Personally, the notion of either makes me shudder?
I guess Trump is worse, though.
I mean, there's a distinct limit to how much damage a British PM can do, but a nutjob in the White House??
Oh, wait .....
Personally, the notion of either makes me shudder?
I guess Trump is worse, though.
I mean, there's a distinct limit to how much damage a British PM can do, but a nutjob in the White House??
Oh, wait .....
Other than being a complete and total embarrassment on the world stage, which he pretty much already is, there's not a lot of real damage Trump (or any US President) can do on an individual basis. I'll not get into the way our government (is supposed to) works - other than to say that none of the 3 branches of government can make any major unilateral decision without the approval of at least one of the other groups - and the judicial can pretty much put the brakes on anything.
But ultimately, Trump being president is pretty much a non-reality. Yes, he leads the polls amongst 16 other candidates, but he trails behind the Democrats, and even though he has 20% of the current Republican vote, he still has a 75% disapproval rating. It's just a matter of time before he either removes himself from the Republican race, or he gets removed. And unless the Republicans collectively pull their heads out of their nether regions, none of them stand a real chance of winning the office.
I'll actually be voting in this election!
But it won't be an easy decision. I'd really like to vote against Hilary, but the Republicans have a lot of candidates I'd really like to vote against too, and some, like Trump, that I'd vote against instead of Hilary.
Which probably tells you all you need to know about US politics.
Trump or Hilary? Scary, scary prospect. No way I could ever vote for Hilary though, not ever, even if it meant voting for Trump.
As for the op, I'd say Trump as president is worse. A really bad PM can be ditched as leader if need be.
UK already has a nutjob - David `rob from the poor to pay the rich` Cameron.
which is why Corbyn appears to be doing so well - he isn't a tory (or Blairite) in disguise.
funke_munke (13-08-2015),jimborae (11-08-2015),Jonj1611 (11-08-2015),nichomach (14-08-2015)
Trump scares me much more, but only because I think he has a (small) chance of winning, and of course he's a republican!
I really hope Corbyn gets the labour leadership - it would almost guarantee another Conservative win in the next election, and leaves Labour with yet another useless leader (although he is a hell of a lot better at public speaking than Milliband could ever hope to be!). It would be a lot of fun
Corbyn appears to be more honest than any of the other labour hopefuls who bring nothing new to the table. He sets himself apart and talks about change rather than more of the same from the tories or 'tory light' from old labour.
He is doing so well because of this. The party needs change and he is the only one offering it. Look at how the other hopefuls attack him yet they are all in the same party. Quite sad really. I believe labour as it was, is dead. The party is going to split.
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It's funny how both Corbyn and Trump are the same really, just on opposite sides of the coin.
Both of them have some solutions that are 'easy' and frankly selling the exact same thing, a kind of optimism. Even if the most cursory glance at the detail from them beggars belief.
We've had narratives of misery, of worry and problems for so long, that some kind of positivity is going to be well received.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
Uh huh.
So, Brown loses to a non-overall Tory win requiring LibDem support to get power. Labour tack a bit to the left with a (Union-backed) Ed Milliband, and the public are so disgusted that he isn't left-wing enough that they give the Tories an overall majority?
Labour respond to the public tacking to the right by going further left?
No doubt that move to the left delights those ideologically to the left anyway, but the pragmatics of politics mean that to win power, Labour have to take back a lot of seats they lost in 2010, which means fundamentally south and south-east England. Maybe, just maybe a more left-wing Labour can get Scottish seats back off the SNP (though from what Scottish friends tell me, I won't be holding my breath for that to happen in large numbers, not in the electoral short-term anyway) but by itself, even getting all of them wouldn't be enough.
The art of election-winning is to be able to grab enough of the centre-based floating voters, in enough constituencies, to get over the line. Without those floaters, the ONLY way a further-left Labour wins is if sufficient of the country move sufficiently left that where the 'centre' is moves markedly left too. So short of that, which seems highly unlikely, Labour are currently trading off gaining hard left, who were never voting Tory in the first place, at the cost of moving away from floaters who, by definition, are in the centre.
And that's why the Tories are currently trying VERY hard not to laugh at the antics that is the Labour leadership contest.
it's a wonderful grand experiment. But I wonder, other than the vicyories by the apparently now despised Blair, when was the last time Labour won two successive full terms? And when was the last time a very left wing Labour won power in the UK?
Hence the grand experiment .... in four year's time, will the British public be ready for a Corbynite left-wing agenda? Unless something radical changes in the meantime, I'd say the answer is pretty self-evident. And the result is likely to be the rise of other parties, or a whopping Tory win. Or both.
For all his faults, and he certainly had them, Blair knew one thing .... how to win elections.
Corbyn is an honourable man, IMHO. Unlike so many politicians, he appears to say what he means and mean what he says. It's certainly refreshing, and the other three need to learn from that, and LEARN FAST. He's benefitting from a certain anti-politician feeling in the same way, ironically, that Farage does.
It may indeed win him the leadership. But an election?
Labour ought to change it's logo from a red rose to an ouroboros.
brown was seen as a cast off from blair although in the years since he has done a lot better opinion wise than blair who ran off to his mates in the USA.
isn't there a civil arrest warrant pending for blair over the Iraq war??
corbyn is unelectable - but will it force the tories to be more right wing - you know in the vote norsefire sense? I don't want a left wing government - centrist is fine tbh - look at the brake the lib dems put on the tories.....
Last edited by HalloweenJack; 13-08-2015 at 01:45 PM.
What's a civil arrest warrant?
As far as I'm aware, no such beast exists (in the UK) though there are occasionally bench warrants issued over civil debt when the person persistently fails to appear, though it's more of a procedural matter since such non-appearance usually results in losing by default.
There's also citizen's arrest, but that applies only to criminal matters and is VERY tricky to get right. And getting it wrong opens you up to assault charges at a minimum, and potentially illegal imprisonment or maybe even kidnapping. All told, not a good area to experiment in.
There is a website encouraging people to try to do a citizen's arrest, promoted IIRC by George Monbiot .... who seems to have had the good sense not to try it himself. It remains to be seen what Blair's security people would do in the face of a serious attempt. Does he still have Met Police security?
If Wisdom is the coordination of "knowledge and experience" and its deliberate use to improve well being then how come "Ignorance is bliss"
I'd hardly say Corbyn was in the same league as Trump. I'd hardly say Bush is in the same league as Trump.
The thing is alot of what Corbyn says seems honest and makes sense to me, so if I was going to vote Labour I'd vote for him, rather than any Tory scumbag, but in my area a Labour vote is a wasted vote so I'd just rather not vote as LibDem alternative is not really any better.
In a world where I can only have one or the other I'm going to say Corbyn's worse, but only really because I want to see the Trump vs. Hilary battle for the Whitehouse. Why? Pure entertainment value, for me this is the ultimate combover vs. half of the ultimate Saturday Night Live skit.
Of course, Hilary has to win because truth be told I can't stand Trump and of course that way Bill can go and check all his old hiding places to see if George managed to find his secret stashes of plastic army men and old issues of Playboy too. We might even get a sax solo and a scandal or three out of it. Corbyn on the other hand will just be mediocre for four years, lie to me a little bit too much and leave the country in the same mess he found it. At least there's the prospect of some entertainment on the other side of the pond....
Although, that said I will always miss the Alaskan Timberwife, the Wasilla Whirlwind, the pride of Idaho, the one, the only, Sarah Palin. Drinking games just haven't been the same since she stopped taking part in electoral debates!
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