What blame falls to Crobbins?

[Mobbd]

James O'Brien has a book out. It's called How They Broke Britain and it profiles the ten most visible scumbags who brought about the current post-Apocalypse reality in the UK. Each scumbag has a chapter: Farage, Cummings, Cameron, Truss, Dacre... Corbyn.

I'm a Corbynite but I think and hope I can think objectively about that period. Corbyn's not beyond criticism but I see the destruction of his career (not his presence or actions) as part of the problem. He didn't campaign hard enough for Remain but (a) we didn't elect him as Labour leader to do that and (b) he did campaign. Even if you think his attitude to Brexit wasn't helpful, his role in Britain's decline (if there was one) can hardly be said to be equal to that of Cameron and Farage and Paul Dacre. The chapter should be devoted to Starmer and the other cunts of Labour's right wing who shot him down.

Is this just typical Centrist "balance" I'm seeing? Am I right or wrong to be pissed off by this?

The Guardian review says "All 10 [i.e. including Corbyn] more than deserve his ire, and ours" but also goes on to say that "some liberal-left men haven't abdicated all responsibility for asking questions about it, particularly as it pertains to women's rights" [i.e. yay terfs] so y'know. Guardian and O'Brien are probably just cunts, right? Am I right? Or am I up my own echo chamber?

[Wonderful Butternut]

I think the Guardian and O'Brien are just cunts, tbh.

[buttgammon]

I think the Guardian and O'Brien are just cunts, tbh.

Agreed.

The Guardian review says "All 10 [i.e. including Corbyn] more than deserve his ire, and ours" but also goes on to say that "some liberal-left men haven't abdicated all responsibility for asking questions about it, particularly as it pertains to women's rights" [i.e. yay terfs] so y'know. Guardian and O'Brien are probably just cunts, right? Am I right? Or am I up my own echo chamber?

The reviewer is a terf as Barry has identified in a previous thread, so your scepticism is entirely justified.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

In hindsight it's mental how little the impending EU ref was talked about in that leadership election, maybe was complacency, maybe was awkwardness, maybe was the fact it was a Tory thing for Tories to go on about compared to actually important stuff?

I deffo think the Labour leadership at the time has culpability but anyone making the case it was Jibby Cribbles' fault specifically has to explain why Yvette Cooper or Andy Burnham (both with seats that eventually voted Leave, and both as leader would have been facing the exact same problems in the Labour vote being split) would have been full throated pro-EU voices if they'd happened to be leader. Given they weren't in the real events that actually happened, for very good political reasons, stands to reason they wouldn't have been.

Sometimes things are just structural and Labour being absolutely cut down the middle by the EU was an issue the people who decided to have the referendum should have considered before assuming the party could just deliver them the votes they needed. The cunts.

The reviewer is a terf as Barry has identified in a previous thread, so your scepticism is entirely justified.

Yes that Terf turn right at the end slapped me in the face a bit. Unexpected! But that's the world these people live in, everything is about their obsession in the end.

[Sebastian Cobb]

He was a fool to try and work with and appease people in the party who were publicly wrecking. He should've put them all on a boat and sank it, frankly.

[greenman]

He was a fool to try and work with and appease people in the party who were publicly wrecking. He should've put them all on a boat and sank it, frankly.

Pretty much, he should probably have pushed though mandatory reselection which would have been a shift towards greater democratic accountability.

He should also have been vastly more critical of people like O'Brien, The Guardian and the BBC, faux progressives who shat on everything they ever claimed to believe in to benefit their careers.

[Bernice]

Put some more respect on O'Brien's names you shiftless fuckwits. The man literally wrote the book on being correct.

[Buelligan]

We'll never know if Corbyn could've changed things, maybe saved us, because that little dream was torpedoed, thoroughly torpedoed.  Amongst that flotilla of smarmy big-house-London-dinner-party cunts doing it were O'Brien and the fucking Guardian.

In many ways, I had as much to lose as many over the EU thing.  Throughout it, I felt that Brexit was a price well worth paying (if a price had to be paid) for the chance of a Corbyn-led government for the UK.  I thought, if he got the chance to show the UK, show the world, what a socialist PM could do with Britain, it really might change the world substantially for the better.  Most things are worth that.

You only have to look at the current situation in Gaza and consider what that might've looked like if Corbyn was calling the UK's shots, being a voice of sanity, to understand.

But what was needed for that to happen was solidarity.  And the parliamentary Labour Party does not have that.  Individualism, careerism, capitalism is what runs the Party, it runs Starmer, O'Brien and the cunts at the Guardian, even von der Leyen.  And they will fuck you all if it's convenient.

As far as blame goes, I blame us for letting them do it.  No one could've pushed that rock up the hill more times than Corbyn did.  We helped those cunts to fuck us and now we have to live with it.

[Z-Model Ford]

I don't think Corbyn made a particularly spectacular fist of the referendum campaign, but I also think the idea that if only the Very Online Left or the ravening hordes of Trotskyite entryists or whoever's getting the blame for voting him in as the leader this week had simply shut up, listened to their betters, and voted for Kendall or Cooper (Burnham doesn't seem to get much love from the centre or the right these days) then things would have turned out differently is largely a delusion.

Not long after the result came in, the BBC put up an online map which let you check how various parts of the U.K. had voted. With the exception of the part of London where I live now, every part of the U.K. I've ever called home went for Leave. And when I think of those places, and think of what kind of arguments might have turned the result the other way, most of the people who became prominent in the various pro-EU campaign groups are also the last people I'd want making the case.

[Mr Vegetables]

I genuinely thought this was going to be about Bernard Cribbins and thought "but who'd blame him for anything"

[Pink Gregory]

I genuinely thought this was going to be about Bernard Cribbins and thought "but who'd blame him for anything"

the bloke in the bowler hat who was buried alive

[Mr Vegetables]

the bloke in the bowler hat who was buried alive

Would have to have strong lungs

[Pink Gregory]

Would have to have strong lungs

it didn't come up in the song, but one must never assume

[idunnosomename]

Absolutely everything

[lauraxsynthesis]

O'Brian and the Guardian can fuck off. The whole idea that Corbyn, or even the Labour Party are to blame for Brexit is preposterous and always was. Many Liberal Centrists have fuck all critical faculties though and believed the lies of the Chicken Coup participants and Guardian writers.

What I do blame Corbs for is knowing what evil ratfuckers the Labour Right are and not ratfucking them out of the party when he might have had the chance. Of course he's nice and a democrat so that was never going to happen. What's needed is a Labour Left who are absolute bastards willing to use the same Stalinist tactics that Keith and the cunts have always used to take and extend their power.

[Red82]

I concur with others. Jeremy was just too nice. But it's not just him.  The rest of the Labour Left are similar.  The only person who might have driven the right out of the party is Galloway.

[shoulders]

Pretty much, he should probably have pushed though mandatory reselection which would have been a shift towards greater democratic accountability.

This is probably the biggest Corbyn failing. Particularly after 2017 election when there was the political capital to justify that, instead they sidelined that after some limited experimentation.

But that was a headline policy of his leadership run and objectively can't be criticised. Every MP should be subject not only to their constituents but their party.

A Labour Party with 100+ left leaning MPs would have been much more careful to scrutinize Keith's background and his diarrhoea of lies and much more able to coherently put its platform across.

Instead with power tantalisingly close that always felt like a subplot when in fact it was critical to being able to do anything with any authority.

You can see how lethal this policy was by the vicious reaction from those threatened.

[shoulders]

James O'Brien is a cunt getting high off his own farts and the people who enjoy his content are the Remainers who think they're much more clever even when they're just armchair spectators trapped in the media's own invention.

[Buelligan]

What I do blame Corbs for is knowing what evil ratfuckers the Labour Right are and not ratfucking them out of the party when he might have had the chance. Of course he's nice and a democrat so that was never going to happen. What's needed is a Labour Left who are absolute bastards willing to use the same Stalinist tactics that Keith and the cunts have always used to take and extend their power.

I concur with others. Jeremy was just too nice. But it's not just him.  The rest of the Labour Left are similar.  The only person who might have driven the right out of the party is Galloway.

Emotionally, of course I agree.  In the noggin, NO, not at all.  If you use Stalinist tactics to get what you want, what you want is Stalinism.

If Corbyn had been the cunt Starmer is, sure, we'd still have Corbyn.  But he would be Starmer.  No one wants that.  The whole point is, we've seen where that takes us, we reject it.  We want something much better.

And that's where solidarity comes in.  In order for good to triumph, weak people must stand up and be counted.  All of us.

It ain't on Corbyn, it's on us.

[J Peasemould Gruntfuttock]

As far as blame goes, I blame us for letting them do it.  No one could've pushed that rock up the hill more times than Corbyn did.  We helped those cunts to fuck us and now we have to live with it.

I think you're right. Trashy, biased media have turned much of the UK electorate into people who just can't be bothered to acquire the sort of political awareness that will protect them from being screwed.

[Buelligan]

It's true, old bean.  We have, some of us have, the time to find out about all this shit and we still expect someone else to do the hard yards.  We want to sit on our arses and get utopia spoon-fed.

There are enough vested interests making damn sure that's never happening.  What we already have is being busily chipped away.  Madness to let it happen but we are driven mad, I think. 

[Red82]

Emotionally, of course I agree.  In the noggin, NO, not at all.  If you use Stalinist tactics to get what you want, what you want is Stalinism.

If Corbyn had been the cunt Starmer is, sure, we'd still have Corbyn.  But he would be Starmer.  No one wants that.  The whole point is, we've seen where that takes us, we reject it.  We want something much better.

And that's where solidarity comes in.  In order for good to triumph, weak people must stand up and be counted.  All of us.

It ain't on Corbyn, it's on us.

I don't think getting rid of the right wing of the Labour Party is being a cunt.  I think it's a reasonable and necessary step Mr Corbyn could have taken. 

[shoulders]

Recognise squatters for what they are. Labour should be accommodating those shy of communists and those shy of third way neolibs and everyone in between should thrash it out to what extent they go so long as everyone knows their enemy.

But there is a liberal party, there has been for a long time, and the people associated with liberal social values and conservative, patrician, pro-corporate, pro-business alliances should join that.

Those of us willing to give and take if things get better at some speed should be allowed representation in the party people like us created.

[Buelligan]

I don't think getting rid of the right wing of the Labour Party is being a cunt.  I think it's a reasonable and necessary step Mr Corbyn could have taken. 

You don't build solidarity, you don't build community by destroying those things.  It was up to all of us to unite in solidarity behind Corbyn and make destruction irrelevant but a lot of us sat back.  A lot of us stayed quiet.  A lot of us were motivated by our own ignorance and complacency.  Even when we saw what was happening.  We were the cunts.

I repeat, if Corbyn behaved like Starmer or Stalin against one group, what would stop him doing that against us?  We loved him because he was better than that.  That was the point.

[Shaxberd]

Who's "us"? CaB? Labour party members? The entire British public?


Personally, I think blaming things on Corbyn is too individualist a way of looking at things. Any left wing candidate would have been treated the same. (Christ, remember when they called Ed Miliband a dangerous red?)

The particular circumstances made it extra challenging. Brexit laid waste to the Tory party, after all, and was something any socialist candidate would have struggled with. I think he would have had a better chance if it'd never happened.

And if Corbyn had got into government, what then? The downfall of Truss, while hilarious, shows how quickly the real sources of power can move to oust a leader they consider a threat. I think he would have faced severe difficulties getting any of his policies through.

Frankly, the whole thing made me feel like parliamentary democracy is just a sideshow. You can choose from two highly similar flavours of pre-approved slop because that is what the hands that pull the levers allow.

[Buelligan]

Who's "us"? CaB? Labour party members? The entire British public?

Everyone who saw it happen.  I'm not in the UK and I feel I should have done more.  Been stronger.

[Wonderful Butternut]

At the risk of sounding like I think Corbyn would've single-handedly solved all the world's ills, maybe it was naive in some way for people to ever believe he'd be allowed succeed in this day and age.

No matter how well he'd handled Brexit, or if he'd fucked out the Starmerites, or whatever, the UK mainstream media (God, how I hate that phrase, makes me feel like a Trumpist) still would've massively stacked the deck against him because the media are owned by large corporations and large corporations ultimately, sub consciously or consciously, will act in their own interests and the interests of their friends, which are served by Tories and Right-wing Labour, not by Corbyn. The fact that they've been sticking mics in front of him since Palestine kicked off in the hope he'll say something that can be construed as antisemitic just to make sure he's absolutely destroyed politically is proof enough of that for me. It's not enough that he's no longer the Labour leader and can't ever be PM, he has to be hounded out of public life entirely.

JOB's just being a further extension of it here. Can't exclusively blame Cameron for having no backbone, and Boris, Truss & Co for actively attempting to run the country into the ground to make their backers happy. Gotta tag in Corbyn too.

Let's not forget that people openly laughed at Boris Johnson when he said "don't you trust me?" on Question Time or whatever programme it was, and on another occasion he hid in a walk-in freezer rather face questions. But more people still voted for him cos "Corbyn is a massive IRA supporting Commie" or whatever, and he lost 2 million votes in 2019 vs. 2017.

[phantom_power]

Everyone on the right/centre thinks the left is obsessed with Corbyn when really it was just his ideas and ideals that we liked. And he was the only one espousing them. Whether he was a good leader or not was sort of irrelevant as there was no-one near him in terms of even the not massively left-wing policies he was putting forward, and we can see now how much he was holding back the tide with the lurch to the right now.

I think we, and probably Corbyn, would have been happy if a "more electable" left-wing Labour MP had come forward to try and lead the party but they didn't really exist, and even if they had they would have been shafted by the media and the Labour right as much as Corbyn but for possibly different things

Ultimately as has been said his failing was being too nice, but as Alexei Sayle has said, the Labour left are generally nice and the Labour right are some of the biggest cunts around, and unfortunately in politics the cunts win as there is nothing they won't sink to in order to win

The people to blame for the country being fucked are really none of the people mentioned in the book but the people pulling the strings. The people that masterminded Brexit, got Boris and co. into power, shafted Corbyn in the press, promoted Starmer and led the culture war to distract from them deliberately and accidentally fucking up the economy, the NHS, and everything else they touch. O'Brien would never say that though as he is part of the machine

[Red82]

You don't build solidarity, you don't build community by destroying those things.

Indeed.

[kitsofan34]

It still absolutely puzzles me that Corbyn and his team did not anticipate any subterfuge from the state and its media arm, during Corbyn's time as leader of the opposition.

His director of communications, Seamus Milne, literally wrote a book, the book, on the attack on the miner's strike from those very same groups, then sat back and watched as it happened to himself in real time. It's very confusing.