Corbyn, leadership? 
It’s not just leadership of the Labour party. It is - as I said - his responsibility as leader of the opposition to represent the 48% (IMO anyway).
Dinner party rules preclude me from typing out my preferred response to this comment which would be long and explore in detail some of the finer points of English profanity, profanity from other languages and, quite possibly, some anatomically improbable instructions.
It’s a perfectly valid opinion, if course, but IMO it verges on the ridiculous Paul. It’s absolutely (or as near as Dammit) NOT the case that HM Leader of the Opposition has to raise oppositions that have no intellectual or moral merit just for the sake of opposition. That’s the politics of Tweedledee and Tweedledum. But I would say that, I’m a thoughtful-as-maybe socialist. 
Or I’m an andouille.
I have to say I find the idea very odd that it is a political party leader’s responsibility to represent one strain of opinion in the country. Surely it’s exactly the other way round: the party sets out it’s policies and tries to persuade people to vote for them.
It seems to me that Corbyn is the only English party leader that has shown real leadership, instead of the posturing gesture-politics of May, Johnson and Swinson.
The centrist critique of Labour’s soft brexit position (now conditional in any case on a second referendum) always seems to revolve around peripheral issues, such as whether it was politically expedient, rather than the real issue: whether it was right .
Further, by ignoring the ethical case for such a compromise position, they in fact tacitly admit that Labour, and especially Corbyn, were just about the only politicians, at least in England, demonstrating real moral strength and leadership.
You put the Corbyn case a darned sight more persuasively and attractively than me, Geof.
I agree it’s an ethical/moral and grown-up way to do politics, and many more people are yearning for it, and will soon require it of their representatives, I think and hope.
Oo err! I seem to have awakened the beast in you, Paul. Say you don’t really mean it…
I actually think a lot of the reservations about Corbyn, especially among the commentariat, are actually rooted in the difficulty they have dealing with a very rare phenomenon: an honest politician!
I agree. Reconciling legitimate conflicts of interest calls for exceptional skills, and that is what the current situation over Brexit calls for.
Any absolutist ‘solution’ such as the political imposition of an indefinite postponement of Brexit, a decision to Remain based on a slender referendum majority, or a force majeure no-deal crash-out, will produce a malignant wound in an already diseased body politic.
There has to be a middle way through the mess we’ve allowed to develop, but life is NOT simple or clearly defined, it is very fluid and chaotic, as modern science tells us: any order we see in it is a convenient but illusory heuristic device we have adopted to protect us from our ultimate impermanance. And our relative insignificance?
It is recognised that the role of Her Majesty’s Opposition is “is to question and challenge the Government - the Government proposes, the Opposition opposes - and constantly to call the Government to account for its actions.”
Agree but in the case of Brexit there are many valid questions that most assuredly have intellectual and moral justification - such as not triggering A50 without a plan, or reminding the government that a paper-thin majority for Leave does not justify pitching the argument around to the most insane version of Brexit.
It’s probably unfair to include Swinson in the same breath as Johnson and May, for one she’s much less experienced as a politician and has only been in post for a short while - for another no way is she as evil as those two.
But I struggle to see leadership in Corbyn - either on the issue of anti-Semitism or Brexit, or anything much else for that matter.
On the former, of course, it is his sympathy for the Palestinians which causes him problems - and I am not insensitive to the situation or the difficulty that it presents but I do not think he has handled it well.
But Corbyn has taken so long to come to half-heartedly come round to a morally sustainable position on a further referendum - and every time you think he has come round to it, he backs away the next day.
Corbyn is somewhat insulated by being leader of the opposition - the spotlight is on him but not as brightly as Johnson - but what I see in his current role does not persuade me he would be a better PM.
In fact Labour as a whole is insulated from the scrutiny that they would be under in government rather than opposition and I think we would quickly see that they are, if anything, more split over Brexit than the Tories.
When campaigning, yes but when actually sitting in opposition that is of secondary interest (obviously you have to lay the groundwork for your victory at the next GE 
but holding the giovernment of the day to account is paramount)
Lemme see:
Support for the IRA - airbrushed
Support for Hamas and Hizbollah - airbrushed (OK bit more complex than the IRA).
Opposing “shoot-to-kill” until it became politically expedient for him to switch horses.
slating NATO - conveniently forgotten
I truly do not see Corbyn as more honest than the average politician - i.e not very.
It’s probably obvious that I do not like the man and probably never will but even taking that into account he is only “honourable” in comparison to Cameron, May and Johnson - and they set the bar so low that an ant could get over it without breaking stride.
I’m not concerned about whether people like or dislike politicians - it’s up to them - but I am disappointed by how readily the tabloid/murdoch media distortions about Corbyn are repeated as if they were true. They’re not. Just to take your first bullet point…
What is true is that Corbyn often eschews the simplistic soundbite clarity of politicians like Swinson and Johnson - but as Peter has pointed out, this is precisely because of his honesty: the honesty of dealing with a world that is itself fuzzy and complicated and fluid.
From that article
Despite extending invitations to IRA members to the HoC.
The factcheck does NOT say they were IRA members, though does it? It says ‘it’s not clear’. And since when does inviting somebody for talks imply ‘support’ for them? - especially as (factcheck again) the very people that were condemning Corbyn were actually having secret talks with the IRA anyway.
Corbyn was absolutely right: dialogue was indeed the route to peace. Indeed, it’s hard to think of any issue, especially in foreign policy, where Corbyn’s position, however unpopular at the time, has not been proven right by the eventual course of events.
It’s the denial and hair splitting that gets me though.
As I said I don’t particularly like Corbyn, indeed would admit that I dislike him (as much as you can dislike someone you have never met - it is entirely possible if I did so and we kept the conversation away from politics I would find him quite agreeable).
But I don’t see his recent record as terribly distinguished - he fought against the most incompetent Tory party election campaign in living memory and lost, for goodness sake. He has prevaricated over Brexit to the point of losing both Leave and Remain support for Labour.
His approval rating as potential premiere is even lower than the incumbent whom history may yet condemn as the worst PM ever.
You and I might disagree as to how honourable a politician he is - but the facts speak for themselves in terms of how much he is damaging the Labour cause at the moment.
It really is time for him to step aside.
On the contrary, Paul, Jeremy Corbyn is an internationally recognised champion of internationalist socialism at home and abroad. He can easily shrug aside the calumnies and insults thrown at him by those who have the most to lose from socialism and the defeat of bandit monopolist capitalism, which similarly is reviled at home and abroad by the young, the dispossessed and the unprivileged masses in poor countries. Including benighted Blighty.
Trump, Bolsanaro, Johnson are last-gasp excrescences of a rotten system that is nearing its Götterdämmerung, and knows it. They are going to be swept away, I feel it in my bowels, without Carter’s Little Liver Pills playing any part in my premonitions 
If he’s such an effing messiah why are his ratings so low, why did he lose the last election and why can he not be properly honest about his position(s).
I realise that you and Geoff think the sun shines out of his derrière and I don’t disagree with any of your comments about Johnson and Trump but the moment needs a man, and that man isn’t Corbyn.
Had initially posted a rather flippant remark about it being an entertaining dinner party.
I think with Brexit, Corbyn and Trump people are desperately clinging to whatever they think will stop the neo-liberal juggernaut. Aka the almighty race to the bottom. Well that’s if you exclude all the vultures who stand to make (or are) making a killing out of Brexit and Trump.
On the other hand you have those for whom life is alright. Generally the more sane Tories and Lib Dem supporters who want to preserve the status quo. What I find hard to fathom is that some of these people (not all by any means!!!) would rather have a catastrophic Brexit than a mild redistribution of wealth under Corbyn.
I really believe that the coming change in global power structures will take the effete and implacably complacent, ‘entitled’ and property-rich but ethically bankrupt elites, made up of the ‘white’ races completely by surprise.
It will arise in the East, and in the tropical and sub-tropical South and will be unstoppable, probably bloody, and inflicted on an unprepared and hapless civilisation who can not entertain the idea that their era is over, and a new one is due, as day follows night.
It won’t be a socialist revolution. I don’t cling to that fantasy, and I don’t think many contemporary socialists do either. Change will produce a new human paradigm, and it can hardly be envisaged, let alone articulated, planned for, or averted.
Movements like Extinction Revolution are straws in the wind, but not the wind itself.
Greta Thunberg is a herald, strange, worrying and frail. There will be more of her kind in future. Asperger’s may not be a disability, it may represent a new and pivotal evolutionary development in the history of humankind.
I am myself aberrant and flawed. I have always known it. But I sometimes think that I have survived to bear some kind of local witness to a transformative fate that beckons, and will overthrow the hegemony of many centuries of ‘history’. Time will tell.
Regardless of our opinions the vast majority of the UK public don’t want him as PM as indicated by countless polls.
For personal reasons I can’t get beyond the anti Semitic accusations
But they are only accusations - and have been forensically taken apart by many real experts - notably Jonathan Cook (https://www.facebook.com/Jonathan.Cook.journalist/) - eg:
The thing is Paul, I don’t ‘think the sun shines out of [Corbyn’s] derrière’ - my only interest is in good evidence and sound arguments - but this does mean I often feel the need to correct the media distortions about Corbyn (which are, of course, largely responsible for his supposed unpopularity).
There is a huge well researched and referenced evidence base (I’ve just given an example on the anti-semitism lies - or see https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/lib-dem-members-party-line-on-labour-anti-semitism-is-ill-judged-and-uncritical/) very clearly demonstrating that nearly all of the negative mass media stories on Corbyn are fabricated.
Really, it doesn’t take much to find out these things.
We all have different political views - but also, I think, a duty to base personal criticism only on decent evidence.