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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Labour: time to turn blue?
What became of Maurice Glasman? Only those of us with a tendency to don the proverbial political anorak will recall the name, but Maurice (now Lord) Glasman was once the intellectual guru du jour for Labour. With roots in the Living Wage campaign and community organization, Glasman coined the term Blue Labour, a profound policy reaction to the perceived human emptiness of Blairism and the Third Way.
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Except there is no "problem in the data" at all, according to PHE. One of their senior officials is directly quoted by The Guardian today, stating quite explicitly that they've decided to count Covid deaths in this way on purpose:
Dr Susan Hopkins, Public Health England’s incident director, said: “Although it may seem straightforward, there is no WHO agreed method of counting deaths from COVID-19. In England, we count all those that have died who had a positive COVID-19 test at any point, to ensure our data is as complete as possible.
source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/17/matt-hancock-calls-urgent-inquiry-phe-covid-19-death-figures
This is total insanity. You might just as well rake through the life of Auntie Doris with a fine toothed comb after she kicks the bucket, discover that she had a minor shunt in her Austin Allegro in 1977, and add her to the road traffic death stats as a consequence.
There are no comprehensive statistics for this pandemic which can be trusted. The hospital Covid death numbers are probably reliable, but tell us nothing about deaths in other settings. Covid death stats outside of hospital are useless, first of all because of PHE's stupidity and secondly because many (probably a majority) of the Covid deaths were certified according to the best guesses of the relevant physicians and without being confirmed by a positive test result. The overall excess death numbers aren't a panacea either, because we've no idea what proportion of those were caused by Covid and what proportion may have been caused by the consequences of Covid (such as patients being denied treatment or being too scared to seek it.)
We know that Covid has been bad, but we've no idea exactly how bad, and we may never learn the truth. This will probably suit the authorities in the long run. If it could be conclusively established that we had torched the economy and condemned tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of people to an early grave from other causes - mass poverty, undiagnosed and untreated cancers, and all the rest - such that the collateral damage turned out to be hugely worse than that from Covid itself, then a lot of very uncomfortable questions might have to be answered. As it is, we're left to shrug our shoulders and say "dunno."
"Georgia continues to baffle me
The rise that had been forming in deaths has gone away and now continues to fall. Cases started rising on the 1st of June for this new super peak. Lagged deaths should be showing up by now.
According to news reports they are having to ship patients out of state so totally saturated is the hospital system but no rising deaths."
****
There's no need for bafflement. I posted a link a few days ago, from a Texas medical centre: in essence doctors have now learned how to treat Covid very successfully, to the extent that no one - apart from the seriously co-morbid - should ever die.
As long as the ICU is not overwhelmed, a First World hospital should now see minimal deaths.
What doctors can't do, yet, is stop people from catching Covid, and then getting chronically/seriously ill, hence the continued rise in cases/hospitalisations.
There is no paradox.
Interesting article @rottenborough - you make a good point that some serious change is needed.
It should focus on poor DE voters with whom Labour got 39% and who are the most economically left still and also could make inroads with pro Remain ABs and C1s with whom the Tories got a lower voteshare than C2s
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election
https://twitter.com/RAFBBMF/status/1284110332810670081?s=20
What has happened is that PHE have set a super-inclusive definition of death from COVID outside hospitals. Which means 6 or so deaths per day. Maybe.
There will be no perfectly accurate numbers for any health crisis. Anywhere in the world. Ever. All numbers have their issues.
The number to judge the crisis on is, in the long term, the excess deaths figure. which will include non-COVID deaths caused by the response.
Catalonia reports 1,111 new positives for COVID-19, of which 195 correspond to the Segrià region, 346 to the city of Barcelona and 67 to L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona), according to data released this Friday by the Department of Health . 69.5% of the cases (772) are in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, which covers the health regions of Barcelona, Metropolitana Norte and Metropoliana Sur
I was planning a brief holiday in the Algarve with my wifelet.
But can I risk tit? Whereever you go there's a chance you might get stuck in a lockdown
Thanks Mike.
Some of the text is repeated twice.
Good article btw.
https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/status/1284116980304314368
If Labour can't demonstrate that it has a good chance of reaching an overall Parliamentary majority on its own - and bear in mind at this juncture that it hasn't come anywhere close to this since Blair retired - then it has a serious problem.
"Dr Varon admits he's "thrown the kitchen sink" at trying to find new ways of beating this virus.
"And now he thinks there's a game-changer.
He and a group of medical colleagues from five different hospitals across America have created a cocktail of commonly but separately-used drugs they're calling the Math+ protocol - and the combination is having some staggering results."
"No-one needs to die from coronavirus any more," he said.
"This won't cure you of coronavirus but it can stop the build-up of problems which can lead to you needing a ventilator and when that happens, your chances of survival are only about 20%.
"Putting someone on a ventilator is like signing their death warrant.
"Finally, we have an option and I think it's going to work."
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-houston-doctor-says-were-heading-to-pure-hell-as-covid-19-cases-spike-in-texas-12020307
Some more detail on it here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/17/coronavirus-deaths-stubbornly-low-us-new-cases-soar/
1) If getting back to normal boosts the infection rate to the point that you overwhelm your ICU facilities, then people will start dying.
2) A Covid-19 infection appears to have serious long term negative effects on a significant fraction of those infected with it.
The combination of the two (both of which are very bad for your economy, naturally) suggests that we aren’t getting back to normal any time soon.
5m locked down, again, in Barcelona
https://twitter.com/DailyMirror/status/1284125955414343687?s=20
https://twitter.com/stephanfaris/status/1284077547714678786?s=20
If the long term strategy is winning in England, it inevitably suggests giving up on Scotland as those hypothetical ex miners gone blue aren't going to have much truck with making concessions to Nicola. Tbf Labour's current strategy in Scotland fairly reeks of giving up.
As I recall it Blue Labour was entirely concerned with the psyche of the English working class, so its resurgence as an idea would make sense in this context.
The total number of miners involved with the Mineworkers Pension Fund as pensioners or deferred pensioners fell from 225k to around 143k between 2012 and 2019.
https://www.mps-pension.org.uk/scheme-publications-and-factsheets
Slipping into history, and they all need to notice.
Just because what suits us also suits our enemy does not mean we shouldn't do it.
In Georgia you are seeing a absolutely plummeting Hospitalisation Death rate.
Compared to their daily cases
Pretty much identical surges in cases. Absolutely not identical surge in deaths.
There is,. nonetheless, evidence that medics are getting much better at treating the most severe cases. They've learned to avoid ventilators, for instance. That must be a factor in "better" American death rates despite soaring case loads.
Perhaps the Texan deaths are severely co-morbid people? Mayhap the virus has got into care homes? It would be interesting to see the age profile in Texas.
Blue Labour would surely have a greater grasp of the significance of the past and our inherited culture.
Boris Johnson, on the other hand, will want to stonewall demands for a second referendum for as long as possible. I don't think he's bothered about the Union, so much as the concern that breaking it will break him too. And, of course, Scotland is a useful stick with which to beat Starmer.
Edit: just seen @BlackRook 's post a moment ago. Quite.
Plus of course there have always been working class Tories (eg Alf Garnet) so it's not as if Labour can, should, or has to get all working class people to vote for it.
Plus I thought that Maggie was the one that accumulated working class votes with all that aspiration stuff?
She is incredibly concerned about the healthcare system becoming overwhelmed. As @LadyG says, while you have beds to treat everyone, you can keep the death rate low. Once you get beyond healthcare capacity, then lots of people will die.
This NPR story also tells you how close Georgia is to running out of capacity.
Hogan made one thing crystal clear: disassociating himself from the disaster - for his party, our nation & the world - that is Donald Trump.
By 2019 though Labour won only 32% of C2s and 39% of DEs.
Labour's AB voteshare was virtually the same under Corbyn and Blair, 30% in 2019 and 28% in 2005, in fact Corbyn did better with the upper middle class than Blair in 2005 but far worse with the working class. C1s were the same under Blair in 2005 and Corbyn in 2019 too, 32% each
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2005
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election
And thanks for a good thread header Rotten.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election_in_England
If the polls are even looking close to a hung parliament, Starmer needs to make it explicitly clear that he will never work with nor rely on the SNP for support, even if it means no government can be formed and we move to a second election
The equivalent to Putin in the 1930s was Stalin.
The EU is not equivalent to the Nazis by any means, so don't think I'm pulling a Godwin. But when it came to our European policy in the 1930s and early 1940s the interests of the UK and USSR aligned. Temporarily.
I hold no truck with Putin, he is an evil dictator. But if our interests coincide with Putin's then so be it. I'm not doing the bidding of Putin, I'm doing what is right for the UK and if that happens to be right for Russia then so be it.
Thatcher and Reagan defeated the Soviet Union. Putin is getting his revenge by having a moron in the Whitehouse, a clown in No10, damage to the EU and the likely breakup of the UK. You can reflect on the fact that you and a very gullible 52% of the population were gulled by his propaganda and have massively assisted his goals. The lunacy is with you, and you can own it as it plays out.
You can be assured his bots are probably trying to amplify AC Grayling to the FBPE crowd, just as they are with the Farage tweets regarding migrants attempting to cross the Channel.
However, I'm not persuaded that Blue Labour is either the right way to go, or what will happen. Starmer (and Nandy) certainly know that they need to dispel the apparently 'anti-British' rhetoric of the previous regime, and are already doing that. But I don't think they will subscribe to the rather rose-tinted, nostalgic vision implied by Blue Labour. The world has moved on, like it or not, and, for example, religious belief has continued to diminish in the majority community, and families come in all shapes and sizes now - there is no going back. And Labour members would not run with the Blue Labour nostalgia. What Nandy, in particular, is keen on is progressive values that emphasis the importance of community.
What I think is often forgotten is that politicians should seek to change people's minds, rather than just bow to a prevailing view. For example, Labour should not give up on the Red Wall new Conservatives. They should be seeking to persuade them that voting Labour is in their individual and collective interests, and that progressive values are to their benefit, not their detriment. Not easy, I know, but we shouldn't just give up and always bend to the perceived will of the voters. That will is not preserved in aspic.
There is also the issue of whether his activists will let him, even if he wanted to or thought it expedient.
I mean just look at the last Lab conference. Awash with stuff and motions that can almost certainly not be described as 'blue' labour.
It came about at a time, early 2010s, when economic factors (jobs, inflation, interest rates, strikes, even crime) were not the problem they once were.
So politics became about culture instead.
But economic politics is going to come back, big time, post-COVID.
Why call yourself a Unionist and then deny the vast majority of Scottish MPs any role in ruling the UK?
Not that Mr Starmer has much to lose at Westminster, apart from Mr Murray.
It's possible we see - as has happened in the US - that Labour becomes not just the party of the city centres, but of the suburbs too (v. bad news for the LDs, if true, of course).
In that scenario, it's not Northern, formerly-industrial, towns that go from Blue to Red, but places like Hazel Grove.
I would need several assistants to help me back to my feet again!
I couldn't care less if is suits his interests, he's the leader of a failed tinpot minor and inconsequential state. Its like worrying about the interests of the late Mugabe.
What holds Putin in check is not the EU, but NATO. There is no way an independent Britain is going to renege on its commitments there any more than a UK inside the EU would.
Whilst it's a truism that people become more right-wing as they get older, that's much easier to understand in an economic sense than a social sense. Without wishing anyone dead, hitching your wagon to the desires of the older voter (which is what Blue Labour and Red Tory do on average) isn't necessarily a winning long-term strategy.