Is there any point in Labour being 'particularly left wing' now anyway? Given Scotland is a wipe out and it must be a bit difficult to out-left the SNP, why bother? Just what does the Labour Party want... does it really think weaponising the NHS is clever? Does it really believe the anti tory rubbish it spouts about the NHS? Just when will it engage with the real issues we face in a sensible way? In a nutshell that's what Blair promised. If labour ignore that lesson that's fine with me.
Well Labour has a problem.
It has its hardcore supporters who believe in "working class" stuff as it was in the 1970s and before. Who really believe in money trees and nationalisation of everything. They are loyal, often clever and have belief they are correct and everyone else is WRONG.
So they'll walk away if Labour modernise.
Then you have people who believe what politicians say. So "equality and fairness" mean something. And A Price Freeze means prices will fall.. And the Tories will close the NHS. In other words, people who cannot think for themselves. The type who won't vote Tory because their grandfather who died in 1985 would be very upset.
Then the public servants. WHo always want more money. Their case is logical.
And the ethnic minorities who have perpetual grievances and relay on Labour to cover up their reliance on benefits, and large scale oppression of women and vote rigging.
When you have voters like that, to say thatTtories are not evil would remove Labour's USP..
Re Boundary changes: People need to be very, very careful when looking at the Lewis Baston numbers published today.
Baston is a Labour supporter. His mother an ex Lib Dem councillor.
Indeed - I remember very well the debate after the article in 2011.
It's actually incredibly serious for Con - they absolutely have to get a review through.
If I was Cameron I would concede 650 MPs and avoid any backbench rebellion.
Queens Speech will be very interesting - the Con manifesto does imply a Bill to remove the need for any vote in 2018 - as per the amendment Con tried in 2012 - ie it would say by law that the PM has to lay the Boundary Commission reports directly to the Queen.
IDF Elite @idfelite 3m3 minutes ago BREAKING: IDF have identified at least 4 rockets fired from the Gaza Strip. 1 Rocket has landed in the industrial area of Ashdod.
Note Harriet's comment that she'd try to ensure that all four get on the ballot. People are up for signing a ballot nomination to ensure choice even if they're not going to vote for them.
Nick - do you think it is now safe to assume that no-one other than the four currently declared runners will enter the race?
Perhaps if Nick spots a candidate who's apparently given up, he could let us know on here, in time for us all to get on?
Labour slags Blair off for two reasons - he was a Tory - and a war criminal .
Does it alarm you that come 2020, the only Labour leader in the last 46 years to win a majority was a Tory and a war criminal?
War Criminals and Witches win elections.
Still not having Blair Witch Project
Do you think Burnham or Cooper would become PM in 2020 if they win the leadership?
I am sure Kendall wouldnt.
I am not starting any acronyms ending in PM for any of the LAB candidates TBH
That suggests you don't think Cooper or Burnham would win either. I'm not a signed up Lizzer, and some of what she has said I strongly disagree with, but I think we need to show a break from the past. I think I'm hoping that Creagh will be the surprise package and dazzle in the hustings. Unfortunately, I don't (yet) see a leftward equivalent of Priti.
Me neither but I would never vote for LAB under Kendall would prefer a Farron led LD but more likely would vote Green or move to Scotland !
Mr Owls
You forget that the Lib Dems are liberal (and so right wing) on economic and business issues and presumably not to your taste.
IDF Elite @idfelite 3m3 minutes ago BREAKING: IDF have identified at least 4 rockets fired from the Gaza Strip. 1 Rocket has landed in the industrial area of Ashdod.
Since Al-Nusra, an offshoot of Al-Qaeda is now an ally of Israel, it can't be them then.
“Some in Syria joke: “How can you say that al Qaeda doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force,”
IDF Elite @idfelite 3m3 minutes ago BREAKING: IDF have identified at least 4 rockets fired from the Gaza Strip. 1 Rocket has landed in the industrial area of Ashdod.
Since Al-Nusra, an offshoot of Al-Qaeda is now an ally of Israel, it can't be them then.
"Incidentally, I'm old enough to remember canvassing in areas where if you needed a loo it was polite to enquire whether they had one inside the flat - sometimes it was simply on the landing. So I'd concede that there's progress."
And I'm old enough to remember when we moved into a council house from our old condemned cottage in the middle of nowhere (My dad had to punt with his bike across the drain to get onto the road to Boston where we worked as a labourer in the fertilizer factory).
My mother was overwhelmed with the fact that the windows could be closed and we had an inside toilet. And three bedrooms for what ended up as two parents and six kids. We didn't consider ourselves poor in the fifties.
No-brainer that there should be a common tax policy across Euro member states. The idea that such a thing is sensible across the broader EU is just poppycock.
IDF Elite @idfelite 3m3 minutes ago BREAKING: IDF have identified at least 4 rockets fired from the Gaza Strip. 1 Rocket has landed in the industrial area of Ashdod.
Since Al-Nusra, an offshoot of Al-Qaeda is now an ally of Israel, it can't be them then.
Another load of rubbish from surbiton.
Direct your ire to the Wall Street Journals and a thousand other publications.
I see that Coopers big idea is 'Scandinavian style' universal child care. Free of course and available for 2 year olds.
How about rewarding people for NOT having children? For NOT being a burden on stretched maternity services. For NOT being a burden on the education system. For NOT putting additional pressures on housing.
That would be a big idea. Not the same old, same old "who can piss the most of other peoples money up a wall" contest....
Labour slags Blair off for two reasons - he was a Tory - and a war criminal .
Does it alarm you that come 2020, the only Labour leader in the last 46 years to win a majority was a Tory and a war criminal?
War Criminals and Witches win elections.
Still not having Blair Witch Project
Do you think Burnham or Cooper would become PM in 2020 if they win the leadership?
I am sure Kendall wouldnt.
I am not starting any acronyms ending in PM for any of the LAB candidates TBH
That suggests you don't think Cooper or Burnham would win either. I'm not a signed up Lizzer, and some of what she has said I strongly disagree with, but I think we need to show a break from the past. I think I'm hoping that Creagh will be the surprise package and dazzle in the hustings. Unfortunately, I don't (yet) see a leftward equivalent of Priti.
Me neither but I would never vote for LAB under Kendall would prefer a Farron led LD but more likely would vote Green or move to Scotland !
Mr Owls
You forget that the Lib Dems are liberal (and so right wing) on economic and business issues and presumably not to your taste.
You forget that the Lib Dems were liberal (and so right wing) on economic and business issues and presumably not to your taste. Farron represents the 2/3 of the LD members that are left wing statists.
As long as EU member states put abstract european values that don't exist above their interests, then the EU will take as much money from them as possible.
Being in the EU is like being in an abusive relationship.
Anyway looking forward to see if the city boys continue to love the EU after an EU corporation tax hike.
I don't know why anyone pays attention to her anymore. She is a complete nonentity who seems to spend every second of her day tweeting complete nonsense. As I understand it she was very far from popular amongst the Corby Conservative Association.
People need to be very, very careful when looking at the Lewis Baston numbers published today.
Remember Baston did an article in 2011 before the Boundary review in the last Parliament - and by an amazing coincidence he said that would only have a minimal effect, namely:
Con -15 Lab -18
That proved to be complete rubbish - per Anthony Wells if the last review had gone through Con would have had a majority of 44 at GE 2015, not 12.
Population change is fairly minimal between 2010 and 2015 - so a new review now would very likely give a result similar to the aborted review in the last Parliament - ie Con majority 44.
Thrasher also put the advantage at about 15. In any case, the tables have now turned.
The average votes per seat for the Tories in England is 32858. For Labour, it is 39261.
IDF Elite @idfelite 3m3 minutes ago BREAKING: IDF have identified at least 4 rockets fired from the Gaza Strip. 1 Rocket has landed in the industrial area of Ashdod.
Since Al-Nusra, an offshoot of Al-Qaeda is now an ally of Israel, it can't be them then.
I see that Coopers big idea is 'Scandinavian style' universal child care. Free of course and available for 2 year olds.
How about rewarding people for NOT having children? For NOT being a burden on stretched maternity services. For NOT being a burden on the education system. For NOT putting additional pressures on housing.
That would be a big idea. Not the same old, same old "who can piss the most of other peoples money up a wall" contest....
I understand the point you are making. But who looks after us when we are old?
Immigrants, of course....
Same as now. Yeah, everyone's kids today are SO keen to look after mum and dad as bits start malfunctioning and they go doo-lally....
That means immigration from areas with high birthrates. The Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, the Horn of Africa, the North West frontier - failed states, violent, dysfunctional societies. Exactly the sorts of places where we don't want immigration from.
Labour slags Blair off for two reasons - he was a Tory - and a war criminal .
Does it alarm you that come 2020, the only Labour leader in the last 46 years to win a majority was a Tory and a war criminal?
War Criminals and Witches win elections.
Still not having Blair Witch Project
Do you think Burnham or Cooper would become PM in 2020 if they win the leadership?
I am sure Kendall wouldnt.
I am not starting any acronyms ending in PM for any of the LAB candidates TBH
That suggests you don't think Cooper or Burnham would win either. I'm not a signed up Lizzer, and some of what she has said I strongly disagree with, but I think we need to show a break from the past. I think I'm hoping that Creagh will be the surprise package and dazzle in the hustings. Unfortunately, I don't (yet) see a leftward equivalent of Priti.
Me neither but I would never vote for LAB under Kendall would prefer a Farron led LD but more likely would vote Green or move to Scotland !
I could vote for Kendall but she shouldn't get carried away in an avalanche of Tory praise. Look what happened to the naïve Liberals. Their "service to the country" was rewarded by their partners with an almighty massacre !
I see that Coopers big idea is 'Scandinavian style' universal child care. Free of course and available for 2 year olds.
How about rewarding people for NOT having children? For NOT being a burden on stretched maternity services. For NOT being a burden on the education system. For NOT putting additional pressures on housing.
That would be a big idea. Not the same old, same old "who can piss the most of other peoples money up a wall" contest....
I understand the point you are making. But who 9looks after us when we are old? Children are a good thing. But do Labour have to state-istly insitutionise the process of bringing them up?
We redefine what "old" means. 40 may be the new 30, but rather more importantly 75 is very often the new 65 and in many cases 90 is the new 80.
Do Labour know that Kendall has been elected by the betting markets? (well nearly)
That's an amazing price for someone we'd only vaguely heard of a couple of weeks ago.
It almost looks as if Kendall will be favourite soon, and hard to justify that.
A good bet at 50/1, still good at 10/1 but no value at 2.64. Cooper is looking value, as could slip through the middle on AV second preferences.
I suspect that the 2.64s may offer incredible value! However I'm not sure, and I'm not smashing up that price.
As PM, who would you prefer? AB, YC, or someone else? Nailed on I think, and far more so than party politics. However Ed got quite close, so the irrational can happen.
I see that Coopers big idea is 'Scandinavian style' universal child care. Free of course and available for 2 year olds.
How about rewarding people for NOT having children? For NOT being a burden on stretched maternity services. For NOT being a burden on the education system. For NOT putting additional pressures on housing.
That would be a big idea. Not the same old, same old "who can piss the most of other peoples money up a wall" contest....
Fewer children would be a very false economy.
As the Chinese are finding out. I would not be surprised that in ten years, the Chinese actually pay their citizens to have more children.
Long stand; I've also heard of it as a long weight (wait)...
A tin of elbow grease.
A tin of tartan paint....
We summer-job students used to get sent for all of them. We generally managed to show the fitters we weren't THAT stupid. Until one of us was tasked with painting a floor with bitumen - and literally managed to paint himself into a corner....
In the six or so hours it took to dry off, everybody in the factory found an excuse to come down and have a laugh at him.
Ha! At school, we (a bunch of 16-year-olds) were in biology class, when a young lad (12, maybe) came in. The evil teacher in the classroom next door had sent him in to ask for some fallopian tubes....
Go to the parts depot and get a sky hook.
Slightly different, but my first job was picking and packing in a pharmaceutical warehouse. We despatched international orders and on my first day I was told that Libyan and Saudi shipments had to be specially marked out after picking by spraying on a blue six-pointed star...
I now know that the United States exports just over half a million pig rectums to Taiwan each year. The educational value of the internet is quite remarkable.
Nick Palmer. Hope you're doing well and commiserations. But I am sure you've plenty of worthy work to keep you out of mischief.
Re poverty, as a kid in Malta and Cyprus, the family had a fridge, but when we were in the UK we did not until 1972. We did not think of ourselves as poor. I remember schoolmates in Exmouth who had outside loos. And of course, no-one but no-one had central heating.
I agree with you that we should aspire for our poorest to do better than Mali by a long shot. But poverty should not simply be relative - there should be some link to meeting the basic needs of life - food, shelter, health - rather than just x% of y. And we should never forget what real poverty is. I am a firm believer that a Westerner's education is not complete until they have been to a Mali or Yemen, etc...
Unless we set meaningful metrics, programmes will always miss the mark as we'll have the wrong measure of progress.
I see that Coopers big idea is 'Scandinavian style' universal child care. Free of course and available for 2 year olds.
How about rewarding people for NOT having children? For NOT being a burden on stretched maternity services. For NOT being a burden on the education system. For NOT putting additional pressures on housing.
That would be a big idea. Not the same old, same old "who can piss the most of other peoples money up a wall" contest....
Fewer children would be a very false economy.
As the Chinese are finding out. I would not be surprised that in ten years, the Chinese actually pay their citizens to have more children.
China's problem is especially acute, because they've gone from a very high birthrate, to one that's well below replacement level, in just 35 years. That hits the economy hard.
I now know that the United States exports just over half a million pig rectums to Taiwan each year. The educational value of the internet is quite remarkable.
Why the word 'boneless'? I hate to think what a 'bone-in' rectum would be! ;(
I see that Coopers big idea is 'Scandinavian style' universal child care. Free of course and available for 2 year olds.
How about rewarding people for NOT having children? For NOT being a burden on stretched maternity services. For NOT being a burden on the education system. For NOT putting additional pressures on housing.
That would be a big idea. Not the same old, same old "who can piss the most of other peoples money up a wall" contest....
Fewer children would be a very false economy.
As the Chinese are finding out. I would not be surprised that in ten years, the Chinese actually pay their citizens to have more children.
China's problem is especially acute, because they've gone from a very high birthrate, to one that's well below replacement level, in just 35 years. That hits the economy hard.
I was speaking to our office secretary in Hong Kong [ admittedly not mainland China but the Chinese are fast becoming like the Hong Kongese in behaviour pattern ] just after she came back to work after the birth of her child [ barely two months later ]. She more or less made it clear that was going to be her only child. Later I found out that that is the norm in HK.
People need to be very, very careful when looking at the Lewis Baston numbers published today.
Remember Baston did an article in 2011 before the Boundary review in the last Parliament - and by an amazing coincidence he said that would only have a minimal effect, namely:
Con -15 Lab -18
That proved to be complete rubbish - per Anthony Wells if the last review had gone through Con would have had a majority of 44 at GE 2015, not 12.
Population change is fairly minimal between 2010 and 2015 - so a new review now would very likely give a result similar to the aborted review in the last Parliament - ie Con majority 44.
In any case, the tables have now turned.
The average votes per seat for the Tories in England is 32858. For Labour, it is 39261.
That's not relevant as to whether boundary changes done now will help Con.
The above numbers simply reflect the "Winners Bonus" whereby the winner always gets a disproportionately high number of seats.
Fact remains that the average Con seat has a higher electorate (73,500) than the average Lab seat (69,500). So boundary changes to equalise electorates will almost certainly favour Con.
I see that Coopers big idea is 'Scandinavian style' universal child care. Free of course and available for 2 year olds.
How about rewarding people for NOT having children? For NOT being a burden on stretched maternity services. For NOT being a burden on the education system. For NOT putting additional pressures on housing.
That would be a big idea. Not the same old, same old "who can piss the most of other peoples money up a wall" contest....
I understand the point you are making. But who 9looks after us when we are old? Children are a good thing. But do Labour have to state-istly insitutionise the process of bringing them up?
We redefine what "old" means. 40 may be the new 30, but rather more importantly 75 is very often the new 65 and in many cases 90 is the new 80.
Which is one reason why state pensions need pretty urgent reform. I'm of an age where my parents & their generation are starting to draw theirs, and frankly (unlike my Grandma, widowed at 62 with no job) they do not need a penny of it. Any extra is helpful, of course (see also: child benefit) but in straitened times it really is an area where government should not be handing out cash.
Eternally filed under 'will never happen - political suicide' of course.
I'm quite happy to accept that I need to fund my own pension, so if I want to retire at 60-65 I can do so off my own earnings, investments etc.
I don't know why anyone pays attention to her anymore. She is a complete nonentity who seems to spend every second of her day tweeting complete nonsense. As I understand it she was very far from popular amongst the Corby Conservative Association.
She's shown some evidence that she's not a non-entity in the past. That's why. My suspicions are that the Corby Conservative Association isn't quite in tune with the mood of the country.
Trade Unions, Conservative Associations, Churches, and whatever else. I'd prefer to think for myself - admittedly the results of that have been mixed!
Labour slags Blair off for two reasons - he was a Tory - and a war criminal .
Does it alarm you that come 2020, the only Labour leader in the last 46 years to win a majority was a Tory and a war criminal?
No - John Smith would have won handsomely in 1997.
April 94, the last ICM before John Smith died, had Labour with a 12% lead (ie just 3 years before an election)
April 12 with ICM, Miliband had a lead of 8%, so in the same time frame, John Smith and Ed Miliband werent' that far off.
Remember, John Smith probably cost Labour the 1992 general election with his Shadow Budget
I don't share the view that Smith's Shadow Budget cost Labour the 1992 election. Labour did well in London marginals that year despite that being an area most likely to have been adversely affected by the proposals. Re - polls in April/May 1994 - ICM on 7th May just five days before Smith's death gave Labour a 15% lead. For several months Mori had been recording Labour leads of over 20% whilst Gallup and NOP came up with leads of circa 25%. There is no doubt that Labour was storming ahead long before Blair became leader.
I think that any government that's been in power for 17 years is destined to lose against a reasonably competent opposition, simply because people are sick of them by then.
Blair turned a normal defeat into an appalling rout.
I remember that Essex University chappie Anthony King saying on the BBC on election night that the result would have been the same since September 1992. The Tories lost the election on Black Wednesday.
Many people vote Tory even when they don't like them because they believe Tories run the economy better. That day they lost it !
That's what King wanted to think. As Mike Smithson was forever reminding us in recent months, the Tories were still polling higher on economic competence in the run-up to 1997. How would that have happened if their economic reputation was shot? Nah, it was sleaze that did for Gentleman John - ruthlessly stoked up by the New Labour smear machine with the aid of a nebbish media.
Comments
It has its hardcore supporters who believe in "working class" stuff as it was in the 1970s and before. Who really believe in money trees and nationalisation of everything. They are loyal, often clever and have belief they are correct and everyone else is WRONG.
So they'll walk away if Labour modernise.
Then you have people who believe what politicians say. So "equality and fairness" mean something. And A Price Freeze means prices will fall.. And the Tories will close the NHS. In other words, people who cannot think for themselves. The type who won't vote Tory because their grandfather who died in 1985 would be very upset.
Then the public servants. WHo always want more money. Their case is logical.
And the ethnic minorities who have perpetual grievances and relay on Labour to cover up their reliance on benefits, and large scale oppression of women and vote rigging.
When you have voters like that, to say thatTtories are not evil would remove Labour's USP..
She rises beyond that though, and although well separated from Westminster is worth listening to.
It's actually incredibly serious for Con - they absolutely have to get a review through.
If I was Cameron I would concede 650 MPs and avoid any backbench rebellion.
Queens Speech will be very interesting - the Con manifesto does imply a Bill to remove the need for any vote in 2018 - as per the amendment Con tried in 2012 - ie it would say by law that the PM has to lay the Boundary Commission reports directly to the Queen.
That's an amazing price for someone we'd only vaguely heard of a couple of weeks ago.
A few months ago there was a discussion about Peter Reich's book "A book of dreams", which was like hen's teeth to get. Someone (iSam?) wanted a copy.
Well, it's just been republished in hardback and is available for £12 on Amazon.
IDF Elite @idfelite 4m4 minutes ago
BREAKING: Reports 4 rockets have hit an open area just outside Ashdod.
BREAKING: IDF have identified at least 4 rockets fired from the Gaza Strip. 1 Rocket has landed in the industrial area of Ashdod.
France and Germany behind plans for 'common EU corporation tax' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11630468/France-and-Germany-behind-plans-for-common-EU-corporation-tax.html …
BOO!
A good bet at 50/1, still good at 10/1 but no value at 2.64. Cooper is looking value, as could slip through the middle on AV second preferences.
Mr Owls
You forget that the Lib Dems are liberal (and so right wing) on economic and business issues and presumably not to your taste.
“Some in Syria joke: “How can you say that al Qaeda doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force,”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/al-qaeda-a-lesser-evil-syria-war-pulls-u-s-israel-apart-1426169708
"Incidentally, I'm old enough to remember canvassing in areas where if you needed a loo it was polite to enquire whether they had one inside the flat - sometimes it was simply on the landing. So I'd concede that there's progress."
And I'm old enough to remember when we moved into a council house from our old condemned cottage in the middle of nowhere (My dad had to punt with his bike across the drain to get onto the road to Boston where we worked as a labourer in the fertilizer factory).
My mother was overwhelmed with the fact that the windows could be closed and we had an inside toilet. And three bedrooms for what ended up as two parents and six kids. We didn't consider ourselves poor in the fifties.
Luxury! And we didn't even come from Yorkshire.
Being in the EU is like being in an abusive relationship.
Anyway looking forward to see if the city boys continue to love the EU after an EU corporation tax hike.
The average votes per seat for the Tories in England is 32858. For Labour, it is 39261.
Look what happened to the naïve Liberals. Their "service to the country" was rewarded by their partners with an almighty massacre !
As PM, who would you prefer? AB, YC, or someone else? Nailed on I think, and far more so than party politics. However Ed got quite close, so the irrational can happen.
This is a great betting market.
Slightly different, but my first job was picking and packing in a pharmaceutical warehouse. We despatched international orders and on my first day I was told that Libyan and Saudi shipments had to be specially marked out after picking by spraying on a blue six-pointed star...
I didn't fall for it though!
Thanks to this tweet
https://twitter.com/AntonyBlampied/status/603194590460518400
And this insightful webpage
http://www.neatorama.com/2014/06/22/For-Sale-Boneless-Pork-Rectums-Inverted/
I now know that the United States exports just over half a million pig rectums to Taiwan each year. The educational value of the internet is quite remarkable.
Re poverty, as a kid in Malta and Cyprus, the family had a fridge, but when we were in the UK we did not until 1972. We did not think of ourselves as poor. I remember schoolmates in Exmouth who had outside loos. And of course, no-one but no-one had central heating.
I agree with you that we should aspire for our poorest to do better than Mali by a long shot. But poverty should not simply be relative - there should be some link to meeting the basic needs of life - food, shelter, health - rather than just x% of y. And we should never forget what real poverty is. I am a firm believer that a Westerner's education is not complete until they have been to a Mali or Yemen, etc...
Unless we set meaningful metrics, programmes will always miss the mark as we'll have the wrong measure of progress.
HK never had the one child policy.
The above numbers simply reflect the "Winners Bonus" whereby the winner always gets a disproportionately high number of seats.
Fact remains that the average Con seat has a higher electorate (73,500) than the average Lab seat (69,500). So boundary changes to equalise electorates will almost certainly favour Con.
Eternally filed under 'will never happen - political suicide' of course.
I'm quite happy to accept that I need to fund my own pension, so if I want to retire at 60-65 I can do so off my own earnings, investments etc.
New thread
Trade Unions, Conservative Associations, Churches, and whatever else. I'd prefer to think for myself - admittedly the results of that have been mixed!
Times also rubbishes 'British Future' claims regarding minority voting patterns.
Still if you can't trust the former general secretary of the Fabian Society to give good advice to the Conservative Party who can you trust?