Yes, they are a middle-market tabloid and quite right-wing. But they do not exist in a vacuum either and reflect the opinion of a big part of British public.
That doesn't make them any less of a joke.
Do you imagine that the Grauniad exists in a vacuum? If you want to know about the people who support your political opponents, avoiding reading what they write seems like an odd way to achieve that.
I am not saying not to read that. I read plenty of articles and papers I disagree with. I was just saying that they will have a predictable opinion of Comrade Jeremy.
Yes, the Guardian is one place you could look, if you want to know what Corbyn's supporters think; But most of his base are not found reading the Grauniad either.
What are they reading? The Mirror? Or more likely, nothing at all and watch the telly instead?
Both of these, and others.
The US media are clueless on this topic; they don't even start with an understanding of the fundamental drivers of British politics, so they are incapable of comprehending it, as that Atlantic article demonstrates. You would do better (not well, perhaps, but better) to read the Torygraph - They may hate the Labour Party and Corbyn, but at least they know who he and his supporters are, and what they want, even if they don't agree with them. Just don't forget that the Torygraph is the mouthpiece of Corbyn's enemies, so they are still giving you a very slanted view of how he appears to the British public.
There is also a way that somebody like Corbyn appears to the American public and that is not unimportant given the close relationship of US and UK.
The number of votes that a UK party can win by appealing to the American public can be counted on the fingers of one foot.
if you want to know about what the British Labour Party stood for in the past, or what its likely direction will be under Corbyn; The American press have absolutely no clue what any of this stuff really means, and are incapable of ever grasping it, due to massive but unrecognised differences in the use of language.
Two countries separated by a common language ...
Indeed.
the word 'socialist' in the UK is simply not related to the word 'unelectable' in the way that it is is the USA.
I don't know about that.
Evidently. Which rather underscores my point.
Labour of old had some socialist policies but they had abandoned them to remain electable.
A policy which worked for five minutes, but ultimately led to the recent Tory landslide. The feeling in the Labour Party is that that was a mistake.
A liking for elements of Marxist philosophy is not damaging in British politics as it would be in the USA;
That remains to be seen.
I can assure you that it is true.
Support for Israel is not a vote winner in the UK;
Unfortunately you may be right there, especially given all the Muslims UK has imported over the decades.
It has fuck all to do with British Muslims. I told you wouldn't believe it; but it remains true regardless. Very few UK voters favour Israel in the Israel/Palestine debate.
Support for Austerity is a positive vote loser, outside the 'rusted on Tory' demographic.
And support for Profligacy is a vote winner?
Yes. British voters don't think about money the way American voters do; They are far less averse to taxation, and far less keen on balanced budgets - what they really worry about is cuts to services.
The Falklands War was a huge propaganda coup for Margaret Thatcher; The Labour leadership at the time knew it would be political suicide to do anything other than salute the flag that Thatcher ran up over the issue, but it was a lose-lose proposition for them either way; Corbyn's position at the time was nothing like as unpopular as you seem to believe, particularly amongst the Labour base.
UK was completely in the right on this one, and the Argentinians were in the wrong. Those are British islands, with British settlers. Physical proximity does not imply ownership. Corbyn taking Argentina's side on this is frankly shameful. And it doesn't matter that others in the base were equally shameful.
You are confusing your opinion with the topic under discussion, which is the opinion of the British Electorate.
Pacifism, the protection of the working class from conscription, and the protection of the volunteer members of the armed forces from military adventurism overseas were and still are popular policies, outside the 'Land of Hope and Glory' South East Tory heartland.
This was not military adventurism abroad", it was protection of a UK territory form foreign aggression.
Again, that is your opinion. It doesn't matter whether you are right or wrong; it matters what the UK voters think, and what weight they give to the issue at the ballot box. The Tories think the Falklands are a big deal; but that's because they see the issue as a vote winner. Corbyn's Labour see the Falklands as an insignificant issue that nobody will worry about in the light of their other policies. Who is right remains to be seen.
You say that as if it was a bad thing; but that is far from obvious to the British voting public.
Supporting terrorists is a very bad thing indeed.
But supporting freedom fighters is not. Your opinion is not shared by the British public.
He also opposes UK taking out terrorists with drones.
As do a LOT of UK voters. Again, this would be a bad political move in the USA; but it is a popular move in the UK.
This is what I mean about Americans being incapable of comprehending this stuff. No British politician would expect to describe Israel's activities since her foundation as "defending their country against terrorist aggression". That might fly in the USA, but it would be laughed down in the UK.
Well it happens to be accurate.
That's debatable; and irrelevant. Once again - Your opinion is not the issue; nor are the 'facts' (assuming that such things even exist); What counts is what the British voters think, and that is VERY different from what you seem to imagine they should think.
Or are you forgetting the suicide bombs and rockets that Palestinian terrorists use against Israeli civilians?
My opinion is not the issue here any more than yours is; and if you or I wanted to debate the Israel/Palestine question, there are dozens of threads already in which we could do that.
But that doesn't matter to Corbyn.
Nor to his supporters; nor to many of the voters.
To him Hamas terrorists are his friends, while he thinks Israeli leaders are war criminals.
Yes. And he is far from alone in that opinion; it is a very common opinion in British politics.
Argentina invading the Falklands.
In 1982, I bet you couldn't have found 1% of the UK population who could even pick which hemisphere the Falklands were in. The British voter only cares about the Falklands because Thatcher made them her big propaganda lever to win the '83 election. The Argentinians only give a shit about them because the Junta made them their big propaganda lever to stay in power. Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges described the war as "a fight between two bald men over a comb"; It was pure jingoism. Of course, jingoism can win votes - but it loses its potency after 30 years.
Yes, but not a good reason - at least not in the view of their core support base.
"Core support base" - i.e. those voting for Labour anyway. Labour needs to win the majority of districts and for that it needs support beyond their "core support base".
Not at all; they just need to win back those parts of that base that defected to other parties - particularly the SNP and the Greens - or who stopped voting altogether. 'New Labour' moved to the centre; By so doing, they have created a sizable pool of non-Labour voters on the left that can be exploited by Corbyn.
No, he simply despises the changes made since 1979.
A different way to say the same thing. You can't turn back the clock to 1970s, and I don't see why anybody would want to.
Look around you. Nostalgia for a (fictional) golden age a few decades ago has always been popular; the only difference here is that it is usually the right-wing who exploit it, and this time it is the left.
He is far from alone in that; Again, Margaret Thatcher is seen by many Americans as one of the UK's greatest leaders; but that is VERY different from the way she is remembered in the UK - particularly in the North.
The way I see it, much of Labour's current support is in the North already. They need to expand the map, not consolidate.
They need to win back Scotland. Expansion into the Home Counties is beyond them even if they kept moving right, so it would be futile to try (as demonstrated by the most recent election result).
I know; I was there, and got the bruises to prove it.
Were you a miner or were you just protesting for the hell of it?
False dichotomy.
I was protesting in support of my friends and neighbours. People tend to do that, rather than blindly pursuing only their own selfish interests.
I very much doubt that you can tell me anything I don't already know about the miner's strike.
So you must know that the driving force behind the events was that most of the shafts were not economical and had to be heavily subsidized.
On the contrary; I can tell you that that piece of Thatcherite propaganda is false. The coal produced in the Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire coalfields was considerably cheaper than imported coal; but Maggie was determined to break the NUM, at any cost. Had the pits been uneconomical, there would have been no use in a strike; if loss making mines stop work, why should their owners care?
Thatcher could not stand that British Coal was an effective nationalised industry with a strongly unionised workforce who wouldn't do as she wished. She decided that if she couldn't be in charge, nobody would be.
I do not see how those abandoned mines would be any more economical today, which means Corbyn would have to come up with new subsidies just to reopen what are literally money pits.
Nope; there are still plenty of pits that could be run at a profit.
And all that because of some sort of nostalgia for pre-Thatcherite "North".
And it is clear that you have no idea of how fresh those events are in the minds of the people of the coalfields.
You are right about that one. That was 30 years ago, how fresh can it be? Those who were in their mid-30s and older are of retirement age already and those younger had plenty of time to retrain for other jobs and careers.
Jobs? In the coal fields? Ha!!
Let me assure you, the miner's strike is far more relevant to the voters up North than the Falklands War.
Meh. The British care a LOT less about US politics than you seem to think;
I would say more than people here care about UK politics. But my point is that trends in the US and UK seem to follow each other - conservative Thatcher and Reagan, "third way" Clinton and Blair. Now either the massive Tory victory in 2015 will spell disaster for Dems in 2016 or perhaps (but not likely) a Bernie triumph in 2016 will be a harbinger of Corbyn winning.
I think you are mistaken; I don't think that there is much of a correlation at all, and what there is is purely coincidental.
and despite what the (right-wing dominated) press have to say, there are plenty of people in the UK who strongly support re-nationalisation of the railways (which were privatised recently enough that people still remember that things were better before); and there are plenty of people in the North East of England and in South Wales who still think it would be better to dig coal out of the ground there than to buy it from overseas.
"Plenty of people" is not necessarily a majority.
No. But then, it doesn't need to be. The Tory landslide was the result of a minority of voters voting Conservative. FPTP electoral systems are like that.
And if coal that can be dug out of the ground domestically is much more expensive than the coal that can be imported who will pay the difference?
Your premise is incorrect; so the question doesn't arise.
All that beside the point that focusing on dirty fuel like coal is contrary to environmental goals of Labour.
That is true; but replacing foreign coal with British coal is carbon neutral.
The British don't see any 'socialist experiments'; they see Corbyn taking them back to the comfortable socialism of the past, before Margaret Thatcher ruined the country.
Yeah the good old days when people in "the North" drove around in
three-wheelers and worked dangerous mining jobs (which were partly dole anyway given they had to be heavily subsidized) while being subject to high levels of air pollution from burning all that coal.
Is this supposed to make some kind of point? Because if so, it is far from clear.
Of course, I don't expect many Americans to be mentally equipped to believe this; it is far beyond your grasp, because the entire philosophical basis for British politics is totally unlike anything that has ever existed in the USA.
Sometimes some distance can provide perspective those immersed in it do not possess.
True.
But I am not immersed in it - I left in the mid 1990s.
