The labour Leader thread...
- Thread starter easyrider
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Deleted member 66701
Deleted member 66701
But he's not hard left?????
Which makes it easier to nationalise in the future
They key to a successful take over is to erode the value of the business so you can get it at a knock down price.
Being hard left has nothing to do with immigration policy & ignoring crime, neither are his policies that far left of many parts of mainland Europe (Germany/Norway/Denmark level socialism). He isn't a communist as the media is making out.
Free education, public ownership of utilities, rent controls & high level investment in infrastructure & high tech manufacturing are hardly extreme left.
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Basically, what he says appeals to a massive amount of the left wing voters, so he is very popular with them and the has been a surge of new/young Labour party members willing to vote for him. Overall he is a frontrunner because he is extremely electible with the Labour voters.
The flipside is that he doesn't appeal to any right wing voters, and doesn't appeal to most centre voters either (and the are more centre voters than left or right wing voters).
So while he is very electable in a Labour leader election he is virtually unelectable in a general election and would almost certainly do worse than Miliband. This is why Labour figures are urging people to vote with their heads not their hearts, because although he is more of a "Labour man" than the other candidates, they know the British public will never elect a "Labour man".
As Mr Jack keeps pointing out, there is no definite 'centre point' it moves to the left and right dependent on media, general trends in society etc
Lets stop being so sure about who is and who isn't electable in 5 years time. We've got 5 years of austerity squeezing of the 'middle' by the current government yet. We'll just have to wait and see how they feel about the Conservatives after that.
Soldato
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As part of the squeezed middle I'm not imagining that at Corbyn Government will deliver any improvement in my living standards. I'm 40 years old and in my mind Labour is synonymous with economic mis-management. The idea of the most Left wing leader of Labour since Foot doesn't attract me at all.
Well, I'm classed as one of the upper earners, who hasn't been and won't be adversely affected by the Tories policies and I'm interested in voting for him - my standard of living should be dropping to help those worse off than me, but due to the Tories I'm better off....which isn't right.
Deleted member 66701
Deleted member 66701
Ditto.
Other than the increase in tuition fees and child ben cap, I'm doing pretty well under a Tory government - but I feel for those that aren't.
But I'd happily pay a bit more tax to see services improved (esp for the less well off/in need/unemployed/young) and I want to see income equality minimised so that my children can choose worthwhile careers (i.e. teaching, engineering, research) without thinking they are selling themselves short salary wise. Nationalisation is also very important in my eyes as it guarantee a service for my children and thier children and so on without that service being dependent of "if the market allows it".
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Yes in your mind, in reality there are no better or worse than the Conservatives for economic policy over quite some time.
Somehow, when an economic crash happens under Labour, the electorate seem to apply that blame to them (which is stupid when it's a global crash). Yes money was indeed wasted back then, but it's being wasted now, was before & will be in the future.
Soldato
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All the leftie papers (all two them) have declared who they want there readership to vote for, The Mirror wants you to back the bungler of Mid Staffs hospital and snobby the Guardian has gone with the non entity that's Yvette cooper.
The Labour leadership election is from a conservative point of view is something the laugh about and mock and the ridiculous way it's been run. For a Labour party it's caused deep divides and hasn't addressed ANY of the problems which caused them to buried in the last election. And from a neutral stand point it's just bizarre, her you have the traditional left wing party of the UK scared stiff by a potential leader who is campaigning on traditional labour values.
Somebody has to take the blame for the rescission the UK suffered and due to the policies of the government leading up to the crash a banking sector collapse was going to hurt the UK more so then other countries due the amount of tax revenue the city generated. The captain of the ship ultimately is held responsible for when his ship sinks and that's what happened with Gordon Brown.
The Labour leadership election is from a conservative point of view is something the laugh about and mock and the ridiculous way it's been run. For a Labour party it's caused deep divides and hasn't addressed ANY of the problems which caused them to buried in the last election. And from a neutral stand point it's just bizarre, her you have the traditional left wing party of the UK scared stiff by a potential leader who is campaigning on traditional labour values.
Somebody has to take the blame for the rescission the UK suffered and due to the policies of the government leading up to the crash a banking sector collapse was going to hurt the UK more so then other countries due the amount of tax revenue the city generated. The captain of the ship ultimately is held responsible for when his ship sinks and that's what happened with Gordon Brown.
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Soldato
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I don't blame Labour for the crash, I think I have said as much in SC threads. I blame them for running a deficit during the boom and not fixing the roof when the sun is shining. I blame them for PFI and a bucket load of off the books debt. I blame them for screwing the pensions industry with the removed tax relief on dividends. I blame them for massively increasing the size of state spending on the false permise of an end to boom and bust. But I don't blame them for the crash. I would say the way they acted to stem the banking crisis was good and although I believe that banks shouldn't be too big to fail it plainly wasn't the right time to apply that. I also grew up being told how previous Labour Governments had screwed up economically, I think it is in the DNA of the British left.
Deleted member 66701
Deleted member 66701
Actually, that can be traced back to Thatcher with the Big Bang in 1986 and the subsequent regulatory changes that followed - which the Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron governments have done nothing to fix.
TLDR - it's Thatchers fault - but as there wasn't a lot of difference between Thatcher and Major/Blair/Brown/Cameron it's a bit of a moot point blaming any one government from the 80's onward for the problems we face currently.
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it was brown that separated the BoE and created the toothless FSA, essentially doing the same as the US when they repealed the Glass-Steagal Act. This was a significant contribution to why the crash happened both here and the US, and is only a small example as to why Brown was a complete moron.
I'm not arguing that there were bad policies before (because there were) and i'm not saying that the tories would have done anything different (we will never know), but to suggest that labours involvement in the economy had nothing to do with the financial crash (when London is one of the major financial capitals of the world) is frankly ridiculous.
Deleted member 66701
Deleted member 66701
Which Thatcher paved the way for.............
Blair and Brown are just Thatchers dirty love children anyway, so arguing whther it was the Tories fault or Labours fault is an irrelevance, as they are both essentially the same - although hopefully that will change soon.
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You are aware that a majority of the policies regarding the economy were supported by the right wing at that point also.
It's a fiction to believe there is a notable difference, as we could just as easily go into the economic damage this government has caused by stagnating growth with excessive cuts. I have no issue slating Labour for messing up economically, they have - I do on the other hand have a problem with people pretending this is a problem with just Labour (the reality is the economic performance of all political entities is very similar if you look at the actual data).
The real difference in economic performance is the rhetoric in the majoritively right wing media regarding this (colour blindness for blue being a key illness which the media suffers from regarding economic mismanagement). Rhetoric which has been swallowed uncritically & without any regard for the actual data or facts on the subject by the plebs.
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You could say that it was failures by Heath / Wilson / Callaghan in the 1970's which led to many of the Thatcher doctrines. History is like that. It is not possible to divorce effect and consequence or vice versa.
Soldato
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That is not an unreasonable comment, even at the time my thoughts were that the inept Conservative oposition were trying to wear New labour's clothes on the economy because they thought it was electorally the only place to be, rather than it was where they wanted to be. Until the fiscal problems of 2008 onwards any suggestion of cutting the size of the state was met with pure contempt, and for a lot of people still is, as demonstrated by the support of Corbyn.