presta
Member
Before people join in with those who peddle the same old anecdotes and hackneyed tropes about NHS productivity, I'd recommend they try reading some of Steve Black's work.
Dammit, Steve Black looks interesting but you gotta register to read - I know it's 'free' but even so I rather baulk.
It depends what the 'links' are.
The hedge fund manager may have 'links' to all sorts of things.
Unfortunately, the Labour party has to get its funds from somewhere if it is to compete with the vastly better funded Conservative machine, especially considering the Conservatives have just removed the cap on party electoral spend. Ah...you didnt know about that...I see.
That's bordering on the absurd. A bit like saying you can't criticise the policies of the Israeli government, which is a bit like what got so many Labour party members damned for alleged anti-semitism."Mandelson-shaped" has an anti-semitic conspiracy ring to it.
Hell's bells.The Labour party is no longer a populist party, thank God,
That's bordering on the absurd. A bit like saying you can't criticise the policies of the Israeli government, which is a bit like what got so many Labour party members damned for alleged anti-semitism.
Hell's bells.
Whose party is it then? The party of middle class opportunists who bought their council houses but felt a teensy bit guilty for it?
I said it is no longer a populist party. Populism is a political strategy, not a constituency.
I know I said it twice. There is a lot of equating things falsely about, sorry.You said "a bit like" twice...
If you want to try and argue that anti-semitic tropes about evil Jews in the background secretly controlling events don't exist then be my guest.
On the contrary. So far from populism that he declined to admit that, on balance, he supported Brexit - rather believing in following the party policy.Jeremy Corbyn was an absolute populist. Prior yo his election as leader he had absolutely nothing to show for his years in politics. Just 'protest'.
On the contrary. So far from populism that he declined to admit that, on balance, he supported Brexit - rather believing in following the party policy.
What should he have to show apart from being a person of integrity?
Some sort of achievement? Even just a junior ministerial position rather than just a back bencher who goes on marches and tells the marchers what they want to hear. That isn't integrity, it's cowardice.
Anyone can spout an idealised position that takes no account of the constraints of office, balancing conflicting interests etc.
But there was the problem. You see most people are not left wing or right wing, they are centrist. This chart is from 2020 and shows 24% left wing and 25% right wing. That leaves 34% in the middle plus the 17% who didn't know (if you don't know whether you are right or left wing, I'd argue you are centrist). The last 4 elections have had a 66% turnout on average. It's the centrist / floating vote which is the most important. So Rabid right wing parties such as the Tories now are, and frothing lefties like Jeremy Corbyn are just not electable.Ok. But not the strategy of Jeremy Corbyn, who found himself at the front of both the principled left of the Labour party, the activist element who tried to make him a folk-hero and the formerly disillusioned who rejoined Labour to try to work for genuine socialism, in their naivety.
But there was the problem. You see most people are not left wing or right wing, they are centrist. This chart is from 2020 and shows 24% left wing and 25% right wing. That leaves 34% in the middle plus the 17% who didn't know (if you don't know whether you are right or left wing, I'd argue you are centrist). The last 4 elections have had a 66% turnout on average. It's the centrist / floating vote which is the most important. So Rabid right wing parties such as the Tories now are, and frothing lefties like Jeremy Corbyn are just not electable.
Blair got elected through moving Labour to the right. Older people are still terrified of going back to a 70s style labour government (based on a poll of my elderly mother) but don't grasp that the current Tory government is absolutely shafting them.
Very few people want everything renationalised, 95% taxes and unions running everything. Equally no-one wants the utter rowlocks that the current government offers. I'd say that most people would like to keep taxes low but wouldn't mind paying a bit more, would like people who should be paying lots of tax (see Lord Ashcroft and his money that lives in the Cayman islands) actually paying it, seeing multinationals pay their fair share of tax so that the NHS can be properly funded, potholes fixed, the courts backlog to be dealt with, some basic community policing, improvements in energy supply to make it more renewable and less costly etc etc.
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