why you MUST vote for anyone but Corbyn
the 7 irrefutable arguments you cannot ignore
by ‘cannot ignore’ i simply mean that you cannot escape them, since they have been repeated endlessly from all angles — many long before Jeremy was even elected Labour Party leader last September. and rightly so because they are pretty great arguments, so listen up
1.) “he is unelectable”
this one is pretty hard to contend. it’s patently obvious that an MP who has been elected to represent his constituency on eight successive occasions — spanning a period of thirty-two years — before going on to be elected leader of the Labour Party with the biggest mandate of any leader in the history of British politics, is the living embodiment of unelectability
the biggest reason for his self-evident unelectability is his radical left-wing policy set. after all, Labour did lose the last election because they were too left-wing. ‘except that claim has since been rubbished’, i hear the Corbynista choir cry. ok fine, but Miliband is hardly as left-wing as Hard left commie Corbyn. how are Labour going to win the next general election if they don’t win over some of the 24% of the electorate who voted for the Tories? exactly — they’re not — and they’re certainly not going to win ‘middle England’ over with Corbyn’s extreme brand of socialism. i mean, renationalisation of rail and energy companies…are you kidding me? only militant Trots would support such absurd policies
some eagle-eyed observers (the bird of prey, not our lovely Angela) might point to the fact that 34% of registered voters didn’t vote at all last May, meaning Labour don’t actualy need to chase Tory voters. a fair point, but it’s not like Corbyn’s going to inspire the disenfranchised to vote is he?
his electoral performance thus far speaks for itself. in the May elections:
* Labour managed to retain control of 58 councils (the Tories lost one)
* Labour lost 18 council seats (the Tories lost 48)
* Labour added 3 Police and Crime Commissioners to the 12 they already held, and increased their share of the votes — the largest of any party (the Tories added 4 Commissioners to the 16 they already had — the same 25% increase as Labour)
* Labour received the most votes ever in the London assembly elections (over a million), retaining all 12 seats and minority control (the Tories lost 1)
* Labour lost 13 seats in Scottish Parliament, falling from 37 to 24 seats and from second to third place (12 months after losing 40-out-of-41 seats in the General Election, falling from first to joint-second with the Tories and Lib Dems)
* Labour lost 1 seat in the Welsh Assembly (the Tories lost 3)
* Labour won 4 Mayoral elections (regaining London from the Tories, winning Bristol for the first time, and retaining Liverpool and Salford — the latter with an increased majority)
* Labour won 2 Parliamentary by-elections: in Ogmore, and with a substantially increased majority in Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough (they have won two others under Corbyn’s leadership, both with significantly increased majorities: Oldham West and Royton by-election last December, and in Tooting this June)
2.) “he is not a good leader”
look at him for goodness sake, he looks like a bloody retired geography teacher. he’s such a scruff — he can’t even lead himself to the ironing board. where’s his power stance? where’s his passive-aggressive fingerless point? i know a leader when i see one, and he is no leader
good leadership depends on a certain set of intangible qualities, which are hard to define but just as hard to miss when present. when it comes to leadership you either have it or you don’t, and Jezza don’t. next batter up
even if you disagree with my assessment of leadership, it’s hard to ignore the fact that he can’t even retain the confidence of his colleagues: of the Party’s 230 MPs, 172 voted no-confidence in his leadership. fine, so the membership has more than doubled in size since last year’s general election, now at 540,000 and rising. clearly the vast majority of those fall into two categories: Trot entryists, or young people having their arms twisted by the aforementioned Trots. they are trying to hijack the party from the goodwilled old boys who rightly pull the Party’s strings; ergo, the democratic mandate they gave (and plan to give again) to Corbyn is worthless
3.) “he is destroying the party”
if he cared at ALL about the Labour Party, he would do the honourable thing and stand aside. if the coup plotters – who clearly have nothing but the Labour movement’s interests at heart – feel they have no choice but to splinter off, it will all be his fault when they do. surely any sane person can see this?
4.) “he has created a culture of abuse”
he seems to have an uncanny ability to mirror any controversies in the Tory party, and completely overshadow them. it’s almost as though he has a network of hacks in the media, serving his singular agenda of destroying the Labour Party
anti-semitism
just as the Tories were guilty of relentless and blatant racism and Islamaphobia throughout Zac Goldsmith’s London Mayoral campaign, sure enough Corbyn handed them anti-semitism on a plate with which to attack the Labour party
it began on February 15, when Alex Chalmers (former intern for BICOM — Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre) resigned as co-chair of the Oxford University Labour Club, citing the club’s democratic decision to endorse the University’s Israeli Apartheid Week as evidence that the club was rife with anti-semitism. since then an anti-semitic cloud has engulfed Corbyn unrelentingly, and despite evidence of foul play every step of the way, it’s a well known fact that there’s no smoke without fire. well…there is dry ice
and smoke machines
bullying
similarly, just months after bullying in the Conservative party pushed a young activist to suicide (a tragedy tied up in the potential electoral fraud for which they are presently being investigated), Corbyn allowed them to divert attention across the chamber towards a Labour Party rife with it
first, Angela Eagle was subjected to homophobic abuse (during a meeting at which she wasn’t even present, by two LGBT advocates, one of whose daughter married her wife the following morning). then, she had to change the venue of a meeting because of threats (well, actually the hotel cancelled the booking when they found out the event was political in nature, but why let the facts get in the way of a good story). then, a Momentum thug threw a brick through her office window (except it wasn’t her window, but the window of a stairwell in a building shared by six different organisations, and the identity of the brick thrower — and with it their motives — remains unestablished)
clearly, Corbyn is unable to control the mob of thugs who adore him
5.) “he’s a terrorist sympathiser”
by not wanting the RAF to join the bombing campaign in Syria, Corbyn was siding with ISIS (even though, had we not invaded Iraq in 2003 — per Corbyn’s rallying cries — ISIS would not exist). he was siding with terrorists, just like he did when holding dialogue with the IRA (by extension, so was Nelson Mandela), or when he casually spoke of ‘our friends’ from Hezbollah and Hamas (two months after the end of an Israeli invasion of Palestine, which killed 1,417 Palestinians and 13* Israelis —*4 by ‘friendly-fire’)
6.) “he’s a pacifist”
what a pussy — he said he wouldn’t press the big red button; even Theresa May said she would, and she’s a girl!
all joking aside, what a bloody daft thing to say. if you say that you would never use them, then nuclear weapons have no purpose whatseoever. mutually assured destruction: the clue is in the name! i appreciate that Putin and his ilk would probably find it hard to believe him if he had said yes when asked — given his 50-year membership of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, for which he now serves as vice-president—but still. with one careless statement, he made clear that all the hundreds of billions of pounds spent on Trident over the years would be wasted the second he became Prime Minister (not that there’s any chance of that happening)
a man so set on his agenda for achieving world peace is clearly a threat to our safety. Jeremy would do well to listen to the manager of his beloved Gunners, Arsène Wenger, when he says that attack is the best form of defence
7.) “Brexit was all his fault”
you heard him, he said he was only “seven, or seven and a half out of ten”. it was hardly earth-shattering when he did, given his lifelong euroscepticism; his half-hearted campaigning made that much clear from the start. it’s no wonder then that only 63% of Labour voters voted to Remain (i’m surprised the SNP aren’t calling for Nicola Sturgeon’s head, given only 64% of their voters voted the right way)
clearly, after 17.4 million UK voters decided that they want us to leave the EU, the only choice left for the Labour Party is to oust Corbyn for failing to convert more of them
conclusion: a.b.C.
so i leave it to you: when the time comes to cast your ballot, either you can heed my advice or you can vote for Corbyn. if you have any sense at all you will vote for the a.b.C. (anyone but Corbyn) candidate; on this occasion the [d]electable Owen Smith. i urge you to do so, in order that we may make this party an legitimate (but still radical) parliamentary force once more
so let us ignore the evidence that Corbyn is very electable — in fact he’s never lost an election
let us neglect the fact that many of his policies are hugely popular among voters from across the political spectrum (perhaps that’s why Smith has mimicked them), and his anti-establishment sentiment might be the most widely shared feeling around Britain today
let us ignore the fact that his leadership has attracted nearly as many new members as there were in total at the height of Tony Blair’s popularity
let us pretend that we didn’t know he has remained a member of the Labour Party for 33 years, under a string of leaders of which he didn’t approve, voicing his disagreements only when it was his turn to speak from the backbench, all the while never resorting to PR smears and PMQs jeers
let us also delude ourselves, that somehow — if the Party splits (i.e. if the right-wing splits the Party) — it will be his fault for not handing back the reigns against the democratic will of the membership
let us disregard the incontrovertible evidence that the brush of anti-semitism he continues to be tarred with is a sinister smear, and that the culture of abuse he is said to have fostered is unsubstantiated slander (claimed by the very same people who have treated Corbyn and his supporters with contempt from the get-go, sullying them with vile and unjustified labels)
let us turn a blind eye to the mounting evidence that mainstream media has deployed a consistent bias against Corbyn, recently prompting nine academics to demand a meeting with James Harding, director of BBC News
let us refuse to believe that plans to topple Corbyn have been documented as early as last November, that the cynically engineered (but failed) coup was manufactured by a PR company with strong links to Blair’s government, and that the impending release of the Chilcot Report was an obvious motivating factor
let us overlook the polling data, which clearly shows Labour having pulled neck and neck with the Tories until the anti-semitism smear boiled over with the suspensions of Naz Shah and Ken Livingstone (April 27th and 28th); and then doing so again until the wave of resignations and ‘no confidence’ vote which followed the EU referendum result
let us cower in belief that he is a threat to our national security, because he has this wacky idea that peace can only come about through dialogue and understanding, and that constantly pumping mountains of money into nuclear weapons upgrades might make it hard to convince others that we’re serious about disarmament
and let us profess that Brexit was all Corbyn’s fault (despite the fact his early leadership rival Eagle said: “Jeremy is up and down the country, pursuing an agenda that would make a 25-year-old tired”), whilst disregarding the fact that — given more than half of voters voted to Leave — constantly bemoaning the referendum result and exploring ways to undermine it (rather than proposing progressive terms of exit) might not be the best way of building electability (especially given the fact that the working class — Labour’s traditional voter base — overwhelmingly voted to Leave)
yes, let’s do all of the above
let’s vote for anyone but Corbyn
