I agree with Jon Healey in Labour List today -

 

http://labourlist.org/2015/05/lets-put-to-...-on-the-tories/

 

I agree with your arguement but think its unfair to blame the state when the system set up by the rich and powerful in the 1970s was based on telling the state to F off!

May 2016 would be a very ambitious date. After all, the 27 other EU countries haven't even accepted the principle of a renegotiation yet. Some leaders have made vague noises over the last week, but there is still a long way to go.

 

However, if Cameron really does want the UK to remain a member, next May does have its advantages. The Scottish parliament election will be taking place then. That would probably increase the turnout in Scotland. UKIP's performance in Scotland was largely woeful, suggesting that Scotland may vote to stay in by a larger margin than previously anticipated. The same applies to Wales.

 

OTOH, local elections in some parts of England will probably do little or nothing to increase the turnout. A lower turnout in England may well reduce the chances of an English Out vote defeating a Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish In.

I wouldn't be so sure. I assume UKIP's poor showing has more to do with our disgusting vile creature that is our UKIP MEP. BBC Scotland and the Scottish electorate gave him enough rope to hang himself and it was utterly SPECTACULAR to watch him do so. That and Farage declaring war on Scotland and it's budget.

 

I think UKIP as an electoral force in Scotland is dead rather than Anti-EU sentiment. We should vote to stay in but I'm not holding my breath as to by how much.

I wouldn't be so sure. I assume UKIP's poor showing has more to do with our disgusting vile creature that is our UKIP MEP. BBC Scotland and the Scottish electorate gave him enough rope to hang himself and it was utterly SPECTACULAR to watch him do so. That and Farage declaring war on Scotland and it's budget.

 

I think UKIP as an electoral force in Scotland is dead rather than Anti-EU sentiment. We should vote to stay in but I'm not holding my breath as to by how much.

 

Ironically, one of the safest SNP seats (Banff & Buchan) is apparently the most Eurosceptic in Scotland.

 

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/p...stay-in-the-eu/

I'd say that UKIP do badly in Scotland given that if someone wants to vote for nationalism, they've already got a perfectly good option for it.

I'm not sure it's correct to equate UKIPs English nationalism in the same breath as the SNPs civic nationalism?

It's apples and oranges. While they are both fruit, they are hardly similar.

I agree with Jon Healey in Labour List today -

 

http://labourlist.org/2015/05/lets-put-to-...-on-the-tories/

 

I agree with your arguement but think its unfair to blame the state when the system set up by the rich and powerful in the 1970s was based on telling the state to F off!

 

That all confirms what I'm saying Labour is currently trying to do, I'm afraid. The British banks going bust were a "world" crisis that all nations can co-incidentally hide behind, nothing to do with the Labour Party, no housing bubble, no 1 TRILLION pounds of debt before the crash as a nation, no failures of Brown and his set-up, no mention of the taxes from the banks used to avoid a large deficit. Labour are just innocent of all wrong-doing and it's only those nasty Tories cutting back in 2010 that has caused the problems. Those exact cutbacks in expenditure (give or take a few quid and a quibble over timing) that the Labour Party had in their manifesto had they won the 2010 election and a thinned down version in their 2015 manifesto....?

 

I despair at how stupid Labour party members think the public are juggling conveniently-chosen statistics as some sort of proof. I'm becoming more convinced it doesn't matter who gets elected leader if this is their strategy cos they will get laughed out of court (ie the next general election) while the Torags reap the benefit of any economy improvements by 2020.

 

for a different point of view, have a look at some of Robert Peston's reports (the one who blew the whistle on the forthcoming banking crisis and Northern Rock) or read the relatively unbiased Independent/i papers

YouGov yesterday asking people's opinions on Labour leaders had the supposed swing voters' choice Liz Kendall reach 2%. Chuka Umunna was top with 17% followed by Andy Burnham on 14%.

Edited May 18, 201510 yr by Danny

I'm not sure it's correct to equate UKIPs English nationalism in the same breath as the SNPs civic nationalism?

LMAO. Yeah, the amount of times I've been told to fuck off for being English when I've had to do Scottish fieldwork felt real civic. Nicola can try and put a pretty face on it all she likes, but when you have widespread support for an actively nationalist cause it is never, never purely benign. There is always an outgroup.

YouGov yesterday asking people's opinions on Labour leaders had the supposed swing voters' choice Liz Kendall reach 2%. Chuka Umunna was top with 17% followed by Andy Burnham on 14%.

I think the main problem with these polls are that they're based entirely on what they will have seen so far, so lesser known candidates like Liz, Creagh, and in fairness Yvette (who's kept a low profile) will always do badly as they're basically name recognition polls unless someone's been actively hateful the times they've had publicity.

 

Survation get around the problem interestingly by showing a one-minute clip of each leader before asking. Annoyingly, for some reason they decided on polling again last week to include Tristram but not to include Liz, even though she's got the numbers to make the final ballot and he doesn't.

I think the main problem with these polls are that they're based entirely on what they will have seen so far, so lesser known candidates like Liz, Creagh, and in fairness Yvette (who's kept a low profile) will always do badly as they're basically name recognition polls unless someone's been actively hateful the times they've had publicity.

 

Survation get around the problem interestingly by showing a one-minute clip of each leader before asking. Annoyingly, for some reason they decided on polling again last week to include Tristram but not to include Liz, even though she's got the numbers to make the final ballot and he doesn't.

 

But she's just had a week of media interviews and press coverage. If she couldn't create an impression on people with those opportunities in the way that Chuka and Andy have done, doesn't that suggest she's not good enough for the job? This goes to the heart of the problem, to reach out to people who've drifted away from Labour, you need to have something interesting to say to even get their attention before you can think about getting their votes -- platitudes about "giving people control" are not going to get people's attention. Yet platitudes are inevitable if they're too scared to put forward any concrete (even - gasp! - left-wing) ideas.

Edited May 18, 201510 yr by Danny

But she's just had a week of media interviews and press coverage. If she couldn't create an impression on people with those opportunities in the way that Chuka and Andy have done, doesn't that suggest she's not good enough for the job?

Are you actually seriously making this argument? :lol:

 

No, seriously. Seriously?

 

Andy and Chuka have both been hugely high profile Labour representatives for four, five years now. Even then, a large part of the public will not (and does not) know either of them by name. Come on Danny - you're better than this. At the very least the idea that the public is paying close enough attention that one week's coverage of the odd interview without a single speech so far (with probably about a ten second clip of her on the evening news of her one or two high profile days) is enough for a. much of the public to know who Liz Kendall is, and b. for those that do to have much of an idea of whether she'd be any good as leader is probably the most laughable thing you've said.

 

You'd mock that argument if anyone made it for a newcomer the other way around, and rightly so. There's a reason this leadership contest isn't being done in a month, which would be ridiculous enough. To suggest the public at large would have a perception in a week!

That said, the 80% platitudes thing is something that's plagued every candidate so far. I'm putting it down to week 1 - most of the positioning the candidates are doing is behind the scenes to try and win nominations from MPs (it'll probably carry on that way until we have the nominations out the way), so there isn't much of a focus on putting a stall out to voters right now other than the cursory set out the lines kind of stuff that comes with the interviews.

LMAO. Yeah, the amount of times I've been told to fuck off for being English when I've had to do Scottish fieldwork felt real civic. Nicola can try and put a pretty face on it all she likes, but when you have widespread support for an actively nationalist cause it is never, never purely benign. There is always an outgroup.

 

 

Im not sure you can blame Nicola Sturgeon for some idiot who is ignorant to you when you have encountered someone no more than I can blame Labour for anti nationalist sentiment in Belfast due to their position as a unionist party in the UK? :huh:

That said, the 80% platitudes thing is something that's plagued every candidate so far. I'm putting it down to week 1 - most of the positioning the candidates are doing is behind the scenes to try and win nominations from MPs (it'll probably carry on that way until we have the nominations out the way), so there isn't much of a focus on putting a stall out to voters right now other than the cursory set out the lines kind of stuff that comes with the interviews.

 

But as we've seen from the past 5 years, platitudes are inevitable if Labour aren't going to go properly to the left. If they're not prepared to make a proper, distinctive argument (whether that's an argument for government spending, for more business responsibility, for the super-rich being brought to heel, etc.), they've got nothing left to say except the derivative soundbites like "hardworking families" or "unleashing people's potential" that turn off the public, swing voters most of all. Yet again it will result in the parties with the clearer and more distinctive messages (the Tories and the SNP) drowning out Labour yet again.

Edited May 19, 201510 yr by Danny

Im not sure you can blame Nicola Sturgeon for some idiot who is ignorant to you when you have encountered someone no more than I can blame Labour for anti nationalist sentiment in Belfast due to their position as a unionist party in the UK? :huh:

I don't blame Nicola Sturgeon. I blame the Scottish Nationalist Party for the rise of, uh, virulent nationalism. You can rebrand nationalism all you like. It's still a vile and disgusting ideology at the root of it.

But as we've seen from the past 5 years, platitudes are inevitable if Labour aren't going to go properly to the left. If they're not prepared to make a proper, distinctive argument (whether that's an argument for government spending, for more business responsibility, for the super-rich being brought to heel, etc.), they've got nothing left to say except the derivative soundbites like "hardworking families" or "unleashing people's potential" that turn off the public, swing voters most of all. Yet again it will result in the parties with the clearer and more distinctive messages (the Tories and the SNP) drowning out Labour yet again.

Platitudes certainly aren't inevitable if Labour 'don't go properly to the left' - invoking Tony's mildly cliché but the likes of him and John Reid were plenty capable of having distinctive centrist positions and saying something that meant something, and they certainly weren't 'properly to the left'.

 

In any case, I don't see the platitudes lasting long. At least, not from the candidates that are Andy, by virtue of needing to say something to get ahead of him.

Platitudes certainly aren't inevitable if Labour 'don't go properly to the left' - invoking Tony's mildly cliché but the likes of him and John Reid were plenty capable of having distinctive centrist positions and saying something that meant something, and they certainly weren't 'properly to the left'.

 

In any case, I don't see the platitudes lasting long. At least, not from the candidates that are Andy, by virtue of needing to say something to get ahead of him.

 

But Tony Blair was to the left of Miliband and the current leadership contenders on policy (however reasonable and non-tribal his tone was). He was able to sound distinctive because he was actually arguing for higher government spending and government assistance for people, for new workers' rights, and occasionally even criticising obscenely high levels of pay: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/blair-co...ed-1568040.html

Edited May 19, 201510 yr by Danny

Plus, I don't see how you could think any of the candidates WON'T stick to the platitudes. Anything concrete will cost money. If Liz Kendall et al are running round saying how they don't believe in government spending, how is it possible to say something concrete?

But Tony Blair was to the left of Miliband and the current leadership contenders on policy (however reasonable and non-tribal his tone was). He was able to sound distinctive because he was actually arguing for higher government spending and government assistance for people, for new workers' rights, and occasionally even criticising obscenely high levels of pay: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/blair-co...ed-1568040.html

You're getting very rose-tinted glasses on Blair, considering he was basically the Godfather of your loathed public service reform - which was pretty much his main domestic focus post-9/11.