Finally, a Labour supporter (and an entrepreneur at that) points out the idiocy of Labour's economic pledge, and how in spite of the media's moronic "Marxist!!!11" chants, the Tories and Labour are closer together than ever: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26729259

 

Sadly, it seems like this will fall on deaf ears, as the leadership are still in their thinktank bubble deludedly telling themselves that people really want is some technocratic "reform" of public services: http://labourlist.org/2014/03/is-cruddasal...shadow-cabinet/

Meanwhile:

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/...jor-policy-hint

 

The IPPR (that famously left wing, completely ignored think tank) is advocating a graduate tax and Miliband's clearly shaping towards it. Could cement a lot of Lib Dem defectors while the Tories are dropping everything to try and claw back people flirting with UKIP.

 

Even if he chickens out it's still another one in the eye for "BUT THEY'RE JUST GONNA BE THE SAME AS THE TORIES". At the absolute worst, it'll be a choice between £6k and £9k fees. It could easily be a choice between a progressive graduate tax and potentially unlimited, privatised fees with the rich end up paying less as they can pay it back quicker and avoid the interest.

Why would a graduate tax win any votes? It's effectively the same as what we've got now. This is another example of them academically trying to split the difference between two policies to try and pander to the mythical "centre ground" and not offend anyone, and coming out with something so weak and incoherent that it will please noone. Either scrap fees altogether or don't bother doing anything. (Frankly even as a certified loony leftie who thinks ideally there shouldn't be fees, I'd prefer them to spend money on protecting welfare claimants and pumping it into the collapsing public services than on that.)

Edited March 25, 201411 yr by Danny

Why would a graduate tax win any votes? It's effectively the same as what we've got now. This is another example of them academically trying to split the difference between two policies to try and pander to the mythical "centre ground" and not offend anyone, and coming out with something so weak and incoherent that it will please noone. Either scrap fees altogether or don't bother doing anything. (Frankly even as a certified loony leftie who thinks ideally there shouldn't be fees, I'd prefer them to spend money on protecting welfare claimants and pumping it into the collapsing public services than on that.)

How is a graduate tax the same as what we have now?

 

The fact that it could potentially win votes since "we're getting rid of massive student loans" is a fundamentally good thing shouldn't really need explaining.

In some ways it's the same as what we've got now, because you only need to pay back 2012-and-later student loans once you're earning over £21000, and how much you pay back is calculated as a percentage of your income over that amount. And of course, once you've paid back your entire loan, this 'tax' stops.

 

But like you said, it gets rid of leaving university with massive student loans and instead simply increases the tax burden. And there's less shock value from a graduate tax than the sound of 'tripling university fees in a single year!!!', which caused all the outrage amongst my year - the first cohort to be affected by that particular change.

In some ways it's the same as what we've got now, because you only need to pay back 2012-and-later student loans once you're earning over £21000, and how much you pay back is calculated as a percentage of your income over that amount. And of course, once you've paid back your entire loan, this 'tax' stops.

 

But like you said, it gets rid of leaving university with massive student loans and instead simply increases the tax burden. And there's less shock value from a graduate tax than the sound of 'tripling university fees in a single year!!!', which caused all the outrage amongst my year - the first cohort to be affected by that particular change.

Yeah, obviously there are similarities. I wouldn't have minded the fee increase as much had it not been for 1) the interest "loophole" and 2) the fact that the threshold for paying it back wasn't really increased by enough to compensate for the fact that actual fees had gone up by so much.

If the repayment model stays the same as it is now then the difference between £9,000 fees and £6,000 fees for many people will be minimal. Most graduates will not repay the full £27,000 within the 30 year period and many of them won't pay back as much as £18,000.

I dunno, I honestly get the sense most students think tuition fees aren't as bad as they were expecting, because of the fairly flexible repayment scheme. People didn't really understand at first because the change came in at the same time the media and politicians were in full-on hysteria about the national debt and sending out a message that any debt meant the bailiffs would be round at your house any minute. My guess would be that if you gave young people a choice between scrapping tuition fees or a guarantee of a permanent job with a decent wage, most would choose the latter.

 

If anything, tuition fees are a good chance for Labour to actually make the argument about how the deficit doesn't matter with an easy-to-understand analogy: how it's worth getting into a bit of debt if it means you're building your skills/potential to get more income later on. But that's obviously wishful thinking, because it would involve the Labour leadership actually having some guts rather than having a nervous breakdown and quivering in the corner of their thinktank conference as soon as a newspaper runs an editorial saying they're not "economically credible".

I dunno, I honestly get the sense most students think tuition fees aren't as bad as they were expecting, because of the fairly flexible repayment scheme. People didn't really understand at first because the change came in at the same time the media and politicians were in full-on hysteria about the national debt and sending out a message that any debt meant the bailiffs would be round at your house any minute. My guess would be that if you gave young people a choice between scrapping tuition fees or a guarantee of a permanent job with a decent wage, most would choose the latter.

 

If anything, tuition fees are a good chance for Labour to actually make the argument about how the deficit doesn't matter with an easy-to-understand analogy: how it's worth getting into a bit of debt if it means you're building your skills/potential to get more income later on. But that's obviously wishful thinking, because it would involve the Labour leadership actually having some guts rather than having a nervous breakdown and quivering in the corner of their thinktank conference as soon as a newspaper runs an editorial saying they're not "economically credible".

Since when was it a choice between reforming the fees structure and guaranteeing jobs?

 

I don't think the "look, not all debt is bad" argument would fly given that Labour voted against the increase and have been campaigning for lower fees for the whole of this parliament. According to your analogy it's the Tories who would be arguing for increased government spending if they stuck to their tuition fees argument.

Did Danny and I just end up on the same side on tuition fees?!

You know it's bad when Diane Abbott makes more sense than the rest of the shadow cabinet combined. The rise up against the thinktankbots is beginning! Hopefully more backbench Labour MPs finally speak up (and end their bullshit "unity") and point out commonsense things like this - getting them to talk about things that people actually care about, pointing that if you want people to think the Tory government is bad then it might be an idea to actually offer an alternative to their policies, and getting them to speak in something approaching English rather than cod-intellectual thinktank-ese - and Labour might have a chance of winning what should be an unloseable election after all.

Edited March 26, 201411 yr by Danny

I still don't get how this is an "unloseable" election for a party that only got 29% last time.

 

I also read something the other day that was interesting on the supposed dearth of Labour policy nearly four years into the electoral cycle. At this point after almost any previous election you'd expect the opposition to be virtually ready to go with its mainfesto because they knew that the government could call the election at any time. This time there's just not the same urgency because we know exactly when the election will be.

How are the Tories so convinced that they'll win a majority this time round?

I still don't get how this is an "unloseable" election for a party that only got 29% last time.

 

Because of the fact a party which has been competing for leftwing votes with them until now has imploded, and because the government has at various points over the past few years insulted everyone who isn't a wealthy, south-eastern, employed, private-sector-working, white, non-immigrant man.

 

They literally just had to shut up and not do anything, and they probably would've won. It speaks volumes that by September 2010, when Harriet Harman was leader and the party was on complete autopilot and deliberately not saying anything until the results of the leadership election came in, Labour had already pulled neck-and-neck in the polls (and during the government's "honeymoon" to boot). But they're throwing it away due to a mixture of gratuitously insulting their own voters in perverse attempts to establish "credibility", unlikeable personalities, and a bizarre idea that they need to ape a party who hasn't won an election in more than 20 years on virtually every policy area that matters.

 

I also read something the other day that was interesting on the supposed dearth of Labour policy nearly four years into the electoral cycle. At this point after almost any previous election you'd expect the opposition to be virtually ready to go with its mainfesto because they knew that the government could call the election at any time. This time there's just not the same urgency because we know exactly when the election will be.

 

You might be right, but that would show how bad their understanding is of how normal people think about politics. People don't vote for a party as if they're going shopping and vote on who has the best list of policies -- you need to define what you stand for and what your whole "raison d'etre" is, and to do that you need to be drumming away what that definition is for years in advance. Even if Labour come up with a list of leftwing policies at the last minute which would help people (which I hope, but doubt because it's in direct contradiction to their "zero-based spending review" guff), I still doubt it would convince people, because it would look like they've hastily cobbled something together at the last minute in a cynical attempt to win votes, rather than being because of deeply-held genuine principles. You have to convince people you're authentic and truly believe what you say, and not just saying whatever you think will win you an election.

Edited March 26, 201411 yr by Danny

I still don't get how this is an "unloseable" election for a party that only got 29% last time.

 

I also read something the other day that was interesting on the supposed dearth of Labour policy nearly four years into the electoral cycle. At this point after almost any previous election you'd expect the opposition to be virtually ready to go with its mainfesto because they knew that the government could call the election at any time. This time there's just not the same urgency because we know exactly when the election will be.

I've been making the point about fixed term parliaments for some time. It means opposition parties can bide their time rather than coming up with policies in the fourth year and then having to change the in the fifth year if circumstances change. It's also clear that the Tories are more shameless than ever in nicking other parties' policies and claiming them as their own even if they have slagged them off in the past. The increase in the income tax threshold is a prime example.

Labour lead again at just 1% tonight, and an EU poll shows they have little chance of winning the EU elections (they're on 28%, to UKIP's 26% and the Tories' 24%). The master strategy of gaining "credibility" by embracing Tory policies and throwing benefit-claimants and public-sector workers under a bus continues to bear fruit.

And an EU poll shows they have little chance of winning the EU elections (they're on 28%, to UKIP's 26% and the Tories' 24%).

LMFAO. Did you seriously just post a poll showing us IN THE LEAD and say we have 'little chance' of winning the EU elections? Like, yeah, there's a big chance UKIP may do better as the polls get closer, but you can't really say that poll shows we have 'little chance' of winning.

"Labour are struggling because they're too leftwing and their policies are too radical Marxist and they need to water down their policies more and move closer to the centre ground", say the deluded New Labour/Progress wing.

 

This from today's YouGov poll:

 

 

Thinking generally about the sort of policies that have been put forward by Ed Miliband and Labour, do you think they are... ?

 

Too radical and would be bad for the country: 12%

Radical and would be good for the country: 8%

Cautious, but would be good for the country: 24%

Too cautious and would be bad for the country: 10%

Not sure what policies they are putting forward: 47%

 

More than double as many people think the Tories' policies are "radical" than Labour's.

 

Thinking about Ed Miliband's leadership of the Labour Party, do you think he... ?

 

Has made it clear what he stands for: 26%

Has not made it clear what he stands for: 58%

Don't know: 16%

 

"Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides"

Edited March 30, 201411 yr by Danny

"Labour are struggling because they're too leftwing and their policies are too radical Marxist and they need to water down their policies more and move closer to the centre ground", say the deluded New Labour/Progress wing.

As someone who's been called a Trot by members of Progress more than enough times, it says something that even I think you're exaggerating just slightly.

As someone who's been called a Trot by members of Progress more than enough times, it says something that even I think you're exaggerating just slightly.

:D (who was it?)

 

"Labour are struggling because they're too leftwing and their policies are too radical Marxist and they need to water down their policies more and move closer to the centre ground", say the deluded New Labour/Progress wing.

Nope, not really at all. Caroline Flint, one of your soulless New Labour Progress technocrats, was behind that energy price freeze policy (which actually got applauded at the most recent Progress political weekend, so...). And you wouldn't find anyone except a couple of raging try-hard Tonyites at a Progress who would genuinely think we were doing too badly because we were being too left-wing. You're conjuring up phantom opponents and straw men here Danny - after all, Progress even published that massive BritainThinks piece the other month on the views of swing voters that you agreed with.

 

And plus, my point has never been that a left-wing manifesto is unelectable (indeed, I made the point a few months back that a more left-wing manifesto is Ed's best chance of winning). My point has been that it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to successfully put that manifesto into action in the current political-economic scenario, for a couple of reasons:

 

- Money. I know you'll constantly disagree on this one, but funding a properly balls-out socialist manifesto has to come through either further borrowing or taxes. Getting past the point of even whether the lenders would happily accept the deficit going up now it's a salient issue again, it's pretty safe to assume most of the lenders aren't of a socialist bent when it comes to policy. If they wanted to pull the plug on borrowing to fund that policy programme, they're more than within their power to do so and look elsewhere for investments.

 

It's a policy programme that requires substantial public support (and evidenced through something more tangible than hypothetical questions in opinion polls with loaded questions commissioned by CLASS) and/or the funds at hand. The former may possibly be there at some point, but I doubt it's there currently. The latter quite objectively isn't there currently, and it's questionable whether there are enough top rate payers to generate that much money by just putting the top rate up - it'd probably need a big rise in the basic rate to fund an all-out socialist platform. And then we're back to the need for substantial public support, and growth strong enough to handle the kind of drag a big rise in tax puts on it temporarily. Possible at some point? Maybe. Possible now? No. I'd argue even then that the institutional opposition from the likes of the media means it'd probably be wiser to be elected on a moderate platform and shock by doing that in government than to campaign in opposition on that sort of platform. (There's a quote I find quite illuminating on this one - 'In opposition you move to the centre, in government you move the centre'. Let's not forget that Thatcher wasn't elected as an especially radical opposition leader, and that the lion's share of her drastic reforms came after her landslide in 1983.)

 

- Instability. The other big reason I think it's quite dangerous to fight an election 'centrifugally' rather than 'centripetally' (to coin a really really nerdy expression) and base your support almost entirely away from the centre rather than having a big base within it is that it makes you a hostage to those who seek purity - just look at the Tea Party, and how the likes of Rubio et al who are ridiculously right-wing fall out of favour in a blink the second they do something the base dislikes, because they've committed to a politics which elevates principle above everything else - pragmatism, relevance, the population at large. Am I calling for principle to be totally abandoned? No. But I don't think that's what the Labour Party is doing anyway, and I think the biggest problem with Ed is that he never really defined himself at all - people know he's vaguely left-wing because the return to avowedly left-wing values was his leadership pitch in 2010, so he comes off fake when he makes pitches to the centre, and at the same time because he isn't a firebrand who's doing the whole left-wing full-throatedly even that identification doesn't really catch on, so people just think he's a bit useless (hence why I think the left-wing pitch is the only one that can win it for him, because then at least the people we have now are motivated).

 

So fighting the next election based on appealing to core support is a good strategy in the short term. But I think it's really, really bad long-term strategy, because when you base your support on those who seek traitors and are likely to ditch you the second you have to do something that goes against their principle (which is pretty much inevitable in any government - and also because there's a lot of disagreement on a lot of issues, even within the core. Just look at how the Conservative party reacted to equal marriage.) you put yourself on a pretty short timer, if only because all governments naturally shed support - and Ed'll be on a really short timer given he'll be shedding from what's looking like it'll be a narrow majority at best. Now, this is the bit where you're going to take the piss and mock it as 'power over principle', but in general I think it's pretty much impossible to get a second term on that basis, and I think that's something pretty important to get as I think it's rare to find a government that actually effects much long-lasting and real change if it's only been in for a term.

 

It's also part of the reason I'm a bit of an incrementalist - not because I think the problems we face on things like equality don't require real action, but because I think the solutions to them only last if they're accepted by most of the public. Hence, better to slowly and reliably build utopia rather than take big actions supported by a minority which get reversed a term later (and may not even be sustainable in the first place) and potentially discredit the whole progressive movement in the process by a bastard media commentariat which refuses to work in shades of grey. (For an example of this in action, just look at how AV getting rejected through a one-leap referendum has effectively buried electoral reform for a generation or more when perhaps having the coalition condition of PR for local elections would've gotten towards the ultimate goal quicker. Additionally, equal marriage was a relative breeze given the heavy lifting had already been done with civil partnerships. Isolated cases possibly, but I think they illustrate the broader point that it's more successful to build change rather than enforcing it in one go.)

 

Anyway, I've kind of gotten off the point a little, but you only have to really look at the likes of Hollande and Thorning-Schmidt to see how actually governing a more left-wing platform is the difficult part, and rarely as popular as it was when elected, especially when it runs into issues like money. If you don't have a base in the centre willing to stand with you if you have to make difficult decisions uncomfortable to your base, you're in big trouble.