[DaveO]

Re: The Labour party leadership thread : Wed May 13, 2015 12:27 pm  

cod'ead wrote:

Of those mentioned so far, here's my take:

Yvette Cooper - too close to Ed Balls, mention of him would be continuous and keep dragging her back

Chuka Umunna - personable enough, good communicator but he'll be subjected to closet racism in the same way that Miliband suffered closet anti-semitism

Andy Burnham - good orator, cheeky chappy but will always be saddled with "North Staffs killing 1200 people"

Liz Kendall - intelligent, excellent orator. About the only thing the Wail will find wrong is that she's not married and her partner is a comedian

None of them get me excited but of the lot, I'd go for Kendall

The person they need to stand has ruled himself out due to having a young family. Dan Jarvis.

Ex-Major from the Parachute regiment who resigned his commission in the army when he was selected to stand in the by-election for Barnsley in 2011.

The exact opposite of a career politician who would leave the Sun and the Daily Mail dumbfounded in trying to criticise him. I mean can you imagine those papers trying to criticise how an ex army Major who served in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan eats a bacon butty?

He also went to my old Uni, Aberystwyth, so even better!

All this of course is about mostly about image not his politics (though if you rise to Major in the Army yet end up a Labour MP I reckon you must have some conviction) but in this day and age Miliband's ratings show no matter how decent a person you are, unless you have the right image you won't win.

Re: The Labour party leadership thread : Wed May 13, 2015 1:16 pm  

Confusion over political terms such as "Left-Wing" or "Right-Wing" might be common among the electorate today. But this wasn't always the case. Sure, in every society there are people who claim to be apolitical (a political statement in itself), but journey back a hundred years or so and you'd discover a country literally awash with political fervour. In Manchester alone there were over 200 newspapers published each week - the majority of which were fiercely political.

The joke that you could put a Labour donkey up for election in many northern towns and it would win was certainly no joke back then.

In the North West you voted Labour because you'd FOUGHT bloody battles on the picket line against fascist thugs to win the rights people take for granted today.

Back then people knew something most either don't or don't want to right now: Government concedes NOTHING and if you aren't prepared to fight for your rights - be prepared to lose them.

[DaveO]

Re: The Labour party leadership thread : Wed May 13, 2015 1:50 pm  

Dally wrote:

That statement just shows the confusion that people thinking in daft so called "left" and "right" terms causes.

It doesn't really. In fact it is a poor example because being racist isn't the prerogative of the right. Working class people particularly of my parents generation would be trade unionists and would vote Labour not out of tribalism but because they knew no one else was going to stand up for their rights. That doesn't mean a good percentage of them weren't racist.

Re: The Labour party leadership thread : Wed May 13, 2015 2:25 pm  

LeighGionaire wrote:

The 'Labour' Party are so far removed from their supposed core vote they should be sued for misrepresentation. I predict that every potential leadership candidate will try and move the party even further to the right in the illusion that this is why they are losing votes. As supposedly proven in several surveys immigration adds a net economic positive to the country as a whole BUT the bottom 20% end up WORSE OFF. That's why IMO a lot of traditional Labour voter who tend to lives in a micro-bubble are turning to UKIP. They don't fully understand how a global economy functions but they have enough common sense to realise that more competition for low paid jobs drives down wages even further.

Scotland's rejection of U.K pro-austerity parties shows that the working classes want a turn to the LEFT. Unfortunately Labour sold their souls to the City of London and the banksters in charge years ago and they cannot see that pandering to these financial fraudsters is slowly killing the country.

It is this sort of view that totally fails to understand the UK electorate and which if it prevails will see Labour in opposition for many years to come.

Firstly it is clear that the deluded Milliband's union backed strategy of appealing only to his core vote (the so called 35%) in addition to a policy move to the left from the previous 'New Labour' model was a massive failure. His tactic of ignoring the wealth creators, of being hostile to business in favour of a concentration on minority issues may have been welcomed by his followers from the 'left wing metro elite' and the leftie media but did not go down well with the suburban and country voters.

Secondly if we look at the results in Scotland it is quite simplistic to suggest the working classes want a turn to the left. In fact the two right of Centre parties increased their share of the vote (Conservatives by 5% and UKIP by 173%) The capitulation of both Labour and the Lib Dems who are both left wing parties provided the big switch since the 2010 election with other lefties like the Trades Union & Socialist Coalition and the Scottish Socialist Party also losing half their votes to the SNP. The increase in the turnout over 2010 provided the other voters and it is interesting to note that the number that voted for the SNP in 2015 was 10% down on their vote in the referendum.

So you could say that far from being a jump to what is already a largely left wing electorate, it was a more of a selfish nationalist result as the voters see the SNP winning a better deal for them than the old Westminster based parties could.

[DaveO]

Re: The Labour party leadership thread : Wed May 13, 2015 3:10 pm  

Lord Elpers wrote:

It is this sort of view that totally fails to understand the UK electorate and which if it prevails will see Labour in opposition for many years to come.

Firstly it is clear that the deluded Milliband's union backed strategy of appealing only to his core vote (the so called 35%) in addition to a policy move to the left from the previous 'New Labour' model was a massive failure. His tactic of ignoring the wealth creators, of being hostile to business in favour of a concentration on minority issues may have been welcomed by his followers from the 'left wing metro elite' and the leftie media but did not go down well with the suburban and country voters.

Absolute nonsense. He wasn't remotely "hostile to business". He wanted to reduce business rates for SME's by forging a planned cut in corporation tax. So corporation-tax wise no business would be worse off and SME's would have been better off. If you are referring to things like restrictions being placed on zero hours contracts, then any ordinary voter who voted against Labour for that was a turkey voting for Christmas. And to say he lurched to the left is a joke. He did no such thing.

Secondly if we look at the results in Scotland it is quite simplistic to suggest the working classes want a turn to the left. In fact the two right of Centre parties increased their share of the vote (Conservatives by 5% and UKIP by 173%) The capitulation of both Labour and the Lib Dems who are both left wing parties provided the big switch since the 2010 election with other lefties like the Trades Union & Socialist Coalition and the Scottish Socialist Party also losing half their votes to the SNP. The increase in the turnout over 2010 provided the other voters and it is interesting to note that the number that voted for the SNP in 2015 was 10% down on their vote in the referendum.

Where you get the Tories up by 5% I have no idea. In 2010 they got 16.7% of the vote and in 2015 14.8%. Their share of the vote went down, not up. Your figure for UKIP is also meaningless. The got 1.6% (v 0.9% in 2010) which is 47,078 votes in all. So based given you based the rest of your post on a bunch of erroneous stats I think we can dismiss the conclusions.

Re: The Labour party leadership thread : Wed May 13, 2015 5:33 pm  

DaveO wrote:

Absolute nonsense. He wasn't remotely "hostile to business". He wanted to reduce business rates for SME's by forging a planned cut in corporation tax. So corporation-tax wise no business would be worse off and SME's would have been better off. If you are referring to things like restrictions being placed on zero hours contracts, then any ordinary voter who voted against Labour for that was a turkey voting for Christmas. And to say he lurched to the left is a joke. He did no such thing.

Ok then why the did Labour member, major donor and Gordon Brown's "enterprise champion" Lord Sugar just resign from the party. He said: "In the past year I found myself losing confidence in the party due to their negative business policies and general anti-enterprise concepts they were considering if they were elected. I expressed this to the most senior figures in the party several times. I signed on to New Labour in 1997 but more recently, particularly in relation to business, I sensed a policy shift moving back towards what Old Labour stood for. By the start of this year I had made my decision to resign from the party whatever the outcome of the general election."

Then there was the open letter signed by 100 captains of industry urging people to vote for the Tories. One of the signatories was the founder of Carphone Warehouse, Sir Charles Dunstone who once signed a letter in support of Tony Blair. He said "it's worrying because we have a big deficit, an ageing populations and a health service that is hard to fund. We have to generate growth and tax revenues to pay for that. There is a nervousness that Labour doesn't regard business as part of the solution" Another said " Milliband's union affiliation and left-leaning orientation combined with an apparent lack of empathy with business would, indeed, pave the way for catastrophie"

Milliband had gone on about zero hours contracts and those at the top getting away with zero tax. According to the ONS people on zero hours contracts represent just 2.3% of the workforce, and almost two-thirds of whom describe themselves as happy with their employment (this level of satisfaction is higher than that reported by those in jobs with fixed hours contracts) With regard to the "privileged few" the HM Revenue and Customs reports that the top 0.1% of earners (about 30K people) take home roughly 5% of the total UK income but they also pay 11% of the total take of income tax. So in inconvenient truth is that our public services would collapse without them.

I never said he "lurched" to the left. But I think most of his colleagues and media pundits believe he his move to the left cost him the election and his job.

If you are saying that Labour policies were friendly to business then I guess you also believe that Milliband fought a good campaign and the vote was rigged.

DaveO wrote:

Where you get the Tories up by 5% I have no idea. In 2010 they got 16.7% of the vote and in 2015 14.8%. Their share of the vote went down, not up. Your figure for UKIP is also meaningless. The got 1.6% (v 0.9% in 2010) which is 47,078 votes in all. So based given you based the rest of your post on a bunch of erroneous stats I think we can dismiss the conclusions.

Sorry wrong terminology. The Tories increased their number of votes by 5% (21,242) from 2010 to 2015. Likewise the UKIP increased the number of voters by 29,855 (173%) So my point remains the same. There is no evidence of a swing from right to left in Scotland.

The SNP picked up votes from all the other left wing parties plus most who did not vote last time (or perhaps those who only voted for the first time in the referendum and voted for the Yes campaign)

[Kosh]

Re: The Labour party leadership thread : Wed May 13, 2015 5:58 pm  

Lord Elpers wrote:

The SNP picked up votes from all the other left wing parties

There were no other left wing parties. And the SNP are only superficially left wing - they just present themselves well.

The SNP presented the most 'left-wing' campaign to the Scottish electorate and picked up all but three of the seats there. Only a dimwit of epic proportions would try to portray that result as anything other than a swing to the left.

Re: The Labour party leadership thread : Thu May 28, 2015 1:49 pm  

Liz Kendall? She's another Blairite so no thanks.

DaveO wrote:

Absolute nonsense. He wasn't remotely "hostile to business".

This is the key issue for me. No matter what Labour do they are always perceived as not being pro-business, which is ludicrous given their track record when last in government. Miliband started off well by saying he wanted to take on multinationals but he barely seemed to mention small and local businesses, which is where they should pitch themselves.

Every year it gets clearer and clearer that multinationals, in the service sector specifically, do little other than hoover up money from local economies and then pass them those benefits to shareholers. Sure some of them are necessary e.g. car manufacturing, but the little guy and his business is coming under ever-increasing pressure from multinationals e.g. supermarket suppliers on ridiculously low profit margins.

The Yanks have been through all this with mega-businesses like Walmart driving out small businesses who can't compete on price. It's okay saying that's market forces but small businesses put money into the local economy unlike many multinationals who look for economies of scale deals with national contractors e.g. Biffa do the bins for Tesco, at tiny profit margins. That money goes to Biffa plc, whereas if Joe Bloggs did it, the money would go into his business, his employeers, his profits and ultimately his life, where he's more likely to use local businesses when spending e.g. decorators. Money that goes to the stock exchange is money taken from that local economy. That's perhaps not as big an issue with some, but when that money goes out of the country it's rarely seen again.

The Tories are certainly never going to tackle this and Labour probably won't but it's a fundamental issue for the long-term security of this country's prosperity because we don't have the manufacturing sector to replace that money. It's one of the reasons why American politicians voted against TTIP because they could see what's likely to happen i.e. US corps shifting work to cheaper countries in Europe. American politicians are bought sure, but they're not so bought that they'll sacrifice jobs in their own constituencies just to satisfy the desire to maximise profit on Wall St.

Re: The Labour party leadership thread : Wed Jun 03, 2015 12:15 am  

McClennan wrote:

It's one of the reasons why American politicians voted against TTIP because they could see what's likely to happen i.e. US corps shifting work to cheaper countries in Europe. American politicians are bought sure, but they're not so bought that they'll sacrifice jobs in their own constituencies just to satisfy the desire to maximise profit on Wall St.

A more cynical person would say they voted against TTIP because they know TTIP is going through regardless of how they vote but by putting their opposition on record they can curry favour with the electorate.

Re: The Labour party leadership thread : Sun Jul 19, 2015 12:01 pm  

All the MP's who nominated Corbyn for the leadership are now bricking it that he might actually win the thing! Party in crisis.