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.

 

Talking about Blair in opposition. He would never have got people's attention in the first place if he'd just mouthed vacuous "centrist" platitudes and not put forward substance.

 

Peter Kellner (one of the former "Blairite" heroes) also says he thinks Blair's 1997 manifesto was more left-wing in substance than Miliband's; he says the main issue was that Miliband allowed himself to LOOK more left-wing than he actually was (which I don't totally agree with either, but it makes a lot more sense than this laughable idea that the public are crying out for a Labour party which commits to huge spending cuts and sucks up to the super-rich and big businesses):

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-kell..._b_7305402.html

Edited May 19, 201510 yr by Danny

I know they led in different times but Blair left wing?? lol

 

I see Mark Ferguson is Liz Kendalls new advisor, i shall miss his morning updates from Labour List!

If he was remembered for anything in Opposition, it was 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime', visiting Murdoch, or the platitude-tastic concept of stakeholder capitalism.

 

As it goes, I agree with Peter - and I was thinking about just this the other day on how exactly that comes to happen. It's quite interesting actually:

 

Thousands of election offers throughout the store

JUNE 20, 2014

STEVEVANRIEL

 

Is Peter taller than Paul? How much taller is Peter than Paul? Our minds find the first question much easier to answer than the second. Sometimes these easier ,yes or no, comparisons reveal as much or even more than trying to measure everything individually. Simple tallying heuristics have been found to beat more complicated professional judgements on accurately diagnosing strokes and predicting avalanches.

 

However, sometimes they get it wrong. Suppose there are two supermarkets: one is very slightly cheaper on 90% of the products, the other is generally slightly more expensive but is a lot cheaper on a few big items like spirits. If you wander through both supermarkets, your mind will find it easier to do lots of small comparisons – beans are cheaper here, bread is cheaper here, toothpaste is cheaper here – rather than noticing that those small reductions don’t actually add up to the big saving the other supermarket offered on a bottle of Scotch. The supermarkets appear to know this – explaining why they have adverts emphasising how many of their products are cheaper than their rivals’ (“frequency cues”), not how much cheaper they are overall (“magnitude cues”).

 

What has this got to do with politics? Judging prices or heights is a lot easier than judging political positions. So in political decisions, people may rely even more on questions like “Is Ed Miliband more leftwing than David Cameron?” and avoid, even more, questions like “How much more leftwing is Ed Miliband than David Cameron?”

 

This has interesting implications for politics. Parties want voters to think they occupy a particular place on the ideological spectrum. They do things – make speeches, announce policies and so on – to try and show people where they stand. What this approach suggests is that it’s the number of leftwing policies that you adopt or leftwing speeches you give that matters – not how left they are – for whether you are seen as leftwing or not. If “frequency cues” matter then a party can pursue a madly lefty policy – occasionally – and be seen as quite centrist. Alternatively, a party can be very moderately leftish – regularly – and be perceived as radically leftwing. The same applies on the right.

 

In campaign terms, it makes overall tone more important than major interventions. Fifty small press releases matter more than a big policy announcement. Both the Conservatives and Labour have sometimes gone for big centrist policy announcements in recent years – for example, Labour’s zero-based budgeting or the Tories’ support for gay marriage – which have done surprisingly little to change the overall perceptions of either party. Perhaps the reason is not that the moves weren’t big enough, but that they weren’t frequent enough – or were swamped by the many minor signals being given out in the opposite direction.

 

Now where you want to be on the political spectrum is up to you. As a New Labour type, I like this analysis because it helps resolve a big problem for me. I tend to be pretty centrist on most things but on a few issues – immigration or international development for example – I don’t agree with the majority position in the UK. This approach says that taking an out-of-touch view on a few issues isn’t a problem, just as Tony Blair’s pro-Europeanism never really held him back electorally. Because who wants to be “in touch” all of the time?

 

References:

 

Alba, J.W., Broniarczyk, S.M., Shimp, T.A, & Urbany, J.E. (1994). The Influence of Prior Beliefs, Frequency Cues and Magnitude Cues on Consumers’ Perceptions of Comparative Price Data. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(2), 219-235.

 

Chater, N. (2014). From principles to decision making. Principals of Cognition series. Lecture conducted at Warwick Business School, UK.

 

Gigerenzer, G. & Gassmaier, W. (2011). Heuristic Decision Making. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 451-482.

This myth that Miliband D would have done better than Miliband E is almost entirely an invention by the Tory press. It's all been part of their campaign to discredit Miliband E. Just look at the number of times they have shown that awkward picture with the bacon buttie. If Miliband D had won, they would have used that picture with the banana instead.

 

Similarly, if Andy Burnham becomes leader, they will remind readers that he was booed at a Hillsborough memorial service. Even The Sun will try that line, despite their utterly shameful record on Hillsborough. They will ignore the fact that the reaction to that booing was the establishment of the enquiry that finally reported the truth.

 

They will continue to ignore Cameron's failings - his role in Black Wednesday, leaving his daughter in the pub etc. - and his lies - "no top down reorganisation of the NHS", "I'm a passionate Aston Villa supporter" etc. If Boris Johnson becomes leader, they will ignore his serial adultery. As with Cameron, there will be no mention of the Bullingdon Club.

I know I'm going back a couple of pages here, but really, dragging up Cameron leaving his daughter in a pub as an example of a "failing" is absurd! It could literally happen to anyone, especially as if memory serves they left in different cars and both parties thought the other had her. I hate when stuff like that is brought into political discussions. Ditto sandwichgate.

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.

 

 

I get your point Qass, and im a labour supporter just dont want you to think im a raving right wing nationalist :P

Also the whole 'Blair was more left wing than Ed' misses, as ever, the importance of both trajectory (where they were coming from in the Party's history) and political context. Nobody at the time considered Blair especially left wing for those statements - in Opposition or in Government - and quoting one at a time is a little like the kinds of people who go 'the 80s must have been amazing for music!', name a couple of stone cold grooves, but forget that with time everything else that came with them has been forgotten. You can cherrypick any politician who was active for nigh on thirty years but the most unbending into most any position you'd like.

I know I'm going back a couple of pages here, but really, dragging up Cameron leaving his daughter in a pub as an example of a "failing" is absurd! It could literally happen to anyone, especially as if memory serves they left in different cars and both parties thought the other had her. I hate when stuff like that is brought into political discussions. Ditto sandwichgate.

I think the point he was more making was that the papers could equally have used that as a 'failing' going by the low bar they go for for most Labour politicians - i.e., sandwichgate.

Also the whole 'Blair was more left wing than Ed' misses, as ever, the importance of both trajectory (where they were coming from in the Party's history) and political context. Nobody at the time considered Blair especially left wing for those statements - in Opposition or in Government - and quoting one at a time is a little like the kinds of people who go 'the 80s must have been amazing for music!', name a couple of stone cold grooves, but forget that with time everything else that came with them has been forgotten. You can cherrypick any politician who was active for nigh on thirty years but the most unbending into most any position you'd like.

 

That may be, but it doesn't change the fact that he wouldn't have got anywhere if he'd just spouted the nonsense that today's "Blairites" spout which the public just dismisses as meaningless politics-speak.

 

Also, a while back I looked through the Independent archive for stuff about Labour from that period (because I'm just that cool), and there's actually a LOT of stories about Blair and especially Brown railing against the "undeserving rich" and saying that certain salaries were out of proportion (while stressing they supported businesses that did the right thing).

Edited May 19, 201510 yr by Danny

Danny you need to submit a paper to John McDonnells Radical Labour group -

 

http://radical-labour.co.uk/index.html

 

 

I know I'm going back a couple of pages here, but really, dragging up Cameron leaving his daughter in a pub as an example of a "failing" is absurd! It could literally happen to anyone, especially as if memory serves they left in different cars and both parties thought the other had her. I hate when stuff like that is brought into political discussions. Ditto sandwichgate.

But that's partly my point. The papers kept going on about Miliband's bacon sandwich, while ignoring Cameron's failure to look after his own daughter. Neither are particularly relevant, although I would argue that the latter is more important than the former.

Danny you need to submit a paper to John McDonnells Radical Labour group -

 

http://radical-labour.co.uk/index.html

 

Dunno, I feel like John McDonnell would be the type who would translate anything as "nationalise the railways".

:D!

while ignoring Cameron's failure to look after his own daughter. .

 

 

You didn't comment on my post about this. Don't you think Cameron's protection team were as much if not MORE to blame?

Edited May 20, 201510 yr by Common Sense

You didn't comment on my post about this. Don't you think Cameron's protection team were as much if not MORE to blame?

No. I know Tories like to outsource as much as possible, but the primary responsibility for looking after children lies with the parents.

Tristram Hunt is out of the running and has backed Liz Kendall.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32800602

Good to see!

What a shame. Just when I'd finally learned how to spell Tristram. All nuns will breathe a sigh of relief that he's not standing.

Tristram the MP for Stoke, never thought id see the day...

What a shame. Just when I'd finally learned how to spell Tristram. All nuns will breathe a sigh of relief that he's not standing.

 

and James Blunt will go "dammit" as he was the cockney rhyming slang replacement for Gareth Hunt and it would have been his chance to pass on that baton... :teresa:

Suggestions from some in Labour that whoever wins should be forced to submit themselves for re-election in 2018. I actually quite like that idea. It doesn't really make sense to select your prime minister candidate years and years before.

 

Meanwhile, the "Blairites" are still going apeshit at Liz Kendall possibly not managing to scrape together enough MP nominations to get through to the next round. I don't know why they care so much, because if she's struggling with the MPs she sure as hell isn't going to get anywhere with the more left-wing membership.

Edited May 20, 201510 yr by Danny