Who should be leader of the Labour party?

scorza said:
I think when people see the effect of the government's unfair spending cuts on society people's appetite for a new new Labour will disappear rapidly.
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How much do you think it will impact the average person though? NHS spending is staying put near enough so the the health system isn't going to change all that much. Education may be effected but that will take time to hit and will only impact those that use it. If you are on benefits or a public sector worker that gets made redundant obviously that will have an impact. But of the majority of people it will just be a little more expensive and a little less in the way of service.
 
David Miliband is the only person who can make Labour remotely electable again. Why he didn't challenge Brown in 2007 I don't know.

I like Diane Abbot's stand on civil liberties but she drags race into matters when it really isn't needed. Her double act with Michael Portillo is good TV.

Ed Balls is a bully boy and I can't stand him.

Ed Miliband. ' We didn't listen to the electorate. ' Then why did you write the party's manifesto then ? Surely he knew that the party faced ruination ? Perhaps he should have listened before Labour were turfed out.

Andy Burnham comes across as a decent bloke and I have to say I quite like him but is he leadership qualit ? I'm not convinced.

That said, they all have connections to a previous government that must have assumed that money grew on trees.
 
scorza said:
Ed Milliband now for me. I think when people see the effect of the government's unfair spending cuts on society people's appetite for a new new Labour will disappear rapidly. New Labour failed the country badly, as will the coalition - people will start to see that moving to a fairer more equal society is the only logical way forward.
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The problem is that the government can't force a more equal society, it can't make a more equal society, only equality of opportunity combined with equality of drive can do that.

Labour made society less equal, not more, despite giving massive benefit to those at the lower end.
 
Von Smallhausen said:
Really ?

The *******. I hate him now.
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Yup. There was quite a lot of debate when it happened about whether it was right to do that sort of thing or not. The Tories claimed that his (Labours) claims were false about them cutting treatment for breast cancer and such, and he claimed the opposite. It was a pretty shameful underhand tactic regardless.

I actually went to the same secondary school as him funnily enough.
 
RDM said:
How much do you think it will impact the average person though? NHS spending is staying put near enough so the the health system isn't going to change all that much. Education may be effected but that will take time to hit and will only impact those that use it. If you are on benefits or a public sector worker that gets made redundant obviously that will have an impact. But of the majority of people it will just be a little more expensive and a little less in the way of service.
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I think it's going to impact on us all enormously - just this week we heard of plans to reduce police numbers by 40,000. That's not coming from the army of back-end pen pushers the Daily Mail would have us all believe exist, but from the front line. You can't tell me that's not going to have an impact on crime and anti-social behaviour.

People use more public services than they think and as Joni Mitchell sang: "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone".
 
I'm sure there was a study done somewhere that showed that as the number of police officers increased, so did the incidents of crime and anti-social behaviour given the right circumstances. I'll try and find it.

In real world terms, the amount of crime and anti-social behaviour where I live hasn't changed in the slightest as the number of officers has increased. Infact, come to think of it the number of more serious crimes has probably increased. Ten years ago, nobody got shot here. In the past two years, there has been quite a few shootings and stabbings.
 
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Dolph said:
The problem is that the government can't force a more equal society, it can't make a more equal society, only equality of opportunity combined with equality of drive can do that.

Labour made society less equal, not more, despite giving massive benefit to those at the lower end.
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They can and there's plenty of evidence for that from other governments. Trade union membership is key, power in society is grossly disproportionately wielded by those at the top. Under a proper trade union framework, like exists in the Nordics and Germany, unions will act as a counter weight to that power.

Then there are other things that have worked in promoting equality in other countries, like protecting your key industries (every country does this except us) and subsidising food production to ensure a viable rural economy.

Yes inequality got worse under Labour, but at least they tried to do something and didn't pretend inequality wasn't an issue. At least they did manage to slow down the rate of inequality growth.
 
40,000 frontline officers are not being cut scorza.

It is tabloid and political scaremongering.

That is equivalent to disbanding the Metropolitan and West Yorkshire Police forces entirely. Police numbers will drop no doubt but not by 40,000 as that is around a third of all officers in England and Wales.
 
scorza said:
I think it's going to impact on us all enormously - just this week we heard of plans to reduce police numbers by 40,000. That's not coming from the army of back-end pen pushers the Daily Mail would have us all believe exist, but from the front line.
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You do realise you are just as bad as the Daily Mail don't you? As the above seems to be suggesting that all 40,000 are going to be front line officers.

scorza said:
You can't tell me that's not going to have an impact on crime and anti-social behaviour.
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Depends on how the cuts are done (which is a big problem as it makes sense politically to make cuts that impact the public the most).

scorza said:
People use more public services than they think and as Joni Mitchell sang: "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone".
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Obviously, as it seems that the best you can come up with so far is "40,000 less police officers!!!!!".
 
scorza said:
I think it's going to impact on us all enormously - just this week we heard of plans to reduce police numbers by 40,000. That's not coming from the army of back-end pen pushers the Daily Mail would have us all believe exist, but from the front line. You can't tell me that's not going to have an impact on crime and anti-social behaviour.

People use more public services than they think and as Joni Mitchell sang: "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone".
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Complete misrepresentation. We didn't hear of 'plans' at all. We heard the police federation (acting as a status quo pressure group) deciding that the budget cuts under discussion would require this.

Of course, despite police numbers being higher than ever before, we now have far fewer people doing basic frontline police work than ever before, so even if this figure is true, it's perfectly reasonable if the service is rescoped.
 
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