Fraid not, it's just the loony right that's anti-Europe nowadays.
next labour leader
- Thread starter sun_tzu
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There are some Eurosceptics on Labour's benches, of that i know, although i doubt whether many have advanced to senior positions.
The UK's continued membership of the European Union should be apolitical, what with the quite lamentable state of that organisation. The party's new leader will need to be able to engage on the issue and adapt to a changed reality if the voters decide such.
The UK's continued membership of the European Union should be apolitical, what with the quite lamentable state of that organisation. The party's new leader will need to be able to engage on the issue and adapt to a changed reality if the voters decide such.
It looks highly unlikely they will though. Not worth taking in to account.
Except Blair didn't endorse aggressive ideological cuts to the public sector
If it's not a matter of politics then I don't know what is. Unless you mean that MPs should be given a free vote, in which case that's up to the individual party leaders, with the members having a corresponding option to leave their party if they don't like it. It's only really a conservative problem though, Cameron can easily suspend the whip if he wants to.
Has she come out in favour of the 12bn cuts or something, or is this to do with the budget surplus rhetoric? Because fighting the latter at this stage is like trying to stop the tides, and was basically in the 2015 manifesto anyway.
Sorry bit of an exaggeration. Should have said "Refusing to condemn" ideological cuts.
And I honestly don't know what the best route for Labour to take is regarding budget surpluses. Politically they have lost the argument. The ordinary voter thinks that reducing the deficit is somehow important. The right has managed to twist how voters view the economy from whether it is serving their needs to whether arbitrary targets are being achieved.
Having said that I'm not convinced the right course of action is to simply give up. A commitment to budget surpluses means either tax raises or aggressive cuts to welfare that in my view are contrary to the social justice labour should advocate. They should look more to Podemos and Syriza. They need a positive identity. Corbyn is the only candidate that offers anything more than a desire to win. And winning IS crucial. But you can't do it if voters look at you and that desire is all they see. That's how Kendall appears to me.
If I could choose a direction for the Labour Party I would make voting reform a key issue. They are not going to win a majority for the foreseeable future so they might as well prevent Conservative majorities. It would also bring voters back from the Greens and UKIP (albeit temporarily)
Ramble over.
Actually final question. You said you are closest politically to Corbyn? I honestly don't understand why you would vote for Kendall then. She's in the wrong party imo and will probably lose as well all whilst conceding the terms of political debate in this country to the Tories
See I get quite wound up about seeing this continually said, she's basically in the same political space that David Miliband was/is and he didn't get called a Tory anywhere near this extent, even Dennis Skinner voted for him. Maybe you're only allowed to take the more uncomfortable positions when you're experienced and the presumed winner of the contest, I don't know. In terms of her "Tory positions", off the top of my head I can think of the agreement with the 23k benefits cap (this is now the actual position of the Labour party, as stated by Harman in parliament a couple of weeks back), a commitment to the 2% defence spending target (Alastair Campbell and David Miliband have both endorsed this recently and isn't a bad tactic for causing the Tories a headache), Trident renewal (all the main candidates agree with this, as did the 2015 manifesto), Free Schools (the point has been quite fairly made that pledging to close down over 900 schools as a policy isn't likely to go down well in marginal constituencies) and public spending (again the main three candidates and the 2015 manifesto said similar things, the time for Labour to counter this was 5 years ago and they screwed it up. Concede and move on.) On the other hand, she's spoken of repealing any anti-union legislation the Tories introduce in this parliament, wants to devolve far more power to local levels to better target and improve service provision, prioritise spending on early years education as this is the key time that your future life chances are improved, and three of her main supporters (Chukka Umunna, Tristram Hunt and Jonathan Reynolds) are the only people I can think of that have actually brought up electoral reform in this campaign so far, which is something that I agree is very important for the future.
I won't consider voting Corbyn because he'd set the party back 10 years or more, and I'll vote Kendall over Burnham and Cooper because she's better positioned with the electorate to win in 2020, and is harder to damage by past associations or roles from the Tories and their press machine (and, contrary to certain prolific activists on twitter, isn't a Tory). Cooper for second preference as she'll at least take a big-ish step forward, and is quite a bit more impressive than Burnham. Time that Labour had a female leader either way.
Sorry to wind you up. To be fair I would throw that accusation at David Miliband as well if he was refusing to criticise Osborne's economic plan.The point being rather crudely made by suggesting she's in the wrong party is that if you concede public spending to the Conservatives then your hands are tied. You can only match them on the deficit reduction through tax rises or an attack on welfare. There's nowhere else left to look. She's not going to do the first so we are left with a Labour party that is not committed to social justice. But looking at her voting record I admit it's perhaps a rather out of line accusation.
The point being rather crudely made by suggesting she's in the wrong party is that if you concede public spending to the Conservatives then your hands are tied. You can only match them on the deficit reduction through tax rises or an attack on welfare. There's nowhere else left to look. She's not going to do the first so we are left with a Labour party that is not committed to social justice. But looking at her voting record I admit it's perhaps a rather out of line accusation.
No worries, you argue your corner and I appreciate that you took the effort to look further into it, it's more the people on twitter who did it endlessly without backing it up and call her the "Blair Witch", which also hits an ever so slightly misogynistic tone (seemingly tends to be Burnham supporters). On conceding public spending - I think it was the IFS during the campaign that said if Labour was only committed to balancing the current budget (therefore excluding infrastructure spending from the equation) by 2020, they'd have had to make very few cuts at all as the economy would pick up the slack on its own. Whether Kendall is pledging that or the further step of an overall surplus as the Tories propose I'm not sure, but the problem in opposition is that they government nearly always set the agenda and in Osborne's case, it's almost always done with the intention of giving Labour a headache rather than sound economics. Agreeing to the government's spending is a fairly standard move - Brown did it in the run up to '97 and ran a surplus for three years in government, and Osborne pledged to match Labour's spending when it was fashionable to do so before the crash. Overall point I suppose being - the Tories will be implementing the cuts regardless of what Labour say, they can now claim a mandate for it and there are no more Lib Dems to restrain them. Labour have to re-establish economic credibility as a priority, and it seems that unfortunately this is near impossible if you are seen to be advocating borrowing. As Labour showed in 97, you can get into office with a broadly centrist overall message, but apply fairly lefty redistributive policies once there (e.g. minimum wage, windfall tax on energy profits, tax credits).Burnham pretty dull on question time, not impressed by him - but I knew that was the case anyway.
Blair witch is actually funny - although completely out of order.
She is a Tory though, even wants an Aussie points system.
Voting records are pretty academic when you consider she is a career politian.
She would help the lib dem recovered for sure.
She is a Tory though, even wants an Aussie points system.
Voting records are pretty academic when you consider she is a career politian.
She would help the lib dem recovered for sure.
You realise we have an immigration points system already, introduced under Brown? And given she's the most pro-EU out of the candidates, she's not exactly going to recommend extending it to EU member states.
Wow she really is a witch. Already has what she is campanging for......
I hear that it was Corbyn's chance on Question Time last night, did any of you see it? How did he fair?
I caught bits of it. Quite liked one common-sense guy who turned out to be Corbyn, I can't remember seeing him before.
The stand-out was Anne McElvoy, as staggeringly clueless. Her sentences seemed unrelated at times, and the end result was a childish hotch-potch of Daily Mail cliiches. I've never claimed to be clever, but how someone like that can be successful at anything is a mystery.
The stand-out was Anne McElvoy, as staggeringly clueless. Her sentences seemed unrelated at times, and the end result was a childish hotch-potch of Daily Mail cliiches. I've never claimed to be clever, but how someone like that can be successful at anything is a mystery.
There's an obnoxious pompous little prig on big brother (i know i know) at the moment who's clearly as thick as two short planks and wants to be an MP. I think he'll most likely be successful, he has all the tools
This is why I'm losing patience with Labour, they don't dare to point out the reality as they're scared to challenge the narrative should they appear too leftist or defending new labour.
It's actually very difficult for immigrants outside of the EU to come over here and seek legal employment.
I'm hoping Corbyn gets enough airtime to change the landscape even if he doesn't win.
Had Corbyn been fortunate enough to appear on QT when domestic policies were at the fore he'd have been far it off IMO. Whilst much of what he said was well enough meant, his responses on foreign matters appeared to amount to one big group hug and that's not gonna cut it.
He suggested that IS could be combated by job creation in Tunisia, yet made no attempt to explain how he might bring such about. Too woolly to be practicable.
He was both right and wrong with regard to the NHS; i agree with him about pharmaceutical companies and state participation in research, but believe him to be overly generous towards those who repeatedly miss appointments.
He suggested that IS could be combated by job creation in Tunisia, yet made no attempt to explain how he might bring such about. Too woolly to be practicable.
He was both right and wrong with regard to the NHS; i agree with him about pharmaceutical companies and state participation in research, but believe him to be overly generous towards those who repeatedly miss appointments.
What, that they should be reminded several times before the appointment and then moaned at when they turn up after missing one? In other words what pretty much everyone else said? The only person who thought it was a good idea was Jeremy Hunt, who is a moron.
As someone who has regularly sat in outpatient clinics for 2-4 hours due to inefficiencies, a modest financial penalty for repeat offenders doesn't sound like a bad idea. These things don't occur n isolation, medical staff and other patients are affected.
Unite are backing Corbyn.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/05/jeremy-corbyn-backing-unite-labour-leadership-race
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/05/jeremy-corbyn-backing-unite-labour-leadership-race
Assuming Corbyn doesnt win the leadership, and assuming Cons get another majority, what next for Labour? The three candidates who have a chance of getting the leadership are running on a platform that Ed lost by being too left wing, so will Labour move right again if they lose in 2020?
Depends where the votes you need to win are, really. If Labour did manage to win a lot of voters back from the Tories but haemorrhaged so many to their left that they still lost the election, there'd be at least an argument for heading that way. If 2015 repeats itself though and Tory voters stay away, or don't come over in enough numbers, then it still doesn't look particularly wise to move left and lose even more of them.
Corbyn doing a lot better than expected. Ahead of Yvette cooper .
Policies aside, Corbyn comes across as less self-important than most politicians, and it goes down well.
I think that will play heavily in his favour. Half the reason people voted UKIP was because they saw Farage as more 'normal' than the other leaders and less of an archetypal slimy politician who'll do anything for a bit of power.
As you might expect, Corbyn got a great reception yesterday at the Big Meeting in Durham, seemed to win over a lot of people who were left cold by Milliband's appearance in 2012.
Telegraph state that private polling shows Corbyn is set to win the leadership.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...win-Labour-leadership-shock-poll-reveals.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...win-Labour-leadership-shock-poll-reveals.html
I would be very happy with that.
I suspect David Cameron would not be too disappointed
On the other hand, if Cameron continues his march to the right then the nation might vote in a left labour party simply as the alternative.
Wow if that is true,i bet the other candidates must be regretting letting him in.
but it will probably be boris by the time of the next election and he will just bumble along into the centre ground making the odd quip at pmq's and win by a landslide
He's neck and neck with Osborne at the moment, who has a long term economic plan, don't you know.
That's been labours election strategy for the last century. It hasn't worked.
Wow, that poll is a shock. I never gave the guy a chance in hell, as he was legitimately the only left wing candidate on the ballot. I'd love to see him win it.
he may well do
labour party activists voting for somebody who shares their beliefs rather than somebody who appeals to non labour party voters
I was talking about the possibilities if the tories abandoned the centre-ground, if I didn't make myself clear.
As for the last century, Thatcher comes in number one, although Blair and Wilson come in two and three.
they did pretty much abandon the centre ground under thatcher and labour decided to take her on from as far left as they have ever been (foot 1983) and got smashed (the libs took almost as many votes as labour - though not the same amount of MP's)