The main responsibility for "looking after hardworking families", financially speaking, should rest with their employer. Somehow no party seems willing to say that.

The main responsibility for "looking after hardworking families", financially speaking, should rest with their employer. Somehow no party seems willing to say that.

 

Don't be silly, big businesses are beyond criticism, we should just be grateful they're creating wealth for us and take any of the scraps they have the grace to throw at the rest of us.

 

**

 

I said on here a few weeks ago this Budget could potentially put the Tories back in the lead in the polls, but I doubt it now. It's just an assorted jumble of measures with no consistent message or theme running through it -- despite politicians consistently underestimating the average person's intelligence, people don't just vote for a party as if they're shopping for the best "deal", people are pretty canny at seeing through when politicians are just blatantly trying to get votes rather than trying to promote specific principles or a consistent message.

 

Not that Labour have anything to be happy about since (I may possibly have mentioned this before) they have even less of a consistent message than the Conservatives. Dan Hodges changed the habit of a lifetime today, by actually being right about something when he said that Labour's current message basically boils down to them shouting "you smell!" at the Conservatives, with all their tired soundbites about them being "out of touch". But that's the inevitable consequence of triangulating away all your principles and your distinctiveness -- if you're too scared to say anything remotely radical, then all you have left is dumb mindless tribalism and petty personal insults.

 

 

You can see on the BBC (here) how the budget will effect you.

 

I will be £136 better off over the next financial year. Yay. £11.33/month better off.

 

Dear God..... and who said the Conservatives had a patronising idea of the working class?

Edited March 19, 201411 yr by Danny

In fairness to Ed (though it was a dreadful speech), the rumour is that the Chancellor's Office broke the standing gentleman's agreement to send the opposition a briefing on the Budget an hour before it began, at which point he would have had literally nothing to respond to (and winging it on criticism of a budget measure without it being checked first is pretty dangerous - better a bad speech than potentially coming out with an outright falsehood the media could hold up). Pretty out of order on the Tories' part if true.

Two polls tonight have the Labour lead at just 1%. Wake-up call, etc.

 

EDIT: And Sunday Times frontpage claims "Labour's knives come out for Miliband". Think I'll go and put a bet on Andy Burnham to be next prime minister.

Edited March 22, 201411 yr by Danny

Two polls tonight have the Labour lead at just 1%. Wake-up call, etc.

 

EDIT: And Sunday Times frontpage claims "Labour's knives come out for Miliband". Think I'll go and put a bet on Andy Burnham to be next prime minister.

I'd be interested to see who you think would actually challenge him.

I'd be interested to see who you think would actually challenge him.

 

Who, Andy Burnham? If you mean Ed Miliband, he doesn't need to be formally challenged in practice, does he? If enough MPs come out and tell him to go, that would be it. And that's extremely likely: considering he's progressively sacrificed all his principles over the past 2 years (apart from some brief periods, like late last year, before he once again gave into the idiots in the shadow cabinet), his entire pitch to the party was "I know the policies aren't what you want, but it's what's needed to get elected". If it doesn't look like he's going to get elected, what's he got left?

 

There's no getting around the fact one of the most winnable elections of recent times is about to be thrown away because of the Labour elite's arrogance and lack of backbone and principles, and their willful blindness to the eminently obvious fact that their "centre-ground" "credible" policy ideas are about as popular as Fred Goodwin.

Edited March 22, 201411 yr by Danny

I have to say, the Budget aftermath has worried me - although probably for entirely different reasons to Danny. The pensions reform is on a totally different level as policies go, to a point where I don't know if I'm for it or against it (although I'm leaning towards for - though there is the danger it could all come back to haunt us in about twenty years, but hey - it's their money that they earned, so they're more than within their right to do with it as they want). It's massive in terms of how it affects so many people and I'm being entirely serious when I say I think it might go down (along with the cuts) as the policy this government is most remembered for. It's had a lot of serious thought go into it clearly, and you only have to look at how we have absolutely no idea what to say in response to it to tell how much of a masterstroke of a move it is.

 

I think it's quite revealing that Labour's lead being cut to 1 isn't down to Labour falling but the Conservatives rising - I think a fair few of the affluent 40-65 bloc who might have been leaning Ukip will have been tempted back. If there is a bit of solace here, it hasn't been so effective as to give the Conservatives a lead, and the Budget effect will likely wear off soon unless there's more good news for the Conservatives.

 

(And I'd save your money Danny. The odds of someone who became leader the year before winning the election have to be pretty low. Yeah, the media isn't as influential as it once was - but Burnham (and anyone else for that matter) would get utterly slaughtered by them on the basis of how 'divided and unready' Labour are and how 'inexperienced' the leader is. I mean Ed'll probably get similarly harsh treatment from the media but when has a divided party ever won a general election? I know you like to decry all these things as 'process' and 'Westminster bubble obsession' but it does matter. People do get put off if the party looks like a mess.)

Also, Ed would require a formal leadership challenge unless he resigned - so you are right that a Shadow Cabinet challenge would be enough, but that probably wouldn't be the case unless the majority of the Shadow Cabinet found someone to unite behind and elect immediately without an extended leadership election. That person would almost certainly not be Andy Burnham - Yvette would be a more likely consensus candidate, but there are enough people looking for a 'stop Yvette' candidate at the next leadership election that even she wouldn't get it. Hence, a collective request from the Shadow Cabinet for Ed to resign would be very unlikely, because they would not want a contest this close to the election, so they'd only do it if they could agree on a leader to install.

 

The threshold for a leadership challenge post-Collins is (I believe) now about 15% of Labour MPs - so ~39 MPs - and that's 39 MPs nominating someone else (i.e. you can't just have 39 MPs say 'we want Ed to step down!'. They have to nominate another person to challenge him in a contest). I could not see anything outside of an efficient and co-ordinated campaign getting those 39 MPs to request a leadership challenge - there would have to be more than dissatisfaction with Ed driving it (even if they did think we were going to lose, there are other considerations: would it be good for Labour to have a leadership election this close to the election? Can we afford a leadership election? Could whoever won actually win the election - would it be worth it having the election? If they would probably still lose, would it not be better to wait until after the next election rather than having a good candidate crippled by undoubtedly ferocious attacks in a leadership election and a likely defeat in the general election?).

 

Not only would it need 39 MPs, but it would need one leadership candidate to have the balls this close to the next election to break ranks from the party loyalty - which is unprecedented in Labour after just four years in opposition, given normally we're tearing shreds out of each other at this point. As such, any leadership challenger would immediately be quite unpopular with a lot of the party for breaking unity, unless there were significant demand from below and from the grassroots for another leader (from the actual Labour grassroots, there is dissatisfaction with Ed but not much actual demand for a new leader as most don't see what any other leader would have done - and chances are you wouldn't get the manifesto you're looking for from anyone to the right of John McDonnell Danny). Hence, there'd probably be a 'Draft XYZ!' movement before any challenger actually stepped out and took the risk, and it would all be very calculated - they wouldn't do it until they knew for certain they didn't just have the 39 votes, but had enough to beat Ed. I can't see that happening as things stand.

Changing leader going into an election does absolutely no good to anyone. Shining example of this is Australia where they now have a backwards incompetent racist dickhead as a leader because Labor couldn't get a grip and stop fighting with itself for long enough to fight Abbott.

 

Labour has a year to get a grip and sort it's shit out. If Milliband loses then you can oust him, just don't cock it all up this close to an election. The public will think you are disorganised and they won't trust you to run a country when you can't even run a political party.

(although in fairness Rudd probably did better than Gillard would've done, although if they had to change the horses they should've done long before then)

I think it's quite revealing that Labour's lead being cut to 1 isn't down to Labour falling but the Conservatives rising - I think a fair few of the affluent 40-65 bloc who might have been leaning Ukip will have been tempted back. If there is a bit of solace here, it hasn't been so effective as to give the Conservatives a lead, and the Budget effect will likely wear off soon unless there's more good news for the Conservatives.

 

Yes, but Labour could and should be winning over those UKIP voters. Despite the as-always comically inept media characterising "KIPpers" as lifelong Tories, most of them are actually traditional swing voters -- they voted Labour between 1997 and 2005, and many of them said they were going to vote Labour earlier in this parliament (especially in 2012). The Progress thinktankbots and the like don't want to see it because it would be conceding all their lifelong painfully over-academic theories were completely wrong, but the "centre ground" doesn't exist at all -- swing voters are typically people who pay little attention to politics and often feel alienated, so they typically go for the party who projects a coherent message which is clear enough to get through to people who pay little attention to politics. They were saying they were going to vote UKIP in 2013, because both main parties were incoherent messes obsessed with their own political games while UKIP projected a clear (if disingenuous) message of "We're against the status quo and 21st-century Britain". But, now that the Tories are atleast defining themselves clearly (even though that definition is not particularly popular), they're drifting over to them - and that's going to continue as long as Labour continue with their "nuanced" (aka: confused and contradictory) messages such as "We're against the Tories' cuts, but we're in favour of big cuts ourselves, just nice fluffy cuts", or "We're against how the Tories treat welfare claimants, but we're still going to vote for a welfare cap and dither for ages about the bedroom tax and only finally say we're against months after even Nigel Farage condemned it".

 

 

Changing leader going into an election does absolutely no good to anyone. Shining example of this is Australia where they now have a backwards incompetent racist dickhead as a leader because Labor couldn't get a grip and stop fighting with itself for long enough to fight Abbott.

 

Labour has a year to get a grip and sort it's shit out. If Milliband loses then you can oust him, just don't cock it all up this close to an election. The public will think you are disorganised and they won't trust you to run a country when you can't even run a political party.

 

I don't necessarily agree. Most countries (not least the US) only pick their candidates for elections within a year before election day. I think there would be time for a new Labour leader to be accepted by the public, as long as s/he very quickly actually defined what s/he stood for in politics and what the "direction" for a Labour government would be, rather than do what Ed Miliband did by purposely trying not to say anything interesting or radical which results in painfully vacuous soundbites and speeches, and the sense that he doesn't believe in anything.

 

I also don't really agree a new leader with a more definite leftwing direction would mean the party would be disorganised or not united. Don't underestimate just how little enthusiasm people in the party have for the toxic New Labour "programme", even among moderate members (people have been sitting on their anger purely because they don't want to ruin chances of winning, but if it looks like we're not going to win anyway then you can bet it will all start coming out). If the likes of the useless NewLabour people like Ed Balls, Caroline Flint, Jim Murphy etc, who all put their career before principles, were consigned to the backbenches and their ideas rejected, there would be virtually no tears shed.

Edited March 23, 201411 yr by Danny

The difference is that there's no 'leader' per se of the Democrat/Republican parties. It's accepted there that presidential candidates are only chosen the year before - that happening doesn't show a divided party. That isn't the convention here, and it's a very different situation - it would be the equivalent of an American party choosing their presidential candidate a few years before then changing it midway. That definitely wouldn't go down well (hell, the closest equivalent - the Democrats having to change their VP candidate in 1972 - left the Democrats a total laughing stock going into that election. They'd have probably lost it anyway, but it was one of the two biggest things that took them down), and regardless of whether we united around the new leader or not (more likely not in my view unless we dramatically had someone's profile raise to have them become a consensus candidate in the next few months) it'd be universally portrayed as a sign of massive division in Labour if we did ditch Ed.

 

I'm not saying that a new leader with a more definite leftwing direction would mean the party would be disorganised/disunited. I'm saying any new leader would invariably mean the party would be disorganised and disunited (or at least portrayed that way). The likelihood of there being a consensus successor is about zero. Hence, there'd be a scrap and probably a lot of rancour regardless who won. We got over it fairly quickly in 2010. A year before a general election, where differing visions of how to fight that election would probably be contested in that leadership election? No chance.

 

Also :manson: at the implication that just because someone is New Labour they must have put their career before their principles. Sorry Danny, just because they aren't identical to your principles doesn't mean they betrayed their principles. Also a bit bizarre given the likes of Caroline have established a bit of a profile in opposition - she was the one who did the work leading into the energy bill freeze for example. For all you'd like to insist everyone moderate is just a deluded robot without an original idea who just betrayed any principle for the sake of promotion (yeah, you do get a couple like that, but trust me when I say they're in the minority - and very few ever make it that far up), if you actually look at the work most of these people have been doing it just isn't the case.

Also :manson: at the implication that just because someone is New Labour they must have put their career before their principles. Sorry Danny, just because they aren't identical to your principles doesn't mean they betrayed their principles. Also a bit bizarre given the likes of Caroline have established a bit of a profile in opposition - she was the one who did the work leading into the energy bill freeze for example. For all you'd like to insist everyone moderate is just a deluded robot without an original idea who just betrayed any principle for the sake of promotion (yeah, you do get a couple like that, but trust me when I say they're in the minority - and very few ever make it that far up), if you actually look at the work most of these people have been doing it just isn't the case.

 

I don't think anyone who doesn't have identical principles to me is unprincipled. Hell, I don't think Thatcher was unprincipled, and her principles are the polar opposite to mine.

 

What I do think is unprincipled is if you join a party committed to fighting for equality, a welfare state and for the most disadvantaged, but then say "getting myself into government is the most important thing, policies and principles are secondary" and advocate slashing the state further and crushing the poorest people, and putting big business-men and international bond-market investors ahead of them. If you're saying the likes of Blair, Mandelson, Caroline Flint and Jim Murphy haven't abandoned their principles, then that must mean their principles are rightwing tory ones. I don't actually believe that, but it's a choice between either that or them abandoning their true principles for the sake of what they perceive (wrongly) to be popular.

Edited March 23, 201411 yr by Danny

Your idea of principled action is staked on an assumption that the people lending us money won't care if we put all extra spending on borrowing. Theirs are staked on an assumption that they will, and that far worse consequences will come of that for working people than doing nothing about it. That doesn't make them right-wing Tories in their principles. You're putting up a bit of a false choice with that last sentence.

Not only would it need 39 MPs, but it would need one leadership candidate to have the balls this close to the next election to break ranks from the party loyalty - which is unprecedented in Labour after just four years in opposition, given normally we're tearing shreds out of each other at this point. As such, any leadership challenger would immediately be quite unpopular with a lot of the party for breaking unity, unless there were significant demand from below and from the grassroots for another leader (from the actual Labour grassroots, there is dissatisfaction with Ed but not much actual demand for a new leader as most don't see what any other leader would have done - and chances are you wouldn't get the manifesto you're looking for from anyone to the right of John McDonnell Danny). Hence, there'd probably be a 'Draft XYZ!' movement before any challenger actually stepped out and took the risk, and it would all be very calculated - they wouldn't do it until they knew for certain they didn't just have the 39 votes, but had enough to beat Ed. I can't see that happening as things stand.

 

Missed this earlier.

 

As I've said, I'm guessing I'd be a moderate if you transported my views to the 1980s. I wouldn't actually want any of the flagship policies that were in their famous "suicide" manifesto (unilateral disarmament, huge-scale nationalisations, EU withdrawal). But yes, I would want government spending, I would want the rich to pay much more in tax, I would want people on benefits to be protected, I would want public services to be protected from destructive "reforms" and marketisation. Shoot me for wanting the Labour Party to have...Labour policies. But you may be right that Labour has sunk so far that noone is willing to offer a relatively moderate platform (by historic Labour standards) like that, in which case the next election is the least of the party's worries and they have much more existential questions to consider. It's probably only a matter of time before the trade unions go off and use their funds (which are considerable, due to the fact that despite the media spin they retain much more support and members than Labour do) to create a party which actually represents ordinary people's interests.

Edited March 23, 201411 yr by Danny

So far as I'm aware, Ed hasn't ruled out the rich paying much more in tax - if anything I'd expect more taxes to be announced in the manifesto, just that that's the sort of thing you don't want to give much advance warning on.

 

I don't see what's especially Labour about conflating all public service reform with destruction - are pupils being failed by academies? Did the NHS implode after foundation hospitals were brought in? (If anything it started doing better after then - IIRC the NHS was 2nd in the OECD healthcare rankings in 2010, although obviously the increased investment also played a big part in that). These are things that actually represent the interests of ordinary people, for all you might want to decry it as technocratic the second any academic language enters the equation.

 

And for what it's worth I think a Labour government would be protecting people on benefits, just that for sad and obvious reasons no leader of the opposition would want to go on and on about it in the lead-up (and nor would they want to make the mistake of falling into the trap Osborne is setting with what is for all intents and purposes a totally symbolic welfare cap next week - as it said in the article you posted, it doesn't cover cyclical employment benefits or pensions, and it's set to be pegged to inflation from above a level it's at now, and the cap can be raised in the unlikely event it goes above that by going back to a Commons vote, which would be won if Labour were in power. For all intents and purposes, it's meaningless outside of the sole purpose it has of being done so Ed can vote against it and the Tories and the media can chortle about how Labour are soft on benefits and a lot of wavering voters grimace - so why give Osborne the pleasure when it's purely symbolic?). For what it's worth also, I don't think that it's really in 'ordinary people's interests' for nothing to be done to help people on benefits out of them - which is something Labour are doing, either through further training/education or the compulsory jobs' guarantee as a last resort if people are still out of work after two years.

 

As it goes, my McDonnell quip was more related to your stance that Labour should just say sod it to the deficit and pile all further spending on borrowing, which I think is a policy even he'd probably shrink from (I imagine he's probably more in favour of higher taxes - after all, interest on borrowing is the very representation of spending money satisfying bond markets that could be spent on helping British people). And if you're after higher taxes as opposed to further cuts, well, I imagine that's what you're likely to be getting anyway under Ed.

As it goes, my McDonnell quip was more related to your stance that Labour should just say sod it to the deficit and pile all further spending on borrowing, which I think is a policy even he'd probably shrink from

 

Even though even moderate Labour leaders from generations past rightly didn't pay much attention to the deficit, with the sole exception of the late 70s when they were forced to by the IMF (which certainly doesn't apply to now)? If you say so.

 

And if you're after higher taxes as opposed to further cuts, well, I imagine that's what you're likely to be getting anyway under Ed.

 

Then why does Ed Balls constantly prattle on "there'll need to be more cuts" and desperately crying "tough decisions" and "not wasting a penny" (which I imagine comes across to the average person as an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend who you dumped for being too clingy bombarding you with texts begging to get back together).

 

I would love to believe Labour will raise £100bn or whatever in extra taxes that would be required to create their needless surplus and to start the new government spending that any decent Labour government would be planning to do, but, with the current level of courage among the Labour leadership, I'll believe it when I see it.

Edited March 23, 201411 yr by Danny

Well it's only relatively recently that the deficit has become the primary measure - up until the 80s the prime focus was always on the balance of payments between exports and imports. So long as that was positive, it was taken by those we owed to that the historically fairly small budget deficits and the debt we had were essentially meaningless, as we could always afford them. And the overwhelming majority of our debt holders were domestic in any case, which is no longer the case now.

 

And Ed Balls prattles on about it because rhetoric is vital on this front - after all, the persistent rhetoric from the government that they're doing something about it's given them a bit of a fig leaf on the deficit not actually being lowered that much, as no gilt holder could really accuse them of being soft on that front. Would you rather we just ceded the ground of 'gives a damn about making the sums add up' to the Tories? We get enough snark as it is from certain elements of the media about fiscal irresponsibility - it'd be pretty much universal otherwise.