Labour to spend weekend practicing deafening silence ahead of Tory budget

[T_i_B]

http://eveningharold.com/2015/07/04/labour-to-spend-weekend-practicing-deafening-silence-ahead-of-tory-budget/

The parliamentary Labour Party are spending the next two days on a country retreat working on how they can provide the least opposition to the first Conservative budget since November 1996.

“We hear that George Osborne is going to favour the wealthy on inheritance tax while also cutting billions from welfare,” a Labour insider who gave their name only as Harriet Harman told us. “We don’t like that at all so in response we’ll be sure to…um…well…hoo…”

[LeftishBrit]

1. Sounds all too accurate.

[non sociopath skin]

2. Ain't it the truth?

The Skin

[Gumboot]

3. Too true, and getting very sick of it.

Let's get Jeremy Corbyn elected ASAP, and have some proper old-school rabble-rousing socialists back on centre stage.

[non sociopath skin]

4. Sorry to be a party pooper but it ain't gonna happen.

And if it does, the Establishment will make mincemeat of him.

I watched what they did to a much tougher, more experienced and more battle-scarred leader in 1983. And it's got worse since then.

Nice man. Good policies. But ...

The Skin

[LeftishBrit]

5. Very true, sadly

I doubt that he even expects or particularly wants to be leader - he just wants to present the 'alternative' to his party and good for him; but it won't go further.

It's said in the media that some Machiavellian Tories are paying the three pounds to vote in the contest, so that they can try and get the Labour Party led by the 'unelectable' Corbyn.

Though I do get frustrated by the mantra, common even in the Labour Party, that they lost the last election because they were 'too left wing'. Let's look at the maths: 48 Labour seats were lost. Of these, 8 were lost to the Tories (as compared with 10 Tory seats lost to Labour) - and 40 to the mostly more left-wing SNP. They didn't lose because they were too left-wing; they lost because the leaders were seriously ineffective campaigners, and also because they panicked over Scotland and lost Scottish support by saying that they would never work with the SNP, while at the same time failing to reassure those English voters who were influenced by the right-wing media on this issue.

[Ironing Man]

6. agreed

Labour didn't lose because they were too left wing, they lost because they presented an incoherant dogs-breakfast of a manifesto, did the classic 'saying two different things to two different people while they're both in the room' thing, undermined any policy with the small print that said very different things to the policy headline, and topped it all off with having a deeply uninspiring leader leading a deeply uninspiring shadow cabinet.

personally i think they did come across as too 'left wing' - but only in one very narrow, unimaginative, way: they allowed themselves to be percieved as having a client base who are dependant on state support, and that this client base would be maintained in order to preseve its electoral usefulness, but their 'socialism' went no further than that. a much more ambitious, much more widespread 'leftiness for all' might well have been far more attractive - there was no national (in the full sense of the word) project, no HS2 to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Swansea, Exeter and Penzance, no plan to boost significant, well-paid industries like Shipbuilding, Aerospace, Space, Renewable (or even Nuclear), just timidity.

they were also completely hamstrung by the failed personalities - who did they put forward to champion the issue of the NHS? Andy Burnham, the Butcher of Stafford, who implemented the PFI debacle and signed off on the whistleblower programme. who did they use on the economy? Ed Balls - one of the brightest, most capable people you're ever likely to meet - but forever tainted by his pivotal involvment in the Blair-Brown internecine warfare within Labour that hamstrung its governments for a decade and more, and so closely associated with Brown that you might as well have put a Gordon Brown mask on him and hope the voters wouldn't notice.

so much more could have been offered to all - national infrastructure, high-paying, exporting industries, constitional reform (federalism?), but no - they were just pissing about at the margins.

[T_i_B]

7. Very true

Apparently he is doing very well, but I would respectfully suggest that's only because the competition for the Labour leadership is so very poor.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11720055/Jeremy-Corbyn-is-a-close-second-in-Labour-leadership-race.html

If Jeremy Corbyn were elected leader, I would expect the parliamentary Labour party to turf him out even quicker then the Tories did with IDS.

[T_i_B]

8. Labour oppose almost nothing in George Osborne's budget

http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2015/07/09/labour-oppose-almost-nothing-in-george-osborne-s-budget

Those hoping for Labour to mount a fierce opposition to the austerity measures contained within George Osborne's Budget yesterday are set to be disappointed.

Speaking to journalists yesterday afternoon, Labour's new shadow chancellor Chris Leslie repeatedly turned down opportunities to oppose, or even criticise, most of Osborne's key decisions.

"It's difficult and obviously a lot more than they were expecting but we don't deny that difficult decisions have to be made and we accept that pay restraint is sadly necessary over this period," he said, adding that: "We have got to weigh up some of these changes and be more thoughtful in the way we don't just literally oppose everything … tempting as it might be."

The shadow cabinet are keen to re-position themselves as the "responsible opposition" following the departure of Ed Miliband. However, in their rush to change perceptions of the party they seem to have abandoned any real opposition to the Tories at all.

[LeftishBrit]

9. The satire was feebly inadequate, as it turns out

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/12/harman-labour-not-vote-against-welfare-bill-limit-child-tax-credits