I'm still struggling to understand what question on earth Mary Creagh thought she'd be the answer to.

Probably 'How can I ensure I'll be in mind for a decent Shadow Cabinet portfolio?'.

I could see questions Yvette Cooper would be the answer to, but I can't see any she's answered.

 

I think she is the only one who possibly could get the public to believe she could into a negotiating room with Putin and not dissolve into a wreck. Not sure whether it makes up for her other deficiencies, though.

Edited May 26, 201510 yr by Danny

I think she is the only one who possibly could get the public to believe she could into a negotiating room with Putin and not dissolve into a wreck. Not sure whether it makes up for her other deficiencies, though.

She's allowed Kendall to take a lot of her momentum away, which is somewhat inevitable when you're trying to win from the middle.

Chuka Umunna has endorsed Blair Witch Project, and in the process has inadvertently highlighted what a carcrash her leadership would be with this unreadable guff about "devolution" and "creative and strategic relationships between state and business":

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/...bour-leadership

Tripartism and devolution are both existing ideologies you know, even if they could be expressed in better ways.

Tripartism and devolution are both existing ideologies you know, even if they could be expressed in better ways.

 

Do you think that's the kind of idea that's going to get swing voters to pay attention to Labour?

No, but I don't think that's really Liz Kendall's main pitch to win swing voters over to Labour.

Chuka Umunna has endorsed Blair Witch Project, and in the process has inadvertently highlighted what a carcrash her leadership would be with this unreadable guff about "devolution" and "creative and strategic relationships between state and business":

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/...bour-leadership

 

Local Government has a requirement to be open and transparent and plain in all of it's dealings with the public, and that means plain English usage. Obviously the people PASSING these requirements are above all that and can avoid using plain simple words at all costs....

 

When I used to have a bit of spare time at work, many years ago, I used to delight in translating government/council/advisor documents/notes/instructions into plain simple English for the amusement of my workmates. It's surprisingly easy to do, you can add bits of reading between the lines, note the bullsh%t terms, and get down to the meat of the waffle. usually about 2 sentences per page, at best a paragraph.

 

Yes, I know that's hard to believe coming from me, but I can't abide anything populated with phrases like "silo culture" "hard-working families" and so on.... :P

Good article illustrating how this argument that Labour lost because it didn't convince middle-class voters (or "aspirational" voters!) is a load of bollocks and how the real split in Labour's results is between the big cities and everybody else, irrespective of wealth:

 

http://newstonoone.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/...t-campaign.html

 

Though Labour already seem ready to double down on their alienation to everyone who isn't "metropolitan" by planning to spend the next couple of years talking endlessly about the EU (including unfortunately much even of "the left") and not talking about spending cuts or wealth inequality.

Edited May 27, 201510 yr by Danny

Well generally it would be fairly inevitable that we're going to talk a bit about the EU given, y'know, the whole referendum thing and how much of our economy is dependent on it.

 

The question is what about the EU we talk about - I'm confident we're not going to start buggering on about fishing policy and the focus is probably going to be on why staying in makes ordinary people better off and how we can make the EU better.

 

Anyway, it's only going to be a year. Unless we get a strategic issue as big as Better Together got in it looking like we're arguing for the status quo shoulder to shoulder with the Tories without suggesting improvement it's not really going to be a factor come 2020.

Good article illustrating how this argument that Labour lost because it didn't convince middle-class voters (or "aspirational" voters!) is a load of bollocks and how the real split in Labour's results is between the big cities and everybody else, irrespective of wealth:

 

http://newstonoone.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/...t-campaign.html

That doesn't illustrate what you said at all. Places like Corby and Lincoln are *stuffed* with middle class voters (not the John Lewis types that idiots like Tristram Hunt think are middle class voters). They're the ESSENCE of the middle class vote!

Well generally it would be fairly inevitable that we're going to talk a bit about the EU given, y'know, the whole referendum thing and how much of our economy is dependent on it.

 

The question is what about the EU we talk about - I'm confident we're not going to start buggering on about fishing policy and the focus is probably going to be on why staying in makes ordinary people better off and how we can make the EU better.

 

Anyway, it's only going to be a year. Unless we get a strategic issue as big as Better Together got in it looking like we're arguing for the status quo shoulder to shoulder with the Tories without suggesting improvement it's not really going to be a factor come 2020.

 

You think? I think it's very conceivable that UKIP will succeed in turning the referendum into a vote on immigration and "patriotism", and Labour being on the "wrong side" of that could be absolutely fatal in their tradiitional heartlands (outside of the big cities) and maybe even moreso in the working-class towns in the Midlands and South where we keep hearing Labour need to win.

 

That doesn't illustrate what you said at all. Places like Corby and Lincoln are *stuffed* with middle class voters (not the John Lewis types that idiots like Tristram Hunt think are middle class voters). They're the ESSENCE of the middle class vote!

 

But they won loads of seats which are wealthier than Corby or Lincoln, as long as they were in big cities or just outside of them. If Labour can win Wirral West, it's obviously not the case that there was something fundamentally offputting about their message to middle-class people.

Edited May 27, 201510 yr by Danny

But they won loads of seats which are wealthier than Corby or Lincoln, as long as they were in big cities or just outside of them. If Labour can win Wirral West, it's obviously not the case that

Well that's my point really - I think Tristram Hunt's utterly wrong to go on about 'John Lewis voters'. They're the ones that are rich enough to either be fervently against Labour or to feel comfortable enough to vote Labour on more altruistic reasons. It's the middle class places like Corby, Lincoln, Nuneaton (honestly, pick pretty much any swing seat) where stuff like the threat of economic chaos because the SNP are propping up a minority government/because we don't really trust Labour with the economy/because they're about to reverse a load of cuts for services you don't use and you're going to pay for it in increased taxes/insert other Tory attack here is enough to really scare people.

 

And citing a one-off seat win next door to our biggest heartland city that we targeted relentlessly because of the incumbent MP isn't really enough evidence after a landslide defeat to suggest we're fine with the middle class.

You think? I think it's very conceivable that UKIP will succeed in turning the referendum into a vote on immigration and "patriotism", and Labour being on the "wrong side" of that could be absolutely fatal in their tradiitional heartlands (outside of the big cities) and maybe even moreso in the working-class towns in the Midlands and South where we keep hearing Labour need to win.

I can see how it could happen - which is why I said I don't think it will be an issue provided we don't make the same mistakes as the Scottish referendum of looking like we're just arguing as an establishment for the status quo but no improvement.

Well that's my point really - I think Tristram Hunt's utterly wrong to go on about 'John Lewis voters'. They're the ones that are rich enough to either be fervently against Labour or to feel comfortable enough to vote Labour on more altruistic reasons. It's the middle class places like Corby, Lincoln, Nuneaton (honestly, pick pretty much any swing seat) where stuff like the threat of economic chaos because the SNP are propping up a minority government/because we don't really trust Labour with the economy/because they're about to reverse a load of cuts for services you don't use and you're going to pay for it in increased taxes/insert other Tory attack here is enough to really scare people.

 

And citing a one-off seat win next door to our biggest heartland city that we targeted relentlessly because of the incumbent MP isn't really enough evidence after a landslide defeat to suggest we're fine with the middle class.

 

But it was a pattern repeated in countless middle-class city/suburb seats everywhere.

 

You might be right that the economic competence thing kills them in a lot of the marginals we're talking about, but how is Liz Kendall going to solve that problem? That exit poll last week showed that while people overwhelmingly said they didn't trust Labour with the economy, they also at the same time said they thought Labour was planning to cut spending/the deficit too quickly -- so talking about cuts not only alienates core voters, it doesn't even do anything to address the economic competence issue.

Edited May 27, 201510 yr by Danny

Link to the exit poll?

 

(Though this neatly brings me back to the argument on how far people are willing to trust you if they're convinced you buggered up last time and you won't recognise it.)

 

And it wasn't really repeated in countless middle-class city/suburb seats everywhere that we didn't hold already - we can count it precisely actually, given we only gained 11 seats from the Tories.

Link to the exit poll?

 

http://www.gqrr.com/uk-post-election-2

 

People say their top doubt about voting Labour was they didn't think they could be trusted with the economy and would spend too much. Yet when asked specifically about policy, 39% said they thought Labour should cut spending "slower than they plan" (while 34% said quicker).* So if people already thought Labour was going to cut spending significantly, too much even, then I fail to see how talking about cuts even more would've improved their economic competence even without talking about the additional problems it would create.

 

 

* God knows how people square that contradiction in their minds, maybe they think Labour are so fundamentally incompetent that they think it doesn't matter how much they plan to cut spending, they'll still mess things up by selling "the gold" or its equivalent at the bottom of the market and wasting money anyway even while cutting public services.

Edited May 27, 201510 yr by Danny

So what your basically saying is that labour have to wait 10 years for people to forget the last crisis just like the tories using the winter of discontent for 20 years.

 

Nick Clegg made a good speech in the commons yday about the dangers of the referendum and its effects. Could it really have a si milar effect on ukip the Scottish ref did for the snp?

Danny you're completely confusing the word "metropolitan". Labour won more in big cities because the last Labour government was great for big cities and was better at addressing their problems than it was for addressing those of shit towns in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing "sneering" about East Leeds or Manchester Gorton.

Basically this

 

http://labourlist.org/2015/05/understandin...fy-the-answers/