It has not been turned into a safe Labour seat. Their majority was 10.2%. Traditionally the definition of a safe seat has been a majority of at least 10% thus requiring a swing of at least 5% for the party in second place to win it. However, in the last few general elections there have been a lot of seats changing hands on swings of well over 5% so that definition no longer really applies.

Well, it's certainly a safer Labour seat than ever before, even moreso than the 1997 high water-mark!

 

(And yes, I know there's been a few minor boundary changes since then.)

I think it still says a lot that the Fib Dems cant even gain a seat where a major scandal took place and the sitting Labour MP got booted out of office.... They really should have taken that seat away from Labour no problems, but, I guess that's what happens when you deal with the Tory Devil....

Nick Clegg has just said he expects the Lib Dems will take the constituency at the next general election. I become more convinced that he's cracking up by the day.

Two more by-elections in the next few months, plus the Northern Irish Assembly and council elections. It's going to be an exciting few months in politics.

All leading up to the AV Referendum and Scottish Elections in May.

 

Salmond is still seething that the AV referendum is the same day as the Holyrood election.

 

 

Personally i'd push through another few dozen meaningless Referendums to be voted for on the same day just to p*** him off further :kink:

Nick Clegg has just said he expects the Lib Dems will take the constituency at the next general election. I become more convinced that he's cracking up by the day.

If it's held under AV there's a better chance. However, if the Tories get their way there's no knowing what the constituency will look like at the next election.

Two questions:

 

Is AV voting by percentage (i.e. 42% over 24% matters, and the number of seats don't matter)?

 

How on earth does Clegg think he'll get ANY seat in the next election, never mind a Labour one...

 

 

The coalition got more votes than Labour, which shows that Labour are still not Number One in that area, as a LD vote is no different from a C Vote and vice-versa now, but the polls now have Labour luckily in a very nice 8% lead, the cuts are pushing in, and the Lib Dems are crawling towards 0%! Good times for the Left (Centre-Right?!)... though I'll be voting Green next, no Social Democratic party for me there though, which I think we should have now, following the Nordic Model.

Two questions:

 

Is AV voting by percentage (i.e. 42% over 24% matters, and the number of seats don't matter)?

 

How on earth does Clegg think he'll get ANY seat in the next election, never mind a Labour one...

The coalition got more votes than Labour, which shows that Labour are still not Number One in that area, as a LD vote is no different from a C Vote and vice-versa now, but the polls now have Labour luckily in a very nice 8% lead, the cuts are pushing in, and the Lib Dems are crawling towards 0%! Good times for the Left (Centre-Right?!)... though I'll be voting Green next, no Social Democratic party for me there though, which I think we should have now, following the Nordic Model.

Under AV you vote for candidates in order of preference. If no candidate gets 50% of first preference votes the bottom candidate is eliminated and their second preference votes are redistributed among the other candidates. That continues until one candidate has 50% of the votes.

 

See the member awards thread for examples of AV in action

 

http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=123064

The Labour leadership has rightly disowned that Illsley guy, so he's definitely going to get kicked out even if he isn't jailed for more than a year. Obviously Ed Miliband will have MAJOR problems if he can't hold such a rock-solid safe seat.

 

I'm from Barnsley and of course Labour will hold that seat! Rock-solid Labour seat.

Thanks alot Suedehead :D

Off to see the GLORIOUS LEADER at the Fabian Conference tomorrow, should be good http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/images/icons/disco.gif I'll be jotting down a report on it if anyone's interested, and counting how many times he says or alludes to 'change'.

Off to see the GLORIOUS LEADER at the Fabian Conference tomorrow, should be good http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/images/icons/disco.gif I'll be jotting down a report on it if anyone's interested, and counting how many times he says or alludes to 'change'.

 

Yep, I'd love to see it when you've written it! :D It sounds like his speech was pretty good from the bits I've heard.

Nick Clegg's "pleasant surprise"

 

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Observer/Columnist/Columnists/2011/1/15/1295094581283/Chris-Riddell-16-January--003.jpg

Ha, the whole thing was about change! I've got about six pages of notes to type up and collate on the whole thing, so I'll hopefully have it up by tomorrow...

Right, I just spent the last few hours typing this up, so I hope a few people at least read it!

 

Ed's learned the lessons, but can he pass the test?

 

(Before I begin this article, I should probably give full disclosure: I’m a first year politics student at the University of Essex, and have been a member of the Labour Party since 2009 and am a new member of the Fabian Society, having joined the week before the Conference at the same time I bought my ticket. I self-identify on the moderate left of the party and voted for Ed Miliband in the leadership election.)

 

I entered the Conference Hall on Saturday morning fairly sure of what to expect from Ed Miliband’s speech, having accidentally read a spoiler of its themes for myself by reading the Guardian article early that morning, in my wakeful daze having not thought that it was likely a leading article from the Leader of the Opposition would likely have some connection to the speech he was about to deliver that day. Doubtless most of you are aware of the basic thrust of the speech, so I shall skip to the critique: to boil it down, I was impressed with Ed’s repeated and correct assertions for the reasons why Labour lost – the key point of substance (I shall critique the third later) being that we had been simultaneously overbearingly statist in some areas and had too slavishly idolised the key tenets of the free market in others, but moreover that we had tended to take these approaches in the wrong areas when it came to connecting with the public – hence the public decrying of target culture and managerialism in public services, and leaving Middle England too susceptible to the financial crisis by allowing markets to let rip when wages couldn’t keep pace, forcing them to turn to borrowing and creating an unstable economy where inequality bred financial instability - indeed, the key point of the whole crisis: note how it was triggered by the excess of subprime mortgages lent and borrowed in the absinthe dream of economic overconfidence.

 

Miliband is correct in the analysis that Labour lost as the offer of little but more of the same for the future past ‘securing the recovery’ was painfully inadequate and unappealing to a public that had tired of the top-down bureaucratic culture within the public services and the neoliberal consensus - the latter element being my personal opinion on why no one party failed to win the election, as no one major party articulated a viable (or, indeed, any) alternative to this financial system despite the havoc it had just wrought on the lives of so many within the country as a result of the biggest market failure the world has ever seen. His ideas, therefore, of incorporating social justice into the heart of our economy through measures such as the living wage - one of the few solid policies up on offer at the moment prior to the policy review, and a powerfully populist one that fits into the leitmotif of the fairer economy which it’s safe to say the next election will likely be based around – and promotion of co-operatives impressed on their own and went down well in the hall.

 

However, there are two prospective key weaknesses here: the ‘fairer economy’ is an admirable aim, yet one which we will find difficult to seize as our own without policies beyond the likes of the living wage – at which point we possibly leave ourselves susceptible to the charge of being the ‘same old tax and spend party’ from our opponents and many of the voters who came to Labour in 1997 but left from the 2005 election onwards, although given Miliband mentioned the risks of the overly statist and purely redistributive government as being one of our failings under New Labour, I’m confident and willing to hear what he potentially offers as further solutions for government ensuring that social justice is at the heart of the economy. Be that as it may, the susceptibility to being labeled as the same old Labour which belied us the 1992 election may mean that we do not get a proper hearing in our arguments for a fairer economy – for though it would be a more stable one, much of the public will not necessarily connect to it in quite that way for the second reason I’m about to go on to. Let us not forget that Major won the 1992 election in the midst of a recession, and that no matter how much pain the Tory-led government inflicts upon the public it will almost win the next one if Labour cannot be taken seriously on the economy, so we will need to have something to offer to the public as well as the idealism of a fairer economy preserving communities if we are to be given a fair hearing and be considered as credible treasurers of the public purse. A part of that has to come with admitting a painful truth: that we were responsible for overspending to an extent prior to the financial crisis: though this was not the main contributing factor to the deficit. On this, the facts are there: a structural deficit of about 5.7% of GDP was in existence prior to the global financial crisis, as we did not fully adhere to Gordon Brown’s Golden Rule and the PSNCR limits as advised by the EU. Granted, we were not alone in doing this, but nonetheless we were overspending to an extent. However, this is not an intellectual capitulation to the Tories, and nor should it be interpreted as so: admitting that we overspent is a different argument entirely to the one over the current cuts, and would serve more as a sign to the public that we had changed and recognised where we had gone wrong on the economy – after all, saying cuts are required is not the same as saying we need cuts as fast and hard as possible, due to the current context of our economy. We are, at least, saying that cuts would be necessary, but whilst we need to drive home the point that the current crisis is not even mainly Labour’s fault, we cannot get away with absolving ourselves of all culpability otherwise the public simply will not take us seriously in the future on the economy.

 

And, to my second point on a prospective weakness: the language that we use in advertising ourselves as the party of government and re-establishing Labour as a party to be trusted on the economy. Though Miliband’s speech was well suited to the Fabian Society, in speaking in terms of broad ideas and concepts to a mainly academically-minded and politically involved audience, and he clearly doesn’t have problems with public speaking (having connected very well with the audience through his self-evident passion, and having mastered the art of putting them at ease with alternately amusingly vainglorious and self-deprecating humour), much of the language he has used in putting out Labour’s stall hasn’t really been hugely effective in communicating what we stand for to the public – indeed, it’s clear he recognises this himself, having mentioned that the ‘squeezed middle’ was likely a term for the scrapheap, after his by-now infamous performance on Radio 4’s Today where he gave six definitions of the term. But still, Labour’s current poll ratings are more a result of disenchantment with the governing Tory-led coalition, rather than Ed having captured the public’s imagination – as is apparent from his personal approval ratings, which, while high compared to Cameron and Clegg, are barely hovering above neutral in one of the lowest ratings at this point in his tenure as Leader of the Opposition compared to those that have gone before him (although this may, admittedly, be more down to his policy of underpromising in order to prevent heightened expectations which cannot be met). However, this is also a likely result of the very airy, vague language which he has used up until this point which is meaningless to the majority of everyday (would it be too ironic to use the phrase ‘Alarm Clock’?) Britons – with particular reference to key elements of the speech, such as the third point which expounded that Labour had only governed when it had been ‘the standard-bearer of the progressive majority’ in the country. A glaring problem with politics in this country currently is the tendency of all three parties to slip into such clichéd language that means nothing in practice and therefore leads to further disenchantment with politics amongst the public – a basic rule of thumb on this that I’ve found to hold true is that if opposing a maxim would be pretty much unheard of (‘I’m against being progressive!’, ‘I don’t think society should be bigger!’), it isn’t worth saying unless you have something solid and tangible to back it up with.

 

This is an area where Ed could learn a lot from the campaigns of the other leadership candidates – Burnham and Balls in particular, who came up with ideas grounded in day to day life which were easily communicable; ideas such as the land value tax or increases in house building to deal with the painful shortage of social housing in this country. The latter point in particular was harnessed to much rapture during the Democracy Dragons event at the end of the day by Emma Burnell, who proposed a tax on bankers’ bonuses in order to fund a large-scale construction project of social housing – a masterstroke which would at once deal with the issue of bankers’ profligacy (one of the few issues which unites Guardianistas and Mail readers in outrage, and one we should exploit to the fullest given the government seems determined to turn this issue into an own goal), housing shortages, and go some way towards dealing with that old chestnut of anti-immigrant sentiment – the idea that ‘they get all the houses’. This led to a line from Mehdi Hasan which forms the crux of my argument here, and neatly crystallises my point – ‘You can have left-wing populism too, there isn’t just right-wing populism’. The main problem Miliband faces in communicating how he has learned the lessons of Labour’s failures comes in his inability thus far to communicate with the public how the Party has and will change in a populist manner.

 

In this, I would say the two key figures of the day were Deborah Mattinson, there as the representative of Britain Thinks, an organisation whose findings ought to be key in the orchestration of Labour’s campaign in the next election, and Lord Glasman, who expounded upon a lot of Miliband’s vision in his keynote speech of a Labour Party committed to nurturing a localist and community-based outlook – a socially traditionalist ‘Blue Labour’ vision married to an economy more considerate of developing local communities and restoring co-operative traditions; a vision which could very easily subsume and alter Cameron’s garbled idea of the Big Society (particularly as an idea for making easy cutbacks to public spending – something which ought to be in harmony with and not a substitute for localism.). Miliband has the knowledge of how we lost the voters over the last thirteen years: now he needs to show that he can appeal to these voters, and Glasman and Mattinson, in concert with the ideas derived from Lakoff’s ‘Don’t Think of an Elephant’ (a treatise referred to during the Conference by Chuka Umunna which holds that framing the issues that they can connect with voters aspirations is far more important than policy – a tactic used to great success by the Republican Party in the USA over the last few decades, and in fitting with the idea Miliband expressed in his conclusion that we ought to make our politics the common sense of our age – something New Labour excelled at) have the potential to be key figures behind any manifestation of this.

 

And so, to conclude. Miliband was convincing in his assessment of the many areas Labour went wrong over the last thirteen years in our disconnect from what the public wanted – be it through overcommitment to the power of the free market to fuel equitable distribution and improved public services, and through subscription to the view of the state as possessing all the wisdom in top-down judgement in public services – a disconnect which manifested itself in public discontent with New Labour, be it through the mocking of the tabloids and our abandonment by them, or the eventual financial crisis which clattered into our nation and which we failed to seize upon and explain effectively. However, his visions have potential weakness (which could admittedly be already realised and be being dealt with in the policy reviews of the next two years) in how they leave the Party’s economic credibility and in how Miliband communicates them – though he is personally a good speaker, he needs to adopt a language accessible to the wider public and speak in concepts with which he can connect with them and their hopes and aspirations much as Blair did thirteen years ago. One easy way he could do this would be to adopt some substantive and costed tangible policies, such as land value tax or a construction project of social housing funded by a one-off bankers’ tax. If he can restore Labour’s economic credibility and make Labour accessible to the wider public once more in these ways, then victory at the next election would be much more likely.

 

-

 

(Two postscripts: Miliband’s idea on underpromising, which I questioned him on on the day, is one I see the merits of but am also wary of. He gave a convincing answer in that New Labour was able to come into power off of a fairly modest manifesto in 1997, but I do fear that underpromising could potentially lead to disaster without an aforementioned solid policy which we can both guarantee and which would help to re-establish economic credibility amongst the wider public – we will, after all, need the chance to overperform to our underpromising, which we won’t be able to do if all the parties are dismissed as liars and we lose out as the liars who promise a lesser future than the others!

 

Secondly, the various events of the day itself were almost universally enjoyable and engaging, with the exception of the lunchtime Young Fabians fringe event, which had all the energy and excitement of an accountant’s funeral. The audience was noticeably unengaged, and the speakers did not seem ideally suited to the event – with the possible exception of Richard Serunjogi, who would have been far better suited had he had more pace to his speaking, and the definite exception of Rushanara Ali, who had a real charisma to her and clearly has a big future ahead of her within the Party. Overall though I was disappointed that an event which was focused on ways of re-engaging the youth vote with the Labour Party was in itself so very dull and unengaging!)

Miliband seems determined to address the issue of why Labour lost far more readily they did after they last lost power in 1979. Neil Kinnock started the process in 1983 but it wasn't until after the 1992 defeat that they realised they needed to take a good look at themselves. Similarly, the Tories didn't really look at themselves until Michael Howard became leader with Cameron accelerating the process.

 

Is he right about overspending? I'd say he's half right. Part of Labour's problem was that they were far more keen on spending money than on raising it. Of course that was made worse by the economic downturn which led to a dramatic fall in tax revenue. Even so, they should have raised taxes - particularly introducing the new 50% rate - earlier.

 

I've thought for some years that Labour undersold their successes. They could have used newspaper headlines - even negative ones - to demonstrate how things had improved. For example, in the last years of John Major's administration, headlines about the NHS tended to be about the length of waiting lists, whether the number of people waiting or the average length of the wait. In the last few years, they have been more about individual cases such as a person being left on a trolley in a corridor. Yes that's still bad news, but it's only news because it's the exception. It wasn't news in 1997 because it happened more often and was, in any event, considered less important than the overall issue of waiting lists.

 

Miliband also needs to decide how Labour should respond to the Daily Mail and the Express. We all know how they distort things - just look at today's headline in one of them about Nick Clegg's plans for parental leave. Labour need to decide whether they are going to confront this sort of nonsense or just ignore it. While they are in opposition they probably need to confront it so they need to work out how.

Great article Tyron! :)

 

I agree with quite a lot of what you say about the importance of Ed not just resorting to empty soundbites... but, with that said, I do think he's onto something with the "squeezed middle", just so long as he defines it more firmly. I also think he's right, to an extent, to say that he wants to under-promise and overdeliver. If he went down the Clegg route of promising an all-new, sunny, infinitely better Britain, or the Cameron route of jumping on a million bandwagons and making a load of commitments which you won't keep, not only would Ed be setting himself up for a fall after getting into power, I also think people would be very wary of a politician doing that again precisely becaue of Cleggeron. But I do think two years for this policy review is way too long - not only is there (imo) still a good prospect of an election before long, it would also cast him possibly irretreivably in the public's mind as a lightweight. Labour need to have a pretty complete set of policies by the end of 2011 I think.

 

With regards to spending/the deficit while Labour were in power - I think Ed is politically playing it right by saying it isn't Labour's fault. Did they let the deficit get too high before the financial crisis? Yes, maybe a bit - it was a mistake for Brown to keep cutting taxes while continuing to spend highly - but, in saying that, it's understandable that he assumed they'd be able to fairly smoothly close the gap within a few years, as absolutely no-one saw the sharp downturn (and consequential collapse in tax revenues) coming until mid-2007. BUT I think it would be a mistake for Ed to say that they let the deficit get a bit too high, as that would allow the debate to remain on the Tories' terms, and would support, in the public's mind, the government's argument that all debt is evil and that the deficit must be gotten rid of within a few years regardless of the consequences. And, in any case, they can argue (correctly) that debt was low by historic standards and compared to the G20 heading into the crisis, and that neither the Tories or the Lib Dems ever said they were overspending at the time. Imo, Ed needs to hug the Labour government's record on the economy and public services close (as it's going to be looking like a golden age pretty soon), while disowning other parts of their record (Iraq, ID cards, obsession with spin, too permissive attitude to banks and tax avoidance) to show they've changed.

Danny makes a good point about timing of policies. But there are really two reasons why Labour need some reasonably firm policies soon. As Danny says, there is still a good deal of uncertainty about when the next election will be. But there's also a difference between a party which has been in opposition for several years and a party which was in government very recently. The Tories and Lib Dems have every right to ask Labour what they would have cut if they had been in power. After all, Labour can't use the excuse that they didn't know how bad things were (leaving aside any arguments about the extent to which the government have exaggerated how bad things are).

 

If the coalition does last until 2014 or 15 though, Labour are going to have to adapt to a changing situation. So any policies announced this year may have to be abandoned by the time of the next election. Doing that without being labelled as flip-flopping won't be easy, particularly with a largely hostile press.

The Barnsley Central byelection will be on March 3.

Figures obtained by Newsnight prove the Tories soft-peddled their Oldham campaign to prop up the Lib Dems - despite being by far the wealthiest party, the Tories spent half as much on their campaign as did Labour and the Lib Dems, and even spent £4000 less than UKIP! Proof if ever there was that the Lib Dems are fast becoming a client party to the Tories - propped up when it suits their masters, but mercilessly trashed when it doesn't (e.g. in the No to AV campaign, where the Tories are apparently happy to let "AV = Clegg and tuition fees" be the main argument; and in the many Tory-Lib marginals at the next election).