Monday 12 September 2016

Corbyn's First Year

Jeremy Corbyn's first year as Labour leader has been......... fascinating to say the least.

Let's start from the beginning, the Labour leadership bid, it was a given thing that another Blairite/ Brownite/ Milibandite/ a mix of a three New Labour type leader would win.

Then Jeremy Corbyn entered the race.

Oh how he stole the "moderates" limelight.

What the New Labour politicians seems to forget is, to my generation, they're old news, we've lived it, received it's education, listened to their drivel.

Then there was Corbyn, a man we hadn't really heard of, a man who's politics my generation aren't used to at all.

He was unshaven, he was sow at answering questions, he didn't speak the political jargon, he smiled, he looked human.

Here is his first interview with supporter Owen Jones. Look how calm and relaxed he is, despite the fact he had just completed his morning run.

In fact when he was on the radio having a good deabte with his fellow leadership bidders, he was the calmest.

Perhaps because, despite what the polls were saying, he thought there wasn't a hope in hell he would win.

Well, he did win, and it's been a rather turbulent 12 months, let's go through his successes and failures so far as leader.

1. He won with a landsliding majority to become the new Labour leader.

2. He failed to get a woman into one the "top five" shadow cabinet roles, all of them went to men.

3. His past came back to bit him: e.g his close association with ex IRA leader Gerry Adams, calling terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah "friends" and inviting them for chats at the Houses of Parliament.

4. Upsetting his MPs in his first PLP meeting as Labour leader, this ended up with one MP telling journalists the meeting was a "complete f***ing shambles", another said it was a "joke" whilst one female MP told Diane Abbott to "f**k off".

5. Losing the vote on whether or not we should airstrike Syria...... Ed Miliband won his.

6. His Shadow Chancellor, and good friend, John McDonnell's gag of "Chairman Mao's little red book" didn't exactly go well, in fact it was a bit of a lead balloon.

7. The EU referendum didn't exactly go to plan for anyone, David Cameron ended up resigning, and has today resigned as an MP, but for Jeremy Corbyn it was just the tip of the iceberg.

8. Resignation after resignation, Jeremy faced over 40 resignations from his shadow cabinet/ ministerial team, not exactly a good look.

9. After the resignations, Jeremy faced a vote of no confidence  from 172 of his MPs, bearing in mind Labour only have 232, that's a huge majority against him, only 40 voted with confidence.

10. Leadership bid against Jeremy Corbyn was launched firstly by Angela Eagle, who was quickly out of the running, but Owen Smith soon followed suit and is currently running against Jeremy to become new Labour leader.

11. Anti-Semitism has plagued the Labour leader ever since Ken Livingstone was elected to the NEC. For some reason Livingstone can't help himself but mention Hitler's name whenever he's interviewed on TV or radio. Secondly, the press release for the inquest into anti-semitism within Labour had a Jewish Labour MP leave in tears.

Sadly the only upside I can point out was his landslide win last year, and I am sure he will get that again later this month.

Other than that, he has had more failures in one year, than what most have in five, and who's to blame? Quite obviously, and self evidently, it's Jeremy himself, or his team around him.

Who can sort this out? Jeremy himself, and his team around him, so come on Labour, sort yourselves out, and give us a genuine opposition.


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