Jeremy Corbyn

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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
craner said:
https://capx.co/the-future-is-bleak-for-british-politics/

Must say, I am closer to the above Oliver than my pun-heavy, new (not New) Labour comrade the Dissensus Oliver.
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On the other hand, the election shows that the centre-left can pretty easily co-opt the far left with a bit of rhetoric and a couple of token policies. The far left just voted for a party of benefits freezes (which the Lib Dems opposed), trident and a number of regressive policies (tuition fees, free school meals, triple lock, etc.). Essentially the worst policies in the manifesto came from either ostensible 'fiscal prudence' or cynical, politically motivated subsidies to the middle class, not from the far left.

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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
sadmanbarty said:
On the other hand, the election shows that the centre-left can pretty easily co-opt the far left with a bit of rhetoric...
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It's more the reverse, isn't it?

And can you explain how free school meals and abolishing tuition fees are "regressive"?
 
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droid

droid

Well-known member
sadmanbarty said:
On the other hand, the election shows that the centre-left can pretty easily co-opt the far left with a bit of rhetoric and a couple of token policies. The far left just voted for a party of benefits freezes (which the Lib Dems opposed), trident and a number of regressive policies (tuition fees, free school meals, triple lock, etc.). Essentially the worst policies in the manifesto came from either ostensible 'fiscal prudence' or cynical, politically motivated subsidies to the middle class, not from the far left.
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What with the what now?

Ending freeze on welfare benefits
Jeremy Corbyn said at the manifesto launch that Labour will end the freeze on welfare benefits.

The abolition of tuition fees and reintroduction of maintenance grants

Health and social care reform at a cost of £7.7b

Free lunches for pupils as part of £6.3bn school package

The end of the bedroom tax and repeal of cuts in support to disabled people in a social security package worth £4bn

At least 100,000 council and housing association homes a year, as well as new help to buy funding, covered by the £250bn ‘national transformation fund’

Income tax
Top 5% of earners, those on more than £80,000 a year, to face a 45p marginal rate of income tax and a new 50% rate on earnings above £123,000 to raise £6.4bn a year. Pledges to not increase VAT rates or personal national insurance contributions

Company taxes
Labour plans to raise £48.6bn to pay for extra spending. It plans to raise an extra £19.4bn a year from corporation tax by raising the headline rate from 21% to 26%. This is two percentage points below the 2010 rate inherited by the coalition government.

Tax on the City
A tax on derivative dealing and other exotic trading areas will generate £5.6bn, according to Labour.

Water industry nationalisation


Free childcare and early years support
Labour says it will introduce a £5.3bn package, including extending 30 free hours of childcare to all two-year-olds, and moving towards making some childcare available for one-year-olds and extending maternity pay to 12 months.
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No matter how you swing it, this is probably the most left wing manifesto from a major party on offer in the UK since 1983.
 
droid

droid

Well-known member
sadmanbarty said:
They take money from the poor to subsidise the middle-class and the wealthy.
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How is ending the freeze on welfare benefits, increasing taxes on the wealthy, introducing a Tobin tax, providing free school meals and improving public services 'taking money from the poor'?

Other than tuition fees which are currently a huge barrier to lower class access to education, little of this is aimed at 'the middle classes' at the expense of the poor.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
sadmanbarty said:
They take money from the poor to subsidise the middle-class and the wealthy.
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How do they "take money away from the poor"? In a system of progressive taxation, wealthier people pay a both a greater amount of tax in total, and a bigger proportion of their income, in tax in the first place. They're already paying for things like schools and universities. Your assumption that only middle-class people go to university - or at least, that people from poorer families don't go - is a direct result of the fact that it now costs so bloody much. It's a circular argument. Access should be based on academic ability and a desire to learn, not ability to pay.

And I think providing free school meals for all children has something to be said for it in terms helping to destigmatize free meals, which at present are effectively a badge of poverty.

Edit: what droid said, too. It's also telling that you use the phrase "the middle class and the wealthy" - bear in mind that huge numbers of people who are 'culturally' or 'professionally' middle-class are by no means wealthy. I have a friend who works as a lecturer at a top university who started out on a salary in the mid-twenty thousands, has been doing it for years and I think still isn't on 30k yet. That does not get you very far in southern England in 2017.
 
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firefinga

firefinga

Well-known member
droid said:
No matter how you swing it, this is probably the most left wing manifesto from a major party on offer in the UK since 1983.
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Indeed it is and it's quite telling how much to the right reporting on economics have gone when I in mainstream publications (as well as one TV debate - although admittedly on German TV) repeatedly came across occasions where commentators/journalists referred to the manifesto being "left wing extremist".

It's not "left wing extrimist", this is what was mainstream across Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. In a nutshell: before the "Thatcher Revolution"
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
craner said:
https://capx.co/the-future-is-bleak-for-british-politics/

Must say, I am closer to the above Oliver than my pun-heavy, new (not New) Labour comrade the Dissensus Oliver.
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For the record, I was always, and remain, Corbyn-ambivalent. Clearly, he's run a very effective campaign; equally clearly, some of his more unsavoury associates have put off a large number of natural Labour voters, Daily Mail or no Daily Mail. (Labour voters don't generally read the Mail in the first place, in my experience, so the idea that the only reason one could have for harbouring reservations about Corbyn is because of a 'right-wing smear campaign' is a fucking tired cliché and needs to be put to bed if Labour is going to maintain and improve upon this fragile unity that's been thrust upon the party by the surprise election result.)

I can't actually recall which has happened more often over the last few months: Facebook Tories calling me a "Corbynite", or Facebook Corbynites calling me a "Tory".
 
droid

droid

Well-known member
Ye-ah, but as has been documented by the LSE in their report on media coverage of Corbyn, it wasnt just the Daily Mail. It was the Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Financial Times, The Times The Sun, The BBC, Sky News... and of course, the Guardian.

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B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Mr. Tea said:
equally clearly, some of his more unsavoury associates have put off a large number of natural Labour voters, Daily Mail or no Daily Mail. .
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Which associates have been in the news enough to make any impact upon large numbers of people? I can't see this as being a big factor, tbh - important to some voters of course, but relatively few. Unless you're talking about Hilary Benn? He has to talk to the guy at functions, y'know.

And of course some trad Labour voters simply don't agree with certain of Corbyn's policies, either because they're too left wing, or in certain cases not left wing enough.

It's just that there was barely any discussion of actual policies in the media - outside of Brexit and Trident etc - until the Labour manifesto was leaked (so leaking it ahead of time was probably a masterstroke, to give Labour vital extra days of actual policy discussion before the election), and that was almost wholly down to the right wing media and their associates on the left.
 
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craner

craner

Beast of Burden
With good reason, though. I am not part of the new fragile unity in Labour. The whole thrust of the Corbyn gang's agenda is more to do with transforming the internal make-up of the Labour party to ensure that the Socialist Left will have a lock down on constituency nominations until the end (or "the beginning"), rather than winning now. Although they are starting to have the delirious dream that this is in sight sooner than expected, which indeed it is. Either in the longer or shorter term, though, this is still a rolling nightmare for Labour, immediate shock and certain ambigious and untested benefits this election might deliver aside.

The only real winners in this election have been the Scottish Tories, which is fascinating. Particularly because that new clutch of MPs saved May from total destruction, and because the SNP ran their campaign heavily on a second independence referendum.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I was referring to the policies, not the people! Specifically thinking of those of Osborne's benefit cuts that Labour would reportedly not roll back, though obviously there are other areas people might think don't go far enough.

But in answer to your question, 92.
 
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craner

craner

Beast of Burden
It's worth remembering that Labour was always a broad coalition of the Left, staking out territory from the historic constituencies of the old Liberal party to hardcore Marxists and Communist fellow travellers. Ken Loach's propaganda flick 'Spirit of 45' was essentially a panegyric to Nye Bevan and pretty much sidelined Attlee who didn't quite fit his revisionist narrative. Many seem to associate classical Labour with the likes of Bevan and Cripps (despite their own ambigious records and swings) while ignoring the equally vital contributions of Gaitskell, Dalton, Morrison, Crossland, Healey, Jenkins, etc. There's a lack of historical understanding of Labour's history that contributes to this narrative. This has also infected the leaders of the Trade Unions who act as de facto national and international activists at the expense of their members interests (I say this as a Unison Rep, not a Daily Mail reader). Blair and Brown did not come out of nowhere.
 
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