[teestub]

I've just read that in the observer tomorrow, Corbyn writes that he won the arguments and it was all down to the media and brexit.

Had a quick flick through the article (couldn’t bring myself to read the whole thing) which ‘argument’ does he think he won?!

[spidermonkey09]

I find your defence of it delusional to be honest.

I do read The Times. The overriding tone of their opinion pages is pro Tory and their editorials are full foam flecked denigration of the left. They publish the odd good columnist (eg David Aaronovitch) alongside racist and bitter old crones like Melanie Phillips. They even publish Matt Ridley who masquerades as an economic expert while also banging the drum for climate denial. It's a clearly right wing paper, not the beacon of centrism you seem to think it is.

[Bradders]

From someone’s Twitter

A fella from Scunthorpe has just said on national tv..

"look around you shops are shutting, businesses are closing, the full place is falling down, so I voted for change, that's why I voted Conservative for the party which promised Brexit and had the clearest message"

Let that sink in....

Yup. Let that sink in. This ain’t a brexit thing - it’s people think Johnson will do a better job than Corbyn - despite being from the austerity party. Enough people didn’t think labour under Corbyn were a credible alternative.

Fixed...I think it is about people thinking Johnson will do a better job (astonishing imo), but it's also very much about Brexit, and Labour's failure to listen to their voters in those areas and adjust their policy accordingly. The two things are so intertwined as to make it impossible to separate them.

They also just didn't attack the Conservatives enough on their record, which is a remarkable failure.

[tomtom]

My point Bradders - and of the tweet I think - is that Labour have failed to communicate with these voters - that were their hard core.

Their campaign and their leader failed to get their message across properly. That’s also about using the media well - even if it’s cosying up to them.

That’s before we even start debating the message....

Johnson was clever though - his campaign managed to lose the shackles of austerity / by promising to spend spend spend (more than the Lib Dem’s planned for example).

[TobyD]

I find your defence of it delusional to be honest.

I do read The Times. The overriding tone of their opinion pages is pro Tory and their editorials are full foam flecked denigration of the left. They publish the odd good columnist (eg David Aaronovitch) alongside racist and bitter old crones like Melanie Phillips. They even publish Matt Ridley who masquerades as an economic expert while also banging the drum for climate denial. It's a clearly right wing paper, not the beacon of centrism you seem to think it is.

So are you trying to say that Labour lost because voters in Burnley, or Sedgefield who voted Labour all their lives, voted for the conservatives because they read Melanie Reid?

I am bitter and angry about the result,  but vilification of the media leads to enabling the worst instincts of people who want to tear it down, which I think would do far more damage than good.  Our media as a whole is decent,  flawed , but decent. 

If Labour hadn't been in thrall to short sighted dogma for the last four or five years,  they might well have won. That had nothing to do with the media,  and everything to do with Corbyn,  Mccluskey,  Murphy, Milne etc.

[Andy B]

British media is among the, if not the most diverse, rich and genuinely informative in the world. Brutus, your assertion that the Labour party was fighting a state broadcaster (if I read your post correctly)  is plain wrong. The UK has no such thing. Try China for that sort of thing.

Using comparisons with China’s state media to dismiss media bias in the UK is a weak argument akin to the “their racism is worse than our racism” argument discussed further down the thread.

[petejh]

Something I find really interesting is how many people form an understanding of the world from their social media. I suppose it's completely natural to do this - easy-access digitalised tribalism in your hand, with instant gratification feedback. But I've never felt that social media is where I go to give me an objective understanding the world, except as a window to see what people in silos are saying to fellow silo occupants. I think there's a widespread gullibility, a tunnel-vision and a switching-off of critical thinking.

I was reminded of this by this post on the ukc exit poll thread - which itself was a hugely biased medium out of sync with what was actually happening - which made me chuckle:

Thursday, 2.42pm
Well, there's some pretty exciting stuff going on now on Twitter. Literally hundreds of people who have always voted Tory or Lib Dem saying they have voted tactically for Labour for the first time - to get rid of Bojo. Admittedly of the 4200 people I follow about 4000 are Remainers, so I might be getting a very distorted picture. Even so....

[TobyD]

Something I find really interesting is how many people form an understanding of the world from their social media. ...

Indeed.  I was told by a work colleague last week that she was going to vote online.  I politely suggested that I didn't think that you can, knowing full well that you can't.  She told me that she'd read it on Facebook and that I didn't know what I was talking about. 

[TobyD]

British media is among the, if not the most diverse, rich and genuinely informative in the world. Brutus, your assertion that the Labour party was fighting a state broadcaster (if I read your post correctly)  is plain wrong. The UK has no such thing. Try China for that sort of thing.

Using comparisons with China’s state media to dismiss media bias in the UK is a weak argument akin to the “their racism is worse than our racism” argument discussed further down the thread.

I'm not saying that they don't have opinions,  they clearly do,  but as a whole it's a better system than most other countries.  Critical,  investigative journalism doesn't exist in many places, only a bland filter of current events. 
But newspapers,  which all have a definite editorial line, don't change people's opinions,  just confirm them. The fact that there are more right of centre papers must be in considerable part due to the fact that they are mostly bought by older people.  The papers which publish very dubious stuff aren't bought by people who might have been leaning in the opposite political direction. 

[nai]

People don't have to read papers to form an opinion, so many more people see the front pages on petrol station forecourts, in the queue for their fags, while they're picking up their Angling TImes, etc. Folk who don't question what they read just need to see those headlines to cement their beliefs and job done for the tories.

Even the Mirror screws up on decision day, detail that can't be read from five meters away.

https://inews.co.uk/news/media/general-election-2019-uk-newspaper-coverage-the-sun-daily-mail-brexit-1340033

[Bradders]

Something I find really interesting is how many people form an understanding of the world from their social media. ...

Indeed.  I was told by a work colleague last week that she was going to vote online.  I politely suggested that I didn't think that you can, knowing full well that you can't.  She told me that she'd read it on Facebook and that I didn't know what I was talking about.

Goodness me I hope you corrected her in a less polite way!!

My point Bradders - and of the tweet I think - is that Labour have failed to communicate with these voters - that were their hard core.

Yeah I think we agree TT. It's utterly bizarre that people were of the mindset that voting Conservative was for change, when they've been in power for 9 years, and to me that shows the combined strength of Brexit and anti-Corbynism.

[Andy B]

British media is among the, if not the most diverse, rich and genuinely informative in the world. Brutus, your assertion that the Labour party was fighting a state broadcaster (if I read your post correctly)  is plain wrong. The UK has no such thing. Try China for that sort of thing.

Using comparisons with China’s state media to dismiss media bias in the UK is a weak argument akin to the “their racism is worse than our racism” argument discussed further down the thread.

I'm not saying that they don't have opinions,  they clearly do,  but as a whole it's a better system than most other countries.  Critical,  investigative journalism doesn't exist in many places, only a bland filter of current events. 
But newspapers,  which all have a definite editorial line, don't change people's opinions,  just confirm them. The fact that there are more right of centre papers must be in considerable part due to the fact that they are mostly bought by older people.  The papers which publish very dubious stuff aren't bought by people who might have been leaning in the opposite political direction.

Again, comparing UK media to extreme examples like China doesn’t prove its worth. UK media can be biased enough to influence voters whilst still being miles better than countries like China. Comparing them proves nothing.
The uk has some excellent investigative journalism but most people don’t read or watch this. As Nai said, most don’t get past the headlines.
The idea that newspapers don’t influence opinion is laughable. If that is the case then why did Blair work so hard to woo murdoch, and why do parties spend so much on media ads? Am I right in saying that a party hasn’t won an election in our lifetime without the support of the Sun?

[Andy B]

Something I find treally interesting is how many people form an understanding of the world from their social media. ...

My point Bradders - and of the tweet I think - is that Labour have failed to communicate with these voters - that were their hard core.

Yeah I think we agree TT. It's utterly bizarre that people were of the mindset that voting Conservative was for change, when they've been in power for 9 years, and to me that shows the combined strength of Brexit and anti-Corbynism.

Part of the explanation for this (to my mind, and very anecdotally) is that my wife’s social media feed has had a constant stream of posts in the last few months from family members living in poor, run down areas of the country (the North East, in our case), involving social media “news” blaming labour councils for their areas’ neglect and poverty, whilst always failing to acknowledge/realise that this is a direct result of years of massive cuts to labour council funding by the conservatives at a national level. Which, when combined with a lack of understanding of how local and national politics work, leads people in those areas to the conclusion that voting Tory is a vote for change.

[teestub]

Interesting to see more Labour figures in the news today blaming their Brexit position for the defeat. I’m sure someone somewhere has done the maths, but:
- back a second referendum and lose leave backing northern seats.
- back leaving without any further referendum and lose your metropolitan remain supporting seats?

Hard to think of a strategy besides the compromise they went for that would have satisfied all the previously Labour areas.

[nai]

It was a decent tactic but poorly executed.  More easily justified than LD just cancelling it.  Trying to justify rerunning it with a short punchy slogan was never going to be easy though I guess.

And you've got to think that every time BJ reeled off "Get Brexit Done" a lot of folk just heard "Send them home", "Get them out" or whatever.

I came to think of the election like a game of Bullseye: "you've got the foreigners out, now do you want to gamble that on saving the NHS, ending austerity and bringing utilities back in to public owenership. You could have all that but you might lose out on sending them back".

[Mr and Mrs Gammon discuss while the audience shouts at them to gamble and stick in equal measure]

"we've had lovely day, those extras would be nice but we don't want to risk it.  We'll let somebody else take the NHS"

I don't think anything was going to get through to those folk.

[tomtom]

“Clearly the play was a success, but the audience was a failure.”

[Offwidth]

The latest on Boris and the BBC (anyone in the press who is remotely independent is a danger to him of course, given his record).

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/15/boris-johnson-threatens-bbc-with-two-pronged-attack

[mrjonathanr]

Hard to think of a strategy besides the compromise they went for that would have satisfied all the previously Labour areas.

Campaigning properly for Remain in the referendum would have resolved this before it happened. Labour would have known full well their electoral base was split on the issue but went ahead with their referendum strategy anyway.

This mess is a direct consequence of a lily-livered referendum campaign based on wanting Brexit and wanting the Tories to own the aftermath. A naïve belief in both having cake, and eating it, as someone once said.

[tomtom]

Good points MrJA

Though there is some sort of sick irony that the Tories have created the crisis they are now elected to fix.. (austerity).

[tomtom]

Dominic Cummings is known to be a strong critic of the BBC, its funding model and its output. He is particularly dismissive of the Today programme, which he argues operates in a metropolitan bubble out of touch with the rest of the country.

From the guardian article. For once I find myself in agreement with Domestos... (re today)

[tc]

This, from John Douthwaite, sums the current situation up quite neatly I think:

“So congratulations if you wanted Boris Johnson as PM.
Please don’t celebrate too much though as you have work to do. You see us remoaners have spent three and a half years now telling you brexit was wrong but we’ve finally and completely lost. There’s pretty much nothing we can do now to stop it.
So, it’s over to you leavers. You need to get yourselves into gear to make it work. We need to see some of these benefits you’ve been able to see yet unable to properly articulate since 2016.
I hope you don’t mind but I’ve taken the liberty of writing a to do list for you.
1. Get brexit done please. When we say done we mean as promised so we’ll be looking for trade deals with the EU, Japan, Australia and Canada etc. In fact there’s about 40 deals covering 70 countries that need to be done please. Also with the US that doesn’t involve the nhs or chlorine. We want what you promised us. That was that we’d be no worse off than when we were an EU member. You need to crack on as this was promised by the end of Jan. You have seven weeks.
2. The nhs. We want the cash that was promised please. £350 million per week is about 72000 nurses so please get recruiting. This is important.
3. Scotland. Ok so these guys were promised they would remain in the EU if they remained in the UK. They’re pretty pissed. In fact they’ve voted almost exclusively for the SNP so they might want to leave. Equally you said the UK wouldn’t split so you’ll need to both grant Scotland its independence and keep it as part of the United Kingdom. Good luck squaring this circle. NB. This is urgent.
4. Northern Ireland. Oooookay then. You’ve really buggered this one up. There’s a chance they could look to reunify with the republic now because they didn’t want to brexit. Regardless you’ve caused instability there where we and they can least afford it. NB. This is also urgent.
5. The economy. Johnson keeps talking about unleashing the potential of the country. We need to see this soon if possible. We don’t want to see the downturn that “project fear” predicted. We don’t want to be poorer. We don’t want to lose out.
6. You’ll also need to “bring the country back together”. This might be tricky as a lot of people seem to be really really angry with each other.
That’s as far as I’ve got. Should keep you busy. So go and get all British about things. Roll up your sleeves, pull your socks up, dig deep and deliver what you promised.
And remember if you fail to deliver any of this it’s on you, Brexit and Tory voters. You wanted this so badly and now you have it. We honestly hope we’re wrong and that you can make a success of this but if you can’t then we will forever tell you that we told you so.”

[Fiend]

Good points.

[mrjonathanr]

My apologies to Stu Littlefair : you asked me directly in what way I thought Corbyn was anti-Jewish in his attitudes or policies and I didn’t answer. Work has been pretty mental.  I’ll do my best to answer now. Please bear in mind I don’t represent any view beyond my own- there’s nothing very Jewish about me really, apart from heredity.

I don’t think Corbyn poses an existential threat to British Jewry.  I think his racism is dangerous though. As Winhill observed, others in this country and abroad, watch events- and will be emboldened by him.  Attacks will go up if thugs see their prejudices condoned. 

When I asked my uncle why he never returned to visit Vienna (where he was born) his answer was simply that he couldn’t forgive. His memory as a little boy of watching out the window, as Austrian crowds lined the avenue to cheer the Nazis marching into the city, stayed with him. The violence of the 1940s may seem distant. For some it is a lot more real, and seem repeatable. As Primo Levy observed, it can happen again because it happened before. So bear in mind that others will see things very differently, and be more frightened by Corbyn’s views than may seem warranted to you.

I am not aware of any anti-Jewish Corbyn policy but I do think Corbyn is an anti-Semite because he tolerates anti-Semitic discourse in his party. A few years ago I started noticing examples of antiSemitic discourse which seemed to go unpunished in the Labour Party. First with surprise, then disquiet, now disgust. For example:


Naz Shah, 2014. Suspended, reinstated. Why not expelled? In a Facebook post in 2014, before she became an MP, she shared a graphic showing an image of Israel's outline superimposed on a map of the US under the headline "Solution for Israel-Palestine conflict - relocate Israel into United States", with the comment "problem solved". Is this someone who deserves to be an MP ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-36802075

Livingstone. 2014, re Shah ‘Never heard anything anti-Semitic from Labour Party members’.  Just not credible.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-36163432/ken-livingstone-naz-shah-not-anti-semitic

Ken Livingstone, plenty of casual anti-Jewish sentiment to choose from. 2005, references to Nazi guards in relation to Jewish journalist.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/feb/12/pressandpublishing.londonpolitics

Livingstone again, 2016.  ‘Hitler was supporting Zionism’ comments. Yet the man was responsible for the murder of 6m Jews. Offensive and bizarre.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/ken-livingstone-was-stating-historical-fact-when-he-made-hitler-remarks-a3845041.html

Alan Bull 2015, suspension opposed by Christine Shawcross, led to her resignation.
Re-posted an article suggesting the Holocaust was a hoax to a "closed group" of Facebook "friends" to "invite discussion and debate".

Chris Williamson ‘Party too apologetic’ about antisemitism
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chris-williamson-labour-mp-antisemitism-video-jeremy-corbyn-momentum-a8798581.html
Resignation comments worth reading:
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/jewish-labour-movement-lambasts-chris-williamsons-racist-resignation-letter/

Luciana Berger, anti-Semitic abuse and lack of support in LP
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2019/mar/01/luciana-berger-on-antisemitism-hate-and-life-as-a-jewish-mp-video

Some detail on the nature of the abuse and its perpetrators political identities:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-mps-resignation-puts-claims-of-uk-labour-anti-semitism-back-in-spotlight/

Readmittance of Derek Hatton and his views about Jews:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/20/derek-hatton-suspended-from-labour-over-tweet

East Anglia, another anti-Semitic candiadate :
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/anti-semitism-row-in-south-suffolk-1-6337904

What about the man himself?

Corbyn has a long history of support for the Palestinian people. Nothing in itself wrong with that; their situation is intolerable. It’s the elision of Palestine-Zionism-Jewishness that is problematic.
Corbyn referred to Hamas as ‘friends’ in 2009, later repudiating that comment. Still, rum friends. Hamas’s 1988 Covenant makes clear that its purpose is to destroy Israel: 'Israel will exist and will continue to  exist  until  Islam  will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.' Article 6 states ‘The Islamic Resistance  Movement . .. strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.'

Jeremy Corbyn, 2011 Foreword praising historian John Hobson’s 1902 study of Imperialism . Why is he praising a book as ‘brilliant’ which rehashes anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish financiers, Rothschilds etc?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism_(Hobson)

Corbyn in 2012 in support of the Freedom for Humanity mural. As blatant a piece of iconography of the moneyed Jew conspiracy theory school as you will ever see. His defence is not, in my view, credible.
https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/there-is-only-one-word-for-jeremy-corbyn-1.461313

Corbyn, talking about Zionists as not English
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2018/aug/24/jeremy-corbyns-2013-remarks-on-some-zionists-not-understanding-english-irony-video

Racists appear out the woodwork, sure. But since Corbyn's ascendancy it's rife, and the disciplinary process does not deal with it effectively - interference from the leader's office, weak punishments, enormous backlog. Why? Because they are in tune with the leadership's views? Surely if they can expel Alastair Campbell in a matter of minutes, the anti-racist party can expel racists in a matter of months? Surely?

In July 2018, Labour adopted a new anti-Semitism code which did not include a number of accepted examples of anti-Semitism, including:
   accusing Jewish people of being more loyal to Israel than their home country
   requiring higher standards of behaviour from Israel than other nations
They really dragged their feet over this.

Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) announced it would be conducting its own wide-ranging investigation into whether Labour "unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish".

No wonder.

[TobyD]

Dominic Cummings is known to be a strong critic of the BBC, its funding model and its output. He is particularly dismissive of the Today programme, which he argues operates in a metropolitan bubble out of touch with the rest of the country.

From the guardian article. For once I find myself in agreement with Domestos... (re today)

Alright, it seems I'm not convincing people about the British media, but I think that the lefts criticism of it may assist in enabling the rights exertion of an unhealthy level of control. Cummings etc don't like Today because they ask awkward questions.  When there's noone left to question when the government has done f all about inequality, the NHS, social care, the police etc in 3 years time, this will be a worse informed less free and democratic country.

[Oldmanmatt]

Dominic Cummings is known to be a strong critic of the BBC, its funding model and its output. He is particularly dismissive of the Today programme, which he argues operates in a metropolitan bubble out of touch with the rest of the country.

From the guardian article. For once I find myself in agreement with Domestos... (re today)

Alright, it seems I'm not convincing people about the British media, but I think that the lefts criticism of it may assist in enabling the rights exertion of an unhealthy level of control. Cummings etc don't like Today because they ask awkward questions.  When there's noone left to question when the government has done f all about inequality, the NHS, social care, the police etc in 3 years time, this will be a worse informed less free and democratic country.

Toby, in three years time, Inequality, NHS, Social care and Police, will be a single Civil Service department (actually a single “Expert” contractor, called Nigel, who did a summer internship with Bojo’s  campaign during his (unfinished) second year reading Guatemalan literature at Cambridge), under the specially appointed Uber Home and Foreign Secretary, Gloria “Go Go” Goodtime (catering to the discerning gentleman), who Bojo recruited for her amazing Entrepreneurial skills (she won several business awards (from committees that Bojo chaired)).

Anyway, the new DG of the BBC, Ms Dominique Coomeans (definitely not a bloke in a cheap blond wig) won’t allow them to get away with it and insist that they reveal exactly where they buy their socks and who their hair stylist is.

I don’t think you have anything to worry about or ask about.

There won’t be any poverty, anymore, because we just won’t count those kinds of things, we’re going to have positive thoughts and “can do” attitudes instead.