Labour leadership

Quoted from HackneyHaddock

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.

I'm a Labour supporter but I agree with plenty that you say. I am not particularly following the leadership contest as I believe whoever wins has no chance of becoming PM and I don't have any affiliation with any of the candidates.

Where I really agree with you is your assertion that lots of Labour supporters don't seem to care about winning elections. I've read so much trash about principles being more important but what kind of principle is it to position yourself where you will never have the power to achieve anything or make society fairer. Blair copulated it up with the wars and it's pretty impossible to look beyond them but by making the party electable he achieved lots of good. I'd have liked to see him go further and be less in thrall to big business but he achieved more than Corbyn or Burnham ever have or will.

I think there is lots of room to the centre as the Tories lurch right. I think there is room for a party that encourages and supports business but still ensures staff are treated fairly. I think people should be allowed to be ambitious and socially mobile but I think when they die a decent chunk should go to the state which has created the condition in which they could thrive. I think people who want mass nationalisation of industry and businesses to be effectively crippled by trade unions are living in the past.

I think you're right Rodley.  Lots of Labour people don't realise just how much traditional Labour stuff the Blair government got through:  NMW, Tax Credits, Maternity leave, a decent record on primary education and record healthcare investment.  So much of what they did has been accepted by the Tories.  Blair was a million times better a Labour figure than Tony Benn, Foot and Kinnock combined for the simple reason he WON.  Those other three, for all the romanticism, gifted the country to Mrs Thatcher.

I really think someone like Kendall, with Umunna, Dan Jarvis and Simon Danczuck around her, could make a centrist pitch that people would go for, and give us a run for our money.

Tax credits may have been brought in by New Labour, but aren't a socialist policy and they have plenty of problems, some discussed in that tax credit thread on this forum.

Ultimately, they have ended up as a subsidy to business (such as supermarkets) which depresses wages. A much higher minimum wage (a 'proper' living wage) would have been a much better idea but can you imagine the howls of complaint from the right-wing media and business if this had been brought in by a Labour government? The fact that there has barely been a squeak of complaint about Osborne's plans to raise the minimum wage shows just how polarised the views of these organisations really are. Just as long as the 'scroungers' (who barely exist) are punished, they are happy.

The Labour party is in chaos at the moment, that's for sure, possibly as unelectable as the Tories had become by the end of the 1990s and whoever wins the leadership contest will have a struggle on their hands to unite the party. The big difference is that the current Tory regime is absolutely maniacal in their beliefs and plans and are pushing through punitive legislation which even Thatcher wouldn't have considered as acceptable.

As an example, here's the government's own views on what the Welfare bill which has just passed will lead to:

http://www.theguardian.com/soc.....ernment-figures-show

We're the 6th wealthiest country on the planet yet we've just passed a bill which will impoverish hundreds of thousands of children, single mothers and the young disproportionately whilst at the same time more money is being given back to the wealthy through cuts in inheritance tax and pensioners are becoming ever better-off through their triple-locked pensions. This coming when real wages still haven't recovered to pre-recession levels. We're all in it together, right? Un-frigging-believable.

I'm amazed anybody is proud to call themselves a Tory. I'd be ashamed.

As for the Labour party (of which I have never been a member), they need to give themselves a kick up the rear to become an effective opposition. God only knows what the state of the country will be in another 5 years.

As I've noted elsewhere, Osborne's published plans to take the economy into surplus rely on a huge increase in the private debt to higher levels than before the recession! It is expected that the Inheritance Tax cuts will lead to further inflation of housing prices so the next collapse and recession can't be too far away and is likely to be more painful than the last. Absolute and complete madness economically. Will anybody who is a self-professed Tory on this board defend this record, I wonder? What do they expect to gain longer-term?

Had to laugh at ex-military officers being hard nosed sorts who don't take excrement. Clearly never worked with some of these "leaders" of men.

In addition to that far too many of them don't even know their workforce (five or six section bosses and only one has taken the time to learn my first name and I've only ever worked in sections of 40ish people) so how can they be relied upon to know what is good for communities up and down the country?

Quoted from HackneyHaddock

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.

I'm ignoring the text between the highlighted bold words and have to say, you've summed them up perfectly!  

Quoted from FishOutOfWater

I'm ignoring the text between the highlighted bold words and have to say, you've summed them up perfectly!  

Very true!

Seriously though, Labour nominating Jeremy Corbyn is a joke.  It would be like the Tories picking Bill Cash, John Redwood or Peter Bone.  Labour are just going through the stages of grief, but are stuck in denial.  They're blaming everyone for their hammering but themselves:  it's the media, the foreign-owned press, big business, small business, gerrymandering, Tony Blair, Maggie Thatcher.  Blame everyone else first instead of listening.  Labour had a winning formula with Tony Blair and it delivered 13 years of European-style social democratic government.  The fact that the only candidate in the race who seems to recognise that is running dead last shows you that Labour members care more about being right and going on protest marches than they do about winning elections and actually doing stuff.

Corbyn entered the competition as a stalking horse and, judging by some of the crap we've heard coming out of the other candidates, this was a good thing. If they are all reading from the same hymnsheet, what exactly is the point of the contest?

If you think Corbyn's left-wing credentials make him a joke, then why even have a Labour Party? If, as the appalling Kendall wants, Labour chases the Tories towards the right, there will be nobody to oppose the bad and divisive policies currently being enacted by Osborne. Harman's idea to abstain from opposing the 'Welfare Bill' for political reasons was completely nuts - if you're the opposition, you should oppose bad legislation. As for the left vs right view, if you ignore all the "Red Ed" bullshit you read in the media and look at the actual policies of the two Eds before the last election (such as they were), they were actually centre-right, not wildly left-wing. After all, they had decided to support austerity (still economically illiterate at the current time) and had promised to run a surplus though at a later date than Osborne's latest claim (which will be missed again, of course). That obviously didn't work (and why should it?). There wasn't enough to differentiate them from the Tories and the scare tactics of the right-wing media helped to do the rest.

What Labour need to do is become an effective opposition. As I've noted elsewhere the idea of 'expansionary austerity' which the Tories ran on back in 2010 has failed completely and totally and they've now seamlessly (and without admitting it) segued into the claim that a smaller state and lower taxes and welfare are required. Osborne's plans as reviewed by the OBR assume that increased household debt is what will produce this surplus. How mad is that, eh? He is claiming that prudence is required for government but plans for us all to borrow more money to balance the books, most likely through further inflation of the already massively overblown housing market! Why haven't we heard this stuff from the Labour party, the opposition? It doesn't even seem to me that they've tried to inform the electorate about this?

Kendall's view seems to be, that the electorate believe something so you should shape your policy around this, even if it is not true. No, what you should do is inform the electorate what is actually the reality and try to debunk the myths which have become so prevalent. This is where the two Eds failed so miserably. Failing to debunk the lies over the past 5 years that overspending caused the crash back in 2007, they allowed the Tories (and their LibDem lackeys) to blame them for pretty much anything which occurred in the economy! Absolutely nuts then and even more baffling now.

Right now, they should be pointing out that the 'Welfare Bill' which has just passed almost unopposed through parliament will lead to millions of low-paid workers becoming worse off. Heck, the fact that some of the lowest-paid will be facing an effective tax rate of 48% on additional earnings is absolutely shocking and completely the opposite of Osborne's bullshit claims that they are trying to make work pay. They should be pointing out that Osborne's claims about welfare are not true and that the 'savings' in the bill which will take money out of the pockets of three quarters of a million families are less than the government is giving away to the wealthy through the changes in the Inheritance Tax thresholds. That's right, money directly taken from some of the poorest in our society and given to the wealthiest 6%.

Defend that, I dare you.

Hey Maringer why are you not an MP? You could be challanging for the labour leadership by now, you make running the country sound oh sooo simple and you even have the all answer to everything with your vast researched knowledge. Must say your wasted in the public sector( just a hunch)

Like you to look at the tables in the link regarding minimum pay and hear your comment, because it looks to me it's only the family's with 1 working parent that will be worse off ( and yes I agree this isn't fair) but it would encourage the partner that's out of work to seek employment.

As for for the second table it's clearly showing that the family will be much better off with the wage increase.

http://www.smf.co.uk/will-the-new-living-wage-make-up-for-the-cuts-to-tax-credits/

Quoted from Grim74

Hey Maringer why are you not an MP? You could be challanging for the labour leadership by now, you make running the country sound oh sooo simple and you even have the all answer to everything with your vast researched knowledge. Must say your wasted in the public sector( just a hunch)

You know what, with every post I read of yours, it becomes clearer and clearer what a complete cretin you are. We're almost done, I'm pleased to say, because I've had enough of your childish and snide little insults as you completely fail to address the points I try to make.

However, I note you've actually posted something worthwhile for a change. Well done. Good on you.

I'll reply to that in a different message.

Tony Blair's on the telly today looking slimy and telling everyone were they are going wrong. Of course he's more than qualified to do so what with his ultra successful recent form of envoying peace across the middle east.