Jeremy Corbyn: I have nothing to say
Except, perhaps, "Wow!".
And, importantly, "I was wrong."
I said he wouldn't win the leadership, and that if he did, he wouldn't win a general election.
That wasn't an off the cuff dismissal without really thinking about it, or not really knowing what he was like, or what the political situation in the country was. It wasn't simply parroting the conventional wisdom without thinking, although it was very much the conventional wisdom - even Stephen Bush with his now-famous "If Jeremy Corbyn does get the extra five MPs he needs, I think he's going to surprise a few people with how well he does among members." thought Corbyn might get as much as 40% in the final round.
No, this was my own carefully-considered opinion based on plenty of knowledge. And the first part, at least, was wrong.
And not just a little wrong. He didn't scrape by thanks to some weird quirk of the electoral system or some unlikely confluence of events. He won a thumping, clear victory. Indeed, even though his win looked likely before the results came out, winning so convincingly, and in all three categories (members, registered supporters, affiliate supporters) was still pretty surprising.
As a result, I think I need to be considerably less confident in my beliefs about big-P Politics. So I am not going to make any more bold statements about what is going to happen now he's Leader of the Labour Party. I don't know what's going to happen next.
I will allow myself one tiny little dig at people who are claiming retrospectively that it was obvious, when they said the opposite until we had polls saying it would happen. And a bigger one at people who said the same as me at the start and, now that the first part of the prediction (he won't win the leadership) has been spectacularly blown out of the water, have not weakened their belief in the second part (he won't win a GE) but intensified it, and are now in full-on certain rant mode.
I am not so sure.
(And this is already far too many words for a post headed "I have nothing to say".)
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/301535.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.
And, importantly, "I was wrong."
I said he wouldn't win the leadership, and that if he did, he wouldn't win a general election.
That wasn't an off the cuff dismissal without really thinking about it, or not really knowing what he was like, or what the political situation in the country was. It wasn't simply parroting the conventional wisdom without thinking, although it was very much the conventional wisdom - even Stephen Bush with his now-famous "If Jeremy Corbyn does get the extra five MPs he needs, I think he's going to surprise a few people with how well he does among members." thought Corbyn might get as much as 40% in the final round.
No, this was my own carefully-considered opinion based on plenty of knowledge. And the first part, at least, was wrong.
And not just a little wrong. He didn't scrape by thanks to some weird quirk of the electoral system or some unlikely confluence of events. He won a thumping, clear victory. Indeed, even though his win looked likely before the results came out, winning so convincingly, and in all three categories (members, registered supporters, affiliate supporters) was still pretty surprising.
As a result, I think I need to be considerably less confident in my beliefs about big-P Politics. So I am not going to make any more bold statements about what is going to happen now he's Leader of the Labour Party. I don't know what's going to happen next.
I will allow myself one tiny little dig at people who are claiming retrospectively that it was obvious, when they said the opposite until we had polls saying it would happen. And a bigger one at people who said the same as me at the start and, now that the first part of the prediction (he won't win the leadership) has been spectacularly blown out of the water, have not weakened their belief in the second part (he won't win a GE) but intensified it, and are now in full-on certain rant mode.
I am not so sure.
(And this is already far too many words for a post headed "I have nothing to say".)
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/301535.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.