Wednesday 13 July 2016

Still Fact Checking during Labour Leadership Debates

Now that Corbyn is on the ballot it looks like the first recap of the EU Referendum will be during the leadership election over the next couple of months. I will be looking at the blog again and trying to evaluate what sort of campaign Corbyn actually achieved.

I will be trying to check some dates. I still think Corbyn did well on social media but there is very little research or evidence that I can find. Some detail is coming out about the way campaigns were organised. The Guardian has reported at length on the Remain campaign and it appears Corbyn had his role constrained by organisations other than the Labour Party as such. It is not clear from the Guardian article how this was decided on. The most interesting phase is the time when it was decided to emphasise Labour as Cameron was getting some negative response. Why was there such a large role for Brown? who decided that Lard Darling should share a platform with George Osborne? When Corbyn denies being a "catastrophist" I think he is putting some distance from the sort of scare stories that Remain relied on. Has there been any polling on response to the "punishment budget"? I cannot see how Labour benefited or Labour voters could have been influenced. The Brexit Conservatives were able to state they would vote against such a budget so Osborne told the Today prog that he would rely on Lord Darling. Clarified by Corbyn at question time that nothing like that would happen so far as he was concerned but I don't think this was widely reported. I will check into this later. Main point is that I don't think the PLP can just blame Corbyn without a bit more study.

Still waiting for any mainstream media facts about the two heckles that appeared to balme Corbyn for the referendum result. On social media such as Twitter one is linked to Portland Communications, the other to the Liberal Democrats. Both reported on BBC as appearing to show lost support for Corbyn. What to think? How organised was the "coup" or "plot"? The Truthseeker has a view but there is other mainstream comment on when the PLP were thinking of a move against Corbyn, depending on election results. It might be that the referendum was seen as the best chance so the weakness of Corbyn's role has been over stated.

I still think the Guardian could have reported Corbyn with more positive attention. There was often a negative view from anonymous PLP sources in any report of a Corbyn speech or TV appearance. I will also try to track down why Channel 4 blocked the use on YouTube of a clip from the Last Leg. Corbyn's own channel blocked from uploading it though the fancy dress intro is available, just not the reasoned explanation of what Corbyn had to say.

More about the Guardian on the ReadG blog.


No comments:

Post a Comment