UK Election June 08

[peejaye]

One thing for sure Stavros; Jeremy Corbyn is certainly "away from home" tonight compared to Mr's Mays "home game" the other night!
I know you will be aware but just for anyone who isn't; Neil was Editor of "The Sunday Times" for a number of years and still shares its Political views! He's also actually worked for The Conservative Party!

[Stavros]

I watched the interview and although I generally like Andrew Neil for giving his guests a hard time, I thought it was clear that this interview was not going to be about Labour policy, but the Labour leader, and he decided to spend the first half of the session dealing with Northern Ireland.

This is because it is seen as a weakness and the truth is that while Corbyn was sincere in claiming he has always supported peace and condemned 'all bombing', it is also true that he offered comradely support to Provisional Sinn Fein because like others on the left of the party, he saw them as a fraternal Socialist party, while his revolutionary sympathies and knowledge of Anglo-Irish relations were always going to tip the balance toward a United Ireland rather than a defence of 'British Imperialism'. In 1986 when he and Livingstone invited Gerry Adams to various public meetings in London, I tabled a resolution to my local party criticising them and calling for them to be called off, and was asked to withdraw it on the basis that there needed to be a wider discussion in the constituency (one party member never spoke to me again, as if I cared about that). I refused and the resolution fell but I did nevertheless attend a wider meeting at which it was clear that some sort of 'radical chic' had taken over and criticism of Sinn Fein was equivalent to defending British imperialism against Irish freedom, etc etc. Corbyn could just admit that it was part of the 'anti-imperialist struggle' but he doesn't want to frighten away the voters, and tends these days to leave the redundant orthodox Marxism-Leninism to John McDonnell.

In addition, if Corbyn was less than willing to polish his revolutionary credentials in public, he made the mistake today of giving a speech on foreign policy/security/terrorism rather than on social care, where the Tories are weak, or the prospects for economic growth and jobs when the UK leaves the EU -a subject Neil never raised in this evening's interview. Yes, it was feeble of Neil to try and distort the argument that UK foreign intervention has been the cause of terrorism in the UK, as if this were a 'monstrous' argument according to Boris Johnson, yet the ringleader of the 7/7 atrocities in London stated on tape the attacks were in revenge for regime change in Iraq, and Boris Johnson himself said this in 2005:
"The Iraq war did not create the problem of murderous Islamic fundamentalists, though the war has unquestionably sharpened the resentments felt by such people in this country, and given them a new pretext.

"The Iraq war did not introduce the poison into our bloodstream but, yes, the war did help to potentiate that poison."
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...eremy-10506835

Where Corbyn also failed completely, was on the question of Trident. He took the view that as the Party had decided to maintain the nuclear deterrent, that he would support the decision, even though he is opposed to the deterrent, and could have said so but, being a Party Man, simply kept repeating the Party Line, as all good comrades do.

But this was pathetic on a deeper level, because it reveals the Labour Party has not only not given any serious thought to military and security policy, had it done more research it would be aware that there has been a heated debate in the Royal Navy for some years about Trident itself, and the whole future of our 'Senior Service'. Unfortunately it is not online, but the extract from an article in The Naval Review in 2016 by a former Commander of a Polaris submarine not only argues Trident is a waste of money and, in strategic terms, a useless piece of kit, he goes on to argue the future of the Royal Navy may not be able to justify manned submarines when submarine drones can do the same job at a fraction of the cost. There is a whole agenda here that Labour could have opened up to give the British public an entirely new perspective -ad indeed, a choice- on 21st century military strategy and cost, but no, Corbyn like Johnson, May and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon are still locked into the Cold War mentality out of which no sensible position can be carved.
https://www.navybooks.com/blog/2016/...eping-us-safe/

The Green Party will scrap Trident, a good enough reason for me.

[peejaye]

To be honest Stavros; I thought it was an absolute disgrace & supports everything I & many other people think; The BBC are nothing more than a Party Political broadcast for the Conservatives! I found the interview appallingly repetitive & the almost childish like behaviour by Andrew Neil in trying to get Corbyn to say what Neil wanted him to say on the IRA & NATO totally unprofessional! Everything you say in your piece above re. Corbyn & the IRA is true but most of it was over 30 years ago, absolutely ridiculous! I personally, with many others no doubt, have made an official complaint to the BBC, complete waste of time though no doubt?

[holzz]

I'm no Labour person, but Corbyn is right. The media are getting all pissy for nothing. it's been accepted in military, international relations, political science and geopolitical circles for years that Western foreign policy can cause resentment. this is probably before 9/11, and was the narrative in the 7/7 bombings in London. It's common sense really. If a child's parents get killed by UK/US troops, and then they grow up and join ISIS or Al Qaeda out of revenge, what do the media really expect?

That said, Tories to win, but by no more than a 30 seat majority. No 100-plus seat landslide will happen.

[Stavros]

To be honest Stavros; I thought it was an absolute disgrace & supports everything I & many other people think; The BBC are nothing more than a Party Political broadcast for the Conservatives! I found the interview appallingly repetitive & the almost childish like behaviour by Andrew Neil in trying to get Corbyn to say what Neil wanted him to say on the IRA & NATO totally unprofessional! Everything you say in your piece above re. Corbyn & the IRA is true but most of it was over 30 years ago, absolutely ridiculous! I personally, with many others no doubt, have made an official complaint to the BBC, complete waste of time though no doubt?

I agree, I was disappointed in Neil because by now most people who are interested known Corbyn's background on the left makes him vulnerable to this issue, but yes, the Troubles are over, and the most ironic thing is that there is even talk of a United Ireland as a solution to Northern Ireland's dilemma over Brexit. Moreover, the Labour manifesto is full of promises on a wide range of policy areas, so even if Neil did not want to discuss Brexit, he could have challenged Corbyn on the NHS, Education, Policing, Housing, the Environment, Transport and on and on. This has been a poor show by the BBC, rather like the US elections where there was -to some extent understandably- an intense focus on personality, but almost no serious or extended debate on real issues like education or housing. And it will get worse because it seems to me Theresa May rushed into this election and Tory policies were thrown together without any real depth of thought, and to cover up the social care fiasco, for example, they have decided to divert the campaign believing that Corbyn is weak on terrorism and defence and will -as they did with Kinnock- recruit the Murdoch press and the Mail to produce negative copy rather than offer the public a positive view of their own portfolio. But even there they have not done very well, Michael Fallon made a complete tit of himself on Channel 4 News, helped of course by the madness of King Boris. Question is -will this produce the desired result? If the Tories are returned but not with the huge majority May banked on, does this weaken her position in the party, and how will this affect the Brexit negotiations?

[peejaye]

Seems Mr Fallon's had another bad morning on "Peston on Sunday" earlier today, not sure if it's repeated again this evening. Jeremy Corbyn also made an appearance, fresh from Wembley after watching his team Arsenal win the FA Cup. (He was on Twitter last night!)
He was asked about his IRA connections briefly & answered them well, he was also asked about Labour policies and the costings of it all.
Andrew Neil take note!

[Stavros]

Seems Mr Fallon's had another bad morning on "Peston on Sunday" earlier today, not sure if it's repeated again this evening. Jeremy Corbyn also made an appearance, fresh from Wembley after watching his team Arsenal win the FA Cup. (He was on Twitter last night!)
He was asked about his IRA connections briefly & answered them well, he was also asked about Labour policies and the costings of it all.
Andrew Neil take note!

Paxman has a go tonight, Monday. He has described himself as a 'One Nation Tory' so maybe he will be kind to Theresa May, though he might try to get her to admit she changed her mind on social care policy -for some reason changing one's mind on policy is seen as a weakness in this country,even if it makes sense. Although I would like to think he will not press Corbyn on the IRA, HAMAS -for some reason he gets a free pass on Hugo Chavez- I suspect this will be tackled early on before he challenges Corbyn on its manifesto highlights. One thing Paxman and others might like to note is that when Corbyn was in favour of a United Ireland and accused of being a friend of the IRA, the Tories described the ANC as a terrorist organization funded by Moscow and supported the Inkatha Movement, Mandela was either thus also a terrorist or not worthy of their attention -until the Federation of Conservative Students produced 'Hang Mandela' badges and Norman Tebbit shut it down in 1986 (though the precise reason was their defence of Nicolas Tolstoi who made bogus claims about former Tory Ministers and the repatriation of Soviet POWs to the USSR after the war where it is claimed they were executed). And guess what, when Norman Tebbit was challenged on his party's demonization of Mandela and the ANC he replied

"He was the leader of a political movement which had begun to resort to terrorism. You have to act within the constraints of the time and I get very irritated by people who judge the past by the present."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...nelson-mandela

Meanwhile in the Telegraph on Sunday, Simon Heffer trotted out that old canard about British Marxists: that Corbyn hates Britain. This was the argument the Daily Mail used to smear the Miliband brothers a few years ago because their father, a refugee from the Nazis was a Marxist who wrote critically of capitalism (really?, Gosh!) and wanted to see a socialist Britain (even more shocking). It is of course possible to love one's country but not want its citizens to sleep rough on the streets or rely on food banks to eat. As for hate, you find more bile written about the UK in the Daily Mail and in UKIP leaflets than you do in Labour Party publications.

[holzz]

lol...i don't care really what Lapafrog thinks about me. his only issue is that he mocks me for posting, when i post in the same manner as everybody else. but fine. he needs to suck cock, or fuck or get fucked, it would relax him a lot.

[holzz]

I think this thing on Diane Abbott is a bit stupid. It was thirty years ago, so what? the entire issue of Northern Ireland is highly complex, and if anybody knows the history of Ireland, one would realise that England and later the UK has been the aggressor.

[Stavros]

I think this thing on Diane Abbott is a bit stupid. It was thirty years ago, so what? the entire issue of Northern Ireland is highly complex, and if anybody knows the history of Ireland, one would realise that England and later the UK has been the aggressor.

While it is true that over the course of 800 years of Anglo-Irish relations the British made catastrophic mistakes, I don't see how any observer of the Troubles since 1968 can either justify the violence committed on both sides in the Province, or detonating bombs in pubs in Birmingham, and litter bins in Warrington in England, to cite just two examples. In these cases it was not the 'UK' that was the aggressor but the Provisional IRA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_pub_bombings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrington_bomb_attacks