I'm what some people might describe as a fairly typical "Corbynista".
I certainly don't speak for all Corbyn supporters - not least because like any large group, we have among us a very wide range of views & backgrounds.
Time to put a few myths to bed...
Q How do you feel about being called a #Corbynista?
A Many people use the term 'Corbynista' as a pejorative, in order to scapegoat, demonize or negatively stereotype a large group of diverse people they tend to disagree with - but some Corbyn supporters embrace the term.
Q Aren't you part of an extremist Cult?
A LOL! All Corbyn supporters recognise & accept that Corbyn (like everyone else) has made mistakes. In fact, we often disagree about & debate exactly what they were, but the policies we support are popular, & normal across much of Europe.
Q Aren't Corbynistas obsessed with ideological purity?
A No. As with anyone involved in politics, some Corbyn supporters are more or less willing than others to compromise, & we all know that while it's very important to be principled, sometimes realpolitik overrides ideology.
Q Don't Corbynistas believe antisemitism in @UKLabour is all a 'smear'?
A A tiny minority might think this. While 99% of us accept it IS a real problem, which must be eliminated, there's no doubt whatsoever that occasionally its scale has been exaggerated for political purposes.
Q Do Corbynistas hate "centrists"?
A Some do, some don't! Imho, much of the animosity & distrust comes from the belief that some "centrist" @UKLabour MPs are more ideologically aligned with "moderate" Conservatives than with traditional Labour or socialist policies & values.
Q Why do Corbynistas demonize centrist @UKLabour MPs?
A SOME do. Corbynistas hate "free-market" ideology (embraced by some centrists) & many of us believe we'd be three years into a transformative @UKLabour Govt had some centrists not persistently attacked & undermined Corbyn.
Q Why do Corbynistas hate Blair/Starmer?
A Some do, some don't. Many Corbynistas voted for both Blair & Starmer. Keir promised unity, but we're disappointed in this aspect of his leadership. New Labour did some great things, but Iraq & its embrace of neoliberalism disappointed.
Q Surely any Labour Govt is preferable to any Tory Govt?
A Most of us agree. However, many of us fear that reverting back to the failed pre-Corbyn strategy of 'Tory-Lite' will alienate many @UKLabour members, is not a wise strategy, & it will result in failure. Baby, bathwater.
Q So why don't you stop moaning & get behind Starmer?
A Labour must be a democratic Party. Some of us praise Starmer when he deserves it (eg commitment to cancelling student debt) & express displeasure when we think he doesn't (eg SpyCops). Disagreement is normal in politics!
Q if you're so bloody reasonable, why do so many people in @UKLabour hate you?
We're a broad range of people, with diverse backgrounds & opinions, but given our antiquated electoral system, only one of two parties can form a Govt, so many very left-wing people choose Labour.
Q So what is a Corbynista?
A Depends who you ask! Language is malleable, & meaning is always context-dependent. But if I were to try & define it, I'd say it's simply someone who was inspired by Corbyn's values & the policies he introduced. We know he wasn't perfect - nobody is.
Q So why are so many Corbynistas so rude?
A Quite often, people who feel very passionately about the disgusting way already vulnerable people are treated by the Govt & the press, & who are angry about grotesque wealth inequality, let their tempers get the better of them. I do.
Like I say, I don't speak for all Corbynistas - that would be ridiculous. I feel angry about the direction our country is going in, & I feel anger toward the Govt. I try to be civil on Twitter, but sometimes I fail - we're all stressed, & we're all human.
It's fine to disagree.
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Just two opinion polling companies have put Reform UK on 20% or more: People Polling (owned by Legatum Snr Fellow Matt Goodwin) & Whitestone Insight (CEO Andrew Hawkins).
The links to Reform UK, the Evangelical Christian Right & fossil fuel interests are concerning.
On 18 June, a poll commissioned by GB "News" (co-owned by Legatum), conducted by Snr Fellow at Legatum Matt Goodwin, put Reform on 24%
The average of all polls since is just 16%.
Only two other outlier polls have put Reform on 20% or more - both conducted by Whitestone Insight.
Before revealing the connections between the two outlier polls & Reform UK & fossil fuel interests, some important context.
In 1997, all the polls correctly predicted Blair’s landslide. That most polls significantly overstated the size of his victory passed virtually unnoticed.
Nowhere in the world have private equity firms found a more welcoming playground than in the UK: the volumes of buyouts have over the past two decades weighed more in the overall economy than in any other advanced market, including the US.
Private equity firms have snapped up high street names from grocers Asda and Morrisons to sandwich chain Pret A Manger, and invested in sectors ranging from insurance to nursing homes and infrastructure.
Now their record, and relatively lower taxation, are once again coming under heightened scrutiny ahead of the election. Labour wants to increase taxes on the performance fees that fund managers receive from asset sales, so these 'dealmakers' may be tempted to relocate elsewhere.
Why did they hold a joint event with barking Clare Fox's Battle of Ideas on “Indoctrination in Education” with barking Frank Furedi of Spiked Online as a speaker?
Britain is NOT America. Not yet.
The term 'Judeo-Christian' became widely used in the US during the Cold War to suggest a unified American identity opposed to communism.
The “Judeo-Christian tradition” was a political invention: an ecumenical marketing meme for combating godless commies.
The term 'Judeo-Christian' is now widely & misleadingly mobilised by the far-right to divide people, mainly by demonising 'Others' (especially Muslims).
"My beliefs are based on a Judeo-Christian worldview that’s thousands of years old" - Miriam Cates.
Danny, a leading expert on housing, health, employment, education & poverty, has published with colleagues more than a dozen books on issues related to UK social inequalities, & several hundred journal papers - which is probably why he's so rarely on TV.
Middle England has been hit hard by the #costoflivingcrisis. Even people doing comparatively well are struggling.
Across Britain, opportunity has been replaced by food banks. Pre-COVID, life expectancy dropped as a result of poverty for the first time since the 1930s.
The hateful anonymous @X account @benonwine constantly tweets out divisive, inflammatory far-right pro-Farage tweets.
Because it's impossible to find out who is behind the grotesque account, we cannot know who, or what, is behind it. It's the same for @UKUpdates_co_uk.
Now that all the main parties have published their manifestos, rather than actually read them, the overwhelming majority of voters will rely on (almost invariably partisan) third-party accounts to summarise and/or interpret them.
But how accurate & reliable is their analysis?
In 2019, in 'The explosion of the public sphere', Dr Martin Moore (Centre for the Study of Media Communication & Power at Kings College) & Dr Gordon Ramsay (University of Westminster) outlined recent developments in our insufficiently regulated UK media.
A research paper from the University of Greenwich, 'The case for a progressive annual #WealthTax in the UK' (updated 12th June 2024), analyses the revenue potential of a progressive annual net wealth tax on the top 1% in the UK...
A progressive net wealth tax is a tax on the stock of net wealth (assets minus liabilities), that is designed to raise revenues primarily from only the very wealthiest individuals, primarily to fund public & other essential services, which benefit *everyone*.
#TaxTheRich
The authors present a baseline progressive net wealth tax that only taxes the top 1% wealthiest individuals. Individuals with net wealth above £2.2M (the top 1%) are taxed at a marginal rate of 1%; above £3.6M (the top 0.5%) at 2%, & above £11.2M (the top 0.1%) at 4%.
#TaxTheRich