Its time that people in the Labour movement woke up to how dangerous Owen Jones is – dangerous because he wants a swift return Labour failures of the past – dangerous because he bats for the status quo while pretending not to – dangerous because he has a platform in the corporate media.
Given all the exciting changes happening on the UK political landscape, his articles miraculously remain comfortably within the electric fence of permissible views that right-wing politicians and media outlets enforce.
He oft appears at left wing rallies as a bizarre ‘celebrity’ pundit and he clearly values his ‘activist’ status. The trouble is, his value for the media types that pay his wages depends on his ability to pour scorn on genuine socialist agitation from inside the movements he lambasts.
Owen’s need for influence both within activist circles and the establishment media necessitates some egregious lip service to socialist principles, but his articles always end up with him supporting the establishment’s views.
Owen can’t seem to separate what ingratiates himself to people he views as important (hacks in the corporate media and politicians), what facilities his career and what the truth is. While some playing this shell game retain some awareness of what they are doing, I think Owen genuinely believes that we need his specious pronouncements like a needy child needs a good parent.
Owen has boundless self belief and drips with the sincerity of an embattled victim and a heroic crusader. As we learnt from Tony Blair, the ability to get people to like you (Owen makes much of his huge social media following) twinned with winsome eyes of victimhood and a quick tongue are no substitutes for actual principles. Owen Jones is exactly the kind of person who turns into a Tony Blair, someone who has done such a headfuck on himself that he believes his own headlines.
Lets examine two recent sermons that define his art.
In perfect harmony with The Guardian (and the rest of the corporate media) we observe his brand of pragmatic collusion while endorsing Hilary Clinton.
His readers are invited to notice that Hilary Clinton isn’t Donald Trump. No matter how venal, deceitful and downright dangerous Hilary Clinton is, she isn’t Donald Trump and therefore we should endorse her at the ballot box. As this off-guardian article explains acidly:
The likes of Jones are paid to surrender their dignity and ethics and pretend this macabre farce is something called “democracy”, and to sell the decaying relics offered up for candidacy as if they were real choices. That doesn’t mean we have to pretend to believe them. If I were a US citizen I’d take the only truly free choice left and decline to play this game of fake reality any longer. And if we all did that, the game would be over, wouldn’t it.
Owen Jones is the bully of pragmatism – he talks the talk:
the Sanders phenomenon is a beacon – and proof that political change can be achieved, however gruelling and difficult it often is.
but when push comes to shove…
Yes, his most zealous supporters refuse to distinguish between Clinton and Donald Trump. There is nothing radical about failing to take a stand on a far-right racist demagogue sweeping to power in what remains the world’s most powerful nation.
Those sane people who refuse to endorse a racist lunatic like Trump OR a neocon shill like Clinton are thus placed into a box marked “silly people” and invited to swallow the laughable idea that a Clinton administration will give a hoot about left wing sensibilities once elected. Even for Owen Jones this paragraph is utterly ridiculous and deceitful:
The task ahead is to ensure Trump’s defeat – as decisively as possible – and Democratic control of both Houses of Congress, and then to build pressure from below to enact progressive legislation.
Owen knows as well as we do, that a Clinton administration elected with a broad base of support will feel emboldened – nay entitled to do whatever it wants with the mandate given to it – and Hilary’s corporate sponsors will want (and get) their money’s worth.
Owen never stands for anything which might mean a genuine struggle to change the political landscape – we must merely adapt as he does. His message is crystal clear – accept the options that are provided and vote for the least worst, this apparently representing some kind of noble enlightened sacrifice. Poor Owen bleeds about Hilary and Bernie:
I desperately wanted Sanders to become President, not just for the United States, but in the interests of the world as a whole.
Owen always weeps with sorrow about not getting what he really believes in before inviting you to support its antithesis – in this case Clinton.
I regard her, yes, as a pro-war establishment corporate politician, much like those who have dominated US politics for a long time.
and he further fluffs his left wing feathers thus:
A Clinton administration will fail to deal with the monstrous inequalities and injustice which define US society, the inequalities and injustices which partly led to the rise of Trump in the first place.
But Owen supports that status quo – vote for her anyway because we have no alternative. That is always his message – give up any hope of getting out of the mesh – support the corporate friendly options provided.
Media Lens said this about him in a 2014 Media Alert:
In truth, Jones is part of an Oxbridge, Guardian/Observer/Independent/New Statesman/BBC niche on the ‘liberal-left’ of the Establishment. It is acceptable because it indeed does not offer the kind of radical perspectives needed to question the very foundations of the status quo.
In a review of Jones’s book in the Independent, Archie Bland – former Independent foreign, Saturday and deputy editor, now senior writer – asked ‘whether Jones himself, a prominent, well-connected figure who knows powerful people on first-name terms, counts as part of the Establishment, or an establishment, anyway…’
His latest missive is horribly misjudged and we at The Haze have hope that this may yet see him displaced from his season ticket atop left wing platforms.
Flowing from a clickbait headline that would feel at home in The Sun or The Telegraph:
“Questions all Jeremy Corbyn supporters must answer”
Owen goes on to recycle every attack line used to berate Corbyn and his supporters – including the oft repeated insinuation that (like Bernie Sander’s supporters who won’t get with the program and vote for Hilary Clinton) we are all stupid and don’t know what is best for us.
He opens the article defending a deserving cause – Owen Jones.
Labour and the left teeter on the brink of disaster. There, I said it. I’ll explain why. But first, it has become increasingly common in politics to reduce disagreements to bad faith.
In other words ,we are not allowed to question his motives, how he earns a living and the role he plays on the political landscape – if we do, he raises the straw man argument that he has to be wholly uncritical of Corbyn or be labelled a traitor.
There are some who expect me to mount an uncritical defence of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and leave it at that, suppressing any fears that I have…my failure to do so has led to a number of charges being levelled against me.
Let us be clear – I might have some criticisms of Corbyn, nobody is forcing me to censor them and nobody is forcing Owen – he plays the victim card to try and occupy a moral and intellectual high ground that we are invited to accept without question. Thus he draws attention away from his establishment supporting views and puts the onus of justification on to his critics – a sly trick.
He shores up credentials as a sacred scribe for the left by name dropping all the political people he has access to via the well trodden path of University College, Oxford and a job at Westminster.
I was at the first Corbyn campaign meeting, and the last campaign meeting, too. I not only spoke at Jeremy Corbyn leadership rallies: I introduced him at the final one. I helped choose the name for Momentum. This isn’t a milieu that I know well: it’s a milieu I’m part of.
But as this article on the World Socialist site notes:
Jones was prepared to bask in Corbyn’s reflected glory so long as this served his own ends. But his support was always conditional on the movement that has developed around Corbyn not jeopardising the status quo by leading to a genuine, socialist opposition
Indeed Jones admitted he wanted to replace Corbyn right from the outset:
A confession. There was a plan that, along with others, I subscribed to. The general election was scheduled to take place in 2020; two years or so before, a younger left-wing member of the new intake would take Jeremy Corbyn’s place.
So this guy was sharing a platform at rallies with a man he was already conspiring to undermine? At what stage during Corbyn’s campaign for leadership did he decide to jump ship – or was he ever truly on it? Why do people trust a man like this? How does he get away with it?
Once he has paid enough attention to singing the opening hymns “how great I art” and “how I suffer to lecture thee” he returns to the main theme of his sermon – why supporters of Corbyn need to listen to his string of criticisms.
He offers nine questions we all MUST answer
- How can the disastrous polling be turned around?
- Where is the clear vision?
- How are the policies significantly different from the last general election?
- What’s the media strategy?
- What’s the strategy to win over the over-44s?
- What’s the strategy to win over Scotland?
- What’s the strategy to win over Conservative voters?
- How would we deal with people’s concerns about immigration?
- How can Labour’s mass membership be mobilised?
.
Except Owen doesn’t actually address these as questions – more launch points for cherry picking data which suits his attacks on Corbyn. Sound familiar – yeah you’ve been reading this guff in the media 24/7 for months on end.
The questions are legitimate of course – but they are questions which any political party and leader have to ask all the time. Owen offers no solutions whatsoever to any of them except wistfully hoping that his mate Clive Lewis might take over.
It begs the question, why does a man continue to contribute to what has become a self fulfilling prophecy – a point made (ironically) by his mate Clive Lewis – why does he not work to fix the problem of the ‘Corbyn is unelectable’ smears from within? Instead he contributes to them and gives new attack angles for Corbyn’s corporate opponents.
“When elements of your own party are saying that and you’ve got pretty much the establishment media, including the so-called liberal wing of that media saying that, it does become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
The one solution Owen never contemplates is the only one that will work for any leader of a genuinely left wing party anywhere – namely that we unite and try and win the arguments in favour of socialism and cooperation. Why is that never mentioned?
What Owen invites Labour to do is to abandon trying to make the argument and instead find a ‘media strategy’ and ways to dupe tory voters. Sound familiar? Its the same empty strategy that cost Labour two elections and its soul. There is no way the corporate media in this country will be tricked into supporting left wing politics. Owen lives in a dream world where he can manipulate elections as easily as he has inserted himself inside the Westminster / media bubble.
Jones couches his rhetoric carefully – he never mentions courting the ‘centre ground’ of British politics (that would upset his chums at Momentum) but invites his readers to embrace that themselves with his hand wringing despair about Corbyn. But as George Monbiot stated when he wrote before the last leadership election:
Jeremy Corbyn is the only candidate who can revive the Labour Party. It’s the others who are chasing an impossible dream.
and tellingly
In fact, in this contest of improbabilities, Corbyn might stand the better chance. Only a disruptive political movement, that can ignite, mesmerise and mobilise, that can raise an army of volunteers, as the SNP did in Scotland, could smash the political concrete.
To imagine that Labour could overcome such odds by becoming bland, blurred and craven is to succumb to thinking that is simultaneously magical and despairing. Such dreamers argue that Labour has to recapture the middle ground. But there is no such place; no fixed political geography. The middle ground is a magic mountain that retreats as you approach. The more you chase it from the left, the further to the right it moves.
What Owen Jones doesn’t say is as illuminating as what he does say.
Who does Owen suggest we vote for in the leadership election? Owen won’t say. Why not? Labour members must choose between Smith and Corbyn – that is the reality. Clearly he won’t endorse Corbyn but he won’t endorse Smith either. What does the bully of pragmatism say about that?
He hasn’t breathed a single word of criticism for the sewage spewed out by his employers The Guardian against Corbyn every day – ‘coverage’ which has included blatant lies and endless distortions.
Why do all the generic questions Owen insists Corbyn supporters MUST answer – not apply to supporters of Owen Smith?
Smith’s campaign has been nothing short of an utter embarrassment – inventing new meaningless phrases like ‘Labourism’ and holding empty rallies in front of ice cream vans and bored looking teenagers holding placards. What answers does Owen Smith have? Jones never asks those questions – why not?
Why was he not predicting an impending calamity for Labour when it had a nicely suited, on message and ‘credible’ neoliberal robot in Ed Milliband at the last election? Why is it suddenly facing a calamity now, just when the party has revived the political hopes and engagement of millions of people?
Why is the onus on Corbyn to repair (instantly) the decades of dreadful damage done to Labour by Blair and Brown – especially in Scotland? Why are there no questions for the PLP and the plotters within the Labour movement who have worked tirelessly to subvert Labour in the public’s mind since Corbyn’s election?
Why can Owen not see, as the overwhelming majority of the public can, that the right wing rump of sitting Labour MP’s would rather destroy the Labour Party before accepting the democratic wishes of its own membership?
Why does all the onus for clarity and compromise rest with Corbyn and his supporters – what clarity does Owen Jones offer and what compromise?
Why won’t Owen accept the simple truth that democracy cannot be put back in its box now that Labour has embraced it? Why cannot Owen accept the democratic wishes of the overwhelming majority of the Labour Party’s members and supporters? Why did he feel anyone had the RIGHT to plot from the outset to undermine their freely expressed wishes?
We could go on – but you get the point.
Owen Jones is part of the establishment – he has a cosy niche at The Guardian, turns a blind eye to their abuse of Corbyn and his supporters and then presumes to lecture us from on high.
He uses his connections within politics to serve his own ends – he has a vested interest in maintaining the power of people who give him privileged access and a platform. He weeps and wails about the fate of Labour but I suspect he argues out of desperate concern for himself. He can see as clearly as some Labour MP’s that a truly democratic and socialist Labour Party would have no need for the kind of empty political punditry that he exemplifies.
Owen Jones is dangerous because he weaves a tangle of sophistry over his articles to disguise his true intentions. Labour and the world has suffered enough by listening to specious pleas to stay inside the political limits defined by the neoliberal consensus in order to get what we really need later. IT DOESN’T WORK.
The only time I have ever truly admired him was when he stormed out of the Sky News studio following the murders of gay people in Florida – when its closer to home and it really matters, cooperation with the media is not the only option.
A little pop up has just emerged inviting me not to miss his next ‘story’ on his blog. Miss it? It’s all so predictable I could write it for him.
See also: follow Sodium Haze on Facebook
Corbyn describes his vision in his 2015 leadership campaign as:
“Double the NHS’s income, new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects, create a million skilled jobs and genuine apprenticeships, a National Education Service, universal free childcare, scrap tuition fees and replace with grants, buy out NHS PFI contracts, build decent homes for all in public and private sectors, Rail and Energy nationalisation, renationalise the Royal Bank of Scotland. cap the pay of top executives, possible reopening of coal mines.”
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/jeremyforlabour/pages/70/attachments/original/1437556345/TheEconomyIn2020_JeremyCorbyn-220715.pdf?1437556345
Yet you fail to address Owen Jones’ most important question, – where is the strategy needed to turn this vision into and election winning campaign?
This is of crucial importance given that Jones is only the latest of a number of important advisors appointed by both Corbyn and McDonnell, who have now withdrawn their support.
I refuse to be drawn into Owen Jone’s narrative – which echoes the corporate media and has a manipulative and dishonest agenda.
I will not be lectured by Owen Jones. he chooses to ignore every scrap of context which surrounds this moment in history for his own reasons.
I don’t believe this is about Labour but about him – his articles recently have been sulky and self-indulgent.
It is Owen Jones’ nose that is out of joint and so he projects his angst on to Labour as the victim.
I will not play his game – I see it for what it is.
We can be clearer about this. The point is made quite clear at every Corbyn rally.
‘Straight talking, honest politics.’ That’s what his banners read.
His ‘strategy’ is not to have a strategy. People are sick of strategies. Strategies, spin, the media, manipulation, and pandering: these were features of New Labour. New Labour is dead, and those methods aren’t the only way to do politics. Corbyn’s method is to lay out his vision, and let it spread. It’s ‘people powered politics’. That’s the whole point.
Owen Jones is playing a game, like the rest of the establishment. He thinks that Jeremy Corbyn is playing the game, but very badly. In reality, Corbyn is not playing the game at all.
OMG! That is some article. I have been a supporter of Owen Jones for the past couple of years and find him to be a likeable character. But… Simply… OMG!
I recently tweeted that my belief was that the only thing Owen Jones was guilty of was pessimism, whilst I remained an optimist. After reading this article, I feel like I’ve been duped, manipulated, and steered unwillingly toward a box marked ‘Status Quo’ (and I don’t mean the 3 chord only soft rockers). I cannot disagree with a single word of what is written here. Yet, I wholeheartedly disagreed with Owen’s pessimistic arguments whilst also feeling begrudgingly disappointed with him for so publicly giving ammunition to the anti-Corbynites and creating doubt in some Corbynistas where doubt didn’t before exist.
It reminds me of his heavy promotion of Russell Brand’s position within the political rhetoric of revolution, whereby Russell served the Fabian Society as a ‘Pied Piper’ to rally the disenfranchised towards Ed Milliband’s dull leadership in the final days of the General Election. I hugely admired Russell at that time & followed him like a child of Hamlin, with a magnetic blindness and denial of his now obviously blatant campaign of misguided trust, faux-leadership, and misdirection. I should’ve known better. After all, he even wrote a bloody children’s book on the subject!
I am so grateful for insightful readings such as this article. It helps me to weed out the Judas Iscariot’s that prey upon the wantingly trusting, like myself. I shall now view Owen Jones in a very different light. A light that, once again, is so obvious when placed in front of you and spread out in this insightful critical manner. It answers questions that were always in the back of my mind, such as, how is someone like Owen Jones able to express his views within this corrupt mainstream media we have? And, why would someone who purports to be a left-wing Corbyn supporter be so negative about the rising left-wing?
I now have my answers… Thank you!
Excellent article and very useful information I didn’t know about Jones and his previously aired views. Any chance you could make a bullet point style post to share of reasons Owen Jones isn’t what he sets himself up to appear? I’m following you on facebook.
A challenge: can you rewrite this without the emotive and sometimes abusive language? That way, it would be much easier to assess what you’re actually saying. At the moment, it sounds like a tabloid rant.
Why is it that you can’t challenge a powerful person these days without it being called ‘abuse’.
I think Owen Jones has a hidden agenda – an agenda which is mostly about Owen Jones.
You don’t like that – fine. Write your own piece on your own site. But spare me the hand wringing and the sanctimony.
I am entitled to my opinion and just because I tweak the nose of a very deserving case doesn’t make it ‘abuse’.
No surprise that the ‘abuse’ card gets played early but its gets very tiresome.
Good heavens! How much you read into a few sentences! I don’t know the truth about Owen Jones. I have read some of what he’s written and wondered how much is objective and how much nuanced, and I read your piece to get what I hope is an objective outside opinion by someone who knows far more than me to get a clearer idea of how far, if at all, I can trust what Owen Jones writes. And I find that a lot of emotive and abusive words mean I can’t really appreciate and understand what you’re saying. Words like “fraud, rhetoric of failure, dangerous, miraculously, drips with sincerity, done a headfuck on himself, bully of pragmatism”.
I’m sure Owen Jones has a hidden agenda, and I had hoped your piece might have clarified what it is and how much it invalidates what he says. But all this colourful language makes it very difficult for me. So my challenge to you remains and is for you to help me by rewriting it in plain English. That’s one of the things I admire about Jeremy Corbyn, that he doesn’t feel the need to use highly-wrought language, but is content to let straightforward expression speak clearly.
God I hate this sticky treacle one runs into if you say what you mean, in the manner in which you feel it. I don’t like the guy and I dislike intensely the sly games he plays with words and the dishonest way he presents himself – so that’s what I say. You don’t like that – fine. You don’t like the style – fine. This is MY website – my place to let off a bit of steam. I was so angry when I read that blog post by Owen Jones I was pacing the room – I deleted loads of stuff while writing but at some point you have to post what you feel or just give up. By all means write a better less emotive piece and send it to us, if its any good we’ll host it gladly.
You know your interlocutor has no real intent to address the content of your argument when they pull out a straw man and resort to pettifogging attempts to claim a moral high ground over the style in which you made it. When your opponent tries to pull that one, you’ve won as far as I’m concerned.
Aha! This article is considerably longer than mine which you told me was too long for a scroll-scan audience. (I made it almost to the very end where you were still hammering a nail that was fully hammered.) So go ahead, let them have POST-INDIVIDUALISM and see for themselves how far they can get.
As you know, my piece is about a lot more than targeting one hapless (if over-exposed) individual.
Looking forward to reading me!
Tony
PS I like the colourful language: ripe and succulent! Well done.
And here, have some of this:
TRUMP CARD
Well, this time the chips are really down
In the Last Chance Saloon, and it will be
Too late – if it already isn´t, too soon –
As the U.S. hits a one-way highway
Headed for hell and paved with bad intent.
It´s the maverick versus the machine
Politician: the vulgar versus the
Venal – and if it seems like a penal
Servitude either way, you can´t deny
It´s a cataclysm of some proportion.
America throws caution to the hot winds
Of rage and resentment – though exactly
What the richest and most powerful nation
On Earth has to do with feeling poor and
Powerless says plenty about the rest of us.
It´s a no-brainer alright. America
Loves a maverick-at-large – the kind who´d barge
Into a whorehouse demanding conjugal rights.
Never mind he´s got all women and coloureds
In his sights – what´s Right´s an amended right
As the maverick swaggers-in to right
Those wrongs and give the people what belongs
To them, in all those songs of selfish pride
And greed. You´d need a lobotomy, if you
Weren´t already born that way in the USA.
That Donald Trump, man – he´s like John Wayne.
He´s like Charlton Heston on steroids. He´s like
Ronald Reagan off-script. Let´s nuke the Russians!
The cushion´s plump beneath the hairy ass
He pays somebody else to wipe – but let that pass.
He´s a card alright, The Donald – the Joker
Who wants to be the King of Golf Clubs
Most of them built by him. He´d turn the whole world
Into a fairway for the few, if it wasn´t
Already. He knows what to do, and how it works.
No one jerks his string – that´s why they identify
With him. The fact his new advisers
Will string him like a puppet within hours
In that Oval Office seat is one they
Choose to ignore – like every time before.
This time it´s different, though. If a rich fool
Can outwit a wealthy tool, it´s the end
For professional politicians.
The crooked sheriff surveys the sleeping town
Even as the gunslinger moves to bring her down.
Casa Tablado, La Palma, Canary Islands / 30th July 2016
Thank you – makes perfect sense. Labour’s disaster happened for all to see in Scotland, the culmination of 20 years of New Labour betrayal and illegal wars. Of course they blame Corbyn for Scotland as well as everything else
Another interesting fact about Owen Jones is his support for ‘soft left’ MP Lisa Nandy. In a recent interview with her, he reveals that he pressed Lisa to stand as a candidate for leadership in 2015 before Corbyn threw his hat into the ring. She ended up supporting Andy Burnham for leader. In the past year Owen seems to have shifted from soft left to pro-Corbyn/Momentum and now is back in his comfort-zone of the soft-left. He doesn’t have the strength to withstand the firestorm that he himself predicted.
As a mental health survivor and campaigner, I find the following paragraph extremely insulting:
“Those sane people who refuse to endorse a racist lunatic like Trump OR a neocon shill like Clinton are thus placed into a box marked “silly people” and invited to swallow the laughable idea that a Clinton administration will give a hoot about left wing sensibilities once elected. Even for Owen Jones this paragraph is utterly ridiculous and deceitful:”
I would not suggest that Bernie Sanders supporters whole-heartedly endorse Hilary Clinton. I would suggest that just as Jeremy Corbyn campaigned to Remain in the EU with reservations, so Bernie Sanders supporters campaign and vote for Hilary Clinton with reservations.
Does that make me insane?
I don’t see why you have to pull rank in order to make a comment. That aside, your point makes no coherent sense – just because I call one group of people sane and call out the mighty Owen Jones for patronising them doesn’t mean anything except what it says. Feel free to feel insulted.
Fucking marvellous article!
This analysis of Owen Jones latest offering is spot on. I read the article by Owen, thinking this will be original and insightful, how disapointed I was, yet really why should I have expected anything else? Have heard Owen Jones speak many times about social injustice etc and it did not resonate with me. As you so correctly write “he talks the talk ” that is exactly what I thought too. Yes, all well and good to go on tv and be allowed to say things that are considered out of bounds in Tory Britian. It does not make any difference what Owen says, it is just his opinion, he can not make any change for people who are desperate for change.I feel we are being patronised by this man, that he thinks we need him to speak for us. Rather like the do-gooders of a century ago, the poor can not help themselves they need guidance .Does Owen go to bed, unable to sleep because he is consumed with worry for the uneducated, poor, sick, low waged ? no, its his bread and butter. When I saw Owen with the conservatives at some party do, it made me think he is right at home there, hard to believe he is a champion of the working classes. I am not well educated , I read and like to think I am not blinkered, and I can not believe how he has got people who support Jeremy Corbyn questioning everything, doubt creeping in. They are naive enough to say that Owen is not really anti-Corbyn, oh really. Yes Owen Jones is dangerous, he appeals to the young, ageism is a factor, Jeremy is positively ancient to some young people.Ironically Owen wrongly says JC does not have people over the age of 44 support him, that is simply not true. There are some who think Owen Smith is original and sincere, I wish they could see this is not the case.I think the young lady called Jack was someone real . Does she still have a column with the Guardian, where are you Jack, could really believe in you.
The future is an electorate free from the undue influence of politically bias commentators, corporate lobbyists and unresponsive higher echelons of politians. There could be one political party: the electorate. A good pyramid of representation from the neighbourhood to the national whereby each tier of representatives would elect some of their number to the tier above. And thus would the leader come from the people – and with good experience too.
Owen Jones is nothing but a red Tory Blairite neoliberal scumbag. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Owen Jones is a vain young male he sees a picture of himself which is not borne out in reality. It hurts him that what he thinks he is forming does not take his advice. Unfortunately It was ever thus. give him another 20 years of being ignored and he may have something valid to offer.
milliband not really a neo-liberal though is he? Very similar policies to Corbyn (mansion tax, crackdown on tax-avoidance, nationalise rail/energy, housing corps etc). But without the fuss and devastation to the PLP that Corbyn has managed.
Red Ed miliband was basically neoliberal, but not as bad as some. It was interesting to watch as any time he he crept ahead in the polls, for what they are worth, he was cut off at the knees by his PLP.
He was only ever a seat warmer for them, they were more than happy with the coalition government. They were happy as the loyal opposition.
THe PLP needs devastation, the byrnes,bryants,umunnas etc have never held the commonwealth in mind.
Hello.
I find this writing to be accurate and considered. You have truly arrived at the same conclusions as myself. Your expression is powerful and rich.
I have read some of your replies here and relate to you further; I too was very frustrated when I read Jones’ Blog.
I had been pacing up and down until I read this.
I have shared this document. What is your twitter handle.
Best regards,
Owen looks to be heading into the non recyclable bin that n cohen calls home.
Jeremy Corbyn’s approach and demeanor seems to bring out honest responses from both his detractors and his admirers.
For well groomed, established and thoroughly professional hand wringer like Jones he is just a social embarrassment.
He can imagine many years wringing ink from his hands discussing how someone like smiffy might do somethings a little better, yet he has a clear distaste for the actual enthusiasm Jeremy Corbyn has built to do things better.
We are just going to have to persevere without his ilk.
Without having a coherent argument I feel I need to raise a few points about this article.
The Guardian has in many ways shown to be part of the establishment with it’s many anti-Corbyn smears lately, however, it still does some very worthwhile journalism (it’s work on police shootings in the US was brilliant) and it’s unfair to dismiss simply as the ‘corporate media.’ George Monbiot, who you praise writes for the Guardian. They give a platform to prominent leftists such as Chomsky, Zizek, Pilger.
Owen Jones has pissed a lot of people off lately and his phrasing of the ‘questions all Corbyn supporters must answer’ seemed inflammatory but they’re still mostly important questions regarding the Corbyn’s prospects to become PM as I’m sure you all know the left faces huge challenges.
I disagree with your narrative that he is placating the voice of the left. Yes, he is media friendly, and ‘soft’ left, but he wouldn’t get airtime if he wasn’t.
The left movement needs to have popular support and Owen Jones is good at communicating, through his books and media appearances some left ideas. The left movement needs people like him to gain mass support. Do you not think Jones has had a big role to play in making this new left movement as popular as it is now?
Also, you keep using this word ‘neoliberalism’. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
How about Purple Traitors instead of ‘red tories’? The Purps pose as reds but have been contaminated with large dollops of blue in their thinking socialising and aspirations. They are often blessed by the system with honours after the political careers of skullduggery. It’s an easy badge to pin on those legions that have been groomed by our open politicsl system for too many years now to pose as red blooded socialists but who are in fact working for the blue blooded status quo. Purps are nasty odious deceitful hand wringers (I like that one) who only do what they do because they genuinely want to help the poor and viciously exploited but do love a Buck house garden party and the chance to swap good natured banter with the neo cunts like Boris.