That Corbyn fella...

https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk_eu_referendum2016

Quite an interesting site. JC is in no-way hard left.

I'm going down a wiki hole now

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism

As I've been saying for a while. :)

Wow, I read your posts with interest before but I think this allows me to switch off.

Trading principles for power is exactly what is wrong with politics and most of the current crop of Labour politicians.

Winnifred; if polls showed that bringing back the death penalty could win Labour the next election, should they promise that? Or is there a limit to which principles can be compromised and, if so, how do you choose that limit?

How has this debate about sacrificing principles over power come down to this binary choice?

Surely this is always a sliding scale, where you weigh up the effect of taking a non-perfect position against the benefits of being able to do something rather than nothing. It's something that every politician should be doing - weighing up what they want ideally, against what they can pragmatically achieve, and then choosing whether or not the compromise (if there is one) is worthwhile.

Pretending that any politician should be entirely uncompromising is facile, and saying there is some trade off is not the same as saying that politicians should always do whatever they can to obtain power.

I think there is a distinction:

You can compromise without dropping your principles.

Agree - you have to choose where the line is between things which are acceptable compromise, and things which are points of principle that are inviolable.

It's quite difficult to decide which is which, though - I probably agree with his U-turn on trident on balance, but is that a compromise or a breach of his principles (which were always firmly for unilateral disarmament)?

It depends, if I'm in a 2 horse race and the other candidate is backing the death penalty and is planning to do other damaging things to society that I feel is necessary to stop and I know for certain that if I don't back the death penalty I wont win then I'd likely back it. It's a lesser of 2 evils.

I wouldn't back it to get the pensioner vote in Kent tho.

If you don't know that then I can't help you

Yes, we do have a large middle England, right wing contingent. We need to win some of their votes

Simply untrue.

There are ample voters to comfortably beat the middle England right wingers without needing to pander one little bit. Pinching half the lib dem vote, half the green vote and half the SNP vote would have been enough to win the 2015 election.

Of course we should try to win hearts and minds, but some can't be won and aren't worth the battle. Winning over the left and centre left would be easier, Shirley? Those that left labour during the Blair years.

Haha, shame because I was really hoping for your help. Can you do something about the housing crisis?
It's nuts that everyone on here thinks I'm a tory because I want a labour government.

Winnifred; if polls showed that bringing back the death penalty could win Labour the next election, should they promise that? Or is there a limit to which principles can be compromised and, if so, how do you choose that limit?

You choose it very carefully, more carefully than Blair did. And definitely more carefully than Cameron did when he called the referendum. I think people who wanted to leave the EU should have voted for their views in a general election.

Do you want syrup with that waffle?

What? Sorry I just edited that.

Putting out shit like this when the Tories are suggesting companies have to register foreign workers?

Fucking pathetic, if this is Labour under Corbyn then I'm out.

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That's messed up. One referendum has taken the country back by 76 years.
Next stop Oswald Mosley >>>

I wonder who has authorised that, though - given Corbyn has expressly said he isn't anti-immigration (which I applaud him for, I think that is the right thing to do), it seems odd that he would authorise the ad.

Could it be the NEC or someone else in Labour without leadership buy-in?

EDIT - I realise that it doesn't actually say Labour on it anywhere, so maybe it isn't a labour ad / doc and I just assumed it was because of the comments around it.

Agreed, it doesn't sound like something Corbyn would say. @andyp where did you find it?

it's not even red!

It was a tweet from the Labour Party Press account.

https://twitter.com/labourpress/status/783266273266429952

It's clever, slippery wording; "record high" and "higher than when the tories came into office" are not explicitly negative about immigration, and so can't be described as hypocritical. However they are alarmist and will play on the fears of those with a negative view of immigration. Perhaps Corbyn is getting better at spin, or has employed people who are.

I don't think you are a Tory, I don't think you actually have a coherent set of principles that would be a requirement to be anything, your commitment would appear to be specific to obtaining power, then doing whatever you've had to commit to in order to gain said power. Tres Blair.

I don't think you actually have a coherent set of principles

I don't have an immovable, hard-line set of principles that I stick to regardless of the situation. If that means they are incoherent, then sure. The comparison with Blair is hilarious, given my current situation in life. and the 'blairite' slur, as I've said before, is very tired. I don't want power, I want the Labour party to have power, because I'm frightened about what's happening in this country.

Edit, I think this debate would be more usefully focused on the issues, rather than comments about each other.

A bit of (healthy?) dissent amongst the true believers.

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2016/10/17/jeremy-corbyn-supporters-demands-apology-rape-victim-swp