I too think that One Nation Labour was a good idea. But Ed Miliband didn't have the courage to follow through all the necessary implications of such an idea, which is why it has been sidelined.
Have we had Producers vs Predators recently? That one provided a lot of fun.
Ed has stripped off the barnacles and combined that policy with his new approach on immigration, it's now Aliens vs Predators.
I too think that One Nation Labour was a good idea. But Ed Miliband didn't have the courage to follow through all the necessary implications of such an idea, which is why it has been sidelined.
One Nation Labour in concept has already been tried. It's New Labour. It's everything that Tony Blair stood for, before he became a neo-Con. It's also a philosophy which Miliband has been running from ever since he started campaigning for the Labour leadership. That's why he's not mentioned it: the core idea is incompatible with everything else he's been doing.
Yeah, global warming. Where scientists predicted we'd almost never have snow. And that summers be hot. Or wet. And then hot again. If scientists can't predict a weather/climate trend for 5-10 years in the future how we have confidence they can do it for centuries?
He also commits the classic error of failing to identify and attack his opponents' actual and best arguments.
Sceptics commonly oppose climate activists because whether they are right or not the aim of a "green" energy policy is to make fuel more expensive so we'll use less of it.
This is absolutely guaranteed to kill the old and the weak. It is not an oversight or an unforeseeable consequence.
A lot of projection going on in that Hundal nonsense.
@Next That's one of the strongest arguments against Ed Miliband. He's shown courage on the things that run with the grain of his ideology (for example, on press abuses). But the things that are uncomfortable for traditional social democrats, such as the need to discuss how to manage competing social interests in thin years, has proved too difficult for him to do. True One Nation Labour would have explained the sacrifices that interest groups sympathetic to Labour would need to make as well as what they could expect to receive. As a result, he doesn't look like a leader but a protester.
@RichardNabavi That was Ed Miliband's silliest idea, and best answered by a quotation from Solzhenitsyn:
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
"But the UK Independence Party said half of the single-sex golf clubs in the UK admitted only female members and accused Mrs Miller and Mr Salmond of "political grandstanding"."
Why the outrage at male-only membership clubs not female-only membership clubs?
It'd be amusing if it weren't so biased. You can't argue against sexism, but only when it penalises women.
Mr. Bond, another point is that cutting global carbon emissions also requires emerging nations (including rapidly industrialising countries like China) to stand still. As well as being morally indefensible, it's entirely unrealistic.
@Josias The Crosby stuff is largely about Camerons character, what sort of man he is, who he appoints, what his priorities are.
Ed Milliband appointed Phil Woolas after the allegations were tabled. Does that speak to "what sort of man he is, who he appoints, what his priorities are"?
Mr. Bond, another point is that cutting global carbon emissions also requires emerging nations (including rapidly industrialising countries like China) to stand still. As well as being morally indefensible, it's entirely unrealistic.
Agree there are practical objections as well as moral. The moral ones matter most to me, because they crystallise the Pascal's Wager nature of what's being argued for, and its costs.
The fact that none of the predictions are accurate and that the activist movement behaves like the church i the fifteenth century are concerns too, but less so. The issue for me is that even if they're right, they're wrong.
Yes the Conservatives have a mountain to cover but they do have a lot of MPs benefiting from 1st time incumbency at the next GE. Makes it harder for Labour to win seats.
The Crosby stuff is largely about Camerons character, what sort of man he is, who he appoints, what his priorities are.
Priority in appointing an election strategist: Winning the election Who he appoints: Someone good at helping him win the next election
Labour really are being stupid here, even in their own terms. Of course they are gagging for the Big Smear later in the year, but this just muddies the waters, making it look as though they throw smears around entirely at random.
Yes - I notice Ed has been rather keen to shout a certain man's name during PMQ's - but not a certain lady. Ed hoping guilty is nailed on ?
isn't it the most stupid bet imaginable? Because even if there is a God, it assumes God is a moron who can't tell when someone's faking it as a celestial insurance policy.
I agree with you regarding the human-centric approach of the true believers. Just as Churchmen of the Middle Ages assumed we *must* be at the centre of the universe, so do some attribute any and all changes in the climate to our activities. The climate's always changed.
That's why he's not mentioned it: the core idea is incompatible with everything else he's been doing.
But he did mention it [One Nation Labour]. He made a speech all about it. We're still talking about it.
OK. Hasn't mentioned it *this year*. And we're only talking about it (1) because we're political obsessives and remember these things and (2) because of how his other actions have run entirely contrary to that slogan.
"But the UK Independence Party said half of the single-sex golf clubs in the UK admitted only female members and accused Mrs Miller and Mr Salmond of "political grandstanding"."
Why the outrage at male-only membership clubs not female-only membership clubs?
It'd be amusing if it weren't so biased. You can't argue against sexism, but only when it penalises women.
Harman's a hypocrite. She introduced female only short lists.
I don't know if this has already been posted but it's spot on. The mindless howling that lefties come out with when someone disagrees with them is certainly a characteristic of the breed.
"But the UK Independence Party said half of the single-sex golf clubs in the UK admitted only female members and accused Mrs Miller and Mr Salmond of "political grandstanding"."
Why the outrage at male-only membership clubs not female-only membership clubs?
It'd be amusing if it weren't so biased. You can't argue against sexism, but only when it penalises women.
Harman's a hypocrite. She introduced female only short lists.
I don't know if this has already been posted but it's spot on. The mindless howling that lefties come out with when someone disagrees with them is certainly a characteristic of the breed.
"But the UK Independence Party said half of the single-sex golf clubs in the UK admitted only female members and accused Mrs Miller and Mr Salmond of "political grandstanding"."
Why the outrage at male-only membership clubs not female-only membership clubs?
It'd be amusing if it weren't so biased. You can't argue against sexism, but only when it penalises women.
Harman's a hypocrite. She introduced female only short lists.
Yes but they were open to men - like Mr Dromey.
This transparent attempt to wind me up wont work!!!
"But the UK Independence Party said half of the single-sex golf clubs in the UK admitted only female members and accused Mrs Miller and Mr Salmond of "political grandstanding"."
Why the outrage at male-only membership clubs not female-only membership clubs?
It'd be amusing if it weren't so biased. You can't argue against sexism, but only when it penalises women.
Harman's a hypocrite. She introduced female only short lists.
Yes but they were open to men - like Mr Dromey.
This transparent attempt to wind me up wont work!!!
Just as Churchmen of the Middle Ages assumed we *must* be at the centre of the universe, so do some attribute any and all changes in the climate to our activities. The climate's always changed.
And there's always been aeromancy - " divination conducted by interpreting atmospheric conditions... the practice is thought to have been used by the ancient Babylonian priests.".
I'm sure this has been said before, but isn't the Tories' "magic bullet" always in fact the Labour leader?
Look at who they won against:
Thatcher vs Callaghan Thatcher vs Foot Thatcher vs Kinnock Cameron vs Broon
Look at who they lost to
Major vs Blair.
All obvious at the time.
So in 2015, Cameron vs Miliband, what's the obvious outcome?
To ask the question is to know the answer, surely?
Not sure that's an iron rule?
1966 Wilson v Heath - Labour landslide 1970 Wilson v Heath - Conservative win 1974F Wilson v Heath - Hung parliament 1974O Wilson v Heath - Labour knife-edge win
Four elections, same line up: four different results
Those who suggest that Labour's lead is too modest at this stage of the Parliament might care to recall the 74 - 79 Parliament.At that time Gallup was the most frequent pollster -in the Telegraph. From Autumn 77 - end of 78 the Tory lead was generally very narrow - often just 2%. It did spike upwards briefly in March 78 when Thatcher spoke of 'being swamped' by immigrants - though by Oct/Nov Labour was 5% ahead. It took the Winter of Discontent to give the Tories a commanding lead in Jan/Feb 79.
I want the royal baby to remain an anachronism. The fact that its future is not so different from lots of other little princes and princesses who will be able to lord it over their less fortunate peers points to a profoundly dystopian vision of Britain’s future.
A pity this wasn't the first paragraph as it would have saved the effort of reading the full FT article.
The reason why rents have increased faster than inflation since the financial crisis is that property values have fallen below the rate of inflation.
The reason that property prices have fallen below the rate of inflation is that Gordon Brown pumped up a property value boom which invevitably went bust.
With a crash in property prices coinciding with banks going bust, the supply of credit to the housing market dried up.
The financial crisis and property price crash caused private sector housing construction companies to stop building.
Under the 1997-2010 Labour governments, in both good times and bad, less than 2% of all dwellings were constructed by local governments and around 10% by housing associations. The private sector accounted for 85 to 90% of supply. Without the private sector building no one was building.
With no credit mortgage credit available, house prices in free fall and no construction activity the liquidity in the housing market collapsed. Householders needing to move refused to sell, rented instead and first time buyers were shut out by lack of available finance and constrained mortage terms. In particular, the requirements for low loan to value ratios, caused by new prudential regulation of bank lending, shut out buyers without the capital to pay 25% of value as a deposit.
All the above problems had their causal roots in the profligacy of Brown's economic management in the early noughties.
Osborne has no "bubble strategy". The bubble was blown up and burst by Brown. Osborne's intervention in the housing mortgage and construction markets is designed to reestablish liquidity in the housing markets, to halt and reverse the decline in property values and to support first time buyers by reducing the capital deposit barrier to house purchase.
So far Osborne's polices have been very successful very quickly in meeting his defined goals. But a bubble it is not: the construction, house sales and mortgage market is still only operating at 60% of pre-crisis levels and property values have nowhere near recovered pre-crisis values.
"A man has been jailed for a minimum of 30 years for murdering three generations of a family in a fire, including his six-month old baby on her first night home from hospital."
There was a long period here at PB when he was maligned on an almost daily basis by the usual suspects. In the long run, it turned out that Rod was right and they were wrong. I can't remember seeing many of them apologising.
Four years IS a long time! That was the period during which I was abused and accused of being a Labour shill, simply for demonstrating that a Tory majority in 2010 was improbable. (For the record, I state again I have never voted Labour in my life, and most likely never will.)
Now, my antenna are telling me Labour are in trouble. It seems the public's opinion of Miliband has crystallized into a thumbs-down. I expect Labour's polling position to weaken further and the Tories to win the popular vote in 2015. If Miliband becomes PM, it will be the cock-eyed electoral system which puts him in Downing Street and not the voters...
If one has to choose, most of us would rather have a decent, normally stable lead in voting intention and a trailing leader than vice versa. That's particularly true when the issue is own party supporters, since they've decided to support you despite their reservations (and at present the reservations are often simply that they're desperate for him to win and aren't sure he will).
Today's poll is based on the day when three newspapers were leading with the Tory attack on Labour's NHS record - the Mail very explicitly so. It appears to have had no impact whatever, presumably because the target audience of Labour voters and left LibDems are pretty Mail-immune.
A very interesting article, Mike, but as we all know, it is the ICM poll that counts. As a betting man, I would place a few bob on Cameron sneaking more votes but Labour more seats. Not too far fetched?
Comments
Sceptics commonly oppose climate activists because whether they are right or not the aim of a "green" energy policy is to make fuel more expensive so we'll use less of it.
This is absolutely guaranteed to kill the old and the weak. It is not an oversight or an unforeseeable consequence.
A lot of projection going on in that Hundal nonsense.
@RichardNabavi That was Ed Miliband's silliest idea, and best answered by a quotation from Solzhenitsyn:
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23355533
"But the UK Independence Party said half of the single-sex golf clubs in the UK admitted only female members and accused Mrs Miller and Mr Salmond of "political grandstanding"."
Why the outrage at male-only membership clubs not female-only membership clubs?
It'd be amusing if it weren't so biased. You can't argue against sexism, but only when it penalises women.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/business/markets-economy/services-and-manufacturing-help-scottish-economy-grow.21633844
Cameron vs Milliband ... Foppish amateur vs charmless wonk.
Now Labour are complaining because the fops are becoming professional and they are stuck with the charmless wonk.
That that made me laugh, Neil.
LibDems Finally Withdraw Whip From David "The Jews" Ward guyfawk.es/1brvOoT
The fact that none of the predictions are accurate and that the activist movement behaves like the church i the fifteenth century are concerns too, but less so. The issue for me is that even if they're right, they're wrong.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/business-news-markets-live/10187167/Business-news-and-markets-live.html
isn't it the most stupid bet imaginable? Because even if there is a God, it assumes God is a moron who can't tell when someone's faking it as a celestial insurance policy.
I agree with you regarding the human-centric approach of the true believers. Just as Churchmen of the Middle Ages assumed we *must* be at the centre of the universe, so do some attribute any and all changes in the climate to our activities. The climate's always changed.
Harman's a hypocrite. She introduced female only short lists.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100227068/five-reasons-why-left-wingers-are-pure-evil/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3421669.stm
http://www.labour.org.uk/one-nation-politics-speech
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23360103
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100227068/five-reasons-why-left-wingers-are-pure-evil/
It's the lack of respect for Andrea's authority on all matters selection that really gets to me
Feel free to justify from first principles of political philosophy what a "Real Liberal" party would think of those issues.
EU = elites ruling from above ignoring the demos.
Seems obvious to me.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100227116/the-strange-death-of-fascist-europe-and-how-the-left-wants-to-revive-it/
house price inflation is a good thing rather than an economic and social disaster
Agreed. But it was Brown who particularly stoked that social disaster as it made him look good (for a while).
For the EU, anything beyond arbitrary arguments about demos?
I'm sure this has been said before, but isn't the Tories' "magic bullet" always in fact the Labour leader?
Look at who they won against:
Thatcher vs Callaghan
Thatcher vs Foot
Thatcher vs Kinnock
Cameron vs Broon
Look at who they lost to
Major vs Blair.
All obvious at the time.
So in 2015, Cameron vs Miliband, what's the obvious outcome?
To ask the question is to know the answer, surely?
(And you skipped 1992).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeromancy
So – add Major vs Kinnock to the list, and does the hypothesis not still stand? The Tories’ magic bullet is the Labour leader?
1966 Wilson v Heath - Labour landslide
1970 Wilson v Heath - Conservative win
1974F Wilson v Heath - Hung parliament
1974O Wilson v Heath - Labour knife-edge win
Four elections, same line up: four different results
I want the royal baby to remain an anachronism. The fact that its future is not so different from lots of other little princes and princesses who will be able to lord it over their less fortunate peers points to a profoundly dystopian vision of Britain’s future.
A pity this wasn't the first paragraph as it would have saved the effort of reading the full FT article.
The reason why rents have increased faster than inflation since the financial crisis is that property values have fallen below the rate of inflation.
The reason that property prices have fallen below the rate of inflation is that Gordon Brown pumped up a property value boom which invevitably went bust.
With a crash in property prices coinciding with banks going bust, the supply of credit to the housing market dried up.
The financial crisis and property price crash caused private sector housing construction companies to stop building.
Under the 1997-2010 Labour governments, in both good times and bad, less than 2% of all dwellings were constructed by local governments and around 10% by housing associations. The private sector accounted for 85 to 90% of supply. Without the private sector building no one was building.
With no credit mortgage credit available, house prices in free fall and no construction activity the liquidity in the housing market collapsed. Householders needing to move refused to sell, rented instead and first time buyers were shut out by lack of available finance and constrained mortage terms. In particular, the requirements for low loan to value ratios, caused by new prudential regulation of bank lending, shut out buyers without the capital to pay 25% of value as a deposit.
All the above problems had their causal roots in the profligacy of Brown's economic management in the early noughties.
Osborne has no "bubble strategy". The bubble was blown up and burst by Brown. Osborne's intervention in the housing mortgage and construction markets is designed to reestablish liquidity in the housing markets, to halt and reverse the decline in property values and to support first time buyers by reducing the capital deposit barrier to house purchase.
So far Osborne's polices have been very successful very quickly in meeting his defined goals. But a bubble it is not: the construction, house sales and mortgage market is still only operating at 60% of pre-crisis levels and property values have nowhere near recovered pre-crisis values.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/10187947/Gentlemens-clubs-are-a-thing-of-the-past-says-David-Cameron.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-23327218
Con: +3.66%
Lab: -6.47%
LD: +0.92%
Others: +1.90%
So even in 2010 the increase in the share of Others was more than half the increase in the Tory share.
Today's poll is based on the day when three newspapers were leading with the Tory attack on Labour's NHS record - the Mail very explicitly so. It appears to have had no impact whatever, presumably because the target audience of Labour voters and left LibDems are pretty Mail-immune.