Has Corbyn dumbed down the Labour Party by purging Oxbridge grads?

Glad you enjoyed reading my posts. .

The leadership not knowing what the peasants pay for bread was the reason the French executed the 'elite' and that France is now a republic.

Some do, I agree. And it is not my case that red brick students are ipso facto less intelligent than Oxbridge ones. Some may be much much more so, in individual cases.

But considering how small these two universities are compared to the total population of students

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_enrollment

...their dominance in British political life is extraordinary.

There have been 29 Prime Ministers since Robert Peel (the first "modern" PM) inclusive. More than half of them attended just one of those two universities.

You might say that this encompasses a period before the existence of most of the red bricks. (If London and Durham are redbrick?) That is true, but during the twentieth century the red bricks have educated millions of students over the decades.

The number of redbrick Prime Ministers? Zero.

Jezza is on the front page of the Sunday Times this morning, providing yet more evidence that he is too stupid to be our next Prime Minister. He just can't help himself!

In a youtube video from the Morning Star (do they still exist, who knew?) he is filmed saying "I am not sure what there is to commemorate about the First World War."

Next week he will have to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in the annual commemoration ceremony, because that is what Leaders of the Opposition do.

The Tories are being soft on Corby because they want him to remain in post but their red top friends will go to town on this when the time is right.

If you wanted to find an issue that resonates more with the public at the level of the gut, it would be harder to think of one than this. WW1 is a national wound that is still not fully healed to this day. Our grandfathers and great great grandfathers fought and died by the millions, whole streets being decimated in single days, and there is STILL a visceral need by many to honour them. He will cause great offence and disgust when these words are publicised widely, which they will be, fear not of that.

The narrative is (and will be till he is defeated) that Corbyn is unpatriotic. Comments like this are a gift. When you see the next opinion poll with Labour plunging still further think back to statements like this for the reason why..

He may sincerely think this, no doubt he does. But you don't express such sentiments publicly if you ever want the party you represent to become the Government of the nation. There is nothing to gain, everything to lose.

Saying such a thing about an issue so emotive in our political culture was unbelievably, incredibly, unimaginably stupid. But then that is Corbyn, thick as two short planks.

Firstly, Neville Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin attended Mason College (a late 19th century university that was incorporated into the University of Birmingham). Even by your confused definition of redbrick, Mason College would fall firmly and indisputably into that category.

Secondly, from the outset you have (erroneously) used the term redbrick as being synonymous with non-Oxbridge, and in fact your most recent post implies similar thinking with the way your frame Prime Ministers; whether this is unintentional/thoughtless or intentional/deceitful is anyone's guess. If this is indeed the case, then Gordon Brown would also fall into that category, having been educated at Edinburgh

And you really don't want to tie yourself in further knots by your flexible definition of redbrick, flipping to how it suits you. From your original post, you have said that that Jeremy Corbyn's shadow Cabinet "is almost exclusively red brick, not Oxbridge". If you actually look at the make up of the Shadow Cabinet, you will find that only 10 were educated at redbricks (and that is even being generous to you, since this is including 3 who were educated at Edinburgh, and 2 from Durham): these are Heidi Alexander (Durham), Jon Trickett (Leeds), Lisa Nandy (Newcastle), Ian Murray (Edinburgh), Kerry McCarthy (Liverpool), Kate Green (Edinburgh), Michael Dugher (Notthingham), Luciana Berger (Birmingham), Catherine McKinnell (Edinburgh), Jon Ashworth (Durham). Which again brings us back to your habit of lying, since 10 members of the shadow cabinet attended Oxbridge. How you can stand by your original claim of the shadow cabinet being "almost exclusively red brick, not Oxbridge" is just beyond me. Leaving aside that the basis of your criticism is just untrue, the premise of your criticism has also been shot to pieces.

@rock_climber86, this poster has been the source of a huge amount of entertainment on this thread, though the thread is now probably too long for you to read through to appreciate this.

Are you saying he is stupid because his position on remembrance is stupid?

Or are you saying he is stupid because it is strategically a poor political move to not loyally toe the line of remembrance?

OK. I'll bite, this time.

Neville Chamberlain didn't go to a redbrick university. His educational institution was not a university at the time, so he didn't go to university at all. You are committing a logical fallacy again.

You are correct, it eventually BECAME part of Birmingham University, funnily enough created by his own father, Joseph.not that long after Neville left.

Joe didn't think that much of Neville, his hopes were invested in the elder (half) brother Austen, educated at Cambridge, a serious politician but never PM . Since Neville eventually (by most people's estimations) became one of the worst Prime Ministers in our history it looks like he knew, sadly only too well, his younger son's failings.

Why Austen never became PM himself (he very nearly did) is a fascinating story in itself, but one that is too long for this thread.

Stanley Baldwin went to Cambridge and got a Third. His father said to him
when he heard the news "don't get a third in life." And he didn't, he was a good (if underestimated) PM.

Why did you not mention this? Were you ignorant or were you lying?

Edinburgh (your research wasn't good it actually produced two PM's during the period I cited not one) is an ancient university founded in 1582, not a redbrick. During the Scottish Enlightenment it arguably far overshadowed Oxford and Cambridge,.

The definition of that latter is a little opaque, it is true, but few I think would argue that Edinburgh falls within it.

Insightful but very prejudiced. Where's the infamous lefty tolerance?

Personally I appreciate a wide range of views from the whole of society rather than picking and choosing on the basis of their upbringing and bank balance.

Why don't you work out for yourself what I was saying?

Maybe you can work out the meaning of the below sentence. Give it a good old parse?

I AM BORED OF ARGUING THE TOSS WITH YOU.

Because you claimed that there existed no redbrick Prime Minister. And this is incorrect.

Because I was giving you the change to get yourself out of yet another hole you had dug yourself

If you believe he is stupid based on the perspective of political strategy and that public announcements trivialising the remembrance is quite an unpopular move, then you are omitting a crucial fact. That is that he said these things two and half years ago.

Now two and a half years ago, Jeremy Corbyn was a fringe long-term backbencher. He, nor anybody, would have considered the possibility of being leader of the Labour Party. In fact even at nomination and for sometime after, he considered himself a candidate to generate debate and didn't consider himself a credible possible winner.

So there is little to say that he was stupid two and a half years when he said these words, since back then he was just an MP for North Islington. I mean, there was no fall out from him saying this at the time, indicating it could hardly be a stupid move (in fact they are probably the sort of words that champagne socialists in Islington love to hear).

So again, we are seeing that you cannot provide grown up or logical political analysis, with all you being able to do is churn our simplistic rhetoric sometimes even based on lies, and in most cases based on huge distortions of the truth. It speaks volumes for the psyche of UKIP supporters that this is what makes them tick and how they form their opinions.

Sorry, your attempted refutation was based on a logical fallacy and a combination of either ignorance or deceit.

Mason College was not a "redbrick" university when Chamberlain (and Baldwin) attended. IT WAS NOT EVEN A UNIVERSITY.

As for Baldwin answer me two questions.

1. How long did Baldwin actually spend at Mason College?

2. Were you unaware that he attended Trinity College Cambridge, or were you lying (by omission) when you didn't refer to that and claimed him as a redbrick Prime Minister?

This poster is subject to logical fallacies and I ask everyone to examine this egregious example.

It is called the "straw man" fallacy. I doubt you could find a better example. If Harvard Business School did modules on spurious and fallacious debating techniques they could use it as a case study.

The poster puts forward positions not advanced by his interlocutor, positions not held, conclusions not advanced or drawn. He himself invents the arguments of his opponent, as someone building a man of straw. Go back to the post made and see how he does this.

Then he demolishes his own pile of rags and straw and claims victory. "Boy can I debate"

Rat bag, I'll set you the traps. You be sure to fall into them now...

And the digger doesn't stop digging his own holes.

Are you seriously taking the position that a university college is not a university?Are you seriously saying therefore that UCL is not a university, or at least only became a university in 2008?

I was aware of Baldwin's attendance at Cambridge. His attendance there is irrelevant when refuting your claim that no Prime Minister within a certain time frame "was redbrick", by the evidence that two Prime Ministers studied at a redbrick university.

This is more than clutching at straws on your part. You almost have a masochistic desire to open yourself up to flagellation with your incapability of being able to debate coupled with an expertise in taking ridiculous positions and sticking by them even when they've been utterly knocked down.