Win or lose, Jeremy Corbyn has already changed the rules of the game

The media and the political class can hardly contain themselves. What’s happening in the Labour party should simply not be happening. It’s suicidal, puerile, madness, self-mutilation, narcissistic, an emotional spasm and, in the words of one Tory cabinet member, a “potential catastrophe for Britain”.
But Jeremy Corbyn’s runaway leadership campaign shows little sign of flagging. In fact, the more he’s attacked and derided, the more support he attracts. It’s an extraordinary example of how utterly unpredictable politics can be. In the aftermath of the general election, Corbyn’s name was barely mentioned as a possible candidate, as Labour’s leaders lurched to the right.
A couple of months later and the veteran leftwing MP is heading the field in polls and nominations, attracting thousands of young people to the party and packing public meetings across the country. As Corbyn himself readily concedes, it’s a political insurgency that was waiting for something to latch on to - and that something has turned out to be him.
The parallels with the anti-austerity movements that threw up Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece and are fuelling Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the US Democratic nomination are clear. And the claim that the influx of new members and registered supporters is fuelled by far-left “entrists” is time-warp twaddle.

The paradox of Corbyn’s campaign is that some of the very reasons he wasn’t seen as an obvious challenger after the election are why he’s attracting such wide support now. He may not be able to match Podemos’s pony-tailed Pablo Iglesias for charisma. But he’s transparently honest and unspun, and so obviously not from the professional politician’s mould. In a political landscape full of speaking-clock triangulators, those qualities go a long way.
Not only that, but far from being the “fanatical class warrior” of the Daily Mail’s imagination, Corbyn represents Labour’s mainstream values and is making the case for a social democracy that has been driven from the mainstream for a generation.
As one young supporter at a Corbyn rally explained: “People say he is an old leftwinger or an old Marxist but to my generation his ideas seem quite new.” What she meant was simply free university tuition and the public ownership of rail and energy – common across Europe and popular with the British public.

Public investment in infrastructure, housing and hi-tech industry, using targeted quantitative easing, combined with redistributive taxation and rights at work: “Corbynomics” is scarcely revolutionary. As the Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman put it, when Labour supporters refuse to accept a failed austerity ideology, they aren’t “moving left”, they’re “refusing to follow a party elite that has decided to move sharply to the right”.
That is what Labour’s other leadership candidates all did after the election, ditching the party’s most popular policies, such as the mansion tax and 50% top rate, in order to appease corporate business – which polling shows most voters believe Labour has in fact been too soft on. Add to that their reversion to the New Labour formulas of the 1990s and refusal to oppose George Osborne’s attacks on the working poor – and no wonder they’re struggling to cope with Corbyn-mania.
So now the mild-mannered London MP faces a wall of propaganda from almost the entire media and every Blairite has-been that can be mobilised to derail his bandwagon. Can’t his supporters understand, they rage, that someone such as Corbyn simply could never win an election, that the “rules” of politics mean elections can only be won on the centre ground? Don’t they know what happened in the early 1980s?
There’s no sensible comparison with the 1980s, when Labour was trounced after a rightwing faction broke away to form the Social Democratic party and Margaret Thatcher dined off the jingoism of the Falklands war. And the political and media establishment’s “centre ground” bears no relation to the actual centre ground of public opinion, from public ownership to taxes on the rich.
Having decided against the evidence that Labour lost the election because it was too leftwing, they now insist the party must move closer to the Tories or be consigned to irrelevance. Mass support for the anti-austerity Corbyn is definitely not part of the script. So expect the attacks to intensify – and more loaded polling and tendentious reports such as that partially published this week attempting to show the public supports austerity.

With the likelihood growing of a new economic downturn before the end of this parliament, while new cuts bite into the living standards of millions, the fear seems to be as much that Corbyn might succeed as that he would consign Labour to oblivion. That certainly seemed to be Tony Blair’s worry when he said the problem with Corbyn’s platform was that even if he did win “it wouldn’t be right”. And former chancellor Ken Clarke has warned fellow Tories not to underestimate Corbyn, who he believes “could win” on a left populist ticket.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/05/jeremy-corbyn-political-stitch-up-anti-austerity-labour

#JezWeCan and #JezWeBloodyWellWill

And ensured if he wins that Labour will never win the next election

Corbyn energising the young.  Teenager scaling wall to look in window at Camden meeting as the Hall was full



People worried about them asked them to climb down again, they said they didn't want to miss anything.

Who else can energise the 35% who didn't vote.  Jeremy can, and will.

It's strange that so many people say they don't vote Labour anymore because they no longer represent the core values of the Labour movement and the working man but when someone comes along that goes down that road then he is too hard to the left.

It wil be intersting to see that if he wins what the country wants as a government. More of the same or a shift to the left and a stand against the current corrupt bunch that we have in power at the moment.

Two reasons I think Ed Miliband lost the election.

1. The country, in pure economic and growth terms, was on the up (in terms of GDP and the simple fact of number of jobs).

2. Ed lacked substance. He spewed neutral sounding sound bites like a robot and was utterly unconvincing. He also seemed to lack belief.

On point two Corbyn would do well, here is a man with vision and who believes what he says, many agree with him and he seems to have the conviction to stand by what he says he will do (one of the few positive traits he shares with a certain Mr Blair).

On point one, probably most importantly, we will have to see. If the country had been crumbling in May then Labour probably would have won even with Ed. But it was stable. A governmemt will rarely be disposed of in times of stability and growth.

I wish Corbyn luck, he's a real socialist. Depending on the shape of the Liberal Democrats in 2020, if Corbyn stands for Labour I might even vote red