- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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Blairism wasn't the litany of evil people today paint it out to be. Off the top of my head, some good policies included:
Introducing the minimum wage at a time when there was literally no minimum and nothing to stop employers paying people £1 an hour
Putting more money into schools to reduce class sizes and increase teachers' pay
Scrapping laws which openly, proudly discriminated against LGB people and instead introducing laws protecting them from discrimination (yes LGB - politicians hadn't really discovered the other letters yet)
Raising taxes (national insurance) to put more money into the NHS
Expanding post-16 education and training. Simply leaving education at 16 was still the norm previously.
Introducing EMAs
Introducing Sure Start
Reducing poverty by giving poor people money (ie tax credits) paid for by taxing people who had a bit more money
Some of these policies actually succeeded in moving the fabled Overton window, eg the Tories now love the minimum wage and gay rights which they bitterly opposed when Blair's government championed them.
I'm not denying there was a lot of terrible stuff too but if we had a government which did whatever the 2016 equivalent of the above stuff is then I think Britain would become less unpleasant for many people.
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Jul 26, 2016 09:35
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May 18, 2024 00:43
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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Seems the High Court is today considering whether Jeremy Corbyn should be kicked out of the leadership contest after all
e: beaten to it
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Jul 26, 2016 10:04
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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Trident is pretty tubular though.
I like "Jeremy Corbyn has reconnected our party with its radical principles. But it's now time for a new generation with the energy and ideas to turn those principles in to action."
Yes, Mr. Corbyn has reconnected Labour with its mondo principles during the 8 months we let him lead, half of which were spent stabbing him in the back, but it's now time to put them into action by sweeping them under the rug.
I don't see how saying the existing leader is basically right about things but we should boot him out anyway because we need a "new generation" is going to inspire people.
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Jul 26, 2016 13:49
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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If the party splits, are those MPs just gonna refuse to step down and allow a by-election? Surely, unless your CLP does nominate Smith, if a Labour MP abandons the party in the event of the membership returning Corbyn, they'll never win re-election?
Quick glance at the SDP looks like none of them allowed a by-election and then they won a massive six seats at the next election. (Largely due to FPTP screwing them)
I cannot fathom how these MPs spent nine months undermining the leader instead of attacking the Tories and are now ready to return to the outback rather than give him (another?) chance.
One theory is they could "split" in the House of Commons so that they don't accept Corbyn's leadership there (which the Labour peers have already done) but remain members of the wider party and stand for election as Labour MPs when the time comes, assuming they're not deselected.
For what it's worth, my guess is that they'll just carry on exactly as they are now - Labour MPs who publicly attack their leader a lot. There won't be a full-on new party because people remember what happened to the SDP.
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Jul 27, 2016 09:53
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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I suspect not when he moved in, since he's likely been there for the majority of the 30 years he's served as Islington North's MP.
Corbyn went to a private fee-paying preparatory school followed by some weird state-funded grammar school run by the Haberdashers' Company, while Smith went to his local comp. So if we're arguing about who's posher, I think it's Corbyn.
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Jul 27, 2016 12:05
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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Seriously though, has Corbyn published a list of his policies? I don't mean things like being against austerity or against war, I mean setting out actual things he will do if he becomes Prime Minister.
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Jul 27, 2016 13:54
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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It's possible for an opposition leader to come out of PMQs looking like a winner even if the PM is a slippery bastard. William Hague, when he was Tory leader, did it with Tony Blair all the time (also an illustration of how little winning PMQs means as the Tories then got slaughtered at the election, but it did make his backbenchers happy).
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Jul 29, 2016 21:54
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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loving Hell, this is awful. As if it wasn't bad enough for kids in poverty to begin with.
Free Schools are an extension of that poo poo Blair did where some rich fucker or corporation puts up about 10% of the costs to open a school with the rest coming from the state and in exchange they get to decide what goes into the curriculum, like those mental christian schools that Dick Dawkins hates, right? Or is it slightly different?
Free schools don't have to follow the national curriculum and they can be opened by "charities, universities, independent schools, community and faith groups, teachers, parents, businesses". I'm not sure you actually need to put any money into them. (see here)
Supposedly they don't make a profit but certainly with academies, which are similar, there are documented cases of people involved in running the schools just paying themselves unreasonably massive salaries or outsourcing some functions to profit-making businesses which they have an interest in.
E: This recent episode of Channel 4's Dispatches is very good on explaining how people make money out of academies http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/on-demand/62012-006
Paxman fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jul 29, 2016
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Jul 29, 2016 22:09
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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I'm watching Newsnight right now and never mind Jeremy Corbyn, it's striking to me how terrible previous Labour leaders have been at getting their message across.
The BBC is interviewing one young man who says he backs Corbyn because he's anti-austerity and willing to invest in infrastructure.
In fact, the policy of the current Labour leadership is almost actually the same as it was under Miliband. Ed Miliband and Ed Balls said they would balance the books and then run a surplus on day-to-day spending but borrow to invest in infrastructure. John McDonnell has said his policy is to balance the books on day-to-day spending and borrow to invest in infrastructure. The difference is that he's not talking about a surplus, but as Miliband/Balls never said what this surplus would be, that's a much smaller difference than it may seem. It could mean they spend £1 a year less (in fact it probably means literally nothing because no Government can balance the books down to the precise £1 anyway).
However, Miliband was so keen to sound tough on spending and talk about "difficult decisions" that it seems he gave his own side the impression he was going to slash and burn our public services.
I had a conversation with a friend in the last leadership election who said she was voting Corbyn because for the first time in her life there was a politician who cared about equality, social justice, workers' rights and a compassionate society. I was genuinely a bit confused - even if you disagreed with them on a lot of things, did you really not think that Ed Miliband or Gordon Brown cared about those things?? But no, she didn't.
Now I'm pretty sure they did in fact care (especially Brown) but they seem to have given a lot of their own supporters the impression they didn't.
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Jul 29, 2016 23:01
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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Not if it is being spoon fed to you with plenty of free booze to help the story go down. Basically:
Jeremy Corbyn is not playing that status quo and it is a huge problem if he wants to get any positive coverage in the media. He would have to schmooze people he hates, serve them pre-hashed stories which they can drop into their paper with minimal work and let juicy tidbitss drop from thee top table to make them think that they are important and have a unique inside line to the People Who Matter.
The whole lecture series stuff and speeches in local places and detailed discussion of policy points is all well and good but those have to be accompanied by a press pack which spoon feeds the 1 or 2 main points to a set of hacks which they have previously lunched with a few times. Even better if through these lunches the hacks got wind of your initiates beforehand.
Schmoozing with parts of the establishment isn't a Corbyn thing though and many people in this thread would be pissed off with him if it was.
I wish Corbyn would do exactly this, or employ people to do it. He doesn't have to do it directly himself.
It wouldn't have to involve changing any of his policies or general philosophy in any way, or doing less on Facebook or ending the McDonnell lectures.
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Jul 30, 2016 15:41
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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There's a pelican crossing near my place which I use most days and if there's a cyclist approaching on the road I just wait for them to go through even if the traffic light is red and the green man is up. Plenty of cyclists stop for red lights but the number that don't bother mean it's not worth the risk.
I'm sure cyclists have plenty of horror stories about pedestrians too.
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Jul 31, 2016 15:54
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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Owen Jones posted:
Labour’s current polling is calamitous. No party has ever won an election with such disastrous polling, or even come close. Historically any party with such terrible polling goes on to suffer a bad defeat.
Don’t take my word for it: listen to John McDonnell. During the leadership election last year he wrote: “It is inarguable that no modern party leader can win an election if behind in the polls on economic competence.” This is actually untrue: you can be behind on the economy and ahead on leadership and still win. It is when you are behind on both — as they are for the current leadership — that history says you are heading for disaster. According to ICM in mid-July, “on the team better able to manage the economy,” 53% of Britons opted for Theresa May and Philip Hammond, while 15% opted for Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Labour’s polling has deteriorated badly ever since Brexit and the botched coup. But it was always bad and far below what a party with aspirations for power should expect. Corbyn started his leadership with a net negative rating. (Ed Miliband — who went on to lose — started with a net 19% positive approval rating); it has since slumped to minus 41%. At this stage in the electoral cycle, Ed Miliband’s Labour had a clear lead over the Tories — and then went on to lose. But Labour have barely ever had a lead over the Tories since the last general election. When there is a slim lead, it is seized on with much excitement on social media: but it was the norm throughout the entire last Parliament for Labour to be ahead, often by a big distance. The Tories have now opened up a lead of up to 14 points — yes, undoubtedly partly caused by the destabilisation of the party by Corbyn’s opponents, but there it is. Numerous polls show that most Labour supporters are dissatisfied with his leadership, even if they show little faith in any alternative. One poll showed that one in three Labour voters think Theresa May would make a better Prime Minister than their own party leader and — most heartbreakingly of all — 18 to 24 year olds preferred May.
The response to this normally involves citing the size of rallies and the surge in Labour’s membership. There is no question that Jeremy Corbyn has inspired and enthused hundreds of thousands of people all over Britain. But Michael Foot attracted huge rallies across the country in the build-up to Labour’s 1983 general election disaster. When Neil Kinnock saw the huge crowd at the infamous Sheffield rally in 1992, he was undoubtedly convinced he was going to become Prime Minister. It did not happen. I’ve spent a considerable portion of my life speaking at rallies: I would not mistake what I saw before me as representative of the nation as a whole, which is why I have often urged that those attending protest rallies went out into their communities. The enthusiasm of a minority is not evidence that the polls are wrong. There are 65 million people in Britain. If a total of 300,000 turn up to supportive rallies, that means, 99.5% of the population have not done so. There are those who do argue the polls are wrong, of course. But unfortunately the evidence to date is that when the polls are wrong — as they were in 2015 — it is not in Labour’s favour.
Yes, it’s true that Labour has won all its by-elections since Jeremy Corbyn became leader, and increased majorities. But in his first year, the picture was the same with Ed Miliband. Neither did Corbyn do as badly in the local elections as was predicted. But Labour still lost seats — unprecedented for an the main opposition party for decades — and as Jeremy Corbyn said at the time: “the results were mixed. We are not yet doing enough to win in 2020.”
Owen Jones posted:
The Labour leadership effectively has the same fiscal rule as Ed Balls in the last election: balance the nation’s books, not to borrow for day-to-day spending, but do borrow in order to invest. The leadership proposes a British investment bank: again, in the last manifesto. The key policy at the launch of Corbyn’s leadership campaign were equal pay audits. That was also in the last manifesto.
Yes, the Labour leadership now says it’s anti-austerity: Corbyn told me in my interview that they weren’t pledging cuts, unlike Ed Balls. But as I say, their fiscal rule is effectively the same, including a focus on deficit reduction “Deficit denial is a non-starter for anyone to have economic credibility with the electorate,” wrote John McDonnell. Labour would renationalise the railways, he says: but this, again, beefs up Labour’s pledge under Miliband’s leadership. Labour would reverse NHS privatisation: again, Labour at the last election committed to repealing the Health and Social Care Act and regretted the extent of NHS private sector involvement under New Labour. Corbyn opposed the Iraq war: so did Miliband. The Labour leadership’s policy was to vote against the bombing of Syria, as it was under Miliband.
I’m somebody who campaigned for Corbyn, I’m a left-wing journalist. But I’m genuinely not clear on the policies being offered. It seems as though Ed Miliband presented his policies as less left-wing than they actually were, and now the current leadership presents them as more left-wing than they actually are. It’s presentation, style and sentiment that seem to differ most. The same people alienated by a similar offer are now the most enthusiastic about it. But surely the aim should be to develop radical policies and present them as being commonsense and moderate — not as super radical in a way the substance doesn’t justify. The danger is similar policies are being offered by a leadership regarded as less competent, more “extreme” and less popular.
Owen Jones posted:
Yes, the media are always going to demonise a left-wing leader. But, again, if we just believe the public are robots who can be programmed what to think, then we might as well all give up. Sadiq Khan was not standing on a radical left programme in his London Mayoral bid. Nonetheless he was remorselessly portrayed as the puppet of extremists by his opponent and his ally — the capital’s only mass newspaper, as well as several national newspapers. He managed to counteract it, and won. His ratings are extremely favourable. The press lost.
Yet there doesn’t seem to be any clear media strategy. John McDonnell has actually made regular appearances at critical moments, and proved a solid performer. But Corbyn often seems entirely missing in action, particularly at critical moments: Theresa May becoming the new Prime Minister, the appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, the collapse of the Government’s economic strategy, the abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, soaring hate crimes after Brexit, and so on. Where have been the key media interventions here? When Theresa May became Prime Minister, Labour’s initial response (via a press release from a Shadow Cabinet member) was to call for a snap general election, which (to be generous) seems politically suicidal. As Andrew Grice in the Independent points out, press releases are often sent out so late that they become useless.
Many of Corbyn’s key supporters will not recognise this picture, because they follow his social media accounts. The polling last year showed a huge gap between Corbyn supporters and the rest of the public when it comes to getting news off social media. Look: I could hardly be a more avid user of social media. Without sounding like bragging, my social media following isn’t insubstantial — I have 489,000 followers on Twitter, for example, and in June I had over 4 million profile visits and 46.3 million impressions. I set up a Facebook page last year and have 225,000 likes; I use YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat. Social media takes up all too much of my life.
But social media is no substitute — at all — for a coherent media strategy. Only a relatively tiny proportion of the population use Twitter, for example, to talk about or access political news: disproportionately those who are already signed up believers. Take Facebook. At the last general election the Tories used targeted Facebook ads very effectively. There are a few points here. This is very different from people joining Facebook groups or sharing Facebook memes. This is online advertising. As one of Labour’s social media team put it to me, Labour actually may have had higher levels of reach than the Tories on Facebook at the last election. But the Tories paid money to work who they need to target, and with clear messages tailored for specific audiences, repeated ad infinitum. Labour had lots of different messages, didn’t target them at the right people, had a more diffuse audience, and many of the people targeted would only have seen a Labour post once. You end up with huge engagement amongst people who are already engaged — and you end up repeating messages that get the most engagement, because those are the ones that get your most dedicated supporters most enthused. You energise your core supporters (and end up sticking to the messages that energise them most), but fail to reach out — you actually do the opposite.
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There are, as I say, 65 million people in Britain. Most people do not spend their times discussing politics (or seeking out political content) on social media. That’s just an obvious fact. Millions of people do get their information about what’s going on in politics, say, from watching a bit of the 10 O’Clock News, or listening to news on radio. Radio 2, for example, has 15 million listeners, four million more than voted Conservative at the last general election. A study in 2013 found that 78% of adults used television for news; just 10% opted for Twitter. Things have not changed dramatically since then (indeed Twitter has been stagnating). The study found that people had poor trust in Twitter as a news source. Most people hear a bit of news about politics on the TV or radio.
Yes, social media has a role — but as a complement. An effective media strategy means appearing on TV and radio at every possible opportunity, and lobbying for appearances when they are not offered; reacting swiftly to momentous events like a change in Prime Minister; having message discipline underpinning a coherent vision; planning ahead, so that you are always one step ahead; sending press releases in good time so they can be reported on, and so on. Such a strategy does not seem to be in place.
https://medium.com/@OwenJones84/questions-all-jeremy-corbyn-supporters-need-to-answer-b3e82ace7ed3#.durajocc1
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Jul 31, 2016 18:08
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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I invite anyone who asserts that those not directly in power cannot influence the government to consider that the tories won in 2015 on a manifesto of All Austerity All The Time and that the labour leadership election started between three people who agreed with that and Jeremy Corbyn.
In 2016 Theresa May is making speeches appealing to the left and the only person anyone thinks has a chance of leading the labour party except for Jeremy Corbyn is nicking all his policies, including completely rejecting austerity.
There are people being thrown out of their homes today because of the bedroom tax.
If Labour had won in 2015 the bedroom tax would have been abolished. If Labour wins in 2020 (or whenever), the bedroom tax will be abolished. If the Tories win again then the bedroom tax will stay.
Opposition parties can have some influence but basically the government controls the apparatus of the state and the opposition doesn't.
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Jul 31, 2016 22:11
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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If Labour had remained a left wing party it is possible the bedroom tax would not have been enacted in the first place.
The Opposition is a significant part of setting the tone of discussion and what policies are acceptable for the electorate. The current Tory governments owe a lot to the centrism of the previous Labour government and opposition for the things they do and get away with. The job of the opposition is to effectively organize the opposition to government policy, regardless of whether they're in government. The bedroom tax is loving stupid and the opposition's job should be to raise the appropriate outcry about that.
Labour was reasonably left wing under Michael Foot and that didn't stop Margaret Thatcher being right wing.
I mean, there's no way any Labour opposition is going to somehow drag the Tories to the centre so that they are less terrible than a Labour government.
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Jul 31, 2016 22:28
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May 18, 2024 00:43
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- Paxman
- Feb 7, 2010
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Here's a thought - Labour leadership candidates need 50 MPs to sign them off. If Corbyn completely tanks the party then they won't have that many MPs. Hey presto - job for life.
To be a pedant, it's 15%, which is around 50 MPs right now.
So if you get Labour down to 20 MPs in total, Corbyn, McDonnell and Diane Abbott would make up 15% and he'd be sorted.
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Jul 31, 2016 23:44
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Jul 26, 2016 09:35
