Labour leadership

Btw ma ringer your point about low wages part time work etc is something I've been interested in for years (I run an agency!). I think you may well be correct re productivity, for example job sharing, part time work in our industry just does not work, it's disruptive and inefficient IMHO. But at least people stayed in work and we didn't have millions on the dole for years on end. It's not the type of work or number of hours they want but at least they are working and earning and having the chance of getting overtime , extra hours or being there if an opportunity for full time work or promotion presents itself.its not ideal and it's not perfect but it's better than wjat happened under thatcher

Oh, I agree on the balance of things that fewer long-term unemployed and more in part-time work is a good start following a recession but, unfortunately, there is little indication that the recovery is going to be strong enough to turn many of them into properly-paid full-time positions.

Juggling multiple part-time workers might work out better for businesses and allow them to make more profit, but it is inevitably going to put more pressure on the state through increased pension liabilities, lower tax receipts and (currently) the cost of more tax credits/housing benefit. It is going to be a downward spiral for the economy as the poorest sector of society have less to spend and Osborne's next round of self-defeating cuts will make this problem even worse.

Even more than that, the Tories are looking to further weaken the unions which have already been pretty much emasculated over the years. Bringing in voting rules for industrial action which are massively more stringent than those for parliamentary elections is so hypocritical it is almost embarrassing. Only a handful of Tory MPs would have been elected if they had needed to meet the same vote percentages! Even Thatcher didn't attempt to attack the Unions to such a degree. The result of this will be even less power for workers which will lead to even less job security, lower wages, fewer good jobs etc etc. Not to mention cutting Labour party funding, of course.

Funny you should mention the recession of the 80s which led to such high and long-term unemployment as this was exacerbated by some terrible economic decisions by the Tories:

http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/on-economic-achievements-and-failures.html

Don't forget that the 'Big Bang' in the City also started the events which led to the recent and deep recession. Why exactly is it that people believe that the Conservative party is economically competent? I can only assume that it is because they control the media so effectively and the public believe all the tripe they are fed.

What I would really, really like to know is whether Osborne really knows what his "Long Term Economic Plan" will achieve, other than trying to guarantee another Tory government in 5 or 10 years time? Does he seriously, seriously think the economy will become stronger when there are fewer decent jobs paying good wages and productivity continues to lag all our competitors? Does he seriously think that continuing to inflate the property market whilst failing to build enough new homes will lead to anything but another property crash in the future? Does he seriously think that cutting welfare further will magically lead to full employment when there are not enough good jobs around already? Does he seriously think cutting taxes of the wealthy will lead to growth when every serious study has proved the theory utterly incorrect? Does he seriously think that the youth and the young of today will continue to accept the ever-increasing transfer of wealth to the older, richer sections of the population? He's so set on putting money into the pockets of the rentier classes to buy their votes that he doesn't appear to have realised that people need to have money to rent said houses which is why housing benefits continue to rocket!

When the generally right-wing FT and Economist begin to write articles mocking the policies of a Conservative chancellor, you know they acting bizarrely!

Troubled times ahead.

All sound arguments, but labour aren't seen as having the answers. Better the devil you know etc etc. plus there's the argument that God knows what state we'd have been in had balls n milliband had been in charge.
I'd disagree about the jobs.there are plenty of decent jobs about, it's just that it so heavily skewed towards the already fully employed south east. One could also disagree about the quality of work. Is working in a supermarket, in a warm dry environment , with usually overtime and a pension and staff discount available, so much worse than a boring repetitive factory line job?
It maybe that labour have to be quite radical . A separate party for Scotland? A closer policy alignment in areas where bodies like the cbi are sympathetic? A strong policy towards a John Lewis/ co op approach to business and worker involvement? Somehow they've got to appeal to a sizeable percentage of people south of Nottingham. They probably have to become more Tory like in their realism/ cynicism/
Ruthlessness. I am convinced that Blair was so successful precisely because he out Toried the Tories, by being utterly cynical and ruthless

Utterly uninspiring bunch
Being dragged to the right (other than Corbyn who won't win)
No personality, no compelling vision, no compelling narrative..
No chance of Labour winning in the next 10 years

Quoted from forza ivano

All sound arguments, but labour aren't seen as having the answers. Better the devil you know etc etc. plus there's the argument that God knows what state we'd have been in had balls n milliband had been in charge.
I'd disagree about the jobs.there are plenty of decent jobs about, it's just that it so heavily skewed towards the already fully employed south east. One could also disagree about the quality of work. Is working in a supermarket, in a warm dry environment , with usually overtime and a pension and staff discount available, so much worse than a boring repetitive factory line job?
It maybe that labour have to be quite radical . A separate party for Scotland? A closer policy alignment in areas where bodies like the cbi are sympathetic? A strong policy towards a John Lewis/ co op approach to business and worker involvement? Somehow they've got to appeal to a sizeable percentage of people south of Nottingham. They probably have to become more Tory like in their realism/ cynicism/
Ruthlessness. I am convinced that Blair was so successful precisely because he out Toried the Tories, by being utterly cynical and ruthless

The success of the south-east over the past few decades is down mostly to the re-inflation of the housing market and (of course), the shocking imbalance of government investment and spending in this country. All well and good for people down there (but for the millions who now have no hope of ever owning a home or finding reliable social housing in the way their parents could), but what about the other 70% of the English population, not to mention the Welsh and the Scots? Some areas in the East of England and East Midlands are doing reasonably well, but the rest of us are struggling in general. Here in N.E. Lincs, WHSmith in Freshney Place is going to shut soon, no doubt in part down to the increasing use of Internet shopping, but I went to FP the other day and was surprised to see how many other shops there are empty. It's rumoured that Next will be the next to leave the centre. When the major shopping centre of the area is stuggling so badly, this is a good indication that the economy here is still suffering in the aftermath of the recession. We've seen little even of the weak recovery around here.

Funny you should mention how good supermarket jobs are:

http://metro.co.uk/2015/04/13/.....-1bn-a-year-5148380/

Pay for many of their workers is so low (and below the living wage) that they rely on benefit payments from the government to top them up. Also, don't expect the supermarket pension schemes (to those workers who actually receive them) to last much longer:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fin.....on-supermarkets.html

Morrisons closed down their schemes earlier this year, I understand, following a growing trend in struggling businesses.

Service jobs are all well and good but actually producing stuff in factories gives you the opportunity to strengthen your economy through exports. Our balance of trade is just about the worst it has ever been so that is our money flowing out of our economy and to overseas competitors. Despite Osborne's "March of the Makers" speech back in 2011, nothing has changed and we're reliant on services and finance.

Personally, I think Blair (and Brown) were very centrist politicians who enacted mostly sensible economic policies (other than PFI) and actually invested in schools, hospitals, infrastructure etc which much needed as the previous Conservative government had let it all rot away on their watch, something the current bunch seem to be happy to continue:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5652c79c-ccae-11e4-b94f-00144feab7de.html#axzz3dOcTdMa0

I think the FT has a paywall but I've registered with them and you get a few free articles a month. To run down the article, government investment in infrastructure dropped by a third between 2009/10 and 2013/14, investment in schools dropped by 55% (!), Communities and Local Government’s capital spending (mostly on housing) dropped by 62% (!!) in this period. Bear in mind that this isn't just new builds, it's also maintenance.

The policies of Blair/Brown and those proposed by Miliband had barely a homosexual paper between them yet Blair had the backing of Murdoch's media empire whereas "Red Ed" Miliband faced years of baseless attacks from them claiming his policies were practically marxist! The lurch to the right by the Tories is clearly aimed at destroying the state sector and potential 'leaders' such as Kendall seem happy to follow them in that direction which can only be bad.

The baby boomers who have grabbed most of the wealth in this country are retiring in ever-increasing numbers but it doesn't seem that anybody is considering how we are going to pay for their care in the future. We've got an aging population and will inevitably need to spend more and more on healthcare and social care in future years, but it doesn't seem that anybody on the right is considering anything about this - they are actively encouraging these people to withdraw their money from their pensions with Osborne announcing yesterday plans to remove financial penalties for doing so. Great for the pensioners who can spend all their money on cruises and the like (no doubt plenty will be put into property, making the market even worse for the young), but what about the rest of us who will need to fund much of their care in later life?

Personally, I reckon we're on the brink at the moment, a tipping point at which the viability of the post-war social contract will stand or fall. Unfortunately, I fear you are correct that Labour will struggle to get into power for the next term or two as the whole game is rigged against them (or if they do, they will be so far to the right that the status quo will practically remain) and I can't see any way that the current Tory policies won't lead us over the edge to disaster in the future. Perhaps not in the next decade, but certainly soon thereafter.  

Think I'm going to have to take a break from these bloody polemics as they are just taking up too much time! If only the new footy season would get here sooner, I'd have something else to think about.

i come back to my point that your arguments are lucid and make a lot of sense, however are they arguments that the general population will 'get', understand and respond positively to? your point about PFI is a case in point.probably one of the most disastrous and financially ruinous ideas ever promulgated, yet who gives  a damn about it? tories don't bother attacking labour on it because they know the voters don't understand or care about it. they do care about things like immigration and crime, which is why the tories make such a big thing about it.
it just seems the things labour and the unions hold dear are things from a bygone era.what are the unions for? being part of Europe and having the EU dictate to us better working conditions, environmental standards,working time directive human rights etc etc have largely ensured that the general population  are in a much better position than they were 30 years ago ,but in so doing they have made large parts of the unions remit redundant. i come back to construction - the industry now is hugely regulated, much safer, more professional, less sexist and racist and a much more comfortable place to work. Who's most responsible? I'd argue it's Europe.
People and circumstances have changed.i don't think many people think they will have a job for life - they are used to change. labour has to find what modern day people want; trouble is they may find that very uncomfortable because it takes them so far away from what they were founded for. maybe they need to look at the social democrat parties in Europe or the professional unions/staff associations in the Uk.
ps one last thing - the manchester power house project is the cynical Tories at their best - driving a wedge into labour's heartland. divide and rule etc. Manchester gets everything, it becomes less labour and more Tory (it's already happening) everyone else in the north has to take the scraps from Manchester's table, unless of course they decide to take the Manchester route and cosy up to Osborne..... I think the whole project is utterly brilliant in a political sense and i take my hat off to whoever thought it up.it's a masterstroke

Well, PFI was stupid, but wasn't exactly that disastrous. Kept a few % points off the debt to GDP ratio which is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things. A Tory policy taken up with gusto by New Labour and continued (albeit to a lower degree) by Osborne:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/apr/18/george-osborne-backs-pfi-projects

Even more stupid that Osborne has continued with it when government borrowing costs are at a record low, but then we shouldn't expect any sense from him.

Your point about the unions is an interesting one. The right-wing in the UK (and US) claim that unions are bad bad bad in every conceivable respect and this is why they continue to attack them, whilst at the same time penalising the poorest workers in society with regressive VAT increases, reductions in the benefits that top up their wages and housing benefit that enables them to live in an inflated housing market.

What about Germany, the strongest economy in Europe? Well, in the 1980s, instead of attempting to destroy the unions, the Germans took the view that strong unions are good for the country and this remains the case. Doesn't seem to have gone too badly for them, does it? Productivity high, social welfare high, workers rights high. In fact, you simply don't see the union-bashing over there that is so prevalent from the right-wing politicians over here and relations between political parties and the unions are very good. Perhaps this is because their PR electoral system means that pretty much all of the parties over there are very centrist in nature instead of moving towards the more extreme ends of the political spectrum. Also, there doesn't seem to be a dominant right-wing media ruled over by billionaire ideologues over there as you find in the UK and USA. They have better sense than that.

Of course, the corollary of the closeness between the political parties and the unions in Germany is that wages over there are actively supressed in comparison to the levels they should be when compared to the profits made by business. It seems that the German workers have accepted they should earn a lower salary (and are happy to do so due to a generous welfare state backing them up), on the understanding that in the long term, they will all be better off. Of course, things might change if Germany wasn't operating the Eurozone for their own benefit, enjoying a massively undervalued currency which allows them to run huge trade surpluses (which breaks EU regulations!) at the expense of industrial competitors such as Italy.

Back to the UK, you ask what modern day people want. The answer is the same as it always has been - health, relative wealth and happiness. The issue is that due to the enormous influence of the media in this country, people are often voting against their best interests. When your newspaper is telling you what are fundamentally lies day after day, why wouldn't you believe it, especially when your only other source of news is the BBC which either isn't willing or isn't capable of pointing out the dishonesty? The whole demonisation of people receiving benefits is a good case in point. If you believe the media-led narrative, the whole country is just full of slackers refusing to work and sitting around smoking and drinking at the tax payer's expense. In reality this is nothing like the case. Sure, there's a tiny minority who are like this but the clever policies of the ideologically-motivated politicians hit not just these, but the ill, the unemployed and the generally impoverished. Like using a hammer to try and heal a scratch.

Oh, and it is certainly no coincidence that all of the policies put forward by the right over the past few decades lead to a greater proportion of the pot heading to the richest in society.

As long as our media is controlled by foreign and non-domiciled billionaires, we're going to struggle to have a fair and just society, but how do you stop it when governments of all stripes have been in their pockets for much of the past 30 years?

Incidentally, I don't entirely buy into your view of the "Northern Powerhouse" plan particularly. We know Osborne is a schemeing fecker but I'm not convinced that even he is as machiavellian as that. He probably thinks the whole region will benefit (though to a lesser degree than Manchester) which will lead to more Tory votes. You're not wrong in thinking that pretty much he cares about is votes, however!

Well after watching the leadership debate this morning with Andrew Neil, got to say what an absolute shower of excrement these clowns are, the Torys must be rubbing their hands together,

Cringy Cooper was an absolute car crash the worse by some mile, comes across as totally in denial and a bare faced liar.

body bags Burnham no substance no radical plans same old left views that where rejected completely last month, I wish someone would tell him that if he doesn't want to be in the west minister bubble then a future prime minister is probably not the job for him.

Comrade Corbyn not a clue just as expected wants the state to control everyone and everything total fantasy, and surprisingly very short tempered not the cuddly old socialist I was told to expect.

Kendal won the debate she's the only one with some sense of reality, the problem for her she's not to clever as she's clearly in the wrong party if she wants to cut the deficit, slash the welfare and control immigration.

Quoted from barralad

Is that really entirely what happened though? Labour were massacred in Scotland for not being left-wing enough. The Tories targetted the Lib Dems in the south of England-areas that have never been Labour heartlands to great effect. True they lost marginals in the East/West Midlands they should've won but a key factor in that was the defection of Labour voters to UKIP -a strange sort of rejection of the left wing option.

Whoever the next leader is has the hardest task of any Labour leader in certainly my lifetime.

I haven't decided who to vote for yet only that it won't be the God-awful Kendall...

I used to like ehr when she was in "The good life" Politics are sh1te though.

Well as a Tory, I'm loving the spectacle of Labour making a complete pig's ear of this.  I haven't decided yet, but might even join so I can vote for Corbyn!

The way I see it, is that you can take two views on the way forward for Labour.  One, is that they need to recover confidence in their ability to run an economy, stop being so anti-business and appeal more to middle England.  The other, is that there are millions of left-leaning voters who stayed at home or voted SNP, who can be persuaded out to vote Labour if only they ran on a radical populist socialist platform.

If you agree with the first diagnosis, you vote for Liz Kendall.  If you agree with the second, you vote for Jeremy Corbyn.  Burnham and Cooper are just two career politicians who want to carry on the Miliband regime with a new face.  They're the "one more heave" candidates.

Now I don't know loads about the Labour party, but it does seem to me that their members care more about ideological purity than winning.  They're too idealistic and put up with leaders who aren't up to snuff for too long.  The Tory Party on the other hand, has perfected a ruthless knack of picking winners, or at least of giving dud leaders the boot once they're deemed a liability.  The Labour party of teachers, social workers and idealists just tend to suffer fools gladly.  Your average local Tory party on the other hand, is packed with hard-headed businesspeople, ex military officers and generally ruthless b@stards.

Therefore, while Labour ought to pick Kendall if they want to win, will end up chickening out and going for one of the dullards, probably Burnham, who will win after picking up the lion's share of Jeremy Corbyn's second preferences.