Go on then, who do you reckon will win? The Labour Leadership contest, that is...

^^^I think that has to have something to do with it.

they both elicit a kind of if I hand one bullet i'd line them up and make it count type of response in me. I hate mediocre comedians and vapid professional politicians equally.

I am seriously projecting here because I am a miserable old bastard, ignore me :P

So is Coogan.

Coogan is still funny obv

About as funny as Rob Brydon.

there's no need for that kind of abuse

he's not even been elected yet and the press/cybertories are seriously playing up supposed links to the ira, hamas, hezbollah, radical islamists.

and given how much a pasting "red ed" got for his centrist platform - with some mild redistributive measures - how is a bona fide old labour socialist going to be portrayed in print?

― corbyn's gallus (jim in glasgow), Friday, August 14, 2015 1:28 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel like there's a kind of zen submission to this as well, though; strategising everything through the lens of what the tory press will make of it yields so much ground, & sort of proceeds according to the idea that any of it is measured, ie that their critique of JC would be comparable to that of ed but amplified in proportion to the degree to which JC's liberalism (w/e) is greater. & i think it's more likely that everyone will just get the exact same bullshit with words swapped around. it's like republican superlatives attached to obama, it's just free association, it can't really be meaningfully addressed i don't think.

Corbyn is doing a good job of playing "just the policies, ma'am" at the moment, but that is largely because he's speaking to an audience that mostly won't be swayed by media black ops. if he were to become leader of the Party - he won't - then he and his people might have to do something to address the ongoing character assassination from the Tory press (that's all of the press, basically) because they will throw everything at him as long as he's there

- he won't -
If you are that certain there is a fortune to be made on the betting exchanges, the other worthless fuckers are 4/1, 8/1 + 125/1, how come none of the shrewdies are jumping on this yet?

merely innoculating my own expectations against the counter-revolution

it is so weird looking at the first post in this thread and realising that it is from only 3 months ago. did anyone put a bet on Corbyn winning when the bookmakers were still giving odds of 200/1 or whatever it was?

Why do you say he won't? If he wins 50% of the vote, which is looking pretty likely, how can he not? You said up throat that the PLP will pull out all the stops - but the latest stop being pulled out is that, ahem, Gordon Brown is going to make a speech - or resort to shenanigans but the PLP couldn't run a menodge. They are fucking this up so badly, it's breathtaking.

Xposts.

Up throat!

i've just explained why i keep saying it - hope is dangerous

I've checked and this thread was started two days after Dan Jarvis ruled himself out, which feels like a lifetime ago. I'd forgotten that people were talking up Tristram Hunt

However, in the Survation poll, in which people were shown short video clips of the candidates, Corbyn scored the highest for seeming in touch with ordinary people at 57%, trustworthy at 40%, intelligent at 79%, and most likely to fare the best in a television debate against David Cameron at 33%. Burnham scored highest for seeming tough at 43%, and Kendall for seeming normal at 69%.

Seeming normal but not actually being normal.

i've yet to witness either.

Has anyone here been phoned up by Labour HQ yet to verify their credentials?

I am not into shaming people but Kendall has this permanent mean spirited scowl which I would say say she wasn't born with, it is a type of institutional "roughness" like as an electrician, when I did 6 years of house bashing, I became institutionally rough.

Kendall's ex-other half IE the tall comedian Greg Davies says on twitter that he is recording an album with Billy Bragg, is this true?

https://twitter.com/gdavies/status/631557179036835840?lang=en

It's true: twitter really does say that

Well, that swings it!

IIRC, the couple split up well before the beginning of the contest.

NOT A GOOD LOOK: crediting one of your manifesto's proposals to billy bragg

hey, he's a senior Lib Dem figure

i actually googled that. i was struck by a sudden fear you were serious.

never forget, never forgive

so, shenanigans

Failed shenanigans by all accounts, but who in these days thinks "Let's do what Peter Mandelson thinks!"?

my grandad, who was a pretty mild-tempered man who didn't often talk about politics, once said that the first thing the Labour government shd've done in 1964 was had the remaining Tory MPs shot, pour discourager les autres. feel much the same way about 9 tenths of the PLP right now.

the "seeming normal" thing is actually hilarious. like it's just accepted politicians are replicants who will only score a 5 or 6 out of 10 on their ability to walk among humans

Over the past few days two different strategies have emerged, which have been dubbed the "Free French” and the "Maquis” strategies.
The Free French strategy involves effectively withdrawing all support from Corbyn. MPs will not serve in his shadow cabinet, they will not observe the whip, they will not be bound by any sense of collective responsibility to the official party line. Those advocating that strategy are being compared to De Gaulle and those French forces that retreated into exile in Britain, then returned to the French continent on D-Day to liberate their homeland.

The Maquis strategy involves “staying behind enemy lines and fighting”, according to one MP. Existing members of the shadow cabinet will organise slates, and stand for election in the shadow cabinet elections Corbyn has pledged to reintroduce. From here they will oppose Corbyn’s more radical policy initiatives and start to construct an independent base from within the PLP and the wider Labour party, which they will use to strike out against him when they judge the time is right.

A lot of attention has been focused over the past 48 hours on the announcement that Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt that they are setting up a “resistance cell” called the “Common Good Group”. Although technically this would make them members of the Free French army, not the Maquis.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11805916/Labour-MPs-are-now-preparing-to-go-underground-to-resist-the-Corbyn-regime.html

It all depends on who has the best dub plates.

ts:
http://cdn.discogs.com/UPLZWG3_zvM1X631s2bpKZkwOYE=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb()/discogs-images/R-6465176-1419892885-9734.jpeg.jpg
vs

http://cdn.discogs.com/xRc0oU6Fi9mY9jME8xPcuSEL4vg=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb()/discogs-images/R-383596-1291887630.jpeg.jpg

Liz Kendall finds supporter:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/17/david-miliband-electing-jeremy-corbyn-risks-one-party-tory-state

Miliband in favour of two-party Tory state etc.

Weird timing to be backing the 150/1 outsider unless he thinks the leadership contest isn't going to be over when the votes are counted. I'd have thought that whatever marginal influence he has is just going to draw votes away from Burnham and Cooper.

think we have to assume at this stage that these idiots really believe in the invisible difference of their preferred advocate of neoliberalism

'draw votes away' doesn't matter that much in the leadership election though - Kendall/Cooper/Burnham/Corbyn and Cooper/Kendall/Burnham/Corbyn are both effective for the ABC crowd.

All this talk about offering policies that are 'financially viable' makes me reach for my

https://img1.etsystatic.com/017/0/6337680/il_570xN.498770417_ki4l.jpg

shirt.

it's like there's a contest to see who can react to corbyn's popularity in the stupidest, most self-defeating way

it's like a perfect distillation of the european-wide disconnect between elites and rank-and-file

"no, THIS is what you should think"

'draw votes away' doesn't matter that much in the leadership election though - Kendall/Cooper/Burnham/Corbyn and Cooper/Kendall/Burnham/Corbyn are both effective for the ABC crowd.

This is true to some extent but if the best case ABC scenario is Corbyn winning around 45% of the vote and losing on second preferences, for the next leader to have any credibility I think they need to be pulling in something around the upper twenties. I'd have thought picking one of the candidates to rally behind would make more sense than a doomed attempt to make Kendall happen even if it didn't materially affect the outcome when the preferences are tallied.

for the next leader to have any credibility

They won't.

Yes, I almost typed "(lol)" after writing that but I guess they have to try. The party is probably doomed either way.

I just had a phone call from a man working for Yvette Cooper's campaign asking me if I'd decided who to vote for yet, I told him that I'd already voted and put Corbyn as my first preference. then he asked me who I'd put as my second preference and I told him that I voted for Cooper as my second preference, and he thanked me for the second preference, but I kind of got the impression he thought I was just pretending to have put Cooper as my second preference because I was embarrassed? I was telling the truth, though. anyway, the whole thing was awkward.

I was kind of worried he was going to shout at me when I told him that I'd voted for Corbyn

four teenagers on channel 4 news right now, each repping for one of the leadership contenders, Kendall supporter giving some amazing side-eye to the Corbyn supporter

was funny to each of them trotting out their candidate's sound bites

cathy newman is terrible

Channel 4 News is terrible.