It’s not a question of whether I like him or not....it’s whether he can get Labour elected, and I have serious doubts about that. Being in permanent opposition is a pointless exercise, so unless Corbyn can persuade a large number of the electorate to vote for him, his principles will count for nothing,

@Marionville I think he will get elected at the next GE with a workable majority. The electorate like Labour's policies, especially younger voters.

@CeliaVL. Time will tell on that ,

I don’t think that Mrs May is acting deliberately in order to mess up, though she undoubtedly has....I just think she needed to get all sides and Parties together at the beginning, not lay down red lines from the start, and stop allowing the tail to wag the dog (ERG and DUP). She then could have got a compromise which may have been acceptable. My own option is never to leave, but I am a realist, and accept that we were beaten in the referendum, even though I deeply regret that so many of my fellow citizens voted to leave.

@Marionville I voted remain. I do not know one person who voted leave

@Amisja Some of my friends voted leave...I have stopped discussing Brexit with them....they are all delusional about how rosy a future we will have when unshackled from Europe! Most of them read the Daily Mail...enough said! They mostly vote DUP too and did what they told them to do, to vote leave. I hate the DUP with a vengeance....that goes without saying!!

You may be proved right...he has certainly kept everyone guessing right from the start, whether his ambivalence will prove to win him votes if it comes to a General Election is as yet unknown. By that stage he would have had to declare his hand one way or the other, is he for allowing us to have a vote on the final deal or not. I believe that leaders should lead, they should not be weighing up what way the wind is blowing before making decisions, they should be policy makers out of conviction not expedience. He has, in the past, always seemed to be a conviction politician, but always from the safety of the backbenches, where his dissent was never going to be policy, as yet he is completely unproven as a leader.

@Marionville The media has persistently tried to say that Corbyn has kept everyone in the dark. But the fact of the matter is that Labour policy is crystal clear on this matter, and JC has stuck to it throughout. The media are playing games as usual.

@chazwin Time will tell.

I support JC 100% but he has not been very political about this whole thing. Neither this nor the anti-semitism row. JC is a man of principles and integrity. He is honest to his core. Unfortunately that is not what is needed in politics.

@Amisja How would you have acted differently?

@Marionville On the matter of JC and Labour's consistency, it is the Media that have kept people in the dark.

@chazwin I can’t even vote for him....so I’m really just an onlooker. I think that it’s disgrace that Labour decided not to stand in Northern Ireland....the SDLP is not a substitute that many here see as a viable alternative to Sinn Fein or the DUP.

You say the LibDems have "kept their heads down", but they have managed a healthy comeback in these elections.

I respect your views regarding the EU...but cannot agree that it’s in Britain’s interest to leave. I think your views of our MPs are much too sweeping, I know that there is a great diversity within parliament, and they are not all in it for what they can get out of it for themselves. It is delusional for us to believe that we will get better deals on our own. The breakup of the UK is also becoming increasingly likely due to Brexit, the exact opposite of what the most arch brexiteers actually want....yes it was never thought through sufficiently, I do agree on that point.

The Euro is a complete red herring, as the UK shall never have to surrender its currency. That is what the veto is for. But as for the euro: all but France and Germany have found it to be an unmitigated disaster with all the economic power concentrating on the big two. This is a general and persistent prob!am with large polities. Power and economic wealth always polarise. I n the USA the centre is a wasteland, with the riches flowing East and West. Even without the euro, the UK benefits from cheap labour, through free movement, whilst Poland and Hungary suffer from manpower shortages. This cheap labour impoverished the poor in the UK, whilst damaging the donor economies of poorer countries.

@chazwin Republic of Ireland???

You have failed to address point number 3. It’s a matter of personal choice who we believe to be worse May or Thatcher, personally although I disliked Thatcher I thought she was an effective leader, therefore a better PM. Corbyn has divided his party, whether I like him or not is immaterial, that is not leadership...he has also been ambiguous in his views around Brexit. I really only used points 1 and 2 as a preamble for my main point of whether our present bunch of MPs are the worst ever, as Widdicombe asserts. She, herself is a loathesome bigoted old hag, but that wasn’t my point either.

@Marionville I reckon the current crop contains a bunch of Etonians who weren't smart enough for Oxbridge academia or the City, a lump of careerists with their eyes on post-politics executive director/charity CEO positions, and a smattering of people who actually want to make their constituent's lives better.
Par for the course, really.

@MrBeelzeebubbles Just much as I thought.

@OwlInASack @LenHazell53 You are completely missing the point I was making in my post....whether we agree or disagree on the merits of Widdicombe, May or Corbyn, it was the third statement about our current batch of parliamentarians that I wanted your opinion on.

@Marionville
Whether the old bag is right or not about the current state of the UK government, is for the reasons I stated, irrelevant to me, I am capable of making my own judgements that may (no pun intended) coincide with hers on some points is purely coincidental.
British politicians have always been bloody minded, self serving and corrupt, it is a job requirement for ministerial office.
Unser usual circumstance there can be a consensus as to what will or will not happen, worked out well in advance, the current fiasco is the result of a number of unique circumstances.
Fist the country being split almost exactly in half between remainers and leavers, so what ever the government or parliament do they are going to enrage half the populous. A complete no win scenario.
Secondly The government and parliament while having to pay lip service to the "democracy" of the referendum, know Brexit is economic suicide and will cost them their backers if it goes through, and that No-Deal is a recipe for national bankruptcy. So they don't want it, not even the ardent Brexiteers like Grease Smog are playing the long game for their own ultimate financial benefit but could and would never actually deliver anything more than a pseudo Brexit in name only.
Thirdly this whole situation is the death Knell of the two party system and possibly of representative democracy. When this is all over no matter how it turns out, the whole system will be revamped to make sure it can never happen again, it will probably result in a much worse and more dictatorial system that concentrates more power in to far less hands.

Yes...I was sorry that he lost the leadership vote in the Tory party....I think he’d have made a good PM. Widdicombe is horrendous in all respects....even if she was right on. 1 and 2!

That goes without saying....but there is still quite a diversity of opinion and they are not all wealthy...at least not as wealthy as a handful of the Tory Grandees. There are single parent black female MPs, and lots of second generation immigrants, black and Asian amongst their numbers, There are Trade unionists and genuinely honest and hardworking constituency MPs, of course we do know the main offenders when it comes to dubious motivation, but that’s to do a disservice to the others to tar them with the same brush.

@Marionville I agree. But there are still too many who use it as a means to further enrich themselves. It is not as bad as the USA but I think we should do more to control lobbying groups, too.