"The poverty and unemployment which we came into existence to fight have been largely conquered."
It is so true, but people just look for new battles. So, with the abolition of poverty as we once knew it, we look for relative poverty. Little Johnny has an ipad one that wont run the latest IOS, and cant download angry birds 3, therefore he is excluded from the activities his peers are able to enjoy.
It's a rather depressing thought, but the biggest factor in Liz Kendall's favour may be the fact that she's the only candidate with a southern accent. (She's originally from Watford).
Its proper Estuary though, not the bizarre mockney of Blair or Milibands toe curling Brand interview.
But he talked about fixing prices in the rental market, fixing prices in the energy market, fixing prices in the railways and through a process of taking in rail franchises as they came up, effectively renationalising the railways. He talked of banning zero hours contracts, increasing minimum wage, abolishing the 'bedroom tax' reintroducing 50p top income tax rate.
Blair also "intervened" in the energy market (windfall taxes), had higher taxation for the super-rich, and in opposition promised to end zero-hour contracts. And even the US (that hotbed of socialism that it is) has rent controls.
On top of that, Blair proposed higher spending levels than Miliband did.
But those were different times. The centre of gravity had changed. It's like saying Thatcher had higher rates of tax for most of her time in office, than Brown ever had. She had 60% higher rate and 30% basic rate for over eight years.
Fine, but it's clearly nonsense to say Miliband was "as left-wing as Foot".
Foot 209 seats Miliband 232 seats
I loved how Boris linked the catastrophically comical Ed Stone and Michael Foot's 1983 Labour: the Ed Stone was
AndyJS Labour don't need to win the South outside a few Kent marginals and the likes of Milton Keynes and Swindon, they need to win the north and Wales and the Midlands and London and do a bit better in Scotland.
If I were in charge of the OUT campaign, I would campaign under the slogan "Not Good Enough", arguing that the terms that David Cameron had negotiated were inadequate and advocate a No vote on the basis that Britain would then have a mandate to trigger its exit clause in order to get the opportunity to negotiate better terms over the following two year period. That way you scoop up not just the headbanging BOOers but also quite a lot of the persuadables who might otherwise not take a leap of faith.
And for your next trick you can divorce your wife to get the opportunity to negotiate better sex with her. Because that's going to work so well.
If UEFA have any balls, they'll tell FIFA to do one.
I would presume the rhetoric from them will die down pretty quickly. They can spin that Blatter not winning in the first round was hugely encouraging and shows that Fifa and Blatter will have no choice but to take reform seriously from now on and so on and so forth, and so they they will stick around to see that things improve etc etc.
Interesting that Prince Ali talked about people being 'brave enough' to support him.
I wonder. I suspect that the European football associations will be coming under behind-the-scenes pressure from their national governments. Michel Platini looked to me like a man who was running ahead of the whip.
Well exactly. Qatar 2022 is the obvious joke, but the real prize would be denying Putin Russia 2018.
Russia is credible, I don't really mind that even disliking Putin. But Qatar, a step too far it has been suggested.
Of course Russia is a credible (even overdue) host - but if the Swiss investigation finds that the tournament was awarded illegally then I think the opportunity to humiliate Putin will be very attractive to the USA in particular.
Oh come on, you cannot expect Putin to have his eye on everyone, er can you? Prince Ali had a rotten ground game.
Russia 2018 will be great. Russian fans are serious ultras.
I am planning a road trip.
Try to watch the footage of the recent Belgrade derby, only a few weeks ago and on You Tube.
Completely mad, if Russia 2018 is anything remotely like that then football will be finished.
I suspect the Russian plod will be rather heavy handed. They don't do softly-softly.
If UEFA have any balls, they'll tell FIFA to do one.
I would presume the rhetoric from them will die down pretty quickly. They can spin that Blatter not winning in the first round was hugely encouraging and shows that Fifa and Blatter will have no choice but to take reform seriously from now on and so on and so forth, and so they they will stick around to see that things improve etc etc.
Interesting that Prince Ali talked about people being 'brave enough' to support him.
I wonder. I suspect that the European football associations will be coming under behind-the-scenes pressure from their national governments. Michel Platini looked to me like a man who was running ahead of the whip.
Well exactly. Qatar 2022 is the obvious joke, but the real prize would be denying Putin Russia 2018.
Russia is credible, I don't really mind that even disliking Putin. But Qatar, a step too far it has been suggested.
Of course Russia is a credible (even overdue) host - but if the Swiss investigation finds that the tournament was awarded illegally then I think the opportunity to humiliate Putin will be very attractive to the USA in particular.
Oh come on, you cannot expect Putin to have his eye on everyone, er can you? Prince Ali had a rotten ground game.
Russia 2018 will be great. Russian fans are serious ultras.
I am planning a road trip.
Try to watch the footage of the recent Belgrade derby, only a few weeks ago and on You Tube.
Completely mad, if Russia 2018 is anything remotely like that then football will be finished.
I suspect the Russian plod will be rather heavy handed. They don't do softly-softly.
Qatar will just be crap though.
It won't happen.
I hope not. Those white elephant stadia can be a permanent monument to FIFA.
"This is what political hegemony looks like. Having defeated his opponents, Mr Cameron is bending them to his view of the world."
Completely wrong.
It is Mr Osborne, not Mr Cameron, who is doing this.
That point should be read in conjunction with Ganesh's other observation that Cameron is a great manager. Osborne is acting in harmony with Cameron without any hint of the dysfunctional relationship that Blair and Brown had.
Ganesh compared Cameron with Attlee but to me he's very much the British Angela Merkel. He is flexible and manages to tailor his own positions according to the dynamics across political divides with both within his party and with other parties.
I think it's interesting how an old, white, rich European male has successfully cemented his privileged position based on, however indirectly, left-wing colonialist ideology.
The AV campaign tried to do politics without politicians and that didn't go well for them. Maybe there's ambitious Tory minister who could take a run at it?
If you are an ambitious Tory minister and a committed Eurosceptic, resigning from the government to lead the OUT campaign would be a gutsy move. If you win the referendum you pretty much become PM, don't you?
Is there any Eurosceptic anywhere who is simply willing to stand up and say "The EU is bad. Let's leave." Not utter insanities like "leave to get a better deal" or calculations like "if I leave it'll be good for my career", but just simple and honest like "Fuck it let's go". Farage, for all his manifest disadvantages (list available on request), has pursued a honorable course throughout: presentingthe argument and pursued it without resorting to illogic.
"It's especially 'not the end of the matter' in a rotten electoral system that hands absolute victory to a party that a) garnered only 37% of the vote and on many day-to-day issues does not represent the majority view and b) used despicable lies and distortions, aided and abetted by their disgusting media friends and wealthy backers, to swing some of its votes."
which part, other than the florid adjective selection, which i admit is a matter of personal taste, is untrue? any political system that hands over absolute power on a little over a third of the popular vote (and under a quarter of the electorate) is indefensible and unsustainable. And yes, this was just as true in 2005. It wont last but the Tories will drag this zombie voting system as far as they can take it.
I didn't hear any lefties whining about their self-publicised strategy to concentrate on their 35% core vote. Stop blaming other people for your party being utterly unappealing to the ordinary shire voter (i.e. people like me). Develop some decent policies that don't compromise sound finances and Labour will be re-elected.
"It's especially 'not the end of the matter' in a rotten electoral system that hands absolute victory to a party that a) garnered only 37% of the vote and on many day-to-day issues does not represent the majority view and b) used despicable lies and distortions, aided and abetted by their disgusting media friends and wealthy backers, to swing some of its votes."
which part, other than the florid adjective selection, which i admit is a matter of personal taste, is untrue?
The part where he says "It's especially 'not the end of the matter'". That part is untrue.
"This is what political hegemony looks like. Having defeated his opponents, Mr Cameron is bending them to his view of the world. Short of actually paying reparations to Conservative HQ, it is hard to see how Labour could be any more under his boot."
"If personality is destiny, Mr Cameron will stay the sensible side of bug-eyed ideology. But he will still leave the British centre-ground some way to the right of where he found it in 2010, and without ever really intending to. Labour will splutter at this comparison but he evokes Attlee in one sense: he is not a radical so much as a shrewd manager of radicals. It was not Attlee himself but Aneurin Bevan, Hugh Dalton and other cabinet colleagues who did dramatic things with healthcare and welfare in the postwar years. Their prime minister supported, nudged and presided elegantly, but he tended not to initiate.
Something similar is true now. Mr Cameron is not an obvious man of destiny. It is Michael Gove who threw his soul into schools reform as education secretary. It is George Osborne, the chancellor, who is restless for a trimmer state and a more liberal economy. It is Steve Hilton, once the prime minister’s closest counsel and now a public voice in his own right, who instilled this government’s impatience to shake things up."
I love how Janan Ganesh knows what the political landscape will be like in 2020. *sarcasm*
I've just come back from a lecture by Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, the former President of Latvia who saw her country invaded by the Soviets, then the Nazis, then the Soviets again, then saw her baby sister die in a refugee camp. I log on and there are lefties stating that a free election, conducted scrupulously and with humour by local councillors, policed by an unarmed police force, and informed by a wide variety of media, is in some way rotten and indefensible. I see Eurosceptics stating that leaving the EU will engender a better deal, by, er, REASONS! There are times when British political discussion strikes me as ineffably silly.
"It's especially 'not the end of the matter' in a rotten electoral system that hands absolute victory to a party that a) garnered only 37% of the vote and on many day-to-day issues does not represent the majority view and b) used despicable lies and distortions, aided and abetted by their disgusting media friends and wealthy backers, to swing some of its votes."
which part, other than the florid adjective selection, which i admit is a matter of personal taste, is untrue? any political system that hands over absolute power on a little over a third of the popular vote (and under a quarter of the electorate) is indefensible and unsustainable. And yes, this was just as true in 2005. It wont last but the Tories will drag this zombie voting system as far as they can take it.
I didn't hear any lefties whining about their self-publicised strategy to concentrate on their 35% core vote. Stop blaming other people for your party being utterly unappealing to the ordinary shire voter (i.e. people like me). Develop some decent policies that don't compromise sound finances and Labour will be re-elected.
I don't see them blaming 'other people', but being critical of the electoral system.
"It's especially 'not the end of the matter' in a rotten electoral system that hands absolute victory to a party that a) garnered only 37% of the vote and on many day-to-day issues does not represent the majority view and b) used despicable lies and distortions, aided and abetted by their disgusting media friends and wealthy backers, to swing some of its votes."
which part, other than the florid adjective selection, which i admit is a matter of personal taste, is untrue? any political system that hands over absolute power on a little over a third of the popular vote (and under a quarter of the electorate) is indefensible and unsustainable. And yes, this was just as true in 2005. It wont last but the Tories will drag this zombie voting system as far as they can take it.
I didn't hear any lefties whining about their self-publicised strategy to concentrate on their 35% core vote. Stop blaming other people for your party being utterly unappealing to the ordinary shire voter (i.e. people like me). Develop some decent policies that don't compromise sound finances and Labour will be re-elected.
I don't see them blaming 'other people', but being critical of the electoral system.
Which electoral system they were more than happy with when it was biased in their favour.
"It's especially 'not the end of the matter' in a rotten electoral system that hands absolute victory to a party that a) garnered only 37% of the vote and on many day-to-day issues does not represent the majority view and b) used despicable lies and distortions, aided and abetted by their disgusting media friends and wealthy backers, to swing some of its votes."
which part, other than the florid adjective selection, which i admit is a matter of personal taste, is untrue? any political system that hands over absolute power on a little over a third of the popular vote (and under a quarter of the electorate) is indefensible and unsustainable. And yes, this was just as true in 2005. It wont last but the Tories will drag this zombie voting system as far as they can take it.
I didn't hear any lefties whining about their self-publicised strategy to concentrate on their 35% core vote. Stop blaming other people for your party being utterly unappealing to the ordinary shire voter (i.e. people like me). Develop some decent policies that don't compromise sound finances and Labour will be re-elected.
I don't see them blaming 'other people', but being critical of the electoral system.
Which electoral system they were more than happy with when it was biased in their favour.
Really? I've seen many on the left critical of FPTP a long time before this result.
"It's especially 'not the end of the matter' in a rotten electoral system that hands absolute victory to a party that a) garnered only 37% of the vote and on many day-to-day issues does not represent the majority view and b) used despicable lies and distortions, aided and abetted by their disgusting media friends and wealthy backers, to swing some of its votes."
which part, other than the florid adjective selection, which i admit is a matter of personal taste, is untrue? any political system that hands over absolute power on a little over a third of the popular vote (and under a quarter of the electorate) is indefensible and unsustainable. And yes, this was just as true in 2005. It wont last but the Tories will drag this zombie voting system as far as they can take it.
I didn't hear any lefties whining about their self-publicised strategy to concentrate on their 35% core vote. Stop blaming other people for your party being utterly unappealing to the ordinary shire voter (i.e. people like me). Develop some decent policies that don't compromise sound finances and Labour will be re-elected.
I don't see them blaming 'other people', but being critical of the electoral system.
Which electoral system they were more than happy with when it was biased in their favour.
Really? I've seen many on the left critical of FPTP a long time before this result.
Certainly, many on the left have argued for AV. But Blair and Brown did not introduce it in all their years of government when vote distribution favoured higher numbers of Labour MPs on a given vote percentage. And the Labour Party took no position during the AV referendum.
How about Tim Weatherspoon to lead the Out Vote? Weatherspoons has been one of the best known well managed businesses in the UK over the last 25 years and Weatherspoon is an unconventional character who would appeal to a wide range of people
Comments
http://www.conservativehome.com/video/2015/05/watch-derek-hatton-discusses-his-attempt-to-rejoin-the-labour-party.html
"The heaviest suicide note in history..."
It is Mr Osborne, not Mr Cameron, who is doing this.
[Perhaps Mr Gove has a hand in it as well?]
Ganesh compared Cameron with Attlee but to me he's very much the British Angela Merkel. He is flexible and manages to tailor his own positions according to the dynamics across political divides with both within his party and with other parties.
That's funny, I thought poverty had already ended by 1959 according to Barbara Castle.
Doesn't matter what the electoral system is if you have a crap leader with crap policies.
- Barbara Castle to Paul Rose, MP in 1967.