You'd actually love it. It's full of headcases who'd ride the wall of death (admittedly, by voting for Brexit....) Top people. Their town got shelled by the German Navy. Antipathy to the Europeans makes rather more sense in that light.
I've been. I gave a lecture on Sea Harrier ops at the RN museum there. I remember turning off the A19 through a pleasant village (can't remember the name) but once you're in the town it's like the Road to Wigan Pier with more tattoos, staffies and heroin. I saw a "fat lass" pissing in a gutter at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon. It looked as rough as fuck to me and I've been right to the bottom of the barrel.
Part of the reason why politics has come to an impasse is that I don’t think people see the potential for change. I know I’m a broken record on this, but as a Millennial I know that we’ve been screwed by low interest rates and QE. Gen Z faces the same fate. But Labour has nothing to say on this subject. So I’m inclined to support the party that is least threatening to my inheritance.
This is a good point. I can’t remember a time when general policy-making was as moribund as today.
I think it’s because politicians don’t want to upset anyone. The winners pocket the benefit with no gratitude and the losers scream blue murder.
Perhaps COVID will cause some genuine changes that will challenge the politicians to take decisions. Perhaps that might focus minds and get the electorate thinking again.
Populations everywhere are urbanizing, and old people die a lot. Some of them will become more conservative as they get older, but not all of them, especially as house buying is less accessible to younger people. Con has gone very hard on the themes of the declining demographics in a way that will be hard to reverse.
Parties can always reorient themselves so this of course doesn't mean that Con are doomed to long-term irrelevance, but the same fact means that Lab will ultimately find a winning coalition. I'm not sure whether they've got one now or not, and I don't have a strong opinion about where they should get it from, but I don't see a *structural* reason for the UK (or whatever is left of it) to be a long-term one-party state.
For the last 15 or 20 years weve heard people saying the Tories will be finished in the near future because they rely so much on older voters. It never seems to happen, presumably because people continue to become more conservative as they get older.
Historically people became more Conservative as they got older, but that was mostly based around economics. As politics has shifted to values that may well change. We already see it in Tory working class votes and the strong showing in ABC1 for Labour Libs and Greens.
The swing voters for Labour are the 40-55 year olds, and they need to hang on to votes as people age. I think this article has it right, in that while many seats are not up for grabs, a Southern strategy appeals to this demographic nicely.
The article is akin to those of the Labour years mapping out Conservatives' terminal decline, its problems with minorities, the young, and the modern world, its lack of vision and second rate team. Or indeed during Obama explaining why the Republican coalition was broken or during Trump about the Democrats.
Did the Tories regain power by resolving their problems with minorities and the young, unveiling a new vision for the modern age, led by a team of political titans? ?
No (with the possible exception of Cameron's superficial modernity).
A wider perspective is needed.
Around the world, the centre and left struggles to advance a coherent vision of the state leading us toward a better future in the post-GFC world, and have been in retreat almost everywhere. The few successes arose only where electorates needed rescuing from palpably worse alternatives, most obviously Trump and Le Pen.
Hence a better question is whether the Tories can avoid become so bad that people will turn to Labour in desperation? Which is a re-cast of rcs's post top-thread.
You could look to the fall of communism as part of the story as to why the wider left lost credibility in advancing its solutions, but the defining episode is the 08/9 financial crisis and the effects of the policy responses to it.
Another wider point is that the right generally gets elected when the future looks threatening and the left when people are looking toward a credible better future (for us, post-war, the sixties - which we all know didn't start in 1960! - and the turn of the Millennium).
Since 2008, things have looked threatening, without end. More so right now.
A further wider point is that crises take time to feed through into politics. Post-GFC commentary along the lines of "the western capitalist economic system nearly collapsed, yet so little has changed!" was common.
That point doesn't hold, with the benefit of a decade's hindsight.
What the effect of Coronavirus will be, it is too early to say. I do predict that, next year, there'll be a flurry of comment about how, remarkably, everything has gone back to the way it was before, and in ten years' time we'll all be discussing how significantly the world changed after the pandemic.
Governments are already pushed toward more state-driven policies. It seemed jarring that, right now, the Tories announced (or leaked, it isn't clear) that they are finally giving up on market-driven solutions to health provision. But in another way it's entirely logical.
The fallout from the crisis might rescue the left along two different paths. Enough people might turn toward the likes of Trump2, Le Pen, the AfD and so on, that the sensible majority turn back and elect the left through fear. Or, slowly but surely, people might turn more hopeful as the world pulls out of pandemic, and the wider left might be able to articulate and champion a new vision.
Neither path requires anything to be done about identity politics.
Most people unfortunately vote against things rather than in favour of them. Most people didn't want Mrs May to have a huge majority. Most people didn't want Corbyn as PM. So the Tories will be voted out eventually - when they become the greater of the available evils rather than the lesser. Probably the best argument for proportional representation is that we could start voting in favour of things.
Part of the reason why politics has come to an impasse is that I don’t think people see the potential for change. I know I’m a broken record on this, but as a Millennial I know that we’ve been screwed by low interest rates and QE. Gen Z faces the same fate. But Labour has nothing to say on this subject. So I’m inclined to support the party that is least threatening to my inheritance.
In the world of PB vinyl, you're only badly scratched
This is a key point, touching on the wider issues I raised above
You'd actually love it. It's full of headcases who'd ride the wall of death (admittedly, by voting for Brexit....) Top people. Their town got shelled by the German Navy. Antipathy to the Europeans makes rather more sense in that light.
I've been. I gave a lecture on Sea Harrier ops at the RN museum there. I remember turning off the A19 through a pleasant village (can't remember the name) but once you're in the town it's like the Road to Wigan Pier with more tattoos, staffies and heroin. I saw a "fat lass" pissing in a gutter at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon. It looked as rough as fuck to me and I've been right to the bottom of the barrel.
Did you get to Seaton Carew? It’s my all-time favourite beach with a nuclear power plant on it.
Not unless they sort themselves out in Scotland, and make it quite clear to a UK audience that they will never do a deal in Parliament with the SNP.
You think that Labour's problem's in England are to do with English voters worrying about some non specific deal with the SNP in an indistinct future? Polling is at best mixed on this and I'd suggest Labour should do some more assiduous burrowing for England's g spot and be as vague on Scotland as they're able (which SKS was doing until he thought Union flags was a great wheeze, or some marketing company convinced him that was the case).
I assume your Labour sorting themselves out in Scotland doesn't include winning 'their' voters back and a UK majority winning chunk of seats? That would be naively optimistic in the extreme.
Whatever the Guardian thought at the time, this was the single most effective piece of party political literature since "Labour Isn't Working" (with a nod to Labour's Tax Bombshell too). The idea of a Labour leader utterly beholden on the economy to the SNP was toxic. I suggest that message retains its relevence in England (and Wales) going into the next election. If only because nobody puts Boris in that top pocket.
Yea, but while Salmond was loathed below the border nearly as much as he is now above it, Sturgeon is nearly as popular in England as Scotland. For all its murkinesss the current scandal is not impacting, and an articulate, polished social democrat has appeal here too.
You can just hear the geniuses that thought sending Prince Eddy northwards was a plan spitballing this.
'Is Salmond still in charge? No? A woman you say. Shit, we can't do the breast pocket thing again can we?'
'I've got it Olly, we'll put Brittas, haw haw, peeping out of Sturgeon's handbag! Strong cuck energy!'
You may laugh, but the understanding in England of the subsidies that Scotland gets combined with the constant whinging from the North that weirdly accompanies it is absolutely toxic on the doorstep. I've spoken to ex Labour and Lib Dem voters in marginals who voted Tory because of Sturgeon.
The rise of the SNP has created two headaches for Labour
1) The loss of a huge number of previously bankable seats 2) The impression that Labour would be a lap dog to the SNP, especially so if reliant upon them for votes in a coalition or C&S situation.
Much that I would like to argue the point you actually can't,
The freebies available in Scotland that England doesn't offer (Free Prescriptions, Free university education..) is absolutely toxic on the doorstep.
and all you have to do is mention Labour will need the SNP to be in power to watch the vote turn blue.
I've been a few times, but never in TT week. I've never even crashed there but I came very close to doing the full "Conner Cummins" at the Verandah on my MV about 10 years ago.
Alas, my motorbiking days are behind me, even though motorbiking was part of my pre-nup with Mrs Foxy. I would love to get to the TT one day though, and sit in a pub glorying in the atmosphere. Not this year it seems.
The racing is about 4 tiers below the top level these days. The best motorcycle racing spectacle, in my experience, is MotoGP under the lights at night at Losail in Qatar. I used to go every year until covid...
Populations everywhere are urbanizing, and old people die a lot. Some of them will become more conservative as they get older, but not all of them, especially as house buying is less accessible to younger people. Con has gone very hard on the themes of the declining demographics in a way that will be hard to reverse.
Parties can always reorient themselves so this of course doesn't mean that Con are doomed to long-term irrelevance, but the same fact means that Lab will ultimately find a winning coalition. I'm not sure whether they've got one now or not, and I don't have a strong opinion about where they should get it from, but I don't see a *structural* reason for the UK (or whatever is left of it) to be a long-term one-party state.
That’s a lightly misleading chart as the first two age brackets are about half the length of the rest, making it look like there is a lot more red than there actually is.
What would also be interesting is seeing how this chart evolves over time: is there a steady drift from Labour to Tory as people grow up or will demographics save Labour in the end?
Not unless they sort themselves out in Scotland, and make it quite clear to a UK audience that they will never do a deal in Parliament with the SNP.
You think that Labour's problem's in England are to do with English voters worrying about some non specific deal with the SNP in an indistinct future? Polling is at best mixed on this and I'd suggest Labour should do some more assiduous burrowing for England's g spot and be as vague on Scotland as they're able (which SKS was doing until he thought Union flags was a great wheeze, or some marketing company convinced him that was the case).
I assume your Labour sorting themselves out in Scotland doesn't include winning 'their' voters back and a UK majority winning chunk of seats? That would be naively optimistic in the extreme.
Whatever the Guardian thought at the time, this was the single most effective piece of party political literature since "Labour Isn't Working" (with a nod to Labour's Tax Bombshell too). The idea of a Labour leader utterly beholden on the economy to the SNP was toxic. I suggest that message retains its relevence in England (and Wales) going into the next election. If only because nobody puts Boris in that top pocket.
What's your conclusive evidence that the poster was effective in winning votes apart from you recalling a stirring in your loins 6 years ago?
Several thousand Torbay doorsteps. It was raised without prompting, numerous times.
There's no data more convincing than on the doorstep anecdata.
It's better than your constant smug assertions...
Fair enough, PB definitely hasn't had enough of your Torbay canvassing yarns, the sine qua non of hard psephological info.
You were the ones saying, er what is the basis for your assertion that the SNP is toxic in England?
I appreciate that reality-based politics may be an unknown for you.
The term i used was 'conclusive evidence'. I know we live in debased times, but hearsay from an anonymous rando on the internet doesn't usually count as such.
I could get a million folk to sign a petition saying Miliband in the SNP pocket changed their vote and you'd still say it was a million anonymous randos.
Point is, you have got nothing to back up your assertions that folk weren't swayed. I, on the other hand, reported back here in 2015 on the impact it was having on ENGLISH doorsteps - something you self-evidently know fuck-all about. So on this issue, just STFU. You are out of your depth, little man.
The Tories have a symbiotic relationship with the SNP, they need each other and do well when the other succeeds. The irony of the 2015 campaign was that it was the Tories that increased the SNPs power.
For the last 15 or 20 years weve heard people saying the Tories will be finished in the near future because they rely so much on older voters. It never seems to happen, presumably because people continue to become more conservative as they get older.
No, it's because the tories get repeatedly dragged into more progressive policy positions (marriage equality, climate change, etc) because their Last of the Summer Wine voters keep dying. The same thing will happen with Europe and trans rights eventually.
Populations everywhere are urbanizing, and old people die a lot. Some of them will become more conservative as they get older, but not all of them, especially as house buying is less accessible to younger people. Con has gone very hard on the themes of the declining demographics in a way that will be hard to reverse.
Parties can always reorient themselves so this of course doesn't mean that Con are doomed to long-term irrelevance, but the same fact means that Lab will ultimately find a winning coalition. I'm not sure whether they've got one now or not, and I don't have a strong opinion about where they should get it from, but I don't see a *structural* reason for the UK (or whatever is left of it) to be a long-term one-party state.
That’s a lightly misleading chart as the first two age brackets are about half the length of the rest, making it look like there is a lot more red than there actually is.
What would also be interesting is seeing how this chart evolves over time: is there a steady drift from Labour to Tory as people grow up or will demographics save Labour in the end?
The principal driver of that gradient is that people's views change as they age, with a secondary factor being that people tend to shape their political worldview toward the beginning of their adult lives, and stick with it.
The mistake is to think that the shift in opinion arises solely by dint of being older, rather than because older people tend to have more property, pensions and other investments, and families, and other stuff that makes them more risk-averse.
The challenge for the Tories is that the upcoming generations are finding this a lot more difficult because the generation that has most of the property and wealth is both living longer and defending any challenge to it.
Part of the reason why politics has come to an impasse is that I don’t think people see the potential for change. I know I’m a broken record on this, but as a Millennial I know that we’ve been screwed by low interest rates and QE. Gen Z faces the same fate. But Labour has nothing to say on this subject. So I’m inclined to support the party that is least threatening to my inheritance.
This is another point of course. The baby boomers who have locked up a great deal of wealth are now, crudely, getting on and many of them will be passing away in the next decade.
So that wealth will cascade down. Or alternatively, will be released to the government in the form of IHT/reversion.
And those people who inherit it will therefore have different priorities.
Of course, that also makes assumptions. It doesn’t include care home costs, for starters. Moreover, those in the north/midlands will leave less than those in London - an ex-council semi in Cannock is worth a tenth of a similar house in Kew.
But that is where generational shift may come in.
This is a very interesting point.
For this to help Labour, rather than the Tories (assuming the latter create an environment more beneficial to inheritors), IMO, the next generation would have to be inheriting less than their parents. Not less than Southerners....
My Mum's family in Wales didn't inherit anything from their parents. My cousins have started inheriting houses and estates worth 10-20x their annual salaries - even if they would be worth more than double that in Dorset. I don't think this will help Labour anytime soon...
Populations everywhere are urbanizing, and old people die a lot. Some of them will become more conservative as they get older, but not all of them, especially as house buying is less accessible to younger people. Con has gone very hard on the themes of the declining demographics in a way that will be hard to reverse.
Parties can always reorient themselves so this of course doesn't mean that Con are doomed to long-term irrelevance, but the same fact means that Lab will ultimately find a winning coalition. I'm not sure whether they've got one now or not, and I don't have a strong opinion about where they should get it from, but I don't see a *structural* reason for the UK (or whatever is left of it) to be a long-term one-party state.
For the last 15 or 20 years weve heard people saying the Tories will be finished in the near future because they rely so much on older voters. It never seems to happen, presumably because people continue to become more conservative as they get older.
That's always been true when the main divide has been economic- you get a mortgage, you become conservative. However, the last few years have seen a pivot to a split on social values, culture war stuff. And there, it's harder to see a mechanism that drives the rightward drift. And the age gradient in voting intention has got a lot steeper in recent years. Smart tactical move by the Conservatives, but they have to run awfully fast from here to stand still.
Great Header CR (and a nice choice of photo OGH). I agree with all of it.
The problem, at its root, is that any LP which is remotely true to collectivism will lose. Doesn`t have the numbers.
The CP is regarded as the natural party of government. We need to have a liberal party as the natural party of opposition not the LP - far more people are ideologically liberal than ideologically collectivist.
We are rather "stuck". PR could provide the answer??
Part of the reason why politics has come to an impasse is that I don’t think people see the potential for change. I know I’m a broken record on this, but as a Millennial I know that we’ve been screwed by low interest rates and QE. Gen Z faces the same fate. But Labour has nothing to say on this subject. So I’m inclined to support the party that is least threatening to my inheritance.
This is another point of course. The baby boomers who have locked up a great deal of wealth are now, crudely, getting on and many of them will be passing away in the next decade.
So that wealth will cascade down. Or alternatively, will be released to the government in the form of IHT/reversion.
And those people who inherit it will therefore have different priorities.
Of course, that also makes assumptions. It doesn’t include care home costs, for starters. Moreover, those in the north/midlands will leave less than those in London - an ex-council semi in Cannock is worth a tenth of a similar house in Kew.
But that is where generational shift may come in.
This is a very interesting point.
For this to help Labour, rather than the Tories (assuming the latter create an environment more beneficial to inheritors), IMO, the next generation would have to be inheriting less than their parents. Not less than Southerners....
My Mum's family in Wales didn't inherit anything from their parents. My cousins have started inheriting houses and estates worth 10-20x their annual salaries - even if they would be worth more than double that in Dorset. I don't think this will help Labour anytime soon...
If the wealth accumulated by the boomer generation simply passes down by inheritance, then we return to a position that was always the societal norm before some date between 1930 and 1950, of relative wealth (and hence to a significant extent status) determined overwhelmingly by birth and only marginally by merit and personal achievement. With the meritocratic years after WW2 - when governments and societies had the incentive of spreading economic benefits more widely to stave off the threat of communism - becoming the aberration.
Aside from IHT (for which the above is a very good argument), the missing bit of the analysis is the growing gap in pension provision, which many people from the younger slices of the boomer generation downwards are looking to bridge by spending the accumulated gains from their property. Of which yd's mention of care costs is only part, if an important one. Paradoxically the world in which the elderly spend down their wealth, rather than passing it on, is probably the better one.
I've been a few times, but never in TT week. I've never even crashed there but I came very close to doing the full "Conner Cummins" at the Verandah on my MV about 10 years ago.
Alas, my motorbiking days are behind me, even though motorbiking was part of my pre-nup with Mrs Foxy. I would love to get to the TT one day though, and sit in a pub glorying in the atmosphere. Not this year it seems.
The racing is about 4 tiers below the top level these days. The best motorcycle racing spectacle, in my experience, is MotoGP under the lights at night at Losail in Qatar. I used to go every year until covid...
I know little about the racing, more wanted to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy Mad Sunday.
Of course Labour CAN win again, if they pick an inspiring leader, and if the Conservatives pick another Theresa May. But Starmer isn't the leader they need at the moment.
But the odds are against them anyway, if past performance is something to go by. The Labour Party first formed a government in 1924 - 97 years ago. Since then, it has been in power, either alone or dominating a coalition, in only 33 of those years, compared with 64 which were dominated by the Conservatives (counting the 1931 National Government, though led by Ramsay Macdonald, as a Conservative administration). Every one of those governments have been formed when the Conservatives screwed up egregiously.
As a wise academic once told me, the role of Labour in Britain is to provide occasional sabbaticals for the Conservatives, so the latter can get their act together again. The one exception to that was Blair, who was such a political genius that he provided Labour with almost half its time in government, and who was anyway more right wing than a lot of Conservative PMs.
Its a great piece Casino - British politics is broken and the Labour Party is lost. Last night my Labour friends through a surprise leaving party - a bagful of food and drink dropped at the door and instructions to join a Zoom meeting.
My former colleagues are lovely people. But in discussing the various perils of the local opposition - Tories and independents - it was clear that they know they are going to get battered again. Just a "25%" chance of their Tees Valley Mayoral candidate winning. A candidate who they - the local grandees - all openly mock.
They simply don't know what the Labour Party is for any more, other than the muscle memory of fighting for people who largely don't share belief in the same things any more, and not being the Tories.
As a lapsed Labourite, I should care about seeing out my last days (well 30 years) under only Conservative Governments, but I don't. Maybe it is because I am currently experiencing the most fiscally Marxist Government I could ever have dreamed of.
Part of the reason why politics has come to an impasse is that I don’t think people see the potential for change. I know I’m a broken record on this, but as a Millennial I know that we’ve been screwed by low interest rates and QE. Gen Z faces the same fate. But Labour has nothing to say on this subject. So I’m inclined to support the party that is least threatening to my inheritance.
This is another point of course. The baby boomers who have locked up a great deal of wealth are now, crudely, getting on and many of them will be passing away in the next decade.
So that wealth will cascade down. Or alternatively, will be released to the government in the form of IHT/reversion.
And those people who inherit it will therefore have different priorities.
Of course, that also makes assumptions. It doesn’t include care home costs, for starters. Moreover, those in the north/midlands will leave less than those in London - an ex-council semi in Cannock is worth a tenth of a similar house in Kew.
But that is where generational shift may come in.
This is a very interesting point.
For this to help Labour, rather than the Tories (assuming the latter create an environment more beneficial to inheritors), IMO, the next generation would have to be inheriting less than their parents. Not less than Southerners....
My Mum's family in Wales didn't inherit anything from their parents. My cousins have started inheriting houses and estates worth 10-20x their annual salaries - even if they would be worth more than double that in Dorset. I don't think this will help Labour anytime soon...
If the wealth accumulated by the boomer generation simply passes down by inheritance, then we return to a position that was always the society norm before some date between 1930 and 1950, of relative wealth (and hence to a significant extent status) determined overwhelmingly by birth and only marginally by merit and personal achievement. With the meritocratic years after WW2 - when governments and societies had the incentive of spreading economic benefits more widely to stave off the threat of communism - becoming the aberration.
Aside from IHT (for which the above is a very good argument), the missing bit of the analysis is the growing gap in pension provision, which many people from the younger slices of the boomer generation downwards are looking to bridge by spending the accumulated gains from their property. Of which yd's mention of care costs is only part, if an important one. Paradoxically the world in which the elderly spend down their wealth, rather than passing it on, is probably the better one.
My experience is that the next generation of inheritors will be far less divided by class, and far more divided by a) the property experiences of their parents and b) their number of siblings. My Mum's family grew up in one of the poorest council estates in North Wales.
I have friends who are basically drifting, never been interested in education, or starting a business, or qualifying for a trade, who will inherit £1m+ houses. I have other friends who are highly educated working in the charity/cultural sector who will likely never be able to buy more than a 2 bed flat because they have several siblings.
I've been a few times, but never in TT week. I've never even crashed there but I came very close to doing the full "Conner Cummins" at the Verandah on my MV about 10 years ago.
Alas, my motorbiking days are behind me, even though motorbiking was part of my pre-nup with Mrs Foxy. I would love to get to the TT one day though, and sit in a pub glorying in the atmosphere. Not this year it seems.
The racing is about 4 tiers below the top level these days. The best motorcycle racing spectacle, in my experience, is MotoGP under the lights at night at Losail in Qatar. I used to go every year until covid...
I know little about the racing, more wanted to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy Mad Sunday.
I don’t care about bikes at all, but IoM TT is definitely on the wish list of events to attend.
It’s one of those things with so many grandfather rights, that everyone would think you were utterly insane if you proposed it today. An anachronism of old-fashioned motorsport, in a modern world of tarmac runoff areas and sterile tracks.
There’s no other sporting event on Earth that tolerates so many deaths and injuries, yet keeps a fanatical group of participants and spectators coming back year after year.
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
Part of the reason why politics has come to an impasse is that I don’t think people see the potential for change. I know I’m a broken record on this, but as a Millennial I know that we’ve been screwed by low interest rates and QE. Gen Z faces the same fate. But Labour has nothing to say on this subject. So I’m inclined to support the party that is least threatening to my inheritance.
This is another point of course. The baby boomers who have locked up a great deal of wealth are now, crudely, getting on and many of them will be passing away in the next decade.
So that wealth will cascade down. Or alternatively, will be released to the government in the form of IHT/reversion.
And those people who inherit it will therefore have different priorities.
Of course, that also makes assumptions. It doesn’t include care home costs, for starters. Moreover, those in the north/midlands will leave less than those in London - an ex-council semi in Cannock is worth a tenth of a similar house in Kew.
But that is where generational shift may come in.
This is a very interesting point.
For this to help Labour, rather than the Tories (assuming the latter create an environment more beneficial to inheritors), IMO, the next generation would have to be inheriting less than their parents. Not less than Southerners....
My Mum's family in Wales didn't inherit anything from their parents. My cousins have started inheriting houses and estates worth 10-20x their annual salaries - even if they would be worth more than double that in Dorset. I don't think this will help Labour anytime soon...
But they're hanging on to it much longer, and it may not be worth quite as much by the time that it gets passed on.
Excellent piece but I found myself asking would a government in waiting have the likes of Margaret Hodge, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper on the front bench?
They are all very effective politicians but they are also politicians whose government experience is at least 11 years in the past. Would they look to voters like a government in waiting to take them into the future? Or would they look more like Disraeli's spent volcanoes?
I wholeheartedly agree that the Labour front bench is lackluster but I think that is more because the leadership is awful about recognising who it's new talent is. I have spent a lot of time in Westminster looking at MPs like Wes Streeting, Alison McGovern, Catherine McKinnel and wondering why they aren't being given meaty portfolios.
True some of these aren't that new anymore but they're certainly fresher than Liam Byrne and better operators than Kate Green.
Of course Labour CAN win again, if they pick an inspiring leader, and if the Conservatives pick another Theresa May. But Starmer isn't the leader they need at the moment.
But the odds are against them anyway, if past performance is something to go by. The Labour Party first formed a government in 1924 - 97 years ago. Since then, it has been in power, either alone or dominating a coalition, in only 33 of those years, compared with 64 which were dominated by the Conservatives (counting the 1931 National Government, though led by Ramsay Macdonald, as a Conservative administration). Every one of those governments have been formed when the Conservatives screwed up egregiously.
As a wise academic once told me, the role of Labour in Britain is to provide occasional sabbaticals for the Conservatives, so the latter can get their act together again. The one exception to that was Blair, who was such a political genius that he provided Labour with almost half its time in government, and who was anyway more right wing than a lot of Conservative PMs.
What subject did this academic you speak of study? I don't think it was political science.
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
You could say the same about the Tories. That was Cameron's pitch, after all, and in a different way the clown is doing the same; the ground he is fighting on is increasingly not Tory, and if you speak to active Tories a lot of them hanker for a return to fighting on what they see as True Conservative ground. It's partly why the likes of Casino are getting so obsessed about identity.
The true Tory was Mrs May...and we know what happened there.
Part of the reason why politics has come to an impasse is that I don’t think people see the potential for change. I know I’m a broken record on this, but as a Millennial I know that we’ve been screwed by low interest rates and QE. Gen Z faces the same fate. But Labour has nothing to say on this subject. So I’m inclined to support the party that is least threatening to my inheritance.
This is another point of course. The baby boomers who have locked up a great deal of wealth are now, crudely, getting on and many of them will be passing away in the next decade.
So that wealth will cascade down. Or alternatively, will be released to the government in the form of IHT/reversion.
And those people who inherit it will therefore have different priorities.
Of course, that also makes assumptions. It doesn’t include care home costs, for starters. Moreover, those in the north/midlands will leave less than those in London - an ex-council semi in Cannock is worth a tenth of a similar house in Kew.
But that is where generational shift may come in.
This is a very interesting point.
For this to help Labour, rather than the Tories (assuming the latter create an environment more beneficial to inheritors), IMO, the next generation would have to be inheriting less than their parents. Not less than Southerners....
My Mum's family in Wales didn't inherit anything from their parents. My cousins have started inheriting houses and estates worth 10-20x their annual salaries - even if they would be worth more than double that in Dorset. I don't think this will help Labour anytime soon...
But they're hanging on to it much longer, and it may not be worth quite as much by the time that it gets passed on.
What one might call Prince Charles Syndrome.
I've had a lot of phone calls lately from middle aged children of recently deceased parents, clearing out the latter's houses and wondering if their books are worth anything (they generally aren't). The point I am making is that I have a feeling that sadly Covid has accelerated inheritances recently...
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
Of course Labour CAN win again, if they pick an inspiring leader, and if the Conservatives pick another Theresa May. But Starmer isn't the leader they need at the moment.
But the odds are against them anyway, if past performance is something to go by. The Labour Party first formed a government in 1924 - 97 years ago. Since then, it has been in power, either alone or dominating a coalition, in only 33 of those years, compared with 64 which were dominated by the Conservatives (counting the 1931 National Government, though led by Ramsay Macdonald, as a Conservative administration). Every one of those governments have been formed when the Conservatives screwed up egregiously.
As a wise academic once told me, the role of Labour in Britain is to provide occasional sabbaticals for the Conservatives, so the latter can get their act together again. The one exception to that was Blair, who was such a political genius that he provided Labour with almost half its time in government, and who was anyway more right wing than a lot of Conservative PMs.
What subject did this academic you speak of study? I don't think it was political science.
You are wrong - it is politics. And he is a very shrewd observer, for instance predicting at the start of the 90s how traumatic the issue of Europe would be for the Conservatives.
India now showing what you should do on that wicket. Pretty much a run a ball. This is probably going to be a draw but I don't rule out an uncomfortable third innings for England.
Part of the reason why politics has come to an impasse is that I don’t think people see the potential for change. I know I’m a broken record on this, but as a Millennial I know that we’ve been screwed by low interest rates and QE. Gen Z faces the same fate. But Labour has nothing to say on this subject. So I’m inclined to support the party that is least threatening to my inheritance.
This is another point of course. The baby boomers who have locked up a great deal of wealth are now, crudely, getting on and many of them will be passing away in the next decade.
So that wealth will cascade down. Or alternatively, will be released to the government in the form of IHT/reversion.
And those people who inherit it will therefore have different priorities.
Of course, that also makes assumptions. It doesn’t include care home costs, for starters. Moreover, those in the north/midlands will leave less than those in London - an ex-council semi in Cannock is worth a tenth of a similar house in Kew.
But that is where generational shift may come in.
This is a very interesting point.
For this to help Labour, rather than the Tories (assuming the latter create an environment more beneficial to inheritors), IMO, the next generation would have to be inheriting less than their parents. Not less than Southerners....
My Mum's family in Wales didn't inherit anything from their parents. My cousins have started inheriting houses and estates worth 10-20x their annual salaries - even if they would be worth more than double that in Dorset. I don't think this will help Labour anytime soon...
If the wealth accumulated by the boomer generation simply passes down by inheritance, then we return to a position that was always the society norm before some date between 1930 and 1950, of relative wealth (and hence to a significant extent status) determined overwhelmingly by birth and only marginally by merit and personal achievement. With the meritocratic years after WW2 - when governments and societies had the incentive of spreading economic benefits more widely to stave off the threat of communism - becoming the aberration.
Aside from IHT (for which the above is a very good argument), the missing bit of the analysis is the growing gap in pension provision, which many people from the younger slices of the boomer generation downwards are looking to bridge by spending the accumulated gains from their property. Of which yd's mention of care costs is only part, if an important one. Paradoxically the world in which the elderly spend down their wealth, rather than passing it on, is probably the better one.
My experience is that the next generation of inheritors will be far less divided by class, and far more divided by a) the property experiences of their parents and b) their number of siblings. My Mum's family grew up in one of the poorest council estates in North Wales.
I have friends who are basically drifting, never been interested in education, or starting a business, or qualifying for a trade, who will inherit £1m+ houses. I have other friends who are highly educated working in the charity/cultural sector who will likely never be able to buy more than a 2 bed flat because they have several siblings.
Yep, a return to the idle rich of the (pre-) 1920s.
Taking a very long view, over time the attitudes and mores of the two groups diverges and turns inexorably into class, surely?
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
It only wins, if it changes what it is.
In which case it becomes unhinged from its ideology; it becomes nothing.
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
Excellent piece but I found myself asking would a government in waiting have the likes of Margaret Hodge, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper on the front bench?
They are all very effective politicians but they are also politicians whose government experience is at least 11 years in the past. Would they look to voters like a government in waiting to take them into the future? Or would they look more like Disraeli's spent volcanoes?
I wholeheartedly agree that the Labour front bench is lackluster but I think that is more because the leadership is awful about recognising who it's new talent is. I have spent a lot of time in Westminster looking at MPs like Wes Streeting, Alison McGovern, Catherine McKinnel and wondering why they aren't being given meaty portfolios.
True some of these aren't that new anymore but they're certainly fresher than Liam Byrne and better operators than Kate Green.
I think Starmers biggest flaw is his lacklustre front bench. Attlee was as dull as ditchwater, but he was astute at recognising and promoting talent, and more importantly still at effectively chairing meetings of such people. New faces are not a problem as such. Voters don't want retreads from the New Labour period, but they do want a bit of passion and bite. It would do a lot to keep the Corbynistas onside too.
On topic I recall Shirley Williams stating with confidence about 1992 that Labour would never win again.
The Tory party is a somewhat chaotic tent containing many non natural bedfellows. Labour's task is to break bits off that coalition as Blair did. With different leadership it could have happened in either 2017 or 2019 where the Tory remainer vote was up for grabs. I think that chance has gone but it remains worth thinking about. How can the UK get closer to the EU, possibly EFTA?
As I have said before one of SKS's weaknesses is that he has fewer ideas than the England bowling attack. He needs to start shaping a narrative that is of interest to parts of the Tory coalition.
Part of the reason why politics has come to an impasse is that I don’t think people see the potential for change. I know I’m a broken record on this, but as a Millennial I know that we’ve been screwed by low interest rates and QE. Gen Z faces the same fate. But Labour has nothing to say on this subject. So I’m inclined to support the party that is least threatening to my inheritance.
This is another point of course. The baby boomers who have locked up a great deal of wealth are now, crudely, getting on and many of them will be passing away in the next decade.
So that wealth will cascade down. Or alternatively, will be released to the government in the form of IHT/reversion.
And those people who inherit it will therefore have different priorities.
Of course, that also makes assumptions. It doesn’t include care home costs, for starters. Moreover, those in the north/midlands will leave less than those in London - an ex-council semi in Cannock is worth a tenth of a similar house in Kew.
But that is where generational shift may come in.
This is a very interesting point.
For this to help Labour, rather than the Tories (assuming the latter create an environment more beneficial to inheritors), IMO, the next generation would have to be inheriting less than their parents. Not less than Southerners....
My Mum's family in Wales didn't inherit anything from their parents. My cousins have started inheriting houses and estates worth 10-20x their annual salaries - even if they would be worth more than double that in Dorset. I don't think this will help Labour anytime soon...
If the wealth accumulated by the boomer generation simply passes down by inheritance, then we return to a position that was always the society norm before some date between 1930 and 1950, of relative wealth (and hence to a significant extent status) determined overwhelmingly by birth and only marginally by merit and personal achievement. With the meritocratic years after WW2 - when governments and societies had the incentive of spreading economic benefits more widely to stave off the threat of communism - becoming the aberration.
Aside from IHT (for which the above is a very good argument), the missing bit of the analysis is the growing gap in pension provision, which many people from the younger slices of the boomer generation downwards are looking to bridge by spending the accumulated gains from their property. Of which yd's mention of care costs is only part, if an important one. Paradoxically the world in which the elderly spend down their wealth, rather than passing it on, is probably the better one.
My experience is that the next generation of inheritors will be far less divided by class, and far more divided by a) the property experiences of their parents and b) their number of siblings. My Mum's family grew up in one of the poorest council estates in North Wales.
I have friends who are basically drifting, never been interested in education, or starting a business, or qualifying for a trade, who will inherit £1m+ houses. I have other friends who are highly educated working in the charity/cultural sector who will likely never be able to buy more than a 2 bed flat because they have several siblings.
Yep, a return to the idle rich of the (pre-) 1920s.
Taking a very long view, over time the attitudes and mores of the two groups diverges and turns inexorably into class, surely?
In the long term, sure. But right now the friends who are going to inherit a packet aren't shopping at Waitrose, and those working in the cultural sector are. What I'm suggesting is that this might take a while to materialise. And depends upon a perpetuation of it.
I don't think 'wait out the baby boomer inheritance generation' is going to be a viable strategy for anti Tories.
Anyway, thank you all for your kind words. It's good to get an interesting debate going.
I have to go now as my toddler is giving me grief for not giving her enough attention, and doesn't appreciate me being on my phone.
Will try and drop in later!
Great piece CR, thank you.
I am baffled that eg Hilary Benn and Yvette Cooper aren't on the front bench.
If Labour lose again, they'll have almost no institutional memory of Govt. Which would be another hurdle to get over...
In 2010 only two Cabinet ministers - Hague and Clarke - had been in cabinet before.
In 1997 the only member of the Cabinet who had even been a junior minister under Callaghan was Margaret Beckett.
In 1964 the sole person with Cabinet experience was Wilson himself.
So it’s not that unusual and generally we’ve got over it.
A good point re: experience. Not easy to find in periods of lengthy opposition.
I suspect much like 1997, when the Conservatives do fall, it will be all about the Conservatives losing elections rather than Labour winning them.
The argument about Starmer's lack of personality is not dissimilar to the analysis of Blair as a lightweight pre-1997.
The Conservative Party and their chums run the media narrative, so Labour and whoever are running the party will have a mountain to climb to get their voice heard. Media Grandees let their guard down in 1997 with Dacre and Murdoch jettisoning Major. That won't happen again!
Tory hubris about their electoral invincibility is not so different now as it was in the 1980s and 90s. I believe this might be misplaced, no one seems to be aware of the economic Armageddon thundering towards us, and that will be bad news for incumbency.
Part of the reason why politics has come to an impasse is that I don’t think people see the potential for change. I know I’m a broken record on this, but as a Millennial I know that we’ve been screwed by low interest rates and QE. Gen Z faces the same fate. But Labour has nothing to say on this subject. So I’m inclined to support the party that is least threatening to my inheritance.
This is another point of course. The baby boomers who have locked up a great deal of wealth are now, crudely, getting on and many of them will be passing away in the next decade.
So that wealth will cascade down. Or alternatively, will be released to the government in the form of IHT/reversion.
And those people who inherit it will therefore have different priorities.
Of course, that also makes assumptions. It doesn’t include care home costs, for starters. Moreover, those in the north/midlands will leave less than those in London - an ex-council semi in Cannock is worth a tenth of a similar house in Kew.
But that is where generational shift may come in.
This is a very interesting point.
For this to help Labour, rather than the Tories (assuming the latter create an environment more beneficial to inheritors), IMO, the next generation would have to be inheriting less than their parents. Not less than Southerners....
My Mum's family in Wales didn't inherit anything from their parents. My cousins have started inheriting houses and estates worth 10-20x their annual salaries - even if they would be worth more than double that in Dorset. I don't think this will help Labour anytime soon...
If the wealth accumulated by the boomer generation simply passes down by inheritance, then we return to a position that was always the society norm before some date between 1930 and 1950, of relative wealth (and hence to a significant extent status) determined overwhelmingly by birth and only marginally by merit and personal achievement. With the meritocratic years after WW2 - when governments and societies had the incentive of spreading economic benefits more widely to stave off the threat of communism - becoming the aberration.
Aside from IHT (for which the above is a very good argument), the missing bit of the analysis is the growing gap in pension provision, which many people from the younger slices of the boomer generation downwards are looking to bridge by spending the accumulated gains from their property. Of which yd's mention of care costs is only part, if an important one. Paradoxically the world in which the elderly spend down their wealth, rather than passing it on, is probably the better one.
My experience is that the next generation of inheritors will be far less divided by class, and far more divided by a) the property experiences of their parents and b) their number of siblings. My Mum's family grew up in one of the poorest council estates in North Wales.
I have friends who are basically drifting, never been interested in education, or starting a business, or qualifying for a trade, who will inherit £1m+ houses. I have other friends who are highly educated working in the charity/cultural sector who will likely never be able to buy more than a 2 bed flat because they have several siblings.
Yep, a return to the idle rich of the (pre-) 1920s.
Taking a very long view, over time the attitudes and mores of the two groups diverges and turns inexorably into class, surely?
The property inheritance will be a major redistributor of wealth to a new elite. Levelling up the Midlands and North is incompatible with low inheritance taxes.
I think that the Lib Dem idea of taxing inheritance as income or capital gain by the receiver is a much better idea than taxing the estate. It would encourage rewriting wills in favour of more recipients, so grandchildren rather than children who are often in their sixties themselves.
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
It only wins, if it changes what it is.
In which case it becomes unhinged from its ideology; it becomes nothing.
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
But times change, and parties need to change with them.
Tony Blair got a huge amount of internal pushback over ‘Clause 4’, but the wider electorate understood the change and supported it.
Unions are now almost exclusively a public sector, middle class thing - but there’s millions of people now working casual jobs ‘self-employed’ for large companies, who can barely make rent, let alone think of owning property. What’s the Labour Party proposing, for those who actually labour?
This can't be right? Surely only the Toreeees use private contractors in the NHS?
A private healthcare firm contracted to distribute Covid jabs has been sidelined by Scotland’s largest health board as efforts are stepped up to turn around the lowest vaccination rates in the UK.
The SNP are Tories. That's why they get business funding. The SNP is also everything else in Scotland. And wouldn't the point be clearer if said private company had cut the SNP-yellow mustard?
An interesting header, written from the perspective of somebody who wants Labour to be capable of winning, but would not be happy if they actually win, it seems.
It's certainly right that Starmer needs to paint a vision of the future. He will, give it time. He's been Leader for less than a year. During that time, absolutely nothing outside 1) Covid and 2) Brexit has got a hearing. If Starmer set out his grand vision now, nobody would listen - neither voters nor media. Only when not everything is seen through the prism of Covid will Starmer, or his front bench, get a hearing.
I'm amused at some PB Tories suggesting that Labour brings back some of the last generation (Cooper, Byrne, Benn etc.); I'm absolutely sure that those same people would then turn on Labour and say - what, no new talent! Old retreads! Byrne "we've spent all the money!". The current front bench will be judged once it's had a fair hearing, and Starmer will dispense with those not up to it.
Excellent piece but I found myself asking would a government in waiting have the likes of Margaret Hodge, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper on the front bench?
They are all very effective politicians but they are also politicians whose government experience is at least 11 years in the past. Would they look to voters like a government in waiting to take them into the future? Or would they look more like Disraeli's spent volcanoes?
I wholeheartedly agree that the Labour front bench is lackluster but I think that is more because the leadership is awful about recognising who it's new talent is. I have spent a lot of time in Westminster looking at MPs like Wes Streeting, Alison McGovern, Catherine McKinnel and wondering why they aren't being given meaty portfolios.
True some of these aren't that new anymore but they're certainly fresher than Liam Byrne and better operators than Kate Green.
I think Starmers biggest flaw is his lacklustre front bench. Attlee was as dull as ditchwater, but he was astute at recognising and promoting talent, and more importantly still at effectively chairing meetings of such people. New faces are not a problem as such. Voters don't want retreads from the New Labour period, but they do want a bit of passion and bite. It would do a lot to keep the Corbynistas onside too.
That is a good point. Starmer could be the man of the moment after people tire of Johnson. Annalise Dodds however is never going to be "of the moment".
The header says : "It may shortly lose (or be forced to share) power in Wales."
Labour are already sharing power in Wales with the the Lib Dem (Kirtsy) + Loose Cannon (Dafydd Ellis Tomos).
I think some Labour losses are baked in at the Senedd, as Mark Drakeford is not as Smooth as Carwyn. Right at the moment, though, I'd say the Tories were in more trouble in Wales than Labour.
I have long though the Tories' best performer in the Senedd was Suzy Davies, who looks almost human and has a good campaigning instinct. In a normal, meritocratic party, she should actually be the leader.
She has been effectively deselected from the South Wales West list, presumably replaced by some Tory pachyderm with a tail and tusks.
Jonathan Morgan also failed to make a high position on the South Wales Central list, being judged insufficiently anti-devolution.
The Tories are gradually hardening into an anti-devolution party in Wales, which is a very niche interest indeed. This will probably help stem Labour losses come the Senedd elections.
If the Welsh Tories don't take the institution seriously, no good candidates will stand, and they will end up being represented by a bunch of freaks, lunaticks and nut-jobs in the Senedd.
This can't be right? Surely only the Toreeees use private contractors in the NHS?
A private healthcare firm contracted to distribute Covid jabs has been sidelined by Scotland’s largest health board as efforts are stepped up to turn around the lowest vaccination rates in the UK.
The SNP are Tories. That's why they get business funding. The SNP is also everything else in Scotland. And wouldn't the point be clearer if said private company had cut the SNP-yellow mustard?
Eh?? It gets very little business funding. Much more individuals.
This can't be right? Surely only the Toreeees use private contractors in the NHS?
A private healthcare firm contracted to distribute Covid jabs has been sidelined by Scotland’s largest health board as efforts are stepped up to turn around the lowest vaccination rates in the UK.
The SNP are Tories. That's why they get business funding. The SNP is also everything else in Scotland. And wouldn't the point be clearer if said private company had cut the SNP-yellow mustard?
I'm thinking the Tories might not be getting quite so much business funding, looking forward
Don't tell anyone how outstanding the NE coast - Durham and Northumberland is. Anyway where else but the Co Durham coast can you get and ice cream and go home with a sack of sea coal? Same for Lincolnshire. Keep it a closely guarded secret.
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
It only wins, if it changes what it is.
In which case it becomes unhinged from its ideology; it becomes nothing.
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
But times change, and parties need to change with them.
Tony Blair got a huge amount of internal pushback over ‘Clause 4’, but the wider electorate understood the change and supported it.
Unions are now almost exclusively a public sector, middle class thing - but there’s millions of people now working casual jobs ‘self-employed’ for large companies, who can barely make rent, let alone think of owning property. What’s the Labour Party proposing, for those who actually labour?
Completely agree with that. Our society is becoming more divided, not less, and there is an ever larger number of people doing casual work on minimum wage with minimal rights, supposedly self employed. Who speaks for them? What chance have they got of getting a decent home, secure family life, a half decent retirement? Instead they face huge job insecurity, poverty and alienation.
They are not a majority but does even 40% of us not care? Who can make us care? That is surely the challenge.
The header says : "It may shortly lose (or be forced to share) power in Wales."
Labour are already sharing power in Wales with the the Lib Dem (Kirtsy) + Loose Cannon (Dafydd Ellis Tomos).
I think some Labour losses are baked in at the Senedd, as Mark Drakeford is not as Smooth as Carwyn. Right at the moment, though, I'd say the Tories were in more trouble in Wales than Labour.
I have long though the Tories' best performer in the Senedd was Suzy Davies, who looks almost human and has a good campaigning instinct. In a normal, meritocratic party, she should actually be the leader.
She has been effectively deselected from the South Wales West list, presumably replaced by some Tory pachyderm with a tail and tusks.
Jonathan Morgan also failed to make a high position on the South Wales Central list, being judged insufficiently anti-devolution.
The Tories are gradually hardening into an anti-devolution party in Wales, which is a very niche interest indeed. This will probably help stem Labour losses come the Senedd elections.
If the Welsh Tories don't take the institution seriously, no good candidates will stand, and they will end up being represented by a bunch of freaks, lunaticks and nut-jobs in the Senedd.
They look well on the way to achieving that.
If Plaid could only move on from the language issue (which, in terms of what government can do, is mostly won)....
Ah yes, the usual thing about the "natural Party of Government" and the "natural Party of Opposition" as was heard in the immediate aftermath of 1992.
The Conservatives were out of power for 13 years and in that time there was plenty in the same vein about the 21st Century being "the progressive century" or the "lib-lab century" and so on.
Parties which enjoy long periods in office benefit from both the weakness of Opposition but the ability to achieve almost seamless re-invention. The problem with re-invention is how to make the new leader different enough from the old leader to be their own man or woman but similar enough to retain the popularity the former leader once enjoyed.
John Major, Gordon Brown and Theresa May all enjoyed honeymoon periods after becoming Prime Minister - indeed Major won an election just as Eden and MacMillan had. It didn't end well for Theresa May, Gordon Brown nor indeed for James Callaghan before that.
It's all in the timing of course - Brown, May and Callaghan could have won elections had they gone to the country at the right moment. Johnson was always going to win against Corbyn - with hindsight, the Opposition parties should have gone for the election sooner rather than later - as the Conservative poll ratings moved inexorably higher in autumn 2019 the writing was in every sense on the wall.
The future is an undiscovered country - no one could have foreseen the events since Johnson's euphoric win that mid December night. We can surmise the legacy of the coronavirus will be with us long after the last person has been vaccinated.
Johnson's brand of relentlessly upbeat optimism has been sorely tested this past year - indeed, in some ways I find him more convincing when he's not gibbering about "sunlit uplands" and everyone "cheek by jowl". Behind the public schoolboy pastiche there's actually quite a serious and sensible man lurking and he needs to raise above the political knockabout in a way Thatcher and Blair managed in their pomp.
Sometimes it's not about having "a big idea" - Blair didn't have one and neither did Cameron in all honesty. Sometimes it's just about a change of emphasis, of style, of management not so much turning back the clock as winding it up and giving it a good clean.
Johnson will, I suspect, undertake a significant re-shuffle before the next GE - a new team for the rest of the decade. The problem for him as Thatcher and Blair discovered is ex-Cabinet members on the backbenches are a problem. We are told by some on here there is an endless reservoir of "talent" on the Conservative backbenches - I'm much less convinced.
The header says : "It may shortly lose (or be forced to share) power in Wales."
Labour are already sharing power in Wales with the the Lib Dem (Kirtsy) + Loose Cannon (Dafydd Ellis Tomos).
I think some Labour losses are baked in at the Senedd, as Mark Drakeford is not as Smooth as Carwyn. Right at the moment, though, I'd say the Tories were in more trouble in Wales than Labour.
I have long though the Tories' best performer in the Senedd was Suzy Davies, who looks almost human and has a good campaigning instinct. In a normal, meritocratic party, she should actually be the leader.
She has been effectively deselected from the South Wales West list, presumably replaced by some Tory pachyderm with a tail and tusks.
Jonathan Morgan also failed to make a high position on the South Wales Central list, being judged insufficiently anti-devolution.
The Tories are gradually hardening into an anti-devolution party in Wales, which is a very niche interest indeed. This will probably help stem Labour losses come the Senedd elections.
If the Welsh Tories don't take the institution seriously, no good candidates will stand, and they will end up being represented by a bunch of freaks, lunaticks and nut-jobs in the Senedd.
They look well on the way to achieving that.
My circle of Welsh Tory-leaning xenophobes are heartened by RT's elevation, coupled with Johnson's overall Covid performance.
Excellent piece but I found myself asking would a government in waiting have the likes of Margaret Hodge, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper on the front bench?
They are all very effective politicians but they are also politicians whose government experience is at least 11 years in the past. Would they look to voters like a government in waiting to take them into the future? Or would they look more like Disraeli's spent volcanoes?
I wholeheartedly agree that the Labour front bench is lackluster but I think that is more because the leadership is awful about recognising who it's new talent is. I have spent a lot of time in Westminster looking at MPs like Wes Streeting, Alison McGovern, Catherine McKinnel and wondering why they aren't being given meaty portfolios.
True some of these aren't that new anymore but they're certainly fresher than Liam Byrne and better operators than Kate Green.
I think Starmers biggest flaw is his lacklustre front bench. Attlee was as dull as ditchwater, but he was astute at recognising and promoting talent, and more importantly still at effectively chairing meetings of such people. New faces are not a problem as such. Voters don't want retreads from the New Labour period, but they do want a bit of passion and bite. It would do a lot to keep the Corbynistas onside too.
That was then though, in the social media age I think you need the leader to have a certain amount of spikiness, and the rest of the team doesn't matter so much. This is why I voted for Nandy, Starmer's doing as good a job as can be expected but I don't think I was wrong.
Not unless they sort themselves out in Scotland, and make it quite clear to a UK audience that they will never do a deal in Parliament with the SNP.
You think that Labour's problem's in England are to do with English voters worrying about some non specific deal with the SNP in an indistinct future? Polling is at best mixed on this and I'd suggest Labour should do some more assiduous burrowing for England's g spot and be as vague on Scotland as they're able (which SKS was doing until he thought Union flags was a great wheeze, or some marketing company convinced him that was the case).
I assume your Labour sorting themselves out in Scotland doesn't include winning 'their' voters back and a UK majority winning chunk of seats? That would be naively optimistic in the extreme.
Whatever the Guardian thought at the time, this was the single most effective piece of party political literature since "Labour Isn't Working" (with a nod to Labour's Tax Bombshell too). The idea of a Labour leader utterly beholden on the economy to the SNP was toxic. I suggest that message retains its relevence in England (and Wales) going into the next election. If only because nobody puts Boris in that top pocket.
What's your conclusive evidence that the poster was effective in winning votes apart from you recalling a stirring in your loins 6 years ago?
Several thousand Torbay doorsteps. It was raised without prompting, numerous times.
There's no data more convincing than on the doorstep anecdata.
It's better than your constant smug assertions...
Fair enough, PB definitely hasn't had enough of your Torbay canvassing yarns, the sine qua non of hard psephological info.
You were the ones saying, er what is the basis for your assertion that the SNP is toxic in England?
I appreciate that reality-based politics may be an unknown for you.
The term i used was 'conclusive evidence'. I know we live in debased times, but hearsay from an anonymous rando on the internet doesn't usually count as such.
I could get a million folk to sign a petition saying Miliband in the SNP pocket changed their vote and you'd still say it was a million anonymous randos.
Point is, you have got nothing to back up your assertions that folk weren't swayed. I, on the other hand, reported back here in 2015 on the impact it was having on ENGLISH doorsteps - something you self-evidently know fuck-all about. So on this issue, just STFU. You are out of your depth, little man.
I recall you doing so. Clearly. I kept hoping, too, that you were wrong about the effect on the LD's of the Coalition.
This can't be right? Surely only the Toreeees use private contractors in the NHS?
A private healthcare firm contracted to distribute Covid jabs has been sidelined by Scotland’s largest health board as efforts are stepped up to turn around the lowest vaccination rates in the UK.
The SNP are Tories. That's why they get business funding. The SNP is also everything else in Scotland. And wouldn't the point be clearer if said private company had cut the SNP-yellow mustard?
Eh?? It gets very little business funding. Much more individuals.
Mainly its own members, it seems. Looks like I was out of date in remembering large donations from individuals who just happened to own bus companies and the like.
I do hope he shortens again so that I can top up my lays.
Yeah - he ought to put some more of his money where his mouth is. Pier Corbyn too. If they've no self-confidence how can they expect people to vote for them!?
Ah yes, the usual thing about the "natural Party of Government" and the "natural Party of Opposition" as was heard in the immediate aftermath of 1992.
The Conservatives were out of power for 13 years and in that time there was plenty in the same vein about the 21st Century being "the progressive century" or the "lib-lab century" and so on.
Parties which enjoy long periods in office benefit from both the weakness of Opposition but the ability to achieve almost seamless re-invention. The problem with re-invention is how to make the new leader different enough from the old leader to be their own man or woman but similar enough to retain the popularity the former leader once enjoyed.
John Major, Gordon Brown and Theresa May all enjoyed honeymoon periods after becoming Prime Minister - indeed Major won an election just as Eden and MacMillan had. It didn't end well for Theresa May, Gordon Brown nor indeed for James Callaghan before that.
It's all in the timing of course - Brown, May and Callaghan could have won elections had they gone to the country at the right moment. Johnson was always going to win against Corbyn - with hindsight, the Opposition parties should have gone for the election sooner rather than later - as the Conservative poll ratings moved inexorably higher in autumn 2019 the writing was in every sense on the wall.
The future is an undiscovered country - no one could have foreseen the events since Johnson's euphoric win that mid December night. We can surmise the legacy of the coronavirus will be with us long after the last person has been vaccinated.
Johnson's brand of relentlessly upbeat optimism has been sorely tested this past year - indeed, in some ways I find him more convincing when he's not gibbering about "sunlit uplands" and everyone "cheek by jowl". Behind the public schoolboy pastiche there's actually quite a serious and sensible man lurking and he needs to raise above the political knockabout in a way Thatcher and Blair managed in their pomp.
Sometimes it's not about having "a big idea" - Blair didn't have one and neither did Cameron in all honesty. Sometimes it's just about a change of emphasis, of style, of management not so much turning back the clock as winding it up and giving it a good clean.
Johnson will, I suspect, undertake a significant re-shuffle before the next GE - a new team for the rest of the decade. The problem for him as Thatcher and Blair discovered is ex-Cabinet members on the backbenches are a problem. We are told by some on here there is an endless reservoir of "talent" on the Conservative backbenches - I'm much less convinced.
I`m not convinced either. Shame there`s no route back for those bigger beasts who defected or were ousted last year.
Thanks for the article. It would be hard to improve on it. Except to agree with the comment that 1964 was in fact a fairly close run thing, and add that the projects broadly 1964-1979 ad 1997 -2010 both ended pretty calamitously, and with Labour's reputation on key issues trashed.
The coalition Labour relies on is fragile and highly non unified. The interests of ethnic minorities are diverse and often socially conservative, bearing little relation to public sector unions or Hampstead thinkers.
Labour's underlying USP and ideology is not remotely clear. Not is its policy on difficult issues - the ones which test its principles and competence like tax, debt, deficit.
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
It only wins, if it changes what it is.
In which case it becomes unhinged from its ideology; it becomes nothing.
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
But times change, and parties need to change with them.
Tony Blair got a huge amount of internal pushback over ‘Clause 4’, but the wider electorate understood the change and supported it.
Unions are now almost exclusively a public sector, middle class thing - but there’s millions of people now working casual jobs ‘self-employed’ for large companies, who can barely make rent, let alone think of owning property. What’s the Labour Party proposing, for those who actually labour?
Completely agree with that. Our society is becoming more divided, not less, and there is an ever larger number of people doing casual work on minimum wage with minimal rights, supposedly self employed. Who speaks for them? What chance have they got of getting a decent home, secure family life, a half decent retirement? Instead they face huge job insecurity, poverty and alienation.
They are not a majority but does even 40% of us not care? Who can make us care? That is surely the challenge.
Absolutely right - I hadn't realised you were a man of the left. Those divisions have flourished over the last 10 years. Labour's challenge is to represent the people you mention, to restore their dignity and improve their life chances in all the ways you mention. But at the same time to do so with a tranche of policies that appeal to, or at least do not threaten the interests of, those who have more secure presents and futures.
Excellent piece but I found myself asking would a government in waiting have the likes of Margaret Hodge, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper on the front bench?
They are all very effective politicians but they are also politicians whose government experience is at least 11 years in the past. Would they look to voters like a government in waiting to take them into the future? Or would they look more like Disraeli's spent volcanoes?
I wholeheartedly agree that the Labour front bench is lackluster but I think that is more because the leadership is awful about recognising who it's new talent is. I have spent a lot of time in Westminster looking at MPs like Wes Streeting, Alison McGovern, Catherine McKinnel and wondering why they aren't being given meaty portfolios.
True some of these aren't that new anymore but they're certainly fresher than Liam Byrne and better operators than Kate Green.
I think Starmers biggest flaw is his lacklustre front bench. Attlee was as dull as ditchwater, but he was astute at recognising and promoting talent, and more importantly still at effectively chairing meetings of such people. New faces are not a problem as such. Voters don't want retreads from the New Labour period, but they do want a bit of passion and bite. It would do a lot to keep the Corbynistas onside too.
That was then though, in the social media age I think you need the leader to have a certain amount of spikiness, and the rest of the team doesn't matter so much. This is why I voted for Nandy, Starmer's doing as good a job as can be expected but I don't think I was wrong.
I think Nandy and Jess would be in the same media narrative boat as Starmer. Incompetent lightweights when compared to Johnson and his titanic, likely successors, Gove, Raab, Sunak or Patel.
Don't forget six months ago we were all critical of the terrible candidate that was Biden. A man who could never overhaul the mighty Donald Trump.
As for Labour, Starmer is the right leader right now - whether he's the next Labour Prime Minister is uncertain but he's a good place to start.
His problems start from within and then move without. The "hard Left" decided ultimately they'd rather win with Blair than lose again but neither they nor the Conservatives expected the landslide which neutralised them both for a decade.
There may be a cadre of "new Labour" (sorry) MPs out there but they have first to get past the Corbynite rearguard. As we saw with both Blair and Cameron and to an extent with Johnson, the new crop of "moderate" MPs which could follow their leader into Government will be beholden to that leader and will close down opposition from both within and without.
Is your average 30-something Labour activist a Corbynite or is he or she now committed to the Starmer path to world domination? After all, Tony Blair stood on the 1983 Labour Manifesto in Sedgefield yet I suspect he wasn't wholly enamoured of much of it. It may be the Corbyn cult is a mile wide and an inch deep - as opposition parties prosper, new members join and the traditional activists find themselves coming under new pressure.
It's a long way to Tipperary apparently and it's also a long way to 2024. We can ignore the initial euphoria of 2021 which may produce better election result for the Conservatives than might have seemed likely - there will be a fiscal reckoning for Covid and with Sunak unwilling to raise income tax, VAT or NI, it will either be spending cuts (and the NHS is now sacrosanct) or something else.
The other problem Johnson and the Conservatives have is they have no friends - they have burnt their bridges with all other parties and it may well be a conciliatory Starmer can build a more stable anti-Conservative majority than some on here might hope or believe.
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
It only wins, if it changes what it is.
In which case it becomes unhinged from its ideology; it becomes nothing.
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
But times change, and parties need to change with them.
Tony Blair got a huge amount of internal pushback over ‘Clause 4’, but the wider electorate understood the change and supported it.
Unions are now almost exclusively a public sector, middle class thing - but there’s millions of people now working casual jobs ‘self-employed’ for large companies, who can barely make rent, let alone think of owning property. What’s the Labour Party proposing, for those who actually labour?
Completely agree with that. Our society is becoming more divided, not less, and there is an ever larger number of people doing casual work on minimum wage with minimal rights, supposedly self employed. Who speaks for them? What chance have they got of getting a decent home, secure family life, a half decent retirement? Instead they face huge job insecurity, poverty and alienation.
They are not a majority but does even 40% of us not care? Who can make us care? That is surely the challenge.
Absolutely right - I hadn't realised you were a man of the left. Those divisions have flourished over the last 10 years. Labour's challenge is to represent the people you mention, to restore their dignity and improve their life chances in all the ways you mention. But at the same time to do so with a tranche of policies that appeal to, or at least do not threaten the interests of, those who have more secure presents and futures.
You’d be surprised how much many of us on the right want to see those on the bottom rung of society pulled up, and understand the dangers of Uber-capitalism (with a deliberate capitalisation), to both a functioning society and the chances of being re-elected.
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
It only wins, if it changes what it is.
In which case it becomes unhinged from its ideology; it becomes nothing.
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
But times change, and parties need to change with them.
Tony Blair got a huge amount of internal pushback over ‘Clause 4’, but the wider electorate understood the change and supported it.
Unions are now almost exclusively a public sector, middle class thing - but there’s millions of people now working casual jobs ‘self-employed’ for large companies, who can barely make rent, let alone think of owning property. What’s the Labour Party proposing, for those who actually labour?
Completely agree with that. Our society is becoming more divided, not less, and there is an ever larger number of people doing casual work on minimum wage with minimal rights, supposedly self employed. Who speaks for them? What chance have they got of getting a decent home, secure family life, a half decent retirement? Instead they face huge job insecurity, poverty and alienation.
They are not a majority but does even 40% of us not care? Who can make us care? That is surely the challenge.
Absolutely right - I hadn't realised you were a man of the left. Those divisions have flourished over the last 10 years. Labour's challenge is to represent the people you mention, to restore their dignity and improve their life chances in all the ways you mention. But at the same time to do so with a tranche of policies that appeal to, or at least do not threaten the interests of, those who have more secure presents and futures.
I started life as a founder member of the SDP and I have never changed much. I want an economy that works but I want one that works for everyone. I think zero hour contracts, for example are an abomination putting all the risks of variable demand on those least able to bear it. I want decent housing for everyone. I think those that gain the most from society need to pay back into the society that sustains them, particularly companies like Amazon. I don't think that this makes me a man of the left but it just might under the right leadership.
What has happened to Labour is that it has turned in on itself. It is more interested in those who do the supposed "caring" in public sector comfort than those being inadequately cared for. They need to regain a moral purpose without scaring the horses. Its a difficult challenge and I am not yet convinced that SKS can do this although I don't doubt that he means well.
To win an overall majority in the UK there is still a lot more for Labour to do and certainly to win England, which elected Tory majorities even in 2010 and 2017 and which no Labour leader has made serious inroads in since Blair.
However on some current polls Labour could get into power with confidence and supply from the SNP and support from the LDs as well as its Welsh MPs even if the Tories win a majority in England if they win back about 50 seats in England.
If they then won back their Scottish seats they could start to look towards a UK overall majority again, so a Labour government is probably not as far off as the article suggests, even if a Labour majority likely relies on Labour winning back its Scottish seats.
As for Labour, Starmer is the right leader right now - whether he's the next Labour Prime Minister is uncertain but he's a good place to start.
His problems start from within and then move without. The "hard Left" decided ultimately they'd rather win with Blair than lose again but neither they nor the Conservatives expected the landslide which neutralised them both for a decade.
There may be a cadre of "new Labour" (sorry) MPs out there but they have first to get past the Corbynite rearguard. As we saw with both Blair and Cameron and to an extent with Johnson, the new crop of "moderate" MPs which could follow their leader into Government will be beholden to that leader and will close down opposition from both within and without.
Is your average 30-something Labour activist a Corbynite or is he or she now committed to the Starmer path to world domination? After all, Tony Blair stood on the 1983 Labour Manifesto in Sedgefield yet I suspect he wasn't wholly enamoured of much of it. It may be the Corbyn cult is a mile wide and an inch deep - as opposition parties prosper, new members join and the traditional activists find themselves coming under new pressure.
It's a long way to Tipperary apparently and it's also a long way to 2024. We can ignore the initial euphoria of 2021 which may produce better election result for the Conservatives than might have seemed likely - there will be a fiscal reckoning for Covid and with Sunak unwilling to raise income tax, VAT or NI, it will either be spending cuts (and the NHS is now sacrosanct) or something else.
The other problem Johnson and the Conservatives have is they have no friends - they have burnt their bridges with all other parties and it may well be a conciliatory Starmer can build a more stable anti-Conservative majority than some on here might hope or believe.
The header says : "It may shortly lose (or be forced to share) power in Wales."
Labour are already sharing power in Wales with the the Lib Dem (Kirtsy) + Loose Cannon (Dafydd Ellis Tomos).
I think some Labour losses are baked in at the Senedd, as Mark Drakeford is not as Smooth as Carwyn. Right at the moment, though, I'd say the Tories were in more trouble in Wales than Labour.
I have long though the Tories' best performer in the Senedd was Suzy Davies, who looks almost human and has a good campaigning instinct. In a normal, meritocratic party, she should actually be the leader.
She has been effectively deselected from the South Wales West list, presumably replaced by some Tory pachyderm with a tail and tusks.
Jonathan Morgan also failed to make a high position on the South Wales Central list, being judged insufficiently anti-devolution.
The Tories are gradually hardening into an anti-devolution party in Wales, which is a very niche interest indeed. This will probably help stem Labour losses come the Senedd elections.
If the Welsh Tories don't take the institution seriously, no good candidates will stand, and they will end up being represented by a bunch of freaks, lunaticks and nut-jobs in the Senedd.
They look well on the way to achieving that.
Over a quarter to a third of Welsh voters want to scrap the Senedd, given the Welsh Conservatives only got 21% in 2016 they could make gains in May on that platform
Good article, many of the conclusions are on the right track but taken to an extreme that is not accurate imo.
That England (and even wider UK) in a FPTP system naturally favours the Tory party and will tend to be difficult for Labour is occasionally pointed out but far too often forgotten when judging the qualities of both Tory and Labour politicians, including Johnson and Starmer.
Tories can win multiple ways (Labour too extreme, Tory govt doing well, Economy doing well, Culture wars, Good leadership) whereas Labour (almost) require both unpopular Tories and a trusted Labour leadership to have a chance. Of course that combination will happen again, it is possible but unlikely it could be as early as 2024.
CR is very likely to get his dream of mostly Tory rule with occasional moderate Labour periods to allow the Tories to regenerate.
My circle of Welsh Tory-leaning xenophobes are heartened by RT's elevation, coupled with Johnson's overall Covid performance.
N.B. Spellchecker changed RT's to Rat's?
You have the advantage on me on attitudes to the RaT.
I don't think I actually know any Welsh Tories personally (except of course BigG, remotely). So, I am not sure whether it is a plus or a minus for the Tories.
All my circle of family, friends are either Don't Vote, Plaid or Labour.
( But, one of my long-dead uncles was a Welsh Tory, & he was rather gentlemanly. Another of my long-dead uncles was a Labour MP for a Valleys mining constituency, he was more of a ruffian, actually ).
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
It only wins, if it changes what it is.
In which case it becomes unhinged from its ideology; it becomes nothing.
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
But times change, and parties need to change with them.
Tony Blair got a huge amount of internal pushback over ‘Clause 4’, but the wider electorate understood the change and supported it.
Unions are now almost exclusively a public sector, middle class thing - but there’s millions of people now working casual jobs ‘self-employed’ for large companies, who can barely make rent, let alone think of owning property. What’s the Labour Party proposing, for those who actually labour?
Completely agree with that. Our society is becoming more divided, not less, and there is an ever larger number of people doing casual work on minimum wage with minimal rights, supposedly self employed. Who speaks for them? What chance have they got of getting a decent home, secure family life, a half decent retirement? Instead they face huge job insecurity, poverty and alienation.
They are not a majority but does even 40% of us not care? Who can make us care? That is surely the challenge.
Absolutely right - I hadn't realised you were a man of the left. Those divisions have flourished over the last 10 years. Labour's challenge is to represent the people you mention, to restore their dignity and improve their life chances in all the ways you mention. But at the same time to do so with a tranche of policies that appeal to, or at least do not threaten the interests of, those who have more secure presents and futures.
You’d be surprised how much many of us on the right want to see those on the bottom rung of society pulled up, and understand the dangers of Uber-capitalism (with a deliberate capitalisation), to both a functioning society and the chances of being re-elected.
I totally agree.
Though for me the problems lie more in the dominance of consumerism than the growth of zero hours contracts (which are popular with many and contribute a degree of flexibility to employers that may be fundamental to our swift economic recovery).
I am flabbergasted by those who earn less than half I do but have a £80 a month satelite contract, spend £60 a month on a phone and have accumulated credit card debt. Getting in to debt is far too easy, IMO, and far to little attention is given to those who profit from it - the companies offering goods/services to those who cannot afford them.
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
It only wins, if it changes what it is.
In which case it becomes unhinged from its ideology; it becomes nothing.
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
But times change, and parties need to change with them.
Tony Blair got a huge amount of internal pushback over ‘Clause 4’, but the wider electorate understood the change and supported it.
Unions are now almost exclusively a public sector, middle class thing - but there’s millions of people now working casual jobs ‘self-employed’ for large companies, who can barely make rent, let alone think of owning property. What’s the Labour Party proposing, for those who actually labour?
Completely agree with that. Our society is becoming more divided, not less, and there is an ever larger number of people doing casual work on minimum wage with minimal rights, supposedly self employed. Who speaks for them? What chance have they got of getting a decent home, secure family life, a half decent retirement? Instead they face huge job insecurity, poverty and alienation.
They are not a majority but does even 40% of us not care? Who can make us care? That is surely the challenge.
Absolutely right - I hadn't realised you were a man of the left. Those divisions have flourished over the last 10 years. Labour's challenge is to represent the people you mention, to restore their dignity and improve their life chances in all the ways you mention. But at the same time to do so with a tranche of policies that appeal to, or at least do not threaten the interests of, those who have more secure presents and futures.
I started life as a founder member of the SDP and I have never changed much. I want an economy that works but I want one that works for everyone. I think zero hour contracts, for example are an abomination putting all the risks of variable demand on those least able to bear it. I want decent housing for everyone. I think those that gain the most from society need to pay back into the society that sustains them, particularly companies like Amazon. I don't think that this makes me a man of the left but it just might under the right leadership.
What has happened to Labour is that it has turned in on itself. It is more interested in those who do the supposed "caring" in public sector comfort than those being inadequately cared for. They need to regain a moral purpose without scaring the horses. Its a difficult challenge and I am not yet convinced that SKS can do this although I don't doubt that he means well.
Not many people got actively involved in politics so young, for sure. Indeed unless anyone has a mother who went canvassing while pregnant, you can't be beaten on the point
To win an overall majority in the UK there is still a lot more for Labour to do and certainly to win England, which elected Tory majorities even in 2010 and 2017 and which no Labour leader has made serious inroads in since Blair.
However on some current polls Labour could get into power with confidence and supply from the SNP and support from the LDs as well as its Welsh MPs even if the Tories win a majority in England if they win back about 50 seats in England.
If they then won back their Scottish seats they could start to look towards a UK overall majority again, so a Labour government is probably not as far off as the article suggests, even if a Labour majority likely relies on Labour winning back its Scottish seats.
If the economy trends the way I think it will, the Tories are in big, big trouble in 2024. If by some miracle I am wrong (and I don't bsee how I can be) you can settle in for decades of Tory majorities.
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
It only wins, if it changes what it is.
In which case it becomes unhinged from its ideology; it becomes nothing.
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
But times change, and parties need to change with them.
Tony Blair got a huge amount of internal pushback over ‘Clause 4’, but the wider electorate understood the change and supported it.
Unions are now almost exclusively a public sector, middle class thing - but there’s millions of people now working casual jobs ‘self-employed’ for large companies, who can barely make rent, let alone think of owning property. What’s the Labour Party proposing, for those who actually labour?
Completely agree with that. Our society is becoming more divided, not less, and there is an ever larger number of people doing casual work on minimum wage with minimal rights, supposedly self employed. Who speaks for them? What chance have they got of getting a decent home, secure family life, a half decent retirement? Instead they face huge job insecurity, poverty and alienation.
They are not a majority but does even 40% of us not care? Who can make us care? That is surely the challenge.
Absolutely right - I hadn't realised you were a man of the left. Those divisions have flourished over the last 10 years. Labour's challenge is to represent the people you mention, to restore their dignity and improve their life chances in all the ways you mention. But at the same time to do so with a tranche of policies that appeal to, or at least do not threaten the interests of, those who have more secure presents and futures.
I started life as a founder member of the SDP and I have never changed much. I want an economy that works but I want one that works for everyone. I think zero hour contracts, for example are an abomination putting all the risks of variable demand on those least able to bear it. I want decent housing for everyone. I think those that gain the most from society need to pay back into the society that sustains them, particularly companies like Amazon. I don't think that this makes me a man of the left but it just might under the right leadership.
What has happened to Labour is that it has turned in on itself. It is more interested in those who do the supposed "caring" in public sector comfort than those being inadequately cared for. They need to regain a moral purpose without scaring the horses. Its a difficult challenge and I am not yet convinced that SKS can do this although I don't doubt that he means well.
Not many people got actively involved in politics so young, for sure. Indeed unless anyone has a mother who went canvassing while pregnant, you can't be beaten on the point
LOL. I was 17 when the SDP were formed. Its the only political party I have ever actually joined.
Over a quarter to a third of Welsh voters want to scrap the Senedd, given the Welsh Conservatives only got 21% in 2016 they could make gains in May on that platform
There is a Party, Abolish, already on that ground. An interesting group with some ex-Conservatives and ex-UKIP people. Abolish has two seats in the Senedd now and could be the kingmakers (I suppose).
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
It only wins, if it changes what it is.
In which case it becomes unhinged from its ideology; it becomes nothing.
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
But times change, and parties need to change with them.
Tony Blair got a huge amount of internal pushback over ‘Clause 4’, but the wider electorate understood the change and supported it.
Unions are now almost exclusively a public sector, middle class thing - but there’s millions of people now working casual jobs ‘self-employed’ for large companies, who can barely make rent, let alone think of owning property. What’s the Labour Party proposing, for those who actually labour?
Completely agree with that. Our society is becoming more divided, not less, and there is an ever larger number of people doing casual work on minimum wage with minimal rights, supposedly self employed. Who speaks for them? What chance have they got of getting a decent home, secure family life, a half decent retirement? Instead they face huge job insecurity, poverty and alienation.
They are not a majority but does even 40% of us not care? Who can make us care? That is surely the challenge.
Absolutely right - I hadn't realised you were a man of the left. Those divisions have flourished over the last 10 years. Labour's challenge is to represent the people you mention, to restore their dignity and improve their life chances in all the ways you mention. But at the same time to do so with a tranche of policies that appeal to, or at least do not threaten the interests of, those who have more secure presents and futures.
Trouble is, that group voted for Boris last time. @DavidL asks who speaks for them? and the answer is Dominic Cummings. Next time it might be Nigel Farage's aptly-named RefUK.
Cummings co-opted left-behind voters in left-behind towns to vote, probably against their own interests, first for Brexit and then for Boris. Collapse of stout red wall. Hence the levelling up agenda.
But now Cummings is no more. Or is he? Shades of #ClassicDom in the Kahneman pop psychology book giving succour to CCHQ as we discussed recently?
The header says : "It may shortly lose (or be forced to share) power in Wales."
Labour are already sharing power in Wales with the the Lib Dem (Kirtsy) + Loose Cannon (Dafydd Ellis Tomos).
I think some Labour losses are baked in at the Senedd, as Mark Drakeford is not as Smooth as Carwyn. Right at the moment, though, I'd say the Tories were in more trouble in Wales than Labour.
I have long though the Tories' best performer in the Senedd was Suzy Davies, who looks almost human and has a good campaigning instinct. In a normal, meritocratic party, she should actually be the leader.
She has been effectively deselected from the South Wales West list, presumably replaced by some Tory pachyderm with a tail and tusks.
Jonathan Morgan also failed to make a high position on the South Wales Central list, being judged insufficiently anti-devolution.
The Tories are gradually hardening into an anti-devolution party in Wales, which is a very niche interest indeed. This will probably help stem Labour losses come the Senedd elections.
If the Welsh Tories don't take the institution seriously, no good candidates will stand, and they will end up being represented by a bunch of freaks, lunaticks and nut-jobs in the Senedd.
They look well on the way to achieving that.
Over a quarter to a third of Welsh voters want to scrap the Senedd, given the Welsh Conservatives only got 21% in 2016 they could make gains in May on that platform
1. Most voters who want to scrap the Senedd won't actually vote in the Senedd elections. This is a classic non-voter position. "They are all charlatans and rogues, Get rid of all' em, shut the Senedd."
2. If the Tories scrap the Senedd, then back come all the small Welsh (mainly Labour) constituencies at Westminster.
You are getting most of the extra 10 seats in Westminster in the boundary changes BECAUSE Welsh matters are devolved.
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
It only wins, if it changes what it is.
In which case it becomes unhinged from its ideology; it becomes nothing.
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
But times change, and parties need to change with them.
Tony Blair got a huge amount of internal pushback over ‘Clause 4’, but the wider electorate understood the change and supported it.
Unions are now almost exclusively a public sector, middle class thing - but there’s millions of people now working casual jobs ‘self-employed’ for large companies, who can barely make rent, let alone think of owning property. What’s the Labour Party proposing, for those who actually labour?
Completely agree with that. Our society is becoming more divided, not less, and there is an ever larger number of people doing casual work on minimum wage with minimal rights, supposedly self employed. Who speaks for them? What chance have they got of getting a decent home, secure family life, a half decent retirement? Instead they face huge job insecurity, poverty and alienation.
They are not a majority but does even 40% of us not care? Who can make us care? That is surely the challenge.
Absolutely right - I hadn't realised you were a man of the left. Those divisions have flourished over the last 10 years. Labour's challenge is to represent the people you mention, to restore their dignity and improve their life chances in all the ways you mention. But at the same time to do so with a tranche of policies that appeal to, or at least do not threaten the interests of, those who have more secure presents and futures.
You’d be surprised how much many of us on the right want to see those on the bottom rung of society pulled up, and understand the dangers of Uber-capitalism (with a deliberate capitalisation), to both a functioning society and the chances of being re-elected.
I totally agree.
Though for me the problems lie more in the dominance of consumerism than the growth of zero hours contracts (which are popular with many and contribute a degree of flexibility to employers that may be fundamental to our swift economic recovery).
I am flabbergasted by those who earn less than half I do but have a £80 a month satelite contract, spend £60 a month on a phone and have accumulated credit card debt. Getting in to debt is far too easy, IMO, and far to little attention is given to those who profit from it - the companies offering goods/services to those who cannot afford them.
Health, food and financial education should be taught more formally at school. Society would be far better off if we treated those topics with the respect they deserve and are needed for modern life.
Not unless they sort themselves out in Scotland, and make it quite clear to a UK audience that they will never do a deal in Parliament with the SNP.
You think that Labour's problem's in England are to do with English voters worrying about some non specific deal with the SNP in an indistinct future? Polling is at best mixed on this and I'd suggest Labour should do some more assiduous burrowing for England's g spot and be as vague on Scotland as they're able (which SKS was doing until he thought Union flags was a great wheeze, or some marketing company convinced him that was the case).
I assume your Labour sorting themselves out in Scotland doesn't include winning 'their' voters back and a UK majority winning chunk of seats? That would be naively optimistic in the extreme.
Whatever the Guardian thought at the time, this was the single most effective piece of party political literature since "Labour Isn't Working" (with a nod to Labour's Tax Bombshell too). The idea of a Labour leader utterly beholden on the economy to the SNP was toxic. I suggest that message retains its relevence in England (and Wales) going into the next election. If only because nobody puts Boris in that top pocket.
What's your conclusive evidence that the poster was effective in winning votes apart from you recalling a stirring in your loins 6 years ago?
Several thousand Torbay doorsteps. It was raised without prompting, numerous times.
There's no data more convincing than on the doorstep anecdata.
It's better than your constant smug assertions...
Fair enough, PB definitely hasn't had enough of your Torbay canvassing yarns, the sine qua non of hard psephological info.
You were the ones saying, er what is the basis for your assertion that the SNP is toxic in England?
I appreciate that reality-based politics may be an unknown for you.
The term i used was 'conclusive evidence'. I know we live in debased times, but hearsay from an anonymous rando on the internet doesn't usually count as such.
I could get a million folk to sign a petition saying Miliband in the SNP pocket changed their vote and you'd still say it was a million anonymous randos.
Point is, you have got nothing to back up your assertions that folk weren't swayed. I, on the other hand, reported back here in 2015 on the impact it was having on ENGLISH doorsteps - something you self-evidently know fuck-all about. So on this issue, just STFU. You are out of your depth, little man.
I recall you doing so. Clearly. I kept hoping, too, that you were wrong about the effect on the LD's of the Coalition.
I enjoy the knockabout here as much as the next guy. But I also know that there's folk shift serious money on political bets. So if I report on something from the front line, you can rest assured it is the real deal - inside track from either personal experience or somebody else I trust.
"Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970"
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
Yes to those last two paragraphs, and rcs1000, below, says "The most likely group to be that opposition is the Labour Party."
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
It only wins, if it changes what it is.
In which case it becomes unhinged from its ideology; it becomes nothing.
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
But times change, and parties need to change with them.
Tony Blair got a huge amount of internal pushback over ‘Clause 4’, but the wider electorate understood the change and supported it.
Unions are now almost exclusively a public sector, middle class thing - but there’s millions of people now working casual jobs ‘self-employed’ for large companies, who can barely make rent, let alone think of owning property. What’s the Labour Party proposing, for those who actually labour?
Completely agree with that. Our society is becoming more divided, not less, and there is an ever larger number of people doing casual work on minimum wage with minimal rights, supposedly self employed. Who speaks for them? What chance have they got of getting a decent home, secure family life, a half decent retirement? Instead they face huge job insecurity, poverty and alienation.
They are not a majority but does even 40% of us not care? Who can make us care? That is surely the challenge.
Absolutely right - I hadn't realised you were a man of the left. Those divisions have flourished over the last 10 years. Labour's challenge is to represent the people you mention, to restore their dignity and improve their life chances in all the ways you mention. But at the same time to do so with a tranche of policies that appeal to, or at least do not threaten the interests of, those who have more secure presents and futures.
Trouble is, that group voted for Boris last time. @DavidL asks who speaks for them? and the answer is Dominic Cummings. Next time it might be Nigel Farage's aptly-named RefUK.
Cummings co-opted left-behind voters in left-behind towns to vote, probably against their own interests, first for Brexit and then for Boris. Collapse of stout red wall. Hence the levelling up agenda.
But now Cummings is no more. Or is he? Shades of #ClassicDom in the Kahneman pop psychology book giving succour to CCHQ as we discussed recently?
Cummings is very much still there. He might not be working out of the office in Number 10 any more, in an environment where everyone disagreeing with him has a dozen journalists on speed dial, but he hasn't gone away.
Excellent piece but I found myself asking would a government in waiting have the likes of Margaret Hodge, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper on the front bench?
They are all very effective politicians but they are also politicians whose government experience is at least 11 years in the past. Would they look to voters like a government in waiting to take them into the future? Or would they look more like Disraeli's spent volcanoes?
I wholeheartedly agree that the Labour front bench is lackluster but I think that is more because the leadership is awful about recognising who it's new talent is. I have spent a lot of time in Westminster looking at MPs like Wes Streeting, Alison McGovern, Catherine McKinnel and wondering why they aren't being given meaty portfolios.
True some of these aren't that new anymore but they're certainly fresher than Liam Byrne and better operators than Kate Green.
I think Starmers biggest flaw is his lacklustre front bench. Attlee was as dull as ditchwater, but he was astute at recognising and promoting talent, and more importantly still at effectively chairing meetings of such people. New faces are not a problem as such. Voters don't want retreads from the New Labour period, but they do want a bit of passion and bite. It would do a lot to keep the Corbynistas onside too.
That was then though, in the social media age I think you need the leader to have a certain amount of spikiness, and the rest of the team doesn't matter so much. This is why I voted for Nandy, Starmer's doing as good a job as can be expected but I don't think I was wrong.
I think Nandy and Jess would be in the same media narrative boat as Starmer. Incompetent lightweights when compared to Johnson and his titanic, likely successors, Gove, Raab, Sunak or Patel.
Don't forget six months ago we were all critical of the terrible candidate that was Biden. A man who could never overhaul the mighty Donald Trump.
I wasn't particularly talking about the current media narrative, those will come and go. Starmer has done the basic things necessary to be acceptable if the Tories are determined to lose the election, and the point at which the voters judge that a government is bad can be quite weird and not happen for the reasons we'd expect. But it would really help if he had that little extra something.
PS. We were definitely all critical of Biden but I if you'd asked me at the time I wouldn't have said he'd lose to Trump, I'd have said the problem was how he was going to defeat the mighty KLOBUCHAR.
The header says : "It may shortly lose (or be forced to share) power in Wales."
Labour are already sharing power in Wales with the the Lib Dem (Kirtsy) + Loose Cannon (Dafydd Ellis Tomos).
I think some Labour losses are baked in at the Senedd, as Mark Drakeford is not as Smooth as Carwyn. Right at the moment, though, I'd say the Tories were in more trouble in Wales than Labour.
I have long though the Tories' best performer in the Senedd was Suzy Davies, who looks almost human and has a good campaigning instinct. In a normal, meritocratic party, she should actually be the leader.
She has been effectively deselected from the South Wales West list, presumably replaced by some Tory pachyderm with a tail and tusks.
Jonathan Morgan also failed to make a high position on the South Wales Central list, being judged insufficiently anti-devolution.
The Tories are gradually hardening into an anti-devolution party in Wales, which is a very niche interest indeed. This will probably help stem Labour losses come the Senedd elections.
If the Welsh Tories don't take the institution seriously, no good candidates will stand, and they will end up being represented by a bunch of freaks, lunaticks and nut-jobs in the Senedd.
They look well on the way to achieving that.
Over a quarter to a third of Welsh voters want to scrap the Senedd, given the Welsh Conservatives only got 21% in 2016 they could make gains in May on that platform
1. Most voters who want to scrap the Senedd won't actually vote in the Senedd elections. This is a classic non-voter position. "They are all charlatans and rogues, Get rid of all' em, shut the Senedd."
2. If the Tories scrap the Senedd, then back come all the small Welsh (mainly Labour) constituencies at Westminster.
You are getting most of the extra 10 seats in Westminster in the boundary changes BECAUSE Welsh matters are devolved.
Unless I've missed something I thought it was principally just based on population. Had a quick look on web and does seem that way.
Comments
Perhaps COVID will cause some genuine changes that will challenge the politicians to take decisions. Perhaps that might focus minds and get the electorate thinking again.
The swing voters for Labour are the 40-55 year olds, and they need to hang on to votes as people age. I think this article has it right, in that while many seats are not up for grabs, a Southern strategy appeals to this demographic nicely.
https://twitter.com/foxinsoxuk/status/1357966197103411205?s=19
Most people didn't want Mrs May to have a huge majority.
Most people didn't want Corbyn as PM.
So the Tories will be voted out eventually - when they become the greater of the available evils rather than the lesser.
Probably the best argument for proportional representation is that we could start voting in favour of things.
I am baffled that eg Hilary Benn and Yvette Cooper aren't on the front bench.
If Labour lose again, they'll have almost no institutional memory of Govt. Which would be another hurdle to get over...
This is a key point, touching on the wider issues I raised above
The freebies available in Scotland that England doesn't offer (Free Prescriptions, Free university education..) is absolutely toxic on the doorstep.
and all you have to do is mention Labour will need the SNP to be in power to watch the vote turn blue.
What would also be interesting is seeing how this chart evolves over time: is there a steady drift from Labour to Tory as people grow up or will demographics save Labour in the end?
A minor quibble: bit unfair on Liam Bryne. Isn't he fully engaged running a close race to be West Mids mayor?
The mistake is to think that the shift in opinion arises solely by dint of being older, rather than because older people tend to have more property, pensions and other investments, and families, and other stuff that makes them more risk-averse.
The challenge for the Tories is that the upcoming generations are finding this a lot more difficult because the generation that has most of the property and wealth is both living longer and defending any challenge to it.
In 1997 the only member of the Cabinet who had even been a junior minister under Callaghan was Margaret Beckett.
In 1964 the sole person with Cabinet experience was Wilson himself.
So it’s not that unusual and generally we’ve got over it.
For this to help Labour, rather than the Tories (assuming the latter create an environment more beneficial to inheritors), IMO, the next generation would have to be inheriting less than their parents. Not less than Southerners....
My Mum's family in Wales didn't inherit anything from their parents. My cousins have started inheriting houses and estates worth 10-20x their annual salaries - even if they would be worth more than double that in Dorset. I don't think this will help Labour anytime soon...
However, the last few years have seen a pivot to a split on social values, culture war stuff. And there, it's harder to see a mechanism that drives the rightward drift.
And the age gradient in voting intention has got a lot steeper in recent years. Smart tactical move by the Conservatives, but they have to run awfully fast from here to stand still.
The problem, at its root, is that any LP which is remotely true to collectivism will lose. Doesn`t have the numbers.
The CP is regarded as the natural party of government. We need to have a liberal party as the natural party of opposition not the LP - far more people are ideologically liberal than ideologically collectivist.
We are rather "stuck". PR could provide the answer??
Aside from IHT (for which the above is a very good argument), the missing bit of the analysis is the growing gap in pension provision, which many people from the younger slices of the boomer generation downwards are looking to bridge by spending the accumulated gains from their property. Of which yd's mention of care costs is only part, if an important one. Paradoxically the world in which the elderly spend down their wealth, rather than passing it on, is probably the better one.
But the odds are against them anyway, if past performance is something to go by. The Labour Party first formed a government in 1924 - 97 years ago. Since then, it has been in power, either alone or dominating a coalition, in only 33 of those years, compared with 64 which were dominated by the Conservatives (counting the 1931 National Government, though led by Ramsay Macdonald, as a Conservative administration). Every one of those governments have been formed when the Conservatives screwed up egregiously.
As a wise academic once told me, the role of Labour in Britain is to provide occasional sabbaticals for the Conservatives, so the latter can get their act together again. The one exception to that was Blair, who was such a political genius that he provided Labour with almost half its time in government, and who was anyway more right wing than a lot of Conservative PMs.
And a great, thought provoking piece by Casino.
I have friends who are basically drifting, never been interested in education, or starting a business, or qualifying for a trade, who will inherit £1m+ houses. I have other friends who are highly educated working in the charity/cultural sector who will likely never be able to buy more than a 2 bed flat because they have several siblings.
It’s one of those things with so many grandfather rights, that everyone would think you were utterly insane if you proposed it today. An anachronism of old-fashioned motorsport, in a modern world of tarmac runoff areas and sterile tracks.
There’s no other sporting event on Earth that tolerates so many deaths and injuries, yet keeps a fanatical group of participants and spectators coming back year after year.
What you are both saying is the the LP only wins if it successfully conceals what it is.
What one might call Prince Charles Syndrome.
They are all very effective politicians but they are also politicians whose government experience is at least 11 years in the past. Would they look to voters like a government in waiting to take them into the future? Or would they look more like Disraeli's spent volcanoes?
I wholeheartedly agree that the Labour front bench is lackluster but I think that is more because the leadership is awful about recognising who it's new talent is. I have spent a lot of time in Westminster looking at MPs like Wes Streeting, Alison McGovern, Catherine McKinnel and wondering why they aren't being given meaty portfolios.
True some of these aren't that new anymore but they're certainly fresher than Liam Byrne and better operators than Kate Green.
Although both Blair and Cameron entered an election into opposition - 1983 and 2001 respectively.
The true Tory was Mrs May...and we know what happened there.
Taking a very long view, over time the attitudes and mores of the two groups diverges and turns inexorably into class, surely?
I`m an old-fashioned sort. I want parties to be ideological.
The Tory party is a somewhat chaotic tent containing many non natural bedfellows. Labour's task is to break bits off that coalition as Blair did. With different leadership it could have happened in either 2017 or 2019 where the Tory remainer vote was up for grabs. I think that chance has gone but it remains worth thinking about. How can the UK get closer to the EU, possibly EFTA?
As I have said before one of SKS's weaknesses is that he has fewer ideas than the England bowling attack. He needs to start shaping a narrative that is of interest to parts of the Tory coalition.
I don't think 'wait out the baby boomer inheritance generation' is going to be a viable strategy for anti Tories.
I suspect much like 1997, when the Conservatives do fall, it will be all about the Conservatives losing elections rather than Labour winning them.
The argument about Starmer's lack of personality is not dissimilar to the analysis of Blair as a lightweight pre-1997.
The Conservative Party and their chums run the media narrative, so Labour and whoever are running the party will have a mountain to climb to get their voice heard. Media Grandees let their guard down in 1997 with Dacre and Murdoch jettisoning Major. That won't happen again!
Tory hubris about their electoral invincibility is not so different now as it was in the 1980s and 90s. I believe this might be misplaced, no one seems to be aware of the economic Armageddon thundering towards us, and that will be bad news for incumbency.
I think that the Lib Dem idea of taxing inheritance as income or capital gain by the receiver is a much better idea than taxing the estate. It would encourage rewriting wills in favour of more recipients, so grandchildren rather than children who are often in their sixties themselves.
Tony Blair got a huge amount of internal pushback over ‘Clause 4’, but the wider electorate understood the change and supported it.
Unions are now almost exclusively a public sector, middle class thing - but there’s millions of people now working casual jobs ‘self-employed’ for large companies, who can barely make rent, let alone think of owning property. What’s the Labour Party proposing, for those who actually labour?
It's certainly right that Starmer needs to paint a vision of the future. He will, give it time. He's been Leader for less than a year. During that time, absolutely nothing outside 1) Covid and 2) Brexit has got a hearing. If Starmer set out his grand vision now, nobody would listen - neither voters nor media. Only when not everything is seen through the prism of Covid will Starmer, or his front bench, get a hearing.
I'm amused at some PB Tories suggesting that Labour brings back some of the last generation (Cooper, Byrne, Benn etc.); I'm absolutely sure that those same people would then turn on Labour and say - what, no new talent! Old retreads! Byrne "we've spent all the money!". The current front bench will be judged once it's had a fair hearing, and Starmer will dispense with those not up to it.
Labour are already sharing power in Wales with the the Lib Dem (Kirtsy) + Loose Cannon (Dafydd Ellis Tomos).
I think some Labour losses are baked in at the Senedd, as Mark Drakeford is not as Smooth as Carwyn. Right at the moment, though, I'd say the Tories were in more trouble in Wales than Labour.
I have long though the Tories' best performer in the Senedd was Suzy Davies, who looks almost human and has a good campaigning instinct. In a normal, meritocratic party, she should actually be the leader.
She has been effectively deselected from the South Wales West list, presumably replaced by some Tory pachyderm with a tail and tusks.
http://www.tinyurl.com/y3u78un9
Jonathan Morgan also failed to make a high position on the South Wales Central list, being judged insufficiently anti-devolution.
The Tories are gradually hardening into an anti-devolution party in Wales, which is a very niche interest indeed. This will probably help stem Labour losses come the Senedd elections.
If the Welsh Tories don't take the institution seriously, no good candidates will stand, and they will end up being represented by a bunch of freaks, lunaticks and nut-jobs in the Senedd.
They look well on the way to achieving that.
They are not a majority but does even 40% of us not care? Who can make us care? That is surely the challenge.
Ah yes, the usual thing about the "natural Party of Government" and the "natural Party of Opposition" as was heard in the immediate aftermath of 1992.
The Conservatives were out of power for 13 years and in that time there was plenty in the same vein about the 21st Century being "the progressive century" or the "lib-lab century" and so on.
Parties which enjoy long periods in office benefit from both the weakness of Opposition but the ability to achieve almost seamless re-invention. The problem with re-invention is how to make the new leader different enough from the old leader to be their own man or woman but similar enough to retain the popularity the former leader once enjoyed.
John Major, Gordon Brown and Theresa May all enjoyed honeymoon periods after becoming Prime Minister - indeed Major won an election just as Eden and MacMillan had. It didn't end well for Theresa May, Gordon Brown nor indeed for James Callaghan before that.
It's all in the timing of course - Brown, May and Callaghan could have won elections had they gone to the country at the right moment. Johnson was always going to win against Corbyn - with hindsight, the Opposition parties should have gone for the election sooner rather than later - as the Conservative poll ratings moved inexorably higher in autumn 2019 the writing was in every sense on the wall.
The future is an undiscovered country - no one could have foreseen the events since Johnson's euphoric win that mid December night. We can surmise the legacy of the coronavirus will be with us long after the last person has been vaccinated.
Johnson's brand of relentlessly upbeat optimism has been sorely tested this past year - indeed, in some ways I find him more convincing when he's not gibbering about "sunlit uplands" and everyone "cheek by jowl". Behind the public schoolboy pastiche there's actually quite a serious and sensible man lurking and he needs to raise above the political knockabout in a way Thatcher and Blair managed in their pomp.
Sometimes it's not about having "a big idea" - Blair didn't have one and neither did Cameron in all honesty. Sometimes it's just about a change of emphasis, of style, of management not so much turning back the clock as winding it up and giving it a good clean.
Johnson will, I suspect, undertake a significant re-shuffle before the next GE - a new team for the rest of the decade. The problem for him as Thatcher and Blair discovered is ex-Cabinet members on the backbenches are a problem. We are told by some on here there is an endless reservoir of "talent" on the Conservative backbenches - I'm much less convinced.
I do hope he shortens again so that I can top up my lays.
N.B. Spellchecker changed RT's to Rat's?
(Do you reckon that'll do it?)
Next two players can bat, but they won’t die wondering if they should have played more attackingly. Could be fun.
The coalition Labour relies on is fragile and highly non unified. The interests of ethnic minorities are diverse and often socially conservative, bearing little relation to public sector unions or Hampstead thinkers.
Labour's underlying USP and ideology is not remotely clear. Not is its policy on difficult issues - the ones which test its principles and competence like tax, debt, deficit.
Don't forget six months ago we were all critical of the terrible candidate that was Biden. A man who could never overhaul the mighty Donald Trump.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/our-new-best-friends/
His problems start from within and then move without. The "hard Left" decided ultimately they'd rather win with Blair than lose again but neither they nor the Conservatives expected the landslide which neutralised them both for a decade.
There may be a cadre of "new Labour" (sorry) MPs out there but they have first to get past the Corbynite rearguard. As we saw with both Blair and Cameron and to an extent with Johnson, the new crop of "moderate" MPs which could follow their leader into Government will be beholden to that leader and will close down opposition from both within and without.
Is your average 30-something Labour activist a Corbynite or is he or she now committed to the Starmer path to world domination? After all, Tony Blair stood on the 1983 Labour Manifesto in Sedgefield yet I suspect he wasn't wholly enamoured of much of it. It may be the Corbyn cult is a mile wide and an inch deep - as opposition parties prosper, new members join and the traditional activists find themselves coming under new pressure.
It's a long way to Tipperary apparently and it's also a long way to 2024. We can ignore the initial euphoria of 2021 which may produce better election result for the Conservatives than might have seemed likely - there will be a fiscal reckoning for Covid and with Sunak unwilling to raise income tax, VAT or NI, it will either be spending cuts (and the NHS is now sacrosanct) or something else.
The other problem Johnson and the Conservatives have is they have no friends - they have burnt their bridges with all other parties and it may well be a conciliatory Starmer can build a more stable anti-Conservative majority than some on here might hope or believe.
What has happened to Labour is that it has turned in on itself. It is more interested in those who do the supposed "caring" in public sector comfort than those being inadequately cared for. They need to regain a moral purpose without scaring the horses. Its a difficult challenge and I am not yet convinced that SKS can do this although I don't doubt that he means well.
However on some current polls Labour could get into power with confidence and supply from the SNP and support from the LDs as well as its Welsh MPs even if the Tories win a majority in England if they win back about 50 seats in England.
If they then won back their Scottish seats they could start to look towards a UK overall majority again, so a Labour government is probably not as far off as the article suggests, even if a Labour majority likely relies on Labour winning back its Scottish seats.
https://twitter.com/WardQNormal/status/1206280031552454656
That England (and even wider UK) in a FPTP system naturally favours the Tory party and will tend to be difficult for Labour is occasionally pointed out but far too often forgotten when judging the qualities of both Tory and Labour politicians, including Johnson and Starmer.
Tories can win multiple ways (Labour too extreme, Tory govt doing well, Economy doing well, Culture wars, Good leadership) whereas Labour (almost) require both unpopular Tories and a trusted Labour leadership to have a chance. Of course that combination will happen again, it is possible but unlikely it could be as early as 2024.
CR is very likely to get his dream of mostly Tory rule with occasional moderate Labour periods to allow the Tories to regenerate.
I don't think I actually know any Welsh Tories personally (except of course BigG, remotely). So, I am not sure whether it is a plus or a minus for the Tories.
All my circle of family, friends are either Don't Vote, Plaid or Labour.
( But, one of my long-dead uncles was a Welsh Tory, & he was rather gentlemanly. Another of my long-dead uncles was a Labour MP for a Valleys mining constituency, he was more of a ruffian, actually
Though for me the problems lie more in the dominance of consumerism than the growth of zero hours contracts (which are popular with many and contribute a degree of flexibility to employers that may be fundamental to our swift economic recovery).
I am flabbergasted by those who earn less than half I do but have a £80 a month satelite contract, spend £60 a month on a phone and have accumulated credit card debt. Getting in to debt is far too easy, IMO, and far to little attention is given to those who profit from it - the companies offering goods/services to those who cannot afford them.
Cummings co-opted left-behind voters in left-behind towns to vote, probably against their own interests, first for Brexit and then for Boris. Collapse of stout red wall. Hence the levelling up agenda.
But now Cummings is no more. Or is he? Shades of #ClassicDom in the Kahneman pop psychology book giving succour to CCHQ as we discussed recently?
2. If the Tories scrap the Senedd, then back come all the small Welsh (mainly Labour) constituencies at Westminster.
You are getting most of the extra 10 seats in Westminster in the boundary changes BECAUSE Welsh matters are devolved.
PS. We were definitely all critical of Biden but I if you'd asked me at the time I wouldn't have said he'd lose to Trump, I'd have said the problem was how he was going to defeat the mighty KLOBUCHAR.
We all know of secessionist movements across the world like Scotland and Catalonia who want independence from one country.
But apart from Northern Ireland, are there any examples of one part of a country wanting to leave one country and join another?