Originally posted by AshiitakaI don't get how a leader can sour anyone's support. Maybe I don't get it anymore, but you're supposed to get out and learn a bit about life, develop a worldview and then support a political ideology that best articulates and follows through on all the big ticket items.
The latest odds are:
Emmanuel Macron: 1
Francois Fillon: 11/4
Marine Le Pen: 3
Jean Luc Melenchon: 15/2
I'm surprised by how much I like Melenchon, maybe because Jeremy Corbyn had soured my opinion of the left.
The leader should only maintain the core attributes of the party and try to remind the faithful of what that means.
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Melenchon, although his interviews are so abstract and theorycentric they make your average Corbynista look like praxis: if you're a Corbyn supporter and you think Melenchon is a good example of a "populist" left-winger, think again; Corbyn is much more of a "populist" than Melenchon in relative terms, even if he's far less popular here. Macron is utterly beige - he even had a copy of Mandelson's autobiography on his bookshelves recently. The horrible thing is that it's all interesecting variables: France doesn't look like its capable of electing a Podemos-style candidate, so we're presumably left with rubbish like Fillon or Le Pen.
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-Removed-I get what you're saying, but in the British Westminster system of parliamentary politics, the leader is not a president who once elected can do as they please and who can only be removed by office by engaging in an illegal act or one outside the purview of his role as defined by the constitution.
Corbyn as the leader has the confidence of the majority of the party he leads and whether he is a charismatic dynamo who can sell the policies of his party and can prosecute the mandate of electoral victory (if he wins) by implementing the agenda articulated in the lead up to a general election is a moot point.
Corbyn can lose the confidence of his party and be thrown under a bus in an instant.
If the party says away with the New Labor third way tosh of the Blairites and Corbyn is tasked with championing the virtues of a return to a socialised, nationlised, former glory, then thats his remit and so be it (so be it - Soviet- get it comrade?)
Whether his prosecution of the agenda as laid out and agreed to by the party at successive Labor Conferences is after a fashion and style reminiscent of the personality of a brown recyclable paper grocery bag then that also, is a moot point.
So if Corbyn sours anyone's attitude to Labor then the person left disgruntled and disillusioned by Corbyn is in effect disappointed by the messenger, the guy on point. The focus of disgruntlement, ie the message, should be Labor.
That Blair hijacked the Labor narrative and adopted pro corporate, economically rationalist arguments, that saw core Labor values transformed into a Thatcher lite trickle down 2.0 melange, is something the party faithful have been aching to change.
Whether Corbyn prosecutes that change in a manner that inspires the electorate to get on board is neither here nor there. If the people see value in the arguments articulated by Labor then they will prevail. If Corbyn stops articulating the message as distilled by the party, then he will be rolled.
If you think Corbyn is on the nose, then maybe your problem's with Labor.....
