The New Statesman declines to endorse Corbyn

If there was one endorsement at election time which Labour can usually rely on, it is that of the New Statesman.

Not this time.

I don't agree with their general approach to politics or with most of the rest of the editorial linked to here which refuses to endorse any party in the present election.

But to any reader who thinks that the concerns about Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party are all "smears" put together by the "right-wing press," the fact that a magazine which is sufficiently left-wing to put forward the other views in this article has also published the paragraphs which explain why they cannot endorse Labour under Jeremy Corbyn should come as a wake-up call.

Comments

Gary Bullivant said…
Very brave of you to highlight this becaause he has now apologised and the Labour Party's position on Brexit is clear enough whatever he thinks personally. It should appeal to a lot of those who occupy the centre ground, left or right leaning. I am a soft leaver because it's the ever increasing political integration I object to. As a result I don't like the idea of delay and I don't like the idea that the last referendum can be overturned. I'd prefer to take Boris's deal but drop Boris, the risk of no deal and the referendum. I can't trust Mrs Harrison to resist further preferment so, because he appears only to have temporarily lent his support to Mr Corbyn, Mr Lywood is looking like a really good choice for me and my WASPI wife. His CV looks pretty blue too (property landlord, businessman, prvate school education, 80's Uni degree). Looking forward to the hustings Friday.
11:04 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Don't quite see how you get to most of those conclusions - what Labour is offering in most of those areas is exactly what you say you don't want.
10:31 pm
Anonymous said…
Let me try to make it clearer. As a young man studying PPE at undergraduate level I voted to join the EEC in a referendum. As an old man with experience of life I recognise that Boris and his mates really can't be trusted and I sense a hard Brexit is inevitable if there is a Conservative working majority, as may well happen. Mr Corbyn will not survive another failed election and Mr Lywood is just the sort of MP the Labour Party needs to help to haul it back to the centre when he does. Mrs Harrison, so easily convinced to bag carry for Mr Williamson, is not very likely to help haul the Conservative Party back to One Nation territory any time soon.
3:53 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
First of all, I am not going to let your description of yourself as an "old man" go unchallenged.

If you voted in the 1975 referendum as an undergraduate then I presume you must now be in your early sixties - indeed, probably almost exactly the same age as Cllr Lywood - and whatever else I might think about his suitability to be our MP he is certainly not past it and neither are you.

However, I have a number of fairly serious difficulties with the position you laid, out, of which the more fundamental is that a vote to make Tony Lywood MP for Copeland is NOT and cannot be a vote for an opposition MP to guide Labour back to the centre after Jeremy Corbyn has failed to become Prime Minister.

It is a vote to make Jeremy Corbyn Prime Minister.

In the context of this election, in which the Conservatives are likely to be gaining ground in heavily "leave" areas like Copeland and losing ground in "Remain" areas, then if the Conservatives lose seats like Copeland it is likely to mean the next government will be some sort of arrangement between Labour and the SNP, since the Lib/Dems say they will not support either a Conservative or a Labour government.

If you want a Corbyn government, then you have every right to vote for one, but don't kid yourself that voting Labour in Copeland in 2019 can possibly be anything other than a vote for that outcome.

I have worked with both Tony Lywood and Trudy Harrison for approximately two and a half years. I'm not a fan of the sort of politics which involves denouncing your opponents as bad people and I'm not going to get into an argument about what they are like as people which could all too easily end up in that sort of territory.

I would suggest, however, that you ask yourself carefully whether the arguments you have posted on my blog about those two individuals are internally consistent. I don't think they are.

10:29 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more