They won elections with rapidly reducing majorities. And I wouldn’t say they “neutered” the right wing Press. They could have done so much - brought in German style ownership laws, which would have kept out Murdoch, had a proper regulator, and introduced prosecution for the printing of actual lies. But Blair thought he could walk on water, sucked up to Murdoch, attended the baptism of Murdoch offspring at the River Jordan while wearing white robes (I swear you would never make this stuff up) and Brown cultivated Dacre, appealing to his fellow Scottish repressive mindset. They let an alcoholic tabloid journalist - Campbell - take part in making policy. And they parachuted in a collection of MPs who owed their jobs to Blair and Co. They also got round the convention that ministers must declare interests by expanding buy for let, so that a number of Labour Ministers including Blunkett and Blair acquired rather large property portfolios, then manipulated planning laws so that there was a London house price boom from which they benefited. Mandelson actually had to resign owing to the way he funded a mortgage to get him on the London gravy train. You’ve now ended up with “Labour” MPs with no real constituency standing. (All this of course was perfectly legal. I’m not accusing them of dishonesty, just of behaving like Conservatives.)
And when they had the chance they sold their principles for Ministerial salaries and company cars, and were outmanoeuvered by experienced Conservatives - who tend to be masters of Parliamentary procedure. In our constituency the behaviour of the Lib Dems resulted in their losing the seat to a very weak Conservative candidate who got a majority of 20 000. They now can’t find a strong candidate. Farron is all very well but Christian fundies are essentially not Lib Dems - Gay rights were a major platform of the Liberals from way back.
I know this has turned into a rant and I apologise, but I do feel that Corbyn was necessary, Labour needed to get rid of people like Danczuk. Things got bad but they are improving. The Lib Dems have yet to face up to what happened to them.
Actually, I think Brown’s failure to properly regulate the financial markets was responsible for the 2008 crash. They’d been in power for 11 years by this point, they can’t absolve themselves of it because it happened on their watch. The real problem, though, is that it utterly destroyed a reputation for being a safe pair of hands with the economy. Who’s going to trust them with their money now?
Don’t worry, I’m good. Politics is a hot button topic at the best of times. At least here we’re actually discussing it rather than just shouting slogans into the echo chamber.[quote=“Enkita, post:45, topic:165”]
They won elections with rapidly reducing majorities. And I wouldn’t say they “neutered” the right wing Press.
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But they started with a landslide. And if you look at the press it was reasonably sympathetic. Certainly far more so than in the 80’s (or what we see now). And I agree with you that there was so much they could have done, and this is why I think it’s a tragedy that they did nothing with it.
Ah, so you are accusing them of dishonesty!
I’ve heard this said a lot, but I never hear anyone criticising the Tories for implementing their plans, just that it’s our fault we didn’t stop them. And to pretend that a political party that is seeking power in order to enact it’s policies shouldn’t take the opportunity is disingenuous, although it does deflect attention away from Labour’s poor performance. I think I’ll post separately on this giving my views as a Lib Dem, but I’ll need a day or two to collect my thoughts.
Tim was exactly the leader we needed after the 2015 result. He’s friendly, personable, enthusiastic and is trying to build the party back up. For all the mocking of #LibDemfightback the party has grown enormously since the election. If Norman Lamb had become leader we would have become a protest party focusing on a few issues. Tim may not be the leader we need going forward, but he’s certainly the leader we needed to get here.
Yeah, so was I. I got the impression that they got played badly and screwed-over in the coalition negotiations (which was disappointing, since that was supposed to have been their key strategy objective for over a decade) - and then again randomly thereafter.
I think the best at-all-likely outcome here is reducing the majority of the Theresa May party, which not only would make the choice to hold an election one more foolish risk, but would make her more vulnerable to rebellion, and thus needing to take a compromise position, possibly needing cross-party consent, on exit - rather than blatantly speeding for the cliff stuck in first gear and foot stamped solidly on the accelerator like Jeremy Clarkson with a raging anti-EU hard-on.
And if we want (no experts) emotional reasons - If the referendum voters were voting leave to throw a spanner in the works, and punish the powers-that-be in the only way available to them? Well then, it must also be equally valid to want to punish the blithering idiots in office who got us there just to settle their own damn internal politics.
Owing to the close links between US and UK banking it was virtually impossible for Brown to resist the deregulation coming from over the Atlantic. If you haven’t already read it, Gillian Tett’s book Fools Gold explains a lot of the background.
My wife remarks how difficult it is to get ordinary people to understand that their lives are directly affected by apparently abstract questions about the movement and control of capital. The short answer is “shortly after civilisation collapses.”
I’m not saying that there’s not a bigger picture, but Brown was responsible for deregulation, and was more than happy to take the credit when things were going well.
Just saying that everyone else was doing it, or that the bigger boys made him isn’t, to me, adequate.
I think they both do. It would be a huge exaggeration to say that the only reason I would vote for them is to keep the tories out, but when I balance what I like and dislike about the parties it’s what I feel like doing.
Now, if we could have a party that is economically like left wing labour, and socially like the lib-dems then I would be a supporter from day one. About the closest we have is the green party, and the hair shirt wing scare me (I’m still thinking of joining them though).
I agree with you - I dislike the Labour social Stalinists.
But the Green Party? The more I look into them the more they seem to consist of upper middle class people who are safely up the slippery pole, telling the people lower down that they have to restrain their expectations. The local members (that I know) all seem to have plenty of money to spend on electric or other expensive bicycles, and live in big houses with large gardens. Car parking in Brighton (for instance) is astronomically expensive which keeps poor people* out of the central areas. The Green Party really doesn’t seem to be addressing the fundamental issue of our time, which is the transfer of wealth to a tiny (and ageing) minority aided by politicians and the media. For me, everything else follows from that. A more just distribution of money, education and access to resources is the priority. And sadly my experience of Greens is that they are economically illiterate - they have no idea how much infrastructure projects cost, they talk casually of building offshore wind plants and adding more solar power without considering how they are to be funded or how energy is to be stored for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. They are like the old Independent Labour Party, which wanted everything but had no idea how to get there. A low energy society is a great idea. How are you going to rebuild our entire infrastructure, farming, cities, transport, warehousing and distribution and generation in order to make it work?
I do try to engage with the Greens but it’s hard to discuss things with people who don’t understand big numbers.
Yes, the hair shirt wing. I didn’t say that they would be the people wearing the hair shirts.
I understand your concerns, but I am not seeing any better alternatives who have any chance of getting elected. Labour/Lib-Dem/Tory/Ukip aren’t going to do anything to fix the problems we are having. I wouldn’t have even considered voting Green if Larry Sanders wasn’t running here (who is ex-Labour, he left because of the Blairites). There is an independent running here (he lives just around the corner) and he seems to have some good ideas, but he can’t even come close to being elected to the city council.
And that’s everyone. I mentioned Ukip but they aren’t standing here because there is a good chance they will lose their deposit.
And now the anarchist inside me is asking why I bother.
When there’s a more complete picture of what’s to be done rather taking the concept of “taxing wealth” and making a system even more reliant on self-reporting-with-{dubious-accounting}-and-loopholes than the current {VAT}.
That is a bit like saying that Newton’s work should have been ignored till someone found a way of building quadruple expansion steam engines. You have to get from here to there, and to do so implies that someone starts to do something about it. Like Watt. Or Stevenson.
“One step at a time” certainly has meaning. By traction I figure you mean actual political results. There’s no workable political program of implementation, so it will remain stalled.
By traction I mean pull. Political change comes either from push (Farage, Hitler) or pull (1945 Labour government). Pull can only develop if people re aware of possibilities for change, but how it takes place evolves.
Since Conservatives manage to mismanage the country quite happily without bothering about things like “workable political programs”, I fail to see your point. Politicians do things all the time without really understanding the consequences. Even in China where they tend to leave running the country to engineers and accountants.
From my point of view you and I are saying similar things. What I will add is that the incomprehensible cred the Tories gain for their economic shitshow is down to long term capture, by the idiot rich, of media.
