Six month waiting period to get JSA!

The most worrying thing about the current polls for Labour is how many of their voters from the 2010 election they have lost (close to 50% according to some of the detailed breakdowns this week). Many of the lost voters are voting UKIP (despite the brainless "all Ukip voters are ex-Tories!!!!11" mantra) but most are saying they're simply not going to vote. The leadership have been making a complacent assumption all along that those voters would always stick with them, and so they could afford to ignore them, and it's now coming back to bite them.

 

By contrast, the chunk they've taken out of the Lib Dem vote since 2010 is holding up quite well. Their focus for the next year should be 100% on core Labour voters and making sure they turn out; if they manage to keep most of those 2010 voters onside then they could still "win" even now, despite the utter hash they've made over the past 4 years. But in case they still haven't worked it out, the way to winning over working-class Labour voters is certainly not by giving "equal volume" to deficit reduction as to everything else, or by telling poor people that their livelihoods are less important than paying off some randomer on a trading floor in Shanghai, or by rambling on about "devolving power" and telling people who barely have enough time to themselves as it is after a hard day's work that they're going to have to chip in with the running of public services.

 

(Though frankly, I'm starting to question whether these types of people would ever warm to Ed Miliband, even if he came out with a radical working class-friendly programme, since he's now been possibly irredeemably defined as a weird middle-class alien who doesn't understand "normal people").

Edited May 15, 201411 yr by Danny

What's wrong with devolving power? Not every announcement is a headline-grabbing pledge. Announcing that we'll give councils more powers just makes good sense, it's not meant to be on the same level as something like the energy price freeze.

If "devolving power" means setting up regional parliaments like in Scotland, then I would love that, if it meant northerners could make our own decisions on things and not have to be dictated to by south-easterners' wishes for lower taxes, spending cuts and spiteful "scrounger-bashing".

 

I'm not sure that's what's meant by it, though. Judging on this piece by Labour's leading pseudointellectual Jon Cruddas (and I admit I may have misunderstood it, because I find some of the thinktankese gobbledygook impossible to decipher), it sounds like a lot of right-wing, code-for-spending-cuts, reheated "Big Society" crap: http://labourlist.org/2014/02/50512/

LabourList isn't exactly the place to make big policy announcements...

 

There's also been a lot of talk about city regions and devolving transport powers etc. to them, which is about as far removed from the 'Big Society' as you could get.

If "devolving power" means setting up regional parliaments like in Scotland, then I would love that, if it meant northerners could make our own decisions on things and not have to be dictated to by south-easterners' wishes for lower taxes, spending cuts and spiteful "scrounger-bashing".

 

I'm not sure that's what's meant by it, though. Judging on this piece by Labour's leading pseudointellectual Jon Cruddas (and I admit I may have misunderstood it, because I find some of the thinktankese gobbledygook impossible to decipher), it sounds like a lot of right-wing, code-for-spending-cuts, reheated "Big Society" crap

 

I agree with a lot of that. Personally I'm very uncomfortable with the phrase "empower people to help themselves" - that just seems to be code for cutting the welfare state and telling people to get on their bike. And I'd love to know how a "compulsory jobs guarantee" would work - isn't that something the Tories have just come up with? This doesn't sound like the Labour I want to vote for.

 

Schools empower people to help themselves. The word empower isn't that hard to understand.

LabourList isn't exactly the place to make big policy announcements...

 

There's also been a lot of talk about city regions and devolving transport powers etc. to them, which is about as far removed from the 'Big Society' as you could get.

 

I would rather have proper Scottish-style parliaments for whole regions (either for different parts of the north, or even just one single one for the whole north), with control over budgets. Not some symbolic London-style crap where there's no real devolved power in anything that matters.

 

 

Schools empower people to help themselves. The word empower isn't that hard to understand.

 

And what about people who don't have time to help themselves when it comes to running public services, and think that governments and local authorities are the ones who are paid to do that job?

And what about people who don't have time to help themselves when it comes to running public services, and think that governments and local authorities are the ones who are paid to do that job?

Patient/commuter boards and having greater choice in schools and hospitals isn't the government just shrugging its shoulders and saying 'look, you do it'. People manage to find the time to run for local parish councils and the like. If anything that sort of thing is the co-operative movement wholesale - that's one of the biggest strands in the left-wing movement.

Patient/commuter boards and having greater choice in schools and hospitals isn't the government just shrugging its shoulders and saying 'look, you do it'. People manage to find the time to run for local parish councils and the like. If anything that sort of thing is the co-operative movement wholesale - that's one of the biggest strands in the left-wing movement.

 

So would there be regular elections to these patient and commuter boards? (I'm genuinely asking, as I say I find it impossible to understand some of the convoluted proposals coming from Labour people on this.) There would need to be accountability and an opportunity for people to judge those carrying out the services, and stop someone from doing so if it's felt they're doing a bad job. The impression (which, again, I concede might be wrong) is that there wouldn't be elections to these things, that it would just be thrown open to any ordinary person in the community who wanted to do it without need for election or without need to justify their actions to the rest of the community. And if there WOULD be elections, why not just give these powers to the existing, elected local councils?

Edited May 16, 201411 yr by Danny

I would rather have proper Scottish-style parliaments for whole regions (either for different parts of the north, or even just one single one for the whole north), with control over budgets. Not some symbolic London-style crap where there's no real devolved power in anything that matters.

Regional government died a death after the North East referendum. It was specifically targeted at a region that was seen as having a strong identity (but didn't have as many Tories as Yorkshire) but flopped because it was seen as more bureaucracy. The trouble with regions as they are currently described is that they don't really have a strong identity and aren't really functional economic regions either. People in Carlisle I'm sure feel they have more in common with people in Northumberland than in Cheshire.

 

Other than the entire North, the strongest identities - and the only ones that get close to Scottish or Welsh identity - revolve around cities.

So would there be regular elections to these patient and commuter boards? (I'm genuinely asking, as I say I find it impossible to understand some of the convoluted proposals coming from Labour people on this.) There would need to be accountability and an opportunity for people to judge those carrying out the services, and stop someone from doing so if it's felt they're doing a bad job. The impression (which, again, I concede might be wrong) is that there wouldn't be elections to these things, that it would just be thrown open to any ordinary person in the community who wanted to do it without need for election or without need to justify their actions to the rest of the community. And if there WOULD be elections, why not just give these powers to the existing, elected local councils?

I can't answer for certain, but as far as I'm aware they would be elected (possibly similarly to the police and crime commissioners, but with boards instead of a single figure), but also that they'd be distinct from local councils as councils tend to be elected on more of a party-political basis, which doesn't necessarily make them best accountable on one given issue. You might have a lot of Conservative residents who agree with their local Tory council on everything but rail and health provision, but wouldn't stand a chance of getting their views on transport, health and education across if those powers were just devolved to the council. (Which could also imply that this is Labour's way of getting through certain policy on health, education and transport permanently, regardless of Tory governments/councils.)

 

I suppose the best way of thinking about it is having it so certain areas of policy become more democratic in themselves separate from council/government powers.

If ever there was a vivid illustration of why Labour are in such a mess, this article from Rachel Reeves is it:

 

http://labourlist.org/2014/05/we-can-win-t.../#disqus_thread

 

A fairly decent list of policies (though insufficient), but absolutely NO attempt to tie them together into an overarching argument. They really need to grasp that most people don't base their votes after carefully consulting the menus of policies that each party provides, but base it on the one overarching impression of what they think that party's raison d'etre is (though I feel the fact that Labour bods are always going on about Labour's "offer" to the electorate is sadly revealing of how poor their understanding is), and to achieve that raison d'etre you need to be hammering it home all the time.

 

Why are they so scared to spell out that they think inequality in the UK since the 1970s has become too foul and is never a price worth paying just for the sake of GDP or to correct the public finances, or to say that they think big businesses are out of control and Labour are going to tame them? Instead, the only attempts at overarching arguments are utterly nebulous and mind-numbingly cliched concepts like "fighting for Britain's future" or "hardworking families better off" (which obviously marks them out in stark contrast to all the other parties who never stop going on about how they want "hardworking families" to be worse off), and that means their rare good policies go to waste.

Edited May 17, 201411 yr by Danny

Lord Ashcroft's "mega-poll" has Labour winning all but one of the key marginals the Tories currently hold.

 

What I found interesting about it was that overall, very slightly more people in those constituencies had been canvassed by Labour than by the Tories - despite the "long campaign" supposedly being a Conservative asset where they could throw loads of money at marginal seats months or even years in advance in order to get ahead.

Lord Ashcroft's "mega-poll" has Labour winning all but one of the key marginals the Tories currently hold.

 

What I found interesting about it was that overall, very slightly more people in those constituencies had been canvassed by Labour than by the Tories - despite the "long campaign" supposedly being a Conservative asset where they could throw loads of money at marginal seats months or even years in advance in order to get ahead.

My favourite fact from that poll is that the constituency with the highest level of optimism for the future of the economy was Morley and Outwood. The current MP for the constituency is Mr Edward Balls. There are several ways of interpreting that :lol:

It's really very hard to square that Ashcroft poll with the local election results. Despite the leadership's spin, the party actually performed LESS well in the crucial areas in the locals than nationally - their performances in the marginals in the north and Midlands were very poor indeed, and the only reason their national share of the vote was respectable was because they racked up bigger majorities in London.

 

That said, one interesting thing from the Ashcroft poll is that, of current UKIP voters, almost as many people say they would prefer a Labour government to a Tory government, as vice versa. Which means two things, firstly that the Tories' complacency that that all Kippers are "Tories on holiday" who can be coaxed back by the supposed fear of a Labour government is misplaced, but also should shake the Labour leadership out of their absurd complacency that UKIP only take Tory voters so they don't have to worry about them (based on a simplistic measure of who they voted for in 2010, even though what they really should be examining are the substantial Labour->UKIP swings from the 2012 local elections to 2014 in those northern/Midlands marginals). So Labour's entire focus for the next year should be on those working-class people who are pissed off with the way they're screwed over time and time again, but who feel UKIP stand up more for people like them than Labour do. Though, again, shallow as it may be, I have to question whether Ed Miliband is capable of appealing to them no matter what he says.

Edited May 25, 201411 yr by Danny

If anything it was the southern marginals Labour did badly in. There were a fair few in the Midlands Labour made good gains in, including mine.

If anything it was the southern marginals Labour did badly in. There were a fair few in the Midlands Labour made good gains in, including mine.

 

They performed about on a par with 2012 in the southern marginals, and of course London was better than anyone was expecting (which just shows how Labour's supposed middle-class problem is an invention of the Westminster commentariat). And even those southern marginals were they did fall heavily are VERY deprived places (like Great Yarmouth).

 

But there were big falls right across the north and the midlands compared to 2012, with only a handful of exceptions (which is yours?).

Edited May 25, 201411 yr by Danny

Because, as we all know, London is entirely middle class.

 

While the idea of spending the next year shoring up the working class vote sounds great, it's worth noting that lots of these marginals have a very diverse class split and are far from sewn up already.

 

However, the most effective line for both groups is probably more similar than you'd think - namely to keep banging on about the NHS and the complete cack job Gove has done in Education.

The NHS is certainly still one of their trump cards (though not enough on its own), but to take advantage of it they'll need to pledge to massively increase spending on it. Doing what they've done so far, complaining about the state of the NHS but essentially not saying things would be any different in the NHS under them, is not going to work.