luka

Well-known member
Sigh. Because "progressive" and "supporting Corbyn" are now synonyms, aren't they. :slanted:

I actually do think that with my hero Jeremy Corbin the nation had a once in a lifetime chance to change direction. It might have ended in disaster but even just at a symbolic level a Corbin victory would have been monumental and transformational.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I actually do think that with my hero Jeremy Corbin the nation had a once in a lifetime chance to change direction. It might have ended in disaster but even just at a symbolic level a Corbin victory would have been monumental and transformational.

Don't get me wrong - it would have been fucking great! Even with all his flaws, he'd have done a better job at running the show than these cunts. We'd either have averted Brexit or had a much less bad version of it. Austerity reversed, a properly thought-out green policy for energy and industry, etc. etc. Believe me when I say I take no pleasure in having been right in thinking it was never going to fly with the electorate.

I think Leo's right. Most of the criticism I saw of Corbyn from progressive sources concentrated on his performance as a politician, not "oh no he might raise taxes for millionaires and end austerity, how terrible". Or they were legitimate critiques of his mishandling of the antisemitism crisis, susceptibility to conspiracy theories or whatever.

And when all's said and done, even if the Guardian had become a Canary clone and had sung Corbyn's praises from dawn till sundown, day in day out, how much difference would it have made? Labour got shat on because their support collapsed in working-class small towns in the Midlands and the North - hardly Guardian-reading territory, for the most part.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Minority opinion but I think it was his challenge to the foreign policy consensus the thing that frightened the horses. Not the redistributive plans.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Don't get me wrong - it would have been fucking great! .

It would have been a bloody disaster. You can't nationalise all the utilities, all the railways, and give everyone free broadband at the same time while renegotiating Brexit. Plus sorting out Universal Credit, and a massive council house drive. Why not a British space programme while they're at it? And this failure would be managed by governing with the same paranoid style that's characterised their management of the Labour party - lots of enemies, a pronounced group of the unpure, and the elevation of yes-men.

And this is not to mention completely ripping up and trashing all of our international commitments. Corbyn with a veto on the UN security council? No fucking thanks.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Minority opinion but I think it was his challenge to the foreign policy consensus the thing that frightened the horses. Not the redistributive plans.

Yep. I'm tired of hearing myself say it by this point, but most of Corbyn's broad policy points - or those Labour adopted under his leadership, at least - are popular, and deservedly so. It's other stuff people objected to.

So basically:

* let's tax corporations and high-earning individuals properly, boost funds to the NHS and keep it in public hands, stop punishing the poor and sick via austerity --> popular

* "Our friends in Hamas and Hezbollah"/unilateral disarmament/getting to the bottom of the Skripal poisoning by asking Putin if he dun it --> not popular
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
It absolutely matters! In terms of how the globe is going to be the rest of this century, responses to authoritarianism etc. It's just the upsets are less visible to us. I think Corbyn would have been pretty much the same, pitched against the establishment.


Maybe I'm proving Droid's point?
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I've always thought it'd be what a Labour govt could stop rather than set in motion that'd be important. I'm assuming the Hostile Environment and benefit sanctions would be easy to unwind.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I'm not convinced on that re. Corbyn. Hard to prove one way or the other, but I think some degree of taxing, spending and redistribution would've been broadly accepted by "the establishment" esp. after austerity.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
US does have more deeply entrenched hostility to anything that smacks of the Left though, I'll give you that.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
And this is not to mention completely ripping up and trashing all of our international commitments. Corbyn with a veto on the UN security council? No fucking thanks.

To play devil's advocate for a moment, though: how much good is the UK doing in the world as it is? What practical difference would it make with respect to Syria, say? (To take a subject close to your heart.)

And Johnson's reticence to release the report on Russian interference suggests they've got their claws well into this country's Conservative establishment, which doesn't make Corbyn's misplaced Russophilia any better but does put it in context.

I dunno, maybe you're right. I'm just looking around me at what's happening, and what's clearly going to happen over the next few years, and wondering how almost any alternative could fail to be better.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Yeah, I can't massively disagree. Appalling turbocharged populist racism. It's not going to end well is it? To despise one is not to endorse the other, it's just to lament the lack of better choices.

Re. Syria and Russia. I think it's likely Lab would have stopped funding the White Helmets and we'd see conspiracy theories indulged at quite a high level. Probable capitulation to Russian foreign policy goals around in the Ukraine also.
 

droid

Well-known member
And this is not to mention completely ripping up and trashing all of our international commitments. Corbyn with a veto on the UN security council? No fucking thanks.

What exactly do you mean by 'international commitments'? Unconditional security and political support for authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia & the Gulf States? Participation in a genocidal military campaign in Yemen? Escalation and aggression in the middle east in general? Continued support for the US in disastrous interventions? Political, military and diplomatic support for US and Israeli war crimes? Ongoing refusal to participate in nuclear non proliferation? Continuation of the role as the world's biggest (or 2nd biggest) arms dealer?

We've had this discussion many times and Tea makes a good point above. Britain is not a force for good in the world. It's record is absolutely abhorrent.

To take some local examples, just yesterday it was revealed that British intelligence was involved in the showband massacre, one of the most notorious incidents of the troubles. A month ago it was revealed that the security service contracted loyalist terrorists to murder the then Taoiseach Charlie Haughey (they turned down the offer and warned Haughey instead). These are just two tiny examples from a minor conflict (from a British perspective). Its insane to suggest that a change to this murderous and ingrained worldview and approach to foreign policy would be anything other than morally requisite.
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
It would have been a bloody disaster. You can't nationalise all the utilities, all the railways, and give everyone free broadband at the same time while renegotiating Brexit. Plus sorting out Universal Credit, and a massive council house drive. Why not a British space programme while they're at it? And this failure would be managed by governing with the same paranoid style that's characterised their management of the Labour party - lots of enemies, a pronounced group of the unpure, and the elevation of yes-men.

And this is not to mention completely ripping up and trashing all of our international commitments. Corbyn with a veto on the UN security council? No fucking thanks.

i don't see why all of that can't be possible? even the space programme bit.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
At the risk of jinxing this golden moment when droid has agreed with something I've said, I think it's worth pointing out that there are some among the hard left of Labour - not that Corbyn is by any means the most extreme of these, although he does lean in that direction - who'd be perfectly willing for the UK to carry on supporting or participating in brutal imperialist wars in the Middle East, but with a different set of allies and client states: Russia, Iran and Syria in place of the USA, KSA and Israel. This is what I've said before: neither side has an "ethical foreign policy" for as long as many self-described progressives either ignore, or act as apologists for, brutal regimes just because they're not aligned with the USA. (Think also of the StWC's disgraceful "Hands Off Syria" demo after a few missiles were flung at some evacuated nerve gas factories, when the real message was very clearly "Hands Off Assad".)

Genuine universal pacifism is one thing, but bland and meaningless condemnations of "violence on all sides" - when one side has quite clearly instigated the violence and committed the vast majority of it - are an obfuscation designed to give a false impression of equivalence between sides in a drastically unequal conflict.

(And the UK, although it does export a lot of weapons, is nowhere near the 'top' spot globally - a quick survey of websites that list these things suggests it's somewhere between #6 and #8.)
 

droid

Well-known member
(And the UK, although it does export a lot of weapons, is nowhere near the 'top' spot globally - a quick survey of websites that list these things suggests it's somewhere between #6 and #8.)


2019: UK reclaims place as world's second largest arms exporter

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-place-as-worlds-second-largest-arms-exporter

2018: The record orders in 2018 made the UK the largest arms exporter in the world after the US.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/uk-2018-year-arms-exports-190731074142657.html

2016: Britain is now the second biggest arms dealer in the world
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...iggest-arms-dealer-in-the-world-a7225351.html

1950 - 2017

1 United States 682,607
2 United Kingdom 141,385

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World's_largest_arms_exporters

IIRC there was also one year that the UK briefly claimed the top spot.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
It would have been a bloody disaster. You can't nationalise all the utilities, all the railways, and give everyone free broadband at the same time while renegotiating Brexit. Plus sorting out Universal Credit, and a massive council house drive. Why not a British space programme while they're at it? .

It IS possible to do all these things and more.

It might not have been likely that Labour under Corbyn managed to do them.

But these are things that can be done, with the right forces at play.
 
Top