Labour leadership

Quoted from forza ivano

personally i don't think any of them can hold a candle to cameron and osborne, who will rubbing their hands in glee at the lack of quality. burnham and cooper are both second rate and non descript.corbyn is highly entertaining but completely unelectable. kendall is interesting but so inexperienced she'd be a liability. umunna is the one who would have given the tories something to think about so its a shame he dropped out so early.

labour has the quadruple problem of what to do in scotland, the loss of seats due to the perfectly reasonable reorganisation of constituencies, the fact that the tories are utterly ruthless and far more politically astute than labour and an improving economy.
imho labour needs to have a deep deep think about what they are offering. in the past when people's living standards were low and life consisted of working for the same company and living in council provided housing their appeal to the working class was obvious.
nowadays working people have their own homes, nice things and more leisure time. they want to keep those things and move up to say shopping at m&s and john lewis etc. they are far more right wing re immigration and crime because of this. talk to people in gy and they despise the druggies and the burglars; they don't have the liberal 'lets help these poor people, and try and help them with their problems' attitude
whilst the zero hours contracts and benefit cuts are things that labour should be against, its not the main problem for the majority of people. imho these things should be a part of their campaign but it did seem like it was almost the main things they were worried about.
labour has to win in the more affluent parts of the country, and that means a totally different approach which i just cannot see happening to avoid a seemingly inevitable defeat in 2020

As the Tories experienced back in 1997, the Labour party since 2010 has been in difficulty as all of the big 'names' are indelibly linked to the previous long-running administration. Most of the biggest Labour party characters fell on their swords in the Blair/Brown era, the two Eds have now gone and this leaves people such as Burnham who are perfectly competent but were never overly ambitious and Cooper who is very competent but lacking the common touch. Kendall and Umunna have been spouting the Conservative propaganda as if it were the truth.

http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/labours-growing-macroeconomic-illiteracy.html

Why would a Labour politician do such a thing? They either aren't competent enough to understand the falsity of the Tories' economic and other policy bullshite, aren't brave enough to stand up and point out the lies or are cynical enough to go along with them in an attempt to appeal to a misinformed electorate. The two Eds failed appallingly by acting in a similar manner about the economy especially yet these two 'leadership' candidates want to attempt to replicate them? The mind boggles as to what they are thinking.

Cameron spent most of the election campaign (and the year or so running up to it) lying about pretty much anything you can think about and could get away with it thanks to the backing of the massed ranks of the right-wing press and an acquiescent BBC unwilling (or simply incapable) of reporting on pretty much anything but the stuff printed in said press. Being able to outspend Labour by around 2 to 1 certainly hasn't helped them in the past couple of elections, either.

As for Osborne, he is entirely politically and ideologically motivated and must surely the least competent Chancellor we've ever had. You talk about a recovering economy? Osborne oversaw the weakest recovery following a recession for around 200 years in the last parliament! Osborne's austerian policies cut off a moderate recovery and have (and continue) to increase poverty amongst the poorest whilst transferring wealth to the very richest. Real wages are still below the pre-recession levels and the only reason anybody was feeling a bit better about things from 2014 onwards was due to the drop in oil prices and inflation which was absolutely nothing to do with Osborne, yet he still somehow claimed the credit!

His latest 'policy' targetted at setting up the Labour party is his promise to legislate for surpluses in good times to try and get them to say this isn't necessary. This policy from Osborne is so far beyond stupid, it has been ridiculed by the FT and Economist - has he got anybody that understands macroeconomics working for him at the Treasury? The chart at the top of this blog post from Frances Coppola shows the figures from the OBR's economic forecast back in March:

http://coppolacomment.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/repeat-after-me-sectoral-balances-must.html

The red line shows recent and forecast government spending. The OBR thinks that, under Osborne's plans, the government deficit will become a surplus some time during 2018/2019. Now look at the green line. This is our balance of payments deficit, money leaving the country because we import a heck of a lot more than we export. Incidentally, I can't imagine why they think our trade deficit is likely to fall in the near future - what do we actually have to export these days? Perhaps something to do with a drop in the cost of oil? Dunno. Anyway, the yellow line shows that they expect the corporate sector to start borrowing more soon which is actually good news as businesses only borrow when investing in expectation of profit. When things aren't great, they just fire people.

The really interesting one here is the blue line showing household borrowing. As you can see from the downward trajectory since 2011, Osborne's much-vaunted economic plan has relied greatly on households taking on more debt, mostly through the inflation of another housing bubble, aided and abetted by various government subsidies! As Coppola notes, sectoral balances must sum to zero - the only way the government will be able to run Osborne's planned surplus is by households taking on increasing amounts of debt as clearly shown in this OBR chart. How whacky is that? Osborne is saying it is so vital that the national debt is paid down as soon as possible that we've all got to borrow more ourselves. This despite the fact that the UK government borrowing costs are at an all-time low. The only way that the government can run regular surpluses is through households running regular deficits. Wonder if any of the newspapers or media will actually, you know, forcefully point out that the Emperor Has No Clothes with this latest 'plan'?

Anyway, sorry about that little rant. When somebody says anything positive about Osborne my head explodes!  

Back to your other points. The reorganisation of boundaries was chiefly arranged by the coalition government because in general, the Labour party has required fewer votes to win seats than the Conservatives. I'd imagine that much of this was due to the previous Conservative lock-out in Scotland which meant that the small constituencies there gave Labour the benefit. This time, however, the Tories actually needed around 6,000 less votes to win each seat than Labour! The SNP needed 14,000 less votes than Labour to win each of their seats. The utterly ridiculous electoral system we have here allows these margins which is bad enough until you see that the LibDems needed over 300,000 votes to win each of their seats and poor old UKIP needed almost 4 million votes for their one seat! Absolutely crazy and you can see why our voting system is considered so comical by most of the civilised world. The boundary changes which come into place next election will make it more difficult for Labour but would have been entirely fair if we had a proper proportional electoral system. With first past the post, it remains little more than gerrymandering.

You're correct that we're not as impoverished as previous generations, but we're certainly heading that way for the majority of the population. You note that these days, working people have their own homes, nice things and leisure time. Really? How many working people do you know under the age of 30 or 35 who own their own home? Average age for first time buyers is now 36 in the country as a whole, 41 in other parts of the country. Average house price is 7 times the median wage. I was lucky enough to buy my house over a dozen years ago - it is now 'worth' double what I paid back then and this in Cleethorpes, hardly a property hotspot. My wife is 11 years younger than me - none of her friends from University (some reasonably well-paid) have been able to afford to buy a house as yet. When I was her age, most of my friends had owned homes for 6 or 7 years. Not nearly enough houses are being built (possibly another part of Osborne's genius plan as building houses would reduce prices?) so it is only going to get worse for the young in the future.

In addition to housing policy, don't forget employment. Unemployment for ages 16-24 is three times as high as the rest of the population and most of the jobs the young can get are sub-McShite jobs. Retirement ages are going up as well so that means fewer jobs for the young to take over as well. We simply can't go on as things are, especially when Osborne's further planned cuts are going to hit the poorest in society once again. Note the cutting of Working tax credits which has been mooted recently is for those who already have low-paid jobs in the first place! Tens or hundreds of thousands more children will be forced into poverty. Poverty leads to greater crime, the druggies and burglars you mention.

For me, we need an effective opposition so the likes of Kendall and Umunna are about the worst thing that could happen to the country. Burnham or Cooper it will have to be and I only hope that they will actually start speaking up, noting the failure of Tory policies and how they are economically illiterate, taking on the right-wing press and forcing the BBC to actually report the news.

I still doubt it will be enough to win a majority (the Tories will probably be able to spend triple or even quadruple as much as Labour next time), but they need to make their voices heard and hopefully inform some of the electorate what is actually going on in the country.

If they do that, then at least the aging "I'm all right Jack" voters in the country will only have themselves to blame when the excrement inevitably hits the fan in future years when the rightfully disgruntled young begin to have their say.

Shite. That was a bit longer than planned.

Actually, should just have posted Frankie Boyle's much funnier run-down instead.  

http://www.theguardian.com/com.....htwing-frankie-boyle

Quoted from Maringer

As the Tories experienced back in 1997, the Labour party since 2010 has been in difficulty as all of the big 'names' are indelibly linked to the previous long-running administration. Most of the biggest Labour party characters fell on their swords in the Blair/Brown era, the two Eds have now gone and this leaves people such as Burnham who are perfectly competent but were never overly ambitious and Cooper who is very competent but lacking the common touch. Kendall and Umunna have been spouting the Conservative propaganda as if it were the truth.

http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/labours-growing-macroeconomic-illiteracy.html

Why would a Labour politician do such a thing? They either aren't competent enough to understand the falsity of the Tories' economic and other policy bullshite, aren't brave enough to stand up and point out the lies or are cynical enough to go along with them in an attempt to appeal to a misinformed electorate. The two Eds failed appallingly by acting in a similar manner about the economy especially yet these two 'leadership' candidates want to attempt to replicate them? The mind boggles as to what they are thinking.

Cameron spent most of the election campaign (and the year or so running up to it) lying about pretty much anything you can think about and could get away with it thanks to the backing of the massed ranks of the right-wing press and an acquiescent BBC unwilling (or simply incapable) of reporting on pretty much anything but the stuff printed in said press. Being able to outspend Labour by around 2 to 1 certainly hasn't helped them in the past couple of elections, either.

As for Osborne, he is entirely politically and ideologically motivated and must surely the least competent Chancellor we've ever had. You talk about a recovering economy? Osborne oversaw the weakest recovery following a recession for around 200 years in the last parliament! Osborne's austerian policies cut off a moderate recovery and have (and continue) to increase poverty amongst the poorest whilst transferring wealth to the very richest. Real wages are still below the pre-recession levels and the only reason anybody was feeling a bit better about things from 2014 onwards was due to the drop in oil prices and inflation which was absolutely nothing to do with Osborne, yet he still somehow claimed the credit!

His latest 'policy' targetted at setting up the Labour party is his promise to legislate for surpluses in good times to try and get them to say this isn't necessary. This policy from Osborne is so far beyond stupid, it has been ridiculed by the FT and Economist - has he got anybody that understands macroeconomics working for him at the Treasury? The chart at the top of this blog post from Frances Coppola shows the figures from the OBR's economic forecast back in March:

http://coppolacomment.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/repeat-after-me-sectoral-balances-must.html

The red line shows recent and forecast government spending. The OBR thinks that, under Osborne's plans, the government deficit will become a surplus some time during 2018/2019. Now look at the green line. This is our balance of payments deficit, money leaving the country because we import a heck of a lot more than we export. Incidentally, I can't imagine why they think our trade deficit is likely to fall in the near future - what do we actually have to export these days? Perhaps something to do with a drop in the cost of oil? Dunno. Anyway, the yellow line shows that they expect the corporate sector to start borrowing more soon which is actually good news as businesses only borrow when investing in expectation of profit. When things aren't great, they just fire people.

The really interesting one here is the blue line showing household borrowing. As you can see from the downward trajectory since 2011, Osborne's much-vaunted economic plan has relied greatly on households taking on more debt, mostly through the inflation of another housing bubble, aided and abetted by various government subsidies! As Coppola notes, sectoral balances must sum to zero - the only way the government will be able to run Osborne's planned surplus is by households taking on increasing amounts of debt as clearly shown in this OBR chart. How whacky is that? Osborne is saying it is so vital that the national debt is paid down as soon as possible that we've all got to borrow more ourselves. This despite the fact that the UK government borrowing costs are at an all-time low. The only way that the government can run regular surpluses is through households running regular deficits. Wonder if any of the newspapers or media will actually, you know, forcefully point out that the Emperor Has No Clothes with this latest 'plan'?

Anyway, sorry about that little rant. When somebody says anything positive about Osborne my head explodes!  

Back to your other points. The reorganisation of boundaries was chiefly arranged by the coalition government because in general, the Labour party has required fewer votes to win seats than the Conservatives. I'd imagine that much of this was due to the previous Conservative lock-out in Scotland which meant that the small constituencies there gave Labour the benefit. This time, however, the Tories actually needed around 6,000 less votes to win each seat than Labour! The SNP needed 14,000 less votes than Labour to win each of their seats. The utterly ridiculous electoral system we have here allows these margins which is bad enough until you see that the LibDems needed over 300,000 votes to win each of their seats and poor old UKIP needed almost 4 million votes for their one seat! Absolutely crazy and you can see why our voting system is considered so comical by most of the civilised world. The boundary changes which come into place next election will make it more difficult for Labour but would have been entirely fair if we had a proper proportional electoral system. With first past the post, it remains little more than gerrymandering.

You're correct that we're not as impoverished as previous generations, but we're certainly heading that way for the majority of the population. You note that these days, working people have their own homes, nice things and leisure time. Really? How many working people do you know under the age of 30 or 35 who own their own home? Average age for first time buyers is now 36 in the country as a whole, 41 in other parts of the country. Average house price is 7 times the median wage. I was lucky enough to buy my house over a dozen years ago - it is now 'worth' double what I paid back then and this in Cleethorpes, hardly a property hotspot. My wife is 11 years younger than me - none of her friends from University (some reasonably well-paid) have been able to afford to buy a house as yet. When I was her age, most of my friends had owned homes for 6 or 7 years. Not nearly enough houses are being built (possibly another part of Osborne's genius plan as building houses would reduce prices?) so it is only going to get worse for the young in the future.

In addition to housing policy, don't forget employment. Unemployment for ages 16-24 is three times as high as the rest of the population and most of the jobs the young can get are sub-McShite jobs. Retirement ages are going up as well so that means fewer jobs for the young to take over as well. We simply can't go on as things are, especially when Osborne's further planned cuts are going to hit the poorest in society once again. Note the cutting of Working tax credits which has been mooted recently is for those who already have low-paid jobs in the first place! Tens or hundreds of thousands more children will be forced into poverty. Poverty leads to greater crime, the druggies and burglars you mention.

For me, we need an effective opposition so the likes of Kendall and Umunna are about the worst thing that could happen to the country. Burnham or Cooper it will have to be and I only hope that they will actually start speaking up, noting the failure of Tory policies and how they are economically illiterate, taking on the right-wing press and forcing the BBC to actually report the news.

I still doubt it will be enough to win a majority (the Tories will probably be able to spend triple or even quadruple as much as Labour next time), but they need to make their voices heard and hopefully inform some of the electorate what is actually going on in the country.

If they do that, then at least the aging "I'm all right Jack" voters in the country will only have themselves to blame when the excrement inevitably hits the fan in future years when the rightfully disgruntled young begin to have their say.

Shite. That was a bit longer than planned.

Well it saved me from having to write a (far less well written) reply....excellent critique of the current situation  

A good post Maringer and enjoyed the links - interesting stuff.

I would take issue with your somewhat arrogant assumption that you know more about these things than some of the politicians who disagree with you.

The ONS stats out today certainly seem to show the end of the world is not quite as imminent as some of your posts make out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33162403

The point is that we're currently in a 'pause' in the austerity that Osborne planned and plans again. His austerity measures practically shut down the economy from 2010-2012, were quietly relaxed in 2013 when they realised how disastrously things were going to allow a modest recovery in the lead up to the election (also more by luck than design as low inflation is all that saved him), and we know he now plans an emergency budget next month where he's going to outlight further cuts (mostly on the poor) all over again. It really makes me laugh when the Tories say they are sticking to their "long-term economic plan" as they've failed in every measure they were aiming to meet when they came into office in 2010 and have somehow got away changing their reasoning for their cuts whilst hiding the fact they actually changed the overall plan mid-way through the last parliament!

I suspect the situation over the next 5 years will be the same as last time - more harsh cuts for the first 2 or 3 years, ideologically aiming to cut the state further, then a relaxation as the next election approaches. Unfortunately, the electorate has a habit of forgetting hard times if things have been looking up for 18 months or so before an election hence the mistaken belief he's been anything other than a disastrous chancellor. Whether or not he'll be as lucky this time remains to be seen.

Note that the government are currently positioning themselves to blame anything that goes wrong with the economy on Eurozone woes. Another thing that has been to Osborne's benefit is that the Eurozone economic policy has been even worse (and with more severe outcomes) than our own! Allows Osborne to use his same old tired "strongest recovery in Europe" guff even though it has been historically terrible.

It is pleasing to hear that wages are probably growing reasonably at last but don't forget it is 8 years since the recession began! The worst recovery from a recession and it is unheard of for wages to be falling then depressed for so long after a recession. No doubt that

Low unemployment is good but there certainly seems to be something odd about the figures there. It will be interesting to see if any good research comes out about the types and quality of these jobs. I know the move to part-time work has been very big and I wonder how much of our terrible productivity performance is down to the poor quality of the jobs and underemployment.

https://www.tuc.org.uk/economi.....ours-top-their-wages

Incidentally, I would urge you to read the following article which points out just how far away ideologically the current bunch of Conservatives are compared to those in the past:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/17/conservatives-unions-tax-housing-brussels

Cameron, Osborne & Co are doing stuff which even Thatcher wouldn't have dreamed of imposing on the nation. They are heading even to the right of the American Republican party which shows there is serious ideological whackiness going on.

Quoted from Maringer

The point is that we're currently in a 'pause' in the austerity that Osborne planned and plans again. His austerity measures practically shut down the economy from 2010-2012, were quietly relaxed in 2013 when they realised how disastrously things were going to allow a modest recovery in the lead up to the election (also more by luck than design as low inflation is all that saved him), and we know he now plans an emergency budget next month where he's going to outlight further cuts (mostly on the poor) all over again. It really makes me laugh when the Tories say they are sticking to their "long-term economic plan" as they've failed in every measure they were aiming to meet when they came into office in 2010 and have somehow got away changing their reasoning for their cuts whilst hiding the fact they actually changed the overall plan mid-way through the last parliament!

I suspect the situation over the next 5 years will be the same as last time - more harsh cuts for the first 2 or 3 years, ideologically aiming to cut the state further, then a relaxation as the next election approaches. Unfortunately, the electorate has a habit of forgetting hard times if things have been looking up for 18 months or so before an election hence the mistaken belief he's been anything other than a disastrous chancellor. Whether or not he'll be as lucky this time remains to be seen.

Note that the government are currently positioning themselves to blame anything that goes wrong with the economy on Eurozone woes. Another thing that has been to Osborne's benefit is that the Eurozone economic policy has been even worse (and with more severe outcomes) than our own! Allows Osborne to use his same old tired "strongest recovery in Europe" guff even though it has been historically terrible.

It is pleasing to hear that wages are probably growing reasonably at last but don't forget it is 8 years since the recession began! The worst recovery from a recession and it is unheard of for wages to be falling then depressed for so long after a recession. No doubt that

Low unemployment is good but there certainly seems to be something odd about the figures there. It will be interesting to see if any good research comes out about the types and quality of these jobs. I know the move to part-time work has been very big and I wonder how much of our terrible productivity performance is down to the poor quality of the jobs and underemployment.

https://www.tuc.org.uk/economi.....ours-top-their-wages

Incidentally, I would urge you to read the following article which points out just how far away ideologically the current bunch of Conservatives are compared to those in the past:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/17/conservatives-unions-tax-housing-brussels

Cameron, Osborne & Co are doing stuff which even Thatcher wouldn't have dreamed of imposing on the nation. They are heading even to the right of the American Republican party which shows there is serious ideological whackiness going on.

I saw somewhere the other day a term that summed up Osborne perfectly....GIDIOT  

[IMG]http://i59.tinypic.com/zjy0ph.jpg[/IMG]

Some great debate and input. The Tories managed to do what they do best and scare the nation into voting for them. Let's hope the country wakes up before they have no welfare provision, a raped NHS, 40 plus class sizes etc because that's what scares me. As for leader, Burnham has one thing most politicians lack in having a common touch. If anyone hasn't seen it, I'd direct you to his speech at Anfield at the Hillsborough memorial. He got it and actually did something about it.
I'd prefer Skinner, but AB will do.

First hustings on BBC 2 and five live at 7pm tonight

I was hovering between Kendall and Burnham  before tonight's debate but after hearing what's been said Kendall can sod off.  She comes across as quite patronizing and as some have said sounds like a tory.

Burnham for me

As an indie reader and usually lib dem voter I'm generally sympathetic to a more left wing argument, and it maybe that the fact that the south east is doing quite nicely thank you, colours my viewpoint. I do know that construction round here is booming, wages are going up, there aren't enough competent workers out there and tonight I left 7 jobs unfilled which is almost unheard of. I've just done the biggest payroll today in the history of our company.
The problem for labour is that the biggest richest and most important region in the country is seemingly completely uninspired by them. Then you've got another entire region where they were wiped out ,they never figure in the south west and East Anglian anyway, plus a new party whose dubious policies do actually resonate with a good number of voters who otherwise would be solid labour.
Labours natural constituency is slowly disappearing ,skilled workers tradesmen , racial minorities etc are the sort of people who would have voted labour but now are the ones I argued who have'aspirations' or have moved up the ladder or have something to lose. I would further argue that the people most likely to vote labour are the young and the 'underclass' plus your guardian reading liberal lefties.unfotunately there aren't many of said groups and not many of the first two vote. The people who do tend to vote are the more affluent and the old. Hence why both groups are so determinedly looked after by the Tories and why most of the bad stuff impacts on the young. Only 23% of the elderly voted labour! which speaks volumes.The Tories are rich, brilliantly ruthless and totally cynical. Osbornes new law, the protection of pensioners benefits, the one nation stuff appealing to the ' blue collar skilled workers' are all cynical clever stuff. I note now that they are starting to consider presenting a far more friendly, less aggressive face to ethnic minorities and immigrants. You won't be surprised to learn that polling suggested a  big swing to the Tories in May from these groups.
I think the pendulum will only swing back once the cuts have started to cut so deep that the elderly, the affluent , Tory voters actually are impacted by the cuts. Once these people can't get doctors appointments, can't find a dentist, have to drive on Nigerian standard roads, can't get housing for their off spring, don't have their bins collected and see crime rates going up then you will find the tide turning, but otherwise I think Cameron and the boys are here for the next ten years at least