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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Harriet: I’m a fan but you got it wrong
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Harriet: I’m a fan but you got it wrong
I was proud to have been a member of Team Harman that won the deputy leadership of the Labour Party for Harriet in 2007. I admire her as a consistent campaigner for radical causes, championing feminism, equality and diversity in and out of government.
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"It would be a mistake, however, to see the 36.9% of the vote that gave the David Cameron his overall majority as a triumph for Tory values."
Its great to see Labour going ever backwards into turmoil in the same way as we did with IDS.
Competence is key, toxicity isn't.
Calling voters selfish pricks won't win many elections though.
Jesus. Thinly veiled contempt for the electorate combined with bregrudging insincerity about the need to pretend to understand.
You can't pretend to have respect; it gets smelt out a mile away.
If that's where the supposedly insightful Labour members are at then the party will be in opposition for a very long time.
I agree with Don Brind that Harriet Harman did not have the authority to make this concession as deputy leader and she would have been better opposing while explicitly acknowledging that the approach on such matters would be set by her successor. I suspect she took this step because she was alarmed at the trajectory of debate. As it is, her actions have backfired, restricting the freedom of manoeuvre for the next Labour leader to make concessions on welfare reform.
If the Tories are 'toxic', then what the hell are Labour?
http://www.northumbria.police.uk/news_and_events/news/details.asp?id=108427
But really so what? The Conservatives got the votes, they got a majority, they won!
As they say in Cricket, look in the book!!
If Labour don't like that - they had 13 years to change it, so that Tory values could never prevail again. Of course, the price was Labour values never prevailing either - clearly not a price you thought worth paying...
But, oh boy, do Labour still not get it. It's in the Tory zone of 1997-2003, and hasn't even got to the Michael Howard stage yet.
Well that's one way to alienate voters. And citing this quote just reinforces that Lefties have a moral superiority self-image issue.
I wish more on the Left took note of Peter Watt. He's a very sensible chap who doesn't presume all Tories have malign motives. http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2015/05/10/6080/
What delusional cr*p, on several levels.
"how to tackle the tricks and traps of the Chancellor George Osborne"
aka
"how to deal with reality"
PS your "forecasts" link goes to Google mail.
So long as Labour think like Mark Thompson then they will deserve to lose. People are generous to those in need; they are less patient - and rightly so - with those who confuse "need" with "want" and who take the p*ss.
To her credit Harman showed some signs of understanding that and, as a result, came across as more grown up than the other candidates.
I do feel that the position of 'cannot oppose all the time' is a sensible one in theory, but Harman's problem, and that for a new leader, as this piece shows, is that everyone will have a different view on where it is ok to support the government position (or principle of their decision even if implemented wrong) where it is actually popular, and so in practice you get a lot more kneejerk opposition than you started out promising not to do. Being without a spouse or children, I have plenty of spare time to spend with my loneliness, I mean TV. But I find plenty with both spouses and children seem to manage it - I think by binge watching entire series' in the few spare times they do have.
Yup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF3EnYb6HOQ
I am very happy for Labour to carry on as the party of welfare. Incidentally the hidden change that Mr Brind etc have not taken into account are the incentives to work more hours which the 16 hour minimums barely had. With the prospect of £9 an hour, jobs with more hours than the welfare minimum, will bring in enough cash to easily replace the headline cuts for those who want to work.
PS FWIW I am a long standing anti-Osborne chap.
Far from being "radical", I would regard Harman's campaigns of say the last 20 years as reactionary throwbacks from a new generation of self-appointed moral Puritans who have tried to assume the right to take decisions that are properly our own, given her efforts to prevent people doing things that she doesn't approve of and censor things she doesn't like.
She and her fellow travellers have been engaged in a long-term strategy to infantilise us all.
I find that contemptible, and Harman poisonous.
Happy to argue the detail some day but perhaps you don't want this thread derailing :-).
But she's a trooper and great media performer in the main.
"Yes, Miliband failed to win the election. But he gave the Tories the fright of their life during the election campaign … credit where it’s due. Politics is about ideas as well as power."
is I think something the Tories will be happy to have them believe, as a narrative that will disarm Labour - rather like the narratives in the election that turned out to be useful smoke puffed by non-Tories into their own eyes.
Why should Sturgeon care. We all know - though the Nats won't admit - that Sturgeon would prefer a Tory government in the UK and SNP in Scotland. She got her perfect result.
The most the SNP could ever be in a "progressive alliance" is the Scottish Lib Dems-equivalent junior partner to Labour.
But the tsunami of outrage was just too much for even her. And that's an awful lot. She's no shrinking violet.
I give her props for that.
Agreed. That she was able to manage it does, however, pay testament to what @Plato says - a true and proven media performer. Labour will be lesser for losing her in the short term, but if it leads to realisation that people do not like statist interference combined with attempts to buy off the needy with taxpayer's money, rather than actually solving issues, then her moving on will be a good thing.
It really took me by surprise, some voters seemed really rather alarmed and none of them looked like blue-rinse Tories down here in Eastbourne. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4500555.ece
Being right of the Labour Party is still on the left of the country. Until Labour get a new Mandelson and Blair combo good luck in realising that!
People who used to earn tax credits but no longer do and fund themselves instead may not be as inclined to vote for increased welfare.
Now where are all those deniers of BBC being stuffed full of lefties?
http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2015/jul/17/london-residents-pay-thousands-homes-town-down-cressingham-gardens
Plato makes the point below that Hattie is ahead of many of the alternatives and IMHO she would be a 2nd or 3rd division person in Blair's time.
Twitter reporting that Jeremy Corbyn received two further nominations last night from Norwich North and Great Yarmouth CLP, taking Corbyn’s lead over leadership rival and favourite Andy Burnham by 57 votes to 52.
Not sure how this will play out in the election, but with the Unions also backing Corbyn, he must be in contention to win outright?
The electorate will finally come round to accepting that the unemployed should receive more money than the employed.
I support CTC. The only question for me is "at what level?". CTC will continue, and all those in receipt of it are "winners", because they are receiving a subsidy. Since the subsidy will lower they are still "winners", just not as bigger "winners" as before.
The real "losers" are the people who have to pay the taxes to fund the subsidy.
The two child limit comes in in April 2017. Anyone with more than two children by that date will NOT be affected by the limit. This is so that the new limit will not hit families retrospectively.
The limit means that parents who want more than two children will have to take into consideration that they must pay for them themselves.
The limit is fair in my view because it still enables the poorest people to get a state-subsidy to enjoy a family life. If you do not support a limit then you are effectively saying that the state MUST subsidize the lifestyle choice of parents to have as many children as they like.
I get that. it's the whole Means Test Reluctance thing coming into play.
" Political parties have a responsibility to provide credible leaders. The Liberal Democrats have abandoned that responsibility. "
Ouch!
632? Unless there's a single CLP for NI, making 633?
Anyone seen tim with a bottle of antifreeze around?
They need to work and build confidence across the full five year lifecycle of this parliament.
The winners of the CLPs will be misleading because (a) there will be more activist members in CLPs rather than general membership, and (b) it is a constituency FPTP scheme - inaccurate when the real results will be from individual votes, biased toward the larger London base.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/11746504/Coup-in-the-City-as-George-Osborne-ousts-UKs-top-financial-regulator-Martin-Wheatley.html
Schadenfreude now on the lips of a number of bankers and insurers........
Silly people :-).
Sturgeon and the SNP's attitude is entirely rational and entirely what they say it is/was.
They would have preferred to have had maximum influence at Westminster which a hung parliament would have conferred. That did not happen, so they will exploit the genuinely ridiculous situation of one Tory in effect outvoting 56 SNP members on matters affecting Scotland.
Do try and understand, usual suspects, it really isn't hard :-)
The faster they're out, the more likely we are to lose the match ;p
Michael Gove
Boris Johnson
All worked for the BBC
It's 331(*) Tory members in a UK parliament being able to outvote 56 SNP members on UK matters in Scotland. Devolved matters of course are under the jurisdiction of the Scottish Assembly.
(*) according to BBC figures, so it must be OK with lefties
The Tories fooled a quarter of the electorate, mostly the simple-minded, narrow-minded and easily frightened. They are still hated by the majority of the population, but got in by the vagaries of a completely undemocratic electoral system. Dont get ahead of yourself, as this hilarious hubris is going to result in a very unpleasant fall, probably sooner rather than later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party
Anyone know when we get the next splurge of data from New Horizons..
I honestly don't think many Tories (and to be fair quite a few Labourites) realise how relatively little it will take for some of those head-over-heart Tory voters to desert them.
Imho, the attack on the idea of circularity is where the Tories are most manouvering a position. It has a nice pub Faragian ring to it, and as if cutting welfare isn't populist enough making any circularity a bad thing very much limits how you can restructure welfare in a progressive way. It's obvious, isn't it, that administering a system to take tax off people then administering another system to give a hand out back to them is a bad thing, right?
Well, not necessarily, not always. The simple universal welfare benefits, child benefit, pensions &c are all circular - give to all, take the tax. What it can give you at it's best are two much simpler systems to administer than the alternative single system could ever be. What is more, circularity used well could be a strong mechanism by which you can 'make work pay'.
The Tories by switching focus to circularity itself being bad could end up taking their eye off the ball of that much, much more important 'making work pay' principle. The early Labour attacks on this were good, before the focus was lost, but the line of attack remains open.
As I've mentioned recently, I'm no fan of the complex tax credits structure that Brown set up, but it did make work pay for a good many people and Universal Credit took on a lot of that thought capital. But given the progress of UC, I can understand why IDS is under pressure within his own party from this alternative narrative. The fact that 'making work pay' does require generous enough tapering and therefore does cost money plus the fact that the UC structure is mired in implementation may make it seem all to difficult to the Treasury, who are wishing to cut their losses.
If enough of the PLP can just stay focussed enough on holding the government to account on 'making work pay', it will be enough - Labour can hold the line and hope a new leader who is not EdM can actually develop a proper line of attack against any narrative that has taken hold. Because the 'mess Labour got you into' was truly lost after the election of EdM, not before.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/17/prince-philip-who-you-sponge-off#comments
You think naming 2-3 Tory sympathisers ends the debate, and disproves any accusation of bias? Why should anyone be convinced by that?
There are hundreds, thousands, of BBC employees. The vast majority are urbane, metropolitan and left-wing in their views. Diversity and multiculturalism is their religion. The vast majority read the Guardian, and think like they do. It's endemic in their culture.
Yes, there are one or two breaths of fresh air like Andrew Neil, and John Humpfries. There are even those like Sissons, Buerk and Paxman who were consumate professionals but simply oozed impartiality.
That doesn't prove that the BBC doesn't have an institutional problem in understanding and accurately representing the nation. The problem is in governance, management, recruitment and operating culture - much of which is back scene.