@IanAustinMP: Instead of pandering to Jeremy Corbyn people who aspire to lead our party must take him on & explain why he is wrong http://t.co/BJWoCgKChc
Kendall is completely right when she says "if we claim that making money, building a business, earning a profit, are Tory values, then we will be in Opposition for ever".
She nails it. Shame, for Labour, that she is (therefore?) unelectable.
Precisely. Tristram Hunt made similar remarks himself. The disdain that Labour hold those who live by their own profits is similar to the Conservatives sometimes have for the public sector.
A lot of it is perception, but perception is powerful. Constituencies will be full of individuals who have set up local businesses and are now actually relatively quite wealthy. #succesful small business owners like builders, plumbers and mechanics can quite easily have accumulated a million pounds in assets, theyve done it by hard graft. When Labour treats them with contempt you have to wonder why they would bother to vote for them.
The perception out there is that Labour represent the workshy and public sector (and many in the private sector, somewhat unfairly, think there is a massive correlation between the two).
I had my flat done up by a classically white working class dude the other day. He was smart, badly educated, very hard working, keen on a profit, brutally honest, a good man with ambition. Of course he was Tory: he basically screamed it, even tho we never discussed politics directly. He loathed Labour.
But what struck me was all the men he employed - black, Muslim, Eastern European, other WWC guys - they all depended on his enterprise and I suspect they all, therefore, felt drawn to his politics.
This is Labour's problem. If you alienate small businesses, you alienate all those who depend on these businesses for a living, not just the entrepreneurs - no matter how many golden owls for orphans you might likewise promise.
Any political party that is for bigger government, higher taxes, more public spending, is almost by definition anti-business.
'I do agree with Cooper on the economy. Of the contenders she is the only one with an economics background and is well aware that the Budget Deficit in 2007 - on the eve of the worldwide crash- was smaller as a % of GDP than when the Tories left office in 1997. I have been persuaded to sign up as a supporter to vote for her. What a meaningless comparison, revisionism of the worst kind.
In 2007 there had been 15 years of growth, tax receipts were higher than ever thanks to the City that Labour deregulated, massive public spending was transferred to the never-never of PFI yet STILL the government could only raise 90% of their spending from taxes and had to borrow the rest - despite warnings from the IMF for five years previous.
It was a massive mess entirely of Gordon Brown's making, of which the refusal of Labour to accept responsibility cost them the last two elections.
The Labour Government did run a Budget Surplus for 3 of its 13 years in office. The previous Tory Govt was only able to manage 2 years of Budget Surplus over 18 years.
Ironically it was the years it stuck to Tory plans, though Ken Clarke later admitted that he didnt think he could have kept to them.
The issue in 2007 wasn the scale of the deficit it was that spending had been increased substantially and it was funded by a booming financial sector and property market. When they both went simultaneously 'pop' a gigantic chasm opened up, the type you would expect during a world war.
I agree with that - the deficit was caused by the collapse in Tax Revenues rather than surging Government Spending per se.
Im trying not to swear.... Public spending was raised based on these revenues coming in in perpetuity. It was not a stable tax base. When they went you had the double whammy of all the bad stuff that happens when you have a recession, plus 4% of extra public spending that has no tax base.
We wont even get onto Labour's stimulus package.'
But there is a lot of hindsight there surely.I am not aware of warnings from politicians - Tory or Labour - of the unstable nature of the tax flows from the financial sector.
Francois Hollande calls for eurozone government - French president wants eurozone government to strengthen political and economic union, saying answer to Greek crisis is ‘more Europe, not less’ http://bit.ly/1Og0dWZ
What a complete idiot this man is, no wonder the Germans have no time for him. I can't believe France elected this disaster of a man into office. *Yep, I really don't like Hollande.*
Well he is a better disaster that his predecessor, although he is still a disaster. But that's France, they are switching between crooks, liars and idiots since De Gaulle died, and their strong presidential system means there are no checks and balances.
Hollande is yet another socialist idiot. But of course he is right about the Eurozone - for it to work it needs more centralisation. More of Greece doing as it its told. More of Scotland doing what its told if it becomes - ha ha - 'independent'. Of course to be fair to Hollande, his idea of 'more Europe' is all of Europe doing more of what France wants.
The last thing the eurozone needs is more of the same. For a europe that is economically diverse, centralization means collapse as the eurozone has proved.
A single currency must mean common economic policies common taxes and spending and interest rates. This may or may not be a good thing for Europe. It may be an economic masterstroke leading to a continental wide megaeconomy - or it may not. Your point about economic diversity is a good one, however the reason that countries like Greece were happy to join the Euro was to make them less diverse, ie less poor less corrupt and more disciplined in running their economies. Its a bit late for Greece and the other countries that admitted them to the Euro to forget all that now. I really do not know if the Euro is a good idea or not. I'm glad we are not in it, however. We have to make tough choices because of the Pound and the Eurozone have to make their own tough choices.
But surely this undermines your reason for supporting Cooper. If the electorate weren't convinced by the approach first time round, why should 5 more years of pushing the same line make any difference at
In no way is she unknown. She was in the Brown cabinet and held 2 senior jobs in the Miliband shadow team. She has made frequent appearances in media for more than a decade.
She is right at the heart of the Labour metropolitan elite - even if she puts on a cod working class accent from time to time. She is no outsider.
With respect , the likes of you and I know who she is - the much more typical voter has never heard of her. Moreover, the same line was not pushed for 5 years - the Tory charge of 'clearing up Labour's mess ' went unanswered until the very end.
You can have all the common spending and taxation policies you like. As long as economies vary enormously in terms of house ownership, willingness to use credit, preferences between work and leisure, industry structure, nature of benefit systems and a host of other things, they will respond differently to interest rate changes. That means, in the absence of labour mobility or fiscal policy as stabilizers, the economies will diverge within one economy, causing prolonged slumps in some. Germany's approach is thus doomed to fail. Either you need major centralized fiscal policy or you need to break up the Eurozone.
'This is Labour's problem. If you alienate small businesses, you alienate all those who depend on these businesses for a living, not just the entrepreneurs - no matter how many golden owls for orphans you might likewise promise. '
Whereas if you are a Tory government you just whack a 7.5% tax on small business owners' incomes out of nowhere having somehow forgotten to mention it at the election.
@oxfordsimon I don't agree with Cooper on the economy issue, and I think that will be a problem for her leadership - something she will, I think have to change tact in the long-term. However, in the next five years or so, the government will have to defend its own record as opposed to always referencing Labour's record in office. By 2020, it'll have been ten years since Labour were last in government, so I doubt the debate will centre on what Ed Balls'/Yvette Cooper (or indeed Burnham, as he was also in the treasury) did more than ten years ago.
I do agree with Cooper on the economy. Of the contenders she is the only one with an economics background and is well aware that the Budget Deficit in 2007 - on the eve of the worldwide crash- was smaller as a % of GDP than when the Tories left office in 1997. I have been persuaded to sign up as a supporter to vote for her.
Either the state of the economic cycle is relevant - in which case the comparator is not the point at which the Tories left power but the comparable point before the previous recession - or it is not, in which case the comparators are the point at which each respectively left office.
In the former case, Labour were running a 3% deficit versus the Tories running a surplus; in the latter case, you've got the 10%+ deficit that Labour handed over. To compare the handover of one to the immediate pre-recession point of another is either egregiously misleading cherry-picking or stunning incompetence.
Neither of which raise her status in my eyes, to be honest.
@oxfordsimon I don't agree with Cooper on the economy issue, and I think that will be a problem for her leadership - something she will, I think have to change tact in the long-term. However, in the next five years or so, the government will have to defend its own record as opposed to always referencing Labour's record in office. By 2020, it'll have been ten years since Labour were last in government, so I doubt the debate will centre on what Ed Balls'/Yvette Cooper (or indeed Burnham, as he was also in the treasury) did more than ten years ago.
I do agree with Cooper on the economy. Of the contenders she is the only one with an economics background and is well aware that the Budget Deficit in 2007 - on the eve of the worldwide crash- was smaller as a % of GDP than when the Tories left office in 1997. I have been persuaded to sign up as a supporter to vote for her.
What a meaningless comparison, revisionism of the worst kind.
In 2007 there had been 15 years of growth, tax receipts were higher than ever thanks to the City that Labour deregulated, massive public spending was transferred to the never-never of PFI yet STILL the government could only raise 90% of their spending from taxes and had to borrow the rest - despite warnings from the IMF for five years previous.
It was a massive mess entirely of Gordon Brown's making, of which the refusal of Labour to accept responsibility cost them the last two elections.
The Labour Government did run a Budget Surplus for 3 of its 13 years in office. The previous Tory Govt was only able to manage 2 years of Budget Surplus over 18 years.
Ironically it was the years it stuck to Tory plans, though Ken Clarke later admitted that he didnt think he could have kept to them.
The issue in 2007 wasn the scale of the deficit it was that spending had been increased substantially and it was funded by a booming financial sector and property market. When they both went simultaneously 'pop' a gigantic chasm opened up, the type you would expect during a world war.
I agree with that - the deficit was caused by the collapse in Tax Revenues rather than surging Government Spending per se.
Yet a recession was always going to come along sooner or later and Labour acted like the good times would be there forever. The fact that Labourites still refuse to accept that, convincing themselves that they were fiscally prudent by selective wordings that miss the wood for trees, is why they will not get elected in 2020. Well that and taking the opposite position to three quarters of the public on the most important issue to the public: immigration.
What's interesting about this Labour leadership election is that there are a group of young, articulate, attractive English Labour MPs, some of whom do seem to broadly get it - Jarvis, Hunt, Umunna, De Piero, Reeves and Creasy - and all of whom you could see as ministers in 10 years time.
Yet none of them are standing, and most are keeping a very low profile. The one who is, Kendall, will probably come last.
Over the course of six painful months, round after round of fraught negotiations between Greece and its creditors produced all manner of speculation about what a "Grexit" would actually entail.
With no precedent to turn to for guidance, mapping out the implications of an exit from the currency bloc was (and still is) a virtually impossible task, but the collective efforts of the sellside, the mainstream media, political analysts, and economists did manage to produce a veritable smorgasbord of diagrams, decision trees, flowcharts, and schematics, in a futile attempt to map the complex interplay of politics, economics, and financial concerns that would invariably follow if Athens decided to finally break off its ill-fated relationship with Brussels.
And it wasn’t just outside observers drawing up Grexit plans. Despite the fact that EU officials denied the existence of a “Plan B” right up until German FinMin Wolfgang Schaeuble’s “swift time-out” alternative was “leaked” last weekend, no one outside of polite eurocrat circles pretends that a Greek exit wasn’t contemplated all along and indeed Yanis Varoufakis contends that Athens was threatened with capital controls as early as February if it did not acquiesce to creditor demands.
Now, in what is perhaps the most shocking revelation yet about what EU officials really thought may happen in the event Greece crashed out of the EMU and unceremoniously reintroduced the drachma, Kathimerini is out with a description of what the Greek daily calls the "Grexit Black Book," which purportedly contained the suggestion that civil war would breakout in Greece in the event the country was forced out of the currency bloc.
I agree with that - the deficit was caused by the collapse in Tax Revenues rather than surging Government Spending per se.
Well, yeah. As Keynes pointed out sixty-odd years earlier. Which is why you don't run a deficit during the peak of the economic cycle - because when the downturn comes, tax revenues fall and welfare spending rises automatically and you realise you've been running a big structural deficit.
All of this coming as an apparent surprise to Cooper isn't reinforcing her status as an economics guru. Assuming she does know and understand basic Keynesianism, she's therefore being deliberately misleading to the extreme.
Labour need to be comfortable with being English, making money and not just focussed on the crusades of the chattering metropolitan classes, and the public sector trade unions.
What's interesting about this Labour leadership election is that there are a group of young, articulate, attractive English Labour MPs, some of whom do seem to broadly get it - Jarvis, Hunt, Umunna, De Piero, Reeves and Creasy - and all of whom you could see as ministers in 10 years time.
Yet none of them are standing, and most are keeping a very low profile. The one who is, Kendall, will probably come last.
Why?
The fact that you are making a claim for Reeves, De Piero, Creasy and Umunna as being the up and coming talent in the Labour Party shows what a state they are in.
None of them are political heavyweights in the making. Jarvis is too untested to know about - which is why he is seen as having potential as people can project what they would like him to be.
Hunt - well the least said the better. He should have stuck to history.
What's interesting about this Labour leadership election is that there are a group of young, articulate, attractive English Labour MPs, some of whom do seem to broadly get it - Jarvis, Hunt, Umunna, De Piero, Reeves and Creasy - and all of whom you could see as ministers in 10 years time.
Yet none of them are standing, and most are keeping a very low profile. The one who is, Kendall, will probably come last.
Why?
Lack of a power base? Young cardinals vote for old popes? Lack of ambition? Cowardice? No pressing need to do so? They secretly like having a Conservative Government and their jobs aren't in danger, so why bother?
We are all assuming Labour actually want to win the next election. Why would they want to do that? To do that they'd have to become Blairite - ew, ew - and that's hard, so best sit back for a couple of years, do a bit of Leftybation with Corbyn, watch a bit of telly...
They won't get back into power until they want to. And right now, I don't think they do.
Labour need to be comfortable with being English, making money and not just focussed on the crusades of the chattering metropolitan classes, and the public sector trade unions.
Is that so hard?
It can be when the trade unions are the ones bankrolling you.
I'm still waiting for someone to explain how this government is positive for small business, aside from trying to cripple them with new taxes and regulation in order to clear more lebensraum for their true masters at the top of global capital?
I'm still waiting for someone to explain how this government is positive for small business, aside from trying to cripple them with new taxes and regulation in order to clear more lebensraum for their true masters at the top of global capital?
Given that you even think in such ways as to make that a question you would actually ask shows how blinkered you are.
I'm still waiting for someone to explain how this government is positive for small business, aside from trying to cripple them with new taxes and regulation in order to clear more lebensraum for their true masters at the top of global capital?
Tax and regulation also applies to bigger firms and the government has just imposed an apprenticeships levy on large businesses
What's interesting about this Labour leadership election is that there are a group of young, articulate, attractive English Labour MPs, some of whom do seem to broadly get it - Jarvis, Hunt, Umunna, De Piero, Reeves and Creasy - and all of whom you could see as ministers in 10 years time.
Yet none of them are standing, and most are keeping a very low profile. The one who is, Kendall, will probably come last.
Why?
Lack of a power base? Young cardinals vote for old popes? Lack of ambition? Cowardice? No pressing need to do so? They secretly like having a Conservative Government and their jobs aren't in danger, so why bother?
We are all assuming Labour actually want to win the next election. Why would they want to do that? To do that they'd have to become Blairite - ew, ew - and that's hard, so best sit back for a couple of years, do a bit of Leftybation with Corbyn, watch a bit of telly...
They won't get back into power until they want to. And right now, I don't think they do.
That would be true if Corbyn is elected but it is not impossible one of the other 3 could win in 2020
The Conservatives don't need to ignore the very small number of voters who are their paymasters, and neither do Labour. Each party wins commanding support among certain groups of society and negligible support among others, and the difference between 37 and 31 per cent is not large in the recent historical context.
What's interesting about this Labour leadership election is that there are a group of young, articulate, attractive English Labour MPs, some of whom do seem to broadly get it - Jarvis, Hunt, Umunna, De Piero, Reeves and Creasy - and all of whom you could see as ministers in 10 years time.
Yet none of them are standing, and most are keeping a very low profile. The one who is, Kendall, will probably come last.
Why?
Lack of a power base? Young cardinals vote for old popes? Lack of ambition? Cowardice? No pressing need to do so? They secretly like having a Conservative Government and their jobs aren't in danger, so why bother?
We are all assuming Labour actually want to win the next election. Why would they want to do that? To do that they'd have to become Blairite - ew, ew - and that's hard, so best sit back for a couple of years, do a bit of Leftybation with Corbyn, watch a bit of telly...
They won't get back into power until they want to. And right now, I don't think they do.
That would be true if Corbyn is elected but it is not impossible one of the other 3 could win in 2020
Impossible? No. Likely? Er...
The frontrunner is a Northerner with a Scouse accent who came fourth to Ed Miliband last time and was in charge of hospitals when people were dying in their own excrement. Yvette Cooper is married to Ed Balls. Liz Thing is right wing and will not be chosen because that's just too easy. Jeremy Corbyn is a Viz parody.
You can have all the common spending and taxation policies you like. As long as economies vary enormously in terms of house ownership, willingness to use credit, preferences between work and leisure, industry structure, nature of benefit systems and a host of other things, they will respond differently to interest rate changes. That means, in the absence of labour mobility or fiscal policy as stabilizers, the economies will diverge within one economy, causing prolonged slumps in some. Germany's approach is thus doomed to fail. Either you need major centralized fiscal policy or you need to break up the Eurozone.
Even centralised fiscal policy hasn't worked for the UK's currency area. Some parts do very poorly under a strong pound as in the last twelve months, and don't get compensated for it.
I agree with that - the deficit was caused by the collapse in Tax Revenues rather than surging Government Spending per se.
Your logic assumes that Brown's massive spending increase was affordable in the first place. It was not. And on top of that it was not well targeted. The tax revenues collapsed because they were not structural, they were cyclical revenues which could not be sustained. These cyclical revenues should have paid off previous deficits not been used as an excuse for perpetuating the current one. The revenues will not come back because the industry which paid those taxes has disappeared. Casino banking. Plus banks must now keep higher reserves. The BoE pointed out that the recession had wiped out at least 5% of the economy which would not come back. On the back of these ephemeral revenues Brown massively increased spending and deficits went up as spending went up even when we had growth.
I'm still waiting for someone to explain how this government is positive for small business, aside from trying to cripple them with new taxes and regulation in order to clear more lebensraum for their true masters at the top of global capital?
Tax and regulation also applies to bigger firms and the government has just imposed an apprenticeships levy on large businesses
The new taxes and regulations seem custom-made to hit small businesses particularly hard. We don't even know what the supposed apprenticeship levy is yet.
What's interesting about this Labour leadership election is that there are a group of young, articulate, attractive English Labour MPs, some of whom do seem to broadly get it - Jarvis, Hunt, Umunna, De Piero, Reeves and Creasy - and all of whom you could see as ministers in 10 years time.
Yet none of them are standing, and most are keeping a very low profile. The one who is, Kendall, will probably come last.
Why?
Kendell will come last because she is a lightweight, and in an election of lightweights, she is the lightest. Jarvis is untested.
Chuka would have won, but he has skeletons. David Miliband would win but he is not an MP. Alan Johnson would win but he doesn't want the job.
The 2010 leadership election was about ideology as the unions imposed Ed on the party to get back at Blair- this election is about finding a credible leader. Unfortunately there are no credible candidates ergo Corbyn's popularity.
"Commodities crash could turn Australia into a new Greece The commodities boom made Australia the lucky country but rising debt and a slump in Chinese demand for resources signal tough times ahead Down Under"
What's interesting about this Labour leadership election is that there are a group of young, articulate, attractive English Labour MPs, some of whom do seem to broadly get it - Jarvis, Hunt, Umunna, De Piero, Reeves and Creasy - and all of whom you could see as ministers in 10 years time.
Yet none of them are standing, and most are keeping a very low profile. The one who is, Kendall, will probably come last.
Why?
Lack of a power base? Young cardinals vote for old popes? Lack of ambition? Cowardice? No pressing need to do so? They secretly like having a Conservative Government and their jobs aren't in danger, so why bother?
We are all assuming Labour actually want to win the next election. Why would they want to do that? To do that they'd have to become Blairite - ew, ew - and that's hard, so best sit back for a couple of years, do a bit of Leftybation with Corbyn, watch a bit of telly...
They won't get back into power until they want to. And right now, I don't think they do.
That would be true if Corbyn is elected but it is not impossible one of the other 3 could win in 2020
Impossible? No. Likely? Er...
The frontrunner is a Northerner with a Scouse accent who came fourth to Ed Miliband last time and was in charge of hospitals when people were dying in their own excrement. Yvette Cooper is married to Ed Balls. Liz Thing is right wing and will not be chosen because that's just too easy. Jeremy Corbyn is a Viz parody.
Be honest. They're not trying.
He wasn't actually Health Secretary when the events occurred, the last leadership election was all about the Milibands and some leaders have lost leadership elections before before winning the top job eg Reagan, John Howard, Chirac, Mitterand etc. If this was like 2001 and the next election was 8 years into a government ie in 2018 and Cameron, like Blair, would be running for 1 more term then I agree, it would be very likely Labour would lose, but the election is 10 years into a government and probably with Osborne leading the Tories, so provided Corbyn does not win I would not rule anything out
TSE- Kendell doesn't annoy Labour activists because she is a Blairite, she is just a poor candidate with little charisma, persona, gravitas, chutzpah, or likability to carry the party. The notion of the ideological Labour activist is long lost- don't forget they voted en masse for David Miliband. They just don't like the candidates at hand and like Liz the least because to be quite frank, she is the worst.
I'm still waiting for someone to explain how this government is positive for small business, aside from trying to cripple them with new taxes and regulation in order to clear more lebensraum for their true masters at the top of global capital?
Tax and regulation also applies to bigger firms and the government has just imposed an apprenticeships levy on large businesses
The new taxes and regulations seem custom-made to hit small businesses particularly hard. We don't even know what the supposed apprenticeship levy is yet.
Maybe, but the regulations in the budget hit large businesses too
"Commodities crash could turn Australia into a new Greece The commodities boom made Australia the lucky country but rising debt and a slump in Chinese demand for resources signal tough times ahead Down Under"
TSE- Kendell doesn't annoy Labour activists because she is a Blairite, she is just a poor candidate with little charisma, persona, gravitas, chutzpah, or likability to carry the party. The notion of the ideological Labour activist is long lost- don't forget they voted en masse for David Miliband. They just don't like the candidates at hand and like Liz the least because to be quite frank, she is the worst.
That's not my experience. My CLP, which I won't name, is dominated by new members who've joined over the last 2-3 years and oppose Kendall because she's a Blairite, pure and simple. These new members are all from Unite and approach each selection process in the same way: which candidate is the old-fashioned socialist? The idea that these people would weigh up the strengths and weaknesses of candidates regardless of their place on the political spectrum is laughable. Their place on the political spectrum is *everything*.
I've seen candidacy for town council elections in safe Tory wards get heated because the New Left want their man to get the nomination. The left is on the rise in Labour, and it's my belief the media is underestimating it. The value bet is Corbyn. I'm a Kendall volunteer, btw. And I'd be delighted to escape with Cooper or Burnham.
That's not my experience. My CLP, which I won't name, is dominated by new members who've joined over the last 2-3 years and oppose Kendall because she's a Blairite, pure and simple. These new members are all from Unite and approach each selection process in the same way: which candidate is the old-fashioned socialist? The idea that these people would weigh up the strengths and weaknesses of candidates regardless of their place on the political spectrum is laughable. Their place on the political spectrum is *everything*.
You make it sound as if the Labour Party is facing a similar threat to the 1980's when Kinnock had to battle The Militant Tendency. Very worrying.
That's not my experience. My CLP, which I won't name, is dominated by new members who've joined over the last 2-3 years and oppose Kendall because she's a Blairite, pure and simple. These new members are all from Unite and approach each selection process in the same way: which candidate is the old-fashioned socialist? The idea that these people would weigh up the strengths and weaknesses of candidates regardless of their place on the political spectrum is laughable. Their place on the political spectrum is *everything*.
You make it sound as if the Labour Party is facing a similar threat to the 1980's when Kinnock had to battle The Militant Tendency. Very worrying.
There is a lot of chatter about 'wanting my party back' and some bizarre belief that Corbyn represents some sort of Pure Labour.
There is a lot of chatter about 'wanting my party back' and some bizarre belief that Corbyn represents some sort of Pure Labour.
I can only hope that my CLP isn't representative. But increasingly I feel like a hard-left group, spearheaded by Unite, has quite cunningly and quietly gained ground within Labour. Certainly in my area. And they're quite organised and ruthless in their behaviour. I expected to disagree on friendly terms with these people, but they've made it quite clear that there's nothing friendly about it. I've seen several new, centrist party members given a hostile reception at recent CLP meetings. They haven't been back, and to be honest, I don't fancy going back myself.
There is a lot of chatter about 'wanting my party back' and some bizarre belief that Corbyn represents some sort of Pure Labour.
I can only hope that my CLP isn't representative. But increasingly I feel like a hard-left group, spearheaded by Unite, has quite cunningly and quietly gained ground within Labour. Certainly in my area. And they're quite organised and ruthless in their behaviour. I expected to disagree on friendly terms with these people, but they've made it quite clear that there's nothing friendly about it. I've seen several new, centrist party members given a hostile reception at recent CLP meetings. They haven't been back, and to be honest, I don't fancy going back myself.
The Unite control over the party has been well documented and seems to chime with your experience.
What, for me, is the most disturbing thing in all this is the absolute certainty of many on the Left that their world view is the only moral one. Everyone who doesn't agree is evil and cannot be considered as part of the debate. This certainty is destroying conversation and making progress impossible.
You can have all the common spending and taxation policies you like. As long as economies vary enormously in terms of house ownership, willingness to use credit, preferences between work and leisure, industry structure, nature of benefit systems and a host of other things, they will respond differently to interest rate changes. That means, in the absence of labour mobility or fiscal policy as stabilizers, the economies will diverge within one economy, causing prolonged slumps in some. Germany's approach is thus doomed to fail. Either you need major centralized fiscal policy or you need to break up the Eurozone.
Even centralised fiscal policy hasn't worked for the UK's currency area. Some parts do very poorly under a strong pound as in the last twelve months, and don't get compensated for it.
But within its central currency zone and tax regime all areas of the UK can vote for a central government - it is a central political area, and that govt can apply its tax revenues to where it thinks appropriate and set its tax rates accordingly. The UK has its own regional policy, which its electorate can judge and vote on. Its a bit silly to say it has not worked.
@oxfordsimon I don't agree with Cooper on the economy issue, and I think that will be a problem for her leadership - something she will, I think have to change tact in the long-term. However, in the next five years or so, the government will have to defend its own record as opposed to always referencing Labour's record in office. By 2020, it'll have been ten years since Labour were last in government, so I doubt the debate will centre on what Ed Balls'/Yvette Cooper (or indeed Burnham, as he was also in the treasury) did more than ten years ago.
I do agree with Cooper on the economy. Of the contenders she is the only one with an economics background and is well aware that the Budget Deficit in 2007 - on the eve of the worldwide crash- was smaller as a % of GDP than when the Tories left office in 1997. I have been persuaded to sign up as a supporter to vote for her.
Either the state of the economic cycle is relevant - in which case the comparator is not the point at which the Tories left power but the comparable point before the previous recession - or it is not, in which case the comparators are the point at which each respectively left office.
In the former case, Labour were running a 3% deficit versus the Tories running a surplus; in the latter case, you've got the 10%+ deficit that Labour handed over. To compare the handover of one to the immediate pre-recession point of another is either egregiously misleading cherry-picking or stunning incompetence.
Neither of which raise her status in my eyes, to be honest.
But by 1997 we had over 5 years of growth - we were not in recession - yet the Tories still handed over a significant Budget Deficit.
I agree with that - the deficit was caused by the collapse in Tax Revenues rather than surging Government Spending per se.
Well, yeah. As Keynes pointed out sixty-odd years earlier. Which is why you don't run a deficit during the peak of the economic cycle - because when the downturn comes, tax revenues fall and welfare spending rises automatically and you realise you've been running a big structural deficit.
All of this coming as an apparent surprise to Cooper isn't reinforcing her status as an economics guru. Assuming she does know and understand basic Keynesianism, she's therefore being deliberately misleading to the extreme.
When did the Tories run a surplus between 1951 and 1964? When did they run a Surplus between 1970 and 1974?
There is a lot of chatter about 'wanting my party back' and some bizarre belief that Corbyn represents some sort of Pure Labour.
I can only hope that my CLP isn't representative. But increasingly I feel like a hard-left group, spearheaded by Unite, has quite cunningly and quietly gained ground within Labour. Certainly in my area. And they're quite organised and ruthless in their behaviour. I expected to disagree on friendly terms with these people, but they've made it quite clear that there's nothing friendly about it. I've seen several new, centrist party members given a hostile reception at recent CLP meetings. They haven't been back, and to be honest, I don't fancy going back myself.
Sounds unpleasant but untypical of the CLPs that I know (Islington N and Broxtowe). There are quite a few Kendall supporters in both and lots of Burnhan and Cooper backers. Corbyn leads convincingly in Islngton N but it's the seat he's represented for decades so there'a lot of affection for him. But the Kendall people are getting a friendly (though unconvinced) hearing, and overall it's more good-humoured at ground level than the 2010 leadership election, partly because I don't think many people actually expect Corbyn to win in the end. Some MPs seem to be less relaxed though!
I think Kendall is on <1% chance - she will get a respectable vote, but I know lots of moderate Blairites who aren't convinced. The balance of the other figures look right to me.
I'm not sure what Oxfordsimon calls a close link to the unions. It used to be a requirement of Labour membership that you belonged to a union too (don't think that's still enforced) so most MPs will have joined up sometime. That seems to me fair enough, but it's easy to overestimate the significance. I was in Unite throughout 1997-2010 and they took only the vaguest interest. In 2014 they supported a right-wing GMB candidate for the selection in Broxtowe, and why not? - they just thought he was the best candidate.
I have a long standing bet on Burnham at 16/1. I think Cooper is now the strong value at 11/4 and your comments have not discouraged me so I have bet accordingly.
On the Sunday Politics I thought Andrew Neils interviews with the candidates showed Corbyn coming across well and relatvely moderate. He also seemed relaxed and confident.
Meanwhile the optimist of the year award goes to Louka Katseli For this hopeful statement on live TV urging Greeks to put money into the banks, not take it out.
“If we take our money out of chests and from our homes - where they are not safe in any case - and we deposit them in the banks, we will strengthen the liquidity of the economy,” Louka Katseli, the head of Greece’s banking association, said in a television interview on Sunday.
@oxfordsimon I don't agree with Cooper on the economy issue, and I think that will be a problem for her leadership - something she will, I think have to change tact in the long-term. However, in the next five years or so, the government will have to defend its own record as opposed to always referencing Labour's record in office. By 2020, it'll have been ten years since Labour were last in government, so I doubt the debate will centre on what Ed Balls'/Yvette Cooper (or indeed Burnham, as he was also in the treasury) did more than ten years ago.
I do agree with Cooper on the economy. Of the contenders she is the only one with an economics background and is well aware that the Budget Deficit in 2007 - on the eve of the worldwide crash- was smaller as a % of GDP than when the Tories left office in 1997. I have been persuaded to sign up as a supporter to vote for her.
Either the state of the economic cycle is relevant - in which case the comparator is not the point at which the Tories left power but the comparable point before the previous recession - or it is not, in which case the comparators are the point at which each respectively left office.
In the former case, Labour were running a 3% deficit versus the Tories running a surplus; in the latter case, you've got the 10%+ deficit that Labour handed over. To compare the handover of one to the immediate pre-recession point of another is either egregiously misleading cherry-picking or stunning incompetence.
Neither of which raise her status in my eyes, to be honest.
But by 1997 we had over 5 years of growth - we were not in recession - yet the Tories still handed over a significant Budget Deficit.
Take a look at it. There had been a spike after the recession, which was gradually falling. Thus Keynesian spending. They surged the deficit from a position of surplus (all very correct), which gradually fell thereafter; their spending plans returning them to surplus (that Brown correctly - in his first parliament) followed. So we weren't forced into any austerity.
Meanwhile the optimist of the year award goes to Louka Katseli For this hopeful statement on live TV urging Greeks to put money into the banks, not take it out.
“If we take our money out of chests and from our homes - where they are not safe in any case - and we deposit them in the banks, we will strengthen the liquidity of the economy,” Louka Katseli, the head of Greece’s banking association, said in a television interview on Sunday.
1. It has been drawn out of the bank before that bank runs out of cash. 2. None of this money has been declared for tax reasons and so why pay it into the bank and make it liable for back tax? Also how much of the Greek economy is on the cash-in-hand basis which of course may escape VAT>
I think that dramatically underestimates Corbyn. While we don't have much evidence to go on, the evidence we do have suggests he's among the frontrunners. That's what the leaked polls and CLP nominations tell us. It matches my own local experience, and everyone I've asked on Twitter has said that Corbyn is either strong or is winning in their CLP. Then there's the fact that his opponents haven't really managed to land a punch on him in this campaign.
Burnham and Cooper are obviously serious challengers, while Kendall is the outsider. Yet she has the most backing among the party grandees, and her supporters are probably the least likely to attend CLP nomination meetings. So there's a slim chance she's being dramatically underestimated.
I'd go:
Burnham 35% Cooper 30% Corbyn 25% Kendall 10%
I'd guess that Corbynites will have Burnham as their second preference, and since there are quite a few Corbynites these days, that should clinch it for Burnham. But I don't rule out an earthquake and a Corbyn win.
Labour didn't inherit a surplus from Clarke - it was still a slight deficit, which they turned into a surplus. During the first 10 years of New Labour's govt, the deficit was always lower, as a share of GDP, than the kind of borrowing we saw under Thatcher and Major. Labour's deficits were moderate, and borrowing only went crazy after the crash of 2008. In 2007, for example, Labour's borrowing was half the level of borrowing we saw from Lawson in the boom years of 87-88.
Comments
'I do agree with Cooper on the economy. Of the contenders she is the only one with an economics background and is well aware that the Budget Deficit in 2007 - on the eve of the worldwide crash- was smaller as a % of GDP than when the Tories left office in 1997. I have been persuaded to sign up as a supporter to vote for her.
What a meaningless comparison, revisionism of the worst kind.
In 2007 there had been 15 years of growth, tax receipts were higher than ever thanks to the City that Labour deregulated, massive public spending was transferred to the never-never of PFI yet STILL the government could only raise 90% of their spending from taxes and had to borrow the rest - despite warnings from the IMF for five years previous.
It was a massive mess entirely of Gordon Brown's making, of which the refusal of Labour to accept responsibility cost them the last two elections.
The Labour Government did run a Budget Surplus for 3 of its 13 years in office. The previous Tory Govt was only able to manage 2 years of Budget Surplus over 18 years.
Ironically it was the years it stuck to Tory plans, though Ken Clarke later admitted that he didnt think he could have kept to them.
The issue in 2007 wasn the scale of the deficit it was that spending had been increased substantially and it was funded by a booming financial sector and property market. When they both went simultaneously 'pop' a gigantic chasm opened up, the type you would expect during a world war.
I agree with that - the deficit was caused by the collapse in Tax Revenues rather than surging Government Spending per se.
Im trying not to swear.... Public spending was raised based on these revenues coming in in perpetuity. It was not a stable tax base. When they went you had the double whammy of all the bad stuff that happens when you have a recession, plus 4% of extra public spending that has no tax base.
We wont even get onto Labour's stimulus package.'
But there is a lot of hindsight there surely.I am not aware of warnings from politicians - Tory or Labour - of the unstable nature of the tax flows from the financial sector.
Your point about economic diversity is a good one, however the reason that countries like Greece were happy to join the Euro was to make them less diverse, ie less poor less corrupt and more disciplined in running their economies. Its a bit late for Greece and the other countries that admitted them to the Euro to forget all that now.
I really do not know if the Euro is a good idea or not. I'm glad we are not in it, however. We have to make tough choices because of the Pound and the Eurozone have to make their own tough choices.
Moreover, the same line was not pushed for 5 years - the Tory charge of 'clearing up Labour's mess ' went unanswered until the very end.
That's in nominal or real terms?
% GDP?1
Whereas if you are a Tory government you just whack a 7.5% tax on small business owners' incomes out of nowhere having somehow forgotten to mention it at the election.
In the former case, Labour were running a 3% deficit versus the Tories running a surplus; in the latter case, you've got the 10%+ deficit that Labour handed over. To compare the handover of one to the immediate pre-recession point of another is either egregiously misleading cherry-picking or stunning incompetence.
Neither of which raise her status in my eyes, to be honest.
Yet none of them are standing, and most are keeping a very low profile. The one who is, Kendall, will probably come last.
Why?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-19/streets-athens-will-fill-tanks-kathimerini-reveals-grexit-black-book-shocker
Excerpt:
Over the course of six painful months, round after round of fraught negotiations between Greece and its creditors produced all manner of speculation about what a "Grexit" would actually entail.
With no precedent to turn to for guidance, mapping out the implications of an exit from the currency bloc was (and still is) a virtually impossible task, but the collective efforts of the sellside, the mainstream media, political analysts, and economists did manage to produce a veritable smorgasbord of diagrams, decision trees, flowcharts, and schematics, in a futile attempt to map the complex interplay of politics, economics, and financial concerns that would invariably follow if Athens decided to finally break off its ill-fated relationship with Brussels.
And it wasn’t just outside observers drawing up Grexit plans. Despite the fact that EU officials denied the existence of a “Plan B” right up until German FinMin Wolfgang Schaeuble’s “swift time-out” alternative was “leaked” last weekend, no one outside of polite eurocrat circles pretends that a Greek exit wasn’t contemplated all along and indeed Yanis Varoufakis contends that Athens was threatened with capital controls as early as February if it did not acquiesce to creditor demands.
Now, in what is perhaps the most shocking revelation yet about what EU officials really thought may happen in the event Greece crashed out of the EMU and unceremoniously reintroduced the drachma, Kathimerini is out with a description of what the Greek daily calls the "Grexit Black Book," which purportedly contained the suggestion that civil war would breakout in Greece in the event the country was forced out of the currency bloc.
As Keynes pointed out sixty-odd years earlier. Which is why you don't run a deficit during the peak of the economic cycle - because when the downturn comes, tax revenues fall and welfare spending rises automatically and you realise you've been running a big structural deficit.
All of this coming as an apparent surprise to Cooper isn't reinforcing her status as an economics guru. Assuming she does know and understand basic Keynesianism, she's therefore being deliberately misleading to the extreme.
Is that so hard?
None of them are political heavyweights in the making. Jarvis is too untested to know about - which is why he is seen as having potential as people can project what they would like him to be.
Hunt - well the least said the better. He should have stuck to history.
@MrHarryCole: Osborne is enjoying this. http://t.co/5Pmh67vciK
We are all assuming Labour actually want to win the next election. Why would they want to do that? To do that they'd have to become Blairite - ew, ew - and that's hard, so best sit back for a couple of years, do a bit of Leftybation with Corbyn, watch a bit of telly...
They won't get back into power until they want to. And right now, I don't think they do.
Even FDR was against public sector unions.
Likely? Er...
The frontrunner is a Northerner with a Scouse accent who came fourth to Ed Miliband last time and was in charge of hospitals when people were dying in their own excrement. Yvette Cooper is married to Ed Balls. Liz Thing is right wing and will not be chosen because that's just too easy. Jeremy Corbyn is a Viz parody.
Be honest. They're not trying.
The tax revenues collapsed because they were not structural, they were cyclical revenues which could not be sustained. These cyclical revenues should have paid off previous deficits not been used as an excuse for perpetuating the current one.
The revenues will not come back because the industry which paid those taxes has disappeared. Casino banking. Plus banks must now keep higher reserves. The BoE pointed out that the recession had wiped out at least 5% of the economy which would not come back.
On the back of these ephemeral revenues Brown massively increased spending and deficits went up as spending went up even when we had growth.
Chuka would have won, but he has skeletons. David Miliband would win but he is not an MP. Alan Johnson would win but he doesn't want the job.
The 2010 leadership election was about ideology as the unions imposed Ed on the party to get back at Blair- this election is about finding a credible leader. Unfortunately there are no credible candidates ergo Corbyn's popularity.
"Commodities crash could turn Australia into a new Greece
The commodities boom made Australia the lucky country but rising debt and a slump in Chinese demand for resources signal tough times ahead Down Under"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/mining/11749706/Commodities-crash-could-turn-Australia-into-a-new-Greece.html
The notion of the ideological Labour activist is long lost- don't forget they voted en masse for David Miliband. They just don't like the candidates at hand and like Liz the least because to be quite frank, she is the worst.
I've seen candidacy for town council elections in safe Tory wards get heated because the New Left want their man to get the nomination. The left is on the rise in Labour, and it's my belief the media is underestimating it. The value bet is Corbyn. I'm a Kendall volunteer, btw. And I'd be delighted to escape with Cooper or Burnham.
What, for me, is the most disturbing thing in all this is the absolute certainty of many on the Left that their world view is the only moral one. Everyone who doesn't agree is evil and cannot be considered as part of the debate. This certainty is destroying conversation and making progress impossible.
Its a bit silly to say it has not worked.
Couldn't agree more. I'm late to the Unite thing - I don't pay much attention to trade unionism.
147 of them are Unite MPs.
I would be intrigued to know which 6 Labour MPs don't have union links!
Hi. What's your best guess for the outcome of the Labour leadership contest?
I have it as a two horse race and suggest the following likelihoods of winning
Burnham 45%
Cooper 40%
Kendall 10%
Corbyn 5%
Burnham 47%
Cooper 40%
Kendall 8%
Corbyn 5%
I'm not sure what Oxfordsimon calls a close link to the unions. It used to be a requirement of Labour membership that you belonged to a union too (don't think that's still enforced) so most MPs will have joined up sometime. That seems to me fair enough, but it's easy to overestimate the significance. I was in Unite throughout 1997-2010 and they took only the vaguest interest. In 2014 they supported a right-wing GMB candidate for the selection in Broxtowe, and why not? - they just thought he was the best candidate.
I have a long standing bet on Burnham at 16/1. I think Cooper is now the strong value at 11/4 and your comments have not discouraged me so I have bet accordingly.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/19/corbyn-communist-labour-leader
Meanwhile the optimist of the year award goes to Louka Katseli For this hopeful statement on live TV urging Greeks to put money into the banks, not take it out.
“If we take our money out of chests and from our homes - where they are not safe in any case - and we deposit them in the banks, we will strengthen the liquidity of the economy,” Louka Katseli, the head of Greece’s banking association, said in a television interview on Sunday.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11749712/Greece-crisis-long-queues-expected-as-banks-reopen-on-Monday.html
There had been a spike after the recession, which was gradually falling. Thus Keynesian spending.
They surged the deficit from a position of surplus (all very correct), which gradually fell thereafter; their spending plans returning them to surplus (that Brown correctly - in his first parliament) followed. So we weren't forced into any austerity.
1. It has been drawn out of the bank before that bank runs out of cash.
2. None of this money has been declared for tax reasons and so why pay it into the bank and make it liable for back tax? Also how much of the Greek economy is on the cash-in-hand basis which of course may escape VAT>
Burnham and Cooper are obviously serious challengers, while Kendall is the outsider. Yet she has the most backing among the party grandees, and her supporters are probably the least likely to attend CLP nomination meetings. So there's a slim chance she's being dramatically underestimated.
I'd go:
Burnham 35%
Cooper 30%
Corbyn 25%
Kendall 10%
I'd guess that Corbynites will have Burnham as their second preference, and since there are quite a few Corbynites these days, that should clinch it for Burnham. But I don't rule out an earthquake and a Corbyn win.
https://rjsigmund.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/deficitcbo.jpg