devastated Iraq’s infrastructure and society. The occupation fostered a lethal sectarianism that turned into a civil war. The war fuelled and spread terrorism across the region.”

As Corbyn issued his excoriating statement to the House of Commons, he was heckled by his own backbencher Ian Austin, who shouted: “Sit down and shut up, you’re a disgrace.”

The Labour leader said the Commons should react to the Chilcot report by remembering Robin Cook, who resigned from his role as foreign secretary on the eve of the invasion after saying he could not accept collective responsibility for the decision.

Corbyn said his former colleague’s resignation said in “a few hundred words what has been confirmed by this report in more than 2m words”.

He said the decision to go to war in a “colonial-style occupation” had “convulsed the entire region” and led to many other disasters.

“The government’s September 2002 dossier, that Iraq had WMD that could be deployed in 45 minutes, was only the most notorious of many deceptions,” he said.

Corbyn responded to a much more cautious statement by the prime minister, who voted in favour of the Iraq war, by saying that the 2011 conflict in Libya had also left that country in the grip of warring militias.

Going by Ian Austin's comments - obviously not. How low can they go?

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Democracy in Action

Or is Democracy really a problem

Labour rebels are in retreat after admitting that Jeremy Corbyn cannot be removed and would "win easily" if a leadership election is triggered.

One senior Labour MP said: "It's finished" as it emerged that lengthy talks between union bosses and Tom Watson, the party's deputy leader, had failed to find a solution to the deadlock.

MPs have now pinned their hopes on a challenge by Angela Eagle, despite many believing that she will not beat Mr Corbyn because of his support among members.

It follows weeks of stalemate between the Labour leader's office and MPs who want to see Mr Corbyn step down without having to trigger a leadership campaign.

One senior MP told The Telegraph: "It's finished. He will win easily in a second contest if he is on the ballot, it's everything we wanted to avoid."

They added: "He is losing support of the membership by the day, there is no doubt about that, but they just sign up new members to replace them. He is Teflon in that sense."

The times when Labour getting new members by their thousands is bad?!?

"It's no good. It's possible that the PLP would consider some kind of executive role for Jeremy if he were to stand aside as leader but his team just won't consider that option, they know where the power lies."

It's really sad, even though just a little bit hilarious.

"They know where the power lies" - you bet.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

I have just come across this from Nov 5th 2015

Jeremy Corbyn could be hit by a wave of resignations by moderate frontbenchers in an attempt to destabilise his leadership and pave the way for a coup aimed at ousting him.

Some Labour frontbenchers who agreed to serve under left-wing party leader are determined to topple him well before the 2020 general election and have begun private talks about their tactics. One option is an orchestrated series of resignations if Labour does badly in Mr Corbyn’s first major electoral test – the contests next May for London Mayor; the Scottish Parliament; Welsh Assembly and local authorities.

“There will be an uprising in the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] at some point,” one Labour MP told The Independent. “But we have to get our timing right. We may only have one shot.”

that shot has been fired

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

-It's like an episode of House of '*****...

[OneFootInTheGrave]

They say Jeremy is unelectable

Yet



* Keep the NHS
* Remove student debt
* Have qualified teachers
* Education is not just for the individual, it's for the society as a whole
* Raise corporate taxes by 0.5% and erase all the fees for all the university students
* We can address ecological issues by investing into technology
* Can we stop being a world of brutality, cannot we be humans and help actual humans, not condemn them
* Economic polices for all, not the few

They were so desperate to get rid of him.

[C0ckney]

i really think that the reason that corbyn has faced so many and such vicious attacks is that the tories and the right-wing press are scared of him and what he represents. they've got used to easily pliable and malleable centre-left leaders, people ed milliband, a decent man but too limp and lacking in moral fibre, to whom they merely had to say the s-word to make him scurry off and hide for 2 weeks with focus groups. they don't know how to handle someone who refuses to fight on their chosen ground, refuses even to play the game, and who instead of trying to fight for the so-called 'centre', prefers an attempt to change the political context. more worrying, from a labour point of view, is that many of his internal critics seem to be worried not that a corbyn led labour party can't win but rather that it might.

his detractors have tried painting him as both a big threat and a joke. neither has worked, and now they are reduced to hollow smears with lifespans measured in hours - see for example the latest attempt to reignite the 'anti-semitism' row, or the 'reporter attack'. no one is listening any more. or rather, people are listening and they are furious with what they hear. an article in the guardian can get 14,000+ comments, with most of them supporting corbyn and many attacking both the labour rebels and outlets like the guardian for promoting and encouraging all this nonsense. but anyway, the point is that not only the smears are being rejected, but all the rest of the commentary and 'analysis' too, and therefore 'corbyn unelectable' will be soon be taken about as seriously as 'labour anti-semitism' or whatever the smear du jour is.

it's actually rather beautiful watching the old hacks offer their 'serious and sober' 'analysis', and see people collectively scream 'bollocks!'.