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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Cyclefree suggests that Smith and Corbyn go back to Labour’
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Cyclefree suggests that Smith and Corbyn go back to Labour’s roots
The current fight for the leadership of the Labour Party seems so far to be presented as a choice between who will make the better leader, with the requirements of leadership being defined either as the person most in tune with the membership or the person most able to win votes from non-members. Nothing unusual about this, you might think. There seems to be very little difference on policy, as S…
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Whether it's immigration, taxes, spending, or social policy.
@Indigo
"The government argued that Iraq was armed to the teeth with WMD, had they not been lying, and frankly at the time who are we to gainsay people in receipt of supposed accurate national intelligence estimates, would that have constituted a threat to vital national interests ?"
In my view, no. A credible threat has to consist of the means to carry it out and the will/intention to do so. Saddam was definitely a very nasty piece of work but in 2002 what evidence was there that he wanted to harm the UK's vital national interests? Even if he had been stuffed up to the gills with WMD, there was not, as far as I am aware, any evidence that he was an actual, credible threat to the UK's vital national interests.
If Labour tells every single one of its support bases to take one for the team, striving for voters who have a perfectly sensible alternative in the shape of the Conservative Party, it will be annihilated.
Meanwhile, Corbyn's trying to get the Telegraph readers onside. Good luck with that.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/06/you-dont-need-to-settle-for-the-future-the-tories-are-creating/
"Do Labour really want to be all lefty, or should they be more Tory, nudge nudge wink wink?"
That aside, CF is right in saying that the issue is not merely presentational or even about selecting a popular coherent policy platform.
For me, I think Labour should be about supporting people to overcome their own challenges and addressing barriers that stop people having fulfilling lives, whether that means stopping overly powerful corporations from exploiting people and the environment, increasing employability of the long term unemployed, tackling the housing shortage, etc.
(And surely most stay at home mothers will have worked before they became stay at home mothers, and therefore would be unaffected.)
https://www.byline.com/column/11/article/1177
After Zoe Williams, one by one the radical lefties who were cheering Corbyn before have realised that he is not only destroying the Labour Party (which they don't care about) but he is so spectacularly crap he is in danger of destroying their vision of the radical left too.
Heart of Stone...
Dump NI contributions as we now have them. Instead have a two separate contribution streams. A Health contribution, i.e. a hypothecated tax, on everyone (employed, self employed, unemployed whatever) to pay for the NHS. Secondly, a Community Chest levy on every working person to pay the welfare bill. Both to raised on percentage of gross income, with fearsome penalties for anyone caught trying to evade/avoid. Other taxes (income, capital gains etc) to be adjusted accordingly to make it overall neutral in the first year or two.
For companies I would bin Corporation Tax entirely. It is too complicated, too difficult to collect and too easy to avoid. A straight forward sales tax, with the payments split into three streams, x% for the general exchequer, y% for the Community Chest, z% for the NHS. hat the overall percentage would be and how it would be split would be down the the Chancellor the day. Again fearsome penalties for any company director, partner or sole trader who tried to avoid/evade the sums due.
On such a scheme I reckon I could re-write the entire tax code in less than a 1000 pages, increase collection and shut down 90% of the loopholes which enable the wealthy to avoid tax.
To paraphrase very crudely, Labour needs to work out what it's for.
I think the Labour party collectively haven't got answers, and this is not a recent but long-running problem.
They lost the ability to be intelligently self-critical a long time ago. - If 2 social goods are not obviously compatible for instance, how do you choose between them - what mechanisms do you use?
Tony Blair defined Labour as "A party for the British people as a whole".
That was arrant nonsense, both meaningless, and actually destructive - A leader who thinks that, or purports to think that, is going to mess up from not understanding his party, and not actually understanding what politics is for.
Noone in the Labour party called him out on it. That was nigh on 2 decades ago.
The party doesn't have the capacity to think about the questions raised above, and doesn't show any sign of developing that capacity.
The party is stuffed.
"Well, one reason might be that a person cannot be an effective leader if the organisation they want to lead has no clear idea about what it is for and why it exists. "
I would suggest that the issue is in all but practice Labour has already split. The grassroots and CLP ( based on their recent support) will not be led by Smith, the PLP will not be led by Corbyn. Therin Labour is truly caught on the horns of a dilemma where no present candidate can mould these sections into a fighting force.
I agree Leadership succeeds but only where the leader has a definitive reason for being, a clear direction of travel and an ultimate goal of that to be achieved on which the entire team is focused.
At the moment there are two sets of troops being led in different directions leaving the centre and right flank seriously exposed to enemy action. If Corbyn loses then the left flank will rebel and engage in gureilla warfare. If Corbyn wins the right flank will collapse and withdraw from the field of battle leaving the centre ground at the mercy of the approaching cavalry.
Either option is appalling for Labour and either issue has no obvious solution. No King across the water or an unknown unity candidate with suffice to gravitas and experience exists. Even those wise heads no longer have the ability to seize the opportunity( You have Brown to thank for that)
Labour are over as an effective political party. They shall have to start again. It is best for all concerned if they just got on with that acceptance and reformed in short order to retake the field at least looking like some semblance of a cohesive force.
Another good piece from Miss Cyclefree. Others here have also asked the simple question "What is Labour for?"
The working class don't look at Corbyn and nod approvingly. They certainly don't look that way at Colonel Thornberry or Mao.
Lets us just take one of those, Mr. Freggles, "Increasing employability of the long term unemployed". How? I have some experience in this field and have worked on some schemes and have significant knowledge of the people we are talking about. So how are you going to do it?
It is an easy soundbite to put out but let us see some policies that will turn it into reality.
Take pharmaceutical distributors. Their job is to buy drugs from drug companies and be able to deliver pretty much anything in under a day to any pharmacy in the UK. It's a low margin business: you might buy a packet of pills for $1,000, and you might get just $1,005 from the pharmacy for it. (Holding inventory, per se, is not a very high margin business.) But if you sales taxes the pharmaceutical wholesale business it would simply not exist. Pharmacies would instead have to buy direct from drug companies. And the drug companies aren't set up to deal with ten thousand plus pharmacies: they're set up to deal with a dozen pharmacy distribution businesses.
(In case you're wondering: pharmaceutical distributors exist all around the world: there's McKesson in the US, and Celesio in Germany, etc.)
1. Forget renationalisation of trains etc its too expensive instead look at how we can build an economy where everyone doesn't have to travel to the big cities for work we need a more balanced economy where the banks are servants and not masters.
2. The States role? To achieve the rest.
3.It is unfair Google etc get away with paying so less tax, reform the tax system wholly and set out what they want it to do. Forget about people earning millions rather aim to raise as much money as possible in the most fair way so taxing people 50% tax is wrong rather go after inherited wealth tho u could have different allowances on iht in different regions but it should be ringfenced for social care.
4. They need to be the greatest defenders of liberal western values which are British values, not having meetings with hamas etc.
5. Labours biggest problem us the decline in trade union membership they need to recognise the economy is less about collective bargaining and more about individual choice this should be facillatated rather than hindered e.g support N.I contributions for self employed .
Our friend @FrancisUrquhart should be having an enjoyable day out at the ground.
Another example of an intrinsically low margin business: staffing companies. On large contracts, Adecco will take 12 pounds an hour from a client, and pay the temp 11. It's hard to see how temporary agencies could exist in a world with a blanket sales tax.
** before the lefties get on high horses I have been made redundant three times. Each time I found a job. Not one I ever really wanted to do but I found and did it all the same and accepted some retaining as well. I certainly did not sit around feeling sorry for myself, signing on once a week and bemoaning my lot
What Labour needs is fresh ideas about how to put these ideas into practice. And then the competence to communicate the ideas and execute a plan.
Its actually annoyingly simple.
Could you hypothetically provide a brief answer to the 5 questions above, one that you could sincerely say that Labour members would agree on, and very few would disagree with significantly.
I don't think, even as a thought experiment, that that is currently possible.
In terms of practicalities, Labour need to accept that the Tories may be wrong, but they are not evil, nor do Labour hold any kind of moral high ground. Their current civil war has, I hope, shocked many of them with the sheer malignity of the vitriol on display.
People will not vote for a party that apparently considers them to be scum. In order to win a majority, Labour need to win both Nuneaton and a couple of dozen or so rural seats. They also, as Cyclefree states, need to slaughter the odd sacred cow. The NHS is a medical service, not a religion.
How they accomplish this, is almost impossible to say. History abounds with scenarios where the way forward was clear yet the protagonists were unable to countenance them and suffered accordingly.
England well on top now, a great session of bowling from Cook's men.
....but MrJ, it just doesn't know hence the civil war spilling over into the press, debates and news programming as well as a bitter and very divisive leadership challenge .
To many factions of the party seem to think they alone know what Labour is for and I agree with you are not articulating a common reason to the electorate. Until the party, its members and the grassroots accept a common front then Labour are finished irrespective of any principles and values. It is as you say surprisingly simple but they won't ever do it.
I suspect that at this stage even if they managed to do so would it be little believed or trusted? Opponents just have to point and say the Labour Party is only ever a hairbreadth away from this chaos whoever is in charge unity candidate or not. Their opponents would be right as well.
At the moment Labour are already writing the election posters and leaflets for their opponents.
Agree about IHT, it's the most hated tax of the lot, and falls disproportionately on the middle class who had a home go up in value, rather than the seriously wealthy who can afford trusts and accountants.
It's spite politics pure and simple and gained nothing in the longer term. Squeezing so "the pips squeak" as a cohesive tax principle simply doesn't work anymore except for people who want to go back to the 60's
Great powers or lesser powers with cast iron great power backing have always taken land by right of conquest and still do (China-Tibet, Russia-Crimea, Israel-West Bank).
Lesser and sometimes great powers that go to far get taken to the cleaners (Germany, Iraq).
Whether it is too far is a fine judgment whose threshold has been lowered by modern technology, the downside of that is that things become fossilized, and pressure within builds up more.
I doubt anyone would raise a hand to stop Russia reconquering the whole USSR , other than the Baltic States (they only seem interested in ethnic Russian areas though).
If the crisis comes it will be once Belarus have been reabsorbed into Russia and a narrow Polish/Lithuanian corridor separates Russia from East Prussia where their Baltic Fleet is based.
Hopefully Poland and Lithuania wont repeat their behaviour on the original Polish corridor where the fascist Polish Junta, convinced that they could see off the German army, made Germans lives a misery when they tried to cross it, harrying them and holding them up for hours and making life very difficult in trade matters with Germany for the citizens of Danzig, then an entirely German populated city which versailles absurdly decided should self governing ciity within Poland.
The polish junta also invaded and annexed part of Czechoslovakia when Germany occupied it in 1938.
The guarantee of Poland from the UK made the junta even more arrogant and they refused to even discuss German proposals for an autobahn corridor to East Prussia through Poland (part of Poland which was German until 1918 and ethnic German populated) which german vehicles could cross without being held up for hours at each end
Hitler would never have got into power had there not been genuine injustices to exploit.
In government, your citizens tend to reap what you sow and that applied to both the Polish and German governments in the 30s/40s. Both brought disaster upon their people.
Governments should be about facilitation and equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome
I did not support it personally but it is not a policy Labour has to reverse to win a general election regardless of its economic merits
They need to focus on property taxes, in particular:
Split band H into eight new bands enabling a massive incease in council tax for these properties.
Levy council tax on rented properties on the owner not the tenant and double it.
Tax all land at 1% of its value.
Increase council tax by 25% for every bedroom a property has in excess of the number of occupants (if more than three non bedroom rooms the excess also deemed to be Bedrooms.
I know that the state of alliances in central europe was fluid between 1933-1939, but there is no doubt that Hitler wanted revenge for WW1 as soon as possible.
Records show that he was very angry he didn't get his war in 1938 but instead he had to sign the Munich treaty.
If Labour want to be seen as a party of tax and spend I'm fine with that, it's a rational argument to have. What's not rational or reasonable is extra spending paid for by more borrowing, or the idea that only 1% of the people need to pay more tax for the other 99% to enjoy the fruits of the extra spending.
They need to have the balls to put up eg the 40% income tax rate, and say it will raise £20bn for the NHS. That's at least honest politics.
That's interesting given the time differences.
The problem is that even if you are prepared to use unpleasant coercion technogology has seen to it that the dumbass jobs no longer exist.
But apart from that, great post!
(Just teasing...your point is very fair. It's also a business where, if you do it right, you can make a lot of money. Stefano is now a billionaire many times over having started with a loss-making pharmaceutical business in Naples with revenues of $1m. One of the most impressive business careers that there is - and a pretty decent guy (although as sharp as tacks and takes no prisoners... I think it took Stefano 3 months to replace the chief executive of Walgreens after he sold Alliance Boots to him)
Russian paraolympians receive blanket ban.
Disablist...
Properties are already very expensive because of hoarding by investment companies, increasing taxes will only push their prices up.
Instead I would install a levy on empty properties to force investors to put them on market for rent or sale.
It is absurd that earned income is hammered while unearned income gets a virtually free ride.
1. Defence of the Realm.
2. Management of the public finances.
When they can do that, they'll get elected eventually. That's a long way from where they are now.
Making it now they appear to be mean on disabled people.
By double taxing investments in corporations (at corporate and dividend levels) you distort how investment money is allocated. This can have very adverse effects on an economy.
Also it is a just move, if income tax is good for people then it's just as good for corporations.
The former got it right, the latter wrong.
Lots of landlords think that and then find themselves either without tenants or crap tenants who trash the place.
Rents are related to what the market will bear not what the landlord needs to charge to make a profit.
Not that sure that'll do much for the UK's reputation as a place to do business.
1) appease Labour grass roots and make it harder for incoming government
2) gave Labour years of ammunition from 2010 onwards to prevent that damage being undone by stating any reduction would mean Tories are for the rich. **
** this after Labour and Brown retained it at the lower rate for 12 years and 11 months of a Labour government.
Rents are more driven by lack of supply in desirable areas, plus the idiotic housing benefit system that created a ratchet effect on rents (I think that was going to be fixed, but no idea if it actually was)