advertisement


Jeremy Corbyn's Speech at the Labour Conference 2017

jackbarron

jackbarron

Chelsea, London
Wow, what a great speech Corbyn is coming to the end of at the Labour Party Conference.

He argues that Labour are on the threshold of power and I can easily believe it. 14,000 people have turned up to the Conference in Brighton.

He has made one of the best speeches I have ever heard from a Labour leader. He is a mile on from Blair and Brown, because he is a socialist and not a Tory-Lite.

You can read and hopefully see the speech at The Guardian here.

Corbyn has talked about Brexit, investment, taxation, policing, terrorism, education, the NHS, housing and rent control. He also had a go at Donald Trump. He said Trump was wrong in his UN speech and we should tell him this if we actually have a special relationship with America.

Corbyn also dealt with racism, antisemitism and online abuse. Labour have introduced new rules and regulations so that anybody involved with this will be thrown out of the Labour Party.

He said that Diane Abbot had suffered the most appalling experiences and thanked her for her help against such issues. Then the whole hall the sang happy birthday to her. This was a just reward to a politician who has been abused so badly by the media and some citizens.

In one amusing moment he had a go at the right-wing media and the way they lay into Labour during the last general election. What happened is the public ignored them and the Labour vote went up massively.

He mentioned The Daily Mail in particular who on the day of the election devoted 14 pages to slating Corbyn and Labour. Jezza asked if Dacre could perhaps up this to 28 pages before the next election.

The Tory Party is so inept and damaging to the UK. Corbyn suggested that May should go off on another walking holiday, because the last one inspired her to call a snap general election.

It will be cool when Labour delivers a Britain for the many and not the few.

Jack
 
Jeremy Corbyn... Sounding like the only sane and competent leader in British politics. Whodda thunk that this time last year.

Sadly, we probably won't see the next Labour government until after the coming collapse of the UK in 2019.
 
yep, they're pretty energised and motivated. i hope they get the chance to put it all to the electorate before this parliament runs its full term.

but, isn't it about time that someone penned some new lyrics to that old chant the red flag? it's all very grim and gory. talk about cowards, traitors, blood, gallows, dungeons etc etc. i'm sure the message could be put across in a more moderate tone. less militaristic, less aggressive perhaps?
 
I admire Corbyn's policies and principles.

And I hugely admire the way he's weathered a sh*tstorm of slurs by the far-right press, misrepresentation by most of the rest of the media, and backstabbing from his own MPs to put left-wing policies firmly back on the political agenda. Reading the recent Labour Manifesto was like waking up from a decades-long neoliberal nightmare.

But... I've never found him a compelling orator. He's too long-winded, has a tendency to trip up over his words, and uses too many abstractions to be a really great speaker. I like my rhetoric crisp and punchy and, sadly, Corbyn doesn't hack it as far as I'm concerned. His speech had its moments but it went on a bit and left me, an ardent Labour supporter, feeling a tad bored.

By way of contrast, I thought Angela Rayner's speech on Education yesterday was fantastic. It was full of the passion and belief in the value of education that only someone who was written off at an early age could feel. Contrast that with the privilege and complacency of some (privately educated) members of Tory party who see fit to mock her for her accent. And the idea of a National Education Service ("from the cradle to the grave") is a great piece of branding - I hope the Labour Party can add real substance to it before the next election.

The conference as a whole has been fantastic - bursting with optimism and ideas about how we can make the country work better for the many not the few. Even the BBC's usual mode of covering Labour under Corbyn's leadership (basically: stir shit and then report on the bad smell) has had limited success this time around.

It will be interesting to compare and contrast the Tory effort next week.
 
droodzilla said:
By way of contrast, I thought Angela Rayner's speech on Education yesterday was fantastic. It was full of the passion and belief in the value of education that only someone who was written off at an early age could feel.
Click to expand...

Yeah her speech was great. Corbyn's one could have been edited down a bit, because it went on for over an hour.

Jack
 
Yes it's all great stuff, but I do wish Corbyn would actively counter the accusations of 'radicalism' and the negativity engendered by the term. Like it or not huge swathes of the population have been brainwashed into a fear of 'the left', after incessant press and meedja lies and misrepresentation for decades.

FWIW, I don't see any of his policies as 'radical' in absolute terms and they certainly have much precedent, but he needs to explain that his policies are not radical.. just a return to real Labour values. Or silence the critics by saying something like 'If creating a fairer society, rather than just talking about one like May, is radical.. then hell yes!! I'm radical!!'

I see Norman 'Tory Boy' Smith was trotting out the usual shite on the lunchtime news. Ignoring most of the speech and focusing on Corbyn's 'radical' policies such as 'increasing nationalisation'. Eh?

Does he mean a slight reversal of some privatisation? Notably Rail? Which most people favour anyway? Undeniably biased.
 
notaclue said:
Jeremy Corbyn... Sounding like the only sane and competent leader in British politics. Whodda thunk that this time last year.

Sadly, we probably won't see the next Labour government until after the coming collapse of the UK in 2019.
Click to expand...

I dunno. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the Tories engineered an election defeat to get them off the Brexit hook. They could then sit back and blame Labour for the catastrophe which will result from Brexit, whoever manages it.

Mull
 
Fantastic speech from the PM in waiting. And it was Diane Abbott's birthday, I could hardly contain myself.
 
Speaking as a centrist and floating voter with absolutely no tribal loyalties, I see myself as just the sort of voter JC needs to win over if Labour are to win the next general election. I thought his closing conference speech was very good, the best I've heard for a long time. I may even vote Labour instead of LibDem if they get their stance on the EU sorted.
 
I admire Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for these reasons. He speaks with admirable clarity, force and eloquence and should be congratulated for it - it is probably why he is ahead of the other mediocrities in the party who aspire to be leader. However, the problem of eloquence and persuasion is that they can be used for malicious or, in this case, recklessly negligent ends; because make no mistake, the election of Jeremy Corbyn and Labour would be a disaster for British democracy.

This is because Mr Corbyn's flat-cap and whippet style charm and cuddliness as well as his aforementioned articulacy and fluidity of speech are the packaging for two rather stupid proposals. Each of which require exposition.

The first of these is that the British people voted for the most right wing of the conventional political parties at the last UK General election because the other party was not left wing enough. There are obvious, and rather boring, comparisons to be made with the famous 'Longest Suicide Note in History', where Michael Foot's Labour Party issued a manifesto so laden with backward-thinking socialist claptrap at a time when the British people had given their clear support for Mrs Thatcher. I fear that in the possibility of Mr Corbyn as the man to lead them into the next UK General election, Labour may be on the brink of making the same mistake all over again.

Should they fall into this error, and veer violently off to the left, it will not have been entirely their own fault. Those people living in Scotland have heard the stupid, heard-like animal bleats of 'Red Tories' for too long - a sentiment served in huge portions by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at each and every First Minister's Questions - to not have it engrained in us.

All that requires to be said to my Labour supporting and voting friends is that in politics, your opponents encourage you to make a move for one of two reasons. The first is to scupper your chances and the second is to make you more like them. You would be well advised to consider carefully the impulses at play before you cast your vote.

The second, more damning, proposal contained within Mr Corbyn's labour can be phrased thusly; the way to improve our country is not only to reverse the course of action that brought us out of the recent recession but also to implement policies similar to those which brought Britain into those circumstances in the first place. Mr Corbyn's platform calls for nationalisation, a massive increase in state spending - and the implicit corresponding debt, tax hikes and cuddling up to the theocratic authoritarians of Hamas and Hezbollah; it is a recipie for disaster. It would be The Longest Suicide Note in History Director's Cut Special Edition.

Of course, the decision of who should lead the Labour Party is solely and entirely the prerogative of the Labour Party itself. As someone who is neither a Labour member nor a Labour supporter - I've never voted Labour on any level - my opinion could, and maybe should, be disregarded. It is not my decision to make nor a decision I can influence. However, I care, not because I care especially for the Labour Party but because I care about the integrity of our democracy.

Whether one likes it or not, it would appear that the Conservative Party is the natural party of government in the UK. Since the advent of the modern parties, the Tories have been in power for the lion's share of the time and that shows no sign of ending. It is perfectly ok to have a dominant/natural party of government but only if there is a legitimate, serious and viable party of opposition.

In the UK that role ought to be filled by the Labour Party - again, sorry my Labour supporting pals but it's true - and this is not possible if they do not have a serious, modern, realistic political platform. It may well make the left feel good to return to bleating on about nationalisation and raising taxes and spending like a sailor on shore leave but the world and Britain in particular has moved on from those days. The Labour Party can, if they want, return to the politics of the 1970s, but Britain will not be joining them.

It is not a matter of coincidence that Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and implicitly Gordon Brown have in the recent past urged Labour to change the leader. While the current darling of the left may know his history and his socialist credentials are without question, those three men know what it means to turn Labour into a realistic party of opposition and occasional party of government. If I were a Labour supporter I would be on the side of the guys who know how to win and not just how to whine - albeit very articulately.
 
^^^^ Good spot! :D

And of course whoever actually wrote this rather lengthy diatribe scuppered themselves with the appalling inaccuracy of this paragraph:

The second, more damning, proposal contained within Mr Corbyn's labour can be phrased thusly; the way to improve our country is not only to reverse the course of action that brought us out of the recent recession but also to implement policies similar to those which brought Britain into those circumstances in the first place. Mr Corbyn's platform calls for nationalisation, a massive increase in state spending - and the implicit corresponding debt, tax hikes and cuddling up to the theocratic authoritarians of Hamas and Hezbollah; it is a recipie for disaster. It would be The Longest Suicide Note in History Director's Cut Special Edition.
Click to expand...

Nothing to see here... move along..
 
You say : "'Ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn"
And you claim these words as your own
But I've read well and I've heard them said
A hundred times (maybe less, maybe more)
If you must write prose/poems
The words you use should be your own
Don't plagiarise or take "on loan"
Cause there's always someone, somewhere
With a big nose, who knows
And who trips you up and laughs
When you fall
 
calorgas said:
You say : "'Ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn"
And you claim these words as your own
But I've read well and I've heard them said
A hundred times (maybe less, maybe more)
If you must write prose/poems
The words you use should be your own
Don't plagiarise or take "on loan"
Cause there's always someone, somewhere
With a big nose, who knows
And who trips you up and laughs
When you fall
Click to expand...

E J Thribb (17 1/2) himself couldn't have put it better.
 
I thought it was a good speech and very impressive at the fanaticism of his followers. You can't help but admire how he and fellow colleagues came from what was a pretty desperate position.
Scary and sad for the state of UK politics that the only viable option to some people is Marxist politics. I know many of the posters are big JC fans but I still believe that they would be a disaster far bigger than brexit.
I still cling to the hope that a better offering will emerge before the next election that the two offers we have at the moment.
 
I was puzzled the Corbyn hating BBC tx'd many minutes of Jezza's speech live on lunchtime R4 news.
It appears a Revolutionary Comoonist has infiltrated the World at One production team.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top