Will Toynbee's praise help or hinder Miliband?

David

I don't know the answer to your question, but I'd sure like to know what she's been smoking.

Simon

PT really does seem to be losing the plot with her comments. She used to be someone I would read - not because I would agree with what she said, but because she would argue her points with conviction and clarity. Now she is gushing over a man who has shown no real talent or leadership. If he were a potential PM, he would have made a real mark at the FCO - and I have yet to find any evidence of that. He has no experience of taking any difficult decisions. He has no real connection to the Labour base or the concerns of real people.

If Polly thinks this is worth celebrating, then she has lost much credibility.

Silent Hunter

The Guardian are definitely running scared today, after letting down their golden boy's shot at the leadership of the Labour Party.

The response to Milibands article was overwhelmingly hostile and I would suggest has killed his aspirations for leadership.....stone dead!

So today....on the pro Miliband Polly thread.....they have introduced 'PRE MODERATION'; something they said they would never do, as it runs contrary to their whole Comment is Free ideology.

This is a thinly veiled attempt to recoup some of the political losses for Miliband yesterday.....(they even removed the Dennis MacShane thread after just a day because he too, as planted advocate for Miliband was getting universally pilloried)....by desperately trying to censor the posts to give an artificial view that there actually is support for Miliband out there; when the opposite is true.

The TRUTH is that NO ONE WANTS LABOUR any more and it won't make any difference who takes charge of the sinking ship.......IT'S STILL SINKING!

What we need is a General Election and the sooner the better.

Bernard from Horsham

You should reead Guido's post about PT on www.order-order.com. I think it sums it up fairly nicely

David

By the way, what's the opinion at the Coffee Shop about the way Labour are playing politics with someone's death (i.e. Harman's comments on Thatcher, clearly aimed at ingratiating herslef with the left?)

Charlie T

This humanities drop out is nothing more than a shameless Labour Party shill.Shes there to tell the "free thinkers" and "progressives" what to think.The fact she's bigging up Miliband does confirm the plutocracy now realise Brown is a loser.

Oscar India

Polly's little more than a comedy figure now. Suggestions of her "influence" are laughable. As are the inconsistencies in and of her arguments

Marian C

Nobody takes PT seriously, she's really quite mad; I think she must be taking double strength silly pills, and everyone them has worked

TrevorH

If Toynbees claims for Milibands policies are correct (and since when did she ever get anything right?) then its clear that Miliband would be a disastrous PM for Britain.

"He would step in and regulate the risk-taking City" - do Toynbee and Miliband realise that that's just what the City is for, and from which it derives its rewards?

All Toynbee has confirmed is my view of Miliband's Marxist family background and leanings.

Juan Kerr

Anyone who is 'at breezy ease' with the situation Labour/the nation are in right now, signals quite clearly that their lights are switched off.

JONNY

'Suddenly everything changed. The burst of optimism was so startling it dazzled those too long trapped deep in a dungeon. In that one moment it was all over for the old leader who had plunged them into these depths. Suddenly here was the chance of escape everyone was waiting for.'
She's got it rather bad I'd say. And I always thought she'd be faithful unto death to her old flame Gordon.
But there's light at the end of the tunnel. With her new quivering romantic style she could make it onto the Mills & Boon list.

Faceless Bureaucrat

As the sultry chanteuse Tina Turner once sang, “Women of a certain age,
they learn to rely and judge all his responses…”. Despite being of a ‘certain age’, I think dear Polly has not judged DM’s responses at all well this time.

Kevyn Bodman

Polly Toynbee was the cause of my first ever comment to a political site on the web.
We are all wrong sometimes, but Polly is more consistently wrong than any commentator I've
yet found.

Silent Hunter

I note that a number of anti Labour posts have now completely 'disappeared' from the Guardians Comment is Free, Polly Toynbee thread.

Welcome to Labour censorship of free speech, Guardian style.

Something tells me that even if they do lose the General Election, there may be a 'pressing reason' for them to stay in Government under 'emergency measures'......... a terrorist atrocity springs to mind. :O(

I really wouldn't put anything beyond ZaNuLabour after the almost dismissive trampling of Magna Carta to introduce 42 days detention without trial.

We have simply got to get rid of this abysmally corrupt Labour Government.

Chris Paul

It wasn't a leadership bid Peter. I'm not even sure it wasn't run by Brown. Polly Toynbee is off on one and way too excitable.

And there is no precedent for Thatcher getting a state funeral now is there David?

Trumpeter Lanfried

Polly says: 'For the first time in ages the Tories hear threatening mortar fire from Labour approaching their barricades.'

Ah yes, I hear it now ... pop! pop! pop! Approaching mortar fire. Take cover everyone. Tory party about to be destroyed.

John Page

If PT is right about Miliboy's policies (and she's wrong about a lot of things), Miliboy needs to get out into the real world a bit. Personal carbon trading as a vote winner? I don't think so!

London Calling

The response to Milibands speech last week,was like the launching
of a Sunday supplement for Hello magazine. Gossip and the dissection of what he said and what others translated as to what he said by the media
put politics and the media at a all time low. There’s nothing more damaging than just opinion and speculation, especially when those who sell stories haven’t any to tell and plunge into the darkest unknown regardless of the consequences, papers after all have to sell and people get hurt in the process but who cares? Its just opinions.

If the conservatives or any other party were in power now it would be just the same,
they would be getting a kick in also, regardless of past achievements, that’s how it works and always has in politics and it is this kind of relationship with the war of words propped up by a biased media that so sickens.

We need a revolution, but not on the streets, but by the very people who have become so detached from ordinary people who want change so desperately, but instead have to sink alongside the carnival of the powerful and the opinionated privileged.

The British people deserve better than this, and especially give a thought to the family who spent the past two weeks sleeping in their car with their two children after their house was reprocessed and many more like them in their situation who feel so hopeless.

I for one will support a party who has vision and offers an alternative to the current
charade of pantomime politics we are so accustomed. Punch and Judy closed down, the curtains are closed and we await a sincere replacement worthy of our attention.

Silent Hunter

Update on the Polly thread!

Now the Guardian is blocking any one from posting, who has previously posted some thing anti Labour.

LOL.....perhaps the Chinese have taken over the Comment is Free Blog for 're-education'. ;O)

For those of you who look at some of the worst government excesses in Zimbabwe and China and say "It couldn't happen here".......this is how it starts!!!!
Piddling little removals of freedom of speech which lead logically & eventually to people being snatched from the street and taken for 'political re-education' in some Gulag.

Open your eyes and un-cross your fingers behind your backs.

If Labour are left in power - this is where it will end up.

Marin

The article is clearly an attempt at manipulation; she's simply trying to implant the idea that 'The Party' is somehow not beyond redemption, that it can be rescued. She probably thinks they deserve another term in office. If so, I'll say 'good for her' but I doubt the electorate can be fooled by such crudeness.

Silent Hunter

And now the Polly Thread at the Guardian has been closed.

Clearly not getting the response they wanted.......so let's shut it down.

The Guardian Newspaper - Home of Censorship.

john miller

"Personal carbon trading" Hah! Good old Pol, behind the plot as always.

What this means luv, is that you can pollute as much as you like if you are rich. Of course this appeals to you on a personal basis, but your hypocrisy has always prevented your personal views from appearing in your columns. But really, Pol, this is the ultimate capitalism. In your terms, its a licence to kill if you have the money. And if you understood it, I don't think you'd like your readers to realise you understood it...

Mrs Erdleigh

The Dennis Macshane thread is here http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/30/labour.davidmiliband?commentpage=1 for those who want to catch up on it

Ben Elford

Polly Pointless: her witless inconsistency is far beyond taking seriously, far beyond parody. When I looked at the comments on her article earlier, not one supported her risible argument. It can't be long before retirement is suggested.

Tanuki

Surely what Her Pollyship means is "no-one listens to a *party* once 85% of the population decides it's not up to the job".

NuLab can play shuffle-the-leader until the rotten cows come home to roost, but that doesn't change the pervading national Zeitgeist that the only solution is a change of government.

Silent Hunter

Mrs Erdleigh:

Forgive me but although the article is still there......commenting on it was halted after a few hours to avoid further embarrassment to New Labour.

Its called CENSORSHIP.

They do it in Zimbabwe, North Korea, Burma, China and now at The Guardian.

Ann

Yes, both Millipede and Toynbee are silly clowns: the lights are on but there's nobody at home.

Max Kaye

PT reminds me of Simon Jenkins (and vice versa) - everything they say is usually totally wrong.

Ann

Seconded, Max. But that's true of just about everyone who writes for the Guardian and the Sunday Times.