I know that the default setting for Corbyn is that everyone is out to get him, but I think the main problem is his judgement during this Brexit process. I honestly think the Conservatives are there for the taking – a shambles. A blundering, out of his depth PM resigning as a result of a referendum he only agreed to in order to keep his own party from imploding.
Labour were weak during that period. Instead of being the Opposition, they remained largely silent. When the results came in, they were just as broken as the Tories and allowed the resignations of numerous shadow cabinet ministers to dominate the news just as much as the chaos from the PM and his pals.
Teresa May couldn’t believe her luck as she came in as the voice of calm reason, and steadied things – battening down hatches to prepare for the inevitable onslaught of dissention and ridicule from the Opposition. Except it hasn’t come. Teresa May’s charmed life as PM continues when the Opposition seem to be just as battered and bruised and are giving off an air of grim, defiant survival rather than doing their job.
It reminded me of Labour during the Falklands. They were so scared of the media branding them as unpatriotic, they united with the Government and allowed the whole thing to progress without so much as a squeak. In 1982, there was a very strong Conservative PM – so it was probably the only thing they could have done.
That’s not the case now. If the Labour Party really are the Opposition, there should be open ridicule at every move made by the PM to ratify Article 50. The meek narrative of “the people have spoken and we must get behind the Goverment to get the best deal for Britain” is heartbreaking and craven. A troublesome opposition is trouble for the Government, particularly one with a very small majority. Europe has seen us in our underwear now in broad daylight – they know how divided the nation is on this. 52:48. We can’t now pretend that we are all suddenly united as one on this issue to help a negotiating position. Labour have nothing to lose and everything to gain by being really annoying about Article 50. By being so compliant and silent, it now looks like the mess is caused by all of us – rather than an incompetent and desperate Conservative Party flapping around in the deep end with deflated water wings.
Couldn’t agree more. At the beginning I found the howls of derision at Corbyn from the usual suspects infuriating. Remember when he didn’t sing the national anthem? Or wear a tie? He had a massive mandate (however sus the process was), he seemed to have broken the mould, and the very least he deserved was a fair go. I even had a little spat with our currently absent Mr Concheroo over what I perceived as his enthusiasm for walloping him at every opportunity.
But he’s been a disaster. I was amazed Labour saw off UKIP in Stoke, and as my Right Honourable Friend Mr Celebration says, they’ve completely sold the pass over Brexit. I’m thinking of joining the Lib Dems.
The most telling thing about Stoke was that faced with a choice of four re-booted parties, (each with a shiny new leader), the most febrile political environment for decades, and the prospect of a close contest, over 60% of people stayed at home.
Indeed yes…can’t help feeling that the Oz system of compulsory voting would be worth a try. At least then nobody could complain they wuz robbed.
Mandatory voting is the opposite of democracy and it’s no coincidence that the established parties in Australia are the main people to advocate it.
Mass electorate apathy and disenchantment can’t be solved by ‘vote or accept a ten quid fine’.
Isn’t that basically victim blaming?
Depends if you believe we get the government we’ve asked for. I think we do. So the electorate aren’t victims, they’re complicit.
Well, you’re certainly not going to reduce electorate apathy without a better product, but isn’t it possible that being required to engage, however peripherally, with the political process raise consciousness just a little?
There’s next to no evidence it’s achieved that in Australia though, is there?
I don’t know Gary, I’m too depressed about Blighty this morning to want to argue. I just think it’s time the citizenry got off its fat arse, that’s all.
I suppose it comes down to how you draw in the disenchanted people, Mike. Politics is a hard sell for the left but it hasn’t been made any easier by the repeated instances of lies, broken promises, in-fighting and back stabbing.
Nevertheless I’d still favour positive motivation over mandatory voting as a method of engagement any day.
The turnout was just under 40%. Turnout is always lower at a by-election, and this constituency actually had the lowest turnout in the country at the 2015 general election, at just under 50%. So the turnout wasn’t really any lower than would have been expected.
In normal times, perhaps. But one might have thought things have changed, not least for some of the reasons I outlined above.
In a digital age I think it’s time there was a voting app as opposed to voting apathy. It would definitely improve the voting numbers but I’m not sure if it could be hack proof. Any IT savvies out there who think it’s possible?
In an age where seemingly anything can be hacked by someone with enough patience, this strikes me as a terrifying idea.
I’d imagine the person who can’t be bothered to go to a polling station once every few years, or send in a postal vote won’t be bothered to download an app, and prod the screen a few times.
Matthew Parris said that he doesn’t want governments to be elected by people who can’t be bothered to go to a polling station. I kind of agree with him.
Yes, so do I, but I can see why people don’t vote. The parliamentary constituency I live in will only return an MP from one party to parliament. The votes for the other parties who stand together total what the returned MP gets.
Local government-wise, I live in a two-tier authority. The county usually has a majority for the same party as the MP, and so does the district council. Both tiers do what they’re told, and the MP is an arrogant, bullying twat, safe in the knowledge that he do what he wants, as long as he keeps the constituency party onside.
If voting became compulsory, there would have to some meaningful quid-pro-quo, and not just – say – a discount on your council tax. True devolution of power to a more local level, so that you can see what your vote does? Proportional representation? Forced voting would just result in a huge number of spoilt papers. I spoilt my last ballot for elected PCCs, after not voting in the first.
The interesting thing about Stoke was that Labour held off UKIP because Nuttal’s lies were exposed by the very same Main Stream Media that Corbyn’s gang is convinced is out to get them.
I think Corbyn’s lot are far more energetically opposed to the centrist element of their own party than they are to anyone on the real Right.
You only have to look at the relative levels of commitment and visibility Corbyn showed while campaigning to keep his job, compared to anything he’s done before or since. He was everywhere during his re-election campaign, visible and engaged and energised. Imagine if he harnessed that enthusiasm for his self-cult to actually do the work of Leader of the Opposition. We might get somewhere.
Indeed, and he showed similar Invisible Man tendencies during the Brexit campaign.
That’s just not true. I think Corbyn is a Leaver at heart, but he was by far the most active Labour voice in a campaign that Alan Johnson was supposed to be running. Clearly not effective enough, but he is not the single cause of Brexit. Where was Theresa May during the entire campaign? Home bloody Secretary and truely invisible.
Labour needed to See off UKIP in Stoke, and did. Copeland was a very poor loss.
How do you reconcile those two results on the same day? People try to blame Corbyn for one, and Nuttall for the other. That is just inherent bias.
Remember a month ago,when Nuttal was going to,win and UKIP was going to be the party of the working man?
Stoke was vital, Copeland an embarrassment not the end
Labour would have lost both if not for Nuttall’s implosion. Then Corbyn would have been blamed for both, which would be consistent. Nuttall’s fall and the media coverage of it kept Corbs in his job.
Didn’t Copeland have its boundaries redrawn to bring in Tory-voting Keswick? Corbyn isn’t a particularly appealing politician in a most sense of the word, but possibly his main impact might have been to be anti-nuclear in a constituency with Sellafield in it, and up the road from Barrow with the BAE shipyard. Hardly a vote-winning policy in those parts, I’d suspect.
No boundary changes in recent years AFAIK. There have been proposals for a nationwide redrawing of constituency boundaries in order to reduce the number of MP’s from 650 to 600, but as yet they are purely proposals for discussion.
Wikipedia would suggest there was a change 7 years ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copeland_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
“Boundary change
Parliament accepted the Boundary Commission’s Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies by making changes to this constituency for the 2010 general election, namely the addition of the wards Crummock, Dalton, Derwent Valley and Keswick in the Allerdale District.
The four new wards thus extend the constituency beyond the district of Copeland. They include the town of Keswick, which has a larger electorate than the other three new and sparsely populated wards, despite their extensive area. The new wards are in the Lake District, like much of Copeland district. The inclusion of Keswick in the constituency was the main topic in public consultations regarding the changes.”
Far too often over the last few months I’ve heard Eddie Mair on Radio 4 say, “We tried to get a comment from the Labour Party, twice, but none was forthcoming.”
Why not?
What the f*** are the Labour Party doing all day?!
If Corbyn’s Islington Massive paid me a nominal fee, I’d be more than prepared to give Eddie a comment on Trump, “Brexit,” the merits or otherwise of “Mary, Mungo and Midge,” anything….on their behalf.
I’ve had no end of spats with Corbynistas ever since he was elected (including my kids) who think he’s wonderful and if we only all got behind him and had a real left wing agenda then all would be well. He is a complete disaster – I don’t care if he is an honourable and decent man, that isn’t enough – a leader inspires and takes people with him. I find his speeches and interviews utterly devoid of anything other than slogans and platitudes.
We will be wiped out at the next election unless he goes.
Yeah the people of Copeland were so crying out for a real left wing agenda, and to stick it to “the establishment” that they voted for the government.
I had a lot of these conversations too. Used to be a local activist. Now no longer even a member. I can hardly watch.
This is my experience with some of my friends who are otherwise sound on most other issues. They have a real blind/deaf spot about his lack of leadership skills and the deepening crisis of his tenure, much preferring to blame the PLP who are all, of course, ‘Red Tories’.
Part of the problem, and I’m guessing here, is that Corbyn is a closet Brexiteer. His heart isn’t in opposing it. Again, I’m speculating, but he probably sees the EU as a single market designed to allow capitalism to thrive.
And so is Theresa May. Funny old world, eh?
That was what cause the last but one referendum – the Labour Party split over the corporate nature of the Common Market as it was then. There was a clue in the name. It’s moved on since then of course but I am convinced one of the drivers for freedom of movement is the way it drives down wages and work moves to where it costs least. The EU is nothing if not well lobbied.
Corbyn isn’t a leader in the sense of having a vision, a plan and motivating people to get there. What he’s good at is making rousing speeches to people who already agree with him, and this was obvious from the start. What pisses me off is we need effective opposition and he’s all over the place, as @deramdaze says, they can’t even seem to see where being ready with some killer radio commentary would move the debate.
I prefer their early stuff.
This is the endgame of a certain kind of perspective’s influence. We all know the trendy bourgeois bohemian life. Many of us were or remain so inclined. I certainly was, and have a few strands still. But, you know what? It’s a class and education thing, and it exploits working class views, which are rarely as right on as bo-bos want. Working class people are not always thick, racist. Sexist, etc. they see things as they are, from the bottom, and recognise unfairness. They get fed up with middle class people preaching at them, doing very well, and not facing the same challenges. They can also see a preachy school teacher wanker when they see one, as Jezza clearly is. A wanker is not a Cnut (that’ll be Cameron, Osborne. Mandelson, etc) but they are not taken seriously. Labour now rely on tribal memory, metropolitan types, and the hope ethnic demographics will save them. They are too big to die, and too wounded to survive. And I see no serious alternative.
I probably fit into the boxes you say Labour are relying on. Long family history of voting Labour, but also a metropolitan ponce these days – I’m a quinoa eating vegetarian for god’s sake – and always voted Labour. But I have no intention of voting for them while Corbyn’s there. The man is an utter disaster, and as Mike says above, any grace I may have been willing to grant him has long since been exhausted. The party is staring oblivion in the face and doesn’t seem to want to do anything about it. How long can it be before MPs start jumping ship? They’ll want to keep their seats, and it won’t happen under Corbyn. Do the centrist ones start eyeing up the Lib Dems, will there be a breakaway party, is there a parliamentary leadership coup that alienates the membership? Nothing looks good for them right now.
Much of what you say is what I’ve been trying to verbalise on many recent political threads. You have said it so much better
According to the BBC News Website this morning Jeremy Corbyn is ‘determined to finish job’ – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39093981
There appears to be a general impression that the Labour Party is teetering on the brink of a death spiral.
So if those really are Mr Corbyns words they are a bad way of reaching out the waverers he and his team need to reach.
Not much to say really. Corbyn’s got the job for as long as he and his disciples want it. His unpopularity with the electorate doesn’t seem to bother them, and the Tories know that as long as he’s there they have free rein to do whatever they like. That means life’s going to get worse for the poorest and most vulnerable, exactly the people you would expect Labour to stand up for.
If there is a long game, it must be that Corbyn is looking beyond the probable collapse of the economy in two year’s time, and hoping that enough people will be so beaten down by then that they will reject capitalism and embrace – well, whatever it is he stands for. I’m not entirely clear what that is. The glorious socialist dawn can only come from the ashes of society, or something. But if May calls an election before then (and the FTPA is not an obstacle to that) Labour will be too insignificant to challenge anything.
So we sit and watch him stroke his beard as the government wreaks its mayhem.
I broadly share your concern for the state of the economy in two years time and in ‘normal’ times it would be expected that the electorate would swing the other way.
However, I fear that in those circumstances the same electorate will only then question where was the effective opposition, leadership and direction under Corbyn?
I believe it would be this point at which Corby will be finished, with the Labour Party not far behind – unless it happens sooner.
(and the rest of Northamptonshire).
Save our trouser presses!
What I find perplexing about the situation is that Corbyn’s loyalists refuse to recognise his inadequacies as a leader.
There is not one example of him showing leadership; of acting as the head of the opposition. Being a decent chap is not enough. Delivering a rousing speech to the converted is not enough.
How can they continue to support someone who does not have a clue about what it takes to be a leader? A man who cannot envisage what it takes to get the support of the tens of thousands of people the Labour party need if it hopes to regain power. This is a man incapable of leading a credible opposition, never mind a party of government.
But his support within the party electorate continues. Utterly bizarre.
I think they just think that because what he’s (not) doing is different from what came before, it must be right.
And because he’s the human embodiment of signing a 38 Degrees petition and telling everyone you’re a socialist on Facebook, without actually having to do anything. So they can relate.
Both spot and on. Especially the social media mob. Apparently very few of the new membership are very keen on the hard yards of supporting campaigning, going to meetings, stuffing leaflets etc. Calling people Tories on Facebook is much more effective, obviously.
Mate of mine is still Party through and through. Can’t leave like the rest of us because he actually works for the thing. But he says exactly that – his CLP has tripled in size. A small number of these come to every third or fourth meeting to yell “Red Tory” at the MP and not a single new member has been seen doing any voluntary constituency work.
That’s what I’ve heard locally too and party websites say the same thing (in a different way). I was out leafleting on Friday (polishes halo).
And I was leafleting today. But the ABCs in my constituency are not the active ones. Constituency work (stalls, phone canvessing, leafletsing etc, – the hard yards) has gone up 10 fold since the membership tripled. Most are Corbynites.
I’m ABC but recognise the oddness of believing Labour is finished because membership tripled… What would we be saying if UKIP, LD or Tory membership tripled? Resurgent I reckon.
Membership is not votes, but it is a base. Personally I dont think Corbyn is the person to mobilise it. But who is? (I voted David not Ed, then Yvette)
I don’t believe that the far left Corbynistas are at all concerned about forming a government. Like all such movements (see SWP etc) they are more interested in a kind of misguided moral purity and prefer their default position of a protest movement. Corbyn has been an absolute disaster as a leader and Labour, in its current form, is doomed if he stays beyond the local elections in May. If this is the case then the only rational answer is to form a new movement along the lines of Macron in France with moderate Labour, remainer Tories, Lib Dems, Greens etc. At least they would be capable of forming a coherent opposition to May and her craven, headlong pursuit of economic disaster.
Caveat: this may not be true. But I’ve heard Momentum, rather than doorknocking in Copeland, organised a screening of I, Daniel Blake.
Even if it’s not true, it’s so dreadfully plausible.
Yes, but is it true? So much disinformation out there at the moment to undermine people politically. Many of the lies told about Brexit/immigration/trump/the economy sound plausible to those listening. But are deliberate lies.
Seeking and telling
truth is getting to be a political act.
I can’t really agree with you last paragraph BC. the meek narrative of “the people have spoken and we must get behind the Goverment to get the best deal for Britain” is heartbreaking and craven. The people have spoken, and surely that’s now her job, whateve the consequences might be.
37% of the people have spoken and what’s actually happening is only representing the most extreme wing of that 37%. Leave were very clear that of course we’d have access to the single market. Norway was bandied around constantly as an example of how things would go.
The hard Brexit currently being pursued wasn’t anywhere near the ballot paper. There should be a massive and vehement opposition movement to fight for the negotiable bits. There isn’t, and craven and heartbreaking is a mild description of Labour’s approach.
No Leave voter or leader has yet been able to tell me in what way their lives have been made unbearably awful by the heavy hand of Brussels, or what definite improvements are on their way now.
Seems to me we’ve voted to trade in a situation which isn’t perfect for one which can only be summarised as “fuck knows but it’s not looking terribly secure”. How is that better? How is that “delivering for the British people”?
And our opposition is completely, utterly, nowhere.
I was referring to the Tories’ approach not Labour’s. No one on either side had a real clue about the realities post-Brexit, unless they are far cleverer and more devious than I can give thm credit for.
I was referring to Labour’s approach – I think May’s position and approach is broadly as expected.
On you, maybe.
Sorry, that’s obvious after re-reading your post. I was just lashing out.
I think the Labour Party’s real weak point is John McDonnell. In spite of the pretty disastrous consequences of 8 years of austerity for the economy, cuts everywhere, including to corporation tax, he hasn’t been able to articulate a coherent alternative to the ‘privatise everything and sell it off to my mates’ philosophy of Osbourne. Labour really needs to regain trust on its economic message, and I had thought that might have been developing with its professional economist advisors and some sort of Keynesian investment programme. That appears to have died in the water, with Lord Lamont openly laughing at him on Any Questions this week about going further into debt with £500 billion a key of part of Labour’s plan.
Could do much better.
Trouble is he can’t articulate a successful message because he hates only one thing more than the Tories: the successful governments of one T. Blair. Any party trying to establish economic competence knows that track record is the only thing that matters and to acknowledge that the deficit was small and shrinking prior to the ’08 financial collapse, and investment in public services was very high, would be to credit the Blair / Brown administrations for getting an awful lot right.
He can’t do that. He hates TB too much.
If one thing drives me mental more than anything it’s how post-Blair Labour have happily colluded with the Tories in allowing a majority to believe that “Labour crashed the economy”. This is an outright lie, but it’s been the dominant narrative for nearly a decade.
Drives me nuts too. Labour just allowed Osborne’s lies to be the narrative. No pointing out that Tories created the majority of the debt, and that austerity is self defeating (if you are either Keynsian or evidence based). Yvette Cooper told me it was Ed’s decision not to challenge the lie.
Now it is the received wisdom. There is nothing intrinsically wrong in having a large debt for a good reason (which is why we all have mortgages). But now debt is bad, even if it means you have nowhere to live….
Genuine question: was that “there’s no money left, we spent it all” story an outright lie too?
He didn’t write “we’ve spent it all” – just that there’s no money left.
Liam Byrne has apologised many times for that moment of crass idiocy but let’s remember that “the money” didn’t get spent on public services. It got spent on preventing a Great Depression and the collapse of the entire banking system.
The post- narrative is that Labour were ruinously extravagant with public services. That’s simply not true.
As Friar says, I think it was an inaccurate (deliberately?) quotation of a bad taste note from Liam Byrne to his successor as Chief Secretary to the Treasury:
“Treasury sources said the full text of the letter from Byrne – dated 6 April, the day Gordon Brown called the general election – was: “Dear chief secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards – and good luck! Liam.”
I guess it was embarrassing enough for Byrne or others not to try to correct the subtle difference.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/may/17/liam-byrne-note-successor
I still feel with burning fury that this was a resigning matter for Byrne. No good interpretation. A fool, glib, or a glib fool giving the Tories a weapon to use for generations. Wasnt even true.
I’ve been a Labour member since 1980, though am pretty much an inactivist these days. I find the current situation heart-breaking – and all the worse because it’s a self-inflicted wound. I can see no change until that majority of the membership who recently voted for Corbyn come to their senses, don sackcloth and ashes and crawl on their bloodied hands and knees to Barnsley to implore Dan Jarvis to take over.
This may take a while.
In the meantime, the Tories cannot believe their luck and I have to pinch myself every time that 22 carat creep John McDonnell is described as shadow chancellor. Seriously, WTF?
These are the death throws of ’68er Marxism and it’s suit-wearing adopters. Whether it’s herbivore oppositionalism still wearing badges bought in Compendium and Colletts and being down with everything, or the corporatising of same with the Trade Unions to form an alternative establishment. All done, bar the burial. Nothing new to replace it as shouty Marxists and the Bragg/ Toynbee tendencies cynically appropriate and adapt the ideology for their own comfort. Blair won, but had to make choices (“to govern is to choose”) and this meant not just talking big. Blair shafted himself by getting into a daft war, and by not sacking Brown. Blair was then assimilated into Davos-borg. He is now anathama to many for many reasons, but crying all the way to the bank. Will the replacement of Marxism/ socialism be the “civic nationalism” modelled by Scotland to undermine the nationalist nationalism rising elsewhere?
The thing about Nicola Sturgeon is that she is right there nipping at the heels of the Government every time they make a false move. She gets the publicity because she is confident – usually amused and incredulous over the latest blunder. The media live having her on and she also seems to really want the job she’s in. Corbyn and May frequently appear to be terrified.
“Civic nationalism”? LOL. Nationalism in Scotland is no different from nationalism elsewhere.
For example: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/settler-watch-extremist-links-tartan-9834853
One step away from Mister Khan’s position. You’ll be saying we’re all racists next.
Didn’t Tony Blair (spit) realise the Labour Party was a dead duck 20 years ago? Seems to me Corbyn and his fellow walking dead are trying to raise something that has long since decayed and gone to the worms?
No. Tony Blair realised the Foot/Benn vision of what Labour should be was dead. Why people believe that “real” Labour has to equal a bunch of Trots standing around braziers quite escapes me: Attlee, Wilson, Gaitskell – none of the giants of 20th century Labour conform to JC’s idiot revisionist idea of what the party “should” be. Blair was a pragmatist but every inch a Labour man and it pisses me off when people claim otherwise.
Begs the question then what should the vision of The Labour Party be and how do you sell that to a 21st century electorate. You can use no more than 1000 words, a calculator and a slide rule for your answer. Show your workings…..
I’m fine with Blairism thanks. It worked.
Yup, Blairite scum here too.
FWIIW, I am Blairite scum & proud of it.
Another Red Tory here.
Me too, warts ‘n’ all. Chuffed to hear Tony weigh in the other day too; good to hear some leadership skills being exercised for once. Been too long.
So what went wrong with that version? Just poor leadership? Iraq? Where did the money go? Genuinely interested. If the narrative as you say further up is not true, what is?
The money went on bailing out the banks and keeping the economy afloat in 2008, Dave. Where else?
But didn’t most of it go into the bankers pockets first? Working closely with the banks as part of their supply chain back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s the overspending and net worth of these guys was staggering. Didn’t Blair turn a blind eye to some of those shenanigans? A labour man letting the rich get richer?
Who can forget the furious howls of outrage from our current leaders at the despicable largesse of the banks back when the sun was shining…
Absolutely agreed but the question is trying to find out why Labour are imploding and what they stand for. Cameron and Co never claimed to be anything other than money grabbing capitalists
New Labour were pro business. That’s part of the whole “third way” thing you were keen on the other day.
You’re basically asking why Blair and co didn’t spot an impending banking crisis that only a handful of individuals round the world, and no major government, saw coming. If you could spot it in the offing over in supply chain at the time then hats off to you, and can I borrow your yacht?
The 1986 Big Bang is when the banks were let off the leash, Dave.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_(financial_markets)
I wish Labour had done more but I also understand why they didn’t. There was NO appetite for more financial regulation in the 90s and 00s. None. Least of all from anyone who now cries foul re. the deficit.
Absolutely we saw it coming, my old bosses cashed in and got out 2 years before the end . I left last year after not having a rise in 5 years and seeing the banks frantically scrambling to get their cash back. Some of the people we moved, often to Geneva and Jersey pre 2008, hedge fund types had wine collections worth more than their 3 houses any idiot could see that amount of spend couldn’t last forever, someone was paying for it.
Ok, Dave – you’re the blog’a humble Everyman speaking truth from the streets, who also saw the banking crash coming.
What I was trying to imply that all this crap that high government couldn’t see that over spending was going on cannot be allowed to pass without comment. We moved Lehman people for years, massive over spenders. Our guys would spend four or five days in their houses packing their finery while HR approved every extra spend. Had a couple of containers on the water when they went bust and I promise you no one was surprised.
I will admit that the relocation industry benefited hugely over that period and are suffering the consequences now. I sat in an office organising men and trucks and we could smell a rat. I won’t have it governments from either side didn’t get the warnings too
Ok, Dave.
I was teaching business English in 2008 and the Economist, amongst other sources of discussion material for my lessons, certainly made from for the view that the economy was overheating/there were a lot of dodgy investments but that it was too profitable for even those far-sighted enough to see the writing on the wall to quit.
Iraq was certainly a huge deal, but not so much at the time.
Blairism was mostly killed by internecine warfare between the Treasury and Number 10. Highly recommend The End Of The Party by Andrew Rawnsley if you fancy a front row seat. I’ve not read a better post mortem of the Blair/Brown years.
Also factor in the natural attrition of a long spell in government and the fact that it’s not like they were crushed at the polls in 2010, despite a fairly terrible campaign by Gordon Brown. The idea that there was some sort of grand repudiation of New Labour by the voters is simply without merit.
One more question then, did they just choose the wrong Milliband?
No idea, mate. He certainly didn’t feel much like the right one, did he?
He was the unions’ choice, wasn’t he?
Up
Dave was too much like Tony at the time, that’s all.
The global banking collapse did for them, and subsequent revelations about the evidence for going to war have damned them in most people’s minds.
Just by way of a visual aid
Now ask yourself. When did the global financial crisis hit?
Do you have one for Net Spending on champagne, fast cars and homes in Jersey and Geneva around the same time? If you keep using all your credit cards at some time you have to visit Wonga to pay them off
Sorry what?
Your visual aid shows borrowing at it’s lowest point on 2001-2002 when the highest spending was going on. If you keep spending what you don’t have at some point you’ll need to pay it back. Apologies if I’ve misunderstood your visual aid
Ok. Governments can spend either money they get in tax or money they borrow. There’s no other source. If you’re able to fund high public spending without high borrowing, that’s a good thing*. The money came from a high tax take based on a successful economy.
Analogies with overdrafts and credit cards aren’t applicable at the macro level.
*Unless you have a philosophical issue with tax and public spending in general.
Ok. I guess it depends how you define a successful economy. It does show the complete difference between Blairs Labour and Corbyns and why the party is such a mess now. It really does need another version doesn’t it?
Sorry, I’m not following. What needs another version?
Another version of The Labour Party one in Blairs image, one in Corbyns
Well, we’ve had both. One was a three term electoral juggernaut. The other is a shit joke. So let’s just stick with the one that worked and fight for its reputation, is what I say.
Re the spending graph. 1999 – 2002 was when Brown sold nearly 400 tonnes of gold reserves.
He also encouraged the worst type of mortgages known to man, PFI. Where I live, the health and education systems are crippled by those extortionate repayments and will remain so for decades to come. I’m all in favour of raising private finance for capital builds but to roll over and let the private sector charge what they like is simply incompetent.
PFI was an awful scene, no question. But frankly I’d swap the shitshow we’ve had since 2010 for 2003-wild PFI any day of the week. I feel like we lost a golden age, increasingly.
The disaster PFI is now wreaking in public sector finances was entirely predictable. It is a major contributor to the NHS’s deficit.
The other ‘economic’ policy the Brown/Blair government encouraged was cheap labour from the EU. They wilfully ignored the impact on ‘working class’ communities, schools, etc. Remember, they had already bought in ATOS to reduce welfare costs. This was where Brown’s election campaign floundered and where Labour’s Brexit problem originated.
Sure, it’s huge. But it’s – what – £250bn over the next 30 years or so. That’s about 8bn a year, unless I’m missing something.
By contrast the bank bailouts cost £850bn, which supposedly will get recouped but every time you hear about it these days, we’re told “oh, yeah, about that…”. Maybe we’ll get it back, maybe we won’t. I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
Anyway, in the context of an annual budget of £762bn, £8bn seems to me high but hardly ruinous.
As for the “cheap labour from the EU” bit, well – business were crying out for people to do jobs that Brits wouldn’t. Do you remember people in the late 90s and 2000s shouting that they were desperate to be nurses, to pick peas in Boston or to work in Starbucks but couldn’t because of all these damn Polish people? I don’t.
That was just supply and demand. As an EU member, we had freedom of movement. The jobs that the EU workers filled weren’t being filled domestically. They just weren’t.
Which isn’t to say business doesn’t always want to get the lowest price for its labour, but Tigger, let’s also remember that it was the Blair government which brought in the minimum wage.
What would you have done differently?
I would have driven far harder bargains on PFI for a start. The cost of NHS buildings via PFI is £11.8 billion and the repayment is £79 billion. At the end of that ‘mortgage’, the buildings will still belong to the private sector. In between, the NHS has draconian contracts for maintaining those buildings, whose cost is beyond sense. The NHS overspend is currently a billion. Halve those stupid debts and the deficit will be wiped out.
There was a dishonesty about cheap labour from the EU, almost as though those in Whitehall hoped no-one in ‘working class’ areas would notice. Money should have followed into the local schools, GP practices and so on. The benefit going to children abroad, albeit small, stuck in many people’s craw.
Sorry, I’m not following. If people are working, they’re not in receipt of public money to send home. The numbers of foreign nationals who are a net drain on the public purse are next to non existent. And your local school got the same money for a Polish bum on a classroom seat as an English one. Schools are funded per pupil. I couldn’t comment on hospitals etc.
I agree that PFI was scandalously poorly negotiated. But I also think it has its upside – namely the first really serious bit of new public service infrastructure in a generation.
I’d love to have said I’d have driven a harder bargain but then I’d love to say I could manage Arsenal or remaster Raw Power better. Doesn’t mean I could.
Those pupils were treated as having special needs, since their first language was not English. They consumed extra, more costly resources even though their bum-on-seat attracted the same amount.
The Child Benefit issue was very small but was clearly daft and caused a disproportionate amount of disquiet.
The PFI deals were quite obviously wrong at the time. All that was needed was a half-decent business negotiation. They still cow-tow to the Pharmaceutical Industry in the same way.
PFI wasn’t an awful scene Friar, it was a disgraceful bit of dodgy book keeping by Gordon Brown to hide the expenditure when no one would have batted an eyelid if he’d just announced he was borrowing X to build new schools and hospitals. Actually my brother was involved in bidding for new school money and his observation was that major numbers of management consultants seemed to be slurping up public money as part of the process. Brown was an incompetent bandit who let the banks RIP and there’s why he is responsible for the UK crisis. Fool. Apart from systematically undermining Blair at every opportunity (I too was Blairite scum) then bottling the election. Dreadful man. For the interested here’s my track about the crash from my “Decades” album (see posts passim).
https://jonathanroberts.bandcamp.com/track/confident-and-proud
PFI gets a bad press. Yet other than borrowing – which had caused huge problems for past Labour governments – where else were much-needed new schools and hospitals to come from?
Being honest, but not an option for Brown of course.
Borrowing was not an option, no. History is replete with past Labour governments whose plans were scuppered by a run on the pound. Brown wanted to avoid that fate – and did so.
History will be kind to Brown, I think.
Ummm, I think he will be remembered for being the man who let the banks rip, fuelled the UK crash, undermined the prime minister and sold the NHS down the river. We will have to agree to differ on him.
I think I’m right in saying that EU workers qualify for tax credits and other benefits. I agree though that nearly all migrants come to work rafher than claim.
Don’t forget Shrodinger’s Pole as invented by UKIP and the Daily Mail – coming here to simultaneously take our jobs and to scrounge.
This week’s version was to blame them for not being paid enough to pay enough taxes to keep (another countries) pensioners in the style they would like. Taxing businesses not an option apparently. Ands lets ignore the fact that they are working and we didn’t pay for their education, or probably their retirement.
The whole issue of pay is a bit chicken and egg. I don’t agree with the idea of tax credits, believing instead that employees should be paid enough to survive without their income being topped up by government but then prices would go up, affecting the lowest paid. We have a very small limited company and we not only pay freelancers & local crew above LIVING wage but always pay some corporation tax every year, usually quite considerable amounts which is more than can be said for many multinationals. HRMC should stop doing deals with megacorps. The jobs they provide often have to be subsidised anyway.*
*I am aware this is a gross simplification.
Blair turned into a self-righteous prick and got mired in wars that we had no business starting or even being involved in. His and Dubya’s actions are directly responsible for the hell-hole that is the Middle East at the moment.
But Blair knew how to win elections. He put money in people’s pockets and his government did good things. The Corbynite Faction that now control the Labour Party write all that off as tainted because of the Iraq war. Which is revisionist nonsense.
Labour only ever wins by occupying the centre ground. Now they’ve lurched to the left and stuck with Corbyn they will be decimated at the next election. Hopefully the Lib Dems will win back a lot of the seats they lost next time around. Another decade of Tory rule and we’ll all be paying to see a doctor and working for peanuts in the sweatshop of Europe.
I agree that the war in Iraq was a total nightmare, but you have to take a long view as well. The withdrawal of colonial Britain from the region, the creation of Israel, Carter’s response to the Kabul Revolution in 1978 and the Reagan-era arming of the mujaheddin, the whole insane “the enemy of my enemy” stuff – it was boiling away long before Blair and Paul Wolfowitz got their sticky little hands on the place.
But completely agree that 2003 fucked up an already awful situation in proper style.
This is the bit I don’t understand.
If Tony Blair shows up to lecture you on casus belli, by all means hoot derisively.
When he pops up with some pointers on how you might go about winning an election for Labour, why in god’s name would you wave his comments away? It’s the ultimate in ad hom nonsense, isn’t it? Because you disagree with him on one point, everything else he says must therefore be tainted?
On the upside, it provoked the hilarity of watching Corbyn and crew pronounce him “utterly discredited” one week, and then blame him for having swung the Copeland by-election the next….
I think that “one point” is everything to the Trots, though.
Their entire worldview is constructed around one principle: that THE WEST* is always evil and anyone with brown skin is automatically a saintly victim of imperialist aggression.
*(especially America, and especially financial America, by which they definitely don’t only mean people whose names end in -stein, honest)
But yeah – spot on. They disagree with Blair on this, so he must be wrong about everything.
Actually now I think about it, I think they probably dislike the very fact that he won elections. It’s not their way. Anyone who wants to win isn’t the right kind of person.
(I occasionally dabble in a forum based on my work. There’s a couple of Corbynistas on there who are very happy to scream blue murder about the thickness and doctrinal heterodoxy of the electorate: the wrong kind of proles are an unfortunate roadblock for them.)
Let’s be clear – the moment the Disasterous Brexit result came in a section of the Labour party started a civil war which destroyed any opportunity to hold the government to,account until it was too late. This was a choice. Plan B might have been to,attack the Tories, wait till May appointed PM and then say “we need new leadership to,take on May (or Boris or whoever)” and defenestrate Corbyn. But they just could not control themselves. He gets an increased mandate, May gets a free pass, Cameron gets to skip away to make more millions.
Its not just Corbyn. The PLP doesnt seem very good at politics either!
How could they attack the Tories on Brexit post June 23? Corbin went straight out and called for the immediate triggering of A50.
The PLP had one shot, which was to start a leadership challenge and try to keep Corbyn off the ballot. Once that failed, they backed off, and there’s been no criticism of him from within since. Since then he has achieved very little, except to order his MPs to side with the government on Brexit.
I’m not saying he played it well, or thought too much about what he was saying, but opinion is divided on whether he called for immediate triggering (#howsoonisnow?)
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jeremy-corbyn-branded-a-liar-for-denying-he-wanted-brexit-article-50-triggered-now_uk_57a46659e4b04ca9b5d2a4cf
No critiscm of Corbyn from within since the second election? You must be in a different Labour party to me.
Remember Cameron said he would invoke article 50 immediately. He justified not doing so,with his resignation.
I agree PLP had
one shot – and they were totally incompetent about it. And remember I am
ABC.
Labour MPs have been extremely well behaved since the second election. John McDonnell’s had to invent covert criticism in place of any public opposition to JC. Well that’s what he thought this morning, anyway, he’d changed his mind by lunchtime
http://labourbriefing.squarespace.com/home/2017/2/26/the-soft-coup-is-under-way
I actually had a really similar experience today.
When I arrived in the office, I flicked on the lights and – just for a moment – I thought I saw a clandestine meeting of all my various adversaries, plotting my downfall via a complex system of media manipulation, neuro-linguistic suggestion and corporate espionage.
Turned out, it was actually a daddy long-legs. Had a good laugh about that one, once I’d got my tinfoil helmet securely in place, obviously.
Turns out a bunch of people grumbling about something they don’t think much of is actually a conspiracy.
In England there’s been a conspiracy against the weather for several thousand years. Wow!
Although obviously there is a coup to get rid of Corbyn. Millions of people are secretly planning to not vote for him in 2020. There are little clues that only a master strategist like McDonnell would pick up – like rejecting Labour in Copeland for the first time in 80 years. But mainly it’s a sneaky ‘soft coup’ by voters who are cravenly planning behind Jeremy’s back to vote for someone – anyone – else.
I think the real lesson here is that Corbyn is simply not socialist enough for the electorate.
Corbyn was well chuffed with the result I’m sure and would never have made any effort to stop it. He’s from the previous generation of anti Europe Labour guys.
It might be right, it might be wrong, but go out and SELL yourself.
Miliband, not an intrinsically bad person I don’t suppose, was almost anonymous at the last election – arguably UKIP, one MP, had a higher profile.
The Labour Party have to be seen to be united (difficult), but the most important factor in any movement forward they might enjoy is that they’re SEEN in the first place.
In the Labour leadership campaign which gave us Ed I followed it quite closely and came to the conclusion that Ed Balls was the best bet – he actually had the vision and a plan…wrong Ed, wrong Miliband, as they said.
I voted David then Ed Balls. Thought he might have given the coalition more of a kicking than Ed M.
So farewell then, Gerald Kaufmann, the man who called the 1983 Labour manifesto the longest suicide note in history. 86.
Another bye-election then…
Sorry to hear that. I remember someone saying to him that John Major was a self-made man…Kaufman’s response “well, he didn’t do a very good job!”.
That’s classic GK, love it. He’ll be missed.
Decent film writer too… bit of a Powell & Pressburger obsessive.
Think Kaufman could have been on the Politicians thread…seemed half decent.