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Britain's Next Top Prime Minister - Labour Leadership Election 2020.


CB Fry

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An ex assistant to Cameron was on 5Live yesterday.

When a PM goes anywhere (personal holiday or not) he/she will have a plethora of assistants etc with them. As well as armed minders and such like.

 

The PM was in communication with the US/FR presidents, Merkel and the Iraqi PM whilst over seas.

That is standard practice.

 

But hey, he didn’t respond to a pointless opposition leader at the click of their fingers......

 

No, the British public.

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Because it's pony!

 

The press will pick on whoever is weak / stupid / losing. You only need to look at England managers for that - Turnip Taylor anyone?

 

Do a good job and get left alone 9by and large). Be incompetent and get rinsed daily, pretty simple formula that sells newspapers.

 

And yet research after the election showed a huge media bias towards the Tories with many untrue and negative stories run against Labour. It is common knowledge that the press in this country is strongly right wing. What is “pony” is pretending it isn’t.

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Seriously jonnyboy, give me one good reason to to ever even consider voting for Labour, whether it's Corbyn, Rebecca wrong bailey or the joke that is Jess philips?......I must admit that I'd like one of the last 2 for the comedy value at PMQs

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And we are supposed to believe that misinformation doesn’t get spread by those trying to slur someone? Once again Duckie manages to prove something he is attempting to disprove.

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Seriously jonnyboy, give me one good reason to to ever even consider voting for Labour, whether it's Corbyn, Rebecca wrong bailey or the joke that is Jess philips?......I must admit that I'd like one of the last 2 for the comedy value at PMQs

 

Well if all you care about is chest beating nationalism and getting one over on Johnny Foreigner whatever the cost, then I suggest Labour is not the party for you.

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Seriously jonnyboy, give me one good reason to to ever even consider voting for Labour, whether it's Corbyn, Rebecca wrong bailey or the joke that is Jess philips?......I must admit that I'd like one of the last 2 for the comedy value at PMQs

 

Welcome new person Harvey. Enjoy the love.

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Blair was a watered down Tory. Even Duckie might have voted for him.

 

No he wasn't, he was watered down Labour. New Labour's record was very good, minimum wage, investmest in hospitals, new start scheme, working tax credits, lifting thousands out of poverty. Up until the Iraq war it was a successful third way left of centre government. One of Corbyns mistakes was to not talk about the Blair government's successes, the left of the party never liked the fact that New Labour changed clause 4 and didn't look to re-nationalise the railways or BT straight away.

 

If the media has such a massive effect, why did Tony Blair win by a landslide not so long ago?

 

I thought every one knew that Murdoch backed Blair prior to the 97 election, Blair was conscious of limiting the hostility of the press that had savaged the labour party under Foot and Kinnock. He courted News Corp and instead of just damage limitations he managed to get them to back him, you could say on this he played a blinder.

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No he wasn't, he was watered down Labour. New Labour's record was very good, minimum wage, investmest in hospitals, new start scheme, working tax credits, lifting thousands out of poverty. Up until the Iraq war it was a successful third way left of centre government. One of Corbyns mistakes was to not talk about the Blair government's successes, the left of the party never liked the fact that New Labour changed clause 4 and didn't look to re-nationalise the railways or BT straight away.

 

 

 

I thought every one knew that Murdoch backed Blair prior to the 97 election, Blair was conscious of limiting the hostility of the press that had savaged the labour party under Foot and Kinnock. He courted News Corp and instead of just damage limitations he managed to get them to back him, you could say on this he played a blinder.

 

Ok that might be another way of putting it, but old school socialists didn’t see Blair and New Labour as a good thing apart from getting Labour elected of course. The is still a great deal of rancour between Blairites and the left wing of the party. The fact that Murdoch supported him tells you all you need to know about politics in the mid 90s. Every other Labour leader has been pilloried by the majority of the press in this country. If you don’t see that you have not been paying attention.

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No he wasn't, he was watered down Labour. New Labour's record was very good, minimum wage, investmest in hospitals, new start scheme, working tax credits, lifting thousands out of poverty. Up until the Iraq war it was a successful third way left of centre government. One of Corbyns mistakes was to not talk about the Blair government's successes, the left of the party never liked the fact that New Labour changed clause 4 and didn't look to re-nationalise the railways or BT straight away.

 

 

 

I thought every one knew that Murdoch backed Blair prior to the 97 election, Blair was conscious of limiting the hostility of the press that had savaged the labour party under Foot and Kinnock. He courted News Corp and instead of just damage limitations he managed to get them to back him, you could say on this he played a blinder.

Makes you think if it's that easy why every other Labour leader failed to do that. I also don't like the narrative that corbyn has been so unsuccessful simply plbecause some of the newspapers printed negative stuff about him. He brought most of it on himself as I said.
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Ok that might be another way of putting it, but old school socialists didn’t see Blair and New Labour as a good thing apart from getting Labour elected of course. The is still a great deal of rancour between Blairites and the left wing of the party. The fact that Murdoch supported him tells you all you need to know about politics in the mid 90s. Every other Labour leader has been pilloried by the majority of the press in this country. If you don’t see that you have not been paying attention.
"don't see Blair and New Labour as a good thing apart from getting elected." lol.
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Daily Telegraph - Tory house paper

The Times - Tory

The Mail - Tory

The Express - Tory

The Sun - Tory

The Star - Tits, soaps and sport

The Mirror - Labour

The Guardian - apart from a few left wing columnists, not party aligned. Liberal with a small L.

 

On a daily basis the print media print stories in support of their own agendas and it is not difficult to see why they do when you see some of the comments on here. It clearly works. Is this serving democracy well? The majority of our press support a party who polled less than their combined opposition. Hardly a level playing field.

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Daily Telegraph - Tory house paper

The Times - Tory

The Mail - Tory

The Express - Tory

The Sun - Tory

The Star - Tits, soaps and sport

The Mirror - Labour

The Guardian - apart from a few left wing columnists, not party aligned. Liberal with a small L.

 

On a daily basis the print media print stories in support of their own agendas and it is not difficult to see why they do when you see some of the comments on here. It clearly works. Is this serving democracy well? The majority of our press support a party who polled less than their combined opposition. Hardly a level playing field.

 

The Guardian not party aligned? :lol: And what happened to the Not Independent? Is that not worthy of inclusion when you include the Star?

You're increasingly out of touch with modern news coverage. All newspapers are now online and people are just as likely to view news stories and comments on them via You Tube or other social media. I haven't read an actual paper newspaper for probably a decade.

In any event, attempting to discuss media bias for or against any political party without including broadcast media is ridiculous. The main national broadcaster, the BBC, is clearly biased towards the left, as are others to a slightly lesser extent.

 

It isn't fair, is it? Life isn't fair. The sooner that you acknowledge that and stop bleating about it, the better you will feel. You remind me a bit of Steve Bray still protesting alone outside the HOP, or the Japanese soldier found on some small Pacific Island who hadn't realised that the war was over. Move on.

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The Guardian not party aligned? :lol: And what happened to the Not Independent? Is that not worthy of inclusion when you include the Star?

You're increasingly out of touch with modern news coverage. All newspapers are now online and people are just as likely to view news stories and comments on them via You Tube or other social media. I haven't read an actual paper newspaper for probably a decade.

In any event, attempting to discuss media bias for or against any political party without including broadcast media is ridiculous. The main national broadcaster, the BBC, is clearly biased towards the left, as are others to a slightly lesser extent.

 

It isn't fair, is it? Life isn't fair. The sooner that you acknowledge that and stop bleating about it, the better you will feel. You remind me a bit of Steve Bray still protesting alone outside the HOP, or the Japanese soldier found on some small Pacific Island who hadn't realised that the war was over. Move on.

 

Funny you should mention the BBC because it got royally slated for being biased towards the Tories! As for the print media, yes more people read it online but there is still a significant hard copy readership along with online feeds. You might not read a newspaper but you will still walk past the bold front pages in shops and supermarkets. It they were insignificant they wouldn’t publish and the rest of the media wouldn’t refer to them so much.

 

The Guardian is the only truly independent newspaper in this country. It is owned by the Scott Trust whose sole aim is to ensure the editor remains unbiased. The paper has liberal traditions but is not tied to any one party. Many of its columnists gave Corbyn a hard ride and you will find that many hard line Labour supporters don’t see it as their paper.

 

Well spotted! I missed the i. I haven’t read a The Independent for years so I couldn’t tell you anything about its political stance. My neighbour gets the i which I pinch now and again and that seems quiet even handed, albeit there isn’t a lot in it.

 

I used to get daily doses of the Express and Mail on my newsfeed. Thankfully I have worked out how to stop that now. I still get a feed of all the front pages though.

 

I don’t think that any paper should be tied to any political party. Print facts and let us make up our own minds. The trouble is that facts have become subjective and we just get fed more and more guff. If you are going to have a columnist with a right wing agenda at least give the same amount of space every day to a columnist with a different viewpoint to provide some balance.

 

An image that still sticks with me years later is from the front page of The Sun before the election involving Kinnick (the Welsh Windbag they called him). Will the last one to leave Britain turn out the light went the headline. No newspaper should be so partisan (for either side).

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I think he’s a perverted pinko.

 

Now, what do you think of Corbyn showing off a naked Abbott in bed to impress the comrades....

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

How do we know that he did it on purpose? It was the assumption of the person who leaked the story. How was Corbyn to know that she hadn’t got up and got fully dressed? It is hardly world shattering stuff is it and know where near on the level of Boris Johnsons ****ging exploits. If a young testosterone fuelled Corbyn wanted to show off his latest flame, fair play. When you are young who doesn’t want to show off their latest “bird” to their mates?

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So the BBC are biased to the right and the Guardian are unbiased? Are you insane?

 

No. There have been many claims by Labour supporters that the BBC was biased towards the Tories. Especially Laura Kuenssberg. You must have read about it surely? As for The Guardian, if it was pro Labour there were several columnists who didn’t get the memo. I worked there for 22 years. I sat in many editorial meetings with old editor Peter Preston and then later with AlanRusbridger. I can tell you categorically that it is not allied to any political party. It is often thought that it was tied to the newly formed LibDems but it wasn’t, as a centrist (in general) paper it was always going to be linked with a new centrist party. Don’t confuse the columnists it employs with its politics. It used to give Julie Burchill a column, the later day Katie Hopkins.

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Daily Telegraph - Tory house paper

The Times - Tory

The Mail - Tory

The Express - Tory

The Sun - Tory

The Star - Tits, soaps and sport

The Mirror - Labour

The Guardian - apart from a few left wing columnists, not party aligned. Liberal with a small L.

 

On a daily basis the print media print stories in support of their own agendas and it is not difficult to see why they do when you see some of the comments on here. It clearly works. Is this serving democracy well? The majority of our press support a party who polled less than their combined opposition. Hardly a level playing field.

 

Odd really isn't it.

 

Like I said, the press are not stupid and the majority of them will back winners not losers - hence more back the tories.

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So people who have different views to Hypo and Wes are either insane or incredibly naive.

 

Hmm.....

 

Wouldn't you 2 gents be better off living in a totalitarian state ??

You can have a difference of opinion but to suggest the BBC is right leaning or that the guardian doesn't have a left bias is pretty mental. I have left wing labour supporting mates who would consider that view pretty crazy.
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In a hypothetical scenario where all printed press was strictly factual, I still think that corbyn would have left a bad taste in many people's mouths and he would have still lost the election. Agree?

 

I really don’t know if that is the case. The press were on him from day 1 so it is impossible to say how much damage they did to him personally. Certainly his policies were more popular, and should that be the main thing?

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I really don’t know if that is the case. The press were on him from day 1 so it is impossible to say how much damage they did to him personally. Certainly his policies were more popular, and should that be the main thing?
Well in that case I couldn't disagree more strongly. I don't consider the majority of the public to be mindless robots. There has always been a lot to dislike about Corbyn including some of the people who follow him. The press didn't exactly have to try hard to be critical of his Iran and Russia links, his wreath laying exploits, his statements after Salisbury, his slowness to react on antisemitism, his candidness about never using the nuclear deterrent etc. The British public didn't need the fading British press to tell them that they didn't want corbyn in charge of the country. Edited by hypochondriac
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In a hypothetical scenario where all printed press was strictly factual, I still think that corbyn would have left a bad taste in many people's mouths and he would have still lost the election. Agree?

 

Of course he would have.

 

You must agree that the press bias had an influence in the result though - agree?

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You can have a difference of opinion but to suggest the BBC is right leaning or that the guardian doesn't have a left bias is pretty mental. I have left wing labour supporting mates who would consider that view pretty crazy.

 

There have been plenty of articles about BBC bias towards the Tories in the last election. You might not believe it, but it is out there. As for the Guardian, being aligned to a party (as the Telegraph is to the Tories) is a different thing to having a bias. The Guardian clearly has a bias towards social issues which is why it is an easier read for socialists. So much so that the belief was that it was only read by social workers and teachers. Unfortunately for The Telegraphs advertising department, the young professional readership started to take off in the 80s to the point when a young lady in our ad department, Caroline Marland (wife of a Tory MP no less) virtually took their jobs advertising revenue overnight. I was lucky enough to work for the paper when it virtually doubled it sales and left behind the old Manchester Guardian legacy behind for good. The growth would have continued had The Independent not launched. It too around 100k sales from us thanks to its title. In truth it wasn’t really Independent because it raised its money in the City and was always mindful of not biting the hand that fed it. If you think that the Guardian is pro Labour read the parliamentary sketches by John Crace. Had Corbyn won it would have been as tough on his government as it will be on Johnson’s.

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Of course he would have.

 

You must agree that the press bias had an influence in the result though - agree?

All press bias has an impact. I think it suits certain agendas to over inflate the influence of the press and pretend that there's some giant right wing conspiracy to brainwash people into not voting for Corbyn. It's a nonsense but it allows people to not face up to the truth which is that corbyn was and is an appaling leader of a mainstream political party. At least Starmer looks vaguely like he could be prime minister, but some people within Labour would rather keep corbyn even now then try someone who has a whiff of being less extreme even if it increases their chances of winning an election. No amount of positive press coverage in the world could have redeemed corbyn and some of his actions. Edited by hypochondriac
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Of course he would have.

 

You must agree that the press bias had an influence in the result though - agree?

 

Given many people still think he is an anti-Semite and a friend of terrorists I am not sure. It was a major failing (which is being recognised in this “period of reflection” that more wasn’t done to combat these negative misconceptions. If you through enough mud it sticks. Johnson had his issues but he overcame them by ramping up the nationalistic fervour. You can’t go wrong in the country by waving the Union Jack, even if you are hanging from a wire and looking a right **** whilst doing so. Sadly for Corbyn, he couldn’t even pretend suck up to the Queen and country crap and that is why people didn’t trust him with the top job. You can care about the people you represent without waving a bit of cloth and miming to God Save The Queen, but you aren’t going to get Little Englanders to support you.

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No he wasn't, he was watered down Labour. New Labour's record was very good, minimum wage, investmest in hospitals.

 

Definitely not investment in hospitals. The opposite in fact.

 

Don’t forget Blair was the one that expanded PFI after Major introduced it. It has cost the NHS £250 billion in PFI debt for all projects worth £55 billion - the interest rates for PFI agreements are obscenely high.

 

One hundred NHS hospitals were built with PFI money at an original cost of £11.5 billion. In the end, they will cost the tax payer nearly £80 billion.

 

The PFI debt would cover the entire NHS budget for approximately two and a half years.

 

Also there were his failed education reforms!

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Given many people still think he is an anti-Semite and a friend of terrorists I am not sure. It was a major failing (which is being recognised in this “period of reflection” that more wasn’t done to combat these negative misconceptions. If you through enough mud it sticks. Johnson had his issues but he overcame them by ramping up the nationalistic fervour. You can’t go wrong in the country by waving the Union Jack, even if you are hanging from a wire and looking a right **** whilst doing so. Sadly for Corbyn, he couldn’t even pretend suck up to the Queen and country crap and that is why people didn’t trust him with the top job. You can care about the people you represent without waving a bit of cloth and miming to God Save The Queen, but you aren’t going to get Little Englanders to support you.
Corbyn handled anti semitism investigations horrendously. That would still have been the case whatever the press reported. Senior Jewish Labour figures would still have been heavily critical of him personally, the human rights commission would still have been investigating Labour. Corbyn would still have been viewed negatively by the public for his associations with various terrorist organisations and many within the electorate would still have been suspicious that he actually had a very low opinion of the UK and did a lot of consortobg with the wrong sort of people. Most of the public would have come to these conclusions even if they had been presented in an entirely factual manner and you even said yourself he couldn't even pretend to be patriotic so even if the press had just released video footage of him looking scruffy, not singing and his negative views of the monarchy etc they would have come to those conclusions anyway. Edited by hypochondriac
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Definitely not investment in hospitals. The opposite in fact.

 

Don’t forget Blair was the one that expanded PFI after Major introduced it. It has cost the NHS £250 billion in PFI debt for all projects worth £55 billion - the interest rates for PFI agreements are obscenely high.

 

One hundred NHS hospitals were built with PFI money at an original cost of £11.5 billion. In the end, they will cost the tax payer nearly £80 billion.

 

The PFI debt would cover the entire NHS budget for approximately two and a half years.

 

Also there were his failed education reforms!

 

Where did the money go? Real-terms spending increases on health under Blair and Brown were faster than the long-term average (6% p.a. vs. 3.7% p.a.). And considerably faster than under the Coalition government (1.1% p.a.) and Cameron and early May governments (2.3%). And faster than what Johnson is proposing (3.4% p.a.) despite all the puff and pageantry. And no I don't buy the lazy dopey right-wing trope that all the money was wasted on bloat and bureaucracy. New Labour made many mistakes (they drunk from the free-market Kool-Aid with pfi) but credit where credit is due.

Edited by shurlock
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Well in that case I couldn't disagree more strongly. I don't consider the majority of the public to be mindless robots. There has always been a lot to dislike about Corbyn including some of the people who follow him. The press didn't exactly have to try hard to be critical of his Iran and Russia links, his wreath laying exploits, his statements after Salisbury, his slowness to react on antisemitism, his candidness about never using the nuclear deterrent etc. The British public didn't need the fading British press to tell them that they didn't want corbyn in charge of the country.

 

What Russia links?

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