Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)
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I don't think the party will split though. It would be 1983 all over again. The centre-left vote will split and the Tories will win. There are members of Parliament, and the Shadow Cabinet who are trying to bide their time and 'wait for it all to blow over'.
Maybe but I don't see anything that inspiring. He's never made a keynote speech or ever really set out his vision for the party, let alone country. He got elected to a job he didn't really want and since then has just been increasingly annoyed by the fact the job requirements involve actually doing stuff. He's ran the Labour party as if he's still a backbench MP making infrequent appearances but generally keeping himself to himself, plodding along. Which maybe explains some of the organisational chaos and amateurish handling of the media.
Get the impression if it were up to him he'd pop along once a week on a Tuesday afternoon for a coffee with the people in the office, brief meeting then home again for a few days where he can work on that replica model of the Lusitania someone bought him for Christmas.
There simply isn't that radical vision there other than in the minds of people who fear they'll lose face if they ever admitted it. He's a middle-aged, middle-of-the-road leftie happy to do a part-time job and just plod along. I can see how a firebrand socialist bursting with radical and refreshing ideas would inspire people, but he isn't that. The only thing he has are supporters that desperately need to pretend that's what he is. He's a leader who in 3 years has achieved a football chant and he didn't even do that himself.
I think you're probably right in reality, it's just my own preference. Although it depends how loony the loony left get, I suppose.
and one of my favourite replies
I am not in any way dismissing your views here. In fact I wish many Party members would step out of the echo chamber to see what the electorate think more broadly.
Corbyn is the result of a number of factors. First, the slow death and toxicity of New Labour, mostly due to Iraq, which has led to a generally held view that the war in Iraq overrode any of the positive achievements of the 1997-2010 Government (which, I should note, was the longest period of non-Tory rule since 1763). This can be contrasted to Tory members - Thatcher's ministries are generally seen positively, despite issues like the Poll Tax. The left have to be more pious than the right.
Second, there was a feeling in the membership (who were sidelined during the Blair and Brown years), that the Party lost its way and that we needed to 'return' to be properly left-wing. Even Miliband wasn't left wing enough. Without this groundswell of opinion, Corbyn would not have been elected. There was a desire to 'lose authentically' than compromise. (See also Wenger, Arsene).
Third, since 2015 the membership has got more and more left wing. Moderates have left. Those who attend meetings are predominantly Corbyn supporters, but also predominantly white, middle aged and of middle income. To be cruel, you could accuse them of being able to afford Labour losing elections, as they would benefit from a Tory Government. They see in Corbyn all of their hopes and dreams for what a Labour Party should be, and what they also think (incorrectly) the Labour Party was from 1945-1951 under Attlee. Rhetoric has trumped reality.
Fourth, there has been a clear movement of power away from the PLP to the NEC and Conference, and in turn the membership. This has reinforced Corbyn's position, but also more broadly the position of the Left throughout the Party. We are engaged in a civil war (not widely reported) involving the deselection of councillors and (in time) MPs. We risk, as a Party, becoming even more polarised and not communicating our messages and vision to the electorate at large. The result of that will be more Tory Governments.
The membership wasn't really sidelined during the Blair/Brown years if we're talking about those who share Corbyn's ideology. They've been in self-imposed exile for the best party of 70 years, opposing every Labour leader with the possible exception of Michael Foot. The myth that New Labour was some kind of removal of 'true' Labour ignores the reality that pretty much since 1945 the party has always been led from its centre/right and has always faced opposition from within from the left. Blair was far more in-keeping with the natural evolution of where Labour had moved post-war than Corbyn is. Just look at the fact the only leader Corbyn has felt any loyalty to since being elected MP has been himself.
And as unsuccessful as Foot was he was a genuine intellectual giant. Fantastic orator. Not someone who got nominated as it was his 'go' from a group of people who'd stand routinely with no expectation of winning who found himself leader of the party to his perpetual chagrin. So even with that comparison, Corbyn pales.
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Everyone remembers how Nye Bevan deregulated the financial markets and kept privatising things. Proper moderate that boy.
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They were sidelined in the sense that policy decisions were made from No. 10 and the PM and his SPADs and not through Conference or the NEC (which was closely controlled by the leadership). The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and their ilk made a lot of noise from the sidelines and Corbyn is responding, although in doing so he will undercut his own ability to shape Party policy.
You are right about the mythologising of past Governments but that level of myth-making is rife throughout the membership. Attlee is reified and the realities of his Ministry ignored.
You are right about New Labour too but unfortunately it is seen as an evil and not to be repeated. Unless and until the rank and file realise compromise is needed to govern we won't gain power.
And again I cannot disagree with you on Corbyn and Foot. I'm more saying that unless and until 'Corbynism' gets a kicking at the ballot box the Left will remain dominant in the Party. Even if 'Corbynism' loses heavily I suspect the Left will blame it on the Labour Right and get more entrenched in their views.
Unfortunately for you, others are capable of reading.
Bevan was a divisive figure. His model of the NHS failed within a few years and cost the Exchequer dear, and supported the nuclear deterrent.
I share that concern. It doesn't appear as if winning is considered that important to them. Finishing 2nd in a two-horse race when the other horse's jockey has decided to feck off and its trainer implemented the worst training regime any horse in a race has ever endured - and seeing that as a thing to celebrate, doesn't to me indicate that winning is high on the priority list.
They'll take 20 years of the Tories in power if in return they got control of the Labour party.
He was also a radical and responsible for some of the biggest, lasting, changes to the British state.
Really? I didn't know that about the NHS.
He was certainly a radical. He was within one vote of being expelled from the Labour Party in 1955.
And it is important to remember the background of the 1945 election. All three main parties accepted the main recommendations of the Beveridge Report and all three parties were committed in their manifestos to creating a National Health Service. This gave the Labour Government, and Bevan at the Ministry of Health, leeway to enact the pillars of the Welfare State, knowing that they did so from the political centre. And with masses of American money. Personally, Attlee and Cripps will take precedence over Bevan for me given their central roles in enacting the Welfare State whilst dealing with huge Government debt. Bevan's plan for the NHS nearly sunk the spending plans of the Government.
He told the cabinet in 1945 that the cost of the NHS might be £145m a year, then admitted that it was costing £330m in 1949-50, its second year of operation. He didn't make any attempt to assess the likely demand for the free NHS services either.
He resigned in 1951 as Labour introduced charges for dentures and glasses to try and balance the books.
He prevailed against persistent opposition from doctors and others to the NHS - probably any non-ideologue would have buckled. No one person creates history but the existence of the NHS is in a huge part down to him and his dogmatism.
That's fascinating. Is the consensus that he pitched the £145m a year figure knowing that it was untrue but believing it'd gain support if that's what the cabinet thought it would cost?
Most importantly he made it extremely difficult to privatise the new health service. It could easily have been dismantled at a later date had he not nationalised the hospitals and centralised the whole structure. The spending worries are neither here or there IMO because this the the central requirement for a good national health service and can seen in the effects from this:
where dentists and opticians regularly give subpar service and goods to NHS subsidised patients
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He also compromised, allowing doctors to retain private practice and essentially bribing GPs by allowing them to continue as private businesses, as they do to this day: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/alevelstudies/origins-nhs.htm.
There is an element of historicising about the man which needs to take into account the support he was given by Attlee and the Cabinet, and most importantly the fact that all major political parties supported the creation of the NHS. It is much much easier to make changes to the structure of the State when you are doing so from near the political centre. That is a lesson which the Labour Party needs to understand.
Yes that is the view of most Labour Party historians which I have read. He also thought that once it was created the political pressure would be such that the Labour Party could not renege on it.
The spending worries are absolutely crucial. As they are today. With the state of the Exchequer's finances and the national debt even before Brexit bites any Labour Government must ensure all measures are clearly costed. That holds then as much as now. And again, all three main parties supported an NHS (but differed on the details). There simply wasn't the money in 1951 to pay for free opticians and dentists given the state of the UK's finances and our commitment to the Korean War.
But you can see the effects these policies have right? Him going over budget in the early days means people today won't have to choose between eating food and paying for an appointment. The government will go over budget on health because you can't tell someone who's sick and needs medical attention we can't afford it. That the choices made in dentistry and optometry last to this day is a testament to that. If you have to go into debt for these policies, go into debt.
Bevan's vision for the NHS was far more extensive than that conceived of by the Liberals, Tories or even other Labour MPs. The Labour Party's Welfare State addressed a number of the Beveridge Report's modern day evils. However my point was that Bevan's vision of the NHS was unaffordable from the very moment of inception, leading to the necessary cost cutting measures. The reality of the public finances was dire in 1945. We had effectively spent the wealth of an Empire on prosecuting a war, and we could not simply go on spending as if money was no object. Not whilst the Gold Standard held and the US had over 90% of the world's gold reserves.
I would also note that the NHS tells people all the time that they cannot afford to treat them. NICE guidelines and evidence-led treatment means some treatments just are not funded which does affect peoples lives and their morbidity and mortality: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/published?type=csg,cg,mpg,ph,sg,sc
The other issue is that even today, the Government has gone over budget on health. Sadly, throwing money at the health service will not fix issues related to demography, as well as the advance of modern medicine. Scientific advances cost the NHS at least £10bn a year alone. Our population is growing and the tax base diminishing. We will need 17,000 more hospital beds by 2022.
Adjusted for inflation, we spend 10 times the amount on the NHS that we did 60 years ago. Going into debt is simply not a valid response. Why? Because (just like in 2010), what is to stop the next Government from reversing spending in health? The Labour Party needs a serious conversation about how it will fund health services, beyond the simple tax-and-spend approach of the past (and yes, even from 1997-2010).
http://nhsproviders.org/a-better-future-for-the-nhs-workforce
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42572110
https://www.themedicportal.com/application-guide/the-nhs/challenges-facing-the-nhs/
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/the-nhs.433205/page-2#post-22945867
The UK spends less, both as a total and counting only govt expenditure, than most similar countries in northern Europe.
Having free-at-the-point-of-use coverage, with no extra insurance requirement, was part of what Bevan pushed for, and has lasted for 70 years. It went against not just the doctors' association and Conservatives, but also well beyond the recommendations of the Beveridge report.
You cannot say that Labour benefited from going to the centre by holding up one of their most radical acts as an example.
You cannot say that Labour benefited from going to the centre by holding up one of their most radical acts as an example.
It doesn't seem like Labour's leftist economic policies are holding them back among the general public.
Yes. And many of those countries have small polities (such as Netherlands) or higher levels of taxation (Sweden and others).
The King's Fund have made several points similar to the ones you have raised: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2...nding-compare-health-spending-internationally
I also think you will be interested in the Barker Report from 2014: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/new-settlement-health-and-social-care
You misunderstand me if you think I am opposed on principle to higher spending by the State, especially on health. I am trying to make the point that simply spending more does not address some of the systemic issues in our health system. The Barker Report's reforms are an example of the types of recommendations and reforms which could greatly benefit the UK as our population ages and the workforce shrinks.
I didn't say that. I said that in 1945 all the main parties accepted the Beveridge Report and committed themselves to creating an NHS. The political centre was therefore much further to the left than it is today, which made it much easier for Labour to pass reforms which would hold, as all the other parties accepted the Welfare State in principle.
Now look at today. In order for Labour to A) win power and B) more importantly, pass lasting reforms, we will need to start to move the political centre away from where it was under Cameron and austerity and towards the left. That has happened to an extent since Brexit but we are not there yet. If we try to pass reforms and structural change from further left of the centre than we (and the other parties) were in 1945, then those changes will likely not last long at all.
It doesn't seem like Labour's leftist economic policies are holding them back among the general public.
But we lost the election. It didn't seem that way given the opinion polls, and Lord knows I celebrated long into the night, not least because I had broken my back going round 6 constituencies which we either held or won. But we lost. And to win, we will need at least 1 million people who looked at the Tory Party in 2017, which had an unpopular manifesto and policies, to switch and vote for us (and most members would say our 2017 manifesto was excellent), without losing votes to either the Tories or Liberal Democrats. That is not an easy task at all.
I have already seen signs that the Party just think 'one more push' will put us into power. That was the same strategy which we used in 1992 and it did not work.
Oscie voted Lib Dem last election(Even Blair didn't go that far). And yeah why wouldn't your boss vote for a socialist leader who wants to improve the workers rights and strength trade unions must be because of Corbyn dress sense.
Just because he voted LibDem doesn't mean he isn't a Labour supporter at heart.
Like I said, the boss of my firm is a member of the Labour Party, but didn't vote for them at the last election.
Yeah, that's the point, and why he's held up as a prominent example of what those on the far left need to do. The NHS would look very different if not for his vision while in office.
It is a valid response. The death rate has increased since 2010 as a direct consequence of conservative policy, hitting the poor and disabled hardest. People who disagree with NHS spending through debt and taxation aren't worth spending political capital on. There are enough progressive people in the UK that the labour party doesn't need to appeal to people who want lower taxes. Labour should spend more time on emotional pleas for healthcare than economic ones.
That's good for reason for mandatory re-selection of MP's right ? It going to be very hard to pass changes/reforms when parts of the british state and British Capitalism is trying it's best to stop these reforms(As Tony Benn time in office shows). It's would make it a hell of lot easier if all MPs in Labour Party could agree that these reforms are a good thing, which clearly isn't the case at the moment.
Well yes. Being a ''labour supporter'' doesn't actually mean, Osice is a liberal and the labour party isn't really a liberal party anymore so he's not going to vote for it(And I image the same can be said of your boss).
I don't think you will find any Labour member who doesn't like the NHS. My point here is that it is important to give Bevan's actions context. He compromised a lot to get the NHS Act passed. He also designed a system that needed reform 3 years after creation, and which has sadly always struggled around issues of funding. He was given backing in Cabinet by Attlee and could not have got the Bill through without the 146 seat majority Labour had. Of course we can hold up the NHS as a shining achievement of Labour in Government. It just took a lot more than Nye Bevan's will.
A few points. Labour always scores higher than the Tories on the NHS. We don't need to make emotional arguments. They tend not to work. Remember the 2015 election and "24 hours to save the NHS"? People voted for the Tories on economic reasons and ignored us. We cannot make the same mistake again.
Debt for debt's sake is not a long-term or sustainable response. I am not arguing for dogmatic Lansley-style reforms to support the free market. The Barker Report raises important questions like why are the health and social care budgets separate? There are reforms we could and should make to join up healthcare in the UK that would improve outcomes. At least we need to agree that the current system was broken by the 2012 reforms? That alone should show that money alone is not the answer. We need reforms.
Here are a few: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/public...MIquaij_n-3AIVgbHtCh0ZawUiEAAYASAAEgL5DvD_BwE
I oppose mandatory reselection. There are deselection processes on the books which work and which Kate Hoey, Frank Field and Chris Leslie will doubtless experience soon. The Labour Party has a democratic constitution but is not democratic. Power has always been used by the faction in charge to purge the faction that is out of power.
Deselection would mean, in practice, that an MP has to get and retain the confidence of a small selection of the membership - those who attend meetings, and who are not representative of the Party or of the constituency. It would lead to MPs becoming delegates rather than representatives, and push the PLP to the left, which (in my view) will undermine us at the ballot box. It is hard enough winning votes at local elections when the Tory Party consider Momentum to be a Stalinist organisation running the Party from the shadows.
Housing is really the major issue why the labour moderates can't win either internal elections or general elections right now. We all agree on tax and spend for the NHS, but it's hard to imagine labour centrists being in favour of policies that feck landlords. And it's going to be impossible to fix the housing crisis without landlords losing significant wealth and large parts of their property portfolios. There needs to be a significant programme of social housing construction (and acquisition of local housing stock), significant rent controls and tenants rights (most obvious examples being pets, children and LHA recipients which most landlords won't allow in their properties).
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I'm not questioning the context. I'm questioning whether the NHS would be what it is (namely free at point of use) if someone more moderate was at the helm.
Honestly, the major labour policies I remember from the 2015 elections were immigration reform and minor reversals of austerity. Those were the policies they promoted heavily. The vote share for labour jumped significantly when they moved further to the left in 2017 and made no concessions on policies or branding.
It's not debt for debts sake, it's for specific expansions in healthcare and the welfare state. Also I'm not arguing against any particular reform here. I'm just making the case for ambitious policies. I don't think centrists will appeal to enough of the electorate to be successful now or in the near future.
50% of second home owners are over 54: https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/bns/BN237.pdf
And we do need to deal with it as a nation: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...launch-tax-attack-second-home-owners-new-buy/
The younger generations are getting shafted.
I would note though that the current set of Labour MPs all stood on the 2017 manifesto with its housing plans and rent controls. A good number of centrist Labour MPs would support those measures in my view. This isn't a hill they want to die on (Chris Leslie excepted).
It's not that they're going to shit the bed when said policies are introduced. It's that they won't go far enough when drafting and enacting those policies. See new labour which despite better than the governments preceding and following it did nowhere near enough to control or improve the sector.
I don't know. Such is the nature of hypotheticals. It would have been interesting to imagine a system designed by Ernie Bevin though.
The policies of Corbyn and the policies of Miliband were very, very similar:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politi...-different-ed-milibands-or-even-new-labour-so
https://labourlist.org/2017/04/corbyns-policy-platform-and-why-he-could-be-the-heir-to-ed-miliband/
https://medium.com/@OwenJones84/questions-all-jeremy-corbyn-supporters-need-to-answer-b3e82ace7ed3
The branding was certainly different. The presentation certainly was, as the manifesto glossed over the issue of whether we would end the benefits freeze: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39991866
And where we differ is that spending money is not ambitious enough. We need to first repeal the 2012 changes to the NHS and then combine the health and social care budgets and provisions, ensuring that care focuses on the individual rather than the diagnosis. In short, the Barker Report's proposals.
The reality is that Corbyn has the job until he voluntarily steps down. So the Left is in the ascendency in the Party. So anyone arguing for centrism or for a moderation in views is effectively arguing that Corbyn should temper his views. So the people writing Labour policies for the foreseeable future are the Left in my view.
I think the New Labour Government was too timid in part, and in part they were cautious after 18 years of Tory rule and unsure what the electorate would accept. Then Iraq came and basically ruined the second and third terms.
Ah fair enough.
Absolutely fair criticism. For all his bravado I think Blair was for quite a long time after 1997 someone unsure of himself. Fixated on that second consecutive term that despite the good that was done, there was a lot more than could have been done with that first term majority.