Comments by "J Drake1994" (@JDrakeify) on "Owen Jones meets Jeremy Corbyn again | 'I am very optimistic' – full length interview" video.

X Girl Because he lost and did a deal that would get $15 dollar living wage, free tuition, strong measures on climate change, and a move toward extending public healthcare? It annoys me when former Sanders supporters call him a sell out, when there will likely be millions of people, not just in America, but around the world, whose lives will be vastly improved because his willingness to work with others to get things done. If you don't see the value in that, then your support for him was about little more than a statement of identity than about changing people's lives.
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That's all well and good, but there is no point in hope if it cant be translated into change, and for that we need a Labour government. Take a look at any kind of polling, and you will see Corbyn doesnt have a hope in hell of leading Labour to power.
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I gather he interviews all of them for that amount of time, but the videos are usually edited down. He only releases the full conversation if there is popular demand for it, like with Corbyn and with Peter Hitchens.
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I punctuate. There is no precedent for a reason. Not only in the UK, I have never heard of a party coming from 16 points down in the polls (especially when the leading party has just come out of a period of major turmoil) to win an election. The fact of the matter is that people do not generally change there mind about a politician after a first impression. Michael Foot was the last Labour leader to be this poorly rated, and look what happened there. It is wishful thinking to think the guy who has become the least popular leader of the opposition within less than a year of his election can turn that all around. I get that people want to see him as some kind of left wing messiah who will make everything okay, but that is just projecting what you want to be onto him and denying the reality.
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Wendy Adams Maybe Corbyn should have been given an extra year, but his incompetence and negative ratings from the public make it blatantly obvious that that wouldnt turn it around anyway. That is why his shadow cabinet ditched him, rather than any major differences on policy, which were clear when they took there jobs in the first place. Those people who were initially open to or even supportive of Corbyn's leadership with left wing credentials of there own (Lisa Nandy. Jo Stevens. Louise Haigh) have now backed Owen Smith. The Blairites by and large went for Eagle. Leaders of the opposition dont get a second chance at a first impression. There is no precedent for an opposition to be so far behind in the polls and come back to win the next election. It just won't happen. In fact, the trend is usually toward things getting worse as a parliament goes on. And Corbyn is already one of, if not the least popular opposition leader of all time, and his party are 16 points behind in the polls.
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Luke Belecco One moment he is a Blairite, the next he is copying Corbyn. Make your mind up.
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Coilla Drake Then why was he backed by the likes of Lisa Nandy, Jo Stevens, and Louise Haigh, MPs with strong left wing credentials, while the Blairites opted for Eagle at first?
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***** He is anti austerity, he wants to renationalise the railways, bring back wage councils, create a ministry of labour, and raise taxes on the rich, policies which are supported by Corbyn, but not endorsed by the Lib Dems, to the best of my knowledge.
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Marky T Jeremy is a decent man, but sometimes that is not enough. Labour has had leaders who were good people, but not capable of leading the party into power. George Lansbury and Michael Foot were highly principled men, but they were not able to put there principles into practice. Decency needs to be coupled with competence. The best leader Labour has ever had, Clement Attlee, had both qualities. But Corbyn only has one, and he will never change this country if he is not in government, which, as the polls show now, is almost impossible.He wouldnt even sit alone in a room with his deputy at one point. He isnt a man of steel, he is a man who it is painfully obvious will never be PM. And at the end of the day, there is no point to politics unless you want to implement your principles to better society, so Corbyn needs to go.
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ERRATICCHEESE2 That was after 9/11, by the time he left office he had the lowest poll ratings. Even if humans are morons though, we still need their votes,and the left needs something better than derision to get them.
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ZOD4 I did support him- but the support of people like me wouldnt be enough. He needs to reach outside of the left wing comfort zone, and so far he has preferred to preach to the converted, and even if he wasnt his incompetency and rather extreme views on foreign policy prevent any kind of economic message from surfacing. Most voters arent even aware he is anti austerity. It is a fallacy to believe the choice is either Corbyn or Blair 2.0. We need someone with many of the left wing principles of Corbyn, but with the drive to get Labour into power to implement those ideas. The likes of Lisa Nandy or Clive Lewis would be ideal in my book, but under the circumstances, I'd settle for Owen Smith.
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ZOD4 It is because most of the news worthy things that have happened are either when there is some kind of internal crisis within Labour that he hasnt handled well, or when he has said something controversial on foreign policy. The leader of the opposition doesnt need to go out and insult people, but they ought to be able to set the agenda in order to talk about what they want. Yes, the party might well be in a stronger position if there had been more unity on both sides, but we would still be in a bad place, since Corbyn has made plenty of unforced errors without the help of the PLP or the press. Maybe plenty of people do agree with him on austerity, it is just that there first impression of him as a pacifist who cannot even run his own party properly, means that they will probably not vote for them even if they like his economic platform. The media hasnt been fair on him, but that comes with the territory of being Labour leader these days. What concerns me is that when he inevitably loses, the left will just blame them and not consider what we could do better next time in order to attract support, and we will continue to act like a sub culture, alienating the voters that our policies could help.
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ERRATICCHEESE2 Corbyn is 0.1% left wing? His entire life is a left wing political statement. What would a 100% left wing leader look like?
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Totalwarking7 Some polls is about three in the space of 9 months. One poll doesnt mean much on its own, it is the overall trend that is important. For the vast majority, the Tories were in the lead, Labour didnt build up a sustained advantage. And that is pretty shocking, considering that the government had been ripping itself apart in a manner unprecedented since the early nineties. Labour ought to have held a lead of at least over 5 points at that time. The fact that Corbyn couldnt even outpoll the Tories then, when those polls still likely overstate left wing support, reflects very poorly on him. Sure, Labour are doing even worse now due to the current situation, but Corbyn was already the least popular opposition leader in history before any of that, and he is less than a year into the job. All other opposition leaders have declined as a parliament has gone on. Certainly no opposition leader who is rated as poorly as Corbyn has staged a comeback from the situation he was in even before this contest. The fact he can win a by election in what are either incredibly safe Labour seats or places like Tooting where an incumbent government is the main challenge is no indication he is on track to form a government. Neither is the fact the party has won mayoral elections in places like Liverpool, where Labour has won 80% of the vote in some areas. And surely you can see the ability to fire up a politically engaged minority is not the same thing as winning over ordinary voters, as the Trump phenomenon over in the US is proving. In every comparable situation in the history of any parliamentary democracy that I know of, electoral disaster is invariably what follows in situation like this. Can you come up with any examples that prove that rule wrong?
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Lauren Clark I noticed.
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Meanwhile, take a look at the polls. Sorry, but he will never be PM, we need someone competent to take his ideas forward, especially on the economy, but Labour are going nowhere but electoral oblivion under his leadership.
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martin webb I would like that change vmore than anything, I just highly doubt Corbyn is the man who is competent or popular enough to bring it about. It is because of the problems that this country faces and the historic opportunity that Labour now has to reshape it if they play their cards right that I want Corbyn gone, he is simply not a credible leader, though I agree with him on a great deal.
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martin webb The other leadership contenders had plans to change Labour after the election, it just that there plans were to move it further to the right, with no compelling vision of how we would transform society. That is why I voted for Corbyn in the first place. Thing is, Corbyn has watered down his policies somewhat since becoming Labour leader, some which I agree with. such as the concessions on trident, and others which I do not. Did you know that McDonnell is backing a Tory tax cut for the top 15% in the autumn statement? That has annoyed me a great deal. I also find this suggestion by some on the left that Corbyn is the only person capable of bringing change rather worrying, as it is antithetical to what the left believes in, change from below brought by the masses, rather than the 'I alone can fix it' mentality of the right. If you listen to practically all left wing leaders of note, they will emphasize the importance of the movement over themselves. The campaign to get elected created a new left wing movement which gives me a lot of hope for future, but I think we have reached a point where Corbyn is a burden to it rather than an asset. I find your comment about privately educted politicians kind of ironic, Corbyn himself did grow up in a rather large and was partially privately educated himself. Why not someone else, who is left wing, but also has shown the capability to think about how Labour can get itself back to power to implement meaningful change, and who has the ability to connect with people? Clive Lewis grew up on a council estate, he is hardly part of the elite, he would be a choice of mine. Lisa Nandy too. People who support Corbyn make a big support by reducing Labour's infighting to just Blairite vs Corbynista, there are whole load of different viewpoints in the party, many of which broadly agree with Corbyn and his criticisms of New Labour.
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Awesome Avenger your comment shows little to no engagement with what the left is actually suggesting these days.
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gerald geaf he has whips, so he is ordering people how to vote as much as other parties or previous Labour leaders were. And how do you know what his real thoughts on the EU was? Sure, he didnt think the institution was perfect, but that in theory shouldnt change the way in which he campaigned, there was an entire sub campaign devoted to left wingers who thought a similar way. As a major party leader, he would be expected to be prominent in campaigning whichever option he chose to advocate for, there is little evidence to suggest he did that simply to appease the PLP.
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MrHmmburger but referendum polling and election polling are to different things. The kind of swings that were seen over a relatively short space of time, in the AV referendum for instance, have never been seen in the context of a general election. Besides, the swing in the Brexit polls is far smaller than the 16 point margin that Labour need to make up. And that is just assuming that they are right, as the last election and Brexit showed us, they often overestimate left wing support.
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gerald geaf Do you mean Corbyn allows MPs to debate how they vote? That is the first I have heard of anything like that. Free votes have taken place twice when they normally wouldnt have in his time as leader thus far (and he spent some time considering whether to whip MPs in favour of his stance) but there have been literally hundreds of other votes since he became leader that have received media attention which Labour MPs have been whipped to vote a certain way by the leadership.
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Take a look at his policies. They would have been considered dangerously left wing by the Blairites a year ago. Some of his policies are to the left of Corbyn (the 200 billion investment was more than McDonnell has suggested). If he shouldnt be part of the Labour Party, who should?
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I think there both middle class. Smith's Dad was a historian and BBC editor, Corbyn grew up in a manor house in Wiltshire.
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gerald geaf But there are plenty of Labour MPs who might not agree with the way Corbyn tells them to vote, and yet do it anyway. The whole point of the whipping system is that MPs subordinate the way they vote on certain issues to the party, partly so that other MPs will do the same when they are whipped to vote an issue on which they strongly agree with the party line, but there colleagues might not feel the same way. Your argument essentially comes down to 'because Corbyn was right' and on many issues he was imo, but equally many of the Blairite MPs who do not rebel against him at anything like the rate he did to previous leaders, would feel a different way.
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The two situations arent comparable. Bernie was facing an internal party election where he began with no name recognition, Corbyn was in a similar position last year when he first ran for leader but now he is one of the best known politicians in the country, and most people have made there mind up about him. There is no precedent for a leader of the opposition to come from 16 points down to win a General Election in our history.
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gerald geaf By that logic,someone like Liz Kendall is not a Blairite, as she openly advertised she wanted to take the party to the right in the last leadership election, which is why she did so poorly.
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gerald geaf I wonder, would that still be your position if Labour MPs rebelled against Corbyn as much as he had done in his past life as a backbencher? The odd rebellion over a certain issue is okay, but party discipline is necessary if an opposition are to have any hope of defeating the government on any kind of vote. And for someone like Smith, most of his time in Parliament has been spent in the shadow cabinet, so he has a seat around the table when the party line is being decided. And if he were leader, it would be absurd to say he would follow the party line should it 'swing in the other direction' as he would be the person deciding the party line in the first place.
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jorgepeterbarton He nominated Ed Miliband, and the Andy Burnham, and he served in Corbyn's shadow cabinet. The evidence since he has made into Parliament at least would suggest he is left wing, though not as much as Corbyn. If you think you can tell people's views through there voting record, then you are forgetting that most of the time MPs follow the party line and vote the way the leadership wants, therefore Smith's votes reflect his deference to the party whip rather than his own views. I wouldnt be surprised if the rest of the 2010 intake who are Blairites (Ummuna, Hunt, Kendall, etc) had a remarkably similar looking record, as they both voted largely as the leadership asked them too.
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BigBuilder Al He is the least popular leader of the opposition (not just Labour leader) with the public (he has already surpassed Michael Foot less than a year into the job). And I fail to understand why some people cannot see the difference between being popular with a political engaged minority, and a plurality large enough to win a general election. Corbyn has won the votes of less than 1% of the electorate in the Labour leadership contest. His support may be enthusiastic, but the same could have been said for Michael Foot in 1983, plenty turned out for his rallies.
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siobhan mc dermott On most of the occasions they have been elected the Tories have broken their promises to the public, and yet people still vote for them, because they dont view Labour as a decent alternative. That is what happened in 2015, and every other time an incumbent Tory government has been returned to number 10 within living memory.I think its pretty clear by now that it wont be enough on its own to topple a Tory government.
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