The Guardian's lack of objectivity on the fact that a left of centre candidate has stood for leadership of the Labour party (I use the term left of centre wisely) continues.
Anne Perkins has had her third Comment is Free article on Jeremy Corbyn published in fewer days.
And now the Guardian illustrates its headline story that he would split the party if elected because some business sponsors would walk away with this image (which I reproduce because it is my story):
I am ruling out the possibility that this shot was produced with a red filter, or that the tome was photoshopped on. I guess the photographer simply got lucky with the red curtains casting the hue and used it to good effect. But the resulting message is clear: it really won't be long before the Guardian is writing about reds under the bed at this rate.
A change of editor is definitely not becoming the paper at present. I continue to stress that who Labour chooses is not my business and I will not be voting although I could, of course, register to do so. But this paranoia is my business. They really do need to get a grip.
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Well done for ditching the craven Grauniad Richard! Just like the BBC and mainstream media it should all be tossed aside. The garbage pouring out of the Guardian is no more than trashy neo-liberal mouth-farting. Labour should be putting electability as its ‘LOWEST’ priority as the word is now defined by the neo-lib dictionary- ‘sing the tune of corporate and financial power or you are finished.’ We live in an Alice in Wonderland world where words mean their opposites.
The press in this country has become totally vile and vapid -I personally would not insult my haemorrhoids by using it in the ‘smallest room’. (Not a nice image at breakfast time -but apposite I feel).
It’s astonishing to me that so fr the PLP and Labour grandees aren’t able to take the one lesson from Corbyn’s success that they should. Whatever their thoughts about the man, his POLITICS is popular. All of the other candidates need to take serious note of that, and if they want a hope of gaining the support of a majority of Labour voters, and left-leaning members of the public, they have to seriously firm up their social democratic policies.
Indeed-I’d even consider joining the Labour Party if Corbyn wins which is saying something as I’ve held them in utter contempt for years.
Can’t understand why people like Meacher isn’t speaking out unless he is and I haven’t come across it.
Michael has written here on this. He is often critical of the right in the Party in his own blog, which he publishes in the “left futures” blog as well.
http://www.michaelmeacher.info/weblog/
Stopped reading the Guardian during Scottish independence campaign. They used to be the best of a bad bunch: but they are not that any longer. We have no free press, though it is not easy to see why the Guardian represents the financial and neoliberal narrative these days.
I gave up reading the Guardian (except letters online) 8 years ago. Now read FT (sharing expense with partner) and the Morning Star plus Private Eye. The Star is owned by its readers and, like the Eye, you read things there that you won’t see anywhere else in print.
Likewise. The Graun has been awful for quite a while now. Can’t argue with your choice of Private Eye either; more real journalism once a fortnight than anywhere else. The FT is particularly myopic but reliably so and can thus be viewed with the appropriate goggles on. But the Morning Star? I’m a big fan of distributed ownership and control but;
“you read things there that you won’t see anywhere else in print”
there’s a reason for that … 🙂
Solomon Hughes writes for both Private Eye and Morning Star.
See here: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-b9f2-The-Man-Behind-the-Bill#.VbI7ffnLnQE
The FT has just been sold has it not?
I am worried that it will be less editorially independent in the future as a result of the sale.
Yes…it was all the fault of the ridiculous Labour 1983 election manifesto that lost Labour the election that year.
As others on here have already mentioned, a little event that was in all the pates at the time, the Falklands war, ensured a flag-waving election victory for Thatcher. Before then, she was one of the most unpopular Prime Minister’s in British history and was extremely unlikely to win a second term of office. Then, General Galtieri came riding over the horizon on his white charger and came to her rescue.
The other event was the traitorous “Gang of Four” who stabbed the Labour party in the back, walked out to form their own party and made sure the vote was effectively split in favour of the tories for many years to come.
Anyone who had actually taken the time to peruse the 1983 Labour manifesto would have found that it was nowhere near as bad as it had been painted. Some parts were actually quite tame.
Of course, the press rounded on Labour, destroyed them and the rest is history.
If Labour weren’t so scared of the press and big business, they would see their craven, venal behaviour in backing the welfare bill for what it is.
Disgraceful!
We need a medium to portray a strong message against the rhetoric that electing Jeremy Corbyn as labour leader will finish the party off. I have not yet heard such a message.
Clearly we are hardly spoiled for choice, but the guardian it seems can now be removed from the list.
In my opinion, Jeremy Corbyn is the only chance the labour party have of being saved from delegation to irrelevance for the foreseeable future and the inevitable one party politics that would result. The Corbyn campaign need a strong message to defeat this rhetoric of from their opposers that big businesses will leave if Corbyn is elected. It is exactly the same rhetoric we have all heard from those who oppose a fairer system of taxation.
To the best of my knowledge, no business ever has, nor is ever likely to stop trading in Britain because of either any government policy, or who makes up our government. To suggest otherwise is simply ridiculous scare tactics without any foundation whatsoever. I have never heard that message coming from any politician.
The New Statesman, with the honourable exception of Peter Wilby, has joined in the Corbyn bashing. Their main political writer, George Eaton, ends his current piece with the following:
‘To many it feels as if Labour has regressed several decades in the space of a few weeks. The journey back to reality, they fear, will take much longer.’
So what is this reality to which the party must return?
Ever increasing inequality
Toleration of personal and corporate tax fraud and tax havens
Evisceration of Local Government and its services
Benefit cuts that strike hardest at the poor and children
Privatisation of public services which benefits only Capita, Serco bosses.
Spending a fortune on replacing Trident
Loading HE students with ludicrous levels of debt and the forthcoming decimation of the post 16 FE sector
Abandonment of any pretence of concern for the environment or global warming
It’s funny that we never hear a clear statement from any of the other three Labour candidates. They never explain ‘reality’. Blair’s neoliberalism lite, even with Brown’s tax credit mitigation, took us down the same road that Cameron is currently speeding along. Why don’t the majority of Labour MPs get this? The rest of us do and we’re not just a bunch of Marxists and Trots as they claim. In the main we are social democrats who believe in a fairer society, not the weak go the wall version of modern capitalism.
On R4 the other day they had Roy Hattersley, who I’m not a great fan of, but who was seen as representing the right of the Labour Party in the 80s after the SDP quit & Michael Foot ( who I obviously was a fan of & would expect any thinking person to be) took the party to the left.
RH, quite rightly in fairness, declined to support a candidate, but stated absolutely-Labour’s problems were that
1 It hadn’t answered the lie that it was its policies, rather than banking policies, that caused the global crisis &
2It hadn’t answered the lie that Britain’s position was now so parlous that it could no longer afford welfare.
The answer might imply it, but it wouldn’t be quite true that Labour’s Right-Wing in the 80s would now support Corbyn; some of them would support Burnham & maybe even Yvette cooper. It is obvious that politics has shifted so far to the right that the “Labour Right” of the 80s is now, according to most Newspapers, the “Stalinist Left” ,
This is quite a dangerous situation. A lot of people, on both sides of the fence, seem to be forgetting that Europe’s capitalists & hereditary landowners didn’t give up money & power for philanthropy but because they feared violent revolution. If you keep moving to the right, restoring all the traditional privileges to the wealthiest in society, there will come a point where what you bring about isn’t injustice so much as civil war.
The only other point to mention; isn’t this whole furore largely a result of journalists, politicians & SPADs all using the same pubs, going to the same parties & screeching to a frenzy over the last champagne cocktail of the night?
I’m the last person to preach puritanism, but maybe they could, at least, try drinking with those outside the bubble? If any of them fancy a real ale in The Barton Arms I can assure them a very different understanding of how the world works.