£15 is completely doable if you adjust a more radical overhaul of economic spending plans and give aid to businesses that need it, and control for cost of living. Whether it's this or another policy, Labour need to be coming in hard on to fix the cost of living crisis which helps fix the economy by itself with further easing - where the Tories are currently determined to destroy worker spending power to keep rich people happy.

 

It should be worth noting that the Conservative and Lib Dem parties are now far more democratic than Labour, the former has limited numbers of MP nominations required for leadership nominations. If there are MPs who aren't adhering to the party's values, then members should be able to deselect them, and if there is an MP who the majority of members would support, then having them be pre-screened by people who the party leadership pre-selected for agreeing with them is indeed anti-democratic.

 

That's the problem with putting faith in MPs, there's no open selection in Britain, no way to primary an MP, they're just put there by the leadership and if the leadership sees it as convenient to morph the worker's party's values away from what it should be, then they can do it over time and there's nothing the public can do about it but vote red with the threat of 'if you don't you'll get blue'.

Add to that 80% of members voted in favour of the PR motion that was defeated tonight, by affiliates who voted 95% against. That is definitively not democracy.

Looks like the Corbyn led faction are going for their one last attack on the Labour Party. Some truly bonkers stuff coming out about the £10ph national minimum wage, the same policy the shadow cabinet member wrote on the green paper, had it voted and accepted on, and then immeditely wants to raise this to £15ph. I suspect a lot of this is in retaliation to the constitution change rather than the actual policy. Can't work out if it's Starmer deciding to push buttons or if people have just gone truly bonkers.

 

@1442544607334572036

 

Starmer isn't a particularly good communicator, most of the time when being interviewed he looks and sounds awkward and you can tell the briefing notes that he's been given because he ends up looking around and then repeating them. 'Angela has said those words'. ugh

 

As for democracy Roo - I seem to remember you couldn't accept the democracy of a referendum that had a 52%/48% split so maybe PIPE DOWN love. The whole rule changes are very suspicious, why would they need to be brought in at this point if Keir wasn't thinking of going soon and was worried about a successor? They were trying to bring in this significant change that reversed the 'one member: one vote' process that was brought in after a review by Ed Miliband in 2014 but this failed, so they (Mandelson et al) decided instead to suppress democracy by requiring that 20% of MPs are required to get someone nominated for the leadership slate - a threshold that rules out all but 1 woman in the past 40 years of leadership contests and would have led to precisely zero black candidates, furthermore this would have led to a 'choice' in the 2020 leadership election between Keir Starmer and er..

 

Thoroughly depressing if you think that's democracy mate. Railroading your own opinion(s) and ideas through against a majority who are against you. I'd call it something else.

@1442544607334572036

 

Starmer isn't a particularly good communicator, most of the time when being interviewed he looks and sounds awkward and you can tell the briefing notes that he's been given because he ends up looking around and then repeating them. 'Angela has said those words'. ugh

 

As for democracy Roo - I seem to remember you couldn't accept the democracy of a referendum that had a 52%/48% split so maybe PIPE DOWN love. The whole rule changes are very suspicious, why would they need to be brought in at this point if Keir wasn't thinking of going soon and was worried about a successor? They were trying to bring in this significant change that reversed the 'one member: one vote' process that was brought in after a review by Ed Miliband in 2014 but this failed, so they (Mandelson et al) decided instead to suppress democracy by requiring that 20% of MPs are required to get someone nominated for the leadership slate - a threshold that rules out all but 1 woman in the past 40 years of leadership contests and would have led to precisely zero black candidates, furthermore this would have led to a 'choice' in the 2020 leadership election between Keir Starmer and er..

 

Thoroughly depressing if you think that's democracy mate. Railroading your own opinion(s) and ideas through against a majority who are against you. I'd call it something else.

1) Who can say how the nomination process would have gone if the threshold was 20% of MPs rather than 10%? As potential candidates unable to get the 20% required dropped out, their supporters are likely to have switched to somebody else.

 

2) If an MP cannot get nominations form one-fifth of their colleagues, how are they going to do when trying to get the support of the country?

1) Who can say how the nomination process would have gone if the threshold was 20% of MPs rather than 10%? As potential candidates unable to get the 20% required dropped out, their supporters are likely to have switched to somebody else.

 

2) If an MP cannot get nominations form one-fifth of their colleagues, how are they going to do when trying to get the support of the country?

 

MPs are not representative of the country. There are three times as many landlords in Parliament as compared to the general population. They will obviously have different interests, particularly so in a party like Labour that aspires (or rather, should aspire) for the many.

 

This is very clearly the anti-Corbyn rule, and looking at his results again show why this is a nonsense rule. 15% of MPs nominated him, he beats his opponents by a landslide in the popular vote (59% to Burnham as the nearest on 19%) and then brought Labour up to 40% popular vote in his first election, which whatever you may say about the circumstances of that election, was far better than anything the Blairite, the dominant MP-wing of the party has done in decades. It guarantees nothing about the candidate being a good leader, and it guarantees everything about whether or not they're liked by the current, comfortable set of Labour MPs.

£15 is completely doable if you adjust a more radical overhaul of economic spending plans and give aid to businesses that need it, and control for cost of living. Whether it's this or another policy, Labour need to be coming in hard on to fix the cost of living crisis which helps fix the economy by itself with further easing - where the Tories are currently determined to destroy worker spending power to keep rich people happy.

 

It should be worth noting that the Conservative and Lib Dem parties are now far more democratic than Labour, the former has limited numbers of MP nominations required for leadership nominations. If there are MPs who aren't adhering to the party's values, then members should be able to deselect them, and if there is an MP who the majority of members would support, then having them be pre-screened by people who the party leadership pre-selected for agreeing with them is indeed anti-democratic.

 

That's the problem with putting faith in MPs, there's no open selection in Britain, no way to primary an MP, they're just put there by the leadership and if the leadership sees it as convenient to morph the worker's party's values away from what it should be, then they can do it over time and there's nothing the public can do about it but vote red with the threat of 'if you don't you'll get blue'.

 

You don't cost the fix of living by giving millions of people a near 40% wage increase. It's an arbitary figure with no thought in to it whatsoever, so I cannot support the idea and you come in to a whole host of other issues too- £15 an hour on 40 hours gets you to £30,000 a year near enough I think. You're just fueling inflation. It's nothing like creating a minimum wage (which of course, was by the Blairites most of the Left decide to ignore). It was a tactic by some Corbynite to declare maximum damage, seeing as yet again, he voted for it on the Green Paper to begin with. £15 copying a Bernie policy and forgetting that pounds and dollars are not the same thing.

 

We vote MPs in. We, the general public. If we don't like them, we can vote for someone else. All MPs should be aligned to their Party framework and values. Let's have Primaries is just an absolutely bonkers idea. We barely get people to vote in the general election, so let's have primary elections too - what a great use of public money.

 

@1442544607334572036

 

Starmer isn't a particularly good communicator, most of the time when being interviewed he looks and sounds awkward and you can tell the briefing notes that he's been given because he ends up looking around and then repeating them. 'Angela has said those words'. ugh

 

As for democracy Roo - I seem to remember you couldn't accept the democracy of a referendum that had a 52%/48% split so maybe PIPE DOWN love. The whole rule changes are very suspicious, why would they need to be brought in at this point if Keir wasn't thinking of going soon and was worried about a successor? They were trying to bring in this significant change that reversed the 'one member: one vote' process that was brought in after a review by Ed Miliband in 2014 but this failed, so they (Mandelson et al) decided instead to suppress democracy by requiring that 20% of MPs are required to get someone nominated for the leadership slate - a threshold that rules out all but 1 woman in the past 40 years of leadership contests and would have led to precisely zero black candidates, furthermore this would have led to a 'choice' in the 2020 leadership election between Keir Starmer and er..

 

Thoroughly depressing if you think that's democracy mate. Railroading your own opinion(s) and ideas through against a majority who are against you. I'd call it something else.

 

Yes I've seen the Starmer banner, used by the Twitterite. I said before it was public sector bodies and small businesses. I'm fine with making global businesses pay a good wage, as they can afford it. McDonalds make billions. Also convinently this certain McDs is in London innit? Where the living wage is closer to £11 as it is. It's funny the old people holding him account to this are the Labour left.

 

Completely right on the EU. However like I have said before, the general public vote in MPs. Now people are saying there is not a democracy because THEY cannot decide what happens, this isn't a democracy apparently. It's only a democracy if Labour members vote.

 

MPs are not representative of the country. There are three times as many landlords in Parliament as compared to the general population. They will obviously have different interests, particularly so in a party like Labour that aspires (or rather, should aspire) for the many.

 

This is very clearly the anti-Corbyn rule, and looking at his results again show why this is a nonsense rule. 15% of MPs nominated him, he beats his opponents by a landslide in the popular vote (59% to Burnham as the nearest on 19%) and then brought Labour up to 40% popular vote in his first election, which whatever you may say about the circumstances of that election, was far better than anything the Blairite, the dominant MP-wing of the party has done in decades. It guarantees nothing about the candidate being a good leader, and it guarantees everything about whether or not they're liked by the current, comfortable set of Labour MPs.

 

Beat them in a landslide vote cos you could sign up and pay £10 and do what needs to be done back in 2016. Think it's well known that the popular vote was a complete farce and heavily manipulated. It's not an anti-Corbyn rule, but it is certainly a rule designed to stop no-mark MPs from getting a ticket to the leadership. I'm not saying this is not an attack on the left, because it is, but it's not undemocratic. If you can't win over 20% of your fellow MPs, how are you going to win over millions of people in an election???

How do you win over the populace while not winning over the establishment? I suppose there are plenty of examples in recent history to choose from...

 

You don't cost the fix of living by giving millions of people a near 40% wage increase. It's an arbitary figure with no thought in to it whatsoever, so I cannot support the idea and you come in to a whole host of other issues too- £15 an hour on 40 hours gets you to £30,000 a year near enough I think. You're just fueling inflation. It's nothing like creating a minimum wage (which of course, was by the Blairites most of the Left decide to ignore). It was a tactic by some Corbynite to declare maximum damage, seeing as yet again, he voted for it on the Green Paper to begin with. £15 copying a Bernie policy and forgetting that pounds and dollars are not the same thing.

 

We vote MPs in. We, the general public. If we don't like them, we can vote for someone else. All MPs should be aligned to their Party framework and values. Let's have Primaries is just an absolutely bonkers idea. We barely get people to vote in the general election, so let's have primary elections too - what a great use of public money.

 

If millions of people are on the minimum wage then that's a problem in itself. It's not something you can live on. You increase the spending power of the people in society most likely to spend, it stimulates the economy by itself. And obviously with the implementation of such a policy it would be done incrementally over time.

 

(not to mention the jobs that are on minimum wage probably deserve a lot more for how awful they are)

 

And that's really not true about MPs. The party can put up just about anyone they choose in a safe seat, and if the leadership is hostile to the concept of labour, as this leadership are, then they're not going to choose people who'd change that. Even in marginal seats the person who is an MP is barely a factor, because everyone just votes for who they want to be Prime Minister.

 

The PLP has been hijacked by people who want to be not even Blair's Labour, they seem to be aspiring to Cameron's Tories. And by doing that, they're changing the rules to make it more restrictive on who can be voted in just cements their power over anyone else. It's a fixing of the status quo.

The arrogance of Murray to complain about sabotage with the way him and his faction acted under Corbyn, you couldn’t make it up! The brass neck on him!

How do you win over the populace while not winning over the establishment? I suppose there are plenty of examples in recent history to choose from...

If millions of people are on the minimum wage then that's a problem in itself. It's not something you can live on. You increase the spending power of the people in society most likely to spend, it stimulates the economy by itself. And obviously with the implementation of such a policy it would be done incrementally over time.

 

(not to mention the jobs that are on minimum wage probably deserve a lot more for how awful they are)

 

And that's really not true about MPs. The party can put up just about anyone they choose in a safe seat, and if the leadership is hostile to the concept of labour, as this leadership are, then they're not going to choose people who'd change that. Even in marginal seats the person who is an MP is barely a factor, because everyone just votes for who they want to be Prime Minister.

 

The PLP has been hijacked by people who want to be not even Blair's Labour, they seem to be aspiring to Cameron's Tories. And by doing that, they're changing the rules to make it more restrictive on who can be voted in just cements their power over anyone else. It's a fixing of the status quo.

 

Unless we live in a communist society then there is always going to be a food chain. The way to fix the crisis (of which I totally agree there is one) is not to increase wages 40%! It's a policy with zero thought and complete pie in the sky stuff. If the minimum wage goes up, so does everyone else's salaries and who pays for all the increases? Us! You're just feeding inflation. Think you're forgetting the average median wage in the country is like £27k or something. While the pandemic placed an emphasis on key workers, how are the nurses/teachers gonna feel when someone doing an admin job in the back office is getting paid more than them? Hardly a vote winner. They can increment it all they like, but there's no fiscal thought. There's a massive need for social and affordable housing, this is where our efforts need to be placed to bridge the gap between the cost of living. But of course 'let's build on brownfield sites' or 'hammer developers who are banking land' doesn't have the same view.

 

The Party.. which everyone is a member of. Sure they can parachute people to safe seats, but we still vote for them at the end of the day. It's us the general public who decide who gets elected and who doesn't. It's why I find the hyperbole about democracy so ridiclulous from the Left. It's not an attack on democracy, it's certainly an attack on the marginalised fringes of what I would agree.

 

The arrogance of Murray to complain about sabotage with the way him and his faction acted under Corbyn, you couldn’t make it up! The brass neck on him!

 

Yes, in the same way the Corbyn-led faction sabotaged Labour for 20 years through the Blair and Brown years at every given opportunity. Also conveniently the only time Labour have been in power for generations!

Unless we live in a communist society then there is always going to be a food chain. The way to fix the crisis (of which I totally agree there is one) is not to increase wages 40%! It's a policy with zero thought and complete pie in the sky stuff. If the minimum wage goes up, so does everyone else's salaries and who pays for all the increases? Us! You're just feeding inflation. Think you're forgetting the average median wage in the country is like £27k or something. While the pandemic placed an emphasis on key workers, how are the nurses/teachers gonna feel when someone doing an admin job in the back office is getting paid more than them? Hardly a vote winner. They can increment it all they like, but there's no fiscal thought. There's a massive need for social and affordable housing, this is where our efforts need to be placed to bridge the gap between the cost of living. But of course 'let's build on brownfield sites' or 'hammer developers who are banking land' doesn't have the same view.

 

The Party.. which everyone is a member of. Sure they can parachute people to safe seats, but we still vote for them at the end of the day. It's us the general public who decide who gets elected and who doesn't. It's why I find the hyperbole about democracy so ridiclulous from the Left. It's not an attack on democracy, it's certainly an attack on the marginalised fringes of what I would agree.

Yes, in the same way the Corbyn-led faction sabotaged Labour for 20 years through the Blair and Brown years at every given opportunity. Also conveniently the only time Labour have been in power for generations!

 

How on Earth did they do that? They weren’t in any position of power? They were critical from the back benches which they are entitled to be. It’s hardly the same as mass shadow cabinet resignations of the 2015-19 period!

 

What sabotage? The elft fought for Labour at everything election. THE ROGHT WING ACTIVELY STOPPEF US FROM WINNING THE ELECTION VERSUS MAD MAY BEGOTE BREXSHIT CEMENTED ITSELF!!

Beat them in a landslide vote cos you could sign up and pay £10 and do what needs to be done back in 2016. Think it's well known that the popular vote was a complete farce and heavily manipulated. It's not an anti-Corbyn rule, but it is certainly a rule designed to stop no-mark MPs from getting a ticket to the leadership. I'm not saying this is not an attack on the left, because it is, but it's not undemocratic. If you can't win over 20% of your fellow MPs, how are you going to win over millions of people in an election???

 

Quite the statement this Rooney, ‘stop no mark MPs from running a ticket to leadership’. I certainly hope all the idiots and less intelligent people have a say in your view of democracy.

Edited September 28, 20213 yr by steve201

What is the point of an MP if they are not there to make decisons for that we voted them in for?? They are literally the proxy of the people. What the likes of Momentum really mean is the "democracy" is the Labour members, as the general population don't count- great logic. I can appreciate the debate around it, but a certain group of people take democracy for granted and have lost any real conception of what an elected represantive is.

 

Have you seen the Tories breaking pledges left right and centre, at times doing the opposite of what they stood for?

 

We live in a sham anyway. Vote someone in, then they can do the opposite of what they said they would and you have no mechanism to do a jot about it for FIVE YEARS.

How on Earth did they do that? They weren’t in any position of power? They were critical from the back benches which they are entitled to be. It’s hardly the same as mass shadow cabinet resignations of the 2015-19 period!

 

The same way the centre-left of the Party had little to no control of the Party during 2016-2019. Backbenchers can be critical but as has always been my point about Corbyn, how can you expect a man not to have many enemies in the Labour Party when he has spent his entire political career discrediting anything Blair/Brown did, voting against the whip at most opportunities!? It's hard to cry wolf when you have spent your entire political career discrediting most things an elected Government have done.

 

Quite the statement this Rooney, ‘stop no mark MPs from running a ticket to leadership’. I certainly hope all the idiots and less intelligent people have a say in your view of democracy.

 

As Suedehead put it much better than myself, how can you expect the electorate to vote for you when your own Party won't.

 

I don't want a Labour politician running with a £15 minimum wage tag line, because outside of a socialist fantasy, it's not going to cut with the electorate and will get torn to pieces. A one way ticket to losing a general election and causing more damage than the good it sets out to do. I'm all for policies which are thought out, but they're not. I want a leader who has leadership qualities and isn't the self prophesied socialist messiah.

 

Have you seen the Tories breaking pledges left right and centre, at times doing the opposite of what they stood for?

 

We live in a sham anyway. Vote someone in, then they can do the opposite of what they said they would and you have no mechanism to do a jot about it for FIVE YEARS.

 

Politicians lie, welcome to.. politics? Doesn't matter what a politicians ideology is they lie and bend the truth :lol:

Re: £15/hr. I'm not massively in favour of it myself - although the argument about inflation is laughable because it's hit 3% and will definitely go higher. Plus the rate that house prices have increased would definitely suggest we should be well above £30000 as a median salary, actually probably nearer £40000.

 

But the point is - it was adopted as policy through the democracy of the party conference.

 

Just like the second referendum was, just like the renewal of Trident was - both of which were massively unfavourable to the Labour leadership at the time but unlike this current lot of absolute MELTS they respected democracy.

Starmer id absolute TRASH, like I said all along. How is your 20 points ahead neoliberal clown doing for you Harvey and Rooney? :lol:

?

 

Starmer is terrible and his vague project of Danish SocDem-style centre-left with an authoritarian twinge is something I disagree with. But regardless of whether I like it, it would be going much better and the legitimate grumblings from progressives would be drowned out more if he was actually a visionary and an effective communicator. When all the Labour leadership projects is bland sentiments that nobody can really disagree with, then there is a void to fill, and the headlines from your conference are instead gonna be dumb but eyecatching stuff like transphobia and debates over whether 'scum' is an appropriate word, leaving your numerous policy announcements ignored.

 

So I'm not sure why you're calling me out.

I don't have a specific number in mind for the correct minimum wage but when Britain is having a cost-of-living crisis, then it is going to hit those on low incomes first and hardest. And the best way of mitigating that pain that is to raise minimum wages.

 

If it leads to further inflation (and it will, but not by as much as the minimum wage is raised, because higher earners won't see that kind of wage increase), then that hits everybody, but disproportionately those with savings and assets. So the rich shoulder the cost of a minimum wage increase, but since they have the wealth to weather the storm much better than the poor anyway, that's a sacrifice I'm perfectly fine. We're talking about a country with stark generational inequality and huge disparities in assets here - gapclosers would be better if they didn't happen in a time of economic strife but would be quite welcome all the same.

Edited September 28, 20213 yr by Harve

@1442863528235319299

@1442863528235319299

 

Picking up the ball and going home tactic after losing the NEC seat isn't it. Let's hope Starmer brings his own pastries to his meetings now :D