I'd never heard of Smith before the leadership challenge but I'm liking him quite a lot. He has a much better message and delivery than Angela "I'm about to burst into floods and tears" Eagle, who appears to think that it's vitally important to choose a female leader. No, it isn't. That way of thinking leads to Thatcher and May. Meritocracy needs to be paramount. Equality of opportunity should not compromise that, least of all with the prospect of leading the country. I don't care if a politician is a white 40 year old rich male banker or an 83 year old black disabled lesbian, so long as have the right message and can convince me they're able to run a government.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36820419
You could add Clinton to your list..
ReplyDeleteBut what's wrong with Corbyn?
For the most part Corbyn is a victim of media slurs; 90% of the negative press is exaggeration, misleading, or just plain wrong. They have tried to paint a moralist as some kind of bigot, which just isn't true.
ReplyDeleteHis failures are twofold :
1) His "campaign" for Britain to remain in the EU was half-hearted at best. Since Labour have always been strongly pro-EU, this meant that the man who should have been leading the strongest Remain camp of all was (to a large extent) not doing very much of anything.
2) He's almost completely failed to win the confidence of his MPs. He's always cited his own backbench rebellions as due to a matter of principle, but he seems completely unwilling to accept that people can believe differently to him and also remain principled. The simpler part of the problem is that he's never been a minister so has no experience of running government departments. He makes genuinely commendable overtures about wanting a kinder politics, but has no real clue how to deal with disagreement.
Unfortunately the lack of confidence from his other MPs has become so strong that it no longer matters why they're at odds - there's no way a Corbyn-lead government seems credible at this point, right now they aren't even presenting a credible opposition. The honourable, principled move would have been to resign - you can't keep leading after massively losing a vote of no confidence ! He's beginning to seem more like he's just power-hungry and not really interested in doing what's right for the country or his party. He is using the mandate of his strong leadership election win as a sort of right to rule, seemingly unaware that there could be a very strong selection effect at work in the leadership vote that won't come in to play during a general election.
If he doesn't go, there's a real danger of a party split. Given how weak Labour currently are in Parliament, that could easily leave the left out of power for a generation. He either needs to step down or make a huge change in his leadership style.
Cheers for solid analysis.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope it's the latter.