Dismal, Lifeless, Spineless

The Labour Party's poor performance in the great EU referendum was so shocking that even Polly Toynbee in The Guardian has turned on its hapless leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

But whether he's hapless or just hopeless if you ask me, there is no doubt that Labour's fortunes will not improve with Jezza at the helm.



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/25/jeremy-corbyn-referedum-campaign

Dismal, lifeless, spineless – Jeremy Corbyn let us down again

By Polly Toynbee - The Guardian

Labour squandered a golden opportunity to own the referendum campaign. And party leader Corbyn must take the blame

 

Jeremy Corbyn is pursued by journalists as he walks towards the parliament after the referendum result was announced. Photograph: Rob Stothard/Getty Images

As shock waves ricochet across the country, expect few tears for the prime minister’s downfall. An insignificant apostle of Thatcher, his place in history is assured only as the man who shipwrecked Britain. Just as Lord North is remembered only for losing America, so David Cameron will be for losing our place in Europe.

Jeremy Corbyn faces no-confidence motion after Britain votes to leave EU

He appeased the party’s “bastards” who brought down John Major, and let them “bang on about Europe” until they ate him alive. But in the end it was his government’s relentless small-state austerity that tilled the ground for this monumental popular rebellion. He and his chancellor turned recession into social calamity, crushing the pride out of a humiliated working class. Year by year the Guardian has chronicled all those places Cameron’s metropolitan crew ignored, touring those dead high streets with empty shop fronts, where even pound stores and charity shops fail to thrive.

He closed the Sure Starts, libraries, leisure centres and day centres that once helped hold communities together. He accelerated right-to-buy so close-knit estates lost a third of flats, sold off to private landlords to fill with exploited migrant men. He is slicing away the lifeline of tax credits. Councils that once buffered their citizens against hard times are now skeletons of their former selves, half their income gone, a million jobs shed. Where there was already distress, the Cameron government brought woe.

Labour's Inspector Clouseau (24/06/16)

I wrote this post about Jeremy Corbyn before the great EU referendum, but there is no doubt in my mind now that Jezza really is the Labour Party's answer to Inspector Clouseau. 

If you ask me, David Cameron has done the right thing by resigning as Prime Minister and his motivation, in part at least, must come from the fact that as far as the Conservative Party is concerned the 'lunatics' have taken over the asylum.

But the problem for the Labour Party is that this penny has still to drop. 

'Bog Standard' Officials (24/06/16)

I was unfazed one way or the other by Jeremy Corbyn's appearance on 'The Last Leg' TV programme which had the Labour leader arrive in a chauffeur-driven Bentley, dressed in a dinner suit and a full-length white fur coat.

After all if you have an image problem, then why not do something out of the ordinary to confound and confuse your political opponents.

But no, my real problem with Jeremy is that in answer to a 'dolly' question about how he would rank the importance of the next week's EU referendum on a scale of 1 to 10, Jezza responded with the unbelievably lame answer of "7 to 7 and a half".

Now when so much is at stake in next week's referendum, you would think a Labour leader worth his mettle would have emphasised, in the strongest possible terms, the very real threat to the UK economy, jobs and investment posed by the country's withdrawal from the European Union (EU).

So Jeremy's a complete fool if you ask me, a political half-wit, but that's what you get if you elect as Labour leader a man who rose to the dizzying ranks of 'bog standard' union official before finding a niche as a backbench Labour MP in the House of Commons for the next 32 years.

And while there are some decent trade union officials around, believe me there are plenty of complete 'duds' in the ranks too, as the Labour party and the country is finding out to its cost.