Privatisation has never fallen under the banner of centre Left (I regard Blair as being centre, and Brown as centre Left).

If the money was available a centre Left candidate could increase his/her appeal by nationalising parts of the failing rail network, for instance (though in austerity Britain that's heading out of the EU that looks out of the question now), but it gives you some kind of idea about how once unfashionable Leftist policies could be popular again.

Universal Basic Income could be another policy.

Firstly it has to be shown that any kind of significant movement from labour to UKIP took place. Granted I have no evidence either but it seems rather suspicious that the tory and UKIP swings were the same and those 2 parties are politically very similar.

See I don't automatically buy the view that labour voters switch to UKIP with any significant volume and I'm yet to be shown any proof that this has ever happened. It fits a popular narrative of 'the post industrial traditional white working class' who are a bit racist and backward so they're susceptible to UKIP style politics (Despite their only MP being an ex tory in a tory area.)

I agree, but be warned that what you are arguing for is considered to be way-out-there radical Leftist, and I suppose it is in these times. Whoever succeeds Corbyn will be made to look ridiculous within 3 weeks and we'll be re- hashing the same old s***.

UKIP came second in 120 constituencies in 2015, 0 in 2010.

Tories won more seats in 2015.

hmmmmmm.

How Ukip helped David Cameron win in the Midlands
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...ories-election

Sadly there's a lot of truth in that narrative.

Your comments are built on so many misconceptions I scarcely know where to begin.

Copeland is not representative of anything. By-elections do not have any correlation with subsequent general elections, there is a wealth of evidence on this subject. For those who are sufficiently curious I'd urge them to look at ukpollingreport.com. where this fallacy is rebuked on a monthly basis. When something weird happens in a meaningless election it means nothing. Having witnessed so many opposition Labour victories over the years which led to GE I'm indifferent to the one they have finally lost. Hell, it might be a good thing.

Secondly, Copeland does not support your hypothesis. The nuclear issue was an important reason for the loss: the environment is a middle-class centrist concern whereas industrial jobs are a working-class concern, so in this area at least, Corbyn was not left-wing enough.

Corbyn's main problem, despite the media bull**** that you are perpetuating, is that he is not seen as "one of us" by the working classes. That is a genuine problem. It is not one that will be solved by electing a smarmy Blairite. That would make it worse.

OK, so there's some truth, in some specific hand picked areas within specific hand picked constituencies, magnified by reporters following specific agendas.

For a more nuanced view:

Http://labourlist.org/2015/10/labours-shrinking-vote/

It looks from the second graph that labour ended up losing around 5% to ukip while the Tories lost 12% in 2015.

But there's a broader agenda here, the continued ignorance of the actual working class in mainstream discourse, culture and media. The actually existing working class ie people who work for a living, is incredibly diverse.

Agreed

I dont think the working class need a 'one of us' leader, they just need a leader they can out their faith in to deliver what they want.

It's representative of Labour polling 37%, same as they did in Stoke. The only thing that saved Labour in Stoke was UKIP splitting the Tory vote.

Of course he isn't. He's seen, quite correctly, as 'Islington'. Or as that lady in Rochdale put it, 'he should be sitting on a barge somewhere floating up and down.'

Remember when he appeared on the Marr show a couple of Sundays ago, a gig that was over by 10am, he insisted on taking the Monday off in recompense, to muck about on his allotment or something. A worker he ain't. Britain is facing its biggest political issue since 1945 and has never stood in greater need of an effective opposition, and Corbyn is lazily but very deliberately refusing to provide that opposition.

This is getting tiresome. Polling in individual constituencies does not have any correlation with broader voting patterns.

This is like talking to Americans or something.

You are now doing the establishment media thing of making up reasons to justify your irrational hatred of the man.

No one really knows or cares what his work schedule is. I mean, you could, but I doubt you bothered to find out. Or so half the pisshead journalists that come out with this stuff. Which is ironic, because they are being too lazy to work out how lazy this guy is.

He had a day off. That's it. So what. It is highly questionable whether he needs to be doing stuff all the time in any case-frenetic activity for the sake of it is counter-productive.

I'd remind you that when half of London was burning down during the riots neither Cameron nor then Labour leader Milliband bothered to come back from their holidays until the third day of rioting. Neither of them received any criticism for it.

Looks like I for one underestimated the significance of the stoke victory for Labour. A friend, a Labour councillor, confirmed the presence of some 500 Labour activists door knocking and campaigning in Stoke, vs a significant and clearly fascist, gang of UKIP supporters. Story also confirmed by Paul Mason in the Guardian last week.
A cause for celebration for those opposed to the politics of hate.

Congrats on beating possibly the worst campaign with one of the worst candidates in a by-election in living memory. Awesome!

Surely the road to 2020 victory will remain unmarred by silly things like reality and the labour leader being a first class ****.

Though, truth be told, very relieved ukip seems to be burning itself away.

Such arrogance, refusing to accept that progressive people acting together can make a difference. The hardcore fascist right don't just naturally implode, it takes real pressure from outside. If you could see past your partisanship, you would acknowledge this.
Too many people just obsessed with Corbyn the bogeyman, seeing reds under the bed.

Even if you don't like him, he is clearly a sincere man who has devoted himself to helping others with total disregard for his own self-interest.

It doesn't really say much for you, that of all politicians in the public eye, on the right and left, deserving of criticism, you focus on the one guy who has an unimpeachable character. You can argue about his policies or his judgment, but attacking him personally just makes you sound like a real arse****.

Exactly (although I'll always hold his dalliance with Abbott the sea slug against him)

Labour's national opinion polling is currently at about 26%, so the Copeland and Stoke results actually flattered Corbyn. His personal approval rating of minus 40 is the worst ever recorded by a British party leader.

No. Unlike you, fanboi, I have a clue what I'm talking about.

We do, actually.

You don't know much about politics, do you, son?

Police matter. And nothing like half of London was burning down, and I personally saw how the police got on top of it.

No, he isn't. He's a vain, self-regarding, under-educated leftover Seventies right-on.

No, he hasn't. Massive IRA fan. Massive Chavez fan. Massive Hamas fan. Massive Putin fan. And there's a reason why he wears that Lenin cap too, and I'm afraid it's the worst reason you can imagine.

Au contraire.

Interesting article on the BBC regarding Labour's internal battles

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39113671

Everyman and his dog knows by elections dont have any correlation with the GE.

However your level 1 superficial read is missing something very important, and very very obvious, you cant see the obvious because of utter fan boi blindness.

By elections have an internal logic, if you compare one by election to another, obvious patterns emerge.

One of these patterns is that the governing party loses its vote share, often losing quite safe seats,to go on to win them back in the GE. This is a very big noticeable consistent feature of by-elections.

I repeat the governing party doing poorly is a consistent and predictable feature of by-elections.

If you had to predict the outcome of a by-election and the only information you had to hand was previous by-election data, the opposition party losing a seat to the governing party would be a humongous dog.

Which is why it has not happened in 35 years.

You have done your best never to directly confront or accept this through our whole debate, you have been dodging it like a jam factory.

The Copeland result was a massive outlier and big defeat and just handwaving it away as a by-election is very poor reasoning which is just trying to obfuscate a truth that you do not want to confront.

^ if such a rule change were to go ahead that would be hugely significant, assuming this is to be believed. I suspect the procedures to be delegated are nothing short of opaque to the untrained. So we might see a conference weighted in favour of the right despite corbyn's thrashing of Owen Smith.
Certainly something for the 'on the left but fed up with corbyn' people to consider.

Utter rubbish. All he ever said about the IRA was that he wanted a dialogue. So did John Major. Sentences have been taken out of context by the Murdoch machine to portray him as a terrorist sympathizer. You could do the same with almost any politician who was around during that era. The same with Hamas.

And as for Chavez, he was a democratically elected leader who enjoyed massive working class support. Only someone who'd swallowed CIA propaganda could have an issue with that.

If he's a leninist he's kept it pretty well hidden.

House of Lords needs to go.


How the **** did it get so many liberals in anyway?