politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Almost all of LAB’s current problems stem from eight years
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Almost all of LAB’s current problems stem from eight years ago today when Gordon Brown recorded this interview
Eight years today an event took place from which, I’d argue, all Labour’s trouble stem – the decision by the then PM to call off what were very advanced plans to have an early general election.
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Labour's problems were always bigger than just one bottled election.
If I had to point to one moment when he, and Labour, really got it badly wrong, it was just after the financial crisis in late 2008. Having got some credit for stabilising the situation with the bank bailouts, Brown could have gone to the country in early 2009 on a platform of stability and, with Darling as Chancellor, economic prudence based on the need to cut public expenditure in the light of the collapse in tax revenues. Had he done so, Osborne and Cameron would have been reduced to the weak position of agreeing with him but reinforcing his message of 'no time for a novice'.
Instead, Brown went into deficit-denial mode and tried to create the completely fatuous dividing line of 'Labour investment versus Tory cuts'. It was bonkers because anyone with half a brain could see that cuts, Tory or otherwise, were going to be unavoidable. What's more it left Brown's successor with an impossible starting position: how to support cuts whilst opposing them. Labour has never recovered from that dilemma, unable to decide whether to attack Osborne for cuttting too far too fast, or not fast enough. Even McDonnell, amazingly, is hoist on that petard.
The media are giving Theresa May a hard time. But once again, they are out of touch with public opinion. I couldn't fault her speech and it was honest.
I thought Theresa Villiers also gave a good speech. Another minister who is growing into the job. She looked quite touched at the warm applause she got at the end.
How grown up this conference was compared to the shambolic, vacuous nonsense, we witnessed last week.
There was nothing wrong with Osborne's delivery. Anybody who thinks there was is an incorrect deviationist.
Not sure if this has ever been posted on PB before, but it was written at the time by a Labour minister at the Labour conference in 2007.
Perhaps the magnitude of the moment we face is too great for us collectively to bear. Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority, and in so doing utterly shatter the glass paradigm of cyclical politics which has contained us for the century since 1906. This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government. Which will finally and irrevocably transform the nature of politics and civic life in Britain.
That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/conference/2007/09/labour-majority-increase
I got the impression that Alistair Darling rather enjoyed the challenge that he inherited from Brown and was (is) a difficult opponent. Where I disagree with you is that Labour had an impossible starting position. It would have been an awkward year or so of changing direction, but Labour should have challenged Osborne to keep his promise of abolishing the deficit by 2015. They'd have had to suggest other ways to achieve it (possibly tax rises?) but it would have put them in a decent position come 2015 as they'd have been able to point to a broken promise. Of course, this assumes that they could have carried the party with them and in the end they chose the easy option of opposing everything the Tories did.
Even had a dig at Ashcroft (by name!)
The bodies of the young princes are strewn on the battlefield.
Scotland Yard has apologised for causing distress to the bereaved widow of Lord Brittan for not telling the couple before he died that he had been exonerated of a false rape claim.
In a letter to Lady Brittan’s lawyers, seen by the Guardian, deputy assistant commissioner Steve Rodhouse confirmed that the former home secretary would have faced no further action over the allegation.
http://bit.ly/1LyZUdb
The other consequence of the non-election was the resignation of Sir Menzies Campbell as LD leader and the eventual election of Nick Clegg.
Campbell became leader at an age only a year or two senior to Jeremy Corbyn currently but never really settled into the role. We will never know how he would have fared in a GE campaign.
Nick Clegg moved the LDs into a path of convergence with Cameron's liberal conservatism and made the Coalition possible. Had the 2007 election ended in a Hung Parliament, it's much harder to me Campbell forming such an arrangement with Cameron.
Some on here might argue a Campbell-led LD Party would have supported a minority Labour administration - I'm much less convinced given the Iraq War and a decade of Labour Government.
Given what we now know, even if Brown had prevailed in 2007, it's hard not to think there would have been an inevitable change in 2011-12.
Had that disastrous decision not been taken we'd have entered the financial crisis from a far better position of strength and able to cope with cyclical spending during a downturn. Plus crucially once the downturn was over we could start spending again.
Ultimately Brown spent all the money to the point that there is no money left and Labour's raison d'etre of being the one to spend money when the country can afford to doesn't exist anymore. The country can't afford to and will have to run a surplus for many, many years in order to get our debt:GDP ratio back to the level of 2002 when the tap was turned on.
Less noticeable than a single interview but the problems in Labour are more serious than any one interview or election.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/07/joy-of-tax-david-cameron-joke-conservative-conference
A killer combo that we're still trying to extract ourselves from.
I think it was about that time I suggested tipping Jack Straw at 50/1 to be next Labour leader when the men in white coats removed Gordon.
Or is that a carrot?
When will Tom Watson apologise for his smearing?
Should be worth watching.
Or, would a successful Brown, bout=yed up by a reasobaly large election victory have been more like the Brown we see today?
Nonetheless, the contrast between how formidable Brown was considered in say 2004, and how different things looked after he'd been leader for a while, should give pause for thought to those who think an Osborne leadership would be a hit with the public.
Meagre pickings if you ask me. They say before embarking on revenge - dig two graves, in this case Dale and Ashcroft are occupying both of them
*My wife is a centrist, very similar political history to Plato.
I think Brown would have lost the 40-60 "bonus" English marginals Blair won in 2005 to Cameron.
How naive we were. The infighting just got worse.
It takes mere seconds for that lot to do damage.
Either way, it's been a terrible time for the alleged suspect, their family and the alleged victims. Only Exaro News and Tom Watson have been smiling.
Hopefully the smiles will be wiped off their faces soon.
http://news.yahoo.com/uk-exit-eu-disaster-schaeuble-201925596.html
They have absolutely no understanding of the political climate in this country, do they?
And vice versa. I still can't believe a politician can unilaterally let 1.5m people into her country overnight and remain in power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e6mzH0Y4G8
"You should be flattered he called you 'an academic' rather than 'a pudgy hypocritical mentalist and lukewarm fascist, addled by self-regard and pomposity'.
German chancellor Angela Merkel has taken direct control of the refugee crisis and signalled that she would stick with her “open doors” policy, despite growing public pressure to control the unprecedented migrant surge.
My argument is that by 2010 there was a degree of philosophical convergence between the Orange Bookers and the liberal conservatives and indeed it's well known Osborne was hugely impressed by the deficit reduction work done by David Laws and the LD side. I doubt Campbell in 2007 would have felt that way (Vince Cable was his Deputy).
The problem for the incoming Conservative Government is the global crash is starting and 2008-09 will be very tough for any Government.
It must have bothered him to the core that virtually *everyone* beat the LDs this year.
Germany does not like to behave with arrogance on the world stage but her mistakes on migration have resulted her in demanding that other nations share the burden of the consequences of those mistakes. This is a pattern that is likely to be repeated in other spheres in the future. She is now big enough to manage without us.
Captain Balislava, one of #Russia's fighter pilots who bombed brutal misogynists of #ISIL today #KarmaHasAPrettyFace pic.twitter.com/lXlP8GCh1b
— Mark Sleboda (@MarkSleboda1)
October 7, 2015
http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/politbarometer.htm
AfD's score was marginally up as well, though by less than 1%. I remember widespread predictions here and elsewhere that they would easily break through the 5% barrier, which they narrowly failed to do. They are now 1-2% higher and should squeak in next time. They are seriuosly divided and have no realistic chance of getting 10%. However, sadly the left is nowhere near a majority - even if an SPD+Green+Left coalition were imaginable, which it isn't yet, they're on about 43% between them, to around 45% for CDU+FDP (the latter are back over the 5% level) and 6% for the AfD.
Merkel is clearly in stormy waters, but German voting patterns are incredibly stable, and the entire refugee crisis has seen a shift of a couple of percentage points so far. I can't see any outcome other than a further CDU-SPD coalition, and Merkel still looks quite solidly in place.
'Scotland Yard has apologised for causing distress to the bereaved widow of Lord Brittan for not telling the couple before he died that he had been exonerated of a false rape claim.
In a letter to Lady Brittan’s lawyers, seen by the Guardian, deputy assistant commissioner Steve Rodhouse confirmed that the former home secretary would have faced no further action over the allegation.'
When can we expect to get an apology from Watson ?
Labour would now be into year 2 of EdM's leadership. The only difference is that Lib Dems would be much stronger (this is not hard).
But thanks for demonstrating the level of credibility Russia Today analysts have.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/10/07/exclusive-russian-jets-intercept-us-predator-drones-over-syria-officials-say/