I don't know. Social democracy has lost its bearings since 1989 - 1991. Its decline was masked in the UK by Blair's electoral success, largely built on very shallow foundations. The Third Way turned out to be meaningless waffle.
The Left has either attached itself to old shibboleths (EU good, almost regardless of what it does, even when what it does is austerity) or to Islamic fascists and a my enemy's enemy is my friend view of the world (the Corbynistas) or to a vain hope that being a bit like the Tories but sounding nicer and more caring (the Cooper furrowed brow tendency) will be enough or has thought that reliving the glory days of the 1945-1951 government (the Burnham tendency) will revive it. And none of these will. Not least because they are all fundamentally nostalgic; they are not even an attempt to use old principles in a new setting.
There is so much for the left to be doing.
Our public housing is a disgrace. It needs massive investment and imagination if the mistakes of the past are not to be repeated.
Our education system is a disgrace for all but a very small, largely self perpetuating elite. The lack of opportunity for those from disadvantaged backgrounds is immoral and inefficient.
So many of our public services are a disgrace. And it is the poor and disadvantaged that need them. If the better off really required them and did not have their escape hatches we would not put up with it.
Although there have been some improvements in inequality, largely as result of the recession, the level of inequality in our society stretches its cohesion to the limits.
I don't see any credible answers to any of these issues from Labour since Blair and he talked a lot more about them than actually addressing them. Do lefty politicians from their comfortable middle class homes and posh universities simply find this stuff boring? Or are they frightened of taking on the vested interests that stand in their way?
Those are all issues that an intelligent, left-wing party could get its teeth into.
I'll add another. The tendency for a class of men and women at the top of the private and public sectors to enjoy all the benefits of capitalism, while experiencing none of the risks. There does seem to be a level at which no degree of incompetence retards one's career.
To a point, Fred Goodwin and Dick Fuld and Sharon Shoosmith and Paul Flowers all ultimately had to go
Teeside Steel has gone kaput. Sad but expected, steel is declining product as new forms of plastics and ultra metals come to the fore. For example, armoured vehicles are now using lighter and stronger means of defence.
We will need huge quantities of steel in the building of HS2. Unfortunately, thanks to GO, it looks like it will all be coming from China.
Housing, education and the public services would all be under less strain if net immigration wasn't running at 300,000+ a year.
Just sayin'.
In fairness, both parties are completely at fault for failing to manage immigration. Cameron has had over five years to address the issue and failed miserably.
Of course, Labour have additional points deducted from their score as they did it from malice aforethought.
Labour opened the gates. The Tories are finding it difficult to close them.
The non-Marxist bit of Labour has completely lost heart, its bearings and its head. I don't see anyone with the wit to do any of the hard thinking that's needed. Until that changes Labour will continue to revel in its very old Labour comfort zone.
Labour's challenge is that in the 1970s/1980s there were some very serious/engaged moderates willing to fight for what they believed in. The current generation are exhausted/useless/retired. And I can't imagine any *new* moderates chosing to join Labour for the first time right now.
So how do they recover from this?
They need some real smart people to think out a logical argued case for a modern social democratic party . That sounds a tall order but in reality, anyone with any smarts would look at the successful ones round the world and copy them.. Germany and Sweden have them...
Sure there's a need for that. But how does it happen within Labour? There's a real chance that Labour has just turned into an evolutionary cul-de-sac. Like the dinosaurs they have massive institutional advantages that will sustain them for a long-period of time. But if they can't develop a message that is relevant for the modern world then what's the point?
So Seema Mulhotra is something to do with the shadow cabinet?
I'd assumed she was just a random passer-by at first because she didn't seem to understand the questions.
It does get really irritating when politicians go off on a PPB instead of answering the question. Still, she followed orders to keep smiling. Vacuous doesn't really do it justice.
Teeside Steel has gone kaput. Sad but expected, steel is declining product as new forms of plastics and ultra metals come to the fore. For example, armoured vehicles are now using lighter and stronger means of defence.
We will need huge quantities of steel in the building of HS2. Unfortunately, thanks to GO, it looks like it will all be coming from China.
Thanks to Ed Miliband's stupid energy policies and the idiocy of the coalition in not repealing them it looks like all energy intensive industries are going bankrupt in the UK. We still need the steel and aluminium, and production of both is very energy intensive and has a high level of emissions. All we are doing is shifting the emissions to China and India along with the jobs. Our need for steel and aluminium hasn't gone away now that we don't produce the stuff, just the jobs and skills.
Ed Miliband and Ed Davey need to answer for this, so does Osborne who should have pushed the anti-green agenda harder from 2010-2015.
Our public housing is a disgrace. It needs massive investment and imagination if the mistakes of the past are not to be repeated.
Our education system is a disgrace for all but a very small, largely self perpetuating elite. The lack of opportunity for those from disadvantaged backgrounds is immoral and inefficient.
So many of our public services are a disgrace. And it is the poor and disadvantaged that need them. If the better off really required them and did not have their escape hatches we would not put up with it.
Although there have been some improvements in inequality, largely as result of the recession, the level of inequality in our society stretches its cohesion to the limits.
I don't see any credible answers to any of these issues from Labour since Blair and he talked a lot more about them than actually addressing them. Do lefty politicians from their comfortable middle class homes and posh universities simply find this stuff boring? Or are they frightened of taking on the vested interests that stand in their way?
Those are all issues that an intelligent, left-wing party could get its teeth into.
I'll add another. The tendency for a class of men and women at the top of the private and public sectors to enjoy all the benefits of capitalism, while experiencing none of the risks. There does seem to be a level at which no degree of incompetence retards one's career.
To a point, Fred Goodwin and Dick Fuld and Sharon Shoosmith and Paul Flowers all ultimately had to go
It was interesting hearing someone from Germany say that VW was too big to fail. Where have we heard that before?
The other issue I would add: welfare. Any successful society would have a good welfare system for those who have fallen on hard times and a way of providing such people a way out of their diffculties. But a successful society would regard it as shameful that people are left on welfare for years on end. Or that people who are earning above the average feel entitled to welfare. Labour needs to stop regarding the size of the welfare budget as a measure of success rather than as a symptom of failure
Today is the anniversary of William the Conqueror's invasion in 1066. Just sayin'
Illegal immigrant !
I think you get off if you bring your own country...
The most shameful moment in the history of England.
We were conquered by a French Bastard.
Not true Frenchies. I grant you they spoke french, lived in france and served the french king, but they were still more Norse than french, damnit!
IIRC hadn't Harold had to march up North to thrash the Scots (Battle of Stamford Bridge) before immediately returning South.
Vikings, not Scots. Otherwise correct.
Harold pulled off a pretty impressive feat of generalship simply taking the field at Hastings after what he'd been through over the previous two months. I wouldn't regard 1066 as any more shameful than any of the other invasions that England suffered during the earlier part of the eleventh centuries. The only thing that marked it as being particularly different was that it was the last successful one - and that could only be seen in retrospect.
Cue someone bringing up William of Orange in 'successful invasions'
Successful contested invasion then!
Oh I agree, I just know some don't accept the complexities of the William of Orange situation make it hardly analagous to 1066.
I think I may be one of the people to which you refer ("some don't accept the complexities of the William of Orange situation make it hardly analagous to 1066"). I think you're drawing a distinction without a difference: the different circumstances and support for HaroldvsWilliam compared to JamesvsWilliam do not contradict the point that in both cases the rightful King of England was overthrown by force of arms. The contention that the English have a single unbroken monarchy back to 1066 is more poetic than factual.
Teeside Steel has gone kaput. Sad but expected, steel is declining product as new forms of plastics and ultra metals come to the fore. For example, armoured vehicles are now using lighter and stronger means of defence.
We will need huge quantities of steel in the building of HS2. Unfortunately, thanks to GO, it looks like it will all be coming from China.
It's amazing how idiots on the left scream when industry shuts under a Conservative government, but remain oddly mute when it disappears under a Labour government.
It's almost as if they're using closures to make narrow and self-serving political points.
Conferences are for the party itself, granted, but sometimes I think they should just decide to have bits in private and other bits not - I know that'd look bad in this modern age, but most of the time they don't want to display actual debate (unless within agreed parameters) so they don't appear divided, and they want to pitch to voters at large, which you cannot always do if you are pitching to an internal party audience who will lap up silly rhetoric much easier, so you might as well have a real conference behind closed doors and then the stagemanaged stuff for public consumption.
Indeed, useful debate has to allow challenges to the status quo, including currently unacceptable ideas. That has to be done in private, otherwise 'debate' is self-censored and little more than affirmation-seeking.
Recidivist tells us he is tired because he stopped up to look at the moon. So did I. It was neat stuff. However that was all we did - look on. Unlike Labour we were not found to be howling at it.
A red moon BTW was regarded by the ancients as being a bad omen.
Today is the anniversary of William the Conqueror's invasion in 1066. Just sayin'
Illegal immigrant !
I think you get off if you bring your own country...
The most shameful moment in the history of England.
We were conquered by a French Bastard.
Not true Frenchies. I grant you they spoke french, lived in france and served the french king, but they were still more Norse than french, damnit!
IIRC hadn't Harold had to march up North to thrash the Scots (Battle of Stamford Bridge) before immediately returning South.
Vikings, not Scots. Otherwise correct.
Harold pulled off a pretty impressive feat of generalship simply taking the field at Hastings after what he'd been through over the previous two months. I wouldn't regard 1066 as any more shameful than any of the other invasions that England suffered during the earlier part of the eleventh centuries. The only thing that marked it as being particularly different was that it was the last successful one - and that could only be seen in retrospect.
Cue someone bringing up William of Orange in 'successful invasions'
Successful contested invasion then!
Oh I agree, I just know some don't accept the complexities of the William of Orange situation make it hardly analagous to 1066.
I think I may be one of the people to which you refer ("some don't accept the complexities of the William of Orange situation make it hardly analagous to 1066"). I think you're drawing a distinction without a difference: the different circumstances and support for HaroldvsWilliam compared to JamesvsWilliam do not contradict the point that in both cases the rightful King of England was overthrown by force of arms. The contention that the English have a single unbroken monarchy back to 1066 is more poetic than factual.
I do not think an unbroken line is being suggested. The whole history can be clearly traced and linked and at various times there were dynastic and political disputes.
Comments
I'd assumed she was just a random passer-by at first because she didn't seem to understand the questions.
It does get really irritating when politicians go off on a PPB instead of answering the question. Still, she followed orders to keep smiling. Vacuous doesn't really do it justice.
Ed Miliband and Ed Davey need to answer for this, so does Osborne who should have pushed the anti-green agenda harder from 2010-2015.
The other issue I would add: welfare. Any successful society would have a good welfare system for those who have fallen on hard times and a way of providing such people a way out of their diffculties. But a successful society would regard it as shameful that people are left on welfare for years on end. Or that people who are earning above the average feel entitled to welfare. Labour needs to stop regarding the size of the welfare budget as a measure of success rather than as a symptom of failure
"Migration Crisis: "Islam Will Conquer Europe Without Firing a Shot"
It's almost as if they're using closures to make narrow and self-serving political points.
RIP Butterley.
A red moon BTW was regarded by the ancients as being a bad omen.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2015/sep/28/labour-conference-john-mcdonnells-economy-speech-politics-live
Impressed by how much plato is posting about the conference here. We feel the love. :-)