Tories To Capture Saint Tony's Old Seat......

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/807203/Tony-Blair-general-election-seat-Sedgefield-win-Conservative
If Safe Labour seats are threatened are we looking at a massacre?

[emmie]

isn't this a little too early to tell, i mean we haven't had the GE yet.

[jim360]

Oh, let us have our fun guessing at what will happen, emmie :P

[youngmafbog]

Hope your right jim. I guess there is plenty of time for another "Abbott" moment.

[Deskdiary]

Isn't Corbyn repeatedly refusing to answer a straightforward question about condemning the IRA yesterday an 'Abbott' moment?

[Kromovaracun]

Yeah. Even I won't defend Corbyn's refusal to say anything about that. It's both strategically and morally poor.

There have been a few "Abbot moments" on the Tory side though which nobody reports. Hammond getting his figures wrong by £20m, the home secretary not knowing what police officers earn, Gove getting his figures wrong on the immigration skills charge.

If simply "being prepared" is getting done away with, then I miss "politics as usual"...

[jim360]

From the sounds of things Corbyn was refusing to condemn *only* the IRA, instead stating that "all the bombing (by the IRA and everyone else)" was wrong. Whether or not that makes things any better I don't know.

[Kromovaracun]

It's just a really tortuous and evasive way of putting it if that's what he thinks, though. If he thinks bombing in general is a bad thing it should not be difficult to condemn the IRA even if you think their cause was just.

I mean, I would still rather be governed by him than the thin-skinned closet authoritarian who currently occupies No.10, but I can definitely understand people having reservations with him over this.

[ichkeria]

I actually have some sympathy for Corbyn on this. I always have been appalled at his support for the Troops Out movement, but this particular item seems to be one of those contrived pieces of moral outrage that lead nowhere.
He condemned the violence of the IRA and the loyalists. Whatever you might think of his support for Sinn Fein and maybe even the IRA in the past, he was badgered about condemning 'just the IRA' on its own. That doesn't really make a lot of sense put like that.