Interesting Links for 25-09-2016
Thelonious Monk Creates a List of Tips for Playing a Gig: "Don’t Listen to Me, I Am Supposed to Be Accompanying You!"
(tags: music jazz advice )
Corbyn wins: what next?
(tags: labour politics uk )
To ship bikes safely put a picture of a tv on the box
(tags: bicycles shipping transport safety )
US Naval Academy to name its cyber building after
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My politicing problems with Corbyn include:
Corbyn is more like Cameron than Cameron was ever like Blair. He won't do the heavy lifting that Blair and Kinnock did. By that I mean he won't go and persuade enough of the other flank of his own party that he has an election winning strategy that will get them most of the important things they want but they in turn will have to go along with the Plan, with a smile on their face. I think Cameron did PR and I think Corybn does t-shirt slogans. This matters because unless he can persuade the sort of non-Corbyn enthusiasts who have been turning up to keep Labour winning marginal and semi-marginal seats to keep turning up UKIP will go through the North of England like Atilla the Hun.
He does not appear to be good at collaborating with those who disagree with him. Given that his best chance of becoming Prime Minister is as part of a Labour / Lib Dem / SNP government or as part of a Labour / UKIP government that is a weakness.
Corbyn has allowed himself to be presented to the general public as a shambling, disorganised incompetent. Having read what Thandie Degnam and Lillian Greenwood had to say about his management ability I think there is some truth in the presentation. (He should have known this was coming and prepared the ground, either externally by doing a proper job at PMQ's or internally by admitting to the PLP it was a problem for him and he had not ready answer. It's too late now.)
He does not pay attention to policy - see again Lillian Greenwood and the economic brains trust John McDonnel convened and which Corbyn appears to have taken no interest in.
He either doesn't understand or doesn't care how politics is currently actually done in the UK. He seems to take no interest in the news cycle, or PMQ's or picking off unpopular and damaged ministers. That the public see subtly and caution as equivocation and weakness seems to pass him by. He might be right that it should be done differently but it isn't done differently and won't be until half a million Labour members have spent a decade dedicately changing the way it is done. (They will not do this by not paying their BBC licence fee.)
He's not a gifted performer - which for someone who wants to change the ideology of an entire country in three years is a bit of a failing.
He does not appear to be preparing the Labour Party for the long march to success as a social movement. I've heard nothing from him that suggests that the Labour Party should be thinking in terms of decades not years for his approach to pay off. I fear those 500,000 members will be asked to throw themselves on the bayonts of the Tory Party keen to distract the public from Brexit and get no help from the Lib Dems who will dig in around their core message of liberal, pro-European progressiveness and hard work in target constituencies and the SNP who will dig in in Scotland (Saor Alba) and careful competent government and a message of thwarted anti-austerity.
I think he is largely not interested in winning an election in 2020 or 2025. I'm not convinced he's interested in winning an election in 2030 at which point he'll be 80. I'm not sure how his plan of not winning elections translates in to a change in the lives of people.
He's too proud, vain and stubborn to fall on his sword ahead of the 2020 election. He's damaged goods. I think he lacks the skill and interest to carefully pick a suitable successor, nurture them into a position of strength and hand over to them without tainting them with his failure or giving the game away too soon and making himself a lame duck.
(I have many problems with him in terms of his values and policies and attributes but that's a different topic.)
This doesn't mean that I think Andy Burnham or Owen Smith would have been better, just that Corbyn won't succeed in winning.
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I think the wisest course for the PLP would be to negotiate a common platform with Corbyn, get that out in public and stick to the day job of opposing the government of the day with vigour. I expect that platform will be somewhat to the left of recent Labour platforms. (I don't have a problem with that and I suspect that a sizeable minority of the public won't have a problem with it.) I think it would be wise if the platform was a minimal as possible to reduce the potential areas for conflict and that Corbyn agreed to not make up policy off the cuff.
It shouldn't be difficult to come up with some left-wing policies that have popular support. Re-nationalising train operating companies by allowing their franchises to lapse for example. A programme of investment in infrastructure in the North of England. Some improvements in the minimum wage.
I think any Labour MP who is deselected should resign and fight a by-election as Independent Labour and make it clear to Corbyn that that is what will happen (which might or might give him pause and might or might not help keep the cease fire but at least gives him fair warning of the consequences).
Then they watch him flounder about and hope not to be too badly beaten up in 2020. I'd expect the best case for them to be losing 20 seats to the Lib Dems and 20 seats to UKIP and losing some to the boundary review. That's not fatal. Corbyn would have to go, the bounds of acceptable policy will probably have been broadened out to include left of centre ideas and Corbyn's successor, either social democrat or democratic socialist, would have five years to do a competent job of running the Labour Party.
The PLP's only other option is the rather nuclear one of founding their own party or joining the Lib Dems en masse or some shadow Labour Party within the Labour Party.
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