In my circle of friends I've seen that the spectre of Nu-Labour, the very centrist version of Labour (often referred to as Diet-Tory) was responsible for the Iraq war. I know people that would rather back a Corbyn and his Old-School Labour, even if that means that Labour is less electable, as long as it means that their principles are intact.
Not saying I agree with that at all but thats what I see in a large circle of leftist, northern middle-age/class people.
Indeed. It's complicated; people are finally, after Chilcot, willing to cut off everyone who supported the Iraq war. It's a symbol of a particular kind of bad moral compromise. Unfortunately, it's compromise that won Blair his elections; he offered a middle-class, British-nationalist (remember Cool Brittania?) business-friendly Labour party. Which worked brilliantly until Iraq.
Corbyn is a disaster and has no new ideas - he's not even a reliable Brexitsceptic. His only advantage is being free of the taint of Blairite compromise. But who else is there? Possibly Tom Watson. Someone really needs to come up with a good answer to the question "what is the point of the Labour party?" other than "not being the Tory party".
(Don't blame me, I'm voting SNP, who give exactly the kind of reliable centrist technocracy that's extremely popular with actual voters.)
> It's complicated; people are finally, after Chilcot, willing to cut off everyone who supported the Iraq war.
This is not true at all, at least for anyone who counts when there isn't going to be a vote. The media and the entire consultocracy have rallied around the Blair generation even harder, and still have the bizarre fantasy that a David Miliband could ride in and save Labour. It's the same fantasist thinking that thought Clinton was a shoo-in and Brexit could never happen. Labour has no future as a moderate Tory party because the Tory party is currently a moderate Tory party. Labour already has no future in Scotland, and should ally with the SNP; that the Blairites can't see that Labour's last election in Scotland was lost because Dugdale was outperformed on every level by both Sturgeon and Davidson shows that they're living in a fantasy world.
Centrist Labour have openly declared scorched-earth war on the left of the party, and out of some misplaced sense of civility or ideal of compromise in governance, Corbyn won't do the same. He needs to use the power while he has it, and if the attempt is a failure, clear out and allow the centrists to do their unstained-Tory-governement-in-waiting thing until the next financial crash.
Corbyn's ideas are fine; from my (absurdly distant) perspective, what the Labour party needs are old ideas, not new ones. The bulk of the PLP seem to think that their only job is to listen to Tory proposals for cuts, counter-propose the same cuts, but only 2/3rds of them, scream that the Tories are heartless over and over again, and then abstain on the final vote. Corbyn is the only one offering any proposals that aren't slightly modified Tory ones. The problem is that Britain has one of the worst media environments in the Anglosphere outside of Australia, precisely zero mainstream outlets can manage to quote an entire sentence from him verbatim, and think that Bill Clinton telling lobbyists that he's a shabby "maddest person in the room" is an important news story. There shouldn't be secret PLP enemies lists to be "discovered." He should have proxies that are reading these lists to every outlet that will listen, every day.
No voters are looking for centrist technocrats other than the highly-paid professional service workers who the centrist technocrats are drawn from. Voters are looking for change from the neoliberal consensus. Labour and The Conservatives are completely weak, and in total disarray. Wait until your own racist reality tv-show host shows up, with a fistful of protectionism and an explicit platform to completely reverse austerity, steeped in racism and a hint of social conservatism. Britain is gagging for it - Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson - is Lord Sugar available?
Sorry about the babbling, but it just annoys me that people don't see that it's the left being marginalized by the media, not Corbyn in particular. Anyone who came from the left would have their mannerisms ruthlessly battered by the British press, and content-free constant accusations of "unelectability" and "uselessness." Eventually, a demagogue will come who will completely dominate the press through naked aggression, evocations of a better, purer time in the past, and, likely enough, an large ownership stake in the media itself. Then, we'll learn the lesson yet again that we should have learned from Western dabbling in the Middle East: once you've helped an oligarchy to eliminate all of the tolerant, secular opposition in a country, all you have left are the maniacs.
Again, sorry. The idea of ranting like this to a SNP voter is silly:) Just needed to get it out.
edit: There was 50x the coverage of a later retracted non-story about whether Corbyn could get a seat on a train than Chilcot, which had come and gone in maybe two weeks (after all of the wait.) Colin Powell was pretty happy about the priorities of the British media. Why would you relitigate some old pointless war anyway?
Not saying I agree with that at all but thats what I see in a large circle of leftist, northern middle-age/class people.