Thursday, August 6, 2015

Unlike the Daily Telegraph, a broken clock is accurate twice a day

I know that I'm picking on an easy target when I say that the Telegraph are often pretty clueless, but their treatment of the Labour leadership contest has been woeful even by their standards.  For weeks now, they've been adding little pre-prepared inserts to their online articles, describing Jeremy Corbyn as "the bookies' favourite to finish fourth" (even though for much of that time he has either been second-favourite or outright favourite to win), and Liz Kendall's chances of winning as "improving" (even though her campaign has been a dead duck for ages).  I see today that they've finally updated the inserts to declare Corbyn the favourite - which is rather unfortunate timing, because Andy Burnham was re-established as the clear favourite earlier this week!

They also make this weird comment -

"Under the old Labour electoral college that elected Ed Miliband, union-backed Jeremy Corbyn would be a shoo-in. But rules brought in last year limited the unions' power by eliminating the college and giving a single vote to each party member."

Utter tripe. Any radical left-wing leadership candidate would have been hammered under the electoral college, regardless of any support from the unions, because the parliamentary party had one-third of the vote. Each MP's vote was effectively worth several hundred times that of a rank-and-file party member or trade unionist. Corbyn may or may not win under the new system, but there's no doubt that it gives him a much better chance.

9 comments:

  1. Christ I hope he gets elected. Those other muppets are just depressing no matter how beneficial or not they may be to the Indy movement up here.

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  2. Christ I hope he gets elected. Those other muppets are just depressing no matter how beneficial or not they may be to the Indy movement up here.

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  3. I really don't give a toss who Labour elect, none of them have the future benefit of Scotland at heart so I will note the result and carry on the fight for Independence.

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  4. I agree that I am not bothered about Labour either, but Corbyn would be the best of a bad bunch and seems willing to work with the SNP.

    Although I am thoroughly enjoying the centre/right side of Labour fear of him and hearing the likes of Alan Johnson, McTernan, and other Blarites ramping up the fear of a Corbyn leadership.

    P.S Does anyone know what time the results for the 4 Glasgow area By Elections will come in tonight? I believe counting will be tonight, so maybe after midnight?

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  5. Whoever wins, I don't see any of them lasting the five years. I can see Dan Jarvis or Keir Starmer taking over in 2018/9.

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  6. Word from the count in Glasgow is it's not looking like Labour's night. Shocking, I know.

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  7. Yep who cares, bit like the Ashes!

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  8. I'll say this for them - the Telegraph is not often right, but it's wrong again.

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  9. "I'd do a deal with the SNP to get Labour into power, says Corbyn"
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/596429/jeremy-corbyn-snp-deal-labour-alex-salmond

    Guess Corbyn has thrown Labour's Scottish apparatchiks under the bus.
    If he'll do deal with the SNP there's no incentive for Scots to vote Labour either at WM or Holyrood

    Of course that gives him an extra 56 MPs voting on whom he can rely rather than just whatisname the shadow SSS, so why wouldn't he?

    'Course it destroys the argument that the Scottish branch of Labour is relevant.

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