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Guardian claims renationalising is ‘new common sense’. It was Corbyn’s 2017 and 2019 policy

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42 Comments on Guardian claims renationalising is ‘new common sense’. It was Corbyn’s 2017 and 2019 policy

And popular policy, overwhelmingly supported by public – but Guardian, Labour right and others destroyed Corbyn for it

In a genuine ‘through the looking-glass moment, the Guardian has published an editorial in which it claims, with no apparent irony or sense of shame, that renationalising energy is ‘the new common sense’:

It was always common sense – and for the last two general elections it was Labour’s flagship manifesto policy, along with all other strategic national industries and services: the NHS, rail, Royal Mail and water.

And the Guardian was among the rags and broadcasters – the whole ‘MSM’ and the entire Establishment they serve – that waged an unprecedented war on Jeremy Corbyn for it, as the activist ‘ToryFibs’ pointed out scathingly:

The desperate situation in which the UK is now drowning was entirely avoidable – and would never have happened under a Corbyn-led government with the proud policies to restore the nation that Corbyn’s Labour unashamedly offered. And those policies were popular across supporters of all parties, even the poisonous Tories.

The ‘mainstream’ media, the Labour right, including Keir Starmer, and the entire Establishment robbed the UK’s people of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a nation to be proud of again. Hundreds of thousands are dead, millions are in desperate poverty, national infrastructure and democracy are in collapse – and more will die and become poor, even destitute, essential services will collapse even further – because of that sabotage and betrayal, which Starmer continues now.

Claiming what was always clearly needed is suddenly ‘new commonsense’ not only won’t wash, it is the most shameless and shameful rewriting of history – and a spineless refusal by media and commentators to own the consequences they brought on us all.

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42 comments

  1. Tory Fibs sums it perfectly. The last two Labour manifestos were offered by a person who isn’t even allowed to consider himself a Labour MP and promised:

    Scrap student tuition fees
    Nationalisation of England’s nine water companies.
    Re-introduce the 50p rate of tax on the highest earners (above £123,000)
    Income tax rate 45p on £80,000 and above
    More free childcare, expanding free provisions for two, three and four year olds
    Guarantee triple lock for pensioner incomes
    End to zero hours contracts
    Hire 10,000 new police officers, 3,000 new firefighters
    Moves to charge companies a levy on salaries above £330,000
    Deliver rail electrification “including in Wales and the South West”.

    On nationalisation:

    + Bring the railways back into public ownership as franchises expire
    + Regain control of energy supply networks through the alteration of operator license conditions, and transition to a publicly owned, decentralised energy system
    + Replace water system with a network of regional publicly-owned water companies
    + Reverse the privatisation of Royal Mail “at the earliest opportunity”
    + Create at least one publicly-owned energy company in every region of the UK, with public control of the transmission and distribution grids.

    “Common Sense”? Yes, denied and opposed by The Guardian every bit as keenly as the rest of the billionaires’ synchronised-MSM. Shame on you Guardnog! You’re as false as Sir Keir Rodney

    Reply

  2. Quite – not the new common sense but the OLD
    common sense as recommended by Corbyn.

    Now can we have some more common sense –
    give the Whip back to Jeremy Corbyn !

    Reply

    1. Holby….Common sense…..not if your allegiance is to somone other than the country.
      ..Labour turned their back on the working class under Blair the day after a landslide victory and went back on promises to scrap the hated trusts in the NHS.At that time I had set up the NHS defence campaign with help and support from Unison and backing from the ordinary members of the public in Surrey who always voted Tory
      We were stabbed in the back and missed a chance of retaining council housing along with the water companies and railways.Why would they continue a vote looser even amongst the Tory voters and a few Tory councillors even the Tory mayor of Reigate.supported public ownership and direct works from the council.Blair and Starmer both bought and paid for and that includes the labour party……..and theres no other lodgical explanation for why they do what they do…….sell out the nation..!

      Reply

  3. On the BBC Website Chris Cook, BBC Newsnight policy editor, added: “Capping rail fares (through public ownership); that has a very simple consequence – it costs you money – but that money isn’t mentioned in the document.

    “It’s important to point out, though, that it’s hard to be in Opposition, especially in the case of a snap election. Labour doesn’t have the civil service to do the sums for them and it shows.”

    Reply

    1. Well that Is interesting, because both of Labour’s manifestos – 2017 and 2019 – were accompanied by a costings document prepared for John McDonnell by the Treasury. I believe such things are referred to as a Blue Book.
      One of Lisa Nandy’s claims in the 2020 leadership hustings was that she did not want to ever go into a GE campaign again, without costed policies……. Was she thus being disingenuous or clueless? I have my own opinion on that one.

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      1. Ludus57,
        McDonnell did indeed present what he termed his ‘grey book’ alongside the manifesto. I did try to get it to add up but found it was out by about £20bn and was then further undermined in my mind when someone remembered the WASPI women and decided that another £50bn needed to be found. It is challenging for an opposition to model the finances without the full complement of civil service resource (and, ironically, Truss’ latest pledges are willfully submitted without scrutiny because she well knows that they don’t add up).
        Even the Tories have tinkered with keeping at least one rail franchise in public ownership (I forget which) and the principle of bringing them all back into public hands as franchises expire is certainly an obvious Corbyn strength. It is less than staggering that The Guardian would now adopt the policy of nationalising energy but in the rush to declare ‘told you so’ it is worth applying some sequencing to the breadth of what Corbyn proposed (and to acknowledge that these were ideas for a two term parliament) as well as accepting that some, such as free broadband, whilst popular, incur a massive financial hit that hampers one’s ability to follow through with the rest of the programme. Even the supposedly transformational nature of energy renationalisation is not the panacea one imagines as it cannot reach those upstream of the suppliers – the multinational producers – and therefore the most liberating move in this space is to decentralise power production by means of subsidising variously solar, geothermal and wind in households such that the energy is crowd-sourced and shared, with the state concerned with the infrastructure of the grid rather than having to intervene in pricing. This was the area where the New Green Deal in the 2019 Manifesto really needed joining up with other policy – new home building serves as the vanguard of energy production, transport policy avails itself of the profusion of energy storage at the domestic level, defence spending pivots toward food, energy and water security (not least because we don’t then feel so inclined to throw our weight around in foreign climes because of shortages in these areas).

      2. Do you think that revelation would have gone totally unnoticed and unreported or at least under reported if specialist financiers at the IFF spotted it, I don’t doubt your financial math skills

  4. In March of this year, Chris Mullin wrote an article in the Guardian about the case of the Birmingham Six.

    He wrote:

    “My friend Peter Chippindale, a Guardian journalist, first drew my attention to the Birmingham pub bombings. He had reported on the trial in 1975 and remarked that he thought the men were innocent. He had come to that conclusion from his attendance at court and from talking to the relatives of the convicted men.”

    I did not previously know this. It rather looks as if Peter Chippindale knew this, or strongly suspected it, as early as 1975.

    So why did the Guardian not report on it? It seems inconceivable that he would not have discussed it with his Guardian colleagues, including the higher-ups there. As it was, Mullin was unable to break the story until, I estimate, 1984.

    Could the Birmingham Six have been released nine years earlier?

    Peter Chippindale and Chris Mullin come out of this very well but not so the Guardian.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/23/birmingham-six-chris-mullin-press-freedom

    Reply

    1. It would be like sticking white hot needles in my eyeballs! How any socialist could vote for the Neo-Labour TORY Party after 2015 to date, is beyond me it would be as shameful an act as their VoteTORYtoStopCorbyn campaign.

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    2. Gosh, gee wizz. The Guardian holding back the truth. My world is falling rapidly to pieces. Now who can we trust. At least we have BBC and Newsnight. Oh there’s that Guru Maharishi bloke, nearly forgot him.

      Reply

  7. LiEBOUR IS doing it again! Lies are all you will see until finally people wake up and shit on this vile right wing Scab of a party!!!

    Reply

    1. Not a good time to be in government, and an even worse time to be an ordinary citizen.
      Truss proposes to make tax cuts. This will make a hole in the exchequer that will have to be plugged by borrowing.
      Sunak proposes to “support families” with energy costs. This will make a hole in the exchequer that will have to be plugged by borrowing.
      The cost of government borrowing is rising.
      The UK could easily see its credit status being downgraded, resulting in an even higher price for its borrowing.
      Starmer appears not to acknowledge the problem.
      It’s all fantasy politics and we all know who will carry the can.

      Reply

    2. QE initially caused the problems as endlessly printing money is inflationary & then zero interest rates allow big business to ‘borrow’ money @ no cost to re-capitalise & invest in Stock Market. If the economy is doing so badly why no crash? Cheap money for big business but not you or I.

      Reply

  11. We have a “ROAD TO DAMASCUS” moment for the Guardian.
    What took them so long ?
    As for Sir Cur Starmer (Knight Commander of the Most Honourable Order of The Bath) – No surprise that he is behind the curve – as always.
    The Trilateral Commission has commanded that he holds the line on neo-liberalism.
    Therefore he must obey.
    Leader of the Labour Party !!!! What a cretin !!!!

    Reply

  12. Apart from a few guest writers, the paper has moved right ever since being threatened by MI5 years ago and now is happy to take on Telegraph rejects

    Reply

    1. Politico ran a piece yesterday titled: How a retired MI6 boss, his Brexiteer friends and a celebrity Marxist became targets in Russia’s war on Ukraine – https://www.politico.eu/article/mi6-russia-hackers-used-a-pro-brexit-ex-mi6-boss-and-a-left-wing-labour-firebrand-in-its-ukraine-war/

      The interesting line from the piece about Mason is this:

      “Both hacks are now subject to intensive investigations by the British security services, POLITICO can reveal.”

      So Paul Mason’s Proton Mail email account breach is worthy of MI6’s resources, time and effort? Think they’d go to those efforts for some ordinary left-wing activist? Isn’t Politico kinda confirming the Grayzone’s piece about Mason’s significance? No wonder he was pictured dining alone with Starmer in 2019.

      Mason has since been criticised for not using 2FA. Though even that can be spoofed depending on the form of 2FA used (dedicated security keys being better than telephone codes that are visible).

      Reply

      1. just having a proton email account is reason enough for MI6/NSA/CIA/GCHQ attention. Thanks for the politico.eu link Andy

      2. I think a lot of this can be put down to what techy people
        call “noise” .. random information – as summed up in the last
        para.

        ‘He added: “It’s all about creating chaos, like the Joker in the Batman film ‘The Dark Knight,’ who wants to burn the world down. It’s about seeing what sticks.” ‘

        I guess that anarchists LOVE noise because it is a generator of “news”
        and the more “news” the more chaos as he states

      3. @HolbyFanMw

        Russia is a convenient scapegoat for the elite; good for lumping anyone unhappy with the status quo as being somehow ‘linked’ to Russia and trying to ‘divide us’ or sow anarchy.It’s a game the establishment are playing to discredit dissenters and other political opponents of neoliberalism and neocolonialism. And many who should know better are falling for it. As if political division is something new or unnatural.

        We elect people who despise the population: they monitor internet use; they ban demonstrations and protests, wish to limit industrial action. They’ve taken control of the mainstream media and now want to control the internet – this very site could be closed under the ultra-vague Online harms Bill.

        Who are these imposters, because they certainly aren’t representative. Worse still, these strange people we elect expect automatic respect from the population for lording it over us with their authoritarianism.

        As Jonathan Cook hints at in his latest piece, these people in parliament have been doing the bidding of others for so long they’ve forgotten the purpose of ‘representative democracy ;namely ., the ‘ the idea of a covenant with the people i.e. Corbynism..It’s alien to them because they feel more like the haughty French aristocracy.

  13. Starmer will need to get permission from his Trilateral masters(think ultra-rich Freemasonry), which obviously, won’t be forthcoming. Conference needs to force him to keep his pledge. No excuse not to, given the public’s absolute support and demand for change.

    Privatisation is now thankfully seen for what it always was: a Tory scam; a scheme to transfer of wealth of the nation – assets and infrastructure built from the wealth of everyone in the UK – to the richest. The promised price reductions have failed to materialise… quite the opposite. While investment in infrastructure is wholly insufficient to meet rising demand, CEO pay has sky-rocketed, astronomically when taking fake performance bonuses(met by cost cutting and share buybacks) eg. Scottish Power CEO’s £11m +. https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scottishpower-chairman-earned-over-11million-27792895

    Many of the utilities are similarly foreign owned Energy : Scottish Power(Spain) E.On (German).
    “At least 71% of shares in England’s nine privatised water companies are owned by organisations from overseas including the super-rich, banks, hedge funds, foreign governments and businesses based in tax havens.” – Source GMB

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  14. Does anybody really expect the Guardian to give Jeremy Corbyn credit for anything? They are worse than the Mail because while most people are aware of the Mail’s Tory bias the Guardian is perceived to be a left of centre paper and people are therefore less likely to query its undermining of Jeremy Corbyn and his Socialist principles.
    The Guardian gleefully joined the rest of the MSM in the daily onslaught against him when it seemed likely Jeremy would lead Labour to form a government. The paper shamed itself and is paying the price now with falling circulation and loss of revenue.
    Now it is claiming one of Jeremy’s policies- renationalisation- is ” new common sense” .
    All Jeremy’s policies were based on fairness, decency and common sense e.g. ending child poverty, ensuring everyone had a roof over their head and had enough to eat , had access to health care and education, paid their fair share of taxes, etc-but Jeremy was vilified for these policies by the Guardian and the rest of the MSM.
    So this latest enlightenment by the Guardian is too little too late. They have already done the damage and helped have the most vicious right wing government in living memory ( and I remember Thatcher) to be elected with a massive majority in 2019.

    Reply

    1. The advantage the Mail has over the likes of the Guardian is that at least the Mail does what it says on the tin.

      Reply

  15. The 2019 Manifesto WAS intended for two terms –
    as McDonnell ruefully admitted the day after the GE.

    However that does not mean the policies were bad
    ones – just badly presented. A shorter
    document containing a few over-arching themes
    would have been better. Note that this is
    EXPLANATION and not blame.

    The struggle against Right Wing anti-Corbynites and
    incompetent “allies” was evidently too much.

    I dont think it takes much effort to identify members
    of either of these two groups.

    Reply

    1. People don’t seem to grasp the Forrests of British Money Trees that are scattered all over the world, those would be a bit complex to bring home, but once the ones around the edges are picked off the fleets would return full steam ahead.
      By the simple act of investing in an unavoidable, unescapable tax collection system, forcing those bastards running off with our taxes instead of stuffing the coffer, to pay their full Percentage of Tax, we’d already be on a massive home run. Once that tax collection gets hold of the city we’d be doing doible home runs.
      The biggest obsticle to tax is the negative relationship we’ve historically had with it, once we have a government in place who collects ALL the tax, not just SOME of the tax and a hand shake under the table. And starts showing People value for their money, ie Free nationwide high speed internet, best shcools/unis in the world all one standard, best NHS/Pharma hub in the world, best postal services in the world, most substantially supported/funded communities in the world, etc etc then people won’t mind paying their taxes, once Eton is just another school, with exactly the same standards and no special recognition, same with Oxford and Cambridge, just another uni same as every other, with the highest standards in the world, well, then even the rich would whine less about paying their full tax.
      But it’s because we’ve never really seen value for our money, rich or poor, the NHS until Con & NeoLab started hacking it to death, maybe I am pesimistic, what else do we have that is value for OUR money!?

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      2. That is also true, our fucking money that we paid in tax, not the tax dodging bastards, who sneer at the mere mention of Social Security or Poor.

  16. One other of Corbyn’s policies ignored by the Guardian was
    access to the Internet – which has proved crucial.

    Corbyn wanted it under public control – so that access to
    it plus speed was enhanced – and lo and behold what
    did I hear advocated on the News this morning ..?

    The same policy – or similar under another name!

    Reply

    1. Jess Phillips sneered at the very idea.

      But we have the lowest fibre to the premises (FTTP) coverage of any European country and the most expensive broadband relative to speed too. Typical : the UK pretending its the best when its the worst, again – Remember Ministers boasts about leading the world 10 years ago. We literally rank in last place for FTTP coverage.

      A 10Gb capable fiber network with that full 10Gbps for creative industry businesses(at a vastly reduced cost to that of commercial ISPs) & 1Gbps up/down for households provided free, by a Corbyn-led govt would’ve been popular & cutting edge. And a tiny fraction of the cost of HS 2’s final bill. HS 2 is just an idiotic, luxury project for the rich – Concorde on rail, to carry MPs up and down the country – it won’t create any new jobs. Whereas Corbyn broadband network infrastructure would’ve opened up loads of opportunities in deprived areas and creative industries etc.

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    2. The Bastard TORIES, Conservative and Neo-Labour TORIES are all raping Corbynism! I wish he wrote the Corbynism Manifesto (more of a memoir than an actual Manifesto) and coined all his Policies! Even if some were not original, for him to claim for these purposes (*NO, THAT IS NOT CRITICISM!*), he could spin it like they do!
      Its not too late, he could could write it in a couple of years after the next GE and say and look my policies live on and are used here, here and here by so and so and there by that one etc, etc
      As a pisstake GE 2017/2019, can’t remember when, I made a book cover for the manifesto, I don’t think he liked it, I never head back. Mind you those were busy times indeed!
      https://ibb.co/0VPg2YQ

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  17. I certainly do not blame Russia for everything!

    And in any case it is not the peoples fault –
    but their leaders.

    The disastrous and criminal invasion of Iraq was
    entirely the fault of Blair and Bush ..

    Blair was also partly responsible for the rise
    of Putin – he crawled to him – because he
    thought in his arrogance Putin would be his
    ally in the “war”: against Islamic
    fundamentalism.

    It is a pity that Gorbachev’s legacy did not hold –
    Thatcher was right to recognise his good
    qualifies and it is a pity that Blair was not more
    discerning

    Reply

    1. R.I.P. Mr Gorbachev, an honest man who was grievously deceived by the West.

      Reply

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