Labour close win Peterborough

[the other bob wilson]

That's the scary bit. Him, and more worrying, the people who pull his strings

This fear of the "Marxist" Corbyn as a possible Prime Minister would carry far more weight if it wasn't for the fact that, almost always, the person expressing it is someone who seems perfectly happy for the current bunch of clowns who are judged to have made such a balls up of running the country over the past nine years by nearly all objective analysts. I'm biased, so I'm never going to praise a Conservative Government, but I think history will judge the ones led by David Cameron and Theresa May very harshly compared to other Tory ones and is there anyone in the list of contenders to become the new leader who has the gravitas to make people believe they can turn around the fortunes of a country, and party, that is seen by so many as a laughing stock now?

[Vindec]

This fear of the "Marxist" Corbyn as a possible Prime Minister would carry far more weight if it wasn't for the fact that, almost always, the person expressing it is someone who seems perfectly happy for the current bunch of clowns who are judged to have made such a balls up of running the country over the past nine years by nearly all objective analysts. I'm biased, so I'm never going to praise a Conservative Government, but I think history will judge the ones led by David Cameron and Theresa May very harshly compared to other Tory ones and is there anyone in the list of contenders to become the new leader who has the gravitas to make people believe they can turn around the fortunes of a country, and party, that is seen by so many as a laughing stock now?

So you think Corbyn (the Venezuela fan) and John Macdonald are better options. I agree that the current government is laughable especially due to their BREXIT antics but I would trust even less the Marxist Corbyn who couldn't even run his family finances and whose answer to everything is to chuck money at it. As I see it the current lot are the least worst option but as a floating voter I always make up my mind at the time of an election and not routinely vote for the same Party as many do.

What I do know is that if Corbyn and Co were removed Labour would win any future Election at a canter but with Momentum membership Corbyn is safe for as long as he wishes to remain as leader.

[jon1959]

So you think Corbyn (the Venezuela fan) and John Macdonald are better options. I agree that the current government is laughable especially due to their BREXIT antics but I would trust even less the Marxist Corbyn who couldn't even run his family finances and whose answer to everything is to chuck money at it. As I see it the current lot are the least worst option but as a floating voter I always make up my mind at the time of an election and not routinely vote for the same Party as many do.

What I do know is that if Corbyn and Co were removed Labour would win any future Election at a canter but with Momentum membership Corbyn is safe for as long as he wishes to remain as leader.

Corbyn isn't a Marxist. I would be very relaxed if he was, but he isn't. He's a left social-democrat. A Bennite in 1980s speak.

The 2017 Labour Manifesto is a pretty good place to start and finish to understand Corbyn and Corbynism. He may have wanted to move the goalposts a little bit from that place, but not by much.

Unfortunately there aren't as many reds under the bed as the Daily Express and Chuka Umunna claim.

[the other bob wilson]

So you think Corbyn (the Venezuela fan) and John Macdonald are better options. I agree that the current government is laughable especially due to their BREXIT antics but I would trust even less the Marxist Corbyn who couldn't even run his family finances and whose answer to everything is to chuck money at it. As I see it the current lot are the least worst option but as a floating voter I always make up my mind at the time of an election and not routinely vote for the same Party as many do.

What I do know is that if Corbyn and Co were removed Labour would win any future Election at a canter but with Momentum membership Corbyn is safe for as long as he wishes to remain as leader.

Anyone wanting to go back through my posting history on here will see that I'm not a fan of Jeremy Corbyn and, certainly since 2001, have hardly voted for his party as a matter of routine - my last vote less than a month ago was cast for the Green Party. However, what I would say is that I, and much of the country it seems, found myself being impressed by him when he was given the opportunity to put his views over directly, as opposed to having them "interpreted" by experts, pundits and various other people with an agenda in the print and broadcast media during the 2017 election campaign - so maybe I'm guilty of paying too much attention to those media voices?

Also, I'm a little confused by what you say about the Labour Party considering that you were a member of it for twenty seven years. In particular, you come out with a common complaint made against the party when you say "the Labour Party is about spending money the country hasn't got and leaving the country in a financial mess every time they leave office". One of the problems I have with that when I read it is that the Labour Party has only been voted out of Government once in the last forty years and, as you, rightly in my view, acknowledge, they were hardly wholly responsible for what happened in 2008 that played a big part in their election defeat two years later.

So, I can only assume that your drift away from the party you were a member of for almost three decades was based on their election defeats in 1970 and 1979 and yet it's hard to see how and when your period as a Labour member fits in with that - it would appear that, unless you are old enough to have taken out a membership around the end of the Second World War, you did not let either of those defeats influence you at the time.

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that an awful lot of people had their heads turned during the "I, me, mine" decade (the 80s) and were taken in by the "economic miracle" credited to Margaret Thatcher's Government. I, on the other hand, see the deregulation of the banking and financial industries at the heart of said miracle as being the start of a process which led to what happened in 2008 and much of the subsequent hardship which stemmed from it - one thing which sustains me somewhat in the very turbulent times we live in is that there are signs that 80s style capitalism's chickens might just be coming home to roost.